However, I'm intrigued by that comparison to ultra-quiet submarines.
Think for a moment. Say you had a fleet of ultra-quiet submarines. You know that your enemy can track them if my looking for unusually quiet spots. So, what do you do?
The answer: surround their fleet. Cancel out the ambient noise, so the quiet spots can't be picked out. It's the opposite of creating noise to cover noisy submarines.
Therefore, one answer would seem to be the creation of many "dummy" keys on the server. They're generated just like the "real" key is, so they're just as random. Thelocation of the "real" key then becomes a closely-guarded secret, of course, as much so as the machine's root password.
Consider that the strongest keys out there are only 4K. This means that creating 1000 dummies only wastes four megs of space; in an age where it's hard to find drives less than twenty times that size this isn't really that much of a space-waster.
The best solution would be a completely-encrypted filesystem. Then there would be no way to tell the key from any other data, and even if you could it would be useless. Are there any good fully-encrypted filesystems out there yet? Linux-compatibility would be a plus...
I loved Don Martin's work. It's truly sad to see him go. I hope that both Mad and Cracked (which also used some of his work) give him fitting tributes. The man was great at what he did.
Adieu, Don. You'll be missed, but never forgotten.
Anyway, there were a few things about the article that I found interesting. One, it never tackled the encryption issue. It mentioned it once in passing, but never said anything about it.
Two, check the bit about the MS case. There's a decidedly pro-MS slant. Then again, that's probably why the site's called that.
Three, the filtering problem. The issue is thorny; kids really shouldn't be accessing all the pr0n that's out there. But the government has no place in this, and no right to take the role of guardian. That's the job of parents and educators. There's also the problem that most filtering software blocks harmless sites (the most often-cited example is that medical sites get blocked).
Apple's KidSafe filtering software is actually intriguing for that reason. Instead of blacklisting the "bad" sites, it whitelists "good" ones, as approved by a panel of teachers and librarians. This one, much as I hate to support filtering, might actually have something of a place in the school system. School-owned computers shouldn't be used for stuff other than schoolwork anyway. As long as they don't try to force it onto personal and home machines, there's something of an appeal to those.
The argument can also be made that the government owns the computers placed in public schools and libraries, and therefore has the right to do what it wants with its property.
Note that I don't support mandatory filtering at all. I would still much rather see any "protection" acts shot down. But I get the feeling that eventually our twisted right-fringe zealot friends in the government are going to get what they want, so it might as well be channeled to where it can do the least destruction possible.
You want to know how come kernelspace drivers don't decrease OSX's stability? The answer is actually simple. They're done right.
That's what Linux and company are afraid of. Buggy drivers in kernelspace can totally trash a system. Currently, the Linux community doesn't seem to have the resources to produce video drivers of the same quality as you get from the company that makes the cards. This is mainly the fault of the corporations, mind you; they don't provide the documentation that the Linux community needs.
I do hope that when KGI becomes stable enough (and it will, given enough time) it is incorporated into the kernel. Speed isn't the only issue with kernelspace drivers, after all; there's security issues too (any program that has to directly access hardware, such as X, has to run as root under the current system, because there's no kernelspace video functionallity). This both leads to potential exploits and puts the system at risk stability-wise, since a root process can still take down the whole system in the event of a crash.
Aqua's the new OSX interface; no one's used it yet (outside Apple anyway) but there are plenty of previews. Check it out at http://www.apple.com/macosx.
It's very pretty, and frankly I wonder if Apple fired its own graphic design team and hired a legion of demo-coders to implement it instead; it's undoubtedly the coolest-looking interface I've ever seen (with the possible exception of the BlueSteel theme for E, and the supposed interface for the new AmigaOS which, sadly, never showed).
However, the good looks don't always translate to practicality; check out the three buttons at the top of the window (I think they look like jewels). They look exactly alike, except for color, until you mouse over them. Then all three get little symbols (X for clode, + for maximize, - for minimize) embedded in the jewels. It's still bad interface, though.
In other words, Apple isn't getting it completely right with this revision. Hopefully they'll correct the mistakes by the time OSX is released; then it'll be really cool.
Pretty cool. By my real name, I'm "Auxiliary Priest." Go by my Net alias and I'm "Half-Cut Skeleton." I'm having trouble figuring out which one is cooler.
How does one figure out one's Wu name anyway? I can't figure out how this one's done.
There's a difference between criticism and flaming. Criticism presents facts to back up its arguments. It also tends to avoid the use of blatantly insulting words, such as "crappy." It stays on topic, for example it doesn't switch from discussing an interface to the people who use it.
Let's see... you provide absolutely nothing to back up your claim, which was laced with insulting words. To top it all off, you then move to insult Mac users.
But I very much doubt that Apple's going to Open-Source everything. It might Open-Source more than Darwin, but I don't think it'll do it all (or even as much as it even can).
My guess is that the author of this article misinterpreted what Jobs was saying. I suppose we can dream, though.
If I remember correctly, the patents on RSA are set to expire soon. This removes one barrier: more crypto can then be legally Open-Sourced.
The next problem comes with crypto restrictions. My guess is, either Mozilla will have to get a permit or we'll have to wait for the crypto source export restrictions to be lifted. Alternatively, a module could be developed overseas which plugs into Mozilla (will Mozilla be able to work with plug-ins, by the way?).
I agree; crypto is absolutely vital for a Web appliance. If Mozilla (or some version thereof) doesn't end up with crypto of some kind, then there's no way I could recommend it for this type of machine.
I remember Alan saying at one point that he was considering adding the current ext3 sources into the kernel. Anyone know if he's done this yet, or will that be going into the 2.3 tree?
This is definitely going way too far. Speeding is a problem, yes, but it can be controlled without resorting to such Big Brother-ish methods (you know they're going to install tracking devices in the cars along with this satellite thing too; it's simply too easy to resist).
A better solution would be as follows. The speed limit in a given area is broadcast on some radio frequency (a convenient place would be at each road sign, using what would end up being a very inexpensive transmitter since it only has to use one frequency and transmit only one thing). The vehicle would have a device inside which renders it incapable of exceeding the speed it "hears" from these transmitters.
Because the transmitters cannot recieve data, privacy is protected (since the vehicle cannot be tracked). It also stops the problem of speeding. And even though it means installing a lot of transmitters, in the end it's probably cheaper than launching a network of satellites and installing even more satellite recievers. It is cheaper for the car manufacturers, tool the technology is less expensive.
Now, I do have objections to forcing the cars down to the speed limit, of course. For one, the limits are often set ridiculously low, because the laws tend to use blanket formulas that don't apply well to some areas where faster speeds are safe, but because of the designation it's set slower than it needs to be. For another, I wonder if the British government realizes just how much revenue speeding tickets generate; you can kiss that goodbye (yeah, that's a self-serving reason, but to governments ever have any other kind?)
Think about this. Gutenberg was the one who made the printing press a practical invenion by introducing movable type. This fact is what kick-started the freer flow of information, which is how we humans have come to be defined. daVinci, Curie, Einstein, Hawking, Torvalds... all great in their own respects, but had Gutenberg not come before them they would be nothing. After Gutenberg, then Alexander Graham Bell, no so much for the telephone as the telephone line. Think of just how many devices now depend on telephone lines. Also consider this: while a telephone line may have more wires n it now, the basic ideas haven't changed since the device was first invented. Now that is impressive. After Bell, then Babbage. The one whose ideas would later inspire the modern computer. Only the first of his three machines (Difference Engine, Analytical Engine, "Dream Engine") were ever built, but the ideas carried on. After Babbage, then A and B (whose names I can't remember, but they built the A-B-C, the first electronic computer, predating its more famous descendant the ENIAC by one or two decades). Then the people behind ENIAC, who made the term a household word. Then Admiral Grace Hopper, who helped with the first programming languages. Then the inventors of the transistor, then the the microprocessor. I'm sure you see where I'm going here. Keep the list going, and you'll reach the original writers of UNIX, the Xerox PARC team, Jobs and Wozniak, and so on until you reach Torvalds. The point: The top geeks of this century have done great things indeed, but we shouldn't forget who made these possible. And it all started, more or less, with Gutenberg.
Personally, I don't know what to think about this. My luggage is already X-rayed every time I go to the airport, and I don't hear anyone complaining about that; I don't think many people would consider it an invasion of privacy.
I also go through a metal detector each time. I don't think this is a privacy invasion either. Now, I've never actually had to be frisked before. This said, though, I think I'd rather step in front of a machine than be frisked, as long as the machine was safe.
I do remember the screenshots posted last time this was brought up on Slashdot several months ago. Somehow I don't think the images from this thing will ever get onto any porn site; even the sickest freak out there wouldn't want these. Yeah, the gender of the person being scanned is pretty obvious (the Slashdot folks all got a good laugh out of that). But it's not like a photograph; it's more like a low-power X-ray with extremely little in the way of detail (the outline isn't even very clear, and certainly not as detailed as this article would have you believe).
I would prefer something low-powered enough that there wouldn't be any detail at all, but you run the risk of killing the scanner's effectiveness then. I do hope they work on something like that, though. It'd put a lot more people's minds at ease.
1) PR. Not that BSD has bad PR. It just doesn't get as much of it as Linux does. Most people have at least heard of Linux, but you don't hear about BSD in the media very often. You can't use what you don't know exists.
2) The license. Say what you will, but the non-quid-pro-quo has a lot of disadvantages, not the least of which is that it discourages development by independent authors. Look at it this way: a commercial company can do whatever it wants with BSD-licensed software, make it proprietary, and make a ton of money off the stuff (witness Solaris). Corporations have nothing to fear from BSD, the way they do GPL. An independent author could theoretically do this, but it's not practical; one person simply doesn't have the marketing power of a corporation and thus isn't going to be able to profit. Therefore, the independent author has no real choice but to keep his code free and Open-Source. This tips the balance of power, and means that independent authors usually end up working, in effect, as unpaid coders for the companies that leech off of BSD's work.
3) Fragmentation. The fragmentation of BSD really isn't that bad. But it is there; you have three major versions (FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD) and a few others (Darwin could, in a way, be considered one, though it's hardly a major variant at this point in time). Is this a Bad Thing? No. It's not good, but it's not bad. But it does scare most bosses. It scares them enough so that it doesn't take much extra FUD to sway their decisions (unless the bosses know what they're talking about, in which case it takes considerably more effort).
Is BSD a bad system? Hardly; I don't have very much experience with BSD but I like what I've seen so far (though I think I'll stick with Linux all the same). But it does have a few issues. Linux does too; don't get me wrong, no OS is perfect, and they both have some way to go. It just happens that, for now, Linux is farther ahead. That might change, or it might not. Either way, it keeps things from being dull.
Software patents are a Bad Thing. It's good to fight to change them. But until they actually are changed, we do have to respect the system.
However, until the patent system is changed, it can yet prove useful. Consider: The GPL uses copyright, which is supposed to prevent people from copying works, to instead allow such copying. Something similar could (albeit more expensively) be done with patents relatively easily. Get the rights to it, then give others those same rights freely.
Last I checked, Google was Open-Source. Since OSS and the typical uses of software patents are antithetical, my guess is that this is what Google is trying to do. It'll apply a GPL-like license to the patent: you may use this technology in your products, provided that either 1) those products do not involve any other patented technology or 2) any other patented technology used is licensed is distributable and usable under the terms of this license.
It's a shame that Google has to do this; patents are expensive. But when you have a system that people twist to knock others out, you have to twist it too in order to survive.
I'm only half-joking. How can I say this? Well, consider: a very large part of what makes human beings what they are is the fact that humans have a complex ability to exchange ideas. This was first accomplished through language, and is not being spread to computers. Think about it: humans are individuals, but at the same time you could also say there's a collective consciousness as well in the various groups and cultures.
My point? Software is, at its heart, nothing but ideas. Ideas have never been intended to be patentable; even the US Patent Office doesn't allow for the patenting of ideas (they just need to get my previous point into their heads). There's a difference between source code and software; source code can be copyrighted, providing adequate protection for the work a company has done (not to mention the fact that copyrights are cheaper than patents and last longer too). It does this without stifling the flow of ideas which makes humanity what it is. Software patents do stifle this flow, and it's done without any real need (unless percieved from the point of a profiteering glutton, to borrow a phrase from The Mentor). It's more than possible to make money without patents; in fact I would be willing to bet that if all software patents were abolished right now, the revenues of the various software companies (those which actually write software instead of hoarding patents, at least) wouldn't change significantly.
Basically, to stifle the free flow of information is to stifle our humanity in a very real way. It's a shame that there are people who will do this just to make a buck. But they do exist, having forgotten that there are things more important than making ridiculous amounts of wealth (which is certainly nice and all, and I wouldn't mind doing it myself, but it's not the most important thing).
Re:Thats great but what about other OS's?
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Quake 1 GPL'ed
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One: MacSoft didn't code MacQuake. Westlake Interactive did. MacSoft only distributed it; they outsourced the development.
Two: I think Westlake has to Open-Source their stuff now, including all six Quakes they did (software, 3Dfx, RAVE, QWsoftware, QW3Dfx, QWRAVE). They were based off the original Quake source, after all, and probably still contain chunks of it (particularly the QuakeC engine and the file-translation routines).
I should also point out that the 3Dfx (and, if I'm not mistaken, RAVE) versions were themselves ports of GLQuake with the rendering engine changed as appropriate. So while the Mac doesn't have a "true" GLQuake, it has pretty much the same thing already. A true GLQuake would be nice, though, and shouldn't be too hard since we already have two very similar programs.
If you're just starting to get the whole "programming" thing into gear, then the Quake engine is not the place to start.
Don't get me wrong, the Quake engine being GPL'd is a great thing, and I applaud Id for it. However, 3D-engines are not a good thing to cut your teeth on. Start small. Code a few 2-D games first (my guess is that you're into game programming). Tetris clones and platformers are always popular (heck, my first game was a taste-challenged Barney-killing simulator back in my high schools Pascal class). Then move on to grander things. You can't build a tool shed in the backyard and then move on to a castle right away. It's the same with coding.
1) As for randomly changing the genes, first you have to know the genome (unless you want to take on the astronomically time-consuming and expensive task of taking wild shots in the dark, and it'll take thousands of years to learn the genome by then thanks to the time lag introduced by this technique). In order to know the genome, you need live samples to study. Extinct species by definition have no live samples, so you can't study the genome. 2) Keeping on cloning: that doesn't really solve the problem. So you have a few animals in zoos; if all of the specimens of a given species are in captivity then the species may as well be extinct; it is no longer a part of nature. 3) Getting more samples: You do, of course, realize that in all the time we've searched for wooly mammoth DNA, we've only ever found one specimen with most of its DNA left.
In other words, once a species is extinct there's nothing you can do. It is gone. A sobering thought, to be sure, and a good reason to preserve what species we still have.
I was already boycotting them for this reason, but now I at least know I'm not alone in this. Yes, RMS is known for being a little, and cometimes more than a little, extreme. But in this case I think he's justified. Mainly because I can't think of anything else constructive that'll even have a chance of solving this problem.
You know, you'd think they would have learnedx by now. Particularly after the last school shooting (about which I'm honestly surprised JonKatz hasn't written). Why?
Because the shooter apparently didn't fit any geek profile out there. No amount of profiling, and certainly no computer program could have found him. And that's proof that it doesn't work; you hurt far more innocent people than you catch criminals. In this case, geek profiling caused hardships for thousands of students, and didn't even catch the next shooter.
Part of the philosophy of our justice system is that "it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to punish one innocent man." Yeah, I suppose it shows in the fact that criminals twist our laws around so much to get off for their crimes, but that's not the point. The point is, this sort of profiling should be unconstitutional. I guess that wouldn't hinder its development in the UK (which has no formal Constitution) but still, you'd think they'd have learned from these mistakes too.
This is a gross privacy violation. However, it's not too difficult to circumvent.
Consider: the serial numbers can only be traced back to the printer, not the printer's owner (at least, not without records). Also, consider that the serial number has to be stored someplace where it can be modified easily, so that the printers can still be mass-produced. This means that it's still theoretically possible to modify the serial number.
Hehehe... my guess is that they'll use letters in serial numbers too, to allow for a greater number of numbers. This means that, once we figure out how to hack these, it'll be possible to put little messages into the watermarks.
I can see it now... Big Brother tries to read the watermark, all they get is strings of swear words:)
Slashdot Mirror
However, I'm intrigued by that comparison to ultra-quiet submarines.
Think for a moment. Say you had a fleet of ultra-quiet submarines. You know that your enemy can track them if my looking for unusually quiet spots. So, what do you do?
The answer: surround their fleet. Cancel out the ambient noise, so the quiet spots can't be picked out. It's the opposite of creating noise to cover noisy submarines.
Therefore, one answer would seem to be the creation of many "dummy" keys on the server. They're generated just like the "real" key is, so they're just as random. Thelocation of the "real" key then becomes a closely-guarded secret, of course, as much so as the machine's root password.
Consider that the strongest keys out there are only 4K. This means that creating 1000 dummies only wastes four megs of space; in an age where it's hard to find drives less than twenty times that size this isn't really that much of a space-waster.
The best solution would be a completely-encrypted filesystem. Then there would be no way to tell the key from any other data, and even if you could it would be useless. Are there any good fully-encrypted filesystems out there yet? Linux-compatibility would be a plus...
I loved Don Martin's work. It's truly sad to see him go. I hope that both Mad and Cracked (which also used some of his work) give him fitting tributes. The man was great at what he did.
Adieu, Don. You'll be missed, but never forgotten.
This is why I stay politically neutral.
Anyway, there were a few things about the article that I found interesting. One, it never tackled the encryption issue. It mentioned it once in passing, but never said anything about it.
Two, check the bit about the MS case. There's a decidedly pro-MS slant. Then again, that's probably why the site's called that.
Three, the filtering problem. The issue is thorny; kids really shouldn't be accessing all the pr0n that's out there. But the government has no place in this, and no right to take the role of guardian. That's the job of parents and educators. There's also the problem that most filtering software blocks harmless sites (the most often-cited example is that medical sites get blocked).
Apple's KidSafe filtering software is actually intriguing for that reason. Instead of blacklisting the "bad" sites, it whitelists "good" ones, as approved by a panel of teachers and librarians. This one, much as I hate to support filtering, might actually have something of a place in the school system. School-owned computers shouldn't be used for stuff other than schoolwork anyway. As long as they don't try to force it onto personal and home machines, there's something of an appeal to those.
The argument can also be made that the government owns the computers placed in public schools and libraries, and therefore has the right to do what it wants with its property.
Note that I don't support mandatory filtering at all. I would still much rather see any "protection" acts shot down. But I get the feeling that eventually our twisted right-fringe zealot friends in the government are going to get what they want, so it might as well be channeled to where it can do the least destruction possible.
If you want to turn off the 3-blink thing, just go to General Controls and set "Menu Blinking" to Off.
.25 seconds it takes for the menus to blink makes. Then again, I also use keyboard shortcuts when possible.
Personally, I don't see what difference the
You want to know how come kernelspace drivers don't decrease OSX's stability? The answer is actually simple. They're done right.
That's what Linux and company are afraid of. Buggy drivers in kernelspace can totally trash a system. Currently, the Linux community doesn't seem to have the resources to produce video drivers of the same quality as you get from the company that makes the cards. This is mainly the fault of the corporations, mind you; they don't provide the documentation that the Linux community needs.
I do hope that when KGI becomes stable enough (and it will, given enough time) it is incorporated into the kernel. Speed isn't the only issue with kernelspace drivers, after all; there's security issues too (any program that has to directly access hardware, such as X, has to run as root under the current system, because there's no kernelspace video functionallity). This both leads to potential exploits and puts the system at risk stability-wise, since a root process can still take down the whole system in the event of a crash.
Aqua's the new OSX interface; no one's used it yet (outside Apple anyway) but there are plenty of previews. Check it out at http://www.apple.com/macosx.
It's very pretty, and frankly I wonder if Apple fired its own graphic design team and hired a legion of demo-coders to implement it instead; it's undoubtedly the coolest-looking interface I've ever seen (with the possible exception of the BlueSteel theme for E, and the supposed interface for the new AmigaOS which, sadly, never showed).
However, the good looks don't always translate to practicality; check out the three buttons at the top of the window (I think they look like jewels). They look exactly alike, except for color, until you mouse over them. Then all three get little symbols (X for clode, + for maximize, - for minimize) embedded in the jewels. It's still bad interface, though.
In other words, Apple isn't getting it completely right with this revision. Hopefully they'll correct the mistakes by the time OSX is released; then it'll be really cool.
Pretty cool. By my real name, I'm "Auxiliary Priest." Go by my Net alias and I'm "Half-Cut Skeleton." I'm having trouble figuring out which one is cooler.
How does one figure out one's Wu name anyway? I can't figure out how this one's done.
There's a difference between criticism and flaming. Criticism presents facts to back up its arguments. It also tends to avoid the use of blatantly insulting words, such as "crappy." It stays on topic, for example it doesn't switch from discussing an interface to the people who use it.
You did none of these. You simply flamed.
I'd mod it down too, if I hadn't already posted.
Let's see... you provide absolutely nothing to back up your claim, which was laced with insulting words. To top it all off, you then move to insult Mac users.
If that's not flamebait, I don't know what is.
But I very much doubt that Apple's going to Open-Source everything. It might Open-Source more than Darwin, but I don't think it'll do it all (or even as much as it even can).
My guess is that the author of this article misinterpreted what Jobs was saying. I suppose we can dream, though.
If I remember correctly, the patents on RSA are set to expire soon. This removes one barrier: more crypto can then be legally Open-Sourced.
The next problem comes with crypto restrictions. My guess is, either Mozilla will have to get a permit or we'll have to wait for the crypto source export restrictions to be lifted. Alternatively, a module could be developed overseas which plugs into Mozilla (will Mozilla be able to work with plug-ins, by the way?).
I agree; crypto is absolutely vital for a Web appliance. If Mozilla (or some version thereof) doesn't end up with crypto of some kind, then there's no way I could recommend it for this type of machine.
I remember Alan saying at one point that he was considering adding the current ext3 sources into the kernel. Anyone know if he's done this yet, or will that be going into the 2.3 tree?
This is definitely going way too far. Speeding is a problem, yes, but it can be controlled without resorting to such Big Brother-ish methods (you know they're going to install tracking devices in the cars along with this satellite thing too; it's simply too easy to resist).
A better solution would be as follows. The speed limit in a given area is broadcast on some radio frequency (a convenient place would be at each road sign, using what would end up being a very inexpensive transmitter since it only has to use one frequency and transmit only one thing). The vehicle would have a device inside which renders it incapable of exceeding the speed it "hears" from these transmitters.
Because the transmitters cannot recieve data, privacy is protected (since the vehicle cannot be tracked). It also stops the problem of speeding. And even though it means installing a lot of transmitters, in the end it's probably cheaper than launching a network of satellites and installing even more satellite recievers. It is cheaper for the car manufacturers, tool the technology is less expensive.
Now, I do have objections to forcing the cars down to the speed limit, of course. For one, the limits are often set ridiculously low, because the laws tend to use blanket formulas that don't apply well to some areas where faster speeds are safe, but because of the designation it's set slower than it needs to be. For another, I wonder if the British government realizes just how much revenue speeding tickets generate; you can kiss that goodbye (yeah, that's a self-serving reason, but to governments ever have any other kind?)
Think about this. Gutenberg was the one who made the printing press a practical invenion by introducing movable type. This fact is what kick-started the freer flow of information, which is how we humans have come to be defined. daVinci, Curie, Einstein, Hawking, Torvalds... all great in their own respects, but had Gutenberg not come before them they would be nothing. After Gutenberg, then Alexander Graham Bell, no so much for the telephone as the telephone line. Think of just how many devices now depend on telephone lines. Also consider this: while a telephone line may have more wires n it now, the basic ideas haven't changed since the device was first invented. Now that is impressive. After Bell, then Babbage. The one whose ideas would later inspire the modern computer. Only the first of his three machines (Difference Engine, Analytical Engine, "Dream Engine") were ever built, but the ideas carried on. After Babbage, then A and B (whose names I can't remember, but they built the A-B-C, the first electronic computer, predating its more famous descendant the ENIAC by one or two decades). Then the people behind ENIAC, who made the term a household word. Then Admiral Grace Hopper, who helped with the first programming languages. Then the inventors of the transistor, then the the microprocessor. I'm sure you see where I'm going here. Keep the list going, and you'll reach the original writers of UNIX, the Xerox PARC team, Jobs and Wozniak, and so on until you reach Torvalds. The point: The top geeks of this century have done great things indeed, but we shouldn't forget who made these possible. And it all started, more or less, with Gutenberg.
Personally, I don't know what to think about this. My luggage is already X-rayed every time I go to the airport, and I don't hear anyone complaining about that; I don't think many people would consider it an invasion of privacy.
I also go through a metal detector each time. I don't think this is a privacy invasion either. Now, I've never actually had to be frisked before. This said, though, I think I'd rather step in front of a machine than be frisked, as long as the machine was safe.
I do remember the screenshots posted last time this was brought up on Slashdot several months ago. Somehow I don't think the images from this thing will ever get onto any porn site; even the sickest freak out there wouldn't want these. Yeah, the gender of the person being scanned is pretty obvious (the Slashdot folks all got a good laugh out of that). But it's not like a photograph; it's more like a low-power X-ray with extremely little in the way of detail (the outline isn't even very clear, and certainly not as detailed as this article would have you believe).
I would prefer something low-powered enough that there wouldn't be any detail at all, but you run the risk of killing the scanner's effectiveness then. I do hope they work on something like that, though. It'd put a lot more people's minds at ease.
As I see it, there are a few reasons...
1) PR. Not that BSD has bad PR. It just doesn't get as much of it as Linux does. Most people have at least heard of Linux, but you don't hear about BSD in the media very often. You can't use what you don't know exists.
2) The license. Say what you will, but the non-quid-pro-quo has a lot of disadvantages, not the least of which is that it discourages development by independent authors. Look at it this way: a commercial company can do whatever it wants with BSD-licensed software, make it proprietary, and make a ton of money off the stuff (witness Solaris). Corporations have nothing to fear from BSD, the way they do GPL. An independent author could theoretically do this, but it's not practical; one person simply doesn't have the marketing power of a corporation and thus isn't going to be able to profit. Therefore, the independent author has no real choice but to keep his code free and Open-Source. This tips the balance of power, and means that independent authors usually end up working, in effect, as unpaid coders for the companies that leech off of BSD's work.
3) Fragmentation. The fragmentation of BSD really isn't that bad. But it is there; you have three major versions (FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD) and a few others (Darwin could, in a way, be considered one, though it's hardly a major variant at this point in time). Is this a Bad Thing? No. It's not good, but it's not bad. But it does scare most bosses. It scares them enough so that it doesn't take much extra FUD to sway their decisions (unless the bosses know what they're talking about, in which case it takes considerably more effort).
Is BSD a bad system? Hardly; I don't have very much experience with BSD but I like what I've seen so far (though I think I'll stick with Linux all the same). But it does have a few issues. Linux does too; don't get me wrong, no OS is perfect, and they both have some way to go. It just happens that, for now, Linux is farther ahead. That might change, or it might not. Either way, it keeps things from being dull.
Software patents are a Bad Thing. It's good to fight to change them. But until they actually are changed, we do have to respect the system.
However, until the patent system is changed, it can yet prove useful. Consider: The GPL uses copyright, which is supposed to prevent people from copying works, to instead allow such copying. Something similar could (albeit more expensively) be done with patents relatively easily. Get the rights to it, then give others those same rights freely.
Last I checked, Google was Open-Source. Since OSS and the typical uses of software patents are antithetical, my guess is that this is what Google is trying to do. It'll apply a GPL-like license to the patent: you may use this technology in your products, provided that either 1) those products do not involve any other patented technology or 2) any other patented technology used is licensed is distributable and usable under the terms of this license.
It's a shame that Google has to do this; patents are expensive. But when you have a system that people twist to knock others out, you have to twist it too in order to survive.
They aren't human.
I'm only half-joking. How can I say this? Well, consider: a very large part of what makes human beings what they are is the fact that humans have a complex ability to exchange ideas. This was first accomplished through language, and is not being spread to computers. Think about it: humans are individuals, but at the same time you could also say there's a collective consciousness as well in the various groups and cultures.
My point? Software is, at its heart, nothing but ideas. Ideas have never been intended to be patentable; even the US Patent Office doesn't allow for the patenting of ideas (they just need to get my previous point into their heads). There's a difference between source code and software; source code can be copyrighted, providing adequate protection for the work a company has done (not to mention the fact that copyrights are cheaper than patents and last longer too). It does this without stifling the flow of ideas which makes humanity what it is. Software patents do stifle this flow, and it's done without any real need (unless percieved from the point of a profiteering glutton, to borrow a phrase from The Mentor). It's more than possible to make money without patents; in fact I would be willing to bet that if all software patents were abolished right now, the revenues of the various software companies (those which actually write software instead of hoarding patents, at least) wouldn't change significantly.
Basically, to stifle the free flow of information is to stifle our humanity in a very real way. It's a shame that there are people who will do this just to make a buck. But they do exist, having forgotten that there are things more important than making ridiculous amounts of wealth (which is certainly nice and all, and I wouldn't mind doing it myself, but it's not the most important thing).
That should be www.westlakeinteractive.com. Sorry about the mixup.
One: MacSoft didn't code MacQuake. Westlake Interactive did. MacSoft only distributed it; they outsourced the development.
Two: I think Westlake has to Open-Source their stuff now, including all six Quakes they did (software, 3Dfx, RAVE, QWsoftware, QW3Dfx, QWRAVE). They were based off the original Quake source, after all, and probably still contain chunks of it (particularly the QuakeC engine and the file-translation routines).
I should also point out that the 3Dfx (and, if I'm not mistaken, RAVE) versions were themselves ports of GLQuake with the rendering engine changed as appropriate. So while the Mac doesn't have a "true" GLQuake, it has pretty much the same thing already. A true GLQuake would be nice, though, and shouldn't be too hard since we already have two very similar programs.
If you're just starting to get the whole "programming" thing into gear, then the Quake engine is not the place to start.
Don't get me wrong, the Quake engine being GPL'd is a great thing, and I applaud Id for it. However, 3D-engines are not a good thing to cut your teeth on. Start small. Code a few 2-D games first (my guess is that you're into game programming). Tetris clones and platformers are always popular (heck, my first game was a taste-challenged Barney-killing simulator back in my high schools Pascal class). Then move on to grander things. You can't build a tool shed in the backyard and then move on to a castle right away. It's the same with coding.
None of those three are likely to be practical.
1) As for randomly changing the genes, first you have to know the genome (unless you want to take on the astronomically time-consuming and expensive task of taking wild shots in the dark, and it'll take thousands of years to learn the genome by then thanks to the time lag introduced by this technique). In order to know the genome, you need live samples to study. Extinct species by definition have no live samples, so you can't study the genome.
2) Keeping on cloning: that doesn't really solve the problem. So you have a few animals in zoos; if all of the specimens of a given species are in captivity then the species may as well be extinct; it is no longer a part of nature.
3) Getting more samples: You do, of course, realize that in all the time we've searched for wooly mammoth DNA, we've only ever found one specimen with most of its DNA left.
In other words, once a species is extinct there's nothing you can do. It is gone. A sobering thought, to be sure, and a good reason to preserve what species we still have.
I was already boycotting them for this reason, but now I at least know I'm not alone in this. Yes, RMS is known for being a little, and cometimes more than a little, extreme. But in this case I think he's justified. Mainly because I can't think of anything else constructive that'll even have a chance of solving this problem.
You know, you'd think they would have learnedx by now. Particularly after the last school shooting (about which I'm honestly surprised JonKatz hasn't written). Why?
Because the shooter apparently didn't fit any geek profile out there. No amount of profiling, and certainly no computer program could have found him. And that's proof that it doesn't work; you hurt far more innocent people than you catch criminals. In this case, geek profiling caused hardships for thousands of students, and didn't even catch the next shooter.
Part of the philosophy of our justice system is that "it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to punish one innocent man." Yeah, I suppose it shows in the fact that criminals twist our laws around so much to get off for their crimes, but that's not the point. The point is, this sort of profiling should be unconstitutional. I guess that wouldn't hinder its development in the UK (which has no formal Constitution) but still, you'd think they'd have learned from these mistakes too.
This is a gross privacy violation. However, it's not too difficult to circumvent.
:)
Consider: the serial numbers can only be traced back to the printer, not the printer's owner (at least, not without records). Also, consider that the serial number has to be stored someplace where it can be modified easily, so that the printers can still be mass-produced. This means that it's still theoretically possible to modify the serial number.
Hehehe... my guess is that they'll use letters in serial numbers too, to allow for a greater number of numbers. This means that, once we figure out how to hack these, it'll be possible to put little messages into the watermarks.
I can see it now... Big Brother tries to read the watermark, all they get is strings of swear words