The way we dispose of space trash has always, on some level, irked me. I mean, here's this multi-million dollar lump of metal, and we send it to a fiery death in our atmosphere, where it just vaporizes, making the air a little less clean and ensuring that our supply of useful metals is just a little lower.
Now here's an idea for a nano-satellite design: the recycler. In ten years, you could simply purchase a few of these for cheap, and they would seek out space garbage and reuse whatever's still working (solar panels, some computers, com equipment, etc.) while melting down the rest. Once all the right parts are collected, you nano fleet builds a brand spanking new satellite right in orbit. The cost of launching these little machines is orders of magnitude less than sending completed sattelites into space, and you pay nothing for materials.
Of course, eventually we'll run out of space trash. At this point, we could begin towing asteroids into high orbit. Maybe a tax on orbital development could fund the towing.
The Indrema console looks very cool, but while we're waiting for it's launch in spring, here's something else to chew on: The Playstation 2 might just be able to run Linux, with a lot of ingenuity.
The hardware is a mixed bag. At it's heart is a MIPS processor (fully supported by the kernel). The hard drive and ethernet in the US version are also pretty standard. The graphics chips are proprietary, with no documentation (doh!), but they are licensable, which could mean that if some very rich hackers (possible use for IPO money?) got together they could buy documentation for the chips and write an X-server, GL driver, etc.
Of course, it wouldn't be easy, and I'd much rather spend $300 supporting Indrema, a company which is supporting amateur developers and open source, than Sony. Still, it's an interesting project for anyone who's interested.
MS Office is proof that mediocre programmers led by downright moronic (software-wise) businessmen churn out very, very bad programs. Simple productivity apps should not take up half a gig and leave their little "helpers" running in the background, sucking up system resources. Do we really need a findfast daemon?
Abiword and GnuMeric handle office files, and the two of them downloaded in just a few minutes on my 56K. They have almost all the functionality of their M$ counterparts, and they blaze even on my old 486s. StarOffice and Applix are pretty cool too, but proprietary. And if you really crave very poorly done ports of windows apps that weren't that good in the first place, there's Corel.
I could care less if Office gets ported to BSD or Linux. It would be very sad if after all the hard work millions of people have put into the open-source Unices, most of the users became dependant on proprietary software. Wasn't avoiding dependancy on closed software the impetus for the free software movement in the first place?
The different processors really aren't that much of a problem unless office/IE is written in assembly (which I doubt). As long as the OS and libraries are the same, C and C++ code usually compiles with no problems on alternate processors. Pretty much any Linux software runs equally well on both my P2 and my SPARC. Hackers with Macs know the same is true with PowerPCs and even 68K's.
The problem is that OSX has an API layer that is closed and non-BSD. Classic and Carbon have a whole lot more to do with the old MacOS than with Darwin. Cocoa is a great deal more UNIX-like, but then again, M$ isn't using cocoa. The display interface is different, too (Quartz is a long, long way from X).
This doesn't concern me, since I've switched to Mozilla, but I've noticed a couple of very unusual clauses in the Communicator 4.x license agreement. Here's an exerpt:
3. RESTRICTIONS. Except as otherwise expressly permitted in this Agreement, or in another Netscape agreement to which Licensee is a party such as the CCK license agreement, the MCD license agreement or a distribution agreement, Licensee may not:... (ii) decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the Product (except to the extent applicable laws specifically prohibit such restriction);... (v) publish any results of benchmark tests run on the Product to a third party without Netscape's prior written consent.
So, you are prohibited to reverse engineer or publicly benchmark communicator unless you get permission from Netscape.
While these are wicked cool if you have the cash, I just had to point out that they're not any older than anything else in the universe. If you want to go down to the level of quarks, the matter that makes up us, the knives, and the galaxies has been around for 12 billion years. Even then, as far as the formation of the solar system is concerned, our most recent data seems to show that the gas giants formed first, with the terrestrial planets all coming into existence at about the same time a few hundred million years later. Since most meteorites are either left over debris or remnants from a destroyed/failed planet between Mars and Jupiter, we basically have the knives tied, age-wise.
First of all, I'm one of those people that thinks that IP laws are a divisive, anti-individualist, and generally dumb idea in the first place. However, I do live in a capitalist society which disagrees. Even so, weren't patents meant to cover implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves?
A patent is intended to protect, for a limited time, the "right" to be the sole producer of a physical product that significant resources were expended to engineer. Patenting an algorithm just doesn't make sense. It's just as if Einstein would have patented E=MC^2 and set up relativity corp. "For all your power plant, college textbook, and unthinkable weapon needs."
It's things like this, and genetic patents, that make me think the USPTO needs to be disbanded. Doesn't patenting a spliced organism infringe on the prior art of, say, God/Yahweh/Allah/Vishnu/The Universe/L. Ron Hubbard/Nobody/whatever else you happen to believe in? And am I violating their patent by existing, since I evolved from microbes?
My first programming experience was in 1990, when I was 5 years old programming GW-BASIC on a Tandy 1000. I thought I was pretty cool when I could write an invisible maze program. It got even better when I figured out the graphics commands and made little circles on the screen. Oh, did I mention that I had to specify line numbers and that my programs were 100% sequential?
While (Q or V) BASIC may be temping for youngsters getting into programming, I can tell you from my own experience that it actually harmed me as a programmer. A few years later, when I learned Perl on Linux, I found that my ability to deal with modern programming concepts like subroutines, object-oriented programming, and control structures was hindered by my background with this very poorly designed mess called BASIC. And it wasn't even a usefull mess like Perl!
Since then, I've learned C, Python, and Java as well. I can tell you that without a doubt Python is the language to start your kids out on. It is cross platform, so they can get their feet wet in Win98. Of all the *serious* programming languages out there, it is the easiest for beginners without being intentionally crippled (a la Pascal). It even has a really slick IDE, IDLE.
Once your little ones are comfortable with the language, you might try getting them booting into Linux or *BSD. Whether or not you do, though, their next language ought to be Perl. Sure it's messy. Sure not all the syntax makes sense. But hey, it's one of the most enormously usefull tools in a programmer's arsenal. It will also give your children experience with free-format and more C-like syntax and structure, which will help them as they move on to systems programming.
With this path, the intrepid young programmers will be ready for C in no time.
Bookwise, I recommend Learning Python (I think there's a version geared towards win32 now) and Learning/Programming Perl from ORA. Once they're ready, get a copy of "The C Programming Language: Second Edition" from Prentice Hall. When Dennis Ritchie is an author, it's gotta be good.
Think about how our own brains work. Neurons are basically very small, very simple processors that don't deal in straight binary, but rather in varying levels of chemical and electrical signals. A quantum computer is also non-binary. Could it be that the key to intelligence is multi-state computing? If so, is it possible that this algorithm is sub-sentient?
While I really appreciate what Peter is trying to do by giving away the code, I should probably mention that this isn't *quite* like totally open licenses (e.g. GPL, BSD/Apache/X, etc.). For a license to truly be open source, either you can be free to do whatever you want with the code, sharing your changes or not, a la BSD, or you MUST share everything, a la GNU.
What Peter is proposing is in reality a lot like Sun's "community license." The code is available for non-commercial use, but if you want to make money off of it, you have to pay. The problem with this is that it's inequitable. The original developers get to release a commercial product, royalty free, while those who contributed later don't. And while it's much better than a closed-source EULA, I secretly long for B&W to follow Quake's footsteps and go GPL.
More than 200 years ago it was decided that parodies are covered by freedom of the press. IDG's legal skylarkings are analogous to ABC suing NBC whenever SNL does a fake millionare episode.
The Lingo line of personal translators is IMHO excellent. Depending on your needs, there's everything from the Lingo 26 that supports , you guessed it, 26 international languages, to the Lingo 6Talk and Lingo phrase which pronounce the words themselves. There are also versions of the translator designed for specific areas of the world. I bought my grandfather a Lingo Continental for his birthday and it's been indespensable in his travels.
The new copy protection scheme is actually quite a bit different from that of DVDs. It is non-CSS, proprietary, and (they say) stronger. Does this mean they won't leave keys exposed in commercial decoders?
Personally, I'm anti-DVHS. It's proprietary. It was basically invented as a means to restrict freedom now that DVDs have been cracked. It is linear, NOT random-access. It can't be used in computers without specialized, expensive equipment. Would you get a heavily encrypted digital cassette player in leiu of CD or MP3 hardware? Didn't think so. Once DVD-R comes down in price, it'll be clear what the superior format is.
From your point of view, a continuously expanding circle would appear with you as it's focal point. Here's why:
The pole would have passed through every angle in a 360 degree arc surrounding you. That means that at any time during the next 24 hours, you would be recieving light from some part of the pole that passed through each and every one of those angles. As time progresses, the circle appears to be increasing it's radius, since light from farther parts of the pole is reaching you.
If you want to get technical, you would still be recieving light from when you held the pole in one place, which would appear as a point on the circle (assuming you pointed the pole directly away from your POV). Also, unless you rotated the pole instantly, circle would be more of an inward swirl because of the time difference. You would only be able to percieve this, however, if you moved above or below the plane of rotation.
If large ammounts of not only interstellar but intergalactic hydrogen exist out there, it may eliminate the need for "dark matter" in explaining the continued expansion of the universe.
Since we've never been able to prove the existence of WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) this does seem to be a more plausable explanation based on our current understanding of physics. However, we need much more information about the ammount of intergalactic hydrogen, it's distribution, and it's density before we can make that judgement.
If we only have to take precautions equal to those we take for our own confidential data, why not just set up a windows box with ALL files shared over gnutella. Then just throw a few love letters in my documents (personal confidential data) and share the Microsoft docs. Problem solved!;)
Ammendment 1: Free Speech Ammendment 4: No Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Hmm... I'd say the stripping of constitutional rights constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Is Mitnick no longer free to practice a religion, or lack thereof, of his choosing? Didn't think so.
If your assumptions are correct, then it is illegal for anyone to overhear me playing any music I have a copy of.
Think of all the copying and translation involved in *normal* use of a CD. First, a laser copies from physical to optical form, then a diode from optical to digital. After that, a microcontroller chunks the digital stream into 8-bit long bytes. Then a DSP decodes the signal into a square wave. A DAC then creates an analog signal based on the digital square wave. Finally, the speakers copy the analog wave over to the set of air molecules in immediate proximity to themselves. Each and every air molecule then passes the data on through millions of it's neighbors until it reaches my ear, where it's converted back to an analog electrical signal.
Do you mean to say, that after literally billions of instances of copying for personal use have taken place, it becomes illegal for my friends to have it copied once more by *their* eardrums instead of mine? If not, what makes copying at the level of molecular vibrations any more legal than copying at the level of minute digital electrical signals. Must the data carrier have a nucleus for copying to be legal?
Personally, I've always prefered the New York Times over other national newspapers (read McNews), now I have more reason to love the paper. This is the type of Journalism we need to see more of, unbiased, fair coverage of both sides of the story. It sure beats my local paper's "MP3: Local Students Stealing Music Online".
My Prediction: The NYTimes is fond of freedom of the press. Their defiance of the MPAA will lend legitamacy to the OpenDVD cause.
The practice of sharing copies of copyrighted material for personal use is not now, nor has it ever been illegal. It only becomes a crime to copy works if it is done at a profit.
In the field of education, photocopiers have been churning out worksheets and articles for years. Publishers have no problem with this, because they know that it is the right of a school, after purchasing books/newspapers/etc. to use them as they see fit for educational use.
It is also perfectly legal for me to tape a CD and give a copy to my friend. As an owner of the CD, it is my right. It ONLY becomes a crime if I charge and make a profit.
If some kid with a CDR drive makes a bunch of copies of his favorite CD and sells them for $5 a piece, he's profiting off of someone else's work. If someone connects their computer to Napster and lets other people download songs for free, then he is excercising his right to distribute copies for personal use. So long as there is no profit, and the copies are not used for public display, then US law has no provision for making any use of Napster illegal.
The true artist seeks to have his art enjoyed and appreciated by as many people as possible. The businessman, lacking any talent of his own, imagines how he can exploit the artist's talent for his own gain.
It's interesting that the initial posting mentions the concept of a voice interface. We've seen this concept used so often in movies and talked about so often by pundits that we accept it as the natural next-generation UI after the conventional GUI. Is this assumption correct, however?
Let's contrast a couple of human behaviors, and see how they map to interaction with computers. Verbal communication, while the base of most adults' thought processes, is a *learned* behavior. We're constantly bombarded with spoken language at an early age until it becomes second nature. On the other hand, manipulating our environment is an instinctive behavior. A baby with no exposure to civilization will automatically begin experimenting with the objects around it.
It's my prediction that the ultimate UI (at least for the forseeable future) is the virtual environment. Instead of asking for the news vocally, or picking up a newspaper (even a virtual one), the user can simply make contact with an object which, for them personally, has connotations with current events. Whether the object is a television, a camera, or a newspaper is irrelevant, the system will be customizable. By beginning to interact with the object, the environment around the user will transform itself into a new scene with several objects representing different types of news. A flag for politics, a gun for war, a computer for technology. The user can then begin to interact with these objects, once again transforming the scene. The user then becomes an eye-witness to whatever news interests them, whether it's a campaign rally or a football game. The user will also have the option to interact with other people around the world who are accessing the same information at the same time.
Of course, the processing power required for such an interface is, by today's standards, staggering. Still, within the next 20 years, the technological obstacles to the "object interface" will disappear. In the interim, voice will be the first post-GUI interface. Afterward, cybernetics may open up the possibility of the native thought-based interface. But the model of interaction with one's environment is one that I think can't be ignored.
I've been to several NASA sites recently, and I can tell you that on the ground most of the machines are SGIs, presumably running IRIX.
As for the shuttle itself, the onboard computers are mostly 386s. If I remember correctly, ESR mentioned in one of his essays that NASA runs trimmed-down Linux on the integrated computers.
The computers that are used for scientific research are different for each mission. If you read Linux Journal, you're familiar with the Metro-X adds which boast that Metro-X X servers are used on the space shuttle. Therefore we can be reasonably sure that either Linux or *BSD runs on these computers at least part of the time.
Also, it should be noted that shuttle crew members are allowed to bring their own laptops onboard for personal use, presumably running whatever they please.
I enjoy experimenting with running Linux on many different platforms. So far, I'm runnning Linux on x86, SPARC, and MIPS. I haven't tried Linux/PowerPC yet because the machines from Apple and IBM are exorbitantly priced.
Are there any options for those of us who are interested in PowerPC *without* running MacOS or AIX?
First of all let me say that I am absolutely opposed to having any backdoors in encryption, government or otherwise. I also believe that encryption is, in our current world, necessary for the protection of innocent individiduals.
Now for the inflamatory part: What if there were no crypto? What if all of our data could be accessed by anyone else with reasonable hacking skill? What if we could do the same for all of the top secret information held by the government and corporations? What would our world look like?
I'll tell you what: We would find out the truth. The people could no longer be lied to by companies that suppressed information about the danger of their products. No injustice could escape our eye. True, the RIAA could see all of my MP3s, and the government could read the pro-socialist/civil libertarian papers that I've written for my history class. But I could see all of the accounting records from our favorite record labels and PROVE that CDs are price fixed. I could find all of the illegal searches done without warrants and DEMAND that these wrongs be righted.
Information is our most powerfull weapon in defeating corporatism and imperialism. If crypto, and privacy with it, dies, then the result can only be greater freedom. And I like freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
The way we dispose of space trash has always, on some level, irked me. I mean, here's this multi-million dollar lump of metal, and we send it to a fiery death in our atmosphere, where it just vaporizes, making the air a little less clean and ensuring that our supply of useful metals is just a little lower.
Now here's an idea for a nano-satellite design: the recycler. In ten years, you could simply purchase a few of these for cheap, and they would seek out space garbage and reuse whatever's still working (solar panels, some computers, com equipment, etc.) while melting down the rest. Once all the right parts are collected, you nano fleet builds a brand spanking new satellite right in orbit. The cost of launching these little machines is orders of magnitude less than sending completed sattelites into space, and you pay nothing for materials.
Of course, eventually we'll run out of space trash. At this point, we could begin towing asteroids into high orbit. Maybe a tax on orbital development could fund the towing.
Just an idea...
The Indrema console looks very cool, but while we're waiting for it's launch in spring, here's something else to chew on: The Playstation 2 might just be able to run Linux, with a lot of ingenuity.
The hardware is a mixed bag. At it's heart is a MIPS processor (fully supported by the kernel). The hard drive and ethernet in the US version are also pretty standard. The graphics chips are proprietary, with no documentation (doh!), but they are licensable, which could mean that if some very rich hackers (possible use for IPO money?) got together they could buy documentation for the chips and write an X-server, GL driver, etc.
Of course, it wouldn't be easy, and I'd much rather spend $300 supporting Indrema, a company which is supporting amateur developers and open source, than Sony. Still, it's an interesting project for anyone who's interested.
MS Office is proof that mediocre programmers led by downright moronic (software-wise) businessmen churn out very, very bad programs. Simple productivity apps should not take up half a gig and leave their little "helpers" running in the background, sucking up system resources. Do we really need a findfast daemon?
Abiword and GnuMeric handle office files, and the two of them downloaded in just a few minutes on my 56K. They have almost all the functionality of their M$ counterparts, and they blaze even on my old 486s. StarOffice and Applix are pretty cool too, but proprietary. And if you really crave very poorly done ports of windows apps that weren't that good in the first place, there's Corel.
I could care less if Office gets ported to BSD or Linux. It would be very sad if after all the hard work millions of people have put into the open-source Unices, most of the users became dependant on proprietary software. Wasn't avoiding dependancy on closed software the impetus for the free software movement in the first place?
The different processors really aren't that much of a problem unless office/IE is written in assembly (which I doubt). As long as the OS and libraries are the same, C and C++ code usually compiles with no problems on alternate processors. Pretty much any Linux software runs equally well on both my P2 and my SPARC. Hackers with Macs know the same is true with PowerPCs and even 68K's.
The problem is that OSX has an API layer that is closed and non-BSD. Classic and Carbon have a whole lot more to do with the old MacOS than with Darwin. Cocoa is a great deal more UNIX-like, but then again, M$ isn't using cocoa. The display interface is different, too (Quartz is a long, long way from X).
This doesn't concern me, since I've switched to Mozilla, but I've noticed a couple of very unusual clauses in the Communicator 4.x license agreement. Here's an exerpt:
... (ii) decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the Product (except to the extent applicable laws specifically prohibit such restriction); ... (v) publish any results of benchmark tests run on the Product to a third party without Netscape's prior written consent.
3. RESTRICTIONS. Except as otherwise expressly permitted in this Agreement, or in another Netscape agreement to which Licensee is a party such as the CCK license agreement, the MCD license agreement or a distribution agreement, Licensee may not:
So, you are prohibited to reverse engineer or publicly benchmark communicator unless you get permission from Netscape.
While these are wicked cool if you have the cash, I just had to point out that they're not any older than anything else in the universe. If you want to go down to the level of quarks, the matter that makes up us, the knives, and the galaxies has been around for 12 billion years. Even then, as far as the formation of the solar system is concerned, our most recent data seems to show that the gas giants formed first, with the terrestrial planets all coming into existence at about the same time a few hundred million years later. Since most meteorites are either left over debris or remnants from a destroyed/failed planet between Mars and Jupiter, we basically have the knives tied, age-wise.
First of all, I'm one of those people that thinks that IP laws are a divisive, anti-individualist, and generally dumb idea in the first place. However, I do live in a capitalist society which disagrees. Even so, weren't patents meant to cover implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves?
A patent is intended to protect, for a limited time, the "right" to be the sole producer of a physical product that significant resources were expended to engineer. Patenting an algorithm just doesn't make sense. It's just as if Einstein would have patented E=MC^2 and set up relativity corp. "For all your power plant, college textbook, and unthinkable weapon needs."
It's things like this, and genetic patents, that make me think the USPTO needs to be disbanded. Doesn't patenting a spliced organism infringe on the prior art of, say, God/Yahweh/Allah/Vishnu/The Universe/L. Ron Hubbard/Nobody/whatever else you happen to believe in? And am I violating their patent by existing, since I evolved from microbes?
My first programming experience was in 1990, when I was 5 years old programming GW-BASIC on a Tandy 1000. I thought I was pretty cool when I could write an invisible maze program. It got even better when I figured out the graphics commands and made little circles on the screen. Oh, did I mention that I had to specify line numbers and that my programs were 100% sequential?
While (Q or V) BASIC may be temping for youngsters getting into programming, I can tell you from my own experience that it actually harmed me as a programmer. A few years later, when I learned Perl on Linux, I found that my ability to deal with modern programming concepts like subroutines, object-oriented programming, and control structures was hindered by my background with this very poorly designed mess called BASIC. And it wasn't even a usefull mess like Perl!
Since then, I've learned C, Python, and Java as well. I can tell you that without a doubt Python is the language to start your kids out on. It is cross platform, so they can get their feet wet in Win98. Of all the *serious* programming languages out there, it is the easiest for beginners without being intentionally crippled (a la Pascal). It even has a really slick IDE, IDLE.
Once your little ones are comfortable with the language, you might try getting them booting into Linux or *BSD. Whether or not you do, though, their next language ought to be Perl. Sure it's messy. Sure not all the syntax makes sense. But hey, it's one of the most enormously usefull tools in a programmer's arsenal. It will also give your children experience with free-format and more C-like syntax and structure, which will help them as they move on to systems programming.
With this path, the intrepid young programmers will be ready for C in no time.
Bookwise, I recommend Learning Python (I think there's a version geared towards win32 now) and Learning/Programming Perl from ORA. Once they're ready, get a copy of "The C Programming Language: Second Edition" from Prentice Hall. When Dennis Ritchie is an author, it's gotta be good.
Think about how our own brains work. Neurons are basically very small, very simple processors that don't deal in straight binary, but rather in varying levels of chemical and electrical signals. A quantum computer is also non-binary. Could it be that the key to intelligence is multi-state computing? If so, is it possible that this algorithm is sub-sentient?
While I really appreciate what Peter is trying to do by giving away the code, I should probably mention that this isn't *quite* like totally open licenses (e.g. GPL, BSD/Apache/X, etc.). For a license to truly be open source, either you can be free to do whatever you want with the code, sharing your changes or not, a la BSD, or you MUST share everything, a la GNU.
What Peter is proposing is in reality a lot like Sun's "community license." The code is available for non-commercial use, but if you want to make money off of it, you have to pay. The problem with this is that it's inequitable. The original developers get to release a commercial product, royalty free, while those who contributed later don't. And while it's much better than a closed-source EULA, I secretly long for B&W to follow Quake's footsteps and go GPL.
More than 200 years ago it was decided that parodies are covered by freedom of the press. IDG's legal skylarkings are analogous to ABC suing NBC whenever SNL does a fake millionare episode.
The Lingo line of personal translators is IMHO excellent. Depending on your needs, there's everything from the Lingo 26 that supports , you guessed it, 26 international languages, to the Lingo 6Talk and Lingo phrase which pronounce the words themselves. There are also versions of the translator designed for specific areas of the world. I bought my grandfather a Lingo Continental for his birthday and it's been indespensable in his travels.
The new copy protection scheme is actually quite a bit different from that of DVDs. It is non-CSS, proprietary, and (they say) stronger. Does this mean they won't leave keys exposed in commercial decoders?
Personally, I'm anti-DVHS. It's proprietary. It was basically invented as a means to restrict freedom now that DVDs have been cracked. It is linear, NOT random-access. It can't be used in computers without specialized, expensive equipment. Would you get a heavily encrypted digital cassette player in leiu of CD or MP3 hardware? Didn't think so. Once DVD-R comes down in price, it'll be clear what the superior format is.
From your point of view, a continuously expanding circle would appear with you as it's focal point. Here's why:
The pole would have passed through every angle in a 360 degree arc surrounding you. That means that at any time during the next 24 hours, you would be recieving light from some part of the pole that passed through each and every one of those angles. As time progresses, the circle appears to be increasing it's radius, since light from farther parts of the pole is reaching you.
If you want to get technical, you would still be recieving light from when you held the pole in one place, which would appear as a point on the circle (assuming you pointed the pole directly away from your POV). Also, unless you rotated the pole instantly, circle would be more of an inward swirl because of the time difference. You would only be able to percieve this, however, if you moved above or below the plane of rotation.
If large ammounts of not only interstellar but intergalactic hydrogen exist out there, it may eliminate the need for "dark matter" in explaining the continued expansion of the universe.
Since we've never been able to prove the existence of WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) this does seem to be a more plausable explanation based on our current understanding of physics. However, we need much more information about the ammount of intergalactic hydrogen, it's distribution, and it's density before we can make that judgement.
If we only have to take precautions equal to those we take for our own confidential data, why not just set up a windows box with ALL files shared over gnutella. Then just throw a few love letters in my documents (personal confidential data) and share the Microsoft docs. Problem solved! ;)
Ammendment 1: Free Speech
Ammendment 4: No Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Hmm... I'd say the stripping of constitutional rights constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Is Mitnick no longer free to practice a religion, or lack thereof, of his choosing? Didn't think so.
If your assumptions are correct, then it is illegal for anyone to overhear me playing any music I have a copy of.
Think of all the copying and translation involved in *normal* use of a CD. First, a laser copies from physical to optical form, then a diode from optical to digital. After that, a microcontroller chunks the digital stream into 8-bit long bytes. Then a DSP decodes the signal into a square wave. A DAC then creates an analog signal based on the digital square wave. Finally, the speakers copy the analog wave over to the set of air molecules in immediate proximity to themselves. Each and every air molecule then passes the data on through millions of it's neighbors until it reaches my ear, where it's converted back to an analog electrical signal.
Do you mean to say, that after literally billions of instances of copying for personal use have taken place, it becomes illegal for my friends to have it copied once more by *their* eardrums instead of mine? If not, what makes copying at the level of molecular vibrations any more legal than copying at the level of minute digital electrical signals. Must the data carrier have a nucleus for copying to be legal?
Electrons are not criminals.
Personally, I've always prefered the New York Times over other national newspapers (read McNews), now I have more reason to love the paper. This is the type of Journalism we need to see more of, unbiased, fair coverage of both sides of the story. It sure beats my local paper's "MP3: Local Students Stealing Music Online".
My Prediction: The NYTimes is fond of freedom of the press. Their defiance of the MPAA will lend legitamacy to the OpenDVD cause.
Mirror DeCSS on on a T-Shirt.
The practice of sharing copies of copyrighted material for personal use is not now, nor has it ever been illegal. It only becomes a crime to copy works if it is done at a profit.
In the field of education, photocopiers have been churning out worksheets and articles for years. Publishers have no problem with this, because they know that it is the right of a school, after purchasing books/newspapers/etc. to use them as they see fit for educational use.
It is also perfectly legal for me to tape a CD and give a copy to my friend. As an owner of the CD, it is my right. It ONLY becomes a crime if I charge and make a profit.
If some kid with a CDR drive makes a bunch of copies of his favorite CD and sells them for $5 a piece, he's profiting off of someone else's work. If someone connects their computer to Napster and lets other people download songs for free, then he is excercising his right to distribute copies for personal use. So long as there is no profit, and the copies are not used for public display, then US law has no provision for making any use of Napster illegal.
The true artist seeks to have his art enjoyed and appreciated by as many people as possible. The businessman, lacking any talent of his own, imagines how he can exploit the artist's talent for his own gain.
It's interesting that the initial posting mentions the concept of a voice interface. We've seen this concept used so often in movies and talked about so often by pundits that we accept it as the natural next-generation UI after the conventional GUI. Is this assumption correct, however?
Let's contrast a couple of human behaviors, and see how they map to interaction with computers. Verbal communication, while the base of most adults' thought processes, is a *learned* behavior. We're constantly bombarded with spoken language at an early age until it becomes second nature. On the other hand, manipulating our environment is an instinctive behavior. A baby with no exposure to civilization will automatically begin experimenting with the objects around it.
It's my prediction that the ultimate UI (at least for the forseeable future) is the virtual environment. Instead of asking for the news vocally, or picking up a newspaper (even a virtual one), the user can simply make contact with an object which, for them personally, has connotations with current events. Whether the object is a television, a camera, or a newspaper is irrelevant, the system will be customizable. By beginning to interact with the object, the environment around the user will transform itself into a new scene with several objects representing different types of news. A flag for politics, a gun for war, a computer for technology. The user can then begin to interact with these objects, once again transforming the scene. The user then becomes an eye-witness to whatever news interests them, whether it's a campaign rally or a football game. The user will also have the option to interact with other people around the world who are accessing the same information at the same time.
Of course, the processing power required for such an interface is, by today's standards, staggering. Still, within the next 20 years, the technological obstacles to the "object interface" will disappear. In the interim, voice will be the first post-GUI interface. Afterward, cybernetics may open up the possibility of the native thought-based interface. But the model of interaction with one's environment is one that I think can't be ignored.
I've been to several NASA sites recently, and I can tell you that on the ground most of the machines are SGIs, presumably running IRIX.
As for the shuttle itself, the onboard computers are mostly 386s. If I remember correctly, ESR mentioned in one of his essays that NASA runs trimmed-down Linux on the integrated computers.
The computers that are used for scientific research are different for each mission. If you read Linux Journal, you're familiar with the Metro-X adds which boast that Metro-X X servers are used on the space shuttle. Therefore we can be reasonably sure that either Linux or *BSD runs on these computers at least part of the time.
Also, it should be noted that shuttle crew members are allowed to bring their own laptops onboard for personal use, presumably running whatever they please.
I enjoy experimenting with running Linux on many different platforms. So far, I'm runnning Linux on x86, SPARC, and MIPS. I haven't tried Linux/PowerPC yet because the machines from Apple and IBM are exorbitantly priced.
Are there any options for those of us who are interested in PowerPC *without* running MacOS or AIX?
First of all let me say that I am absolutely opposed to having any backdoors in encryption, government or otherwise. I also believe that encryption is, in our current world, necessary for the protection of innocent individiduals.
Now for the inflamatory part: What if there were no crypto? What if all of our data could be accessed by anyone else with reasonable hacking skill? What if we could do the same for all of the top secret information held by the government and corporations? What would our world look like?
I'll tell you what: We would find out the truth. The people could no longer be lied to by companies that suppressed information about the danger of their products. No injustice could escape our eye. True, the RIAA could see all of my MP3s, and the government could read the pro-socialist/civil libertarian papers that I've written for my history class. But I could see all of the accounting records from our favorite record labels and PROVE that CDs are price fixed. I could find all of the illegal searches done without warrants and DEMAND that these wrongs be righted.
Information is our most powerfull weapon in defeating corporatism and imperialism. If crypto, and privacy with it, dies, then the result can only be greater freedom. And I like freedom.
I would keep typing, but my liver just crashed. Darn wince!