Do you know how EXPENSIVE RFID is? Just a small RFID reader / base station costs around $1000 - $2000 per unit. To cover any read distance, you are talking much more. Chips rugged enough not to be destroyed on the first wash cost $1-2 each.
It's simply not economically viable at this time to spy using this method. What we should really do is change all the trafic lights in major cities to go red for 15 seconds when no one is about to cross the road. Then we should add a series of road works that are entirely unnecessary. This will cause congestion, which we will solve by introducing a dodgey tax called a "Congestion chargeing". To enforce this, we will build a network of TV camera's with a fuzzy data feed to detect license plates, record exactly where everyone is in the city. Just for a laugh, we may add facial recognition to the system in a few months... What a brilliant idea.
Just a shame nobody thought of it before...
[KenLivingston.Com : Making a better world by charging extra tax... ]
If they released their product under the GPL, couldn't IBM just take a distro and re-release it as "SCOSUCKS"
Er, there are laws against that kind of thing. SCO is a trademark.
It is an intellectual property complaint and would have to be either a copyright complaint or a software patent complaint (under those strange american patent laws).
For copyright, under American law, you need to enfore it as soon as you are aware of the breach if you are going to claim damages. Patent law, AFAIK, does not require this.
'It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM.'
So how long has this linux thing been going on, then? A mere day and a half, from the sound of things. And there aren't tens of thousands more programmers available for linux than any other O/S, are there?
Does writing interesting code(tm) count? I used to work on distributed computing applications in strange and interesting fields that almost always required the following steps:
1. Drill hole through firewall.
2. Listen on port...
3. Connect...
4. Run some highly unusual code written by Kevin* when the application requests it
In practice, almost all of the systems could be cracked in less than ten seconds by a deformed and brain dead hedgehog**, if the hedgehog knew what I knew about the system.
All the holes were documented, and minimised to the maximum extent possible. And no, I have not used the backdoors for any illegal purpose. But a lot of programmers write backdoors because they can't do otherwise; the application requires it.
* Kevin, our resident Moron of the time (all names have been changed to protect the idiots).
** Also known as Kevin.
The programmer has a low skill level and resorts to the "cut and paste" style of programming. The programmer possibly resides in Europe and socialises with other blackhat style programmers. The programmer is male, overweight and has no social life other than his computer. He wears glasses and was bullied throughout school. He uses computers as a way of getting back at the world which has maligned him. You decide where reality steps aside and Hollywood takes over.
D*mn it, why do they always blame me?
I've had a look at his site. Believe it or not, he's done a lot of work including:
1. Unmanned test flights
2. Safety reviews
3. Actually talking with govt. agencies.
It is easy to be negative, but I don't believe the guy is going to ride a rocket until he is d*mn sure he'll come down again in one piece. A lot of nay-sayers said that we'd never fly. A lot of people don't even believe we got to the moon.
Neither is he even going into space. He is going 30 miles up, using a far less explosive fuel than normal rockets. And before he gets in, you can be sure that he'll already have done enough test flights to be sure he'll get out in one piece.
All in all, I believe that if he does the flight, he is relatively likely (75%+) to survive.
No progress has been without risk, but I believe that he is unlikely to kill himself. And if he does, it is his life he risks - no one else's. He is doing the right thing.
I'm sure people will work out plenty of new ways to waste... uh, I mean use... storage. After all, there was a time the corporations got by on the "huge" 1.5 mb data store. Nowdays we can barely fit a gif in that.
Besides, micro$haft will make sure we use plenty of hard disk space.
Yeah. I remember a few years ago reading that 70% of computer cracking incidents are caused by people inside the organisation
The real problem is preventing internal people breaking a system. Realistically, if your Computer Services Manager is cracking your e-mail system to read internal mail from directors, you don't have much hope. (Something that happened in a company I was working for a few years back).
One thing I'm impressed with is the fact that this story came out at all. I've heard rumours of similar things happening in the UK, and they are all covered by the official secrets (Cover the govt arse) Act.
Got to say, the only really interesting thing I got from the article was that they can build nanotransistors that can take a fair amout of current. This has been a problem with some prior implementations
I suspect this might just be PR; they haven't shown that they can produce nanotransistors at a reasonable cost, or hook them together in large enough arrays.
They also said in the message that they will invest in.NET; presumably their main investment will be to port.NET to HP-UX.
I found the comments that HP-UX was to be their main unix operating system interesting (if a bit depressing). It suggests to me that a concentrated effort to add new functionality is on the way. After all, they can take any good tru64 (I've never used the OS, so can't comment on how good it was;) functionality and add it to HP-UX. More investment in HP-UX might result in a better OS; maybe HP are trying to rival Linux, Solaris and Microsloth. Ultimately, they can do this only if they provide one main unix OS.
(I hope they sort out the debugger. During an entire year programming in C, C++ and CORBA on HPUX i never found one that was any good).
With any luck, the merger might revive the OS wars. Unix looks a lot more like a viable alternative to WinDoze as a result of the merger. HP are definitely interested in becoming the "One True unix" and with a port to.NET, Application s written for WinDoze should (with any luck) be very easily ported to HP-UX, and possibly even linux.
Interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know how EXPENSIVE RFID is? Just a small RFID reader / base station costs around $1000 - $2000 per unit. To cover any read distance, you are talking much more. Chips rugged enough not to be destroyed on the first wash cost $1-2 each.
It's simply not economically viable at this time to spy using this method. What we should really do is change all the trafic lights in major cities to go red for 15 seconds when no one is about to cross the road. Then we should add a series of road works that are entirely unnecessary. This will cause congestion, which we will solve by introducing a dodgey tax called a "Congestion chargeing". To enforce this, we will build a network of TV camera's with a fuzzy data feed to detect license plates, record exactly where everyone is in the city. Just for a laugh, we may add facial recognition to the system in a few months... What a brilliant idea.
Just a shame nobody thought of it before... [KenLivingston.Com : Making a better world by charging extra tax... ]
If they released their product under the GPL, couldn't IBM just take a distro and re-release it as "SCOSUCKS" Er, there are laws against that kind of thing. SCO is a trademark.
It is an intellectual property complaint and would have to be either a copyright complaint or a software patent complaint (under those strange american patent laws).
For copyright, under American law, you need to enfore it as soon as you are aware of the breach if you are going to claim damages. Patent law, AFAIK, does not require this.
'It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM.'
So how long has this linux thing been going on, then? A mere day and a half, from the sound of things. And there aren't tens of thousands more programmers available for linux than any other O/S, are there?
Does writing interesting code(tm) count? I used to work on distributed computing applications in strange and interesting fields that almost always required the following steps:
...
1. Drill hole through firewall.
2. Listen on port...
3. Connect
4. Run some highly unusual code written by Kevin* when the application requests it
In practice, almost all of the systems could be cracked in less than ten seconds by a deformed and brain dead hedgehog**, if the hedgehog knew what I knew about the system.
All the holes were documented, and minimised to the maximum extent possible. And no, I have not used the backdoors for any illegal purpose. But a lot of programmers write backdoors because they can't do otherwise; the application requires it.
* Kevin, our resident Moron of the time (all names have been changed to protect the idiots).
** Also known as Kevin.
We are combining RFID with Relational Databases. That was what I was doing at work today:)
It's not Paranoia if they're out to get you.
Unicode? Dang evil windoze capitaleest peeg!
Linux should use ASCII. It was good enough for BABY, so it's good enough for us!
My compiler normally sings to me. It goes something like this
There may be trouble ahead
duh,dda,da,da,duh
but while there's magic, and music, love and romance
let's face the music and-
FATAL ERROR 102: There is no error
The programmer has a low skill level and resorts to the "cut and paste" style of programming. The programmer possibly resides in Europe and socialises with other blackhat style programmers. The programmer is male, overweight and has no social life other than his computer. He wears glasses and was bullied throughout school. He uses computers as a way of getting back at the world which has maligned him. You decide where reality steps aside and Hollywood takes over. D*mn it, why do they always blame me?
I'm not even sure I've found any "intelligent force" in Europe, let alone expecting to find it on Mars.
I've had a look at his site. Believe it or not, he's done a lot of work including:
1. Unmanned test flights
2. Safety reviews
3. Actually talking with govt. agencies.
It is easy to be negative, but I don't believe the guy is going to ride a rocket until he is d*mn sure he'll come down again in one piece. A lot of nay-sayers said that we'd never fly. A lot of people don't even believe we got to the moon.
Neither is he even going into space. He is going 30 miles up, using a far less explosive fuel than normal rockets. And before he gets in, you can be sure that he'll already have done enough test flights to be sure he'll get out in one piece.
All in all, I believe that if he does the flight, he is relatively likely (75%+) to survive.
No progress has been without risk, but I believe that he is unlikely to kill himself. And if he does, it is his life he risks - no one else's. He is doing the right thing.
I'm sure people will work out plenty of new ways to waste... uh, I mean use... storage. After all, there was a time the corporations got by on the "huge" 1.5 mb data store. Nowdays we can barely fit a gif in that.
Besides, micro$haft will make sure we use plenty of hard disk space.
Yeah. I remember a few years ago reading that 70% of computer cracking incidents are caused by people inside the organisation
The real problem is preventing internal people breaking a system. Realistically, if your Computer Services Manager is cracking your e-mail system to read internal mail from directors, you don't have much hope. (Something that happened in a company I was working for a few years back).
One thing I'm impressed with is the fact that this story came out at all. I've heard rumours of similar things happening in the UK, and they are all covered by the official secrets (Cover the govt arse) Act.
Got to say, the only really interesting thing I got from the article was that they can build nanotransistors that can take a fair amout of current. This has been a problem with some prior implementations
I suspect this might just be PR; they haven't shown that they can produce nanotransistors at a reasonable cost, or hook them together in large enough arrays.
They also said in the message that they will invest in .NET; presumably their main investment will be to port .NET to HP-UX.
I found the comments that HP-UX was to be their main unix operating system interesting (if a bit depressing). It suggests to me that a concentrated effort to add new functionality is on the way. After all, they can take any good tru64 (I've never used the OS, so can't comment on how good it was;) functionality and add it to HP-UX. More investment in HP-UX might result in a better OS; maybe HP are trying to rival Linux, Solaris and Microsloth. Ultimately, they can do this only if they provide one main unix OS.
(I hope they sort out the debugger. During an entire year programming in C, C++ and CORBA on HPUX i never found one that was any good).
With any luck, the merger might revive the OS wars. Unix looks a lot more like a viable alternative to WinDoze as a result of the merger. HP are definitely interested in becoming the "One True unix" and with a port to .NET, Application s written for WinDoze should (with any luck) be very easily ported to HP-UX, and possibly even linux.
Interesting.
HP-UX is going to die.
Great. Even more competition, after all the layoffs that will follow. But there is one goof thing: They'll probably dump HP-UX.