Seems to me that it would be possible to make a 3rd-party RFID "bug scanner" for $20-40 that could scan for the devices, and optionally burn them out if found.
The best way for the industry to battle filesharing is just to drop the price of what they're selling.
If I could pick up my favorite CD complete with liner notes and colour silkscreen for $4 or $5, why am I going to waste time downloading a questionably ripped copy?
Same for DVDs. When I see a DVD I'm interested in for around $10 (usually at Costco or Walmart), I'll just grab it.
I think many people get patents not for any particular legal protection (I mean, legal protection for a length of duct tape?), but because it's a cool marketing gimmick.
Honestly, if you see something that says "Patent Pending" on a product, or a real honest-to-goodness "Patent Number!", it just screams out QUALITY doesn't it (snicker snicker).
Obviously only BIG, IMPORTANT companies who take PRIDE in their products and take the TIME to engineer them properly are going to go to all of the trouble to get them patented to protect their ideas from being stolen, right?
Maybe one day the US patent office will get tired of looking like a horse's ass to the rest of the world that laughs at them every time they release a patent for a stupid "invention".
I swear, one of these days I'm going to patent a method of "freezing water into ice" or something just for the hell of it. I've got a couple dings in my livingroom wall that a patent certificate would cover nicely.
I look at it this way - Jim Cameron was not involved in this movie, I knew it was going to suck - no real surprise here. The spoiler I read about the open ending (on another site) dissapointed me even more. Looks like they left it open for an even worse B-grade sequel.
They took characters and situations that Cameron carefully developed and screwed them up royally.
"Who cares about good characters or past storylines - just throw lots of explosions and effects at them and they'll be happy".
Reminds me a heck of a lot of Alien 3, which did nearly the same thing (without the good explosions and effects that is).
I'm not surprised that it sucks, and I'm not going to see it in theatres or buy it on DVD or VHS. Arnie never should've made the movie without Cameron being involved - he sold out.
Works great, and I bet it scares printer manufacturers like hell. I can print all day on these things and when the ink runs low, I just unscrew the top of the bottle and pour a little more in.
I was printing 11x14s by the dozen without worrying about it. Great stuff!
Hell, local stores are still doing this. A 6' firewire cable at a local chain electronics store is $35.
Go to the distributer in town, and they sell the same cable in bulk for $6. The only difference? It's not packaged in a plastic windowed box with full-color labeling and "instructions for use" (ya, plug it in!).
Of course, as soon as the store repackages the bulk product, they charge over 5x the price. For probably about $1.50 worth of additional packaging.
Consumers are stupid and companies are there to squeeze the money out of the stupid ones as fast as possible.
Well, any time someone with a highly specialized skill like this is going to sign a non-compete agreement, they'd be fools if they didn't write in a clause where the company would continue to pay them their normal wages for the entire time they're "non-competeing".
Seems to me that the proper approach would be to make a laptop that can run on either a battery or a fuel cell. If you're running near AC, run on battery and recharge occasionally. If you're on a 10hr flight or something and they havn't been thoughful enough to have accessory plugs on the plane for laptops and such, or if you're on safari in the middle of Africa, switch to the fuel cell.
The issue I'm worried about is that the laptop/fuel cell industry will to do what printer manufacturers did for the printer. In other words, make the fuel cell hardware cheap and affordable and price-fix the actual fuel refill components as high as possible to maximize profits. The old razor blade pricing scheme.
From what I understand of fuel cells, besides requiring the fuel itself which is rather cheap, it requires a rather expensive (and no-doubt proprietary) catalyst component (platinum?) which sort of throws the "refill at home" idea out.
Maybe you could get 5x methanol refills before replacing the catalyst or something, but I'm waiting to see what the pricing of the fuel technology will be before jumping onboard.
You seem to think it's your god-given right to fly in a plane or drive a car.
If your rights and privacy is so important to you that you're unwilling deal with extra security, you're more than welcome to swim, walk, or jog to your chosen destination without endangering the rest of us.
Solution to what? Invasive, meaningless activities that don't improve security? Why, stop them, of course. Adjust the metal detectors so they don't trigger on the metal in a zipper. Don't waste time wanding people's feet when the floor has so much rebar in it that the buzzer always goes off anyway. Stuff that I'd think was common sense.
Since you didn't seem to grasp my message the first time around, I'll use smaller words this time. It's possible that you decided not to answer the obvious question because you don't have an answer - of course I don't really expect a reply, but here goes:
"What is YOUR solution to preventing people from getting onto planes with bombs and weapons?"
Remember, you need to get as close to 100% accuracy as possible, because you're going to get the blame if your measures don't work.
Let me know what you come up with. Of course I fully expect you to dodge around the issues as you did before.
I think perhaps you would be singing a different tune if your life were the one that could've been saved...
Ok, so let's say an entire airliner full of people, men, women, kids. Are they worth a bit of an invasion of privacy to save?
As for the rest of it - is your body so "special" and "unique" that anyone particularly cares what it looks like? Mine isn't. And I don't.
Invading your UTMOST privacy is being seen without clothes huh? Guess you don't go to the gym or the pool much huh? Or do you hide yourself in shame behind a towel in the lockerroom?
Farking north americans all concerned over a bit of nudity, as if it's the most precious thing in the world...
I'm sorry, but this is lunacy. By this argument, we'd immediately ban the automobile. Think of how many people die because of them today. If we'd save just ONE life by banning them... and hot dogs (people do choke to death on them, you know. If we save just one life...
Nice, but you have your analogy all wrong. Maybe if you said something like "it would require all drivers to blow into a mandatory breathalyzer before starting the ignition", it would be more accurate. Don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind in the slightest if that was a legal requirement for anyone driving, anywhere. I don't drive drunk, so no skin off my back.
Likewise, I don't particularly care if someone sees me naked, my body isn't so remarkable that I'm different from another 3 billion or more people on the planet in a way that someone would find particularly fascinating. I have 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes, and everything else is likewise fairly normal for a human.
Nobody is saying you can't fly, just that you'll be subject to a little more security before getting on the plane.
Just for the sake of arguement, I'm curious what your solution would be, as you don't seem to find their proposal to your liking...?
Perhaps you're suggesting they just put everyone on planes without any screening at all, and whenever a plane is hijacked or someone is killed, you can say "Yup, I guess we found one!"? Give me a break.
So, let me see if I have this "reasonable" request straight. Let's check the points...
- Microsoft is asked to release a free operating system bootloader to allow people who bought VIDEO GAME systems to use things other than the game software they are entitled to use.
- Microsoft is selling XBOX systems at a loss (or near loss) and hoping to recoup some of their money on expensive software.
- The hacker types want them to do this in order to run an operating system that's not only free, but is in direct competition with Microsoft's bread and butter operating system market?
Am I summing that up pretty well?
- Oh yes, if they don't provide a free bootloader, the hackers will release a mod that allows you to (presumably) boot unsigned programs, be it linux, or (probably) copied games.
What if they were used to stop people from blowing up planes and killing people?
A single person not being killed because one of these machines caught someone before they had the chance to get on a plane makes it all worthwhile in my books.
Besides, I seriously doubt there would be any way to record/save the images created on the machines so it's not like a screener would be grabbing them and posting them on the net or anything.
A screener could be looking at thousands, or tens of thousands of people a day - I think the "oh! nudies!" aspect of the job would grow old real fast. I mean, how much do people pay any attention to pr0nmail that shows up in the email box? You just automatically hit delete and move on.
I'm going to write a new compiler, just for benchmarking - it'll run on all platforms.
Now, of course, by run, I mean it will finish the test on all platforms, however on one platform due to additional plugins and tweaks being made, it will finish in 30 seconds. On the other platform it takes 3 weeks because it's somewhat "less optimized".
But it's the same compiler, so hey, everything is fair, right?!!
Duh.
If you want a realistic benchmark, you take the fastest compiler for either platform you're testing and optimize it as much as possible for the absolute BEST results on each platform. Then you compare.
Anything less and you might as well not bother, except for the gullible people who will buy anything...
It's never a good idea to kill off a project (programming or other) when you're emotional about it - you'll always manage to say something that will come back to haunt you, or people will get entirely the wrong idea about you...
Better to chill out, get out of the house, go sit on a beach for a while with a beer in hand, and when you're all mellow and relaxed, write something that's perhaps a bit less melodramatic.
I recently dumped my Handspring and moved to a Sony Ericsson P800. I was expecting the move to a much higher-powered (and power hungry) device that needed recharging every 2-3 days to be a real pain, but it's not a problem.
I just drop it in the sync cradle when I get home and it's topped up within 15-20 min. No problem. I've got a USB charger to use at work if necessary, but I've never had to so-far.
I'm waiting for the new splashpower battery charging technology which uses the pad to wirelessly charge any device put on top of it. Should be very handy!
Just remember, his proposal about companies being able to destroy people's property if they suspect theft of property only applies to the vast unwashed masses who aren't in political office.
It obviously doesn't apply to people who MAKE laws!
You do know that by posting "What Ifs" like this, you're probably encouraging a bad Hollywood b-quality movie, with a-quality actors and budget, right?
Canada has has this same bullshit for a few years now. They've collected MILLIONS of dollars "for the artists" (bullshit), and not given out a single cent. It's all being stored somewhere to give out - eventually. And because the government (stupidly) gave a private special interest group jurisdiction, their books and other documents aren't even public record.
Of course it's common knowledge that to avoid it, you just buy your media from out of country and you don't get the levy added on. Too bad for Canadian retailers... Funny though, the common perception is that if you pay the levy, you're welcome to do whatever you want with media. I mean, if you're paying a tax to pirate music on CD-R, you might as well pirate it right? You've already paid.
That said, to people living in Sweden, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES let your law makers get ANY levy/fee/tax on blank media in at ANY amount. It's the thin edge of the wedge. We had the same problem in Canada.
They start at a few pennies a CD, then each year ratchet it up a few more pennies, and a few more pennies until we're paying more in tax than the blank media is worth now!
ICANN is a joke - nobody expects impartiality or informed decision-making to come out of it.
IMHO, the only way to clean it up is for the entire board to be fired, and to start fresh with a brand new entity with a new constitution that prevents the sort of hijack that happened to ICANN.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me that it would be possible to make a 3rd-party RFID "bug scanner" for $20-40 that could scan for the devices, and optionally burn them out if found.
N.
Yup, you have it exactly right.
The best way for the industry to battle filesharing is just to drop the price of what they're selling.
If I could pick up my favorite CD complete with liner notes and colour silkscreen for $4 or $5, why am I going to waste time downloading a questionably ripped copy?
Same for DVDs. When I see a DVD I'm interested in for around $10 (usually at Costco or Walmart), I'll just grab it.
N.
It's a testimonial actually. Advertisements are from people that have some relation to the company. I don't, I'm just a happy customer.
N.
I think many people get patents not for any particular legal protection (I mean, legal protection for a length of duct tape?), but because it's a cool marketing gimmick.
Honestly, if you see something that says "Patent Pending" on a product, or a real honest-to-goodness "Patent Number!", it just screams out QUALITY doesn't it (snicker snicker).
Obviously only BIG, IMPORTANT companies who take PRIDE in their products and take the TIME to engineer them properly are going to go to all of the trouble to get them patented to protect their ideas from being stolen, right?
Maybe one day the US patent office will get tired of looking like a horse's ass to the rest of the world that laughs at them every time they release a patent for a stupid "invention".
I swear, one of these days I'm going to patent a method of "freezing water into ice" or something just for the hell of it. I've got a couple dings in my livingroom wall that a patent certificate would cover nicely.
N.
I look at it this way - Jim Cameron was not involved in this movie, I knew it was going to suck - no real surprise here. The spoiler I read about the open ending (on another site) dissapointed me even more. Looks like they left it open for an even worse B-grade sequel.
They took characters and situations that Cameron carefully developed and screwed them up royally.
"Who cares about good characters or past storylines - just throw lots of explosions and effects at them and they'll be happy".
Reminds me a heck of a lot of Alien 3, which did nearly the same thing (without the good explosions and effects that is).
I'm not surprised that it sucks, and I'm not going to see it in theatres or buy it on DVD or VHS. Arnie never should've made the movie without Cameron being involved - he sold out.
N.
Just as an aside, I use one of these, both at home and at work:
Continuous Ink System
Works great, and I bet it scares printer manufacturers like hell. I can print all day on these things and when the ink runs low, I just unscrew the top of the bottle and pour a little more in.
I was printing 11x14s by the dozen without worrying about it. Great stuff!
N.
Visiting SoCal from Vancouver, ya, you guys have some pretty hard water down there...
I think a water softener/filter would probably do the job and still be cheaper than paying big money for bottled water.
But then, we're a throwaway disposable society, even if a small portion is eventually recycled... so... gotta go with the flow.
N.
Hell, local stores are still doing this. A 6' firewire cable at a local chain electronics store is $35.
Go to the distributer in town, and they sell the same cable in bulk for $6. The only difference? It's not packaged in a plastic windowed box with full-color labeling and "instructions for use" (ya, plug it in!).
Of course, as soon as the store repackages the bulk product, they charge over 5x the price. For probably about $1.50 worth of additional packaging.
Consumers are stupid and companies are there to squeeze the money out of the stupid ones as fast as possible.
N.
Well, any time someone with a highly specialized skill like this is going to sign a non-compete agreement, they'd be fools if they didn't write in a clause where the company would continue to pay them their normal wages for the entire time they're "non-competeing".
N.
Seems to me that the proper approach would be to make a laptop that can run on either a battery or a fuel cell. If you're running near AC, run on battery and recharge occasionally. If you're on a 10hr flight or something and they havn't been thoughful enough to have accessory plugs on the plane for laptops and such, or if you're on safari in the middle of Africa, switch to the fuel cell.
The issue I'm worried about is that the laptop/fuel cell industry will to do what printer manufacturers did for the printer. In other words, make the fuel cell hardware cheap and affordable and price-fix the actual fuel refill components as high as possible to maximize profits. The old razor blade pricing scheme.
From what I understand of fuel cells, besides requiring the fuel itself which is rather cheap, it requires a rather expensive (and no-doubt proprietary) catalyst component (platinum?) which sort of throws the "refill at home" idea out.
Maybe you could get 5x methanol refills before replacing the catalyst or something, but I'm waiting to see what the pricing of the fuel technology will be before jumping onboard.
N.
Ah, one more thing...
You seem to think it's your god-given right to fly in a plane or drive a car.
If your rights and privacy is so important to you that you're unwilling deal with extra security, you're more than welcome to swim, walk, or jog to your chosen destination without endangering the rest of us.
Thanks.
Solution to what? Invasive, meaningless activities that don't improve security? Why, stop them, of course. Adjust the metal detectors so they don't trigger on the metal in a zipper. Don't waste time wanding people's feet when the floor has so much rebar in it that the buzzer always goes off anyway. Stuff that I'd think was common sense.
Since you didn't seem to grasp my message the first time around, I'll use smaller words this time. It's possible that you decided not to answer the obvious question because you don't have an answer - of course I don't really expect a reply, but here goes:
"What is YOUR solution to preventing people from getting onto planes with bombs and weapons?"
Remember, you need to get as close to 100% accuracy as possible, because you're going to get the blame if your measures don't work.
Let me know what you come up with. Of course I fully expect you to dodge around the issues as you did before.
I think perhaps you would be singing a different tune if your life were the one that could've been saved...
Ok, so let's say an entire airliner full of people, men, women, kids. Are they worth a bit of an invasion of privacy to save?
As for the rest of it - is your body so "special" and "unique" that anyone particularly cares what it looks like? Mine isn't. And I don't.
Invading your UTMOST privacy is being seen without clothes huh? Guess you don't go to the gym or the pool much huh? Or do you hide yourself in shame behind a towel in the lockerroom?
Farking north americans all concerned over a bit of nudity, as if it's the most precious thing in the world...
N.
I'm sorry, but this is lunacy. By this argument, we'd immediately ban the automobile. Think of how many people die because of them today. If we'd save just ONE life by banning them... and hot dogs (people do choke to death on them, you know. If we save just one life...
Nice, but you have your analogy all wrong. Maybe if you said something like "it would require all drivers to blow into a mandatory breathalyzer before starting the ignition", it would be more accurate. Don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind in the slightest if that was a legal requirement for anyone driving, anywhere. I don't drive drunk, so no skin off my back.
Likewise, I don't particularly care if someone sees me naked, my body isn't so remarkable that I'm different from another 3 billion or more people on the planet in a way that someone would find particularly fascinating. I have 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes, and everything else is likewise fairly normal for a human.
Nobody is saying you can't fly, just that you'll be subject to a little more security before getting on the plane.
Just for the sake of arguement, I'm curious what your solution would be, as you don't seem to find their proposal to your liking...?
Perhaps you're suggesting they just put everyone on planes without any screening at all, and whenever a plane is hijacked or someone is killed, you can say "Yup, I guess we found one!"? Give me a break.
N.
So, let me see if I have this "reasonable" request straight. Let's check the points...
- Microsoft is asked to release a free operating system bootloader to allow people who bought VIDEO GAME systems to use things other than the game software they are entitled to use.
- Microsoft is selling XBOX systems at a loss (or near loss) and hoping to recoup some of their money on expensive software.
- The hacker types want them to do this in order to run an operating system that's not only free, but is in direct competition with Microsoft's bread and butter operating system market?
Am I summing that up pretty well?
- Oh yes, if they don't provide a free bootloader, the hackers will release a mod that allows you to (presumably) boot unsigned programs, be it linux, or (probably) copied games.
N.
Hmm... Wonder if there'd be some way to use a machine like this in place of a 3d-laser scanner for effects work...
N.
What if they were used to stop people from blowing up planes and killing people?
A single person not being killed because one of these machines caught someone before they had the chance to get on a plane makes it all worthwhile in my books.
Besides, I seriously doubt there would be any way to record/save the images created on the machines so it's not like a screener would be grabbing them and posting them on the net or anything.
A screener could be looking at thousands, or tens of thousands of people a day - I think the "oh! nudies!" aspect of the job would grow old real fast. I mean, how much do people pay any attention to pr0nmail that shows up in the email box? You just automatically hit delete and move on.
N.
I'm going to write a new compiler, just for benchmarking - it'll run on all platforms.
Now, of course, by run, I mean it will finish the test on all platforms, however on one platform due to additional plugins and tweaks being made, it will finish in 30 seconds. On the other platform it takes 3 weeks because it's somewhat "less optimized".
But it's the same compiler, so hey, everything is fair, right?!!
Duh.
If you want a realistic benchmark, you take the fastest compiler for either platform you're testing and optimize it as much as possible for the absolute BEST results on each platform. Then you compare.
Anything less and you might as well not bother, except for the gullible people who will buy anything...
I'd tend to agree.
It's never a good idea to kill off a project (programming or other) when you're emotional about it - you'll always manage to say something that will come back to haunt you, or people will get entirely the wrong idea about you...
Better to chill out, get out of the house, go sit on a beach for a while with a beer in hand, and when you're all mellow and relaxed, write something that's perhaps a bit less melodramatic.
N.
Good points!
I recently dumped my Handspring and moved to a Sony Ericsson P800. I was expecting the move to a much higher-powered (and power hungry) device that needed recharging every 2-3 days to be a real pain, but it's not a problem.
I just drop it in the sync cradle when I get home and it's topped up within 15-20 min. No problem. I've got a USB charger to use at work if necessary, but I've never had to so-far.
I'm waiting for the new splashpower battery charging technology which uses the pad to wirelessly charge any device put on top of it. Should be very handy!
N.
I didn't buy mine on Ebay, but I did buy it through a 3rd party as opposed to a regular retail outlet.
The $650-ish phones ARE unlocked, but make sure to get one that's english/european instead of english/chinese.
While you can switch to english mode in the chinese model, it eats 3mb of internal memory that you can't utilize for the chinese input/display.
Just remember, his proposal about companies being able to destroy people's property if they suspect theft of property only applies to the vast unwashed masses who aren't in political office.
It obviously doesn't apply to people who MAKE laws!
I can't believe nobody else figured that out yet.
Sheesh.
You do know that by posting "What Ifs" like this, you're probably encouraging a bad Hollywood b-quality movie, with a-quality actors and budget, right?
N.
Canada has has this same bullshit for a few years now. They've collected MILLIONS of dollars "for the artists" (bullshit), and not given out a single cent. It's all being stored somewhere to give out - eventually. And because the government (stupidly) gave a private special interest group jurisdiction, their books and other documents aren't even public record.
Of course it's common knowledge that to avoid it, you just buy your media from out of country and you don't get the levy added on. Too bad for Canadian retailers... Funny though, the common perception is that if you pay the levy, you're welcome to do whatever you want with media. I mean, if you're paying a tax to pirate music on CD-R, you might as well pirate it right? You've already paid.
That said, to people living in Sweden, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES let your law makers get ANY levy/fee/tax on blank media in at ANY amount. It's the thin edge of the wedge. We had the same problem in Canada.
They start at a few pennies a CD, then each year ratchet it up a few more pennies, and a few more pennies until we're paying more in tax than the blank media is worth now!
N.
No.
Not surprised in the least.
ICANN is a joke - nobody expects impartiality or informed decision-making to come out of it.
IMHO, the only way to clean it up is for the entire board to be fired, and to start fresh with a brand new entity with a new constitution that prevents the sort of hijack that happened to ICANN.
N.