The truth is that DSL/Cable Modem providers need to provide some kind of guaranteed-bandwidth service for VOIP to work.
Yes, it is called QoS (quality of service) and it is built into IPv6 and it is one of the ways the telecoms are using to provide preferred bandwidth to companies that pay them money while arbitrarily increasing latency to companies that don't pay them their blood money. It seems like a good thing for the reason you stated, but it ends up as just a way to squeez more money out of customers, so that it ends up that a few people that can afford it migth get high quality service, but the rest of us will still pay a lot but get shitty service. It just doesn't work out for the customer, any customer.
As a consequence you can use the Yahoo stuff with any backend implementation language (PHP, Java, whatever) while the Google framework is limited to strictly Java. I don't mind though.:)
Is that really true? Although that is what they seem to be pushing, couldn't you just use this toolkit for the stuff that runs in the browser and then use whatever you want on the servlet side to respond to the remote procedure call (RPC). I mean in theory it should be doable.
Really the biggest benefit to this seems to be to leverage all the experience google has gained about browser incompatibilities, so you can use this to compile into javacsript code that works on IE, firefox and others.
But the servlet side of things really is a whole other abstraction layer. Why not mix and match?
So I suspect that's what Wall Street means by PC era being over. They see the same turning into a steady industry as Gates sees, but from their perspective tere's a lot less to be excited about that future.
So, you suspect they mean that the PC era is over in the same way as the electricy era is over, or the radio era. Now just about everyone has a radio and access to electricity, so the era of growth is over. Which seems about right for PC growth, at least in the US. Overseas I suspect the number of PCs actively being used out there will double in the next 10 years mostly due to China and even more so India.
Most people think taxation is essential to government, and taxation can't be done properly without being able to establish identities.
Establishing identities for tax purposes is fine, and has already been accomplished simply by linking a name and record of birth with a unique numeric identifier, thus you get a social security number. What you are talking about however is identity verification on a transaction by transaction basis to prevent fraud of some sort or another. But simply for tax purposes fraud is not really an issue, people aren't exactly lining up to pay eachothers taxes.
Having multiple organizations come up with their own identification methods is inefficient, and will probably lead to poor implementation and more fraud. Also, having universal identification will help in all sorts of commerce. Those are real benefits.
It is a trade off, not just benefit. If you have one monolithic system which is relied on heavily by every organization, then when it is compromised the damage is pervasive. And it is true that commerce has been greatly benefited from centralized identity management in the form of VISA, MasterCard and others. But I would argue that merely being able to identify someone is a very little part of it. It is really the brokers, those willing to assume some level of responsibility for the transaction that allow commerce between unfamiliar parties. That broker's ability to "know" the parties is important to the broker. As the uncertainties can increase the risk of losses due to fraud. But the real question is how much does identity fraud increase the cost of transactions? It seems that it has very little overall effect.
As someone familiar with technology you are probably also aware that what you get out is often only as good as what you put into it. Garbage in, then garbage out. Current initial verification for things such as drivers licenses and such often just require a birth certificate. A birth certificate is not easily verifiable and very likely easy to forge or simply acquire. To follow your centralization of identity to its natural conclusion you would also have to establish centralized birth registration, but then you would also need a biometric unique identifier, probably a combination of DNA and fingerprints (to distinguish between twins)
So, if you have such an identifier and technology progresses to a point of practical quick dna testing then you would likely just dispense with indirect means of identification and go with direct biometrics.
Just because it might be more efficient and good for commerce doesn't mean we should go down the path. The path we are on is not one that has a happy ending. Where from your birth every achievement and failing, every dollar spent, every communication made, are indexed and correlated to your unique identifier and then your ability to survive is based on the health and well being of that abstraction of yourself kept in a government computer. That is the means to totalitarian control which even I couldn't resist.
The key is not making the path we are on easier to tread, but to go down another path.
I would love to see how you expect to run a government if you have no good way of verifying people are who they say they are.
First you must ask the question why do you need to verify people are who they say they are? And why do you have to have the same way to verify identity for everything?
A few things could be done to ease the "need" for centralized identity management: - Eliminate work restrictions on foreigners, to eliminate the biggest initial reason for identity fraud. - phase out Federal management of welfare and social security, let the charities and banks and individual state governments figure out how they want to prevent and monitor fraud based on their own needs. - Criminal identity is already determined by fingerprinting and DNA, so there is no need here. - Stop warrantless government monitoring of bank transactions. - Eliminate the income tax witholding requirement on employers. - Eliminate the social security and medicare "match" on employers.
probably a few more reforms would be necessary, as well.
Yes, I agree. But I think your solution is also a band aid. The problem is the need to establish identity in the first place, not the means by which which you do it.
The greatest need to establish identity is because we have allowed a police state to evolve, where people are tracked and correlated at every step of their lives. The problem isn't identity theft, fraud will never be prevented by technological means, the problem is that to the government we have become just a number to be managed.
Good for you being able to avoid responsibility to the point where you can- I've got a mortgage and a family to pay for.
If you are living so close to the bone that you cannot afford to be out of work at least for a few months while you look for another job, and you have a mortgage and a family, then I think you have a very warped view of what it means to take on a "responsibility".
The problem might be that some other drunk asshole member of the US congress might overstep his bounds (which we see examples of on the news weekly) and use this information with no sense of proportion to forward an agenda in the guise of an investigation.
More likely that some political appointee or just some other mid level bureaucrat will find something interesting in all those phone records, say dozens of calls to a 900 number or an unusual number of calls to a very sexy intern, and then blackmail a drunk asshole member of Congress into making laws or spending public money on something they want.
We already know "horse trading" is seen as an acceptable means for prosecutors to make deals which let the so called "little fish" go unpunished or unembarrassed, while they go after the "big fish" so they can advance their careers. With all the laws and information to embarrass public officials at their disposal, what is to prevent prosecutors and police from using their power to coerce other benefits from elected officials. Ya sure it is illegal, but I mean who and by what means will this type of corruption be stopped.
If these records are going to be freely available to law enforcement and prosecutors without warrant (as well as to the spooks who are collecting it), then you should just open up the records to the public in whole, otherwise you are creating a dangerous concentration of power.
Why should they be forced to use a proprietary product for a fully open standard, just because they're disabled? Shouldn't this be something that the OSS movement jumped on?
Since OSS developers are often designing, building, QA'ing features that they would like to see, then it doesn't naturally follow that they would build in accessibility features unless they were familiar with building such features. This speaks to the need to more closely tie developers and users (or potential users) in OSS projects not just for accessibility by for other specialized features.
Its like the flicker images we have seen around (like these [well.com]) There is enough information in these images for your brain (and mine) to reconstruct the scene and get depth perception.
I have been playing around with 3d stereoscopy, with a stereoscopic HMD, for a while now and the effect is great, but I was thinking it might help some games achieve a similar effect if they had a bit of stereo jiggle to them. That is how we tend to walk anyway, with a sway that helps add a bit of depth perception.
That being said, if a 3D web is going to come out of anywhere, it will probably stem from the MMOGs. These virtual worlds have become so popular that in some cases they manage to displace the idea of meeting in real life.
Big hardware companies need to seriously change their outlook - if it can be done with a PC, it will eventually be done with a PC cheaply, the question is not what the "box" does, it's who's the best at providing the service.
I think Dell has been about trying to convince all the other manufacturers of this for many years now. Don't worry fellas, just sell software and services, and let Dell make all the hardware. You don't want to worry about hardware do ya?
really. How the hell does Jeffrey Toback think that the authorities find the child porn in order to track down the people producing it? If it is easy to find through google, then it is easy for the police to find and stop. Sue the police if nothing is being done about it.
I usually do some quick general design and planning beforehand
Exactly. I really don't think taking more time to "code" is the answer. The majority of security problems in software come about because of design issues. The focus should be on security as a functional requirement. Sure buffer overflows and such can result from poor coding techniques, but I have found it is just a general lack of functional definition which dooms a project to a lot of revision later in the process.
The profit motive is the best way to motivate people and companies to do anything you want (including provide healthcare, food etc).
And that doesn't work too well when you don't have the money, and funny thing about being sick, you often can't earn any money. And if the people want more than you could possibly make in your lifetime in return to save your life... ouch. Basically, if someone could save your life and won't unless you pay them, they hold a bargaining position which society should not consider valid. No more than society should allow a person to hold a gun to your head and take all your money.
If a person gets cancer can we say, "No you can't get coverage, you are on your own?" This is exactly what private healthcare providers do. I know, my mother survived breast cancer, but the private healthcare providers are refusing to cover her for cancer. If she gets cancer again she is on her own. This is wrong! But it is business because she is a "problematic" person.
And such would be the case regardless. We as individuals and society can only afford to make people healthy if it is economical. Public versus private versus indivudual just changes who is making the decision about what can be afforded.
Regardless of what kind of "system" you want, people on all sides should start being more honest about the economics of our own mortality. Not everyone can have every test performed, and not everyone can have a heart transplant, and not everyone can be given medications and medical care beyond a certain point. Doctors, nurses and technicians are people too and can only be made to do so much and some of our medical technology just wouldn't be economical on large scales.
One thing I think we should also all agree on is that a profit motive regarding the care of sick people is a completely innappropriate and corrupting influence. Certainly some people must be enable to make a living caring for those that can't care for themselves. But that it is seen as acceptible to seek profit from the sickness of others is an evil which must be purged from society.
Nobody cares about you making copies of something you already own for personal use or private exhibition. In fact, that's probably already covered by fair use. The issue here is redistribution. I believe that copyright reform is in order, too, but don't try to cast it as a privacy issue when it isn't.
Well, the issue of filesharing may not be a privacy issue directly, but other RIAA paid for legislation such as the DMCA is very much a privacy issue, with what was once perfectly legal fair use all of a sudden becoming a felony where you can lose all your legal rights as a citizen just for wanting to make a copy of something in the privacy of your home with no intention of redistribution.
The RIAA is evil and Congress ain't far behind, and I mean that in the Biblical sense.
In the US, if you go out and dig in your backyard and find something man-made and more than a few hundred years old, you've most likely really found something of archaeological interest.
Actually, my archeologist friend said that you can search around just about any old watering hole, start digging and probably find something left their by native amaricans long ago. American's just don't like to think about it too deeply.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just plain stupid. Apparently, Representative Wolf's [house.gov] former crusades against meth...
I am not sure what is funnier, that I thought you wrote "math" instead of "meth" or that I found either statement to be believable.
The truth is that DSL/Cable Modem providers need to provide some kind of guaranteed-bandwidth service for VOIP to work.
Yes, it is called QoS (quality of service) and it is built into IPv6 and it is one of the ways the telecoms are using to provide preferred bandwidth to companies that pay them money while arbitrarily increasing latency to companies that don't pay them their blood money. It seems like a good thing for the reason you stated, but it ends up as just a way to squeez more money out of customers, so that it ends up that a few people that can afford it migth get high quality service, but the rest of us will still pay a lot but get shitty service. It just doesn't work out for the customer, any customer.
As a consequence you can use the Yahoo stuff with any backend implementation language (PHP, Java, whatever) while the Google framework is limited to strictly Java. I don't mind though. :)
Is that really true? Although that is what they seem to be pushing, couldn't you just use this toolkit for the stuff that runs in the browser and then use whatever you want on the servlet side to respond to the remote procedure call (RPC). I mean in theory it should be doable.
Really the biggest benefit to this seems to be to leverage all the experience google has gained about browser incompatibilities, so you can use this to compile into javacsript code that works on IE, firefox and others.
But the servlet side of things really is a whole other abstraction layer. Why not mix and match?
So I suspect that's what Wall Street means by PC era being over. They see the same turning into a steady industry as Gates sees, but from their perspective tere's a lot less to be excited about that future.
So, you suspect they mean that the PC era is over in the same way as the electricy era is over, or the radio era. Now just about everyone has a radio and access to electricity, so the era of growth is over. Which seems about right for PC growth, at least in the US. Overseas I suspect the number of PCs actively being used out there will double in the next 10 years mostly due to China and even more so India.
Those might be considered radical ideas.
Who... what me? never.
Most people think taxation is essential to government, and taxation can't be done properly without being able to establish identities.
Establishing identities for tax purposes is fine, and has already been accomplished simply by linking a name and record of birth with a unique numeric identifier, thus you get a social security number. What you are talking about however is identity verification on a transaction by transaction basis to prevent fraud of some sort or another. But simply for tax purposes fraud is not really an issue, people aren't exactly lining up to pay eachothers taxes.
Having multiple organizations come up with their own identification methods is inefficient, and will probably lead to poor implementation and more fraud. Also, having universal identification will help in all sorts of commerce. Those are real benefits.
It is a trade off, not just benefit. If you have one monolithic system which is relied on heavily by every organization, then when it is compromised the damage is pervasive. And it is true that commerce has been greatly benefited from centralized identity management in the form of VISA, MasterCard and others. But I would argue that merely being able to identify someone is a very little part of it. It is really the brokers, those willing to assume some level of responsibility for the transaction that allow commerce between unfamiliar parties. That broker's ability to "know" the parties is important to the broker. As the uncertainties can increase the risk of losses due to fraud. But the real question is how much does identity fraud increase the cost of transactions? It seems that it has very little overall effect.
As someone familiar with technology you are probably also aware that what you get out is often only as good as what you put into it. Garbage in, then garbage out. Current initial verification for things such as drivers licenses and such often just require a birth certificate. A birth certificate is not easily verifiable and very likely easy to forge or simply acquire. To follow your centralization of identity to its natural conclusion you would also have to establish centralized birth registration, but then you would also need a biometric unique identifier, probably a combination of DNA and fingerprints (to distinguish between twins)
So, if you have such an identifier and technology progresses to a point of practical quick dna testing then you would likely just dispense with indirect means of identification and go with direct biometrics.
Just because it might be more efficient and good for commerce doesn't mean we should go down the path. The path we are on is not one that has a happy ending. Where from your birth every achievement and failing, every dollar spent, every communication made, are indexed and correlated to your unique identifier and then your ability to survive is based on the health and well being of that abstraction of yourself kept in a government computer. That is the means to totalitarian control which even I couldn't resist.
The key is not making the path we are on easier to tread, but to go down another path.
I would love to see how you expect to run a government if you have no good way of verifying people are who they say they are.
First you must ask the question why do you need to verify people are who they say they are? And why do you have to have the same way to verify identity for everything?
A few things could be done to ease the "need" for centralized identity management:
- Eliminate work restrictions on foreigners, to eliminate the biggest initial reason for identity fraud.
- phase out Federal management of welfare and social security, let the charities and banks and individual state governments figure out how they want to prevent and monitor fraud based on their own needs.
- Criminal identity is already determined by fingerprinting and DNA, so there is no need here.
- Stop warrantless government monitoring of bank transactions.
- Eliminate the income tax witholding requirement on employers.
- Eliminate the social security and medicare "match" on employers.
probably a few more reforms would be necessary, as well.
Quite simply, because the US Government has been running a $500,000,000,000 deficit a year for several years.
Yes, although I am not sure we can call borrowing half a trillion dollars and throwing it up in the air and seeing where it falls an "economy".
THIS IS A STUPID MODEL.
Yes, I agree. But I think your solution is also a band aid. The problem is the need to establish identity in the first place, not the means by which which you do it.
The greatest need to establish identity is because we have allowed a police state to evolve, where people are tracked and correlated at every step of their lives. The problem isn't identity theft, fraud will never be prevented by technological means, the problem is that to the government we have become just a number to be managed.
aren't idiots.
Good for you being able to avoid responsibility to the point where you can- I've got a mortgage and a family to pay for.
If you are living so close to the bone that you cannot afford to be out of work at least for a few months while you look for another job, and you have a mortgage and a family, then I think you have a very warped view of what it means to take on a "responsibility".
The problem might be that some other drunk asshole member of the US congress might overstep his bounds (which we see examples of on the news weekly) and use this information with no sense of proportion to forward an agenda in the guise of an investigation.
More likely that some political appointee or just some other mid level bureaucrat will find something interesting in all those phone records, say dozens of calls to a 900 number or an unusual number of calls to a very sexy intern, and then blackmail a drunk asshole member of Congress into making laws or spending public money on something they want.
We already know "horse trading" is seen as an acceptable means for prosecutors to make deals which let the so called "little fish" go unpunished or unembarrassed, while they go after the "big fish" so they can advance their careers. With all the laws and information to embarrass public officials at their disposal, what is to prevent prosecutors and police from using their power to coerce other benefits from elected officials. Ya sure it is illegal, but I mean who and by what means will this type of corruption be stopped.
If these records are going to be freely available to law enforcement and prosecutors without warrant (as well as to the spooks who are collecting it), then you should just open up the records to the public in whole, otherwise you are creating a dangerous concentration of power.
Why should they be forced to use a proprietary product for a fully open standard, just because they're disabled? Shouldn't this be something that the OSS movement jumped on?
Since OSS developers are often designing, building, QA'ing features that they would like to see, then it doesn't naturally follow that they would build in accessibility features unless they were familiar with building such features. This speaks to the need to more closely tie developers and users (or potential users) in OSS projects not just for accessibility by for other specialized features.
oh ya... thought it was a statue.
Its like the flicker images we have seen around (like these [well.com])
There is enough information in these images for your brain (and mine) to reconstruct the scene and get depth perception.
I have been playing around with 3d stereoscopy, with a stereoscopic HMD, for a while now and the effect is great, but I was thinking it might help some games achieve a similar effect if they had a bit of stereo jiggle to them. That is how we tend to walk anyway, with a sway that helps add a bit of depth perception.
You should probably post that the link isn't work appropriate. Jeesh
Her naughty bits are not really visable.
Doesn't matter where the data comes from, as long as it's verifiable, it's still valid data.
That is worth repeating. And applies to a lot more than just this endeavor.
That being said, if a 3D web is going to come out of anywhere, it will probably stem from the MMOGs. These virtual worlds have become so popular that in some cases they manage to displace the idea of meeting in real life.
exactly!
Big hardware companies need to seriously change their outlook - if it can be done with a PC, it will eventually be done with a PC cheaply, the question is not what the "box" does, it's who's the best at providing the service.
I think Dell has been about trying to convince all the other manufacturers of this for many years now. Don't worry fellas, just sell software and services, and let Dell make all the hardware. You don't want to worry about hardware do ya?
really. How the hell does Jeffrey Toback think that the authorities find the child porn in order to track down the people producing it? If it is easy to find through google, then it is easy for the police to find and stop. Sue the police if nothing is being done about it.
I usually do some quick general design and planning beforehand
Exactly. I really don't think taking more time to "code" is the answer. The majority of security problems in software come about because of design issues. The focus should be on security as a functional requirement. Sure buffer overflows and such can result from poor coding techniques, but I have found it is just a general lack of functional definition which dooms a project to a lot of revision later in the process.
The profit motive is the best way to motivate people and companies to do anything you want (including provide healthcare, food etc).
And that doesn't work too well when you don't have the money, and funny thing about being sick, you often can't earn any money. And if the people want more than you could possibly make in your lifetime in return to save your life... ouch. Basically, if someone could save your life and won't unless you pay them, they hold a bargaining position which society should not consider valid. No more than society should allow a person to hold a gun to your head and take all your money.
If a person gets cancer can we say, "No you can't get coverage, you are on your own?" This is exactly what private healthcare providers do. I know, my mother survived breast cancer, but the private healthcare providers are refusing to cover her for cancer. If she gets cancer again she is on her own. This is wrong! But it is business because she is a "problematic" person.
And such would be the case regardless. We as individuals and society can only afford to make people healthy if it is economical. Public versus private versus indivudual just changes who is making the decision about what can be afforded.
Regardless of what kind of "system" you want, people on all sides should start being more honest about the economics of our own mortality. Not everyone can have every test performed, and not everyone can have a heart transplant, and not everyone can be given medications and medical care beyond a certain point. Doctors, nurses and technicians are people too and can only be made to do so much and some of our medical technology just wouldn't be economical on large scales.
One thing I think we should also all agree on is that a profit motive regarding the care of sick people is a completely innappropriate and corrupting influence. Certainly some people must be enable to make a living caring for those that can't care for themselves. But that it is seen as acceptible to seek profit from the sickness of others is an evil which must be purged from society.
Nobody cares about you making copies of something you already own for personal use or private exhibition. In fact, that's probably already covered by fair use. The issue here is redistribution. I believe that copyright reform is in order, too, but don't try to cast it as a privacy issue when it isn't.
Well, the issue of filesharing may not be a privacy issue directly, but other RIAA paid for legislation such as the DMCA is very much a privacy issue, with what was once perfectly legal fair use all of a sudden becoming a felony where you can lose all your legal rights as a citizen just for wanting to make a copy of something in the privacy of your home with no intention of redistribution.
The RIAA is evil and Congress ain't far behind, and I mean that in the Biblical sense.
In the US, if you go out and dig in your backyard and find something man-made and more than a few hundred years old, you've most likely really found something of archaeological interest.
Actually, my archeologist friend said that you can search around just about any old watering hole, start digging and probably find something left their by native amaricans long ago. American's just don't like to think about it too deeply.
Actually, a lot of recent evidence suggests that the pyramids where not built by slaves, but rather by paid workers.
Yes, they would be considered "paid workers" by modern standards.