a 5 cent tag would be a cheap price to pay to get rid of most of the physical inventory costs and increase the efficiency of inventory control
Alright, but from what other people have pointed out in this discussion RFID has its own set of problems so even if you could get 5 cents per tag, how would you prevent the RFID errors from being just about as bad (i.e. not all tags in the box respond to the ping, certain items in the box interfere with the signals, etc) as the barcodes? Perhaps even more important, what is keeping the price at $0.20 and is that ever likely to come down? Certain materials like metals for antennas and other commodities associated with RFID production probably have some relatively stable and fixed long term costs for example.
BTW: In answer to your previous question I once worked for a company that dabbled in integrating RFID into an existing warehousing solution that was being sold on a consulting basis at the request of one particular customer, but it proved to be too expensive to be worthwhile in practice. That was a while back now, but the price per tag was actually closer to $0.50 cents back then and the better types, the ones that could transmit more than a 24 bit integer code, were still quite expensive indeed going all the way up to several hundred dollar apiece smart transponders (probably the kind that one would put on shipping containers).
but management freaking out that OMG someone is stealing from us let's investigate this with some high-paid managers and hire a security firm and install cameras and do rfid and put locks on the dumpsters and install drug-sniffing urinals
Which is precisely what they do when there is even a rumor that a unionizing drive is underway at one of their stores. They fly in a special union-busting team of high priced consultants with surveillance equipment, propaganda materials, and special managerial advisors from the corporate headquarters on a corporate jet which is on standby at all times for just such an emergency intervention. The cost of this elite union busting strike team is estimated to run into the thousands of dollars per hour and they stay on site until the store is closed or the union vote goes down to defeat.
Convenient stores could make it really easy to find products with a proper RFID search system with kiosks in the store.
The problem is that there is no incentive for them to make it convenient so long as they are not perceived by the public to be making it actively inconvenient. In fact there is a disincentive. This is why supermarkets move their shelves around and change the locations of items on a regular rotation, precisely to prevent the efficient shopper from memorizing the layout and minimizing his time spent in the store. The retailer, whether that is Walmart or the supermarket, knows that the longer you spend looking for things in the store that you cannot find the more likely it is that you will fill your basket with other impulsive purchases along the way. Why should they help you be efficient when that would limit their opportunities to pitch more impulse buys while you search for the item that you actually came into the store to buy?
Even at 5 cents per tag how would this compete with simple barcode scanning which is dirt cheap (i.e. one time capital investment in scanning equipment...which you have to do with RFID too and then software or hardware and printer w/ink to print barcodes or label paper)? If everything is scanned when it goes into or out of your warehouse or scanned at the checkout stand in retail sales then the inventory should always be accurate and up to date in the database (at least to some tolerable margin of error). I suppose that it is possible for there to be miscounts of smaller items in larger boxes when they come into the warehouse or there might be theft or loss of some small number of items but how large would these discrepancies have to become before it became worth it to pay 5 cents per tag to catch them (assuming that you could get that price)? It seems to me that the people who are most bullish about RFID are invariably the people trying to sell it.
Excuse me sir, but isn't it possible that a certain midwestern judge might take that as a slight to his competence concerning matters of law? I must confess that I have not known many judges in my time but if I were a writer, for example, and someone obliquely suggested that I was a hack then I might be inclined to take it personally. Perhaps an Amicus Curiae brief to draw the attention of the judge to certain relevant copyright laws, commentaries, and precedents would be more appropriate?
Is it permitted for the advocates (i.e the lawyers for the plaintiff(s) and the defendant(s)), in their proposed jury instructions, to remind the Jury that they have the right to nullify?
You can already make these kinds of bets on sites like Trade Sports. You can buy or sell contracts or make bets on anything you want. They have bets on everything from when the first person will walk on mars, to who will win the Democratic presidential nomination, or just about anything else you can possibly think to bet on.
The question isn't whether normal people are smart but how the records would be used. Suppose that the insurance companies got access to the records and used them to price discriminate or deny coverage? How would you know that the record had been accessed or, more succinctly, how would you prove that they discriminated or denied coverage based upon a peek at your medical records?
And you are living in la la land if you think that Iraq is secular or indeed that the Middle East is secular. It is secular in name only. The emperor has no clothes.
Making up a bunch of crap does not an argument make
And what proof do you offer that religion is not the controlling ideology and the root cause of the problems in Middle East? You may not like a generalization that doesn't fit with your world view, or the way that you think the world should be, but that doesn't invalidate the generalization. So then you pull out the ad hominem because you don't like the generalization when the shoe fits. I suppose that if you had mod points and you hadn't already replied you would have modded the whole thread down simply because you didn't agree with it.
You are completely missing the larger part of the discussion in favor of nitpicking and arguing over the manner in which the inevitable conclusion is reached. This is a thread on Slashdot, not some place were people defend a thesis with full academic rigor. The point was that the clerics are in control of the middle east whether directly or indirectly through the religion of the people and that science, among other things, is suppressed because of it. Only a "moron", to use your terminology, would suggest that religion isn't a controlling force in the middle east.
Like so many other things on Slashdot it is merely a personal observation built up over time from conversations with coworkers and friends who come from those countries (Pakistan and Iran) or who have family still living there and certain pieces of journalism undertaken by others much braver than I (it takes a certain amount of sand for an American to visit those countries these days). I apologize for the generalizing and "truthiness" as you put it, but I was trying to address a fairly broad question without presenting a dissertation and thus it was necessary to be a bit general.
Among the best recent examples of journalism concerning the middle east is the CNN documentary series Gods Warriors by Christiane Amanpour if you are looking for some more concrete source materials.
In most US states, drunk driving laws work exactly that way. Refusal to take a breathalyzer test amounts to a confession of guilt.
Yes, because no judge, without very convincing evidence, is going to believe that you *cannot* breathe into a tube to prove your innocence or guilt...ergo obstruction. However the entire thread of this discussion revolves around thoughts or knowledge in your head which is intangible and very difficult to prove or disprove. If you say, "I don't know" or "I don't remember" or "I didn't see that" then it is very difficult for the court to prove that you are not telling the truth, especially when there is no other evidence to the contrary. This is the same problem with "eye witness" testimony and why other evidence, beyond "you have my word on it", is required to prove something beyond some reasonable level of doubt. Otherwise it is just he said she said or hearsay.
Only a jury can decide if that evidence constitutes proof beyond reasonable doubt.
To which the only conclusion can be that it does not. Consider the following: everyone has jaywalked or broken some other minor law at some point or other in their lives but does this fact, that someone jaywalked, prove, by extension, anything that the authorities want to pin on them? Certainly not, and therefore there will always be reasonable doubt in this type of scenario.
In most of the "Islamic" world, the "clerics, mullahs, and religious scholars" (the second being strictly redundant with the first; a mullah is a kind of cleric) aren't in charge now.
They are "in charge" to the extent that they control the opinions of the populace with regard to the ruler and thus have some measure of power over the temporal leader, authoritarian though he may be, because the religious figure could brand the leader or his policies as "un-Islamic" in the eyes of what the people perceive is a "higher authority" (i.e. the word of Allah revealed through the religion, or prophet, and interpreted by the cleric or the religious scholar). One does not have to be directly in charge to exercise considerable power, particularly in a society where the people are religious, superstitious, or generally don't trust their political leaders.
but my personal belief is that the external forces which promote durable authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world also are involved in maintaining the kind of religious fundamentalism seen there.
Absolutely, this adds fuel to the fire of the arguments of the religious leaders, who frequently argue against the policies of the secular and authoritarian leaders, in the eyes of the people. It also serves to reinforce and enhance the effectiveness of the underlying force which suppresses science, among other things, but in the Islamic world the religious element is really the most important factor, even though others may serve to magnify its effect.
You obviously didn't hear the part about plausible deniability. One cannot be compelled to produce what does not exist or cannot be proven to exist. The judge receives the keys to the outer volume decrypts it and looks at your files but he cannot compel you to give up the keys to a volume which does not exist. When asked, you simply reply, "that is all there is, sir" and they cannot prove otherwise. You have cooperated and they cannot throw you in jail indefinitely merely because they "think" you *might* be holding something back, especially if they cannot prove it even in the slightest. The whole point of hidden volumes is that they can be neither proved nor disproved...plausible deniability.
hidden volumes, secret file system, etc. Will not fool someone in data forensics.
It is not a question of "fooling" them, but rather a question of what can be definitively proved. The whole point of plausible deniability is that an assertion cannot be proved either way. In the English and American systems the defendant is entitled to the presumption of innocence, no matter what the charges, until proven otherwise. Therefore if there is a question of equal probability then the defense must be given the benefit of the doubt or reasonable doubt which means that the hidden volume is presumed to not exist in the absence of proof that it does exist (and good crypto systems such as True Crypt ensure that there is no technical way to prove that such a hidden volume exists).
One can only hope that this current poverty of science in the islamic world is reversed.
It will not happen as long as the clerics, mullahs, and religious scholars are in charge. The average level of non-religious education in these countries is now so poor that many muslims call anyone who can read and write Arabic, with knowledge of the Koran and the Hadith, a great scholar even though the poor chap probably never completed the equivalent of Western grade school in other areas of non-religious study such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course, but part of the problem in the Islamic world is that the people equate religious knowledge with all the truth that is worth knowing and are suspicious or even hostile to secular ideas in general and scientific ideas, especially those which bring into question dogmatic "truths" from religion, in particular. This becomes dangerous when an "educated man" (i.e. the mullah) tells the people that they should kill all of non-believers, for example, because the people base the "truth" of the mullah's statements or interpretation of the religious texts based upon his perceived authority and scholarship, the appeal to authority (i.e. if the mullah, an educated man, says that it is so then it must be true...end of discussion), instead of the logic of what the mullah is actually saying.
There is a lesson here for the fundamentalists here in the United States. Hopefully we will be wise enough to learn it, but unfortunately it seems that we, as a society, are taking the same long road to stagnation in science that others have in the past.
The Flash player runs in memory as a process, or at least within the memory space of a host process, and it is taking a stream of data from an outside source according to a protocol. There must be methods for handling that data and if those methods are not carefully constructed then it it may be possible for a malicious user to smash the stack by sending carefully crafted packets to the host running the flash session. Now, most modern operating systems, even including Windows after the 9.x branch was retired, protect memory access on a per process basis so that the operating system itself cannot be compromised in this way. However, it may still be possible for an attacker to gain control of the Flash player itself and do anything which the flash player could do, including possibly reads and writes to certain files or calls to API functions. In this manner, when there were flaws found in the Windows API functions, the attacker might conduct a multi-stage attack whereby the Flash player is compromised first and then an Windows API function is called with another crafted exploit, piggybacking on the first attack, to complete the compromise. Every program that directly faces the network over a port is potentially subject to these types of attacks so this is not something special about Flash per se.
Re:This is a rhetorical question, right?
on
The 700MHz Question
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· Score: 1
whether it is in the best interest of citizens or technology or progress or any other damned thing that doesn't have anything at all to do with "maximizing profits."
From The Wealth of Nations:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages"
"and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."
Re:This is a rhetorical question, right?
on
The 700MHz Question
·
· Score: 1
Some corporation will end up in control of a public resource. The public will get fucked. That's how it works. That's how it always works.
People are always quick to demonize the corporation without giving any credit to the benefits allowed by such legal organizations of resources and people. While it is true that corporations, like people, sometimes behave badly it is also true to say that the modern lifestyle, which is based upon a foundation of incredible complexity, would not be possible without the organizational rigor and specialized expertise that only becomes possible when some formal notion of an organized group of private individuals, acting in concert to achieve a set of goals, is recognized by law (i.e. the corporation). How does this relate to business needs trumping the consumer interest you ask? Well, consider the following.
It costs money (i.e. resources) to run the government, enforce the laws, and generally to perpetuate the lawful and civilized society that we all enjoy. Now, if the government can offset some of that cost by leasing a public resource, be it public land or in this case the EM spectrum, then it is generally obligated to do so, provided that certain rules of conduct are followed, because if the public resource were not leased then the government would have to make up the extra revenue somehow and that generally means more and higher taxes. You might *really* want to use that 700 MHz band, being a radio enthusiast perhaps, and are willing to pay higher taxes in order to have that resource stay completely in the public domain, but most of the rest of us, on the other hand, are not equipped to make use of the spectrum and do not want to use it for long range radio broadcasts and communications. The rest of us would prefer to lease our interest in the spectrum in exchange for something else (lower taxes hopefully) instead of trying to use it ourselves.
It is therefore in the public interest to conditionally lease the spectrum to someone who can offer us the services that we want at a reasonable price while allowing those who do not want to use the spectrum a lower rate of taxation (at least in theory) in exchange for leasing their interest in the spectrum. This way the people that pay are the people who use the most which I think we can all agree is eminently fair and in the public interest.
In the case of Mandarin Chinese the sheer number of speakers does not give the language as much importance, at least right now, as one might otherwise expect because those speakers tend to be highly concentrated in China. While there are Mandarin Chinese speakers abroad (of course) it is not clear that Mandarin Chinese, outside of China, is substantially more common than any of the other Asian languages in use throughout south east Asia (Korean, Japanese, other dialects of Chinese, etc). Among the reasons that English in particular enjoys such prominence in world affairs today is the wide geographic distribution, not the sheer numbers, of speakers as both native and second language participants. The fact that the Internet began in the United States and much of the computer revolution, which began in Britain following WWII, took place, at least initially, in the United States further cemented the importance of English. I anticipate that Mandarin Chinese will become more important in the 21st century as the economy of China continues to grow in prominence and the language and culture of China become more widely distributed, but English will remain the lingua franca of international business for the foreseeable future.
Not as much as one might think. The truth is that very few copies of Windows are sold at retail as either upgrade or the even more rare full version (and price) retail box. For most people the new version of Windows comes with their new or next computer and not as a retail upgrade purchased for a non OEM or existing system. The OEM price for Windows is probably already between $50 and $100 dollars per machine, more or less, for mass produced PCs from the likes of DELL, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc. The retail price for Windows (Vista Ultimate) can be as high as 400 dollars but few enough people choose to build their own computer from after market parts these days and of those fewer still would select the full retail price copy of Windows Vista Ultimate to finish of their custom PC workstation, unless it is a gaming rig in which case the choice will be Windows XP Pirate Edition.
It is really quite ironic that among the people who have most taken the message of the late economist Milton Friedman to heart are the people of Estonia (formerly a totalitarian socialist state) and they are now reaping the benefits of forward thinking and sound economic and government policies. There have been hurdles and difficulties to overcome along the way...yes, but compared to some other European countries, were the flawed remnants of socialist ideas persist like three day old fish, Estonia is moving ahead rapidly while other European nations, particularly France, seem to be stuck in first gear. Estonia is a study in contrasts, between the failure of socialism and the success of the free market and between the freedom of limited government and the oppressive nature of high-tax nanny state socialism. If this type of initiative succeeds then it will further burnish the credentials of Estonia and reaffirm the correctness of the ideas of the late Milton Friedman.
Slashdot Mirror
a 5 cent tag would be a cheap price to pay to get rid of most of the physical inventory costs and increase the efficiency of inventory control
Alright, but from what other people have pointed out in this discussion RFID has its own set of problems so even if you could get 5 cents per tag, how would you prevent the RFID errors from being just about as bad (i.e. not all tags in the box respond to the ping, certain items in the box interfere with the signals, etc) as the barcodes? Perhaps even more important, what is keeping the price at $0.20 and is that ever likely to come down? Certain materials like metals for antennas and other commodities associated with RFID production probably have some relatively stable and fixed long term costs for example.
BTW: In answer to your previous question I once worked for a company that dabbled in integrating RFID into an existing warehousing solution that was being sold on a consulting basis at the request of one particular customer, but it proved to be too expensive to be worthwhile in practice. That was a while back now, but the price per tag was actually closer to $0.50 cents back then and the better types, the ones that could transmit more than a 24 bit integer code, were still quite expensive indeed going all the way up to several hundred dollar apiece smart transponders (probably the kind that one would put on shipping containers).
but management freaking out that OMG someone is stealing from us let's investigate this with some high-paid managers and hire a security firm and install cameras and do rfid and put locks on the dumpsters and install drug-sniffing urinals
Which is precisely what they do when there is even a rumor that a unionizing drive is underway at one of their stores. They fly in a special union-busting team of high priced consultants with surveillance equipment, propaganda materials, and special managerial advisors from the corporate headquarters on a corporate jet which is on standby at all times for just such an emergency intervention. The cost of this elite union busting strike team is estimated to run into the thousands of dollars per hour and they stay on site until the store is closed or the union vote goes down to defeat.
Convenient stores could make it really easy to find products with a proper RFID search system with kiosks in the store.
The problem is that there is no incentive for them to make it convenient so long as they are not perceived by the public to be making it actively inconvenient. In fact there is a disincentive. This is why supermarkets move their shelves around and change the locations of items on a regular rotation, precisely to prevent the efficient shopper from memorizing the layout and minimizing his time spent in the store. The retailer, whether that is Walmart or the supermarket, knows that the longer you spend looking for things in the store that you cannot find the more likely it is that you will fill your basket with other impulsive purchases along the way. Why should they help you be efficient when that would limit their opportunities to pitch more impulse buys while you search for the item that you actually came into the store to buy?
Have they stopped using the "made in America" imagery now that they are building them all in China?
Even at 5 cents per tag how would this compete with simple barcode scanning which is dirt cheap (i.e. one time capital investment in scanning equipment...which you have to do with RFID too and then software or hardware and printer w/ink to print barcodes or label paper)? If everything is scanned when it goes into or out of your warehouse or scanned at the checkout stand in retail sales then the inventory should always be accurate and up to date in the database (at least to some tolerable margin of error). I suppose that it is possible for there to be miscounts of smaller items in larger boxes when they come into the warehouse or there might be theft or loss of some small number of items but how large would these discrepancies have to become before it became worth it to pay 5 cents per tag to catch them (assuming that you could get that price)? It seems to me that the people who are most bullish about RFID are invariably the people trying to sell it.
Excuse me sir, but isn't it possible that a certain midwestern judge might take that as a slight to his competence concerning matters of law? I must confess that I have not known many judges in my time but if I were a writer, for example, and someone obliquely suggested that I was a hack then I might be inclined to take it personally. Perhaps an Amicus Curiae brief to draw the attention of the judge to certain relevant copyright laws, commentaries, and precedents would be more appropriate?
Is it permitted for the advocates (i.e the lawyers for the plaintiff(s) and the defendant(s)), in their proposed jury instructions, to remind the Jury that they have the right to nullify?
You can already make these kinds of bets on sites like Trade Sports. You can buy or sell contracts or make bets on anything you want. They have bets on everything from when the first person will walk on mars, to who will win the Democratic presidential nomination, or just about anything else you can possibly think to bet on.
The question isn't whether normal people are smart but how the records would be used. Suppose that the insurance companies got access to the records and used them to price discriminate or deny coverage? How would you know that the record had been accessed or, more succinctly, how would you prove that they discriminated or denied coverage based upon a peek at your medical records?
And he remembered not to "choose poorly" and drink from George's coffee mug before attempting to cross the great Paramount seal.
Get over it, you're wrong.
And you are living in la la land if you think that Iraq is secular or indeed that the Middle East is secular. It is secular in name only. The emperor has no clothes.
Making up a bunch of crap does not an argument make
And what proof do you offer that religion is not the controlling ideology and the root cause of the problems in Middle East? You may not like a generalization that doesn't fit with your world view, or the way that you think the world should be, but that doesn't invalidate the generalization. So then you pull out the ad hominem because you don't like the generalization when the shoe fits. I suppose that if you had mod points and you hadn't already replied you would have modded the whole thread down simply because you didn't agree with it.
You are completely missing the larger part of the discussion in favor of nitpicking and arguing over the manner in which the inevitable conclusion is reached. This is a thread on Slashdot, not some place were people defend a thesis with full academic rigor. The point was that the clerics are in control of the middle east whether directly or indirectly through the religion of the people and that science, among other things, is suppressed because of it. Only a "moron", to use your terminology, would suggest that religion isn't a controlling force in the middle east.
Like so many other things on Slashdot it is merely a personal observation built up over time from conversations with coworkers and friends who come from those countries (Pakistan and Iran) or who have family still living there and certain pieces of journalism undertaken by others much braver than I (it takes a certain amount of sand for an American to visit those countries these days). I apologize for the generalizing and "truthiness" as you put it, but I was trying to address a fairly broad question without presenting a dissertation and thus it was necessary to be a bit general.
Among the best recent examples of journalism concerning the middle east is the CNN documentary series Gods Warriors by Christiane Amanpour if you are looking for some more concrete source materials.
In most US states, drunk driving laws work exactly that way. Refusal to take a breathalyzer test amounts to a confession of guilt.
Yes, because no judge, without very convincing evidence, is going to believe that you *cannot* breathe into a tube to prove your innocence or guilt...ergo obstruction. However the entire thread of this discussion revolves around thoughts or knowledge in your head which is intangible and very difficult to prove or disprove. If you say, "I don't know" or "I don't remember" or "I didn't see that" then it is very difficult for the court to prove that you are not telling the truth, especially when there is no other evidence to the contrary. This is the same problem with "eye witness" testimony and why other evidence, beyond "you have my word on it", is required to prove something beyond some reasonable level of doubt. Otherwise it is just he said she said or hearsay.
Only a jury can decide if that evidence constitutes proof beyond reasonable doubt.
To which the only conclusion can be that it does not. Consider the following: everyone has jaywalked or broken some other minor law at some point or other in their lives but does this fact, that someone jaywalked, prove, by extension, anything that the authorities want to pin on them? Certainly not, and therefore there will always be reasonable doubt in this type of scenario.
In most of the "Islamic" world, the "clerics, mullahs, and religious scholars" (the second being strictly redundant with the first; a mullah is a kind of cleric) aren't in charge now.
They are "in charge" to the extent that they control the opinions of the populace with regard to the ruler and thus have some measure of power over the temporal leader, authoritarian though he may be, because the religious figure could brand the leader or his policies as "un-Islamic" in the eyes of what the people perceive is a "higher authority" (i.e. the word of Allah revealed through the religion, or prophet, and interpreted by the cleric or the religious scholar). One does not have to be directly in charge to exercise considerable power, particularly in a society where the people are religious, superstitious, or generally don't trust their political leaders.
but my personal belief is that the external forces which promote durable authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world also are involved in maintaining the kind of religious fundamentalism seen there.
Absolutely, this adds fuel to the fire of the arguments of the religious leaders, who frequently argue against the policies of the secular and authoritarian leaders, in the eyes of the people. It also serves to reinforce and enhance the effectiveness of the underlying force which suppresses science, among other things, but in the Islamic world the religious element is really the most important factor, even though others may serve to magnify its effect.
You obviously didn't hear the part about plausible deniability. One cannot be compelled to produce what does not exist or cannot be proven to exist. The judge receives the keys to the outer volume decrypts it and looks at your files but he cannot compel you to give up the keys to a volume which does not exist. When asked, you simply reply, "that is all there is, sir" and they cannot prove otherwise. You have cooperated and they cannot throw you in jail indefinitely merely because they "think" you *might* be holding something back, especially if they cannot prove it even in the slightest. The whole point of hidden volumes is that they can be neither proved nor disproved...plausible deniability.
hidden volumes, secret file system, etc. Will not fool someone in data forensics.
It is not a question of "fooling" them, but rather a question of what can be definitively proved. The whole point of plausible deniability is that an assertion cannot be proved either way. In the English and American systems the defendant is entitled to the presumption of innocence, no matter what the charges, until proven otherwise. Therefore if there is a question of equal probability then the defense must be given the benefit of the doubt or reasonable doubt which means that the hidden volume is presumed to not exist in the absence of proof that it does exist (and good crypto systems such as True Crypt ensure that there is no technical way to prove that such a hidden volume exists).
One can only hope that this current poverty of science in the islamic world is reversed.
It will not happen as long as the clerics, mullahs, and religious scholars are in charge. The average level of non-religious education in these countries is now so poor that many muslims call anyone who can read and write Arabic, with knowledge of the Koran and the Hadith, a great scholar even though the poor chap probably never completed the equivalent of Western grade school in other areas of non-religious study such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course, but part of the problem in the Islamic world is that the people equate religious knowledge with all the truth that is worth knowing and are suspicious or even hostile to secular ideas in general and scientific ideas, especially those which bring into question dogmatic "truths" from religion, in particular. This becomes dangerous when an "educated man" (i.e. the mullah) tells the people that they should kill all of non-believers, for example, because the people base the "truth" of the mullah's statements or interpretation of the religious texts based upon his perceived authority and scholarship, the appeal to authority (i.e. if the mullah, an educated man, says that it is so then it must be true...end of discussion), instead of the logic of what the mullah is actually saying.
There is a lesson here for the fundamentalists here in the United States. Hopefully we will be wise enough to learn it, but unfortunately it seems that we, as a society, are taking the same long road to stagnation in science that others have in the past.
The Flash player runs in memory as a process, or at least within the memory space of a host process, and it is taking a stream of data from an outside source according to a protocol. There must be methods for handling that data and if those methods are not carefully constructed then it it may be possible for a malicious user to smash the stack by sending carefully crafted packets to the host running the flash session. Now, most modern operating systems, even including Windows after the 9.x branch was retired, protect memory access on a per process basis so that the operating system itself cannot be compromised in this way. However, it may still be possible for an attacker to gain control of the Flash player itself and do anything which the flash player could do, including possibly reads and writes to certain files or calls to API functions. In this manner, when there were flaws found in the Windows API functions, the attacker might conduct a multi-stage attack whereby the Flash player is compromised first and then an Windows API function is called with another crafted exploit, piggybacking on the first attack, to complete the compromise. Every program that directly faces the network over a port is potentially subject to these types of attacks so this is not something special about Flash per se.
whether it is in the best interest of citizens or technology or progress or any other damned thing that doesn't have anything at all to do with "maximizing profits."
From The Wealth of Nations:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages"
"and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."
Some corporation will end up in control of a public resource. The public will get fucked. That's how it works. That's how it always works.
People are always quick to demonize the corporation without giving any credit to the benefits allowed by such legal organizations of resources and people. While it is true that corporations, like people, sometimes behave badly it is also true to say that the modern lifestyle, which is based upon a foundation of incredible complexity, would not be possible without the organizational rigor and specialized expertise that only becomes possible when some formal notion of an organized group of private individuals, acting in concert to achieve a set of goals, is recognized by law (i.e. the corporation). How does this relate to business needs trumping the consumer interest you ask? Well, consider the following.
It costs money (i.e. resources) to run the government, enforce the laws, and generally to perpetuate the lawful and civilized society that we all enjoy. Now, if the government can offset some of that cost by leasing a public resource, be it public land or in this case the EM spectrum, then it is generally obligated to do so, provided that certain rules of conduct are followed, because if the public resource were not leased then the government would have to make up the extra revenue somehow and that generally means more and higher taxes. You might *really* want to use that 700 MHz band, being a radio enthusiast perhaps, and are willing to pay higher taxes in order to have that resource stay completely in the public domain, but most of the rest of us, on the other hand, are not equipped to make use of the spectrum and do not want to use it for long range radio broadcasts and communications. The rest of us would prefer to lease our interest in the spectrum in exchange for something else (lower taxes hopefully) instead of trying to use it ourselves.
It is therefore in the public interest to conditionally lease the spectrum to someone who can offer us the services that we want at a reasonable price while allowing those who do not want to use the spectrum a lower rate of taxation (at least in theory) in exchange for leasing their interest in the spectrum. This way the people that pay are the people who use the most which I think we can all agree is eminently fair and in the public interest.
In the case of Mandarin Chinese the sheer number of speakers does not give the language as much importance, at least right now, as one might otherwise expect because those speakers tend to be highly concentrated in China. While there are Mandarin Chinese speakers abroad (of course) it is not clear that Mandarin Chinese, outside of China, is substantially more common than any of the other Asian languages in use throughout south east Asia (Korean, Japanese, other dialects of Chinese, etc). Among the reasons that English in particular enjoys such prominence in world affairs today is the wide geographic distribution, not the sheer numbers, of speakers as both native and second language participants. The fact that the Internet began in the United States and much of the computer revolution, which began in Britain following WWII, took place, at least initially, in the United States further cemented the importance of English. I anticipate that Mandarin Chinese will become more important in the 21st century as the economy of China continues to grow in prominence and the language and culture of China become more widely distributed, but English will remain the lingua franca of international business for the foreseeable future.
That would cut into their profits
Not as much as one might think. The truth is that very few copies of Windows are sold at retail as either upgrade or the even more rare full version (and price) retail box. For most people the new version of Windows comes with their new or next computer and not as a retail upgrade purchased for a non OEM or existing system. The OEM price for Windows is probably already between $50 and $100 dollars per machine, more or less, for mass produced PCs from the likes of DELL, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc. The retail price for Windows (Vista Ultimate) can be as high as 400 dollars but few enough people choose to build their own computer from after market parts these days and of those fewer still would select the full retail price copy of Windows Vista Ultimate to finish of their custom PC workstation, unless it is a gaming rig in which case the choice will be Windows XP Pirate Edition.
It is really quite ironic that among the people who have most taken the message of the late economist Milton Friedman to heart are the people of Estonia (formerly a totalitarian socialist state) and they are now reaping the benefits of forward thinking and sound economic and government policies. There have been hurdles and difficulties to overcome along the way...yes, but compared to some other European countries, were the flawed remnants of socialist ideas persist like three day old fish, Estonia is moving ahead rapidly while other European nations, particularly France, seem to be stuck in first gear. Estonia is a study in contrasts, between the failure of socialism and the success of the free market and between the freedom of limited government and the oppressive nature of high-tax nanny state socialism. If this type of initiative succeeds then it will further burnish the credentials of Estonia and reaffirm the correctness of the ideas of the late Milton Friedman.