reading something like this a while ago (more than a year) about this, except I think back then, it was something to do with the uncertainty principle. The article I read (which I cannot remember) basically said that because you cannot observe the photon without affecting its state (because of the uncertainty principle), your action in observing the photon will change the state and thereby tipping off the receiver and sender that the message has been "tapped". I'm not a big physics expert, so I couldn't tell, is this the premise of this new article?
Unauthorized virus hacks?
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What's to prevent people from creating or hacking the guinea pig virus and create different strains? What's to prevent the exchange of such hacks? Is this a possibility?
Re:Virus to deter piracy?
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weeelll, not quite the same, though. What I'm saying is that if you have to download an "antidote add-on" to cure the disease, and let's just say that the virus has a signature that is generated from registration information, and the only way to get the "right" antidote is to register the software with the registration information you enter. The antidote would be keyed to your registration information, thus can be used to "cure" your characters.
This sounds a little like the Intel PIII CPU ID, doesn't it?
What if they create a virus that is in the game from the start that is not an optional download, and that will kill all your characters, no matter what happens, and you can't get the antidote unless you register your software?
I'm sure people won't like that and a patch would certainly be created in no time, and it could be a PR problem, but it's an idea.
I'm going to buy this game right now!
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I think that this is the kind of stuff that makes these games cool. I'd love to see more "realisms" in the game. I don't know about you, but I think this game can be used (maybe after modification) as a tool for creating an environment for people to deal with "real-life", maybe good therapy, even.
How was the serial number accessed? I mean, if it was documented, then you'd know it's there. What if it wasn't documented? What if they keep it in there and just not say anything about it? Since CPUs and hardware in general are not exactly "open source", there's nothing to prevent them from putting it in and not have anybody ever know about it, right? Not that Intel would do that, because if anybody ever find out, it'd be PR disaster. Right?
The other thing is, why not just create two versions of the chip? For home users, we can get the version of the chip that does not have the serial number, and for those that want/need the serial number feature, they can create a version that has it. Better yet, make it a separate module that can be added to the CPU, so that while each CPU has a serial number, it cannot be accessed unless this module is added. If corporate/government users want this feature, I don't see why they shouldn't have it. For personal use, I'd say we have to have at least a choice or it should not be there at all.
Anybody notice the little start button on the bottom, just like WinCE? And why are they using PC screen captures? It looks promising but a little too far off perhaps.
Here's an idea that I just got, I know it's got its problems, but tell me what you think:
1. Napster put advertising into their program. 2. Allow only MP3s that have a certain signature that can be used to positively identify the artist. 3. Allow MP3s to be freely traded. Each time a particular MP3 file is downloaded to completion, the transaction is recorded, and advertising revenue from #1 is used to pay the artist.
So the idea is that Napster than can be used to trade music freely, the artists get paid, the users don't pay anything. It's sponsored music trading. 4. Possibly restrict the MP3s to be under a certain bit-rate.
Problems: 1. How to do the advertising. 2. Must modify all MP3s to add "signature". 3. Omnipresent user profiling possibilities. 4. How much do the artists get paid?
If Napster just capitulates a little bit and allow something like this, or partially so, then maybe, just maybe, there wouldn't be all these people suing. Then we wouldn't have a site to Pay Lars.
Indeed, as RealPlayer used to be a plug-in (or had a plug-in version, however you want to say it) for browsers, now mozilla's gonna be integrated as a plug-in for RealPlayer! What they have in mind is actually staggering - by saying that they can treat everything as a stream, and they are creating a player that plays any kind of stream, they are saying, we are aiming to be broader than the web and all the web pages, etc., because the web is really only http, running mostly on port 80 or 443.
Of course, they could have borrowed a lesson from Winamp, who's had a little browser in their MP3 player for a while. But then, maybe the guys at Winamp (Nullsoft, whatever) should learn from this and incorporate Mozilla into their player.
They are seeking to turn the tables on the browser with this move. I'm sure if this is greeted warmly by the general public, you can bet they will position it more agressively as a "stream" browser/player, unlike what they said about their intentions were not to create a "browser".
hmmm...so by your argument, then data is king. Data is the only thing that ever needs to be protected (kept secret, that is), never the programs or source codes, right? Well, that makes sense.
I guess what I wrote wasn't clear, because I happen to agree exactly with what you are saying about how security should not be through obscurity. That's why I think in many ways the softwre that the US government uses should be open source. However, say if there were military algorithms for missile controls (I don't know of a better example), then I would say they should be classified and kept under wraps. Again, I agree with you on that as well.
I remember that there was the article on FOSE a couple of days back and I wondered why the government doesn't use Linux and Open Source software, and more importantly, why don't they create their own distro? Well, with this article, it seems a little clearer...
As far as US government software is concerned, I think aside from all the classified and confidential software written for the government which would be something akin to 'classified open source' (meaning, the source is completely available within the government to all those with the proper security clearance), all other software such as office productivity applications and OSes that are general purpose and do not contain top-secret algorithms/code should be Open Source. That was a long sentence. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that all government software that is not security-sensitive should be open source. Why? Because I think the government, more than anyone else, would want to know that the software that they use do not have security holes. I'm sure all the software that they use that ARE security sensitive would follow the same open source approach, except that the source is not 'open' to the public.
Does anyone know how the government ensure that the software they use do not have security problems? Or are they so tight on physical and network security that they are not worried about it?
I know that there are many problems with my suggestions above, not the least of which is that Open Source software is often not end-product oriented, but re-packaged with additional software developed by companies to provide the final end-user product. And this is why I thought it would make sense for the government to create its own distro. If they were to develop their own software based on open-source, they'd have to do less work, have more control over what they use, etc.
Ah, yes, back in the days of the BBS, those offline mail readers, all that downloading, with the piddling of bandwidth. I'd say Phil Katz was one of the most significant figures in computing and the early development of the Internet.
I also remember all those programs that were written as utilities that use ZIP in one way or another, such as converters that converted all ARC files to ZIP files, with the extra compression. PKZIP was so useful for me with my 32MB HD...
glass CRTs just seems a little too vulnerable to failures to me. I mean, for god's sake, it's glass! We are talking about space vehicles which may be subject to several G's of acceleration. Granted, that may not cause any problems, but if one of the CRT cracks or breaks, it will be useless. In many ways, I think that analog gauges would be more reliable. You certainly should not put several gauges together such that there's a vulnerable single point of failure. I suppose they could make it with something like bullet proof or shatter resistant glass (I hope) to remedy this proble.
Then there's the electrical system that's needed to drive such as system. What if the electrical system for the gauges were to lose power? No gauges? There should at least be backup analog gauges for some vital system gauges.
What they should also try to develop that would be better than CRTs though not as good as analogs would be some kind of flexible durable flat panel display. Something like the surface of those plastic mouse pads. You could bend it, press on it, and it would not cause significant damage. Even better still, make it so that the display is not a general purpose display, but pre-configured display that changes depending on electrical current/voltage like the analog gauges. But it would have advantage over the analog gauges because it would not have any moving parts. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, imagine those Duracell battery testers used as gauges. I mean, wouldn't that fairly resistant to all kinds of adverse conditions and abuse? And if you make them like "skins" that you could just snap in place, then you could easily carry redundant gauges because they would be very light!
Come on, they could do better than that! Or am I just completely wrong on this?!
I definitely remember Phil Katz and all the controversy surrounding him, and how grateful I was to have discovered his programs. I remember the first compression program which was SEA's ARC program. It was very slow. Then my friend and I discovered PKARC and PKXARC, which were much faster than ARC. As PKARC gained popularity because of its overall superiority, SEA sued Phil Katz, and he in turn created PKPAK/PKUNPAK (I think it was still paired like that). Tha PKPAK series didn't last long. The PKZIP series came out next, and that was the series that created the ubiquitous ZIP format that we see today. If I remember correctly, PKZ204G was the last official DOS version of the program, and there were plenty of trojans, etc. that were going around, and Phil created self-authenticating zip files, etc. Lots of neat little cool things. I also remember that other programs were giving PK a run for his money, such as ARJ and LHARC, but they never achieved the overall speed/performance/compression that PKZIP ever did (they were often better in one thing or another but not overall). Then WINZIP came out, and I kind lost sight of PK.
I still have thousands of ZIP files that were zipped with PKZIP. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have been as into computers as I am, it was because of those early days of playing around with PKARC and PKXARC that really got me started. I am terribly sad to see him go and in such (I think) indignant way.
I'm not familiar with all the details of the ISS, all I know that it is supposed to be an international effort and that the Russians, because of economic problems, have not been able to complete their part as scheduled. My immediate observations are:
1. They need to put in a little more "What If?" scenarios into the planning for just such situations, when the project doesn't go quite the right way or in the right order, especially when you are dealing with resources (other countries) that may fall behind.
2. It seems that one of the overriding goal of the ISS is more of the nature of world peace/cooperation, symbolically. The symbolism of the mission may be almost as important as its success, and I guess in that case, more allowance is made for things like slipped schedules?
3. In some ways, this "improvisational" mission to help the ISS from falling back into earth is really good because it exercises the space program to be more flexible and alert, especially in relation to #1, having to deal with other countries. It also makes space flight seem more routine, making it that much easier to imagine that space flight will become widely available (to everyone) within our lifetime. That'd be cool.
I still think it'd be really cool if the government were to create and use their own distro. That way, they can have a lot of control over the product, they can also have a very secure product. If they don't believe it, the full source code can always be reviewed, by anyone. That way, the only way they can achieve security and keeping information classified would be to use tools that were really secure, not merely obscure. I think the government should really consider it.
hmmm...Ok, I'll agree with you on those, but I think that UI shock within Windows family is minimal, especially after 95. Application UI changes, well, that's a different story. But I'll tell you, though I'm not necessarily proud of it, I'm pretty sure Cut and Paste works the same way in most Windows programs. The kind of UI shock I'm talking about would something akin to going from using shift-delete to ctrl-x for cut, and shift-insert to ctrl-v for paste (even though the shift key combos make more sense in a way).
But it definitely does help that everyone is giong through them at the same time. Being frustrated together is certainly better than being frustrate alone.
Sure! Absolutely. Having a budget doesn't mean having to buy specific items. If you can buy cheaper products, you can just buy more of them to fill the budget, right?
I'm sure there's enough excess and castoffs to get Linux in, no problem. The problem would be free software, because if the government is using free software, wouldn't we, as citizens (some of us less informed than others) demand to know why is the government spending so much money to use 'free' (still in terms of price, though not cost) software?
Quite frankly, if you sell it, it's commodity. End of argument. Something can be art and commodity.
Oh, Lars's definition is probably this:
Art - something that is sold to benefit the 'artist'. Commodity - Something that is bought, sold, traded with no royalty or any kind of payment to the 'artist'.
Someone tell the museums around the world that they aren't hanging art (esp. of the dead artists), but 'commodity'
The government had significant participation in Open Source/Free Software. They certainly have the resources to review the code, test the code, etc. If they are ever worried about control and security, well, what better way than for them to create an organization for development on Linux? Then they can oversee the development to make sure that everything is secure and up to spec.
Is there any reason why they wouldn't/couldn't do that?
The biggest reason for them to not go for free (as in price) stuff is because it ruins their budget allocation. They gotta keep buying expensive stuff to justify their budgets. I don't think it's necessarily (though definitely not out of the question) that anything that isn't expensive suck.
I didn't say there wasn't any. DOS to Windows, certainly. But in keeping with Windows everywhere "vision", Microsoft's various versions of Windows is actually pretty stable. Windows 3.x to Window 95 is the biggest shock event in Windows history. The ActiveDesktop and Win2K difference is negligible, as many critics will point out there it's basically the same, no significant improvements. Windows and WinNT? No major difference as far as I'm concerned. Only when you try to look under the hood.
But you know what? This brings to mind something else: Apple. The Macintosh has had a very stable UI as well, and they've built a loyal user base because of that. Windows built a larger one and faster because the hardware was open and cheaper and therefore more accessible. Apple wanted to maintain integrity, and good for them that they were able to hang in so well.
My point with all of this is that the Linux community can be well served to learn some lessons from AOL and Microsoft (and Apple). Don't constantly jump to something completely new and different just interest of technological/philosophical superiority. Geeks in general can be extreme and fanatical in regards to this. How about thinking about users for a change? Actually, I take that back. People in the Open Source/Linux community can do whatever, because everyone together serves as Research and Development. It is up to the companies that package and bundle and value-add Open Source software to make the user's experience smooth. They are the ones that need to think about the user.
Forget for one moment that this is Microsoft's attempt at breaking into the market of handhelds. Forget that there's Palm and that it just simply works better for what it is supposed to do (in contrast to feature cramming). I'm sure for usability, Palm and many non-WinCE devices work better than PocketPC.
But Microsoft is doing what it has been doing all this time - putting Windows everywhere. From their point of view, of course, it's corporate strategy. But surprisingly, it is also something that serves current users of Windows of any flavor well (sort of. What they don't know won't hurt them is the line of thought here).
For me, one of Microsoft's single greatest feat was NOT making a superior OS, but make an OS that is backwards compatible and provides good continuous user experience. What I mean is that there's no "UI-shock" except when you went from DOS to windows. But those were gradual steps. Microsoft had to build their OSes so that it would support countless different combinations of hardware devices stuck together that we roughly called PCs. Throughout the lifetime of Windows, the users were able to expect certain things to work similarly to previous versions. That says a lot about keeping users in mind.
Sure, we can come up with really great and intuitive UI that blows Windows away, but what about the users? It will take time to re-educate them. One might argue that a great UI will require minimal re-education - but we are not quite there yet, are we? In the mean time, Microsoft is trying to break into the handheld market with Windows. Not a surprise. The execution is poor because they are trying to cram so much into the PocketPC. But that's what they are doing strategically to get market share. They are trying to bring Windows users who's never had a handheld before to start using PocketPC. That's a smart move any way you look at it. And they do it by giving the user the familiar Windows UI that they've been used to. In some ways, that's very applaudable. Look at the two giant companies today: AOL and Microsoft - they build their business by making things easier and more accessible, but not necessarily better than everyone else. And that's why they are the big corporations they are today. Most people out there are not looking for technologically superior products. They are looking for easy to use, accessible stuff that everyone else has.
I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned from Microsoft and AOL, big evil corporate empires they may be. Miguel from GNOME certainly did, when he just copied all those the features from MS Excel. Learn to extend and embrace.
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reading something like this a while ago (more than a year) about this, except I think back then, it was something to do with the uncertainty principle. The article I read (which I cannot remember) basically said that because you cannot observe the photon without affecting its state (because of the uncertainty principle), your action in observing the photon will change the state and thereby tipping off the receiver and sender that the message has been "tapped". I'm not a big physics expert, so I couldn't tell, is this the premise of this new article?
What's to prevent people from creating or hacking the guinea pig virus and create different strains? What's to prevent the exchange of such hacks? Is this a possibility?
This sounds a little like the Intel PIII CPU ID, doesn't it?
I'm sure people won't like that and a patch would certainly be created in no time, and it could be a PR problem, but it's an idea.
I think that this is the kind of stuff that makes these games cool. I'd love to see more "realisms" in the game. I don't know about you, but I think this game can be used (maybe after modification) as a tool for creating an environment for people to deal with "real-life", maybe good therapy, even.
The other thing is, why not just create two versions of the chip? For home users, we can get the version of the chip that does not have the serial number, and for those that want/need the serial number feature, they can create a version that has it. Better yet, make it a separate module that can be added to the CPU, so that while each CPU has a serial number, it cannot be accessed unless this module is added. If corporate/government users want this feature, I don't see why they shouldn't have it. For personal use, I'd say we have to have at least a choice or it should not be there at all.
Anybody notice the little start button on the bottom, just like WinCE? And why are they using PC screen captures? It looks promising but a little too far off perhaps.
1. Napster put advertising into their program.
2. Allow only MP3s that have a certain signature that can be used to positively identify the artist.
3. Allow MP3s to be freely traded. Each time a particular MP3 file is downloaded to completion, the transaction is recorded, and advertising revenue from #1 is used to pay the artist.
So the idea is that Napster than can be used to trade music freely, the artists get paid, the users don't pay anything. It's sponsored music trading. 4. Possibly restrict the MP3s to be under a certain bit-rate.
Problems: 1. How to do the advertising.
2. Must modify all MP3s to add "signature".
3. Omnipresent user profiling possibilities.
4. How much do the artists get paid?
If Napster just capitulates a little bit and allow something like this, or partially so, then maybe, just maybe, there wouldn't be all these people suing. Then we wouldn't have a site to Pay Lars.
Of course, they could have borrowed a lesson from Winamp, who's had a little browser in their MP3 player for a while. But then, maybe the guys at Winamp (Nullsoft, whatever) should learn from this and incorporate Mozilla into their player.
They are seeking to turn the tables on the browser with this move. I'm sure if this is greeted warmly by the general public, you can bet they will position it more agressively as a "stream" browser/player, unlike what they said about their intentions were not to create a "browser".
hmmm...so by your argument, then data is king. Data is the only thing that ever needs to be protected (kept secret, that is), never the programs or source codes, right? Well, that makes sense.
I guess what I wrote wasn't clear, because I happen to agree exactly with what you are saying about how security should not be through obscurity. That's why I think in many ways the softwre that the US government uses should be open source. However, say if there were military algorithms for missile controls (I don't know of a better example), then I would say they should be classified and kept under wraps. Again, I agree with you on that as well.
As far as US government software is concerned, I think aside from all the classified and confidential software written for the government which would be something akin to 'classified open source' (meaning, the source is completely available within the government to all those with the proper security clearance), all other software such as office productivity applications and OSes that are general purpose and do not contain top-secret algorithms/code should be Open Source. That was a long sentence. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that all government software that is not security-sensitive should be open source. Why? Because I think the government, more than anyone else, would want to know that the software that they use do not have security holes. I'm sure all the software that they use that ARE security sensitive would follow the same open source approach, except that the source is not 'open' to the public.
Does anyone know how the government ensure that the software they use do not have security problems? Or are they so tight on physical and network security that they are not worried about it?
I know that there are many problems with my suggestions above, not the least of which is that Open Source software is often not end-product oriented, but re-packaged with additional software developed by companies to provide the final end-user product. And this is why I thought it would make sense for the government to create its own distro. If they were to develop their own software based on open-source, they'd have to do less work, have more control over what they use, etc.
Does this make sense?
I also remember all those programs that were written as utilities that use ZIP in one way or another, such as converters that converted all ARC files to ZIP files, with the extra compression. PKZIP was so useful for me with my 32MB HD...
Then there's the electrical system that's needed to drive such as system. What if the electrical system for the gauges were to lose power? No gauges? There should at least be backup analog gauges for some vital system gauges.
What they should also try to develop that would be better than CRTs though not as good as analogs would be some kind of flexible durable flat panel display. Something like the surface of those plastic mouse pads. You could bend it, press on it, and it would not cause significant damage. Even better still, make it so that the display is not a general purpose display, but pre-configured display that changes depending on electrical current/voltage like the analog gauges. But it would have advantage over the analog gauges because it would not have any moving parts. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, imagine those Duracell battery testers used as gauges. I mean, wouldn't that fairly resistant to all kinds of adverse conditions and abuse? And if you make them like "skins" that you could just snap in place, then you could easily carry redundant gauges because they would be very light!
Come on, they could do better than that! Or am I just completely wrong on this?!
I still have thousands of ZIP files that were zipped with PKZIP. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have been as into computers as I am, it was because of those early days of playing around with PKARC and PKXARC that really got me started. I am terribly sad to see him go and in such (I think) indignant way.
1. They need to put in a little more "What If?" scenarios into the planning for just such situations, when the project doesn't go quite the right way or in the right order, especially when you are dealing with resources (other countries) that may fall behind.
2. It seems that one of the overriding goal of the ISS is more of the nature of world peace/cooperation, symbolically. The symbolism of the mission may be almost as important as its success, and I guess in that case, more allowance is made for things like slipped schedules?
3. In some ways, this "improvisational" mission to help the ISS from falling back into earth is really good because it exercises the space program to be more flexible and alert, especially in relation to #1, having to deal with other countries. It also makes space flight seem more routine, making it that much easier to imagine that space flight will become widely available (to everyone) within our lifetime. That'd be cool.
I still think it'd be really cool if the government were to create and use their own distro. That way, they can have a lot of control over the product, they can also have a very secure product. If they don't believe it, the full source code can always be reviewed, by anyone. That way, the only way they can achieve security and keeping information classified would be to use tools that were really secure, not merely obscure. I think the government should really consider it.
But it definitely does help that everyone is giong through them at the same time. Being frustrated together is certainly better than being frustrate alone.
I'm sure there's enough excess and castoffs to get Linux in, no problem. The problem would be free software, because if the government is using free software, wouldn't we, as citizens (some of us less informed than others) demand to know why is the government spending so much money to use 'free' (still in terms of price, though not cost) software?
You could always check it because it is open source.
Oh, Lars's definition is probably this:
Art - something that is sold to benefit the 'artist'.
Commodity - Something that is bought, sold, traded with no royalty or any kind of payment to the 'artist'.
Someone tell the museums around the world that they aren't hanging art (esp. of the dead artists), but 'commodity'
Is there any reason why they wouldn't/couldn't do that?
The biggest reason for them to not go for free (as in price) stuff is because it ruins their budget allocation. They gotta keep buying expensive stuff to justify their budgets. I don't think it's necessarily (though definitely not out of the question) that anything that isn't expensive suck.
But you know what? This brings to mind something else: Apple. The Macintosh has had a very stable UI as well, and they've built a loyal user base because of that. Windows built a larger one and faster because the hardware was open and cheaper and therefore more accessible. Apple wanted to maintain integrity, and good for them that they were able to hang in so well.
My point with all of this is that the Linux community can be well served to learn some lessons from AOL and Microsoft (and Apple). Don't constantly jump to something completely new and different just interest of technological/philosophical superiority. Geeks in general can be extreme and fanatical in regards to this. How about thinking about users for a change? Actually, I take that back. People in the Open Source/Linux community can do whatever, because everyone together serves as Research and Development. It is up to the companies that package and bundle and value-add Open Source software to make the user's experience smooth. They are the ones that need to think about the user.
But Microsoft is doing what it has been doing all this time - putting Windows everywhere. From their point of view, of course, it's corporate strategy. But surprisingly, it is also something that serves current users of Windows of any flavor well (sort of. What they don't know won't hurt them is the line of thought here).
For me, one of Microsoft's single greatest feat was NOT making a superior OS, but make an OS that is backwards compatible and provides good continuous user experience. What I mean is that there's no "UI-shock" except when you went from DOS to windows. But those were gradual steps. Microsoft had to build their OSes so that it would support countless different combinations of hardware devices stuck together that we roughly called PCs. Throughout the lifetime of Windows, the users were able to expect certain things to work similarly to previous versions. That says a lot about keeping users in mind.
Sure, we can come up with really great and intuitive UI that blows Windows away, but what about the users? It will take time to re-educate them. One might argue that a great UI will require minimal re-education - but we are not quite there yet, are we? In the mean time, Microsoft is trying to break into the handheld market with Windows. Not a surprise. The execution is poor because they are trying to cram so much into the PocketPC. But that's what they are doing strategically to get market share. They are trying to bring Windows users who's never had a handheld before to start using PocketPC. That's a smart move any way you look at it. And they do it by giving the user the familiar Windows UI that they've been used to. In some ways, that's very applaudable. Look at the two giant companies today: AOL and Microsoft - they build their business by making things easier and more accessible, but not necessarily better than everyone else. And that's why they are the big corporations they are today. Most people out there are not looking for technologically superior products. They are looking for easy to use, accessible stuff that everyone else has.
I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned from Microsoft and AOL, big evil corporate empires they may be. Miguel from GNOME certainly did, when he just copied all those the features from MS Excel. Learn to extend and embrace.