Well, according to Poptronics Magazine (July 2000, page 29), which the cover story is how to build a Tesla Coil, a Faraday Cage is very strongly suggested so that the plentifull EM energy does not interfere with objects around the coil. Also, the Cages have long been a staple of any conspiracy theorist trying to prevent people from "Tempesting" them.
That said, it seem that they keep stuff either inside or outside.
I have been reading about the different licenses (GPL, BSD, etc) and they all look fine and dandy, but really... do they mean anything?
Basically... coding difficulties aside, if MS decides to use the entire tcp/ip stack from Linux (for example)... what is there to stop them? Since MS is closed source, there is no real way to determine that they have done this without some sort of legal action, and we know the budget problems in that. After all, the people down in Redmond are not stupid and they know what to change things around so that an examination of the binaries will not give away their "secret". So in that situation, what do you do?
I believe all this licencing (and Copyrights, and Patents) stem from the horrible human problem of dishonesty. The only reason we need something like the GPL is because we KNOW that someone else will grab that code and claim it as their own. Why would they do this? Same thing with books, music, art, etc. Sadly, I also have no solution for this problem, and I am very doubtfull that it will be resolved in my lifetime.
After reading this post, I began to notice that the way I access the menu under Windows is I thurst the mouse to the top and then my wrist "knows" how much to move down so I end up in the menu region. This also happens for the close button on the upper right. I also looked around (I am in a computer lab at school now) and noticed that a lot of other people do it the same way.
I am not arguing that it may be slower. I'm just amazed at how many things we do unconciously.
Well, without any hard figures, I am pretty sure that the number of people harmed by or because of other energy sources (coal and oil mainly) is at the very least the same and most likely more than those harmed by nuclar power generation.
Of course, I don't know what those numbers would show if we include the nuclear bombs...
Putting aside everything that could go wrong with a project like this (patenting, infrastructure, etc.) what about using two or more images of the same region of space taken at about the same time (or within 12 hours of each other, or whatever) to then extrapolate a finer detail that we could from the separate images? I understand this is how its done with the arrays of telescopes at some sites, and maybe it could be also used here.
After reading this article I have a few concerns about what this person is talking about:
1. He mentions that a digisig is less secure than a normal sig because the person does not have to read what he/she is signing. Well, isnt this also the case with normal sigs? How many of you read the contract when you joined your local video club? It is hoped that the person doing the digisiging will have read and agreed the document. Something that could be done about this could be maybe include a signing message, in which you sign the document, and also include a short sentence like "I agree" or "I disagree".
2. The computer is not a trusted environment. Well, if you dont trust your machine, then thats your own problem. I trust mine, because I take care of it remaining trusted. Sure, some assumptions have to be made, but one thing is caution, and another paranoia. I am SURE that at this moment I have no backdoor programs running in my Win98 system. I also know that I have no Office virii in here either. This is not only due to the antivirus software, but also to my downloading/trusting habits. I also have to make the assumption that Win98 itself is not sending data to someone else, but then that becomes the stuff of legend amongst the MS haters.
Point is that forgery and thievery occurs in the real world and in the digital world. The idea that a program will sign another document when you didnt tell it is akin to telling you to sign with a pen a peice of paper and having underneath it a carbon paper and another document with the signature line in the same place, but saying something else. Or hell, even easier, just beating you until you sign a paper or you die.
This sort of fear towards technology is nothing new, but it is shocking to see who is displaying this fear in this case.
The problems presented in this article are not computer problems, but rather human problems, and the lack of ethics in the world of today (and yesterday too).
The problem with the internet is not the "big corporations" or The Man. The problem is the people behind the terminals. Most of the views of the future present this vast sea of information which anyone can peruse, but what happens when people do not want to give up their information? Movements like open source will expand our knowledge a hundredfold, but until everyone embraces them, nothing will come to fruition. It's like the file sharing programs like Napster, Gnutella, etc. If someone chooses, they can share all the files they have, for the benefit of others. But some people just go in to leech, and sadly there are more leeches than sharers. I'm afraid that's the way things are.
Which leads to the problem of greed. People are greedy. You, me, everyone around us is. There is no way around it, it is in our nature. So what? Well, that means that instead of everyone just pooling their resources into one venture, like the "Total Complete Unified Universal Encyclopedia" we will always have separate companies that keep their information under tight control and will never reach this data utopia.
Which of course leads into the next point, of copyrights. Now, I believe it is completly fair for ANYONE to hold a copyright on something they have created, be it text or music or visual arts. But the whole reason for having a copyright is because people are not honest. People rip of each other's work and don't thank the originator. They profit from someone else's labor without giving that person what's due. They download MP3s to "sample" the music, yet if they like a song, they will just download the whole CD instead of buying it. And no, the fact that company "pigs" set the prices way up there is not an excuse for stealing.
Now, if everyone just learned to be not greedy, and actually behave like moral, honest human beings (oxymoron eh?) then the view of a promising future could be a reality. Always keep in mind, that we have all these laws because people are unable to auto-regulate themselves. Sadly, a Star Trek like world where money does not exist anymore will always stay in the realm of fiction.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, according to Poptronics Magazine (July 2000, page 29), which the cover story is how to build a Tesla Coil, a Faraday Cage is very strongly suggested so that the plentifull EM energy does not interfere with objects around the coil. Also, the Cages have long been a staple of any conspiracy theorist trying to prevent people from "Tempesting" them.
That said, it seem that they keep stuff either inside or outside.
I have been reading about the different licenses (GPL, BSD, etc) and they all look fine and dandy, but really... do they mean anything?
Basically... coding difficulties aside, if MS decides to use the entire tcp/ip stack from Linux (for example)... what is there to stop them? Since MS is closed source, there is no real way to determine that they have done this without some sort of legal action, and we know the budget problems in that. After all, the people down in Redmond are not stupid and they know what to change things around so that an examination of the binaries will not give away their "secret". So in that situation, what do you do?
I believe all this licencing (and Copyrights, and Patents) stem from the horrible human problem of dishonesty. The only reason we need something like the GPL is because we KNOW that someone else will grab that code and claim it as their own. Why would they do this? Same thing with books, music, art, etc. Sadly, I also have no solution for this problem, and I am very doubtfull that it will be resolved in my lifetime.
After reading this post, I began to notice that the way I access the menu under Windows is I thurst the mouse to the top and then my wrist "knows" how much to move down so I end up in the menu region. This also happens for the close button on the upper right. I also looked around (I am in a computer lab at school now) and noticed that a lot of other people do it the same way. I am not arguing that it may be slower. I'm just amazed at how many things we do unconciously.
If we are still discovering moons around our "original" planets and even discovering new planets...
...do we have even the slighest chance of seeing some [comet|asteroid|alien] aproaching us?
I dont really remember who said it, but "it" goes something along the lines of: "The more we know, the more we notice we know less"...
Well, without any hard figures, I am pretty sure that the number of people harmed by or because of other energy sources (coal and oil mainly) is at the very least the same and most likely more than those harmed by nuclar power generation.
Of course, I don't know what those numbers would show if we include the nuclear bombs...
Putting aside everything that could go wrong with a project like this (patenting, infrastructure, etc.) what about using two or more images of the same region of space taken at about the same time (or within 12 hours of each other, or whatever) to then extrapolate a finer detail that we could from the separate images? I understand this is how its done with the arrays of telescopes at some sites, and maybe it could be also used here.
After reading this article I have a few concerns about what this person is talking about:
1. He mentions that a digisig is less secure than a normal sig because the person does not have to read what he/she is signing. Well, isnt this also the case with normal sigs? How many of you read the contract when you joined your local video club? It is hoped that the person doing the digisiging will have read and agreed the document. Something that could be done about this could be maybe include a signing message, in which you sign the document, and also include a short sentence like "I agree" or "I disagree".
2. The computer is not a trusted environment. Well, if you dont trust your machine, then thats your own problem. I trust mine, because I take care of it remaining trusted. Sure, some assumptions have to be made, but one thing is caution, and another paranoia. I am SURE that at this moment I have no backdoor programs running in my Win98 system. I also know that I have no Office virii in here either. This is not only due to the antivirus software, but also to my downloading/trusting habits. I also have to make the assumption that Win98 itself is not sending data to someone else, but then that becomes the stuff of legend amongst the MS haters.
Point is that forgery and thievery occurs in the real world and in the digital world. The idea that a program will sign another document when you didnt tell it is akin to telling you to sign with a pen a peice of paper and having underneath it a carbon paper and another document with the signature line in the same place, but saying something else. Or hell, even easier, just beating you until you sign a paper or you die.
This sort of fear towards technology is nothing new, but it is shocking to see who is displaying this fear in this case.
The problems presented in this article are not computer problems, but rather human problems, and the lack of ethics in the world of today (and yesterday too).
The problem with the internet is not the "big corporations" or The Man. The problem is the people behind the terminals. Most of the views of the future present this vast sea of information which anyone can peruse, but what happens when people do not want to give up their information? Movements like open source will expand our knowledge a hundredfold, but until everyone embraces them, nothing will come to fruition. It's like the file sharing programs like Napster, Gnutella, etc. If someone chooses, they can share all the files they have, for the benefit of others. But some people just go in to leech, and sadly there are more leeches than sharers. I'm afraid that's the way things are.
Which leads to the problem of greed. People are greedy. You, me, everyone around us is. There is no way around it, it is in our nature. So what? Well, that means that instead of everyone just pooling their resources into one venture, like the "Total Complete Unified Universal Encyclopedia" we will always have separate companies that keep their information under tight control and will never reach this data utopia.
Which of course leads into the next point, of copyrights. Now, I believe it is completly fair for ANYONE to hold a copyright on something they have created, be it text or music or visual arts. But the whole reason for having a copyright is because people are not honest. People rip of each other's work and don't thank the originator. They profit from someone else's labor without giving that person what's due. They download MP3s to "sample" the music, yet if they like a song, they will just download the whole CD instead of buying it. And no, the fact that company "pigs" set the prices way up there is not an excuse for stealing.
Now, if everyone just learned to be not greedy, and actually behave like moral, honest human beings (oxymoron eh?) then the view of a promising future could be a reality. Always keep in mind, that we have all these laws because people are unable to auto-regulate themselves. Sadly, a Star Trek like world where money does not exist anymore will always stay in the realm of fiction.