Yeah, robots reading human dreams, but whoop. Wake me up when we can read robot dreams. When we find out if they dream of electric sheep, then you'll have something.
Robert,
I did read the article and caught that snippet. The author is vague about how the 'owner' is identified. I doubt the printer's drivers search your disk drive looking for identifying info. More likely, the 'potentially its owner' comes from warranty registration cards the manufacturer can cross-reference against serial number data gathered by the 'identifies the printer' part. The other way it could identify the owner would be for the government to cross reference its own database of citizen-printed documents it has within its archives. Mostly that would be tax forms people ignorantly printed in color instead of B/W.
My assumption about whether it prints user-identifying (name, address, etc.) info could be tested by comparing the pattern of dots when the printer is connected to separate computers.
Last year China shot down a satellite in a very public display of their capability to take out our communication and spying infrastructure. Let's say maybe the demonstration wasn't their best technology for anti-satellite weaponry. The US thinks all they've got are these noisy missiles to shoot satellites. Now we've got a spy satellite that's not functioning and is falling from ortbit. Perhaps its mobo was lacerated by a sino railgun. We'd never suspect the Chinese because all they've got are those easy-to-track missiles, remember?
So I guess the yellow dots get inserted at the hardware level.. Could you do us a favor and check those open source printer drivers to see if the yellow dots are inserted at the software level? If so, you might be able to recruit more Ubuntu users if you could offer yellow-dot-free drivers....
As an ex-Austin customer of Time-Warner ISP, I would say that the first suspect in any service outage should be TWC's incompetence. I finally switched to their new, local competitor: Grande Communications and have been thoroughly pleased ever since. The final straw for me was a network outage for my entire neighborhood that was identified on wednesday, they sent a guy out thursday, then said it would require a tier-2 tech to fix, who won't come out on the weekends, and friday is all booked up. So our whole neighborhood didn't get back online until monday.
Apple is a significant stockholder of Akamai and uses their distributed load balancing service for iTunes content. Before I'd suspect a server-side problem with Akamai (who knows a little bit about networks), my first go-to for troubleshooting would be TWC (who has demonstrated that networks are hard).
Could you please explain where search isn't good enough? Google works well enough for me (and just about everyone I know).
Complacency does not require that innovations and improvements are impossible. True, Google is awesome compared to its predecessors. But the system is constantly gamed by unscrupulous web 'publishers.' Fake website 'portals' abound in top rankings for lucrative searches, for example.
Also, the results are returned without any kind of organization. You just get a link to a page that contains the keyword you searched on. If your topic has a LOT of content published about it and you don't know what the hell it is, you'll have to wade through a lot of content to figure out what part is relevant to you. For instance, if you are a climate-change research group and got a voice mail from ex-Police front-man, Sting, a Google search on his name wouldn't obviously yield that he hosts a rainforest concert. If you Google'd "Sting" to find out why he's calling you, you'd have no idea. Instead, the search engine could recognize that you'd typed a vague keyword and could provide a Wikipedia-like summary of the overall topic with links organized by sub-topics like: Sting's work with the Police. Sting's solo career. Sting's rainforest concert series. Sting's film career.
I agree with the OP. Without competition, a company with overwhelming marketshare will cease to innovate features that benefit the consumer, and instead with focus on how to more effectively extract revenue from consumers. This is why Microsoft hadn't gotten around to improving IE for years until recently. It's also why the new direction they're taking Office is towards a rental model which doesn't bring awesome new power to the app suite, it just brings awesome new revenue potential to MS.
The status quo never seems like it needs remaking. That's why it's called the status quo.
Guess it's time to go some other place to host my photos...
It was time to go some place other than flickr when they instituted the 200 photo limit on free accounts. They also don't advertise that limit up front- you find out about it only after you've got an investment in using their site.
yeah, I had sprint. That phone would support mp3 transfers via cable, but if you wanted a ringtone you had to email it to the phone and get charged. They're not going to allow voip or SMS-workarounds, though. Typed on my iPhone.
Clearly, patents are a legal liability for your company. For other programmers, they enable them to make a career based on the only great idea they're going to have in their lives. So we can't just abandon software patents as others are suggesting.
To a certain extent, your company can defend your coding that might infringe on a frivolous patent based on the non-obviousness (it must not be an obvious invention to an ordinary person in that field) requirement for a patent. If lawyers show up claiming your spontaneously coding infringes on their client's patent, you can use a black-box reverse-engineering demonstration by contract coders to show that the original patent fails the non-obviousness requirement. But what if your code was an inspired bit of cleverness that was shared by someone else who decided to patent it? Well, that's the threat that makes me agree with you that the current software patent system is woefully inadequate because it punishes innovation.
I like the iPhone because it's fun but why are we fighting so hard just to make it run programs that we want?
The main reason Apple wants to control 3rd-party apps on the phone is because they've got a commitment to AT&T not to allow users to circumvent their traditional cell phone profit centers. This is: Ringtones, SMS, and cell phone minutes. If the thing were an open platform, the first thing people would install would be a VOIP client and an SMS app that uses email addresses instead of SMS phone numbers to send messages.
I got an iPhone 2 weeks ago. Best thing I've bought in years.
This little workaround is exactly why Apple is preventing 3rd-party apps on the iPhone. They're undoubtedly under a strict contract with AT&T not to allow anything on the iPhone that circumvents AT&T's profit centers. That would be VOIP and an SMS app that did all the sending via email. Hey, I've had my iPhone for 2 weeks and I love the crap out of it. I'm just a slight bit frustrated by this compromise. Wish it were a full-on computing platform.
I think you know a lot more about this topic than I do. I've done a bit of programming, but my real attitude on this topic comes from something I witnessed at an art opening in Austin. Do you remember that Richard Linklater film, 'Waking Life' or 'A Scanner Darkly'? They used a proprietary vectorizing technique called Rotoshop to convert digital video to vectorized frames, and then put it onto 35mm film. The software was developed by a couple of guys here in Austin. I suppose they patented the technique, but I'm not sure.
Well, at the art show, the main developer (Bob) of the software punched the other guy in the face. The other guy had gone off and signed a contract to use the technique to create those Charles Schwab TV ads. Bob thought this commercial use of their software seemed to be diluting the coolness of the technique.
The point being that this guy felt like his code was so valuable to him that he'd punch a friend of his for using it without his permission. If there was no way to patent the technique, etc., I would think programmers such as Bob wouldn't have as much to gain for innovating something like Rotoshop. Whatever some guy can invent late nights working out of his own bungalow can easily be replicated by any larger corporation once it's hit the market, if not for software patents.
Wow, can you imagine how cool this would be with respect to video games?
It's getting there to an extent. The newest game using an ID engine, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has an SDK where map-makers can load data from Google Earth to create terrain for their map.
I'm excited because I design skate parks and I frequently try to mimic popular real-world skate spots. A tool like this could allow me to import a photo of a plaza in Barcelona and get it into my CAD application without everything being guestimates. It won't be accurate, but things will be correct relative to one another and I can nail them down by hand.
I'm no fan of the patent lawyers, but simply reading your wish of "I too would like to see all software patents expired. It is hindering innovation and diversity in this business" makes me think we would lose a lot. Companies invest a lot developing not-fun-to-code stuff that ends up being lucrative. To get rid of software patents would mean large companies would have little R & D incentive in software.
I'd think that it'd be more effective to attack infrastructure--things like power stations, traffic control systems, that manner of thing--than to go after civilians directly.
You're right, since the first gulf war, the US military has promoted its "surgical" bombing ability to target the infrastructure you're describing. Planes and bombs are invariably used whenever possible, which would be akin to a robotic strike like you suggest. Human soldiers are only applied on offense when enemies are mixed in with civilians. In modern warfare, human soldiers are exposed to most harm when defending, as with the current Iraq situation.
Robotic technology could help out in a lot of non-ethically questionable capacities. For instance, robotic vehicles could drive in advance of convoys with metal detectors to check for IED's buried in the road. Even in direct combat, robotic technology doesn't have to be lethal. Drones can be equipped with tazers. For instance, soldiers clearing a building can drop a box at each entrance that has a motion detector, tazer, and targeting system. While troops are inside, if anyone tries to run in to attack or run out to escape, the drone zaps them. RFID tags or infra-red flashers protect the soldiers from friendly-tazering and verbal instructions warn civilians against running about.
so my cellphone DOES have a direct line of contact with a... government agency that DOES... collect my information.. time of day... places I've been...
This is another brick in the case the feds have been building to justify ballooning budgets for cyber-defense operations. Conveniently, increasing 'cyber defense' also grants the feds more abilities to inspect civilian communications, etc. Meanwhile, they ignore the meatspace threat of people physically attacking power centers. Increasing budgets for staffing people protecting physical power transmission doesn't get the feds anywhere they want to go.
If some foreign entity wanted to wreak havoc on America's power grid, they could simply deploy agents with.50 cal rifles to drive throughout major cities shooting transformers on power poles. We don't see the feds talking about this threat because protecting against it wouldn't mean an extension of their power. It would require an increase in local law enforcement.
I don't have any practical experience with this, but theoretically, I think a virus could be created that would infect windows computers and enable internet sharing off the wireless card. It would look at the name of the existing wireless connection and then call the shared connection '+1'. Then when zombied laptops go to coffee shops, etc. they become an additional wireless access point named 'coffee shop2'. Others mistakenly connect to the internet through this spoofed access point and all their outgoing packets are captured and sent to the botnet owner.
This virii could propogate through the normal infection vectors, but it could also create a 'login' requirment that asks users of the spoofed network connection to install a 'security key' for the connection to work 'securely'. You guessed it, TROJAN.
Slashdot Mirror
threatening legal retaliation based on DMCA.
I'd like to see US law enforced over in Oslo, Norway. Wouldn't that be a hoot.
Seth
Yeah, robots reading human dreams, but whoop. Wake me up when we can read robot dreams. When we find out if they dream of electric sheep, then you'll have something.
Seth
Robert, I did read the article and caught that snippet. The author is vague about how the 'owner' is identified. I doubt the printer's drivers search your disk drive looking for identifying info. More likely, the 'potentially its owner' comes from warranty registration cards the manufacturer can cross-reference against serial number data gathered by the 'identifies the printer' part. The other way it could identify the owner would be for the government to cross reference its own database of citizen-printed documents it has within its archives. Mostly that would be tax forms people ignorantly printed in color instead of B/W.
My assumption about whether it prints user-identifying (name, address, etc.) info could be tested by comparing the pattern of dots when the printer is connected to separate computers.
Seth
Last year China shot down a satellite in a very public display of their capability to take out our communication and spying infrastructure. Let's say maybe the demonstration wasn't their best technology for anti-satellite weaponry. The US thinks all they've got are these noisy missiles to shoot satellites. Now we've got a spy satellite that's not functioning and is falling from ortbit. Perhaps its mobo was lacerated by a sino railgun. We'd never suspect the Chinese because all they've got are those easy-to-track missiles, remember?
Seth
So I guess the yellow dots get inserted at the hardware level.. Could you do us a favor and check those open source printer drivers to see if the yellow dots are inserted at the software level? If so, you might be able to recruit more Ubuntu users if you could offer yellow-dot-free drivers....
Seth
Chiang Mai? Chiang Mai is a warzone. You bringing any weapons? No? You aren't changing nothing.
Rambo
Get an iPhone and be done with it. Look shit.
Seth
As an ex-Austin customer of Time-Warner ISP, I would say that the first suspect in any service outage should be TWC's incompetence. I finally switched to their new, local competitor: Grande Communications and have been thoroughly pleased ever since. The final straw for me was a network outage for my entire neighborhood that was identified on wednesday, they sent a guy out thursday, then said it would require a tier-2 tech to fix, who won't come out on the weekends, and friday is all booked up. So our whole neighborhood didn't get back online until monday.
Apple is a significant stockholder of Akamai and uses their distributed load balancing service for iTunes content. Before I'd suspect a server-side problem with Akamai (who knows a little bit about networks), my first go-to for troubleshooting would be TWC (who has demonstrated that networks are hard).
Seth
Could you please explain where search isn't good enough? Google works well enough for me (and just about everyone I know).
Complacency does not require that innovations and improvements are impossible. True, Google is awesome compared to its predecessors. But the system is constantly gamed by unscrupulous web 'publishers.' Fake website 'portals' abound in top rankings for lucrative searches, for example.
Also, the results are returned without any kind of organization. You just get a link to a page that contains the keyword you searched on. If your topic has a LOT of content published about it and you don't know what the hell it is, you'll have to wade through a lot of content to figure out what part is relevant to you. For instance, if you are a climate-change research group and got a voice mail from ex-Police front-man, Sting, a Google search on his name wouldn't obviously yield that he hosts a rainforest concert. If you Google'd "Sting" to find out why he's calling you, you'd have no idea. Instead, the search engine could recognize that you'd typed a vague keyword and could provide a Wikipedia-like summary of the overall topic with links organized by sub-topics like: Sting's work with the Police. Sting's solo career. Sting's rainforest concert series. Sting's film career.
I agree with the OP. Without competition, a company with overwhelming marketshare will cease to innovate features that benefit the consumer, and instead with focus on how to more effectively extract revenue from consumers. This is why Microsoft hadn't gotten around to improving IE for years until recently. It's also why the new direction they're taking Office is towards a rental model which doesn't bring awesome new power to the app suite, it just brings awesome new revenue potential to MS.
The status quo never seems like it needs remaking. That's why it's called the status quo.
Seth
Guess it's time to go some other place to host my photos...
It was time to go some place other than flickr when they instituted the 200 photo limit on free accounts. They also don't advertise that limit up front- you find out about it only after you've got an investment in using their site.
Seth
yeah, I had sprint. That phone would support mp3 transfers via cable, but if you wanted a ringtone you had to email it to the phone and get charged.
They're not going to allow voip or SMS-workarounds, though.
Typed on my iPhone.
As you state, this technique would reduce their charges by half.
Seth
Clearly, patents are a legal liability for your company. For other programmers, they enable them to make a career based on the only great idea they're going to have in their lives. So we can't just abandon software patents as others are suggesting.
To a certain extent, your company can defend your coding that might infringe on a frivolous patent based on the non-obviousness (it must not be an obvious invention to an ordinary person in that field) requirement for a patent. If lawyers show up claiming your spontaneously coding infringes on their client's patent, you can use a black-box reverse-engineering demonstration by contract coders to show that the original patent fails the non-obviousness requirement. But what if your code was an inspired bit of cleverness that was shared by someone else who decided to patent it? Well, that's the threat that makes me agree with you that the current software patent system is woefully inadequate because it punishes innovation.
Good luck with your start-up!
Seth
I know the SDK is coming out. I believe that 3rd-party apps will need to be approved by apple for installation on the iPhone.
Seth
I like the iPhone because it's fun but why are we fighting so hard just to make it run programs that we want?
The main reason Apple wants to control 3rd-party apps on the phone is because they've got a commitment to AT&T not to allow users to circumvent their traditional cell phone profit centers. This is: Ringtones, SMS, and cell phone minutes. If the thing were an open platform, the first thing people would install would be a VOIP client and an SMS app that uses email addresses instead of SMS phone numbers to send messages.
I got an iPhone 2 weeks ago. Best thing I've bought in years.
Seth
This little workaround is exactly why Apple is preventing 3rd-party apps on the iPhone. They're undoubtedly under a strict contract with AT&T not to allow anything on the iPhone that circumvents AT&T's profit centers. That would be VOIP and an SMS app that did all the sending via email. Hey, I've had my iPhone for 2 weeks and I love the crap out of it. I'm just a slight bit frustrated by this compromise. Wish it were a full-on computing platform.
Seth
cduffy,
I think you know a lot more about this topic than I do. I've done a bit of programming, but my real attitude on this topic comes from something I witnessed at an art opening in Austin. Do you remember that Richard Linklater film, 'Waking Life' or 'A Scanner Darkly'? They used a proprietary vectorizing technique called Rotoshop to convert digital video to vectorized frames, and then put it onto 35mm film. The software was developed by a couple of guys here in Austin. I suppose they patented the technique, but I'm not sure.
Well, at the art show, the main developer (Bob) of the software punched the other guy in the face. The other guy had gone off and signed a contract to use the technique to create those Charles Schwab TV ads. Bob thought this commercial use of their software seemed to be diluting the coolness of the technique.
The point being that this guy felt like his code was so valuable to him that he'd punch a friend of his for using it without his permission. If there was no way to patent the technique, etc., I would think programmers such as Bob wouldn't have as much to gain for innovating something like Rotoshop. Whatever some guy can invent late nights working out of his own bungalow can easily be replicated by any larger corporation once it's hit the market, if not for software patents.
Seth
Wow, can you imagine how cool this would be with respect to video games?
It's getting there to an extent. The newest game using an ID engine, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has an SDK where map-makers can load data from Google Earth to create terrain for their map.
I'm excited because I design skate parks and I frequently try to mimic popular real-world skate spots. A tool like this could allow me to import a photo of a plaza in Barcelona and get it into my CAD application without everything being guestimates. It won't be accurate, but things will be correct relative to one another and I can nail them down by hand.
Seth
I'm no fan of the patent lawyers, but simply reading your wish of "I too would like to see all software patents expired. It is hindering innovation and diversity in this business" makes me think we would lose a lot. Companies invest a lot developing not-fun-to-code stuff that ends up being lucrative. To get rid of software patents would mean large companies would have little R & D incentive in software.
Seth
I'd think that it'd be more effective to attack infrastructure--things like power stations, traffic control systems, that manner of thing--than to go after civilians directly.
You're right, since the first gulf war, the US military has promoted its "surgical" bombing ability to target the infrastructure you're describing. Planes and bombs are invariably used whenever possible, which would be akin to a robotic strike like you suggest. Human soldiers are only applied on offense when enemies are mixed in with civilians. In modern warfare, human soldiers are exposed to most harm when defending, as with the current Iraq situation.
Robotic technology could help out in a lot of non-ethically questionable capacities. For instance, robotic vehicles could drive in advance of convoys with metal detectors to check for IED's buried in the road. Even in direct combat, robotic technology doesn't have to be lethal. Drones can be equipped with tazers. For instance, soldiers clearing a building can drop a box at each entrance that has a motion detector, tazer, and targeting system. While troops are inside, if anyone tries to run in to attack or run out to escape, the drone zaps them. RFID tags or infra-red flashers protect the soldiers from friendly-tazering and verbal instructions warn civilians against running about.
Seth
All your phone calls travel through govt. listening devices. If it's not the NSA warrantless wiretaps, it's echelon.
Seth
so my cellphone DOES have a direct line of contact with a... government agency that DOES... collect my information.. time of day... places I've been...
There, I fixed your typos.
Seth
This is another brick in the case the feds have been building to justify ballooning budgets for cyber-defense operations. Conveniently, increasing 'cyber defense' also grants the feds more abilities to inspect civilian communications, etc. Meanwhile, they ignore the meatspace threat of people physically attacking power centers. Increasing budgets for staffing people protecting physical power transmission doesn't get the feds anywhere they want to go.
If some foreign entity wanted to wreak havoc on America's power grid, they could simply deploy agents with
Seth
She offers several reasons that the device isn't a good corporate tool.
No, YOU are the good corporate tool.
Seth
I don't have any practical experience with this, but theoretically, I think a virus could be created that would infect windows computers and enable internet sharing off the wireless card. It would look at the name of the existing wireless connection and then call the shared connection '+1'. Then when zombied laptops go to coffee shops, etc. they become an additional wireless access point named 'coffee shop2'. Others mistakenly connect to the internet through this spoofed access point and all their outgoing packets are captured and sent to the botnet owner.
This virii could propogate through the normal infection vectors, but it could also create a 'login' requirment that asks users of the spoofed network connection to install a 'security key' for the connection to work 'securely'. You guessed it, TROJAN.
Seth