Maybe I'm off base here, but isn't the government supposed to have large computers for things like the Carnivore project? Aren't they supposed to be capable to tapping into about anything on the Interweb? Why don't they just buy some software from babblefish.com and use it to pinpoint what parts of the Internet they really want to have experts read? To start with, a google for allah, then translate as required would be a good start, key words can be added to the process somewhere along the line... It seems unlikely that there would be more than say, oh... 100,000 arabic websites? Couple of days and its all done.. right?
This seems quite an odd thing to me... unless they are trying to ferret out people in the US and allied countries that are both capable of and willing to translate such information. That sounds like some new kind of profiling to me... well, I could just be paranoid...
The relationship between physical things, such as B12 and some disease is not an invention, it is an observation. Thinking that there is a relationship is not licensed, and therefore cannot be held as private works. Proving the relationship is, more or less, like writing a book. Once you've written it, no one else can claim they did it first. That still doesn't give anyone the right to say no one else can use that relationship, even for the length of a patent.
Thoughts are not inventions, and patent law does not apply. The reason for patent laws was to allow those who acted on their thoughts first to use them for some gain. There has to be an 'invention' for any patent to be issuable, and a discovery of how nature works is not an invention, just as no one can patent 'air' or gravity, no one can patent the relationship between two things that happens in nature.
An example: Many thought of powered flight, but it was the Wright brothers who did it. There is a show on cable lately about how Star Trek created the modern world, or many of the technologies in it, yet the show's creators and writers do not have patents on things like the ion drive, or medical technologies. If this is not smacked down HARD, it will be science fiction writers who own the world in the next century, and they will not be friendly to big business IMO.
Mr. Clarke gave us communications satellites (IIRC) and other science fiction writers would have dibs on tons of things that big business just can't get their minds around yet, like say... talking computers? Mining technologies? cures for diseases?... the list goes on.
Once that is pointed out to the lawyers I think it will all die the quick death of "That was a fscking bad idea, fire the guy who thought of that"....
Those are very good points, but I think that most of the reason for the unexpected longevity of the mars rovers is that they expected dust from dust storms to critically hamper the solar panel operation. What was a surprise is that the wind quite effectively kept the solar panels clear of dust, giving a much longer lifetime. I don't think that the engineers expected to have to worry about the motors lasting 36 months or more since it was not expected. Mars has quite extreme temperature swings, so the engineering is probably worth what it cost to build the rovers. Mother nature is something that just can't always be anticipated, unless, of course, you anticipate problems due to mother nature. In that case, any positive turn of fate leaves you in the position of underestimating vehicle longevity.
The temperatures, radiation, dust, vibration... these are very harsh environmental variables. It is just amazing that they are still running. I'm sure that NASA is still as amazed as we are, and pleased to be continuing the scientific research at what amounts to a budget bonanza.
You are most probably right in thinking that what was learned this time around will be incorporated in the next planetary exploration vehicles, and a longer lifetime expectation will be part of that. In line with that, recent NASA un-manned missions have been incredibly successful. I look forward to more solar system exploration, and also to commercial exploration based on NASA work.
Now that we know how to build robots to explore Mars, we can build them to explore other planets, and that ion engine thing is a Trekie's dream. The expectation bar is rising, and that is a good thing. The X-prize and similar efforts are creating huge scientific 'wealth' for all to use. Its all very cool.
This robot was supposed to last about 9 months... I think it has gone waaayyyy past the rated mileage for that wheel. The fact that it is free-wheeling and not a major hinderance is just a testament to how well it was actually designed. This 3x life-span thing is incredible if you take into account all of the challenges that the designers faced. I dabble in hobby robotics, and I can attest to the fact that designing a robot that does as well as it has done for as long as it has done, is a major accomplishment. Think about the warranty that you get on a new automobile... if it performed past its expected lifetime of usefulness to the tune of 300 percent, people would be driving vintage cars all over the place.... it is an amazing robot and planetary exploration vehicle!
Seems to me that one of the sponsors of this tech is Bell, and aren't they the ones that want to charge us for guaranteed latency, or lack there of? With all that bandwidth, that makes charging extra for low latency a case of banditry, doesn't it? Perhaps that is what Bell is all about anyway. On the other hand, I thought part of the reason for a tiered Internet service was to pay for all the infrastructure that is currently built? Now they are building 100x infrastructure with the money they are already overcharging from users, and only to overcharge them for content they don't want or need in the future?
Sure, I'm not Mr. Optimistic here, but just who the hell is paying for this infrastructure? Already I only want 35% of the content I have to pay for, and none of what I pay for has the latency that I would like to have. The money vs. service issue is all out of whack here. I don't care if its wireless or wired personally, if they could just get the service right in the first place, it would be nice.
Bundled cable, ISP, and VoIP... this is starting to sound like the beginnings of Cable Operators part two. I just know that they need all the bandwidth to support the DRM content that nobody wants to pay for, never mind watch. All I need is DRM'd reruns of "I love Lucy" on my telephone bill to make the world a perfect place again.
There is simply way too much HYPE in the technology sector these days. God forbid any of them think of providing good service before figuring out how to sell me 2 terabits of bandwidth to watch reruns with.
I'm not feeling very enthused about ISPs and content industries right now...
Parent has a good point.. what does it matter what MS does for spyware? The rest of their draconian practices will still ensure that it doesn't stop spyware because people won't use it, no matter how good it is. Upgrading to Vista is not just a software upgrade, for myself and many others, its a hardware upgrade too. EVEN if I did run MS products at home, I still wouldn't get any value from antispyware in Vista LOLOLOL Sounds like more PR spin to make it seem worth the extra hardware costs and giving away your first born to run the new version of MS Windows....
I'll just take my chances with Linux thank you
Is it just me, or should this have been posted to
on
Learning to DJ?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Is it just me that thinks this one is odd, or should this have been posted to slashdj.org
I got modded troll for suggesting that iPods are not as prevelant (at least in the world I live in) as the report suggests, and that anyone that doesn't want DRM might well be better off with a non-DRM'd MP3 player.... apparently, you've been breathing the special packets that they put in shipping crates at Apple for far too long. I'm sure you are quite happy with Apple, and statistically, there are lots of people that are happy with broadcast radio... so what?
My point is that the statistics saying that the iPod is "all that and a bag of chips" is just statistics, not reality in all places of the world, not even all places of North America. Quit huffing on the hype. Quicktime runs on MS too, so its not an OS thing. There are tons of MP3 players out there, all a bit different, most of them are not iPods. iPod is an iFad, like buying those special running shoes... you don't need an iPod to hear music. This story, and stories like it are just hype, the kind of hype that PR machines use to increase sales!
Statistics don't mean anything useful unless there are also statistics for all other aspects of the topic being discussed. How many non-iPod music players are there in use? How many have been sold with WMP on them? How many, including iPods, are just collecting dust in the glove box right now? Using ITMS statistics is sure to make the report lopsided. In fact, usage statistics are incredibly difficult to ascertain. Purchase statistics mean nothing for consumer electronics fads. The truth is that there 'may' be more MP3 players in use than anyone knows about because the owners are using their CD's to rip music and listen to it, ergo no music store stats, and few purchase stats. Statistics that arrive after the holiday shopping season are suspect to start with. How many gifts get purchased and never used? How many are resold or regifted? I resold the iPod I was given... the inflated price made that an EASY choice.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.... more to the point, statistics like this are put together in the manner required to show whatever point was trying to be made rather than in an observably fair representation of the facts.
I work with a bunch of geeks, yet no one I know, no one in my family, and no one I iSee iRegularly has been icaught with an iPod... The halo effect has some momentum, but its not like it has the impact or staying power of SARS or something. Its not a disease. Frisbees and hula hoops hardly changed the world. I still don't personally know anyone that uses Mac OS. Besides myself, I know of one person that knows the OS their phone uses...
I think that anyone that doesn't want Apple DRM will be just fine and happy with a Rio Forge MP3 player, and they are cheaper... too much noise about nothing if you ask me. What will be really cool, IMO, is when there is enough WiFi around to use something the size of a MP3 player to pick up Internet radio, or an iPod-ish XM radio tuner. Hours of music you don't have to personally maintain the play list for, just plug in the earbuds, turn it on, and viola! music.... music you like to hear, with no commercials... its iBetter than an iPod...
What Comcast actually blocks is a rewarding customer experience, and the desire to continue paying them money. I've never had a pleasant experience dealing with Comcast, but unfortunately, they are the only cable company available to me currently. Verizon FIOS will be here soon, and the noise you hear will be the sound of my cable modem shattering on the driveway.... Not that I expect Verizon to be nicer or anything, but it will be good to have competition and a new set of foreign national customer service reps.
I have trouble believing that MS will launch anything in 6 months, never mind on time. It would certainly be a change for them. There is only one group of people that will believe this story... the people that don't know how to use a search engine. If you already know how to use Google or Yahoo, the improvements that are talked about in the story are not needed. Using a search engine is not a black art or anything, but it does require you to be smarter than the proverbial blonde, in the same way that owning a Ferrari doesn't make you a good driver, a brilliant search tool will not suddenly make you able to find anything and everything on the Internet. I don't believe that it is possible to make improvements to searching the Internet in such leaps and bounds as what is claimed. To become more relevant than Google in six months is a claim that cannot readily be tested, unless of course MS will have their 'buddies' in Washington make it happen ???
The big picture is the real center here
on
Outsourcing Evolving
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The big picture is the real center here... Its not just about costs of labor, housing, or whatever. Since the advent of the information age and the Internet, the world has increasingly become a flat world, a smaller world, evolving toward a single community. This evolution toward flatness is stretching and pulling on national and international boundaries, laws, and business practices. Its cheaper to live in Texas then in California, and business incentives on top of that have made Texas the silicon valley of telecommunications companies. Cost of living is less than half of many places in Cal. or the New York area, so the jobs should be good... but still there is outsourcing. Government still has not given businesses the right incentives to hire from within the country, so they will save money wherever they can. If that means hiring people in a country around the world where health plan costs and retirement costs are cheaper, they will because the flat world means it is possible to do so. 30 years ago, it just would not have worked. Communication was not good enough, now it is.
The real problem is not quality or quantity of graduates in the science fields, it is the fact that governments have not caught up to the information age with their legal and business practices standards. Giving companies tax breaks for this or that but not taking into account hiring practices is one of the things that has upset the balance of wages and outsourcing. All this political rhetoric about colleges is just political posturing. The real changes need to be made at the business tax and law level of things. The government can give incentives to companies that don't outsource... but then that would be taking easy money out of their pockets... it is all about money, but not for business, its about money for government and political figures.
When businesses are given the right incentive by governments through taxation and regulation, they will pay for in-country talent, and those jobs will again carry prestige, thus garnering the admiration and adulation of students planning for their futures.
It was fine to enforce equal hiring practices by race, but for some reason its not okay to make companies biased toward hiring citizens of the country they are registered in and pay taxes in. The big picture is that politics is screwing the west for the short term gain.
The dotcom bubble and bust showed that there are times when a guy coding in his mom's basement is as good as a 120k/year engineer... businesses are still learning that the dotcom boom is over, and getting quality work and workers again costs money. It doesn't matter how many people you hire in India, there are costs associated with communicating with those workers, and instilling pride in those workers to do the kind of job that gives the company the reputation that they want.
Right now, there are tons of call centers in India (we all know and hate them) and in the interests of business, even Indian companies are outsourcing to China (of all places) to cut costs because that is the only incentive that business has... cut costs, make profit... Its time for government to step in and realign incentives for companies. Yes, labor is often cheaper, and regulations or lack thereof makes doing business overseas cheaper.. but for the same reason that, say, poisoning the environment is wrong in California, its also wrong in Yogoslovia and India, and governments should not support businesses that are involved in such practices with tax incentives etc. That would counter the effect of a flatened business world.
Well, that is the gist of it anyway.... "its the government's fault" more or less...
Okay, with some sleep and coffee, the finer point goes sort of like this: This proof of concept work allows researchers the opportunity to work with the bio-matter (slime) in order to do more than simply observe the 'properties of the material' so that in the future, perhaps, they can grow sharks olfactory senses (like stem cell research) so that they can load the shark senses into a robot, allowing it to guide search and rescue robots to bleeding (or otherwise) humans that are in the ocean from a ship wreck. Upon arriving at its 'prey', the shark sensor robot turns on a beacon signalling that the rescue team needs to come pick up a human in the water. It will take a lot of proof of concept work, and a lot of research, but using bio-sensors and bio-control of mechanical systems to make such things work. In such cases, I imagine that they only have to keep the shark-sensors 'alive' for up to 5 days or so... like batteries that are discarded after use, these bio-sensors could be a disposable package for the robots ??? Anyway, that is the idea. I'm sure we are nowhere close to this type of end product yet. It will take the sensors, and the control parts. Despite the moral issues with this, growing such sensors from stem cells (or similar process) is not so bad... its not like they have to have a canister of slime attached to the robot... this slime experiment is just proof of concept.
The news is that people are able to now work with them. Light sensors based on silicon and other materials simple take advantage of the light sensitive properties of the material. Using a biological material is no different, other than the need to 'feed' the sensor. As this story and experiment play out, there is no ready made practical application waiting for its development. The real advance here is working with biological sensors. Such work will hopefully lead to sensors that are sensitive enough to detect humans in the wreckage of a bombed building, or cancers (as some dogs can with smell) or other such sensitivities that simply don't seem possible with non-organic materials. This probably isn't going to lead to a bio-brain for robotics, but will make them much more sensitive in the sensor domain. Imagine if a robot could see or smell the way that some insects do? This would lead to robots that are much more capable, and much more useful for all sorts of dangerous work. Imagine a robot that works in water that can find even the tiniest of leaks on an oil tanker? Perhaps a robot that can sniff out drugs in cargo planes etc. The reason for sensors that are orders of magnitude better than what is available today goes without saying, more or less. This type of work will help make it more achievable, hopefully.
Already, they are training bees (in minutes) to sense out things that takes months of training for dogs. This type of bio-sensor systems will hopefully make such work even easier to achieve. I can see that one day, a search and rescue helicopter can drop a truck load of independent water robots that seek out and locate humans in the middle of the ocean, saving lives by finding them faster than current methods, and bio-sensors may be the ticket to such advances.
IANACE (I am not a computer expert) but I have to say that Science Fiction, poor as some of the plots are, has already taken this game to a level that that US, or any government, cannot even imagine. The plot in The Terminator and The Matrix is only going a little further than what reality is probably already producing.
What the world knows of virus and malware programs is only what has been discovered AND disclosed to the public. It is quite probable that there are malicious programs out there that are stealthily eating away at personal and business data or waiting till the right moment to do so, or worse, transmitting small bits and pieces of it back to the 'boss' on a regular basis. The latter has already been shown to be effective.
Any exercise done to improve or test computer security is farsical in comparison to what the imagination of any geek can dream up. No, I don't have the program sheet for the tests done, but I do know that they cannot have tested for security against what I can dream up... and trust me, if I can dream it up, its probably already being done.
Imagine a program that replicates itself, is small, does not trigger AV software, is executed by the computer user, does no damage, but propels itself across the networks until it finds itself on the computer of some user whose first name is Bill, and belongs to the domain microsoft.com. Now, every time that Bill lets his screen saver run, or recalculates some values in MS Excel, the program looks to see what the oldest file on the computer is, and queues it for transmission to another host when such transmission is likely to be unnoticed. (you figure out when that would be). Its not so hard to see such a program working, and going undetected by AV software. Yes, yes, I'm sure you could figure out how to catch it, but the time from zero-day to erradication would be a long time indeed.
The selectivity of this program would make it very difficult to identify and get rid of. Especially if it is passing data from one infected machine to another so that final destination is impossible to find. I hate to say it, but Tor and BT could be used for impossibly complex industrial and government spying.
The only way to stop malware is to disconnect the network cables, or very strictly control what passes over them to your computer or network. That gets difficult when such programs can mutate and then try tunneling via http etc. An http post request would be difficult to defend against if you are running an http server?
Now, to get modded down: Didn't the US government think they were prepared for natural disasters? I'm sure that people in charge of such things do all they think reasonable to be prepared, but that force5 program is just waiting for them....
This will only last about as long as the Sony rootkit-like DRM lasted. It now has public attention, and when it is pointed out that the scheme has enough security holes in it to act as a noodle strainer, the number of people who will actually allow the implant will be zero, meaning there will be no one to do any maintenance in the datacenter, and thus the rules will have to be changed.
For less than they paid for the RFID system, they could have hired someone to log people in and out of the data center. Additionally, I question the validity of a system that restricts access to only those with an implant during disaster situations (fire, flood, and worse) where access rights and needs are rather different than in normal situations.
Good security costs a lot of money, and you cannot replace the human element in the security chain. The RFID schemes won't prevent anyone following an authorized person into the data center, unless there is physical restrictions that would make working in the data center dangerous during emergencies. In this case, the $10/hour guard is more flexible and cheaper than the high-tech answer, and more respectful of humans in general... or at least I think so
This is another case of science finding the mechanism to explain what was already known for years, if not centuries. Since there is no method now known to mechanically adjust neural pathways, psychological methods must still be employed. As pointed out by others, each person can react to stimulus in different manners... for some, bad experiences can create a good outcome. This is the stuff that hazing and boot camps are meant to do.
Mechanically, or pharmacologically adjusting neural pathways is a dangerous thing. I wouldn't trust pharmocology companies to keep my best interests at heart.... ever! That said, the more that is known, the better we can learn to make life better....
This is just one more attempt, IMO, to realign privacy and security values to where they were before new technologies. Where IM is replacing conversations around the water cooler in the workplace, securing it from snooping is an okay thing. Logging it as official corporate communications is getting into, perhaps, dangerous territory. There is the part where it is a company resource, but when it comes close to being thought police, it is dangerous.
I think that modern society is still trying to find a place of 'normalcy' in the midst of new technology. I don't believe that there is an equivelant of IM prior to the advent of IM, other than private conversations. Recording private conversations is still not an okay thing to do. Comparing this to text based conversations that deaf/mute people have with text based phones, it all gets a bit confusing as to what is okay to record and what isn't.
Until it is clearly understood what is okay to snoop and record and what is not, people will make mistakes in what they allow to be recorded, and why, and how those recordings are used. No manner of encryption will fix the real issues. It seems that the only secure mannner to communicate is whispering so that no one can hear what is being said.... very low tech!
Other services, such as Danger, Visto etc. store user files on their servers. The difference here is that google makes them searchable. Google reps are right, users want mobile access to their data. This makes it so that all you need is Google desktop on your wireless device and you have access to your important files. I think that they have to do this in order to compete with WinCE and other mobile OS environments....
Good or not, I think it is a sound business decision. What they do with, and how they care for your data will show in the coming months, and I would approach any such thing with caution in usage.
Some time ago, klorg.org had a piece about trying to cook an egg in the Arizona heat... apparently, cooking on sidewalks and car hoods won't work either... though the spot between speakers behind the back seat seems good enough to keep you from having to clean up runny eggs...
FTFA **Mr. Kapellen got a call. He hooked up the contraption and a few minutes later was playing videogames with Bono. "It was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me," says Mr. Kapellen.'"**
Cool would have been winning $1000 off of Bono playing video games!!
Its just a thought, and I'll probably be modded down as flamebait or worse, but after all the money that the US government has spent on anti-terrorism, and trying to find Bin Laden, perhaps this is just a result of the Republican Party telling groups they have some control over (no wanting to start that as an argument) that they better show some kind of progress for all the money spent...
All the money spent by the US government lately has achieved exactly what? There just have been no successes in all this, and I think that they (you know who 'they' are) are looking for successes as the election nears. I know that the *AA will be proud of how their 'campaign contributions' were spent... I am just wondering what the American public will think of how the dollars were spent... hunting down grandmas and wiretapping anyone and everyone...
Makes me think there just might be a conspiracy in here somewhere?????
I'm surprised as hell
on
IE7 Leaked
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm surprised as hell that anyone would download a 'leaked' copy of IE 7.xx no matter how secure it is supposed to be when released. First, there is the problem of being a beta tester when you don't want to be, and SECOND, there is the problem that it might contain DRM that is equally bad or worse than the Sony 'rootkit' DRM.
AFAIK, 'leaked' software doesn't come with warnings, EULAs, and any other such agreements. I'm willing to bet that 'leaked' or copy-able software in the future will have DRM all over it. That is to say that license keys in the future, if not so already, will have a dual purpose of enabling use of the application AND disabling 'rootkit' type DRM/Spyware easter eggs in the application(s).
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I'm off base here, but isn't the government supposed to have large computers for things like the Carnivore project? Aren't they supposed to be capable to tapping into about anything on the Interweb? Why don't they just buy some software from babblefish.com and use it to pinpoint what parts of the Internet they really want to have experts read? To start with, a google for allah, then translate as required would be a good start, key words can be added to the process somewhere along the line... It seems unlikely that there would be more than say, oh... 100,000 arabic websites? Couple of days and its all done.. right?
This seems quite an odd thing to me... unless they are trying to ferret out people in the US and allied countries that are both capable of and willing to translate such information. That sounds like some new kind of profiling to me... well, I could just be paranoid...
This is TOTALLY wrong, I 'thought' of wikiscience last year... patent pending... nuff said :)
The relationship between physical things, such as B12 and some disease is not an invention, it is an observation. Thinking that there is a relationship is not licensed, and therefore cannot be held as private works. Proving the relationship is, more or less, like writing a book. Once you've written it, no one else can claim they did it first. That still doesn't give anyone the right to say no one else can use that relationship, even for the length of a patent.
... the list goes on.
Thoughts are not inventions, and patent law does not apply. The reason for patent laws was to allow those who acted on their thoughts first to use them for some gain. There has to be an 'invention' for any patent to be issuable, and a discovery of how nature works is not an invention, just as no one can patent 'air' or gravity, no one can patent the relationship between two things that happens in nature.
An example: Many thought of powered flight, but it was the Wright brothers who did it. There is a show on cable lately about how Star Trek created the modern world, or many of the technologies in it, yet the show's creators and writers do not have patents on things like the ion drive, or medical technologies. If this is not smacked down HARD, it will be science fiction writers who own the world in the next century, and they will not be friendly to big business IMO.
Mr. Clarke gave us communications satellites (IIRC) and other science fiction writers would have dibs on tons of things that big business just can't get their minds around yet, like say... talking computers? Mining technologies? cures for diseases?
Once that is pointed out to the lawyers I think it will all die the quick death of "That was a fscking bad idea, fire the guy who thought of that"....
Those are very good points, but I think that most of the reason for the unexpected longevity of the mars rovers is that they expected dust from dust storms to critically hamper the solar panel operation. What was a surprise is that the wind quite effectively kept the solar panels clear of dust, giving a much longer lifetime. I don't think that the engineers expected to have to worry about the motors lasting 36 months or more since it was not expected. Mars has quite extreme temperature swings, so the engineering is probably worth what it cost to build the rovers. Mother nature is something that just can't always be anticipated, unless, of course, you anticipate problems due to mother nature. In that case, any positive turn of fate leaves you in the position of underestimating vehicle longevity.
The temperatures, radiation, dust, vibration... these are very harsh environmental variables. It is just amazing that they are still running. I'm sure that NASA is still as amazed as we are, and pleased to be continuing the scientific research at what amounts to a budget bonanza.
You are most probably right in thinking that what was learned this time around will be incorporated in the next planetary exploration vehicles, and a longer lifetime expectation will be part of that. In line with that, recent NASA un-manned missions have been incredibly successful. I look forward to more solar system exploration, and also to commercial exploration based on NASA work.
Now that we know how to build robots to explore Mars, we can build them to explore other planets, and that ion engine thing is a Trekie's dream. The expectation bar is rising, and that is a good thing. The X-prize and similar efforts are creating huge scientific 'wealth' for all to use. Its all very cool.
This robot was supposed to last about 9 months... I think it has gone waaayyyy past the rated mileage for that wheel. The fact that it is free-wheeling and not a major hinderance is just a testament to how well it was actually designed. This 3x life-span thing is incredible if you take into account all of the challenges that the designers faced. I dabble in hobby robotics, and I can attest to the fact that designing a robot that does as well as it has done for as long as it has done, is a major accomplishment. Think about the warranty that you get on a new automobile... if it performed past its expected lifetime of usefulness to the tune of 300 percent, people would be driving vintage cars all over the place.... it is an amazing robot and planetary exploration vehicle!
Seems to me that one of the sponsors of this tech is Bell, and aren't they the ones that want to charge us for guaranteed latency, or lack there of? With all that bandwidth, that makes charging extra for low latency a case of banditry, doesn't it? Perhaps that is what Bell is all about anyway. On the other hand, I thought part of the reason for a tiered Internet service was to pay for all the infrastructure that is currently built? Now they are building 100x infrastructure with the money they are already overcharging from users, and only to overcharge them for content they don't want or need in the future?
Sure, I'm not Mr. Optimistic here, but just who the hell is paying for this infrastructure? Already I only want 35% of the content I have to pay for, and none of what I pay for has the latency that I would like to have. The money vs. service issue is all out of whack here. I don't care if its wireless or wired personally, if they could just get the service right in the first place, it would be nice.
Bundled cable, ISP, and VoIP... this is starting to sound like the beginnings of Cable Operators part two. I just know that they need all the bandwidth to support the DRM content that nobody wants to pay for, never mind watch. All I need is DRM'd reruns of "I love Lucy" on my telephone bill to make the world a perfect place again.
There is simply way too much HYPE in the technology sector these days. God forbid any of them think of providing good service before figuring out how to sell me 2 terabits of bandwidth to watch reruns with.
I'm not feeling very enthused about ISPs and content industries right now...
Parent has a good point.. what does it matter what MS does for spyware? The rest of their draconian practices will still ensure that it doesn't stop spyware because people won't use it, no matter how good it is. Upgrading to Vista is not just a software upgrade, for myself and many others, its a hardware upgrade too. EVEN if I did run MS products at home, I still wouldn't get any value from antispyware in Vista LOLOLOL Sounds like more PR spin to make it seem worth the extra hardware costs and giving away your first born to run the new version of MS Windows....
I'll just take my chances with Linux thank you
Is it just me that thinks this one is odd, or should this have been posted to slashdj.org
This looks pretty cool for my area, but had to type in the URL on my SideKick II to get it to load (javascript problem?) I like this
I got modded troll for suggesting that iPods are not as prevelant (at least in the world I live in) as the report suggests, and that anyone that doesn't want DRM might well be better off with a non-DRM'd MP3 player.... apparently, you've been breathing the special packets that they put in shipping crates at Apple for far too long. I'm sure you are quite happy with Apple, and statistically, there are lots of people that are happy with broadcast radio... so what?
My point is that the statistics saying that the iPod is "all that and a bag of chips" is just statistics, not reality in all places of the world, not even all places of North America. Quit huffing on the hype. Quicktime runs on MS too, so its not an OS thing. There are tons of MP3 players out there, all a bit different, most of them are not iPods. iPod is an iFad, like buying those special running shoes... you don't need an iPod to hear music. This story, and stories like it are just hype, the kind of hype that PR machines use to increase sales!
Statistics don't mean anything useful unless there are also statistics for all other aspects of the topic being discussed. How many non-iPod music players are there in use? How many have been sold with WMP on them? How many, including iPods, are just collecting dust in the glove box right now? Using ITMS statistics is sure to make the report lopsided. In fact, usage statistics are incredibly difficult to ascertain. Purchase statistics mean nothing for consumer electronics fads. The truth is that there 'may' be more MP3 players in use than anyone knows about because the owners are using their CD's to rip music and listen to it, ergo no music store stats, and few purchase stats. Statistics that arrive after the holiday shopping season are suspect to start with. How many gifts get purchased and never used? How many are resold or regifted? I resold the iPod I was given... the inflated price made that an EASY choice.
Statistics are just another way to lie....
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.... more to the point, statistics like this are put together in the manner required to show whatever point was trying to be made rather than in an observably fair representation of the facts.
I work with a bunch of geeks, yet no one I know, no one in my family, and no one I iSee iRegularly has been icaught with an iPod... The halo effect has some momentum, but its not like it has the impact or staying power of SARS or something. Its not a disease. Frisbees and hula hoops hardly changed the world. I still don't personally know anyone that uses Mac OS. Besides myself, I know of one person that knows the OS their phone uses...
I think that anyone that doesn't want Apple DRM will be just fine and happy with a Rio Forge MP3 player, and they are cheaper... too much noise about nothing if you ask me. What will be really cool, IMO, is when there is enough WiFi around to use something the size of a MP3 player to pick up Internet radio, or an iPod-ish XM radio tuner. Hours of music you don't have to personally maintain the play list for, just plug in the earbuds, turn it on, and viola! music.... music you like to hear, with no commercials... its iBetter than an iPod...
What Comcast actually blocks is a rewarding customer experience, and the desire to continue paying them money. I've never had a pleasant experience dealing with Comcast, but unfortunately, they are the only cable company available to me currently. Verizon FIOS will be here soon, and the noise you hear will be the sound of my cable modem shattering on the driveway.... Not that I expect Verizon to be nicer or anything, but it will be good to have competition and a new set of foreign national customer service reps.
I have trouble believing that MS will launch anything in 6 months, never mind on time. It would certainly be a change for them. There is only one group of people that will believe this story... the people that don't know how to use a search engine. If you already know how to use Google or Yahoo, the improvements that are talked about in the story are not needed. Using a search engine is not a black art or anything, but it does require you to be smarter than the proverbial blonde, in the same way that owning a Ferrari doesn't make you a good driver, a brilliant search tool will not suddenly make you able to find anything and everything on the Internet. I don't believe that it is possible to make improvements to searching the Internet in such leaps and bounds as what is claimed. To become more relevant than Google in six months is a claim that cannot readily be tested, unless of course MS will have their 'buddies' in Washington make it happen ???
The big picture is the real center here... Its not just about costs of labor, housing, or whatever. Since the advent of the information age and the Internet, the world has increasingly become a flat world, a smaller world, evolving toward a single community. This evolution toward flatness is stretching and pulling on national and international boundaries, laws, and business practices. Its cheaper to live in Texas then in California, and business incentives on top of that have made Texas the silicon valley of telecommunications companies. Cost of living is less than half of many places in Cal. or the New York area, so the jobs should be good... but still there is outsourcing. Government still has not given businesses the right incentives to hire from within the country, so they will save money wherever they can. If that means hiring people in a country around the world where health plan costs and retirement costs are cheaper, they will because the flat world means it is possible to do so. 30 years ago, it just would not have worked. Communication was not good enough, now it is.
The real problem is not quality or quantity of graduates in the science fields, it is the fact that governments have not caught up to the information age with their legal and business practices standards. Giving companies tax breaks for this or that but not taking into account hiring practices is one of the things that has upset the balance of wages and outsourcing. All this political rhetoric about colleges is just political posturing. The real changes need to be made at the business tax and law level of things. The government can give incentives to companies that don't outsource... but then that would be taking easy money out of their pockets... it is all about money, but not for business, its about money for government and political figures.
When businesses are given the right incentive by governments through taxation and regulation, they will pay for in-country talent, and those jobs will again carry prestige, thus garnering the admiration and adulation of students planning for their futures.
It was fine to enforce equal hiring practices by race, but for some reason its not okay to make companies biased toward hiring citizens of the country they are registered in and pay taxes in. The big picture is that politics is screwing the west for the short term gain.
The dotcom bubble and bust showed that there are times when a guy coding in his mom's basement is as good as a 120k/year engineer... businesses are still learning that the dotcom boom is over, and getting quality work and workers again costs money. It doesn't matter how many people you hire in India, there are costs associated with communicating with those workers, and instilling pride in those workers to do the kind of job that gives the company the reputation that they want.
Right now, there are tons of call centers in India (we all know and hate them) and in the interests of business, even Indian companies are outsourcing to China (of all places) to cut costs because that is the only incentive that business has... cut costs, make profit... Its time for government to step in and realign incentives for companies. Yes, labor is often cheaper, and regulations or lack thereof makes doing business overseas cheaper.. but for the same reason that, say, poisoning the environment is wrong in California, its also wrong in Yogoslovia and India, and governments should not support businesses that are involved in such practices with tax incentives etc. That would counter the effect of a flatened business world.
Well, that is the gist of it anyway.... "its the government's fault" more or less...
Okay, go ahead and show me where I'm wrong now
Okay, with some sleep and coffee, the finer point goes sort of like this: This proof of concept work allows researchers the opportunity to work with the bio-matter (slime) in order to do more than simply observe the 'properties of the material' so that in the future, perhaps, they can grow sharks olfactory senses (like stem cell research) so that they can load the shark senses into a robot, allowing it to guide search and rescue robots to bleeding (or otherwise) humans that are in the ocean from a ship wreck. Upon arriving at its 'prey', the shark sensor robot turns on a beacon signalling that the rescue team needs to come pick up a human in the water. It will take a lot of proof of concept work, and a lot of research, but using bio-sensors and bio-control of mechanical systems to make such things work. In such cases, I imagine that they only have to keep the shark-sensors 'alive' for up to 5 days or so... like batteries that are discarded after use, these bio-sensors could be a disposable package for the robots ??? Anyway, that is the idea. I'm sure we are nowhere close to this type of end product yet. It will take the sensors, and the control parts. Despite the moral issues with this, growing such sensors from stem cells (or similar process) is not so bad... its not like they have to have a canister of slime attached to the robot... this slime experiment is just proof of concept.
The news is that people are able to now work with them. Light sensors based on silicon and other materials simple take advantage of the light sensitive properties of the material. Using a biological material is no different, other than the need to 'feed' the sensor. As this story and experiment play out, there is no ready made practical application waiting for its development. The real advance here is working with biological sensors. Such work will hopefully lead to sensors that are sensitive enough to detect humans in the wreckage of a bombed building, or cancers (as some dogs can with smell) or other such sensitivities that simply don't seem possible with non-organic materials. This probably isn't going to lead to a bio-brain for robotics, but will make them much more sensitive in the sensor domain. Imagine if a robot could see or smell the way that some insects do? This would lead to robots that are much more capable, and much more useful for all sorts of dangerous work. Imagine a robot that works in water that can find even the tiniest of leaks on an oil tanker? Perhaps a robot that can sniff out drugs in cargo planes etc. The reason for sensors that are orders of magnitude better than what is available today goes without saying, more or less. This type of work will help make it more achievable, hopefully.
Already, they are training bees (in minutes) to sense out things that takes months of training for dogs. This type of bio-sensor systems will hopefully make such work even easier to achieve. I can see that one day, a search and rescue helicopter can drop a truck load of independent water robots that seek out and locate humans in the middle of the ocean, saving lives by finding them faster than current methods, and bio-sensors may be the ticket to such advances.
That's my take...
IANACE (I am not a computer expert) but I have to say that Science Fiction, poor as some of the plots are, has already taken this game to a level that that US, or any government, cannot even imagine. The plot in The Terminator and The Matrix is only going a little further than what reality is probably already producing.
What the world knows of virus and malware programs is only what has been discovered AND disclosed to the public. It is quite probable that there are malicious programs out there that are stealthily eating away at personal and business data or waiting till the right moment to do so, or worse, transmitting small bits and pieces of it back to the 'boss' on a regular basis. The latter has already been shown to be effective.
Any exercise done to improve or test computer security is farsical in comparison to what the imagination of any geek can dream up. No, I don't have the program sheet for the tests done, but I do know that they cannot have tested for security against what I can dream up... and trust me, if I can dream it up, its probably already being done.
Imagine a program that replicates itself, is small, does not trigger AV software, is executed by the computer user, does no damage, but propels itself across the networks until it finds itself on the computer of some user whose first name is Bill, and belongs to the domain microsoft.com. Now, every time that Bill lets his screen saver run, or recalculates some values in MS Excel, the program looks to see what the oldest file on the computer is, and queues it for transmission to another host when such transmission is likely to be unnoticed. (you figure out when that would be). Its not so hard to see such a program working, and going undetected by AV software. Yes, yes, I'm sure you could figure out how to catch it, but the time from zero-day to erradication would be a long time indeed.
The selectivity of this program would make it very difficult to identify and get rid of. Especially if it is passing data from one infected machine to another so that final destination is impossible to find. I hate to say it, but Tor and BT could be used for impossibly complex industrial and government spying.
The only way to stop malware is to disconnect the network cables, or very strictly control what passes over them to your computer or network. That gets difficult when such programs can mutate and then try tunneling via http etc. An http post request would be difficult to defend against if you are running an http server?
Now, to get modded down: Didn't the US government think they were prepared for natural disasters? I'm sure that people in charge of such things do all they think reasonable to be prepared, but that force5 program is just waiting for them....
This will only last about as long as the Sony rootkit-like DRM lasted. It now has public attention, and when it is pointed out that the scheme has enough security holes in it to act as a noodle strainer, the number of people who will actually allow the implant will be zero, meaning there will be no one to do any maintenance in the datacenter, and thus the rules will have to be changed.
For less than they paid for the RFID system, they could have hired someone to log people in and out of the data center. Additionally, I question the validity of a system that restricts access to only those with an implant during disaster situations (fire, flood, and worse) where access rights and needs are rather different than in normal situations.
Good security costs a lot of money, and you cannot replace the human element in the security chain. The RFID schemes won't prevent anyone following an authorized person into the data center, unless there is physical restrictions that would make working in the data center dangerous during emergencies. In this case, the $10/hour guard is more flexible and cheaper than the high-tech answer, and more respectful of humans in general... or at least I think so
This is another case of science finding the mechanism to explain what was already known for years, if not centuries. Since there is no method now known to mechanically adjust neural pathways, psychological methods must still be employed. As pointed out by others, each person can react to stimulus in different manners... for some, bad experiences can create a good outcome. This is the stuff that hazing and boot camps are meant to do.
Mechanically, or pharmacologically adjusting neural pathways is a dangerous thing. I wouldn't trust pharmocology companies to keep my best interests at heart.... ever! That said, the more that is known, the better we can learn to make life better....
This is just one more attempt, IMO, to realign privacy and security values to where they were before new technologies. Where IM is replacing conversations around the water cooler in the workplace, securing it from snooping is an okay thing. Logging it as official corporate communications is getting into, perhaps, dangerous territory. There is the part where it is a company resource, but when it comes close to being thought police, it is dangerous.
I think that modern society is still trying to find a place of 'normalcy' in the midst of new technology. I don't believe that there is an equivelant of IM prior to the advent of IM, other than private conversations. Recording private conversations is still not an okay thing to do. Comparing this to text based conversations that deaf/mute people have with text based phones, it all gets a bit confusing as to what is okay to record and what isn't.
Until it is clearly understood what is okay to snoop and record and what is not, people will make mistakes in what they allow to be recorded, and why, and how those recordings are used. No manner of encryption will fix the real issues. It seems that the only secure mannner to communicate is whispering so that no one can hear what is being said.... very low tech!
Other services, such as Danger, Visto etc. store user files on their servers. The difference here is that google makes them searchable. Google reps are right, users want mobile access to their data. This makes it so that all you need is Google desktop on your wireless device and you have access to your important files. I think that they have to do this in order to compete with WinCE and other mobile OS environments....
Good or not, I think it is a sound business decision. What they do with, and how they care for your data will show in the coming months, and I would approach any such thing with caution in usage.
Some time ago, klorg.org had a piece about trying to cook an egg in the Arizona heat... apparently, cooking on sidewalks and car hoods won't work either... though the spot between speakers behind the back seat seems good enough to keep you from having to clean up runny eggs...
FTFA **Mr. Kapellen got a call. He hooked up the contraption and a few minutes later was playing videogames with Bono. "It was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me," says Mr. Kapellen.'"**
Cool would have been winning $1000 off of Bono playing video games!!
Its just a thought, and I'll probably be modded down as flamebait or worse, but after all the money that the US government has spent on anti-terrorism, and trying to find Bin Laden, perhaps this is just a result of the Republican Party telling groups they have some control over (no wanting to start that as an argument) that they better show some kind of progress for all the money spent...
All the money spent by the US government lately has achieved exactly what? There just have been no successes in all this, and I think that they (you know who 'they' are) are looking for successes as the election nears. I know that the *AA will be proud of how their 'campaign contributions' were spent... I am just wondering what the American public will think of how the dollars were spent... hunting down grandmas and wiretapping anyone and everyone...
Makes me think there just might be a conspiracy in here somewhere?????
I'm surprised as hell that anyone would download a 'leaked' copy of IE 7.xx no matter how secure it is supposed to be when released. First, there is the problem of being a beta tester when you don't want to be, and SECOND, there is the problem that it might contain DRM that is equally bad or worse than the Sony 'rootkit' DRM.
AFAIK, 'leaked' software doesn't come with warnings, EULAs, and any other such agreements. I'm willing to bet that 'leaked' or copy-able software in the future will have DRM all over it. That is to say that license keys in the future, if not so already, will have a dual purpose of enabling use of the application AND disabling 'rootkit' type DRM/Spyware easter eggs in the application(s).