Coyotos is an attempt to do just that, led by Prof. Jonathan Shapiro who is a pretty smart cookie too.
Unfortunately it appears that GNU/Hurd will somehow be re-used as a run-time environment for Coyotos, so RMS may dodge the cream pie this time around:-)
Even the military is now looking at anti-satellite weapons. So I'm beginning to wonder, what's with this sudden surge of interest in defense against things hitting us from space?
Very true, Mr. Hiigara, but those days are long gone and now France and its ideals are way down the toilet. Not that the US has been doing any better with its own legacy lately. But still.
They developed the most heavily armored and gunned tanks during the early German Blitz, one French Char B1-Bis held up an entire German Division for an entire day.
... And probably got kicked the bejeezus out of by some random Messerschmitt the following day, simply because we had no credible airborne forces whatsoever at the time. French military victories or lack thereof are not a fiction.
--
(Bitter? Who, me?)
NO !! the new constitution will grant more power to the parliamant.
... Or so you're told by your local politician monkeys. Actually the proposed EU constitution is technically just a treaty (a consolidation of all the former treaties mostly - section 1 deals with the European flag for instance), it is 350+ pages long and my administrative law teacher says it's simply too convoluted to draw any conclusion as to how the resulting institutions would actually work.
Vote a punitive NO, emigrate or learn a new job (as you may have guessed I'm busy doing). Those are your only options, non-exclusive.
Beg to differ. For instance there is that Switzerland country around here. Or Sweden. Whatever.
Being a frenchman myself, and reading Slashdot a lot, I tend to agree with the grandparent: our two nations have way more than their share in morons, indeed they are struggling for world leadership in the category of per capita moronicity.
Still laughing at this joke when you have had ample evidence in these columns that M. Chirac was right on this Iraq thing (arguably for the only time in his career but still)? When will both of our nations cease competing for being the most stupid on earth? Sheesh.
P.S.: Roland Piquepaille is real, but don't trust me on that, use Google. Oh, and you misspelt "misspelt" by the way.
To this I reply: enjoy your State of Right as long as there remains some, all of you lucky American fellows. In China it is not necessary to be guilty of anything to land up in jail. And Europe will soon be as patent-SNAFU as you are right now, sans the Supreme Court or equivalent institutional body to loop power back to the constituents at the end of the legal food chain. (/me tips hat to US Supreme Court for recent decisions regarding the Guantanamo concentration camp).
Even with a Supreme Court on the good side of it, fear a Cyberpunk-like pay-per-view middle-age: there are a lot of real-world dominations issues at stake with the patent system, medical drugs not being the least of them. Free software (and free speech for that matter) is expendable for Western executive powers in comparison with the enormous amount of racketeering power at hand where you possess the only remedy that can cure the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo from whatever disease he suffers from.
See, that kind of inventing metaphors for supposedly retarded users is precisely one of the problems with this industry.
Well, you are very close to having a point. But not quite.
Human/computer interface design is all about metaphors. A mouse cursor, a window, a clickable hyperlink etc. are all metaphors (resp. for command I/O, multitasking and a "World Wide Web" that actually doesn't have wires, either). Consider the alternative (command-line everywhere, full-screen text, BBSes one had to write down the phone number for).
I was talking about security, not useability. Computer security is rocket science right now and is in dire need of convenient metaphors if users from the general public are to cooperate (which they must - witness the "Don't open those attachments!" injunction). Do you really expect all users to manually perform the dance of exchanging a session key (unique per MAC address, for scalable revocation, and 128-bit long, for security) with the wireless access point using their keyboard and a LED display on the a.p. (to prevent man-in-the-middle)?
Exactly what in my post gave you the "snotty" impression that I consider users=idiots? Metaphors are great for all kinds of homo sapiens (including myself), because it allows one to operate a well-engineered GUI (e.g. Excel® - a good piece of software from Microsoft® if ever there was one) and discover how it works as one goes, without ever needing to RTFM. Worth a lot of time and money.
"what if someone walks through my invisible wire?"
The same thing as if someone walks through your remote's infrared beam. Physical circumstances are not the same of course (messing with 802.11 requires a microwave or a grotty old electric shaver, maybe), but this doesn't cause the metaphor to fall short. And even if it did, that would not be so much of a problem.
Once a connection has been established between two NFC-enabled devices, another wireless technology such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth will be used to actually transfer the data.
This idea could solve the wireless security problems in a really secure and convenient way (if only the standards folks can get the crypto right this time:-/ ): exchange symmetric keys over NFC, then do encrypted 802.11 or Bluetooth. This gets rid of passwords (which are either difficult to remember, easy to guess, or both), is as secure as wire (requires physical access to the 802.11 hub to build a connection) and provides a nice security metaphor to non tech-savvy people: by touching the two devices together, one creates a "virtual wire" between them that can be "stretched" up to the maximal range of the wireless link.
Focus-follows-sight
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Can't wait for these googles to be plugged into my window manager!
Slashdot Mirror
Coyotos is an attempt to do just that, led by Prof. Jonathan Shapiro who is a pretty smart cookie too.
Unfortunately it appears that GNU/Hurd will somehow be re-used as a run-time environment for Coyotos, so RMS may dodge the cream pie this time around :-)
Even the military is now looking at anti-satellite weapons. So I'm beginning to wonder, what's with this sudden surge of interest in defense against things hitting us from space?
Three words: China's space program.
Millions of lines of infringing Linux kernel code by any chance?
It's an epitaph right?
They developed the most heavily armored and gunned tanks during the early German Blitz, one French Char B1-Bis held up an entire German Division for an entire day.
... And probably got kicked the bejeezus out of by some random Messerschmitt the following day, simply because we had no credible airborne forces whatsoever at the time. French military victories or lack thereof are not a fiction.
--
(Bitter? Who, me?)
... suicide commits you!
Vote a punitive NO, emigrate or learn a new job (as you may have guessed I'm busy doing). Those are your only options, non-exclusive.
Beg to differ. For instance there is that Switzerland country around here. Or Sweden. Whatever.
Being a frenchman myself, and reading Slashdot a lot, I tend to agree with the grandparent: our two nations have way more than their share in morons, indeed they are struggling for world leadership in the category of per capita moronicity.
Still laughing at this joke when you have had ample evidence in these columns that M. Chirac was right on this Iraq thing (arguably for the only time in his career but still)? When will both of our nations cease competing for being the most stupid on earth? Sheesh.
P.S.: Roland Piquepaille is real, but don't trust me on that, use Google. Oh, and you misspelt "misspelt" by the way.
Even with a Supreme Court on the good side of it, fear a Cyberpunk-like pay-per-view middle-age: there are a lot of real-world dominations issues at stake with the patent system, medical drugs not being the least of them. Free software (and free speech for that matter) is expendable for Western executive powers in comparison with the enormous amount of racketeering power at hand where you possess the only remedy that can cure the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo from whatever disease he suffers from.
In Soviet Russia, etc.
See, that kind of inventing metaphors for supposedly retarded users is precisely one of the problems with this industry.
Well, you are very close to having a point. But not quite.
"what if someone walks through my invisible wire?"
The same thing as if someone walks through your remote's infrared beam. Physical circumstances are not the same of course (messing with 802.11 requires a microwave or a grotty old electric shaver, maybe), but this doesn't cause the metaphor to fall short. And even if it did, that would not be so much of a problem.
This brand of WLAN cables has its share of crosstalk problems I reckon :-)
(Uh, literally selling a bunch of hot air on EBay and reaching 10.5 euros? Did any money actually change hands?!)
Once a connection has been established between two NFC-enabled devices, another wireless technology such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth will be used to actually transfer the data. :-/ ): exchange symmetric keys over NFC, then do encrypted 802.11 or Bluetooth. This gets rid of passwords (which are either difficult to remember, easy to guess, or both), is as secure as wire (requires physical access to the 802.11 hub to build a connection) and provides a nice security metaphor to non tech-savvy people: by touching the two devices together, one creates a "virtual wire" between them that can be "stretched" up to the maximal range of the wireless link.
This idea could solve the wireless security problems in a really secure and convenient way (if only the standards folks can get the crypto right this time
Can't wait for these googles to be plugged into my window manager!