What he is doing is NOT legal, it is NOT a legitimate business. He is selling counterfeit copies of Norton Systemworks. Pirated. Illicit. Ill-gotten. Black-market. Bootleg. Contraband. Illegitimate. Unauthorized. Unlawful. Unlicensed. Hot. Irregular. Unsanctioned. Warez.
He is selling counterfeit merchandise. Fencing stolen goods. However you write it down, it is not legal.
This question of legality has nothing to do with his spamming the world per se, but with the stolen products he is selling. It is not legal to sell stolen products, regardless of whether he sells them from a TV tray in Times Square, on late-night infomercials, from a web site, a store in the mall or via millions of spam messages. It is not legal to sell stolen products.
William Plante, director of Symantec's security, has been told by the FTC that it is incumbent upon Symantec to get Moore's sites shut down in order to protect the Norton trademark. One can assume that he's also trying to make sure that there's enough evidence to haul Moore in front of a judge.
There is very little this guy hasn't done to deserve being clapped in irons. But it's not our place to rustle up the posse or hunt him down. Sure, if you have a business and want to market to him, feel free. But don't take sticks out and beat him, don't call him at 2:00 AM and threaten his dog or his family. Let the police deal with him.
And if they can nail him without passing extra legislation, so much the better.
John Walker's HotBits already compensates for the slow decay bias by alternating the meaning of 0 or 1 between each event. But as a previous poster mentioned, he has to power the geiger counter tube down when not used in order to reduce saturation problems when the gas becomes completely ionized.
I don't know that the random number generator that they've described could ever be "just as random" as radioactive decay, but it looks like it can probably be made "good enough."
They're probably using electrical noise for both performance and cost reasons. The rate of decay of a safe amount of radioactive sample is quite slow compared to the amount of entropy you might be able to derive from it. (If the sample were decaying at the rate you suggest in your posting, you'd probably want to be wearing a lead codpiece if you were to sit in front of it.:-)
This VIA chip is producing 30-50 million bits per second.
Also, each radiological decay event would have more potential to cause bit rot in your normal CPU, memory or other chipset's operations.
John Walker is already doing exactly this, producing random bits with a system he calls HotBits. Take a look at this page for his system and a good explanation. Of course I also think it may help to live in a castle with a 1-meter-thick-concrete-lined cistern located three-basement-levels-down to stick your Krypton-85 source in...
And while using nuclear decay would raise the geek factor so high as to be measurable on a geiger counter, the manufacturing and disposal licensing and other handling problems that would accompany any usage of nuclear materials would be more than onerous for any company that had an economical alternative.
The input is not supposed to be determined by the current state of the processor (insert obligatory Knuth state-of-sin joke here.) Their design consists of a set of freewheeling* oscillators: a ~600MHz oscillator that is then further "jittered" by a ~450MHz and an ~810MHz oscillator, sampled by a much slower ~30MHz oscillator. Their engineers assume that manufacturing variances, temperature, current processor state and other external factors will all contribute to this jittery response.
* Freewheeling means that these oscillators are not tied to a crystal, and the frequency they oscillate at is not precisely locked at any exact rate (as would be the case if it employed a crystal.) These minute variations in frequency are the source of entropy the chip designers are actually gathering.
The sampled bits are then "whitened" to reduce biases, and the whitened bits are stored in a FIFO queue until used.
The paper in the article explains all this, and it talks about a couple of other cool cryptogeek features. You can change the bias voltage via CPU instruction (which would affect the jitter,) but each request of "randomness" comes with a pedigree indicating what bias settings were used! Finally, Cryptography Research's testing showed that they believe the chip (with whitening enabled) is capable of generating bits with an entropy of 0.99 bits/output bit, although they recommend trusting only a conservative entropy factor of about 0.75 bits/output bit. And since it generates bits at a rate of 30-50 million bits per second, most applications can probably afford to throw away a few in the name of entropy.
First, the "personal information" is actually the spammer's listed business address. Businesses have no specific right to privacy. Because Mr. Moore has chosen to run his business from his home is nobody's fault but his own. Assuming he has a Chapter S corporation, he filed the documents himself, listing his own home address on those very publicly filed pieces of paper. He also typed his own address when purchasing his domain names, and that all instantly becomes a matter of record on the domain name server. Nobody dug up anything secret here -- it's all public.
Second, a criminal accusation is very much a matter of public record. If you are arrested, your name is right there in court documents, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just because they're stuck in a filing cabinet in city hall doesn't mean that they're any less public than Mr. Uy posting them on the web. Less noticed and by fewer people, probably, but no less public. Granted, as far as I know Mr. Moore hasn't yet been criminally charged with pirating stolen software, nor has Symantec filed a civil suit against him yet. But the posting of his address is still legitimate on the first point anyway.
For the moment, that may be a technically true statement. However, according to many of the articles found on a google search, his spam is selling pirated copies of Norton Systemworks. Symantec is shutting his sites down as fast as he can bring them up.
But you are correct in that even if he's found guilty in a criminal court, it's not in anyone's place to physically harass him. That's for the courts to decide. I just wish they'd hurry the process up a bit.
Wow! Read the Wired article! He drives a CAR around a parking lot!! Jens must be the same guy I read about earlier. And Humayun's research seems to be the basis for the retinal implant that I remember.
Wow! Makes you wonder if perhaps the Sci Fi writers are more influenced by reality?
Ummm....I don't think so. I believe he described cybernetic replacements.
<GIBSON_GEEK>
In Count Zero, Turner meets (and unsuccesfully guards) Jane Hamilton, "each iris ringed with the minute gold lettering of the Zeiss Ikon logo." Buschel later retrieves them as a part of her contract (although he does mention minor corneal damage.)
In Mona Lisa Overdrive, Angie meets with Danielle Stark, "her only obvious augments were a pair of pale blue Zeiss implants." [emphasis mine.]
A pair of transplanted human eyes would probably not have gold logos. I also think 'augments' fit better with the rest of Gibson's focus on mechanical augmentation, (such as Sally's razors and chrome implanted shades) rather than a simple transplantation which would not connote the meaning of augment, which means "make greater or larger, to increase"
</GIBSON_GEEK>
And the optic nerve <-> silicon interface is already under experimental study. Since the installation of the chip already requires the mapping of nerves to "pixels", I suspect it would be easier to feed it a video stream than to glue an unmapped eyeball's optic nerve to the other side.
Flamewars aren't really arguments, but rather jokes.
You might want to qualify that with "...but rather jokes to those who appreciate them." I know too many people who are now online (that shouldn't be, but I'm just being l33t) who cannot take a joke, and who cannot even recognize a joke when the cream pie hits them in the face.
I got marked down on a review two years ago because the vendor I was exchanging email with could not recognize sarcasm (or at least went crying to his boss and my boss with my "immature" letter.) I had mistakenly thought that relationships with this vendor had progressed to the point where they could successfully be included in some good natured kidding. The kidding wasn't malicious, nor was it directed at a person (for performance reasons I was questioning the use of their setting the no-alignment flag on our compiled project) but this guy got all bent out of shape.
I got my revenge, however. Last year, this same humorless fool just totally lost his cool in a conference call involving his team and my boss. My boss dropped her jaw, and came over to me to both laugh at this schmuck and apologize for marking me down. The following review was much better...
Oh, sure, holodecks are fantasy and nobody's denying it (other than your marketing department and your customers...:-) But the point I think it makes is "there's the unattainable holy-grail-goal, now see how much closer we get to it today."
Have a second look at the holo-photo-movie-things in the movie "The Minority Report". The movie is set 50 years into the future instead of 500. I thought those holo-movies were very well portrayed. It looked like they showed three dimensional motion, but it was kind of crappy video, and looked good only when viewed from the appropriate angle. You might consider them to be about a tenth of the way to a holodeck.
As to your comment regarding direct neural input, I saw a Scientific American article from about ten years ago where they had achieved direct visual cortex stimulation hooked to a camera. The subject was able to "see" lightbulbs carefully arranged in the shape of spots of a die. There is current research being done on interfacing silicon directly to the end of the optic nerve for people whose eyes have been destroyed by trauma. Cybernetic eyes (a la Gibson's Zeiss-Ikons) may not be ready this year, but this decade may bring an implant that could feed in low-res video to the otherwise blind.
These sci-fi ideas are not necessarily tomorrow's products. They might be next decade's products, or they may never happen. But they certainly influence those of us who know of them, and do give us both short and long term goals. I wouldn't slam my customers for sharing the vision.
Replace the replacable battery! Brilliant and simple! I love it! I wish I had a mod point for you. (But I would hate to throw away my current sets of overpriced Li-Ion batteries.)
And I see what you mean about the inducted voltage being a ratio just like an ordinary cored transformer. I don't know how well the voltage regulators would withstand the twice-expected voltage, or if they'd make the devices too hot to handle.
Either that or they'll build specific market 120 or 220 pads (or pads with a voltage switch) and make all pads sold emit at the same level. I'd hate to have my smartpad-chargable cell phone not work in London. And I'd hate to think the company would be so shortsighted as to not try to solve the global problem in the easy place.
Hmm. Now I wonder if their charging coil would pick up stray EMF from other sources, such as a coiled-up extension cord (under load, of course.)
"Hey, I'm just the visionary here. I don't actually USE the darn things.";-)
No, seriously, I don't like the cord on the mouse offering even the slightest springiness. If I let go of the mouse and it moves even just one mickey, I find it annoying. The bluetooth mouse has a lot of appeal to me, but not with it requiring disposable batteries. (Same with the IR mouse.)
I also don't like the bulk of the current crop of cordless meeces. If it can count on the pad constantly charging it the batteries can be considerably smaller and lighter, only having to provide 60 minutes of operation instead of 40 hours or whatever. They can make them the same form factor as the current corded mice.
Actually, I'm wondering if retrofit kits will be available for existing equipment, such as a stickyback pad with a couple of solderable wires or some such. Those of us with old cell phones that are already out of warranty, or are not afraid to void our warranties, would love to use this.
Hey, another patentable feature: put the receiver in a Bluetooth mouse and use the charging pad as a mouse pad. Never EVER needs ANYTHING.
The cool thing is that "compatible" should be a non-issue. Each receiver will probably be fitted with an appropriately valued voltage regulator. The field produced by the mat won't have a "voltage" per se, but rather a "field strength." The receiver side will convert that to a voltage which will then be regulated as needed.
Hmm. I wonder if it'll even make a difference if the pad gets 120 or 220 volts?
My mom doesn't call me right away either, because she doesn't want to "bother me" with this stuff. I think it came from watching Dad come home from the office and wanting to "get away from it all" while he was at home.
Your mom could simply be trying very hard to be considerate. You might be able to break the ice by just offering to take a look at it for her. You colud also casually "show her something interesting", but then notice something wrong, and offer to fix it on the spot. Let her know to call you if it goes wrong again. She'll call.
There are plenty of non-confrontational ways to approach people. "Social engineering begins at home."
In some instances, the best approach is to take as many shots as possible and hope that some turn out. Big family photo shoots at weddings, for example, where at least someone is guaranteed to have their eyes closed or some little kid is squirming around. With digital, I literally take a dozen shots and then sit down for a minute and delete the obviously unacceptable shots. You have the freedom to "stringer sort".
I was actually taught to photograph that way on film, but was too cheap to ever really take all the recommended shots.
Except that weakness turns out to be a strength when dealing with aliasing. The random orientation of the individual grains avoids aliasing issues. Even at a resolution exceeding that of the film grain, a grid of parallel lines (especially parallel or concentric curves) can produce a noticable moire effect. Also, I've found that angled black and white lines can have noticable color artifacts (although I understand there's a new CCD technology that's supposed to overcome this problem.) The randomness of the grain also seems to provide a "softening" effect that I personally find more pleasing than the regularity of a matrix of pixels.
Don't get me wrong: I *love* my Canon PowerShot G2 (4MP). I've been extremely pleased with the results in a 4x6 format. I've blown up some as large as 8x10 (had them professionally printed and developed) and find that the quality is almost as good as prints made from 100 ISO 35mm film. Having "during the shot" color balancing also makes it much easier to get useable prints without serious headaches. And it's certainly more conveinent to me to have the images digitally available, too.
I also find that without my old-school mental block of "don't waste film" is gone, and that I now take many more shots than I used to. It leads to a bigger choice of shots to choose from, so I now get better final prints. Yes, I know I wasn't supposed to worry about "wasting film" before, but those old habits are very hard to break.
It has to go somewhere because going nowhere is called dying. If you don't move forward you will be left behind by your competition as they continue to innovate, refine, and improve.
I think you have the emphasis on the wrong words. I believe my point might come through by changing it to this:
It has to go somewhere because going nowhere is called dying. If you don't move forward you will be left behind by your competition as they continue to innovate, refine, and improve.
There's no "you" (in your second person sense as above) driving Linux. And that's Gartner's point. But there's no "competition" leaving "you" behind". There's no price war, or feature war. There's only the altruistic development of applications, or the possibly tax-deductible contribution of software to the Open Source movement. It doesn't follow a typical economic roadmap because there is no one driver -- there's a semi-coordinated-yet-still-fragmented community with noone at the helm. There's a token figurehead we deify as Linus, but he wields as much direction as Prince Charles yields over England. There are dozens of houses of parliament that we call distros, but they don't have to get together and ratify anything. And a new one can come into being simply by the declaration of a single commoner.
Just as Microsoft can't figure out how to "defeat" Linux, Gartner can't predict Linux. They share a common mindset; both driven by the way the markets are supposed to work, or the way they always worked in the past.
My point is that Linux is already here. It doesn't have to "go somewhere" to be successful. The GPL guarantees it's here, and that it will stay here. Gartner's comments, predictions and arguments are about questions such as "Will Microsoft add DirectY support to Windows XP/2?" Compare that attitude to Dennis Ritchie's very OSS-like comment to the effect of "I consider it a failing to add new functions to the kernel.") And contrast that attitude with Microsoft's, which is "if we don't add a new API ('going somewhere' in your parlance) then we won't lock more code and users onto our platform."
Believe it or not, I don't necessarily want to see Microsoft fail. Large companies falling down are bad for the economy. I think that companies that make products deserve to get exactly what they charge. (Even the companies in the RIAA and MPAA should continue to have the same basic capitalistic right to make however much money they can get away with.) I simply don't think that Microsoft will be able to maintain their current prominence once OSS reaches a critical mass. For that to happen, the open source movement will need these two things to happen (and probably in this order:)
Linux distros are perceived by the masses to be as-easy-as or easier to install and use than Windows. That means when they upgrade to Linux, their existing Microsoft applications and data files will need to automatically pop up in their "Start" bars, and that their drag-n-drop works everywhere; and
Microsoft releases an OS that is a noticeably worse experience than its predecessor.
My guess is that Palladium will turn half the average users against Microsoft. Once they realize that their computers are "owned", that they have to "subscribe" to Office and pay a monthly tithe, Microsoft will have driven the dagger home. They'll be subsisting on the revenues generated by periodically squeezing their remaining customers, and this will steadily decline as the rest of them move to a free (as in beer) platform.
Hey, moron, every company (especially in the tech industry) has to innovate and update its product portfolio. Every company and product has to "go somewhere" or it will fail.
(Love the "Hey, moron" salutation, by the way. Nice professional touch, coward.)
You probably hit the Gartner Group's point right square on the head. But you seem to be missing exactly the same point they're missing: there's no 'there' there. Linux isn't a company. Linux isn't a product, either, except to those VARs who are hawking support (IBM, Red Hat, et al.) This leads back to my point: it doesn't have to go anywhere to be successful. It already is successful.
If you're a VAR with your own distro, then yes, you'll have to "go somewhere" and "do something". However, that usually means a prettier wrapper or more functional or useful application set. Unlike Microsoft's bundled applications, those things are not "Linux".
Linux application developers are driven by motives that don't necessarily involve money. It leaves the Gartner Group scratching their heads, because it doesn't fit any known business, social or economic model. It's like the old South Park Underpants Gnomes joke stood on its ear:
Write Linux code.
???
?!? not profit !?!
Economic theory says it shouldn't even exist. But it obviously does exist, and thanks to the GPL it can't go away, either. And that's where the Gartner Group is completely missing the boat on not recommending Linux: Linux is GPL'd -- it can't go away. Unlike Microsoft, it can't fail or get worse than it is, because it's already here and in a decent state. It can and will improve, just without the standard economic engine behind it; it can't improve in a Gartner-modelable fashion.
On the other hand, Microsoft can fail. They can release a new version of Windows (let's call it, say, Paladium, for lack of a better name) that is utterly rejected by the marketplace. Look at what happened when IBM released Warp. If Microsoft continues down the "go somewhere" path, as you suggest, they could end up selling as many copies of Paladium as IBM sold of Warp. I consider this a much higher risk, and a more realistic probability than Linux evaporating.
[ Apologetic note to Warp fanatics -- I, too, think Warp was a much better OS than any member of the Windows '9x family ever was; however, you have to admit it's wasn't exactly a barnburner commercial success. ]
Gartner Group is at it again
on
CIOs Looking At OSS
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Of course, the magazine has to get the opinion of the Gartner Group. Here's what V.P. In-Charge-Of-Shilling-For-Microsoft George Weiss has to say: "[Companies want to know], 'Where will Linux be a year from now, or two or three years from now? And who can guarantee that for us?'" Weiss says.
I think that's exactly what's wrong with the Microsoft world. Why does it have to "go somewhere"? Do we need Linux.NET? Linux COM+? Linux ActiveX? Linux MTS? How about a stable platform, that doesn't shift like sand beneath our applications? How about the promise of a platform that remains constant as expected?
As I had forgotten about the Knogos. We use Checkpoint's tags, and as I mentioned, the magnet is an integral part of the detaching tool.
Anyway, I'm sure if you WERE a shoplifter you already would either know how to defeat them or at least have tried googling for methods to defeat them. I wasn't worried about you.:-)
The magical tool uses a magnetic field to align a pin inside the device, then applies straight and even pressure (similar to a gear puller) to the two halves.
Without the magnet or the alignment mechanisms, the pin won't be properly aligned and even a straight pull can crush the ink capsules.
Usually, the "giant honking things" include glass capsules that are filled with pressurised indeliable ink. If you attempt to remove the tag without the magical tool the ink sprays the item, supposedly ensuring that if the store can't have their pretty shoes, neither can you.
Store security has been watching for these for many years. The theives discovered these years ago; actually it was not long at all after the initial popularity of Checkpoint systems that they first started appearing in stores.
Some people believe that simply lining a shopping bag with tin foil will prevent the security tags from functioning. (We call these people "convicts".)
Trust me, being caught using one while shoplifting provides very convincing evidence in a courtroom.
Here's the word cut'n'pasted from the horse's mouth:
LoadLibrary attempts to locate the DLL using the same search sequence used for implicit linking. If the system cannot find the DLL or if the entry-point function returns FALSE, LoadLibrary returns NULL. If the call to LoadLibrary specifies a DLL module already mapped into the address space of the calling process,* the function simply returns a handle of the DLL and increments the module's reference count.
[ * Emphasis mine. ]
While this text is not written in the same order in which it searches for libraries, it does say that the first thing that happens is it checks the calling processes' address space. Not the whole machine, just the calling process.
Of course, this is probably only true for the NT/2K/XP family of OSes and not with the 95/98/Me family...
I have had some luck with bad apps by moving their crappy old copy of COMCTL32.DLL (or whatever) into the same directory as the BADAPP.EXE. Of course to do this I only had to watch every file in the WINNT tree, and I set every DLL file in SYSTEM32 to read-only and watched for installer errors, but hey, that's all you gotta do to make Windows work, right?:-P
GOD I HATED SIERRA'S OLD INSTALLERS. They were the penultimate in arrogance. "If I stomp all over your SYSTEM directory and make all the files what I want them to be I'll work fine, and damn the rest of your box." And I'll never know if they fixed them because I swore I would never buy another Sierra package again, nor would I allow any of my friends or relatives to buy from them. (Well, they could buy them but I wouldn't help them anymore.) If I had to pin one badge on DLL Hell, I'd stick the pin in Sierra and aim for the aorta.
DLLs were originally designed to solve the problem of "many programs doing the same thing won't take up as much space." Now that we have boxes with as much physical memory as the OS can address, static linking seems like a great idea.
Except for the part that legacy software packages with DLLs still rely on those DLLs. No matter what tomorrows spec says, the sh!t installer included with "Siexxa Landscape Designer" sitting on my shelf will always continue to overwrite my MFC and common control dlls.
Also, don't forget that not all DLLs are created equal. COM objects wrapped in a DLL, for example, all have a common set of entry points (DllRegisterServer, etc.) and usually no other entry points. The interfaces are better designed and more manageable for versioning. COM developers always (should) have to keep backwards-compatibility in mind when adding new interfaces or fixing problems. So not every DLL change is a huge problem.
Anyway, my only point is that Microsoft will have to deal with the mess they created long ago, even if every Windows developer today magically starts coding to the same fixed longhorn spec.
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What he is doing is NOT legal, it is NOT a legitimate business. He is selling counterfeit copies of Norton Systemworks. Pirated. Illicit. Ill-gotten. Black-market. Bootleg. Contraband. Illegitimate. Unauthorized. Unlawful. Unlicensed. Hot. Irregular. Unsanctioned. Warez.
He is selling counterfeit merchandise. Fencing stolen goods. However you write it down, it is not legal.
This question of legality has nothing to do with his spamming the world per se, but with the stolen products he is selling. It is not legal to sell stolen products, regardless of whether he sells them from a TV tray in Times Square, on late-night infomercials, from a web site, a store in the mall or via millions of spam messages. It is not legal to sell stolen products.
William Plante, director of Symantec's security, has been told by the FTC that it is incumbent upon Symantec to get Moore's sites shut down in order to protect the Norton trademark. One can assume that he's also trying to make sure that there's enough evidence to haul Moore in front of a judge.
There is very little this guy hasn't done to deserve being clapped in irons. But it's not our place to rustle up the posse or hunt him down. Sure, if you have a business and want to market to him, feel free. But don't take sticks out and beat him, don't call him at 2:00 AM and threaten his dog or his family. Let the police deal with him.
And if they can nail him without passing extra legislation, so much the better.
I don't know that the random number generator that they've described could ever be "just as random" as radioactive decay, but it looks like it can probably be made "good enough."
This VIA chip is producing 30-50 million bits per second.
Also, each radiological decay event would have more potential to cause bit rot in your normal CPU, memory or other chipset's operations.
John Walker is already doing exactly this, producing random bits with a system he calls HotBits. Take a look at this page for his system and a good explanation. Of course I also think it may help to live in a castle with a 1-meter-thick-concrete-lined cistern located three-basement-levels-down to stick your Krypton-85 source in...
And while using nuclear decay would raise the geek factor so high as to be measurable on a geiger counter, the manufacturing and disposal licensing and other handling problems that would accompany any usage of nuclear materials would be more than onerous for any company that had an economical alternative.
* Freewheeling means that these oscillators are not tied to a crystal, and the frequency they oscillate at is not precisely locked at any exact rate (as would be the case if it employed a crystal.) These minute variations in frequency are the source of entropy the chip designers are actually gathering.
The sampled bits are then "whitened" to reduce biases, and the whitened bits are stored in a FIFO queue until used.
The paper in the article explains all this, and it talks about a couple of other cool cryptogeek features. You can change the bias voltage via CPU instruction (which would affect the jitter,) but each request of "randomness" comes with a pedigree indicating what bias settings were used! Finally, Cryptography Research's testing showed that they believe the chip (with whitening enabled) is capable of generating bits with an entropy of 0.99 bits/output bit, although they recommend trusting only a conservative entropy factor of about 0.75 bits/output bit. And since it generates bits at a rate of 30-50 million bits per second, most applications can probably afford to throw away a few in the name of entropy.
First, the "personal information" is actually the spammer's listed business address. Businesses have no specific right to privacy. Because Mr. Moore has chosen to run his business from his home is nobody's fault but his own. Assuming he has a Chapter S corporation, he filed the documents himself, listing his own home address on those very publicly filed pieces of paper. He also typed his own address when purchasing his domain names, and that all instantly becomes a matter of record on the domain name server. Nobody dug up anything secret here -- it's all public.
Second, a criminal accusation is very much a matter of public record. If you are arrested, your name is right there in court documents, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just because they're stuck in a filing cabinet in city hall doesn't mean that they're any less public than Mr. Uy posting them on the web. Less noticed and by fewer people, probably, but no less public. Granted, as far as I know Mr. Moore hasn't yet been criminally charged with pirating stolen software, nor has Symantec filed a civil suit against him yet. But the posting of his address is still legitimate on the first point anyway.
For the moment, that may be a technically true statement. However, according to many of the articles found on a google search, his spam is selling pirated copies of Norton Systemworks. Symantec is shutting his sites down as fast as he can bring them up.
But you are correct in that even if he's found guilty in a criminal court, it's not in anyone's place to physically harass him. That's for the courts to decide. I just wish they'd hurry the process up a bit.
Wow! Read the Wired article! He drives a CAR around a parking lot!! Jens must be the same guy I read about earlier. And Humayun's research seems to be the basis for the retinal implant that I remember.
Wow! Makes you wonder if perhaps the Sci Fi writers are more influenced by reality?
<GIBSON_GEEK>
In Count Zero, Turner meets (and unsuccesfully guards) Jane Hamilton, "each iris ringed with the minute gold lettering of the Zeiss Ikon logo." Buschel later retrieves them as a part of her contract (although he does mention minor corneal damage.)
In Mona Lisa Overdrive, Angie meets with Danielle Stark, "her only obvious augments were a pair of pale blue Zeiss implants." [emphasis mine.]
A pair of transplanted human eyes would probably not have gold logos. I also think 'augments' fit better with the rest of Gibson's focus on mechanical augmentation, (such as Sally's razors and chrome implanted shades) rather than a simple transplantation which would not connote the meaning of augment, which means "make greater or larger, to increase"
</GIBSON_GEEK>
And the optic nerve <-> silicon interface is already under experimental study. Since the installation of the chip already requires the mapping of nerves to "pixels", I suspect it would be easier to feed it a video stream than to glue an unmapped eyeball's optic nerve to the other side.
You might want to qualify that with "...but rather jokes to those who appreciate them." I know too many people who are now online (that shouldn't be, but I'm just being l33t) who cannot take a joke, and who cannot even recognize a joke when the cream pie hits them in the face.
I got marked down on a review two years ago because the vendor I was exchanging email with could not recognize sarcasm (or at least went crying to his boss and my boss with my "immature" letter.) I had mistakenly thought that relationships with this vendor had progressed to the point where they could successfully be included in some good natured kidding. The kidding wasn't malicious, nor was it directed at a person (for performance reasons I was questioning the use of their setting the no-alignment flag on our compiled project) but this guy got all bent out of shape.
I got my revenge, however. Last year, this same humorless fool just totally lost his cool in a conference call involving his team and my boss. My boss dropped her jaw, and came over to me to both laugh at this schmuck and apologize for marking me down. The following review was much better...
Have a second look at the holo-photo-movie-things in the movie "The Minority Report". The movie is set 50 years into the future instead of 500. I thought those holo-movies were very well portrayed. It looked like they showed three dimensional motion, but it was kind of crappy video, and looked good only when viewed from the appropriate angle. You might consider them to be about a tenth of the way to a holodeck.
As to your comment regarding direct neural input, I saw a Scientific American article from about ten years ago where they had achieved direct visual cortex stimulation hooked to a camera. The subject was able to "see" lightbulbs carefully arranged in the shape of spots of a die. There is current research being done on interfacing silicon directly to the end of the optic nerve for people whose eyes have been destroyed by trauma. Cybernetic eyes (a la Gibson's Zeiss-Ikons) may not be ready this year, but this decade may bring an implant that could feed in low-res video to the otherwise blind.
These sci-fi ideas are not necessarily tomorrow's products. They might be next decade's products, or they may never happen. But they certainly influence those of us who know of them, and do give us both short and long term goals. I wouldn't slam my customers for sharing the vision.
And I see what you mean about the inducted voltage being a ratio just like an ordinary cored transformer. I don't know how well the voltage regulators would withstand the twice-expected voltage, or if they'd make the devices too hot to handle.
Either that or they'll build specific market 120 or 220 pads (or pads with a voltage switch) and make all pads sold emit at the same level. I'd hate to have my smartpad-chargable cell phone not work in London. And I'd hate to think the company would be so shortsighted as to not try to solve the global problem in the easy place.
Hmm. Now I wonder if their charging coil would pick up stray EMF from other sources, such as a coiled-up extension cord (under load, of course.)
No, seriously, I don't like the cord on the mouse offering even the slightest springiness. If I let go of the mouse and it moves even just one mickey, I find it annoying. The bluetooth mouse has a lot of appeal to me, but not with it requiring disposable batteries. (Same with the IR mouse.)
I also don't like the bulk of the current crop of cordless meeces. If it can count on the pad constantly charging it the batteries can be considerably smaller and lighter, only having to provide 60 minutes of operation instead of 40 hours or whatever. They can make them the same form factor as the current corded mice.
Hey, another patentable feature: put the receiver in a Bluetooth mouse and use the charging pad as a mouse pad. Never EVER needs ANYTHING.
The cool thing is that "compatible" should be a non-issue. Each receiver will probably be fitted with an appropriately valued voltage regulator. The field produced by the mat won't have a "voltage" per se, but rather a "field strength." The receiver side will convert that to a voltage which will then be regulated as needed.
Hmm. I wonder if it'll even make a difference if the pad gets 120 or 220 volts?
Your mom could simply be trying very hard to be considerate. You might be able to break the ice by just offering to take a look at it for her. You colud also casually "show her something interesting", but then notice something wrong, and offer to fix it on the spot. Let her know to call you if it goes wrong again. She'll call.
There are plenty of non-confrontational ways to approach people. "Social engineering begins at home."
In some instances, the best approach is to take as many shots as possible and hope that some turn out. Big family photo shoots at weddings, for example, where at least someone is guaranteed to have their eyes closed or some little kid is squirming around. With digital, I literally take a dozen shots and then sit down for a minute and delete the obviously unacceptable shots. You have the freedom to "stringer sort".
I was actually taught to photograph that way on film, but was too cheap to ever really take all the recommended shots.
Don't get me wrong: I *love* my Canon PowerShot G2 (4MP). I've been extremely pleased with the results in a 4x6 format. I've blown up some as large as 8x10 (had them professionally printed and developed) and find that the quality is almost as good as prints made from 100 ISO 35mm film. Having "during the shot" color balancing also makes it much easier to get useable prints without serious headaches. And it's certainly more conveinent to me to have the images digitally available, too.
I also find that without my old-school mental block of "don't waste film" is gone, and that I now take many more shots than I used to. It leads to a bigger choice of shots to choose from, so I now get better final prints. Yes, I know I wasn't supposed to worry about "wasting film" before, but those old habits are very hard to break.
I think you have the emphasis on the wrong words. I believe my point might come through by changing it to this:
It has to go somewhere because going nowhere is called dying. If you don't move forward you will be left behind by your competition as they continue to innovate, refine, and improve.
There's no "you" (in your second person sense as above) driving Linux. And that's Gartner's point. But there's no "competition" leaving "you" behind". There's no price war, or feature war. There's only the altruistic development of applications, or the possibly tax-deductible contribution of software to the Open Source movement. It doesn't follow a typical economic roadmap because there is no one driver -- there's a semi-coordinated-yet-still-fragmented community with noone at the helm. There's a token figurehead we deify as Linus, but he wields as much direction as Prince Charles yields over England. There are dozens of houses of parliament that we call distros, but they don't have to get together and ratify anything. And a new one can come into being simply by the declaration of a single commoner.
Just as Microsoft can't figure out how to "defeat" Linux, Gartner can't predict Linux. They share a common mindset; both driven by the way the markets are supposed to work, or the way they always worked in the past.
My point is that Linux is already here. It doesn't have to "go somewhere" to be successful. The GPL guarantees it's here, and that it will stay here. Gartner's comments, predictions and arguments are about questions such as "Will Microsoft add DirectY support to Windows XP/2?" Compare that attitude to Dennis Ritchie's very OSS-like comment to the effect of "I consider it a failing to add new functions to the kernel.") And contrast that attitude with Microsoft's, which is "if we don't add a new API ('going somewhere' in your parlance) then we won't lock more code and users onto our platform."
Believe it or not, I don't necessarily want to see Microsoft fail. Large companies falling down are bad for the economy. I think that companies that make products deserve to get exactly what they charge. (Even the companies in the RIAA and MPAA should continue to have the same basic capitalistic right to make however much money they can get away with.) I simply don't think that Microsoft will be able to maintain their current prominence once OSS reaches a critical mass. For that to happen, the open source movement will need these two things to happen (and probably in this order:)
- Linux distros are perceived by the masses to be as-easy-as or easier to install and use than Windows. That means when they upgrade to Linux, their existing Microsoft applications and data files will need to automatically pop up in their "Start" bars, and that their drag-n-drop works everywhere; and
-
Microsoft releases an OS that is a noticeably worse experience than its predecessor.
My guess is that Palladium will turn half the average users against Microsoft. Once they realize that their computers are "owned", that they have to "subscribe" to Office and pay a monthly tithe, Microsoft will have driven the dagger home. They'll be subsisting on the revenues generated by periodically squeezing their remaining customers, and this will steadily decline as the rest of them move to a free (as in beer) platform.(Love the "Hey, moron" salutation, by the way. Nice professional touch, coward.)
You probably hit the Gartner Group's point right square on the head. But you seem to be missing exactly the same point they're missing: there's no 'there' there. Linux isn't a company. Linux isn't a product, either, except to those VARs who are hawking support (IBM, Red Hat, et al.) This leads back to my point: it doesn't have to go anywhere to be successful. It already is successful.
If you're a VAR with your own distro, then yes, you'll have to "go somewhere" and "do something". However, that usually means a prettier wrapper or more functional or useful application set. Unlike Microsoft's bundled applications, those things are not "Linux".
Linux application developers are driven by motives that don't necessarily involve money. It leaves the Gartner Group scratching their heads, because it doesn't fit any known business, social or economic model. It's like the old South Park Underpants Gnomes joke stood on its ear:
- Write Linux code.
- ???
- ?!? not profit !?!
Economic theory says it shouldn't even exist. But it obviously does exist, and thanks to the GPL it can't go away, either. And that's where the Gartner Group is completely missing the boat on not recommending Linux: Linux is GPL'd -- it can't go away. Unlike Microsoft, it can't fail or get worse than it is, because it's already here and in a decent state. It can and will improve, just without the standard economic engine behind it; it can't improve in a Gartner-modelable fashion.On the other hand, Microsoft can fail. They can release a new version of Windows (let's call it, say, Paladium, for lack of a better name) that is utterly rejected by the marketplace. Look at what happened when IBM released Warp. If Microsoft continues down the "go somewhere" path, as you suggest, they could end up selling as many copies of Paladium as IBM sold of Warp. I consider this a much higher risk, and a more realistic probability than Linux evaporating.
[ Apologetic note to Warp fanatics -- I, too, think Warp was a much better OS than any member of the Windows '9x family ever was; however, you have to admit it's wasn't exactly a barnburner commercial success. ]
I think that's exactly what's wrong with the Microsoft world. Why does it have to "go somewhere"? Do we need Linux.NET? Linux COM+? Linux ActiveX? Linux MTS? How about a stable platform, that doesn't shift like sand beneath our applications? How about the promise of a platform that remains constant as expected?
Anyway, I'm sure if you WERE a shoplifter you already would either know how to defeat them or at least have tried googling for methods to defeat them. I wasn't worried about you. :-)
The magical tool uses a magnetic field to align a pin inside the device, then applies straight and even pressure (similar to a gear puller) to the two halves.
Without the magnet or the alignment mechanisms, the pin won't be properly aligned and even a straight pull can crush the ink capsules.
Usually, the "giant honking things" include glass capsules that are filled with pressurised indeliable ink. If you attempt to remove the tag without the magical tool the ink sprays the item, supposedly ensuring that if the store can't have their pretty shoes, neither can you.
Some people believe that simply lining a shopping bag with tin foil will prevent the security tags from functioning. (We call these people "convicts".)
Trust me, being caught using one while shoplifting provides very convincing evidence in a courtroom.
LoadLibrary attempts to locate the DLL using the same search sequence used for implicit linking. If the system cannot find the DLL or if the entry-point function returns FALSE, LoadLibrary returns NULL. If the call to LoadLibrary specifies a DLL module already mapped into the address space of the calling process,* the function simply returns a handle of the DLL and increments the module's reference count.
[ * Emphasis mine. ]
While this text is not written in the same order in which it searches for libraries, it does say that the first thing that happens is it checks the calling processes' address space. Not the whole machine, just the calling process.
Of course, this is probably only true for the NT/2K/XP family of OSes and not with the 95/98/Me family...
I have had some luck with bad apps by moving their crappy old copy of COMCTL32.DLL (or whatever) into the same directory as the BADAPP.EXE. Of course to do this I only had to watch every file in the WINNT tree, and I set every DLL file in SYSTEM32 to read-only and watched for installer errors, but hey, that's all you gotta do to make Windows work, right? :-P
GOD I HATED SIERRA'S OLD INSTALLERS. They were the penultimate in arrogance. "If I stomp all over your SYSTEM directory and make all the files what I want them to be I'll work fine, and damn the rest of your box." And I'll never know if they fixed them because I swore I would never buy another Sierra package again, nor would I allow any of my friends or relatives to buy from them. (Well, they could buy them but I wouldn't help them anymore.) If I had to pin one badge on DLL Hell, I'd stick the pin in Sierra and aim for the aorta.
DLLs were originally designed to solve the problem of "many programs doing the same thing won't take up as much space." Now that we have boxes with as much physical memory as the OS can address, static linking seems like a great idea.
Except for the part that legacy software packages with DLLs still rely on those DLLs. No matter what tomorrows spec says, the sh!t installer included with "Siexxa Landscape Designer" sitting on my shelf will always continue to overwrite my MFC and common control dlls.
Also, don't forget that not all DLLs are created equal. COM objects wrapped in a DLL, for example, all have a common set of entry points (DllRegisterServer, etc.) and usually no other entry points. The interfaces are better designed and more manageable for versioning. COM developers always (should) have to keep backwards-compatibility in mind when adding new interfaces or fixing problems. So not every DLL change is a huge problem.
Anyway, my only point is that Microsoft will have to deal with the mess they created long ago, even if every Windows developer today magically starts coding to the same fixed longhorn spec.