Other games that will not be shown include, but are not limited to....
1. Any RPG Whatsoever 2. Half Life(Though Counterstrike MAY be shown) 3. Street Fighter 2 4. Sonic The Hedgehog 5. Centipede 6. Maniac Mansion 7. Nethack 8. Outrun 9. Soul Calibur 10. Command and Conquer 11. Duke Nukem Forever
Forget about paper trails. What good is a paper trail if it's never checked. Does anyone believe that after a 'perfect flawless computer count' the winner/biggest briber will allow the vote to be counted by a system that e-voting was supposed to replace.
Black box voting is going to be tampered with. Think about it. Lets say you take all the votes in the entire country, then taken six guys, put them behind closed doors with the votes, and they come out with the result a few hours later. Does this sound crazy to you? Six guys counting ALL the votes, behind closed doors! And yet this is EXACTLY what is being proposed. Six guys, roughly, count the votes by proxy, using the software they wrote. All the votes!
And government inspection? Would a few officials locked in the room with the guys make everyone feel better?
It's crazy. Most people I know are in favour of the idea. Probobly because they consider it more modern and sophisticated. Some tech heads I know even want to see voting over the internet! And these are supposedly educated people!
Instead of electronic voting, what about votes counted electronically. Paper votes are punched/marked very clearly and taken to an OPEN counting areana. The voted are then scanned by cameras, in front of onlookers, and the tally is updated in real time. This has the advantage of being open, secure and more accuate than present systems. In fact, you could set this up with a Linux, webcam, MySQL the approprate software. Could be a project.
At least people could see what is going on in real time rather than crowding around a box that proclaims the winner mysteriously after a sudden count.
Call me a luddite if you will, but for the life of me, I cannot see the reason for a new filesystem. I'm all for metadata and so forth, but why rip up the tried and tested file and directory structure for this magical, cure all, search based filesystem. Search works well in Google because web pages are connect. My files aren't connected, so I don't think search on my filesystem will ever be half as good as search on the web.
As far as I can tell, MS (and GNOME 2.6 it would seem), seem to envision a filesystem where every file is simply dumped to one / or c:\ directory and this uber search finds all the files I'll ever need for me? Is this a joke? In this senario, ~50% of all the metadata will be the same for every file. I made it, with my privilages, with my settings etc... . After a while, even the simplest of searches will bring back a dozen matches. I can't see this working.
The reason given for this is novice users, who don't know where to put their files. they rely on their default program settings and just dump their files anywhere and then complain when they cannot find them. Fair enough, they are novices, but essentially hey are keeping a messy hard disc. WinFS would help these people only in the initial stages. As soon as too many files named 'Picture of Aunt Tilly' are present, the system will fall on its ass.
Metadata/Search based filesystems are based on the assumption that users do not know where their files are. I do, you do and for those who don't, no amount of programming wizardry is going to help them in the long run. Ultimatly they will have to learn how to organise their files, just like they have to learn to type,use the mouse and browse the web. And in reality, most people do eventually learn how to organise their files, if they use computers enough. And if they don't, our regular searches will be of use to them with only minor improvements. It's tough, but consider the search results that 'Find my Accounts for Acme Corp. for the third quarter of last year' brings up on the shared drive for even a medium sized accounting department after only a year.
Give me nested directories 30 levels deep!! And no spatial browsing please! I did wast an entry in my journal on this stuff. maybe now someone will read it?
I want to be able to walk around my house and IN LESS THAN AN HOUR, collect an inventory of every valuable item I have so that the insurance company can't prevaricate about what I had and whether it is covered under the terms of my policy
Don't you see? This is the whole point of RFID. The tags will remain active forever. Do you believe that private companies won't send RFID reading vans, driving around every estate, checking out what people are buying. Do you think that someone else taking an inventory of your items is OK?
You say that wiping RFID is the same as destroying a mailbox. Does that mean such covert scanning of embedded RFID tags will make it OK for complete strangers to open your mailbox, letters and read your mail. Do you have a problem with this? If so, then do you also have a problem with people scanning the contents of your wallet.
the only one that makes sense is providing the consumer with a method to disable the tags after a purchase if they choose to do so.
This will never happen. the whole point of RFID is to spy on consumers. All this talk of inventory supply chains, and more effenciency is all to mask the simple truth. Companies want our data. They want to know every thing about us so they can sell goods to us in every more devious ways. You will not be entitled to disable the tags. Anyone who does so will be accused of willful harm to those they might resell the product to. RFID will be read only, and for every method anyone come up with to disable/hinder it, a solution will be found to enable scanners posted on every shop enterance to continue to gather every intimate detail of individuals.
Whether you like it or not, a lot of laws exist to prevent finge nutjobs from altering, destroying, or stealing OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY
Indeed, but just whose property is an embedded RFID tag? Is it yours? Mine? Or is it forever the property of the retailer and supplier? There also exist many laws, some of which are our most fundamental, to prevent illegal searches or person and property. And these are exactly the laws that RFID will seek to circumvent, if not break entirely. What about blocker tags(if they ever appear)? They will interfere with the inventory system of the retailer. They also interfere with the 'legitimate research' of marketing companies. Will they be deemed to harm the property rights of these groups. Our data is after all, 'their property'.
Keep your damn hands, literal or metaphorical, off of other people's stuff But what about MY stuff? Whose going to keep their prying hands,eyes and readers away from my property. If you believe that private companies will respect your property rights over their property rights then you can't ever have been exposed to telemarketers, spammers or advertisers.
If you want to sacrafice a huge chunk of your privacy for the sake of very minor benefits( auto inventory on your fridge, when you can just look), then you obviously haven't thought this through. If you think me a luddite, remeber that not all technologies are for the greater benefit of society. Technology isn't a force for good or evil. It's just a force. Period. Whether it will be a good or a bad thing depends on how people use it. And I think RFID will be overwhelmingly abused. I'm going to buy a blocker tag because I don't want anyone snooping on my belongings. I just hope that I will be entitled to use such a device once everyone has shot up on the data rape drugs like fridges that order more food, the ability to catalogue their DVD collection, and billboards that talk directly to you depending on how much money your carrying.
I could be completely wrong( I probobly am) as my only information was gleaned from two paragraphs in a 500 page medical book which most doctors uses for consultation. I just glanced at it.
In short Mad Cow Disease isn't a virus, bacteria, or a fungus. It's also not a regular chemical poisoning. Now you see why it was so difficult to research. By my understanding, the prion is malformed in such an unusual way, that when it collides with a brain cell( maybe not just brain), a special reaction begins. The details were a little beyond me, but believe it or not, the final result of this reaction was a destroyed brain cell and another malformed prion. Not the same prion, a new one. The old one was destroyed in the reaction. I'm not actually sure if only one new prion, of more were created. I suppose it's a little like nuclear fission., with prions as the neutrons and brains cells as the Uranium. Lots of 'Plutonium' in your head after a while.
I could be completely wrong on this, but that was my understanding anyway.
On the one hand, I HATE Real for what they've done to mine and others PC's. On the other, I disagree with the view that I can't do anything I want to do with MY iPod.
Real are obnoxious, arrogant, pouting, petulant, unscrupulous, money-grabbing, charletans, so i won't be buying anything from them, whether or not they succeed in whatever legal proceedings arise. However, if another startup or other such competetor offers me cheaper digital music for my player because of this, I'm all for it.
In short bless you Real, may your burn forever in the bowels of danmnation itself.
The author can justify the biased towards late 80s / early 90s covers. They were a little more artistic(most were drawn by hand not by computer). A lot of cover art in the early days was fairly over the top. The graphics wern't exactly works of art, so they had to sell the game on a (very) touched up image. Also 80's extravagance came into it a lot. The game was a 320X240, blocky looking mess. Suspension of disbelief was in order just to appriciate that the characters on screen really were heros, monsters, ninjas, Arnie, lamposts etc... . Having a more exuberence cover might help aid the
Nowadays games can have relativly boring covers (Halo,GTA Vice City) by comparison to older titles. They can sell the game on its demos and even the screenshots on the back(although these aren'y usually as representative as they could be). A lot of the stuff is pretty minimalistic as they've all moved to glossy plastic, rather than laminated cardboard. Remember when they came in those big cardboard boxes.
I don't really miss 'Pop art' covers. Might be nice to have one or too, but ultimatly, they were a bit too corney.
I for one would be delighted to see smirking hackers walking along the aisles of departement stores, wiping every RFID tag in site. At least that would wipe the smirks off the faces of marketing execs who lust after every intimate detail of our lives.
If they try to kick you out, dump the zapper in some old ladies trolley. She'll march about for hours, wiping any spy gadgets in the buliding. Some might construe this as vandalism, but I construe reading dozens of RFID tags, covertly embedded in every item I buy, an illegal search.
Of course execs will find some law (can you say DMCA) to label any such defenders of privacy evil criminals who seek to undermine the economy and of course the usual line, RFID helps fight terrorism or some such rubbish. They're probobly looking for a way to make RFID blocker tags illegal as well.
Unfortunatly, the solution may be simply to make RFIS tags read only, further compounding the privacy issue.
OK given that the very existence of neutrinos is in question, is postulating another unheard of particle connected with them justified?
Quantum physicsists have come up with a lot of crazy stuff that later turned out to be correct. Like positrons, or A-bombs. But a massless,chargeless particle which cannot be detected, dispite the fact that ten trillion pass through us every day is stretching things a little too far in my book.
And now they have mass?! This whole dark energy thing seems very contrived. Perhaps a change is needed to the theory instead of the addition of new particles.
Who is this guy? Does he really think that there is a greater % of USA developers working on Windows than are working on Linux? Does he believe that the DoD won't check the kernel code itself dor backdoors? Does he think that the DoD is happy that they need a court order to look at the windows kernel?
Is he even aware that for most important defence system, the DoD write its own OSes?
This article is the worst kind of FUD. Preying on NAtionalism, Fear and that wonderful old Fear of Terrorism card to get us off Linux. He's trying to plant that image of Osama Bin Laden gleefully grinning into a laptop screen as he inserts a backdoor to the Linux kernel so he can launch nukes for a hilltop over Tora Bora. Someone needs to rebut this gues argument to death.
It's very clear from the article that the MPAA committed outright fraud and lied to the FBI. They also abused laws and I would not be surprised if they were the ones that damaged the equipment.
Perhaps the FBI are in leauge with them. How else could such gross incompetance be explained.
The MPAA should face charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and the FBI should be put under review.
Oh wait. This was a little guy and the MPAA has a lot of money. Ergo, the law does not apply. They probobly threatened the guy with legal action when he asked for his stuff back.
Expect such underhanded dealings when the MPAA drags 12 year olds/protestors/Apple/Independant Movie makers into court.
It's the old battle of graphics over gameplay my friends. 3D came about and everyone just assumed, 3D is better ergo 2D is crap. They abandoned a time honored format for buggy collision, low framrate and lets be honest jaddedy games.
Early 3D looked terrible. Just think. Street Fighter II(any of them) or Tekken One. Which looked better. Crash Bandicoot or Super Mario World. FF6, FF7. OK FF7 looed better, but only because of its pre rendered backgrounds.
Game companies figured that people would say, "2D graphics. That's lame!" And guess what. They DID!! The new wave of casual gamers snubs 2D like the plauge. They must have the latest and flashiest, regardless of the gameplay. Essentially games companies now sell the game's image. Not the game itself. Case in point. Need for Speed Underground. Ick. Lovely cars, but awful game.
The sad thing is, this will continue forever. Just look at the movie industry. Only the flashiest survive, regardless of actual merit.
Very funny. That's a good one. Oh wait... This is real.
Imagine if some small startup had tried this. Apple would invoke the DMCA and blow them out of the water. By the time apples lawyers were finished, the company would be bankrupt and it's owners in jail, and that would be only the effects of a cease and desit letter.
However, the company in question is not a startup. It's an upstart called RealNetworks.
"The law is unsettled," Sunstein said. "We might find some litigation if Apple wanted to be aggressive."
Haha! We have money. Ergo the law is meaningless. First we bitch, then we threaten, then at last we moe headlong into bypassing Apple altogether.
Ignorent little Bastards!! If this is legal then so is PlayFair! There is only one way to get DRM to work on an iPod without iTunes and that's to break it. PlayFair did exactly that and got trampled. Real cannot stand up and say truthfully, "we have not reverse engineered FairPlay", becasue they have. They must have! Unless a Real programmer woke up one afternoon to see a completed FairPlay de/encrypter on his desk, curtousy of the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.
It makes me sick that money grabbing jerks like Real have the nerve to break DMCA regulation in the persuit of profit, yet when FOSS people try to get around them for fair use we get railroaded.
I wouldn't be surprized if this is all part of that collaberation with MS that Real were on about.
OK,OK. All software is free, ergo, we all have to get jobs in support. Big problem. But this hasn't happened. Just look at RedHat.
What is happening out there in the real world is that applications, components and OSes like, OpenOffice, MySQL, Linux are all fully opensource. But when a shop meets a customer and provides a solution, by using these apps and stringinging them together with scripts, GUI's and web pages, to make a solution, that solution is a de facto cloded source solution. The owner is not going to want anyone else to see the code, the code is robobly too specialised for anyone to care, and the programming team won't be able to use most of it on the next project anyway.
I think the primary use for open source, is for the components of a solution. I'm not overly worried if the glue that holds a solution together is locked up in a companies comms room, as that code was once off anyway.
The great thing about open source, is that it actually manages to create standards in the computer industry. Every car that's sold has to be scrutinized and observed by outside people, and so is every FOSS App. Closed source Apps are essentially cowboy application, where the user is held hostage by something which has passed no standards and may crash at any moment. At least FOSS makes things a little more transparent, and maybe accountable?
But real money is made stringin all these apps together into a customised solution for an individual business. This is usually the closed source part that even OSS companies engage in. A customer will not want his competetors to know what his software does. Fair enough. It was a once off solution anyway.
FOSS makes up the skeleton structure which SHOULD be open to scrutiny. But we may never know all of the nuts and bolts that tie them together. Should we?
Whatever about the labour markets in India and China, the real reason for this move is too keep wages, everywhere, down. If the Indian or Chinese programmers start asking for an extra 50 cent an hour, move it to Africa. And hey! There's still South America and Latin America id things go wrong there too!
I know outsourcing is supossed to bring everyone up to the same level, but what happens if a cycle emerges, whereby companies just pick a region on a decade by decade basis, keeping wages down permenatntly! They'd like too you know. But that's worst case senario
Best case, years of outsourceing leads to an equalisation of wages globally. Lets just hope those wages are the level we're used to and not the level programmers in El Salvador.
I don't know much about Ted Turner, I understand he's hardly the most angelic of businessmen. However that has nothing to do with any of the arguments he has put forwardm namely that lax FCC regulations have done nothing but stifle innovation,competition and quaility over the media as a whole.
The media conglomerates will argue for less rules and regulations, a laisse faire approach. But as we know, unregulated markets lead to only one thing. Monopolies. This is especially true in the mass media field. It costs relativily little for a TV or Radio broadcaster to reach an extra 10 million viewer/listeners. They just turn up the wattage on their antennae. This means companies can easily expand and grow without any significant investement. This is unlike most industries, where in order to expand, companies need to invest in more raw materials and manpower, hindering their ability expand to a point where they dominate.
However for mass media, and even software, expansion is easy. It's even more so if you centralise all your content and simply broadcast and sell the same thing to everyone, which is what has happened. Turner is absolutly right. The big guns have taken over, due to the ease of expansion, and the difficulties of entry for independants. And now that they have gained a monopoly, they have abused their positions by promoting bad TV. People spend less time watching TV now, not because of other distractions, but because TV is simply bad. What else do you expect from a monopoly except a low quaility product. He's dead right about reality TV. The number one reason there is so much of it is because it is cheap.
Whatever about Turner, his points are good. Regulations need to be tightened. Having only 3-4 companies with complete control over a medium, is quite frankly dangerous, as well as foolish. The examples of censorship in the article are frightening. What happens when the big guns decide the only news we need is COPS and LA car chases?
Rampant capitalism leads to feudalism. You've got to have rules, otherwise everybody gets a bad deal.
The author makes good points. I wonder if the mainstream media will give them air time?
This has been done, but what's more important for USPTO is that it's been done using a computer
On digital TV in the UK, they're always asking viwers to 'press the red button' and be up for a chance to win 'something crap'. What's more competitions also run, like on Discovery Home & Leisure, where viewers watch the channel for an entire week and when they see a fish float across the screen then they press the red button to be up for a chance to win prizes.
If this isn't exactly what the MS patent is going on about, I don't know what is.
It's time for hollywood, NFL,RIAA and others to wake up and smell the CPU cycles. People want to record TV shows,films and radio broadcasts. Not because they're freeloaders. It's because they like TV and want to watch it again. If you can't accept this and make money off it, then you have a poor business model and deserve to get driven out of business by smarter competetors.
The mass media have made money for one simple reason. They had a monopoly on the production and distrobution technologies of the media. Only they could afford radio towers, film reels and copying technology. Through this they have also maintained a monopsony over the base talent which they promote. Hence the low signal to noise ratio on TV and radio. Now, thanks to technology, even your average joe sixpack has the technology to copy a TV broadcast of music track. TiVo has given him the power to record the game, the soaps, the news, so he can watch them again. Does this mean we should shut down TiVo so the monopoly can continue?
HDD based TV recorders. MPAA and NFL want to shut them down because they encourage 'theft' of signals floating around in peoples homes. Nonsense. They just wish to maintain a monopoly over the distribution of their content, so they can jack up the price for their wares.
They deserve to be driven out of business.
If you want an example of a company that is using peoples wants and likes to make money out of HDD recorders, look no further than Sky+. Sky actually encourage people to record TV shows and are making a mint off it.
If I compile data on someone, their purchases, habits, income and other records, I'm stalking/spying on them.
If I'm a company compiling 8GB or such data on hundreds of thousands of people, I'm doing market research.
If I'm a single individual who gains access without consent to such a companies data, itself usually obtained without consent, I'm a snooping crook/terrorist/cracker/pervert/thief who gets thrown in jail.
RFID. Credit Cards. Social Security. How come I can't aquire such data, yet amoralistic multinationals can. Does the fact that I don't want such information in the hands of anyone at all even count? Tinfoil hat or no, no-one likes being snooped upon. Data rape is data rape no matter how drunk someone was on free handouts.
So tell me, smarteyman, as my ISP, how do you plan to block 4Gbps of legitimate-looking web requests coming from 30,000 hosts in nearly an equal number of unrelated subnets, distributed globally?
If a sites incoming traffic suddenly exceeds a certain level, drop 9 of every ten requests to that server, going up to 99 of every hundred if the problem gets worse.
In case one, legit people still have a 10% chance of contact, while the hard to set up and rare 30,000 zombie attack is blunted. The site is hindered, but stays up.
Massive DDoS >10000, attacks will happen, but will be rare. Much more common will be a mini DDoS with 500 or 100 points. Detect an cut off will work here.
Maybe they don't want to go to 2.7 because they're worried that they may run out of digits before they have to go to Linux 3.0
Hmmmm.. The step to Linux 3.0. Could be a PR disaster. 2 is a sexy sequel, 3 is usually a not so sexy sequel. 4 is the beginning of something mature and steady, but 3 is just... well it's just a number!:E
Dispite the sheer scale of the assault (over 4Gbps), the problem is still avoidable with the right infrastructure. The ISP is certainly carrying the bandwith, and it should be their job to monitor connections. If an ISP spots 4Gbps entering a site from less than 50 addresses, they should ring up and ask "You, guy's OK?". Upon hearing demented screams of terror on the line, they should block the 50 ip addresses.
Admittedly most ISP couldn't be bothered to check, but with the right hardware a victim could analyse the traffic and then demand that the ISP cut them off, which an ISP should be obliged to do.
If I keep getting hundreds of scrawled letters from Mosocw, I can ligitimatly ask my postman not to delivier anymore letters with a russian stamp. Similarly I can ask my ISP, when I'm under a DDoS attack, to cancel all packets from ~200 possible ips, from going to me.
What with all the talk of embedding DRM into the BIOS itself, I'm not surprized Stallman has come out with the idea of a GPL based BIOS. What happens when every single part of the computer must be a pice of 'trusted' software, i.e. restricted software. If this project goes ahead, maybe we'll all have an alternative to what an industry too scared of litigation forces on us.
Some might consider the FSF and Stallman in paticular, to be too zealous in their pursuit of a totally open system, but given the upsurge in patenting, litigation, copyrght restrictions and DMCA style laws, the computing world is becoming a much harsher place for those who want to do, what they want to do, with their own computers. At the moment we have only operating systems restricting our rights on our own PCs. What happens if the PCs themselves contain the restrictions? How far will these restrictions go? How long before PCs come with restrictive EULA and can be repossessed for (suspected) infrigement? Already we can't mod chip our PS2s. What about our PCs? When they get region locking, will we be allowed to mod them? At least a libre BIOS might affors us some protection.
I just wonder, if trusted computing comes into vouge, will a non DRM BIOS be considered a device for circumventing copyright, and get banned under the DMCA. All the more reason to get it established soon, before newer more ridiculous laws are passed.
Slashdot Mirror
Other games that will not be shown include, but are not limited to....
:E
1. Any RPG Whatsoever
2. Half Life(Though Counterstrike MAY be shown)
3. Street Fighter 2
4. Sonic The Hedgehog
5. Centipede
6. Maniac Mansion
7. Nethack
8. Outrun
9. Soul Calibur
10. Command and Conquer
11. Duke Nukem Forever
Go figure I suppose
Forget about paper trails. What good is a paper trail if it's never checked. Does anyone believe that after a 'perfect flawless computer count' the winner/biggest briber will allow the vote to be counted by a system that e-voting was supposed to replace.
Black box voting is going to be tampered with. Think about it. Lets say you take all the votes in the entire country, then taken six guys, put them behind closed doors with the votes, and they come out with the result a few hours later. Does this sound crazy to you? Six guys counting ALL the votes, behind closed doors! And yet this is EXACTLY what is being proposed. Six guys, roughly, count the votes by proxy, using the software they wrote. All the votes!
And government inspection? Would a few officials locked in the room with the guys make everyone feel better?
It's crazy. Most people I know are in favour of the idea. Probobly because they consider it more modern and sophisticated. Some tech heads I know even want to see voting over the internet! And these are supposedly educated people!
Instead of electronic voting, what about votes counted electronically. Paper votes are punched/marked very clearly and taken to an OPEN counting areana. The voted are then scanned by cameras, in front of onlookers, and the tally is updated in real time. This has the advantage of being open, secure and more accuate than present systems. In fact, you could set this up with a Linux, webcam, MySQL the approprate software. Could be a project.
At least people could see what is going on in real time rather than crowding around a box that proclaims the winner mysteriously after a sudden count.
Call me a luddite if you will, but for the life of me, I cannot see the reason for a new filesystem. I'm all for metadata and so forth, but why rip up the tried and tested file and directory structure for this magical, cure all, search based filesystem. Search works well in Google because web pages are connect. My files aren't connected, so I don't think search on my filesystem will ever be half as good as search on the web.
As far as I can tell, MS (and GNOME 2.6 it would seem), seem to envision a filesystem where every file is simply dumped to one / or c:\ directory and this uber search finds all the files I'll ever need for me? Is this a joke? In this senario, ~50% of all the metadata will be the same for every file. I made it, with my privilages, with my settings etc... . After a while, even the simplest of searches will bring back a dozen matches. I can't see this working.
The reason given for this is novice users, who don't know where to put their files. they rely on their default program settings and just dump their files anywhere and then complain when they cannot find them. Fair enough, they are novices, but essentially hey are keeping a messy hard disc. WinFS would help these people only in the initial stages. As soon as too many files named 'Picture of Aunt Tilly' are present, the system will fall on its ass.
Metadata/Search based filesystems are based on the assumption that users do not know where their files are. I do, you do and for those who don't, no amount of programming wizardry is going to help them in the long run. Ultimatly they will have to learn how to organise their files, just like they have to learn to type,use the mouse and browse the web. And in reality, most people do eventually learn how to organise their files, if they use computers enough. And if they don't, our regular searches will be of use to them with only minor improvements. It's tough, but consider the search results that 'Find my Accounts for Acme Corp. for the third quarter of last year' brings up on the shared drive for even a medium sized accounting department after only a year.
Give me nested directories 30 levels deep!! And no spatial browsing please!
I did wast an entry in my journal on this stuff. maybe now someone will read it?
I want to be able to walk around my house and IN LESS THAN AN HOUR, collect an inventory of every valuable item I have so that the insurance company can't prevaricate about what I had and whether it is covered under the terms of my policy
Don't you see? This is the whole point of RFID. The tags will remain active forever. Do you believe that private companies won't send RFID reading vans, driving around every estate, checking out what people are buying. Do you think that someone else taking an inventory of your items is OK?
You say that wiping RFID is the same as destroying a mailbox. Does that mean such covert scanning of embedded RFID tags will make it OK for complete strangers to open your mailbox, letters and read your mail. Do you have a problem with this? If so, then do you also have a problem with people scanning the contents of your wallet.
the only one that makes sense is providing the consumer with a method to disable the tags after a purchase if they choose to do so.
This will never happen. the whole point of RFID is to spy on consumers. All this talk of inventory supply chains, and more effenciency is all to mask the simple truth. Companies want our data. They want to know every thing about us so they can sell goods to us in every more devious ways. You will not be entitled to disable the tags. Anyone who does so will be accused of willful harm to those they might resell the product to. RFID will be read only, and for every method anyone come up with to disable/hinder it, a solution will be found to enable scanners posted on every shop enterance to continue to gather every intimate detail of individuals.
Whether you like it or not, a lot of laws exist to prevent finge nutjobs from altering, destroying, or stealing OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY
Indeed, but just whose property is an embedded RFID tag? Is it yours? Mine? Or is it forever the property of the retailer and supplier?
There also exist many laws, some of which are our most fundamental, to prevent illegal searches or person and property. And these are exactly the laws that RFID will seek to circumvent, if not break entirely.
What about blocker tags(if they ever appear)? They will interfere with the inventory system of the retailer. They also interfere with the 'legitimate research' of marketing companies. Will they be deemed to harm the property rights of these groups. Our data is after all, 'their property'.
Keep your damn hands, literal or metaphorical, off of other people's stuff
But what about MY stuff? Whose going to keep their prying hands,eyes and readers away from my property. If you believe that private companies will respect your property rights over their property rights then you can't ever have been exposed to telemarketers, spammers or advertisers.
If you want to sacrafice a huge chunk of your privacy for the sake of very minor benefits( auto inventory on your fridge, when you can just look), then you obviously haven't thought this through. If you think me a luddite, remeber that not all technologies are for the greater benefit of society. Technology isn't a force for good or evil. It's just a force. Period. Whether it will be a good or a bad thing depends on how people use it. And I think RFID will be overwhelmingly abused.
I'm going to buy a blocker tag because I don't want anyone snooping on my belongings. I just hope that I will be entitled to use such a device once everyone has shot up on the data rape drugs like fridges that order more food, the ability to catalogue their DVD collection, and billboards that talk directly to you depending on how much money your carrying.
I could be completely wrong( I probobly am) as my only information was gleaned from two paragraphs in a 500 page medical book which most doctors uses for consultation. I just glanced at it.
In short Mad Cow Disease isn't a virus, bacteria, or a fungus. It's also not a regular chemical poisoning. Now you see why it was so difficult to research.
By my understanding, the prion is malformed in such an unusual way, that when it collides with a brain cell( maybe not just brain), a special reaction begins. The details were a little beyond me, but believe it or not, the final result of this reaction was a destroyed brain cell and another malformed prion. Not the same prion, a new one. The old one was destroyed in the reaction. I'm not actually sure if only one new prion, of more were created. I suppose it's a little like nuclear fission., with prions as the neutrons and brains cells as the Uranium. Lots of 'Plutonium' in your head after a while.
I could be completely wrong on this, but that was my understanding anyway.
I'm of two minds here.
On the one hand, I HATE Real for what they've done to mine and others PC's.
On the other, I disagree with the view that I can't do anything I want to do with MY iPod.
Real are obnoxious, arrogant, pouting, petulant, unscrupulous, money-grabbing, charletans, so i won't be buying anything from them, whether or not they succeed in whatever legal proceedings arise.
However, if another startup or other such competetor offers me cheaper digital music for my player because of this, I'm all for it.
In short bless you Real, may your burn forever in the bowels of danmnation itself.
The author can justify the biased towards late 80s / early 90s covers. They were a little more artistic(most were drawn by hand not by computer). A lot of cover art in the early days was fairly over the top. The graphics wern't exactly works of art, so they had to sell the game on a (very) touched up image. Also 80's extravagance came into it a lot. The game was a 320X240, blocky looking mess. Suspension of disbelief was in order just to appriciate that the characters on screen really were heros, monsters, ninjas, Arnie, lamposts etc... . Having a more exuberence cover might help aid the
Nowadays games can have relativly boring covers (Halo,GTA Vice City) by comparison to older titles. They can sell the game on its demos and even the screenshots on the back(although these aren'y usually as representative as they could be). A lot of the stuff is pretty minimalistic as they've all moved to glossy plastic, rather than laminated cardboard. Remember when they came in those big cardboard boxes.
I don't really miss 'Pop art' covers. Might be nice to have one or too, but ultimatly, they were a bit too corney.
I for one would be delighted to see smirking hackers walking along the aisles of departement stores, wiping every RFID tag in site. At least that would wipe the smirks off the faces of marketing execs who lust after every intimate detail of our lives.
If they try to kick you out, dump the zapper in some old ladies trolley. She'll march about for hours, wiping any spy gadgets in the buliding. Some might construe this as vandalism, but I construe reading dozens of RFID tags, covertly embedded in every item I buy, an illegal search.
Of course execs will find some law (can you say DMCA) to label any such defenders of privacy evil criminals who seek to undermine the economy and of course the usual line, RFID helps fight terrorism or some such rubbish. They're probobly looking for a way to make RFID blocker tags illegal as well.
Unfortunatly, the solution may be simply to make RFIS tags read only, further compounding the privacy issue.
OK given that the very existence of neutrinos is in question, is postulating another unheard of particle connected with them justified?
Quantum physicsists have come up with a lot of crazy stuff that later turned out to be correct. Like positrons, or A-bombs. But a massless,chargeless particle which cannot be detected, dispite the fact that ten trillion pass through us every day is stretching things a little too far in my book.
And now they have mass?! This whole dark energy thing seems very contrived. Perhaps a change is needed to the theory instead of the addition of new particles.
Who is this guy?
Does he really think that there is a greater % of USA developers working on Windows than are working on Linux?
Does he believe that the DoD won't check the kernel code itself dor backdoors?
Does he think that the DoD is happy that they need a court order to look at the windows kernel?
Is he even aware that for most important defence system, the DoD write its own OSes?
This article is the worst kind of FUD. Preying on NAtionalism, Fear and that wonderful old Fear of Terrorism card to get us off Linux.
He's trying to plant that image of Osama Bin Laden gleefully grinning into a laptop screen as he inserts a backdoor to the Linux kernel so he can launch nukes for a hilltop over Tora Bora.
Someone needs to rebut this gues argument to death.
It's very clear from the article that the MPAA committed outright fraud and lied to the FBI.
They also abused laws and I would not be surprised if they were the ones that damaged the equipment.
Perhaps the FBI are in leauge with them. How else could such gross incompetance be explained.
The MPAA should face charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and the FBI should be put under review.
Oh wait. This was a little guy and the MPAA has a lot of money. Ergo, the law does not apply. They probobly threatened the guy with legal action when he asked for his stuff back.
Expect such underhanded dealings when the MPAA drags 12 year olds/protestors/Apple/Independant Movie makers into court.
SCO to countersue!
It's the old battle of graphics over gameplay my friends. 3D came about and everyone just assumed, 3D is better ergo 2D is crap. They abandoned a time honored format for buggy collision, low framrate and lets be honest jaddedy games.
Early 3D looked terrible. Just think. Street Fighter II(any of them) or Tekken One. Which looked better. Crash Bandicoot or Super Mario World. FF6, FF7. OK FF7 looed better, but only because of its pre rendered backgrounds.
Game companies figured that people would say, "2D graphics. That's lame!"
And guess what. They DID!!
The new wave of casual gamers snubs 2D like the plauge. They must have the latest and flashiest, regardless of the gameplay. Essentially games companies now sell the game's image. Not the game itself. Case in point. Need for Speed Underground. Ick. Lovely cars, but awful game.
The sad thing is, this will continue forever. Just look at the movie industry. Only the flashiest survive, regardless of actual merit.
Slashdot has run out of stories.
..... ...being cast for the LOTR!!
Submit something interesting you lazy sods!!
Me? I'm... I'm
Very funny. That's a good one. Oh wait... This is real.
Imagine if some small startup had tried this. Apple would invoke the DMCA and blow them out of the water. By the time apples lawyers were finished, the company would be bankrupt and it's owners in jail, and that would be only the effects of a cease and desit letter.
However, the company in question is not a startup. It's an upstart called RealNetworks.
"The law is unsettled," Sunstein said. "We might find some litigation if Apple wanted to be aggressive."
Haha! We have money. Ergo the law is meaningless.
First we bitch, then we threaten, then at last we moe headlong into bypassing Apple altogether.
Ignorent little Bastards!! If this is legal then so is PlayFair! There is only one way to get DRM to work on an iPod without iTunes and that's to break it. PlayFair did exactly that and got trampled. Real cannot stand up and say truthfully, "we have not reverse engineered FairPlay", becasue they have. They must have! Unless a Real programmer woke up one afternoon to see a completed FairPlay de/encrypter on his desk, curtousy of the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.
It makes me sick that money grabbing jerks like Real have the nerve to break DMCA regulation in the persuit of profit, yet when FOSS people try to get around them for fair use we get railroaded.
I wouldn't be surprized if this is all part of that collaberation with MS that Real were on about.
OK,OK. All software is free, ergo, we all have to get jobs in support. Big problem. But this hasn't happened. Just look at RedHat.
What is happening out there in the real world is that applications, components and OSes like, OpenOffice, MySQL, Linux are all fully opensource. But when a shop meets a customer and provides a solution, by using these apps and stringinging them together with scripts, GUI's and web pages, to make a solution, that solution is a de facto cloded source solution. The owner is not going to want anyone else to see the code, the code is robobly too specialised for anyone to care, and the programming team won't be able to use most of it on the next project anyway.
I think the primary use for open source, is for the components of a solution. I'm not overly worried if the glue that holds a solution together is locked up in a companies comms room, as that code was once off anyway.
The great thing about open source, is that it actually manages to create standards in the computer industry. Every car that's sold has to be scrutinized and observed by outside people, and so is every FOSS App. Closed source Apps are essentially cowboy application, where the user is held hostage by something which has passed no standards and may crash at any moment. At least FOSS makes things a little more transparent, and maybe accountable?
But real money is made stringin all these apps together into a customised solution for an individual business. This is usually the closed source part that even OSS companies engage in. A customer will not want his competetors to know what his software does. Fair enough. It was a once off solution anyway.
FOSS makes up the skeleton structure which SHOULD be open to scrutiny. But we may never know all of the nuts and bolts that tie them together.
Should we?
Whatever about the labour markets in India and China, the real reason for this move is too keep wages, everywhere, down. If the Indian or Chinese programmers start asking for an extra 50 cent an hour, move it to Africa. And hey! There's still South America and Latin America id things go wrong there too!
I know outsourcing is supossed to bring everyone up to the same level, but what happens if a cycle emerges, whereby companies just pick a region on a decade by decade basis, keeping wages down permenatntly! They'd like too you know. But that's worst case senario
Best case, years of outsourceing leads to an equalisation of wages globally. Lets just hope those wages are the level we're used to and not the level programmers in El Salvador.
I don't know much about Ted Turner, I understand he's hardly the most angelic of businessmen. However that has nothing to do with any of the arguments he has put forwardm namely that lax FCC regulations have done nothing but stifle innovation,competition and quaility over the media as a whole.
The media conglomerates will argue for less rules and regulations, a laisse faire approach. But as we know, unregulated markets lead to only one thing. Monopolies. This is especially true in the mass media field. It costs relativily little for a TV or Radio broadcaster to reach an extra 10 million viewer/listeners. They just turn up the wattage on their antennae. This means companies can easily expand and grow without any significant investement. This is unlike most industries, where in order to expand, companies need to invest in more raw materials and manpower, hindering their ability expand to a point where they dominate.
However for mass media, and even software, expansion is easy. It's even more so if you centralise all your content and simply broadcast and sell the same thing to everyone, which is what has happened. Turner is absolutly right. The big guns have taken over, due to the ease of expansion, and the difficulties of entry for independants. And now that they have gained a monopoly, they have abused their positions by promoting bad TV. People spend less time watching TV now, not because of other distractions, but because TV is simply bad. What else do you expect from a monopoly except a low quaility product. He's dead right about reality TV. The number one reason there is so much of it is because it is cheap.
Whatever about Turner, his points are good. Regulations need to be tightened. Having only 3-4 companies with complete control over a medium, is quite frankly dangerous, as well as foolish. The examples of censorship in the article are frightening. What happens when the big guns decide the only news we need is COPS and LA car chases?
Rampant capitalism leads to feudalism. You've got to have rules, otherwise everybody gets a bad deal.
The author makes good points. I wonder if the mainstream media will give them air time?
This has been done, but what's more important for USPTO is that it's been done using a computer
On digital TV in the UK, they're always asking viwers to 'press the red button' and be up for a chance to win 'something crap'.
What's more competitions also run, like on Discovery Home & Leisure, where viewers watch the channel for an entire week and when they see a fish float across the screen then they press the red button to be up for a chance to win prizes.
If this isn't exactly what the MS patent is going on about, I don't know what is.
It's time for hollywood, NFL,RIAA and others to wake up and smell the CPU cycles.
:E
People want to record TV shows,films and radio broadcasts. Not because they're freeloaders. It's because they like TV and want to watch it again. If you can't accept this and make money off it, then you have a poor business model and deserve to get driven out of business by smarter competetors.
The mass media have made money for one simple reason. They had a monopoly on the production and distrobution technologies of the media. Only they could afford radio towers, film reels and copying technology. Through this they have also maintained a monopsony over the base talent which they promote. Hence the low signal to noise ratio on TV and radio. Now, thanks to technology, even your average joe sixpack has the technology to copy a TV broadcast of music track. TiVo has given him the power to record the game, the soaps, the news, so he can watch them again. Does this mean we should shut down TiVo so the monopoly can continue?
HDD based TV recorders. MPAA and NFL want to shut them down because they encourage 'theft' of signals floating around in peoples homes. Nonsense. They just wish to maintain a monopoly over the distribution of their content, so they can jack up the price for their wares.
They deserve to be driven out of business.
If you want an example of a company that is using peoples wants and likes to make money out of HDD recorders, look no further than Sky+. Sky actually encourage people to record TV shows and are making a mint off it.
Put that in your smoke and pipe in NFAA!!!
If I compile data on someone, their purchases, habits, income and other records, I'm stalking/spying on them.
If I'm a company compiling 8GB or such data on hundreds of thousands of people, I'm doing market research.
If I'm a single individual who gains access without consent to such a companies data, itself usually obtained without consent, I'm a snooping crook/terrorist/cracker/pervert/thief who gets thrown in jail.
RFID. Credit Cards. Social Security. How come I can't aquire such data, yet amoralistic multinationals can. Does the fact that I don't want such information in the hands of anyone at all even count? Tinfoil hat or no, no-one likes being snooped upon. Data rape is data rape no matter how drunk someone was on free handouts.
So tell me, smarteyman, as my ISP, how do you plan to block 4Gbps of legitimate-looking web requests coming from 30,000 hosts in nearly an equal number of unrelated subnets, distributed globally?
If a sites incoming traffic suddenly exceeds a certain level, drop 9 of every ten requests to that server, going up to 99 of every hundred if the problem gets worse.
In case one, legit people still have a 10% chance of contact, while the hard to set up and rare 30,000 zombie attack is blunted. The site is hindered, but stays up.
Massive DDoS >10000, attacks will happen, but will be rare. Much more common will be a mini DDoS with 500 or 100 points. Detect an cut off will work here.
Maybe they don't want to go to 2.7 because they're worried that they may run out of digits before they have to go to Linux 3.0
:E
Hmmmm.. The step to Linux 3.0. Could be a PR disaster. 2 is a sexy sequel, 3 is usually a not so sexy sequel. 4 is the beginning of something mature and steady, but 3 is just... well it's just a number!
Dispite the sheer scale of the assault (over 4Gbps), the problem is still avoidable with the right infrastructure. The ISP is certainly carrying the bandwith, and it should be their job to monitor connections. If an ISP spots 4Gbps entering a site from less than 50 addresses, they should ring up and ask "You, guy's OK?". Upon hearing demented screams of terror on the line, they should block the 50 ip addresses.
:E
Admittedly most ISP couldn't be bothered to check, but with the right hardware a victim could analyse the traffic and then demand that the ISP cut them off, which an ISP should be obliged to do.
If I keep getting hundreds of scrawled letters from Mosocw, I can ligitimatly ask my postman not to delivier anymore letters with a russian stamp. Similarly I can ask my ISP, when I'm under a DDoS attack, to cancel all packets from ~200 possible ips, from going to me.
Lets just hope Cisco don't pantent this!
What with all the talk of embedding DRM into the BIOS itself, I'm not surprized Stallman has come out with the idea of a GPL based BIOS. What happens when every single part of the computer must be a pice of 'trusted' software, i.e. restricted software. If this project goes ahead, maybe we'll all have an alternative to what an industry too scared of litigation forces on us.
Some might consider the FSF and Stallman in paticular, to be too zealous in their pursuit of a totally open system, but given the upsurge in patenting, litigation, copyrght restrictions and DMCA style laws, the computing world is becoming a much harsher place for those who want to do, what they want to do, with their own computers. At the moment we have only operating systems restricting our rights on our own PCs. What happens if the PCs themselves contain the restrictions? How far will these restrictions go? How long before PCs come with restrictive EULA and can be repossessed for (suspected) infrigement? Already we can't mod chip our PS2s. What about our PCs? When they get region locking, will we be allowed to mod them? At least a libre BIOS might affors us some protection.
I just wonder, if trusted computing comes into vouge, will a non DRM BIOS be considered a device for circumventing copyright, and get banned under the DMCA. All the more reason to get it established soon, before newer more ridiculous laws are passed.