The demos weren't from live patients, but from prepared data sets. From looking on the web, it looks like the scanning itself takes 15 to 60 minutes with a fair amount of that time in setup. Then you might wait to make sure that the scans are good. That, I imagine, just gives you the rough data, there isn't any indication on how long it takes to format it into something these computers can zoom around in.
And then do you really think a doctor (and hospital as the employer) who would be facing a malpractice suit if he screws up would really strap on a glove, zoom through in four minutes and go "WOOT!"? My guess is "test results in about two days" will be the default, regardless of the technology used.
There isn't anyone "in cyberspace" -- unless AI has gotten really, really good overnight.
Everyone "in cyberspace" is a real, physical person in an actual country governed by specific laws. The same is true for the websites and services they use. Ultimately they are hosted on physical machines in specific countries, owned by real people and again, subject to the laws of the country(ies) they belong to.
I realize that this isn't central to the argument, but it bugs me every time I see it.
Oh and the whole car analogy argument:
With modern cars you often can't work on the car without the ability to talk to the car's computer which often has an undocumented interface. The dealer has the tools and correct codes, but you might not.
To put it this way, would you want to allow (say) Chinese cars to be sold in the US without the safety features US law requires, simply because they aren't required in their country of origin?
Yes, actually, I would want to allow that -- I imagine it would greatly reduce the cost of getting a new car and allow a lot of people to trade in their old cars for new ones. After all, lots of those old but in use cars don't have the current set of safety features but are still being driven -- and sold, purchased, traded.
As long as people aren't lied to I think they should be able to buy what they want.
One of the main problems with protecting this site is that it isn't a case of "touch the glowing rocks and drop dead" - and if you have that kind of scary message and someone messes around with the site and doesn't turn into a glowing skeleton - then the warnings will be ignored.
That is why so much of the focus is on education, telling people what is here and the types of dangers that the waste represents. The problem with an educational messages, of course, if that it is very hard to get across, especially if there is a language/cultural barrier.
This is a tough problem and a lot of people have put a lot of work into trying to solve it (that and the whole natural physical containment issue).
An interesting look into the warning system design process is here:
I don't agree with the troll moderation, and I can't find an answer I like to this question so far in the responses, so let me give this a try:
Unlike phone systems or paper mail systems, which have comprehensive international-body and governmental regulations to follow, email is a voluntary system specifically designed to work as well as it can in an imperfect and heterogeneous network of networks. What rules that email clients and servers do follow are technical specifications written as early as 1982 -- before business uses of the Internet were even allowed.
So there is no one who *can* make any delivery guarantees, as there is no central control of the system. Also, there are people who like the fact that there isn't central control, and attempts to create a central control would lead to the balkanization of email (like the current system with IM).
There were (and in a way, still are -- Exchange, Notes/Groups) competing email systems, but they were burdened by commercial licenses and the inability to easily transmit messages between systems. Regular Internet email won (in part) because it provided a universal (and licensing free) way to send and receive email messages -- not because it was the system with the best features.
From here, change would be very difficult.
If someone created another commercial/governmental system for email I think it would be doomed, unless the developer managed to make SMTP email illegal in a good percentage of developed countries.
To change Internet email to add the feature of "guaranteed, secure delivery" the feature would either have to be backwards compatible with every existing Internet email client and server (which means the feature wouldn't work) or you would have to convince *everybody* to move to new clients and servers -- good luck on that.
Certainly email has and will continue to evolve, but to go on about your status as a "business user" (who isn't, these day?) isn't likely to be very productive.
In the mean time, go head with the faxes and certified letters -- and if what you are sending isn't important enough for that, well... I guess it wasn't that important, was it?
No, not the Solaris GUI... that's too simple: They are moving to the UltraSparc CPU, with the HURD kernel, a Linux file system layout and user space and then the GUI is the new "iApple" which is basically WINE with some stuff thrown on top to make it look like the Mac OS X Quartz GUI.
The motherbord will have a Transmeta co-processor with software from Infinium Labs for the DRM... anyway that's what I heard.
Good to hear, I'm glad they haven't been able to lock everything down. I had forgotten about Palm, but I haven't been a real active user over the last few years.
And yeah, maybe VNC wouldn't be the way to go -- but being able to "ssh" into your phone would be great if someone stole the thing:-)
I guess I'm thinking it would be neat to have a thing about as big as a Treo as a primary computer. Maybe a "mini-VGA" jack in addition to a mini-USB jack and when you connect a power cable the CPU ramps up to full power.
Okay, so maybe only me and 20-30 other people would want one, but it would be neat to have the carry around convienience with the ability to snap into a full Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor mode. Even the Newton's interface seemed really cramped to me, and it was a lot bigger than the Palm.
And I guess I've gone *way* off topic with this one...
I know everyone loves to hate on Microsoft's closed operating system, but the closed nature of cell phones and their networks is worse. What would the Internet be like if you could only use approved applications built into the computer on it? What if every email was $0.10?
This might be a subversive way for MS to open up cell phones into more general purpose devices with more third party applications.
If so, that would be interesting, and sad that they couldn't do that here.
To look at it the other way -- is there a Linux powered phone that you can VNC into and write applications for (including programably accessing the phone, bluetooth and cell-based network connection)?
That also would be interesting, although I'm sure it would be anathema to folks like Verison -- they want phones to be more like game consoles and less like general purpose computers. You can't even backup your paid-for ring tones? Even Apple treats you better.
One problem is that most people don't care what is going on inside the box.
No one ever asks me, 'how does the ethernet card talk to the cable box?' They ask me 'why is the Internet down?' History of the Internet and hard drive internals are not going to be what the average layman wants to hear.
A book that would really be interesting to your target audience should black box the inside of the computer and focus on tasks and troubleshooting based on what they will see on the screen. And yes, they are going to be interested in tedious tasks you will hate to have to explain like setting up a group entry in their email program, setting up an EBay account, etc.
Then you have your second problem -- lack of standardization. Even just looking at Windows there are enough variations on email programs (Outlook Express, a couple of variations on Outlook, GMail, etc.) that no one set of instructions will do.
And that leads us to the third problem -- you will be out of date by the time the book prints. By the time the book is out there will be a new EBay, Google, and Outlook.
My advice, write your book after Moore's law runs out and computers become as standardized as rotary telephones. If those two events ever happen.
You still have to know the coordinates to be able to bomb it. If you can obtain the coordinates of your target and know that they won't move the target, then you can already attack it without using GPS (most of the time).
GPS for weapons targeting is really only relevant with fixed targets attacked with airplanes, and then only when you want all-weather capability (i.e. can't aim with laser or video).
The hard problem in strategic or tactical bombing is attacking something that moves, then you need laser or video terminal guidance and hope that the weather is clear enough. Oh, and you need to find the thing as well (Google "SCUD Hunt").
As for the terrorists, they have been doing quite well without investing in expensive smart-bombs and high-performance aircraft.
"Good God, some Earth microbes were found in a frozen volcano in Norway -- and everyone throws a fit? Let me guess -- that ice is water right? And oxygen all over the place, plus that huge air pressure..."
"Back when we were evolving... uphill, both ways..."
"Trust me, those microbes are living in a God**** utopia over there on Earth, those punks wouldn't last five minutes -- back on Meridiani Planum."
[Thanks, everyone -- I'll be here all week -- please try the veal]
The infrastructure isn't geared to anywhere near 100% usage -- even with all of the equipment intact and the power running. I don't even think land line telephone service would be able to take care of nearly everyone wanting to call 911 or a relative.
I'd doubt any company executive would want to explain to the shareholders why they have enough towers and switches and computers to handle every subscriber using their phones when the percentage 99% of the time is a lot less than 100%.
Plus more capacity equals more towers equals more resistance to the towers (NIMBY).
Can anyone find statistics that say what kind of usage the cell companies expect?
Oh great, thanks for totally ruining Pit Bull Rooming -- now everybody will say we got it from Slashdot.
I knew I should have talked about it in my last Podcast, but the coffee shop was closing...
Re:OT: where'd all the 4/5 comments go?
on
Xbox 360 for $300
·
· Score: 1
Hmm, I didn't notice (or maybe pay attention) to the new user modifier. I'll have to play around with it some.
And maybe then change my obnoxious sig.
Thanks,
Re:OT: where'd all the 4/5 comments go?
on
Xbox 360 for $300
·
· Score: 1
Broken?
Heck, I thought someone had *fixed* the moderation system. Seeing entire flambatish topics listed as "0 of 408 comments" is great.
Of course the +5 comments are normally off-topic pendantic explanations of other people's attempts at humor -- but you can't have everything.
Word to the guys who run Slashdot -- I wouldn't pay a dime to see *more* comments, but I would be interested in having a real human editor with knowledge on the subject matter of the post him/herself select the funniest and most informative threads and dump the rest.
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn't pay for a magazine that would publish my work.
Mainstream companies (i.e. companies that use computers, not companies that are creating computer related products and services) buy applications -- not operating systems.
We choose an app that does what we want and then buy whatever computer that will run the app we want -- and a lot of times that will be the computer (and OS) that the application vendor recommends. Many times the customer won't have a choice, it will run on MS Windows only, or Solaris only, etc.
I've seen app vendors embrace Linux (normally not Fedora, but the other Red Hat) and have a lot of success with it. They can deliver a less expensive product than what they could deliver with a "traditional" server OS vendor. This strategy has worked and real business are buying real commercial software that is backed by Red Hat, MySQL and Dell servers.
Its these app vendors that don't want to fiddle with Gentoo versus Debian versus BSD. Many of them played that game with AIX, Solaris and SCO and they don't like it. The app vendors would perfer to sell a single "Linux," know that they can write to a single, consistent OS and be done with it.
Once again, most business aren't going to go buy a bunch of Debian boxes because they think the OS is cool -- they are going to buy the boxes that run the apps they like.
Get the app makers and you've got the businesses.
(Of course it isn't that simple, Business also think that there is more Windows support (books, people, schools, companies) available than there is Linux support. That creates resistance. But server packages are probably going to be sold with maintenance agreements anyway, which is why I'm not talking about desktops.)
*) Backups? If you do have backups, are they encypted? If not, then what happens if your machines breaks or is stolen?
*) Spyware/Malware. If someone is able to get spyware on your computer are you certain that you'd notice anything in the logs? Do you do anything to protect the logs from alteration?
*) Email. Your email server supports encrypted passwords? Do you trust your email server? As much as you trust that encypted volume?
*) DNS. Do you run your own DNS server or do you trust what your ISP's DNS server tells you? Okay, this is a little tinfoilish...
*) Government. Rember what happened to Susan McDougal when she decided not to testify? I'm pretty sure the government could put you away for a long time if you decided not to give up that 30-character password.
*) Friends/Family. Maybe you don't have anyone living with you, but do you want a potentially relationship ending "you don't trust me" argument?
*) Does this information exist somewhere else? If you are trying to keep private stuff like social security numbers, etc. there are usaully plenty of other places where they can be stolen. If you are talking about confidential documents/reports/spreadsheets -- are you sure that no one has printed these?
*) What happens when you die? Maybe you don't care, but those left behind when you pass on may want/need access to that computer.
*) You or the Computer? Rember people talking about car jackings going up once people started using really effective ant-theft devices? If you really, really have something people would steal on your computer do you want them to steal the computer or do you want a gun in your face?
In other words, this setup might not help you against random, normal threats and is going to make real, personal threats worse.
The whole "pump shotgun" thing makes this a little suspicious. The things don't look like they could pump a shotgun or even aim one at something that was more than 5 inches off the ground:
http://www.irobot.com/governmentindustrial/
However, here are Army Times and Popular Mechanics stories, and they do talk about weapons, but it doesn't sound like they have done so yet:
I'm not sure that that it is true, but certainly that is a perception. But remember that the market for Apple's stuff is (or was) different from the Windows market.
First, there is little of the "let me grab that CD from work" piracy of opportunity going on.
And until recently most of the people who bought Apple gear bought it to work (2D graphic arts mostly). People who are getting gear as a professional investment go ahead and buy the software.
There is also the aging stereotype of Apple users being the kind of hippy-trippy folks who just don't steal... whatever -- I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
And of course now you have a few Open Source developer types moving towards Apple, and they aren't likely to steal anything either.
Also, Mac users know they are a small group, and many of us knew that the Mac is harder to program for (at least in the Classic days) -- so there is a tendency to treat developers better (until they drop Mac support, then flame on!). Of course we also tend to hold them to higher standards.
Along with that, there seems to be a nicer development community for the Mac. You don't have this thrown together, poorly visually designed, spyware-ridden, VB-ish crap that exists on the Windows platform.
Do all those vague tendencies lower piracy rates for Mac users? I don't know, probably so, but maybe not enough to make a difference for a shareware developer -- unless your stuff is very Maclike and rocks the house (Salling Clicker, CoverStar, and NetNewsWire are some that I've bought).
I've been in military ground transportation as well, and it makes no sense.
A few points:
1) We already have maps, the paper kind -- lots of them. Paper maps are better than road signs which can be destroyed, moved or altered.
2) If no one knows about the signs (except for a secret, secret few) who is going to use them? In the chaos of a real national emergency rolling out this secret system to the units who will need them will get you FUBAR in a very short order.
3) Human being are pattern seekers, a lot of times we see stuff that isn't there because of this trait.
I've dealt with local government GIS data before and no one has ever been as anal about it as these people. The newspaper I work for, our county's GIS department, the local planning board and board of elections have all used the data for things like maps of the flood plane, hog farms, proposed zoning changes, election districts, etc. And we are right next door to an USAF base, where you would almost expect people to be touchy about maps.
Other communities have shaved time off emergency response calls (fire, ambulance, cops, etc.):
http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc01/prof es sional/papers/pap308/p308.htm
Keeping GIS open also aids market transparency. Having this information available over the Internet -- instead of just at the Courthouse -- reduces friction in real estate transactions and makes it easier for people to make informed judgments about real estate. It helps encourage smarter capitalism through route planning and provisioning.
To me the terror argument is spurious -- this is a case of some information control freaks playing Dilbert's Mordac character.
Sure, Slashdot is just Apache, some Linux boxes, some Perl maybe some C -- not a big deal...
The LJ folks faced scaling problems and had financial limits on how much money they could throw at the problem. So they used smarts and OS software instead of huge piles of money. They also built some new tools that are OS themselves, thus contributing back to the community (I hate that phrase, but this is Slashdot).
The presentation is actually interesting technically, and good news for Linux/MySQL/Perl/etc.
(I guess what I'm saying is that I didn't see a huge call for sarcasm).
* It isn't like he ordered these new -- they were working units that had been discarded (i.e. he is recycling -- keeping stuff out of landfills).
* I don't think he obscured a real view -- from the pictures (and the fact that there is a fireplace on that wall) there weren't any windows on that wall.
* Not everyone can live amongst acres of forest -- imagine the suburban sprawl if that happened.
I'm kind of with you on the fake plant thing though, but I'm a bare white walls and no interior lifeforms kind of guy.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
The demos weren't from live patients, but from prepared data sets. From looking on the web, it looks like the scanning itself takes 15 to 60 minutes with a fair amount of that time in setup. Then you might wait to make sure that the scans are good. That, I imagine, just gives you the rough data, there isn't any indication on how long it takes to format it into something these computers can zoom around in.
And then do you really think a doctor (and hospital as the employer) who would be facing a malpractice suit if he screws up would really strap on a glove, zoom through in four minutes and go "WOOT!"? My guess is "test results in about two days" will be the default, regardless of the technology used.
There isn't anyone "in cyberspace" -- unless AI has gotten really, really good overnight.
s /3212
Everyone "in cyberspace" is a real, physical person in an actual country governed by specific laws. The same is true for the websites and services they use. Ultimately they are hosted on physical machines in specific countries, owned by real people and again, subject to the laws of the country(ies) they belong to.
I realize that this isn't central to the argument, but it bugs me every time I see it.
Oh and the whole car analogy argument:
With modern cars you often can't work on the car without the ability to talk to the
car's computer which often has an undocumented interface. The dealer has the tools and correct codes, but you might not.
http://www.righttorepair.org/
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/item
They don't need to weld the hood shut.
Yes, actually, I would want to allow that -- I imagine it would greatly reduce the cost of getting a new car and allow a lot of people to trade in their old cars for new ones. After all, lots of those old but in use cars don't have the current set of safety features but are still being driven -- and sold, purchased, traded.
As long as people aren't lied to I think they should be able to buy what they want.
One of the main problems with protecting this site is that it isn't a case of "touch the glowing rocks and drop dead" - and if you have that kind of scary message and someone messes around with the site and doesn't turn into a glowing skeleton - then the warnings will be ignored.
That is why so much of the focus is on education, telling people what is here and the types of dangers that the waste represents. The problem with an educational messages, of course, if that it is very hard to get across, especially if there is a language/cultural barrier.
This is a tough problem and a lot of people have put a lot of work into trying to solve it (that and the whole natural physical containment issue).
An interesting look into the warning system design process is here:
http://downlode.org/Etext/wipp/
I don't agree with the troll moderation, and I can't find an answer I like to this question so far in the responses, so let me give this a try:
... I guess it wasn't that important, was it?
Unlike phone systems or paper mail systems, which have comprehensive international-body and governmental regulations to follow, email is a voluntary system specifically designed to work as well as it can in an imperfect and heterogeneous network of networks. What rules that email clients and servers do follow are technical specifications written as early as 1982 -- before business uses of the Internet were even allowed.
So there is no one who *can* make any delivery guarantees, as there is no central control of the system. Also, there are people who like the fact that there isn't central control, and attempts to create a central control would lead to the balkanization of email (like the current system with IM).
There were (and in a way, still are -- Exchange, Notes/Groups) competing email systems, but they were burdened by commercial licenses and the inability to easily transmit messages between systems. Regular Internet email won (in part) because it provided a universal (and licensing free) way to send and receive email messages -- not because it was the system with the best features.
From here, change would be very difficult.
If someone created another commercial/governmental system for email I think it would be doomed, unless the developer managed to make SMTP email illegal in a good percentage of developed countries.
To change Internet email to add the feature of "guaranteed, secure delivery" the feature would either have to be backwards compatible with every existing Internet email client and server (which means the feature wouldn't work) or you would have to convince *everybody* to move to new clients and servers -- good luck on that.
Certainly email has and will continue to evolve, but to go on about your status as a "business user" (who isn't, these day?) isn't likely to be very productive.
In the mean time, go head with the faxes and certified letters -- and if what you are sending isn't important enough for that, well
No, not the Solaris GUI ... that's too simple: They are moving to the UltraSparc CPU, with the HURD kernel, a Linux file system layout and user space and then the GUI is the new "iApple" which is basically WINE with some stuff thrown on top to make it look like the Mac OS X Quartz GUI.
... anyway that's what I heard.
The motherbord will have a Transmeta co-processor with software from Infinium Labs for the DRM
Good to hear, I'm glad they haven't been able to lock everything down. I had forgotten about Palm, but I haven't been a real active user over the last few years.
:-)
And yeah, maybe VNC wouldn't be the way to go -- but being able to "ssh" into your phone would be great if someone stole the thing
I guess I'm thinking it would be neat to have a thing about as big as a Treo as a primary computer. Maybe a "mini-VGA" jack in addition to a mini-USB jack and when you connect a power cable the CPU ramps up to full power.
Okay, so maybe only me and 20-30 other people would want one, but it would be neat to have the carry around convienience with the ability to snap into a full Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor mode. Even the Newton's interface seemed really cramped to me, and it was a lot bigger than the Palm.
And I guess I've gone *way* off topic with this one...
I know everyone loves to hate on Microsoft's closed operating system, but the closed nature of cell phones and their networks is worse. What would the Internet be like if you could only use approved applications built into the computer on it? What if every email was $0.10?
This might be a subversive way for MS to open up cell phones into more general purpose devices with more third party applications.
If so, that would be interesting, and sad that they couldn't do that here.
To look at it the other way -- is there a Linux powered phone that you can VNC into and write applications for (including programably accessing the phone, bluetooth and cell-based network connection)?
That also would be interesting, although I'm sure it would be anathema to folks like Verison -- they want phones to be more like game consoles and less like general purpose computers. You can't even backup your paid-for ring tones? Even Apple treats you better.
One problem is that most people don't care what is going on inside the box.
No one ever asks me, 'how does the ethernet card talk to the cable box?' They ask me 'why is the Internet down?' History of the Internet and hard drive internals are not going to be what the average layman wants to hear.
A book that would really be interesting to your target audience should black box the inside of the computer and focus on tasks and troubleshooting based on what they will see on the screen. And yes, they are going to be interested in tedious tasks you will hate to have to explain like setting up a group entry in their email program, setting up an EBay account, etc.
Then you have your second problem -- lack of standardization. Even just looking at Windows there are enough variations on email programs (Outlook Express, a couple of variations on Outlook, GMail, etc.) that no one set of instructions will do.
And that leads us to the third problem -- you will be out of date by the time the book prints. By the time the book is out there will be a new EBay, Google, and Outlook.
My advice, write your book after Moore's law runs out and computers become as standardized as rotary telephones. If those two events ever happen.
But I do wish you luck.
You still have to know the coordinates to be able to bomb it. If you can obtain the coordinates of your target and know that they won't move the target, then you can already attack it without using GPS (most of the time).
GPS for weapons targeting is really only relevant with fixed targets attacked with airplanes, and then only when you want all-weather capability (i.e. can't aim with laser or video).
The hard problem in strategic or tactical bombing is attacking something that moves, then you need laser or video terminal guidance and hope that the weather is clear enough. Oh, and you need to find the thing as well (Google "SCUD Hunt").
As for the terrorists, they have been doing quite well without investing in expensive smart-bombs and high-performance aircraft.
"Good God, some Earth microbes were found in a frozen volcano in Norway -- and everyone throws a fit? Let me guess -- that ice is water right? And oxygen all over the place, plus that huge air pressure ..."
... uphill, both ways ..."
"Back when we were evolving
"Trust me, those microbes are living in a God**** utopia over there on Earth, those punks wouldn't last five minutes -- back on Meridiani Planum."
[Thanks, everyone -- I'll be here all week -- please try the veal]
The infrastructure isn't geared to anywhere near 100% usage -- even with all of the equipment intact and the power running. I don't even think land line telephone service would be able to take care of nearly everyone wanting to call 911 or a relative.
I'd doubt any company executive would want to explain to the shareholders why they have enough towers and switches and computers to handle every subscriber using their phones when the percentage 99% of the time is a lot less than 100%.
Plus more capacity equals more towers equals more resistance to the towers (NIMBY).
Can anyone find statistics that say what kind of usage the cell companies expect?
Oh great, thanks for totally ruining Pit Bull Rooming -- now everybody will say we got it from Slashdot.
I knew I should have talked about it in my last Podcast, but the coffee shop was closing...
Hmm, I didn't notice (or maybe pay attention) to the new user modifier. I'll have to play around with it some.
And maybe then change my obnoxious sig.
Thanks,
Broken?
Heck, I thought someone had *fixed* the moderation system. Seeing entire flambatish topics listed as "0 of 408 comments" is great.
Of course the +5 comments are normally off-topic pendantic explanations of other people's attempts at humor -- but you can't have everything.
Word to the guys who run Slashdot -- I wouldn't pay a dime to see *more* comments, but I would be interested in having a real human editor with knowledge on the subject matter of the post him/herself select the funniest and most informative threads and dump the rest.
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn't pay for a magazine that would publish my work.
Mainstream companies (i.e. companies that use computers, not companies that are creating computer related products and services) buy applications -- not operating systems.
We choose an app that does what we want and then buy whatever computer that will run the app we want -- and a lot of times that will be the computer (and OS) that the application vendor recommends. Many times the customer won't have a choice, it will run on MS Windows only, or Solaris only, etc.
I've seen app vendors embrace Linux (normally not Fedora, but the other Red Hat) and have a lot of success with it. They can deliver a less expensive product than what they could deliver with a "traditional" server OS vendor. This strategy has worked and real business are buying real commercial software that is backed by Red Hat, MySQL and Dell servers.
Its these app vendors that don't want to fiddle with Gentoo versus Debian versus BSD. Many of them played that game with AIX, Solaris and SCO and they don't like it. The app vendors would perfer to sell a single "Linux," know that they can write to a single, consistent OS and be done with it.
Once again, most business aren't going to go buy a bunch of Debian boxes because they think the OS is cool -- they are going to buy the boxes that run the apps they like.
Get the app makers and you've got the businesses.
(Of course it isn't that simple, Business also think that there is more Windows support (books, people, schools, companies) available than there is Linux support. That creates resistance. But server packages are probably going to be sold with maintenance agreements anyway, which is why I'm not talking about desktops.)
A few points that come to mind:
*) Backups? If you do have backups, are they encypted? If not, then what happens if your machines breaks or is stolen?
*) Spyware/Malware. If someone is able to get spyware on your computer are you certain that you'd notice anything in the logs? Do you do anything to protect the logs from alteration?
*) Email. Your email server supports encrypted passwords? Do you trust your email server? As much as you trust that encypted volume?
*) DNS. Do you run your own DNS server or do you trust what your ISP's DNS server tells you? Okay, this is a little tinfoilish...
*) Government. Rember what happened to Susan McDougal when she decided not to testify? I'm pretty sure the government could put you away for a long time if you decided not to give up that 30-character password.
*) Friends/Family. Maybe you don't have anyone living with you, but do you want a potentially relationship ending "you don't trust me" argument?
*) Does this information exist somewhere else? If you are trying to keep private stuff like social security numbers, etc. there are usaully plenty of other places where they can be stolen. If you are talking about confidential documents/reports/spreadsheets -- are you sure that no one has printed these?
*) What happens when you die? Maybe you don't care, but those left behind when you pass on may want/need access to that computer.
*) You or the Computer? Rember people talking about car jackings going up once people started using really effective ant-theft devices? If you really, really have something people would steal on your computer do you want them to steal the computer or do you want a gun in your face?
In other words, this setup might not help you against random, normal threats and is going to make real, personal threats worse.
But the BG-500 seems semi-cool.
Laminar Research, the folks that do X-Plane, use Bit-Torrent as their preferred method for people to download updates and demos of their software.
Their downloads page:
http://www.x-plane.com/demo.html
The whole "pump shotgun" thing makes this a little suspicious. The things don't look like they could pump a shotgun or even aim one at something that was more than 5 inches off the ground:
0 34 207.php
w at ch/2002/12/robot_tunnel/print.phtml
http://www.irobot.com/governmentindustrial/
However, here are Army Times and Popular Mechanics stories, and they do talk about weapons, but it doesn't sound like they have done so yet:
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1
http://popularmechanics.com/science/technology_
So maybe so, but I think a semi-auto shotgun would be better than a pump.
I'm not sure that that it is true, but certainly that is a perception. But remember that the market for Apple's stuff is (or was) different from the Windows market.
... whatever -- I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
First, there is little of the "let me grab that CD from work" piracy of opportunity going on.
And until recently most of the people who bought Apple gear bought it to work (2D graphic arts mostly). People who are getting gear as a professional investment go ahead and buy the software.
There is also the aging stereotype of Apple users being the kind of hippy-trippy folks who just don't steal
And of course now you have a few Open Source developer types moving towards Apple, and they aren't likely to steal anything either.
Also, Mac users know they are a small group, and many of us knew that the Mac is harder to program for (at least in the Classic days) -- so there is a tendency to treat developers better (until they drop Mac support, then flame on!). Of course we also tend to hold them to higher standards.
Along with that, there seems to be a nicer development community for the Mac. You don't have this thrown together, poorly visually designed, spyware-ridden, VB-ish crap that exists on the Windows platform.
Do all those vague tendencies lower piracy rates for Mac users? I don't know, probably so, but maybe not enough to make a difference for a shareware developer -- unless your stuff is very Maclike and rocks the house (Salling Clicker, CoverStar, and NetNewsWire are some that I've bought).
Hmm, the experiment just needs some varients. We will use the first one as a control and then:
A) Volunteers will be allowed to leave at night for nookie and beer, but only if they feel stressed.
B) Volunteers will not be rescued if anything goes wrong.
B) Volunteers will *all* be killed, one every 100 days.
C) Volunteers will be told 500 days, researchers will open capsule at the 560 day mark.
All experiments should involve tasks that might disgust or endanger the volunteers -- so we can look at how chance of rescue influences behavior.
Hey! We can pay for it by making it a reality TV show!
I've been in military ground transportation as well, and it makes no sense.
A few points:
1) We already have maps, the paper kind -- lots of them. Paper maps are better than road signs which can be destroyed, moved or altered.
2) If no one knows about the signs (except for a secret, secret few) who is going to use them? In the chaos of a real national emergency rolling out this secret system to the units who will need them will get you FUBAR in a very short order.
3) Human being are pattern seekers, a lot of times we see stuff that isn't there because of this trait.
4) FNORD
Thanks,
Wasn't Slashdot talking just recently about Arizona turning public access to GIS into a profit center...
5 21 7&tid=103&tid=98&tid=95
f es sional/papers/pap308/p308.htm
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/27/225
I've dealt with local government GIS data before and no one has ever been as anal about it as these people. The newspaper I work for, our county's GIS department, the local planning board and board of elections have all used the data for things like maps of the flood plane, hog farms, proposed zoning changes, election districts, etc. And we are right next door to an USAF base, where you would almost expect people to be touchy about maps.
Other communities have shaved time off emergency response calls (fire, ambulance, cops, etc.):
http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc01/pro
Keeping GIS open also aids market transparency. Having this information available over the Internet -- instead of just at the Courthouse -- reduces friction in real estate transactions and makes it easier for people to make informed judgments about real estate. It helps encourage smarter capitalism through route planning and provisioning.
To me the terror argument is spurious -- this is a case of some information control freaks playing Dilbert's Mordac character.
Sure, Slashdot is just Apache, some Linux boxes, some Perl maybe some C -- not a big deal...
The LJ folks faced scaling problems and had financial limits on how much money they could throw at the problem. So they used smarts and OS software instead of huge piles of money. They also built some new tools that are OS themselves, thus contributing back to the community (I hate that phrase, but this is Slashdot).
The presentation is actually interesting technically, and good news for Linux/MySQL/Perl/etc.
(I guess what I'm saying is that I didn't see a huge call for sarcasm).
Do they have humor up there in Finland, eh?
:-)
* It isn't like he ordered these new -- they were working units that had been discarded (i.e. he is recycling -- keeping stuff out of landfills).
* I don't think he obscured a real view -- from the pictures (and the fact that there is a fireplace on that wall) there weren't any windows on that wall.
* Not everyone can live amongst acres of forest -- imagine the suburban sprawl if that happened.
I'm kind of with you on the fake plant thing though, but I'm a bare white walls and no interior lifeforms kind of guy.