Hardly. Current medical tech can already do quite a bit to reduce the external signs of aging (stretching the skin back out, for one). A 'cure' for aging would probably involve genetic patches that would mostly stop the wrinkling anyway, and you'd get some skin grown. There's no theoretical reason why someone 200 years old could not have the physical body (at this point he basically would have gone through many bodies, even the neurons would have long been replaced with fresh ones) of someone at the very peak of their youth.
Actually, I'd just finished reading a book about false criminal convictions when I wrote that comment, and was feeling just how bad it must suck. When I was in school I was always getting in trouble and finding the school discipline system was both rigid and un-intelligent and gave MUCH more weight to your accuser.
Turns out the justice system which can dispense far greater punishment than a few days of suspension or an inconvenient expulsion is not really much better. The theoretical rights the accused have don't mean very much in practice.
Better than China, though. And yes, I know, China only has a bit over a billion. Realized my error only after whacking the submit button.
That's good...isn't it? I mean, would you rather 6 BILLION people collectively accomplished nothing, or would it be better if the country became better developed. China developing could eventually mean they actually contribute to the worldwide pool of technology. China doesn't have laws against stem cell research, so labs there could eventually provide treatments for the rest of us.
Sure, their government is oppressive (so is ours, its just a matter of degree). And maybe it will keep them down. But if they manage to reform it, become a prosperous nation, its good news for the world.
Nuclear weapons mean they are unlikely to be conquering the globe for land, so we don't need to worry about that angle.
Simple reason : we KNOW Mathematica's generator is deterministic. Give it a starting seed, we know for CERTAIN what it'll spit back.
We probably will never know if the universe itself is deterministic, because we cannot see whether random events at the quantum level (such as an isotope sample releasing a particle) are random or not. But, using an isotope generator means it COULD be random, which I think is a more satisfying method than one where it is uncertain.
It's more satisfying because if the isotope method is also deterministic, existence is utterly pointless because you do not actually make decisions or have anything resembling 'free will'. You're just a bunch of particles running on rails.
Not to mention the question of what it's for : I suspect existence could be quite satisfying without sexual urges of any type (or hunger, or thirst, ect). Your rational brain already feels a certain pleasure when you successfully make new working connections between ideas or accomplish something, this is why you can become addicted to certain hobbies. As for building the next generation of super-cyborgs, you'd obviously use rational thought rather than randomly shaking a bag of traits and seeing what comes out (though randomness would play its role: I think it seems obvious that any sentient computer would have among its hardware some sort of random number generation (the real kind, based on a radioactive isotope, not some cheap software imitation))
"Why do we as a society accept rockstars that make a lot of money anyway? They don't deserve it. They just waste it on clothes and drugs and cars."
Absolutely. I'd be willing to accept the vast differences in pay between a major label rock star and the singers at my local church if I thought somehow the major label singers had a million times the talent. But they don't : significant musical ability is a common talent. A significant fraction of the population could sing well or play most instruments as well as any of the major musicians. The same goes for dance and beauty. At least 10% of the girls at my high school could match Britny Spears if they had the proper coaching, opportunity, and surgery. The difference is hype. My church band doesn't have fancy editing or millions of dollars in marketing.
If it became impossible to maintain copyrights of any material that can be easily digitally copied, there are several solutions that could work. Stopping it legally or with technical solutions is not one of them. The exact solution depends on the medium. For video games : customized hardware and encryption keys works. Unlike music, games have little value a year or two after release, so the eventual failure of the encryption is not an issue. For books : fund more libraries. If noone bought books any more, taxes would need to keep publishing in business. For video recordings : either taxpayer supported tv channels, like in Britain, and/or more direct pay channels. The TV industry is at risk for commercials becoming mostly useless, except for very limited tie-ins. For music and movies : life performances. While one can bring in a camcorder, there is no substitute for seeing a movie with top notch equipment (especially if 3d or IMAX becomes common for major movies). The same goes for music.
I know. As I said, none of this malicious behavoir would be possible if certain software developers *cough*Microsoft*cough* were tighter about what not to allow in the spec. Of course, people can retroactivly write browsers that ignore popup code and other bad features, but this will break legitimate sites. It would work much better if those features had never been included in the first place. Sometimes adding a new feature has a much more harmful effect than making it buggier. New features can be deadly to the project if they are the wrong ones.
This is a rhetorical question : how can one possibly patent a 'feature' built into web-browsers? Popups are only possible because some idiot decided that opening another window without the users consent (and even doing this recursively!) was "friendly" behavoir and belonged in the javascript spec. The same applies to sound. This is another consequence of our failing legal system (lets be honest : its on life support at best. Its BROKEN. While the basic tenants of judges, juries, and appeals might be good, the implementation is falling apart). If the legal system worked without application of large sums of money (and I would not call giving the victory to the one with the money 'justice') this patent would have no meaning.
Its all about convenience. The barrier to entry in any security system always affects how many individuals actually try to break in. For instance, a moderately reinforced steel door is dramatically more secure than a plate glass window, even though both can be trivially defeated by anyone with the knowledge. This is because there is so much lower a barrier to entry with the window that a much larger proportion of the populance will be tempted.
In a similar manner, open wireless networks can usually be used to grant free internet access without doing anything but hanging near the building. Special antennae can be even used to grant one near perfect anonymity and immunity to prosecution. Wired network break-ins require physical access to key wiring somewhere, and the commission of a much more obvious and deliberate crime. (by contrast, most 802.1 war-drivers probably think of it more as walking into a building uninvited when they find the door left cracked open)
Sneaking around a building with a toolkit looking for network cable seems incredibly stupid and dangerous, an almost certain way to end up in jail eventually. It would only be worth even considering if the rewards were immense. By contrast, if one sits at a cafe/van with a laptop one can just power it up and run a few programs and sometimes break into a nearby network with little to no effort but a few clicks. And if one can snoop into a few internal network files, maybe read some mail, so much the better.
The thing is, you already cannot get most of those 400,000 plus films on dvd. To digitize all those movies, at an average size of 10 gigs each (I'm assuming HD and good compression), comes to an incredible 40 million gigs. Hmm... I was dreaming about how cool it would be if storage got to the point that you could have a video jukebox with 'every film ever made'. Only way to store this much data would be with molecular memory.
Anyways, it might be more practical to store this kind of information in a distributed network where the viewers are also temporary storage nodes. Sort of like bit-torrent. There would be a few massive machines at the center that have every film, and then all the viewers boxes would have large local storage and would be part of the distribution system for the most commonly watched material. Ideally, people would pay flat fees or something to use it so that there would be no incentive to pirate.
Really? Go use sharereactor and emule and then come back and say we don't have VoD. While in violation of copyright laws, its possible to get DVD quality versions of most major movies and some still in theaters (though these 'cams' and 'telesyncs' are of rather poor quality). The future is now : you've been able to enjoy 2 cd sized DVD rips of movies for a couple years now. The video quality is actually better than most TVs, the sound is sometimes AC3 surround, and the cost is extremely low. You merely need a $40 a month broadband connect and lots of hard drive space.
Or try out netflix, the legal way. For $40 a month from them you can have out 8 dvds at a time, theoretically you could rent at least 30 a month on that plan (the turn around time is 5 days for me). 30 dvds is more than a month of downloading on my connection, the picture quality is slightly better. Only problem is certain dvds are not available on netflix, and you cannot watch shows a couple days after being aired.
I don't think I left the bounds of plausibility anywhere. With sufficient resources ("sufficient" might be a rather large quantity) there's absolutely no reason this couldn't work. The only iffy bit is the top speed. 90% of light may never be achievable because of the collision danger (anything you hit will have the KE of 7*(1/2*m*(.9*c)^2). The "7" takes into account the approximate relatavistic effect. Energy requirements are achievable : the sun puts out enough energy every tenth of a second.
Anyways, while it wouldn't be instant the entire galaxy could be assimilated in a few hundred thousand years.
Although I don't have a proof for this, any sequence of numbers can be found in the digits of pi. (obviously some sequences will take much longer to find than others). Thus with a LOT of searching you could find a sequence of numbers that when encoded into characters using ASCII rules (65 as A, 108 as z, ect) correspond exactly to a valid Win2003 Server serial.
Actually, no, you merely have to concentrate enough energy in a small enough space. Anti-electrons have been created in this manner with a very large laser. To be practical, this laser would have to be very efficient (free electron lasers have the potential to be nearly 100% efficient) and very, very large to create antiprotons (which you need to create a stable anti-material).
This is most likely what will fuel starships, when intelligent life here has the resources to build them. (note I said intelligent life : human beings would (probably) never be able to ride these starships, nor would be the builders of them)
Due to the danger posed by the tiniest particle at 80-90% of c, I think these starships would be very very very narrow while crossing the gulf. Only when changing velocity (near the beginning and end of the trip) would they self assemble into a large structure with enough mass to stop the particles produced by the anti/matter annhilation.
I think the actual "payload" would be extremely small : a few hundreds kilograms or less. These would be micromachines capable of exploiting the resources found at the destination. The actual passengers would be sent by quantum teleportation (basically a steam of particles and entangled pairs that would be receieved by the vessel once it has had time to construct a receiver upon arrival. As the ship travels, the micromachines would constantly have to repair damage to it, and would have their programming continuously updated by the beam of information sent from their starting point.). The "passengers" would be information embodying whatever lifeforms wish to explore/exploit the target system. In theory these particles could be pieces from a human mind, but I think this unlikely as meatware isn't very fast or efficient. Basically, most of the ship would be the information sent after it leaves, with only a relatively small mass actually experiencing the speeding up and slowing down.
Interestingly enough, "room temperature" is only a design requirement due to our physiology. Were it possible for most/all energy consuming processes to be completed in outer space, ordinary high temperature superconductors would be more than adequate for the task.
actually I LIKED the intro. I'm just saying the German censors might not. I don't have a problem with it : I know that in the real world, blowing the crap out of the other guy sometimes helps. I also know that historically it has gone nowhere in many cases, resolving nothing yet killing millions.
You have to admit, the kickass intro to C&C Generals shows what appears to be news footage with just the talking mouths. The narration is "In the Twentieth century, world leaders resolve conflicts with words. Words like SCUD MISSILE". Unfortuantly I don't have the game installed atm, but it basically gives the impression that world leaders solve conflicts by blowing the crap out of each other.
The game very stylishly makes this seem cool. And it is amusing. While the gameplay is basically no different than the standard rts, and is not as good as Total Annihilation was (that game is STILL better than nearly anything created since), it has lots of style. The voiceovers and graphics are top notch and hilarious parodies of the present day. The chinese builder says "china will grow larger". The American Crusader tank says "Do what's right", and "Protect our people". There are various voiceovers for the terrorists side like "kill the villagers, they are stealing our supplies".
A sale isn't a sale if the person buying the item for sale AGREES TO A CONTRACT!!!!
Dumbass.
Society would fall apart if you could freely use any item you buy for ANYTHING, even something you agreed not to do. If I make you sign a contract that says you must not do X, and that you are liable for civil penalties (or even criminal if the contract provisions are worded properly) if you do X, and you agree to it, you ARE subject to this penalties if you violate it. Duh! Everything from guns to cars to houses (ever heard of a contract called a "deed restriction". They legally can and will take your house if you violate it. Its 100% legal and enforced all the time) is subject to this, and computing hardware is no exception.
When someone sold you that car, they didn't give you the unrestricted right to rip out all the safety equipment or crash it into people, did they? So when you buy that computer, you are not to rip into the processor (I'm assuming the private key will have to be hidden in memory here so it doesn't have to be transmitted across the bus, plus the processor is so complex it could be buried among the other millions of parts) nor use a virtual machine that emulates the functions of that processors cryptosystem.
A sale isn't an unrestricted sale if the buyer and seller agree to restrictions. Now, it is very difficult to enforce most contractual restrictions associated with software because : 1. The stupid clicking "I agree" and onscreen agreements in tiny text is not a very enforcable contract. I sugest making buyers of Palladium equipped hardware sign a paper contract, with a carbon copy of the contract and their signature kept by the buyer. Just like buying anything else with strings attached, like a house or car. If you read the fine print when you bought that house or car, you DID agree to restrictions on your use of it. 2. It's too damn easy to violate most software contracts, usually just a matter of writing some code or downloading some script. Also they are way too broad most of the time. Contracts associated with Palladium hardware would be mostly concerned with methods to steal the private key, which would ideally require physical hacking to read the memory bytes in the rom.
This isn't delusional thinking, you moron, this is standard contract law that has been in force for hundreds of years. Sorry for the duragatory terms, but you must be really dumb if you didn't know this. Heck, I am positive you don't have the rights to do anything you want with your horse or buggy, either. I bet you can't "mod" the wheels so that it is unsafe, nor use certain whips, nor abuse your horse.
So much for "NEW THINKING" you idiot : its centuries old. The "new thinking" is the thinking that you can do whatever the hell you want when you want because its a computer, and using it wrong won't hurt anyone.
"Surely it is cheaper to not distrubute data than to distribute it and expect every machine in the world to not look at it"
There can be absolutely no doubt whatsover that content creators will NOT be compensated as much as they would have been if their creations can be freely copied. Your "not distribute data" analogy falls apart instantly right here : the content creators have to distribute data to paying customers : they inherently HAVE to trust the clients. However, they don't have control over who they sell to, but they can control what hardware can play back the information.
IF the private key is never revealed because it is physically locked in a difficult to reach place, surrounded by chemicals that ignite when exposed to air or something, then the security cannot be easily broken (assuming no impementation mistakes were made, which I already said may be an erroneous assumption for the first few versions)
Yes, someone COULD physically hack this chip, but they would CLEARLY be committing a crime. This isn't some beatdown on debugging tools : this is prosecuting someone who cut apart a specific chip with the intent to steal specific information, with specialized hardware. While the DeCSS boys may be in a grey area because what they did was trivially easy, stealing and distributing information stolen from Palladium chips would be a crime, enforced by the U.S. federal government.
No this still wouldn't be enough security for government secrets or large financial transactions (though banks already use hardware that basically works the same way, with similar vulnerabilities), but it probably would be enough to protect movies, games, books, and other content.
Well, the screen buffer would be a protected resource. It would be set up so that the only easy way to get the movie out would be to reencode with analog, causing some small degredation in quality. You couldn't get the PERFECT, theater version of the movie at least.
Well, debuggers and all ordinary software tools would NOT, I repeat, NOT be adequate to break Palladium. You would have to create VERY specialized software the emulates the chip from the BIOS up, which would be in clear violation of the rules you had to agree to when you bought that Palladium enabled PC. Only an idiot would sell secure hardware that you could freely hack into without legal reprecussions. Also, you would need to steal the private keys out of the chip. Physically hacking it is the only 100% certain way of doing this, and again, this is no trivial violation of the DMCA. You are physically chopping the chip up and reading those areas with a microscope : there can be no doubt you have criminal intent.
As for invoking Godwin's law : STFU. You are trying to compare selling goods that the buyer agree to when he buts it not to hack (if you don't agree, don't buy it) to murdering people.
Mod me down for saying this (on a side note : I think its lame to say "mod me down" : but if I don't say it, people will think I'm trolling. By putting that tag on my message I'm admitting the message is inflammatory)
Anyway, there are some notable advantages to a system like Palladium. Theoretically, it could enable certain types of applications that aren't possible today which involve trusting the client. Yes, I'm aware that even if the hardware is integrated into the processor someone could still steal the private keys the system depends on, and create an emulated version, cracking the system wide open. I'm also pretty confident the initial versions will have some subtle but still gaping hole, allowing them to be cracked with ease.
However, in theory if it all works right (and from a theoretical standpoint it IS possible to make it work right and be unbreakable) applications running under its protection would have their memory space protected against intrusion.
There is NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING planned that would stop you from writing your own applications that hide under this umbrella (but an integral part will be the system kernel, so microsoft OS only), and I'm sure microsoft will encourage you to do so. There is nothing that will stop you from running untrusted code : it just won't have access to resources belonging to trusted applications (unless you've hacked it of course)
Palladium won't prevent you from installing a different OS on the system, you just won't be able to run trusted apps in that OS (technically its possible to give these same features with open source. The actual keys would have to be hidden, controlled by someone, but everything else could be viewed and contributed to) . Yes in theory SOME types of remote hacking exploits could be stopped. Network applications would now only process messages that are signed by code that your palladium chip certifies as meeting certain criteria. This could make it possible for a microsoft server app to only even look at messages sent by a microsoft client app, preventing many hacks.
This means the application could have secret information in it that needs to be hidden from the end user. For instance, the application could be a movie player that decrypts a spiffy new high definition format which is capable of encoding 1080p digital movie quality video, copied byte for byte straight from the version used in theaters. It could be an online gaming client that to run efficiently must have certain information protected from access and tampering(coordinates of other players, your crosshair location, the current state of the world physics system, objects occluded from view, and many many more). The current generation of MMORPGs have very limited interactivity (cannot aim, shitty AI, no physics, no elements that require player twitch skill) because the client cannot be trusted with anything (and even then it has to have SOME information that could be useful to a hacker) nor control anything interesting.
And yes, it could be a document viewer that reads encrypted documents. The document files themselves might contain more information than the author wants revealed, so the viewer would obey certain rules about when the file can be accessed, and what machine. Currently this is impossible to create because someone could steal the decryption key the viewer uses right out of memory, or edit its code such that it no longer obeys restrictive tags in the file.
None of this would stop you from using untrusted players to view your current data files, and nothing would force you to convert. Unfortunatly, since the keys to the kingdom will be controlled by microsoft bad things could come from this. They could charge monopoly prices, use it to squeeze out their competitors, and do many more things. However, I believe that this has the potential to be a killer app. If you don't want microsoft to rule the software world even more than it already does, perhaps the open source community should look to creating their own, equivalent, alternative.
Precisely. The gadget may work impressively on a small scale...but ordinary PCs on a fast LAN with some of them set up a file sharing servers are VERY impressive(such as on a college campus). You can get quality releases of any popular movie or game or app in minutes, with nearly 0 risk of detection, and no bandwidth bills. (since outside IPs cannot access the network) Plus all of the other features this box has. Best of all, it may be free for you if your parents or the government is paying the bills.
The only thing that bugs me is that while tech miracles happen, how can this thing do all these features effectively on cheap hardware? To do games and video on demand requires reliable disk drives or high end processing hardware.
Also, how is the networking the boxes depend upon better or cheaper or immune to the same problems with rolling out broadband or cable access, elsewhere? Surely it requires the same expensive upgrades to the wiring and nodes as any other networking upgrade, the expense having slowed down adoption of this kind of tech.
But the real problem is the software, the enormous virtual machine required to do all of these things. Programming software to do all the listed features well has taken years, and still isn't finished. I suspect this machine is not nearly as neat or as useful as the PC you are reading this on, especially if your PC is reasonably recent and has a fast, unrestricted, network connection.
How it might work : the set of neural signals going in the "input" array would be recorded. The ones that occur after experiencing someone you might want to remember are then played back, over and over. Presumably this would allow you to GREATLY increase the "weight" given to certain memories. So you'd have a MUCH easier time remembering important details, and be programmed with them for the rest of your life.
Slashdot Mirror
Hardly. Current medical tech can already do quite a bit to reduce the external signs of aging (stretching the skin back out, for one). A 'cure' for aging would probably involve genetic patches that would mostly stop the wrinkling anyway, and you'd get some skin grown. There's no theoretical reason why someone 200 years old could not have the physical body (at this point he basically would have gone through many bodies, even the neurons would have long been replaced with fresh ones) of someone at the very peak of their youth.
Actually, I'd just finished reading a book about false criminal convictions when I wrote that comment, and was feeling just how bad it must suck. When I was in school I was always getting in trouble and finding the school discipline system was both rigid and un-intelligent and gave MUCH more weight to your accuser. Turns out the justice system which can dispense far greater punishment than a few days of suspension or an inconvenient expulsion is not really much better. The theoretical rights the accused have don't mean very much in practice. Better than China, though. And yes, I know, China only has a bit over a billion. Realized my error only after whacking the submit button.
That's good...isn't it? I mean, would you rather 6 BILLION people collectively accomplished nothing, or would it be better if the country became better developed. China developing could eventually mean they actually contribute to the worldwide pool of technology. China doesn't have laws against stem cell research, so labs there could eventually provide treatments for the rest of us.
Sure, their government is oppressive (so is ours, its just a matter of degree). And maybe it will keep them down. But if they manage to reform it, become a prosperous nation, its good news for the world.
Nuclear weapons mean they are unlikely to be conquering the globe for land, so we don't need to worry about that angle.
Simple reason : we KNOW Mathematica's generator is deterministic. Give it a starting seed, we know for CERTAIN what it'll spit back.
We probably will never know if the universe itself is deterministic, because we cannot see whether random events at the quantum level (such as an isotope sample releasing a particle) are random or not. But, using an isotope generator means it COULD be random, which I think is a more satisfying method than one where it is uncertain.
It's more satisfying because if the isotope method is also deterministic, existence is utterly pointless because you do not actually make decisions or have anything resembling 'free will'. You're just a bunch of particles running on rails.
Not to mention the question of what it's for : I suspect existence could be quite satisfying without sexual urges of any type (or hunger, or thirst, ect). Your rational brain already feels a certain pleasure when you successfully make new working connections between ideas or accomplish something, this is why you can become addicted to certain hobbies. As for building the next generation of super-cyborgs, you'd obviously use rational thought rather than randomly shaking a bag of traits and seeing what comes out (though randomness would play its role: I think it seems obvious that any sentient computer would have among its hardware some sort of random number generation (the real kind, based on a radioactive isotope, not some cheap software imitation))
Absolutely. I'd be willing to accept the vast differences in pay between a major label rock star and the singers at my local church if I thought somehow the major label singers had a million times the talent. But they don't : significant musical ability is a common talent. A significant fraction of the population could sing well or play most instruments as well as any of the major musicians. The same goes for dance and beauty. At least 10% of the girls at my high school could match Britny Spears if they had the proper coaching, opportunity, and surgery. The difference is hype. My church band doesn't have fancy editing or millions of dollars in marketing.
If it became impossible to maintain copyrights of any material that can be easily digitally copied, there are several solutions that could work. Stopping it legally or with technical solutions is not one of them. The exact solution depends on the medium.
For video games : customized hardware and encryption keys works. Unlike music, games have little value a year or two after release, so the eventual failure of the encryption is not an issue.
For books : fund more libraries. If noone bought books any more, taxes would need to keep publishing in business.
For video recordings : either taxpayer supported tv channels, like in Britain, and/or more direct pay channels. The TV industry is at risk for commercials becoming mostly useless, except for very limited tie-ins.
For music and movies : life performances. While one can bring in a camcorder, there is no substitute for seeing a movie with top notch equipment (especially if 3d or IMAX becomes common for major movies). The same goes for music.
I know. As I said, none of this malicious behavoir would be possible if certain software developers *cough*Microsoft*cough* were tighter about what not to allow in the spec. Of course, people can retroactivly write browsers that ignore popup code and other bad features, but this will break legitimate sites. It would work much better if those features had never been included in the first place. Sometimes adding a new feature has a much more harmful effect than making it buggier. New features can be deadly to the project if they are the wrong ones.
This is a rhetorical question : how can one possibly patent a 'feature' built into web-browsers? Popups are only possible because some idiot decided that opening another window without the users consent (and even doing this recursively!) was "friendly" behavoir and belonged in the javascript spec. The same applies to sound. This is another consequence of our failing legal system (lets be honest : its on life support at best. Its BROKEN. While the basic tenants of judges, juries, and appeals might be good, the implementation is falling apart). If the legal system worked without application of large sums of money (and I would not call giving the victory to the one with the money 'justice') this patent would have no meaning.
Its all about convenience. The barrier to entry in any security system always affects how many individuals actually try to break in. For instance, a moderately reinforced steel door is dramatically more secure than a plate glass window, even though both can be trivially defeated by anyone with the knowledge. This is because there is so much lower a barrier to entry with the window that a much larger proportion of the populance will be tempted.
In a similar manner, open wireless networks can usually be used to grant free internet access without doing anything but hanging near the building. Special antennae can be even used to grant one near perfect anonymity and immunity to prosecution. Wired network break-ins require physical access to key wiring somewhere, and the commission of a much more obvious and deliberate crime. (by contrast, most 802.1 war-drivers probably think of it more as walking into a building uninvited when they find the door left cracked open)
Sneaking around a building with a toolkit looking for network cable seems incredibly stupid and dangerous, an almost certain way to end up in jail eventually. It would only be worth even considering if the rewards were immense. By contrast, if one sits at a cafe/van with a laptop one can just power it up and run a few programs and sometimes break into a nearby network with little to no effort but a few clicks. And if one can snoop into a few internal network files, maybe read some mail, so much the better.
The thing is, you already cannot get most of those 400,000 plus films on dvd. To digitize all those movies, at an average size of 10 gigs each (I'm assuming HD and good compression), comes to an incredible 40 million gigs. Hmm... I was dreaming about how cool it would be if storage got to the point that you could have a video jukebox with 'every film ever made'. Only way to store this much data would be with molecular memory. Anyways, it might be more practical to store this kind of information in a distributed network where the viewers are also temporary storage nodes. Sort of like bit-torrent. There would be a few massive machines at the center that have every film, and then all the viewers boxes would have large local storage and would be part of the distribution system for the most commonly watched material. Ideally, people would pay flat fees or something to use it so that there would be no incentive to pirate.
Really? Go use sharereactor and emule and then come back and say we don't have VoD. While in violation of copyright laws, its possible to get DVD quality versions of most major movies and some still in theaters (though these 'cams' and 'telesyncs' are of rather poor quality). The future is now : you've been able to enjoy 2 cd sized DVD rips of movies for a couple years now. The video quality is actually better than most TVs, the sound is sometimes AC3 surround, and the cost is extremely low. You merely need a $40 a month broadband connect and lots of hard drive space.
Or try out netflix, the legal way. For $40 a month from them you can have out 8 dvds at a time, theoretically you could rent at least 30 a month on that plan (the turn around time is 5 days for me). 30 dvds is more than a month of downloading on my connection, the picture quality is slightly better. Only problem is certain dvds are not available on netflix, and you cannot watch shows a couple days after being aired.
I don't think I left the bounds of plausibility anywhere. With sufficient resources ("sufficient" might be a rather large quantity) there's absolutely no reason this couldn't work. The only iffy bit is the top speed. 90% of light may never be achievable because of the collision danger (anything you hit will have the KE of 7*(1/2*m*(.9*c)^2). The "7" takes into account the approximate relatavistic effect. Energy requirements are achievable : the sun puts out enough energy every tenth of a second. Anyways, while it wouldn't be instant the entire galaxy could be assimilated in a few hundred thousand years.
Although I don't have a proof for this, any sequence of numbers can be found in the digits of pi. (obviously some sequences will take much longer to find than others). Thus with a LOT of searching you could find a sequence of numbers that when encoded into characters using ASCII rules (65 as A, 108 as z, ect) correspond exactly to a valid Win2003 Server serial.
Actually, no, you merely have to concentrate enough energy in a small enough space. Anti-electrons have been created in this manner with a very large laser. To be practical, this laser would have to be very efficient (free electron lasers have the potential to be nearly 100% efficient) and very, very large to create antiprotons (which you need to create a stable anti-material).
This is most likely what will fuel starships, when intelligent life here has the resources to build them. (note I said intelligent life : human beings would (probably) never be able to ride these starships, nor would be the builders of them)
Due to the danger posed by the tiniest particle at 80-90% of c, I think these starships would be very very very narrow while crossing the gulf. Only when changing velocity (near the beginning and end of the trip) would they self assemble into a large structure with enough mass to stop the particles produced by the anti/matter annhilation.
I think the actual "payload" would be extremely small : a few hundreds kilograms or less. These would be micromachines capable of exploiting the resources found at the destination. The actual passengers would be sent by quantum teleportation (basically a steam of particles and entangled pairs that would be receieved by the vessel once it has had time to construct a receiver upon arrival. As the ship travels, the micromachines would constantly have to repair damage to it, and would have their programming continuously updated by the beam of information sent from their starting point.). The "passengers" would be information embodying whatever lifeforms wish to explore/exploit the target system. In theory these particles could be pieces from a human mind, but I think this unlikely as meatware isn't very fast or efficient. Basically, most of the ship would be the information sent after it leaves, with only a relatively small mass actually experiencing the speeding up and slowing down.
Interestingly enough, "room temperature" is only a design requirement due to our physiology. Were it possible for most/all energy consuming processes to be completed in outer space, ordinary high temperature superconductors would be more than adequate for the task.
actually I LIKED the intro. I'm just saying the German censors might not. I don't have a problem with it : I know that in the real world, blowing the crap out of the other guy sometimes helps. I also know that historically it has gone nowhere in many cases, resolving nothing yet killing millions.
You have to admit, the kickass intro to C&C Generals shows what appears to be news footage with just the talking mouths. The narration is "In the Twentieth century, world leaders resolve conflicts with words. Words like SCUD MISSILE". Unfortuantly I don't have the game installed atm, but it basically gives the impression that world leaders solve conflicts by blowing the crap out of each other.
The game very stylishly makes this seem cool. And it is amusing. While the gameplay is basically no different than the standard rts, and is not as good as Total Annihilation was (that game is STILL better than nearly anything created since), it has lots of style. The voiceovers and graphics are top notch and hilarious parodies of the present day. The chinese builder says "china will grow larger". The American Crusader tank says "Do what's right", and "Protect our people". There are various voiceovers for the terrorists side like "kill the villagers, they are stealing our supplies".
A sale isn't a sale if the person buying the item for sale AGREES TO A CONTRACT!!!!
Dumbass.
Society would fall apart if you could freely use any item you buy for ANYTHING, even something you agreed not to do. If I make you sign a contract that says you must not do X, and that you are liable for civil penalties (or even criminal if the contract provisions are worded properly) if you do X, and you agree to it, you ARE subject to this penalties if you violate it. Duh! Everything from guns to cars to houses (ever heard of a contract called a "deed restriction". They legally can and will take your house if you violate it. Its 100% legal and enforced all the time) is subject to this, and computing hardware is no exception.
When someone sold you that car, they didn't give you the unrestricted right to rip out all the safety equipment or crash it into people, did they? So when you buy that computer, you are not to rip into the processor (I'm assuming the private key will have to be hidden in memory here so it doesn't have to be transmitted across the bus, plus the processor is so complex it could be buried among the other millions of parts) nor use a virtual machine that emulates the functions of that processors cryptosystem.
A sale isn't an unrestricted sale if the buyer and seller agree to restrictions. Now, it is very difficult to enforce most contractual restrictions associated with software because : 1. The stupid clicking "I agree" and onscreen agreements in tiny text is not a very enforcable contract. I sugest making buyers of Palladium equipped hardware sign a paper contract, with a carbon copy of the contract and their signature kept by the buyer. Just like buying anything else with strings attached, like a house or car. If you read the fine print when you bought that house or car, you DID agree to restrictions on your use of it.
2. It's too damn easy to violate most software contracts, usually just a matter of writing some code or downloading some script. Also they are way too broad most of the time. Contracts associated with Palladium hardware would be mostly concerned with methods to steal the private key, which would ideally require physical hacking to read the memory bytes in the rom.
This isn't delusional thinking, you moron, this is standard contract law that has been in force for hundreds of years. Sorry for the duragatory terms, but you must be really dumb if you didn't know this. Heck, I am positive you don't have the rights to do anything you want with your horse or buggy, either. I bet you can't "mod" the wheels so that it is unsafe, nor use certain whips, nor abuse your horse.
So much for "NEW THINKING" you idiot : its centuries old. The "new thinking" is the thinking that you can do whatever the hell you want when you want because its a computer, and using it wrong won't hurt anyone.
"Surely it is cheaper to not distrubute data than to distribute it and expect every machine in the world to not look at it"
There can be absolutely no doubt whatsover that content creators will NOT be compensated as much as they would have been if their creations can be freely copied. Your "not distribute data" analogy falls apart instantly right here : the content creators have to distribute data to paying customers : they inherently HAVE to trust the clients. However, they don't have control over who they sell to, but they can control what hardware can play back the information.
IF the private key is never revealed because it is physically locked in a difficult to reach place, surrounded by chemicals that ignite when exposed to air or something, then the security cannot be easily broken (assuming no impementation mistakes were made, which I already said may be an erroneous assumption for the first few versions)
Yes, someone COULD physically hack this chip, but they would CLEARLY be committing a crime. This isn't some beatdown on debugging tools : this is prosecuting someone who cut apart a specific chip with the intent to steal specific information, with specialized hardware. While the DeCSS boys may be in a grey area because what they did was trivially easy, stealing and distributing information stolen from Palladium chips would be a crime, enforced by the U.S. federal government.
No this still wouldn't be enough security for government secrets or large financial transactions (though banks already use hardware that basically works the same way, with similar vulnerabilities), but it probably would be enough to protect movies, games, books, and other content.
Well, the screen buffer would be a protected resource. It would be set up so that the only easy way to get the movie out would be to reencode with analog, causing some small degredation in quality. You couldn't get the PERFECT, theater version of the movie at least.
Well, debuggers and all ordinary software tools would NOT, I repeat, NOT be adequate to break Palladium. You would have to create VERY specialized software the emulates the chip from the BIOS up, which would be in clear violation of the rules you had to agree to when you bought that Palladium enabled PC. Only an idiot would sell secure hardware that you could freely hack into without legal reprecussions. Also, you would need to steal the private keys out of the chip. Physically hacking it is the only 100% certain way of doing this, and again, this is no trivial violation of the DMCA. You are physically chopping the chip up and reading those areas with a microscope : there can be no doubt you have criminal intent.
As for invoking Godwin's law : STFU. You are trying to compare selling goods that the buyer agree to when he buts it not to hack (if you don't agree, don't buy it) to murdering people.
Mod me down for saying this (on a side note : I think its lame to say "mod me down" : but if I don't say it, people will think I'm trolling. By putting that tag on my message I'm admitting the message is inflammatory)
Anyway, there are some notable advantages to a system like Palladium. Theoretically, it could enable certain types of applications that aren't possible today which involve trusting the client. Yes, I'm aware that even if the hardware is integrated into the processor someone could still steal the private keys the system depends on, and create an emulated version, cracking the system wide open. I'm also pretty confident the initial versions will have some subtle but still gaping hole, allowing them to be cracked with ease.
However, in theory if it all works right (and from a theoretical standpoint it IS possible to make it work right and be unbreakable) applications running under its protection would have their memory space protected against intrusion.
There is NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING planned that would stop you from writing your own applications that hide under this umbrella (but an integral part will be the system kernel, so microsoft OS only), and I'm sure microsoft will encourage you to do so. There is nothing that will stop you from running untrusted code : it just won't have access to resources belonging to trusted applications (unless you've hacked it of course)
Palladium won't prevent you from installing a different OS on the system, you just won't be able to run trusted apps in that OS (technically its possible to give these same features with open source. The actual keys would have to be hidden, controlled by someone, but everything else could be viewed and contributed to) . Yes in theory SOME types of remote hacking exploits could be stopped. Network applications would now only process messages that are signed by code that your palladium chip certifies as meeting certain criteria. This could make it possible for a microsoft server app to only even look at messages sent by a microsoft client app, preventing many hacks.
This means the application could have secret information in it that needs to be hidden from the end user. For instance, the application could be a movie player that decrypts a spiffy new high definition format which is capable of encoding 1080p digital movie quality video, copied byte for byte straight from the version used in theaters. It could be an online gaming client that to run efficiently must have certain information protected from access and tampering(coordinates of other players, your crosshair location, the current state of the world physics system, objects occluded from view, and many many more). The current generation of MMORPGs have very limited interactivity (cannot aim, shitty AI, no physics, no elements that require player twitch skill) because the client cannot be trusted with anything (and even then it has to have SOME information that could be useful to a hacker) nor control anything interesting.
And yes, it could be a document viewer that reads encrypted documents. The document files themselves might contain more information than the author wants revealed, so the viewer would obey certain rules about when the file can be accessed, and what machine. Currently this is impossible to create because someone could steal the decryption key the viewer uses right out of memory, or edit its code such that it no longer obeys restrictive tags in the file.
None of this would stop you from using untrusted players to view your current data files, and nothing would force you to convert. Unfortunatly, since the keys to the kingdom will be controlled by microsoft bad things could come from this. They could charge monopoly prices, use it to squeeze out their competitors, and do many more things. However, I believe that this has the potential to be a killer app. If you don't want microsoft to rule the software world even more than it already does, perhaps the open source community should look to creating their own, equivalent, alternative.
Precisely. The gadget may work impressively on a small scale...but ordinary PCs on a fast LAN with some of them set up a file sharing servers are VERY impressive(such as on a college campus). You can get quality releases of any popular movie or game or app in minutes, with nearly 0 risk of detection, and no bandwidth bills. (since outside IPs cannot access the network) Plus all of the other features this box has. Best of all, it may be free for you if your parents or the government is paying the bills.
The only thing that bugs me is that while tech miracles happen, how can this thing do all these features effectively on cheap hardware? To do games and video on demand requires reliable disk drives or high end processing hardware.
Also, how is the networking the boxes depend upon better or cheaper or immune to the same problems with rolling out broadband or cable access, elsewhere? Surely it requires the same expensive upgrades to the wiring and nodes as any other networking upgrade, the expense having slowed down adoption of this kind of tech.
But the real problem is the software, the enormous virtual machine required to do all of these things. Programming software to do all the listed features well has taken years, and still isn't finished. I suspect this machine is not nearly as neat or as useful as the PC you are reading this on, especially if your PC is reasonably recent and has a fast, unrestricted, network connection.
How it might work : the set of neural signals going in the "input" array would be recorded. The ones that occur after experiencing someone you might want to remember are then played back, over and over. Presumably this would allow you to GREATLY increase the "weight" given to certain memories. So you'd have a MUCH easier time remembering important details, and be programmed with them for the rest of your life.
But as it is now apparently large amounts of legitimate email are being dumped.