I remember an article on Slashdot quite a long time ago that there was some technology being developed for military use that would detect the electric signals emmitted by a human heart's natural pacemaker. The military application would be to allow soldiers to see targets and members of their own force, even when distinguishing a target using infared or night vision would be difficult.
Maybe someone has a link to this story? Or more details about the technology? It sounds like it would be useful in a situation like this.
The GPL, to the best of my knowledge, has never been tested in court, let alone upheld as a valid software license. The FSF seems awefully pushy, dictating the license terms of the free software community, in my opinion. If I remember correctly, the FSF forced a software package to remove some disclaimers of liability, and the "click to accept" license portion on the web site.
Maybe the FSF should realize that these people are doing the other members of the community a favor by making the programs and services open source. They don't have to. For a nonprofit organization that doesn't own any of the data in question to dictate terms to individuals that are making their product free out of goodwill is bound to come right back at them.
So what if something is 100% GPL compatible? As long as the permission to modify/redistribute and the full source code are included, that should be good enough.
Speaking as a high school student, which I currently am, in a Florida school, our school district uses Squid software off of Novell something or other to provide internet filtering. Everything is for null, however, due to a very nifty web site that I discovered, that uses a secure proxy to circumvent the filtering and firewalls.
Using this tool, I can go to that web site, and type the address into it, and it uses a secure proxy server on a different port. It currently has school officials stumped on how to block it.
Is there any way to restrict access to HTTPS:// connections? (I don't want to have to set my home connection up as a secure proxy...but I might have to if they block it.)
Hmm, maybe the cases with redundant power supplies will find a slightly higher market now. One for everything except the processor, and one for the CPU chip itself.
There was a program that I never could get to work properly, that attached itself as a debugger to Linux applications under Windows 2000 and allowed them to run by intercepting and translating the Linux system calls into something Windows 2000 could handle, and translating the responses. I tried to use it on a information tap on my LAN, to syphon cheat info about a game out of the packet stream between the system I play on and the one that served the internet connection, but it didn't quite work that way, and I ended up deleting the program. Does anyone know where I can find something like it again?
For a company that is making open-source software both sold retail AND available for download, some users would volentarely pay for the downloaded version. I would too, assuming I had enough money to spare (but then again, if I did, I'd go buy the retail version.)
Companies that are making billions of dollars, and/or companies that don't really do much (web sites devoted to providing cheats, etc... for games) asking for donations don't have any business doing so, in my opinion.
If you're going to request donations, you should (a) be doing something worthwhile (b) need the money and (c) make the donation a volentary contribution for their services, not just a random thing.
Granted, there are some well-designed / entertaining Flash sites out there (Balthazar Studios comes to mind...I was blown away when I saw their page, and would post the URI if I remembered it), but most Flash designed pages are extremely annoying to navigate. Every time I visit a Flash site, I'm promoted to download Macromedia something or other, even though I already have it, and it runs fine. Then, it takes ages to load, and when it does, it usually is so full of motion and color that it's tough to figure out what to click.
The only acceptable meathods for making web pages are (in my opinion) HTML 4.01/Strict, ASP, and ones that are slightly more static then Flash sites, but can still be customized well enough to be interesting to the end user.
I'm not looking for the most flashy web site. I'm looking for the web site that loads fastest, gives me the information I want, and lets me click the Exit button without flashing a million things in my face.
I've seen diskless (at least externally anyways...no CD/Floppy) Windows 98 kiosks at airports quite often. There's always someone using one, checking stocks or e-mail and such.
Linux, on the other hand, is much less of a mainstream OS, for better or for worse. Some people would be able to convert to it relatively easily, but others would be lost not knowing which program does what (as, for example, KDE applicaiton names aren't always that descriptive.)
They would need to place posters of useage directions next to it for those who aren't familiar with Linux (Including me, I've got a system running Linux, but have yet to make it talk to my Windows PCs on the network, despite trying), and let those who are do their own thing anyway.
It's a good idea but I don't know if a lot of people will be able to use it.
I cannot STAND the Gesture-based interface that Black and White uses. I can't even stand the game, actually, but that's another matter - my opinion on it is that it's a dumb game made even worse by an atrocious input system.
Gesture navigation has its place in some environments. I can see it working in CAD, maybe in some 3D games where less precision is required, and such. But why anyone would want to navigate through a Linux GUI, Windows, or whatever else you use with gestures beats me.
Close window: Slam mouse cursor three times at the top of the screen and scream "Close already!" Go back: Slam mouse cursor twice to the left of the screen. You can see how it will go.
Maybe for those with the inability to make precice movements with their hands would benefit from this meathod of input (MS or Trisomy-21 come to mind) but it's just too cumbersome for normal use.
A "hive mind" is a good thing - having many minds working towards a solution to one problem is much more efficient then many minds working on many problems. This is the entire idea behind distributed computing. However, if the "AI" model being used is allowed to think and adapt (I don't believe any are capable of doing so at this point), we need to be very careful to regulate it, so that situations such as those in The Matrix and Terminator don't occur. Science Fiction can sometimes provide a good criticism of society and what we fear as a people, but might not realize we fear.
As long as we can ultimately "pull the plug" when need be, AI is beneficial.
This means that I will no longer have to use a VCR to record shows that I'll miss when I am out. I'll just buy a very expensive piece of hardware and get the shows a day early.
My question is: Where do these shows come from? Do they just materialize from the air for no reason or something? Or are these satellite dishes intercepting the shows as they are sent from one office of the broadcasting network to the othetr? Either way, it doesn't really matter; this is akin to the Logitech Wireless RF devices being suceptable to being tapped, and cell phones being scanned, and such. It's pretty interesting, but not much will come of it in the long run.
I've never heard of this list before, but I am going to take an educated guess.
ICANN, the "new" Internet government, is like the Provisional Government in Russia after the revolution, but wields the power of fear, something said government did not have. Verisign is like the moderate socialists, who were pretty normal but got pushed around by the radicals, who belong to the Petrograd Soviet (ICANN).
ICANN is flexing its muscles, to make people fear it. I was an avid opponent of ICANN, but it looks like not much can be done now.
Lets work with this idea here. Actually, it does sound like a great one.
It could be done sort of like Final Fantasy 7 was. Mostly RPG and such, with RPG-style combat (I love the menu-driven combat but still real-timeness that the FF games have.), but for major operations, such as Paul's military advisor having to control the attack on the Harkonen spice harvesting plant, the game could drop into RTS mode using a C&C2 engine or something. It'd be the best of both worlds - RPG combat and RTS army manipulation.
sorry about the error message at the end there...it apparently was contained in my clipboard adn I accidently stuck it in while I was typing, hten submitted it.
A placebo is a double-edged sword. The patient might believe he is receiving real medication and feel better as a result (though why this happens is extremely wierd, because it certainly isn't giving them any real medicine), or, they could think they're getting the placebo and not have anything happen.
As people become more aware that they might not be getting the real thing, the psycological effect is deminished, and only the true medication will work.
Routing and Remote Access Service: Unable to load C:\WINDOWS\System32\iprtrmgr.dll. Service stopped.
Hi, my name is -=KOC=-Genotype 47XXY[BA] and I am a Low-Ping Bastard
Seriously now, I usually have around 100 ping - but smoke grenades in Counter-Strike severely lag me out, and in big games, I get dropped packets and lag while my computer waits to process all the data it gets.
Just because you have a low "ping" time, all that means is your computer can send a 32-byte ICMP packet and back in 1/10th of a second. It doesn't necessarely mean that the useful data is as fast.
In a world where the organizations with the most money get to tell the other organizaitons what to do, the fact that the RIAA and MPAA are actively attacking anything that allows people to share their music/movies doesn't surprise me. The quality of most MP3s / DivX movies is nowhere near that you'd find on a CD or DVD, and the mediums aren't that big of a threat to the companies producing the media.
As a result of Napster, record companies actually INCREASED their profits, because people were less reserved about buying a CD if they knew that they would like some of the songs on it before hand. I would -never- but CDs, because I didn't know if I'd like them, but by being able to try it out before I buy it, I purchased an entire CD of music that I downloaded off of Napster.
I have DivX movies on CD - but also a DVD-ROM drive and DVD movies, legally purchased, because I want the higher quality for some things. A $3 burned DivX of a movie is like an MP3 of a song - it's a good trial, and if I like it, I go out and buy the real thing.
The major entertainment associations feel threatened by the new technologies that make it more difficult for them to keep tabs on distrubution. This doesn't mean that the file-sharing is wrong; it means that the RIAA's rules need to be adapted to the Internet age. The best thing they could do that would increase their sales would be to stop policing swapping of MP3s. Then, people like me would go out and buy CDs again, instead of going through the hassal of using Gnutella to find MP3s and burn them onto CDs.
Cellular phones aren't secure. Anyone with a piece of hardware can listen in on your conversations. I know some people with such devices.
"Cordless" telephones are definately not secure. I've listened to other people's conversations because we were on the same channel, accidently, and while I couldn't talk, was very informed on this person's stock portfolio from his conversation with his broker.
Monitor cables, yes, the corded kind, emitt signals that a TEMPEST scanner can reconstruct into an image of your monitor, like a remote wireless VNC termanal that is set to look only.
Why should a wireless mouse and keyboard be any different? They are beaming keystrokes/(X,Y) coordinates into the air the same as those other devices are...why wouldn't a scanner or another receiver be able to pick them up? Anything that travels through the air is unsecure - it should never be assumed otherwise.
This is known as "Echelon", and I had its existance confirmed by my Senator, who also is a member of the Senate Government Oversight committee or something like that, and the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they had recently had a meeting on the issue. While he declined to state more, since it was classified, he pretty much said that yes, the NSA is watching, and no, we can't do anything about it.
Haven't we done this in the past? At least the People are sort of aware of it going on this time around. The NSA shouldn't be allowed to operate outside the law, effectively wiretapping the conversations of millions of people at a time without their explicit permission or a court order.
It's a felony punishable by explusion for a student to bring a tape recorder to school to record their teacher's lectures for replay at a later date, because if they don't expressly tell their teacher they are doing so and give them a chance to say no, they are violating federal wiretap laws. Shouldn't the NSA be held to the same standard, or either having to notify the people they are monitoring, or have a court order telling them it is acceptable to do so?
If a government agency suddenly becomes above the law, as the NSA pretty much is, we should be afraid. Monitoring electronic conversations is no more right then monitoring someone's telephone.
Let's all start sending e-mails with words like "C-4", "the President", "bodyguards", "suicide bomb", "PLO", "IRA", "marijuana", and "hijacking" in an effort to flood their computer system with meaningless messages, to force them to stop.
I deserve to be shot for what I am about to say, but so be it.
While Herbert may be considered the God of Science Fiction, I personally do not find his writings desirable to read. I did wade through the entire Dune series. In my opinion, the best book was the prequel, written by Herbert's son. Each and every book in the true "series" got wierder and wierder, starting with the kanly vendettas, to Paul Maud`Dib turning himself into the sand-worm king, then being assassinated so to speak by immersion in a river.
I've also played the video games based on Dune. It's nearly impossible to reduce a world of such albiet twisted depth down into an RTS game with three races. It just doesn't work, no matter how many cinematics you put in and how good the writers are. Dune, for those who are willing to be somewhat bored and confused, should be read, not played.
These are my personal views, but I'm sure I'm not alone.
I might not notice products in a show, but I'd certainly notice it without really seeing it. Just another money making idea that will reduce the realism of television programs.
Slashdot Mirror
Awwwww $^#@, I knew it sounded too sci-fi to be true.
Yes, I did read Rainbow 6...Guess I got my facts confused.
Grrrrrr.
I remember an article on Slashdot quite a long time ago that there was some technology being developed for military use that would detect the electric signals emmitted by a human heart's natural pacemaker. The military application would be to allow soldiers to see targets and members of their own force, even when distinguishing a target using infared or night vision would be difficult.
Maybe someone has a link to this story? Or more details about the technology? It sounds like it would be useful in a situation like this.
The GPL, to the best of my knowledge, has never been tested in court, let alone upheld as a valid software license. The FSF seems awefully pushy, dictating the license terms of the free software community, in my opinion. If I remember correctly, the FSF forced a software package to remove some disclaimers of liability, and the "click to accept" license portion on the web site.
Maybe the FSF should realize that these people are doing the other members of the community a favor by making the programs and services open source. They don't have to. For a nonprofit organization that doesn't own any of the data in question to dictate terms to individuals that are making their product free out of goodwill is bound to come right back at them.
So what if something is 100% GPL compatible? As long as the permission to modify/redistribute and the full source code are included, that should be good enough.
J.W. Koebel
You knew SOMEONE was going to do it. I swear it wasn't me, but I did find the picture.
Don't mod me down...Please.
http://kotisivu.raketti.net/wadez/ter.jpg
JKoebel
Speaking as a high school student, which I currently am, in a Florida school, our school district uses Squid software off of Novell something or other to provide internet filtering. Everything is for null, however, due to a very nifty web site that I discovered, that uses a secure proxy to circumvent the filtering and firewalls.
Using this tool, I can go to that web site, and type the address into it, and it uses a secure proxy server on a different port. It currently has school officials stumped on how to block it.
Is there any way to restrict access to HTTPS:// connections? (I don't want to have to set my home connection up as a secure proxy...but I might have to if they block it.)
Hmm, maybe the cases with redundant power supplies will find a slightly higher market now. One for everything except the processor, and one for the CPU chip itself.
!!!
And my 750-Athlon runs hot as it is.
J.Koebel
There was a program that I never could get to work properly, that attached itself as a debugger to Linux applications under Windows 2000 and allowed them to run by intercepting and translating the Linux system calls into something Windows 2000 could handle, and translating the responses. I tried to use it on a information tap on my LAN, to syphon cheat info about a game out of the packet stream between the system I play on and the one that served the internet connection, but it didn't quite work that way, and I ended up deleting the program. Does anyone know where I can find something like it again?
For a company that is making open-source software both sold retail AND available for download, some users would volentarely pay for the downloaded version. I would too, assuming I had enough money to spare (but then again, if I did, I'd go buy the retail version.)
Companies that are making billions of dollars, and/or companies that don't really do much (web sites devoted to providing cheats, etc... for games) asking for donations don't have any business doing so, in my opinion.
If you're going to request donations, you should (a) be doing something worthwhile (b) need the money and (c) make the donation a volentary contribution for their services, not just a random thing.
Granted, there are some well-designed / entertaining Flash sites out there (Balthazar Studios comes to mind...I was blown away when I saw their page, and would post the URI if I remembered it), but most Flash designed pages are extremely annoying to navigate. Every time I visit a Flash site, I'm promoted to download Macromedia something or other, even though I already have it, and it runs fine. Then, it takes ages to load, and when it does, it usually is so full of motion and color that it's tough to figure out what to click.
The only acceptable meathods for making web pages are (in my opinion) HTML 4.01/Strict, ASP, and ones that are slightly more static then Flash sites, but can still be customized well enough to be interesting to the end user.
I'm not looking for the most flashy web site. I'm looking for the web site that loads fastest, gives me the information I want, and lets me click the Exit button without flashing a million things in my face.
I've seen diskless (at least externally anyways...no CD/Floppy) Windows 98 kiosks at airports quite often. There's always someone using one, checking stocks or e-mail and such.
Linux, on the other hand, is much less of a mainstream OS, for better or for worse. Some people would be able to convert to it relatively easily, but others would be lost not knowing which program does what (as, for example, KDE applicaiton names aren't always that descriptive.)
They would need to place posters of useage directions next to it for those who aren't familiar with Linux (Including me, I've got a system running Linux, but have yet to make it talk to my Windows PCs on the network, despite trying), and let those who are do their own thing anyway.
It's a good idea but I don't know if a lot of people will be able to use it.
I cannot STAND the Gesture-based interface that Black and White uses. I can't even stand the game, actually, but that's another matter - my opinion on it is that it's a dumb game made even worse by an atrocious input system.
Gesture navigation has its place in some environments. I can see it working in CAD, maybe in some 3D games where less precision is required, and such. But why anyone would want to navigate through a Linux GUI, Windows, or whatever else you use with gestures beats me.
Close window: Slam mouse cursor three times at the top of the screen and scream "Close already!" Go back: Slam mouse cursor twice to the left of the screen. You can see how it will go.
Maybe for those with the inability to make precice movements with their hands would benefit from this meathod of input (MS or Trisomy-21 come to mind) but it's just too cumbersome for normal use.
A "hive mind" is a good thing - having many minds working towards a solution to one problem is much more efficient then many minds working on many problems. This is the entire idea behind distributed computing. However, if the "AI" model being used is allowed to think and adapt (I don't believe any are capable of doing so at this point), we need to be very careful to regulate it, so that situations such as those in The Matrix and Terminator don't occur. Science Fiction can sometimes provide a good criticism of society and what we fear as a people, but might not realize we fear.
As long as we can ultimately "pull the plug" when need be, AI is beneficial.
This means that I will no longer have to use a VCR to record shows that I'll miss when I am out. I'll just buy a very expensive piece of hardware and get the shows a day early.
My question is: Where do these shows come from? Do they just materialize from the air for no reason or something? Or are these satellite dishes intercepting the shows as they are sent from one office of the broadcasting network to the othetr? Either way, it doesn't really matter; this is akin to the Logitech Wireless RF devices being suceptable to being tapped, and cell phones being scanned, and such. It's pretty interesting, but not much will come of it in the long run.
I've never heard of this list before, but I am going to take an educated guess.
ICANN, the "new" Internet government, is like the Provisional Government in Russia after the revolution, but wields the power of fear, something said government did not have. Verisign is like the moderate socialists, who were pretty normal but got pushed around by the radicals, who belong to the Petrograd Soviet (ICANN).
ICANN is flexing its muscles, to make people fear it. I was an avid opponent of ICANN, but it looks like not much can be done now.
Precisely what I did with Metallica...though don't tell them that. :)
Lets work with this idea here. Actually, it does sound like a great one.
It could be done sort of like Final Fantasy 7 was. Mostly RPG and such, with RPG-style combat (I love the menu-driven combat but still real-timeness that the FF games have.), but for major operations, such as Paul's military advisor having to control the attack on the Harkonen spice harvesting plant, the game could drop into RTS mode using a C&C2 engine or something. It'd be the best of both worlds - RPG combat and RTS army manipulation.
Sounds like a winner to me.
sorry about the error message at the end there...it apparently was contained in my clipboard adn I accidently stuck it in while I was typing, hten submitted it.
A placebo is a double-edged sword. The patient might believe he is receiving real medication and feel better as a result (though why this happens is extremely wierd, because it certainly isn't giving them any real medicine), or, they could think they're getting the placebo and not have anything happen.
As people become more aware that they might not be getting the real thing, the psycological effect is deminished, and only the true medication will work.
Routing and Remote Access Service: Unable to load C:\WINDOWS\System32\iprtrmgr.dll. Service stopped.Hi, my name is -=KOC=-Genotype 47XXY[BA] and I am a Low-Ping Bastard
Seriously now, I usually have around 100 ping - but smoke grenades in Counter-Strike severely lag me out, and in big games, I get dropped packets and lag while my computer waits to process all the data it gets.
Just because you have a low "ping" time, all that means is your computer can send a 32-byte ICMP packet and back in 1/10th of a second. It doesn't necessarely mean that the useful data is as fast.
In a world where the organizations with the most money get to tell the other organizaitons what to do, the fact that the RIAA and MPAA are actively attacking anything that allows people to share their music/movies doesn't surprise me. The quality of most MP3s / DivX movies is nowhere near that you'd find on a CD or DVD, and the mediums aren't that big of a threat to the companies producing the media.
As a result of Napster, record companies actually INCREASED their profits, because people were less reserved about buying a CD if they knew that they would like some of the songs on it before hand. I would -never- but CDs, because I didn't know if I'd like them, but by being able to try it out before I buy it, I purchased an entire CD of music that I downloaded off of Napster.
I have DivX movies on CD - but also a DVD-ROM drive and DVD movies, legally purchased, because I want the higher quality for some things. A $3 burned DivX of a movie is like an MP3 of a song - it's a good trial, and if I like it, I go out and buy the real thing.
The major entertainment associations feel threatened by the new technologies that make it more difficult for them to keep tabs on distrubution. This doesn't mean that the file-sharing is wrong; it means that the RIAA's rules need to be adapted to the Internet age. The best thing they could do that would increase their sales would be to stop policing swapping of MP3s. Then, people like me would go out and buy CDs again, instead of going through the hassal of using Gnutella to find MP3s and burn them onto CDs.
My $.02 and a few killobytes.
Cellular phones aren't secure. Anyone with a piece of hardware can listen in on your conversations. I know some people with such devices.
"Cordless" telephones are definately not secure. I've listened to other people's conversations because we were on the same channel, accidently, and while I couldn't talk, was very informed on this person's stock portfolio from his conversation with his broker.
Monitor cables, yes, the corded kind, emitt signals that a TEMPEST scanner can reconstruct into an image of your monitor, like a remote wireless VNC termanal that is set to look only.
Why should a wireless mouse and keyboard be any different? They are beaming keystrokes/(X,Y) coordinates into the air the same as those other devices are...why wouldn't a scanner or another receiver be able to pick them up? Anything that travels through the air is unsecure - it should never be assumed otherwise.
This is known as "Echelon", and I had its existance confirmed by my Senator, who also is a member of the Senate Government Oversight committee or something like that, and the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they had recently had a meeting on the issue. While he declined to state more, since it was classified, he pretty much said that yes, the NSA is watching, and no, we can't do anything about it.
Haven't we done this in the past? At least the People are sort of aware of it going on this time around. The NSA shouldn't be allowed to operate outside the law, effectively wiretapping the conversations of millions of people at a time without their explicit permission or a court order.
It's a felony punishable by explusion for a student to bring a tape recorder to school to record their teacher's lectures for replay at a later date, because if they don't expressly tell their teacher they are doing so and give them a chance to say no, they are violating federal wiretap laws. Shouldn't the NSA be held to the same standard, or either having to notify the people they are monitoring, or have a court order telling them it is acceptable to do so?
If a government agency suddenly becomes above the law, as the NSA pretty much is, we should be afraid. Monitoring electronic conversations is no more right then monitoring someone's telephone.
Let's all start sending e-mails with words like "C-4", "the President", "bodyguards", "suicide bomb", "PLO", "IRA", "marijuana", and "hijacking" in an effort to flood their computer system with meaningless messages, to force them to stop.
Ohh wait, its been tried before, and failed.
I deserve to be shot for what I am about to say, but so be it.
While Herbert may be considered the God of Science Fiction, I personally do not find his writings desirable to read. I did wade through the entire Dune series. In my opinion, the best book was the prequel, written by Herbert's son. Each and every book in the true "series" got wierder and wierder, starting with the kanly vendettas, to Paul Maud`Dib turning himself into the sand-worm king, then being assassinated so to speak by immersion in a river.
I've also played the video games based on Dune. It's nearly impossible to reduce a world of such albiet twisted depth down into an RTS game with three races. It just doesn't work, no matter how many cinematics you put in and how good the writers are. Dune, for those who are willing to be somewhat bored and confused, should be read, not played.
These are my personal views, but I'm sure I'm not alone.
Subliminal messaging, only more obvious?
I might not notice products in a show, but I'd certainly notice it without really seeing it. Just another money making idea that will reduce the realism of television programs.