Why not? The US military has very sophisticated research programs and is also less sensitive to individual failures and to some degree political bickering than NASA. Furthermore, they have a very long history of innovation and invention, much of which has been transfered to the public sector. Thus if the Air Force can successfully complete it, it will probably see use in NASA and other programs anyway. The X-33 had a lot of promising ideas and new technologies - it's nice to see that all of that will get a second chance.
While there certainly are many technologically advanced South Asian individuals abroad, the governments of that region (particularly India) are quite skilled at preventing any sort of progress from being made economically by constantly butting their nose in it.
Businesses there must prove their "social worth" - through a notoriously slow beauracracy - before they can begin or expand operations. Thus preventing companies from adapting rapidly to the world economy and keeping millions of people jobless and in poverty.
Who says they don't? They don't fly off the coast of california obviously, but I bet there are chinese spies buzzing all around Japan, a nation which is under our military protection (since we won't let them have one of their own). As well as South Korea and the Phillipines.
And since when have any nations apologized for remote surveillance - Russia, US, or whoever? There's no reason to apologize for that. Why should we apologize for an incident we haven't been allowed to investigate ourselves? I don't understand why more people aren't asking THAT question directly. And since it almost certainly was their pilot's fault, it would be foolish to apologize for it and appear weak.
For my money, the biggest appeal about the Playstation 2 was that it was ALSO a PS1 and DVD player - thus saving an extra purchase and a lot of cables.
Similarly, the best aspect of Indrema was that besides games it could also be used for DVD, Tivo-style personal television, internet, and potentially a whole lot more (think digital cable and satellite recievers, HDTV conversion, and perfect copies of digital tv). The linux specification was only part of the overall concept - that the indrema could combine many similar but previously separate functionalities into a single, simple, efficient, relatively low cost machine, and it could do it in a way that gave the consumers and programmers a lot of control and the means to expand its functionality.
Do you think Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PS#, or Nintendo's GameCube will do the same? Will any of these proprietary technology obsessed companies do anything like this? Of course not. They'd rather sell you all of that to you separately, as a complex, expensive, electricity-guzzling home theater system. Low end users be damned. That's the real loss.
So where was Walid when the international community has been asking for this all this time? It sounds to me like they may have fleshed out the technology after the standards committee started working, then demanded cash for an idea so obvious it was independently created.
Unfortunately, this is a problem with open-source and standards-based development. They spend their time solving the problem well instead of getting patents, and then get scooped by idea stealers. Something should be done. Personally I'm in favor of giving obvious-patent holders the finger.
The thing I liked most about the PS2 was the fact that it came with a DVD player as well for a relatively low price. Lots of people agree with me in this respect. Indrema is even better because in addition to games and DVDs it supports TIVOish personal TV as well, a technology which has become very interesting, is expandable in many respect including hard drive capacity (which would allow more recording than Tivo), and also can act as an internet computer. So I would expect that with some advertising it should do very well - it's four peripherals (and then some) in one. Yay, less cables to worry about.
But it does raise the question - Tivo and RePlay use proprietary subscription servers to coordinate television listings and automatic recording. Will Indrema support this feature? If so, will that require a subscription or be free? Will third parties be able to operate their own listing services?
Servo: You don't know how to fly.
Mike: Sure I do! I'm fully instrument-rated for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Crow: Well, then you fly the Satellite of Love!
Servo: Yeah.
Mike: What, this thing? No, I can't do that, see, 'cause it's not the same. There's no air-foil, so there's no ability to turn when you're up in the... Oh, alright, alright. Fine, you two. Spread out, spread out!
Gypsy: What would you do on the drunken sea, early in the morning? Hey, hey...
Mike: Okay. Out, baby. Out, out, out, out, out.
Gypsy: Well, don't come crying to me when you get us all killed.
Mike: Alright, okay. Let's see here... Well hey, this is going to be easier than I thought! Hehehe....Oh!
Servo: The hell?
Crow: Hey Mike, you hit something! It's the Hubble! You killed the Hubble!
Mike: Gypsy, could you please maybe help...
Gypsy: Uh-uh! No way! This is your dishwashing liquid, you soak in it!
Mike: Ah, ah! The Manipulator Arm! The, the Manipulator Arm.
Servo: Carefully, carefully... There Wait, wait. It's only $6 billion, remember.
Crow: Hope you're insured, Mike.
Servo: It's just the most expensive satellite ever built.
Crow: It's very fragile... Well, was very fragile.
Servo: Better leave a note on the windshield, Mike.
Crow: Yeah. Just back away slowly, and... Aah!
Servo: Don't do that!
Mike: Oh! I'm sorry. I'll just... Now, I'll just release it gently like a sparrow into the night's sky.
Crow: Good night, sweet Hubble, and a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Mike, Crow and Servo: Aah!
Crow: Oh, good one, Mike.
cryptochrome
This wouldn't be suitable for most computing applications, where designing software for a generalized processor would be easier and more effective most of the time.
But for dedicated and experimental electronics, it'd be golden. Just think how much this would accelerate prototyping and design for BEAM robots, since you don't have to mess around with soldering bunches of components!
The most important thing here is that your original text message is now a picture. You still need another decoder (the brain) to extract the original information, which can NOT be done on your computer (not well anyway).
The approach would therefore be centered on breaking your encryption technique. If I had access to an encoder and decoder, even without knowing how it works, I would know that I should be looking for images. In that case I would compare the encoded file with the decoded image and ignore the original text. Determining that it was rot-128 would be a fairly simple matter.
Makes me want to go out and get this surgery right now! Except it's not available yet. Still I'm a bit worried about the side effects. At least we don't have to worry about eyeballs collapsing anymore. Until the military starts using this technology on their own pilots and divers, and it gets a lot cheaper, I'm going to hold back.
Lots of people are saying "What's the point? My PC/console is just as good and a lot cheaper in the long run than an arcade."
While that may be true for many games, arcades have always allowed much more elaborate setups, some of which may be quite involved. Picture, if you will, a room full of enclosed generic cockpits, each with wrap-around screens and surround sound. You go in with a bunch of friends or strangers, pay your money, pick a game, and next thing you and your team know you're in a big competition flight/space/mech sim against your archrivals thousands of miles away.
Freedom, justice, and equality are desirable ends. Incidentally, neither of them can fully implemented without the other. And none of them require privacy.
Privacy is just a means to some end - be it good or bad. Nor is it truly necessary to pursue alternative lifestyles - unless those lifestyles involve imposing on others. Which certainly butts up against the "freedom" issue, doesn't it? Lack of privacy just changes the rules of the game, and makes things difficult for those who have been screwing others over.
Openness dramatically enhances justice and equality. And a diverse society will demand both freedom and equality. While the intolerant may demand that people adhere to their rules, they'll be held to them too, so the rules can't be that strict and if unpopular how will they get people to follow them?
As for people so weak-brained that they automatically conform to the expectations of the powerful... who cares? That's their problem.
XML was designed to transfer data between programs and across platforms. The cross-platform clarity and reliability is great, but an XML file is really bloated relative to a specific file format, which is hardly conducive to transfering files.
Those folks ought to incorporate a universal, cross-platform standard for compressing XML files into something a little smaller and more portable. Maybe call them.xmlc or something. Then include the xml parser and compressor/decompressor code into standard libraries for all platforms.
For instance, if your software needs to do a high-computation task that is also distributable (such as a video filter) and you have a high speed connection to the internet and a relatively slow computer, you could farm out the task to a more powerful computer(s). Depending on how the software is implemented, these central computers could charge a per-use fee or a subscription fee for semi-unlimited use.
I know that sounds sort of irrelevent today, but if complex software really becomes popular (like a full-featured version of Apple's iMovie) I do see a future for this.
No matter how well you think you've hidden something, somebody can always find it, and chances are they wouldn't tell you about it. Insisting on privacy just makes it easier for orgs with the resources to watch you in secret with time-honored techniques like traffic analysis and good old fashioned spying.
As somebody who designs a website I wholeheartedly support the idea of everyone upgrading their browser to something standards compliant. If everyone would support CSS reliably my job would be SO much easier.
But the fact is there are a lot of older computers out there being used by folks who can't afford a new computer, or as cheap internet terminals. And new browsers are so big/inefficient/slow that old computers can't even run them. Or even newer ones. Netscape 6 is ridiculously slow and STILL doesn't support CSS properly. IE mac 5.5 is the best I've seen so far but still is too processor hungry. People with older computers cannot be cut out as viewers, so until they are supported I cannot ignore them.
The spies could just as easily closely watch the spammimic site and intercept all incoming messages and outgoing encodes. The ip can be traced to the sender, and the outgoing encodes could be cross-refererenced against intercepted emails to figure out who the sendee. The website isn't even secure. Since people have to go through this website, that's the weak point in the whole scheme.
A believable stand-alone spammimic encrypter, coupled with a PGP-type encryption scheme, would be the most effective. A PGP encrypted message looks like gibberish (making it easily detected), but could then be SMed into fake spam. If a spy intercepted the message and de-SMed it he would be left with unintelligible encrypted gibberish. More importantly, if a spy tried to de-SM a real spam he would also get unintelligible gibberish. Thus he would have to somehow figure out whether a message was an SMed encryption or not, and even if successful he couldn't decode it.
Therefore spammimic needs to make their encodes indistinguishable from real spam email to prevent detection. The decoding algorithm should also produce an output for any input (no error messages), and the output for real spams should be indistinguishable from PGPed messages (both look like gibberish, but only one can be decrypted, and only if you have the proper key). The SMed messages also need to be able to accomodate longer messages, and you should be able to use the encrypter on your own machine for privacy.
Of course, smart spies know most people don't send each other spam, so they could still pick people out that way. There ought to be a "Long-inane-rambling" or "shallow political discussion" mimic ^_^
Of course I remember Sturgeon's Law. What makes you think that the current books available are the top 10%? I'd say about 90% of them are crap. How else can you explain Michael Crichton?
Hence the "need for promotion and editing" comment. You can find someone to edit a book and tell you it's crap w/o needing a publisher. Your book can be promoted by various levels of critics and reading circles who can judge if your story is crap. And in both cases they probably wouldn't be nearly as biased or as expensive as a publishing house.
If people feel like compensating them at all, which is a whole other story. I'm all for the creators of information being compensated fairly for their works. A book or movie or album has up until recently been tied to a physical object which was bought, sold, and transferred as an object with the limitations on price and proliferation that come with it. But once it has been reduced to information how much is it really worth, and since it can be freely copied how can that worth ever be realized directly? I hate to say it, but I only see a few options here:
No financial compensation, like open source software. This probably wouldn't work so well for most media, since the effort required to create it cannot be distributed as easily as that for software.
Side funding through related efforts, such as selling tickets for a band concert or movies theater or speaking appearances. The effectiveness of this method would depend on the medium.
Indirect compensation through advertising. Thus corrupting the integrity of the work.
Always tying your information to a physical object, such as a copy-protected disc. This loses the advatages of electronic distribution, and takes the risk that the information will be extracted and distributed electronically anyway.
Tying your information to a subscription service, like premium cable. The catch is that the your information is buried under the large cost of the service. Plus it can still be copied.
Being compensated indirectly by some other entity which determines the worth of a work and compensates the creator accordingly based on some system of their own devising. This could mean an independently funded organization like PBS, or a wealthy individual patron, or the government based on any number of methods. Britain's TV tax comes to mind in this case, but some sort of popularity based system could also be used. This system could be prone to corruption, elitism, and pandering.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course you should always take American Spectator articles with a grain of salt.
Why not? The US military has very sophisticated research programs and is also less sensitive to individual failures and to some degree political bickering than NASA. Furthermore, they have a very long history of innovation and invention, much of which has been transfered to the public sector. Thus if the Air Force can successfully complete it, it will probably see use in NASA and other programs anyway. The X-33 had a lot of promising ideas and new technologies - it's nice to see that all of that will get a second chance.
cryptochrome
While there certainly are many technologically advanced South Asian individuals abroad, the governments of that region (particularly India) are quite skilled at preventing any sort of progress from being made economically by constantly butting their nose in it.
Businesses there must prove their "social worth" - through a notoriously slow beauracracy - before they can begin or expand operations. Thus preventing companies from adapting rapidly to the world economy and keeping millions of people jobless and in poverty.
Who says they don't? They don't fly off the coast of california obviously, but I bet there are chinese spies buzzing all around Japan, a nation which is under our military protection (since we won't let them have one of their own). As well as South Korea and the Phillipines.
And since when have any nations apologized for remote surveillance - Russia, US, or whoever? There's no reason to apologize for that. Why should we apologize for an incident we haven't been allowed to investigate ourselves? I don't understand why more people aren't asking THAT question directly. And since it almost certainly was their pilot's fault, it would be foolish to apologize for it and appear weak.
cryptochrome
For my money, the biggest appeal about the Playstation 2 was that it was ALSO a PS1 and DVD player - thus saving an extra purchase and a lot of cables.
Similarly, the best aspect of Indrema was that besides games it could also be used for DVD, Tivo-style personal television, internet, and potentially a whole lot more (think digital cable and satellite recievers, HDTV conversion, and perfect copies of digital tv). The linux specification was only part of the overall concept - that the indrema could combine many similar but previously separate functionalities into a single, simple, efficient, relatively low cost machine, and it could do it in a way that gave the consumers and programmers a lot of control and the means to expand its functionality.
Do you think Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PS#, or Nintendo's GameCube will do the same? Will any of these proprietary technology obsessed companies do anything like this? Of course not. They'd rather sell you all of that to you separately, as a complex, expensive, electricity-guzzling home theater system. Low end users be damned. That's the real loss.
cryptochrome
Woohoo! Nature Kicks Ass!
cryptochrome
So where was Walid when the international community has been asking for this all this time? It sounds to me like they may have fleshed out the technology after the standards committee started working, then demanded cash for an idea so obvious it was independently created.
Unfortunately, this is a problem with open-source and standards-based development. They spend their time solving the problem well instead of getting patents, and then get scooped by idea stealers. Something should be done. Personally I'm in favor of giving obvious-patent holders the finger.
cryptochrome
The thing I liked most about the PS2 was the fact that it came with a DVD player as well for a relatively low price. Lots of people agree with me in this respect. Indrema is even better because in addition to games and DVDs it supports TIVOish personal TV as well, a technology which has become very interesting, is expandable in many respect including hard drive capacity (which would allow more recording than Tivo), and also can act as an internet computer. So I would expect that with some advertising it should do very well - it's four peripherals (and then some) in one. Yay, less cables to worry about.
But it does raise the question - Tivo and RePlay use proprietary subscription servers to coordinate television listings and automatic recording. Will Indrema support this feature? If so, will that require a subscription or be free? Will third parties be able to operate their own listing services?
Servo: You don't know how to fly. Mike: Sure I do! I'm fully instrument-rated for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Crow: Well, then you fly the Satellite of Love! Servo: Yeah. Mike: What, this thing? No, I can't do that, see, 'cause it's not the same. There's no air-foil, so there's no ability to turn when you're up in the... Oh, alright, alright. Fine, you two. Spread out, spread out! Gypsy: What would you do on the drunken sea, early in the morning? Hey, hey... Mike: Okay. Out, baby. Out, out, out, out, out. Gypsy: Well, don't come crying to me when you get us all killed. Mike: Alright, okay. Let's see here... Well hey, this is going to be easier than I thought! Hehehe. ...Oh!
Servo: The hell?
Crow: Hey Mike, you hit something! It's the Hubble! You killed the Hubble!
Mike: Gypsy, could you please maybe help...
Gypsy: Uh-uh! No way! This is your dishwashing liquid, you soak in it!
Mike: Ah, ah! The Manipulator Arm! The, the Manipulator Arm.
Servo: Carefully, carefully... There Wait, wait. It's only $6 billion, remember.
Crow: Hope you're insured, Mike.
Servo: It's just the most expensive satellite ever built.
Crow: It's very fragile... Well, was very fragile.
Servo: Better leave a note on the windshield, Mike.
Crow: Yeah. Just back away slowly, and... Aah!
Servo: Don't do that!
Mike: Oh! I'm sorry. I'll just... Now, I'll just release it gently like a sparrow into the night's sky.
Crow: Good night, sweet Hubble, and a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Mike, Crow and Servo: Aah!
Crow: Oh, good one, Mike.
cryptochrome
This wouldn't be suitable for most computing applications, where designing software for a generalized processor would be easier and more effective most of the time.
But for dedicated and experimental electronics, it'd be golden. Just think how much this would accelerate prototyping and design for BEAM robots, since you don't have to mess around with soldering bunches of components!
cryptochromeThe most important thing here is that your original text message is now a picture. You still need another decoder (the brain) to extract the original information, which can NOT be done on your computer (not well anyway).
The approach would therefore be centered on breaking your encryption technique. If I had access to an encoder and decoder, even without knowing how it works, I would know that I should be looking for images. In that case I would compare the encoded file with the decoded image and ignore the original text. Determining that it was rot-128 would be a fairly simple matter.
Well that's news. Since when has this been policy?
Makes me want to go out and get this surgery right now! Except it's not available yet. Still I'm a bit worried about the side effects. At least we don't have to worry about eyeballs collapsing anymore. Until the military starts using this technology on their own pilots and divers, and it gets a lot cheaper, I'm going to hold back.
cryptochrome
Lots of people are saying "What's the point? My PC/console is just as good and a lot cheaper in the long run than an arcade."
While that may be true for many games, arcades have always allowed much more elaborate setups, some of which may be quite involved. Picture, if you will, a room full of enclosed generic cockpits, each with wrap-around screens and surround sound. You go in with a bunch of friends or strangers, pay your money, pick a game, and next thing you and your team know you're in a big competition flight/space/mech sim against your archrivals thousands of miles away.
Now I'd pay more for THAT.
Freedom, justice, and equality are desirable ends. Incidentally, neither of them can fully implemented without the other. And none of them require privacy.
Privacy is just a means to some end - be it good or bad. Nor is it truly necessary to pursue alternative lifestyles - unless those lifestyles involve imposing on others. Which certainly butts up against the "freedom" issue, doesn't it? Lack of privacy just changes the rules of the game, and makes things difficult for those who have been screwing others over.
Openness dramatically enhances justice and equality. And a diverse society will demand both freedom and equality. While the intolerant may demand that people adhere to their rules, they'll be held to them too, so the rules can't be that strict and if unpopular how will they get people to follow them?
As for people so weak-brained that they automatically conform to the expectations of the powerful... who cares? That's their problem.
cryptochrome
XML was designed to transfer data between programs and across platforms. The cross-platform clarity and reliability is great, but an XML file is really bloated relative to a specific file format, which is hardly conducive to transfering files.
.xmlc or something. Then include the xml parser and compressor/decompressor code into standard libraries for all platforms.
Those folks ought to incorporate a universal, cross-platform standard for compressing XML files into something a little smaller and more portable. Maybe call them
cryptochrome
For instance, if your software needs to do a high-computation task that is also distributable (such as a video filter) and you have a high speed connection to the internet and a relatively slow computer, you could farm out the task to a more powerful computer(s). Depending on how the software is implemented, these central computers could charge a per-use fee or a subscription fee for semi-unlimited use.
I know that sounds sort of irrelevent today, but if complex software really becomes popular (like a full-featured version of Apple's iMovie) I do see a future for this.
cryptochrome
No matter how well you think you've hidden something, somebody can always find it, and chances are they wouldn't tell you about it. Insisting on privacy just makes it easier for orgs with the resources to watch you in secret with time-honored techniques like traffic analysis and good old fashioned spying.
For more info you should read David Brin's The Transparent Society.
cryptochrome
Or at least it's more standards compliant. Tons of people still use netscape 4.x, and can't use IE 5.5 or NS 6. Therin lies the problem.
As somebody who designs a website I wholeheartedly support the idea of everyone upgrading their browser to something standards compliant. If everyone would support CSS reliably my job would be SO much easier.
But the fact is there are a lot of older computers out there being used by folks who can't afford a new computer, or as cheap internet terminals. And new browsers are so big/inefficient/slow that old computers can't even run them. Or even newer ones. Netscape 6 is ridiculously slow and STILL doesn't support CSS properly. IE mac 5.5 is the best I've seen so far but still is too processor hungry. People with older computers cannot be cut out as viewers, so until they are supported I cannot ignore them.
To paraphrase That 70's Show:
Burn!
cryptochromeBehold! The only working phaser ever built!
cryptochrome
The spies could just as easily closely watch the spammimic site and intercept all incoming messages and outgoing encodes. The ip can be traced to the sender, and the outgoing encodes could be cross-refererenced against intercepted emails to figure out who the sendee. The website isn't even secure. Since people have to go through this website, that's the weak point in the whole scheme.
A believable stand-alone spammimic encrypter, coupled with a PGP-type encryption scheme, would be the most effective. A PGP encrypted message looks like gibberish (making it easily detected), but could then be SMed into fake spam. If a spy intercepted the message and de-SMed it he would be left with unintelligible encrypted gibberish. More importantly, if a spy tried to de-SM a real spam he would also get unintelligible gibberish. Thus he would have to somehow figure out whether a message was an SMed encryption or not, and even if successful he couldn't decode it.
Therefore spammimic needs to make their encodes indistinguishable from real spam email to prevent detection. The decoding algorithm should also produce an output for any input (no error messages), and the output for real spams should be indistinguishable from PGPed messages (both look like gibberish, but only one can be decrypted, and only if you have the proper key). The SMed messages also need to be able to accomodate longer messages, and you should be able to use the encrypter on your own machine for privacy.
Of course, smart spies know most people don't send each other spam, so they could still pick people out that way. There ought to be a "Long-inane-rambling" or "shallow political discussion" mimic ^_^
cryptochrome
Of course I remember Sturgeon's Law. What makes you think that the current books available are the top 10%? I'd say about 90% of them are crap. How else can you explain Michael Crichton?
Hence the "need for promotion and editing" comment. You can find someone to edit a book and tell you it's crap w/o needing a publisher. Your book can be promoted by various levels of critics and reading circles who can judge if your story is crap. And in both cases they probably wouldn't be nearly as biased or as expensive as a publishing house.
If people feel like compensating them at all, which is a whole other story. I'm all for the creators of information being compensated fairly for their works. A book or movie or album has up until recently been tied to a physical object which was bought, sold, and transferred as an object with the limitations on price and proliferation that come with it. But once it has been reduced to information how much is it really worth, and since it can be freely copied how can that worth ever be realized directly? I hate to say it, but I only see a few options here: