I find this funny because I've been using A9 for the longest time and it already does this. I wonder how many other features they'll borrow from A9?
Thieves! Scoundrels!
I did some extra research, and it turns out that they stole the search engine idea from Alta Vista, the GMail idea from Hotmail, and the whole Internet idea from Al Gore.
I'm extra careful to avoid blocking Google ads with my Adblock filters. I see them as a resource rather than an annoyance. They convey the message, "If you like what you're looking at, then you might be interested in:..." And it's not altogether unlikely that I'll find what I've been searching for in a Google ad. They're added content, not distractions.
In fact, I like their service so much that I decided to add the Google ad code to the code that I include on all the pages on my personal website. Suddenly, like magic, relevant and related links appear attached to all of my web pages. Wow!
And if that wasn't enough, I've already earned $20 this year from advertising on a personal site with zero real content. That's free money to cover hosting, and I didn't even have to try. I know users appreciate them, because they actually (and regularly) click on the adds to find out more.
This interweb thing really is the wave of the future!
No, scrambling a fighter jet is an amazing waste of money. This system is designed to avoid that. RTFA.
You missed the point. This laser system is incapable of achieving the affect for which it was designed. In other words, money spent which gets us no where--a waste of money.
Scrambling fighter jets is costly, but pilots know how to react when intercepted by a government aircraft--you learn that when you get your pilot's license. Pilots do NOT know how to react when you shine a red-red-green light pattern at them. We learn to interpret light patterns, but red-red-green isn't one of them. The few that will have learned what it means are also the pilots who would know to avoid the airspace. So therefore, the system can't work as designed.
The "problem" is more a figment of our legislators' collective fears and feelings of self-importance than anything else.
After 9-11, congress felt that their own office space was definitely important enough to be a terrorist target (strange, I though the terrorists passed up DC and hit the Pentagon instead...), and since our country could not survive without the current set of elected officials, they MUST protect themselves for humanity's sake.
So they decided that any aircraft within a 25000-square-mile area around DC (which includes no small number of airports) must file a special type of flight plan, remain in contact with ATC at all times, and must follow a whole laundry list of restrictions. It's called an ADIZ, and it's a royal PITA, can delay your flight for hours, and has ATC overtaxed to such a degree that flight safety has been seriously compromised on a surprisingly huge number of documented cases. This includes more than a few near-collisions at airports that were avoided only because the pilots were paying closer attention than ATC, while the controllers were busy with these extra restrictions. The situation is a string of disasters waiting to happen. Without the pilots' extra vigilance, the death toll for Congress's arrogance would already be in the hundreds.
In the mean time, there have been a large number of airspace infringements. These are generally caused by things like equipment malfunctions (eg. radio or transponder that goes bad in flight), unintentional flight path deviations (like being blown off course), and sometimes lack of knowledge about how damn huge this protected airspace really is. It's really a unique and unprecidented situation, and some older pilots don't know what to make of it. And on at least one high-profile occasion, the problem was the incompetence of the defense department.
In the near unanimous opinion of us non-congresspeople, the problem is the airspace itself. We're no safer--and in fact, many people's lives are often at risk because of it, including (and especially) all normal air passengers in and around DC. But rather than dismantling the airspace, they're working to strengthen it. This includes the recent addition of missile installations (whose sole purpose is to shoot down Americans), and now this laser warning system--none of which exists even around actual prohibited airspace.
What congress needs to learn--and what they'll never admit--is that congressional elected officials are (a) not a serious terrorist target, and (b) completely and absolutely expendable. We may even be better off if we were to wipe them out and start over.
Ironic subnote: I frequently fly my plane directly over NORAD without violating any airspace at all. In fact, I could fly it right down the tunnel and the only regulation I'd be breaking is the one about "500 feet from any structure, vessel, etc."
By that I mean, why just flash red-red-green. They could also indicate the best direction to turn to get out of the airspace as quickly as possible:
Red-red-green means turn right. Red-green means turn left. Red-red means stay straight. Green-green (for a few seconds) means you are now clear of the airspace.
Too complicated. If the pilot knew enough to memorize the light patterns, he'd know to avoid the ADIZ area without going through the 3-hour process of getting permission. As it is, the program is destined to be a useless waste of money because red-red-green means no more the average pilot than it does to anyone else. It's not one of the standard light signals that towers use.
The program's only potential saving grace is the slim possibility that a pilot would (a) notice the lasers, and (b) realize that they're directed at him as part of some offical government operation (a slim chance at best). He may then tune to 121.5 assuming he's in trouble and get instructions there.
In reality, the program is just another amazing waste of money designed to set the congresspersons at ease about their safety.
It may also be part of the government's legal defense after they shoot down their first civilian. "Well, we shined our lasers at him and he didn't respond, so we fired a SAM across his spinner as a warning shot..."
I will wager that the INSTANT we get hit with an asteroid that doesnt totally anihilate us, you will see some serious money put into colonising space.
Hmm.. I think I'd still take my chances on Earth, thanks.
No, seriously. The human race is under no obligation to perserve itself. It's a quaint idea, but the truth is, our resources are limited. And when you have to make the choice between improving your life here, or increasing the chances of your species' survival (but certainly not your own survival!) by a billionth of a percent, diverting funds away from space colonization is the only reasonable choice.
It's an ROI game. And unless living away from the earth can provide some verifiable (not just theoretical) return on its substantial investment, there's no sence going down that road. And as far as survival is concerned, we stand our best chance here.
The knee-jerk racism that a large proportion of Slashdotters display is very much tied in with the reason there's so much bad feeling against the United States out in the rest of the world...
Yes, there's nothing that makes Iranians more mad at Americans than racist remarks toward the French.
The whole Israel thing just fans the flames that have been burning for centuries.
I just learned today (from an unrelated conversation) that my Dad's uncle came back from fighting in WWII with a much lowered opinion of the French. "You'd think they had liberated us by the way they treated us. It was as if we owed them something."
Amazingly, the German civilians he met were the some the most cordial around--"the enemy" seemed to put France to shame in the area of hosipitality.
After it was all said and done, he'd come to the conclusion that perhaps we'd joined the wrong side.
Sure, it's probably just that same nationalistic pride that's also so prevalent here. When living in other countries, I've frequently been embarassed by the arrogant idiocy of my fellow Americans ("Why doesn't anyone speak English in this country?!"). But when Americans are arrogant, it's excusable--they're from the most powerful country in the world. France, on the other hand; what has France contributed to the world that makes them so special?
I was most way through elementary school before I could point out France on a map. Sure, I'd been told where it was, but France wasn't important enough to remember.
On the other hand, I could name all 50 states by the time I was 8.
The signature panel is not there to prove your identity...
Whether that's what it's there for or not, that's what people use it for. Signature stripes are one of the more tamper-evident parts of the card because companies know that cards with an illegibile signature stripe are more likely get requests to see ID (I had to replace my worn credit card for that very reason).
QoS is simply the prioritization of packets in a particular box's send queue. Either a box can do it or it can't. If your router implements QoS, your router isn't the problem.
Look at your other hardware. If your router can put packets out at 100Mbps, and your cable modem can put out packets at 1.5Mbps, implementing QoS on your router won't get you anywhere--you're router's packet queues are empty. Your cable modem needs to implement QoS too. Cable modems have huge packet queues and can introduce whole seconds of latency--they're usually optimized for throughput only.
You've got, as I see it, three potential solutions:
Get a cable modem/DSL modem, etc. that implements QoS queuing.
Get a connection that's faster than your router (not the cheapest option)
Throttle the traffic on your router so that it only puts out data at such a rate that the cable modem's queues are always empty.
There's more to designing a network archetecture than just buying the hardware. You have to really understand what each element of your network is actually doing.
even though there are already PLENTY of free certificate providers out there today, stocks-r-us has to pay big big bucks to one of a few certificate agencies- There's absolutely, positively, no way around this currently
Actually...
GoDaddy has a signing cert that is signed by one of the universally-trusted CAs that is shipped with all the web browsers (including IE).
That means that GoDaddy has the authority to sign stocks-r-us's cert and it will be trusted by all browsers. And GoDaddy has a long-standing tradition of not overcharging for their services.
They're currently running a special, $30/year (normally $50). Obviously they can't offer the service for free*, they have to pay for their signing cert--which isn't cheap. However, considering everything that goes into the vetting process and all that, I think $30/year is very reasonable.
* GoDaddy does offer free certificate signing for open-source software projects. Sounds like a "do no evil" company to me.
Probably it's a better idea to trust a huge international body, which already manages a lot of aspects of various fields than the current quasi corporate owned system.
Erm.. Why?
What does the world honestly stand to gain? The ICANN currently concerns itself only with domain names, IP addresses, and protocol numbers; while also helping to coordinate aspects of the DNS root servers.
The ICANN is absolutely non-regulatory in nature. It doesn't establish rules or procedures, it doesn't police usage or control access. It exists only to assist in assuring global uniqueness where necessary. They don't even establish protocols or standards (IEEE does that). They exist so that no for-profit company can use that position to exert control over the Internet (and thus threaten to destabilize it).
Transferring the authority of the ICANN over to the UN can't possibly do any good. What very little the ICANN does, it does as well as can be desired. I've yet to see two established transport protocols with the same IP protocol number.
What the UN wants is to take control of a well-known Internet regulatory organization, and use that acquisition to legitimize an extension of that authority to a governing role. Just listen to their rhetoric: stopping cyber crime; reducing spam--that has nothing to do with assigning protocol numbers. They're talking about legislating acceptable use policies for Internet nodes. They can't enforce any such regulations now--no one will listen. They've tried, and no one HAS listened.
But if they can take control of an established position of authority, they can use it to exert more authority still. They'd finally be able to preach from the pulpit of an organization with some authority.
No, any organization that wants to be allowed control of that position should be categorically denied such a request--no matter who it is. Allowing any desirous organization to take control of that role would undermine the very purpose for which the ICANN was established in the first place. It would mean turning the stability of the Internet over to a group with an agenda.
Perhaps the UN should be allowed to regulate what we're allowed to do on the Internet. (God help us if they do.) But leave the ICANN out of it.
Well, feminist do-gooders, in an effort to de-genderify the term whilst keeping the acronym MITM beat you to it, by redefining MITM as "Meet-In-The-Middle".
It was a quite popular term in academia, until it was discovered that "Meat-In-The-Middle" in the context of a three-party situation sounds a lot more gay even.
There's another rendering of MITM that gets thrown around occasionally: "Monkey in the Middle".
It doesn't sound gay.. but it does sound a bit, um, different.
From the looks of their website, they certainly didn't pull out of the project to focus on their core business...
Not only does InCom specialize in RFID public-school attendance systems, that's the only thing they do! Let me see if I can't come up with an explanation for their behavior:
Eager to jump on the RFID bandwagon, a handful of people get together to develop an RFID tracking system. Since they have previous experience in public schools, they think they have this market figured out.
A year or two later, with their shiny new product to sell, they (finally) find a willing school principal and offer to install the system for free--a pilot program and a media stunt at the same time.
Product gets nothing but bad press and angry parents. The company becomes a legand before they've sold a single product, and all of the buzz is bad.
The pilot program has not gone as planned. The future looks bleak. Financial backing begins to withdraw.
Company abruptly terminates program, attempts to get as far away from the media spotlight as possible. The program has failed.
At this point, the company's chances of survival are slim, and there's a strong probability that the executives will fold and cut their losses. This installation in CA was their one big chance to make a splash, and it was a total disaster. I doubt this company has the resources to try again.
However you look at it. I think RFID in the schools is gone for the time being. If it returns, the company bringing it about will undoubtedly learn from the mistakes made here. The parents will be involved in the decision, and extra care will be taken to make sure that it turns out to be a PR success.
I've already lost trillions on my canned-air venture this year alone. I figured that, as vital as breathing air is, people would be willing to pay my reasonable rate of $200 per cubic foot.
Apparently there's a free alternative that people are taking advantage of, driving my company out of business. How can I undersell free? Better label those free-breathers out there as "air pirates" and start a "get the facts" campaign about the total-cost-of-breathing.
Disclosure or not, if there is an exploit possible your systems are vulnerable.
I agree. Not only are your systems vulnerable, but someone knows they are, too. Maybe only the good guys know, but there's enough chance that there's a black hat who found out too.
If you get a message as simple as "there's a security hole in Tux that could potentially lead to a remote root exploit," even if there is no fix, at least you can disable Tux and move your pages over to Apache--just for now until the patch is released. If one of my systems can be comprimised I want to know, even if I can't patch it yet. At least I can mitigate the risk in other ways.
This is bad. Very bad. Theories of evolution aside (I happen to agree with the text book, not the stikers), this decision is a direct and flagrant violation of the constitution.
The text of the message: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." contains no endorsement or condemnation of any religion, religious belief, or religious practice. The statement itself cannot be deemed a violation of the required separation of church and state. Had the statement actually endorsed a creationist idea, the case would be very different.
The statement was added because of the compliants of the parents of the students who will be using those books. This behavior isn't unheard of--it happens every year with regards to sex ed and other "touchy" subjects that parents' children study in school. It's important that it wasn't the pastors, rabbis, or TV evangelists who pressured the school board, it was the parents. The sticker was a direct result of the desires of the actual members of that school district, not any religion or religious organization. Parents are totally within their rights to argue with the school board, regardless of their religion.
The judge in this case ruled the stickers unconstitutional because of the religion of the people who supported it. "Bah," you may say. But think about it. The judge took up against the "religious" side because the issue is sometimes a point of religious conflict. This is exactly the sort of behavior the constitution prohibits.
If you still don't see anything wrong with this picture, it's because you don't understand the meaning or purpose behind the separation of church and state. This amendment to the constitution was put in place forbid the government from oppressing any individual because of his religion. It is by considering atheism "yet another valid religious belief" that this religious protection is extended to them as well. And since athiesm is just another religion, it must be protected, but it cannot be favored. All religious beliefs, even the ones that don't call themselves "religious", must be given equal rights.
What's wrong with this case is that it's an example of a judge ruling for a religion (the atheists), and not because there was anything wrong with the stickers. They neither promoted nor condemned any religion--or lack thereof. They only questioned a scientific principle. And it's not unconstitutional to question a principle--no matter how wrong you may be. Rather, the judge ruled against the "religious" because of their religion. The ruling was made as if the judge believed atheism to be the official religion of the state, to be promoted at the expense of others.
If you're an athiest, you probably still don't see anything wrong with it. So how about this:
Let's say that instead the issue at hand is a geography book, written by Christians, that said that Saudi Arabia is an ugly place that the world could do without. Some local Muslims take offsense and get the school board to put a sticker on the book that says, "This book contains some statements about the value of certain locations that are based solely on the authors own taste, and which should be approached with an open mind."
In such a case, can a judge declare those stickers unconstitutional because they tend to support an idea which some Muslims see as a religious issue. The issue at stake isn't whether Saudi Arabia really is ugly or not. Likewise, the previous arguement isn't really about evolution. It's about the government taking sides on an issue just because a religion supports or opposes it.
Imagine you're at your local wal-mart. You pick up something expensive--but relatively light--from the back of the store. An SD memory card or something. You head to the front of the store to the self-checkout stand. But when you're about to scan the memory card, you notice the rack of candy bars in front of you. They weigh about as much as the memory card in your hand. You grab butterfinger bar and scan it instead, put the memory card in your bag, and the candy bar back on the shelf.
Clearly that's theft. You've paid for the candy bar, and could legally take it home. But you decide to take home the memory card instead.
UPC code switching is exactly the same dance, but a little more difficult to catch.
Now if Wal-Mart had incorrectly labeled the memory card with a butterfinger barcode, the story may be different. But they didn't.
From the article: "I know that these actions would be controversial in this age where we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability," Mr. Tenet said, "But, ultimately, the Wild West must give way to governance and control."
*Sigh*...
Calling the internet "cyberspace" has only served to perpetuate the misconception that there's some "virtual place" that can be governed like a city. The Internet isn't really a place to meet, it's a way to communicate.
The Internet is a lot like pen and paper in that way. You can point to all the atrocities that have been planned using pen and paper and the covert messages that have been delivered using paper as the medium, and say, "this needs to be regulated in the interest of our own safety!" But in the end, you really can't do anything about it.
You can control the sale of pens and paper, you can read all the mail sent through the post office. You can pass laws allowing law enforcement to sieze any pieces of paper you might have. But in the end, all you've managed to do is be nusiance. People can use alternate methods of delivery that don't pass under government scrutany, or they can write using secret code that no government can break.
For better or for worse, technology has leveled the field--individuals can be as immune to government scrutany as the government is immune to the public. There's no longer such a thing as a "superpower" when it comes to communication. All are equal. And that's a difficult thing for a superpower to swallow.
Due to the rollout of WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System), there are a growing number of airports in the country which have GPS approaches.
Yeah, I used to think that our system was good enough. Then one of those presidential campaigns came to town.
See, I have a Garmin 430 in my airplane. I went for a flight after the presidential hopeful left town. The RAIM warning popped up shortly after turning the reciver on (making it unsafe--and illegal--to execute any approaches). See, seems that the US Secret Service was afraid that a terrorist would try to drop a nucular bomb on one of the candidates, and turned off GPS reception for our... um... state. And apparently, even though the state was no longer a target, they just hadn't gotten around to turning the GPS back on.
I talked to some other pilots, and apparently this is standard procedure--and has been since GPS first went active.
I was really hoping that the European system would put an end to this idiocy. Damn.
You would have found it if you had clicked the "Learn More" link prominantly displayed on the page.
Your own previous searches are not used at all in determining results. The results you see are exactly the same results everyone else will see. You're sending the same information to Google that you send in a normal search (i.e. your query). Google is sending the same information back to you that they normally send (the results). The only things that's different is that they send each of the little pieces of it as you type them.
No one has commented on privacy yet because privacy is irrelevant. No one has commented on terrorism yet either, does that surprise you?
Slashdot Mirror
Thieves! Scoundrels!
I did some extra research, and it turns out that they stole the search engine idea from Alta Vista, the GMail idea from Hotmail, and the whole Internet idea from Al Gore.
Can't they do anything original?
Wow. If I had known that he was such a celebrity, I probably would have paid more attention in his Enterprise Systems class at BYU.
I guess it's nice to learn from someone important who doesn't act like the world revolves around him.
Which, I imagine, is part of why the girl is suing AOL instead of the employee. AOL was making false claims, while apparently the man wasn't.
In fact, I like their service so much that I decided to add the Google ad code to the code that I include on all the pages on my personal website. Suddenly, like magic, relevant and related links appear attached to all of my web pages. Wow!
And if that wasn't enough, I've already earned $20 this year from advertising on a personal site with zero real content. That's free money to cover hosting, and I didn't even have to try. I know users appreciate them, because they actually (and regularly) click on the adds to find out more.
This interweb thing really is the wave of the future!
You missed the point. This laser system is incapable of achieving the affect for which it was designed. In other words, money spent which gets us no where--a waste of money.
Scrambling fighter jets is costly, but pilots know how to react when intercepted by a government aircraft--you learn that when you get your pilot's license. Pilots do NOT know how to react when you shine a red-red-green light pattern at them. We learn to interpret light patterns, but red-red-green isn't one of them. The few that will have learned what it means are also the pilots who would know to avoid the airspace. So therefore, the system can't work as designed.
QED
After 9-11, congress felt that their own office space was definitely important enough to be a terrorist target (strange, I though the terrorists passed up DC and hit the Pentagon instead...), and since our country could not survive without the current set of elected officials, they MUST protect themselves for humanity's sake.
So they decided that any aircraft within a 25000-square-mile area around DC (which includes no small number of airports) must file a special type of flight plan, remain in contact with ATC at all times, and must follow a whole laundry list of restrictions. It's called an ADIZ, and it's a royal PITA, can delay your flight for hours, and has ATC overtaxed to such a degree that flight safety has been seriously compromised on a surprisingly huge number of documented cases. This includes more than a few near-collisions at airports that were avoided only because the pilots were paying closer attention than ATC, while the controllers were busy with these extra restrictions. The situation is a string of disasters waiting to happen. Without the pilots' extra vigilance, the death toll for Congress's arrogance would already be in the hundreds.
In the mean time, there have been a large number of airspace infringements. These are generally caused by things like equipment malfunctions (eg. radio or transponder that goes bad in flight), unintentional flight path deviations (like being blown off course), and sometimes lack of knowledge about how damn huge this protected airspace really is. It's really a unique and unprecidented situation, and some older pilots don't know what to make of it. And on at least one high-profile occasion, the problem was the incompetence of the defense department.
In the near unanimous opinion of us non-congresspeople, the problem is the airspace itself. We're no safer--and in fact, many people's lives are often at risk because of it, including (and especially) all normal air passengers in and around DC. But rather than dismantling the airspace, they're working to strengthen it. This includes the recent addition of missile installations (whose sole purpose is to shoot down Americans), and now this laser warning system--none of which exists even around actual prohibited airspace.
What congress needs to learn--and what they'll never admit--is that congressional elected officials are (a) not a serious terrorist target, and (b) completely and absolutely expendable. We may even be better off if we were to wipe them out and start over.
Ironic subnote: I frequently fly my plane directly over NORAD without violating any airspace at all. In fact, I could fly it right down the tunnel and the only regulation I'd be breaking is the one about "500 feet from any structure, vessel, etc."
Too complicated. If the pilot knew enough to memorize the light patterns, he'd know to avoid the ADIZ area without going through the 3-hour process of getting permission. As it is, the program is destined to be a useless waste of money because red-red-green means no more the average pilot than it does to anyone else. It's not one of the standard light signals that towers use.
The program's only potential saving grace is the slim possibility that a pilot would (a) notice the lasers, and (b) realize that they're directed at him as part of some offical government operation (a slim chance at best). He may then tune to 121.5 assuming he's in trouble and get instructions there.
In reality, the program is just another amazing waste of money designed to set the congresspersons at ease about their safety.
It may also be part of the government's legal defense after they shoot down their first civilian. "Well, we shined our lasers at him and he didn't respond, so we fired a SAM across his spinner as a warning shot..."
Hmm.. I think I'd still take my chances on Earth, thanks.
No, seriously. The human race is under no obligation to perserve itself. It's a quaint idea, but the truth is, our resources are limited. And when you have to make the choice between improving your life here, or increasing the chances of your species' survival (but certainly not your own survival!) by a billionth of a percent, diverting funds away from space colonization is the only reasonable choice.
It's an ROI game. And unless living away from the earth can provide some verifiable (not just theoretical) return on its substantial investment, there's no sence going down that road. And as far as survival is concerned, we stand our best chance here.
Yes, there's nothing that makes Iranians more mad at Americans than racist remarks toward the French.
The whole Israel thing just fans the flames that have been burning for centuries.
Amazingly, the German civilians he met were the some the most cordial around--"the enemy" seemed to put France to shame in the area of hosipitality.
After it was all said and done, he'd come to the conclusion that perhaps we'd joined the wrong side.
Sure, it's probably just that same nationalistic pride that's also so prevalent here. When living in other countries, I've frequently been embarassed by the arrogant idiocy of my fellow Americans ("Why doesn't anyone speak English in this country?!"). But when Americans are arrogant, it's excusable--they're from the most powerful country in the world. France, on the other hand; what has France contributed to the world that makes them so special?
I was most way through elementary school before I could point out France on a map. Sure, I'd been told where it was, but France wasn't important enough to remember.
On the other hand, I could name all 50 states by the time I was 8.
Whether that's what it's there for or not, that's what people use it for. Signature stripes are one of the more tamper-evident parts of the card because companies know that cards with an illegibile signature stripe are more likely get requests to see ID (I had to replace my worn credit card for that very reason).
It seemed to fit the context
Look at your other hardware. If your router can put packets out at 100Mbps, and your cable modem can put out packets at 1.5Mbps, implementing QoS on your router won't get you anywhere--you're router's packet queues are empty. Your cable modem needs to implement QoS too. Cable modems have huge packet queues and can introduce whole seconds of latency--they're usually optimized for throughput only.
You've got, as I see it, three potential solutions:
There's more to designing a network archetecture than just buying the hardware. You have to really understand what each element of your network is actually doing.
Actually...
GoDaddy has a signing cert that is signed by one of the universally-trusted CAs that is shipped with all the web browsers (including IE).
That means that GoDaddy has the authority to sign stocks-r-us's cert and it will be trusted by all browsers. And GoDaddy has a long-standing tradition of not overcharging for their services.
They're currently running a special, $30/year (normally $50). Obviously they can't offer the service for free*, they have to pay for their signing cert--which isn't cheap. However, considering everything that goes into the vetting process and all that, I think $30/year is very reasonable.
* GoDaddy does offer free certificate signing for open-source software projects. Sounds like a "do no evil" company to me.
Erm.. Why?
What does the world honestly stand to gain? The ICANN currently concerns itself only with domain names, IP addresses, and protocol numbers; while also helping to coordinate aspects of the DNS root servers.
The ICANN is absolutely non-regulatory in nature. It doesn't establish rules or procedures, it doesn't police usage or control access. It exists only to assist in assuring global uniqueness where necessary. They don't even establish protocols or standards (IEEE does that). They exist so that no for-profit company can use that position to exert control over the Internet (and thus threaten to destabilize it).
Transferring the authority of the ICANN over to the UN can't possibly do any good. What very little the ICANN does, it does as well as can be desired. I've yet to see two established transport protocols with the same IP protocol number.
What the UN wants is to take control of a well-known Internet regulatory organization, and use that acquisition to legitimize an extension of that authority to a governing role. Just listen to their rhetoric: stopping cyber crime; reducing spam--that has nothing to do with assigning protocol numbers. They're talking about legislating acceptable use policies for Internet nodes. They can't enforce any such regulations now--no one will listen. They've tried, and no one HAS listened.
But if they can take control of an established position of authority, they can use it to exert more authority still. They'd finally be able to preach from the pulpit of an organization with some authority.
No, any organization that wants to be allowed control of that position should be categorically denied such a request--no matter who it is. Allowing any desirous organization to take control of that role would undermine the very purpose for which the ICANN was established in the first place. It would mean turning the stability of the Internet over to a group with an agenda.
Perhaps the UN should be allowed to regulate what we're allowed to do on the Internet. (God help us if they do.) But leave the ICANN out of it.
It was a quite popular term in academia, until it was discovered that "Meat-In-The-Middle" in the context of a three-party situation sounds a lot more gay even.
There's another rendering of MITM that gets thrown around occasionally: "Monkey in the Middle".
It doesn't sound gay.. but it does sound a bit, um, different.
http://www.incomcorporation.com/
From the looks of their website, they certainly didn't pull out of the project to focus on their core business...
Not only does InCom specialize in RFID public-school attendance systems, that's the only thing they do! Let me see if I can't come up with an explanation for their behavior:
At this point, the company's chances of survival are slim, and there's a strong probability that the executives will fold and cut their losses. This installation in CA was their one big chance to make a splash, and it was a total disaster. I doubt this company has the resources to try again.
However you look at it. I think RFID in the schools is gone for the time being. If it returns, the company bringing it about will undoubtedly learn from the mistakes made here. The parents will be involved in the decision, and extra care will be taken to make sure that it turns out to be a PR success.
I've already lost trillions on my canned-air venture this year alone. I figured that, as vital as breathing air is, people would be willing to pay my reasonable rate of $200 per cubic foot.
Apparently there's a free alternative that people are taking advantage of, driving my company out of business. How can I undersell free? Better label those free-breathers out there as "air pirates" and start a "get the facts" campaign about the total-cost-of-breathing.
And remember, persons denying the existance of Robots may be Robots themselves.
I agree. Not only are your systems vulnerable, but someone knows they are, too. Maybe only the good guys know, but there's enough chance that there's a black hat who found out too.
If you get a message as simple as "there's a security hole in Tux that could potentially lead to a remote root exploit," even if there is no fix, at least you can disable Tux and move your pages over to Apache--just for now until the patch is released. If one of my systems can be comprimised I want to know, even if I can't patch it yet. At least I can mitigate the risk in other ways.
The text of the message: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." contains no endorsement or condemnation of any religion, religious belief, or religious practice. The statement itself cannot be deemed a violation of the required separation of church and state. Had the statement actually endorsed a creationist idea, the case would be very different.
The statement was added because of the compliants of the parents of the students who will be using those books. This behavior isn't unheard of--it happens every year with regards to sex ed and other "touchy" subjects that parents' children study in school. It's important that it wasn't the pastors, rabbis, or TV evangelists who pressured the school board, it was the parents. The sticker was a direct result of the desires of the actual members of that school district, not any religion or religious organization. Parents are totally within their rights to argue with the school board, regardless of their religion.
The judge in this case ruled the stickers unconstitutional because of the religion of the people who supported it. "Bah," you may say. But think about it. The judge took up against the "religious" side because the issue is sometimes a point of religious conflict. This is exactly the sort of behavior the constitution prohibits.
If you still don't see anything wrong with this picture, it's because you don't understand the meaning or purpose behind the separation of church and state. This amendment to the constitution was put in place forbid the government from oppressing any individual because of his religion. It is by considering atheism "yet another valid religious belief" that this religious protection is extended to them as well. And since athiesm is just another religion, it must be protected, but it cannot be favored. All religious beliefs, even the ones that don't call themselves "religious", must be given equal rights.
What's wrong with this case is that it's an example of a judge ruling for a religion (the atheists), and not because there was anything wrong with the stickers. They neither promoted nor condemned any religion--or lack thereof. They only questioned a scientific principle. And it's not unconstitutional to question a principle--no matter how wrong you may be. Rather, the judge ruled against the "religious" because of their religion. The ruling was made as if the judge believed atheism to be the official religion of the state, to be promoted at the expense of others.
If you're an athiest, you probably still don't see anything wrong with it. So how about this:
Let's say that instead the issue at hand is a geography book, written by Christians, that said that Saudi Arabia is an ugly place that the world could do without. Some local Muslims take offsense and get the school board to put a sticker on the book that says, "This book contains some statements about the value of certain locations that are based solely on the authors own taste, and which should be approached with an open mind."
In such a case, can a judge declare those stickers unconstitutional because they tend to support an idea which some Muslims see as a religious issue. The issue at stake isn't whether Saudi Arabia really is ugly or not. Likewise, the previous arguement isn't really about evolution. It's about the government taking sides on an issue just because a religion supports or opposes it.
Clearly that's theft. You've paid for the candy bar, and could legally take it home. But you decide to take home the memory card instead.
UPC code switching is exactly the same dance, but a little more difficult to catch.
Now if Wal-Mart had incorrectly labeled the memory card with a butterfinger barcode, the story may be different. But they didn't.
*Sigh*...
Calling the internet "cyberspace" has only served to perpetuate the misconception that there's some "virtual place" that can be governed like a city. The Internet isn't really a place to meet, it's a way to communicate.
The Internet is a lot like pen and paper in that way. You can point to all the atrocities that have been planned using pen and paper and the covert messages that have been delivered using paper as the medium, and say, "this needs to be regulated in the interest of our own safety!" But in the end, you really can't do anything about it.
You can control the sale of pens and paper, you can read all the mail sent through the post office. You can pass laws allowing law enforcement to sieze any pieces of paper you might have. But in the end, all you've managed to do is be nusiance. People can use alternate methods of delivery that don't pass under government scrutany, or they can write using secret code that no government can break.
For better or for worse, technology has leveled the field--individuals can be as immune to government scrutany as the government is immune to the public. There's no longer such a thing as a "superpower" when it comes to communication. All are equal. And that's a difficult thing for a superpower to swallow.
Yeah, I used to think that our system was good enough. Then one of those presidential campaigns came to town.
See, I have a Garmin 430 in my airplane. I went for a flight after the presidential hopeful left town. The RAIM warning popped up shortly after turning the reciver on (making it unsafe--and illegal--to execute any approaches). See, seems that the US Secret Service was afraid that a terrorist would try to drop a nucular bomb on one of the candidates, and turned off GPS reception for our... um... state. And apparently, even though the state was no longer a target, they just hadn't gotten around to turning the GPS back on.
I talked to some other pilots, and apparently this is standard procedure--and has been since GPS first went active.
I was really hoping that the European system would put an end to this idiocy. Damn.
You wouldn't have been so surprised if you had done what the rest of use did and READ THE FAQ!
http://labs.google.com/suggest/faq.html
You would have found it if you had clicked the "Learn More" link prominantly displayed on the page.
Your own previous searches are not used at all in determining results. The results you see are exactly the same results everyone else will see. You're sending the same information to Google that you send in a normal search (i.e. your query). Google is sending the same information back to you that they normally send (the results). The only things that's different is that they send each of the little pieces of it as you type them.
No one has commented on privacy yet because privacy is irrelevant. No one has commented on terrorism yet either, does that surprise you?