If Ethanol is such a viable replacement for gasoline made from oil, then why does it need a 51 cent subsidy? The fact is that no ethanol maker can make a profit without that subsidy.
Another way to put this is: if the price of gasoline goes up by another 51 cents, then Ethanol becomes cost competitive without any subsidy. Given the price increases we've seen over the last couple of years (plus the increased demand coming from Asia, and difficulty that OPEC nations are having increasing production), do you really want to bet against that sort of increase happening in the next decade?
Are we just assuming we're going to have another decade like the nineties any day now?
Wouldn't matter. Thanks to the fundamental restructuring of the tax code over the past four years, even another 1990s-style boom wouldn't even things up. No, we're waiting for the economic boom to end all booms, the one that's gonna make everything just fine again.
Either that, or the economic crash and interest rate spike that will finally put the pinch on the middle class and make them see sense.
The fault is more with the people who chose to use MS Windows in this way. Microsoft's blame is more at the level of promoting their products as something they are not as well as encouraging a culture of "everything Microsoft".
Unfortunately, this "promotion" doesn't always take the form of innocuous sales calls-- it includes significant political lobbying, with donations, gifts, dinners, etc. To put it more bluntly, Microsoft is paying politicians to select Windows for applications where MS knows it isn't really appropriate.
While the politicians are certainly to blame for being corrupt, it's not like Microsoft can avoid responsibility for their role in the decision-making process. If I suggest to a government official that something might be a good idea, I can reasonably avoid some of the responsibility when it doesn't pan out. When I bribe that official to do it, I'm taking a much more active part in that decision, and thus I deserve every bit as much blame for the end result.
This sounds like a reinsertion of all the technology that has gone into anonymous mailers over the years
Not a reinvention, but it's based on Mix nets. These people have been working on anonymity networks for years, and have done a lot of research into building solid systems from ideas that are largely theoretical or ad-hoc. Look online for Syverson's publications and you'll see what I mean.
Onion Routing has been around for several years. Tor is an effort to make the original protocol more practical. It replaces several nice features from OR, specifically the notion of "reply onions", which allowed message recipients to route replies back to the sender without learning the sender's identity. Instead, TOR recommends a form of "rendezvous point" where receivers send messages to be routed back to the sender. It's not as elegant, and the security is not necessarily as strong, though it is more practical.
It's important to note that there are some statistical attacks on both of these systems, and none of them are very secure for long communication sessions when group membership churns, as in a peer-to-peer network.
A track motor car is an automobile that has an additional set of wheels to allow it to drive on train tracks. This technology was commonly known in the rail industry in 1957, so there's nothing new about it.
If you read the site, they note that there have been previous solutions that do exactly what they're trying to do here. The advantage they claim is that their design doesn't attempt to power the rail wheels, and instead uses the main tires to provide power and braking. They say that this results in a significant cost savings.
There's also what appears to be some clever design work which allows the operator to reduce the amount of weight placed on the tires to increase fuel efficiency while cruising, but then rapidly change the weight distribution so as to press down hard while braking.
Yeah, but by that logic they could just make the source avaliable only on special solid platinum CDs hand-carved by tibetan monks and charge three billion dollars each.
Accompany it with a written offer... to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed...
on a medium customarily used for software interchange
You're right. I doubt that you'll find a judge who'll accept your argument that a sold platinum CD hand-carved by Tibetan monks represents any sort of "medium customarily used for software interchange."
the IE big wig thinks that all of his engineers should have other browsers installed to see what they can do
No. All of the IE engineers should have a twelve-year-old kid use their computer at night while they're out of the office. Maybe after uninstalling a few thousand pieces of spyware they'll reconsider some of their basic design choices.
As for the law suit part of things...if they're filing a patent suit, then things are serious. I happen to know that patent lawsuits start in the $0.5 million range to prosecute, and then they start getting expensive. And it may be years before you see anything.
Yes, but this overlooks the real reason that Intermec is suing now: the desire to influence the standards process. You see, at the moment there are two competing standards candidates for the next generation of RFID chips. One comes from Intermec/Philips/TI, and the other from Matrics/Alien Technologies. The side that wins will profit hugely (many millions) because they'll have a faster time to market with their products. Big stuff.
I have no idea if Intermec plans to ride this lawsuit to the end, or if they're just using it as leverage to get their way in the standards process. It's possible that a graceful concession by the other side will see this thing go away, and Intermec graciously agree not to prosecute the suit. Or they may be in it for the long haul. Either way, they've decided to break out the big guns and they obviously think it will be worth it in the end.
However, if you ask the same advocate why s/he wants a particular patent invalidated, it's usually to copy a patented algorithm and incorporate it into an open source product.
You're exactly right-- the advocate wants to use a particular technique to build something. Now, if you view this sort of activity as nothing more than a commercial process in which the open source developer is trying to get somethng for nothing , with no greater significance, then it's perfectly reasonable to follow your line of reasoning. Problem is, in the aggregate, building things is how innovation happens. Cut it off and innovation strangles.
The "gray area" for policy makers is not whether software inventions should be considered patentable because of their similarilty/dissimilarity to physical devices. The real argument is whether software patents will advance the process of innovation (and otherwise benefit society), or slow down innovation and harm society. Opponents of software patents have made an excellent case that in this particular situation, at this time, software patents will severely restrict innovation in an important industry.
Now a great deal of their justification comes from the observation that software patents being allowed in places like the US are overly broad and carelessly considered. But more importantly, it comes from a deep understanding of the nature of invention and the state of the art in software. Whether you're considering hardware or software, inventing new things has almost always required the use of components invented by other people. Imagine if the independent inventors of last century had been denied access to the capacitor, battery or transistor-- because those things were patented and only large corporations with legal departments and plenty of capital could afford to license them. So many of the things we take for granted today would never have been invented.
Why are software patents different from these physical devices? For one thing, where many patented devices can be constructed and sold in bulk for a reasonable per-unit price, it's difficult to purchase an algorithm or an application at your neighborhood Fry's. And since corporations generally can't profit through bulk manufacture/licensing of software components, they profit through high licensing fees unmanageable to the small inventor. Or they profit by using their patent portfolios as defensive or offensive weapons against potential competitors. Open source development, arguably one of the most promising engines of 21st century software innovation and cost reduction, is in some cases an innocent victim of this, in others, a direct target.
But here's the important issue: while physical device patents may have encouraged invention and innovation throughout the last century, there is no reason to assume this will be the case for software patents. While an efficient model may develop to smooth over the economic inefficiencies of a software patent system, none has yet, and the interim costs will be high. So the near-to-medium-term result of software patents is not a net increase in innovation or a financial windfall to society, it's exactly the opposite. And for this, some argue that society should subsidize the creation of a software patent industry. I don't think it's worth it, and I think this is the aspect of the debate we should be focusing on.
Don't you need launch keys, and oh yeah, physical access to a heavily gurded military installation?
Given the enormous discretionary power held by whoever has LCC control, effective measures for denying LCC access to individuals or groups bent on carrying out an act of nuclear terror are self-evident security requirements.
In the recent past, such safeguards were poor or nonexistent. Military personnel, e.g. maintenance airmen, and civilian contractors who possessed minimal security credentials were granted LCC access, and annually thousands of visitors holding no clearance whatsoever were permitted access to operational LCCs. In the interest of public relations, the Air Force permitted ready access to the Minuteman launch network by practically anyone desiring it.
Requests for visitor access were routinely processed and approved. The requesting party had only to provide a name and social security number, and authentication checks were not usually made. As a matter of course, checks of individual backgrounds or motives for requesting LCC access were not made either. Furthermore, within wide bounds, the number of individuals in a party was limited only by the capacity of an LCC - about eight persons.
Once military personnel and civilians are allowed inside an LCC, responsibility for them falls squarely on the shoulders of the on-duty crew members.
So what if there was a password set to 0000000? There still has to be a number of other things set by others in numerous locations in order to do this.
There are five flights, hence five two-man LCCs, in a 50-missile squadron. Since all missiles and LCCs are electronically interconnected, the "normal" launch of any or all missiles in a squadron requires the cooperation of only two crews - no more, no less....
Located in each LCC are two launch keys, one for each member of the crew, and the codes needed to authenticate presidential launch directives. Only the launch keys, not the codes, are physical prerequisites for generating valid launch commands
The article goes on to explain that the time from launch command to launch was about eight seconds, if two separate launch control centers (ie, 4 people) chose to turn the keys. Also, visitors were often allowed into these sites after giving only a name and social security number-- backgrounds generally weren't checked.
So assuming the article's correct: a) there wasn't even one password in the launch process at the time, only physical keys, b) four people in the right place could launch nuclear missiles, and no countermeasures would have been able to stop them, and c) given the lack of stringent security in allowing visitors access to those sites, it's not inconceivable that outsiders could have seized the opportunity to take control of two launch centers.
Judging from the recent statements of James Lovelock, this logjam may be breaking, thank God. A green embrace of non-meltdown capable pebble bed reactors, for example, could make this whole thing go away inside of twenty years.
It's not that simple. The world's supply of Uranium will run out within a few decades, less if demand increases the the levels necessary to replace fossil fuels.
This necessitates reactors that can reuse plutonium reprocessed from waste, a thorny problem all on its own. I'm not sure that any of these reactors sport pebble-bed designs. At least another decade of basic research is probably necessary to bring the technology to the level where it needs to be for sustainable nuclear power. Any plants built today will need to be abandoned or massively updated to support the new technology. Otherwise they become very expensive liabilities.
In the mean time, there are plenty of things that need to be done. We can massively fund these research efforts, modernize the electrical grid, amd subsidize fuel cell production so we have some way to harness all of that nuclear power when it comes online. Also, we can push for increased investment in solar, wind, etc, which could easily make up 20% or more of our energy usage using today's technology (at a cost far lower than that of today's nuclear plants.)
While I agree that nuclear power is a key part of a long-term solution, it needs to be ready for prime time before we begin a massive build-out. I'm not sure we're there yet.
These days I only tune into these arguments to see how stridently unconcerned Slashdotters are with the possibility of environmental change. I am, of course, open to arguments about the validity of the threat. What never fails to amaze me is how many Slashdotters-- ostensibly a group of relatively intelligent people-- are moved to approach this issue from emotional, rather than scientific point of view.
To quote Isaac Asimov: "It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong."
One problem that renders all you have said moot. The film is going to be released. People have already seen it. It has even won an award. Plus, Disney told Moore last year that they didn't want to distribute the film and Moore lied recently about this to drum up publicity (he admitted it).
Renders all I have said moot? A media company that controls a significant portion of what we see and hear has refused to release a film for nakedly political reasons, and admitted it. You think this is moot?
Michael Moore's film will be released eventually, because he's an established, well-known director with an entrenched base providing a lot of support (and even with all of that support he hasn't been able to change Disney's mind). But Moore's a rarity-- someone with his profile can force the issue. For every film like his, there are a dozen that won't ever be seen (or even made) because most people don't have the connections he has. Same goes for news stories and books.
Personal commentary and the net can only make up for so much of this deficit. As long as the people controlling the largest microphones in the country are afraid to publish ideas because of political retribution, we're walking a dim path. And if good people feel moved to defend this state of affairs, then it's much worse than I thought.
econd, there is not an active "campaign" to censor or quiet Michael Moore -- or at least I didn't get the e-mail or fax. He could only wish that the US Government would try to censor him.
No, the campaign to censor dissenting views is not overt, it's very much sub-rosa. And it has a great deal more to do with the carrot than the stick.
Large US media companies have billions, even hundreds of billions, riding on various expansion efforts that must be approved by government regulators-- government regulators who are currently under the control of a conservative administration and Congress. It's difficult for you and I to appreciate the sheer pressure that those billions put on corporate executives, but a dispassionate view of the situation should make it apparent: as the leader of a large media corporation, you can't afford to make enemies of the people who determine your company's financial future. You don't have the liberty to think about what's right and wrong, or care about free speech-- your mandate is simply to insure your investors the highest possible return.
So what are you supposed to do when some tiny, insignificant portion of your corporate empire puts the entire company at risk? You do exactly what Disney has done to Moore's film: you squash it like a bug. Not because the film is bad, incorrect, or unlikely to sell tickets. You do it because, as Disney has said up front, it's simply not worth it to piss off the people who will be ruling on your next merger or expansion plan. The very fact that Disney has admitted this and cited it as the reason for ditching the film takes these sentiments out of the hypothetical. This really is happening, and a firm as large as Disney is actually concerned that publishing this film will cause them political difficulties.
And in the end, that's the issue here. All your talk about not paying to watch Moore is irrelevant-- you won't even get the opportunity to protest his film, because the decision has already been made. For you, for me, for all of us. And it's entirely and unabashedly political.
One more thing: I do personally believe that the Democratic party is less likely to operate in this fashion than the Republicans are, if only due to disogranization and the lingering presence of a few idealists. But when one side plays dirty, it's only a matter of time before their opponents learn the game too. So by looking the other way now, you insure that the next slimy liberal president will be the one determining what's ok for you to read, see and hear.
It's not as though this approach hasn't been thought of before. The problem is the limitations of contemporary AI tools, combined with limitations on our hardware. Also, as tasks become more and more complex, it becomes much more difficult to "evolve" systems that behave exactly as you want them to. There are a number of stories of neural nets being trained to recognize some feature from a set of training inputs, and instead keying in on some completely different and irrelevant detail.
It can't be saved, because it is exactly what people demand. American culture makes this movie inevitably what it will be.
Actually, what's fascinating is that this movie is actually significantly less than what the public demands. This is the rare movie that actually suffers from the influence of a strong, independent director who possesses complete creative control. I believe the prequels would actually be significantly better (though still quite awful) if we'd received the typical written-by-committee Hollywood treatment we've come to demand from the industry.
it's easy to flood a wireless network, when using colision avoidance, if you're the only one not playing by the rules, you can own the network.
There are different levels of "easy". "Easy" where you have to send out hundreds or thousands of packets per second is different-- in terms of energy usage and complexity-- from "easy" where you only have to send out a small number of packets. From the description of this attack, it looks a lot like it falls into the latter category. Some of those problems can actually be avoided with smart protocol design and authentication.
A microwave oven can bring down a WiFi network. You could plug a 110 volt line into an Ethernet jack if you felt like it. All shared media networks require cooperation in order to run correctly.
Because I can't carry a microwave around in my pocket, and it would require some significant source of electricity. This requires only a PDA, and presumably doesn't drain its batteries in a matter of seconds the way RF jamming would.
Honestly, this isn't as useful an attack as some of the targeted ones (see a paper written by Bellardo and Savage) where you can knock a specific individual off the net (and then potentially reconnect them to your own "access point".) But it still has some advantages over brute-force jamming.
Aren't Fedora users the ones who don't need RH Enterprise or just don't want to pay for anything? Seems to me that they're the same ones who, if they convince an employer to go OSS, will also try to do it all themselves, to avoid "evil" licensing fees.
This is probably correct, for a relatively small operation. However, small operations sometimes get bigger, or alternatively, the tech who knows how to fix things gets a different job. Given a shop that already runs some flavor of Red Hat, isn't it likely that future Enterprise purchasing decisions will likely tilt towards Red Hat?
Doesn't see like a bad gamble to me. Anything that reduces market share is probably not good for Red Hat's business, whatever it may be.
Hell, it could just be due to a tiny increase in our sun's thermal output. Most people don't know that our sun is a VARIABLE star, which means that it's energy output changes on an irregular, unpredictable basis
Actually, many people know this. And they have earth and space-based detectors that can measure this with great precision. If this is happening, I doubt some slashdot poster is the one to crack the case wide open.
Most of our "lifestyle" is still possible with more energy-efficient technology. Inefficient engines don't really add much to my lifestyle.
And in the process of moving to more efficient tech, we get an economic dividend, as well... Not to mention the defense/political benefits of moving away from a fuel primarily obtained from politically unstable parts of the world.
I cant see Apple being particularly pissed off about this since
a) it gives them more exposure
and
b) they are already providing the information and tools (what could be more useful than an rss feed?) to make it possible to use the itms database in other applications.
A year or so ago, a number of users were starting to build tools like this. Then apple activated an encryption layer which had shipped, but lain dormant in the iTunes client. I assume they did this because they wanted to lock out third party software, but maybe they had some better reason. Who knows.
I don't know if they'll sue, but I bet they switch keys-- assuming there are more than one.
Slashdot Mirror
Another way to put this is: if the price of gasoline goes up by another 51 cents, then Ethanol becomes cost competitive without any subsidy. Given the price increases we've seen over the last couple of years (plus the increased demand coming from Asia, and difficulty that OPEC nations are having increasing production), do you really want to bet against that sort of increase happening in the next decade?
Don't worry-- this Republican Congress will fund all of those projects, too. I think that's why most people here are freaking out.
Wouldn't matter. Thanks to the fundamental restructuring of the tax code over the past four years, even another 1990s-style boom wouldn't even things up. No, we're waiting for the economic boom to end all booms, the one that's gonna make everything just fine again.
Either that, or the economic crash and interest rate spike that will finally put the pinch on the middle class and make them see sense.
Unfortunately, this "promotion" doesn't always take the form of innocuous sales calls-- it includes significant political lobbying, with donations, gifts, dinners, etc. To put it more bluntly, Microsoft is paying politicians to select Windows for applications where MS knows it isn't really appropriate.
While the politicians are certainly to blame for being corrupt, it's not like Microsoft can avoid responsibility for their role in the decision-making process. If I suggest to a government official that something might be a good idea, I can reasonably avoid some of the responsibility when it doesn't pan out. When I bribe that official to do it, I'm taking a much more active part in that decision, and thus I deserve every bit as much blame for the end result.
Not a reinvention, but it's based on Mix nets. These people have been working on anonymity networks for years, and have done a lot of research into building solid systems from ideas that are largely theoretical or ad-hoc. Look online for Syverson's publications and you'll see what I mean.
It's important to note that there are some statistical attacks on both of these systems, and none of them are very secure for long communication sessions when group membership churns, as in a peer-to-peer network.
If you read the site, they note that there have been previous solutions that do exactly what they're trying to do here. The advantage they claim is that their design doesn't attempt to power the rail wheels, and instead uses the main tires to provide power and braking. They say that this results in a significant cost savings.
There's also what appears to be some clever design work which allows the operator to reduce the amount of weight placed on the tires to increase fuel efficiency while cruising, but then rapidly change the weight distribution so as to press down hard while braking.
No. All of the IE engineers should have a twelve-year-old kid use their computer at night while they're out of the office. Maybe after uninstalling a few thousand pieces of spyware they'll reconsider some of their basic design choices.
Yes, but this overlooks the real reason that Intermec is suing now: the desire to influence the standards process. You see, at the moment there are two competing standards candidates for the next generation of RFID chips. One comes from Intermec/Philips/TI, and the other from Matrics/Alien Technologies. The side that wins will profit hugely (many millions) because they'll have a faster time to market with their products. Big stuff.
I have no idea if Intermec plans to ride this lawsuit to the end, or if they're just using it as leverage to get their way in the standards process. It's possible that a graceful concession by the other side will see this thing go away, and Intermec graciously agree not to prosecute the suit. Or they may be in it for the long haul. Either way, they've decided to break out the big guns and they obviously think it will be worth it in the end.
You're exactly right-- the advocate wants to use a particular technique to build something. Now, if you view this sort of activity as nothing more than a commercial process in which the open source developer is trying to get somethng for nothing , with no greater significance, then it's perfectly reasonable to follow your line of reasoning. Problem is, in the aggregate, building things is how innovation happens. Cut it off and innovation strangles.
The "gray area" for policy makers is not whether software inventions should be considered patentable because of their similarilty/dissimilarity to physical devices. The real argument is whether software patents will advance the process of innovation (and otherwise benefit society), or slow down innovation and harm society. Opponents of software patents have made an excellent case that in this particular situation, at this time, software patents will severely restrict innovation in an important industry.
Now a great deal of their justification comes from the observation that software patents being allowed in places like the US are overly broad and carelessly considered. But more importantly, it comes from a deep understanding of the nature of invention and the state of the art in software. Whether you're considering hardware or software, inventing new things has almost always required the use of components invented by other people. Imagine if the independent inventors of last century had been denied access to the capacitor, battery or transistor-- because those things were patented and only large corporations with legal departments and plenty of capital could afford to license them. So many of the things we take for granted today would never have been invented.
Why are software patents different from these physical devices? For one thing, where many patented devices can be constructed and sold in bulk for a reasonable per-unit price, it's difficult to purchase an algorithm or an application at your neighborhood Fry's. And since corporations generally can't profit through bulk manufacture/licensing of software components, they profit through high licensing fees unmanageable to the small inventor. Or they profit by using their patent portfolios as defensive or offensive weapons against potential competitors. Open source development, arguably one of the most promising engines of 21st century software innovation and cost reduction, is in some cases an innocent victim of this, in others, a direct target.
But here's the important issue: while physical device patents may have encouraged invention and innovation throughout the last century, there is no reason to assume this will be the case for software patents. While an efficient model may develop to smooth over the economic inefficiencies of a software patent system, none has yet, and the interim costs will be high. So the near-to-medium-term result of software patents is not a net increase in innovation or a financial windfall to society, it's exactly the opposite. And for this, some argue that society should subsidize the creation of a software patent industry. I don't think it's worth it, and I think this is the aspect of the debate we should be focusing on.
So assuming the article's correct: a) there wasn't even one password in the launch process at the time, only physical keys, b) four people in the right place could launch nuclear missiles, and no countermeasures would have been able to stop them, and c) given the lack of stringent security in allowing visitors access to those sites, it's not inconceivable that outsiders could have seized the opportunity to take control of two launch centers.
It's not that simple. The world's supply of Uranium will run out within a few decades, less if demand increases the the levels necessary to replace fossil fuels.
This necessitates reactors that can reuse plutonium reprocessed from waste, a thorny problem all on its own. I'm not sure that any of these reactors sport pebble-bed designs. At least another decade of basic research is probably necessary to bring the technology to the level where it needs to be for sustainable nuclear power. Any plants built today will need to be abandoned or massively updated to support the new technology. Otherwise they become very expensive liabilities.
In the mean time, there are plenty of things that need to be done. We can massively fund these research efforts, modernize the electrical grid, amd subsidize fuel cell production so we have some way to harness all of that nuclear power when it comes online. Also, we can push for increased investment in solar, wind, etc, which could easily make up 20% or more of our energy usage using today's technology (at a cost far lower than that of today's nuclear plants.)
While I agree that nuclear power is a key part of a long-term solution, it needs to be ready for prime time before we begin a massive build-out. I'm not sure we're there yet.
To quote Isaac Asimov: "It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong."
Renders all I have said moot? A media company that controls a significant portion of what we see and hear has refused to release a film for nakedly political reasons, and admitted it. You think this is moot?
Michael Moore's film will be released eventually, because he's an established, well-known director with an entrenched base providing a lot of support (and even with all of that support he hasn't been able to change Disney's mind). But Moore's a rarity-- someone with his profile can force the issue. For every film like his, there are a dozen that won't ever be seen (or even made) because most people don't have the connections he has. Same goes for news stories and books.
Personal commentary and the net can only make up for so much of this deficit. As long as the people controlling the largest microphones in the country are afraid to publish ideas because of political retribution, we're walking a dim path. And if good people feel moved to defend this state of affairs, then it's much worse than I thought.
No, the campaign to censor dissenting views is not overt, it's very much sub-rosa. And it has a great deal more to do with the carrot than the stick.
Large US media companies have billions, even hundreds of billions, riding on various expansion efforts that must be approved by government regulators-- government regulators who are currently under the control of a conservative administration and Congress. It's difficult for you and I to appreciate the sheer pressure that those billions put on corporate executives, but a dispassionate view of the situation should make it apparent: as the leader of a large media corporation, you can't afford to make enemies of the people who determine your company's financial future. You don't have the liberty to think about what's right and wrong, or care about free speech-- your mandate is simply to insure your investors the highest possible return.
So what are you supposed to do when some tiny, insignificant portion of your corporate empire puts the entire company at risk? You do exactly what Disney has done to Moore's film: you squash it like a bug. Not because the film is bad, incorrect, or unlikely to sell tickets. You do it because, as Disney has said up front, it's simply not worth it to piss off the people who will be ruling on your next merger or expansion plan. The very fact that Disney has admitted this and cited it as the reason for ditching the film takes these sentiments out of the hypothetical. This really is happening, and a firm as large as Disney is actually concerned that publishing this film will cause them political difficulties.
And in the end, that's the issue here. All your talk about not paying to watch Moore is irrelevant-- you won't even get the opportunity to protest his film, because the decision has already been made. For you, for me, for all of us. And it's entirely and unabashedly political.
One more thing: I do personally believe that the Democratic party is less likely to operate in this fashion than the Republicans are, if only due to disogranization and the lingering presence of a few idealists. But when one side plays dirty, it's only a matter of time before their opponents learn the game too. So by looking the other way now, you insure that the next slimy liberal president will be the one determining what's ok for you to read, see and hear.
It's not as though this approach hasn't been thought of before. The problem is the limitations of contemporary AI tools, combined with limitations on our hardware. Also, as tasks become more and more complex, it becomes much more difficult to "evolve" systems that behave exactly as you want them to. There are a number of stories of neural nets being trained to recognize some feature from a set of training inputs, and instead keying in on some completely different and irrelevant detail.
Actually, what's fascinating is that this movie is actually significantly less than what the public demands. This is the rare movie that actually suffers from the influence of a strong, independent director who possesses complete creative control. I believe the prequels would actually be significantly better (though still quite awful) if we'd received the typical written-by-committee Hollywood treatment we've come to demand from the industry.
There are different levels of "easy". "Easy" where you have to send out hundreds or thousands of packets per second is different-- in terms of energy usage and complexity-- from "easy" where you only have to send out a small number of packets. From the description of this attack, it looks a lot like it falls into the latter category. Some of those problems can actually be avoided with smart protocol design and authentication.
Because I can't carry a microwave around in my pocket, and it would require some significant source of electricity. This requires only a PDA, and presumably doesn't drain its batteries in a matter of seconds the way RF jamming would.
Honestly, this isn't as useful an attack as some of the targeted ones (see a paper written by Bellardo and Savage) where you can knock a specific individual off the net (and then potentially reconnect them to your own "access point".) But it still has some advantages over brute-force jamming.
This is probably correct, for a relatively small operation. However, small operations sometimes get bigger, or alternatively, the tech who knows how to fix things gets a different job. Given a shop that already runs some flavor of Red Hat, isn't it likely that future Enterprise purchasing decisions will likely tilt towards Red Hat?
Doesn't see like a bad gamble to me. Anything that reduces market share is probably not good for Red Hat's business, whatever it may be.
Actually, many people know this. And they have earth and space-based detectors that can measure this with great precision. If this is happening, I doubt some slashdot poster is the one to crack the case wide open.
Most of our "lifestyle" is still possible with more energy-efficient technology. Inefficient engines don't really add much to my lifestyle.
And in the process of moving to more efficient tech, we get an economic dividend, as well... Not to mention the defense/political benefits of moving away from a fuel primarily obtained from politically unstable parts of the world.
A year or so ago, a number of users were starting to build tools like this. Then apple activated an encryption layer which had shipped, but lain dormant in the iTunes client. I assume they did this because they wanted to lock out third party software, but maybe they had some better reason. Who knows.
I don't know if they'll sue, but I bet they switch keys-- assuming there are more than one.