Is all this mess really about protecting a (relatively, when compared to say, the industry being required to bend over backward) small industry's profits, or is it more about creating and/or protecting an end-to-end encrypted, secure channel from the powers-that-be to our ears and eyeballs? What happens if television, the granddaddy of all mass media, is absorbed into the relatively populist and anarchist internet? Imagine the implications of a service like (the now defunct) ThirdVoice, but for the evening news instead of websites. Who would be scared by such a prospect? Makes one go "hmmm".
I assume that the effective distance for communication between these things is relatively short. Given the rather large body of water they'll be released into, wouldn't a prohibitively large number of these things be required?
The question of whether we can accomplish our goals in this conflict with a high-tech, sanitary, "surgical strike" like we did in the Gulf War is based on the false premise that we've ever acheived anything with this type of technology. In fact, the great majority of air sorties flown in the Gulf were thoroughly conventional, although we were never shown much of this type of action on CNN.
GPS even with power OFF?
on
GPS Meets PCS
·
· Score: 2
Now THIS is scary. I can see a new market for lead cellphone cases. Of course, you couldn't receive calls, but you can't with it off, either. At least off means off, dammit.
One problem I can see immediately with these "blockwise" checksums is that the spammers could easily insert not only text with random content but also random length. Do any of these "pretty close" methods handle offsets appropriately as well?
I used to own one, and that's true. I don't know how fast it could have gone without the governor, but I can tell you that hitting 118 was not a problem whatsoever.
I think the assumption here is that the RIAA stands to gain when the public is exposed to more/different artists. I don't believe that this is the case. The RIAA and the several companies that own all the radio stations out there have a pretty tight control over what music the average person is going to hear. Is it any coincidince that the top 40 stations roll over their playlist every 2 weeks? The RIAA doesn't necessarily want everyone to realize that they like songs and artists that were popular a few years back and now are mostly available in used CD stores. I think Napster threatens the record labels more in this area than in revenue, as the financial numbers have been showing for a while.
A close relative of the CRA's is an agency called ChexSystems. ChexSystems is supposed to keep information on people who have defrauded banks, but often all it takes to get on their list is one bounced check, or forgetting to move an automatic debit to your new account after closing the old one. A ChexSystems record is the KISS OF DEATH financially speaking.
I was reported to them for a car payment which was auto-debitted from my checking account. After cancelling my old account, I informed my bank that I wanted the payments to come from the new checking account. They didn't do it for three months (during which time I was calling them regularly to try to get the auto-debit moved), and the ensuing confusion was cause enough for this bank to report me to ChexSystems. Not that I knew anything about it at the time. It was only a year later, when I moved to another city and attempted to start a checking account there, that I found out what had happened. After looking all around town for a bank that did not use ChexSystems (and in a town like Dallas, there are a lot of banks to look at), I finally concluded that the only way for me to get a checking account would be to get rid of the ChexSystems record.
After some research, I determined that a ChexSystems entry stays on file for FIVE YEARS, and that it is almost impossible to either get the record removed before then (whether or not the information is valid) or to get an account with any institution despite the entry. After a week or so of trying to contact ChexSystems, it became obvious that if I was going to get anything done, it would be through the bank, not through them. ChexSystems said that the only way they would update their information would be at the request of the bank who reported me. Fine. I called the bank and it wasn't hard to get them to fax documentation to ChexSystems saying that all amounts were paid in full and that no outstanding debt existed. Thinking I had the problem taken care of, I attempted again to open a checking account.
No luck. It turns out that even if all amounts are paid, the mere presence of a ChexSystems record of the event is enough to be denied for any sort of account. I had to climb the bank's chain of command all the way to the director for the southwest region before getting any action. After spending a half hour of her (no doubt very expensive) time explaining what had happened to me, I was able to convince her to request that ChexSystems remove the record entirely. She told me that this essentially is never done, and that it was an enormous exception to their policies. I don't doubt it.
I consider myself very lucky. That was a year ago. The incident in question was a year before that. If I had not been able to convince this woman to purge my record, It would still be three years from now before I could have any hope of getting a basic checking account. During the time while I was sorting this stuff out, I was paying my apartment rent with money orders, cashing my paychecks at the local branch of the bank my company uses, and paying cash for everything I bought. No check card. No credit cards at that time. Can you imagine living that way for five years, because of either a screwup that wasn't your fault, or for one small mistake? It's appalling.
Here's an article that gives a fairly objective overview of the situation. And here's a site that takes a move combative stance.
That's an interesting point, but the analogy is flawed IMO because if you don't choose to be either under God or under Satan, there's a very good chance that you don't believe in the existence of either. If I believed that they both were real entities with real influence in my life, you can bet I'd give much more thought to the issue. Now you very well may be correct that neither the government nor the corps are really on my side, but I tend to sympathize with Carr's view that government is at least inclined to be more on my side than the corporations are. It's certainly not a rational to believe that I can just go off and "take care of myself", oblivious and immune to the designs of either entity.
I'm drooling over the Visor Phone, but I have two concerns (the same ones everyone else has I'm sure)
Sometimes I want to leave the Visor at home but still have my cell phone with me
There are some situations where I wouldn't be caught dead talking into one.
The simple solution is to let me have a regular cell phone, in addition to the Visor Phone, on the same plan. Hopefully somebody will provide this option.
I was positively drooling over the upcoming Handspring Prism, which supports 16-bit color (never mind there aren't enough pixels to display them simultaneously). However, when I saw it in person, I was disappointed, as it doesn't look any better than the Palm IIIc. White areas look awful; you can see the gaps in between the pixels as a black grid all over the display. It's really ugly. They need to solve this problem before I'll get very excited about color on my handheld.
I'd rather wait a few days to get the merchandise and save myself the trip down to whatever store sells it. Even though I live in a very large city (i.e. I can get almost everything locally), I buy a lot of stuff online for the convenience factor. Order it, forget about it, and have a nice surprise in the mail after a week or so. This service fits right in with my purchasing habits. Too bad I don't listen to music on the radio...
Web Services are a different beast entirely from web applications. The typical example is that FedEx will expose an interface for package tracking, allowing John E. Retailer's website to wrap the service so it's seamless to the customer, rather than asking them to copy-paste their tracking number over to fedex.com.
Rather than being used for highly human-interactive applications such as word processing, this will be used for automated tasks, mainly involved with query and provision of information. Getting the status of a shipment, order, or service is one example, another would be decisions such as loan risk evaluation where the algorithms used are proprietary, and/or the data must remain centralized. These proprietary networks for various industries, like SABER and TicketMaster, already do this, but in a limited and very non-standardized way. XML and SOAP are going to open the door for any organization to create this type of service much more easily.
Keep the "virgin" configuration available to the machine at all times. Then each game applies the needed patches before running itself. These patches are either distributed with the game or standardized ones which are required to be available on the HD. In any case, each game creates its own necessary environment from a known starting point. Then you don't have to jack with backward compatibility or worry about a variable target configuration.
I've been using my Logitech Cordless Wheel Mouse 8 hours a day (at work) for about three months now on one pair of AAA's. YMMV, but 10 hours is ridiculous. How old is that thing anyway?
I know you said keyboard and mine is a mouse, but I can't imagine that making much difference if any.
I'd like to offer $999,999 for your vote this year. How 'bout it? If you can wait till next year I might be able to find some change in my couch to get up to your $1M limit.
Seriously though, do you suffer from the illusion that your vote, cast as you normally would, is about equal in efficacy to $1M donated to groups working for the changes you want to see? If you agree with me that the $1M would be far more efficacious, then I have two questions for you:
Where is the "extra value" in your vote that justifies the $1M price?
What monetary amount, donated appropriately, would you estimate is about equal in efficacy to your one vote?
The US firms should get over their fear of standards bodies and try putting long term interoperability and ease of use over short term earnings reports and shareholder satisfaction.
The problem is that US firms cannot put anything before profit and shareholder satisfaction. It's because of they way they're structured. Their only purpose is to turn a profit for their shareholders, and if they do not, then their direcors will be replaced in favor of a group that will. Of course, customer satisfaction plays a role in the successful corporation, but only to the extent that it maximizes profit.
Slashdot Mirror
Is all this mess really about protecting a (relatively, when compared to say, the industry being required to bend over backward) small industry's profits, or is it more about creating and/or protecting an end-to-end encrypted, secure channel from the powers-that-be to our ears and eyeballs? What happens if television, the granddaddy of all mass media, is absorbed into the relatively populist and anarchist internet? Imagine the implications of a service like (the now defunct) ThirdVoice, but for the evening news instead of websites. Who would be scared by such a prospect? Makes one go "hmmm".
I assume that the effective distance for communication between these things is relatively short. Given the rather large body of water they'll be released into, wouldn't a prohibitively large number of these things be required?
Or you could ask the user for his area code / prefix. Which you probably did before you connected to the net anyway.
The question of whether we can accomplish our goals in this conflict with a high-tech, sanitary, "surgical strike" like we did in the Gulf War is based on the false premise that we've ever acheived anything with this type of technology. In fact, the great majority of air sorties flown in the Gulf were thoroughly conventional, although we were never shown much of this type of action on CNN.
The Myth of Surgical Bombing in the Gulf War [deoxy.org]
Now THIS is scary. I can see a new market for lead cellphone cases.
Of course, you couldn't receive calls, but you can't with it off, either.
At least off means off, dammit.
One problem I can see immediately with these "blockwise" checksums is that the spammers could easily insert not only text with random content but also random length. Do any of these "pretty close" methods handle offsets appropriately as well?
So why couldn't they use the broadband and the conventional siren?
Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television
Is code free speech though? (DeCSS)
I used to own one, and that's true. I don't know how fast it could have gone without the governor, but I can tell you that hitting 118 was not a problem whatsoever.
How can the people choose NOT TO PURCHASE THIS STANDARD, when there are no other choices in the market?
Delay upgrading for as long as possible. Getting your money late is not quite as bad as not getting it at all, but still sucks.
I think the assumption here is that the RIAA stands to gain when the public is exposed to more/different artists. I don't believe that this is the case. The RIAA and the several companies that own all the radio stations out there have a pretty tight control over what music the average person is going to hear. Is it any coincidince that the top 40 stations roll over their playlist every 2 weeks? The RIAA doesn't necessarily want everyone to realize that they like songs and artists that were popular a few years back and now are mostly available in used CD stores. I think Napster threatens the record labels more in this area than in revenue, as the financial numbers have been showing for a while.
Dear Cryptography User:
It has come to our attention that your use of the AES system infringes on our intellectual property rights as set forth in US patent 293869113.
All your AES are belong to us.
A close relative of the CRA's is an agency called ChexSystems. ChexSystems is supposed to keep information on people who have defrauded banks, but often all it takes to get on their list is one bounced check, or forgetting to move an automatic debit to your new account after closing the old one. A ChexSystems record is the KISS OF DEATH financially speaking.
I was reported to them for a car payment which was auto-debitted from my checking account. After cancelling my old account, I informed my bank that I wanted the payments to come from the new checking account. They didn't do it for three months (during which time I was calling them regularly to try to get the auto-debit moved), and the ensuing confusion was cause enough for this bank to report me to ChexSystems. Not that I knew anything about it at the time. It was only a year later, when I moved to another city and attempted to start a checking account there, that I found out what had happened. After looking all around town for a bank that did not use ChexSystems (and in a town like Dallas, there are a lot of banks to look at), I finally concluded that the only way for me to get a checking account would be to get rid of the ChexSystems record.
After some research, I determined that a ChexSystems entry stays on file for FIVE YEARS, and that it is almost impossible to either get the record removed before then (whether or not the information is valid) or to get an account with any institution despite the entry. After a week or so of trying to contact ChexSystems, it became obvious that if I was going to get anything done, it would be through the bank, not through them. ChexSystems said that the only way they would update their information would be at the request of the bank who reported me. Fine. I called the bank and it wasn't hard to get them to fax documentation to ChexSystems saying that all amounts were paid in full and that no outstanding debt existed. Thinking I had the problem taken care of, I attempted again to open a checking account.
No luck. It turns out that even if all amounts are paid, the mere presence of a ChexSystems record of the event is enough to be denied for any sort of account. I had to climb the bank's chain of command all the way to the director for the southwest region before getting any action. After spending a half hour of her (no doubt very expensive) time explaining what had happened to me, I was able to convince her to request that ChexSystems remove the record entirely. She told me that this essentially is never done, and that it was an enormous exception to their policies. I don't doubt it.
I consider myself very lucky. That was a year ago. The incident in question was a year before that. If I had not been able to convince this woman to purge my record, It would still be three years from now before I could have any hope of getting a basic checking account. During the time while I was sorting this stuff out, I was paying my apartment rent with money orders, cashing my paychecks at the local branch of the bank my company uses, and paying cash for everything I bought. No check card. No credit cards at that time. Can you imagine living that way for five years, because of either a screwup that wasn't your fault, or for one small mistake? It's appalling.
Here's an article that gives a fairly objective overview of the situation. And here's a site that takes a move combative stance.
That's an interesting point, but the analogy is flawed IMO because if you don't choose to be either under God or under Satan, there's a very good chance that you don't believe in the existence of either. If I believed that they both were real entities with real influence in my life, you can bet I'd give much more thought to the issue. Now you very well may be correct that neither the government nor the corps are really on my side, but I tend to sympathize with Carr's view that government is at least inclined to be more on my side than the corporations are. It's certainly not a rational to believe that I can just go off and "take care of myself", oblivious and immune to the designs of either entity.
I'm drooling over the Visor Phone, but I have two concerns (the same ones everyone else has I'm sure)
Sometimes I want to leave the Visor at home but still have my cell phone with me
There are some situations where I wouldn't be caught dead talking into one.
The simple solution is to let me have a regular cell phone, in addition to the Visor Phone, on the same plan. Hopefully somebody will provide this option.
I was positively drooling over the upcoming Handspring Prism, which supports 16-bit color (never mind there aren't enough pixels to display them simultaneously). However, when I saw it in person, I was disappointed, as it doesn't look any better than the Palm IIIc. White areas look awful; you can see the gaps in between the pixels as a black grid all over the display. It's really ugly. They need to solve this problem before I'll get very excited about color on my handheld.
The US adopts incompatible standards for the same reason computer manufacturers do: to protect our markets.
I'd rather wait a few days to get the merchandise and save myself the trip down to whatever store sells it. Even though I live in a very large city (i.e. I can get almost everything locally), I buy a lot of stuff online for the convenience factor. Order it, forget about it, and have a nice surprise in the mail after a week or so. This service fits right in with my purchasing habits. Too bad I don't listen to music on the radio...
Web Services are a different beast entirely from web applications. The typical example is that FedEx will expose an interface for package tracking, allowing John E. Retailer's website to wrap the service so it's seamless to the customer, rather than asking them to copy-paste their tracking number over to fedex.com.
Rather than being used for highly human-interactive applications such as word processing, this will be used for automated tasks, mainly involved with query and provision of information. Getting the status of a shipment, order, or service is one example, another would be decisions such as loan risk evaluation where the algorithms used are proprietary, and/or the data must remain centralized. These proprietary networks for various industries, like SABER and TicketMaster, already do this, but in a limited and very non-standardized way. XML and SOAP are going to open the door for any organization to create this type of service much more easily.
Keep the "virgin" configuration available to the machine at all times. Then each game applies the needed patches before running itself. These patches are either distributed with the game or standardized ones which are required to be available on the HD. In any case, each game creates its own necessary environment from a known starting point. Then you don't have to jack with backward compatibility or worry about a variable target configuration.
I've been using my Logitech Cordless Wheel Mouse 8 hours a day (at work) for about three months now on one pair of AAA's. YMMV, but 10 hours is ridiculous. How old is that thing anyway?
I know you said keyboard and mine is a mouse, but I can't imagine that making much difference if any.
I'd like to offer $999,999 for your vote this year. How 'bout it? If you can wait till next year I might be able to find some change in my couch to get up to your $1M limit.
Seriously though, do you suffer from the illusion that your vote, cast as you normally would, is about equal in efficacy to $1M donated to groups working for the changes you want to see? If you agree with me that the $1M would be far more efficacious, then I have two questions for you:
Where is the "extra value" in your vote that justifies the $1M price?
What monetary amount, donated appropriately, would you estimate is about equal in efficacy to your one vote?
The US firms should get over their fear of standards bodies and try putting long term interoperability and ease of use over short term earnings reports and shareholder satisfaction.
The problem is that US firms cannot put anything before profit and shareholder satisfaction. It's because of they way they're structured. Their only purpose is to turn a profit for their shareholders, and if they do not, then their direcors will be replaced in favor of a group that will. Of course, customer satisfaction plays a role in the successful corporation, but only to the extent that it maximizes profit.
I knew there must be some reason. Thanks for the education.