Trusted computing is the next big thing in the PC industry. Get in or be left begin in the dust, wondering why all your competitors are making mad cash while you barely keep your family afloat.
I know a lot of people don't want to hear this, but keeping your eyes closed while the industry is wooshing by you isn't quite economically sound behavior.
I wrote this review for hackwriters.com, I hope it present an complanar view to the above.
There is a category of science romance out there, running parallel to science fiction. Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)- a mathematician is one and Stephen Baxter is another. Putting the science back in fiction and taking us along with it into extraordinary scenarios with fantastic sweeps across history. I'd previously come across Stephen Baxter when reading Reality Dust - pure but very alternative and thoughtful science fiction. It was accompanied by an another long short story in the Futures compendium by Peter F Hamilton called 'Watching Trees Grow'. An amazing detective story spanning generations, about a Britain that has never left the Roman Empire. The Empire, now nearly thousand years old never vanished or collapsed, but redoubled it's strength and held on, shaping all of history forever. But it's Stephen Baxter who has reached prominence with an extraordinary output of very intelligent science fiction and non-fiction too, with his engrossing book which traces the path not yet taken in Deep Future.
In Coalescent Baxter takes a different tack to Peter Hamilton. He sticks to reality. Rome collapses, a slow terrible implosion over hundreds of years as the Barbarians crush the life out of her. He now deals in historical fact. It's Britain where Rome chooses to leave first, needing soldiers to defend Rome itself and Gaul. The population, led from Rome, is used to almost five hundred years of rule of law and prosperity. It cannot adjust, basic craftsmen skills seem to vanish, crime soars, most cannot believe the Emperor won't be back. Order will be restored soon they hope. But this not science fiction; Baxter uses history to chart a novel that is quite wonderful in many respects, doing something that has long been needed and probably should become a textbook for all high schools across the land.
This is a story of a young girl Regina, a Roman British girl living in a villa with a lavish lifestyle and slaves who is suddenly abandoned by her mother Julia after her father accidentally kills himself. Regina is saved from ruin by her Grandfather, an old soldier and they flee to the safety of the wall. Regina's story is central to this book, told over her lifespan and more, alternating with a more contemporary story of one George Poole searching for his long lost twin sister in Rome.
It is Regina's story and the story of Britain suddenly engulfed by marauding Saxons and tribal chieftans trying to fill the gap that the absence of Roman garrison's left behind. The disintegration of Romano Britain is a huge hole in the teaching of history in schools. We know they came, what they did, when they left, but then history glazes over and becomes the 'Dark Ages'. Baxter shines a very bright light indeed on those years and with subtle weaving entangles the adult Regina and her daughter Brica with the forever battling Artorius (Authur) and his mystic Myrddin (Merlin). Baxter is no romantic. This shambolic, receding, violent Britain is full of rapists and killers and Regina has to learn to survive with cunning. Everything is crumbling. Eventually she finds a way to get herself and her reluctant daughter to Rome - ostensibly to find her mother, but also to seek revenge for the man who raped her when she was a beautiful seventeen and left her with child.
The sub-story of George Poole and his search for his sister is consumed by the growing story of 'The Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins'. What is the connection between this secret convent in Rome and Regina's story some sixteen centuries ago? Who is the mysterious Peter, friend of George's father who seems to appear in George's life without warning. What does he want from George?
Baxter has a vision and everything always comes back to Rome. Our modern history began there and it is still entwined in modern Europe. Indeed as I write this review, the Prime Minister of Italy is wrapping up six months of Presidency of Europe.
Well, I heard only a week or so ago that the European Union was going to make sending spam illegal in the near future, or has already done so.
Unfortunately, as this article on the Register points out, most spam comes from outside of the EU, or turns out to be untraceable anyway... so the question is if this new legislature would have any noticeable effect.
A quote: Anti-spam software outfit, Brightmail, says the legislation only affects European registered companies and they're unlikely to flout the legislation. However, it claims nine out of ten spam emails are either untraceable or come from operations outside the European Union. Either way, professional spammers - whether inside or outside the EU - are unlikely to heed the new legislation. So in effect, this new law will make bugger all difference to the amount of spam we get in Europe.
IMHO this new law certainly is a step in the right direction, since the ISP's would be legally obliged to take action against spammers on their network. Now if only the rest of the world would go in the same direction...
It's been reported that SpamCop is paying upwards to $30K / year for bandwidth as a direct cause of the continous DDOS attacks on it.
The spammers are doing everything they can to squeeze the anti-spammers out. They use frivolous lawsuits (aka Mark Felstein and his porn spamming backers) or DDOS attacks that either knock the anti-spam resources off completely or increase the costs so that no hobbyist can run them.
And while all this is going on, the law enforcement agencies are doing nothing to counter the clearly illegal acts of the spammers.
And ISPs are doing NOTHING to reduce the number of zombies on their networks. So the DDOS attacks continue.
Nice going.
It's only a matter of time when someone (Al Queda?) will use the zombie network for something that will truly be noticed.
The some people don't have a clue as to the effects and circumstances of this. The purpose is not Autonomous Kill Vehicles though it might occur. Cruise Missiles etc already do this as does the Predator to one degree or another. The purpose here is to reduce the overhead cost on the army dramatically in hauling supplies etc over long distances with or without roads. To do this you need vehicles than can bypass disabled vehicles and overcome obstacles. They need to be free of drivers who get tired and eat up supplies.
The real effect here will be civilian. The project which like it or not will happen regardless of DARPA someday soon, is going to very nearly completely alter how we live.
To illustrate: suppose you are old blind and unable to drive. (It happens to the best of us) Now you will be able to go where you want without somebody driving you. Suppose you want to go to work but don't want to own a car? Mass Transit? No! you just get on your cell phone and call for a car. It arrives shortly and takes you where you want to go and without a driver. Freight? No more Truck Drivers and the wreaks from them being too tired. No more Taxi Drivers. Close most of the Hospitals because wreaks are not filling them up. Kids will not need parents to drive them somewhere.
There is very nearly nothing more profound than this race! It will reorganize our world. The issue here is how will we adapt. This isn't an esoteric question. We had better face it now.
For the Luddites amung us, give it up. Stopping DARPA will only give the technological edge to China. They will do the work. This is a very high amplification Technology. It Amplifies People a LOT. The issue as always will be the morals of those being Amplified, and will we allow this to cause others to be lost in the "noise."
The next step in anti-spam evolution will be spam-scanning software that automatically follows links back to webpages and looks for "spammy" content and tags the message as spam in the email system.
Dear dumbass:
That would let the spammer know your email address is active.
Honestly though, intellectual wanking such yours belongs to KURO5HIN. Slashdot is the home of the fat, pimpy linux geeks, the decadent child molesters and those lacking any kind of critical thinking skills (these things are not mutually exclusive.) Have you looked around? Slashdot is 80% trolls, and the editors dare not ban them because the site would be so boring then nobody would come here. Wtf do you think generates the traffic? NEWS? I DON'T FUCKING THINK SO.
Henceforth I will no longer respond to your posts.
The obvious solution to this would be for BIND to redirect non-existant queries to a search engine IP which would figure out your mistyped domain via referer. This, of coruse, brings up the question of referer-removing proxies, like privoxy. Now, I don't want to flamebait here, but who in the world uses those? Only criminals I would think. Why would a good netizen want to use such a tool which is obviously there to provide an extra layer of privacy on the internet (I use the term privacy lightly, since given enough focus, it's trivial to track people online). Privoxy is used 80% by people who distribute child pornography and 20% by paranoid linux hippies who like to exploit hard-working site-managers into oblivion by not viewing ads. I suggest that such proxies be made illegal and users of it expelled from the internet until they grow up or the police have enough evidence of their child molestation acts.
instead of the verisign sitelooker page, I suggest that BIND (the software that runs 60% of the DNS) should be enhanced in several ways: The most important one, IMHO, is to compute a list of close matches and present these choices to the user. They may use the Soundex algorithm or some other tricks to see if characters are transposed, if one characters is wrong, if one is missing, etc.
If well implemented, this would solve 60% of the problem. The remaining 40% is due to the fact that people sometimes doesn't actually mistype a known address... they type a dead wrong address, such as "amazonbookstore.com" instead of "amazon.com". In this case, BIND should split up the phrase into separate word (in this case "amazon book store" and redirect to a search engine with those words as parameters. The big question in this case is: which search engine?
I think that one should be able to choose, in one way or another. If not, Google would be my choice;-)
alternatively, they might eject of uranus orbit and become the next catalyzer of earthly protoplanet destruction killing every living creature and brining about a new cambrian era from which it would take millions of years to reinitialize suitable conditions for autogenesis.
but then, who knows?
Slashdot Mirror
And here I thought taste was subjective...
Trusted computing is the next big thing in the PC industry. Get in or be left begin in the dust, wondering why all your competitors are making mad cash while you barely keep your family afloat.
I know a lot of people don't want to hear this, but keeping your eyes closed while the industry is wooshing by you isn't quite economically sound behavior.
Mod me down, I have plenty of karma to burn.
But you should definately check with the American Intellectual Property Law Association, they're your best bet for solid IP info (which slashdot isn't.)
Well, I heard only a week or so ago that the European Union was going to make sending spam illegal in the near future, or has already done so.
Unfortunately, as this article on the Register points out, most spam comes from outside of the EU, or turns out to be untraceable anyway... so the question is if this new legislature would have any noticeable effect.
A quote: Anti-spam software outfit, Brightmail, says the legislation only affects European registered companies and they're unlikely to flout the legislation. However, it claims nine out of ten spam emails are either untraceable or come from operations outside the European Union. Either way, professional spammers - whether inside or outside the EU - are unlikely to heed the new legislation. So in effect, this new law will make bugger all difference to the amount of spam we get in Europe.
IMHO this new law certainly is a step in the right direction, since the ISP's would be legally obliged to take action against spammers on their network. Now if only the rest of the world would go in the same direction...
It's been reported that SpamCop is paying upwards to $30K / year for bandwidth as a direct cause of the continous DDOS attacks on it.
The spammers are doing everything they can to squeeze the anti-spammers out. They use frivolous lawsuits (aka Mark Felstein and his porn spamming backers) or DDOS attacks that either knock the anti-spam resources off completely or increase the costs so that no hobbyist can run them.
And while all this is going on, the law enforcement agencies are doing nothing to counter the clearly illegal acts of the spammers.
And ISPs are doing NOTHING to reduce the number of zombies on their networks. So the DDOS attacks continue.
Nice going.
It's only a matter of time when someone (Al Queda?) will use the zombie network for something that will truly be noticed.
The some people don't have a clue as to the effects and circumstances of this. The purpose is not Autonomous Kill Vehicles though it might occur. Cruise Missiles etc already do this as does the Predator to one degree or another. The purpose here is to reduce the overhead cost on the army dramatically in hauling supplies etc over long distances with or without roads. To do this you need vehicles than can bypass disabled vehicles and overcome obstacles. They need to be free of drivers who get tired and eat up supplies.
The real effect here will be civilian. The project which like it or not will happen regardless of DARPA someday soon, is going to very nearly completely alter how we live.
To illustrate: suppose you are old blind and unable to drive. (It happens to the best of us) Now you will be able to go where you want without somebody driving you. Suppose you want to go to work but don't want to own a car? Mass Transit? No! you just get on your cell phone and call for a car. It arrives shortly and takes you where you want to go and without a driver. Freight? No more Truck Drivers and the wreaks from them being too tired. No more Taxi Drivers. Close most of the Hospitals because wreaks are not filling them up. Kids will not need parents to drive them somewhere.
There is very nearly nothing more profound than this race! It will reorganize our world. The issue here is how will we adapt. This isn't an esoteric question. We had better face it now.
For the Luddites amung us, give it up. Stopping DARPA will only give the technological edge to China. They will do the work. This is a very high amplification Technology. It Amplifies People a LOT. The issue as always will be the morals of those being Amplified, and will we allow this to cause others to be lost in the "noise."
The next step in anti-spam evolution will be spam-scanning software that automatically follows links back to webpages and looks for "spammy" content and tags the message as spam in the email system.
Dear dumbass:
That would let the spammer know your email address is active.
HTH.
Troll Information Services.
FP!
~~ BUSH @ IIP ~~
\m/ Greetz to GNAA and all the people who wasted mod points on moi. \m/ Lots of hot homo love, #!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!%100Tirel EOF
really? american megacorporations seem to be doing it pretty well.
and that's the fucking point.
It's not even a troll, I just need the karma.
Honestly though, intellectual wanking such yours belongs to KURO5HIN. Slashdot is the home of the fat, pimpy linux geeks, the decadent child molesters and those lacking any kind of critical thinking skills (these things are not mutually exclusive.) Have you looked around? Slashdot is 80% trolls, and the editors dare not ban them because the site would be so boring then nobody would come here. Wtf do you think generates the traffic? NEWS? I DON'T FUCKING THINK SO.
Henceforth I will no longer respond to your posts.
What is this now? You bit and now you're feeling stupid for responding to such an obvious troll?
Shit, it only took 3 reposts for you to get it (and who knows how many times before by the guy who originally wrote it) !
A thought is resounding in my mind right now... YOU ARE A DUMBASS. But hey, you can always claim vlad-style retroactive trolling!
The obvious solution to this would be for BIND to redirect non-existant queries to a search engine IP which would figure out your mistyped domain via referer. This, of coruse, brings up the question of referer-removing proxies, like privoxy. Now, I don't want to flamebait here, but who in the world uses those? Only criminals I would think. Why would a good netizen want to use such a tool which is obviously there to provide an extra layer of privacy on the internet (I use the term privacy lightly, since given enough focus, it's trivial to track people online). Privoxy is used 80% by people who distribute child pornography and 20% by paranoid linux hippies who like to exploit hard-working site-managers into oblivion by not viewing ads. I suggest that such proxies be made illegal and users of it expelled from the internet until they grow up or the police have enough evidence of their child molestation acts.
instead of the verisign sitelooker page, I suggest that BIND (the software that runs 60% of the DNS) should be enhanced in several ways: The most important one, IMHO, is to compute a list of close matches and present these choices to the user. They may use the Soundex algorithm or some other tricks to see if characters are transposed, if one characters is wrong, if one is missing, etc.
;-)
If well implemented, this would solve 60% of the problem. The remaining 40% is due to the fact that people sometimes doesn't actually mistype a known address... they type a dead wrong address, such as "amazonbookstore.com" instead of "amazon.com". In this case, BIND should split up the phrase into separate word (in this case "amazon book store" and redirect to a search engine with those words as parameters. The big question in this case is: which search engine?
I think that one should be able to choose, in one way or another. If not, Google would be my choice
And Nintendo Ain't In It.
alternatively, they might eject of uranus orbit and become the next catalyzer of earthly protoplanet destruction killing every living creature and brining about a new cambrian era from which it would take millions of years to reinitialize suitable conditions for autogenesis. but then, who knows?
AND IT'S MADE OF CHEESE
now that konqueror can do thumbs over ftp, who needs samba for porn???
If the RIAA can sue anyone for anything at any given time, then where would be no mix ups.
Which kernel does he run? ;-)
I can see it now: a GTK toolkit with two buttons "Vote 1" and "Vote 2", which execute the action "echo 'voted for candidate 1' >> .votes",
.votes`;
counting the votes is then done a perl script:
#!/usr/bin/perl
@v = `cat
forearch (@v) {
if (\1\) { $i++; }
if (\2\) { $ii++; }
}
if ($i > $ii) {
print "candidate 1 won by ".$i-$ii." votes!";
}
if ($i $ii) {
print "candidate 2 won by ".$ii-$i." votes!";
}
STL buffer overflow advisory
that they only changed the wording a bit with the central point staying the same.
Oh well.