We get a friendly congressbeing to insert DeCSS, the Princeton research, and anything else being threatened by the RIAA, MPAA, CIA, NAACP, et al into the Congressional Record. Then let these groups take on the federal government if they dare. Not only will it be entertaining, it'll let the legislature find out what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of their laws. It might even get the Congress to decide what they really meant in the DMCA.
How long before we start arming these planes and using them for attack? The most recent U.S. forays into combat have shown that we've become extremely reluctant to risk American lives. Using remotely-piloted warplanes would certainly make sense in such circumstances.
Doesn't this imply that the Napster client on the local machine is going to have to process your MP3s before listing them? Otherwise, the MP3s would have to be uploaded to the Napster server to get blessed, which would be quite a departure from the present model and require beaucoup additional bandwidth and processing power at the server. So, if it's client-based, it seems likely that somebody will just hack a Napster client to always tell the server, "yeah, this file's ok". Since the server's never going to see the file for itself, it'll never know whether it's being told the truth or not.
Silly engineers. We should keystroke monitor them to see how much code they're writing per minute, and just pay them per line of code. God it's great to be a middle manager!
This was actually tried in a few places, with the predictable results. One that I'm aware of even counted comments, which resulted in the most extensively documented code in the history of programming (notice I didn't say 'best' documented code).
My initial thought is to wire the house with shielded ethernet cable with all the drops in the basement, to be wired to a hub/router later. But they've got high hopes for a 'smart home', how else can they prepare for the future?"
My best advice is, if you can afford it and the situation permits, put in some good-size conduit (and run nylon cord thru it for pulling purposes) for future needs. Then you can put in whatever the latest and greatest is without tearing up the walls. I'd also 'home run' (run everything to a central location) all the wires in the place for easy hookup and interconnect. I did that with my phones and cable TV (alas, in the pre-Ethernet days) and thank myself every time I have to mess with them. If only I had taken my own advice about the conduit...
I bet the first folks who use this are the Special Forces. I talked to one about a project we're working on for them, and they have to transport a surprising amount of electricity-consuming stuff along with the batteries to power it all. Anything that can be done to reduce the weight they have to schlepp around will be most appreciated.
True, but the article speaks of diamond film created by vapor deposition, so is it really likely to amount to that much extra? From the description of how the collector would be constructed, it sounds like the diamond film would amount to an insignificant percentage of the total mass.
Although I've never seen it carried out, I've thought that one way to handle this is to indent however you yourself want to, and use scripts to translate the source back and forth between your preference and whatever the 'standard' is. That way, you can let the neo-fascist boneheads^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^ H project managers define whatever they want and not have it perturb your wa.
Speaking of which, in the U.S., American Express is selling 'credit cards' thru 7-11 (a convenience store chain). You prepay the amount you want and receive a card with that much value. No ties to your identity - you toss the card when you're done with it. If you want the convenience of a credit card but the confidentiality of cash, this looks like a way to do it.
If you're serious about protecting your privacy, I recommend the book, "How to Be Invisible : A Step-By-Step Guide to Protecting Your Assets, Your Identity, and Your Life" by J. J. Luna. You may or may not want to implement everything he describes, but it's good to know how to go about it if you want to. This isn't one of those books about how to manufacture a new identity, but rather how to keep private whatever you think should be private.
Here in my town, environmental laws forced the shuttering of a large bakery because the baking smell carries 'pollutants' as far as the EPA is concerned. I predict soybean oil powered vehicles would be as popular with the Greens as SUVs are.
As a resident of Glasgow I am delighted to see cameras on every street corner and every road junction.
The reason to fear government surveillance is not because you trust in the benevolence of your government, but because it can become a tool of despotism if the government ever turns against the people. And recent history is a sad statement on how often that comes to pass. However much you trust the current overseers, imagine the system in the hands of your worst enemy and ask yourself what they could do with it. Just off the top of my head, I think of China and what it would mean to be captured on tape visiting the home of someone later found to be a Falun Gong member.
I think that cameras everywhere are going to become a fact of life regardless of how many people hate the idea. The only suggestion I've seen for mitigating the damage was a proposal that each camera pointed at a public place be registered and its feed made available on the net. At least then if an operator is abusing it (like looking in people's homes for example) there'd be a chance that it would get noticed.
How can I protect myself from having a co-worker (or student, thief, ex-wife, etc...) using one of these devices on my machine? Is there any keyboard available which encrypts output before it reaches the computer?"
I think the answer is, "you can't". The information is unencrypted at some point, and if your adversary has physical access to your computer they can get at it. The FBI has been known to install bugs within the keyboard itself to record keystrokes in cases where the target has encrypted the data on the computer.
Star Wars Episode IV is going to be first on the chopping block when the Republicans come to censor our movies. And censor they will.
You really do need to educate yourself on who stands for what in politics. The brain-police are represented on both sides of the aisle. Quoting from here: "It was the Democrat Al Gore who, in an unscripted moment, put the arts in play by attacking what he called ''cultural pollution'' - by which he meant the degradation of society by a torrent of near-porn movies and violence-glorifying pop songs.
[snip]
Gore's running-mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, gave edge to the issue by telling Congress that it might need to legislate against anti-social art. "If the entertainment industry... continues to market death and degradation to our children," he had previously warned, "then the Government will act."
anything that is satellite based will add quite a bit of latency (what i've heard is about 400ms each way).
That's if the satellite you're using is in geosynchronous orbit, and in that case the one-way delay is @250 ms, assuming the satellite is essentially a repeater (i.e. no delay introduced on the satellite itself). Some of the newer satellite systems use low-earth-orbit sats, and for them the latency is much better.
Sure, the code would be vetted thoroughly before it could ever make it into the kernel, but....
But what? Do you seriously think that even the NSA could conceal some nefarious activity when the source code itself is dissected down to its component quarks by an army of suspicious über-grumps? NSA != GOD. The folks who work there, while probably very good, are drawn from the same pool as the readership here, for instance.
This? Description: LANpoint Pro is a fully compliant PC in a compact, rugged case. It has no moving parts and its drip-proof case is built to last in harsh industrial environments. With a built-in 10BaseT Ethernet adapter and barcode decoding it comes ready to solve a multitude of data collection needs. [snip] The LANpoint Pro has a built-in barcode decoder for plug-in compatibility with barcode wands and laser scanners. It also has support for magnetic stripe readers and barcode slot readers.
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We get a friendly congressbeing to insert DeCSS, the Princeton research, and anything else being threatened by the RIAA, MPAA, CIA, NAACP, et al into the Congressional Record. Then let these groups take on the federal government if they dare. Not only will it be entertaining, it'll let the legislature find out what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of their laws. It might even get the Congress to decide what they really meant in the DMCA.
How long before we start arming these planes and using them for attack? The most recent U.S. forays into combat have shown that we've become extremely reluctant to risk American lives. Using remotely-piloted warplanes would certainly make sense in such circumstances.
Doesn't this imply that the Napster client on the local machine is going to have to process your MP3s before listing them? Otherwise, the MP3s would have to be uploaded to the Napster server to get blessed, which would be quite a departure from the present model and require beaucoup additional bandwidth and processing power at the server. So, if it's client-based, it seems likely that somebody will just hack a Napster client to always tell the server, "yeah, this file's ok". Since the server's never going to see the file for itself, it'll never know whether it's being told the truth or not.
This was actually tried in a few places, with the predictable results. One that I'm aware of even counted comments, which resulted in the most extensively documented code in the history of programming (notice I didn't say 'best' documented code).
What, am I the only person on the planet who never once thought of doing this? Man, there goes my 'with it' quotient ...
My best advice is, if you can afford it and the situation permits, put in some good-size conduit (and run nylon cord thru it for pulling purposes) for future needs. Then you can put in whatever the latest and greatest is without tearing up the walls. I'd also 'home run' (run everything to a central location) all the wires in the place for easy hookup and interconnect. I did that with my phones and cable TV (alas, in the pre-Ethernet days) and thank myself every time I have to mess with them. If only I had taken my own advice about the conduit ...
I was about to moderate him up +1: Funny, but someone beat me to it with a +1: Insightful, and it's at +5 now. Ah well.
I bet the first folks who use this are the Special Forces. I talked to one about a project we're working on for them, and they have to transport a surprising amount of electricity-consuming stuff along with the batteries to power it all. Anything that can be done to reduce the weight they have to schlepp around will be most appreciated.
True, but the article speaks of diamond film created by vapor deposition, so is it really likely to amount to that much extra? From the description of how the collector would be constructed, it sounds like the diamond film would amount to an insignificant percentage of the total mass.
Although I've never seen it carried out, I've thought that one way to handle this is to indent however you yourself want to, and use scripts to translate the source back and forth between your preference and whatever the 'standard' is. That way, you can let the neo-fascist boneheads^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^ H project managers define whatever they want and not have it perturb your wa.
For one thing, you can use it for mailorder, which is a much more difficult thing to do with cash itself.
Speaking of which, in the U.S., American Express is selling 'credit cards' thru 7-11 (a convenience store chain). You prepay the amount you want and receive a card with that much value. No ties to your identity - you toss the card when you're done with it. If you want the convenience of a credit card but the confidentiality of cash, this looks like a way to do it.
If you're serious about protecting your privacy, I recommend the book, "How to Be Invisible : A Step-By-Step Guide to Protecting Your Assets, Your Identity, and Your Life" by J. J. Luna. You may or may not want to implement everything he describes, but it's good to know how to go about it if you want to. This isn't one of those books about how to manufacture a new identity, but rather how to keep private whatever you think should be private.
Here in my town, environmental laws forced the shuttering of a large bakery because the baking smell carries 'pollutants' as far as the EPA is concerned. I predict soybean oil powered vehicles would be as popular with the Greens as SUVs are.
God sues the U.S. Human Genome Project under the DMCA.
The reason to fear government surveillance is not because you trust in the benevolence of your government, but because it can become a tool of despotism if the government ever turns against the people. And recent history is a sad statement on how often that comes to pass. However much you trust the current overseers, imagine the system in the hands of your worst enemy and ask yourself what they could do with it. Just off the top of my head, I think of China and what it would mean to be captured on tape visiting the home of someone later found to be a Falun Gong member.
I think that cameras everywhere are going to become a fact of life regardless of how many people hate the idea. The only suggestion I've seen for mitigating the damage was a proposal that each camera pointed at a public place be registered and its feed made available on the net. At least then if an operator is abusing it (like looking in people's homes for example) there'd be a chance that it would get noticed.
Interestingly, today's Wall Street Journal has an article on this same topic. (Paid subscription required, unfortunately): Peer-to-Peer Party Comes to a Halt As Companies Morph or Disappear.
I think the answer is, "you can't". The information is unencrypted at some point, and if your adversary has physical access to your computer they can get at it. The FBI has been known to install bugs within the keyboard itself to record keystrokes in cases where the target has encrypted the data on the computer.
You really do need to educate yourself on who stands for what in politics. The brain-police are represented on both sides of the aisle. Quoting from here: "It was the Democrat Al Gore who, in an unscripted moment, put the arts in play by attacking what he called ''cultural pollution'' - by which he meant the degradation of society by a torrent of near-porn movies and violence-glorifying pop songs.
[snip]
Gore's running-mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, gave edge to the issue by telling Congress that it might need to legislate against anti-social art. "If the entertainment industry ... continues to market death and degradation to our children," he had previously warned, "then the Government will act."
I'm not sure. Do our astronomers have any information what kind of hardware the Canadians might be using?
That's if the satellite you're using is in geosynchronous orbit, and in that case the one-way delay is @250 ms, assuming the satellite is essentially a repeater (i.e. no delay introduced on the satellite itself). Some of the newer satellite systems use low-earth-orbit sats, and for them the latency is much better.
But what? Do you seriously think that even the NSA could conceal some nefarious activity when the source code itself is dissected down to its component quarks by an army of suspicious über-grumps? NSA != GOD. The folks who work there, while probably very good, are drawn from the same pool as the readership here, for instance.
This? Description: LANpoint Pro is a fully compliant PC in a compact, rugged case. It has no moving parts and its drip-proof case is built to last in harsh industrial environments. With a built-in 10BaseT Ethernet adapter and barcode decoding it comes ready to solve a multitude of data collection needs. [snip] The LANpoint Pro has a built-in barcode decoder for plug-in compatibility with barcode wands and laser scanners. It also has support for magnetic stripe readers and barcode slot readers.
Uhh ... isn't that pretty much what this story was about?