Yeah, I was kind of hoping my one-time employer would have made the list. Calling it a rollercoaster ride puts it mildly.
Kuo's book was okay. There were some inaccuracies and author embellishments - a number of events/quotes that David claims to have witnessed happened after he left and/or his version is a little more dramatic. Regardless, VA was a fascinating environment - a company with a lot of potential driven into the ground by some very poor decisions and, in the end, management's personal greed leading to deliberate junking of the company.
Well, if you accualy [sic] read the books you would know that they were not in the school for a good portion of the book, it wasent the director.
I for one agree with the earlier parent. Even in the earlier movies when the kids were not at Hogwarts they did not wear "modern" street clothes. AFAIK, bringing the kids' clothing up to current trends was the director's decision, and the only one I really have an issue with. It just seems so non sequitur in the Harry Potter world.
The feeling of the world of Harry Potter to me seems that in the world of the Muggles things are more modern, but not circa 2000. In the parallel realm of the wizards, things have kept a more Victorian look and feel. To have the kids dressing down to the Muggle equivalent when not at Hogwarts would have been more acceptable than today's trendy wear, though they were dressed in modern garb even when they were on the Hogwarts grounds but not in class, which flies against the setting of the previous movies.
I hope they revert that change in GoF and the later movies.
"And corperate security folks were worried about usb drives."
Um, yup. That was one of my first thoughts, after the "Way Cool!" and "Think of all the cool stuff you could do with one (or more) of these!".
Of course, USB drives in there own ways are just as bad. Think R/W Knoppix media - plug it in to your system @ work, boot 'er up, use whatever naughty tools you want, save the data, shut down, walk away.
Though PicoTux properly outfitted could be pretty naughty. Add Bluetooth or WiFi, attach a small battery, drop it in your coat pocket...
That's certainly one of the points in why they are continuing to promote asymmetric bandwidth allocations;-) They are not interested in supporting P2P (most providers aren't interested in supporting ANY form of serving from your home - read the user agreements).
From their perspective, most users' traffic is going to follow the paradigm of download >> upload (no, not 'bit-shift', 'much greater than':-D ). While there is no technical limitations necessarily requiring the download/upload skewing (though they could have ul/dl bw agreement w/ the tier 1/2 providers they're peered with, etc), it helps serve as a deterrent/hurdle for serving from your home, especially services such as P2P that are heavily upload-centric.
I suspect if the "typical" usage patterns change (and/or if P2P and its brethren cease being shunned), we'll see a change to more equality between upload and download allocations.
Anyone who has walked anywhere near a Victoria's Secret fragrance store or a Yankee Candle Shop in the mall has already experienced this big time. It actually can make me sick if the smells are too strong or are certain fragrances.
Scent is a VERY strong evocator of human emotion and behavior, in fact arguably stronger than sight and sound combined (think I'm wrong? Try comparing the arousal of a picture of a beautiful woman with the sound of a beautiful woman with the scent of a beautiful woman - or substitute something else like a steak, flowers, the beach, etc). It was a sad day when marketers realized the selling power of this.
Despite decades of study and improved learning techniques, human nature hasn't changed all that much.
Of course that goes hand in hand with decades (and tens/hundreds of millions of dollars) of research that has been done by the marketing companies to determine the best selling methods and how to (ab)use human psychology to the benefit of the sellers.
I wouldn't say I'm immune (on some level virtually nobody is), but having been around it for a long time I'm fairly desensitized and it is truly amazing to sit back and watch/listen to all the advertising/marketing and realize just how well they press the buttons and work the puppet strings every day.
Of course this is not confined to sales, look at the media in general. I'm sure they'll be all over this concept as well.
Turning to neuroscience is not so much a new concept as it is a furtherance of a well-defined practice. It started with simple things such as buyer surveys or even just paying attention to buyer behavior. Then it got more formalized as it turned to psychology once it was realized that psychology could be ab(used) in that manner. Neuroscience is the next step.
Lots of greats things are going to come from neuroscience over the next 20 years. Unfortunately, this is some of the crap that will cling to those advances.
Having dealt with a round of this recently, I cannot echo my agreement loudly enough. Most malware targets IE, you can't eliminate the malware (but can try to limit it via Ad-Aware, Spybot, et al), so get rid of its major target, i.e IE.
I personally use Firefox and have also installed it as the primary browser on all user computers I support (including family and friends). The amount of malware has dropped to almost zero, and what little bit does manage to get through it readily dealt with via Ad-Aware, Spybot, etc.
User education is also important. I've found that to be the case with viruses/worms as well.
Speaking of viruses/worms, in the same context as before, while IE is the predominant target of web-based malware, the predominant target of mail-based malware is, you guessed it, OE. So, don't use it!
I've switched to Thunderbird personally, though prior to that I was a solid Eudora user, which is what I have installed for family and friends. Honestly, if users are tied to the OE interface, Thunderbird should work fine for them. What mail-borne malware still makes it through, that's what antivirus is for.
Finally, look at the other common vectors, including the Windows Messaging service. There are a number of services such as this that should not be on (but are on by default). XP SP2 is highly recommended. Also, if you're on Win2k or XP, check out the benchmark scoring tools and guides available from CISecurity. Some of the recommendations might be too draconian for many locations, but the general advise in the benchmarks is dead on.
Why do you say it ISN'T a legitimate order? Do you have any evidence that the executors of the order falsified the order or any reason that Rackspace should believe so? Should it be the position of any recipient of a legal order to assume impropriety unless proven otherwise?
Let's be practical for a moment and put aside all the "we don't trust the government, down with the administration" rhetoric. (I'm not saying I agree or disagree with you on those particular points, but they are not the focus of this thread.) Rackspace is not an activist organization (and I do not use that word with the negative connotations that I've heard it used by the current US administration) that is going to base its determination of whether or not to comply with an order presented to it by a law enforcement agency on whether they agree with the reasons why the order is being presented, or whether they think their client is being persecuted. They have an obligation to abide by the law. They are not going to stick their corporate neck out and risk being made party to a legal issue with a client for failure to comply or obstruction. Doing so would make no sense.
What about their customer's privacy are they supposed to have protected and didn't? What steps do you believe Rackspace, as a law-abiding and responsible company, should have taken that they didn't? What hosting companies do you feel/know would have acted differently?
Do I agree with the Indymedia action? I don't have enough knowledge to make a judgement either way. I don't know anything about Indymedia or the reasons behind the seizure. Perhaps I may even agree with those who say it was a political move to stifle anti-administration sentiments, if facts supporting such a position come to light. However, for this particular thread, IMO, that is all irrelevant. What is relevant is that a US law enforcement agency presented a US company with an order to seize assets of one of its customers and to not disclose any information they were made privy to as part of complying with that order. Is that an unreasonable order? Should anyone expect a provider in such a case to refuse to comply with such an order? Should a customer expect a hosting provider to break the law for its benefit (and to the detriment of the hosting provider itself)?
What would happen if Rackspace did as you and others suggested and decided to refuse to comply? Well, what's likely to have happened if the seizure of materials was sufficiently urgent is the law enforcement officers on the scene would have been empowered to immediately detain any individuals who impeded their seizure and procede to enforce the seizure anyway. Then, those individuals would be brought up on charges. Further, Rackspace would likely be brought up on charges as a company. Even if Rackspace had the luxury of simply refusing to comply and, as you suggested, filed legal protests, what would that have accomplished? How would that benefit Rackspace or any of their customers? How would that be seen as a reasonable business action?
To the best of my knowledge, nobody who has posted to this thread has any information as to why the seizure was ordered. Plenty of people have speculations, but those speculations are just that. But you expect a hosting provider to share your speculations and convictions and to believe that refusing to comply with a seizure order is going to have a positive impact - that it's position as provider allows it to or mandates that it should/must uphold its personal/corporate convictions in deciding to not abide by the law.
Let's suppose for a moment that all the proponents who argue that this was a heavy-handed action by the US administration to silence Indymedia are wrong. What if the seizure involved terrorist information, or child pornography, or as some have speculated protecting the identities of undercover operatives? Would you be directing so much ire at Rackspace for complying with the FBI then? The question of whether or not Rackspace acted appropriately is separate fr
Actually, I wouldn't call Legato Networker "somewhat limited". My experience has been that it's one of the more robust backup solutions, though I can't speak for Mac support.
EMC's Legato acquisition is actually why their current discussions with Dantz surprises me. The question you have to ask with any acquisition is "what's in it for the acquiring company?" Unless they're specifically looking for Mac support, or, as another poster suggest, patent ownership, I have a hard time seeing where Dantz fits in with EMC's recent acquisition portfolio...
It wouldn't? I would think that knowing that your provider is a law-abiding organization (whether or not you agree with the particular law is another issue) should make you feel better. What's Rackspace supposed to do? Refuse to comply because they don't agree with the FBI/Swiss/Italians/whoever or think Indymedia is a really cool organization that shouldn't be interfered with? That does them no good. Rackspace did the only thing they could do - they complied with (what appears to be) a legitimate law enforcement seizure request and gag order.
As a customer of several colocation providers, I for one could not see any reason to hold Rackspace in any shadowed view for doing what they did. I _would_ look askance at them if they were to have violated the gag order or otherwise compromised the situation.
Whether or not you agree with the situation is irrelevant. What's relevant in evaluating Rackspace's response is the level of professionalism with which they conducted themselves in the midst of what was and is not a comfortable situation.
A) Freedom of the press is a more predominant issue in the US than in Europe. The press has very different rights in Europe than in the US.
B) If the FBI was indeed acting as a go-between in this case, your beef should be more with the originators of the seizure order than the FBI.
C) If indeed undercover officers or other covert LEOs were potentially exposed, the general position, IMO, is that the freedom of the press takes somewhat of a back seat to maintaining the security of those individuals and the operations to which they are attached.
However, the FBI appears to be acting mainly as a mediary in this case, principally because the ISP hosting the hardware is an American company and therefore is more under American jurisdiction that British, Italian, Swiss, or any other jurisdiction. Whatever qualms may be had with the FBI, their involvement I believe likely simplified matters for Rackspace at least by providing a familiar law enforcement interface (as opposed to Rackspace having to deal directly with one or more sets of European law enforcement agencies).
This is a fairly complicated international connect-the-dots scenario. Just goes to show that immunity from prosecution and/or seizure and the supposed boundaries of jurisdiction are not exactly cut and dry issues. I suspect this type of multinational effort will be seen more in the near future.
I think there needs to be the addition of an atmosphere to be considered a planet
However, that would include some moons (think Titan and Triton in specific). Better to include (as well) the orbit of a star (as opposed to the orbit of a planet or other non-stellar body).
My experience with Bitter Apple has been great. I have 2 cats and only the young one is prone to chew on things in the apartment. It doesn't take much BA to convince him that the object of his chewing obsession is not tasty nor worth the bother.
While having a 2nd cat DOES in many ways make for a more cat-friendly environment (the reason I got a 2nd on in the first place), it is also a lot more effort (effort/cost/trouble increase exponentially with cats). If you have a small apartment, it may not be all that feasible.
Contrary to the statements of some other posters, this behavior in a cat is not generally out of displeasure or anger, but shear boredom and a need to chew. Is it a young cat? Could it be teething? (I have had to deal with that before... ugh). Maybe some more cat toys and some interactive playtime are in order. If your cat is angry with you, believe me, you WILL know it.:-)
It's possible you wouldn't have to coat ALL your cables. If the BA works, then hitting the cables you catch him/her chewing will condition him/her to the association of BA with cables. It's worked well with my cats, but of course cats are each unique so YMMV.
The most amazing thing is the low cost. While it's not as hi-tech as some hi-speed photography (such as with bullets), it's simple, easy, and can allow for live demos of the concept. Not to mention it allows geeks on a budget to make very cool toys.
My thoughts start heading toward what other fun (AND educational;-) ) things can be done with the strobe photography rig besides blowing up fruit...
(I think I see $40 leaving my wallet in the very near future)
Actually, I've read more than one sci-fi book along similar lines (the titles escape me at the moment - guess I need a database driver to issue some SQL to my memory).
People have been talking about the existing Internet in terms of "collective consciousness" already. Such connectivity would take it several levels further.
Is such a shift the evolutionary future of humankind?
True, this application is for reading data, not writing data, but can the other be far behind? (Well, yes it can, but the idea is there.)
I'm somewhat disturbed that some people's first thought is how this could be used in the military. While there's no doubt that the DoD will be first on the list to play with such toys (that is if they're arent' already in some hidden lab), I'd prefer the focus to be on the medical and scientific uses, especially dealing the quad- and paraplegics, ALS, Parkinson's, etc. I can also think of many applications that, while similar in nature to how a fighter pilot would use it, would be non-military.
This is still EXTREMELY rudimentary and we have a very long way to go before such input/output can be done on a truly reliable basis with what would be considered a true neuro-computer interface. This is a good step though.
How does one go about critiquing an Open Source programmer's code as far as IP ownership goes? Or ANY programmer for that matter? You're taking it on their word that the code they submit was written by them and has no encumberances. The best you can do, IMO, would be to have signed affidavits from the programmers to such effect - proving the IP ownership would still be all but impossible. And how many programmers do you think would want to bother with signing an affidavit for every project to which they contribute? And how many projects are going to want to deal with the overhead?
Of course you could require licensing/registration of all programmers...
"Excuse me sir, but do you have a license to operate that there keyboard?"
Methinks not.
iTunes was and is a very bold move to find a way to reach some sort of compromise between the record companies (and RIAA) and the consumers. The manner in which people obtain, manage and listen to their music has changed drastically over the past 5 years and no amount of trying to re-close Pandora's box is going to make things return to what the labels would like to think of as "the good old days". The paradigm shift has started.
It takes a great deal of vision, big cajones and some luck to successfully ride the tsunami of a paradigm shift. Needless to say, attempting to do so will gain you a large number of critics, as Apple has witnessed. The whole codec/DRM/player saga is just starting and there are going to be a number of less-than-perfect solutions at first. At least there are some companies willing to stick their necks out to try and find a good answer.
Seems somewhat reminiscent of the early days of the MP3 format. It didn't take long for that to change though.
I fully expect a jump in the number of AAC-compatible players over the course of the year.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I was kind of hoping my one-time employer would have made the list. Calling it a rollercoaster ride puts it mildly.
Kuo's book was okay. There were some inaccuracies and author embellishments - a number of events/quotes that David claims to have witnessed happened after he left and/or his version is a little more dramatic. Regardless, VA was a fascinating environment - a company with a lot of potential driven into the ground by some very poor decisions and, in the end, management's personal greed leading to deliberate junking of the company.
Ah, those were the days...
I for one agree with the earlier parent. Even in the earlier movies when the kids were not at Hogwarts they did not wear "modern" street clothes. AFAIK, bringing the kids' clothing up to current trends was the director's decision, and the only one I really have an issue with. It just seems so non sequitur in the Harry Potter world.
The feeling of the world of Harry Potter to me seems that in the world of the Muggles things are more modern, but not circa 2000. In the parallel realm of the wizards, things have kept a more Victorian look and feel. To have the kids dressing down to the Muggle equivalent when not at Hogwarts would have been more acceptable than today's trendy wear, though they were dressed in modern garb even when they were on the Hogwarts grounds but not in class, which flies against the setting of the previous movies.
I hope they revert that change in GoF and the later movies.
FWIW
Um, yup. That was one of my first thoughts, after the "Way Cool!" and "Think of all the cool stuff you could do with one (or more) of these!".
Of course, USB drives in there own ways are just as bad. Think R/W Knoppix media - plug it in to your system @ work, boot 'er up, use whatever naughty tools you want, save the data, shut down, walk away.
Though PicoTux properly outfitted could be pretty naughty. Add Bluetooth or WiFi, attach a small battery, drop it in your coat pocket...
From their perspective, most users' traffic is going to follow the paradigm of download >> upload (no, not 'bit-shift', 'much greater than' :-D ). While there is no technical limitations necessarily requiring the download/upload skewing (though they could have ul/dl bw agreement w/ the tier 1/2 providers they're peered with, etc), it helps serve as a deterrent/hurdle for serving from your home, especially services such as P2P that are heavily upload-centric.
I suspect if the "typical" usage patterns change (and/or if P2P and its brethren cease being shunned), we'll see a change to more equality between upload and download allocations.
Scent is a VERY strong evocator of human emotion and behavior, in fact arguably stronger than sight and sound combined (think I'm wrong? Try comparing the arousal of a picture of a beautiful woman with the sound of a beautiful woman with the scent of a beautiful woman - or substitute something else like a steak, flowers, the beach, etc). It was a sad day when marketers realized the selling power of this.
Of course that goes hand in hand with decades (and tens/hundreds of millions of dollars) of research that has been done by the marketing companies to determine the best selling methods and how to (ab)use human psychology to the benefit of the sellers.
I wouldn't say I'm immune (on some level virtually nobody is), but having been around it for a long time I'm fairly desensitized and it is truly amazing to sit back and watch/listen to all the advertising/marketing and realize just how well they press the buttons and work the puppet strings every day.
Of course this is not confined to sales, look at the media in general. I'm sure they'll be all over this concept as well.
Turning to neuroscience is not so much a new concept as it is a furtherance of a well-defined practice. It started with simple things such as buyer surveys or even just paying attention to buyer behavior. Then it got more formalized as it turned to psychology once it was realized that psychology could be ab(used) in that manner. Neuroscience is the next step.
Lots of greats things are going to come from neuroscience over the next 20 years. Unfortunately, this is some of the crap that will cling to those advances.
I personally use Firefox and have also installed it as the primary browser on all user computers I support (including family and friends). The amount of malware has dropped to almost zero, and what little bit does manage to get through it readily dealt with via Ad-Aware, Spybot, etc.
User education is also important. I've found that to be the case with viruses/worms as well.
Speaking of viruses/worms, in the same context as before, while IE is the predominant target of web-based malware, the predominant target of mail-based malware is, you guessed it, OE. So, don't use it!
I've switched to Thunderbird personally, though prior to that I was a solid Eudora user, which is what I have installed for family and friends. Honestly, if users are tied to the OE interface, Thunderbird should work fine for them. What mail-borne malware still makes it through, that's what antivirus is for.
Finally, look at the other common vectors, including the Windows Messaging service. There are a number of services such as this that should not be on (but are on by default). XP SP2 is highly recommended. Also, if you're on Win2k or XP, check out the benchmark scoring tools and guides available from CISecurity. Some of the recommendations might be too draconian for many locations, but the general advise in the benchmarks is dead on.
Let's be practical for a moment and put aside all the "we don't trust the government, down with the administration" rhetoric. (I'm not saying I agree or disagree with you on those particular points, but they are not the focus of this thread.) Rackspace is not an activist organization (and I do not use that word with the negative connotations that I've heard it used by the current US administration) that is going to base its determination of whether or not to comply with an order presented to it by a law enforcement agency on whether they agree with the reasons why the order is being presented, or whether they think their client is being persecuted. They have an obligation to abide by the law. They are not going to stick their corporate neck out and risk being made party to a legal issue with a client for failure to comply or obstruction. Doing so would make no sense.
What about their customer's privacy are they supposed to have protected and didn't? What steps do you believe Rackspace, as a law-abiding and responsible company, should have taken that they didn't? What hosting companies do you feel/know would have acted differently?
Do I agree with the Indymedia action? I don't have enough knowledge to make a judgement either way. I don't know anything about Indymedia or the reasons behind the seizure. Perhaps I may even agree with those who say it was a political move to stifle anti-administration sentiments, if facts supporting such a position come to light. However, for this particular thread, IMO, that is all irrelevant. What is relevant is that a US law enforcement agency presented a US company with an order to seize assets of one of its customers and to not disclose any information they were made privy to as part of complying with that order. Is that an unreasonable order? Should anyone expect a provider in such a case to refuse to comply with such an order? Should a customer expect a hosting provider to break the law for its benefit (and to the detriment of the hosting provider itself)?
What would happen if Rackspace did as you and others suggested and decided to refuse to comply? Well, what's likely to have happened if the seizure of materials was sufficiently urgent is the law enforcement officers on the scene would have been empowered to immediately detain any individuals who impeded their seizure and procede to enforce the seizure anyway. Then, those individuals would be brought up on charges. Further, Rackspace would likely be brought up on charges as a company. Even if Rackspace had the luxury of simply refusing to comply and, as you suggested, filed legal protests, what would that have accomplished? How would that benefit Rackspace or any of their customers? How would that be seen as a reasonable business action?
To the best of my knowledge, nobody who has posted to this thread has any information as to why the seizure was ordered. Plenty of people have speculations, but those speculations are just that. But you expect a hosting provider to share your speculations and convictions and to believe that refusing to comply with a seizure order is going to have a positive impact - that it's position as provider allows it to or mandates that it should/must uphold its personal/corporate convictions in deciding to not abide by the law.
Let's suppose for a moment that all the proponents who argue that this was a heavy-handed action by the US administration to silence Indymedia are wrong. What if the seizure involved terrorist information, or child pornography, or as some have speculated protecting the identities of undercover operatives? Would you be directing so much ire at Rackspace for complying with the FBI then? The question of whether or not Rackspace acted appropriately is separate fr
EMC's Legato acquisition is actually why their current discussions with Dantz surprises me. The question you have to ask with any acquisition is "what's in it for the acquiring company?" Unless they're specifically looking for Mac support, or, as another poster suggest, patent ownership, I have a hard time seeing where Dantz fits in with EMC's recent acquisition portfolio...
And if the FBI or whoever wanted to do the sort of "tapping" you suggest, you feel switching to a different hosting company will stop them how?
It wouldn't? I would think that knowing that your provider is a law-abiding organization (whether or not you agree with the particular law is another issue) should make you feel better. What's Rackspace supposed to do? Refuse to comply because they don't agree with the FBI/Swiss/Italians/whoever or think Indymedia is a really cool organization that shouldn't be interfered with? That does them no good. Rackspace did the only thing they could do - they complied with (what appears to be) a legitimate law enforcement seizure request and gag order.
As a customer of several colocation providers, I for one could not see any reason to hold Rackspace in any shadowed view for doing what they did. I _would_ look askance at them if they were to have violated the gag order or otherwise compromised the situation.
Whether or not you agree with the situation is irrelevant. What's relevant in evaluating Rackspace's response is the level of professionalism with which they conducted themselves in the midst of what was and is not a comfortable situation.
A) Freedom of the press is a more predominant issue in the US than in Europe. The press has very different rights in Europe than in the US. B) If the FBI was indeed acting as a go-between in this case, your beef should be more with the originators of the seizure order than the FBI. C) If indeed undercover officers or other covert LEOs were potentially exposed, the general position, IMO, is that the freedom of the press takes somewhat of a back seat to maintaining the security of those individuals and the operations to which they are attached.
However, the FBI appears to be acting mainly as a mediary in this case, principally because the ISP hosting the hardware is an American company and therefore is more under American jurisdiction that British, Italian, Swiss, or any other jurisdiction. Whatever qualms may be had with the FBI, their involvement I believe likely simplified matters for Rackspace at least by providing a familiar law enforcement interface (as opposed to Rackspace having to deal directly with one or more sets of European law enforcement agencies).
This is a fairly complicated international connect-the-dots scenario. Just goes to show that immunity from prosecution and/or seizure and the supposed boundaries of jurisdiction are not exactly cut and dry issues. I suspect this type of multinational effort will be seen more in the near future.
However, that would include some moons (think Titan and Triton in specific). Better to include (as well) the orbit of a star (as opposed to the orbit of a planet or other non-stellar body).
How about having an orbit that lies along the same plane as all the 8 "major planets"?
How about having an orbit that has a low eccentricity and does not intersect the orbit of a "major planet"?
Kosmoi and earthsci.org have some good basic info.
In each of these cases Pluto would stand out as an exception.
My experience with Bitter Apple has been great. I have 2 cats and only the young one is prone to chew on things in the apartment. It doesn't take much BA to convince him that the object of his chewing obsession is not tasty nor worth the bother.
:-)
While having a 2nd cat DOES in many ways make for a more cat-friendly environment (the reason I got a 2nd on in the first place), it is also a lot more effort (effort/cost/trouble increase exponentially with cats). If you have a small apartment, it may not be all that feasible.
Contrary to the statements of some other posters, this behavior in a cat is not generally out of displeasure or anger, but shear boredom and a need to chew. Is it a young cat? Could it be teething? (I have had to deal with that before... ugh). Maybe some more cat toys and some interactive playtime are in order. If your cat is angry with you, believe me, you WILL know it.
It's possible you wouldn't have to coat ALL your cables. If the BA works, then hitting the cables you catch him/her chewing will condition him/her to the association of BA with cables. It's worked well with my cats, but of course cats are each unique so YMMV.
My thoughts start heading toward what other fun (AND educational ;-) ) things can be done with the strobe photography rig besides blowing up fruit...
(I think I see $40 leaving my wallet in the very near future)
Shouldn't be a prob with MIT's bandwidth...
People have been talking about the existing Internet in terms of "collective consciousness" already. Such connectivity would take it several levels further.
Is such a shift the evolutionary future of humankind?
I'm somewhat disturbed that some people's first thought is how this could be used in the military. While there's no doubt that the DoD will be first on the list to play with such toys (that is if they're arent' already in some hidden lab), I'd prefer the focus to be on the medical and scientific uses, especially dealing the quad- and paraplegics, ALS, Parkinson's, etc. I can also think of many applications that, while similar in nature to how a fighter pilot would use it, would be non-military.
This is still EXTREMELY rudimentary and we have a very long way to go before such input/output can be done on a truly reliable basis with what would be considered a true neuro-computer interface. This is a good step though.
How does one go about critiquing an Open Source programmer's code as far as IP ownership goes? Or ANY programmer for that matter? You're taking it on their word that the code they submit was written by them and has no encumberances. The best you can do, IMO, would be to have signed affidavits from the programmers to such effect - proving the IP ownership would still be all but impossible. And how many programmers do you think would want to bother with signing an affidavit for every project to which they contribute? And how many projects are going to want to deal with the overhead? Of course you could require licensing/registration of all programmers... "Excuse me sir, but do you have a license to operate that there keyboard?" Methinks not.
Oh no. Here we go again...
iTunes was and is a very bold move to find a way to reach some sort of compromise between the record companies (and RIAA) and the consumers. The manner in which people obtain, manage and listen to their music has changed drastically over the past 5 years and no amount of trying to re-close Pandora's box is going to make things return to what the labels would like to think of as "the good old days". The paradigm shift has started. It takes a great deal of vision, big cajones and some luck to successfully ride the tsunami of a paradigm shift. Needless to say, attempting to do so will gain you a large number of critics, as Apple has witnessed. The whole codec/DRM/player saga is just starting and there are going to be a number of less-than-perfect solutions at first. At least there are some companies willing to stick their necks out to try and find a good answer.
Seems somewhat reminiscent of the early days of the MP3 format. It didn't take long for that to change though. I fully expect a jump in the number of AAC-compatible players over the course of the year.