See, it was a joke... it's funny because kicking my cube wall doesn't accomplish anything... see? And yet it feels like that accomplishes more than any effort to reign in Microsoft... ha ha... wit and all.
See, the thing is this: knowledgable people who care about security don't use passport, sure. But when the first thing that an XP install asks you for after you boot it for the first time is to get a passport account then plenty of people who care about security but aren't in the know about information security sign up (after all, Passport sounds so... official) and the common consumer gets screwed.
That's the audience. And once enough of them are on board then the rest of us start being faced with choices like: "If I want to use cool service X I'll need to sign up for a passport because there's no other way to get it". That's the plan.
that makes me want to give up. I mean, over, and over, and over, and over again big companies (esp. Microsoft) do Bad Things(tm), get caught, and essentially get lightly scolded.
Now if I pulled shit like this I'd be up on fraud charges so fast that the whiplash would likely kill me. Assuming the lawyers hadn't eaten me alive first. But as it turns out that's only true because I'm not completely filthy stinking right.
*sigh*
I mean, I know it's nothing new, and I realize that I probably shouldn't be surprised, but c'mon.... it's just bloody depressing. How can things possibly get better if there's effectively no incentive for companies to behave? Clearly relying on a sense of honor or ethics just isn't working.
I'm going to go kick my cube wall for a while... at least then I'll feel like I'm accomplishing something.
First go here to figure out who your rep is, then write them an actual, physical, pen and paper letter detailing your concerns over this issue and asking them to vote/committe it into oblivion.
Sure you could use the link above to write in electronically, and that's fine, but you should more or less expect that if you don't write a physical letter then you'll be ignored. It's not always competely true, but it's true enough. If you don't write your rep and this thing passes then you've pretty much forfieted your bitching rights.
As it turns out you can't seek remedies unless the damage is greater than $250 - keep reading. The disparity doesn't make sense to me, but then again neither does the sentiment behind the bill.
... and it doesn't take MS to cause problems. The general consensus amongst developers who use the more advanced OGL features (pixel and fragment shaders/programs, etc.) is that things are currently a mess.
OpenGL is comprised of a central body of standard functionality which _must_ be implemented in order to use the name OpenGL. Additionally there's an extension mechanim which allows IHVs (like NVidia, ATI, etc.) to implement their own funcitonality which isn't currently a part of the core standard. That's how we have Fragment/Pixel shaders/programs today, as IHV extensions from NVidia and ATI. This system tends to work pretty well, but you start to get into problems with the interface. Essentially what happens is that all the IHVs decide that they need to do something along the lines of vertex programs (a way to manipulated verticies after they have been passed to the GPU, more or less), which is true. It's a cool feature any everyone likes it. Since they're being implemented as IHV extensions they're not standardized at all, so if you want to use a vertex program from NVidia you have to use their vertex program assembly language, but if you want to accomplish the same thing on an ATI card you have to use _their_ vertex program assembly (which, by the by, tends to follow a completely different model than NVidia), ad naseum.
Naturally all of this is a pain in the ass for developers. You now not only have to have different rendering paths for the various combinations of available extensions, but you have to write the same routines in drastically different languages to support a given set of functions.
Now getting all of this into a standard extension to the core API is supposed to solve some of these problems, but the IHVs aren't totally in favour of that as they then lose some product differentiation/control/etc. Mind you, this bit is speculation and observation, I don't actually know what the IHVs are thinking, but history shows that they sometimes have trouble working together;) In any case, there's been a lot of stalling over this issue due to that sort of crap as well.
And it's exactly these kinds of disagreements that are holding up OpenGL 2.0, which is supposed to directly address many of these problems. NVidia, for instance, has CG, their high level shading language. CG can be compiled down to their proprietry shader code (for use with NV_* extensions on NVidia cards) and, _in theory_ down to the proprietary code for other cards. However, for that to actually work ATI, etc. need to create so called "profiles" which allow the CG compiler to do it's thing. Clearly NVidia wants some degree of control/name recognition/whatever here... in the case where CG takes off you'd need to get your dev tools from NVidea regardless of which cards you're targeting. Now this idea is in direction competition with the OpenGL 2.0 proposal, which gives much of the same functionality but via a standard set of interfaces that replace current IHV proprietary code rather than a compiler ship on the top. Natrually this makes NVidia a little less enthusiastic about OpenGL 2.0 in it's current (proposed) form.
And on, and on, and on.
Right about now DX 9 (really the D3D componant...) is starting to look pretty damn good to a lot of us. It's got standard interfaces for pixel shading, etc. that just work with the various cards, it's a much improved API from it's early days, and given all the extension thrash it's much easier to write clean, readable code under D3D than OpenGL anymore.
Of course you're screwed if you need to port, but that's the plan, right?
The point of all this is simply that while MS is certainly doing their part to muck about with OpenGL (like not updating the damn dev tools since OpenGL 1.1!!!) they're not alone in that hobby. IHV squabbles have always been an issue in that area, and MS' best tactic to date has been to take advantage of the slowness of the ARB (often arising from IHV squabbling) and run right on by with their own API. So their adding to the infighting isn't really that much of a change to the situation, as I see it.
Though xmodmap will allow you to remap keys, if you get the Classic version of this keyboard you can reprogram any key on it directly in the keyboard. I've done this to swap Delete and Escape and it works great (and is completely OS independent;))
Um... what's with the gear shift on the far left?!? At least it looks like an automatic... though I guess it could be handy to be able to pop the clutch on my battle mech;)
I had a bout with tendonitis/carpel tunnel (depending on which doctor I asked) a number of years ago and immediately switched from a normal keyboard to an ergonomic one, eventually finding one from Kinesis (Specifically the Classic) that actually helped. I have found this keyboard to be a great help, and after a bit of research it's actually pretty clear why.
The whole deal with ergonomic keyboards is that to be effective they need to eliminate wrist possitions which cause your tendons to drag along the edges of your wrist, which causes inflamation. The key to this seems to be maintaining a natural "relaxed" wrist position which allows the tendons to do their work right in the middle of the wrist.
Of course people vary quite a bit, so it seems that what works for some doesn't work for everyone. I've found that I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of injury (don't ask me why, I just am...) so the Kinesis is the only thing that works for me. I've met plenty of folks who don't need something this extreme because the more "normal" ergo keyboards change their possition enough that they stop having problems - generally the Kinesis will also work for them, but is over kill. Those more "normal" ergo keyboards don't do crap for me.
I've also met plenty of people who just don't seem to have a problem with this stuff. I don't know what it is, but some people seem susceptible and others can spend fifty years typing on a standard keyboard and never have a problem. Go figure.
I'm tempted to say that the "normal" ergo keyboards are a scam, because they don't work for me, but they seem to help enough borderline folks that I just keep my mouth shut instead. If you're having real wrist issues though don't write off all ergo keyboards until you check out the Kinesis ones. They provide a much more robust solution to bad positioning than any of the others, many of which focus on how "turned in" your hands are while ignoring the degree of flex in your wrists.
And of course, the position of the rest of your body matters too.
I'm unwilling to say that ergo keyboards are a waste or a scam for the simple reason that without them I couldn't code anymore. I did that for a while before I found the Kinesis, and it was bad. My life as a waiter is not a pretty thing;)
The guy at http://www.737simguy.com/ (linked off the site in the article) actually built his sim in the severed nose of a real airliner. Now that's dedication to realism.
Besides, why should a human with less cells than another human be considered non-human? A child has less cells than an adult, why do children have rights, but not infants in the womb? The only difference is one has more cells than the other.
This is a gross oversimplification, akin to saying that the only difference between my 2GHZ workstation and my old Apple II+ is that one has more transistors than the other. While that fact is true, it's not sufficient to describe the useful difference between them. The good test is this: would simply adding more transistors to the Apple II+ make it into a machine like my workstation? No, it wouldn't.
The difference between a few fertilized cells, and embryo, and a featus is likewise more complex than simply the ammount of cells involved. The variety, development, and organization of those cells is vital. While I don't have a good answer to the "when is it a human being?" question, I belive rather strongly that it's shortsighted and irresponsible to ignore the complexities of the issue (which is one of the reasons that I don't have a good answer - it's a hard question).
From conception to birth an organism (just about any organism) undergoes an enormous amount of changes. By your logic those changes mean nothing to the fundamental definition of what it is, and furthur must lead to (highly questionable, or even ridiculous, IMO) conclusions such as "Every sperm is just a human being with less cells and must be afforded rights appropriate to that status". Somewhere there must be a beginning to life, or at the very least we'll need to agree on one, regardless of a possibly unprovable truth, just so we can get on with things already.
As other poster's have pointed out already, when you start getting into the "when does life begin" question, which is really what this is all about, you wander into religious teritory almost immediately. Denying that doesn't make it any less true, and trying to frame your arguments as simply "ethical" rather than "ethical and religious" is more than a bit duplicitous (which is generally frowned on by most religious and ethical frameworks). If your argument is based in religion then just say so, we all know we're wandering around in that territory anyway so it's not as though we'll be surprised.
Anonymity needs to exist, but so does liability and responsibility. That ever-necessary anonymity will continue to exist, and you will probably be able to get it just as well as you can now. The difference is you will not be able to erase yourself and get away from your previous responsibilities/liabilities. The two are different concepts.
Yes, they are two different concepts, but you're sort of implying that being able to escape liability isn't important or desirable (from a social, not an individual, standpoint). I think I rather dissagree with this.
Heck, let's take the easy witness protection program that someone else mentioned in this sub thread. Assuming that my biometrics are on file with a bunch of different businesses, agencies, etc. How is it then possible to change my name and dissapear? As long as cash remains a viable option then there's the cash only solution, but cash becomes less and less viable every day, though hardly anyone notices. Public prejudice ("who would need/have such a large amount of cash but a criminal?" and other such drivel) are as much at fault as anything else.
Bottom line is: there is, I believe, value to being able to shed one's identity, and biometrics is completely at odds with that.
Sure, you can change you pin, but once someone has your fingerprint (or whatever) then, unless you start adding furthur id/auth methods then you effectively only have one thing, not two, which makes it much easier to get by your security.
That's the advantage that stuff which is not a part of your body has... you can change it.
For example: if somone manages to replicate my SecurID token (I know it's tricky, but just pretend here) then yeah, I can just change my password, but the amount of effort they have to go through to get my new pin is certainly less than they had to go through to get both my old pin _and_ replicate my token. Naturally, for maximum security I'd want to change both.
You shop at a supermarket where your checkout is governed by your fingerprint. This works pretty well, for you... they store some personal info (CC#, name, address, etc.) and you just touch a pad to check out.
Now imagine that someone manages to replicate your fingerprint (which sounds like it will take about $10 and an afternoon). What do you do? If it were a credit card which had been stolen you could have it destroyed and reissued... but that doesn't work with your finger! Once someone spoofs your finger, it's over. You can never use your finger for ID again, because it's not certain that you're the only one.
That's bad.
Or how about this: Biometrics are easy. Really easy. I mean, you don't have to carry anything, you don't have to remember anything, it's great! Which is why all kinds of places like video stores, restaurants, etc. would love it... they could make things more convenient for their customers and get faster customer service times, etc. The big drawback is that every transaction is indellibly associated with _you_. Right now, you can pay cash, give fake names, etc. and leave no trail as to what porn you rent, or how much cabbage you buy (you cabbage loving sicko!), but with super-convenient biometrics they know _exactly_ who you are every time.
That's probably bad too.
What's worse? Well, consider that you're pretty attached to your body in general. Though it's possible for you to get fake ID, a fake birth certificate, etc. there's very little in the way of a fake body you can get (plastic surgery aside, modifying the bits used for biomentrics isn't generally feasble - think retinal scans). So now, if for some reason you need a new identity, you pretty much can't have one. There's just no slipping through the cracks.
Why is that bad? Well, it's really only bad if you are doing something illegal, right? Sadly, "something illegal" often can be translated as "something politically unpopular". The idea that we should have the ability to change our government, by revolution if need be, is so deeply ingrained into the Western conciousness (and maybe the Eastern as well, though I don't know...)that it's not at all surprising you get creeped out by biometrics.
That's essentially what SonicBLUE did. If you read through the brief there's a section which details the fact that SonicBLUE decided not to implement data gathering facilities due to cost and consumer reaction concerns.
The fact that they didn't implement those data gathering methodologies is what allows them to stop the discovery proceedings like this. One of the main points of the brief is that Civil discovery rules do not allow surveilence as a means of obtaining prospective evidence. If SonicBLUE already had the data it would be a cinch for the plaintiffs to get their hands on it. That's what discovery is. But since they don't actually have the data they are arguing (correctly, IMHO) that they can not be compelled to gather the data.
Ok, first off, I see your point: Jackie Chan could certainly kick ass as Spider-Man (though voice coaching would be required for it to make a mainstream version, the success of the Rush Hour films not withstanding).
But for the love of God, don't you think the guy deserves a break? I mean, he's not as young as he used to be you know. I remember an interview with him a few years ago where he was saying that he really didn't want to keep doing all the stunts, but since that's what his career was built on he really couldn't stop.
For instance, if you're looking at languages and find that you like what C++ has to offer but you need garbage collection it can sometimes be reasonable to write a memory manager which takes care of that for you. If programming resources are an issue, or if writing a memory manager is just too daunting (no shame there, that's a tough problem) there are third party memory managers available in the world.
This is true for at least some of the other features you listed as well. The language doesn't have to do everything natively, you just have to be able to get it done somehow.
Also, some things that might be missing are really there, just with different names. For instance, multiple inheritence may not exist in java, but it does have interfaces, which sure a very, very similar purpose. Just because it's not multiple inheritance doesn't me it won't meet your needs.
Ultimately it sounds to me like you boss has heard too many buzzwords recently. It might be helpful to ask him why he chose to put each of those requirements on the list. Knowing what needs to be accomplished rather than how he thinks it should be accomplished might just help you find a solution which will actually meet all the needs of the project.
As far as I know (and I might very well be wrong) there is _no_ precedent here. Dismissals aren't legal decisions, they are a _lack_ of legal decision. No legal decision has been rendered, thus no precedent set.
I think that should read "It istn' only about control: it's also about protection". As most anyone who's dealt with RMS will assure you, it's most definitely also about control on some level.
Fans of UNIX will, of course, disagree. The popularity of archaic command-line interfaces in the UNIX subculture could perhaps be understood as a consequence of gamer-like behavior among hobbyists and tinkerers.
I wouldn't have thought that the popularity of "archaic command-line interfaces" had anything to do with their being cryptic, or figuring them out being entertaining... it seems to me that those sorts of interfaces are popular because they tend to be extremely powerful. My personal experience of interfaces has shown the general trend where GUIs tend to be less powerful/flexable than command line interfaces. Though I freely admit that my opinions are colored by many years of UNIX usage, so I'm not really all that objective.
Solving the "problem" of an interface, while somewhat rewarding, isn't exactly an experience I go looking for. I've dealt with this both with command line UIs and GUIs - crappy is crappy either way - and it's never fun. I think it's just that command-line UIs tend to be a bit more featureful than GUIs simply because there is less aversion to complexity, probably because people expect a command-line to be more complex. I generally consider the command-line being more cryptic to be the price I pay for greater power and flexability.
Or I could just be so used to UNIX everything else seems a little weird;)
Slashdot Mirror
See, it was a joke... it's funny because kicking my cube wall doesn't accomplish anything... see? And yet it feels like that accomplishes more than any effort to reign in Microsoft... ha ha... wit and all.
;)
Well, I'll get it right one day
See, the thing is this: knowledgable people who care about security don't use passport, sure. But when the first thing that an XP install asks you for after you boot it for the first time is to get a passport account then plenty of people who care about security but aren't in the know about information security sign up (after all, Passport sounds so... official) and the common consumer gets screwed.
That's the audience. And once enough of them are on board then the rest of us start being faced with choices like: "If I want to use cool service X I'll need to sign up for a passport because there's no other way to get it". That's the plan.
that makes me want to give up. I mean, over, and over, and over, and over again big companies (esp. Microsoft) do Bad Things(tm), get caught, and essentially get lightly scolded.
Now if I pulled shit like this I'd be up on fraud charges so fast that the whiplash would likely kill me. Assuming the lawyers hadn't eaten me alive first. But as it turns out that's only true because I'm not completely filthy stinking right.
*sigh*
I mean, I know it's nothing new, and I realize that I probably shouldn't be surprised, but c'mon.... it's just bloody depressing. How can things possibly get better if there's effectively no incentive for companies to behave? Clearly relying on a sense of honor or ethics just isn't working.
I'm going to go kick my cube wall for a while... at least then I'll feel like I'm accomplishing something.
Sure you could use the link above to write in electronically, and that's fine, but you should more or less expect that if you don't write a physical letter then you'll be ignored. It's not always competely true, but it's true enough. If you don't write your rep and this thing passes then you've pretty much forfieted your bitching rights.
As it turns out you can't seek remedies unless the damage is greater than $250 - keep reading. The disparity doesn't make sense to me, but then again neither does the sentiment behind the bill.
... and it doesn't take MS to cause problems. The general consensus amongst developers who use the more advanced OGL features (pixel and fragment shaders/programs, etc.) is that things are currently a mess.
;) In any case, there's been a lot of stalling over this issue due to that sort of crap as well.
OpenGL is comprised of a central body of standard functionality which _must_ be implemented in order to use the name OpenGL. Additionally there's an extension mechanim which allows IHVs (like NVidia, ATI, etc.) to implement their own funcitonality which isn't currently a part of the core standard. That's how we have Fragment/Pixel shaders/programs today, as IHV extensions from NVidia and ATI. This system tends to work pretty well, but you start to get into problems with the interface. Essentially what happens is that all the IHVs decide that they need to do something along the lines of vertex programs (a way to manipulated verticies after they have been passed to the GPU, more or less), which is true. It's a cool feature any everyone likes it. Since they're being implemented as IHV extensions they're not standardized at all, so if you want to use a vertex program from NVidia you have to use their vertex program assembly language, but if you want to accomplish the same thing on an ATI card you have to use _their_ vertex program assembly (which, by the by, tends to follow a completely different model than NVidia), ad naseum.
Naturally all of this is a pain in the ass for developers. You now not only have to have different rendering paths for the various combinations of available extensions, but you have to write the same routines in drastically different languages to support a given set of functions.
Now getting all of this into a standard extension to the core API is supposed to solve some of these problems, but the IHVs aren't totally in favour of that as they then lose some product differentiation/control/etc. Mind you, this bit is speculation and observation, I don't actually know what the IHVs are thinking, but history shows that they sometimes have trouble working together
And it's exactly these kinds of disagreements that are holding up OpenGL 2.0, which is supposed to directly address many of these problems. NVidia, for instance, has CG, their high level shading language. CG can be compiled down to their proprietry shader code (for use with NV_* extensions on NVidia cards) and, _in theory_ down to the proprietary code for other cards. However, for that to actually work ATI, etc. need to create so called "profiles" which allow the CG compiler to do it's thing. Clearly NVidia wants some degree of control/name recognition/whatever here... in the case where CG takes off you'd need to get your dev tools from NVidea regardless of which cards you're targeting. Now this idea is in direction competition with the OpenGL 2.0 proposal, which gives much of the same functionality but via a standard set of interfaces that replace current IHV proprietary code rather than a compiler ship on the top. Natrually this makes NVidia a little less enthusiastic about OpenGL 2.0 in it's current (proposed) form.
And on, and on, and on.
Right about now DX 9 (really the D3D componant...) is starting to look pretty damn good to a lot of us. It's got standard interfaces for pixel shading, etc. that just work with the various cards, it's a much improved API from it's early days, and given all the extension thrash it's much easier to write clean, readable code under D3D than OpenGL anymore.
Of course you're screwed if you need to port, but that's the plan, right?
The point of all this is simply that while MS is certainly doing their part to muck about with OpenGL (like not updating the damn dev tools since OpenGL 1.1!!!) they're not alone in that hobby. IHV squabbles have always been an issue in that area, and MS' best tactic to date has been to take advantage of the slowness of the ARB (often arising from IHV squabbling) and run right on by with their own API. So their adding to the infighting isn't really that much of a change to the situation, as I see it.
No direct 3D there, just OpenGL. It also used Direct X elements (Direct Input and Direct Sound, at least) but all the 3D goodness is via OpenGL.
Um.... Solaris has been available on Intel for quite a while now.
Mind, it's not always been great (hence the nickname "Slowaris"), but it's been there.
Though xmodmap will allow you to remap keys, if you get the Classic version of this keyboard you can reprogram any key on it directly in the keyboard. I've done this to swap Delete and Escape and it works great (and is completely OS independent ;))
Um... what's with the gear shift on the far left?!? At least it looks like an automatic... though I guess it could be handy to be able to pop the clutch on my battle mech ;)
I had a bout with tendonitis/carpel tunnel (depending on which doctor I asked) a number of years ago and immediately switched from a normal keyboard to an ergonomic one, eventually finding one from Kinesis (Specifically the Classic) that actually helped. I have found this keyboard to be a great help, and after a bit of research it's actually pretty clear why.
;)
The whole deal with ergonomic keyboards is that to be effective they need to eliminate wrist possitions which cause your tendons to drag along the edges of your wrist, which causes inflamation. The key to this seems to be maintaining a natural "relaxed" wrist position which allows the tendons to do their work right in the middle of the wrist.
Of course people vary quite a bit, so it seems that what works for some doesn't work for everyone. I've found that I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of injury (don't ask me why, I just am...) so the Kinesis is the only thing that works for me. I've met plenty of folks who don't need something this extreme because the more "normal" ergo keyboards change their possition enough that they stop having problems - generally the Kinesis will also work for them, but is over kill. Those more "normal" ergo keyboards don't do crap for me.
I've also met plenty of people who just don't seem to have a problem with this stuff. I don't know what it is, but some people seem susceptible and others can spend fifty years typing on a standard keyboard and never have a problem. Go figure.
I'm tempted to say that the "normal" ergo keyboards are a scam, because they don't work for me, but they seem to help enough borderline folks that I just keep my mouth shut instead. If you're having real wrist issues though don't write off all ergo keyboards until you check out the Kinesis ones. They provide a much more robust solution to bad positioning than any of the others, many of which focus on how "turned in" your hands are while ignoring the degree of flex in your wrists.
And of course, the position of the rest of your body matters too.
I'm unwilling to say that ergo keyboards are a waste or a scam for the simple reason that without them I couldn't code anymore. I did that for a while before I found the Kinesis, and it was bad. My life as a waiter is not a pretty thing
The guy at http://www.737simguy.com/ (linked off the site in the article) actually built his sim in the severed nose of a real airliner. Now that's dedication to realism.
Must be expensive though...
This is a gross oversimplification, akin to saying that the only difference between my 2GHZ workstation and my old Apple II+ is that one has more transistors than the other. While that fact is true, it's not sufficient to describe the useful difference between them. The good test is this: would simply adding more transistors to the Apple II+ make it into a machine like my workstation? No, it wouldn't.
The difference between a few fertilized cells, and embryo, and a featus is likewise more complex than simply the ammount of cells involved. The variety, development, and organization of those cells is vital. While I don't have a good answer to the "when is it a human being?" question, I belive rather strongly that it's shortsighted and irresponsible to ignore the complexities of the issue (which is one of the reasons that I don't have a good answer - it's a hard question).
From conception to birth an organism (just about any organism) undergoes an enormous amount of changes. By your logic those changes mean nothing to the fundamental definition of what it is, and furthur must lead to (highly questionable, or even ridiculous, IMO) conclusions such as "Every sperm is just a human being with less cells and must be afforded rights appropriate to that status". Somewhere there must be a beginning to life, or at the very least we'll need to agree on one, regardless of a possibly unprovable truth, just so we can get on with things already.
As other poster's have pointed out already, when you start getting into the "when does life begin" question, which is really what this is all about, you wander into religious teritory almost immediately. Denying that doesn't make it any less true, and trying to frame your arguments as simply "ethical" rather than "ethical and religious" is more than a bit duplicitous (which is generally frowned on by most religious and ethical frameworks). If your argument is based in religion then just say so, we all know we're wandering around in that territory anyway so it's not as though we'll be surprised.
Yes, they are two different concepts, but you're sort of implying that being able to escape liability isn't important or desirable (from a social, not an individual, standpoint). I think I rather dissagree with this.
Heck, let's take the easy witness protection program that someone else mentioned in this sub thread. Assuming that my biometrics are on file with a bunch of different businesses, agencies, etc. How is it then possible to change my name and dissapear? As long as cash remains a viable option then there's the cash only solution, but cash becomes less and less viable every day, though hardly anyone notices. Public prejudice ("who would need/have such a large amount of cash but a criminal?" and other such drivel) are as much at fault as anything else.
Bottom line is: there is, I believe, value to being able to shed one's identity, and biometrics is completely at odds with that.
Sure, you can change you pin, but once someone has your fingerprint (or whatever) then, unless you start adding furthur id/auth methods then you effectively only have one thing, not two, which makes it much easier to get by your security.
That's the advantage that stuff which is not a part of your body has... you can change it.
For example: if somone manages to replicate my SecurID token (I know it's tricky, but just pretend here) then yeah, I can just change my password, but the amount of effort they have to go through to get my new pin is certainly less than they had to go through to get both my old pin _and_ replicate my token. Naturally, for maximum security I'd want to change both.
Can't do that with biometrics.
How about this?
You shop at a supermarket where your checkout is governed by your fingerprint. This works pretty well, for you... they store some personal info (CC#, name, address, etc.) and you just touch a pad to check out.
Now imagine that someone manages to replicate your fingerprint (which sounds like it will take about $10 and an afternoon). What do you do? If it were a credit card which had been stolen you could have it destroyed and reissued... but that doesn't work with your finger! Once someone spoofs your finger, it's over. You can never use your finger for ID again, because it's not certain that you're the only one.
That's bad.
Or how about this: Biometrics are easy. Really easy. I mean, you don't have to carry anything, you don't have to remember anything, it's great!
Which is why all kinds of places like video stores, restaurants, etc. would love it... they could make things more convenient for their customers and get faster customer service times, etc. The big drawback is that every transaction is indellibly associated with _you_. Right now, you can pay cash, give fake names, etc. and leave no trail as to what porn you rent, or how much cabbage you buy (you cabbage loving sicko!), but with super-convenient biometrics they know _exactly_ who you are every time.
That's probably bad too.
What's worse? Well, consider that you're pretty attached to your body in general. Though it's possible for you to get fake ID, a fake birth certificate, etc. there's very little in the way of a fake body you can get (plastic surgery aside, modifying the bits used for biomentrics isn't generally feasble - think retinal scans). So now, if for some reason you need a new identity, you pretty much can't have one. There's just no slipping through the cracks.
Why is that bad? Well, it's really only bad if you are doing something illegal, right? Sadly, "something illegal" often can be translated as "something politically unpopular". The idea that we should have the ability to change our government, by revolution if need be, is so deeply ingrained into the Western conciousness (and maybe the Eastern as well, though I don't know...)that it's not at all surprising you get creeped out by biometrics.
That's essentially what SonicBLUE did. If you read through the brief there's a section which details the fact that SonicBLUE decided not to implement data gathering facilities due to cost and consumer reaction concerns.
The fact that they didn't implement those data gathering methodologies is what allows them to stop the discovery proceedings like this. One of the main points of the brief is that Civil discovery rules do not allow surveilence as a means of obtaining prospective evidence. If SonicBLUE already had the data it would be a cinch for the plaintiffs to get their hands on it. That's what discovery is. But since they don't actually have the data they are arguing (correctly, IMHO) that they can not be compelled to gather the data.
Ok, first off, I see your point: Jackie Chan could certainly kick ass as Spider-Man (though voice coaching would be required for it to make a mainstream version, the success of the Rush Hour films not withstanding).
But for the love of God, don't you think the guy deserves a break? I mean, he's not as young as he used to be you know. I remember an interview with him a few years ago where he was saying that he really didn't want to keep doing all the stunts, but since that's what his career was built on he really couldn't stop.
For instance, if you're looking at languages and find that you like what C++ has to offer but you need garbage collection it can sometimes be reasonable to write a memory manager which takes care of that for you. If programming resources are an issue, or if writing a memory manager is just too daunting (no shame there, that's a tough problem) there are third party memory managers available in the world.
This is true for at least some of the other features you listed as well. The language doesn't have to do everything natively, you just have to be able to get it done somehow.
Also, some things that might be missing are really there, just with different names. For instance, multiple inheritence may not exist in java, but it does have interfaces, which sure a very, very similar purpose. Just because it's not multiple inheritance doesn't me it won't meet your needs.
Ultimately it sounds to me like you boss has heard too many buzzwords recently. It might be helpful to ask him why he chose to put each of those requirements on the list. Knowing what needs to be accomplished rather than how he thinks it should be accomplished might just help you find a solution which will actually meet all the needs of the project.
when it can do the dishes, get the shopping done, and have dinner waiting for me when I get home.
Until then it's a waste of space.
As far as I know (and I might very well be wrong) there is _no_ precedent here. Dismissals aren't legal decisions, they are a _lack_ of legal decision. No legal decision has been rendered, thus no precedent set.
If that isn't justice, then I don't know what is ;)
I think that should read "It istn' only about control: it's also about protection". As most anyone who's dealt with RMS will assure you, it's most definitely also about control on some level.
Can you perhaps recommend a good place to start in his writings? He seems to have been rather prolific ;)
I wouldn't have thought that the popularity of "archaic command-line interfaces" had anything to do with their being cryptic, or figuring them out being entertaining... it seems to me that those sorts of interfaces are popular because they tend to be extremely powerful. My personal experience of interfaces has shown the general trend where GUIs tend to be less powerful/flexable than command line interfaces. Though I freely admit that my opinions are colored by many years of UNIX usage, so I'm not really all that objective.
Solving the "problem" of an interface, while somewhat rewarding, isn't exactly an experience I go looking for. I've dealt with this both with command line UIs and GUIs - crappy is crappy either way - and it's never fun. I think it's just that command-line UIs tend to be a bit more featureful than GUIs simply because there is less aversion to complexity, probably because people expect a command-line to be more complex. I generally consider the command-line being more cryptic to be the price I pay for greater power and flexability.
Or I could just be so used to UNIX everything else seems a little weird