UPS, FedEx, and a few other delivery companies already do this. And its really nice. When I don't get a package on time, I just check the ID number on the website, and they tell me where it is, how long it stayed there, and so on. It is VERY convenient and saves a lot of worry.
This is just expanding an already good system to the regular mail. If it can be done reasonably fast and efficiently, I see no problems here.
The benefits are good and I'm not worried that any government thugs will be obscesssed with watching where my mail goes. (they could already do that anyway... each envelope I send has an address on it.)
all the posts about 'if you can't keep it secure you shouldn't have it' are stupid... and therefore no-one should have a credit card
No they aren't stupid. It is a very different thing to have possession of your own private information, and to have possession of many other peoples' private information. I can and do protect my own credit card. But if a company is holding my private information, there is nothing I can do to keep it secure. Therefore I still say, don't keep my sensitive data on file if you aren't willing to or can't protect it.
While it isn't really anyones fault if a good hacker gets to them (especially on the inside!) This raises a really good legal point. YOU SHOULDN'T DATA MINE UNLESS YOU CAN PROTECT THE DATA!
That company took on a huge responsibility when they started tracking millions of consumers. And they should be held responsible for any damages that occur do to dissemination of private information.
Another bonus feature of this new mouse is that is only clicks Microsoft programs and products.
For your safety, the mouse will not open any programs that Microsoft doesn't make money off of. It could be a virus.
Furthermore, whenever you do click a Microsoft product, the mouse will waste your bandwidth be automatically connecting the internet, contacting Microsoft, and checking all your serial numbers to make sure your licenses are up to date.
Then, if you have old software that has an update release from Microsoft, the mouse will open a browser where you can download updates (for a fee of course).
Then to save you the hassle, the mouse will move the cursor over the Download Updates link and click for you, automatically charging your credit card.
We hope you enjoy your new Microsoft mouse with added features. And don't forget to sign your EULA before opening the package.
It makes sense that they don't want their code to be open source, because then ALL the bugs will be found. When open source code is developed normally, people notice bugs/security holes a few at a time and fix them. But when software has been closed source for a long time, it's bound to have tons of bugs and holes. Opening the code up to public scrutiny would unveil A LOT of problems. And that's just not good for PR... especially in voting.
My guess is they just want someone to look through the code, maybe suggest a couple quick fixes, and then give the OK, so they can reassure the public. They don't really want to get to EVERY hole in the code. They probably just want show that they get numbers close enough that we should keep using/buying their stuff.
'd think more geeks would be into it, especially with all the equipment you get to work with.
But DANG would this be an expensive hobby! If you can get some financial backing or sponsorship it would be ok. But that's a lot of high quality, lightwight devices. And we all know that high quality + heavy = expensive. And high quality + small and light = super-expensive!
And the thing that really gets me, is that once you load up your huge investment into a tiny plane, you send it out to its almost certain destruction!
Now I'll spend money on something I'm going to improve on and keep for a long time. But dropping cash on a big project like this would be like shooting $100 bills into the ocean.
Without a better success rate, you'd have to be a drug smuggler just to afford the little marvels.
This is one more feather in our collective cap. This means that in very recent history (less than a year) open source was significantly impacted every major player. Microsoft is keeping a close eye on us and implementing an open source lab. Big business companies like IBM and Oracle have jumped onboard. And now Apple is realizing that its better to go with it than fight it. This is great news. I could have dreamed of this five years ago, but I never would have bet on it.
We are making history and leaving a big footprint. Little people influencing very large companies.
Read the newspaper. Terrorists, suspected terrorists, and suspected associates of suspected terrorists have no rights. A larger database generates more suspicions, a fixed percentage of which are erroneous. In the land of Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, your innocence does not protect you.
Read the article. Its not a larger database. It's the same information they've always had.
Read the article, its not Bush, Rumsfel, or Ashcroft. It's the state of Florida.
Once you hammer out all the facts, its not nearly so dramatic.
Law enforcement officers don't query their database for a list of people to arrest and lockup indefinately, now matter how much you may like to think so. That is how they start their investigations. They get leads that way, all but one of which are wrong. That's how it's always been. They don't get everybody on the list. The list is there because there's a good chance that the one they're looking for is on the list.
And of course, it's is our very freedoms (in many things) that the terrorists want to take away - to make us afraid...
But what freedoms did you just lose? If you hadn't read slashdot today would you be able to tell that Florida was using a database? I don't think you would. In fact, this system has been running in various forms for quite some time.
There is no guarenteed right to other people not knowing publicly available facts. Heck, there isn't even a right to privacy in the Constitution. I can still go speak out against any senator/president/governor I want. I still work where I want and spend my money how I want. I don't beleive we've just lost any freedoms.
I don't think this really hurts the innocent. True, they may be questioned. But if an inspector drops by the house of all 20 brown-haired owners of red Ford pickups in a 20 mile radius, just asking questions and noticing anything suspicious, that's not so bad. If they immediately ARRESTED all those people, that's something all together different. But just asking where you were, or if they could look at your truck isn't an invasion.
And we also must remember, most criminals are dumb as bricks. There are a few criminal masterminds. But your average 7-11 robber couldn't outsmart a chicken. When an officer visits one of those people and starts asking questions, there's a very good chance they'll sweat like a pig, dart their eyes, and take off running. It's like they're yelling IT WAS ME! I DID IT! ARREST ME! When they stop by my house because a neighbor who looked like me robbed someone, I'll have nothing to worry about. The conversation will go something like:
Where were you this morning at 8:45?
At work.
Can we call your boss?
Yes
Ok, thank you.
Simple investigation is not an invasion of privacy. And this information has already been avaialable, this is just a speed increase.
And people, don't forget. These are the tools the cops will be using to defend your homes and families. I live in a neighborhood where I'm kinda glad to see the cops swing by every once in a while. I've seen the people who get arrested, and they're not the kind of people you want around. And none of my neighbors or myself have never been pulled from our beds and strip searched at the station house.
So before you go criticizing the cops, remember what they're doing and who they're doing it for. They have kids and wives too. If I want a faster computer to do my work, can't they have one too?
Yeah, some guy called me out of the blue yesterday. He said the muffler on my car came from his minivan. He said I can keep it on my car if I want, but I owe him $699.00.
This has always been SCO's strategy, to talk themselves up whenever something bad happens, in an effort to rescue/inflate their stock. This is just one more case. Many people have pointed out that you can look at the stock graph and a history of their PR releases and see a direct corrolation. SCO stock falls. SCO makes up some facts/allegations. SCO stock prices come back up.
How can they fall for that? I sincerely hope no company even dreams of paying that bill. And I hope the company lawyers all know how bullshit this is. If someone were trying to charge me that much or sue, I'd take the chance, because the license cost is just as bad as the lawsuit damages!
I'm glad to see this sort of thing happening, but I am a little disappointed that Adobe didn't port its code to linux natively.
Using Wine will nodoubtedly help many companies using linux. And it will make the decision easier for many companies that want to use linux, but are worried about compatability issues.
My hope is that Win will carry us through the transition phase until software manufacturers just compile a linux version of their product.
The problem now is that companies won't switch to linux because their aren't enough programs supported on linux. But software companies won't develop linux products because there aren't enough companies using linux. It's a deadlock. But if Wine can make the first crack in the floodgates, the whole thing should crumble. If there are already a bunch of photoshop users running linux-wine, Adobe is much more likely to issue a linux port of their code. Which in turn makes it easier to go linux with your company!
And soon enough, all the software companies will compile their linux distrubutions, and then, if enough people ask for it, alter the code so it can be compiled for Windows.
It seems to me that SCO is practiced and very good as throughing around words to help their cause. In this case, I think they're scared that they might have bitten off more than they can chew (Two or more large, pissed off companies with lawyers - and a 15% stock price plummet) They need to pump themselves up. And as evidenced by past history, a lot of talk is how they do it. Whenever SCO needs a little boost, they issue a threat or chastise someone. It's very weak-minded. But it works on Wall-Street... Go figure.
I am also disappointed
that you have chosen litigation rather than good faith discussions with
SCO about the problems inherent in Linux
...
I must say that your decision to file legal action does not seem
conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux.
Darl C. McBride
Then there's the question of... what do you need a supercomputer for? The applications are pretty limited for a need for a petaflop computer, unless your doing mass storage, cryptography (cracking), or simulations.
You're missing the big picture...
Massive multiplayer Quake on a 614,400 x 819,200 screen.
Well, a well engineered supercomputer has much less overhead than a cluster. One superfast processor doesn't have to deal with interprocessor communcations like a cluster does.
And if your supercomputer has multiple processors, they are generally made to cooperate nicely to speed efficiency. Whereas a cluster has to go through ethernet and hardware layers to communicate between nodes. Granted that is fast, but on-board communication is faster.
It seems strange, but a multiple processor computer can actually perform a task slower than just one processor working on the problem if the program and os aren't designed well. So a lot of the value of a supercomputer comes in its design, and the reputation of the manufacturer. And Cray is pretty reliable in my book.
But the REAL key to the potential comeback of the Cray computer will be whether or not it still has cool bubbles! Wow!!! Cray computing... the inventor of case mods.
You just can't see a stereoscopic vision allowing you to definitely position the object in three dimensional space. But the eyes use other cues than stereoscopic vision to determine position, cues like parallax and brightness, as well as ocular focus.
Yeah, but these holograms are projected from a reasonably small screen, so they probably use stereoscopic separation to produce the holographic keypad. Without stereoscopic cues, I think you'd have quite a hard time trying to find the intersection of the projected image and the imaginary view plane. Even if you could do it, it would be far from useful.
The brightness of an object may help a little in the holo keypad, but not much. And the only way to acheive paralax would be to swing your head in circles while looking at the keypad. I doubt anyone wants to pull up to an ATM and do a "You go girl" head movement to see the keypad while the cars behind look on. Anyway, these cues are usually backup cues for stereoscopic separation.
I don't think this is a HUGE issue. I'm just pointing out details.
Yeah, but what if you only have one eye? You can't see a hologram with only one eye. There's a whole bag of "this is not handicap accessible" with their name on it.
Not to mention, I like command line consoles. I guess its just that old style charm. I think I prefer plain old buttons under my fingers too. Maybe you could learn to type fast on a hologram, but with no physical feedback, it seems like it would be a royal pain to type at any great speed.
I'm not sure how we will tell if anyone used GPL'd code in their proprietary software. Anyone who gets caught is probably one in a thousand or more. And I don't think there would really be any monetary damages to sue for.
But image this...
You are a company who illegally took GPL'd code and put it in your own software package. Then you pretended it didn't come from open code, and you wouldn't release the source. Then ten years down the road, you get caught. During those ten years you may have invested millions of dollars in Research and Development of your software. But now there may be a legal claim that all that code is public. I don't know if a judge would uphold an argument like that. But the threat of having to realease all the code from a major software product would be scarey to a large software distribution company. Image if Adobe was found to have copied GPL'd code into photoshop. It would kill them if they had to open the source for it. They would have ten competitors (who don't know about GIMP) immediately develop software that they could seel much cheaper (to people who don't know about GIMP).
This is just one example. But I think this would be the real damages sued for in a court case.
I would really like to see some "Open source lawyers"... or the lawyer version of open source software developers. People who go after random problems like this in their spare time. It would make the world a better place. Imagine GOOD lawyers, not bad ones - working for free for the betterment of society.
If there were people like that around, I would like to see them follow up this case, and those like it.
In the absence of open lawyers, I think a lot of GPL and licensing issues will not be followed up. Without someone to pursue a law or contract, it doesn't really do much.
We've been lucky until now because all the people using GPL software have the open source spirit. But the more open source gets into a market driven economy, the more we will see this type of thing.
Not only does the ISP lose incentive, it also has to essentially pay for "RIAA employees." If the RIAA continually submits subpeonas for 75 people a day, somebody on the ISP payroll has to be trudging around digging up IP addresses and sending them to the RIAA.
I know that's not a huge cost, but it could be a long term expendature. Not to mention it would just plain suck to have to hire an employee to go through your own records and tattle on your customers to a bully corporation.
I would be so pissed if I had to pay for that employee!
I wonder how fast/slow the encryption/decription works. If it takes a little longer to encrypt the data as it flys from the motherboard to the hard disk and vice-versa, you could develop performance hindering bottlenecks. Of course if the encryption/decryption process is as fast or faster than the IDE bus, then there is no problem. It would be transparent to the user.
I'd like to see some tests run on the performance of the new system. I would even accept a SLIGHT descrease in performance for the security. But I don't want noticeably slower data writing/fetching from the hard disk (since it's already the slowest thing that happens in the computer).
From what I understand, the key is a USB key. I've seen some companies advertise these as a way to stop pirating of your software. Instead of entering a product key, you have to plug the little device into the computer EVERY time you want to use it. The device IS the password.
So even the motherboard won't help unless you have the USB key. If you put it on your key chain, or hid it, or took it with you, THEN your data would be secure, provided they can't duplicate/crack the USB devices.
I'm still a little iffy on all the details, but that is what i picked up from it.
Of course, if this technology does turn out to be any good, it will most likely become illegal through excessive lawsuits or some phrase in the DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
UPS, FedEx, and a few other delivery companies already do this. And its really nice. When I don't get a package on time, I just check the ID number on the website, and they tell me where it is, how long it stayed there, and so on. It is VERY convenient and saves a lot of worry.
This is just expanding an already good system to the regular mail. If it can be done reasonably fast and efficiently, I see no problems here.
The benefits are good and I'm not worried that any government thugs will be obscesssed with watching where my mail goes. (they could already do that anyway... each envelope I send has an address on it.)
all the posts about 'if you can't keep it secure you shouldn't have it' are stupid ... and therefore no-one should have a credit card
No they aren't stupid. It is a very different thing to have possession of your own private information, and to have possession of many other peoples' private information. I can and do protect my own credit card. But if a company is holding my private information, there is nothing I can do to keep it secure. Therefore I still say, don't keep my sensitive data on file if you aren't willing to or can't protect it.
While it isn't really anyones fault if a good hacker gets to them (especially on the inside!) This raises a really good legal point. YOU SHOULDN'T DATA MINE UNLESS YOU CAN PROTECT THE DATA!
That company took on a huge responsibility when they started tracking millions of consumers. And they should be held responsible for any damages that occur do to dissemination of private information.
Another bonus feature of this new mouse is that is only clicks Microsoft programs and products.
For your safety, the mouse will not open any programs that Microsoft doesn't make money off of. It could be a virus.
Furthermore, whenever you do click a Microsoft product, the mouse will waste your bandwidth be automatically connecting the internet, contacting Microsoft, and checking all your serial numbers to make sure your licenses are up to date.
Then, if you have old software that has an update release from Microsoft, the mouse will open a browser where you can download updates (for a fee of course).
Then to save you the hassle, the mouse will move the cursor over the Download Updates link and click for you, automatically charging your credit card.
We hope you enjoy your new Microsoft mouse with added features. And don't forget to sign your EULA before opening the package.
It makes sense that they don't want their code to be open source, because then ALL the bugs will be found. When open source code is developed normally, people notice bugs/security holes a few at a time and fix them. But when software has been closed source for a long time, it's bound to have tons of bugs and holes. Opening the code up to public scrutiny would unveil A LOT of problems. And that's just not good for PR... especially in voting.
My guess is they just want someone to look through the code, maybe suggest a couple quick fixes, and then give the OK, so they can reassure the public. They don't really want to get to EVERY hole in the code. They probably just want show that they get numbers close enough that we should keep using/buying their stuff.
'd think more geeks would be into it, especially with all the equipment you get to work with.
But DANG would this be an expensive hobby! If you can get some financial backing or sponsorship it would be ok. But that's a lot of high quality, lightwight devices. And we all know that
high quality + heavy = expensive. And
high quality + small and light = super-expensive!
And the thing that really gets me, is that once you load up your huge investment into a tiny plane, you send it out to its almost certain destruction!
Now I'll spend money on something I'm going to improve on and keep for a long time. But dropping cash on a big project like this would be like shooting $100 bills into the ocean.
Without a better success rate, you'd have to be a drug smuggler just to afford the little marvels.
This is one more feather in our collective cap. This means that in very recent history (less than a year) open source was significantly impacted every major player. Microsoft is keeping a close eye on us and implementing an open source lab. Big business companies like IBM and Oracle have jumped onboard. And now Apple is realizing that its better to go with it than fight it. This is great news. I could have dreamed of this five years ago, but I never would have bet on it.
We are making history and leaving a big footprint. Little people influencing very large companies.
Read the newspaper. Terrorists, suspected terrorists, and suspected associates of suspected terrorists have no rights. A larger database generates more suspicions, a fixed percentage of which are erroneous. In the land of Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, your innocence does not protect you.
Read the article. Its not a larger database. It's the same information they've always had.
Read the article, its not Bush, Rumsfel, or Ashcroft. It's the state of Florida.
Once you hammer out all the facts, its not nearly so dramatic.
Law enforcement officers don't query their database for a list of people to arrest and lockup indefinately, now matter how much you may like to think so. That is how they start their investigations. They get leads that way, all but one of which are wrong. That's how it's always been. They don't get everybody on the list. The list is there because there's a good chance that the one they're looking for is on the list.
And of course, it's is our very freedoms (in many things) that the terrorists want to take away - to make us afraid...
But what freedoms did you just lose? If you hadn't read slashdot today would you be able to tell that Florida was using a database? I don't think you would. In fact, this system has been running in various forms for quite some time.
There is no guarenteed right to other people not knowing publicly available facts. Heck, there isn't even a right to privacy in the Constitution. I can still go speak out against any senator/president/governor I want. I still work where I want and spend my money how I want. I don't beleive we've just lost any freedoms.
I don't think this really hurts the innocent. True, they may be questioned. But if an inspector drops by the house of all 20 brown-haired owners of red Ford pickups in a 20 mile radius, just asking questions and noticing anything suspicious, that's not so bad. If they immediately ARRESTED all those people, that's something all together different. But just asking where you were, or if they could look at your truck isn't an invasion.
And we also must remember, most criminals are dumb as bricks. There are a few criminal masterminds. But your average 7-11 robber couldn't outsmart a chicken. When an officer visits one of those people and starts asking questions, there's a very good chance they'll sweat like a pig, dart their eyes, and take off running. It's like they're yelling IT WAS ME! I DID IT! ARREST ME! When they stop by my house because a neighbor who looked like me robbed someone, I'll have nothing to worry about. The conversation will go something like:
Where were you this morning at 8:45?
At work.
Can we call your boss?
Yes
Ok, thank you.
Simple investigation is not an invasion of privacy. And this information has already been avaialable, this is just a speed increase.
And people, don't forget. These are the tools the cops will be using to defend your homes and families. I live in a neighborhood where I'm kinda glad to see the cops swing by every once in a while. I've seen the people who get arrested, and they're not the kind of people you want around. And none of my neighbors or myself have never been pulled from our beds and strip searched at the station house.
So before you go criticizing the cops, remember what they're doing and who they're doing it for. They have kids and wives too. If I want a faster computer to do my work, can't they have one too?
Yeah, some guy called me out of the blue yesterday. He said the muffler on my car came from his minivan. He said I can keep it on my car if I want, but I owe him $699.00.
This has always been SCO's strategy, to talk themselves up whenever something bad happens, in an effort to rescue/inflate their stock. This is just one more case. Many people have pointed out that you can look at the stock graph and a history of their PR releases and see a direct corrolation.
SCO stock falls.
SCO makes up some facts/allegations.
SCO stock prices come back up.
How can they fall for that? I sincerely hope no company even dreams of paying that bill. And I hope the company lawyers all know how bullshit this is. If someone were trying to charge me that much or sue, I'd take the chance, because the license cost is just as bad as the lawsuit damages!
I'm glad to see this sort of thing happening, but I am a little disappointed that Adobe didn't port its code to linux natively.
Using Wine will nodoubtedly help many companies using linux. And it will make the decision easier for many companies that want to use linux, but are worried about compatability issues.
My hope is that Win will carry us through the transition phase until software manufacturers just compile a linux version of their product.
The problem now is that companies won't switch to linux because their aren't enough programs supported on linux. But software companies won't develop linux products because there aren't enough companies using linux. It's a deadlock. But if Wine can make the first crack in the floodgates, the whole thing should crumble. If there are already a bunch of photoshop users running linux-wine, Adobe is much more likely to issue a linux port of their code. Which in turn makes it easier to go linux with your company!
And soon enough, all the software companies will compile their linux distrubutions, and then, if enough people ask for it, alter the code so it can be compiled for Windows.
It seems to me that SCO is practiced and very good as throughing around words to help their cause. In this case, I think they're scared that they might have bitten off more than they can chew (Two or more large, pissed off companies with lawyers - and a 15% stock price plummet) They need to pump themselves up. And as evidenced by past history, a lot of talk is how they do it. Whenever SCO needs a little boost, they issue a threat or chastise someone. It's very weak-minded. But it works on Wall-Street... Go figure.
I am also disappointed that you have chosen litigation rather than good faith discussions with SCO about the problems inherent in Linux
...
I must say that your decision to file legal action does not seem conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux.
Darl C. McBride
This man is talking out his ass.
Then there's the question of ... what do you need a supercomputer for? The applications are pretty limited for a need for a petaflop computer, unless your doing mass storage, cryptography (cracking), or simulations.
You're missing the big picture...
Massive multiplayer Quake on a 614,400 x 819,200 screen.
Thank you Cray.
Well, a well engineered supercomputer has much less overhead than a cluster. One superfast processor doesn't have to deal with interprocessor communcations like a cluster does.
And if your supercomputer has multiple processors, they are generally made to cooperate nicely to speed efficiency. Whereas a cluster has to go through ethernet and hardware layers to communicate between nodes. Granted that is fast, but on-board communication is faster.
It seems strange, but a multiple processor computer can actually perform a task slower than just one processor working on the problem if the program and os aren't designed well. So a lot of the value of a supercomputer comes in its design, and the reputation of the manufacturer. And Cray is pretty reliable in my book.
But the REAL key to the potential comeback of the Cray computer will be whether or not it still has cool bubbles! Wow!!! Cray computing... the inventor of case mods.
You just can't see a stereoscopic vision allowing you to definitely position the object in three dimensional space. But the eyes use other cues than stereoscopic vision to determine position, cues like parallax and brightness, as well as ocular focus.
Yeah, but these holograms are projected from a reasonably small screen, so they probably use stereoscopic separation to produce the holographic keypad. Without stereoscopic cues, I think you'd have quite a hard time trying to find the intersection of the projected image and the imaginary view plane. Even if you could do it, it would be far from useful.
The brightness of an object may help a little in the holo keypad, but not much. And the only way to acheive paralax would be to swing your head in circles while looking at the keypad. I doubt anyone wants to pull up to an ATM and do a "You go girl" head movement to see the keypad while the cars behind look on. Anyway, these cues are usually backup cues for stereoscopic separation.
I don't think this is a HUGE issue. I'm just pointing out details.
Yeah, but what if you only have one eye? You can't see a hologram with only one eye. There's a whole bag of "this is not handicap accessible" with their name on it.
Not to mention, I like command line consoles. I guess its just that old style charm. I think I prefer plain old buttons under my fingers too. Maybe you could learn to type fast on a hologram, but with no physical feedback, it seems like it would be a royal pain to type at any great speed.
In related news...
I will also be suing SCO. Everyone reading this post, please send me $5.00.
heh heh
I'm not sure how we will tell if anyone used GPL'd code in their proprietary software. Anyone who gets caught is probably one in a thousand or more. And I don't think there would really be any monetary damages to sue for.
But image this...
You are a company who illegally took GPL'd code and put it in your own software package. Then you pretended it didn't come from open code, and you wouldn't release the source. Then ten years down the road, you get caught. During those ten years you may have invested millions of dollars in Research and Development of your software. But now there may be a legal claim that all that code is public. I don't know if a judge would uphold an argument like that. But the threat of having to realease all the code from a major software product would be scarey to a large software distribution company. Image if Adobe was found to have copied GPL'd code into photoshop. It would kill them if they had to open the source for it. They would have ten competitors (who don't know about GIMP) immediately develop software that they could seel much cheaper (to people who don't know about GIMP).
This is just one example. But I think this would be the real damages sued for in a court case.
I would really like to see some "Open source lawyers" ... or the lawyer version of open source software developers. People who go after random problems like this in their spare time. It would make the world a better place. Imagine GOOD lawyers, not bad ones - working for free for the betterment of society.
If there were people like that around, I would like to see them follow up this case, and those like it.
In the absence of open lawyers, I think a lot of GPL and licensing issues will not be followed up. Without someone to pursue a law or contract, it doesn't really do much.
We've been lucky until now because all the people using GPL software have the open source spirit. But the more open source gets into a market driven economy, the more we will see this type of thing.
Bring on the Open Lawyers!
Not only does the ISP lose incentive, it also has to essentially pay for "RIAA employees." If the RIAA continually submits subpeonas for 75 people a day, somebody on the ISP payroll has to be trudging around digging up IP addresses and sending them to the RIAA.
I know that's not a huge cost, but it could be a long term expendature. Not to mention it would just plain suck to have to hire an employee to go through your own records and tattle on your customers to a bully corporation.
I would be so pissed if I had to pay for that employee!
I wonder how fast/slow the encryption/decription works. If it takes a little longer to encrypt the data as it flys from the motherboard to the hard disk and vice-versa, you could develop performance hindering bottlenecks. Of course if the encryption/decryption process is as fast or faster than the IDE bus, then there is no problem. It would be transparent to the user.
I'd like to see some tests run on the performance of the new system. I would even accept a SLIGHT descrease in performance for the security. But I don't want noticeably slower data writing/fetching from the hard disk (since it's already the slowest thing that happens in the computer).
From what I understand, the key is a USB key. I've seen some companies advertise these as a way to stop pirating of your software. Instead of entering a product key, you have to plug the little device into the computer EVERY time you want to use it. The device IS the password.
So even the motherboard won't help unless you have the USB key. If you put it on your key chain, or hid it, or took it with you, THEN your data would be secure, provided they can't duplicate/crack the USB devices.
I'm still a little iffy on all the details, but that is what i picked up from it.
Of course, if this technology does turn out to be any good, it will most likely become illegal through excessive lawsuits or some phrase in the DMCA.