as i understand it, they didn't want to invade the U.S., they didn't even really want to go to war with the U.S.
what they wanted was to be like the U.S., and all the other major western powers, and become an industrialized society. but Japan has no domestic oil supply, and since all the European powers were colonizing other lands and spreading their empires at the time, the Japanese wanted to do the same with Southeast Asia.
but the Western nations, particularly the U.S., didn't want Japan to become too powerful, so they prohibited Japan from invading Southeast Asia and basically cut off their oil supply. and since Oil is the lifeblood of any industrial society, Japan broke from the league of nations and later waged war with the U.S. it was really a matter of survival.
i mean, what do you think the U.S. would do if China suddenly cut off all of our foreign oil supplies in the Middle East? we actually have a domestic oil reserve, but we'd still likely declare go to war with China.
i don't think an Army Ranger or Delta Force soldier is going to pull out a laptop and mouse/joystick in the middle of enemy territory during a combat mission. the whole point of voice/thought commands is to keep the soldier's hands free and allow him to issue commands while on the move.
and muscle memory is still the result of neural signals sent from the brain. for controlling things like unmanned drones you can still exploit a soldier's fast reflexes or autonomic reactions. with training, it'd be possible for the brain to treat the drone as an extension of one's body. and even conscious thought commands can be more useful, or convenient, than voice commands since verbal expression is rather limited compared to the flexibility/versatility of the human mind.
everything else you mentioned are implementation issues. obviously you're not going to design a thought command system that lets someone accidentally launch a missile with one stray thought. first we just have to develop the neural signaling interface, and then once we can interpret brain activity as thought commands it's just a matter of fine-tuning the system.
technology-enabled telepathy, techlepathy, or whatever you want to call it, is still manipulating objects with your mind. and there are many instances where directly transmitting commands with neural impulses would be preferable over verbal commands. for instance, if you were trying to control a UAV drone it would be far more intuitive to be able to make the plane turn via thoughts than with clumsy voice commands. you'd have a much wider range of control that's both, more natural and also quicker, than voice commands.
i'm more disturbed by this:
A project to erase bad memories, which will be critical in helping soldiers with psychological damage.
that's the thing though, i don't work for a major label. i work at an indie metal label--not a mainstream pop label, not a vanity or subsidiary label of one of the big four, not a member of the RIAA, just 100% independent.
i'm sure there are indie labels out there that are more in-tuned with the internet culture, but the majority of labels out there, whether big or small, still subscribe to the old music industry paradigm of file sharing = stealing. and you're right. it runs absolutely counter to their interests.
sure, you and i can easily follow those directions even if we're not familiar with the that particular OS, but you give the same straightforward directions to a lay person and they'll somehow end up unintentionally re-flashing their BIOS or strangling themselves with an rj45 cable.
i mean, how many of us have tried to walk a family member through a simple procedure over the phone and have that family member wind up at a completely different and unrelated window?
that's interesting. i wonder if AI could be used in other ways to improve the judicial system.
oftentimes jobs that involved repetitive tasks in a narrow problem domain can be relegated to expert systems. expert systems are especially suited to jobs ordinarily difficult for human beings based on applying large lists of memorized rules. these include diagnosing medical illness based on the patent's symptoms, reviewing & processing mortgage loans which are based on hard and fast rules, and other jobs requiring a high level of expertise knowledge.
so while the supreme court will probably never be replaced with AI systems, it should be relatively easy to create an expert system to handle straight-forward municipal/county court cases. for instance, traffic infractions, drug charges, petty crimes, etc. even more serious cases like corporate fraud, murder, etc. can benefit from an expert system that assists the judge/jury in finding the appropriate ruling or punishment.
some of the advantages to using AI in the justice system are:
AI systems are inherently impartial, thus would not demonstrate bias based on the defendant's race, sex, age, religion, or socioeconomic stratum.
AI systems will not stray from protocol or procedure and can return consistent results every time, ensuring that everyone gets a fair trial and is treated equally in the eyes of the law.
AI systems are not prone to human error, such as failed memory, selective recall of legal statutes, selective reasoning, misinterpretation of legal precedents, etc.
AI systems can not be pressured politically/psychologically/financially. an expert system would not give Paris Hilton a lighter sentence just because her family has powerful connections.
if the privileged elite are not being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, then there's no real incentive for those with the actual power to change the system to repeal overly severe laws. the rich do not have to worry about our drug laws being too harsh because they'll never get the book thrown at them. this creates a system where laws are becoming increasingly severe for non-violent offenses because the politicians want to look "tough on crime," while only the lower class are being held to these maximum sentences.
yea, i thought that was kind of weird. i mean, there are tons of simple lifeforms that far predate dinosaurs. so that's not a very significant discovery.
it would have been more appropriate to mention jellyfish or other soft-bodied diploblastic animals.
do what Ubisoft did with Go! Sudoku for PSP: have a "Please wait" dialog pop up randomly throughout the game, blocking the entire screen and locking the controls up while the timer keeps ticking in the background. and then when customers report the glitch just tell them they need to keep their PSPs charged.
at least EA is doing something to fix their screwup. Ubisoft on the other hand seems content with telling their customers to fuck off once they've got the customer's money. i still can't believe their Quality Control system is so poor that they'd release a game with such a major bug.
ironically, while this glitch is still apparent in pirated copies of Go! Sudoku, the "Please wait" dialog doesn't seem to pop up quite as often if you're running the game as an ISO or CSO off of your memory stick.
i dunno. tech support operators have a hard enough time walking the average person through how to run ipconfig on their windows PCs. trying to get the average person to open a terminal in Linux to run anything would be like trying to walk a cow down a flight of stairs.
AAC encoding is actually noticeably better than LAME at lower bitrates (128 kbps and below). so you can actually compress a track more with AAC and produce the same quality audio as a higher bitrate MP3.
most sources seem to agree that MPC and AAC are at the head of the pack amongst modern audio codecs. MPC being an open source codec would be preferable over AAC, but AAC obviously has much wider acceptance while MPC is supported by very few hardware manufacturers.
having worked in the music industry i'd tend agree with you. i think this initiative, especially the fact that it's backed by a powerful trade group, will send a strong message to record labels and artists.
while i'm hoping my boss learned his lesson after receiving a bunch of complaints and product returns on music CDs using standards-breaking DRM (i think a rep from Megaforce, our distributor, sold him the idea originally), i suspect the notion of DRMing future releases is still in the back of his mind. and, honestly, even without the product liability issues that come with CD DRM technology, it's still a huge waste of money that alienates customers/fans.
resources wasted combating "piracy" and on anti-consumer policies/tactics like DRM, or any other means of restricting consumer freedom, would be better used on music promotion. record labels can't dictate to consumers how they can or can't use the music they've purchased. online file sharing, like swapping cassettes or CDs, is an timeless constant. the smart labels will use this to their advantage rather than try to fight human nature.
record labels spend millions of dollars each year on promotion, whether it's buying spins on the radio, paying for TV/radio commercials, taking out ads in magazines & one-stops, printing fliers, putting your tracks on listening booths, co-op promotions, etc. it's all about getting the music out there, getting the band's name out there. you let people listen to your music for free on the radio, and you grow your fan base. in fact, the more plays you get on the radio, the more albums you sell. the industry understands the value of this kind of _paid_ promotion, but when it comes to free promotion, they just can't seem to wrap their heads around it. so they actually waste money to try to stop it.
instead of worrying about the music "pirates" who don't pay for music, which is really a relatively small percentage of the population that you're never going to reach anyway, why not exploit the marketing value of the internet. viral marketing the most effective, and simultaneously cheapest, means of increasing your fan base, and subsequently your customer base. so it makes much more sense to distribute DRM-free MP3s that people can share with their friends and let file sharing work for you through viral marketing.
well, MP3 is an ISO standard (approved in 1991). however, i agree that the licensing/patent issues are a huge drawback. to quote Wikipedia:
A large number of different organizations have claimed ownership of patents necessary to implement MP3 (decoding and/or encoding). These different claims have led to a number of legal threats and actions from a variety of sources, resulting in uncertainty about what is necessary to legally create products with MP3 support in countries where those patents are valid.
The various patents claimed to cover MP3 by different patent-holders have many different expiration dates, ranging from 2007 to 2017 in the U.S. The initial near complete MPEG-1 standard (parts 1,2,3) was publicly available in December 6, 1991 as ISO CD 11172. Since US patents must be filed by no later than a year after publication, some of the later patents are questionable, and MP3 may be patent free in the US by December of 2012.
sounds like typical patent-trolling to me. this is a prime example of how our IP laws hinder technological progress/innovation rather than encourage it. and a 20-year patent term for software algorithms is just plain insane. by the time the patent expires and finally goes into public domain the algorithm will likely be obsolete. technological progress is the result of open collaboration and collective efforts. these type of patent lawsuits are counter-productive and greatly hamper cultural symbiosis that every field of knowledge/research depends on to move forward.
so it's too bad that petty patent claims plague the dominant digital music format. maybe Ogg should be made into an ISO standard. perhaps then more hardware manufacturers (and downloadable music retailers) will adopt it alongside of MP3. frankly, MP3 is already a little outdated as it's fallen behind other compression formats over the years.
i'm assuming that wireless protocols used in the white-space spectrum (i think WiMax has an unlicensed spectrum profile, though i don't know what frequency range it's in) will account for potential interference and frequency conflicts from other devices. most-likely these protocols will be designed to detect whether a particular band or frequency is occupied by another device and try to find one that isn't. they'll probably also be designed to jump to a different band/frequency if a new source of interference is detected on the current band/frequency.
now, whether other devices/applications will play nice is yet to be seen. i don't know if the frequencies used in wireless microphones are configurable, but they probably aren't sophisticated enough for this kind of band negotiation. the other main source of interference would be TV transmissions, and they are generally fixed (and much more powerful), so any wireless broadband devices would have to work around them.
the radio spectrum is a limited public resource. it's something that is incredibly useful (and increasingly vital) but has to be shared by everyone. therefore, in order to prevent the tragedy of the commons, it has to be regulated.
and really, the best way to regulate it is through licensing. though how it is licensed could probably use some improvement. and if you are against licensing airwaves, then why are you complaining about the FCC's approval of the unlicensed use of the white-space spectrum?
the people who bitch about how this will affect their TV reception or wireless microphones are basically claiming this entire unlicensed block for themselves and are trying to prevent the development of wireless technologies that are much more broadly useful to the general public. why should they alone be allowed to benefit from this shared public resource? why should their private interests be placed above public interest?
wireless microphones and wireless broadband are not mutually exclusive. but that requires that people be considerate when developing their wireless technologies and implementing wireless applications in the white-space spectrum. i mean, when you use an unlicensed spectrum you should naturally expect to have other devices residing on the same frequencies. that's why it's an unlicensed spectrum.
aside from algorithms being non-patentable, you would need a different algorithm for every culture. also, many cultures don't have strict rules for assigning genders to words/names. language is already pretty idiomatic, but names are even more so. a database of common first names would be simpler to implement.
either way, they shouldn't have been granted a patent on such an obvious/trivial non-invention. this doesn't contribute anything to the body of human knowledge shared by our society. it's like patenting a fridge light. i highly doubt they were the first company to think of this idea, or even the first to implement it. they were just the first people to be dumb enough of a douchebag to think of filing such a petty patent.
and it's exactly this kind of IP pettiness that has turned our copyright & patent system into a tool for stifling, rather than encouraging, innovation.
um, in the U.S. last name is synonymous with family name. that's just because of western name order conventions.
when someone says last name they aren't talking about the last word in your name. otherwise appending a Sr., Jr., II, III, etc. to your name would change your last name. but that's not how it works.
obviously if a Chinese American were to fill out their name in a legal document they would write their family name as their last name, and probably write their name using a western name order. and if a European went to China they would be addressed with their first name in front of their title. so it would be Smith Mister instead of Mister Smith, or Smith Doctor instead of Dr. Smith. you adopt the name order conventions of the culture you travel to, you don't change your given/family name just because you move to a different country.
you might try to expand your horizons a little instead of acting like a pedant.
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia of sorts. it's not an image repository like flickr, either--people don't go to Wikipedia to search for images specifically. but that doesn't mean multimedia isn't a vital part of the site. part of the advantage of having an encyclopedic reference on the web is that you can integrate digital media like video/audio/images/etc. into the site.
and just because YouTube doesn't use Theora doesn't make it a bad codec. YouTube doesn't use XviD or H.264 either.
um, read the post i was replying to. i never said normal people don't need cryptography. i was responding to the comment that there's no longer a need for steganography anymore just because encryption is commonplace.
also, you gave no examples of when an ordinary person would need steganography instead of encryption.
when you have a product/technology that's used on a site that gets over a million visitors each day then you can say that it's "hardly an endorsement."
why should choosing a technology because it's open source mean any less than choosing a technology that is easy to deploy, or is scalable, or for any other reason? and there are plenty of other open source video codecs that Wikipedia could have chosen.
besides, their open source criteria can hardly be considered "strict" when they still use GIF and JPEG images on the site.
so because you consider eating in front of a TV normal other people have to feel the same way? no one is coming into your living room and turning off your TV during dinner. if you don't want to hear other people talk, don't go out into public. it's simple as that.
instead of complaining about people criticizing what you consider normal, maybe you should actually examine those criticisms to see if they have any merit. just because something is "normal" for you doesn't mean it's good. it was quite normal to be a racist in America up until very recently (and it probably still is the norm in some places). it was also normal to use CFCs in many commercial products before we realized it was destroying the ozone.
and, maybe this is just me, but i usually only go out to bars or other public hangouts when i want to socialize with others. if i wanted to watch TV by myself and be left alone (or whine about people criticizing my lifestyle) then i'll just stay home.
personally, i'd much rather they kept a nice supply of magazines in waiting rooms (doctor's office, morgue, dentist's, whatever) instead of a TV--especially one that no one can change the channel on or turn off.
the methadone clinic i currently go to has a TV on the wall that's always on CNN's "Your Health." now, at first i thought this was an appropriate choice since health is an important aspect of recovery, but it got really old, really fast.
first off, methadone patients usually have to go to the clinic every single morning (because we apparently can't be trusted with our own medication). normally, you show up at the clinic, wait for them to call you to the dosing window (only one patient is allowed back at a time); they pour you your dose diluted with water, then they watch you drink it in front of them; and then before you go you're supposed to say something to the nurse so they know that you're not just holding the methadone in your mouth and spitting it into a container when you leave.
unfortunately, methadone clinics are generally very crowded, over worked and understaffed. it gets progressively worse each year since the clinics are all run by a handful of private companies whose main concern is increasing profit margins, so any branches that aren't operating at 150% capacity get shut down, which usually means patients have to drive or take the bus 1-2 hours every morning to reach their nearest clinic. it also means that you're in that waiting room every morning for up to 2-3 hours.
so every morning i show up at the clinic, grab a number (yes, we have numbers, like at the DMV) and sit down in front of the TV to see what Dr. Sanjay Gupta and his female co-host, whatever her name is, have to say--at least for the first 2-3 days, because the TV is always playing re-runs of the same exact program that you just saw the day before (or an hour ago). maybe once every two weeks there's a new show, but no one really watches the TV anymore. it's just there in the background for people to talk over.
aside from the fact that most programs on TV are incredibly stupid and inane these days, the TV in that waiting room is just constantly bombarding waiting patients with commercials for pharmaceutical drugs and wasting electricity. with the embarrassingly low literacy rate in the U.S., it'd actually be a public service to remove that TV and replace it with some books or magazines.
"ordinary" people don't, and never really have. but there will always be people who need to transfer information undetected--spies, for instance.
if you're an undercover law enforcement agent, you could communicate with your agency without blowing the risk of blowing your cover by using steganography; likewise for whistleblowers who need to get information out of an organization with tight security. steganography would also be useful during wartime when cryptography isn't an option, or isn't enough.
i'm sure there are probably much more mundane uses for steganography as well, but you get the idea.
Slashdot Mirror
as i understand it, they didn't want to invade the U.S., they didn't even really want to go to war with the U.S.
what they wanted was to be like the U.S., and all the other major western powers, and become an industrialized society. but Japan has no domestic oil supply, and since all the European powers were colonizing other lands and spreading their empires at the time, the Japanese wanted to do the same with Southeast Asia.
but the Western nations, particularly the U.S., didn't want Japan to become too powerful, so they prohibited Japan from invading Southeast Asia and basically cut off their oil supply. and since Oil is the lifeblood of any industrial society, Japan broke from the league of nations and later waged war with the U.S. it was really a matter of survival.
i mean, what do you think the U.S. would do if China suddenly cut off all of our foreign oil supplies in the Middle East? we actually have a domestic oil reserve, but we'd still likely declare go to war with China.
i don't think an Army Ranger or Delta Force soldier is going to pull out a laptop and mouse/joystick in the middle of enemy territory during a combat mission. the whole point of voice/thought commands is to keep the soldier's hands free and allow him to issue commands while on the move.
and muscle memory is still the result of neural signals sent from the brain. for controlling things like unmanned drones you can still exploit a soldier's fast reflexes or autonomic reactions. with training, it'd be possible for the brain to treat the drone as an extension of one's body. and even conscious thought commands can be more useful, or convenient, than voice commands since verbal expression is rather limited compared to the flexibility/versatility of the human mind.
everything else you mentioned are implementation issues. obviously you're not going to design a thought command system that lets someone accidentally launch a missile with one stray thought. first we just have to develop the neural signaling interface, and then once we can interpret brain activity as thought commands it's just a matter of fine-tuning the system.
or just raise education levels. Japan has negative population growth, and it's not due to government intervention.
technology-enabled telepathy, techlepathy, or whatever you want to call it, is still manipulating objects with your mind. and there are many instances where directly transmitting commands with neural impulses would be preferable over verbal commands. for instance, if you were trying to control a UAV drone it would be far more intuitive to be able to make the plane turn via thoughts than with clumsy voice commands. you'd have a much wider range of control that's both, more natural and also quicker, than voice commands.
i'm more disturbed by this:
--yea, that and carrying out cover ups.
sweet, i can finally get my own holoduke. too bad there's no shrink-ray on that list.
that's the thing though, i don't work for a major label. i work at an indie metal label--not a mainstream pop label, not a vanity or subsidiary label of one of the big four, not a member of the RIAA, just 100% independent.
i'm sure there are indie labels out there that are more in-tuned with the internet culture, but the majority of labels out there, whether big or small, still subscribe to the old music industry paradigm of file sharing = stealing. and you're right. it runs absolutely counter to their interests.
sure, you and i can easily follow those directions even if we're not familiar with the that particular OS, but you give the same straightforward directions to a lay person and they'll somehow end up unintentionally re-flashing their BIOS or strangling themselves with an rj45 cable.
i mean, how many of us have tried to walk a family member through a simple procedure over the phone and have that family member wind up at a completely different and unrelated window?
that's interesting. i wonder if AI could be used in other ways to improve the judicial system.
oftentimes jobs that involved repetitive tasks in a narrow problem domain can be relegated to expert systems. expert systems are especially suited to jobs ordinarily difficult for human beings based on applying large lists of memorized rules. these include diagnosing medical illness based on the patent's symptoms, reviewing & processing mortgage loans which are based on hard and fast rules, and other jobs requiring a high level of expertise knowledge.
so while the supreme court will probably never be replaced with AI systems, it should be relatively easy to create an expert system to handle straight-forward municipal/county court cases. for instance, traffic infractions, drug charges, petty crimes, etc. even more serious cases like corporate fraud, murder, etc. can benefit from an expert system that assists the judge/jury in finding the appropriate ruling or punishment.
some of the advantages to using AI in the justice system are:
if the privileged elite are not being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, then there's no real incentive for those with the actual power to change the system to repeal overly severe laws. the rich do not have to worry about our drug laws being too harsh because they'll never get the book thrown at them. this creates a system where laws are becoming increasingly severe for non-violent offenses because the politicians want to look "tough on crime," while only the lower class are being held to these maximum sentences.
yea, i thought that was kind of weird. i mean, there are tons of simple lifeforms that far predate dinosaurs. so that's not a very significant discovery.
it would have been more appropriate to mention jellyfish or other soft-bodied diploblastic animals.
do what Ubisoft did with Go! Sudoku for PSP: have a "Please wait" dialog pop up randomly throughout the game, blocking the entire screen and locking the controls up while the timer keeps ticking in the background. and then when customers report the glitch just tell them they need to keep their PSPs charged.
at least EA is doing something to fix their screwup. Ubisoft on the other hand seems content with telling their customers to fuck off once they've got the customer's money. i still can't believe their Quality Control system is so poor that they'd release a game with such a major bug.
ironically, while this glitch is still apparent in pirated copies of Go! Sudoku, the "Please wait" dialog doesn't seem to pop up quite as often if you're running the game as an ISO or CSO off of your memory stick.
if you have a trojan on your system then you're already rooted. being able to run telnetd is not a security problem.
if on the other hand telnetd started up on its own, or could be remotely triggered, then it'd be a serious security flaw.
i dunno. tech support operators have a hard enough time walking the average person through how to run ipconfig on their windows PCs. trying to get the average person to open a terminal in Linux to run anything would be like trying to walk a cow down a flight of stairs.
AAC encoding is actually noticeably better than LAME at lower bitrates (128 kbps and below). so you can actually compress a track more with AAC and produce the same quality audio as a higher bitrate MP3.
most sources seem to agree that MPC and AAC are at the head of the pack amongst modern audio codecs. MPC being an open source codec would be preferable over AAC, but AAC obviously has much wider acceptance while MPC is supported by very few hardware manufacturers.
having worked in the music industry i'd tend agree with you. i think this initiative, especially the fact that it's backed by a powerful trade group, will send a strong message to record labels and artists.
while i'm hoping my boss learned his lesson after receiving a bunch of complaints and product returns on music CDs using standards-breaking DRM (i think a rep from Megaforce, our distributor, sold him the idea originally), i suspect the notion of DRMing future releases is still in the back of his mind. and, honestly, even without the product liability issues that come with CD DRM technology, it's still a huge waste of money that alienates customers/fans.
resources wasted combating "piracy" and on anti-consumer policies/tactics like DRM, or any other means of restricting consumer freedom, would be better used on music promotion. record labels can't dictate to consumers how they can or can't use the music they've purchased. online file sharing, like swapping cassettes or CDs, is an timeless constant. the smart labels will use this to their advantage rather than try to fight human nature.
record labels spend millions of dollars each year on promotion, whether it's buying spins on the radio, paying for TV/radio commercials, taking out ads in magazines & one-stops, printing fliers, putting your tracks on listening booths, co-op promotions, etc. it's all about getting the music out there, getting the band's name out there. you let people listen to your music for free on the radio, and you grow your fan base. in fact, the more plays you get on the radio, the more albums you sell. the industry understands the value of this kind of _paid_ promotion, but when it comes to free promotion, they just can't seem to wrap their heads around it. so they actually waste money to try to stop it.
instead of worrying about the music "pirates" who don't pay for music, which is really a relatively small percentage of the population that you're never going to reach anyway, why not exploit the marketing value of the internet. viral marketing the most effective, and simultaneously cheapest, means of increasing your fan base, and subsequently your customer base. so it makes much more sense to distribute DRM-free MP3s that people can share with their friends and let file sharing work for you through viral marketing.
well, MP3 is an ISO standard (approved in 1991). however, i agree that the licensing/patent issues are a huge drawback. to quote Wikipedia:
sounds like typical patent-trolling to me. this is a prime example of how our IP laws hinder technological progress/innovation rather than encourage it. and a 20-year patent term for software algorithms is just plain insane. by the time the patent expires and finally goes into public domain the algorithm will likely be obsolete. technological progress is the result of open collaboration and collective efforts. these type of patent lawsuits are counter-productive and greatly hamper cultural symbiosis that every field of knowledge/research depends on to move forward.
so it's too bad that petty patent claims plague the dominant digital music format. maybe Ogg should be made into an ISO standard. perhaps then more hardware manufacturers (and downloadable music retailers) will adopt it alongside of MP3. frankly, MP3 is already a little outdated as it's fallen behind other compression formats over the years.
i'm assuming that wireless protocols used in the white-space spectrum (i think WiMax has an unlicensed spectrum profile, though i don't know what frequency range it's in) will account for potential interference and frequency conflicts from other devices. most-likely these protocols will be designed to detect whether a particular band or frequency is occupied by another device and try to find one that isn't. they'll probably also be designed to jump to a different band/frequency if a new source of interference is detected on the current band/frequency.
now, whether other devices/applications will play nice is yet to be seen. i don't know if the frequencies used in wireless microphones are configurable, but they probably aren't sophisticated enough for this kind of band negotiation. the other main source of interference would be TV transmissions, and they are generally fixed (and much more powerful), so any wireless broadband devices would have to work around them.
the radio spectrum is a limited public resource. it's something that is incredibly useful (and increasingly vital) but has to be shared by everyone. therefore, in order to prevent the tragedy of the commons, it has to be regulated.
and really, the best way to regulate it is through licensing. though how it is licensed could probably use some improvement. and if you are against licensing airwaves, then why are you complaining about the FCC's approval of the unlicensed use of the white-space spectrum?
the people who bitch about how this will affect their TV reception or wireless microphones are basically claiming this entire unlicensed block for themselves and are trying to prevent the development of wireless technologies that are much more broadly useful to the general public. why should they alone be allowed to benefit from this shared public resource? why should their private interests be placed above public interest?
wireless microphones and wireless broadband are not mutually exclusive. but that requires that people be considerate when developing their wireless technologies and implementing wireless applications in the white-space spectrum. i mean, when you use an unlicensed spectrum you should naturally expect to have other devices residing on the same frequencies. that's why it's an unlicensed spectrum.
aside from algorithms being non-patentable, you would need a different algorithm for every culture. also, many cultures don't have strict rules for assigning genders to words/names. language is already pretty idiomatic, but names are even more so. a database of common first names would be simpler to implement.
either way, they shouldn't have been granted a patent on such an obvious/trivial non-invention. this doesn't contribute anything to the body of human knowledge shared by our society. it's like patenting a fridge light. i highly doubt they were the first company to think of this idea, or even the first to implement it. they were just the first people to be dumb enough of a douchebag to think of filing such a petty patent.
and it's exactly this kind of IP pettiness that has turned our copyright & patent system into a tool for stifling, rather than encouraging, innovation.
um, in the U.S. last name is synonymous with family name. that's just because of western name order conventions.
when someone says last name they aren't talking about the last word in your name. otherwise appending a Sr., Jr., II, III, etc. to your name would change your last name. but that's not how it works.
obviously if a Chinese American were to fill out their name in a legal document they would write their family name as their last name, and probably write their name using a western name order. and if a European went to China they would be addressed with their first name in front of their title. so it would be Smith Mister instead of Mister Smith, or Smith Doctor instead of Dr. Smith. you adopt the name order conventions of the culture you travel to, you don't change your given/family name just because you move to a different country.
you might try to expand your horizons a little instead of acting like a pedant.
who said anything about Word Press?
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia of sorts. it's not an image repository like flickr, either--people don't go to Wikipedia to search for images specifically. but that doesn't mean multimedia isn't a vital part of the site. part of the advantage of having an encyclopedic reference on the web is that you can integrate digital media like video/audio/images/etc. into the site.
and just because YouTube doesn't use Theora doesn't make it a bad codec. YouTube doesn't use XviD or H.264 either.
um, read the post i was replying to. i never said normal people don't need cryptography. i was responding to the comment that there's no longer a need for steganography anymore just because encryption is commonplace.
also, you gave no examples of when an ordinary person would need steganography instead of encryption.
when you have a product/technology that's used on a site that gets over a million visitors each day then you can say that it's "hardly an endorsement."
why should choosing a technology because it's open source mean any less than choosing a technology that is easy to deploy, or is scalable, or for any other reason? and there are plenty of other open source video codecs that Wikipedia could have chosen.
besides, their open source criteria can hardly be considered "strict" when they still use GIF and JPEG images on the site.
so because you consider eating in front of a TV normal other people have to feel the same way? no one is coming into your living room and turning off your TV during dinner. if you don't want to hear other people talk, don't go out into public. it's simple as that.
instead of complaining about people criticizing what you consider normal, maybe you should actually examine those criticisms to see if they have any merit. just because something is "normal" for you doesn't mean it's good. it was quite normal to be a racist in America up until very recently (and it probably still is the norm in some places). it was also normal to use CFCs in many commercial products before we realized it was destroying the ozone.
and, maybe this is just me, but i usually only go out to bars or other public hangouts when i want to socialize with others. if i wanted to watch TV by myself and be left alone (or whine about people criticizing my lifestyle) then i'll just stay home.
personally, i'd much rather they kept a nice supply of magazines in waiting rooms (doctor's office, morgue, dentist's, whatever) instead of a TV--especially one that no one can change the channel on or turn off.
the methadone clinic i currently go to has a TV on the wall that's always on CNN's "Your Health." now, at first i thought this was an appropriate choice since health is an important aspect of recovery, but it got really old, really fast.
first off, methadone patients usually have to go to the clinic every single morning (because we apparently can't be trusted with our own medication). normally, you show up at the clinic, wait for them to call you to the dosing window (only one patient is allowed back at a time); they pour you your dose diluted with water, then they watch you drink it in front of them; and then before you go you're supposed to say something to the nurse so they know that you're not just holding the methadone in your mouth and spitting it into a container when you leave.
unfortunately, methadone clinics are generally very crowded, over worked and understaffed. it gets progressively worse each year since the clinics are all run by a handful of private companies whose main concern is increasing profit margins, so any branches that aren't operating at 150% capacity get shut down, which usually means patients have to drive or take the bus 1-2 hours every morning to reach their nearest clinic. it also means that you're in that waiting room every morning for up to 2-3 hours.
so every morning i show up at the clinic, grab a number (yes, we have numbers, like at the DMV) and sit down in front of the TV to see what Dr. Sanjay Gupta and his female co-host, whatever her name is, have to say--at least for the first 2-3 days, because the TV is always playing re-runs of the same exact program that you just saw the day before (or an hour ago). maybe once every two weeks there's a new show, but no one really watches the TV anymore. it's just there in the background for people to talk over.
aside from the fact that most programs on TV are incredibly stupid and inane these days, the TV in that waiting room is just constantly bombarding waiting patients with commercials for pharmaceutical drugs and wasting electricity. with the embarrassingly low literacy rate in the U.S., it'd actually be a public service to remove that TV and replace it with some books or magazines.
"ordinary" people don't, and never really have. but there will always be people who need to transfer information undetected--spies, for instance.
if you're an undercover law enforcement agent, you could communicate with your agency without blowing the risk of blowing your cover by using steganography; likewise for whistleblowers who need to get information out of an organization with tight security. steganography would also be useful during wartime when cryptography isn't an option, or isn't enough.
i'm sure there are probably much more mundane uses for steganography as well, but you get the idea.