Here we have a prime example of the US trying to impose its legal system on the rest of the world. When some poor sod in scandinavia gets hit by the US over hacking, there's outcry. Whip up enough emotion and it suddenly becomes OK.
Whatever the merits of the case, US laws only apply inside the US - even if the US has passed a law to say otherwise.
I'd been wondering (publicly at Launchpad magazine) why the probes didn't return a signal. If the thrusters blew the whole thing to shreds, it wouldn't have time to deploy them and they'd smack down in a tangled pile of the rubbish.
Funny nobody talked about the probes, eh? From the reports NASA was putting out you'd have thought that they'd forgot to attach them or something. I guess this explains it.
Do you know the author? I've met the guy a few times. He's been involved with investigating government espionage activities for a long time, and consequently has been raided by the spooks on several occasions. Anyone remember Project Zircon?
He, like many people, is concerned with what governments are getting away with. It's becoming far too much an 'us' and 'them' situation. 'They' are supposed to be working for 'us', not against us. But somewhere it has gone wrong. Many people can't see it getting better, and it seems to be one of those self-promoting systems that can only get worse.
It's not euro-centric so much as someone on the outside looking in. More non-US-centric as it were.
Yeah, I have a problem with talking to PDAs. Who is going to take notes in a crowded office or eve the supermarket of a project that is under NDA?
Would you dictate your personal notes where anyone else can hear them. Let's face it, you don't want the rest of the world to hear what you're doing all the time, right?
Well I for sure don't.
The best way to enter data I've ever had was on a chord keyboard. The device was called an "Agenda" and it's about a decade old. If the memory card wasn't dead I'd be using it still. It was smaller than a Cassiopeia A-10 and I could enter text into it faster that I can type on a QWERTY keyboard, which is saying something.
We've been doing this here in New Zealand for a couple of years now. I work for a company called ECONZ during daylight, and we've been using Casio DT800's very successfully to capture signatures for New Zealand's CourierPost courier service.
The signatures are captured on a 160x160 pixel touchscreen, the same resolution but physically smaller than a Palm Pilot. Along with the signature, the client's name, the ID of the courier, the run the courier is on, the barcodes scanned, the time, the delivery point, the ID number of the handheld and a checksum are all captured at the same time. This allows a pretty good audit trail to be established.
It's the latter details that will need to be pinned down. The establishment of the audit trail is going to be a lot harder on internet transactions.
Presumably you are familiar with the "Blue Gene" project. Can you please tell us all why it isn't going to work and where IBM have got their figures wrong?
Look guys, we're grown up enough to get over the "Gray Goo" scenarios of killer, runaway nanobots. We have the damn things already, with names like "Ebloa", "HIV, "Hepatitis" and "Termites". The only reason we can't currently beat them is because we don't have control of a suitably advanced technology.
Nanotechnology is THE advanced technology. It is the only technology we would be able to counter a deliberate nanotechnology offensive with - if anyone were able to build a serious nanotech weapon, and that is not as simple as it seems.
The alternative is to wait - either not doing much, or actively banning nanotechnology, it doesn't matter much - until they develop nanotechnology in Switzerland, Brazil, Japan or whatever. Once someone builds a single functional assembler, it will not be hard to distribute copies or cross national boundaries.
Transmeta has already started the process with their "soft" processor. The design concepts and partnership with IBM have inexorably set in motion a series of steps which will bring us protein-based nanotechnology within 5 years, and an assembler probably by 2010.
Well, the Quantas plane took off and flew over my house pretty much on time - I live across the Manukau, opposite the airport. Unfortunately the passengers missed my Y2K welcoming fireworks show of 180 fireworks going off on my veranda by about 30 seconds. Probably for the best...
So what should be done about it? Round them all up, or try to make everyone's life more pleasant by:
Encouraging communication by any means to widen everyone's circle of friends.
Change the school curricula to promote self-esteem.
Stop making school so damned boring for the smart ones.
Align government policies to give people a chance at having a less dysfunctional family. I'm thinking guidance councellors, support for single parent families, that kind of expensive stuff.
Make a serious attempt at removing bullying from schools rather than just go "hey, kids do that."
Legalise drugs so that a better watch can be kept on the age of the buyer.
Realise that some kids do need more attention than others.
Everyone would benefit from this lot, right?
Not quite, far more convenient if you're a government to grow-your-own-demons. Then you've got something to use as a lever to clamp down on the weak-willed components of society with.
New Zealander's go to the polls today, so they can go and do something about it.
If you weren't thinking of voting, do. Go and vote for some libertarian bunch like the Greens and do the only thing that you can legally do in a democracy to change the government.
There is also a vote on reducing the number of MPs. Don't support the cut! Less MPs means less representation for you. If they're too expensive, cut their damn wages.
That's as maybe, but I used to work for a magazine (and I won't name it, I've worked for a few and they aren't all PC magazines) where I was told not to lay into someone because they were a large advertiser and had recently dropped advertising in a rival magazine because of comments published by that magazine. So I *know* it happens.
There is at least one NZ publication which is so pro-Microsoft it makes me puke. I can only presume something similar goes on there.
I don't buy 'em these days myself; like everyone else I'm fed up with the ads outnumbering the articles 10:1 as I glance through them in the lunchroom.
That's what I can't understand. There are other desktops: Gnome, GNUStep, WindowMaker and so forth. Why make a browser that is so brain-damaged it will only work on one desktop? Isn't there this standard called 'X' we can stick to that will work across all Unix desktops?
I'd love to get rid of Netscape from my desktop, but I'm not about to install KDE to do it.
I control a network of 118 machines, mixed Linux, Solaris, QNX and all flavours of MicroSloth. I run ORL's VNC, which is GPL'd except for the QNX boxes which I use Phindows running under WINE for.
The great beauty of VNC is that you don't even need a graphics card in the PC, which more than pays for the network card that you do need.
This thing is claimed to be a human-alien hybrid, right? So that means that more than 99% of the DNA is going to match anyway even if it is genuine - if that much of the DNA is readable.
Free is free is free. You can't say "I believe in freedom except...", Voltaire sorted that one out some time ago.
Trying to build resentment or otherwise restrict open source software is not what it is all about. You will not progress the freedom of anyone by attempting to impose restrictions on them.
Pop over to http://www.foresight.org and check out Robert Freitas' work on nanomedicine in the "what's new". Having processing power like that in a watch will be childs play. You could have them replacing your red blood cells, and still doing better at oxygen and CO2 transport than the original blood by an order of magnitude. I have artwork on my high-bandwidth homepage of nanotech bloodcells at work.
Nobody owns the moon. Ownership is prohibited by a few treaties. Details of the legal aspects of owning the moon can be found off the Artemis Society homepage, specifically in the Frequently Raised Objections section.
As an aside, TransOrbital Inc. is going to be taking pictures of the moon using a telescope in lunar orbit, so people will be able to have a picture of "their" plot if they choose.
That was announced in July '97 and the guitar was made with what is now an old manufacturing process, limited to 3 layers of silicon.
The latest red-hot technology is 5-layer silicon, which allows the manufacture of far more complex machines - including machines which can errect themselves into structures out of the plane of the manufactured silicon.
HP are now making 2 nanometer wires - much smaller than the 40nm wires used on the nanoguitar - to join up their molecular logic gates with. In about 8 years time the first "molecular chips" will start to appear, and my guess is that the next 5 will see the advent of the first nanotech assembler. (see http://www.foresight.org)
There is a huge resistance to SI units in the US space business, but lessons like this one and the cooperation required for what's left of the International Space Station should help pave the way. Commercial aerospace companies are also more likely to use SI.
What galls me is that Americans refer to imperial units as the "English" system. The English switched to SI units years ago; even my father's pre-war UK schoolbooks are in SI units.
But conversion to SI units took time. I am reminded that some years ago a friend of mine went to buy some hosepipe and asked for a 25 yard reel. "Sorry Sir, we've gone metric". OK, then I'll have a 25 metre roll. "What diameter Sir, 3/4 or 1/2 inch?"
Tank designers know the answer to this one. You put your shielding in two layers: An outer thin layer and an inner more substantial one.
Express crud hits the outside layer, vapourises on impact, and your thicker shielding absorbs or dissapates the fragments of the outer shield and the remains of the crud.
The same pronciple is used to defend against anti-tank projectiles, y'see.
Some of those prints were digitally generated art; you can take it from the artist:)
They've done a lot more than that. The software used to join the members of the project from all over the globe did itself turn into a marketable product called Website Director. There is now a proper Artemis magazine, full of stories and articles about the moon. The Artemis Database has grown to a point where I understand it is now actually linked to by NASA. Plus there's this little company called TransOrbital about which you will hear much more.
Artemis has gone beyond the point where people can glibly say "it can't be done" or "you'll never get the money because everyone thinks like me." We now know it can be done, we've got the know-how, and we're steadily putting it into action.
So what Artemis has done is to show people that it can be done. To inspire people to think outside the little square that is government-funded exploration and realise that more and more, people will be able to decide the direction of their own future.
Mine is in the direction of the stars, and instead of bitching about it liek I used to I'm just making it happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Here we have a prime example of the US trying to impose its legal system on the rest of the world. When some poor sod in scandinavia gets hit by the US over hacking, there's outcry. Whip up enough emotion and it suddenly becomes OK.
:v)
Whatever the merits of the case, US laws only apply inside the US - even if the US has passed a law to say otherwise.
Vik
I'd been wondering (publicly at Launchpad magazine) why the probes didn't return a signal. If the thrusters blew the whole thing to shreds, it wouldn't have time to deploy them and they'd smack down in a tangled pile of the rubbish.
:v)
Funny nobody talked about the probes, eh? From the reports NASA was putting out you'd have thought that they'd forgot to attach them or something. I guess this explains it.
Vik
What I'm wondering is this: Will people like me who live away from the tendrils of AOL, still be able to get hold of the cheap Linux boxen?
:v)
Vik
Do you know the author? I've met the guy a few times. He's been involved with investigating government espionage activities for a long time, and consequently has been raided by the spooks on several occasions. Anyone remember Project Zircon?
:v)
He, like many people, is concerned with what governments are getting away with. It's becoming far too much an 'us' and 'them' situation. 'They' are supposed to be working for 'us', not against us. But somewhere it has gone wrong. Many people can't see it getting better, and it seems to be one of those self-promoting systems that can only get worse.
It's not euro-centric so much as someone on the outside looking in. More non-US-centric as it were.
Vik
Yeah, I have a problem with talking to PDAs. Who is going to take notes in a crowded office or eve the supermarket of a project that is under NDA?
:v)
Would you dictate your personal notes where anyone else can hear them. Let's face it, you don't want the rest of the world to hear what you're doing all the time, right?
Well I for sure don't.
The best way to enter data I've ever had was on a chord keyboard. The device was called an "Agenda" and it's about a decade old. If the memory card wasn't dead I'd be using it still. It was smaller than a Cassiopeia A-10 and I could enter text into it faster that I can type on a QWERTY keyboard, which is saying something.
Vik
We've been doing this here in New Zealand for a couple of years now. I work for a company called ECONZ during daylight, and we've been using Casio DT800's very successfully to capture signatures for New Zealand's CourierPost courier service.
:v)
The signatures are captured on a 160x160 pixel touchscreen, the same resolution but physically smaller than a Palm Pilot. Along with the signature, the client's name, the ID of the courier, the run the courier is on, the barcodes scanned, the time, the delivery point, the ID number of the handheld and a checksum are all captured at the same time. This allows a pretty good audit trail to be established.
It's the latter details that will need to be pinned down. The establishment of the audit trail is going to be a lot harder on internet transactions.
Vik
Vik :v)
These guys know all about free texts.
:v)
http://www.gutenberg.org
Vik
What abunch of Luddites.
:v)
Look guys, we're grown up enough to get over the "Gray Goo" scenarios of killer, runaway nanobots. We have the damn things already, with names like "Ebloa", "HIV, "Hepatitis" and "Termites". The only reason we can't currently beat them is because we don't have control of a suitably advanced technology.
Nanotechnology is THE advanced technology. It is the only technology we would be able to counter a deliberate nanotechnology offensive with - if anyone were able to build a serious nanotech weapon, and that is not as simple as it seems.
The alternative is to wait - either not doing much, or actively banning nanotechnology, it doesn't matter much - until they develop nanotechnology in Switzerland, Brazil, Japan or whatever. Once someone builds a single functional assembler, it will not be hard to distribute copies or cross national boundaries.
Transmeta has already started the process with their "soft" processor. The design concepts and partnership with IBM have inexorably set in motion a series of steps which will bring us protein-based nanotechnology within 5 years, and an assembler probably by 2010.
I've rounded up the details and links on http://olliver.peng uinpowered.com/launchpad/transprocessor.html
Vik
Well, the Quantas plane took off and flew over my house pretty much on time - I live across the Manukau, opposite the airport. Unfortunately the passengers missed my Y2K welcoming fireworks show of 180 fireworks going off on my veranda by about 30 seconds. Probably for the best...
:v)
Vik
Two out of two Symbol SPT1500 Palm devices running PalmOS 3.0 here failed to rollover to 2000.
:v)
The devices remained set at 31st December 1999 but did move to an AM time. They accepted a manual date change with no problems.
The SPT1500 is basically the same as a Palm III but has a Symbol laser barcode scanner built in to the top.
Vik
So what should be done about it? Round them all up, or try to make everyone's life more pleasant by:
:v)
Encouraging communication by any means to widen everyone's circle of friends.
Change the school curricula to promote self-esteem.
Stop making school so damned boring for the smart ones.
Align government policies to give people a chance at having a less dysfunctional family. I'm thinking guidance councellors, support for single parent families, that kind of expensive stuff.
Make a serious attempt at removing bullying from schools rather than just go "hey, kids do that."
Legalise drugs so that a better watch can be kept on the age of the buyer.
Realise that some kids do need more attention than others.
Everyone would benefit from this lot, right?
Not quite, far more convenient if you're a government to grow-your-own-demons. Then you've got something to use as a lever to clamp down on the weak-willed components of society with.
Vik
New Zealander's go to the polls today, so they can go and do something about it.
:v)
If you weren't thinking of voting, do. Go and vote for some libertarian bunch like the Greens and do the only thing that you can legally do in a democracy to change the government.
There is also a vote on reducing the number of MPs. Don't support the cut! Less MPs means less representation for you. If they're too expensive, cut their damn wages.
Vik
That's as maybe, but I used to work for a magazine (and I won't name it, I've worked for a few and they aren't all PC magazines) where I was told not to lay into someone because they were a large advertiser and had recently dropped advertising in a rival magazine because of comments published by that magazine. So I *know* it happens.
:v)
There is at least one NZ publication which is so pro-Microsoft it makes me puke. I can only presume something similar goes on there.
I don't buy 'em these days myself; like everyone else I'm fed up with the ads outnumbering the articles 10:1 as I glance through them in the lunchroom.
Vik
That's what I can't understand. There are other desktops: Gnome, GNUStep, WindowMaker and so forth. Why make a browser that is so brain-damaged it will only work on one desktop? Isn't there this standard called 'X' we can stick to that will work across all Unix desktops?
:v)
I'd love to get rid of Netscape from my desktop, but I'm not about to install KDE to do it.
Vik
I control a network of 118 machines, mixed Linux, Solaris, QNX and all flavours of MicroSloth. I run ORL's VNC, which is GPL'd except for the QNX boxes which I use Phindows running under WINE for.
:v)
The great beauty of VNC is that you don't even need a graphics card in the PC, which more than pays for the network card that you do need.
Vik
This thing is claimed to be a human-alien hybrid, right? So that means that more than 99% of the DNA is going to match anyway even if it is genuine - if that much of the DNA is readable.
:v)
Vik
This ESR guy's prejudice is showing.
:v)
Free is free is free. You can't say "I believe in freedom except...", Voltaire sorted that one out some time ago.
Trying to build resentment or otherwise restrict open source software is not what it is all about. You will not progress the freedom of anyone by attempting to impose restrictions on them.
Vik
Pop over to http://www.foresight.org and check out Robert Freitas' work on nanomedicine in the "what's new". Having processing power like that in a watch will be childs play. You could have them replacing your red blood cells, and still doing better at oxygen and CO2 transport than the original blood by an order of magnitude. I have artwork on my high-bandwidth homepage of nanotech bloodcells at work.
:v)
Vik
Uh, guys, isn't this a novelty item?
:v)
Nobody owns the moon. Ownership is prohibited by a few treaties. Details of the legal aspects of owning the moon can be found off the Artemis Society homepage, specifically in the Frequently Raised Objections section.
As an aside, TransOrbital Inc. is going to be taking pictures of the moon using a telescope in lunar orbit, so people will be able to have a picture of "their" plot if they choose.
Vik
That was announced in July '97 and the guitar was made with what is now an old manufacturing process, limited to 3 layers of silicon.
:v)
The latest red-hot technology is 5-layer silicon, which allows the manufacture of far more complex machines - including machines which can errect themselves into structures out of the plane of the manufactured silicon.
HP are now making 2 nanometer wires - much smaller than the 40nm wires used on the nanoguitar - to join up their molecular logic gates with. In about 8 years time the first "molecular chips" will start to appear, and my guess is that the next 5 will see the advent of the first nanotech assembler. (see http://www.foresight.org)
Vik
There is a huge resistance to SI units in the US space business, but lessons like this one and the cooperation required for what's left of the International Space Station should help pave the way. Commercial aerospace companies are also more likely to use SI.
:v)
What galls me is that Americans refer to imperial units as the "English" system. The English switched to SI units years ago; even my father's pre-war UK schoolbooks are in SI units.
But conversion to SI units took time. I am reminded that some years ago a friend of mine went to buy some hosepipe and asked for a 25 yard reel. "Sorry Sir, we've gone metric". OK, then I'll have a 25 metre roll. "What diameter Sir, 3/4 or 1/2 inch?"
Vik
Tank designers know the answer to this one. You put your shielding in two layers: An outer thin layer and an inner more substantial one.
:v)
Express crud hits the outside layer, vapourises on impact, and your thicker shielding absorbs or dissapates the fragments of the outer shield and the remains of the crud.
The same pronciple is used to defend against anti-tank projectiles, y'see.
Vik
Some of those prints were digitally generated art; you can take it from the artist :)
:v)
They've done a lot more than that. The software used to join the members of the project from all over the globe did itself turn into a marketable product called Website Director. There is now a proper Artemis magazine, full of stories and articles about the moon. The Artemis Database has grown to a point where I understand it is now actually linked to by NASA. Plus there's this little company called TransOrbital about which you will hear much more.
Artemis has gone beyond the point where people can glibly say "it can't be done" or "you'll never get the money because everyone thinks like me." We now know it can be done, we've got the know-how, and we're steadily putting it into action.
So what Artemis has done is to show people that it can be done. To inspire people to think outside the little square that is government-funded exploration and realise that more and more, people will be able to decide the direction of their own future.
Mine is in the direction of the stars, and instead of bitching about it liek I used to I'm just making it happen.
Vik
Think of it as evolution in action :)
:v)
Vik