$399 is the "Give 1 Get 1" price ie. the price of two XOs, one donated, one sent to the purchaser. The fact that the unit price of an XO reached $199 has been endlessly discussed since last spring.
Ok, let's go back to the figures:
162,000 XOs had been sold in the U.S. for $399 in the last two months - generating $35 million
$35M/162K comes out at $216 per pair... Alright. Now, when Negroponte says "generating", does he mean "profit" or "revenue"?
If you do trust them and still want your data encrypted, you're not getting much benefit
If the mailboxes are stored in the encrypted form and Google does not store the content in the plain-text somewhere else (for their "unobtrusive context-sensitive advertisements"), nobody — not even with a government-issued subpoena — can read the mails, until the owner logs in and reads it themselves...
That could be a huge benefit for someone some day...
Yet they do not claim to have the experience on how to best aid the poor. Rather they set up foundations staffed with people experienced in development, health, or whatever area they wish to direct their resources.
And all of these employees of theirs are working there for a living. They may be doing, what they like (I do to), but it is run as a business. Also, very importantly, they spend their own money on it — not the taxpayers'...
Yunus is a worthy role model indeed. He saw a need and fulfilled it.
That's strange dichotomy with Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation — they see needs and try to fulfill them too... Buffet simply gave (billions of) his own money to them, BTW.
Finally, it is a false choice to only develop one self or only help the poor. Why not do both?
Because you can not be good at both. At best you'll be mediocre. At worst (and likely), you'll be damaging to both — growing bitter and personally poor without substantially helping anyone else...
That's the kind of path OLPC is taking.
The path OLPC would take, given a slightest opportunity, would be to get financing through taxes. If Yunus, Gates, and other credible private donors aren't backing the project, neither should you.
So, when a copyright violator gets away (or tries to) with unauthorized reproduction of other people's artwork by claiming, she was investigated by an unlicensed investigator, the entire Slashdot ischeeringforher. And I only picked the posts moderated at 5...
Other times, we are capable of looking at the requirement with a cooler head and recognize it as worrisome. Even if one accepts, that the classic gun-wielding detectives of the Dr. Watson kind should be licensed (and Dr. Watson was not), it should not be necessary for a computer forensics experts.
Licenses in general are a terrible idea, because they are issued (and revoked!) by the Executive branch with very little recourse from the Courts — in fact, this is why the (Executive) government likes them so much. They allow them to twist the businessmen's arms without the troubles of lawsuits. In the city of New York, for example, a driver can not even appeal a driving citation to the real courts — one's only venue is "Traffic Court", where the "judge" is, in fact, a city employee and part of the Executive branch... (That's right — the separation of powers will not help you, if the government of New York City decides to ban you from the "public" roads.)
Making yet another activity require a license is, indeed, a worrisome development.
I do see a problem with the OLPC process apparently not working out
It could not be working out for the same reasons, these guysfailed — they are/were trying to work against a fundamental law of nature.
Steorn tried to violate the laws of Thermodynamics. OLPC is trying to compete for talent with the vibrant economy, that offers enormous rewards to hardworking smart people...
Yes, a project can capture such people's time and attention by appealing to their charitable side. And they will work for non-monetary rewards such as fame and/or pleasure derived from doing a (seemingly, at least) good deed.
But such interest can not be sustained for very long. The novelty wears off, and the internal conflicts cool people's enthusiasm and make them ask questions like: "Do I need this shit?"
The group of wild-eyed and bushy-tailed enthusiasts begins loosing members — including (possibly — beginning with) the brightest ones... And "cadres decide everything" — even more so today, than when the quote was uttered.
Nor is the stated goal of OLPC entirely convincing. Surely, the connectivity and the instant access to the vast amount of information are very appealing and should be very helpful. But wanting to learn, and knowing how to learn are even more important for a child (and an adult) than the actual knowledge of anything in particular. Plenty of kids, who already have computers, use them to exchange pictures/music, and chat with friends — not to learn anything...
At the same time plenty of people, who grew up without a computer (much less Internet), are happy and active users of them now.
If you wish to help the poor, take care of yourself first — and gain the life experience to understand, what kind of help helps, and what kind spoils. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Muhammad Yunus can be your examples...
According to GP-posting, they sold only 50000 boxes. Even if the profit-margin was a whopping $100 on each, that's only $5mln — or barely enough to pay decent salaries/bonuses to top 10 executives for one year. The more likely margin was, of course, in single-digits (10 times less), and the people involved were in it for much more longer than one year...
Could be this continued? Definitely. They just need resources to manage that. [emphasis mine -mi]
Right. A famous excuse for every failing idea.
How it will end, depends not only on OLPC team, but more or less insight in governments around the world.
Excellent. Tax the citizens, milk the donors — a Socialist's dream.
When we studied programming in high school, we used a language called "Ershov" (last name of the textbook's author), which was really Pascal translated to Russian.
I don't think, there was an actual compiler, though — nor did we have (enough) computers. Our little code-snippets were checked by the teacher by hand...
"One laptop per child"? Right...
In the American college, our professor was quite fond of (then brand new) Java. Among the advantages, he listed the ability of using non-ASCII characters. The poor man had to read my programs with variable-names in Ukrainian for the rest of the semester...
Have I really submitted to that when I bought a ticket? Hmm...I don't remember reading anything like that on the website when I bought my ticket.
Check carefully — I'm pretty sure, it is there...
I never signed anything of the like saying I read and understand that I gave up my rights when I bought a ticket to fly somewhere.
You did not give up any rights. If you don't want to be searched, you can say so. But they are unlikely to let you into the boarding area... Such is the "legal" game — entering that area is a privilege, you see, not a right...
Similar to your access to public roads — all of them. If you don't mind the Executive branch's sole power to grant (and revoke!) driving licenses, without which you can not use the roads, that your taxes are paying for, you should not be too upset over the tight controls over access to the boarding areas...
According to this case, such "administrative searches" are fine as long as they are "conducted as part of a scheme that has as its purpose something "other than the gathering of evidence for criminal prosecutions."
there is apparently some unpublished laws supporting what the TSA says, but, since we cannot see them....how do we know what they say?
Uhm, unpublished laws? Not sure, what you mean... Are you referring to TSA's own regulations? Those may, indeed, apply to areas under TSA control. But the worst they can do to you, is escort you is prevent your entering those...
Do you Americans realize that you are heading towards a totalitarian regime?
No, we are not. The described methods have been used by law enforcement professionals for many centuries — there is nothing wrong with them per se.
It would only be a hint of totalitarianism, if the "facial expressions" will be used as a "probable cause" — a good enough reason to search someone on the street. But in the airport everyone is subject to search — you are forced to agree to that, when you buy your ticket — and that is, unfortunately, true in all countries. If they don't search everyone, it is only because they don't have enough time to do that...
The AC posted a trolling flamebait, but a bunch of morons — who have no idea, what totalitarianism really feels like — have moderated it to high heavens...
That strikes me as somewhat disingenuous. The Yen has always been more closely equated with the cent than the dollar
My comment was not meant to suggest, that the dollar is fine, because it has not fallen as much against yen as it did against euro.
All I was saying was that a mere ratio of currencies is meaningless. Both the medium and, more importantly, the median American incomes and, more importantly, wealth remain quite high. Especially among intercontinental travelers...
Although direct comparison with French is difficult — uniform statistics are hard to come by — there is no denying, that an American tourist walking around in Paris will be richer (on average), than a native pedestrian. They are also more likely to have cash on them and be more helpless in the street.
All of this would make it undesirable to carry a device, that would act as the "I'm American" beacon.
I just don't understand what requires them to make the thing readable from 20 feet away? They don't have to be readable via RF at all.
I gather, you've never waited at a major international airport like JFK, when several large planes land short time apart from each other. The passport-check hall turns into a zoo...
They want RFIDs for the same reasons, various warehouse-management systems are trying to use them — it shaves a few seconds off of processing each "unit" (be that a package or a passenger). With thousands of passengers per day, that's several hours of time saved...
You are quite right, that optical scanners work fine — and that's what's currently in use. But the optical scanner can only be used, when the passenger is already at the counter and has given the passport to the officer (and is already waiting — sometimes impatiently). With an RFID system, the look-up of the passenger's data can begin, when they only start walking from the "Please Wait Here" sign to the available officer's booth. By the time they are at the booth, their picture along with other data will already be on the screen...
PUT THE READER 20 FEET DOWN THE LINE. You can put it at a turnstile, where I have to scan my picture page before passing through.
Khmm, I have not seen any turnstiles at JFK... And the readers, that I saw at the booths are, likely, not intended (or, in government speak, "not certified") for use by personnel without special training (that's us, passengers)...
It's kind of unprecedented, but this seems to be the exact opposite of the security theater we've seen in recent years.
There is a certain "piss-off threshold", that a government would not want to cross — any government. In a democracy, the threshold is even lower...
RDS-TMC provides broadcasts on traffic conditions, accidents, and detours for the driver. It's main weakness: It doesn't authenticate where the traffic comes from, the researchers say. That leaves the door wide open for a bad guy to reroute drivers to a detour, or to overwhelm it with a DDOS, killing the navigation system as well as its climate-control system and stereo. [...] There's not much you can do until it's too late and your AC and stereo are out, and you're sitting on a hot and dusty, deserted road nowhere near Starbucks.
Uhm, bullshit. The worst this attack can do is to either
shut the electronics down completely — in which case you'll know, something is wrong long before the last Starbucks is out of sight
fool your GPS into believing, there is some sort of interference (accident, jam) ahead, which will simply cause the device to pick an alternate (and sub-optimal) route. You will not be lost, you'll just arrive later.
In neither case does Kelly's mother need to be concerned with "how a hacker could redirect her brand-new car navigation system to a deserted dead end street far from her intended destination." For that one needs to be able to pretend to be a group of satellites. This possibility the article does not cover — either due to the (mentioned) lack of imagination (on behalf of the author itself), or because it is not really possible (because Pentagon's designers of the system thought about it first, maybe).
[...] there is in fact no handshaking or encryption, and that the device will happily spill its guts to anything that asks.
There should not be much more "guts" to spill, than the passport number itself. This will not give an attacker much information at all — other than: "There exists a passport with this number," but in those few seconds, that it takes a person to walk up to the counter, their giant picture will already be on the officer's screen for verification...
It would still be a hole, but a much smaller one than it may seem at the first suspicious glance. It will, hopefully, be further narrowed by making these passports respond to RFID-readers only when they are opened and, maybe, only when directed towards the reader — simply by making the passport's cover with some RF-blocking material.
All of these measures will make your hypothetical eavesdropper rather impractical even without encryption.
People have been using EZ-Pass and similar (oppressive) RFID-readers for many years now to go through highway robbery, ehm, tools... Yet there are no stories of EZ-Pass numbers picked-up by hidden crooks and plugged into fake EZ-Pass devices for resale... Maybe, someone is doing it, but it sounds more difficult, than crossing into the US through the Southern border.
If you are looking to kidnap or kill an American because your God has given His OK to do so (the mullah told you so), well then chances are very high that you've found one.
Americans aren't difficult to pick out even when they aren't carrying RFID-devices. And the Americans, who go through the trouble of trying to disguise themselves, will wrap their passports in foil, or something.
Even more likely, the actual RFIDs will not be broadcasting anything, until the passport is opened. That's very easy to implement (not that the Government is not likely to screw it up anyway, but one is hopeful)...
If you expressed the "wrong" opinion to the wrong person, you may find your career ended, you housing yanked, or your child's chances of college vanish.
So basically, you want the freedom to discriminate against people for things you happen to care for, and ban discrimination on any other basis.
Of course I do want just that — the world perfected to my taste — and so do you, don't deny it. But I can defend my justification for the ban on racial discrimination — race is not something, one can change. Political opinions is not even formed until well into teens or even early twenties. Religion can be changed, but it is, typically, acquired much earlier in life and is based much more heavily on the parents' influence and customs, so it is a "gray area".
I don't feel very strongly about it, however, and would much rather see the already existing ban on racial and other discriminations be abolished, than new bans on some new discrimination (nail polish color?) be introduced.
And people wonder why voting percentages go down, when having a wrong political opinion risks getting punished by people like you
Ha-ha! People have "like me" always existed (which is why one's vote has been secret for centuries), but the voting percentages are only going down now... Khmm...
A society where I can be fired for expressing a political opinion is not a society where I would feel free to express ANY opinion.
You missed the point entirely... Let me rephrase it in your own terms:
A society, where I can not boycott a political opinion, is not a society where I want to live
If you expressed the "wrong" opinion to the wrong person, you may find your career ended, you housing yanked, or your child's chances of college vanish.
You forgot examples...
The fact that your corporations are "free" to subject me to this treatment
It is not just "my" corporations, darn it... The law applies/would apply to everyone, who has ever paid anybody. Get this through your thick bones — we are all employers to some degree. If you want to be able to legally hesitate in hiring a NAMBLA-activist (and I am not particularly against the organization, but most people are) as your babysitter, you must also allow those evil "corporations" to avoid people with opinions, they find disagreeable.
Those corporations may be sitting in their corporate buildings, they may be acting corporationy, and — heavens — they may even be making money. But they are still owned by real people, whose right to not associate with someone, they dislike, is no less sacred than your own.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, let's go back to the figures:
$35M/162K comes out at $216 per pair... Alright. Now, when Negroponte says "generating", does he mean "profit" or "revenue"?
If the mailboxes are stored in the encrypted form and Google does not store the content in the plain-text somewhere else (for their "unobtrusive context-sensitive advertisements"), nobody — not even with a government-issued subpoena — can read the mails, until the owner logs in and reads it themselves...
That could be a huge benefit for someone some day...
That's a "bit" more, than OLPC's target price of $100 per unit, is not it?..
And all of these employees of theirs are working there for a living. They may be doing, what they like (I do to), but it is run as a business. Also, very importantly, they spend their own money on it — not the taxpayers'...
That's strange dichotomy with Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation — they see needs and try to fulfill them too... Buffet simply gave (billions of) his own money to them, BTW.
Because you can not be good at both. At best you'll be mediocre. At worst (and likely), you'll be damaging to both — growing bitter and personally poor without substantially helping anyone else...
The path OLPC would take, given a slightest opportunity, would be to get financing through taxes. If Yunus, Gates, and other credible private donors aren't backing the project, neither should you.
So, when a copyright violator gets away (or tries to) with unauthorized reproduction of other people's artwork by claiming, she was investigated by an unlicensed investigator, the entire Slashdot is cheering for her. And I only picked the posts moderated at 5...
Other times, we are capable of looking at the requirement with a cooler head and recognize it as worrisome. Even if one accepts, that the classic gun-wielding detectives of the Dr. Watson kind should be licensed (and Dr. Watson was not), it should not be necessary for a computer forensics experts.
Licenses in general are a terrible idea, because they are issued (and revoked!) by the Executive branch with very little recourse from the Courts — in fact, this is why the (Executive) government likes them so much. They allow them to twist the businessmen's arms without the troubles of lawsuits. In the city of New York, for example, a driver can not even appeal a driving citation to the real courts — one's only venue is "Traffic Court", where the "judge" is, in fact, a city employee and part of the Executive branch... (That's right — the separation of powers will not help you, if the government of New York City decides to ban you from the "public" roads.)
Making yet another activity require a license is, indeed, a worrisome development.
And the accurate profit margin was? 19 cents?
It could not be working out for the same reasons, these guys failed — they are/were trying to work against a fundamental law of nature.
Steorn tried to violate the laws of Thermodynamics. OLPC is trying to compete for talent with the vibrant economy, that offers enormous rewards to hardworking smart people...
Yes, a project can capture such people's time and attention by appealing to their charitable side. And they will work for non-monetary rewards such as fame and/or pleasure derived from doing a (seemingly, at least) good deed.
But such interest can not be sustained for very long. The novelty wears off, and the internal conflicts cool people's enthusiasm and make them ask questions like: "Do I need this shit?"
The group of wild-eyed and bushy-tailed enthusiasts begins loosing members — including (possibly — beginning with) the brightest ones... And "cadres decide everything" — even more so today, than when the quote was uttered.
Nor is the stated goal of OLPC entirely convincing. Surely, the connectivity and the instant access to the vast amount of information are very appealing and should be very helpful. But wanting to learn, and knowing how to learn are even more important for a child (and an adult) than the actual knowledge of anything in particular. Plenty of kids, who already have computers, use them to exchange pictures/music, and chat with friends — not to learn anything...
At the same time plenty of people, who grew up without a computer (much less Internet), are happy and active users of them now.
If you wish to help the poor, take care of yourself first — and gain the life experience to understand, what kind of help helps, and what kind spoils. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Muhammad Yunus can be your examples...
According to GP-posting, they sold only 50000 boxes. Even if the profit-margin was a whopping $100 on each, that's only $5mln — or barely enough to pay decent salaries/bonuses to top 10 executives for one year. The more likely margin was, of course, in single-digits (10 times less), and the people involved were in it for much more longer than one year...
Right. A famous excuse for every failing idea.
Excellent. Tax the citizens, milk the donors — a Socialist's dream.
When we studied programming in high school, we used a language called "Ershov" (last name of the textbook's author), which was really Pascal translated to Russian.
I don't think, there was an actual compiler, though — nor did we have (enough) computers. Our little code-snippets were checked by the teacher by hand...
"One laptop per child"? Right...
In the American college, our professor was quite fond of (then brand new) Java. Among the advantages, he listed the ability of using non-ASCII characters. The poor man had to read my programs with variable-names in Ukrainian for the rest of the semester...
Check carefully — I'm pretty sure, it is there...
You did not give up any rights. If you don't want to be searched, you can say so. But they are unlikely to let you into the boarding area... Such is the "legal" game — entering that area is a privilege, you see, not a right...
Similar to your access to public roads — all of them. If you don't mind the Executive branch's sole power to grant (and revoke!) driving licenses, without which you can not use the roads, that your taxes are paying for, you should not be too upset over the tight controls over access to the boarding areas...
According to this case, such "administrative searches" are fine as long as they are "conducted as part of a scheme that has as its purpose something "other than the gathering of evidence for criminal prosecutions."
Uhm, unpublished laws? Not sure, what you mean... Are you referring to TSA's own regulations? Those may, indeed, apply to areas under TSA control. But the worst they can do to you, is escort you is prevent your entering those...
No, you can only spoof a closure, not openness.
No, we are not. The described methods have been used by law enforcement professionals for many centuries — there is nothing wrong with them per se.
It would only be a hint of totalitarianism, if the "facial expressions" will be used as a "probable cause" — a good enough reason to search someone on the street. But in the airport everyone is subject to search — you are forced to agree to that, when you buy your ticket — and that is, unfortunately, true in all countries. If they don't search everyone, it is only because they don't have enough time to do that...
The AC posted a trolling flamebait, but a bunch of morons — who have no idea, what totalitarianism really feels like — have moderated it to high heavens...
Excellent. Now explain, how the hack can cause the system do drive you to a deserted dead end.
My comment was not meant to suggest, that the dollar is fine, because it has not fallen as much against yen as it did against euro.
All I was saying was that a mere ratio of currencies is meaningless. Both the medium and, more importantly, the median American incomes and, more importantly, wealth remain quite high. Especially among intercontinental travelers...
Although direct comparison with French is difficult — uniform statistics are hard to come by — there is no denying, that an American tourist walking around in Paris will be richer (on average), than a native pedestrian. They are also more likely to have cash on them and be more helpless in the street.
All of this would make it undesirable to carry a device, that would act as the "I'm American" beacon.
And living.
I gather, you've never waited at a major international airport like JFK, when several large planes land short time apart from each other. The passport-check hall turns into a zoo...
They want RFIDs for the same reasons, various warehouse-management systems are trying to use them — it shaves a few seconds off of processing each "unit" (be that a package or a passenger). With thousands of passengers per day, that's several hours of time saved...
You are quite right, that optical scanners work fine — and that's what's currently in use. But the optical scanner can only be used, when the passenger is already at the counter and has given the passport to the officer (and is already waiting — sometimes impatiently). With an RFID system, the look-up of the passenger's data can begin, when they only start walking from the "Please Wait Here" sign to the available officer's booth. By the time they are at the booth, their picture along with other data will already be on the screen...
Khmm, I have not seen any turnstiles at JFK... And the readers, that I saw at the booths are, likely, not intended (or, in government speak, "not certified") for use by personnel without special training (that's us, passengers)...
There is a certain "piss-off threshold", that a government would not want to cross — any government. In a democracy, the threshold is even lower...
Uhm, bullshit. The worst this attack can do is to either
In neither case does Kelly's mother need to be concerned with "how a hacker could redirect her brand-new car navigation system to a deserted dead end street far from her intended destination." For that one needs to be able to pretend to be a group of satellites. This possibility the article does not cover — either due to the (mentioned) lack of imagination (on behalf of the author itself), or because it is not really possible (because Pentagon's designers of the system thought about it first, maybe).
There should not be much more "guts" to spill, than the passport number itself. This will not give an attacker much information at all — other than: "There exists a passport with this number," but in those few seconds, that it takes a person to walk up to the counter, their giant picture will already be on the officer's screen for verification...
It would still be a hole, but a much smaller one than it may seem at the first suspicious glance. It will, hopefully, be further narrowed by making these passports respond to RFID-readers only when they are opened and, maybe, only when directed towards the reader — simply by making the passport's cover with some RF-blocking material.
All of these measures will make your hypothetical eavesdropper rather impractical even without encryption.
People have been using EZ-Pass and similar (oppressive) RFID-readers for many years now to go through highway robbery, ehm, tools... Yet there are no stories of EZ-Pass numbers picked-up by hidden crooks and plugged into fake EZ-Pass devices for resale... Maybe, someone is doing it, but it sounds more difficult, than crossing into the US through the Southern border.
Americans aren't difficult to pick out even when they aren't carrying RFID-devices. And the Americans, who go through the trouble of trying to disguise themselves, will wrap their passports in foil, or something.
Even more likely, the actual RFIDs will not be broadcasting anything, until the passport is opened. That's very easy to implement (not that the Government is not likely to screw it up anyway, but one is hopeful)...
100+ Yen to the Dollar, yet the Japanese aren't considered particularly poor...
The ones, who are walking around in Paris, are still quite rich — by the standards of a lowlife robber, anyway.
Slashdot editors are be the worst ever...
Well, obviously there is a painful need for regulation to defend people like him from their saying anything affecting their job prospects.
Because, after all:
Sure — as long as the license of "it" allows for such a method, or if the method falls under "fair use", or some other license-overwriting principle.
Of course I do want just that — the world perfected to my taste — and so do you, don't deny it. But I can defend my justification for the ban on racial discrimination — race is not something, one can change. Political opinions is not even formed until well into teens or even early twenties. Religion can be changed, but it is, typically, acquired much earlier in life and is based much more heavily on the parents' influence and customs, so it is a "gray area".
I don't feel very strongly about it, however, and would much rather see the already existing ban on racial and other discriminations be abolished, than new bans on some new discrimination (nail polish color?) be introduced.
Ha-ha! People have "like me" always existed (which is why one's vote has been secret for centuries), but the voting percentages are only going down now... Khmm...
You missed the point entirely... Let me rephrase it in your own terms:
You forgot examples...
It is not just "my" corporations, darn it... The law applies/would apply to everyone, who has ever paid anybody. Get this through your thick bones — we are all employers to some degree. If you want to be able to legally hesitate in hiring a NAMBLA-activist (and I am not particularly against the organization, but most people are) as your babysitter, you must also allow those evil "corporations" to avoid people with opinions, they find disagreeable.
Those corporations may be sitting in their corporate buildings, they may be acting corporationy, and — heavens — they may even be making money. But they are still owned by real people, whose right to not associate with someone, they dislike, is no less sacred than your own.