How about at work? I've never even bothered trying to bring in one of these things there just because they cause a fair amount of racket -- especially when I'm flipping away at 80-100wpm:). I type loud enough on a quiet keyboard that I've gotten the occasional passerby to stop by my cube thinking I'm beating something to death.
Anybody here ever brought one of these things into a cube farm? Just wondering how much it bothers other employees, if it does at all.
Hate to tell you this, but that sounds like an AT connector.
AT's not really a connector style -- it's a protocol. The XT system (pre AT) used the same 5 pin half-circle connector. It's not terribly uncommon on older keyboards to find a switch to move from XT to AT style.
I'd look on the bottom, under the little flip-up panels to help tilt the keyboard to you. You might find a little switch there.
A couple neighbors would like to start some kind of internet co-op using 802.11, but that takes a bunch of time, money and effort.
I can't dispute that -- but I've got a little experience with the wireless stuff so I'll take the opportunity to spout of a bit of information here. It's offtopic, but I've got Karma to burn it seems.
Given that you don't have DSL/Cable in the area you're going to have to get a T1 -- okay, that'll run you maybe 500-600 USD/month for a 768Kb connection. Prices vary from location to location. You could get a Cisco 1600 with the right card in it for about 600 bucks too. If you're serious about it, and it's important, it's do-able.
Next come the radios. I've seen both Sunstream 5.8GHz and Karlnet 2.4GHz stuff used here. I've found the Sunstream stuff a bit nicer, but the Karlnet products are coming out with a new version that adds in some nice features -- like automatically jumping channels when there's too my noise on the current one. IIRC you'll be paying around 600 bucks each for Karlnet one and 800 bucks for Sunstream. Again, prices flux here and I'm not the wireless hardware guy for this company so I'm not entirely current on it all.
If you're actually all pretty close to eachother though (couple hundred meters) you could probably do it with Linksys WAPs and Pringles cans. I've still never played with that stuff though.
So... find somebody in the neighborhood that can make an LLC for themselves, just in case things go sour and they break a contract with the Telco for that T1 line. If things work out well, and the LLC holder actually wants to put the effort into it, they could start their own wireless ISP up if enough new people move in or interest in broadband picks up.
It'd be a big bonus too if they had some kind of tower in their yard already -- or a grain storage Silo. Perhaps a big flag-pole would work too for mounting the wireless access point.
It's not suprising to see such stupidity coming from the state where pumping your own gas is illegal.
Aaaaagh!?!?!! That's why the two times I've been there every friggen gas station is full service! Here I was thinking that all NJ gas station owners were just nice folk.
This is one of the problems with guns though. People in the house like children using them and getting hurt, or killing someone. Introduce a gun into your home, and you run this risk. Don't have a gun, and you run the risk that someone will break in, and you *might* have the chance to go get your gun, load it, and shoot before they get you.
I know of nobody in my lifetime that grew up without some sort of firearm in the house. I know of no child that was ever hurt because they were dumb enough to pick up a firearm that they didn't know how to handle. I know of 5 incidents in whic h a firearm could have, or did have, an effect on saving innocent lives.
don't hear you arguing in favor of removing the safeties from all handguns. That's all this is: another type of safety. While the ordinary safety protects against accidental discharge of the gun, this one will (if they can make it work) protect against unauthorized discharge. Same thing.
I feel that the "safety" device on most firearms is a huge fallacy. There is only one weapon that I actually engage my safety on, and that is my shotgun. The last weapon you'll see outlawed. Wh y do I use on that? It's the most dangerous one -- the hammer is almost always cocked back and you can't -see- if it's cocked back or not. So, I use the safety. Handgun safeties? Nope -- never. I love my Glock. The moment I put my finger on the trigger that safety is disengaged. It's perfect.
. I'm amazed at how many people know jack shit about guns and then spout off anti-gun ownership rhetoric. A 30.06 is a much more powerful weapon than a M16 or AK-47. A M1 Carbine is even better. Both are now weapons civilians can own IIRC without any special permits. A M1 Carbine is an order of magnitude deadlier in the hands of a skilled fighter than a M16 because its shots are more powerful and accurate than a M16. You damn well better believe that a crowd carrying shotguns, 30.06s and the like would be taken VERY seriously by the government.
Agreed... but we all know why the M16 and AK-47 are restricted. They look scary. I'm incredibly surprised that there isn't a huge public outrage over AR-15's (which is an M16 for all practical purposes to you non-gun folk) after that whole sniper attack. Anybody that knows WTF is up with firearms knows a.270 or 30.06 would have been a better rifle for the job -- but the fact that an AR-15 looks scary freaks people out.
As an aside, all of the above 4 weapons you meantioned I can own in Michigan unrestricted -- well, excpet an actual M16, as that's fully automatic, or fires in 3 round bursts depending on which model you get. You -can- still own one in the US, but only after some pretty heafty taxation and registration. You can buy an AR-15 though off the shelf, as you can an AK-47, an M1 carbine, or 30.06 lever action hunting rifle.
I could rant for -hours- on the assault rifle restrictions we have now at the federal level. It's insane that the Crime Bill of 1994 ever passed. I was but a wee-child then and saw the stupidity of the whole thing and i do -not- come from a right wing gun-toting family. That thing comes up before the Senate in 2004 and you you bet I'm dead set against it. Any supports of the bill are free to mail me at me@justinbuist.org to debate the thing. Yes, I just put my mail address on Slashdot for a controversial topic. And yes, I -will- respond to every single email I get as I consider this a very important issue to me.
just remember that if your potential attacker doesnt think you can get your gun to fire before he can get your arms behind you, he is a lot more likely to act.
Agreed -- See Florida as an example. At the time when tourists were being mugged like crazy it was likely because Florida just passed less strict laws on carrying a concealed weapon for it's citizens. Made it easy to identify the non-carriers for criminals -- hit the tourists!
Guns are made not to protect, but to kill. I hated walking through school and seeing guns every day. It isnt thinking that someone else could grab that gun and use it, I hate it no matter who is holding the gun.
I'm a fairly active shooter -- and I agree with both points above. Guns are made to kill. They have no other purpose and I make that a point to anybody who ever picks up one of my firearms when I'm teaching them about it. The thing you have in your hand right now, I tell them, is designed to kill a human being. Respect that. I also get nervous around others handling guns -- even people that I shoot with regularly. Shooters are the most paranoid of all people I'd wager when around guns -- they know what they can do.
The dream is to have complete control over the gun- exactly when and how it can be used. Know that the law's idea of when and how a gun should be used is NOT your own belief.
This innocent comment is actually a HUGE point of contention for pro-gun advocates. I'd contend that includes the writers of the Bill of Rights even. The single most important reason the 2nd ammendent is there is to overthrow the government in the event that it becomes too powerful. I know this sounds absolutely insane to most people -- but really, that's why it's there. Can it happen? No. We've already restricted the rights of US citizens to the point that they're not as well armed as a US Army foot soldier. But that -was- the point of the 2nd ammendment and I'll be damned if I sit still while it gets any worse.
The point of this message is not to promote accuracy, but thought and discussion.
That you have done, I think. I respect your ideals, but they just don't match history and reality. This isn't your fault -- but the fault of human beings in general. Until we have a perfect world government and world peace, I'm sorry -- but the only way I can rest easy is knowing that my fellow American citizens still have the right to arm themselves to the teeth. Please bear with us -- we're only looking out for the safety of our whole country.:)
That is utter foolishness. A gun will not have an OS, it will be hard coded. My microwave doesn't 'crash' and I don't think my gun would either.
a) I bet you don't own a gun -- so this whole thing seems foolish to you.
b) Ever tried sticking your hand in a palm scanner? Took me 5 minutes my first time to get it right... and that security guard sure got annoyed having to let me out of that locked bubble chamber while I figured it out.
In general, though, this seems like a pretty solid idea that would be useful even if not 100% effective. If something malfunctioned and the rightful owner was not able to fire the gun, then they could take it back to the store and replace it,
Yeah.. unless they were dead. That sorta puts a crimp your argument though I suppose.
If you can't imagine a police officer trusting this technology on their handguns, which they keep to protect themselves, why should a law abiding citizen trust them?
Second: Why do people think it is necessary to have a gun in their home for defensive purposes? Do you intend to actually fire that gun at a potential burglar? You'll probably be sued for it, especially in the USA.
At any time, some county judge can refuse to renew your permit and you are required to surrender your handgun to the local police without compensation. With a quality handgun costing well over $1200, this is a bad thing!
E-gads. I dunno about NY, but here in Michigan the Glock 21 sititng next to me only ran $550 USD.. and I'd consider that a quality gun.
If your going to allowed to carry guns, at least they should be made so someone else can't use them against you.
Agreed... but I would much rather prefer that my wife of one of my children are able to pick up a handgun I own to defend themselves in the event that I'm disabled... perhaps after being shot an an intruder.
I am sure some gun nuts here, are going to be against the idea, but i can't imagine a reason why.
See above for why.
And yeah it probably won't be secure at first, and they'll be underground gangs rechiping the guns. But it makes it harder for criminals to get guns and that has to be good.
Yep... all them law abiding criminals that buy guys legally will certainly be up shit creek without a paddle on this one. Thank goodness we're preventing law abiding citizens from buying a gun that will fire at the pull of a trigger. So what if the WinCE device in your pistol fails when you need it.
Anti-gun advocates: The #1 reason any thinking human purchases a gun for is it's reliability. I do not want to put my life on the line when I need it to something that -may- fail based on my fingerprint. I'll take the risk of my own firearm being used against me. When I go to sleep at night the only unlocked firearm is the one sitting right next to my bed. That's the answer -- not fingerprint technology.
I'm curious if when this legislation goes into effect if all new handguns issued to NJ police officers to contain this technology or if handguns for police have been exempted.
I'd imagine they would be exempted -- I can't imagine going on the job and trusting my life to something other than my own self keeping my own gun by my side to protect me. I don't seen any police officer ever actually considering this to be a safety device to themselves.
Pfft.. I've got you beat. I was the semi-sys admin at a company once, who just knew enough about the NT systems we had up and running to take over in the event that our main admin was out for the day. We got along great, he took care of everything NT and I took care of everything *nix and we could swap back and forth for emergency situations.
One morning I'm pulled into a conference room at around 9:30 am and the HR guy starts scribbling on a piece of paper while my General manager lets me know that the company will have to be laying people off because times are getting tough, or something. So, they hand me a piece of paper with a time table and names on it. I'm instructed to disable each account at the appropriate time, which is when they'll be letting the person know they're fired. So I have to sit there and wait for hours before this is all over. I'm the only person aside from management that knows what's going on. I was given a bit over an hour heads up so I could make sure that I did indeed have the appropriate rights on the network to still do all this and if not just gather up the appropriate passwords from the NT admin.
I tell ya... that's a shitty feeling. Sitting across a cube-hallway across from a guy that goes "WTF? Something's wrong with my login.".. then seeing a manager walk in 2 minutes later and let him know he's fired. Nobody held it against me, but the NT guy did wonder why I had been plunking away in the server room (glass doors.. he could seem me)... I told him I just had to check a few things...then he was fired as I left the room.
Everybody took it well though, especialy the NT admin who knew a heck of alot more about how things worked than I did there. He left himself available over his personal cell phone for the next few weeks to make sure things were ironed out okay as I slid into his role.
Still... that was one horrible feeling morning at work.
Personally, I'd like to give my software away for free and still put bread on the table. I don't know if it's possible, but I like to think it is. And I'll be damned if I don't at least try.
oh... you can do this; but in limited areas. If you're talented enough or lucky enough to end up in an R&D lab of a big coporation (ie: AT&T) that lets you share your achivements with the community you're in. Or perhaps if you're a professor at a university that promotes research you're good to go.
Fact of the matter is though, if you work in the private sector the only way that you'll do this is by coding "dipshit" stuff at your day job to get the job done then going home to have fun with your code and experiment with stuff. I only say "dipshit" above because you'll often see yourself forced into writing sub-par solutions in an attempt to meet near impossible deadlines.. all to do it over again because you never had the time on the previous project that was 80% similar to what you're doing this time around to do it right the first time and make it extensible. It happens.. and it's the reason IT is often blamed for writing crap -- becuase we have to. Yes... I'm bitter.
Although our olfatory sensors are not as developed as dogs', it's also a matter of trainning too. Perfume companies hire specialized people (called 'noses'), that evaluate how a given perfume smells.
Makes you wonder what they call people at the toilet-paper factory that do "quality control.".
Developing the equipment to identify unique scents would be costly, bulky, and probably easily confused by purfumes and other forms of distraction.
Given that it doesn't currently exist I don't really see wher eyou get that from.
I say that nature does the best job, use some sort of animal to sniff a trail, or use a better means to identify a person.
I think that's the idea here.. re-implement the dog. Dog's can't have RJ-45 jacked into their head to make a peer-to-peer database of smells that they've learned over the years. Computers can.
Plus, this might be the first OO system in the world that actually uses crap from those silly college course examples.
class Animal {};
class Dog inherits Animal {};
class GermanShephard inherits Dog {};
As it is, fingerprints, eye scans, and DNA are much better than smell, and how would you store the signature of a scent in a database?
If that was easily answered DARPA wouldn't be tossing $3.2 million at the problem.
Since scents are just chemicals, one could filter out the background scents, and then store a list of the remaining chemicals in a db.
Dogs do this all the time -- but HOW they do it is beyond me. They're able to seperate different smells way beyond what a human being can. When I try and ID a person by smell I usually pick up their perfume or detergent instead of their BO, which is nice and all, but if they switch product lines I'm hosed. Dogs on the other hand will smell their BO, their perfume, the funk from their socks, and know the difference between them. At least that's what I hear on the Discovery channel. I've never telepathically communicated with a dog to ask them this first hand; so I'm not 100% sure here.
So, now the trick is to come up with something that can not only measure smell but measure it in a way that it's seperates each of the signatures out into different signals and then IDs them in sme way, shape, or form.
I really think something like this has been a long-time coming. Dogs have been used to track people and identify substances for a heck of a long time. I don't see any "big brother" issues here either, and I'm usually pretty iffy about that kind of thing. Becaues the actual method has been proven (dogs) so long as it's implemented right it sounds great to me. There -is- a bit of a problem with pin-pointing the source of the smell though, and it would even be possible for somebody to "rub off" their smell onto you and signal a false match, but I'd imagine the odds of the latter is pretty rare. Would make for some interesting check-in procedures at the airport...
"Did you pack your own luggage? Has anybody asked you to carry anything on board for them? Have any strangers tried rubbing their stinky bodies up against in an attempt to make you smell like a terrorist?"
Pretty sure if I had a naked middle-eastern man rubbing his body against mine out of nowhere I'd be worried more about getting the fsck away from him than getting ID'ed as a terrorist at the airport.
I don't know if you're looking for advice or not, but try putting in negative numbers or things like #(-3+1000)... or end a SQL query in a text box and try to execute another query (or put in a sub query)... and edit your query strings if you use GET (or build a query string and make sure that your program doesn't take a GET where it is looking for a POST).... just a couple basics to try... You might want to write a "validate_input" function for your forms as well....
Never ever, ever trust user-supplied data. <input type="hidden"> fields are user-supplied, cookies are user-supplied, etc. It shouldn't matter if they modify a GET param when you expect a POST. They can forge the POST nearly as easily as the GET.
I know Apache does not have any "customers" to support, but why were they so eager to break compatibility for Apache 1.3 modules in Apache 2.0? I know backwards compatibility code isn't sexy, but couldn't they keep the old module API and thunk it to the new API? Then Apache 2.0 could ship with rock-solid mod_php and mod_perl. Let modules developers migrate slowly on their own schedule.
Add-on modules to Apache aren't coming into the 2.0 world quickly because 2.0 will spin off threads within processes now. Any API changes are rather trivial when sitting next to the amount of work that may need to be done to make all of your code thread-safe. In order to make the importation of 3rd party modules entirely safe the Apache team would have had to create a way to mark some modules as non-thread safe and be sure to only load one instance of each per process intstead of per thread. Doing that would have killed the performance enhancments brought on by threading and effectively negating any reason to actually move to 2.0 in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Every system I use has one.
:). I type loud enough on a quiet keyboard that I've gotten the occasional passerby to stop by my cube thinking I'm beating something to death.
How about at work? I've never even bothered trying to bring in one of these things there just because they cause a fair amount of racket -- especially when I'm flipping away at 80-100wpm
Anybody here ever brought one of these things into a cube farm? Just wondering how much it bothers other employees, if it does at all.
Hate to tell you this, but that sounds like an AT connector.
AT's not really a connector style -- it's a protocol. The XT system (pre AT) used the same 5 pin half-circle connector. It's not terribly uncommon on older keyboards to find a switch to move from XT to AT style.
I'd look on the bottom, under the little flip-up panels to help tilt the keyboard to you. You might find a little switch there.
A couple neighbors would like to start some kind of internet co-op using 802.11, but that takes a bunch of time, money and effort.
I can't dispute that -- but I've got a little experience with the wireless stuff so I'll take the opportunity to spout of a bit of information here. It's offtopic, but I've got Karma to burn it seems.
Given that you don't have DSL/Cable in the area you're going to have to get a T1 -- okay, that'll run you maybe 500-600 USD/month for a 768Kb connection. Prices vary from location to location. You could get a Cisco 1600 with the right card in it for about 600 bucks too. If you're serious about it, and it's important, it's do-able.
Next come the radios. I've seen both Sunstream 5.8GHz and Karlnet 2.4GHz stuff used here. I've found the Sunstream stuff a bit nicer, but the Karlnet products are coming out with a new version that adds in some nice features -- like automatically jumping channels when there's too my noise on the current one. IIRC you'll be paying around 600 bucks each for Karlnet one and 800 bucks for Sunstream. Again, prices flux here and I'm not the wireless hardware guy for this company so I'm not entirely current on it all.
If you're actually all pretty close to eachother though (couple hundred meters) you could probably do it with Linksys WAPs and Pringles cans. I've still never played with that stuff though.
So... find somebody in the neighborhood that can make an LLC for themselves, just in case things go sour and they break a contract with the Telco for that T1 line. If things work out well, and the LLC holder actually wants to put the effort into it, they could start their own wireless ISP up if enough new people move in or interest in broadband picks up.
It'd be a big bonus too if they had some kind of tower in their yard already -- or a grain storage Silo. Perhaps a big flag-pole would work too for mounting the wireless access point.
It's not suprising to see such stupidity coming from the state where pumping your own gas is illegal.
Aaaaagh!?!?!! That's why the two times I've been there every friggen gas station is full service! Here I was thinking that all NJ gas station owners were just nice folk.
This is one of the problems with guns though. People in the house like children using them and getting hurt, or killing someone. Introduce a gun into your home, and you run this risk. Don't have a gun, and you run the risk that someone will break in, and you *might* have the chance to go get your gun, load it, and shoot before they get you.
I know of nobody in my lifetime that grew up without some sort of firearm in the house. I know of no child that was ever hurt because they were dumb enough to pick up a firearm that they didn't know how to handle. I know of 5 incidents in whic h a firearm could have, or did have, an effect on saving innocent lives.
Perhaps I'm nuts...
don't hear you arguing in favor of removing the safeties from all handguns. That's all this is: another type of safety. While the ordinary safety protects against accidental discharge of the gun, this one will (if they can make it work) protect against unauthorized discharge. Same thing.
I feel that the "safety" device on most firearms is a huge fallacy. There is only one weapon that I actually engage my safety on, and that is my shotgun. The last weapon you'll see outlawed. Wh y do I use on that? It's the most dangerous one -- the hammer is almost always cocked back and you can't -see- if it's cocked back or not. So, I use the safety. Handgun safeties? Nope -- never. I love my Glock. The moment I put my finger on the trigger that safety is disengaged. It's perfect.
. I'm amazed at how many people know jack shit about guns and then spout off anti-gun ownership rhetoric. A 30.06 is a much more powerful weapon than a M16 or AK-47. A M1 Carbine is even better. Both are now weapons civilians can own IIRC without any special permits. A M1 Carbine is an order of magnitude deadlier in the hands of a skilled fighter than a M16 because its shots are more powerful and accurate than a M16. You damn well better believe that a crowd carrying shotguns, 30.06s and the like would be taken VERY seriously by the government.
.270 or 30.06 would have been a better rifle for the job -- but the fact that an AR-15 looks scary freaks people out.
Agreed... but we all know why the M16 and AK-47 are restricted. They look scary. I'm incredibly surprised that there isn't a huge public outrage over AR-15's (which is an M16 for all practical purposes to you non-gun folk) after that whole sniper attack. Anybody that knows WTF is up with firearms knows a
As an aside, all of the above 4 weapons you meantioned I can own in Michigan unrestricted -- well, excpet an actual M16, as that's fully automatic, or fires in 3 round bursts depending on which model you get. You -can- still own one in the US, but only after some pretty heafty taxation and registration. You can buy an AR-15 though off the shelf, as you can an AK-47, an M1 carbine, or 30.06 lever action hunting rifle.
I could rant for -hours- on the assault rifle restrictions we have now at the federal level. It's insane that the Crime Bill of 1994 ever passed. I was but a wee-child then and saw the stupidity of the whole thing and i do -not- come from a right wing gun-toting family. That thing comes up before the Senate in 2004 and you you bet I'm dead set against it. Any supports of the bill are free to mail me at me@justinbuist.org to debate the thing. Yes, I just put my mail address on Slashdot for a controversial topic. And yes, I -will- respond to every single email I get as I consider this a very important issue to me.
just remember that if your potential attacker doesnt think you can get your gun to fire before he can get your arms behind you, he is a lot more likely to act.
:)
Agreed -- See Florida as an example. At the time when tourists were being mugged like crazy it was likely because Florida just passed less strict laws on carrying a concealed weapon for it's citizens. Made it easy to identify the non-carriers for criminals -- hit the tourists!
Guns are made not to protect, but to kill. I hated walking through school and seeing guns every day. It isnt thinking that someone else could grab that gun and use it, I hate it no matter who is holding the gun.
I'm a fairly active shooter -- and I agree with both points above. Guns are made to kill. They have no other purpose and I make that a point to anybody who ever picks up one of my firearms when I'm teaching them about it. The thing you have in your hand right now, I tell them, is designed to kill a human being. Respect that. I also get nervous around others handling guns -- even people that I shoot with regularly. Shooters are the most paranoid of all people I'd wager when around guns -- they know what they can do.
The dream is to have complete control over the gun- exactly when and how it can be used. Know that the law's idea of when and how a gun should be used is NOT your own belief.
This innocent comment is actually a HUGE point of contention for pro-gun advocates. I'd contend that includes the writers of the Bill of Rights even. The single most important reason the 2nd ammendent is there is to overthrow the government in the event that it becomes too powerful. I know this sounds absolutely insane to most people -- but really, that's why it's there. Can it happen? No. We've already restricted the rights of US citizens to the point that they're not as well armed as a US Army foot soldier. But that -was- the point of the 2nd ammendment and I'll be damned if I sit still while it gets any worse.
The point of this message is not to promote accuracy, but thought and discussion.
That you have done, I think. I respect your ideals, but they just don't match history and reality. This isn't your fault -- but the fault of human beings in general. Until we have a perfect world government and world peace, I'm sorry -- but the only way I can rest easy is knowing that my fellow American citizens still have the right to arm themselves to the teeth. Please bear with us -- we're only looking out for the safety of our whole country.
That is utter foolishness. A gun will not have an OS, it will be hard coded. My microwave doesn't 'crash' and I don't think my gun would either.
a) I bet you don't own a gun -- so this whole thing seems foolish to you.
b) Ever tried sticking your hand in a palm scanner? Took me 5 minutes my first time to get it right... and that security guard sure got annoyed having to let me out of that locked bubble chamber while I figured it out.
In general, though, this seems like a pretty solid idea that would be useful even if not 100% effective. If something malfunctioned and the rightful owner was not able to fire the gun, then they could take it back to the store and replace it,
Yeah.. unless they were dead. That sorta puts a crimp your argument though I suppose.
If you can't imagine a police officer trusting this technology on their handguns, which they keep to protect themselves, why should a law abiding citizen trust them?
:)
Uhm.. dude.. that's exactly my point
Second: Why do people think it is necessary to have a gun in their home for defensive purposes? Do you intend to actually fire that gun at a potential burglar? You'll probably be sued for it, especially in the USA.
1) Yes.
2) I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
At any time, some county judge can refuse to renew your permit and you are required to surrender your handgun to the local police without compensation. With a quality handgun costing well over $1200, this is a bad thing!
E-gads. I dunno about NY, but here in Michigan the Glock 21 sititng next to me only ran $550 USD.. and I'd consider that a quality gun.
If your going to allowed to carry guns, at least
they should be made so someone else can't use them
against you.
Agreed... but I would much rather prefer that my wife of one of my children are able to pick up a handgun I own to defend themselves in the event that I'm disabled... perhaps after being shot an an intruder.
I am sure some gun nuts here, are
going to be against the idea, but i can't imagine
a reason why.
See above for why.
And yeah it probably won't be secure at first, and they'll be underground gangs rechiping the guns. But it makes it harder for criminals to get guns and that has to be good.
Yep... all them law abiding criminals that buy guys legally will certainly be up shit creek without a paddle on this one. Thank goodness we're preventing law abiding citizens from buying a gun that will fire at the pull of a trigger. So what if the WinCE device in your pistol fails when you need it.
Anti-gun advocates: The #1 reason any thinking human purchases a gun for is it's reliability. I do not want to put my life on the line when I need it to something that -may- fail based on my fingerprint. I'll take the risk of my own firearm being used against me. When I go to sleep at night the only unlocked firearm is the one sitting right next to my bed. That's the answer -- not fingerprint technology.
I'm curious if when this legislation goes into effect if all new handguns issued to NJ police officers to contain this technology or if handguns for police have been exempted.
I'd imagine they would be exempted -- I can't imagine going on the job and trusting my life to something other than my own self keeping my own gun by my side to protect me. I don't seen any police officer ever actually considering this to be a safety device to themselves.
Pfft.. I've got you beat. I was the semi-sys admin at a company once, who just knew enough about the NT systems we had up and running to take over in the event that our main admin was out for the day. We got along great, he took care of everything NT and I took care of everything *nix and we could swap back and forth for emergency situations.
.then he was fired as I left the room.
One morning I'm pulled into a conference room at around 9:30 am and the HR guy starts scribbling on a piece of paper while my General manager lets me know that the company will have to be laying people off because times are getting tough, or something. So, they hand me a piece of paper with a time table and names on it. I'm instructed to disable each account at the appropriate time, which is when they'll be letting the person know they're fired. So I have to sit there and wait for hours before this is all over. I'm the only person aside from management that knows what's going on. I was given a bit over an hour heads up so I could make sure that I did indeed have the appropriate rights on the network to still do all this and if not just gather up the appropriate passwords from the NT admin.
I tell ya... that's a shitty feeling. Sitting across a cube-hallway across from a guy that goes "WTF? Something's wrong with my login.".. then seeing a manager walk in 2 minutes later and let him know he's fired. Nobody held it against me, but the NT guy did wonder why I had been plunking away in the server room (glass doors.. he could seem me)... I told him I just had to check a few things..
Everybody took it well though, especialy the NT admin who knew a heck of alot more about how things worked than I did there. He left himself available over his personal cell phone for the next few weeks to make sure things were ironed out okay as I slid into his role.
Still... that was one horrible feeling morning at work.
to get the Bono Act passed
Wasn't the Bono act a good thing? To keep our kids from accidentally skiing into trees or something?
Thank you... I'll be here until my Karma burns up. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
Personally, I'd like to give my software away for free and still put bread on the table. I don't know if it's possible, but I like to think it is. And I'll be damned if I don't at least try.
oh... you can do this; but in limited areas. If you're talented enough or lucky enough to end up in an R&D lab of a big coporation (ie: AT&T) that lets you share your achivements with the community you're in. Or perhaps if you're a professor at a university that promotes research you're good to go.
Fact of the matter is though, if you work in the private sector the only way that you'll do this is by coding "dipshit" stuff at your day job to get the job done then going home to have fun with your code and experiment with stuff. I only say "dipshit" above because you'll often see yourself forced into writing sub-par solutions in an attempt to meet near impossible deadlines.. all to do it over again because you never had the time on the previous project that was 80% similar to what you're doing this time around to do it right the first time and make it extensible. It happens.. and it's the reason IT is often blamed for writing crap -- becuase we have to. Yes... I'm bitter.
Although our olfatory sensors are not as developed as dogs', it's also a matter of trainning too. Perfume companies hire specialized people (called 'noses'), that evaluate how a given perfume smells.
Makes you wonder what they call people at the toilet-paper factory that do "quality control.".
Developing the equipment to identify unique scents would be costly, bulky, and probably easily confused by purfumes and other forms of distraction.
Given that it doesn't currently exist I don't really see wher eyou get that from.
I say that nature does the best job, use some sort of animal to sniff a trail, or use a better means to identify a person.
I think that's the idea here.. re-implement the dog. Dog's can't have RJ-45 jacked into their head to make a peer-to-peer database of smells that they've learned over the years. Computers can.
Plus, this might be the first OO system in the world that actually uses crap from those silly college course examples.
class Animal {};
class Dog inherits Animal {};
class GermanShephard inherits Dog {};
As it is, fingerprints, eye scans, and DNA are much better than smell, and how would you store the signature of a scent in a database?
If that was easily answered DARPA wouldn't be tossing $3.2 million at the problem.
Since scents are just chemicals, one could filter out the background scents, and then store a list of the remaining chemicals in a db.
Dogs do this all the time -- but HOW they do it is beyond me. They're able to seperate different smells way beyond what a human being can. When I try and ID a person by smell I usually pick up their perfume or detergent instead of their BO, which is nice and all, but if they switch product lines I'm hosed. Dogs on the other hand will smell their BO, their perfume, the funk from their socks, and know the difference between them. At least that's what I hear on the Discovery channel. I've never telepathically communicated with a dog to ask them this first hand; so I'm not 100% sure here.
So, now the trick is to come up with something that can not only measure smell but measure it in a way that it's seperates each of the signatures out into different signals and then IDs them in sme way, shape, or form.
I really think something like this has been a long-time coming. Dogs have been used to track people and identify substances for a heck of a long time. I don't see any "big brother" issues here either, and I'm usually pretty iffy about that kind of thing. Becaues the actual method has been proven (dogs) so long as it's implemented right it sounds great to me. There -is- a bit of a problem with pin-pointing the source of the smell though, and it would even be possible for somebody to "rub off" their smell onto you and signal a false match, but I'd imagine the odds of the latter is pretty rare. Would make for some interesting check-in procedures at the airport...
"Did you pack your own luggage? Has anybody asked you to carry anything on board for them? Have any strangers tried rubbing their stinky bodies up against in an attempt to make you smell like a terrorist?"
Pretty sure if I had a naked middle-eastern man rubbing his body against mine out of nowhere I'd be worried more about getting the fsck away from him than getting ID'ed as a terrorist at the airport.
Oprah.
I don't know if you're looking for advice or not, but try putting in negative numbers or things like #(-3+1000)
Never ever, ever trust user-supplied data. <input type="hidden"> fields are user-supplied, cookies are user-supplied, etc. It shouldn't matter if they modify a GET param when you expect a POST. They can forge the POST nearly as easily as the GET.
I know Apache does not have any "customers" to support, but why were they so eager to break compatibility for Apache 1.3 modules in Apache 2.0? I know backwards compatibility code isn't sexy, but couldn't they keep the old module API and thunk it to the new API? Then Apache 2.0 could ship with rock-solid mod_php and mod_perl. Let modules developers migrate slowly on their own schedule.
Add-on modules to Apache aren't coming into the 2.0 world quickly because 2.0 will spin off threads within processes now. Any API changes are rather trivial when sitting next to the amount of work that may need to be done to make all of your code thread-safe. In order to make the importation of 3rd party modules entirely safe the Apache team would have had to create a way to mark some modules as non-thread safe and be sure to only load one instance of each per process intstead of per thread. Doing that would have killed the performance enhancments brought on by threading and effectively negating any reason to actually move to 2.0 in the first place.
The coolest thing about Hawking's books is that it's really easy to visualize him sitting in the room speaking it to you.
That -was- intended to be funny, moderators.