I have been using PovRay for many years now as well as other professional tools. I also work with coding of 3D engines.
I would say a few things in regard to PovRay.
1) It is a complete ray tracer. 2) Its interface is not as good as (some of) the pro-tools, but... 3) Its open source.
Item 1. PovRay support all you need to render images in 3D. Just look at their site, in the hall of fame. The rainy street image is amazing.
Item 2. This is probable the issue that will be discussed most. But I believe the interface developed over the years (originally I worked with PovRay way back when it didn't have a GUI) - is now at a level where it is useful for anyone who which to use it. Of cause you need to think mathematically about 3D, rather than visual. There is not any drag and drop functionality where you can add a box, a cone etc. to your scene. This scares a lot of people away, but most of the professionals I have worked with, and most of my own work, the drag-drop-icon-what-ever GUI is not really that useful. You always end up entering some popup box to insert the exact measurements of you box, cone, sphere...
Item 3. Yes! I once was in a project where we needed a 3D engine to display the results we made. (The project itself was not related to 3D at all, but we needed a good way to display the complex set of results and date.) We made it in such a way that it displayed the results as pov-ray data files, and integrated it into powray. It was awesome. I don't know of any other product that would allow you to do this. Most of the integration was related to Item 2 above, as pov-ray uses text based and script like files as input. This is ideal for programs to handle as their output. Try to do that in any other program.
In relation to all the items above, I believe you have to be slightly nerdish or mathematically minded in order to fully benefit from PovRay - but then again, welcome to Slashdot.
If this goes on for much longer the US will become a low-tech country. It will not be possible to invent or put new technology out on the market there, just because of the risk of getting to court. The market will move elsewhere and only old and tested devices (that have certain "prior art") will remain in the US.
Luckily I live in Europe...
But will the European Union adopt the same madness as the US? If this becomes the case we will see new technology evolve in Asia... (did anyone mention China?)
In Denmark the marketing rules forbid people to send uninvited marketing material. Unless you specifically accept to receive it - it will be illegal (and punishable by court) to send it. This law is not only to electronic e-mails but goes to all kinds of marketing. You are not allowed to call by phone to someone in order to sell them something (unless the user has registered his phone number somewhere and accepted to receive a phone call).
So unless you check the checkbox somewhere in your hotmail registration, you will be able to sue MS - in Denmark at least...
As far as I know popup's are opening new windows. This is very annoying, as you can have tons of new windows (and even windows poping up as you close the old ones) coming up to mess up you desktop.
Now pop-up blockers stop this!
If you enter a site that puts ads on top of their content (like floating <div>'s or similar) I don't really mind. When I close the window to that site - goodbye ad!
So the annoying part of popups are gone.... Hopefully.
I always thought a steady cam used a spinning disk, rather than just relying on weight. Why? Because a spinning disk would act like a gyroscope, preventing the camera from tilting.
Most people have tried this in their physic lab back in school. If you haven't tried it, find a small wheel (like from a bicycle) set it in motion and try to tilt it to the sides.
If a steady cam were build using a gyroscope it would require a small electrical engine and some batteries - just a few bucks more. The spinning wheel (which may weight much less) should be encapsulated to prevent it from hitting anything. It may take some more time to build, but I'm pretty sure it would be more effective, than the solution of "just adding weight".
You don't get sued for accessing the website, with or without an illegal id. You get sued if you misuse information you gained in your former employment. It doesn't matter if it is in your contract, the commerce laws in Denmark forbid use of inside knowledge to harm other companies - as it clearly is happening in this case.
I would guess that Canada have some similar laws.
So how you obtain the information is irrelevant - even thou this case in interesting from a slash-dot point of view.
Some of these services come in Denmark as well. Today we already use some tracking systems to track children, preventing them from becoming lost. The below article describe a blue tooth system installed in Aalborg Zoo here in Denmark.
http://in.tech.yahoo.com/030620/137/25bu3.html The system is in principle (but not technically) the same as triangulation of a cell phone to track your child between school and home. The main issue arises if tracking is allowed without the cell phone owners consent.
By the way; if I was a kid who didn't want mom and dad to know where I was, I would borrow my phone to someone else, or just turn it of. Kids are not stupid...
The incident in scandinavia (I live in copenhagen) started as a failure on a swedish nuclear power plant. This failure caused a transition station on the grid to fall out, and these two incidents caused the entire grid in southern sweeden and eastern denmark to go offline for 5-10 hours.
The starting incident was on a plant, but I guess it was the following overloading of the grid that caused the blackout. So in a sense you are both right and wrong.
As for USA, Italy etc... I don't know about these, so you might be right there.
If sections of the grid would automatically be closed down, isulationg the incident, it wouldn't spread to large areas. In a sense that would (apperently) require a better grid that we have today. So in that sense you are right.
When the blackout occured in USA, the danish power compagnies ensured that this could not happen here on the same scale, as the scandinavian power grid was more advanced than the one in USA. Of cause they got the grid online faster, but anyway, its quite ironic that this should happen shortly after.
In Denmark we used to have a large government owned Telecommunication Company, just like the one described above. When deregulations were made, also under the influence of the free market in EU, the Danish telecommunication was forced to lease the lines to its competitors.
In order to provide a fair deal, TDC (the Danish telecommunication company) was ordered to account for the expenses of the raw cobber. It then had to provide the same price for leasing the cobber to its competitors, as it was billing its own internal departments.
In theory it sounds easy, but in reality several of the competitors (Telia, the Swedish company, among others) started to complain about TDC. Most of the complains was about the time it took TDC to provide the information (regarding prices) or the time it took to lease a line from TDC.
Today the market has levelled out quite a bit. There still complaints about TDC, but the system slowly starts to work.
Two other competitors have entered the market in regards to backbone. The Danish railways (DSB) have a lot of fibre along all the railways. These fibres are now been used for a fair competition to TDC. The other major competition comes from wireless systems. Some of the mobile operators have started to enter this area. For companies (its still too expensive for us normal people) they also provide wireless lines the last mile to the company.
In regards to us mortals, another trend, mainly in the cities, have appeared. Some buildings or neighbourhoods have joined and made their own telenetwork. This includes both data and telephones. They then own their own central that can be connected to the central system in one of the above ways.
In regards to Data, the television cable operators are also starting to provide the service.
All this leads to a fair deal of competition forcing TDC to lose its monopoly for telecommunication.
I should note that Denmark is a small country and in terms of geography it can't be compared to Australia, but some of the mechanisms may be the same.
As a final comment, I lately had to purchase an ATM line for the company I worked in. The company operated in Scandinavia so I made contact to the 3 major tele companies in all tree countries (they were all the three original government companies). The speed and service still led me to one conclusion... they all suck. I thought that TDC was bad, but after I have dealt with the others I have experienced the same. I believe it's an issue all over the world. Old government companies have a very hard time to adjust from monopoly to be a service minded organisation...
This is only an illustration of how DNA is build. It is NOT a specific copy describing a living object on earth. It's like sending them the alphabet, but not the book.
Why is it interesting then? What we want to tell them is that we are carbon-based beings. Carbon is the best way to create living objects (check out the chemical specs for yourself), and it would be very informative if other creatures used a similar building component. If we found life elsewhere this is definitely one of the things we would like to know.
If we meet someone who wish to attach us, we're dead anyway. A species with the capacity to travel here could easily wipe us out anyway. I think we are the aggressive ones.
Just because the nearest star is really far away, it doesn't make it disappointing. We'll get there some day, it may take time and it may not be easy to phone home, but does it matter.
1000 years ago, it took years to go or communicate from one end of the known world to the other.
250 years ago, we reach the new world. But it still took most of a year, and the danger of shipwreck to get there.
In 100 years from now we may have very fast ships. Lets say 10% of light speed. This would put us on the nearest star in 40 years. People who go on that mission will be expecting it to be so. Civilization is not a one mans cause; it's the perspective of generations.
In Denmark some of the major telecompanies have just released a method where you can pay with your mobile number. In this case you register your credit card to your mobile phone. When you want to do a purchase, you type in the mobile number (more easy to remember), and the system verifies it by sending a SMS to you phone that you'll need to verify by typing in a pin-code.
Now this is a very secure way of doing business. Of cause no system is 100% secure. But in the same manner as the passport solution, you still need to register your credit card to a database, connected online, that can be contacted by the merchants. Sound similar to me.
Of cause you still have the additional security of the SMS and the pin code and Microsoft don't have the best reputation when it comes to securing their systems. But it still gives time for thought.
Even if you mask out mobile numbers for the auto diallers, several telecompanies are providing a combined service that will redirect you home phone to you mobile. In that case you will end up receiving the message on you mobile phone anyway.
In regards to time, I'll usually just say goodbye...
But time is an issue. Just think about spam, commercials, etc... but I believe it would only cloud up things if we should start making new laws. What about using existing laws about harassment.
Water can go beyond 100 degree Celsius. It will remain water until it becomes plasma at several thousands degrees. It might become steam at 100 degrees (depending on pressure).
Your reference article appears to be quite interesting, but I'm still not sure it is correct. Why? It talks about the "vibrations" of the microwave in the same way as sound, where the vibrations of the radio wave "push" the material in question. Well, radio waves don't push! They have no mass. The only way a radio wave can provide energy is to have a part (or all) of the wave energy absorbed by something. How can the radio waves then "enter" into the material in question? This is because a radio wave will move through materials until it impact on a molecule (or atom) that can absorb its energy. If you look at a piece of met at an atomic level, you will find it quite "non solid" in aspects to radio waves.
But I do appreciate you point of view and will look into it.
Microwaves in a microwave oven are using a frequency that matches the vibration frequency of the O-H bond in water. Now if a microwave should be converted into heat, it must hit a molecule, where it can leave the correct energy. This is quantum mechanics, so only the precise amount of energy can be transferred to the vibration. If the wavelength of the microwave doesn't match, energy will not be transferred.
Now the described experiment used several different containers for the metal. These containers absorb the microwave and convert them into heat. To obtain the best container material, you should look for materials whose vibration energy of some of its atom bonding matches that of the O-H bonding in water.
The O-H bond has been chosen as most food contains water. Materials without water will not heat in a microwave oven. (Unless it contains molecules that match the frequency in other ways).
Most software is expected to have bugs. But when it comes to OS great care should be taken into removing these, especially those involving security. But bug tracking is an art form. You can never remove bugs 100% as the difficulty in finding the bug increases dramatically as you approach 100%.
When it comes to software like the media player, this is much more serious. This goes into much more than just one single OS. I run Win95, Win98 and Win2000, and all these may be affected. On top of that the media player keep posting me to update the software. Wouldn't it be nice if the system gave me the option to update to the most stable and secure version or the latest version? You might think I have that option, as I may choose not to download the latest, but make my way through the download jungle to find an earlier version. But this jungle is impossible to move through for ordinary people.
I understand that Microsoft wait with disclosure of the bug until they have a patch. This is often criticized, but in some cases it make sense.
Hitting the infrastructure doesn�t generate fear.
on
Cyber-Attacks?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
One of the most important issues for a terrorist is to generate fear. The more, the better. To hit the world trade centre surly get the public attention. Now lets say you create a powerful virus and called it "AQ_FUCK_USA". It may do a lot of damage. It may cost millions of dollars and cause a lot of people to be angry. But it won't create fear.
Even if you hit a vital structure like power plants or hospitals. Yes it will be an annoyance. Some might die (due to lack of traffic lights, respirators etc...), but it's nothing compared to killing 5000 people (or more in some of the other possible scenarios).
You can't tell the terrorist world; "We just cost the evil USA 2 billion dollars". It doesn't give as much "respect" as saying "We just killed 100 Americans" (or some other western "evil" country).
But I wouldn't feel safe anyway. Someone (maybe AQ) will try it anyway. Why not? But do it make a change whether a script-kiddie or AQ hits us?
Two days to deadline, lets add some security�
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Pet Bugs?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Based on a true story!
A few years ago I was working as the lead programmer on a cd-rom game. Two days before deadline, the manager of the project decided that we should implement a copy protection.
Now you can see where it is going... right?
Well the manager had talked to the company who was going to print the cd-roms. They had this piece of software that would protect the system. All we had to do was to write a component that needed to be called in order to start the game. If this component weren't called at first the game wouldn't start. We thought about it for some time. As we only had two days, we decided to let the component write down an encoded string, based on the current date to the harddisk, and then inside the game, well hidden read the string and match the date. As I have coded the game I made the part inside the game, while an other developer made the start-up component. I designed the specification of the coded string. It contained a lot of crap, and well hidden, the two digits indicating the day.
Now I coded my part in such a way that it would work 4 days after the date. (Allowing me to more easily bypass midnight at the end of the month - especially February). This would hopefully also put off hackers, as the game would appear to be hacked, as the coded string would work for a few days.
We tested the system, especially the end of months, going from the 28-31st to the 1st. It was end of November, close to Christmas - therefore the hurry. Then the cd-roms went into print.
4 of December I received one of the first copies, just as the packages was prepared to be send out to the shops. I put it into the computer, and it failed... I tried again... and again. The way the program terminated looked subspecialty like the protection, so I started to look closely into what was happening. It was the date. 4 of December were a single digit. The protection component wrote 40 while the game looked for 04... My fellow developer had misunderstood the specifications. Of cause testing for 31 would work... it was two digits.
We trashed all the cd-roms and made a new version without protection. Our manager will probably not ask us to do such a change with such short notice an other time.
A thought thou; The cd-roms would have worked on Christmas eve... its two digits, but a new year... he he he.
If they put the rights to "attack" a P2P network into the copyright holders, you take out the courts of the equation. If you want to attack someone you could almost say, "whoops I believed they were violating my copyrights".
Normally you need a judge to allow "attacks" on someone, like entering a private apartment or tap a phone line. Why? To protect the public from misuse of power.
Now lets say I don't like a specific company (a competitor). By chance I discover that one of their employees share some mp3 files, and I feel my copyrights have been invaded. Now should I be allowed to take out the entire company or only the addressed files? If I take out the entire company, then later on in court I can argue, that I believed they had thousand of illegal files. The legal mess will become very difficult to untangle. But I could (with a little luck) do severe damage to the company in the process.
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Some of the comments I have read say damage to the systems would not be allowed. Read this from the article:
Destroying, crashing or damaging people's computers, software or other technology systems is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as are many of the ideas Berman is suggesting should be available to content owners - though he said that viruses should not be used as defense mechanisms.
I haven't seen the text in the bill, but it appears to me, that it contain damaging ideas.
I have been involved with a lot of designers (not only code design but real world design, like chairs and furniture's). Whenever they "invent" a new design they want to own it. Every thing else is a cheep copy. Now how does this apply to the current situation? Well if you design a lamp, what are you really doing? Do you come up with something quite new? A lamp is a lamp! Someone else invents the material you use! The form of the lamp is inspired by something else! (Everyone I have talked to has admitted this. Truly unique idea is extremely rare.)
So where do a code design come from? I my daily work as both an IT architect and consultant I'm faced with inventing solutions to suit specific client needs. 80% of my code is copied (more or less) from previous pieces of code. Often when I do write code from scratch, its because the previous collection of "stolen" pieces need to be cleaned up or optimised. The design patterns I use are based on best practice (or if I invent something new, a collection of best practices).
In computer science I learned a method called divide and conquer. It's a basic concept, that if you can divide you problem into two problems, and divide these into two problems etc... you'll end up with tiny problems that can easily be solved (typically by one or two lines of code). If you look at any complex program, design pattern etc, this is what you will find. The problem has been broken down to small solvable pieces. And these pieces are not original. Now the work of breaking down the complex problem, is that IP? Now that's what I'm hired to do as a consultant.
When it comes to solving solutions from scratch, its based on my experience. But what is that, besides a collection of knowledge gain by study, reading, daily life etc... Have I ever really invented something worth calling "My intellectual property"?
If I code in C++ or Java, someone else has invented both languages. But the design of the langue influence deeply upon the design I'm implementing. Now you may say that the idea of OO is really original, and could be classified as IP (luckily no one has done so). But is OO not just inspired by the real world? I many of the teach books I have seen examples of OO have been described as elements from the real worlds (insects inherited into flying insects into bees etc... or cars... you probably can list a lot of examples from the books you have read). So can OO be classified as an original idea to be patented?
Now this is where it goes wrong. Copyrights was originally only based on the specific instance of a piece of art, book etc. Then it expanded into patents and now into IP. At some point it will collapse. Now if anyone can provide me with an idea that could be classified as original, and not based on some other piece of information, method, idea... I would like to hear about it.
Now before this patent, copyright, IP collapse (and I believe it will at some point) a lot of lawyers may earn a lot of money going to court. This is an industry on its own today.
So this is where we stand. In a world where lawyers prey on the society of knowledge. They don't provide anything, they don't produce anything... but they do stop a programmer from trying to implement the correct solution for a client out of fear.
Just try to count the number of comments referring to "go see a lawyer", "slashdot is not a free advisory service" etc...
You could also look at this from the other side. If data become compromised, they will become useless. If a company uses iris scans as a security measure, and it becomes public knowledge how to by pass this security scan, the company losses this way of protection. In this case it will remain in the companies best interest to keep data secure.
Biometrics is difficult (close to impossible) to fake today, that's why they are used. But even fingerprints may be bypassed today. Some fingerprint scanners can be bypassed if old fingerprints may become attached to the plate. This is often seen in science fiction movies, but its not only fiction. Some scanners may be fooled. Iris scans can only be fooled in fiction today, but what about the future. Others talk about breaking into the database holding the data, and that's definitely not fiction.
The issue raised here is not the technical aspects, but the aspects of selling or compromising registrated data. As I stated first data become worthless if they are compromised. The more these data becomes a commodity the higher the risk of them loosing their value. And unlike addresses, phones etc. these are unique data. So it's like our nature resources, once they are used (compromised) they are no more. When we have drilled up (and compromised) all biometric values, we have no more a way to ensure a positive identification. This may not happen today (DNA biometrics will probably be secure for a long time), but in the future it may not...
But just as with the nature, just think about oil, we will se exploitation of this resource, and in time it will become invalided. That's capitalism! Now I sound like a "tree lover" but I'm not. I'm just focused on mechanisms in human behaviour.
We need a way of positively identifying people in certain cases. Now we have this unique resource and we should take care not to exploit it. This require "intelligence" over "human behaviour".
As told in episode VI, the emperor asks Luke to give into the Dark side of the force. "...let the hate run through you...". If the empire and the "dark" Jedis are using hate as a basic life value, the empire must be evil.
It is not possible (I hope) to build a society on hate. The idea might be good, but a society build on hate would probably be more destructive than constructive. The end result would be a community that would slowly crumple...
But otherwise I think the article is quite good. Especially the end comments of what to follow. I agree the galaxy would probably be thrown into chaos.
The "Foundation" book series (by Isaac Asimov) is based on the idea of an empire that collapses. It's a quite good description of such an situation (but in the Star Wars there is no foundation.)
Slashdot Mirror
Ig youu doMt typw wEel yoi wiLL habe dIffivult to male y0ur pooint oM a comPuuter.
I have been using PovRay for many years now as well as other professional tools. I also work with coding of 3D engines.
I would say a few things in regard to PovRay.
1) It is a complete ray tracer.
2) Its interface is not as good as (some of) the pro-tools, but...
3) Its open source.
Item 1. PovRay support all you need to render images in 3D. Just look at their site, in the hall of fame. The rainy street image is amazing.
Item 2. This is probable the issue that will be discussed most. But I believe the interface developed over the years (originally I worked with PovRay way back when it didn't have a GUI) - is now at a level where it is useful for anyone who which to use it. Of cause you need to think mathematically about 3D, rather than visual. There is not any drag and drop functionality where you can add a box, a cone etc. to your scene. This scares a lot of people away, but most of the professionals I have worked with, and most of my own work, the drag-drop-icon-what-ever GUI is not really that useful. You always end up entering some popup box to insert the exact measurements of you box, cone, sphere...
Item 3. Yes! I once was in a project where we needed a 3D engine to display the results we made. (The project itself was not related to 3D at all, but we needed a good way to display the complex set of results and date.) We made it in such a way that it displayed the results as pov-ray data files, and integrated it into powray. It was awesome. I don't know of any other product that would allow you to do this. Most of the integration was related to Item 2 above, as pov-ray uses text based and script like files as input. This is ideal for programs to handle as their output. Try to do that in any other program.
In relation to all the items above, I believe you have to be slightly nerdish or mathematically minded in order to fully benefit from PovRay - but then again, welcome to Slashdot.
If this goes on for much longer the US will become a low-tech country. It will not be possible to invent or put new technology out on the market there, just because of the risk of getting to court. The market will move elsewhere and only old and tested devices (that have certain "prior art") will remain in the US.
Luckily I live in Europe...
But will the European Union adopt the same madness as the US? If this becomes the case we will see new technology evolve in Asia... (did anyone mention China?)
Just a thought.
Yes, there have been a few cases.
In Denmark the marketing rules forbid people to send uninvited marketing material. Unless you specifically accept to receive it - it will be illegal (and punishable by court) to send it. This law is not only to electronic e-mails but goes to all kinds of marketing. You are not allowed to call by phone to someone in order to sell them something (unless the user has registered his phone number somewhere and accepted to receive a phone call).
So unless you check the checkbox somewhere in your hotmail registration, you will be able to sue MS - in Denmark at least...
As far as I know popup's are opening new windows. This is very annoying, as you can have tons of new windows (and even windows poping up as you close the old ones) coming up to mess up you desktop.
Now pop-up blockers stop this!
If you enter a site that puts ads on top of their content (like floating <div>'s or similar) I don't really mind. When I close the window to that site - goodbye ad!
So the annoying part of popups are gone.... Hopefully.
I always thought a steady cam used a spinning disk, rather than just relying on weight. Why? Because a spinning disk would act like a gyroscope, preventing the camera from tilting.
Most people have tried this in their physic lab back in school. If you haven't tried it, find a small wheel (like from a bicycle) set it in motion and try to tilt it to the sides.
If a steady cam were build using a gyroscope it would require a small electrical engine and some batteries - just a few bucks more. The spinning wheel (which may weight much less) should be encapsulated to prevent it from hitting anything. It may take some more time to build, but I'm pretty sure it would be more effective, than the solution of "just adding weight".
In Denmark where I live the rules are simple.
You don't get sued for accessing the website, with or without an illegal id. You get sued if you misuse information you gained in your former employment. It doesn't matter if it is in your contract, the commerce laws in Denmark forbid use of inside knowledge to harm other companies - as it clearly is happening in this case.
I would guess that Canada have some similar laws.
So how you obtain the information is irrelevant - even thou this case in interesting from a slash-dot point of view.
Track your children.
Some of these services come in Denmark as well. Today we already use some tracking systems to track children, preventing them from becoming lost. The below article describe a blue tooth system installed in Aalborg Zoo here in Denmark.
http://in.tech.yahoo.com/030620/137/25bu3.html
The system is in principle (but not technically) the same as triangulation of a cell phone to track your child between school and home. The main issue arises if tracking is allowed without the cell phone owners consent.
By the way; if I was a kid who didn't want mom and dad to know where I was, I would borrow my phone to someone else, or just turn it of. Kids are not stupid...
Right and wrong.
The incident in scandinavia (I live in copenhagen) started as a failure on a swedish nuclear power plant. This failure caused a transition station on the grid to fall out, and these two incidents caused the entire grid in southern sweeden and eastern denmark to go offline for 5-10 hours.
The starting incident was on a plant, but I guess it was the following overloading of the grid that caused the blackout. So in a sense you are both right and wrong.
As for USA, Italy etc... I don't know about these, so you might be right there.
If sections of the grid would automatically be closed down, isulationg the incident, it wouldn't spread to large areas. In a sense that would (apperently) require a better grid that we have today. So in that sense you are right.
When the blackout occured in USA, the danish power compagnies ensured that this could not happen here on the same scale, as the scandinavian power grid was more advanced than the one in USA. Of cause they got the grid online faster, but anyway, its quite ironic that this should happen shortly after.
Some comments from Denmark...
In Denmark we used to have a large government owned Telecommunication Company, just like the one described above. When deregulations were made, also under the influence of the free market in EU, the Danish telecommunication was forced to lease the lines to its competitors.
In order to provide a fair deal, TDC (the Danish telecommunication company) was ordered to account for the expenses of the raw cobber. It then had to provide the same price for leasing the cobber to its competitors, as it was billing its own internal departments.
In theory it sounds easy, but in reality several of the competitors (Telia, the Swedish company, among others) started to complain about TDC. Most of the complains was about the time it took TDC to provide the information (regarding prices) or the time it took to lease a line from TDC.
Today the market has levelled out quite a bit. There still complaints about TDC, but the system slowly starts to work.
Two other competitors have entered the market in regards to backbone. The Danish railways (DSB) have a lot of fibre along all the railways. These fibres are now been used for a fair competition to TDC. The other major competition comes from wireless systems. Some of the mobile operators have started to enter this area. For companies (its still too expensive for us normal people) they also provide wireless lines the last mile to the company.
In regards to us mortals, another trend, mainly in the cities, have appeared. Some buildings or neighbourhoods have joined and made their own telenetwork. This includes both data and telephones. They then own their own central that can be connected to the central system in one of the above ways.
In regards to Data, the television cable operators are also starting to provide the service.
All this leads to a fair deal of competition forcing TDC to lose its monopoly for telecommunication.
I should note that Denmark is a small country and in terms of geography it can't be compared to Australia, but some of the mechanisms may be the same.
As a final comment, I lately had to purchase an ATM line for the company I worked in. The company operated in Scandinavia so I made contact to the 3 major tele companies in all tree countries (they were all the three original government companies). The speed and service still led me to one conclusion... they all suck. I thought that TDC was bad, but after I have dealt with the others I have experienced the same. I believe it's an issue all over the world. Old government companies have a very hard time to adjust from monopoly to be a service minded organisation...
DNA? No problem!
This is only an illustration of how DNA is build. It is NOT a specific copy describing a living object on earth. It's like sending them the alphabet, but not the book.
Why is it interesting then? What we want to tell them is that we are carbon-based beings. Carbon is the best way to create living objects (check out the chemical specs for yourself), and it would be very informative if other creatures used a similar building component. If we found life elsewhere this is definitely one of the things we would like to know.
If we meet someone who wish to attach us, we're dead anyway. A species with the capacity to travel here could easily wipe us out anyway. I think we are the aggressive ones.
Just because the nearest star is really far away, it doesn't make it disappointing. We'll get there some day, it may take time and it may not be easy to phone home, but does it matter.
1000 years ago, it took years to go or communicate from one end of the known world to the other.
250 years ago, we reach the new world. But it still took most of a year, and the danger of shipwreck to get there.
In 100 years from now we may have very fast ships. Lets say 10% of light speed. This would put us on the nearest star in 40 years. People who go on that mission will be expecting it to be so. Civilization is not a one mans cause; it's the perspective of generations.
In Denmark some of the major telecompanies have just released a method where you can pay with your mobile number. In this case you register your credit card to your mobile phone. When you want to do a purchase, you type in the mobile number (more easy to remember), and the system verifies it by sending a SMS to you phone that you'll need to verify by typing in a pin-code.
Now this is a very secure way of doing business. Of cause no system is 100% secure. But in the same manner as the passport solution, you still need to register your credit card to a database, connected online, that can be contacted by the merchants. Sound similar to me.
Of cause you still have the additional security of the SMS and the pin code and Microsoft don't have the best reputation when it comes to securing their systems. But it still gives time for thought.
Duck-breeding = Anders
This is a name!!!!
Even if you mask out mobile numbers for the auto diallers, several telecompanies are providing a combined service that will redirect you home phone to you mobile. In that case you will end up receiving the message on you mobile phone anyway.
In regards to time, I'll usually just say goodbye...
But time is an issue. Just think about spam, commercials, etc... but I believe it would only cloud up things if we should start making new laws. What about using existing laws about harassment.
Water can go beyond 100 degree Celsius. It will remain water until it becomes plasma at several thousands degrees. It might become steam at 100 degrees (depending on pressure).
Your reference article appears to be quite interesting, but I'm still not sure it is correct. Why? It talks about the "vibrations" of the microwave in the same way as sound, where the vibrations of the radio wave "push" the material in question. Well, radio waves don't push! They have no mass. The only way a radio wave can provide energy is to have a part (or all) of the wave energy absorbed by something. How can the radio waves then "enter" into the material in question? This is because a radio wave will move through materials until it impact on a molecule (or atom) that can absorb its energy. If you look at a piece of met at an atomic level, you will find it quite "non solid" in aspects to radio waves.
But I do appreciate you point of view and will look into it.
Microwaves in a microwave oven are using a frequency that matches the vibration frequency of the O-H bond in water. Now if a microwave should be converted into heat, it must hit a molecule, where it can leave the correct energy. This is quantum mechanics, so only the precise amount of energy can be transferred to the vibration. If the wavelength of the microwave doesn't match, energy will not be transferred.
Now the described experiment used several different containers for the metal. These containers absorb the microwave and convert them into heat. To obtain the best container material, you should look for materials whose vibration energy of some of its atom bonding matches that of the O-H bonding in water.
The O-H bond has been chosen as most food contains water. Materials without water will not heat in a microwave oven. (Unless it contains molecules that match the frequency in other ways).
Most software is expected to have bugs. But when it comes to OS great care should be taken into removing these, especially those involving security. But bug tracking is an art form. You can never remove bugs 100% as the difficulty in finding the bug increases dramatically as you approach 100%.
When it comes to software like the media player, this is much more serious. This goes into much more than just one single OS. I run Win95, Win98 and Win2000, and all these may be affected. On top of that the media player keep posting me to update the software. Wouldn't it be nice if the system gave me the option to update to the most stable and secure version or the latest version? You might think I have that option, as I may choose not to download the latest, but make my way through the download jungle to find an earlier version. But this jungle is impossible to move through for ordinary people.
I understand that Microsoft wait with disclosure of the bug until they have a patch. This is often criticized, but in some cases it make sense.
One of the most important issues for a terrorist is to generate fear. The more, the better. To hit the world trade centre surly get the public attention. Now lets say you create a powerful virus and called it "AQ_FUCK_USA". It may do a lot of damage. It may cost millions of dollars and cause a lot of people to be angry. But it won't create fear.
Even if you hit a vital structure like power plants or hospitals. Yes it will be an annoyance. Some might die (due to lack of traffic lights, respirators etc...), but it's nothing compared to killing 5000 people (or more in some of the other possible scenarios).
You can't tell the terrorist world; "We just cost the evil USA 2 billion dollars". It doesn't give as much "respect" as saying "We just killed 100 Americans" (or some other western "evil" country).
But I wouldn't feel safe anyway. Someone (maybe AQ) will try it anyway. Why not? But do it make a change whether a script-kiddie or AQ hits us?
Based on a true story!
A few years ago I was working as the lead programmer on a cd-rom game. Two days before deadline, the manager of the project decided that we should implement a copy protection.
Now you can see where it is going... right?
Well the manager had talked to the company who was going to print the cd-roms. They had this piece of software that would protect the system. All we had to do was to write a component that needed to be called in order to start the game. If this component weren't called at first the game wouldn't start. We thought about it for some time. As we only had two days, we decided to let the component write down an encoded string, based on the current date to the harddisk, and then inside the game, well hidden read the string and match the date. As I have coded the game I made the part inside the game, while an other developer made the start-up component. I designed the specification of the coded string. It contained a lot of crap, and well hidden, the two digits indicating the day.
Now I coded my part in such a way that it would work 4 days after the date. (Allowing me to more easily bypass midnight at the end of the month - especially February). This would hopefully also put off hackers, as the game would appear to be hacked, as the coded string would work for a few days.
We tested the system, especially the end of months, going from the 28-31st to the 1st. It was end of November, close to Christmas - therefore the hurry. Then the cd-roms went into print.
4 of December I received one of the first copies, just as the packages was prepared to be send out to the shops. I put it into the computer, and it failed... I tried again... and again. The way the program terminated looked subspecialty like the protection, so I started to look closely into what was happening. It was the date. 4 of December were a single digit. The protection component wrote 40 while the game looked for 04... My fellow developer had misunderstood the specifications. Of cause testing for 31 would work... it was two digits.
We trashed all the cd-roms and made a new version without protection. Our manager will probably not ask us to do such a change with such short notice an other time.
A thought thou; The cd-roms would have worked on Christmas eve... its two digits, but a new year... he he he.
If they put the rights to "attack" a P2P network into the copyright holders, you take out the courts of the equation. If you want to attack someone you could almost say, "whoops I believed they were violating my copyrights".
Normally you need a judge to allow "attacks" on someone, like entering a private apartment or tap a phone line. Why? To protect the public from misuse of power.
Now lets say I don't like a specific company (a competitor). By chance I discover that one of their employees share some mp3 files, and I feel my copyrights have been invaded. Now should I be allowed to take out the entire company or only the addressed files? If I take out the entire company, then later on in court I can argue, that I believed they had thousand of illegal files. The legal mess will become very difficult to untangle. But I could (with a little luck) do severe damage to the company in the process.
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Some of the comments I have read say damage to the systems would not be allowed. Read this from the article:
Destroying, crashing or damaging people's computers, software or other technology systems is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as are many of the ideas Berman is suggesting should be available to content owners - though he said that viruses should not be used as defense mechanisms.
I haven't seen the text in the bill, but it appears to me, that it contain damaging ideas.
I have been involved with a lot of designers (not only code design but real world design, like chairs and furniture's). Whenever they "invent" a new design they want to own it. Every thing else is a cheep copy. Now how does this apply to the current situation? Well if you design a lamp, what are you really doing? Do you come up with something quite new? A lamp is a lamp! Someone else invents the material you use! The form of the lamp is inspired by something else! (Everyone I have talked to has admitted this. Truly unique idea is extremely rare.)
So where do a code design come from? I my daily work as both an IT architect and consultant I'm faced with inventing solutions to suit specific client needs. 80% of my code is copied (more or less) from previous pieces of code. Often when I do write code from scratch, its because the previous collection of "stolen" pieces need to be cleaned up or optimised. The design patterns I use are based on best practice (or if I invent something new, a collection of best practices).
In computer science I learned a method called divide and conquer. It's a basic concept, that if you can divide you problem into two problems, and divide these into two problems etc... you'll end up with tiny problems that can easily be solved (typically by one or two lines of code). If you look at any complex program, design pattern etc, this is what you will find. The problem has been broken down to small solvable pieces. And these pieces are not original. Now the work of breaking down the complex problem, is that IP? Now that's what I'm hired to do as a consultant.
When it comes to solving solutions from scratch, its based on my experience. But what is that, besides a collection of knowledge gain by study, reading, daily life etc... Have I ever really invented something worth calling "My intellectual property"?
If I code in C++ or Java, someone else has invented both languages. But the design of the langue influence deeply upon the design I'm implementing. Now you may say that the idea of OO is really original, and could be classified as IP (luckily no one has done so). But is OO not just inspired by the real world? I many of the teach books I have seen examples of OO have been described as elements from the real worlds (insects inherited into flying insects into bees etc... or cars... you probably can list a lot of examples from the books you have read). So can OO be classified as an original idea to be patented?
Now this is where it goes wrong. Copyrights was originally only based on the specific instance of a piece of art, book etc. Then it expanded into patents and now into IP. At some point it will collapse. Now if anyone can provide me with an idea that could be classified as original, and not based on some other piece of information, method, idea... I would like to hear about it.
Now before this patent, copyright, IP collapse (and I believe it will at some point) a lot of lawyers may earn a lot of money going to court. This is an industry on its own today.
So this is where we stand. In a world where lawyers prey on the society of knowledge. They don't provide anything, they don't produce anything... but they do stop a programmer from trying to implement the correct solution for a client out of fear.
Just try to count the number of comments referring to "go see a lawyer", "slashdot is not a free advisory service" etc...
You could also look at this from the other side. If data become compromised, they will become useless. If a company uses iris scans as a security measure, and it becomes public knowledge how to by pass this security scan, the company losses this way of protection. In this case it will remain in the companies best interest to keep data secure.
Biometrics is difficult (close to impossible) to fake today, that's why they are used. But even fingerprints may be bypassed today. Some fingerprint scanners can be bypassed if old fingerprints may become attached to the plate. This is often seen in science fiction movies, but its not only fiction. Some scanners may be fooled. Iris scans can only be fooled in fiction today, but what about the future. Others talk about breaking into the database holding the data, and that's definitely not fiction.
The issue raised here is not the technical aspects, but the aspects of selling or compromising registrated data. As I stated first data become worthless if they are compromised. The more these data becomes a commodity the higher the risk of them loosing their value. And unlike addresses, phones etc. these are unique data. So it's like our nature resources, once they are used (compromised) they are no more. When we have drilled up (and compromised) all biometric values, we have no more a way to ensure a positive identification. This may not happen today (DNA biometrics will probably be secure for a long time), but in the future it may not...
But just as with the nature, just think about oil, we will se exploitation of this resource, and in time it will become invalided. That's capitalism! Now I sound like a "tree lover" but I'm not. I'm just focused on mechanisms in human behaviour.
We need a way of positively identifying people in certain cases. Now we have this unique resource and we should take care not to exploit it. This require "intelligence" over "human behaviour".
As told in episode VI, the emperor asks Luke to give into the Dark side of the force. "...let the hate run through you...". If the empire and the "dark" Jedis are using hate as a basic life value, the empire must be evil.
It is not possible (I hope) to build a society on hate. The idea might be good, but a society build on hate would probably be more destructive than constructive. The end result would be a community that would slowly crumple...
But otherwise I think the article is quite good. Especially the end comments of what to follow. I agree the galaxy would probably be thrown into chaos.
The "Foundation" book series (by Isaac Asimov) is based on the idea of an empire that collapses. It's a quite good description of such an situation (but in the Star Wars there is no foundation.)