100" diagonal is like being right in the middle of the action, when you play GTA VC or Unreal Tournament. If you happen to sit slighty of axis you surely will get motion sickness.
Interesting (and thanks for your impressions). Its not surprising that off-axis veiwing leads to motion sickness - I'm sure the game's rendering engine assumes you are sitting front and center. If bigscreens become more popular for gaming, I wonder if game makers will need to add controls for off-axis use -- something that asks about the screen diagonal, distance, and up/down, left/right axial alignement. (Actually, the graphic layer of the OS should handle this using 3-D viewer rendering preferences records for each monitor.)
I've noticed that many of these large screen products (projectors and PDPs) have VGA or DVI inputs and support higher resolutions than the minimum required to display an NTSC signal. Thus, they could be connected to a computer and used for multi-user computer applications (e.g., gaming, boardrooms, or extreme programming) or just a single-person big-screen. What is it like to have a big screen that is more distant than the usual monitor?
then suddenly you get hit with loads more as they get there friends to "bonk" you.
Good point, beady, clearly it would need to be a 1-bonk-per-IM-per-recipient system, not a bonk-any-person function. Thus, you could only be bonked for what you sent by only the people you sent it too. I would also suspect that the system would time-limit bonking to the most recent message from that person (i.e., you could not go back and retroactively bonk someone for all their past IMs to you).
Network providers could prevent Spim by letting IM recipients the power to bill or stall a Spimmer's account. For closed subscriber-only networks, the network provider could give IM users a "bonk-that-IMer" button. Each time a Spim appears and the recipient hits the "bonk" button, the Spimmer's account gets a $0.25 charge or is prevented from sending another IM for 30 secs or a minute.
Billing Spimmers would be a good way to raise revenues, but would be a nightmare for anyone whose account was highjacked. Stalling a spimmer's account might be a better way to make spim too labor-intensive to be useful (although maybe spimmers would just outsource to India or China and pay people $1/day to slowly send spims).
"This is the big problem with current Open Source world, IMO -- the current Open Source world seems oriented toward DIY'ers creating code for other DIY'ers."
You say that as if it were a bad thing. Why do you feel this is a problem? I find it to be a solution.
Your point is excellent! Different types of computer users want different types of software. Code for coders is beautiful.
I agree with you that "useful" is important and that software does not have "to sell a billion units". But I would argue that coders create more value if their code supports the needs of a wider audience. The total value of a given bit of code would seem to be the product of its functionality ("usefulness") and its marketshare ("units"). Simplistic, lite versions of software may ridiculed by real computer professinals, but they seem to provide great value to plain old computer users.
What I do worry about is the long-term marginalization of the Open Software community because of its code-for-coders emphasis. I can easily see Microsoft creating barriers to open software in the guise of security -- requiring software publishers to license expensive DRM, trusted-software technologies. Without the financial resources to buy Microsoft-provided security codes, Open Source would die because Windows would prohibit its installation or reject interfacing with "untrusted" open software. And without a billion units of Open Software out there, too few people will fight for its survival.
Although finding water would be nice, the real issue is finding a long-term source of hydrogen on the moon. The moon offers plenty of long-term sources of oxygen as a byproduct of processing moon rocks. But hydrogen may be scarer, unless there really is a concentration of either water or hydrated rock at the poles. Without hydrogen, life gets much harder. Perhaps the moon really is a harsh mistress.
The do-it-yourselfers that appreciate the quality and flexibility of open source vs. the people who just want a working computer without configuration woes.
This is the big problem with current Open Source world, IMO -- the current Open Source world seems oriented toward DIY'ers creating code for other DIY'ers. Its a BOF community of computer and software-loving people. The result is code that only another coder would love. What fraction of Open Source software packages "just works" without configuration, reading a manual, etc.
The trick to going mainstream is to create incentives and drivers for writing easy-to-use, "just works" software. That means bringing in people who have an incentive to maximize the number of users (meaning they really want to go after the mainstream desktop market). It means bending the programmer's interests away from cool code and toward ease-of-use. Currently, only companies with copyrights seem to do this with their combination of sales commissions, threat of firing programmers, etc.
So how can OCM help incentivize programmers to make mainstream code, not coder's code? I would argue that by supporting the formation of user syndicates, OCM creates an environment in which programmer compensation is proportional to the number of people wanting the code. If a million people pay $10 to join a syndicate that delivers the next version of some desktop application (e.g., an Office substitute), then the syndicate has real money that can motivate real programmers to create code that satisfies that mainstream.
The only problem? This model forces OCM to move to a restricted-access software model. Why would a million people pay money to join a syndicate if they know that they can download the results for free the day after it comes out?
I would hope that OCM would be better than "try before you buy." I have reached a stage in life where I want products that do what I want them to do. I don't care to spend time trying software in a production environment because I find that so much of it is a waste of time.
OCM would seem to support the commissioning of software projects or modifications. Thus I could go the Market, submit a request (e.g., "I want a real-time transparent version of CVS") and various groups might make counter-offers of price and functionality. A bit of public interchange would would lead to a mutually agreeable specification and price. In some cases, the software provided might be off-the-shelf and in other cases it might be written from scratch.
As a venue for the commissioning and creation of software, I see OCM providing a valuable venue for both software creators and software consumers. Software consumers could aggregate to share the costs of new or modified software or form a mutual-support community around a given piece of software.
Something like Expert's Exchange?
on
The Open Code Market
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It sounds like you are proposing something akin to Experts-Exchange, but with a few differences. OCM would use real dollars, instead of points. OCM would also encourage the creation and reuse of code, not just answers to IT questions. OCM might incorporate private collaborative project spaces to help a shifting group of workers create commissioned code.
Already the price of duplicating DVDs is lower than that for VHS tapes.
I also wonder about the cost per byte for this new memory format. Mass produced DVDs cost under 0.10 per gigabyte. I have a hard time seeing how they can fabricate tens of billions of memory bit locations in the Si-PEDOT material for this price point.
Although useful for write-once archiving of data, this format does not seem very useful for CD-ROM, and DVD-ROM applications. CD-ROM and DVD-ROMs can be cheaply mass-produced in pressing operations that simultaneously form all the data into the disk.
In contrast, it would appear that a copy of the data must be sequentially downloaded into each memory device -- like writing to an EPROM. I doubt this can be done very quickly without thermal damage to the device. Without a quick and cheap way of mass-producing the memory device (with the data on it) this technology is less useful for content distribution applications. It still has some potential for archiving, though.
You might consider a multifaceted bag of tricks for getting data from your camera and computer to the cafe's computer or network.
1. Wifi on the PDA/laptop
2. USB thumbdrive to transfer from a PDA/laptop
3. PCMCIA card adapter and compact flash or SD memory
4. Camera with USB cord and the same memory format as the PDA (cafe's might not object to connecting to your camera and you could put PDA data on the memory card in the camera.
It seems like all these clever bot deflectors are really intelligence tests of one form or another. That they discriminate against the blind, non-English-speakers or people with lower IQ is a shame. Bot makers will now work hard to OCR given classes of text-image-disruption algorithms or answer given classes of common sense questions. This means we will have an arms race of smarter bots and tougher tests.
At some point the tests will be so tough and the bots will be so good that many people will be thwarted while many bots will get through. At that point will we concede that computers have passed some form of Turing test?
If small ground motions propagate to large amplitude acoustic effects in the ionosphere, then the effects should be detectable with shortwave radio. A bistatic transmitter-receiver pair would be configured to bounce its signal off some part of the ionosphere. Acoustic vibrations in that layer should create detectable distortion in the shortwave signals. It may not be as exciting as GPS, but it may enable detection of ionospheric disturbances over inaccessible parts of the planet by locating the bistatic pair on either side of the region.
I too would like such a capability. We don't have terabytes of data, but my wife and I find it frustrating to co-create documents and manage who has which version on which machine while ensuring the portablity of my wife's laptop and providing the speed of accessing files locally. Ideally, we would like all of our 12,000 shared files to be in at least two or three places at once (cached on my machine, cached on her laptop, and stored on a central file server).
I'm envisioning some type of write-through file caching and distributed access control system that maintains near real-time synchronization between a local copy of a directory and an ostensibly identical copy of that directory on a remote server and any other machines that "share" that directory. I suspect that a relatively soft access control system would be OK in the sense that you could open your local copy of the file and propagate a lock afterward. Also, in the event of a network disconnect (e.g., using the laptop is on the airplane), the local system would journal any changes to the cached/shared file set and transmit/reconcile those changes when the network was reconnected.
BTW, being one of those silly Mac users, I want a system that is totally transparent without extra steps (like a CVS check-out/check-in process), nasty batch processes, etc. When I open a file or close a file, I expect the system to appropriately handle the ugly details of caching, propagating changes to other machines, alerting me that the file is in use by someone else, etc.
Unfortunately, this research, like most research on the Earth's atmosphere, has a sample size of one. Until we can create accurate simulation models and do valid in silico experiments, most of the work will suffer from an inability to distinguish between correlation vs. causation.
You can do some real science with controls and statistical sample sizes. If the researchers had controlled the environmental conditions on various identical plots of vines to provide higher/lower temperatures, higher/lower CO2, etc. then they might have a valid basis for relating global warming to improved wines.
When software is used to implement a matter of law, the public must have an absolute right and need to review such software
Excellent point. The need for public oversight suggests a modified open source development process and secure traceable binaries. Perhaps we might call this model "exposed source" because the code would be publicly accessible but not publicly modifiable.
I wonder if the FEC (Federal Election Commission) needs to setup a CVS repository to hold voting machine source code. The source would be publicly read-only. Any proposed changes for any reason would need to go through a review process including public and professional scrutiny. Binaries for actual machines would only be compiled for this heavily-reviewed source.
Because of the potential for OS-level vote tampering, the OS of the machines would also need to be provided on an exposed source basis. The single-purpose duty of a voting machine suggests that the machines don't need a large OS - perhaps one that is suitable for running the UI of a medical device would be sufficient. A bit more problematic is the central-office software and OS for totalling all the votes. This heavier system would need to be exposed source too.
Competing makers of the machines might be upset about exposing their vote tally and OS code to public scrutiny, but this would be the price of playing in a very public arena. Machine developers should not be too worried, though. The fact that the source is 100% public means that you could easily see if your competitor had copied you.
You raise a series of very good points (especialy 1, 2, 3 in the RFID set and #2 and 3 of the barcode set). But there is another side to some of the points you raise.
4. There are no real advantages to consumers for each and every item to be remarked with an RFID tag vs a barcode that is already on the item.
Not so. There are number of benefits to consumers. These go beyond lower costs from more efficient handling of product and less theft of products. Three example applications that benefit consumers are:
1. Automated inventory management in the home. With a home scanner, say on the refrigerator or the front door, everything you bring in or take out is tracked. If one person in the house drinks the last of the milk and throws out the carton, the scanner(s) note the potential need for milk.
2. Product recall: With these chips, the retailer knows who bought which lots of a product. If a product recall is initiated, the supplier can alert the retailer and the retailer can contact the customer.
3. Prevention of counterfeit medicines. Apparently some people steal medicine containers out of hospital dumpsters, refill them and resell them. IDing all the containers and flagging the discards prevents this. It also prevents other forms of counterfeiting in which criminals make copies of pharmaceutical packaging. Again, the ID creates traceability (to the extent that the criminals don't also hack the databases)
1. The barcode tags do not store personal data on them.
Actually, the RFID chips promoted by the Auto-ID people don't "store" any personal data. The chip only contains a unique ID code - a database has all the "personal" data associated with the ID. Unless you have access to the database, the data on the chip is useless because its just a code number. Bar codes can be unique and associated with databases - just look at the bar codes on UPS parcels. Any privacy issues (with either Auto-ID or unique bar coding) is more with the database, than with the chip. OK, its a minor distinction, but it adds hurdles to criminal exploitation of RFID.
Just say no, to RFID tracking before it gets out of hand.
I agree with you on the potential threat from some abusive applications of RFID. But to ban the entire technology seems a bit excessive. I'd rather work to ensure that it can be used safely.
Yes and no. I suspect that with this FCC ruling, the service terms will get even worse than they are now (you are totally right about them being bad). Prior to the ruling telcos could rely on both number non-portability and onerous service terms to keep customers. Now they will only have service terms and those terms will get worse.
Telecom companies HATE HATE HATE number portability because it makes it too easy to switch providers. I expect telecom companies to create barriers to switching in the form of cancellation service fees and minimum-term contracts.
If you plan to migrate, do it soon before the companies decide to make it expensive to dump them. Also, read any new service contract very carefully.
Why not create a distributed memory system for preventing memory holes? It could be called something like "Remember@Home" and would rely on all the empty disk space on people's computers to redundantly store everything on the internet.
The client software would watch what you download and coordinate more permanent caching of those internet documents in some "empty" portion of your HD. Distributed coordination in a P2P network structure would help prioritize what is stored where --leveling the number of copies of each document across the network. Most of the operation would be relatively lightweight on bandwidth -- exchanging only metadata about who has what stored. Only occassionally would the system ask for a copy of the content from one person's cache to be copied to another person's cache (such as to relevel the storage if too many backup copies of a peice of content are lost).
The idea requires a great deal of work on how to detect irrelvant differences in dynamic content, distributed coordination, local journaling, optimum metadata routing, etc. But it could be a rather interesting project that has applications for robust massively distributed storage systems.
> > The Space Shuttle Columbia delivered Chandra to a low Earth orbit. Then, the Inertial Upper Stage rocket boosted Chandra up to a higher altitude where a built-in propulsion system took Chandra to its final orbit.
> I'm wondering whether there's some juice still left in Chandra's propulsion systems.
Sadly, no. Changing orbits between the Shuttle's LEO and Chandra's large elliptical orbit (it moves almost one third the way to the moon) requires massive amounts of fuel. The Inertial Upper Stage is actually a large two-stage solid-fuel booster with over 25,000 lbs of fuel and 40,000 lbs thrust. This rocket is discarded along the way. Chandra, itself, has some fuel and some tiny thrusters (105 lb thrust each), but that is completely inadequate for a big job like moving back to LEO.
As Douglas Adams said, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space." Unfortunately, this harsh reality means that moving in space is expensive, mind-bogglingly expensive.
VoIP seems like a great place for spammers. The cost of initiating a call will be neglible unless there is some kind of bandwidth pricing. And without a do-not-call-list for VoIP, it will be open season on VoIP users.
On the other hand, a competent VoIP client should let me easily create my own phone-menu system from hell to repel simple voice-spams and trap telemarketing call-center flunkies ("Press 1 to hear the next confusing list of menu options").
Corporate behavior like this drives me insane. The personal labor cost to fix their defective product exceeds the price of the product. But I'm sure the EULA is careful to explain that the product is not necessarily useful for anything and Belkin is liable for nothing beyond the price of the product.
Unfortunately Chandra's orbit is way out of reach of the shuttle -- orbiting between 133,000 km (82,646 mi) and 16,000 kilometers (9,942 mi) from the Earth.
Slashdot Mirror
100" diagonal is like being right in the middle of the action, when you play GTA VC or Unreal Tournament. If you happen to sit slighty of axis you surely will get motion sickness.
Interesting (and thanks for your impressions). Its not surprising that off-axis veiwing leads to motion sickness - I'm sure the game's rendering engine assumes you are sitting front and center. If bigscreens become more popular for gaming, I wonder if game makers will need to add controls for off-axis use -- something that asks about the screen diagonal, distance, and up/down, left/right axial alignement. (Actually, the graphic layer of the OS should handle this using 3-D viewer rendering preferences records for each monitor.)
I've noticed that many of these large screen products (projectors and PDPs) have VGA or DVI inputs and support higher resolutions than the minimum required to display an NTSC signal. Thus, they could be connected to a computer and used for multi-user computer applications (e.g., gaming, boardrooms, or extreme programming) or just a single-person big-screen. What is it like to have a big screen that is more distant than the usual monitor?
then suddenly you get hit with loads more as they get there friends to "bonk" you.
Good point, beady, clearly it would need to be a 1-bonk-per-IM-per-recipient system, not a bonk-any-person function. Thus, you could only be bonked for what you sent by only the people you sent it too. I would also suspect that the system would time-limit bonking to the most recent message from that person (i.e., you could not go back and retroactively bonk someone for all their past IMs to you).
Network providers could prevent Spim by letting IM recipients the power to bill or stall a Spimmer's account. For closed subscriber-only networks, the network provider could give IM users a "bonk-that-IMer" button. Each time a Spim appears and the recipient hits the "bonk" button, the Spimmer's account gets a $0.25 charge or is prevented from sending another IM for 30 secs or a minute.
Billing Spimmers would be a good way to raise revenues, but would be a nightmare for anyone whose account was highjacked. Stalling a spimmer's account might be a better way to make spim too labor-intensive to be useful (although maybe spimmers would just outsource to India or China and pay people $1/day to slowly send spims).
"This is the big problem with current Open Source world, IMO -- the current Open Source world seems oriented toward DIY'ers creating code for other DIY'ers." You say that as if it were a bad thing. Why do you feel this is a problem? I find it to be a solution.
Your point is excellent! Different types of computer users want different types of software. Code for coders is beautiful.
I agree with you that "useful" is important and that software does not have "to sell a billion units". But I would argue that coders create more value if their code supports the needs of a wider audience. The total value of a given bit of code would seem to be the product of its functionality ("usefulness") and its marketshare ("units"). Simplistic, lite versions of software may ridiculed by real computer professinals, but they seem to provide great value to plain old computer users.
What I do worry about is the long-term marginalization of the Open Software community because of its code-for-coders emphasis. I can easily see Microsoft creating barriers to open software in the guise of security -- requiring software publishers to license expensive DRM, trusted-software technologies. Without the financial resources to buy Microsoft-provided security codes, Open Source would die because Windows would prohibit its installation or reject interfacing with "untrusted" open software. And without a billion units of Open Software out there, too few people will fight for its survival.
Although finding water would be nice, the real issue is finding a long-term source of hydrogen on the moon. The moon offers plenty of long-term sources of oxygen as a byproduct of processing moon rocks. But hydrogen may be scarer, unless there really is a concentration of either water or hydrated rock at the poles. Without hydrogen, life gets much harder. Perhaps the moon really is a harsh mistress.
The do-it-yourselfers that appreciate the quality and flexibility of open source vs. the people who just want a working computer without configuration woes.
This is the big problem with current Open Source world, IMO -- the current Open Source world seems oriented toward DIY'ers creating code for other DIY'ers. Its a BOF community of computer and software-loving people. The result is code that only another coder would love. What fraction of Open Source software packages "just works" without configuration, reading a manual, etc.
The trick to going mainstream is to create incentives and drivers for writing easy-to-use, "just works" software. That means bringing in people who have an incentive to maximize the number of users (meaning they really want to go after the mainstream desktop market). It means bending the programmer's interests away from cool code and toward ease-of-use. Currently, only companies with copyrights seem to do this with their combination of sales commissions, threat of firing programmers, etc.
So how can OCM help incentivize programmers to make mainstream code, not coder's code? I would argue that by supporting the formation of user syndicates, OCM creates an environment in which programmer compensation is proportional to the number of people wanting the code. If a million people pay $10 to join a syndicate that delivers the next version of some desktop application (e.g., an Office substitute), then the syndicate has real money that can motivate real programmers to create code that satisfies that mainstream.
The only problem? This model forces OCM to move to a restricted-access software model. Why would a million people pay money to join a syndicate if they know that they can download the results for free the day after it comes out?
I would hope that OCM would be better than "try before you buy." I have reached a stage in life where I want products that do what I want them to do. I don't care to spend time trying software in a production environment because I find that so much of it is a waste of time.
OCM would seem to support the commissioning of software projects or modifications. Thus I could go the Market, submit a request (e.g., "I want a real-time transparent version of CVS") and various groups might make counter-offers of price and functionality. A bit of public interchange would would lead to a mutually agreeable specification and price. In some cases, the software provided might be off-the-shelf and in other cases it might be written from scratch.
As a venue for the commissioning and creation of software, I see OCM providing a valuable venue for both software creators and software consumers. Software consumers could aggregate to share the costs of new or modified software or form a mutual-support community around a given piece of software.
It sounds like you are proposing something akin to Experts-Exchange, but with a few differences. OCM would use real dollars, instead of points. OCM would also encourage the creation and reuse of code, not just answers to IT questions. OCM might incorporate private collaborative project spaces to help a shifting group of workers create commissioned code.
Already the price of duplicating DVDs is lower than that for VHS tapes.
I also wonder about the cost per byte for this new memory format. Mass produced DVDs cost under 0.10 per gigabyte. I have a hard time seeing how they can fabricate tens of billions of memory bit locations in the Si-PEDOT material for this price point.
Although useful for write-once archiving of data, this format does not seem very useful for CD-ROM, and DVD-ROM applications. CD-ROM and DVD-ROMs can be cheaply mass-produced in pressing operations that simultaneously form all the data into the disk.
In contrast, it would appear that a copy of the data must be sequentially downloaded into each memory device -- like writing to an EPROM. I doubt this can be done very quickly without thermal damage to the device. Without a quick and cheap way of mass-producing the memory device (with the data on it) this technology is less useful for content distribution applications. It still has some potential for archiving, though.
You might consider a multifaceted bag of tricks for getting data from your camera and computer to the cafe's computer or network.
1. Wifi on the PDA/laptop
2. USB thumbdrive to transfer from a PDA/laptop
3. PCMCIA card adapter and compact flash or SD memory
4. Camera with USB cord and the same memory format as the PDA (cafe's might not object to connecting to your camera and you could put PDA data on the memory card in the camera.
Enjoy your trip!
It seems like all these clever bot deflectors are really intelligence tests of one form or another. That they discriminate against the blind, non-English-speakers or people with lower IQ is a shame. Bot makers will now work hard to OCR given classes of text-image-disruption algorithms or answer given classes of common sense questions. This means we will have an arms race of smarter bots and tougher tests.
At some point the tests will be so tough and the bots will be so good that many people will be thwarted while many bots will get through. At that point will we concede that computers have passed some form of Turing test?
If small ground motions propagate to large amplitude acoustic effects in the ionosphere, then the effects should be detectable with shortwave radio. A bistatic transmitter-receiver pair would be configured to bounce its signal off some part of the ionosphere. Acoustic vibrations in that layer should create detectable distortion in the shortwave signals. It may not be as exciting as GPS, but it may enable detection of ionospheric disturbances over inaccessible parts of the planet by locating the bistatic pair on either side of the region.
I too would like such a capability. We don't have terabytes of data, but my wife and I find it frustrating to co-create documents and manage who has which version on which machine while ensuring the portablity of my wife's laptop and providing the speed of accessing files locally. Ideally, we would like all of our 12,000 shared files to be in at least two or three places at once (cached on my machine, cached on her laptop, and stored on a central file server).
I'm envisioning some type of write-through file caching and distributed access control system that maintains near real-time synchronization between a local copy of a directory and an ostensibly identical copy of that directory on a remote server and any other machines that "share" that directory. I suspect that a relatively soft access control system would be OK in the sense that you could open your local copy of the file and propagate a lock afterward. Also, in the event of a network disconnect (e.g., using the laptop is on the airplane), the local system would journal any changes to the cached/shared file set and transmit/reconcile those changes when the network was reconnected.
BTW, being one of those silly Mac users, I want a system that is totally transparent without extra steps (like a CVS check-out/check-in process), nasty batch processes, etc. When I open a file or close a file, I expect the system to appropriately handle the ugly details of caching, propagating changes to other machines, alerting me that the file is in use by someone else, etc.
Unfortunately, this research, like most research on the Earth's atmosphere, has a sample size of one. Until we can create accurate simulation models and do valid in silico experiments, most of the work will suffer from an inability to distinguish between correlation vs. causation.
You can do some real science with controls and statistical sample sizes. If the researchers had controlled the environmental conditions on various identical plots of vines to provide higher/lower temperatures, higher/lower CO2, etc. then they might have a valid basis for relating global warming to improved wines.
When software is used to implement a matter of law, the public must have an absolute right and need to review such software
Excellent point. The need for public oversight suggests a modified open source development process and secure traceable binaries. Perhaps we might call this model "exposed source" because the code would be publicly accessible but not publicly modifiable.
I wonder if the FEC (Federal Election Commission) needs to setup a CVS repository to hold voting machine source code. The source would be publicly read-only. Any proposed changes for any reason would need to go through a review process including public and professional scrutiny. Binaries for actual machines would only be compiled for this heavily-reviewed source.
Because of the potential for OS-level vote tampering, the OS of the machines would also need to be provided on an exposed source basis. The single-purpose duty of a voting machine suggests that the machines don't need a large OS - perhaps one that is suitable for running the UI of a medical device would be sufficient. A bit more problematic is the central-office software and OS for totalling all the votes. This heavier system would need to be exposed source too.
Competing makers of the machines might be upset about exposing their vote tally and OS code to public scrutiny, but this would be the price of playing in a very public arena. Machine developers should not be too worried, though. The fact that the source is 100% public means that you could easily see if your competitor had copied you.
You raise a series of very good points (especialy 1, 2, 3 in the RFID set and #2 and 3 of the barcode set). But there is another side to some of the points you raise.
4. There are no real advantages to consumers for each and every item to be remarked with an RFID tag vs a barcode that is already on the item.
Not so. There are number of benefits to consumers. These go beyond lower costs from more efficient handling of product and less theft of products. Three example applications that benefit consumers are:
1. Automated inventory management in the home. With a home scanner, say on the refrigerator or the front door, everything you bring in or take out is tracked. If one person in the house drinks the last of the milk and throws out the carton, the scanner(s) note the potential need for milk.
2. Product recall: With these chips, the retailer knows who bought which lots of a product. If a product recall is initiated, the supplier can alert the retailer and the retailer can contact the customer.
3. Prevention of counterfeit medicines. Apparently some people steal medicine containers out of hospital dumpsters, refill them and resell them. IDing all the containers and flagging the discards prevents this. It also prevents other forms of counterfeiting in which criminals make copies of pharmaceutical packaging. Again, the ID creates traceability (to the extent that the criminals don't also hack the databases)
1. The barcode tags do not store personal data on them.
Actually, the RFID chips promoted by the Auto-ID people don't "store" any personal data. The chip only contains a unique ID code - a database has all the "personal" data associated with the ID. Unless you have access to the database, the data on the chip is useless because its just a code number. Bar codes can be unique and associated with databases - just look at the bar codes on UPS parcels. Any privacy issues (with either Auto-ID or unique bar coding) is more with the database, than with the chip. OK, its a minor distinction, but it adds hurdles to criminal exploitation of RFID.
Just say no, to RFID tracking before it gets out of hand.
I agree with you on the potential threat from some abusive applications of RFID. But to ban the entire technology seems a bit excessive. I'd rather work to ensure that it can be used safely.
That was sarcasm right?
Yes and no. I suspect that with this FCC ruling, the service terms will get even worse than they are now (you are totally right about them being bad). Prior to the ruling telcos could rely on both number non-portability and onerous service terms to keep customers. Now they will only have service terms and those terms will get worse.
Telecom companies HATE HATE HATE number portability because it makes it too easy to switch providers. I expect telecom companies to create barriers to switching in the form of cancellation service fees and minimum-term contracts.
If you plan to migrate, do it soon before the companies decide to make it expensive to dump them. Also, read any new service contract very carefully.
Why not create a distributed memory system for preventing memory holes? It could be called something like "Remember@Home" and would rely on all the empty disk space on people's computers to redundantly store everything on the internet.
The client software would watch what you download and coordinate more permanent caching of those internet documents in some "empty" portion of your HD. Distributed coordination in a P2P network structure would help prioritize what is stored where --leveling the number of copies of each document across the network. Most of the operation would be relatively lightweight on bandwidth -- exchanging only metadata about who has what stored. Only occassionally would the system ask for a copy of the content from one person's cache to be copied to another person's cache (such as to relevel the storage if too many backup copies of a peice of content are lost).
The idea requires a great deal of work on how to detect irrelvant differences in dynamic content, distributed coordination, local journaling, optimum metadata routing, etc. But it could be a rather interesting project that has applications for robust massively distributed storage systems.
> > The Space Shuttle Columbia delivered Chandra to a low Earth orbit. Then, the Inertial Upper Stage rocket boosted Chandra up to a higher altitude where a built-in propulsion system took Chandra to its final orbit.
> I'm wondering whether there's some juice still left in Chandra's propulsion systems.
Sadly, no. Changing orbits between the Shuttle's LEO and Chandra's large elliptical orbit (it moves almost one third the way to the moon) requires massive amounts of fuel. The Inertial Upper Stage is actually a large two-stage solid-fuel booster with over 25,000 lbs of fuel and 40,000 lbs thrust. This rocket is discarded along the way. Chandra, itself, has some fuel and some tiny thrusters (105 lb thrust each), but that is completely inadequate for a big job like moving back to LEO.
As Douglas Adams said, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space." Unfortunately, this harsh reality means that moving in space is expensive, mind-bogglingly expensive.
VoIP seems like a great place for spammers. The cost of initiating a call will be neglible unless there is some kind of bandwidth pricing. And without a do-not-call-list for VoIP, it will be open season on VoIP users.
On the other hand, a competent VoIP client should let me easily create my own phone-menu system from hell to repel simple voice-spams and trap telemarketing call-center flunkies ("Press 1 to hear the next confusing list of menu options").
Corporate behavior like this drives me insane. The personal labor cost to fix their defective product exceeds the price of the product. But I'm sure the EULA is careful to explain that the product is not necessarily useful for anything and Belkin is liable for nothing beyond the price of the product.
Unfortunately Chandra's orbit is way out of reach of the shuttle -- orbiting between 133,000 km (82,646 mi) and 16,000 kilometers (9,942 mi) from the Earth.