Thin Client has its place, but so does public transportation... and some people, no matter what, want to "drive their own."
But that doesn't mean that no one uses (or would want to use) public transportation. Lots of people would love to use a thin client (including me). It's just that no one has figured out how to do it correctly, yet. The bottom line is that it will take an extremely good (nearly perfect) hardware abstraction layer. It can be done! I play Nintendo 64 games on my XBox all the time!:)
Well, I think that portable storage like this is already possible today. You're just talking about carrying all your data with you, basically. The links, shortcuts, etc, that you mention are just sugar coating. This "IRS" project is about actually bringing your whole environment with you. That means all your installed applications, games, OS settings, application settings, and whatever else. In other words, I want to be able to buy 3DStudio (thousands of dollars) and then use it, instantly, from any PC, anywhere in the world, just as if I were using it at home. First of all, that remote PC must have sufficient resources (good 3D card, CPU, lots of RAM, etc...). Second, this IRS thing is going to have to provide a near perfect hardware abstraction layer. It's not a new idea. But it's an extremely difficult thing to actually get right. That's why it hasn't happened yet.
The fact that the DoJ made this decision probably means that there is something really, really "bad" in that database. My guess is that this move is not intended to stall the release of the information until after the election, but to stall the release until that particular information can be destroyed. I think that Williams' group stumbled onto more than they expected. It's just a shot in the dark, of course... but for the DoJ to whip up a crock of sh*t like this, there's got to be something completely hideous in that data. It's silly to even guess what that might be, but let your imagination run wild...
The Icelink is really, really sweet. This thing from BMW appears to be exactly the same thing. Full control of the iPod from the steering wheel or head unit. The nicest thing (which you don't get with the Transpod or those other tacky adapters) is that the iPod turns off when the car and/or stereo turns off. When you start it back up, it picks up right where you left off. The one thing that's missing is that the car's head unit doesn't display the song/artist/album info from the MP3 tag. Looks like that's the case with this BMW thing, too.
I haven't rtfa. I haven't even read the entire slashdot blurb. I got about two sentences in and that was enough. What is the point of posting something like this? Shock value? Does anyone really think that PC's will be made illegal? Or that a "broadcast flag" on the Internet would have any real effect? If PC's were made illegal, why would we even need an Internet? I fart in the general direction of this story. Next, please.
I think that Kurzweil is the man. He tends to be a little alarmist, I guess... Either way, I think it's certainly worthwhile to check his site now and then. He's constantly posting new articles about extending life, as well as AI and "the singularity." Interesting to think about, whether you believe him or not.
As much as I dislike Via, I gotta admit that these mini boards are a home run -- the best thing to happen to PCs in a long time. I'm looking forward to Intel and/or AMD jumping on the bandwagon. And soon after that I hope to see even smaller stuff becoming popular, possibly even system-on-chip designs. How sweet would that be? Yeah, I know you can buy a single-chip system now, but I want one that's just (or almost) as powerful as my home PC. Integrated graphics, gigs of RAM, all running at several GHz. Forget laptops... put the whole thing in a PDA.:)
Music is information. Any song that you've ever heard, or ever will hear, is nothing more than a number, once it's represented digitally. How moronic does the RIAA have to be to realize that there is absolutely, positively NO WAY to ever prevent people from sharing numbers?
Let's say that I have a number: five. Once I tell you (the listener) that number, the cat is out of the bag! I can't un-tell you the number. You already know it!! I can claim that I have a copyright on the number five, and I can hunt down and sue everyone who has the number five written down on a piece of paper somewhere, but it's a losing battle.
Ok, so now I'll get tricky, and I'll add anti-piracy measures to my number. I'll encrypt it, with an enormously complex scheme, and I'll only give out the key to people who pay me for it. Problem solved!
But, wait... in order to actually "use" my number, you have to decrypt it. At some point, you have to get what you paid for, and that is the number: five. Now, once you have the raw, decrypted number, how in the hell can I stop you from telling your buddy what my number is? I could monitor every phone line in the country and every mailbox, to try and stop you from telling anyone... yeah, that's really cost effective for me.
The simple truth is that if I sell you a number, I can't stop you from giving that number to others.
The only difference between my number (five) and a song is the size. My number (five) has one digit, and a song has a few million. It takes one microsecond to transmit my number (five) accross a wire, and it takes thirty seconds to transmit a song. Not a big difference, really... and it will continue to be less and less of a difference as information is transmitted faster and faster over the Internet. Songs, movies, and any other information will soon be practically as easy to transmit as my number (five). Encrypt them and flag them any way you like... eventually, you have to give me the raw number if I'm going to actually use it. What I do with it from there is beyond your control. Deal with it. Move on. Game over.
It's amazing that people will actually pay for software that does nothing more than blog. Anyone ever heard of Notepad (or vi)? It has pretty much all the features of every popular blogging tool out there, and is probably much easier to use.
I'm not being sarcastic... What's a blog? A bunch of text with fonts and an IMG tag here or there. If you can't figure out the insanely complex HTML required for that, then your blog probably isn't very interesting, anyway.
And, for the super, uber-elite coders, you could write about three lines of CGI to handle all that intense formatting for you. Or just download one of the bazillion free scripts to do it. If you pay for blogging software, you are a sucker. But I'll sell you my blogging "system" if the price is right.
You know, there's an ironic thing about the speed limit. I don't think that police really want to strictly enforce it. If they did, what would happen? There would be a tremendous flood of tickets issued at first... There would be serious outcry from the majority of people who feel the limit is too low... They would probably raise it slightly, but not enough to really matter...
It's just like the weekly poker night that I host. I tell people: "Show up no later than 8:00, or cards will be dealt and your hands will be folded." Now, we don't really enforce that rule, but there has to be some rule in place, just because, otherwise, if I said, "Show up anytime from 7:00 to 9:00," then the first guy would show up at 9:30, and the game would start sometime around midnight.
There has to be some speed limit, but strict enforcement just isn't good for anyone -- especially the police.
Good lord... Someone downloaded something from Limewire and it wasn't what it claimed to be. Slashdot beat everyone to the scoop... I'm sure articles will be popping up all over CNN, Reuters, MSNBC, Yahoo, etc... They just haven't had time to gather their thoughts. And who can blame them, considering the magnitude of a story like this one?
This is going to shatter the credibility of Limewire. They'll be sued out of existence. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some sort of insanely devious and clever plot masterminded by Kazaa to eliminate their competition. This may be the end of P2P as we know it.
Truly a red-letter day. Everyone, take a moment to remember today's date, because your grandchildren will be asking you where you were on 5/12/04 -- the day of the trojan that was heard around the world.
I agree... this article is nonsense. There are tons of exciting new things happening in graphics, and this article covers none of them. The stuff covered here is as old as Quake, and much of it is probably obsolete on today's graphics hardware. And even if the techniques covered were relevant, there is nothing for the reader to work with -- no sample code, not even a single diagram or even a rough algorithm given. What's the point?
Not sure why this got modded as troll. It's the truth. Dell is basically the branch of Intel that makes the cases, heyboards, monitors, etc... They will never jeopardize their relationship with Intel, and even if they were to think about it (which they won't), Intel would simply threaten to take away the extra-special prices they give Dell on CPUs.
Dell will start carrying AMD when Intel goes out of business. It's not going to happen. Intel has complete and utter control over Dell through price manipulation. This isn't new. The only way AMD can win is if others, like HP, somehow start out-selling Dell. That's possible, but Dell shipping AMD simply isn't possible. Dell is Intel. Believe dat.
I don't see this stuff coming into anyone's mouth for many years to come.
Maybe what you meant to say was "I hope I don't see this stuff coming into anyone's mouth for many years to come."
As a dentist, you're required to be opposed to the advancement of technology. What other branch of medicine has remained in the dark ages so successfully? Your primary tools are a pointy stick and various drills.
For fun, let's compare your work with mine. I'm a computer engineer. I work for a company that builds computer chips. If I were to sell you a computer that performed as well as the service that you, as a dentist, provide your customers, I think you would probably want a refund. Here's the computer that I would build for you:
You would have to clean the computer twice a day, at least. This would require a few minutes per cleaning, and you would have to buy computer cleaning supplies regularly.
Every six months, at least, you would have to bring the computer back to my office, where I would check it for normal operation and perform a more thorough cleaning than your twice-daily cleaning.
Every year or so, a chip would develop a flaw, which would need to be fixed.
The entire motherboard might become physically un-aligned, in which case I would use a complicated, unattractive mesh of metal and rubber bands to re-align it. Rubber bands, for crying out loud!
Eventually, entire chips would decay and fall off the motherboard. I would replace these, at tremendous personal cost to you, with fake chips.
This would leave you with two choices. One: you could fork over thousands and thousands of dollars and keep your computer running, or, two: you could just choose not to have a computer.
You would choose option two. Unfortunately, as your customer, I don't have option two. I have no choice but to pay and pay and pay for you to maintain my teeth, while you make ABSOLUTELY NO attempt to advance your science out of the dark ages of pointy sicks and drills and rubber bands. Why would you? Doing so would cut into your income, and possibly even make most of your services obsolete. Sure, it might make your patients' lives dramatically better, but that's not what's important.
And, of course, when something new does come along, you berate and belittle it, in the hopes that no one takes it seriously. Nice work.
And, this gives me another idea. What if I wrote a peer-to-peer application that let users share only numbers? You can copy any portion of the ones and zeros that happen to be stored on my hard disk to your hard disk. It's not music, it's not a JPEG, it's just a number. Do with it what you will. If you happen to take that number and save it in a file called "John Doe - Some Song.mp3" then that's your prerogative. All I gave you was a number. Would there be anything illegal about that transfer of information?
What would we call this app? Maybe "Numbster?" Genius.
I have this idea I've been toying with for a while... I think that it can be scientifically proven that copyright (especially regarding music) is
1) Nonsensical
2) Not enforceable
I'm certain that lots of attempts have been made along these lines, but has anyone ever sat down and put together a well-written, somewhat technical proof along these lines? It might go something like this...
1) It's nonsense because anything (e.g. a song) that is represented digitally is absolutely nothing more than a single, very large number. A long string of ones and zeros. How can a number be eligible for copyright? Can I apply for a copyright on every number from zero to infinity? What about just some finite set of numbers that are roughly the right size to represent a three minute song? Also, if an artist owns a copyright on a song, how can you prove that a large number stored on a computer is an actual representation of that song? What if I change the filename from "John Doe - Some Song.mp3" to "ABCDEF.XYZ"? Then, when I double click the file, nothing happens -- no music is heard, because my operating system doesn't recognize the "XYZ" extension, so it doesn't run Winamp. Is the very large number stored on my hard disk no longer a song, just because the name changed? What if I remove all of the bits (such as ID3 tags) that might identify the very large number as music? Is it still music? What if I randomly flip a few bits from zero to one or vice-versa within the very large number? It's not the same number any more, but does it still represent the same song? How many bits within this very large number do I have to flip before it no longer represents a song? What if I take a picture with my digital camera and save it to my hard disk, and that file happens to be the exact same very large number that represents a piece of music? Am I violating that musician's copyright by saving that JPEG on my hard disk?
2) It's not enforceable because the brain stores information, and there is no (reasonable) way to erase that information. Once I've heard a song, I may remember it, without even meaning to. It is stored in my brain. This process is absolutely no different than my storing a numeric representation of a song (e.g. an MP3) on my hard disk. How can one of these acts be legal, while the other is not? What if, in the near future, technology is developed that can improve human memory? What if I could install a hard disk in my brain that automatically remembered every song that I hear, with 100% quality? Would I then be violating a copyright just by listening to a song and remembering it? That may be pure science fiction, but I doubt that anyone would be surprised if this technology became available within this century. We already rely on computers to remember mountains of information for us. What's the difference between remembering someone's phone number, using your brain, and writing it down on a piece of paper? The information is exactly the same, either way. A piece of music is simply a very large phone number.
QED.:) Well, I suppose I would want to elaborate a little more. But you get the idea.
This article is dumb. It is a whitelist, only more complicated and awkward. Every person has to establish a "secure channel" with their recipient prior to sending them mail. GREAT idea. If I've established a "secure channel" with my message recipient so that I can give him this goofy code/formula/thing, then why don't I just go ahead and give him the whole message while I've got his attention? The author says that the secure channel can even be a face-to-face meeting. Brilliant.
Hey, buddy, let's get together for lunch tomorrow. I want to give you my latest e-mail code-number so that we can send e-mails.
I can't deny the fact that this idea would definitely reduce spam... because no one would use e-mail any more.
Does anyone else find this bizzarre? What are the odds that the rover happened taking a picture of that part of the sky at that exact instant? Isn't it even more mind boggling that the streak is roughly dead-center in the picture Has anyone ever attempted to snap a picture of a meteor, even when you're expecting a meteor shower that night? It's damned hard... the only way to really do it is to use a long exposure and just wait.
The odds against this kind of coincidence must be staggering. Any math geniuses want to take a stab at it? We could estimate how often the half-dozen (?) satellites around mars would pass through that particular section of the sky, and we know roughly how many photos the rovers take in a given day... The odds must be something like one in a billion, or worse. I can't help but think of the slashdot sig I see once in a while... something like "The face of the moon is covered with the results of astronomical odds."
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the people I get to reply to are idiots... Are you one of them?
Yes, I "DEFINATELY" am. And I'm also a "looser."
Thin Client has its place, but so does public transportation... and some people, no matter what, want to "drive their own."
:)
But that doesn't mean that no one uses (or would want to use) public transportation. Lots of people would love to use a thin client (including me). It's just that no one has figured out how to do it correctly, yet. The bottom line is that it will take an extremely good (nearly perfect) hardware abstraction layer. It can be done! I play Nintendo 64 games on my XBox all the time!
Well, I think that portable storage like this is already possible today. You're just talking about carrying all your data with you, basically. The links, shortcuts, etc, that you mention are just sugar coating. This "IRS" project is about actually bringing your whole environment with you. That means all your installed applications, games, OS settings, application settings, and whatever else. In other words, I want to be able to buy 3DStudio (thousands of dollars) and then use it, instantly, from any PC, anywhere in the world, just as if I were using it at home. First of all, that remote PC must have sufficient resources (good 3D card, CPU, lots of RAM, etc...). Second, this IRS thing is going to have to provide a near perfect hardware abstraction layer. It's not a new idea. But it's an extremely difficult thing to actually get right. That's why it hasn't happened yet.
The fact that the DoJ made this decision probably means that there is something really, really "bad" in that database. My guess is that this move is not intended to stall the release of the information until after the election, but to stall the release until that particular information can be destroyed. I think that Williams' group stumbled onto more than they expected. It's just a shot in the dark, of course... but for the DoJ to whip up a crock of sh*t like this, there's got to be something completely hideous in that data. It's silly to even guess what that might be, but let your imagination run wild...
The range of these rail guns is estimated to be over 250 miles.
Yeah, but at that distance, the enemy will be smaller than a single pixel... you won't even be able to see him behind your little aiming dot.
The Icelink is really, really sweet. This thing from BMW appears to be exactly the same thing. Full control of the iPod from the steering wheel or head unit. The nicest thing (which you don't get with the Transpod or those other tacky adapters) is that the iPod turns off when the car and/or stereo turns off. When you start it back up, it picks up right where you left off. The one thing that's missing is that the car's head unit doesn't display the song/artist/album info from the MP3 tag. Looks like that's the case with this BMW thing, too.
I haven't rtfa. I haven't even read the entire slashdot blurb. I got about two sentences in and that was enough. What is the point of posting something like this? Shock value? Does anyone really think that PC's will be made illegal? Or that a "broadcast flag" on the Internet would have any real effect? If PC's were made illegal, why would we even need an Internet? I fart in the general direction of this story. Next, please.
I think that Kurzweil is the man. He tends to be a little alarmist, I guess... Either way, I think it's certainly worthwhile to check his site now and then. He's constantly posting new articles about extending life, as well as AI and "the singularity." Interesting to think about, whether you believe him or not.
As much as I dislike Via, I gotta admit that these mini boards are a home run -- the best thing to happen to PCs in a long time. I'm looking forward to Intel and/or AMD jumping on the bandwagon. And soon after that I hope to see even smaller stuff becoming popular, possibly even system-on-chip designs. How sweet would that be? Yeah, I know you can buy a single-chip system now, but I want one that's just (or almost) as powerful as my home PC. Integrated graphics, gigs of RAM, all running at several GHz. Forget laptops... put the whole thing in a PDA. :)
Too easy. I guessed it by the time I had the first two letters.
Do something creative, like
00110101 00110000 00100000 00110110 01000110 00100000 00110110 01000110 00100000 00110111 00110000 00100000 00110010 00110001
I GOT IT! It says "You Fucker"! I am awesome.
Music is information. Any song that you've ever heard, or ever will hear, is nothing more than a number, once it's represented digitally. How moronic does the RIAA have to be to realize that there is absolutely, positively NO WAY to ever prevent people from sharing numbers?
Let's say that I have a number: five. Once I tell you (the listener) that number, the cat is out of the bag! I can't un-tell you the number. You already know it!! I can claim that I have a copyright on the number five, and I can hunt down and sue everyone who has the number five written down on a piece of paper somewhere, but it's a losing battle.
Ok, so now I'll get tricky, and I'll add anti-piracy measures to my number. I'll encrypt it, with an enormously complex scheme, and I'll only give out the key to people who pay me for it. Problem solved!
But, wait... in order to actually "use" my number, you have to decrypt it. At some point, you have to get what you paid for, and that is the number: five. Now, once you have the raw, decrypted number, how in the hell can I stop you from telling your buddy what my number is? I could monitor every phone line in the country and every mailbox, to try and stop you from telling anyone... yeah, that's really cost effective for me.
The simple truth is that if I sell you a number, I can't stop you from giving that number to others.
The only difference between my number (five) and a song is the size. My number (five) has one digit, and a song has a few million. It takes one microsecond to transmit my number (five) accross a wire, and it takes thirty seconds to transmit a song. Not a big difference, really... and it will continue to be less and less of a difference as information is transmitted faster and faster over the Internet. Songs, movies, and any other information will soon be practically as easy to transmit as my number (five). Encrypt them and flag them any way you like... eventually, you have to give me the raw number if I'm going to actually use it. What I do with it from there is beyond your control. Deal with it. Move on. Game over.
It's amazing that people will actually pay for software that does nothing more than blog. Anyone ever heard of Notepad (or vi)? It has pretty much all the features of every popular blogging tool out there, and is probably much easier to use.
I'm not being sarcastic... What's a blog? A bunch of text with fonts and an IMG tag here or there. If you can't figure out the insanely complex HTML required for that, then your blog probably isn't very interesting, anyway.
And, for the super, uber-elite coders, you could write about three lines of CGI to handle all that intense formatting for you. Or just download one of the bazillion free scripts to do it. If you pay for blogging software, you are a sucker. But I'll sell you my blogging "system" if the price is right.
You know, there's an ironic thing about the speed limit. I don't think that police really want to strictly enforce it. If they did, what would happen? There would be a tremendous flood of tickets issued at first... There would be serious outcry from the majority of people who feel the limit is too low... They would probably raise it slightly, but not enough to really matter...
It's just like the weekly poker night that I host. I tell people: "Show up no later than 8:00, or cards will be dealt and your hands will be folded." Now, we don't really enforce that rule, but there has to be some rule in place, just because, otherwise, if I said, "Show up anytime from 7:00 to 9:00," then the first guy would show up at 9:30, and the game would start sometime around midnight.
There has to be some speed limit, but strict enforcement just isn't good for anyone -- especially the police.
What is "that Mexico video?" Maybe a link or something would be nice? Googling for "Mexico" isn't going to be very useful.
Good lord... Someone downloaded something from Limewire and it wasn't what it claimed to be. Slashdot beat everyone to the scoop... I'm sure articles will be popping up all over CNN, Reuters, MSNBC, Yahoo, etc... They just haven't had time to gather their thoughts. And who can blame them, considering the magnitude of a story like this one?
This is going to shatter the credibility of Limewire. They'll be sued out of existence. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some sort of insanely devious and clever plot masterminded by Kazaa to eliminate their competition. This may be the end of P2P as we know it.
Truly a red-letter day. Everyone, take a moment to remember today's date, because your grandchildren will be asking you where you were on 5/12/04 -- the day of the trojan that was heard around the world.
I agree... this article is nonsense. There are tons of exciting new things happening in graphics, and this article covers none of them. The stuff covered here is as old as Quake, and much of it is probably obsolete on today's graphics hardware. And even if the techniques covered were relevant, there is nothing for the reader to work with -- no sample code, not even a single diagram or even a rough algorithm given. What's the point?
Not sure why this got modded as troll. It's the truth. Dell is basically the branch of Intel that makes the cases, heyboards, monitors, etc... They will never jeopardize their relationship with Intel, and even if they were to think about it (which they won't), Intel would simply threaten to take away the extra-special prices they give Dell on CPUs.
Dell will start carrying AMD when Intel goes out of business. It's not going to happen. Intel has complete and utter control over Dell through price manipulation. This isn't new. The only way AMD can win is if others, like HP, somehow start out-selling Dell. That's possible, but Dell shipping AMD simply isn't possible. Dell is Intel. Believe dat.
Maybe what you meant to say was "I hope I don't see this stuff coming into anyone's mouth for many years to come."
As a dentist, you're required to be opposed to the advancement of technology. What other branch of medicine has remained in the dark ages so successfully? Your primary tools are a pointy stick and various drills.
For fun, let's compare your work with mine. I'm a computer engineer. I work for a company that builds computer chips. If I were to sell you a computer that performed as well as the service that you, as a dentist, provide your customers, I think you would probably want a refund. Here's the computer that I would build for you:
- You would have to clean the computer twice a day, at least. This would require a few minutes per cleaning, and you would have to buy computer cleaning supplies regularly.
- Every six months, at least, you would have to bring the computer back to my office, where I would check it for normal operation and perform a more thorough cleaning than your twice-daily cleaning.
- Every year or so, a chip would develop a flaw, which would need to be fixed.
- The entire motherboard might become physically un-aligned, in which case I would use a complicated, unattractive mesh of metal and rubber bands to re-align it. Rubber bands, for crying out loud!
- Eventually, entire chips would decay and fall off the motherboard. I would replace these, at tremendous personal cost to you, with fake chips.
This would leave you with two choices. One: you could fork over thousands and thousands of dollars and keep your computer running, or, two: you could just choose not to have a computer.You would choose option two. Unfortunately, as your customer, I don't have option two. I have no choice but to pay and pay and pay for you to maintain my teeth, while you make ABSOLUTELY NO attempt to advance your science out of the dark ages of pointy sicks and drills and rubber bands. Why would you? Doing so would cut into your income, and possibly even make most of your services obsolete. Sure, it might make your patients' lives dramatically better, but that's not what's important.
And, of course, when something new does come along, you berate and belittle it, in the hopes that no one takes it seriously. Nice work.
...Usenet?
Have their prices gone up? They used to have a really good deal on singles, as well as complete albums. I haven't shopped there in a while.
And, this gives me another idea. What if I wrote a peer-to-peer application that let users share only numbers? You can copy any portion of the ones and zeros that happen to be stored on my hard disk to your hard disk. It's not music, it's not a JPEG, it's just a number. Do with it what you will. If you happen to take that number and save it in a file called "John Doe - Some Song.mp3" then that's your prerogative. All I gave you was a number. Would there be anything illegal about that transfer of information?
What would we call this app? Maybe "Numbster?" Genius.
I have this idea I've been toying with for a while... I think that it can be scientifically proven that copyright (especially regarding music) is
:) Well, I suppose I would want to elaborate a little more. But you get the idea.
1) Nonsensical
2) Not enforceable
I'm certain that lots of attempts have been made along these lines, but has anyone ever sat down and put together a well-written, somewhat technical proof along these lines? It might go something like this...
1) It's nonsense because anything (e.g. a song) that is represented digitally is absolutely nothing more than a single, very large number. A long string of ones and zeros. How can a number be eligible for copyright? Can I apply for a copyright on every number from zero to infinity? What about just some finite set of numbers that are roughly the right size to represent a three minute song? Also, if an artist owns a copyright on a song, how can you prove that a large number stored on a computer is an actual representation of that song? What if I change the filename from "John Doe - Some Song.mp3" to "ABCDEF.XYZ"? Then, when I double click the file, nothing happens -- no music is heard, because my operating system doesn't recognize the "XYZ" extension, so it doesn't run Winamp. Is the very large number stored on my hard disk no longer a song, just because the name changed? What if I remove all of the bits (such as ID3 tags) that might identify the very large number as music? Is it still music? What if I randomly flip a few bits from zero to one or vice-versa within the very large number? It's not the same number any more, but does it still represent the same song? How many bits within this very large number do I have to flip before it no longer represents a song? What if I take a picture with my digital camera and save it to my hard disk, and that file happens to be the exact same very large number that represents a piece of music? Am I violating that musician's copyright by saving that JPEG on my hard disk?
2) It's not enforceable because the brain stores information, and there is no (reasonable) way to erase that information. Once I've heard a song, I may remember it, without even meaning to. It is stored in my brain. This process is absolutely no different than my storing a numeric representation of a song (e.g. an MP3) on my hard disk. How can one of these acts be legal, while the other is not? What if, in the near future, technology is developed that can improve human memory? What if I could install a hard disk in my brain that automatically remembered every song that I hear, with 100% quality? Would I then be violating a copyright just by listening to a song and remembering it? That may be pure science fiction, but I doubt that anyone would be surprised if this technology became available within this century. We already rely on computers to remember mountains of information for us. What's the difference between remembering someone's phone number, using your brain, and writing it down on a piece of paper? The information is exactly the same, either way. A piece of music is simply a very large phone number.
QED.
This article is dumb. It is a whitelist, only more complicated and awkward. Every person has to establish a "secure channel" with their recipient prior to sending them mail. GREAT idea. If I've established a "secure channel" with my message recipient so that I can give him this goofy code/formula/thing, then why don't I just go ahead and give him the whole message while I've got his attention? The author says that the secure channel can even be a face-to-face meeting. Brilliant.
Hey, buddy, let's get together for lunch tomorrow. I want to give you my latest e-mail code-number so that we can send e-mails.
I can't deny the fact that this idea would definitely reduce spam... because no one would use e-mail any more.
Does anyone else find this bizzarre? What are the odds that the rover happened taking a picture of that part of the sky at that exact instant? Isn't it even more mind boggling that the streak is roughly dead-center in the picture Has anyone ever attempted to snap a picture of a meteor, even when you're expecting a meteor shower that night? It's damned hard... the only way to really do it is to use a long exposure and just wait.
The odds against this kind of coincidence must be staggering. Any math geniuses want to take a stab at it? We could estimate how often the half-dozen (?) satellites around mars would pass through that particular section of the sky, and we know roughly how many photos the rovers take in a given day... The odds must be something like one in a billion, or worse. I can't help but think of the slashdot sig I see once in a while... something like "The face of the moon is covered with the results of astronomical odds."