It seems to me that Windows, especially in the consumer domain, is becoming much more like TV. That is, television isn't a service provided to the viewers, it's a service provided to the marketers. The viewer's attention is the actual product which is being sold. The content on the television is not the primary business of television networks, selling advertisments is.
It seems like Windows is becoming the same way. The fact that a Windows computer can actually do useful things for the owner is becoming secondary to it's use as a vehicle for advertising and gathering marketing information. I think it's one of the things that turns me off the most about Windows, that constant feeling that you can't trust "your" computer at all, because you really can't. Every other program is co-opting "your" computer for the purpose of advertising to you. And it's not even just "free as in beer" software that does it, even stuff you paid good money for feels the need to steal your attention for advertisements. And they all, uniformly, require you to agree to EULA's.
It's one of the main reasons why I hope Linux never takes off on the desktop, because I don't want to have to deal with all that crap. Fortunately, one of Linux's strengths is that even if some distro does take over the desktop from Microsoft and inherits all the spy-ware and ad-ware, I can just run some other distro that doesn't suck. Not an option with Windows: they all suck.
Ok. I give up, and Google didn't seem to be able to help. What's the origin of the new "In Soviet Russia, blank blanks YOU!" joke? It seems to be quite the "in" joke this month, and I'm feeling left out.:-(
Oh wait, Google did come thru. Yakov Smirnoff, right? I didn't know Google let you use wildcards in "exact phrase" searches. Cool. "in soviet russia * * you"
But is printing a whole character per bit, or even byte, efficient? I'm curious how much data a laser printer could store on a piece of paper. Is it realistic to expect individual bits printed at 300dpi to actually be retrievable? Perhaps on a good 600dpi or 1200dpi printer.
300dpi gives us almost 11KBytes per square inch. Figure 70 square inches on a letter page with 1/2" margins. That's 770KB. Print full duplex and you're looking at 1.5MB per page, or roughly a floppy disk (coincidence?) You wouldn't want to back up your MP3 collection, but for an archival method that is likely to last 100 years it's not too bad. Factor in compression and you are probably getting a 100x increase in storage density over plain text. Kind of a neat thought.
The stats I found first at Google are from 1997/8, but I doubt it's changed that much. First, gun ownership per capita is much higher in the US, 0.82 vs 0.25, a three-fold increase. As for the two orders of magnitude difference in total homicides (NOT the rate), that's explained in large part due to the order of magnitude increase in people. Although the increase in the rate of murders commited with firearms is impressive at 0.5/100K Canada to 4.4/100K US, almost a full order of magnitude.
It's also interesting to note that the US still has a higher non-firearm murder rate at 1.3/100K Canada vs 2.3/100K US. The US also has a higher robbery without firearm rate with 78/100K Canada vs 102/100K US. Also interesting is how much closer the total firearms deaths are. 4.3/100K in Canada vs 11.4/100K in the US. Only a factor of 2.7 apart. This is due to the fact that the large numbers of suicides commited with firearms tends to even the lopsided murder numbers.
Oh, here's the URL Canda vs. US Gun Stats Intersting stuff for thought no matter what side you're on in the debate.
It's not just little fly by night Internet operations that think they should be able to deceive the public. Nike is also in court defending it's right to deceive the public. The spin on this case is all over the place depending on the source. Do a google search for "nike first amendment" if you want to learn more. That will give you links to both sides arguments.
One that listens to the microphone to capture your voice, and plays it back on $5.00/minute phone sex calls at 2AM.
I don't know what you do around your computer, but I can guarantee that nobody is interested in paying $5.00/minute to hear what happens around my computer. Unfortunately.
I don't think we're actually in disagreement here.
Any "legal" (i.e. civilian law) re-definition of the term to include firearms incapable of full-auto operation is an adoption of the original hyperbole of the anti-gun crowd.
Which is exactly why I say the phrase is a "propaganda" term. It has been twisted in order to confuse one thing, previously regulated full-auto weapons, with another, semi-auto only weapons. When people hear the phrase they think full-auto but what the law says is semi-auto only. That confusion was introduced intentionally in order to get the ban passed. Had the Brady folks come out trumpeting a law to ban flash supressors (the real effect of the "assault weapons ban") it never would have gotten anywhere. Because who really cares?
At the outset, let me say I'm trying to be informative, not to start a debate over the wisdom of gun control.
SNIP
True, assault weapons are not machine guns; they are semi-automatic, so one trigger pull fires one round.
SNIP
I don't think "assault weapon" is a propaganda term; certainly the military has a sense of the difference between assault weapons (M-16)
See. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Confusion between what is an "assault weapon" and flat out fully automatic machine guns which have been heavily regulated for years. The M-16 is not an "assault weapon", neither under the legal definition nor under your own. So did you call the M-16 an assault weapon because you're one of the ignorant masses whose fallen for all the propaganda they've heard? Apparently. You don't belive the term is a propaganda term, and more importantly on some level you've accepted that particular lie as truth. Despite your earlier statements in the same post which give a contrary opinion! Quite remarkable.
I disagree that the difference is cosmetic. Most of the elements in the definition focus on functional attributes that make the weapon more portable or more deadly and so on. I mentioned here [slashdot.org] a link to some information concerning the statutory definition.
If you want to present the impression of impartially "informing" the readers, don't reference the Brady Foundation. They are at least as biased as the NRA. From the more impartial University of Michigan here are the things that make a rifle an "assault weapon":
(B) a semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least 2 of--
`(i) a folding or telescoping stock;
`(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;
`(iii) a bayonet mount;
`(iv) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor; and
`(v) a grenade launcher;
(i) has some impact on how concealable a weapon is, but in actual use the stock is unfolded and performs identically to a normal stock.
(ii) is really what makes a weapon look like a military weapon to the general public. I'm suprised that they didn't just ban all rifles with this style of grip. Note that in my opinion, this falls under cosmetic. I can shoot either type of rifle from either the hip or the shoulder. A pistol-style grip is a little easier from the hip perhaps, but I think this is largely cosmetic.
(iii) This is totally cosmetic. Are drug dealers and gang members really running around with bayonets?
(iv) Same thing. Is anybody that worried about flash suppressors? It's not like they actually supress the muzzle flash anyway.
(v) Totally ludicrous. Are any crimes commited with grenades? Besides I would be very suprised if grenades and grenade launchers were not already regulated under firearms laws covering destructive devices
The statute is quite clear which weapons are OK and which are not; and if you are prosecuted if will do you no good to point to a weapon that is similar but legal.
The statute is "clear" because it bans a number of weapons by name. The statute is quite unclear because you can buy post-ban weapons that are functionally identical to banned guns with minor cosmetic changes and new names. For example, the Colt AR-15 and Colt "Match Target HBAR". To 95% of the population, they look identical. And they are pretty much right. Colt took off the flash supressor and bayonet mount, slapped on a new name, and hey, legal weapon.
The bill is also quite unclear because there are several pairs of rifles where both are semi-automatic, both are magazine fed, and both shoot the same round. A specific example is the AR-15 and the Ruger Mini-14. But one is banned by name, and the other is exempted by name! What's the sense in that?
Everyone is missing the single biggest and most obvious reason that Open Source projects don't generally reach the masses. There is no marketing!!! The masses don't buy what's best. And they don't even manage to buy what they need most of the time. They buy whatever the flashy ads tell them to buy. They buy whatever the retail tie-in's dump right in front of their face when they walk in the store. They buy whatever the commissioned salesperson tells them they need to buy. And that's why Open Source solutions don't hit the big time. Nobody is spending millions (or billions in the case of some large commercial software vendors) to put Open Source solutions in front of the masses. Ever seen an ad for RedHat on network TV? Didn't think so. Do I even need to ask if you saw an XP ad during it's launch? Didn't think so.
Remember that marijuana plants are illegal in and of themselves. Assault rifles are not. Now in this guys case, his being a previously convicted felon meant that he wasn't allowed to posses any firearms at all, which is why he's being charged with that also. But an "assualt rifle" is not an illegal thing per se. In fact, the term assault rifle is purely a propaganda term used to make people think what he had is worse than it was. The legal definition of assault rifle is based purely on the cosmetic appearance of the firearm, with no mention of what caliber round it shoots or anything that actually affects it's performance. People think "machine gun" when they hear assault rifle, but that's not what is technically being said. That's why I say it's a propaganda term. But I digress.
So the term "profit margin" refers to profit as a percentage of cost, as opposed to a percentage of revenue? Wow. That really does make it an obscene amount of money. And to think that they still feel the need to raise prices.
What's truly amazing is the amount of money they are making in their core OS/Office arena. From The Register article, I've pulled the numbers for Client OS, Server OS, and Office. Lets lump all three together, which seems fair. Especially since the Client and Server OS code bases have been merged with the advent of XP.
First, revene (all amounts in billions):
Client: 2.89 Server: 1.52 Office: 2.38 ------------ Total : 6.79
Now, I'm not an MBA so I'm probably doing the math wrong, but doesn't that indicate a profit margin of 4.88/6.79 = 71.8%? At a time when pretty much the entire industry is bleeding red? Rockefeller and Hearst would be proud. I swear that Microsoft blows as much money as possible on their loser ventures like MSN just to cover up the obscene profits they make on Windows and Office.
If Microsoft actually goes along with this, will it mean that I'll be able to buy a CD-ROM of the Windows source code for $0.99 or whatever on the streets of China? Probably. Which makes me think that Microsoft isn't ever going to go along with this.
Uh, microsoft empoyees are not the only microsoft developers in the world. In fact, a large number of open source developers (including myself) use Windows platforms to do their development.
Quite true. But I'm talking about developers actually working on developing and improving the core tools. I.e., the developers working on the kernel, desktop environment, compiler, etc. Microsoft excludes their customers from directly improving or working otherwise developing those tools. OSS does not, and in fact encourages it. My point being that I think in the long run OSS tools and platforms will eventually outstrip anything Microsoft (or any other commercial company) can produce. I'm not saying it's going to happen this year. But it'll happen eventually.
Estimates put the present size of India's developer population at anywhere between 450,000 and 600,000. That's about 10% of the world's developer population.
So by these numbers, there are between 4 and 6 million software developers in the world. According to the Microsoft(tm) Annual Report, they have about 50,000 employees. So what percentage of the worlds developers need to be working on core open source projects before the open source developers outnumber the Windows developers? Looks like the answer is less than 1%!
And that's why I think Microsoft is doomed in the long run. Open Source already has most of the functionality of Microsoft's offerings. And it only takes a small fraction of the world's developers to completely outstrip the amount of effort Microsoft can throw at the problem. Hell, if 10% of the developers spent 10% of their time on core OSS projects it would be more than enough to provide a nice stable feature-rich desktop and server environment. Interesting.
That's what I was thinking too. I'm guessing by "identify" they mean something more like counting jeeps vs. trucks vs. tanks. Which is quite useful information in a military application of course, but a far cry from being able to id specific vehicles. Is there any reason to belive that any physical aspect if a single model of car varies enough to be measurable as any sort if identifier?
I, for one, am at the same time terrified and excited by the idea of sensors everywhere, communicating wirelessly and powering themselves from ambient heat. I have no idea what kind of applications will come of it, but I don't want any regulation until it's "too late."
I'm just curious. Do you drive your car with your eyes closed so you can be both terrified and excited about the outcome?
Well, crypto would be virutally useless in this application for the military, they're not sending out communications, only recieving them. I cannot see any good reason why the military would want to use any sort of encryption on these...
Actually, there are two very good reasons why the military might want to use crypto. One is that if the sensors are actually providing useful info, the enemy might also find that information useful. If you drop sensors onto the front line, and then manage to advance the line, well now the sensors are transmitting information about the location of your own troops. So you would definitely want that encrypted.
The other is to ensure the integrity of the information. Remember, crypto has more uses than simply preserving privacy. Your sensor array wouldn't be worth a whole lot if the enemy could transmit false data. If you can't trust the sensors, you can't make decisions based upon the data you get back. Imagine if your enemy could inject fake data saying that nothings moving when in fact they are advancing? Or saying that their tanks are miles away from their actual location?
I sure hope this description is a bad one
on
Secure PDAs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Ugh. This article describes exactly how you shouldn't use biometric authentication.
Instead of swiping a badge through a reader, the employee would place his/her thumb on the Paron's small fingerprint recognition screen, and a wirelessly connected server would read the fingerprint, identify the person, and grant access if a match is found between the person making the request and the data in the server.
Uh, this is just using the fingerprint as a password to authenticate the user. Dumb dumb dumb. If they really are doing this, then anybody who can get the user's fingerprint can get access. What they should be doing:
Instead of swiping a badge through a reader, the employee would place his/her thumb on the Paron's small fingerprint recogniction screen to activate the embedded crypto processor. The processor would then use the employee's private key to authenticate to a wirelessly connected server.
Why is this different? For one, the actual authentication to the building is being done with a private key. Private keys are much easier to replace if compromised. Most people also don't routinely leave copies of their private keys on everything they touch.
Second, the fingerprint is only being used to activate the crypto processor. It only needs to be valid from the fingerprint sensor into the bowels of the PDA. But more importantly, it's not good for much. All it does is allow the crypto processor to be activated. An adversary still needs to first steal the PDA itself and then defeat the fingerprint sensor. And then they can only use the public key until it's revoked.
But trusting a wireless device to send the server the fingerprint is just plain silly. That's worse than a cleartext password. It's like authenticating on the username alone. Hopefully, this device doesn't actually work this way and the article is just simplifying for the reader.
Works great. I've had an IR LED one of my mouse for quite a while now. It's hooked up to my jukebox PC which is out in the den. I got tired of having the mouse randomly flashing from dim to bright and back whenever it thought that maybe something was moving underneath it. It liked to do it the most when I was trying to watch movies. Dropped in an IR LED, and it works great. No more flashing.
Support. That's what we're talking about. Microsoft does not support Win 3.1. They do not support Win95 either. Just because people are running them does not mean they are supported. Hey, I've be BeOS running at home. Does that mean Be Inc. is still supporting anything?
Actually, Microsoft's web site clearly says mainstream support won't last more than five years, and "extended" support won't last more than eight. Past that, your limited to "on line self-help support". Hm. Basically, you can count on surfing the web and asking for help in newsgroups if you want support for a 10 year old Microsoft product. They might offer better support initially, but at the 10 year mark their "support" is basically non-existent.
Actually, how many 10 year old products does Microsoft support? Note, I'm not asking how about current versions of 10 year old product lines. How many 10 year old versions of anything does Microsoft support? My guess is the answer is zero. Zilch. Nada. In fact, this is true of almost all companies.
In the commerical software world, you cannot use the same product for 10 years. You will purchase upgrades, and you will purchase new hardware to run those upgrades if you want support. Why? Because any company that doesn't make you do that will be bankrupt in 10 years.
Depending on what you're doing, the support issue can fall either way. If you want to set up a dedicated system which you want to just sit and run doing the same job for 10 years, I'd argue that open source is probably the right tool for the job. On the other hand, if by "support" you mean a continuous stream of upgrades and feature improvements (whether you want them or not), than a commercial product might make more sense.
Since in this case, it sounds like what's being spec'ed is just something that needs to sit and work for 10 years open source is the perfect fit. I suspect that after a couple of years of stable operation, the ongoing support costs for the open source solution would drop to near zero.
The record was the slashback we had recently which duplicated the PayPal tip jar theft story at the beginning and end of the article. That was impressive.
They are testing one of these new access point to distribute stories. Slashdot had the antenna's pointed to the east coast when the first story was posted. Now they are aimed at the west coast. While the range of coverage for slashdot is much greater now, folks in the midwest will have to deal with the resulting duplicate packets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstories
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that Windows, especially in the consumer domain, is becoming much more like TV. That is, television isn't a service provided to the viewers, it's a service provided to the marketers. The viewer's attention is the actual product which is being sold. The content on the television is not the primary business of television networks, selling advertisments is.
It seems like Windows is becoming the same way. The fact that a Windows computer can actually do useful things for the owner is becoming secondary to it's use as a vehicle for advertising and gathering marketing information. I think it's one of the things that turns me off the most about Windows, that constant feeling that you can't trust "your" computer at all, because you really can't. Every other program is co-opting "your" computer for the purpose of advertising to you. And it's not even just "free as in beer" software that does it, even stuff you paid good money for feels the need to steal your attention for advertisements. And they all, uniformly, require you to agree to EULA's.
It's one of the main reasons why I hope Linux never takes off on the desktop, because I don't want to have to deal with all that crap. Fortunately, one of Linux's strengths is that even if some distro does take over the desktop from Microsoft and inherits all the spy-ware and ad-ware, I can just run some other distro that doesn't suck. Not an option with Windows: they all suck.
Ok. I give up, and Google didn't seem to be able to help. What's the origin of the new "In Soviet Russia, blank blanks YOU!" joke? It seems to be quite the "in" joke this month, and I'm feeling left out. :-(
Oh wait, Google did come thru. Yakov Smirnoff, right? I didn't know Google let you use wildcards in "exact phrase" searches. Cool. "in soviet russia * * you"
But is printing a whole character per bit, or even byte, efficient? I'm curious how much data a laser printer could store on a piece of paper. Is it realistic to expect individual bits printed at 300dpi to actually be retrievable? Perhaps on a good 600dpi or 1200dpi printer.
300dpi gives us almost 11KBytes per square inch. Figure 70 square inches on a letter page with 1/2" margins. That's 770KB. Print full duplex and you're looking at 1.5MB per page, or roughly a floppy disk (coincidence?) You wouldn't want to back up your MP3 collection, but for an archival method that is likely to last 100 years it's not too bad. Factor in compression and you are probably getting a 100x increase in storage density over plain text. Kind of a neat thought.
The stats I found first at Google are from 1997/8, but I doubt it's changed that much. First, gun ownership per capita is much higher in the US, 0.82 vs 0.25, a three-fold increase. As for the two orders of magnitude difference in total homicides (NOT the rate), that's explained in large part due to the order of magnitude increase in people. Although the increase in the rate of murders commited with firearms is impressive at 0.5/100K Canada to 4.4/100K US, almost a full order of magnitude.
It's also interesting to note that the US still has a higher non-firearm murder rate at 1.3/100K Canada vs 2.3/100K US. The US also has a higher robbery without firearm rate with 78/100K Canada vs 102/100K US. Also interesting is how much closer the total firearms deaths are. 4.3/100K in Canada vs 11.4/100K in the US. Only a factor of 2.7 apart. This is due to the fact that the large numbers of suicides commited with firearms tends to even the lopsided murder numbers.
Oh, here's the URL Canda vs. US Gun Stats Intersting stuff for thought no matter what side you're on in the debate.
It's not just little fly by night Internet operations that think they should be able to deceive the public. Nike is also in court defending it's right to deceive the public. The spin on this case is all over the place depending on the source. Do a google search for "nike first amendment" if you want to learn more. That will give you links to both sides arguments.
Damn, nobody gets my jokes around here. Too subtle perhaps. :-)
One that listens to the microphone to capture your voice, and plays it back on $5.00/minute phone sex calls at 2AM.
I don't know what you do around your computer, but I can guarantee that nobody is interested in paying $5.00/minute to hear what happens around my computer. Unfortunately.
I don't think we're actually in disagreement here.
Any "legal" (i.e. civilian law) re-definition of the term to include firearms incapable of full-auto operation is an adoption of the original hyperbole of the anti-gun crowd.
Which is exactly why I say the phrase is a "propaganda" term. It has been twisted in order to confuse one thing, previously regulated full-auto weapons, with another, semi-auto only weapons. When people hear the phrase they think full-auto but what the law says is semi-auto only. That confusion was introduced intentionally in order to get the ban passed. Had the Brady folks come out trumpeting a law to ban flash supressors (the real effect of the "assault weapons ban") it never would have gotten anywhere. Because who really cares?
At the outset, let me say I'm trying to be informative, not to start a debate over the wisdom of gun control.
SNIP
True, assault weapons are not machine guns; they are semi-automatic, so one trigger pull fires one round.
SNIP
I don't think "assault weapon" is a propaganda term; certainly the military has a sense of the difference between assault weapons (M-16)
See. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Confusion between what is an "assault weapon" and flat out fully automatic machine guns which have been heavily regulated for years. The M-16 is not an "assault weapon", neither under the legal definition nor under your own. So did you call the M-16 an assault weapon because you're one of the ignorant masses whose fallen for all the propaganda they've heard? Apparently. You don't belive the term is a propaganda term, and more importantly on some level you've accepted that particular lie as truth. Despite your earlier statements in the same post which give a contrary opinion! Quite remarkable.
I disagree that the difference is cosmetic. Most of the elements in the definition focus on functional attributes that make the weapon more portable or more deadly and so on. I mentioned here [slashdot.org] a link to some information concerning the statutory definition.
If you want to present the impression of impartially "informing" the readers, don't reference the Brady Foundation. They are at least as biased as the NRA. From the more impartial University of Michigan here are the things that make a rifle an "assault weapon":
(B) a semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least 2 of--
`(i) a folding or telescoping stock;
`(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;
`(iii) a bayonet mount;
`(iv) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor; and
`(v) a grenade launcher;
(i) has some impact on how concealable a weapon is, but in actual use the stock is unfolded and performs identically to a normal stock.
(ii) is really what makes a weapon look like a military weapon to the general public. I'm suprised that they didn't just ban all rifles with this style of grip. Note that in my opinion, this falls under cosmetic. I can shoot either type of rifle from either the hip or the shoulder. A pistol-style grip is a little easier from the hip perhaps, but I think this is largely cosmetic.
(iii) This is totally cosmetic. Are drug dealers and gang members really running around with bayonets?
(iv) Same thing. Is anybody that worried about flash suppressors? It's not like they actually supress the muzzle flash anyway.
(v) Totally ludicrous. Are any crimes commited with grenades? Besides I would be very suprised if grenades and grenade launchers were not already regulated under firearms laws covering destructive devices
The statute is quite clear which weapons are OK and which are not; and if you are prosecuted if will do you no good to point to a weapon that is similar but legal.
The statute is "clear" because it bans a number of weapons by name. The statute is quite unclear because you can buy post-ban weapons that are functionally identical to banned guns with minor cosmetic changes and new names. For example, the Colt AR-15 and Colt "Match Target HBAR". To 95% of the population, they look identical. And they are pretty much right. Colt took off the flash supressor and bayonet mount, slapped on a new name, and hey, legal weapon.
The bill is also quite unclear because there are several pairs of rifles where both are semi-automatic, both are magazine fed, and both shoot the same round. A specific example is the AR-15 and the Ruger Mini-14. But one is banned by name, and the other is exempted by name! What's the sense in that?
Everyone is missing the single biggest and most obvious reason that Open Source projects don't generally reach the masses. There is no marketing!!! The masses don't buy what's best. And they don't even manage to buy what they need most of the time. They buy whatever the flashy ads tell them to buy. They buy whatever the retail tie-in's dump right in front of their face when they walk in the store. They buy whatever the commissioned salesperson tells them they need to buy. And that's why Open Source solutions don't hit the big time. Nobody is spending millions (or billions in the case of some large commercial software vendors) to put Open Source solutions in front of the masses. Ever seen an ad for RedHat on network TV? Didn't think so. Do I even need to ask if you saw an XP ad during it's launch? Didn't think so.
Remember that marijuana plants are illegal in and of themselves. Assault rifles are not. Now in this guys case, his being a previously convicted felon meant that he wasn't allowed to posses any firearms at all, which is why he's being charged with that also. But an "assualt rifle" is not an illegal thing per se. In fact, the term assault rifle is purely a propaganda term used to make people think what he had is worse than it was. The legal definition of assault rifle is based purely on the cosmetic appearance of the firearm, with no mention of what caliber round it shoots or anything that actually affects it's performance. People think "machine gun" when they hear assault rifle, but that's not what is technically being said. That's why I say it's a propaganda term. But I digress.
So the term "profit margin" refers to profit as a percentage of cost, as opposed to a percentage of revenue? Wow. That really does make it an obscene amount of money. And to think that they still feel the need to raise prices.
First, revene (all amounts in billions):
Now, I'm not an MBA so I'm probably doing the math wrong, but doesn't that indicate a profit margin of 4.88/6.79 = 71.8%? At a time when pretty much the entire industry is bleeding red? Rockefeller and Hearst would be proud. I swear that Microsoft blows as much money as possible on their loser ventures like MSN just to cover up the obscene profits they make on Windows and Office.
If Microsoft actually goes along with this, will it mean that I'll be able to buy a CD-ROM of the Windows source code for $0.99 or whatever on the streets of China? Probably. Which makes me think that Microsoft isn't ever going to go along with this.
Uh, microsoft empoyees are not the only microsoft developers in the world. In fact, a large number of open source developers (including myself) use Windows platforms to do their development.
Quite true. But I'm talking about developers actually working on developing and improving the core tools. I.e., the developers working on the kernel, desktop environment, compiler, etc. Microsoft excludes their customers from directly improving or working otherwise developing those tools. OSS does not, and in fact encourages it. My point being that I think in the long run OSS tools and platforms will eventually outstrip anything Microsoft (or any other commercial company) can produce. I'm not saying it's going to happen this year. But it'll happen eventually.
Estimates put the present size of India's developer population at anywhere between 450,000 and 600,000. That's about 10% of the world's developer population.
So by these numbers, there are between 4 and 6 million software developers in the world. According to the Microsoft(tm) Annual Report, they have about 50,000 employees. So what percentage of the worlds developers need to be working on core open source projects before the open source developers outnumber the Windows developers? Looks like the answer is less than 1%!
And that's why I think Microsoft is doomed in the long run. Open Source already has most of the functionality of Microsoft's offerings. And it only takes a small fraction of the world's developers to completely outstrip the amount of effort Microsoft can throw at the problem. Hell, if 10% of the developers spent 10% of their time on core OSS projects it would be more than enough to provide a nice stable feature-rich desktop and server environment. Interesting.
That's what I was thinking too. I'm guessing by "identify" they mean something more like counting jeeps vs. trucks vs. tanks. Which is quite useful information in a military application of course, but a far cry from being able to id specific vehicles. Is there any reason to belive that any physical aspect if a single model of car varies enough to be measurable as any sort if identifier?
I, for one, am at the same time terrified and excited by the idea of sensors everywhere, communicating wirelessly and powering themselves from ambient heat. I have no idea what kind of applications will come of it, but I don't want any regulation until it's "too late."
I'm just curious. Do you drive your car with your eyes closed so you can be both terrified and excited about the outcome?
Well, crypto would be virutally useless in this application for the military, they're not sending out communications, only recieving them. I cannot see any good reason why the military would want to use any sort of encryption on these...
Actually, there are two very good reasons why the military might want to use crypto. One is that if the sensors are actually providing useful info, the enemy might also find that information useful. If you drop sensors onto the front line, and then manage to advance the line, well now the sensors are transmitting information about the location of your own troops. So you would definitely want that encrypted.
The other is to ensure the integrity of the information. Remember, crypto has more uses than simply preserving privacy. Your sensor array wouldn't be worth a whole lot if the enemy could transmit false data. If you can't trust the sensors, you can't make decisions based upon the data you get back. Imagine if your enemy could inject fake data saying that nothings moving when in fact they are advancing? Or saying that their tanks are miles away from their actual location?
Ugh. This article describes exactly how you shouldn't use biometric authentication.
Instead of swiping a badge through a reader, the employee would place his/her thumb on the Paron's small fingerprint recognition screen, and a wirelessly connected server would read the fingerprint, identify the person, and grant access if a match is found between the person making the request and the data in the server.
Uh, this is just using the fingerprint as a password to authenticate the user. Dumb dumb dumb. If they really are doing this, then anybody who can get the user's fingerprint can get access. What they should be doing:
Instead of swiping a badge through a reader, the employee would place his/her thumb on the Paron's small fingerprint recogniction screen to activate the embedded crypto processor. The processor would then use the employee's private key to authenticate to a wirelessly connected server.
Why is this different? For one, the actual authentication to the building is being done with a private key. Private keys are much easier to replace if compromised. Most people also don't routinely leave copies of their private keys on everything they touch.
Second, the fingerprint is only being used to activate the crypto processor. It only needs to be valid from the fingerprint sensor into the bowels of the PDA. But more importantly, it's not good for much. All it does is allow the crypto processor to be activated. An adversary still needs to first steal the PDA itself and then defeat the fingerprint sensor. And then they can only use the public key until it's revoked.
But trusting a wireless device to send the server the fingerprint is just plain silly. That's worse than a cleartext password. It's like authenticating on the username alone. Hopefully, this device doesn't actually work this way and the article is just simplifying for the reader.
Works great. I've had an IR LED one of my mouse for quite a while now. It's hooked up to my jukebox PC which is out in the den. I got tired of having the mouse randomly flashing from dim to bright and back whenever it thought that maybe something was moving underneath it. It liked to do it the most when I was trying to watch movies. Dropped in an IR LED, and it works great. No more flashing.
Support. That's what we're talking about. Microsoft does not support Win 3.1. They do not support Win95 either. Just because people are running them does not mean they are supported. Hey, I've be BeOS running at home. Does that mean Be Inc. is still supporting anything?
Actually, Microsoft's web site clearly says mainstream support won't last more than five years, and "extended" support won't last more than eight. Past that, your limited to "on line self-help support". Hm. Basically, you can count on surfing the web and asking for help in newsgroups if you want support for a 10 year old Microsoft product. They might offer better support initially, but at the 10 year mark their "support" is basically non-existent.
Actually, how many 10 year old products does Microsoft support? Note, I'm not asking how about current versions of 10 year old product lines. How many 10 year old versions of anything does Microsoft support? My guess is the answer is zero. Zilch. Nada. In fact, this is true of almost all companies.
In the commerical software world, you cannot use the same product for 10 years. You will purchase upgrades, and you will purchase new hardware to run those upgrades if you want support. Why? Because any company that doesn't make you do that will be bankrupt in 10 years.
Depending on what you're doing, the support issue can fall either way. If you want to set up a dedicated system which you want to just sit and run doing the same job for 10 years, I'd argue that open source is probably the right tool for the job. On the other hand, if by "support" you mean a continuous stream of upgrades and feature improvements (whether you want them or not), than a commercial product might make more sense.
Since in this case, it sounds like what's being spec'ed is just something that needs to sit and work for 10 years open source is the perfect fit. I suspect that after a couple of years of stable operation, the ongoing support costs for the open source solution would drop to near zero.
The record was the slashback we had recently which duplicated the PayPal tip jar theft story at the beginning and end of the article. That was impressive.
They are testing one of these new access point to distribute stories. Slashdot had the antenna's pointed to the east coast when the first story was posted. Now they are aimed at the west coast. While the range of coverage for slashdot is much greater now, folks in the midwest will have to deal with the resulting duplicate packets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstories