I think the problem is a function of how QC would be used. If you are using it in a military operation communicating across enemy lines, this could be a big problem. Keeping a functioning, unmolested fiber optic cable going could be nearly impossible.
However, if you are a Big Mega Bank 1 sending financial transfer information to Big Mega Bank 2, simply knowing that no one has intercepted the information is enough. If someone is jamming your communication, you get the telecommunication company, police, military, etc. involved, find the place the line has been compromised, take care of the issue and continue sending your communications. It's an inconvenience but not an insurmountable problem in peacetime in a developed country.
I expect QC to become more important if Quantum computers are developed to the state that they can factor the huge prime numbers that are used in current secure cryptography easily.
If he'd have shoplifted the 5 or 6 copies he said he distributed, he'd have been a lot better off legally.
Maybe in Canada (I don't know any of Canadian law and I figure for shoplifting it might be more lenient than in the U.S.). IANAL but I served on a grand jury and through that experience I know that in Illinois shoplifting anything valued over $150 (2 copies of OSX shoplifted would pass this amount) is an automatic felony charge and you are likely to spend 1 year or more in prison and every job you ever apply for again you'll need to state that you committed a felony and in many states you'll never be able to vote again.
If the matter is purely civil he might be financially ruined and might have to declare bankruptcy but hopefully he could get a job and eventually rebuild his life.
I guess if you HAD to read it literally it would probably be 10.
LXIX (a legit Roman numeral) would be 69 (50 + 10 + (10 - 1 [e.g. 9]))
By the same logic:
VIIV would be (5 + 1 + (5 - 1 [e.g. 4])) or 10.
However it's a lot simpler an a great deal more standard to put X if you want 10 so I'd have to agree it's some clever marketing gimmick that won't stand up to much logical scrutiny.
I'm a librarian and I see a few problems with the anonymous checkout idea. The library at which I work does not keep records of what someone has checked out in the past as long as fines have been paid, but we do keep information on books currently checked out and books that have been returned overdue with fines, until those fines have been paid.
This serves two purposes: to protect the library and to protect the patron. In a perfect world the system you lay out might work, but occasionally libraries make mistakes and sometimes people make mistakes or try to take advantage of the system.
On the patron side: If a book is returned on time, but somehow never gets properly scanned, it may show up as not having been returned. Often patrons cannot or will not return books during open hours, so they will use the book drop. Also having to stand in line at the checkout desk to have a deposit return would at least double the amount of people in line at the desk, meaning longer waits, and perhaps higher taxes to pay for more personnel to deal with twice as many transactions. If the library makes a mistake and the book is returned and not checked-in but reshelved, there will be no way to prove that the book was in fact returned. The patron would have no ground to stand on in stating that the book is in fact on the shelf or checked out to someone else or some such thing, as there would be no record they had checked out that book in the first place. Merely a deposit.
It might be possible to barcode cards and then input prices on the cards at checkout and then check cards inserted into the books on a patron's record, but in addition to taking more time, there would be no record of shelf status for the book (is this book checked out, withdrawn, missing, etc.) meaning anytime someone would want to see if something was one the shelf they would have to go and look, defeating much of the purpose of computer-based catalog systems.
On the library side: In addition to some of the above points (which in many cases would be negatives for patrons and libraries), there are always a group of people out there who wish to abuse the system. A case in point is our printing policy. We do not typically charge per page on printing from public machines, and we used to have signs merely saying "The library reserves the right to charge for excessive printing." 95% of persons using the computers printed reasonable amounts. However, a small percentage would consistently come in the library and print out reams of stuff. We eventually started enforcing that policy, and eventually changed it to the current policy which is 30 pages free, pages 31+ 10 cents a page and printing. But the same contingent still likes coming multiple times during the day, trying to sneak out without paying, printing without doing a preview getting lots of stuff they don't want and hiding the undesired pages, etc. It's a pain. I'm hoping to develop some system for counting pages printed (perhaps running all print jobs through a central server) but with Win98 machines this seems to be an expensive and not-too-easy task.
At any rate, I have no doubt that people would check out single materials, for instance, and then come back on a different day and try walking out with different stuff and say, "hey it's checked out on my record" and there might be no way aside from anecdotal evidence of the circulation staff to prove otherwise. People wouldn't remember what they had checked out. People wouldn't remember what they owned fines on. I'm sure the system could probably be undermined many different ways, while now we can say, "You have X checked out, and X is overdue." and if we are wrong the patron can try to prove otherwise.
Perhaps the most reasonable solution to get this kind of thing to work might be to check out the card to a patron with a price input at check-out and the book checked out to a dummy (non-existant) checkout patron, but that would essentially double work and add an awful lot of hassle, and might have other problems I haven't considered (I don't actually work in circulation, and most of the time the people that work in circulation technically aren't librarians (they don't have a library science degree) but clerks or para-professionals).
I have doubts that this kind of thing is really worth it in the end. If someone is that protective of their privacy that they can't stand to have a book linked with their record for the 3 weeks they have it checked out, maybe they'd be better off just reading it in the building or buying a copy with cash somewhere.
I work at a public library and I have to catalog all of the non-book materials (CD-ROM's, videocassettes, DVD's, etc.) that we get. Among these I have to catalog a zillion children's CD-ROM's, which seem to be aimed at every grade level and every subject in existence, including reading, music, math, construction, etc. Admittedly, I think a lot of them are rather linear math quiz type things, but quite a few seem to have a creative element. My library has 153 children's CD-ROM titles which are all educational games, so listing them all here would be a boring exercise, but some titles include:
Tonka Construction & Raceway
Adiboo: Music, Melody & Rhyme
Various Arthur & Blues Clue's titles
Carmen Sandiego titles
Great Adventures Castle
I never really look at the things in detail unless someone complains it's not working, but they are all very popular and are always getting checked out. They are geared towards a much younger age-group than NeverWinter Nights and Diablo (more my fare), but so was the Music Construction Set in it's day. I would imagine if someone gave me one of the creative games I used to play and a computer to run it on, it would be entertaining for a short time as I was hit by a wave of nostalgia, but I don't know how long I could maintain interest, as my expectations from computer games have changed.
It is my impression that for the 7-13 year old crowd, these kinds of games exist and are as fun as they were when I was that age even now, however.
The air-powered car is a great idea, but I wouldn't count on seeing it come to the U.S. any time soon, at least not as a car. Vehicle safety laws in the U.S. are some of the strictest in the world and any car which could actually run on compressed air would probably have to be so light it couldn't be considered a safe car.
It's conceivably possible that a motorcycle class vehicle could be released on the U.S. market that ran on compressed air, but a full-fledged car is unlikely.
A while back I read a fascinating book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder. The book talked about a somewhat eccentric genius (whose name escapes me at the moment) who came up with a technique of retrieving gold from a shipwreck too deep to be reached using conventional means. At any rate, one of the anecdotes that showed his cleverness involved his modifying a diesel Mercedes car to run on French fry oil which he was able to pick up quite cheap from fast food joints. I imagine the problems that plagued his vehicle would also afflict any car running on vegetable oil, which were that the car always smelled like a fast food joint and that it's emissions couldn't possibly have been quite up to the standards enforced by the various clean air laws.
Actually, if the number was not prime that would make things even stranger. Two (or more) numbers could be published that when multiplied would produce a product that when printed out in hexadecimal would produce a gzip file that contained the C source for deCSS. It would conceivably be illegal then to multiply those two numbers.
I suppose you could do the same thing with this number and division (multiply this number by your favorite number or perform some other mathematical operation on it, so it could then be divided back) but the numbers you'd get would start to become awfully unwieldy.
Having never used a PlayStation and not knowing a great deal about them this comment probably is not authoritative. But according to one posted message the CD-ROMs themselves have the PlayStation OS on them, which would make Connectix's new emulator much like VirtualPC, which emulates an Intel chip and its surrounding motherboard.
If this is the case it is basically impossible to make new games for the PlayStation without Sony's consent, since they won't work without the OS being on the disc, and copying the OS for the purpose of publishing a game would, obviously, be illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the problem is a function of how QC would be used. If you are using it in a military operation communicating across enemy lines, this could be a big problem. Keeping a functioning, unmolested fiber optic cable going could be nearly impossible.
However, if you are a Big Mega Bank 1 sending financial transfer information to Big Mega Bank 2, simply knowing that no one has intercepted the information is enough. If someone is jamming your communication, you get the telecommunication company, police, military, etc. involved, find the place the line has been compromised, take care of the issue and continue sending your communications. It's an inconvenience but not an insurmountable problem in peacetime in a developed country.
I expect QC to become more important if Quantum computers are developed to the state that they can factor the huge prime numbers that are used in current secure cryptography easily.
>I wonder if Systemax is getting sued. They are
>selling:
>
>Systemax(TM) Tiger
>AMD Sempron(TM) 2800+ / Microsoft® Windows®
I kind of doubt it. Apparently Systemax owns TigerDirect (http://www.systemax.com/divisions.htm). No conflict of interest there.
Maybe in Canada (I don't know any of Canadian law and I figure for shoplifting it might be more lenient than in the U.S.). IANAL but I served on a grand jury and through that experience I know that in Illinois shoplifting anything valued over $150 (2 copies of OSX shoplifted would pass this amount) is an automatic felony charge and you are likely to spend 1 year or more in prison and every job you ever apply for again you'll need to state that you committed a felony and in many states you'll never be able to vote again.
If the matter is purely civil he might be financially ruined and might have to declare bankruptcy but hopefully he could get a job and eventually rebuild his life.
In either case the outlook would not be pretty.
I guess if you HAD to read it literally it would probably be 10.
LXIX (a legit Roman numeral) would be 69 (50 + 10 + (10 - 1 [e.g. 9]))
By the same logic:
VIIV would be (5 + 1 + (5 - 1 [e.g. 4])) or 10.
However it's a lot simpler an a great deal more standard to put X if you want 10 so I'd have to agree it's some clever marketing gimmick that won't stand up to much logical scrutiny.
I'm a librarian and I see a few problems with the anonymous checkout idea. The library at which I work does not keep records of what someone has checked out in the past as long as fines have been paid, but we do keep information on books currently checked out and books that have been returned overdue with fines, until those fines have been paid.
This serves two purposes: to protect the library and to protect the patron. In a perfect world the system you lay out might work, but occasionally libraries make mistakes and sometimes people make mistakes or try to take advantage of the system.
On the patron side: If a book is returned on time, but somehow never gets properly scanned, it may show up as not having been returned. Often patrons cannot or will not return books during open hours, so they will use the book drop. Also having to stand in line at the checkout desk to have a deposit return would at least double the amount of people in line at the desk, meaning longer waits, and perhaps higher taxes to pay for more personnel to deal with twice as many transactions. If the library makes a mistake and the book is returned and not checked-in but reshelved, there will be no way to prove that the book was in fact returned. The patron would have no ground to stand on in stating that the book is in fact on the shelf or checked out to someone else or some such thing, as there would be no record they had checked out that book in the first place. Merely a deposit.
It might be possible to barcode cards and then input prices on the cards at checkout and then check cards inserted into the books on a patron's record, but in addition to taking more time, there would be no record of shelf status for the book (is this book checked out, withdrawn, missing, etc.) meaning anytime someone would want to see if something was one the shelf they would have to go and look, defeating much of the purpose of computer-based catalog systems.
On the library side: In addition to some of the above points (which in many cases would be negatives for patrons and libraries), there are always a group of people out there who wish to abuse the system. A case in point is our printing policy. We do not typically charge per page on printing from public machines, and we used to have signs merely saying "The library reserves the right to charge for excessive printing." 95% of persons using the computers printed reasonable amounts. However, a small percentage would consistently come in the library and print out reams of stuff. We eventually started enforcing that policy, and eventually changed it to the current policy which is 30 pages free, pages 31+ 10 cents a page and printing. But the same contingent still likes coming multiple times during the day, trying to sneak out without paying, printing without doing a preview getting lots of stuff they don't want and hiding the undesired pages, etc. It's a pain. I'm hoping to develop some system for counting pages printed (perhaps running all print jobs through a central server) but with Win98 machines this seems to be an expensive and not-too-easy task.
At any rate, I have no doubt that people would check out single materials, for instance, and then come back on a different day and try walking out with different stuff and say, "hey it's checked out on my record" and there might be no way aside from anecdotal evidence of the circulation staff to prove otherwise. People wouldn't remember what they had checked out. People wouldn't remember what they owned fines on. I'm sure the system could probably be undermined many different ways, while now we can say, "You have X checked out, and X is overdue." and if we are wrong the patron can try to prove otherwise.
Perhaps the most reasonable solution to get this kind of thing to work might be to check out the card to a patron with a price input at check-out and the book checked out to a dummy (non-existant) checkout patron, but that would essentially double work and add an awful lot of hassle, and might have other problems I haven't considered (I don't actually work in circulation, and most of the time the people that work in circulation technically aren't librarians (they don't have a library science degree) but clerks or para-professionals).
I have doubts that this kind of thing is really worth it in the end. If someone is that protective of their privacy that they can't stand to have a book linked with their record for the 3 weeks they have it checked out, maybe they'd be better off just reading it in the building or buying a copy with cash somewhere.
I work at a public library and I have to catalog all of the non-book materials (CD-ROM's, videocassettes, DVD's, etc.) that we get. Among these I have to catalog a zillion children's CD-ROM's, which seem to be aimed at every grade level and every subject in existence, including reading, music, math, construction, etc. Admittedly, I think a lot of them are rather linear math quiz type things, but quite a few seem to have a creative element. My library has 153 children's CD-ROM titles which are all educational games, so listing them all here would be a boring exercise, but some titles include:
I never really look at the things in detail unless someone complains it's not working, but they are all very popular and are always getting checked out. They are geared towards a much younger age-group than NeverWinter Nights and Diablo (more my fare), but so was the Music Construction Set in it's day. I would imagine if someone gave me one of the creative games I used to play and a computer to run it on, it would be entertaining for a short time as I was hit by a wave of nostalgia, but I don't know how long I could maintain interest, as my expectations from computer games have changed.
It is my impression that for the 7-13 year old crowd, these kinds of games exist and are as fun as they were when I was that age even now, however.
The air-powered car is a great idea, but I wouldn't count on seeing it come to the U.S. any time soon, at least not as a car. Vehicle safety laws in the U.S. are some of the strictest in the world and any car which could actually run on compressed air would probably have to be so light it couldn't be considered a safe car.
It's conceivably possible that a motorcycle class vehicle could be released on the U.S. market that ran on compressed air, but a full-fledged car is unlikely.
A while back I read a fascinating book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder. The book talked about a somewhat eccentric genius (whose name escapes me at the moment) who came up with a technique of retrieving gold from a shipwreck too deep to be reached using conventional means. At any rate, one of the anecdotes that showed his cleverness involved his modifying a diesel Mercedes car to run on French fry oil which he was able to pick up quite cheap from fast food joints. I imagine the problems that plagued his vehicle would also afflict any car running on vegetable oil, which were that the car always smelled like a fast food joint and that it's emissions couldn't possibly have been quite up to the standards enforced by the various clean air laws.
I suppose you could do the same thing with this number and division (multiply this number by your favorite number or perform some other mathematical operation on it, so it could then be divided back) but the numbers you'd get would start to become awfully unwieldy.
If this is the case it is basically impossible to make new games for the PlayStation without Sony's consent, since they won't work without the OS being on the disc, and copying the OS for the purpose of publishing a game would, obviously, be illegal.