Re:That example seemed deliberate
on
Linux Unwired
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· Score: 1
No, MS sucks because they tried to deliver a easy to use wireless client, but it has a major bug that renders it unusable in many circumstances.
Ignoring bugs in your products/your customers usually brings criticism. Had MS acknowledged the bug & explained a (working) way to avoid it or delivered a patch that fixes the problem they would not be criticized.
Given that MS has decided to exit the wireless access market they wont be leveraging the desktop for wireless products anyway.
The typical ways of exchanging files, using e-mail, discs, or a shared file server, are impractical or clumsy in many cases.
No, typical interfaces used to exchange information are impractical or clumsy. Well designed interfaces are not. Back before my Palm died I used to use beam-it to exchange files with other palm owners using the IR link. While the user interface was far from optimal, it was far from being impractical or clumsy.
Setting up a "pen manager server" just so I can exchange files is impractical and clumsy.
Best quote in the BBM article: Dr Russell Beale, of the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said it was "toys for the boys".
Sorry, you're mistaken. Nowhere in the article did it state that the system would be off limits to non-governmental users. This is a large part of my complaint. Besides, as others have already stated, the encryption WILL be broken. Unless there are CLEAR GUIDELINES & LIMITS on it's use & penalties for it's abuse, I (& many others) will deactivate the RFIDs before ever leaving the curb.
So? Kindly point out the link between having an account on a Honeywell Multics machine in 1984 & the date at which I discovered slashdot and created my account here.
Sheesh, RIT, must really have gone downhill since I grew up in Rochester...
It may be an infraction to have an unreadable licence plate, but that is only because it is trivial for the driver to make sure that the plate is readable.
It NEEDS a battery. Batteries WILL die. The Govt cannot make us verify that the RFID is working without opening it enough so that ANYONE can follow ANYONE ELSE around. See elsewhere why I think that this is a BAD IDEA!
If I need anonymity, I need only drop by any of the free wireless points, change my MAC & voila, I have become untracable except for people with the ressources of MI5 or similar.
At present it is not possible/economical to deploy a network of watchers to follow everyone around. RFID as proposed, without safeguards, nor penalties, will change this & make it possible for Orwell's worst nightmares to become possible.
Present me with clear limits on the system and penalties for it's abuse & I'll change my mind. Until then I see as many possibilities for abuse as SMTP.
RFID will drastically ease the ability of anyone to perform surveillance of everyones movements. The article reports that they can be read from distances of up to a hundred meters distance.
Let me put it this way: My license plate number is public knowledge. You can come take a look at it without me complaining. For around 2 decades my Email address was also public knowledge (my first Email@ was on a Multics system connected to the Arpanet). With the abuse of Email through SPAM this is no longer possible. The proposed RFID system is apparently almost as easy to abuse as is SMTP. The widespread deployment of RFID, the extremely low barrier apparent and the absence of any penalty for the abuse of this system will make it possible for any organization with enough motivation & funding to spy out who goes where & when. The potential for abuse is boundless.
I can see how you may have difficulties comprehending my position. As a marxist you may place the purported greater good before that of the individual. As one who believes instead that society is only protected when individuals rights are protected, I do not.
Unless there are clear safeguards against the abuse of the system, I'll zap it.
I do NOT want to have my whereabouts monitored by anyone who has a reciever. No information whatsoever is given in the article on any safeguards that they plan on placing in the system to protect against abuse of this system. If the govt tries to impose this upon us I will unplug the battery/run 220V through the plates to decommission the RFID emitter.
The USA sells very few ships to the rest of the world compared to Europe. This is partially because the US only sells off the ships that it is downsizing out of the navy & also because the ships are much larger & need more men to man than anyone else can handle. Even when the USA is offering the ships essentially free, it makes no sense for Australia to pick up a used destroyer if would take too big a chunk of their manpower to staff it.
Europe sells smaller vessels (mostly frigates) that are better adapted to their needs.
However, the resin used to bind the fibers is much easier to damage & burns easily giving off noxious fumes. Damage control in case of even a minor hit is going to be lots of fun...
Except that the USPO does not keep the majority of the money they get in patent fees. Congress put the hit on them a number of years ago to finance yet another Pork Project.
I'm against process patents as a matter of principal but in this case I feel that the USPO is not the bad guy. Go complain to your congresscritter so that the USPO keeps all its fees so that they can do some decent research in prior art instead of rubber staming everything.
FYI, recent SVEA firmware versions supports WPA. I've been using it for over 6 months. As for the speed, yeah it's only 200Mhz, but that's more than sufficient for the load the WRT54G has.
You need merely add the domains of the mail servers you use at work & home to the TXT record for yourdomain.com. This is how I setup SPF for my private domain.
No, the lie is in the phrase "imminent threat" that persons opposed to the war have attempted to place in the mouths of GWB, Powell, et al. I challenge you to cite a reliable reference where it is used by a cabinet member. The phrase is a strawman and as such deserves no more credit than any other lie.
Because a certain level of friendly fire is unavoidable & acceptable if it means that your opponents become sufficiently overmatched that you suffer fewer total casualties. In WW2 when fighters had finished escorting bombers they were released on search & destroy missions to use up remaining munitions before returning to base. There are documented cases where allied troops were victims yet the fighters were so effective in disrupting german movement that the secondary search & destroy taskings were never discontinued.
Of course, Election officials in Florida are also often democrats. So, if a democrat official decides to adopt the use of a flawed election machine in their jurisdiction, who's fault is it?
As a matter of fact, the highest election official in Florida during the Bush-Gore elections was also a Dem.
Ockhams Razor is only useful if you have the intelligence to see the other possible solutions before concluding: Aliens did it.
I find it ironic that the article decries expensive solutions that are looking for problems to solve then goes on to laud the two projects that are just that: - Metalstorm: Sure it can fire thousands of RPM, but: Reloads are new loaded barrels. Neither light (so you cannot carry many) nor quick to reload (ready when you need it). - Shkvall: It made sense in the fUSSR's context: When fired on by a US sub that it could not see, fire back a nuclear tipped missile in the general direction of the other sub to make it break off. The article claims that a shkvall will do major damage even without a warhead. How in the hell is the shkvall supposed to be guided? It's blind as a bat & deafened by it's own noise. Once again a solution looking for a problem...
Seeing through a mach 28 (orbital velocity) plasma bow shield was impossible in 64 and still is 40 years later. Thor is useless until the guidance problem is solved...
The USA even proposed signing the treaty -- IF an exception was made for the DMZ where it's impossible to claim that the mapped minefields could kill or maim innocent civilians. The minefields in the DMZ are fenced off and clearly mapped out (to facilitate removing them if they are no longer needed) according to rules set in the geneva conventions. The mines dispersed willy-nilly throughout the rest of the world are ALREADY geneva conventions. The extremists in the anti-mine camp refused to make an exception for the US. Net result: The anti-personel mine treaty will be just as successful as the early renaissance ban on crossbolts.
Lobster, I'm of the same opinion concerning Friendly Fire that you are, but: - The great majority of the German army was never in France. Only 1/3 of the Wermacht was on the western front which includes all forces in southern France & Italy as well as the forces in Normandy. - While Friendly Fire was feared & factored into plans, both Monty & Patton tried hard to close the Falaise pocket. The historians I've read attribute the failure to trap the German forces to german proficiency (being the first users of blitzkrieg they knew what getting encircled entailed) & allied exhaustion (breaking out was a Major effort. Sealing off the forces was beyond them).
The Visby is touted as being a very lightweight ship for it's size. It aims to avoid being hit if possible, by avoiding getting noticed or if discovered by running away at high speed. It's light weight & high rigidity due to it's fiber construction should also help in case of mines by allowing it to bounce away from shocks instead of absorbing them.
The advantage to using a high pressure water cutter over other methods (like the diamond saw they alluded to in the article) is that it doesn't wear out. These water pressure saws are becoming the norm for cutting all relatively soft materials.
You fix it same way you fix any other fiber+epoxy structure. Long ago, I had a 15 ft fiberglass boat that I almost literally cracked in two when jumping waves. I was lucky enough to bring it back to shore with a 3 ft crack on each side of the boat. I drilled a few holes in fore & aft of the cracks, bolted on a reinforced skeleton made of 2x4s, then applied layers of fiber & epoxy to reinforce it. It wasn't pretty, but the boat was stiffer afterwards than it was to start with. Other than the specific respiratory hasards that working with carbon bring, temporary repairs will probably use the same method.
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No, MS sucks because they tried to deliver a easy to use wireless client, but it has a major bug that renders it unusable in many circumstances.
Ignoring bugs in your products/your customers usually brings criticism. Had MS acknowledged the bug & explained a (working) way to avoid it or delivered a patch that fixes the problem they would not be criticized.
Given that MS has decided to exit the wireless access market they wont be leveraging the desktop for wireless products anyway.
No, typical interfaces used to exchange information are impractical or clumsy. Well designed interfaces are not. Back before my Palm died I used to use beam-it to exchange files with other palm owners using the IR link. While the user interface was far from optimal, it was far from being impractical or clumsy.
Setting up a "pen manager server" just so I can exchange files is impractical and clumsy.
Best quote in the BBM article:
Dr Russell Beale, of the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said it was "toys for the boys".
Sorry, you're mistaken. Nowhere in the article did it state that the system would be off limits to non-governmental users. This is a large part of my complaint. Besides, as others have already stated, the encryption WILL be broken. Unless there are CLEAR GUIDELINES & LIMITS on it's use & penalties for it's abuse, I (& many others) will deactivate the RFIDs before ever leaving the curb.
erm, RTFA. The RFID system under consideration NEEDS A BATTERY. This is in large part due to it's 100 meter range.
So? Kindly point out the link between having an account on a Honeywell Multics machine in 1984 & the date at which I discovered slashdot and created my account here.
Sheesh, RIT, must really have gone downhill since I grew up in Rochester...
Please, somebody mod this up as funny/ironic.
It may be an infraction to have an unreadable licence plate, but that is only because it is trivial for the driver to make sure that the plate is readable.
It NEEDS a battery. Batteries WILL die. The Govt cannot make us verify that the RFID is working without opening it enough so that ANYONE can follow ANYONE ELSE around. See elsewhere why I think that this is a BAD IDEA!
If I need anonymity, I need only drop by any of the free wireless points, change my MAC & voila, I have become untracable except for people with the ressources of MI5 or similar.
At present it is not possible/economical to deploy a network of watchers to follow everyone around. RFID as proposed, without safeguards, nor penalties, will change this & make it possible for Orwell's worst nightmares to become possible.
Present me with clear limits on the system and penalties for it's abuse & I'll change my mind. Until then I see as many possibilities for abuse as SMTP.
RFID will drastically ease the ability of anyone to perform surveillance of everyones movements. The article reports that they can be read from distances of up to a hundred meters distance.
Let me put it this way:
My license plate number is public knowledge. You can come take a look at it without me complaining. For around 2 decades my Email address was also public knowledge (my first Email@ was on a Multics system connected to the Arpanet). With the abuse of Email through SPAM this is no longer possible. The proposed RFID system is apparently almost as easy to abuse as is SMTP. The widespread deployment of RFID, the extremely low barrier apparent and the absence of any penalty for the abuse of this system will make it possible for any organization with enough motivation & funding to spy out who goes where & when. The potential for abuse is boundless.
I can see how you may have difficulties comprehending my position. As a marxist you may place the purported greater good before that of the individual. As one who believes instead that society is only protected when individuals rights are protected, I do not.
Unless there are clear safeguards against the abuse of the system, I'll zap it.
I do NOT want to have my whereabouts monitored by anyone who has a reciever. No information whatsoever is given in the article on any safeguards that they plan on placing in the system to protect against abuse of this system. If the govt tries to impose this upon us I will unplug the battery/run 220V through the plates to decommission the RFID emitter.
The USA sells very few ships to the rest of the world compared to Europe. This is partially because the US only sells off the ships that it is downsizing out of the navy & also because the ships are much larger & need more men to man than anyone else can handle. Even when the USA is offering the ships essentially free, it makes no sense for Australia to pick up a used destroyer if would take too big a chunk of their manpower to staff it.
Europe sells smaller vessels (mostly frigates) that are better adapted to their needs.
However, the resin used to bind the fibers is much easier to damage & burns easily giving off noxious fumes. Damage control in case of even a minor hit is going to be lots of fun...
Except that the USPO does not keep the majority of the money they get in patent fees. Congress put the hit on them a number of years ago to finance yet another Pork Project.
I'm against process patents as a matter of principal but in this case I feel that the USPO is not the bad guy. Go complain to your congresscritter so that the USPO keeps all its fees so that they can do some decent research in prior art instead of rubber staming everything.
FYI, recent SVEA firmware versions supports WPA. I've been using it for over 6 months. As for the speed, yeah it's only 200Mhz, but that's more than sufficient for the load the WRT54G has.
You need merely add the domains of the mail servers you use at work & home to the TXT record for yourdomain.com. This is how I setup SPF for my private domain.
No, the lie is in the phrase "imminent threat" that persons opposed to the war have attempted to place in the mouths of GWB, Powell, et al. I challenge you to cite a reliable reference where it is used by a cabinet member. The phrase is a strawman and as such deserves no more credit than any other lie.
> A turbofan engine is ... subject to flame-out, a greater liklihood than a piston engine that has continuous ignition
Eh!?! How so? I'd always considered jets to have continuous ignition & piston engines to have intermittant ignition.
s/is/will soon be/
Because a certain level of friendly fire is unavoidable & acceptable if it means that your opponents become sufficiently overmatched that you suffer fewer total casualties. In WW2 when fighters had finished escorting bombers they were released on search & destroy missions to use up remaining munitions before returning to base. There are documented cases where allied troops were victims yet the fighters were so effective in disrupting german movement that the secondary search & destroy taskings were never discontinued.
Of course, Election officials in Florida are also often democrats. So, if a democrat official decides to adopt the use of a flawed election machine in their jurisdiction, who's fault is it?
As a matter of fact, the highest election official in Florida during the Bush-Gore elections was also a Dem.
Ockhams Razor is only useful if you have the intelligence to see the other possible solutions before concluding: Aliens did it.
I find it ironic that the article decries expensive solutions that are looking for problems to solve then goes on to laud the two projects that are just that:
- Metalstorm: Sure it can fire thousands of RPM, but: Reloads are new loaded barrels. Neither light (so you cannot carry many) nor quick to reload (ready when you need it).
- Shkvall: It made sense in the fUSSR's context: When fired on by a US sub that it could not see, fire back a nuclear tipped missile in the general direction of the other sub to make it break off. The article claims that a shkvall will do major damage even without a warhead. How in the hell is the shkvall supposed to be guided? It's blind as a bat & deafened by it's own noise. Once again a solution looking for a problem...
Seeing through a mach 28 (orbital velocity) plasma bow shield was impossible in 64 and still is 40 years later. Thor is useless until the guidance problem is solved...
The USA even proposed signing the treaty -- IF an exception was made for the DMZ where it's impossible to claim that the mapped minefields could kill or maim innocent civilians. The minefields in the DMZ are fenced off and clearly mapped out (to facilitate removing them if they are no longer needed) according to rules set in the geneva conventions. The mines dispersed willy-nilly throughout the rest of the world are ALREADY geneva conventions. The extremists in the anti-mine camp refused to make an exception for the US. Net result: The anti-personel mine treaty will be just as successful as the early renaissance ban on crossbolts.
Lobster, I'm of the same opinion concerning Friendly Fire that you are, but:
- The great majority of the German army was never in France. Only 1/3 of the Wermacht was on the western front which includes all forces in southern France & Italy as well as the forces in Normandy.
- While Friendly Fire was feared & factored into plans, both Monty & Patton tried hard to close the Falaise pocket. The historians I've read attribute the failure to trap the German forces to german proficiency (being the first users of blitzkrieg they knew what getting encircled entailed) & allied exhaustion (breaking out was a Major effort. Sealing off the forces was beyond them).
The Visby is touted as being a very lightweight ship for it's size. It aims to avoid being hit if possible, by avoiding getting noticed or if discovered by running away at high speed. It's light weight & high rigidity due to it's fiber construction should also help in case of mines by allowing it to bounce away from shocks instead of absorbing them.
The advantage to using a high pressure water cutter over other methods (like the diamond saw they alluded to in the article) is that it doesn't wear out. These water pressure saws are becoming the norm for cutting all relatively soft materials.
You fix it same way you fix any other fiber+epoxy structure. Long ago, I had a 15 ft fiberglass boat that I almost literally cracked in two when jumping waves. I was lucky enough to bring it back to shore with a 3 ft crack on each side of the boat. I drilled a few holes in fore & aft of the cracks, bolted on a reinforced skeleton made of 2x4s, then applied layers of fiber & epoxy to reinforce it. It wasn't pretty, but the boat was stiffer afterwards than it was to start with. Other than the specific respiratory hasards that working with carbon bring, temporary repairs will probably use the same method.