The citizenry of this nation has consistently, and over a long period of time, established that large classes of its citizens (aka "minors") are not protected by the same legal rights that illegal immigrants and felons have access to. You can work to try to change that (good luck) but until that change happens you have to understand that those are the rules of the game.
Anyway, just because he can't afford a lawyer does that necessarily mean he can't sue the school? What ever happened to pro se litigation? It's not like the kid has anything better to do with his time now that he's been pulled from school. And if not pro se then talk to the ACLU and see about some pro bono help. I'm actually a little disappointed that he would have bothered to talk to slashdot before the ACLU. Talk about mixed up priorities; Slashdot is mostly about all talk and no action.
Kinda like how you say "CNN said the markets are down" when what you really mean are the duly appointed representatives of CNN have said the markets are down.
In my memory, the editors of slashdot have never said anything in support of intellectual property, have consistently editorialized that individual infringers should be prosecuted, and had no problems with the characterization offered in the story summary.
Oh yeah, it's pretty easy to share a couple GB of movies over a 56k modem connection. If the MPAA is so damn evil how come everyone wants their product?
Slashdot has continually said that the MPAA should got after individual copyright infrigers rather than services like Napster. Yet as soon as the MPAA does that it becomes labelled "intimidation tactics". I read the article and from what I gathered Excite@Home told people if they didn't stop sharing copyright material they would lose their service.
However, "correctness" is debatable. A (probably large) number of people would say that any programming language that restricts you to single inheritance is not "correct" (despite pragmatic arguments about the real world usefulness of multiple inheritance). Others would argue that the absence of preconditions, postconditions, and invariants prevent Ruby from being called "correct". Yet others might take issue with its exception handling. Or the lack of tuples. Or any number of things.
I don't think Ruby's lack of documentation has anything to do with why it hasn't broken out. After all, Ruby's web site has tons of perfectly good documentation that any competent programmer shouldn't have any problems making heads or tails of.
Ruby's main problem is it doesn't offer clear benefits over the existing solutions. For instance, take a look at Ruby's comparison page. It's improvements over Perl are: nicer syntax, different default scoping, cleaner integration of object-orientedness. Those are hardly decisive. Compare Ruby to Python and you'll find a similarly non-compelling argument.
You don't seem to understand completely what is being discussed, which is fine becaues neither do I. However, I have some passing familiarity with products like SELinux, RSBACS, and LIDS.
FreeBSD and OpenBSD may audit their code to make sure that what they have written is secure but that is something completely different from writing code that does what I want it to. Almost all variants of unix are still stuck in a decade's old world view of security, which is ironic since that's what many unix users make fun of Windows for.
Things like implicitly giving uid 0 god like powers, or thinking ports under 1023 are somehow more special than those above.
Projects like SELinux provide Mandatory Access Controls. Granted, I haven't looked at OpenBSD in a while, but I've never heard of any project to provide MACs for OpenBSD. Which is too bad because proper MACs significantly lessen the need for in-depth code auditing. When programs can't misbehave it becomes less important to audit six hundred million lines of code. And what do you do when you don't have enough man power to audit everything that needs to be audited? Have you ever looked at how little code OpenBSD actually audits?
This isn't about patching a hole is a tire. Audits aren't even relevant.
I didn't say it was the same as a car or a toaster. I had only two points which, apparently, I somehow obfuscated.
The original post said that idiot proof things can only be operated by idiots. His implication was 1) that Windows is idiot proof, or will be Real Soon Now, 2) only idiots can operate such things. In response I say, 1) Windows is so far from being idiot proof that his statement is ridiculous, 2) there are plenty of idiot proof things in the world that non-idiots are able to operate, invaliding the entire basis of his "insightful" claim.
Secondly, the original post seemed to be operating under the assumption that everyone wants the same thing from their computer, namely what the original poster wants. Some people don't want to tweak every last thing on their toaster. They aren't interested in the physics of toasting. They just want to eat toast. Different people want different things from their computer, which will necessitate different approaches in OS design and user interface.
FWIW, I agree with you that OSes need to evolve towards a more appliance like attitude, at least for the overwhelming majority of users and uses. I would wager that the poster I responded to do does not agree, since that is making things idiot proof.
I honestly fail to see the distinction. Unless they came up with the ideas completely on their own without recourse to other people's work I don't see how it is any different from Microsoft. Microsoft hasn't broken into anyone's headquarters and "stolen" anything (besides, the slashdot community is usually so ready to tell you that the whole notion of theft of intellectual property is bullocks anyway since no one actually loses anything). The mere act of transferring cash from one party to another doesn't change the fact that there was no innovation on your part. After all, I know a lot of people who say "Microsoft doesn't innovate, all they do is buy companies that innovate!"
You have to subtract the vitriol from Microsoft side of the equation, too.
What, exactly, are the non-obvious enhancements that OS X has? When the topic is evil patents by evil corporations looking to make an evil buck the slashdot community is ready to scream about independent discovery and obviousness of supposed "innovations". Why do all of those observations suddenly become nonapplicable just because it is Microsoft?
It just seems to me like there is a double standard in effect.
And OS X stole from NeXT and NeXT stole from Mac and Mac stole from Smalltalk.
it exemplifies the old saw that if you build something totally idiot proof, only an idiot will be able to use it.
That's right. Cars are idiot proof and I'm sure you drove one to work today. That must make you an idiot. I'm surprised you aren't also complaining that your toaster doesn't have an "expert user" mode. Different people want different things from their OS. And not every OS can be all things to all people.
I don't think it's even as complicated as you make it out to be. I think the simple answer is that there aren't "people who play games on Linux". There are simply "people who play games". And the existence of one or two Linux games isn't going to obviate the need to have a Windows partition hanging around to play things under. And, really, when I play games, the underlying OS is merely a commodity...I don't care what it is so long as it gets the job done. I'd wager that the majority of people who play games feel the same way. After all, I don't buy a Playstation just because Sony makes it...I buy it because of the games I can play on it. Why should Linux be any different?
Linux server ports are another story. I don't think a online game would make it if it did not have a Linux and/or BSD port.
Yeah, games like Starcraft, Diablo 2, Everquest, Ultima Online, Age of Empires 2, and Myth were complete failures until Linux and BSD ports of the servers became available.
Look at the Jargon File entry for cracker and you'll see that if you REALLY want to be pedantic you should call them worms instead of crackers...since worm was the original neologism.
Hackers are people who thrive on being faced with problems and finding clever, innovative solutions to them. Crackers are people who break into computer systems.
Says who? Try looking up "hacker" in, say, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that small subcultures get to force their own pet definitions on society at large. It works the other way around...words mean whatever the population at large decide they mean. Heck, even the Jargon File admits that hacker was originally used to mean "a malicious meddler" and only recently has that use become deprecated.
Confusing the two is like calling every martial-arts student a 'ninja.'
No, it's more like a subset of karate students (it's only a subset because not all karate students agree with them on this issue) suddenly deciding that, because of the increased media exposure that the movie Karate Kid brought to their subculture they now want to be called "judo-ka" -- and who cares if karate and judo are already in widespread use? -- and then getting their obi in a twist when everyone keeps calling it karate.
Unless you are trying to suggest that there is some innate meaning in the two words completely separate from what society imparts to them.
I don't see how this is any different from people who configure their mail servers to not be open relays. I only want authorized people using my smtpd. AOL only wants authorized people using their IM servers.
It's just much easier to do the infrastructure "right" once.
Provided you pick the "right" infrastructure when you're spending all that money. Given the possibilities that wireless provides I'm having a hard time seeing fiber-to-the-door as a goal worthy of spending billions and billions of dollars on.
(BTW, when did fiber-to-the-door become one of my "rights"?)
Yeah, back in the day before everyone started playing with tournament legal decks. My roommate would play Green with his 4 Forces of Nature, 8 Berserks, and 12 Giant Growths and I would fend him off with my 6 Sengir Vampires, 12 Terrors, and 10 Unholy Strengths.
Of course, we played for ante, too. I lost a Black Lotus once on ante. I got it back a few weeks later on another ante, not that I ever found the card all that useful.
God forbid you actually go into a field you enjoy rather than one in which you hope to become famous.
Besides, last I checked Larry Ellison didn't know much about computer science or genetic engineering.
The real problem with computers is now that they are so dang popular the real advances don't get the press that a new release of Linux 2.4 or a new Athlon does. People aren't interested in trying out new language paradigms because, gall darnit, if C was good enough for K&R it's good enough for them. People aren't interested in trying out new kinds of software because they're comfortable with the old kind.
It's kinda like saying there hasn't been any development in automotive technology when what you really mean is that the cool developments take decades to actually be implemented (if they ever make it) so you never hear about.
Pie in the sky fields like genetic engineering can fill their press releases with things like "some day we may be able to use this technology to cure congenital birth defects". More established industries like computers that already have shipping products have to be slightly more...pragmatic.
Has genetic engineering really made big advances in the past few years? Or is that just the spin that biotech companies have put on it? Or is it our own biases based on our ingrained awe for biology and contempt for mere machines? Even if it has made great leaps in the past, is genetic engineering likely to do so in the next few years as well? How can you even begin to quantify what counts as a "big advance" except through hind sight? I think it was Yogi Berra who said, "It's hard to predict things. Especially the future."
rootness and capabilities
on
New Linux Worm
·
· Score: 4
If people stopped giving root God-like powers then problems like this wouldn't crop up. Patches like LIDS help put root in a jail. Someday we can pray that root, and all the trust and power that goes along with UID 0, will go away completely.
Certainly there are, just there are problems with the current system. The current systems tends concentrate power, whereas a more open system holds the possibility of distributing that power by distributing the information.
You can't make a fresh start.
Certainly this is a big problem but I would also argue that it is a artifact of the current information hiding culture that we expect people to be perfect. We don't tolerate mistakes of any kind. And this is allowed to continue because we hide the mistakes. We lie about smoking pot in college rather than collectively admitting the sometimes people make mistakes but that doesn't mean they are bad people. We expect saints where none can be found. Of course, it certainly isn't guaranteed that removing privacy will automatically force people to be more accepting; who can know how technology will shape society in the future? But it certainly is harder to throw stones when everyone lives in a glass house.
Don't count on the potential date remembering to check the trustworthiness of the reporter.
I would argue that this is because of the up-to-present practice of accepting as gospel information because it came from The Powers That Be. How many media stories on 20/20 even have much in the way of references? And how easy is it to check on those references? But I'll often read a paper on the net and the references will include links to other papers on the net, allowing me to check facts on my own.
You can't trust the data.
But in the transparent society the idea is that when something goes on your credit report you know about it instantly. You don't find out about it two years later when you go to take out a mortgage on a house. And since all information is open it is much easier to prove your case. When you have tracking numbers for every piece of email you send to your credit card company, when you have a copy of every piece of email exhanged, when you have a record and transcript of every phone call made, it is much harder for Visa to say "you never send in a payment". By making the data continually available it is much easier to incrementally validate it.
For every legitimate change (e.g., hiding information about tempting kidnapping target) there will be hundreds or thousands of fradulent changes.
And you will know immediately when the change happens and you can take preventive action. What's more, the more open society it is, the harder it is for some one to make these fraudulent changes anonymously. Did they connect to the internet from a payphone? Well, every pay phone has a video camera and fingerprinting.
Society will become ultra-conformist.
In my opinion this is certainly the most likely and negative downside to a complete loss of privacy. In some circumstances, the comformity may be a blessing. After all, if everyone conforms to respecting other people's opinions and tolerating differences you will be hard pressed to find people saying that's a bad thing. On the other hand, I could easily see life being extraordinarily difficult for homosexuals, swingers, Monkee's fans, and other alternative lifestyle advocates. But again, I would also argue that our current intolerance is largely because we hide these things right now. If they are brought out into the open people become forced to deal with the fact that their favorite musician is homosexual or that the CEO of their company likes the BeeGees. After all, ignorance is the foundation of intolerance.
Having an engine that can't be shifted isn't exactly what I'd call an advantage, unless you think that your car would work better in 4th gear all the time.
No, but on a 0-60 test, not having to shift saves noticeable amounts of time.
The car itself weighs 2400lbs... which while light, isn't a mind bogglingly low weight. The Honda S2000 weighs 2600lbs for example
You're right, it's not. My bad. I couldn't find a weight on the car listed anywhere.
0.88g on the skidpad is also rather respectable. It isn't very good compared to the F550, but it's right there with most other cars in the "sport" class.
I still say it sucks. They are charging more than a Porsche for a kit car. Looking at my most recent R&T other cars in its class:
Acura NSX 0.92g
BMW M3 0.91g
BMW Z8 0.92g
Corvette Z06 1.0g
Corvette C05 Convertible 0.92g
Dodge Viper 0.98g
Ferrari F355 Spider 0.93g
Ford SVT Mustang Cobra R 0.99g
Honda S2000 0.90g
Lamborghini Diablo 6.0 0.99g
Lotus Esprit V8 0.90g
Mazda Miata 0.92g
Panoz Esperante 0.92g
Porsche 911 Turbo 0.96g
Toyota MR2 Spider 0.91
Granted, skid pad ratings are hard to compare...but it still isn't anywhere close to other cars in its price class. It isn't even close to cars that are in one-quarter its price class (Toyota MR2 and Mazda Miata).
What they're really comparing is a super-lightweight car using a 200 horsepower engine that doesn't need to be shifed against an F550. And then we're supposed to be surprised by the results?
Anyone familiar with the Lotus Elise shouldn't be, since this sounds like pretty much the same idea with about 25% more power on tap minus the time lost due to shifting.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if it didn't go as fast as it does.
They don't really mention that you can only drive 100 miles ("with careful driving") and that running a quarter-mile uses up 20% of the battery. So if you want to get a few runs in at the track I guess you'll be towing your car there rather than driving it.
I'm also surprised at the rather weak skidpad rating of 0.88g. I wonder why that is.
Slashdot Mirror
The citizenry of this nation has consistently, and over a long period of time, established that large classes of its citizens (aka "minors") are not protected by the same legal rights that illegal immigrants and felons have access to. You can work to try to change that (good luck) but until that change happens you have to understand that those are the rules of the game.
Anyway, just because he can't afford a lawyer does that necessarily mean he can't sue the school? What ever happened to pro se litigation? It's not like the kid has anything better to do with his time now that he's been pulled from school. And if not pro se then talk to the ACLU and see about some pro bono help. I'm actually a little disappointed that he would have bothered to talk to slashdot before the ACLU. Talk about mixed up priorities; Slashdot is mostly about all talk and no action.
The sense I mean is "the editors of Slashdot".
Kinda like how you say "CNN said the markets are down" when what you really mean are the duly appointed representatives of CNN have said the markets are down.
In my memory, the editors of slashdot have never said anything in support of intellectual property, have consistently editorialized that individual infringers should be prosecuted, and had no problems with the characterization offered in the story summary.
Oh yeah, it's pretty easy to share a couple GB of movies over a 56k modem connection. If the MPAA is so damn evil how come everyone wants their product?
Slashdot has continually said that the MPAA should got after individual copyright infrigers rather than services like Napster. Yet as soon as the MPAA does that it becomes labelled "intimidation tactics". I read the article and from what I gathered Excite@Home told people if they didn't stop sharing copyright material they would lose their service.
What, exactly, is the problem with that?
MS has the single best developer support program of any software company in existence.
However, "correctness" is debatable. A (probably large) number of people would say that any programming language that restricts you to single inheritance is not "correct" (despite pragmatic arguments about the real world usefulness of multiple inheritance). Others would argue that the absence of preconditions, postconditions, and invariants prevent Ruby from being called "correct". Yet others might take issue with its exception handling. Or the lack of tuples. Or any number of things.
I don't think Ruby's lack of documentation has anything to do with why it hasn't broken out. After all, Ruby's web site has tons of perfectly good documentation that any competent programmer shouldn't have any problems making heads or tails of.
Ruby's main problem is it doesn't offer clear benefits over the existing solutions. For instance, take a look at Ruby's comparison page. It's improvements over Perl are: nicer syntax, different default scoping, cleaner integration of object-orientedness. Those are hardly decisive. Compare Ruby to Python and you'll find a similarly non-compelling argument.
You don't seem to understand completely what is being discussed, which is fine becaues neither do I. However, I have some passing familiarity with products like SELinux, RSBACS, and LIDS.
FreeBSD and OpenBSD may audit their code to make sure that what they have written is secure but that is something completely different from writing code that does what I want it to. Almost all variants of unix are still stuck in a decade's old world view of security, which is ironic since that's what many unix users make fun of Windows for.
Things like implicitly giving uid 0 god like powers, or thinking ports under 1023 are somehow more special than those above.
Projects like SELinux provide Mandatory Access Controls. Granted, I haven't looked at OpenBSD in a while, but I've never heard of any project to provide MACs for OpenBSD. Which is too bad because proper MACs significantly lessen the need for in-depth code auditing. When programs can't misbehave it becomes less important to audit six hundred million lines of code. And what do you do when you don't have enough man power to audit everything that needs to be audited? Have you ever looked at how little code OpenBSD actually audits?
This isn't about patching a hole is a tire. Audits aren't even relevant.
I didn't say it was the same as a car or a toaster. I had only two points which, apparently, I somehow obfuscated.
The original post said that idiot proof things can only be operated by idiots. His implication was 1) that Windows is idiot proof, or will be Real Soon Now, 2) only idiots can operate such things. In response I say, 1) Windows is so far from being idiot proof that his statement is ridiculous, 2) there are plenty of idiot proof things in the world that non-idiots are able to operate, invaliding the entire basis of his "insightful" claim.
Secondly, the original post seemed to be operating under the assumption that everyone wants the same thing from their computer, namely what the original poster wants. Some people don't want to tweak every last thing on their toaster. They aren't interested in the physics of toasting. They just want to eat toast. Different people want different things from their computer, which will necessitate different approaches in OS design and user interface.
FWIW, I agree with you that OSes need to evolve towards a more appliance like attitude, at least for the overwhelming majority of users and uses. I would wager that the poster I responded to do does not agree, since that is making things idiot proof.
Making something idiot proof implies that it was too complex for normal people to use in the first place. Neither cars or toasters were.
Apparently you aren't very familiar with early automotive technology.
I honestly fail to see the distinction. Unless they came up with the ideas completely on their own without recourse to other people's work I don't see how it is any different from Microsoft. Microsoft hasn't broken into anyone's headquarters and "stolen" anything (besides, the slashdot community is usually so ready to tell you that the whole notion of theft of intellectual property is bullocks anyway since no one actually loses anything). The mere act of transferring cash from one party to another doesn't change the fact that there was no innovation on your part. After all, I know a lot of people who say "Microsoft doesn't innovate, all they do is buy companies that innovate!"
You have to subtract the vitriol from Microsoft side of the equation, too.
What, exactly, are the non-obvious enhancements that OS X has? When the topic is evil patents by evil corporations looking to make an evil buck the slashdot community is ready to scream about independent discovery and obviousness of supposed "innovations". Why do all of those observations suddenly become nonapplicable just because it is Microsoft?
It just seems to me like there is a double standard in effect.
And OS X stole from NeXT and NeXT stole from Mac and Mac stole from Smalltalk.
it exemplifies the old saw that if you build something totally idiot proof, only an idiot will be able to use it.
That's right. Cars are idiot proof and I'm sure you drove one to work today. That must make you an idiot. I'm surprised you aren't also complaining that your toaster doesn't have an "expert user" mode. Different people want different things from their OS. And not every OS can be all things to all people.
I don't think it's even as complicated as you make it out to be. I think the simple answer is that there aren't "people who play games on Linux". There are simply "people who play games". And the existence of one or two Linux games isn't going to obviate the need to have a Windows partition hanging around to play things under. And, really, when I play games, the underlying OS is merely a commodity...I don't care what it is so long as it gets the job done. I'd wager that the majority of people who play games feel the same way. After all, I don't buy a Playstation just because Sony makes it...I buy it because of the games I can play on it. Why should Linux be any different?
Linux server ports are another story. I don't think a online game would make it if it did not have a Linux and/or BSD port.
Yeah, games like Starcraft, Diablo 2, Everquest, Ultima Online, Age of Empires 2, and Myth were complete failures until Linux and BSD ports of the servers became available.
I have yet to see any practical advantage of
winblows over Linux.
You mean other than application support? Yeah, it's pretty easy to miss that.
Look at the Jargon File entry for cracker and you'll see that if you REALLY want to be pedantic you should call them worms instead of crackers...since worm was the original neologism.
Hackers are people who thrive on being faced with problems and finding clever, innovative solutions to them. Crackers are people who break into computer systems.
Says who? Try looking up "hacker" in, say, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that small subcultures get to force their own pet definitions on society at large. It works the other way around...words mean whatever the population at large decide they mean. Heck, even the Jargon File admits that hacker was originally used to mean "a malicious meddler" and only recently has that use become deprecated.
Confusing the two is like calling every martial-arts student a 'ninja.'
No, it's more like a subset of karate students (it's only a subset because not all karate students agree with them on this issue) suddenly deciding that, because of the increased media exposure that the movie Karate Kid brought to their subculture they now want to be called "judo-ka" -- and who cares if karate and judo are already in widespread use? -- and then getting their obi in a twist when everyone keeps calling it karate.
Unless you are trying to suggest that there is some innate meaning in the two words completely separate from what society imparts to them.
This is about AOL's approach to the internet
I don't see how this is any different from people who configure their mail servers to not be open relays. I only want authorized people using my smtpd. AOL only wants authorized people using their IM servers.
It's just much easier to do the infrastructure "right" once.
Provided you pick the "right" infrastructure when you're spending all that money. Given the possibilities that wireless provides I'm having a hard time seeing fiber-to-the-door as a goal worthy of spending billions and billions of dollars on.
(BTW, when did fiber-to-the-door become one of my "rights"?)
Yeah, back in the day before everyone started playing with tournament legal decks. My roommate would play Green with his 4 Forces of Nature, 8 Berserks, and 12 Giant Growths and I would fend him off with my 6 Sengir Vampires, 12 Terrors, and 10 Unholy Strengths.
Of course, we played for ante, too. I lost a Black Lotus once on ante. I got it back a few weeks later on another ante, not that I ever found the card all that useful.
God forbid you actually go into a field you enjoy rather than one in which you hope to become famous.
Besides, last I checked Larry Ellison didn't know much about computer science or genetic engineering.
The real problem with computers is now that they are so dang popular the real advances don't get the press that a new release of Linux 2.4 or a new Athlon does. People aren't interested in trying out new language paradigms because, gall darnit, if C was good enough for K&R it's good enough for them. People aren't interested in trying out new kinds of software because they're comfortable with the old kind.
It's kinda like saying there hasn't been any development in automotive technology when what you really mean is that the cool developments take decades to actually be implemented (if they ever make it) so you never hear about.
Pie in the sky fields like genetic engineering can fill their press releases with things like "some day we may be able to use this technology to cure congenital birth defects". More established industries like computers that already have shipping products have to be slightly more...pragmatic.
Has genetic engineering really made big advances in the past few years? Or is that just the spin that biotech companies have put on it? Or is it our own biases based on our ingrained awe for biology and contempt for mere machines? Even if it has made great leaps in the past, is genetic engineering likely to do so in the next few years as well? How can you even begin to quantify what counts as a "big advance" except through hind sight? I think it was Yogi Berra who said, "It's hard to predict things. Especially the future."
If people stopped giving root God-like powers then problems like this wouldn't crop up. Patches like LIDS help put root in a jail. Someday we can pray that root, and all the trust and power that goes along with UID 0, will go away completely.
There are a couple problems with this utopia.
Certainly there are, just there are problems with the current system. The current systems tends concentrate power, whereas a more open system holds the possibility of distributing that power by distributing the information.
You can't make a fresh start.
Certainly this is a big problem but I would also argue that it is a artifact of the current information hiding culture that we expect people to be perfect. We don't tolerate mistakes of any kind. And this is allowed to continue because we hide the mistakes. We lie about smoking pot in college rather than collectively admitting the sometimes people make mistakes but that doesn't mean they are bad people. We expect saints where none can be found. Of course, it certainly isn't guaranteed that removing privacy will automatically force people to be more accepting; who can know how technology will shape society in the future? But it certainly is harder to throw stones when everyone lives in a glass house.
Don't count on the potential date remembering to check the trustworthiness of the reporter.
I would argue that this is because of the up-to-present practice of accepting as gospel information because it came from The Powers That Be. How many media stories on 20/20 even have much in the way of references? And how easy is it to check on those references? But I'll often read a paper on the net and the references will include links to other papers on the net, allowing me to check facts on my own.
You can't trust the data.
But in the transparent society the idea is that when something goes on your credit report you know about it instantly. You don't find out about it two years later when you go to take out a mortgage on a house. And since all information is open it is much easier to prove your case. When you have tracking numbers for every piece of email you send to your credit card company, when you have a copy of every piece of email exhanged, when you have a record and transcript of every phone call made, it is much harder for Visa to say "you never send in a payment". By making the data continually available it is much easier to incrementally validate it.
For every legitimate change (e.g., hiding information about tempting kidnapping target) there will be hundreds or thousands of fradulent changes.
And you will know immediately when the change happens and you can take preventive action. What's more, the more open society it is, the harder it is for some one to make these fraudulent changes anonymously. Did they connect to the internet from a payphone? Well, every pay phone has a video camera and fingerprinting.
Society will become ultra-conformist.
In my opinion this is certainly the most likely and negative downside to a complete loss of privacy. In some circumstances, the comformity may be a blessing. After all, if everyone conforms to respecting other people's opinions and tolerating differences you will be hard pressed to find people saying that's a bad thing. On the other hand, I could easily see life being extraordinarily difficult for homosexuals, swingers, Monkee's fans, and other alternative lifestyle advocates. But again, I would also argue that our current intolerance is largely because we hide these things right now. If they are brought out into the open people become forced to deal with the fact that their favorite musician is homosexual or that the CEO of their company likes the BeeGees. After all, ignorance is the foundation of intolerance.
Having an engine that can't be shifted isn't exactly what I'd call an advantage, unless you think that your car would work better in 4th gear all the time.
... which while light, isn't a mind bogglingly low weight. The Honda S2000 weighs 2600lbs for example
No, but on a 0-60 test, not having to shift saves noticeable amounts of time.
The car itself weighs 2400lbs
You're right, it's not. My bad. I couldn't find a weight on the car listed anywhere.
0.88g on the skidpad is also rather respectable. It isn't very good compared to the F550, but it's right there with most other cars in the "sport" class.
I still say it sucks. They are charging more than a Porsche for a kit car. Looking at my most recent R&T other cars in its class:
Acura NSX 0.92g
BMW M3 0.91g
BMW Z8 0.92g
Corvette Z06 1.0g
Corvette C05 Convertible 0.92g
Dodge Viper 0.98g
Ferrari F355 Spider 0.93g
Ford SVT Mustang Cobra R 0.99g
Honda S2000 0.90g
Lamborghini Diablo 6.0 0.99g
Lotus Esprit V8 0.90g
Mazda Miata 0.92g
Panoz Esperante 0.92g
Porsche 911 Turbo 0.96g
Toyota MR2 Spider 0.91
Granted, skid pad ratings are hard to compare...but it still isn't anywhere close to other cars in its price class. It isn't even close to cars that are in one-quarter its price class (Toyota MR2 and Mazda Miata).
What they're really comparing is a super-lightweight car using a 200 horsepower engine that doesn't need to be shifed against an F550. And then we're supposed to be surprised by the results?
Anyone familiar with the Lotus Elise shouldn't be, since this sounds like pretty much the same idea with about 25% more power on tap minus the time lost due to shifting.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if it didn't go as fast as it does.
They don't really mention that you can only drive 100 miles ("with careful driving") and that running a quarter-mile uses up 20% of the battery. So if you want to get a few runs in at the track I guess you'll be towing your car there rather than driving it.
I'm also surprised at the rather weak skidpad rating of 0.88g. I wonder why that is.