Everybody likes prequals, so why not a.. um.. interqual?
Mods, give the parent some brownie points... I do believe this gentleman has stumbled on whole new untapped revenue streams for hollywood!
Can you imagine a Matrix 1.5? The film starts with Neo and Trinity picking up the pieces and hightailing it out of there after setting off the emp. They face a rugged and dangerous journey across the machine badlands before making their way to zion where morpheous tries to convince everyone that Neo is the one...
Or how about a LOTR 1.01? You know the part where the hobbits meet Tom Bombadil one of the most powerful (though certainly not influential) characters in the book?
And just imagine what Friday the 13th's writers can do if they no longer have to make every movie consistent with previous stories?
I'm a (hobbyist) jeweler and while jeweler's try to avoid glues and whatnot, sometimes it's just unavoidable... especially doing repair work on heat-sensitive items...
Therefore I've worked a bit with the theory of how different glues bond, in order to guarantee that work I do will be secure. I'm not entirely sure how these compounds work, either... but I do know that cyanoacrylates depend on an airtight interface to bond properly... specifically it has to be oxygen free.
For instance, I've gotten some on my fingers before... and it sits there just fine in liquid form... until I push my thumb against it. Then instantly the two fingers are bonded together until I get my superglue remover... this is in fact a very useful feature for gems that were knocked out of their mount. Fill the mount with a thin layer of cyanoacrylate, then press gem firmly in place. Instantly it gets bound in place.
I use this a lot for things that are delicately positioned. Glue it in place with the acrylate, then form the mount and dissolve away the glue when done.
Anyways, back to the topic... I don't believe that one-compound cyanoacrylates would work well in space... not enough working time before it hardens. Though there are chemicals you can add to the one-compound cyanoacrylates that slow the curing time...
Unless I'm mistakened, they didn't even know they needed repairs until they were well on their way towards landing.
You would think they would have a skin integrity sensor. A simple hi-res conductance sensor (or series of them) measuring RF electrical propagation on the hull should be able to determine basic integrity.
If you have enough of them and smart enough software it should even be able to pinpoint where to check during your EVA...
Maybe it'd be better to actually use a browser that the user can't see.
When I write applications like this, I actually use the Microsoft Internet Explorer WebControl... it's free, open, and exactly mimics what IE does. Programmatically it's clunky, but bottom line is the spam wouldn't work in IE if it won't work in the WebControl.
Then again... don't I remember that Microsoft turned off javascript in Outlook and Outlook Express because of all the potential problems?
Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to mimic browser behaviour...
Does anyone remember a Simpsons episode (or multiple episodes) where marketing droids just make up statistics to get Homer's attention... something like "we guarantee the funniness content is up 139%" or whatever?
Participants in the study considered multi-screen configurations significantly more useful than single screens and preferred multiple monitor setups on every measure of usability. They found them 29 percent more effective for tasks, 24 percent more comfortable to use in tasks and found it 39 percent easier to move around sources of information.
I'm seeing a strong correlation here. How DOES one objectively measure "comfortable to use" and whatnot?
While I'm not disputing the results of this setup (I use a multi-monitor setup myself), I think the only statistic one could reasonably measure repeatably would be:
Chances are that these people that created the game aren't really 'qualified' to be teaching people how to kill and whatnot. I think that when game creators come up with an idea for a game, it's an idea that ANYONE could have come up with. Game makers aren't some special elite force that knows how to kill. Maybe they do a little research before hand, but I highly doubt that they are any more expericned at 'going postal' than anybody who plays these games.
*ponders implications of this statement with respect to America's Army*
Ah, yes, would you go as far as saying that the interpretation is incomplete unless it is formulated mathematically?
I would agree that the interpretation many times includes a good deal of mathematical formulation, but I would hesitate to go so far as to indicate that it requires a rigorous mathematical formulation.
Many Physics problems do not require a rigorous mathematical representation to prove a solution; A large number of interesting and revolutionary discoveries in Physics do not have a mathematical representation when they are first discovered; for instance, superconductivity was ill-understood from a mathematical point of view for quite some time after it's discovery, as the atomic mechanisms that made it possible were not entirely characterized.
When did Physics change from an empirical science into a theoretical one?
You know, in high school, I took Physics 101 and Calculus 101 at the same time (college level courses as a senior in high school). There is, as anyone who took both surely realizes, a lot of overlap between the two.
I always characterized the difference as empirical vs. theoretical. Calculus is concerned with describing how things move and react while Physics is concerned with measuring and interpreting how things move and react...
It includes workflow management. We setup problem types that indicate the functional area that is addressed, and the current team status (for instance, a bug in this sytem will go from Project - Defect to Project - Fixed (indicating fixed but not ready to promote) to Project - QA (indicating ready to be confirmed))
Of course it doesn't apply just to bugs. Everything from "reset my password", to "install service pack x on server y", to "Change the border of the website to green" goes through it...
users file requests either by phone (we have a small call center to log incidents and route appropriately) or by e-mail (in which case the call center representative still takes care of routing, but the incident itslef is logged automatically by the system). A new incident can be assigned to a specific person, or a queue that represents a team of people.
Project Managers, QA Testers, and Programmers can log incidents themselves and route manually, bypassing the call center stage entirely.
It has lots of nice reports and automatic time tracking by incident, as well.
And what if the drive's alignment drifted after the data was written, and there's recoverable data in what's now a guard band?
IANADE (Drive Engineer) but I would imagine that the DOD examined this possibility, and this is one of the reasons they recommend such a rigorous random field erasure protocol.
On a more practical level, quite a few of the "secure wipe" products leave file names behind in directories.
Which is why you should go with a secure wipe utility that discusses their algorithms in detail, and confirms they are doing a true wipe.
Bottom line is, buyer beware... make sure your secure wipe utility meets your needs...
with out using a secure wipe utility (which may very well still be recoverable by the truely professional recovery shop, I dunno).
Argh. Damn outlook for opening in the same window. Just deleted my post.
Short version:
The DOD looked at this issue and wanted a wipe procedure that would remove information reliably. All the way down to magnetic domains so that ANY theoretical technology, including nanotech or quantum computers, would be unable to recover the data... they came up with a 7 step process that was something like (random streams are truly random hardware gen'd):
1. Overwrite with 1's 2. Overwrite with compliment of step 1 3. Overwrite with a random stream 4. Overwrite with alternating 1's and 0's 5. Overwrite with compliment of step 3 6. Overwrite with compliment of step 4 7. Overwrite with a random stream
This caused all magnetic domains on the disc to be randomly aligned... meaning that there would be no theoretical way to glean any information from the platter. I may have individual steps incorrect, but you get the idea.
The lesson? If you HAVE to have your data wiped securely, use a tool that implements a procedure like this. I believe PGPWipe is such a tool...
independent review? My god people... TheTechLounge is a review website. This WAS an independent review.
I was referring specifically to the success rate figures. I believe Mr. Roberts' concern with them is that there is no oversight body, so his competitors can claim whatever success rate they want...
And I would hardly call this a review. He interviewed a key figure at the company and ran their consumer-grade software on his own.
If that's the case, then I'm going to watch Tombraider and harrass the director of filming so I can write a review of Angelina Jolie...
Another warning sign is when a company gives a success rate. Companies do this to play off your insecurities. They know you want your data back and are telling you what you want to hear. In other words, any company that gives a success rate is lying.
Ummm... or maybe they understand that my number one criteria is success rate and they are honest, scrupulous, hard working individuals, trying to portray their market standing.
Of course I'd prefer if someone could do an independent review...
Damn I wish I had a couple grand of hard drives to destroy:D
I propose an opensource web based search engine...
I know you were joking but my mind took me on a flight of fancy on how an opensource search engine would work.
I'm thinking the only way you could do it economically (i.e. for free) would be to leverage a distributed computing client... use that p2p network that distributes documents throughout the network... and basically each document is an index for a particular word... use a random aggregate-avoiding algorithm to generate new indices, and run it on everyone's box at once. Then have a few merger machines that, when they find indices on the same search topic, merge the two documents and somehow remove the originals from the network.
Oh wait, just use the p2p network where document availability is based on usage... and have the search client look for merge documents first. Then you don't have to figure out how to remove the originals... the network will do it for you when their usage figures plummet...
I agree mostly with your post; and indeed you have somewhat changed my mind now that I realize it doesn't get exponentially harder to scale as you increase power. However I do have one comment that pertains back to the original post re: passive RFID ranges...
and so the extra distance is nothing more than a temporary setback at worst.
Sure, you can lick the signal to noise problem. And you can make almost perfectly efficient RFIDs. And the reader installations are for the most part fixed so chances are you've got a decent power feed for the transmitter.
The problem is the FCC. Unless you want to get a broadcast permit (prohibitively expensive for this applicatin) you're limited to a minute amount of power. I *think* it's a Watt, but I could be wrong on that one...
you've got the 1 ft value wrong in the second case; it should be 4 mW.
No I don't. The problem space is a transmitter/receiver pair that works fine with 1mW transmit power at 1 ft. Therefore, the transmit power at 1 ft is 4 mW.
In both cases, the growth is O(n^2); there's no qualitative difference.
In purely mathematical terms there is none, I grant you that.
But in real world terms, I can tell you that the difference between 25mW and 100mW is enough to make or break a design.
I think maybe they should go the other direction, and start actually making utility belts.
If there was a utility belt that looked good in casual business dress (dockers, collared shirt)... I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Of course this would require a societal change so that such a thing doesn't look horribly unprofessional.
Or would it?
I know guys that have like 3 or 4 belt clips for the various items they have to carry (cellphone, pager, PDA, bluetooth headset, whatever)
Couldn't one make a universal type system for that? Then all you'd need would be cases for the truly ungainly looking items. (I doubt having a GBA hanging off your belt looks really professional...)
this provides some nice opportunities to cause them a major headache by including malicious JavaScript code on a page only seen by a bot not following the robots exclusion protocol
A lot of people do that with a malicious honeypot page. It just outputs X phony, but real-looking, mailto links, where X is a member of the set of Very Large Integers.
(note to/. math freaks: yes I know there's no set called Very Large Integers. It's a joke. Laugh.)
If one quantity is inversely proportional to the square of another, then it's also inversely proportional to the square of any multiple of that other; the only effect is to change the constant of proportionality.
Ahh, but in this case doubling the distance causes the "quantity" to quadruple, not double.
As an example, if you require 1 mW of transmit power for a clear signal at 1 foot, then the following table supplies power requirements for any radiative power technology:
1 ft - 1 mW 2 ft - 4 mW 3 ft - 9 mW 4 ft - 16 mW 5 ft - 25 mW etc.
However, with a passive RFID system and the same parameters, the table is clearly increasing at a much greater rate:
1 ft - 1 mW 2 ft - 16 mW 3 ft - 36 mW 4 ft - 64 mW 5 ft - 100 mW
So the overall power needs are actually 4x greater in this situation. One could say that the power drops off 4x as fast as distance increases in this situation. While this certainly isn't an "exponential" change... It does, as I asserted in my original post, change the economics of the power curve law quite for the worse...
People, these tags are readable up to a few inches. Maybe a foot at most. They are nothing but glorified bar codes. Good for tracking inventory at most.
That's not entirely correct. Depending on the design of the RFID and the sensitivity of the receiver, they can be read from a few meters away. But certainly you wouldn't need to worry about someone driving by your home and reading your RFIDs... the key component of RFID's economic feasibility is that they're passive. Which gives the power-curve law a whole new spin; power doesn't drop as the square of the distance, but as the square of double the distance (the power has to travel there and back).
It doesn't take a slashdot reader to deduce that passive RFIDs are not distance friendly...
As for not being useful without a resolution mechanism... are you saying that ISBN's, SSN's (if in the USA), and UPC barcodes aren't useful? This URI scheme simply provides a way to identify objects (digital or not) using a common identification scheme. The resolution mechanism can be added after the fact (or not, depending on the type of object, or how it is used).
GUIDs have no built in resolution scheme yet look at how universally useful they are...
Actually the two are distinct but related concepts...
Natural Language Processing is the science of how to take a grammatical statement and parse it. Breaking it down into nouns and verbs and subjects and objects and whatever, and then representing the symantic links that describe how these concepts modify each other in a grammatical context.
Voice recognition is the science of taking spoken language and transcribing it to a context-specific computer representation.
The two technologies can be married, in that the context-specific output of voice recognition be a NLP parsing structure... but they don't have to be. Back when I was reading AI mags every week (about 4-5 years ago), all the voice recognition guys were outputing ASCII and all the NLP guys were inputing ASCII but that was as close as they got to working together...
to the computer is OK but in many situations I will want visual, not aural feedback
The one place where I want a full voice interface is when I'm doing something else and my interaction with the computer is secondary. Like driving a car, entertaining guests ("Computer, what's at the movie theater tonight?"), that sort of thing.
And maybe that's Google's point. Stop making the computer the primary focus of every computer interaction. An essential part of ubiquitous computing is that it enables more modes of interaction with the computer... modes where the computer is not the focus any more...
Slashdot Mirror
Everybody likes prequals, so why not a .. um.. interqual?
Mods, give the parent some brownie points... I do believe this gentleman has stumbled on whole new untapped revenue streams for hollywood!
Can you imagine a Matrix 1.5? The film starts with Neo and Trinity picking up the pieces and hightailing it out of there after setting off the emp. They face a rugged and dangerous journey across the machine badlands before making their way to zion where morpheous tries to convince everyone that Neo is the one...
Or how about a LOTR 1.01? You know the part where the hobbits meet Tom Bombadil one of the most powerful (though certainly not influential) characters in the book?
And just imagine what Friday the 13th's writers can do if they no longer have to make every movie consistent with previous stories?
Oh wait...
I'm not sure how one-tube cyanoacrylates get by.
I'm a (hobbyist) jeweler and while jeweler's try to avoid glues and whatnot, sometimes it's just unavoidable... especially doing repair work on heat-sensitive items...
Therefore I've worked a bit with the theory of how different glues bond, in order to guarantee that work I do will be secure. I'm not entirely sure how these compounds work, either... but I do know that cyanoacrylates depend on an airtight interface to bond properly... specifically it has to be oxygen free.
For instance, I've gotten some on my fingers before... and it sits there just fine in liquid form... until I push my thumb against it. Then instantly the two fingers are bonded together until I get my superglue remover... this is in fact a very useful feature for gems that were knocked out of their mount. Fill the mount with a thin layer of cyanoacrylate, then press gem firmly in place. Instantly it gets bound in place.
I use this a lot for things that are delicately positioned. Glue it in place with the acrylate, then form the mount and dissolve away the glue when done.
Anyways, back to the topic... I don't believe that one-compound cyanoacrylates would work well in space... not enough working time before it hardens. Though there are chemicals you can add to the one-compound cyanoacrylates that slow the curing time...
Unless I'm mistakened, they didn't even know they needed repairs until they were well on their way towards landing.
You would think they would have a skin integrity sensor. A simple hi-res conductance sensor (or series of them) measuring RF electrical propagation on the hull should be able to determine basic integrity.
If you have enough of them and smart enough software it should even be able to pinpoint where to check during your EVA...
Maybe it'd be better to actually use a browser that the user can't see.
When I write applications like this, I actually use the Microsoft Internet Explorer WebControl... it's free, open, and exactly mimics what IE does. Programmatically it's clunky, but bottom line is the spam wouldn't work in IE if it won't work in the WebControl.
Then again... don't I remember that Microsoft turned off javascript in Outlook and Outlook Express because of all the potential problems?
Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to mimic browser behaviour...
Does anyone remember a Simpsons episode (or multiple episodes) where marketing droids just make up statistics to get Homer's attention... something like "we guarantee the funniness content is up 139%" or whatever?
Participants in the study considered multi-screen configurations significantly more useful than single screens and preferred multiple monitor setups on every measure of usability. They found them 29 percent more effective for tasks, 24 percent more comfortable to use in tasks and found it 39 percent easier to move around sources of information.
I'm seeing a strong correlation here. How DOES one objectively measure "comfortable to use" and whatnot?
While I'm not disputing the results of this setup (I use a multi-monitor setup myself), I think the only statistic one could reasonably measure repeatably would be:
"This setup increases screen real-estate 100%"
Chances are that these people that created the game aren't really 'qualified' to be teaching people how to kill and whatnot. I think that when game creators come up with an idea for a game, it's an idea that ANYONE could have come up with. Game makers aren't some special elite force that knows how to kill. Maybe they do a little research before hand, but I highly doubt that they are any more expericned at 'going postal' than anybody who plays these games.
*ponders implications of this statement with respect to America's Army*
Ah, yes, would you go as far as saying that the interpretation is incomplete unless it is formulated mathematically?
I would agree that the interpretation many times includes a good deal of mathematical formulation, but I would hesitate to go so far as to indicate that it requires a rigorous mathematical formulation.
Many Physics problems do not require a rigorous mathematical representation to prove a solution; A large number of interesting and revolutionary discoveries in Physics do not have a mathematical representation when they are first discovered; for instance, superconductivity was ill-understood from a mathematical point of view for quite some time after it's discovery, as the atomic mechanisms that made it possible were not entirely characterized.
When did Physics change from an empirical science into a theoretical one?
You know, in high school, I took Physics 101 and Calculus 101 at the same time (college level courses as a senior in high school). There is, as anyone who took both surely realizes, a lot of overlap between the two.
I always characterized the difference as empirical vs. theoretical. Calculus is concerned with describing how things move and react while Physics is concerned with measuring and interpreting how things move and react...
Helpstar.
It includes workflow management. We setup problem types that indicate the functional area that is addressed, and the current team status (for instance, a bug in this sytem will go from Project - Defect to Project - Fixed (indicating fixed but not ready to promote) to Project - QA (indicating ready to be confirmed))
Of course it doesn't apply just to bugs. Everything from "reset my password", to "install service pack x on server y", to "Change the border of the website to green" goes through it...
users file requests either by phone (we have a small call center to log incidents and route appropriately) or by e-mail (in which case the call center representative still takes care of routing, but the incident itslef is logged automatically by the system). A new incident can be assigned to a specific person, or a queue that represents a team of people.
Project Managers, QA Testers, and Programmers can log incidents themselves and route manually, bypassing the call center stage entirely.
It has lots of nice reports and automatic time tracking by incident, as well.
And what if the drive's alignment drifted after the data was written, and there's recoverable data in what's now a guard band?
IANADE (Drive Engineer) but I would imagine that the DOD examined this possibility, and this is one of the reasons they recommend such a rigorous random field erasure protocol.
On a more practical level, quite a few of the "secure wipe" products leave file names behind in directories.
Which is why you should go with a secure wipe utility that discusses their algorithms in detail, and confirms they are doing a true wipe.
Bottom line is, buyer beware... make sure your secure wipe utility meets your needs...
with out using a secure wipe utility (which may very well still be recoverable by the truely professional recovery shop, I dunno).
Argh. Damn outlook for opening in the same window. Just deleted my post.
Short version:
The DOD looked at this issue and wanted a wipe procedure that would remove information reliably. All the way down to magnetic domains so that ANY theoretical technology, including nanotech or quantum computers, would be unable to recover the data... they came up with a 7 step process that was something like (random streams are truly random hardware gen'd):
1. Overwrite with 1's
2. Overwrite with compliment of step 1
3. Overwrite with a random stream
4. Overwrite with alternating 1's and 0's
5. Overwrite with compliment of step 3
6. Overwrite with compliment of step 4
7. Overwrite with a random stream
This caused all magnetic domains on the disc to be randomly aligned... meaning that there would be no theoretical way to glean any information from the platter. I may have individual steps incorrect, but you get the idea.
The lesson? If you HAVE to have your data wiped securely, use a tool that implements a procedure like this. I believe PGPWipe is such a tool...
independent review? My god people... TheTechLounge is a review website. This WAS an independent review.
I was referring specifically to the success rate figures. I believe Mr. Roberts' concern with them is that there is no oversight body, so his competitors can claim whatever success rate they want...
And I would hardly call this a review. He interviewed a key figure at the company and ran their consumer-grade software on his own.
If that's the case, then I'm going to watch Tombraider and harrass the director of filming so I can write a review of Angelina Jolie...
From the article (attributed to Mr. Roberts):
:D
Another warning sign is when a company gives a success rate. Companies do this to play off your insecurities. They know you want your data back and are telling you what you want to hear. In other words, any company that gives a success rate is lying.
Ummm... or maybe they understand that my number one criteria is success rate and they are honest, scrupulous, hard working individuals, trying to portray their market standing.
Of course I'd prefer if someone could do an independent review...
Damn I wish I had a couple grand of hard drives to destroy
I propose an opensource web based search engine...
I know you were joking but my mind took me on a flight of fancy on how an opensource search engine would work.
I'm thinking the only way you could do it economically (i.e. for free) would be to leverage a distributed computing client... use that p2p network that distributes documents throughout the network... and basically each document is an index for a particular word... use a random aggregate-avoiding algorithm to generate new indices, and run it on everyone's box at once. Then have a few merger machines that, when they find indices on the same search topic, merge the two documents and somehow remove the originals from the network.
Oh wait, just use the p2p network where document availability is based on usage... and have the search client look for merge documents first. Then you don't have to figure out how to remove the originals... the network will do it for you when their usage figures plummet...
I'm thinking this is doable (and fun!)
Retraction: I did not RTFA...
:(
I was completely wrong
I agree mostly with your post; and indeed you have somewhat changed my mind now that I realize it doesn't get exponentially harder to scale as you increase power. However I do have one comment that pertains back to the original post re: passive RFID ranges...
and so the extra distance is nothing more than a temporary setback at worst.
Sure, you can lick the signal to noise problem. And you can make almost perfectly efficient RFIDs. And the reader installations are for the most part fixed so chances are you've got a decent power feed for the transmitter.
The problem is the FCC. Unless you want to get a broadcast permit (prohibitively expensive for this applicatin) you're limited to a minute amount of power. I *think* it's a Watt, but I could be wrong on that one...
This won't prevent spam at all...
It'll just force all spam to be joe jobs.
Read the link. This is not an improvement. For the poor victim of a joe job becomes a casualty in the war on spam...
you've got the 1 ft value wrong in the second case; it should be 4 mW.
No I don't. The problem space is a transmitter/receiver pair that works fine with 1mW transmit power at 1 ft. Therefore, the transmit power at 1 ft is 4 mW.
In both cases, the growth is O(n^2); there's no qualitative difference.
In purely mathematical terms there is none, I grant you that.
But in real world terms, I can tell you that the difference between 25mW and 100mW is enough to make or break a design.
I think maybe they should go the other direction, and start actually making utility belts.
If there was a utility belt that looked good in casual business dress (dockers, collared shirt)... I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Of course this would require a societal change so that such a thing doesn't look horribly unprofessional.
Or would it?
I know guys that have like 3 or 4 belt clips for the various items they have to carry (cellphone, pager, PDA, bluetooth headset, whatever)
Couldn't one make a universal type system for that? Then all you'd need would be cases for the truly ungainly looking items. (I doubt having a GBA hanging off your belt looks really professional...)
this provides some nice opportunities to cause them a major headache by including malicious JavaScript code on a page only seen by a bot not following the robots exclusion protocol
/. math freaks: yes I know there's no set called Very Large Integers. It's a joke. Laugh.)
A lot of people do that with a malicious honeypot page. It just outputs X phony, but real-looking, mailto links, where X is a member of the set of Very Large Integers.
(note to
If one quantity is inversely proportional to the square of another, then it's also inversely proportional to the square of any multiple of that other; the only effect is to change the constant of proportionality.
Ahh, but in this case doubling the distance causes the "quantity" to quadruple, not double.
As an example, if you require 1 mW of transmit power for a clear signal at 1 foot, then the following table supplies power requirements for any radiative power technology:
1 ft - 1 mW
2 ft - 4 mW
3 ft - 9 mW
4 ft - 16 mW
5 ft - 25 mW
etc.
However, with a passive RFID system and the same parameters, the table is clearly increasing at a much greater rate:
1 ft - 1 mW
2 ft - 16 mW
3 ft - 36 mW
4 ft - 64 mW
5 ft - 100 mW
So the overall power needs are actually 4x greater in this situation. One could say that the power drops off 4x as fast as distance increases in this situation. While this certainly isn't an "exponential" change... It does, as I asserted in my original post, change the economics of the power curve law quite for the worse...
People, these tags are readable up to a few inches. Maybe a foot at most. They are nothing but glorified bar codes. Good for tracking inventory at most.
That's not entirely correct. Depending on the design of the RFID and the sensitivity of the receiver, they can be read from a few meters away. But certainly you wouldn't need to worry about someone driving by your home and reading your RFIDs... the key component of RFID's economic feasibility is that they're passive. Which gives the power-curve law a whole new spin; power doesn't drop as the square of the distance, but as the square of double the distance (the power has to travel there and back).
It doesn't take a slashdot reader to deduce that passive RFIDs are not distance friendly...
As for not being useful without a resolution mechanism... are you saying that ISBN's, SSN's (if in the USA), and UPC barcodes aren't useful? This URI scheme simply provides a way to identify objects (digital or not) using a common identification scheme. The resolution mechanism can be added after the fact (or not, depending on the type of object, or how it is used).
GUIDs have no built in resolution scheme yet look at how universally useful they are...
Natural Language Processing or voice recognition
Actually the two are distinct but related concepts...
Natural Language Processing is the science of how to take a grammatical statement and parse it. Breaking it down into nouns and verbs and subjects and objects and whatever, and then representing the symantic links that describe how these concepts modify each other in a grammatical context.
Voice recognition is the science of taking spoken language and transcribing it to a context-specific computer representation.
The two technologies can be married, in that the context-specific output of voice recognition be a NLP parsing structure... but they don't have to be. Back when I was reading AI mags every week (about 4-5 years ago), all the voice recognition guys were outputing ASCII and all the NLP guys were inputing ASCII but that was as close as they got to working together...
to the computer is OK but in many situations I will want visual, not aural feedback
The one place where I want a full voice interface is when I'm doing something else and my interaction with the computer is secondary. Like driving a car, entertaining guests ("Computer, what's at the movie theater tonight?"), that sort of thing.
And maybe that's Google's point. Stop making the computer the primary focus of every computer interaction. An essential part of ubiquitous computing is that it enables more modes of interaction with the computer... modes where the computer is not the focus any more...