It's not as important as you want it to be
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Lo-Tech Cinema
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The Blair Witch Project was unique, and done for a tiny budget, but doesn't mean that all movies should use the same techniques to make their movies cheap as well.
The movie got away with grainy, out-of focus shots from handheld cameras held by amateur camera operators because part of the premise was that it was done by film students as a documentary. Because of this the problems with the camerawork actually made the movie better and more realistic. Unfortunately this won't work in all other movies because in most movies the camera is supposed to be a window into the movie world, so grainy, out-of-focus shots interfere with the "gods-eye-view" effect. I'm afraid good cameras and good camera operators will have to remain part of making a good traditional movie.
The same goes for the lack of score, lack of special lighting, etc. All these things enhance the experience of most movies, but would take away from this one -- but only because it would make it seem like it wasn't a documentary. This doesn't mean that music and lighting are necessary otherwise, but nor does it mean that because TBWP got away without them that all other movies can too.
And finally, how is it that GPS enabled the actors to avoid having aides and techs??? GPS is a replacement for a map and compass, not for an aide or tech. GPS is about as relevant to the filmmaking process as is what the actors ate for lunch.
TBWP does prove that it doesn't take a big budget to make a great movie, but don't get carried away. Not all movies can get away with filming the way they did.
See, the thing is I don't want to have to think about the lexical clues that make the difference between a dirty joke and spam.
I'm hoping that after a thorough training cycle my program would be able to tell the difference without my help. It could be many things: the "from" address, the "to" address, my name in the header, my name in the body, the presence of a hyperlink, trustworthy / untrustworthy domains in the header...
Given a big enough "training sample", I think my program should be sensitive enough to discover rules for spam without my helping it any more than flagging the messages in the training sample.
Yep. It's been a back-burner project of mine for a while now to make a spam filter. I think I have a winning concept, but the execution is both time consuming and hard. I'll mention my concept and see what you folks think.
The program would be a learning program, based most likely on a neural net. The core of the program would be a list of 100 or so "words". These words would initially be randomly chosen "words" from my entire inbox file. Eventually the program would see these words as triggers. For example the "word" mom@moms.isp.net (i.e. my mom's internet address) would be a strong indication it's not spam, however "VIRGINS!!!" would be a strong indication it's spam.
Now the program would randomly choose these words, and eventually keep the ones with good relevance (like the above), and throw away the ones with low relevance. Low relevance words would be either words that are seldom seen, or ones that are found both in legitimate and spam mail: "a", "the"...
The strength of this concept is that it is tailored to the individual. Even without things like my mom's email address, I imagine the words that are often seen in my legitimate mail are different from the ones seen in another person's. This goes down to the machines that the mail is likely to pass through on the way, etc. So once the 'net had been trained properly, it should be very good at knowing whether the new mail is spam or not.
The other big strength of this system is that it ends up using the same criteria I use to determine whether or not something is spam -- the words contained in the message. I can tell at a glance whether something is spam based on the words. A rule based system can easily be fooled -- as this article shows.
The weakness, of course, is that as a AI type program, it must be taught. But I don't think this would be too hard. My guess would be that to teach this program you'd simply have to take a huge chunk of mail you've received in the past, mark each message as being spam or not, and then let it train on that.
So what do you think? A good idea? A lost cause? I know it really doesn't go after the root cause of spam, and means that the Spam keeps clogging up the 'net, just that I don't see it -- but right now that's enough for me.
What makes guns bad is that there is no "stun" setting.
It's an easy argument to say "if you come across a massacre, killing the assailant saves lives". But in practice it's not that simple or that easy.
The biggest problem with guns is they tend to cause death. It's a very simple concept. It's also very simple to look at statistics.
Canada is very similar to the US. Most laws are similar, culture is nearly identical, climate is similar, standard of living is similar, etc. But Canada's murder rate is a tiny fraction of the American murder rate. And that difference is due mostly to the US 4th Amendment.
I personally would rather take my chances unarmed in a land where nearly everyone else is unarmed, than armed in a land where nearly everyone else is armed. And the above statistics are the compelling reason why.
The difference between the objects is the potential for mass damage. If an otherwise average joe goes on a rampage with a knife, how many people is he likely to kill? Ok, now how many people is he likely to kill if he's armed with a gun?
The fact is that humans are aggressive, warmongering, emotional, stupid, and occasionally completely psychotic. I personally feel it's stupid to give the average such a human the ability to kill many people with relative ease.
Yeah, and probably what should happen is that the US government should pass an amendment to the US constitution saying:
All citizens have the right to use encryption.
At which point some people will misinterpret that as meaning that they have a responsibility to encrypt things. Otherwise normal people will start encrypting everything, from their recipes to their web pages. They will freak out if anyone ever implies that they really don't need 2048 bit encryption for their emails to their mother. The US will then be looked upon strangely by the rest of the world. "What's with the US and their encryption??"
Tourists from overseas will be shocked when they see signs like "You can have my PGP key when you pry it from my cold dead hands!". Incidents of Encryption Accidents will flood the headlines:
"Jimmy was such a nice boy! Who would have thought he would encrypt all the school's files like that?"
"Postal worker goes crazy! Encrypts all co-worker's files!!"
...
The difference between encryption and guns is huge.
Guns are designed to kill or seriously injure. Gun supporters think that killing and seriously injuring can be good, if the person being killed or seriously injured is a "bad person".
Crypto, on the other hand, is just privacy protection and authentification. It's not using crypto itself that anybody sees as bad, but rather the information being hidden by that crypto.
If the US did go crazy about cryptography the way they do about guns, the world wouldn't really care. Afterall, crypto is essentially harmless. The same, unfortunately, can't be said about guns.
Actually, I don't know about our commandos (last I heard they had been officially disbanded) but our pilots are great. I think it was a Canadian who won the last Top Gun.
Another thing software companies don't want to admit is that they do gain some things by people pirating their software.
Say Joe Blow can't afford a copy of Microsoft Office. He would never buy it. If he pirates it Microsoft gets no money. If he doesn't buy it Microsoft gets no money. So for the sake of argument assume he pirates it.
Joe Blow then goes on to learn how to use Word, he gets used to the interface, how to make charts, embed objects, and all the other peculiarities of Word.
So later on Joe actually gets some money. Microsoft comes out with a new version of Office. Now assuming Joe doesn't pirate the new version (maybe he feels guilty, who knows). Well Joe isn't going to spend his money on WordPerfect because he knows how to use Word. So Microsoft ends up getting a sale because he pirated their software earlier.
And before you say I'm imagining things and software companies don't think like this.... they do. I have friends who work in the industry who say it's an acknowledged "tactic" used by big companies to ensure people get to know their products.
Oh, but in the future we'd have portable fusion sources everywhere and replicators would be so common that they'd be incredibly cheap. People would probably buy their own replicators and use their own fusion generators to power them. The only thing they'd need to buy regularly is matter bricks they'd use to provide as raw materials for the replication process.
I'd imagine that the replicators would probably cost about $300 -- you know, about the price of a CD burner these days. And I bet the matter bricks would be pretty cheap, maybe $1 each?
So I guess when you wanted a Chocolate bar, you could borrow one from the store, pop it in the replicator, drop in a matter brick, replicate the chocolate, and bring the bar back to the store.
Now at first, Hershey would probably fight this tooth and nail. They'd try to ban replicators, try to make the government put special devices in them so they wouldn't copy chocolate bars. They'd probably also modify the chocolate bar in a way so that it contained un-replicatable substances.
Now eventually Hershey would realize the error of their ways. They'd still sell the old Hershey bars at the same price in stores, but they'd also set up some kind of system where you could download their bar patterns to the replicator directly, and pay a small fee for the use of this service.
For them it would be a perfect deal. Consumers without a replicator would buy it in the store, and they'd get their money through traditional means. Consumers with replicators could pay a tiny fee, amounting to 1/10 the store-bought price, but Hershey wouldn't have to worry about distribution, raw materials, and all the other traditional costs.
Now sure, you'd probably still have some people who refused to pay. They'd rig their systems so they could replicate what they wanted without paying. But most people, either through fear of the law, or through their own sense of what's right, would pay the small fee.
You'd probably also get some people who dislike the idea of paying at all. They'd come up with their own chocolate bar recipe, and distribute the replicator pattern for free. At first this bar would probably taste little better than a stick, but a few freaks would eat it. Eventually, with everyone tweaking the pattern it would compete with the for-fee patterns....
I was actually the one who did the original ADSL web pages for Bell in Canada when they were first trying it out. That was about 3 years ago now. My father, a former bell employee, managed to get on the list of people doing the "telework" trial. And when the trial was over there was no way that connection would be given up. I have few complaints about Bell's service. It's cheap and very fast.
Their support leaves a little to be desired though -- the other day the transformer for the ADSL modem died and it took them a week to even get back to say when they'd fix it.
Here Bell is also competing with the local cable companies and their cable modems. They effectively have a price war going on now -- both are offering connections for $40 a month.
Unfortunately the reduced price ADSL connections are half the speed of the original trial connections (1Mb/s instead of 2Mb/s) and use a dynamic IP system instead of a fixed one. Because of this I'm keeping the original version (and paying more) to keep the speed and static IP.
One other interesting bit of trivia is that nowhere on the ADSL pages for Sympatico's site do they mention that it's DSL. They've branded it "the 1 Meg Modem" so dumb consumers aren't confused and feel comfortable because "it's just a modem, right"? But this strategy is somewhat backfiring. Their TV ads want to say that you can get fast access from home -- but they can't say "faster than a modem" because they've tried to lose the distinction between ADSL and a modem. They've sort-of painted themselves into a corner and now can just say "it's fast!".
Yeah, right on. The world also doesn't need any more word processors either. Word and Word Perfect are enough! And what's with all these different email clients? Everyone should just be content to just use Netscape Mail or Outlook! And we sure as hell don't need any more operating systems. Windows 95 and Windows NT. If you want games, go with 95, for serious work NT! Who needs more choice than that??
In case it isn't obvious, the above is sarcasm. I for one think a variety of different programs that do a similar function is a good thing. So what if there are 15 different IRC clients? I think that's a great thing. Find one that matches the features you want or need and use it!
The problem is when huge commercial powers own the two dominant products. Netscape used to be a fast, lean, fairly standards-compliant browser. Now it's a hog. Sure it does more, but much of the extra bloat is annoying eye-candy.
The big problem when two huge companies compete on a certain type of product is that it seems to always lead to featuritis, bloat, and products aimed at "joe average" who almost never wants what I want. I want a lot of choices in MP3 players, IRC clients, web browsers, instant messengers... I don't want to be forced to choose between a $40 AOL Instant Messenger Delucks and a $39 Microsoft MyMessenger Extra.
If I had a few hundred thousand "friends" I think I'd have great success at this.
And if I had a billion dollars I'd be a billionaire. If you're talking about raising a private army to take over a city -- sure, it might last for a little while, but "there's always a bigger fish".
Amd[sic] what are they now? A bunch of men with slingshots?
No, they're a bunch of men and women with billion dollar aircraft carriers, million dollar planes, million dollar tanks, million dollar communication systems, multi million dollar satellites, and lots of things we don't even know about.
Try telling this to the Mujahadeen, the Viet Cong, or currently the KLA. The truth of the matter is, guerillas will always prevail over conventional troops. And opressed people and/or zealots will always have the will to revolt.
The KLA wasn't doing too well until they gained an air force. The Mujahedeen were given all kinds of weapons by the US. Many people consider the stinger missile the turning point in the war. The Viet Kong were given weapons by the soviet union.
Granted, it's hard to wipe out a guerilla force, but it's pretty rare that a guerilla group takes over the government and replaces it successfully.
I think you make some good points. This isn't living up to people's expectations so they immediately notice what they don't like and forget what they do.
And luke, C3PO, and the ewoks are all annoying too. It's true we notice less because we've seen the movies so many times and accept them for what they are.
But I think you're off a bit about a couple of things.
First of all, Leo is famous. That's a bad thing in the Star Wars universe. What makes Star Wars so good is that it is essentially fantasy. Suspension of disbelief is extremely important. When it's done right you forget you're watching a movie, and feel more like you're getting a glimpse of another universe. The wide visuals in TPM did that extremely well.
Unfortunately seeing famous actors kinda reminds you you're watching a movie. Sam Jackson is a great actor, but unfortunately he reminded me I was watching a movie in TPM and kinda spoiled the moment a bit. Now imagine how hard it would be to forget you're watching a movie if Lenny is the lead. It will be very hard to fall under the spell and forget it's a movie.
As for Jar Jar, sure there were annoying characters in other movies, but they weren't as useless or as intrusive. C3PO talked to the Millenium Falcon Hyperdrive, talked to luke about being in the rebellion, fooled the guards in the death star, and did a few other useful things. The ewoks helped fight the storm troopers. But Jar Jar really doesn't do much of anything useful. The only useful things he does is helps the Jedi find his people but other than that he just gets in the way and annoys people. Maybe if he showed a bit of courage at the end or something it would make him worthwhile, but for a 3-d computer character he's really pretty much one dimentional.
You honestly think a shotgun ensures your freedom?? Modern weaponry, tactics and training have made an untrained citizen with a gun obsolete in a revolution. But that's beside the point. Modern power-wielders know that their best weapons are information and disinformation.
Most people who want to ban guns look at other democracies like Canada, England, Australia and see that they're very similar -- just with far fewer murders and violent deaths by gunfire.
Actually, if they're blocking port 110 you can't really telnet to it and use the POP commands. And not all of us are lucky enough to have ISPs who provide shell access through a telnet connection.
Ok, I have a physics background and one class I vaguely remember mentioned how superconductors work. If I remember correctly superconductors work because they make paths where the internal fields balance out so precisely that any electron propelled down one of these paths encounters no resistance.
This is in opposition to regular conductors where you essentially have a cloud of electrons and a field puts a net shift in the cloud, resulting in a net movement in the cloud.
My guess is that this is something like the Hall effect. The current they introduce shifts the fields around inside the superconductor itself and kills the properties that make it a superconductor.
My guess is that they did it so they can assert their temporary monopoly, but also so they can say they're doing it in order to prevent people from spamming you.
Of course they probably won't consider sending email to all domain admin contacts that they authorize as being spam...
I happen to have a copy of the "Proceedings of the IEEE", Sept 97 (vol 85, no. 9) edition on my desktop. It's a special issue on Automated Biometrics. The first paper is on Iris Recognition (the technology used here, not retina scans as the poster suggested). Some quotes from it might help clarify some of the issues raised here.
Addressing uniqueness of irises
"Claims that the structure of the iris is unique to an individual and is stable with age comes from two main sources. The first source of evidence is clinical observations. During the course of examining large numbers of eyes, opthamologists and anatomists have noted that the detailed pattern of an iris, even the left and right iris of a single person, seems to be highly distinctive. Further in cases with repeated observations, the patterns seem to vary little, at least past childhood. The second source of evidence is developmental biology. There, one finds that while the general structure of the iris is genetically determined, the particulars of its minutiae are critically dependent on circumstances (e.g. the initial conditions in the embryonic precursor to the iris)." Note: this should even prevent people from cloning eyeballs from someone's DNA.
Addressing using an eye plucked out of someone's head, or using a dead body's eye
"Due to the complex interplay of the iris' muscles, the diameter of the pupil is in a constant state of small oscillation. Potentially, this movement could be monitored to make sure that a live specimen is being evaluated. Further, since the iris reacts very quickly to changes in impinging illumination (e.g., on the order of hundreds of milliseconds for contraction), monitoring the reaction to a controlled illuminant could provide similar evidence."
Regarding having to put your eye up to an eyepiece
"The Daugman system captures images with the iris diameter typically between 100 and 200 pixels from a distance of 15-46 cm using a 330-mm lens. Similarly the Wildes et al. system images the iris with approximately 256 pixels across the diameter from 20cm using an 80-mm lens."
Regarding glasses / contacts
"Further, by careful positioning of the light source below the operator, reflections of the point source off eyeglasses can be avoided in the imaged iris."
Regarding eye color / colored contacts
"Further, both systems essentially eschew color information in their use of monochrome cameras with 8-b gray-level resolution. Presumably, color information could provide additional discriminatory power."
I happen to have a copy of the "Proceedings of the IEEE", Sept 97 (vol 85, no. 9) edition on my desktop. It's a special issue on Automated Biometrics. The first paper is on Iris Recognition (the technology used here, not retina scans as the poster suggested). Some quotes from it might help clarify some of the issues raised here.
Addressing uniqueness of irises "Claims that the structure of the iris is unique to an individual and is stable with age comes from two main sources. The first source of evidence is clinical observations. During the course of examining large numbers of eyes, opthamologists and anatomists have noted that the detailed pattern of an iris, even the left and right iris of a single person, seems to be highly distinctive. Further in cases with repeated observations, the patterns seem to vary little, at least past childhood. The second source of evidence is developmental biology. There, one finds that while the general structure of the iris is genetically determined, the particulars of its minutiae are critically dependent on circumstances (e.g. the initial conditions in the embryonic precursor to the iris)." Note: this should even prevent people from cloning eyeballs from someone's DNA. Addressing using an eye plucked out of someone's head, or using a dead body's eye "Due to the complex interplay of the iris' muscles, the diameter of the pupil is in a constant state of small oscillation. Potentially, this movement could be monitored to make sure that a live specimen is being evaluated. Further, since the iris reacts very quickly to changes in impinging illumination (e.g., on the order of hundreds of milliseconds for contraction), monitoring the reaction to a controlled illuminant could provide similar evidence." Regarding having to put your eye up to an eyepiece "The Daugman system captures images with the iris diameter typically between 100 and 200 pixels from a distance of 15-46 cm using a 330-mm lens. Similarly the Wildes et al. system images the iris with approximately 256 pixels across the diameter from 20cm using an 80-mm lens." Regarding glasses / contacts "Further, by careful positioning of the light source below the operator, reflections of the point source off eyeglasses can be avoided in the imaged iris." Regarding eye color / colored contacts "Further, both systems essentially eschew color information in their use of monochrome cameras with 8-b gray-level resolution. Presumably, color information could provide additional discriminatory power."
Seeing as Bill's net worth is increasing at a rate of billions a year, and even if somehow it were only increasing at 2% a year (which the most pathetic of savings account should give), he could give millions a year from interest alone forever.
Just the other week I happened to be looking through the Sept. 1997 "Proceedings of the IEEE", which was a special issue on Automated Biometric Systems.
They mention that it is possible to tell whether the eye is alive or not:
Another interesting aspect of the iris from a biometric point of view has to do with its moment-to-moment dynamics. Due to the complex interplay of the iris' muscles, the diameter of the pupil is in a constant state of small oscillation. Potentially, this movement could be monitored to make sure that a live specimen is being evaluated. Further, since the iris reacts very quickly to changes in impinging illumination (e.g., on the order of hundreds of milliseconds for contraction), monitoring the reaction to a controlled illuminant could provide similar evidence. In contrast, upon morbidity, the iris contracts and hardens, facts that may have ramifications for its use in forensics.
This article even mentions Never Say Never Again as a way iris recognition came to popular attention. My guess is that people who have worked on iris recognition are familliar with its use in movies and books and have tried to overcome potential deficiencies that have been suggested there.
So if these guys did their homework you won't have to worry about being mugged for your eyes.
First of all I don't think you're thinking this all the way through. I'm not saying border restrictions should be removed, I'm saying countries should cease to exist. This implies more than just the border disappearing. It implies an absense of country-wide government, etc. In that situation why would all kinds of Chinese people want to come to a dismal place like Canada anyhow?
Aside from that, I don't expect countries to disappear overnight. I expect it will happen sometime, and that it will be a gradual thing. Countries are becoming increasingly irrelevant because of the 'net. I just expect that trend to continue to the point that countries are no longer relevant so they eventually go the way of the buggy whip.
I don't lie. That isn't the issue. The issue is whether or not I respect the copyright. I find copyright to be vastly different from an author asking me personally not to copy the book.
Slashdot Mirror
The Blair Witch Project was unique, and done for a tiny budget, but doesn't mean that all movies should use the same techniques to make their movies cheap as well.
The movie got away with grainy, out-of focus shots from handheld cameras held by amateur camera operators because part of the premise was that it was done by film students as a documentary. Because of this the problems with the camerawork actually made the movie better and more realistic. Unfortunately this won't work in all other movies because in most movies the camera is supposed to be a window into the movie world, so grainy, out-of-focus shots interfere with the "gods-eye-view" effect. I'm afraid good cameras and good camera operators will have to remain part of making a good traditional movie.
The same goes for the lack of score, lack of special lighting, etc. All these things enhance the experience of most movies, but would take away from this one -- but only because it would make it seem like it wasn't a documentary. This doesn't mean that music and lighting are necessary otherwise, but nor does it mean that because TBWP got away without them that all other movies can too.
And finally, how is it that GPS enabled the actors to avoid having aides and techs??? GPS is a replacement for a map and compass, not for an aide or tech. GPS is about as relevant to the filmmaking process as is what the actors ate for lunch.
TBWP does prove that it doesn't take a big budget to make a great movie, but don't get carried away. Not all movies can get away with filming the way they did.
See, the thing is I don't want to have to think about the lexical clues that make the difference between a dirty joke and spam.
I'm hoping that after a thorough training cycle my program would be able to tell the difference without my help. It could be many things: the "from" address, the "to" address, my name in the header, my name in the body, the presence of a hyperlink, trustworthy / untrustworthy domains in the header...
Given a big enough "training sample", I think my program should be sensitive enough to discover rules for spam without my helping it any more than flagging the messages in the training sample.
Yep. It's been a back-burner project of mine for a while now to make a spam filter. I think I have a winning concept, but the execution is both time consuming and hard. I'll mention my concept and see what you folks think.
The program would be a learning program, based most likely on a neural net. The core of the program would be a list of 100 or so "words". These words would initially be randomly chosen "words" from my entire inbox file. Eventually the program would see these words as triggers. For example the "word" mom@moms.isp.net (i.e. my mom's internet address) would be a strong indication it's not spam, however "VIRGINS!!!" would be a strong indication it's spam.
Now the program would randomly choose these words, and eventually keep the ones with good relevance (like the above), and throw away the ones with low relevance. Low relevance words would be either words that are seldom seen, or ones that are found both in legitimate and spam mail: "a", "the"...
The strength of this concept is that it is tailored to the individual. Even without things like my mom's email address, I imagine the words that are often seen in my legitimate mail are different from the ones seen in another person's. This goes down to the machines that the mail is likely to pass through on the way, etc. So once the 'net had been trained properly, it should be very good at knowing whether the new mail is spam or not.
The other big strength of this system is that it ends up using the same criteria I use to determine whether or not something is spam -- the words contained in the message. I can tell at a glance whether something is spam based on the words. A rule based system can easily be fooled -- as this article shows.
The weakness, of course, is that as a AI type program, it must be taught. But I don't think this would be too hard. My guess would be that to teach this program you'd simply have to take a huge chunk of mail you've received in the past, mark each message as being spam or not, and then let it train on that.
So what do you think? A good idea? A lost cause? I know it really doesn't go after the root cause of spam, and means that the Spam keeps clogging up the 'net, just that I don't see it -- but right now that's enough for me.
What makes guns bad is that there is no "stun" setting.
It's an easy argument to say "if you come across a massacre, killing the assailant saves lives". But in practice it's not that simple or that easy.
The biggest problem with guns is they tend to cause death. It's a very simple concept. It's also very simple to look at statistics.
Canada is very similar to the US. Most laws are similar, culture is nearly identical, climate is similar, standard of living is similar, etc. But Canada's murder rate is a tiny fraction of the American murder rate. And that difference is due mostly to the US 4th Amendment.
I personally would rather take my chances unarmed in a land where nearly everyone else is unarmed, than armed in a land where nearly everyone else is armed. And the above statistics are the compelling reason why.
Ok, now go to the other extreme...
The difference between the objects is the potential for mass damage. If an otherwise average joe goes on a rampage with a knife, how many people is he likely to kill? Ok, now how many people is he likely to kill if he's armed with a gun?
The fact is that humans are aggressive, warmongering, emotional, stupid, and occasionally completely psychotic. I personally feel it's stupid to give the average such a human the ability to kill many people with relative ease.
Yeah, and probably what should happen is that the US government should pass an amendment to the US constitution saying:
At which point some people will misinterpret that as meaning that they have a responsibility to encrypt things. Otherwise normal people will start encrypting everything, from their recipes to their web pages. They will freak out if anyone ever implies that they really don't need 2048 bit encryption for their emails to their mother. The US will then be looked upon strangely by the rest of the world. "What's with the US and their encryption??"
Tourists from overseas will be shocked when they see signs like "You can have my PGP key when you pry it from my cold dead hands!". Incidents of Encryption Accidents will flood the headlines:
The difference between encryption and guns is huge.
Guns are designed to kill or seriously injure. Gun supporters think that killing and seriously injuring can be good, if the person being killed or seriously injured is a "bad person".
Crypto, on the other hand, is just privacy protection and authentification. It's not using crypto itself that anybody sees as bad, but rather the information being hidden by that crypto.
If the US did go crazy about cryptography the way they do about guns, the world wouldn't really care. Afterall, crypto is essentially harmless. The same, unfortunately, can't be said about guns.
Actually, I don't know about our commandos (last I heard they had been officially disbanded) but our pilots are great. I think it was a Canadian who won the last Top Gun.
Another thing software companies don't want to admit is that they do gain some things by people pirating their software.
Say Joe Blow can't afford a copy of Microsoft Office. He would never buy it. If he pirates it Microsoft gets no money. If he doesn't buy it Microsoft gets no money. So for the sake of argument assume he pirates it.
Joe Blow then goes on to learn how to use Word, he gets used to the interface, how to make charts, embed objects, and all the other peculiarities of Word.
So later on Joe actually gets some money. Microsoft comes out with a new version of Office. Now assuming Joe doesn't pirate the new version (maybe he feels guilty, who knows). Well Joe isn't going to spend his money on WordPerfect because he knows how to use Word. So Microsoft ends up getting a sale because he pirated their software earlier.
And before you say I'm imagining things and software companies don't think like this.... they do. I have friends who work in the industry who say it's an acknowledged "tactic" used by big companies to ensure people get to know their products.
Oh, but in the future we'd have portable fusion sources everywhere and replicators would be so common that they'd be incredibly cheap. People would probably buy their own replicators and use their own fusion generators to power them. The only thing they'd need to buy regularly is matter bricks they'd use to provide as raw materials for the replication process.
I'd imagine that the replicators would probably cost about $300 -- you know, about the price of a CD burner these days. And I bet the matter bricks would be pretty cheap, maybe $1 each?
So I guess when you wanted a Chocolate bar, you could borrow one from the store, pop it in the replicator, drop in a matter brick, replicate the chocolate, and bring the bar back to the store.
Now at first, Hershey would probably fight this tooth and nail. They'd try to ban replicators, try to make the government put special devices in them so they wouldn't copy chocolate bars. They'd probably also modify the chocolate bar in a way so that it contained un-replicatable substances.
Now eventually Hershey would realize the error of their ways. They'd still sell the old Hershey bars at the same price in stores, but they'd also set up some kind of system where you could download their bar patterns to the replicator directly, and pay a small fee for the use of this service.
For them it would be a perfect deal. Consumers without a replicator would buy it in the store, and they'd get their money through traditional means. Consumers with replicators could pay a tiny fee, amounting to 1/10 the store-bought price, but Hershey wouldn't have to worry about distribution, raw materials, and all the other traditional costs.
Now sure, you'd probably still have some people who refused to pay. They'd rig their systems so they could replicate what they wanted without paying. But most people, either through fear of the law, or through their own sense of what's right, would pay the small fee.
You'd probably also get some people who dislike the idea of paying at all. They'd come up with their own chocolate bar recipe, and distribute the replicator pattern for free. At first this bar would probably taste little better than a stick, but a few freaks would eat it. Eventually, with everyone tweaking the pattern it would compete with the for-fee patterns....
I was actually the one who did the original ADSL web pages for Bell in Canada when they were first trying it out. That was about 3 years ago now. My father, a former bell employee, managed to get on the list of people doing the "telework" trial. And when the trial was over there was no way that connection would be given up. I have few complaints about Bell's service. It's cheap and very fast.
Their support leaves a little to be desired though -- the other day the transformer for the ADSL modem died and it took them a week to even get back to say when they'd fix it.
Here Bell is also competing with the local cable companies and their cable modems. They effectively have a price war going on now -- both are offering connections for $40 a month.
Unfortunately the reduced price ADSL connections are half the speed of the original trial connections (1Mb/s instead of 2Mb/s) and use a dynamic IP system instead of a fixed one. Because of this I'm keeping the original version (and paying more) to keep the speed and static IP.
One other interesting bit of trivia is that nowhere on the ADSL pages for Sympatico's site do they mention that it's DSL. They've branded it "the 1 Meg Modem" so dumb consumers aren't confused and feel comfortable because "it's just a modem, right"? But this strategy is somewhat backfiring. Their TV ads want to say that you can get fast access from home -- but they can't say "faster than a modem" because they've tried to lose the distinction between ADSL and a modem. They've sort-of painted themselves into a corner and now can just say "it's fast!".
Yeah, right on. The world also doesn't need any more word processors either. Word and Word Perfect are enough! And what's with all these different email clients? Everyone should just be content to just use Netscape Mail or Outlook! And we sure as hell don't need any more operating systems. Windows 95 and Windows NT. If you want games, go with 95, for serious work NT! Who needs more choice than that??
In case it isn't obvious, the above is sarcasm. I for one think a variety of different programs that do a similar function is a good thing. So what if there are 15 different IRC clients? I think that's a great thing. Find one that matches the features you want or need and use it!
The problem is when huge commercial powers own the two dominant products. Netscape used to be a fast, lean, fairly standards-compliant browser. Now it's a hog. Sure it does more, but much of the extra bloat is annoying eye-candy.
The big problem when two huge companies compete on a certain type of product is that it seems to always lead to featuritis, bloat, and products aimed at "joe average" who almost never wants what I want. I want a lot of choices in MP3 players, IRC clients, web browsers, instant messengers... I don't want to be forced to choose between a $40 AOL Instant Messenger Delucks and a $39 Microsoft MyMessenger Extra.
And if I had a billion dollars I'd be a billionaire. If you're talking about raising a private army to take over a city -- sure, it might last for a little while, but "there's always a bigger fish".
No, they're a bunch of men and women with billion dollar aircraft carriers, million dollar planes, million dollar tanks, million dollar communication systems, multi million dollar satellites, and lots of things we don't even know about.
The KLA wasn't doing too well until they gained an air force. The Mujahedeen were given all kinds of weapons by the US. Many people consider the stinger missile the turning point in the war. The Viet Kong were given weapons by the soviet union.
Granted, it's hard to wipe out a guerilla force, but it's pretty rare that a guerilla group takes over the government and replaces it successfully.
I think you make some good points. This isn't living up to people's expectations so they immediately notice what they don't like and forget what they do.
And luke, C3PO, and the ewoks are all annoying too. It's true we notice less because we've seen the movies so many times and accept them for what they are.
But I think you're off a bit about a couple of things.
First of all, Leo is famous. That's a bad thing in the Star Wars universe. What makes Star Wars so good is that it is essentially fantasy. Suspension of disbelief is extremely important. When it's done right you forget you're watching a movie, and feel more like you're getting a glimpse of another universe. The wide visuals in TPM did that extremely well.
Unfortunately seeing famous actors kinda reminds you you're watching a movie. Sam Jackson is a great actor, but unfortunately he reminded me I was watching a movie in TPM and kinda spoiled the moment a bit. Now imagine how hard it would be to forget you're watching a movie if Lenny is the lead. It will be very hard to fall under the spell and forget it's a movie.
As for Jar Jar, sure there were annoying characters in other movies, but they weren't as useless or as intrusive. C3PO talked to the Millenium Falcon Hyperdrive, talked to luke about being in the rebellion, fooled the guards in the death star, and did a few other useful things. The ewoks helped fight the storm troopers. But Jar Jar really doesn't do much of anything useful. The only useful things he does is helps the Jedi find his people but other than that he just gets in the way and annoys people. Maybe if he showed a bit of courage at the end or something it would make him worthwhile, but for a 3-d computer character he's really pretty much one dimentional.
You honestly think a shotgun ensures your freedom?? Modern weaponry, tactics and training have made an untrained citizen with a gun obsolete in a revolution. But that's beside the point. Modern power-wielders know that their best weapons are information and disinformation.
Most people who want to ban guns look at other democracies like Canada, England, Australia and see that they're very similar -- just with far fewer murders and violent deaths by gunfire.
Actually, if they're blocking port 110 you can't really telnet to it and use the POP commands. And not all of us are lucky enough to have ISPs who provide shell access through a telnet connection.
Ok, I have a physics background and one class I vaguely remember mentioned how superconductors work. If I remember correctly superconductors work because they make paths where the internal fields balance out so precisely that any electron propelled down one of these paths encounters no resistance.
This is in opposition to regular conductors where you essentially have a cloud of electrons and a field puts a net shift in the cloud, resulting in a net movement in the cloud.
My guess is that this is something like the Hall effect. The current they introduce shifts the fields around inside the superconductor itself and kills the properties that make it a superconductor.
My guess is that they did it so they can assert their temporary monopoly, but also so they can say they're doing it in order to prevent people from spamming you.
Of course they probably won't consider sending email to all domain admin contacts that they authorize as being spam...
not only that but under opaque shrinkwrap
I happen to have a copy of the "Proceedings of the IEEE", Sept 97 (vol 85, no. 9) edition on my desktop. It's a special issue on Automated Biometrics. The first paper is on Iris Recognition (the technology used here, not retina scans as the poster suggested). Some quotes from it might help clarify some of the issues raised here.
Addressing uniqueness of irises
Addressing using an eye plucked out of someone's head, or using a dead body's eye
Regarding having to put your eye up to an eyepiece
Regarding glasses / contacts
Regarding eye color / colored contacts
I happen to have a copy of the "Proceedings of the IEEE", Sept 97 (vol 85, no. 9) edition on my desktop. It's a special issue on Automated Biometrics. The first paper is on Iris Recognition (the technology used here, not retina scans as the poster suggested). Some quotes from it might help clarify some of the issues raised here.
Addressing uniqueness of irises "Claims that the structure of the iris is unique to an individual and is stable with age comes from two main sources. The first source of evidence is clinical observations. During the course of examining large numbers of eyes, opthamologists and anatomists have noted that the detailed pattern of an iris, even the left and right iris of a single person, seems to be highly distinctive. Further in cases with repeated observations, the patterns seem to vary little, at least past childhood. The second source of evidence is developmental biology. There, one finds that while the general structure of the iris is genetically determined, the particulars of its minutiae are critically dependent on circumstances (e.g. the initial conditions in the embryonic precursor to the iris)." Note: this should even prevent people from cloning eyeballs from someone's DNA. Addressing using an eye plucked out of someone's head, or using a dead body's eye "Due to the complex interplay of the iris' muscles, the diameter of the pupil is in a constant state of small oscillation. Potentially, this movement could be monitored to make sure that a live specimen is being evaluated. Further, since the iris reacts very quickly to changes in impinging illumination (e.g., on the order of hundreds of milliseconds for contraction), monitoring the reaction to a controlled illuminant could provide similar evidence." Regarding having to put your eye up to an eyepiece "The Daugman system captures images with the iris diameter typically between 100 and 200 pixels from a distance of 15-46 cm using a 330-mm lens. Similarly the Wildes et al. system images the iris with approximately 256 pixels across the diameter from 20cm using an 80-mm lens." Regarding glasses / contacts "Further, by careful positioning of the light source below the operator, reflections of the point source off eyeglasses can be avoided in the imaged iris." Regarding eye color / colored contacts "Further, both systems essentially eschew color information in their use of monochrome cameras with 8-b gray-level resolution. Presumably, color information could provide additional discriminatory power."Seeing as Bill's net worth is increasing at a rate of billions a year, and even if somehow it were only increasing at 2% a year (which the most pathetic of savings account should give), he could give millions a year from interest alone forever.
Just the other week I happened to be looking through the Sept. 1997 "Proceedings of the IEEE", which was a special issue on Automated Biometric Systems.
They mention that it is possible to tell whether the eye is alive or not:
This article even mentions Never Say Never Again as a way iris recognition came to popular attention. My guess is that people who have worked on iris recognition are familliar with its use in movies and books and have tried to overcome potential deficiencies that have been suggested there.
So if these guys did their homework you won't have to worry about being mugged for your eyes.
Accept the challenge on one condition -- that the test be redone in 6 months. Watch and see whether NT or Linux shows the most improvement.
Doubt MS will go for it tho. *Shrug*
First of all I don't think you're thinking this all the way through. I'm not saying border restrictions should be removed, I'm saying countries should cease to exist. This implies more than just the border disappearing. It implies an absense of country-wide government, etc. In that situation why would all kinds of Chinese people want to come to a dismal place like Canada anyhow?
Aside from that, I don't expect countries to disappear overnight. I expect it will happen sometime, and that it will be a gradual thing. Countries are becoming increasingly irrelevant because of the 'net. I just expect that trend to continue to the point that countries are no longer relevant so they eventually go the way of the buggy whip.
I don't lie. That isn't the issue. The issue is whether or not I respect the copyright. I find copyright to be vastly different from an author asking me personally not to copy the book.