I received a new IBM Thinkpad when I started a new job. It was preloaded with Windows XP. I asked permission to put Linux on it; they didn't mind. So I tried to set it up to dual-boot, but apparently Windows has a special partition table that I didn't know about, and I managed to make Windows unbootable. I even destroyed the restore partition by accident.
I tried every tool I could find to get Windows working again because some projects at work are using.Net. No luck. So I ordered Windows recovery CDs from IBM. (The CDs don't come with the laptop.)
Meanwhile, I set up Gentoo with the latest kernel, hundreds of neat applications, OpenOffice, Xinerama, etc... Linux is better than ever on this hardware. Development is going well, though I can't work on the.Net projects yet.
Now I've been waiting for the recovery CDs for a month, all the while enjoying the competition immensely. They say the CDs are on back-order. So I guess a support problem is keeping me off Windows, but I'm right now I'm pretty glad to have this problem!
That one's easy. I wouldn't want my future self to tell me anything. I'd be happy enough to know that my future is bright enough that I'll live to see and use a time machine!:-)
Imagine this: if we could just reverse causality on an extremely small scale, and for an extremely short period, we could have a time machine. If the movement of one photon could affect the movement of another photon one picosecond earlier, we could theoretically chain that effect until we could actually communicate backward in time.
It would, of course, make current "disruptive technologies" look pretty paltry by comparison.:-)
doclifter translates troff (which, I presume, is the format of man pages) to DocBook. I saw his short presentation on this project at OSCON 2002. His goal is to migrate the good work already done to a more capable format.
SSH already includes most of what you need to achieve single sign-on without trusting your credentials to anyone. I was really excited to learn about this a couple of years ago so I'm passing this info along. The only problem is that the procedure for setting it up isn't obvious. If you're running Linux and have OpenSSH installed, try this. (Excuse me if I mistype any of the directions):
ssh-keygen -t rsa
Follow the prompts, storing your new key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa . Make sure you set a password for your key, so that if someone manages to steal your keyfile, they still won't be able to use it without the password.
Now copy the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub into the ".ssh/authorized_keys2" file on servers you want to access using your private key. For example, if you currently have password access to a server called "gandalf", copy your key like this:
(If you already have an authorized_keys2 file, you'll want to append the new key using a temporary file instead of overwrite.) Now ssh to the box like this:
ssh -2 gandalf
The -2 forces use of SSH protocol version 2, which you'll need in order to use a key of the type you created. When it prompts you for a password, enter the password for your key file rather than the normal SSH password. If you're able to log in this way, you're well on your way.
Now you'll want to allow SSH to remember your password for the duration of a login session. "ssh-agent" does this in a secure manner. Mandrake 8.x, in fact, checks for the presence of ssh keys and runs ssh-agent automatically if it finds them, which is really handy. Other distributions may do the same. Just to get started, though, type this:
eval `ssh-agent`
This starts a new ssh-agent and sets up environment variables so ssh knows how to find the running ssh-agent. Then type this:
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Alternatively, if you also have the openssh-askpass-gnome package installed (find out using "rpm -qa|grep ssh"), you can enter your password graphically:
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa </dev/null
Enter the password for your keyfile. Then ssh -2 to your server again. If everything worked, you'll log in without entering your password again. Sweet, huh?
Finally, if you're running KDE on Mandrake or another distribution that automatically runs ssh-agent, and you have openssh-askpass-gnome installed, add a file to ~/.kde/Autostart called "askpass" with the following script:
#!/bin/sh ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa </dev/null
Then "chmod a+x ~/.kde/Autostart/askpass". Now, every time you log in to X, you'll be prompted to enter your keyfile password. After entering the password, you'll be able to ssh everywhere you have your authorized_keys set up, and you won't have to type your passwords again throughout the session. The freedom and security this gives you is wonderful. It makes the servers feel like an easy to access extension of your workstation. Just don't forget your "real" passwords, because you may lose your keyfile someday.:-)
Now, all of this is difficult to set up for a non-geek. Perhaps we need a little program with a few hand-holding wizards for setting this up.
Software like Mozilla needs to integrate with this. Mozilla has a "software security device" that stores passwords encrypted by a master password. There must be some way it can integrate with ssh-agent instead of prompting for a master password. Currently, when I log in, I have to enter three passwords, but only once per session. I'd like to reduce that to two: a "workstation" password (from/etc/passwd) and a "network" password (the password for the ssh keyfile). Some might want to reduce it even further, using the ssh keyfile to log in to the workstation. I like the idea of keeping them separate, though.
So that's my proposal for open source single sign-on: just integrate with ssh-agent. It's secure, it's reliable, it's decentralized, and if you're running Linux, it's probably already installed on your computer. Take that, Passport.;-)
Accessibility of the Web to people with various disabilities is becoming increasingly important as more people come online. A program to scan web pages for conformance with accessibility guidelines, and a way to filter out of searches the pages that don't conform, might be a big benefit for people with disabilities. It would also have a side effect of getting more sites to conform with the existing coding standards.
Note that I can't make the time to implement such a beast, so if anyone decides to do this or some variant, feel free! And drop me a note. (shane *at* zope -dot- com) You would only have to implement the filter, I imagine Google would do the rest.
BTW some of the comments I've seen say Google is just getting "cheap labor". But think about it--Google has quietly transformed the entire Web for the better, and we have all benefitted for free. They have earned great respect!
Re:Those bastards hacked the linux kernel too!
on
al Qaeda Hacks XP?
·
· Score: 1
How to convince people you're insane
on
VIM 6.0 is Out
·
· Score: -1, Funny
* chase after cars and bark
* stand in street corners wearing a sign that says "will work to be commited"
* circle any random person and when they ask you what you're doing tell them "you're my long lost aunt and i love you"
* make friends with someone get their address and send them freaky
letters telling them that you're watching their every move etc
* run around your neighborhood yelling "they finally got me, they're coming to get you they're watching you!!" and fall down on someones front lawn
* get a stick and continue to poke someone and when they look at you insult you etc. yell "i don't want to marry you" and go hug the nearest person and cry
* pretend you're an angel stand on a corner and hold up a sign that says "a kid pulled my wings off"
* lie on a beach and when someone finds you say that you're a survivor from the titanic
* always answer in enraged song titles
* find a phone book with someone and look for the meaning of life.
* find someone and say " i am a doctor and i'm gonna find out where you live and while you're sleeping i'm gonna.....(tee hee hee") and walk away
* Use VI
(Lifted from http://www.forwardgarden.com/forward/20633;-)
Jython is one solution for Python applets. Jython is basically Python compiled into Java. It works well enough to be used for applets.
http://www.jython.org/applets/index.html
There are a couple of downsides:
- The Jython library has to be downloaded with the applet. It's about 200K. Over a cable modem it takes 0.7 seconds, though.:-)
- Can't use Python extensions.
But there are also a few really good things:
- Jython lets you use the mature AWT/Swing libraries, which are better than Tk. They aren't as good as wxPython, though, IMHO.
- It's a stable platform that works with all Java-enabled browsers already. And Jython continues to receive improvements.
- The *HARD* part about applet-enabling a language is figuring out how to restrict applets without curtailing the language. Sun has achieved that to a reasonable degree and Jython takes advantage of their work.
What I'd like to see is the Java plug-in simply including the Jython library as a standard class library. That would eliminate the download time.
If you want a truly secure connection, you need to use public keys, like others have said. But there's more to it. SSH users need some education. Here are a few things I have learned.
Encrypt your private keys! It's tempting to leave your private keys unencrypted, but if you do and your own box is compromised, every system you access via public-key SSH is also compromised.
Typing your password every time you use SSH (for example, when using CVS) is not only tiresome but insecure because it increases the chances of someone getting your password by looking over your shoulder as you type. ssh-agent is designed to solve this. In fact, ssh-agent is designed right into at least one Linux distribution, Mandrake.
In fact, with KDE (I'm sure there's an equivalent for your favorite WM or operating environment) you can just add a script to ~/.kde/Autostart that lets you type your SSH password when logging in:
#!/bin/sh
ssh-add </dev/null
I believe this requires the "ssh-askpass" package to be installed.
If you SSH to a firewall from which you SSH to another box, you're actually trusting the firewall pretty heavily. Everything you type gets encrypted on your box then decrypted on the firewall, then re-encrypted on the firewall and finally decrypted by the other box. The firewall can read (and change!) anything you type. If the firewall happens to be compromised at the time, the intruder could gain access to the other box as well. It's also a burden on the firewall's CPU, especially if a lot of users do this.
But you can correct the situation by port-forwarding an SSH session. One way to do this is on your own box type "ssh -f -L 2222:otherbox:22 firewall sleep 60" then type "ssh -p 2222 localhost". That way your box encypts the session twice, the firewall decrypts it once, and the other box does the final decrpytion.
(After the sleep timeout is over, the forwarded connection will not terminate until you terminate it.) You can write a shell script that does all this for you. I have a script that uses "netstat -tln | grep 127.0.0.1:2222" to set up the forwarding automatically if it has not been set up.
Once you try to explain miracles in terms of science, you're going to have to deal with its conclusions.
Our current understanding of science and nature is very limited. It is good to try to explain miracles in terms of science, but to discredit a miracle on the basis of not understanding how it was done is narrow minded. People of earlier generations would have certainly discredited the notions of television or journeying into space, but does that make these "miracles" false? Of course not.
Re:I saw that Reuters story earlier
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 1
Your logs (in your sig) indicate that almost all attacks are coming from hosts with numeric host names. Probably home users. Most likely they'll never know they are contributing to the problem.
Realistically, the only way to reach those people is through public channels (TV announcement, perhaps) and anti-worms.
How about this instead? Parents could fill out a form like the gender-prediction survey that went around not too long ago. The results of the form would put them in loose statistical categories with others who fill out the form in similar ways. The results of the form might be:
100% against porn
90% against hate sites
75% against foul language
50% against spam:-)
That last category is quite interesting since it means the filter could be used by some people for just blocking sites that are pure marketing drivel instead of harmful content.
This would be an excellent open source project for someone. The one possible concern is that most of the users have to be honest about their preferences for it to work. But I still think enough people are honest...
Still, for all I know, this is just what AOL is doing.:-)
I have used ZODB outside Zope. I'm writing, on the side, an application for managing genealogy through a GUI interface, and so far ZODB and wxPython have made the job a breeze. Already the app is fast, simple, easily deployed, reliable, scaleable, etc. etc.
In fact I wish I had seen this article sooner because ZODB and Python eliminate most of the complaints I've seen from everyone. I just hope someone sees this.:-)
- Complexity: what complexity? To write RDBMS oriented software I have to write the schema and the application. With ZODB I only have to write the application.
- Generic: I haven't used other OODBMS but I see no evidence of a ZODB instance being constrained to use in a single application.
- Schema changes: Python deals so gracefully with changes to the application classes that in practice, it is rare to need to update the database to match the schema. Sometimes a "live update" trick is needed, but if you grep for "__setstate__" in the Zope source code (which has been evolving for years now) I think you'll find the need is quite rare.
- Skills availability: To the programmer, ZODB is but a thin layer above Python. Python is easy to learn and rapidly growing in popularity.
- Scaleability: ZODB includes a "BTrees" module which lets you fetch and store only the data you need.
- Object-Relational mapping: ZODB is certainly not perfect or universal. Some prefer to store their OO data in an RDBMS. ZODB has a layer of abstraction that lets you write an O/R mapping. Unfortunately no one has taken advantage of this yet, perhaps because the OO store is nearly always sufficient.
Now, I can see that an OODB would have major problems with more tightly constrained languages. Both C++ and Java would probably throw a fit if you tried to deserialize an object that was created with an older version of a class. But Python merrily lets you do it, and that makes all the difference IMHO.
Re:Probably only faster for simple operations
on
FPGA Supercomputers
·
· Score: 1
Actually Quake would be one of the *most* parallelizable applications. And nobody would want 6000 fps, instead they'd rather have 1024x768x100 voxels... for the real experience!
The point is to reduce accidents, right? This is certainly not the answer.
However, technology might have a few better answers:
- I'd like two lights on my dashboard that tell me if I'm going too fast or too slow. Red if I need to slow down, green if I need to speed up. I already use cruise control a lot but in city driving the stretches are too short for cruise.
- I'd like small cameras all around my car and a real-time "map" of the cars all around me generated on a heads-up display. I'd then be able to see not only whether there's a car in the lane next to me but also if there's a speeder two lanes away who's about to swerve into the next lane.
- I'd like the brake lights to be extra bright or flash when I'm stopping hard.
I guess it's really all about improving communication and making more information easily available to the driver. But here's a crazy idea:
- I'd like to be able to reward good drivers somehow. Perhaps there could be little devices that let me aim at a car, push a button, and add "good driver points" to that car, which would eventually lead to a cash incentive for the driver.
We're trying hard to achieve a complete open development process on dev.zope.org. We call it the Fishbowl. It was started this year and so far has been quite successful. It is a way to open to the community not only the software but also the development process. Everyone has the opportunity to contribute at each phase.
Perhaps the most interesting part is the Proposals page. It allows anyone to contribute and discuss ideas for the development of Zope and related projects.
Some of the technology behind it, such as ZWiki and the CVS infrastructure, are not yet complete, but most don't see that as a barrier.
I think many open source projects would benefit from a similar methodology.
Slashdot Mirror
Check this out.
.Net. No luck. So I ordered Windows recovery CDs from IBM. (The CDs don't come with the laptop.)
.Net projects yet.
I received a new IBM Thinkpad when I started a new job. It was preloaded with Windows XP. I asked permission to put Linux on it; they didn't mind. So I tried to set it up to dual-boot, but apparently Windows has a special partition table that I didn't know about, and I managed to make Windows unbootable. I even destroyed the restore partition by accident.
I tried every tool I could find to get Windows working again because some projects at work are using
Meanwhile, I set up Gentoo with the latest kernel, hundreds of neat applications, OpenOffice, Xinerama, etc... Linux is better than ever on this hardware. Development is going well, though I can't work on the
Now I've been waiting for the recovery CDs for a month, all the while enjoying the competition immensely. They say the CDs are on back-order. So I guess a support problem is keeping me off Windows, but I'm right now I'm pretty glad to have this problem!
That one's easy. I wouldn't want my future self to tell me anything. I'd be happy enough to know that my future is bright enough that I'll live to see and use a time machine! :-)
:-)
Imagine this: if we could just reverse causality on an extremely small scale, and for an extremely short period, we could have a time machine. If the movement of one photon could affect the movement of another photon one picosecond earlier, we could theoretically chain that effect until we could actually communicate backward in time.
It would, of course, make current "disruptive technologies" look pretty paltry by comparison.
Eric Raymond agrees!
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/doclifter/
doclifter translates troff (which, I presume, is the format of man pages) to DocBook. I saw his short presentation on this project at OSCON 2002. His goal is to migrate the good work already done to a more capable format.
SSH already includes most of what you need to achieve single sign-on without trusting your credentials to anyone. I was really excited to learn about this a couple of years ago so I'm passing this info along. The only problem is that the procedure for setting it up isn't obvious. If you're running Linux and have OpenSSH installed, try this. (Excuse me if I mistype any of the directions):
/dev/null
/dev/null
:-)
/etc/passwd) and a "network" password (the password for the ssh keyfile). Some might want to reduce it even further, using the ssh keyfile to log in to the workstation. I like the idea of keeping them separate, though.
;-)
ssh-keygen -t rsa
Follow the prompts, storing your new key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa . Make sure you set a password for your key, so that if someone manages to steal your keyfile, they still won't be able to use it without the password.
Now copy the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub into the ".ssh/authorized_keys2" file on servers you want to access using your private key. For example, if you currently have password access to a server called "gandalf", copy your key like this:
scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub gandalf:~/.ssh/authorized_keys2
(If you already have an authorized_keys2 file, you'll want to append the new key using a temporary file instead of overwrite.) Now ssh to the box like this:
ssh -2 gandalf
The -2 forces use of SSH protocol version 2, which you'll need in order to use a key of the type you created. When it prompts you for a password, enter the password for your key file rather than the normal SSH password. If you're able to log in this way, you're well on your way.
Now you'll want to allow SSH to remember your password for the duration of a login session. "ssh-agent" does this in a secure manner. Mandrake 8.x, in fact, checks for the presence of ssh keys and runs ssh-agent automatically if it finds them, which is really handy. Other distributions may do the same. Just to get started, though, type this:
eval `ssh-agent`
This starts a new ssh-agent and sets up environment variables so ssh knows how to find the running ssh-agent. Then type this:
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Alternatively, if you also have the openssh-askpass-gnome package installed (find out using "rpm -qa|grep ssh"), you can enter your password graphically:
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa <
Enter the password for your keyfile. Then ssh -2 to your server again. If everything worked, you'll log in without entering your password again. Sweet, huh?
Finally, if you're running KDE on Mandrake or another distribution that automatically runs ssh-agent, and you have openssh-askpass-gnome installed, add a file to ~/.kde/Autostart called "askpass" with the following script:
#!/bin/sh
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa <
Then "chmod a+x ~/.kde/Autostart/askpass". Now, every time you log in to X, you'll be prompted to enter your keyfile password. After entering the password, you'll be able to ssh everywhere you have your authorized_keys set up, and you won't have to type your passwords again throughout the session. The freedom and security this gives you is wonderful. It makes the servers feel like an easy to access extension of your workstation. Just don't forget your "real" passwords, because you may lose your keyfile someday.
Now, all of this is difficult to set up for a non-geek. Perhaps we need a little program with a few hand-holding wizards for setting this up.
Software like Mozilla needs to integrate with this. Mozilla has a "software security device" that stores passwords encrypted by a master password. There must be some way it can integrate with ssh-agent instead of prompting for a master password. Currently, when I log in, I have to enter three passwords, but only once per session. I'd like to reduce that to two: a "workstation" password (from
So that's my proposal for open source single sign-on: just integrate with ssh-agent. It's secure, it's reliable, it's decentralized, and if you're running Linux, it's probably already installed on your computer. Take that, Passport.
Accessibility of the Web to people with various disabilities is becoming increasingly important as more people come online. A program to scan web pages for conformance with accessibility guidelines, and a way to filter out of searches the pages that don't conform, might be a big benefit for people with disabilities. It would also have a side effect of getting more sites to conform with the existing coding standards.
Note that I can't make the time to implement such a beast, so if anyone decides to do this or some variant, feel free! And drop me a note. (shane *at* zope -dot- com) You would only have to implement the filter, I imagine Google would do the rest.
BTW some of the comments I've seen say Google is just getting "cheap labor". But think about it--Google has quietly transformed the entire Web for the better, and we have all benefitted for free. They have earned great respect!
That's funny until you realize this works too:
/usr/src/linux
;-)
grep -ir 'o.*s.*a.*m.*a.*b.*i.*n.*l.*a.*d.*e.*n'
Who knew!
* chase after cars and bark
;-)
* stand in street corners wearing a sign that says "will work to be commited"
* circle any random person and when they ask you what you're doing tell them "you're my long lost aunt and i love you"
* make friends with someone get their address and send them freaky
letters telling them that you're watching their every move etc
* run around your neighborhood yelling "they finally got me, they're coming to get you they're watching you!!" and fall down on someones front lawn
* get a stick and continue to poke someone and when they look at you insult you etc. yell "i don't want to marry you" and go hug the nearest person and cry
* pretend you're an angel stand on a corner and hold up a sign that says "a kid pulled my wings off"
* lie on a beach and when someone finds you say that you're a survivor from the titanic
* always answer in enraged song titles
* find a phone book with someone and look for the meaning of life.
* find someone and say " i am a doctor and i'm gonna find out where you live and while you're sleeping i'm gonna.....(tee hee hee") and walk away
* Use VI
(Lifted from http://www.forwardgarden.com/forward/20633
Jython is one solution for Python applets. Jython is basically Python compiled into Java. It works well enough to be used for applets.
:-)
http://www.jython.org/applets/index.html
There are a couple of downsides:
- The Jython library has to be downloaded with the applet. It's about 200K. Over a cable modem it takes 0.7 seconds, though.
- Can't use Python extensions.
But there are also a few really good things:
- Jython lets you use the mature AWT/Swing libraries, which are better than Tk. They aren't as good as wxPython, though, IMHO.
- It's a stable platform that works with all Java-enabled browsers already. And Jython continues to receive improvements.
- The *HARD* part about applet-enabling a language is figuring out how to restrict applets without curtailing the language. Sun has achieved that to a reasonable degree and Jython takes advantage of their work.
What I'd like to see is the Java plug-in simply including the Jython library as a standard class library. That would eliminate the download time.
Where are the moderator points when I need them? Well said. Thank you, Phil; I think encryption technology has been used for a lot of good!
If you want a truly secure connection, you need to use public keys, like others have said. But there's more to it. SSH users need some education. Here are a few things I have learned.
In fact, with KDE (I'm sure there's an equivalent for your favorite WM or operating environment) you can just add a script to ~/.kde/Autostart that lets you type your SSH password when logging in:
#!/bin/sh
ssh-add </dev/null
I believe this requires the "ssh-askpass" package to be installed.
But you can correct the situation by port-forwarding an SSH session. One way to do this is on your own box type "ssh -f -L 2222:otherbox:22 firewall sleep 60" then type "ssh -p 2222 localhost". That way your box encypts the session twice, the firewall decrypts it once, and the other box does the final decrpytion. (After the sleep timeout is over, the forwarded connection will not terminate until you terminate it.) You can write a shell script that does all this for you. I have a script that uses "netstat -tln | grep 127.0.0.1:2222" to set up the forwarding automatically if it has not been set up.
Hope this helps!
Once you try to explain miracles in terms of science, you're going to have to deal with its conclusions.
Our current understanding of science and nature is very limited. It is good to try to explain miracles in terms of science, but to discredit a miracle on the basis of not understanding how it was done is narrow minded. People of earlier generations would have certainly discredited the notions of television or journeying into space, but does that make these "miracles" false? Of course not.
Your logs (in your sig) indicate that almost all attacks are coming from hosts with numeric host names. Probably home users. Most likely they'll never know they are contributing to the problem.
Realistically, the only way to reach those people is through public channels (TV announcement, perhaps) and anti-worms.
Oops, replied to the wrong post. Never mind. :-)
Ahem... Corel Draw...
How about this instead? Parents could fill out a form like the gender-prediction survey that went around not too long ago. The results of the form would put them in loose statistical categories with others who fill out the form in similar ways. The results of the form might be:
:-)
:-)
100% against porn
90% against hate sites
75% against foul language
50% against spam
That last category is quite interesting since it means the filter could be used by some people for just blocking sites that are pure marketing drivel instead of harmful content.
This would be an excellent open source project for someone. The one possible concern is that most of the users have to be honest about their preferences for it to work. But I still think enough people are honest...
Still, for all I know, this is just what AOL is doing.
Not quite yet; I've been trying to come up with a good name. "FamilySource" is my current favorite.
I have used ZODB outside Zope. I'm writing, on the side, an application for managing genealogy through a GUI interface, and so far ZODB and wxPython have made the job a breeze. Already the app is fast, simple, easily deployed, reliable, scaleable, etc. etc.
:-)
In fact I wish I had seen this article sooner because ZODB and Python eliminate most of the complaints I've seen from everyone. I just hope someone sees this.
- Complexity: what complexity? To write RDBMS oriented software I have to write the schema and the application. With ZODB I only have to write the application.
- Generic: I haven't used other OODBMS but I see no evidence of a ZODB instance being constrained to use in a single application.
- Schema changes: Python deals so gracefully with changes to the application classes that in practice, it is rare to need to update the database to match the schema. Sometimes a "live update" trick is needed, but if you grep for "__setstate__" in the Zope source code (which has been evolving for years now) I think you'll find the need is quite rare.
- Skills availability: To the programmer, ZODB is but a thin layer above Python. Python is easy to learn and rapidly growing in popularity.
- Scaleability: ZODB includes a "BTrees" module which lets you fetch and store only the data you need.
- Object-Relational mapping: ZODB is certainly not perfect or universal. Some prefer to store their OO data in an RDBMS. ZODB has a layer of abstraction that lets you write an O/R mapping. Unfortunately no one has taken advantage of this yet, perhaps because the OO store is nearly always sufficient.
Now, I can see that an OODB would have major problems with more tightly constrained languages. Both C++ and Java would probably throw a fit if you tried to deserialize an object that was created with an older version of a class. But Python merrily lets you do it, and that makes all the difference IMHO.
Actually Quake would be one of the *most* parallelizable applications. And nobody would want 6000 fps, instead they'd rather have 1024x768x100 voxels... for the real experience!
The point is to reduce accidents, right? This is certainly not the answer.
However, technology might have a few better answers:
- I'd like two lights on my dashboard that tell me if I'm going too fast or too slow. Red if I need to slow down, green if I need to speed up. I already use cruise control a lot but in city driving the stretches are too short for cruise.
- I'd like small cameras all around my car and a real-time "map" of the cars all around me generated on a heads-up display. I'd then be able to see not only whether there's a car in the lane next to me but also if there's a speeder two lanes away who's about to swerve into the next lane.
- I'd like the brake lights to be extra bright or flash when I'm stopping hard.
I guess it's really all about improving communication and making more information easily available to the driver. But here's a crazy idea:
- I'd like to be able to reward good drivers somehow. Perhaps there could be little devices that let me aim at a car, push a button, and add "good driver points" to that car, which would eventually lead to a cash incentive for the driver.
Make sure you take a look at another project which has similar goals: WorldPilot. (See the nifty demo.)
We're trying hard to achieve a complete open development process on dev.zope.org. We call it the Fishbowl. It was started this year and so far has been quite successful. It is a way to open to the community not only the software but also the development process. Everyone has the opportunity to contribute at each phase.
Perhaps the most interesting part is the Proposals page. It allows anyone to contribute and discuss ideas for the development of Zope and related projects.
Some of the technology behind it, such as ZWiki and the CVS infrastructure, are not yet complete, but most don't see that as a barrier.
I think many open source projects would benefit from a similar methodology.
Has anyone entered the DeCSS code into the KEO database?
http://www.keo.org/uk/your_message.html
That way DeCSS can survive 50000 years...