I'm willing to bet most MMOs trust the client to some extent, in order to reduce their load. Open Sourcing them might not be such a good idea.
Trusting the client is what got Ultima Online into buttloads of trouble in the early days. You don't need open source to hack the client. You just need a smart guy who knows how to read memory dumps and TCP/IP stacks.
One of the big differences between Catholics and Protestants was that Catholics were not allowed to read the bible. In fact it was illegal to own a Bible at home (in XVIIth century France at least)
Hold on there. Lets get some history. That issue was due to the position of the King of France and not the Vatican. I could go on about the whole mess of history of the Hugenots and King of France, but its too much at this point.
Yes, the Catholic Church had its head up its arse for the past 2000 years possibly being responsible for more deaths (population ratio wise) than the wars of Nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. (Central Europe was almost empty after the 30 years war during the counter reformation.)
But in the past century its seems to have realized that perhaps maybe they weren't so always right and tend to be more open about certain issues like the big bang, Darwinism, and of course the whole issue about Galileo getting a several hundred year late apology. Compared to some Christian sects these days, the Catholic church is quite liberal.
Now if they could just get over condoms and birth control...
You don't know what you're fucking talking about, and I find you offensive. Maybe this happened to you, or somebody you know, and it's gotten you irked. But I guarantee that I know more cops than you do, and *never* -- not once -- has this happened in my personal experience as an ex-police officer.
Well your personal expirence is quite a drop in the bucket for 300 million Americans.
Your mileage may vary depending on where you live or visit.
I've seen some pretty good cops, some pretty bad cops, and cops that just don't give a damn.
I live in a major metropolitan area where there is a 100+ murders a year and the general attitude here actually depends. Cops here have been known to beat people unprovoked (and get on major headlines for it) and yet I've seen cops watch a fight break out and not lift a finger.
On the upside, I've run a red light once in a morning stupor in front of a cop who just watched me blankly from his car and waved me once he realized what I did.
And regulations of what paper work a cop does have to fill out varies from region to region.
There's no way they're doing real time 3d in flash or javascript, so they're almost certainly using ActiveX or a plugin.
The last I remember hearing, John Carmack uses Macs (at least the hardware) for his development platform and given his personal history towards interoperability, I'd seriously doubt we'd see Active X only which would prevent Linux and OS X from playing.
While I completely agree that I don't want anyone touching my screen (yuk!), there ARE better methods of inputting x/y coordinate data than a computer mouse.
There is a reason the Nintendo DS has a stylus.
Anyways, emerging technologies should be investigated such as say eyeball tracking movement or a non-invasive ear canal method.
Speaking of the ear canal tracking, there is something being worked on for the disabled that is basically a device that you put in your ear which follows your ear canal pressure which changes based on your tongue movement. For those who have little movement in their appendages, this is quite useful for wheel chair control and even controlling a mouse on the screen.
Of course the holy grail is direct neural interfaces or one that its grafted directly to a muscle or nerve.
I personally think the mouse has got another 10 years or so, but I'd be happy to be wrong.
When I first heard about his whole ultrasonic bubble excitation fusion experiment, I honestly thought: WTF?
The bubble itself is a quite interesting phenomenon, thought it is most likley not fusion as Taleyarkhan claims.
For those not familiar of Taleyarkhan and the issue of the bubble this is a good BBC video I saw a while back on the who topic and controversy. Either way the bubble was discovered by someone else and I personally think should be investigated for other properties other than table top fusion.
Well call me naive, but I don't think things like this are driven by greed so much as incompetence, hubris, and an "us vs them" mindset.
Why is greed and incompetence/hubris mutually exclusive?
If nothing else greed leads to incompetence which later results in hubris which turns into an "us vs them" mentality when someone points out they are wrong.
In fact, I'd argue if anything that greed is the key motivation behind what most corporations and government bodies these days even if its not that conspiracy-esque at all.
Take a police officer who is given a quota of giving out speeding tickets. He probaly wants a promotion so he can earn more money which is the natural emotion of greed which in itself it not inherently evil. In order to make quota, he may start giving out tickets which may have not been deserved and even doing things that were obviously incompetent such as using illegal speed traps or camping out in areas in where speed limits were set low on purpose.
Now some one may call him out on this behavior which leads to his hubris and an "us vs them" mindset all without the need for a grand conspiracy all the while thinking what he is doing is perfectly good and just.
That is the scary thing, when people like Stalin, Mao, and Hitler did the things they did it wasn't because they thought up a grand conspiracy to trick the populace. They themselves actually believed in their cause and were blind to what they were doing.
How they came about to power or then kept their power wasn't a grand plan or complex conspiracy worthy of the best fictional writer.
This is why you should fear the idealist more than you would a back room pragmatic politician. Sure the politician may pocket himself some money, but he doesn't actually believe in what he is doing to be right and wouldn't go so far other than to cover his own ass.
It could be said that self justification (hubris) is in human nature and quite common. This is why you see FBI and the Federal Government in general doing the things that they do. It because people in power are usually normal humans (well I suppose this is 100%) who have never really sat back and thought about why they do the things they do and surround themselves with like minded people who feel the same way which results in no one ever pointing out that this might not be the best idea.
So yes, there is no grand conspiracy, but it isn't far fetched that someone at a high level position of power might think to themselves one day "Wouldn't it be easier to do my job (which is of course in the pursuit of justice and freedom) if certain people got out of the way?" and then pursue all the means in their power do so.
Its human nature and that is what we should be afraid of.
Running MMOs can take a lot of resources depending on what kind of functionality you want to provide. While in theory "anyone" could run their own server, logistically it won't happen.
People their own 50+ player count gaming server all the time. They tend to be FPS games or Ultima "Offline" servers, but the technology is there for those who want to pay for the bandwidth and CPU cycles.
Being able to have your own SL server doesn't get you access to Linden's grid. And that's what people want: to be on the grid with everybody else they know.
You could link the non-linden grids together so you can jump from one to another or at least communicate between servers or even patch the linden client so that jumping between Linden and non-Linden without trouble.
You could go as far as to have the ability (with a patched Linden client) to receive messages from people on 3rd party servers.
Suffice to say, for those more concerned about free real estate rather than chatting, it would be logical that people could create their own servers and just have URLs linking them so that you could just look them up in the open DNS and you can pop on their web server and look at whatever they've got going on as well as whoever else happens to be there as well.
Imagine is Slashdot ran their own open source SL server where we could all stand around and post comments... Actually maybe that isn't the best mental image.
Still, the idea of a 3d world without centralization is pretty nifty. Kind of like the old world wide web.
Have you looked at the bottom line of Yahoo lately? Read their cashflow statements maybe? If you had then you would be furious since Yahoo is doing a good job of screwing itself into the ground.
I'm tempted to short both MSFT and YHOO the day the deal is done and throw the money into Oil and Euro ETFs.
The problem with modern investing is that money (and lots of it) can be made by simply determining the emotional behavior of investors and market trends rather than cold hard financial facts.
Did Oil supply decrease and demand increase magically the day that Iran test fired a missile?
No, but the price jumped to its highest record to date.
Same with this Yahoo and Microsoft deal. I have a lingering suspicion that Icahn is going to burn the company for all its worth and there might be crowd of shorters that will tank the company as soon as they smell blood when the long term holders dump their holdings and the last one to sell is going to get his ass hit by the door on the way out.
Of course since Microsoft is the one using its own funny money for the deal instead of cash which will obviously dilute MSFT share price which will be a gain for MSFT shorters there as well.
I don't, but that's because I prefer our legal system to differentiate between theft and copyright infringement as well as manslaughter and murder as the laws were originally intended.
I don't pirate games or kill people, but it bothers me when people are handed sentences down that don't fit the crime.
Not to get into another semantics debate, but the US legal system has clearly defined theft as "deprivation of the use of property" and as none one deprives anyone of anything when they pirate they clearly aren't stealing but performing something else illegal called "copyright infringement".
Which by the way has a higher penalty in some cases to which stealing the game from the store would have earned them less of a punishment.
Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
Just require sterilization for anyone who wants to go through the treatment process. Vasectomies run about $600 bucks these days if not less.
Ah, I see you've answered your own objections there.
If you take the view of life as long term (say hundreds or thousands of years), then our short term actions are all pointless unless we do acheive some sort of immortality.
Now this is more a philosophical point of view than a practical every day, but the difference between having a million dollars or none at all when you are dead is meaningless to the person who is of course dead.
This might be lost on the person stealing the money from the hapless persons looking for immortality until they themselves are actually on their deathbed chuckling to themselves about the great life they had until a sudden overwhelming realization of the great abyss of oblivion that lies before them as they utter "OH SHI-" and make a mess of themselves for the next of kin.
I'm just saying that I'd be more concerned about Aubrey being overly optimistic rather than him duping people out of money. Its not like you can take the money with you.
The problem with this question is that it's probably too late to extend any old person's life to a significant degree and it will take a person's life span to see any real improvements to, er, their life span.
I thought he has some experiments going on with rats or some other animal that naturally has a short life span. If you can make a rat live to 40, then chances are you can make a human live to 200.
Given that, why should we believe you aren't a complete charlatan?
Because a charlatan still dies.
The problem with most humans is that they are very short sighted.
Given the choice of duping people out of their money for hookers and beer or actually putting into life extension research, I would opt with the life extension because there will be plenty of time to do what you please later.
I think Aubrey is a bit more altruistic about why he wants to do this, but even if dupes money out of people, he still faces mortality like the rest of us.
But seriously, humans (even older adults) like to play with things that many would consider to be toys or dolls. Take the Sims for example and the massive following of Warhammer 40,000.
You could say the same thing about people who watch sports or like to watch fast cars going around in circles all day. Its a pastime, not a sign of clinical depression.
Maybe you weren't paying attention to all the illegal and now seemingly legalized wiretapping? Its not too hard to envision a future where sending encrypted data that the 'gubmint' doesn't have a backdoor to across national borders will be illegal, or at least require a license.
The thing about data is that it doesn't have to be grown in the jungles for a while before being transferred somewhere. The neat thing about data is that it can be transferred in multitudes of ways electronically thereby making physical copies a moot point.
One of the tricks the East Germans and the KGB did in the 80s was to use low baud modems disguised as calculators which they'd punch in the data they want to transfer and then walk up to any old pay phone and send a call to the Russian Embassy which could send an encrypted message without anyone being able to do anything about it. The West did similar things in the Eastern block but often used shortwave radio and read data out and were gone before someone could triangulate them.
Now pay phones and short wave radios aren't that popular these days but anyone using clandestine situations (and I'm talking about Russian and Chinese operations) would most likley use internet cafes and stenographic techniques with files. The only way to prevent that would be to shut down the internet which makes the whole thing useless.
You could outlaw the technology but anyone dealing with that kind of issues has a disposal unit which they are going to drop their laptop in as soon as someone kicks down the door.
What I'm trying to say, anyone worth their salt is going to be transferring data over the internet because its harder to detect and harder to determine who and where its going from and who its going to. Anyone who is carrying the data on them through customs is a dumbass and shouldn't be in the business of espionage.
Again... Truecrypt is for mom and pop who want to protect their data from theives. If you are worried about the CIA, Chinese, or Russian equivalents then you need something a bit more.
It will be difficult to make a "biofuel" engine that won't run just fine on petroleum.
If we are talking about bio-diesel, the main issue is replacing all the rubber hoses in the fuel injection process due to bio-diesel's tendency to dissolve rubber. Once you bypass that hurdle, a conversion of a standard diesel to bio-diesel isn't a major jump.
Of course if we are talking about converting engines from gasoline to ethanol, then its a bit more tedious
But once they've retooled the assembly line, its no longer a problem.
You miss the point. Anyone who truly has something to hide to the extent of worrying about torture will have an utterly plausible explanation or ten prepared. That won't stop someone who is willing to use torture from continuing until they get more or you have resisted for so long that they believe you are telling the truth when you're saying there is no more.
Look. If you are being tortured for using truecrypt then you have bigger things to worry about. If you are in the US or European countries and you are being tortured then the rule of law has been thrown out the window.
Otherwise, if you are in other countries where torture is the norm, then you have to mitigate such issues by such things or cyanide tablets and giving having the carriers of the data ignorant to what the passwords are or the contents of the data they are carrying.
If you were really smart you'd develop a self destruct system in which if someone did breach your security you could instantly destroy your data or have a system in which the data is rendered unusable if you give them a certain password.
Most of the scenarios are far what is warranted by truecrypt which is to prevent unauthorized access to data when the computer itself has been physical compromised (like theft).
After all 10,000 laptops were stolen at the airport last year and if you do carry personal information on a computer you travel with, truecrypt sounds like the best method to keep theives from getting to your information if they do steal your laptop.
No, I'm quite positive that you do have a hidden volume. It's where you're storing all of your terrorist secrets, and unless you reveal the password then this ballpeen hammer has a date with your fingers.
The smart thing to do would have a password and encryption system that makes the data unreadable if such a key was used. That way when they ask for the password, you give them one that destroys the key on the disk thereby making the data unreadable. At that point they could torture you all they'd like but the original password will never work again.
I'm not sure how such a thing could be implemented on the hard drive itself with the encryption perhaps on the MBR in which forces you to boot from the hard drive if you want to read the information.
They might not 'catch a criminal' this way, but it could be seen as 'preventative'... no point in smuggling illegal data in a hidden truecrypt volume if they routinely destroy them. They can destroy hidden volumes without knowing they are there.
I never got this "Smuggling illegal data" thing. If you want to transfer something across international borders, its not like you have to tape hard drives to yourself under your shirt. All you have to do is use the internet.
If a law enforcement agency destroyed the "illegal data" in the process of looking for it, then it serves the purposes of the person hiding the data from them. If it was that important they would have made backups somewhere else.
Simply putting an unprepared human being in a Lily isolation tank which only affects our classic 5 senses puts people in stress. Sure you can get your TV eyes and microphone ears but how will a brain/mind really function without feedback from a "body".
Are you so sure?
Isn't stress related to other organs than the brain as well? If your heart could not increase its rate, or your adrenaline glands couldn't fire off, or you couldn't hyperventilate then by what means are you could to stress out? You can't have a heart attack either because you most likley have a machine just pumping blood into your brain no matter what you are thinking.
Obviously, you'd probaly have chemicals in your brain going off, but we really do not know what happens when you take a brain out of the human body and keep it alive just by itself.
I'm sure it would be a very odd experience. You wouldn't feel heat, pain, hunger, or even the need to breathe.
If it did become a problem, it would only be needed to "fool" the brain into think that there was a body. Basically a machine that feed electrical impulses that imitate the nerves going back to your brain from your body parts.
You could be in a vat of this chemical keeping your brain alive forever. And no sensory input. It would be worse than being buried alive and it would last forever (or a very long time, at least).
If you could master lucid dreaming, then it would be a paradise.
Otherwise... You could always have someone check on you every now and then. Its not that hard. I suppose if the "brain in a jar" lifestyle did get popular, there would be facilities specifically for the care and storage of such persons like one has for old people at a retirement home.
Nobody's watching? You better tell the 4 billion people who were planning to do just that...
Historically, the Olympics have gotten low viewership in the West even when we host the Olympics. I think the Beijing estimates are a bit rosy even though they would now of course be higher due to domestic viewership in China.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm willing to bet most MMOs trust the client to some extent, in order to reduce their load. Open Sourcing them might not be such a good idea.
Trusting the client is what got Ultima Online into buttloads of trouble in the early days. You don't need open source to hack the client. You just need a smart guy who knows how to read memory dumps and TCP/IP stacks.
One of the big differences between Catholics and Protestants was that Catholics were not allowed to read the bible. In fact it was illegal to own a Bible at home (in XVIIth century France at least)
Hold on there. Lets get some history. That issue was due to the position of the King of France and not the Vatican. I could go on about the whole mess of history of the Hugenots and King of France, but its too much at this point.
Yes, the Catholic Church had its head up its arse for the past 2000 years possibly being responsible for more deaths (population ratio wise) than the wars of Nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. (Central Europe was almost empty after the 30 years war during the counter reformation.)
But in the past century its seems to have realized that perhaps maybe they weren't so always right and tend to be more open about certain issues like the big bang, Darwinism, and of course the whole issue about Galileo getting a several hundred year late apology. Compared to some Christian sects these days, the Catholic church is quite liberal.
Now if they could just get over condoms and birth control...
You don't know what you're fucking talking about, and I find you offensive. Maybe this happened to you, or somebody you know, and it's gotten you irked. But I guarantee that I know more cops than you do, and *never* -- not once -- has this happened in my personal experience as an ex-police officer.
Well your personal expirence is quite a drop in the bucket for 300 million Americans.
Your mileage may vary depending on where you live or visit.
I've seen some pretty good cops, some pretty bad cops, and cops that just don't give a damn.
I live in a major metropolitan area where there is a 100+ murders a year and the general attitude here actually depends. Cops here have been known to beat people unprovoked (and get on major headlines for it) and yet I've seen cops watch a fight break out and not lift a finger.
On the upside, I've run a red light once in a morning stupor in front of a cop who just watched me blankly from his car and waved me once he realized what I did.
And regulations of what paper work a cop does have to fill out varies from region to region.
There's no way they're doing real time 3d in flash or javascript, so they're almost certainly using ActiveX or a plugin.
The last I remember hearing, John Carmack uses Macs (at least the hardware) for his development platform and given his personal history towards interoperability, I'd seriously doubt we'd see Active X only which would prevent Linux and OS X from playing.
While I completely agree that I don't want anyone touching my screen (yuk!), there ARE better methods of inputting x/y coordinate data than a computer mouse.
There is a reason the Nintendo DS has a stylus.
Anyways, emerging technologies should be investigated such as say eyeball tracking movement or a non-invasive ear canal method.
Speaking of the ear canal tracking, there is something being worked on for the disabled that is basically a device that you put in your ear which follows your ear canal pressure which changes based on your tongue movement. For those who have little movement in their appendages, this is quite useful for wheel chair control and even controlling a mouse on the screen.
Of course the holy grail is direct neural interfaces or one that its grafted directly to a muscle or nerve.
I personally think the mouse has got another 10 years or so, but I'd be happy to be wrong.
When I first heard about his whole ultrasonic bubble excitation fusion experiment, I honestly thought: WTF?
The bubble itself is a quite interesting phenomenon, thought it is most likley not fusion as Taleyarkhan claims.
For those not familiar of Taleyarkhan and the issue of the bubble this is a good BBC video I saw a while back on the who topic and controversy. Either way the bubble was discovered by someone else and I personally think should be investigated for other properties other than table top fusion.
Well call me naive, but I don't think things like this are driven by greed so much as incompetence, hubris, and an "us vs them" mindset.
Why is greed and incompetence/hubris mutually exclusive?
If nothing else greed leads to incompetence which later results in hubris which turns into an "us vs them" mentality when someone points out they are wrong.
In fact, I'd argue if anything that greed is the key motivation behind what most corporations and government bodies these days even if its not that conspiracy-esque at all.
Take a police officer who is given a quota of giving out speeding tickets. He probaly wants a promotion so he can earn more money which is the natural emotion of greed which in itself it not inherently evil. In order to make quota, he may start giving out tickets which may have not been deserved and even doing things that were obviously incompetent such as using illegal speed traps or camping out in areas in where speed limits were set low on purpose.
Now some one may call him out on this behavior which leads to his hubris and an "us vs them" mindset all without the need for a grand conspiracy all the while thinking what he is doing is perfectly good and just.
That is the scary thing, when people like Stalin, Mao, and Hitler did the things they did it wasn't because they thought up a grand conspiracy to trick the populace. They themselves actually believed in their cause and were blind to what they were doing.
How they came about to power or then kept their power wasn't a grand plan or complex conspiracy worthy of the best fictional writer.
This is why you should fear the idealist more than you would a back room pragmatic politician. Sure the politician may pocket himself some money, but he doesn't actually believe in what he is doing to be right and wouldn't go so far other than to cover his own ass.
It could be said that self justification (hubris) is in human nature and quite common. This is why you see FBI and the Federal Government in general doing the things that they do. It because people in power are usually normal humans (well I suppose this is 100%) who have never really sat back and thought about why they do the things they do and surround themselves with like minded people who feel the same way which results in no one ever pointing out that this might not be the best idea.
So yes, there is no grand conspiracy, but it isn't far fetched that someone at a high level position of power might think to themselves one day "Wouldn't it be easier to do my job (which is of course in the pursuit of justice and freedom) if certain people got out of the way?" and then pursue all the means in their power do so.
Its human nature and that is what we should be afraid of.
Running MMOs can take a lot of resources depending on what kind of functionality you want to provide. While in theory "anyone" could run their own server, logistically it won't happen.
People their own 50+ player count gaming server all the time. They tend to be FPS games or Ultima "Offline" servers, but the technology is there for those who want to pay for the bandwidth and CPU cycles.
Being able to have your own SL server doesn't get you access to Linden's grid. And that's what people want: to be on the grid with everybody else they know.
You could link the non-linden grids together so you can jump from one to another or at least communicate between servers or even patch the linden client so that jumping between Linden and non-Linden without trouble.
You could go as far as to have the ability (with a patched Linden client) to receive messages from people on 3rd party servers.
Suffice to say, for those more concerned about free real estate rather than chatting, it would be logical that people could create their own servers and just have URLs linking them so that you could just look them up in the open DNS and you can pop on their web server and look at whatever they've got going on as well as whoever else happens to be there as well.
Imagine is Slashdot ran their own open source SL server where we could all stand around and post comments... Actually maybe that isn't the best mental image.
Still, the idea of a 3d world without centralization is pretty nifty. Kind of like the old world wide web.
Have you looked at the bottom line of Yahoo lately? Read their cashflow statements maybe? If you had then you would be furious since Yahoo is doing a good job of screwing itself into the ground.
I'm tempted to short both MSFT and YHOO the day the deal is done and throw the money into Oil and Euro ETFs.
The problem with modern investing is that money (and lots of it) can be made by simply determining the emotional behavior of investors and market trends rather than cold hard financial facts.
Did Oil supply decrease and demand increase magically the day that Iran test fired a missile?
No, but the price jumped to its highest record to date.
Same with this Yahoo and Microsoft deal. I have a lingering suspicion that Icahn is going to burn the company for all its worth and there might be crowd of shorters that will tank the company as soon as they smell blood when the long term holders dump their holdings and the last one to sell is going to get his ass hit by the door on the way out.
Of course since Microsoft is the one using its own funny money for the deal instead of cash which will obviously dilute MSFT share price which will be a gain for MSFT shorters there as well.
I prefer the term "stealing games" myself.
I don't, but that's because I prefer our legal system to differentiate between theft and copyright infringement as well as manslaughter and murder as the laws were originally intended.
I don't pirate games or kill people, but it bothers me when people are handed sentences down that don't fit the crime.
Not to get into another semantics debate, but the US legal system has clearly defined theft as "deprivation of the use of property" and as none one deprives anyone of anything when they pirate they clearly aren't stealing but performing something else illegal called "copyright infringement".
Which by the way has a higher penalty in some cases to which stealing the game from the store would have earned them less of a punishment.
I'm just saying...
Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
Just require sterilization for anyone who wants to go through the treatment process. Vasectomies run about $600 bucks these days if not less.
Ah, I see you've answered your own objections there.
If you take the view of life as long term (say hundreds or thousands of years), then our short term actions are all pointless unless we do acheive some sort of immortality.
Now this is more a philosophical point of view than a practical every day, but the difference between having a million dollars or none at all when you are dead is meaningless to the person who is of course dead.
This might be lost on the person stealing the money from the hapless persons looking for immortality until they themselves are actually on their deathbed chuckling to themselves about the great life they had until a sudden overwhelming realization of the great abyss of oblivion that lies before them as they utter "OH SHI-" and make a mess of themselves for the next of kin.
I'm just saying that I'd be more concerned about Aubrey being overly optimistic rather than him duping people out of money. Its not like you can take the money with you.
The problem with this question is that it's probably too late to extend any old person's life to a significant degree and it will take a person's life span to see any real improvements to, er, their life span.
I thought he has some experiments going on with rats or some other animal that naturally has a short life span. If you can make a rat live to 40, then chances are you can make a human live to 200.
Given that, why should we believe you aren't a complete charlatan?
Because a charlatan still dies.
The problem with most humans is that they are very short sighted.
Given the choice of duping people out of their money for hookers and beer or actually putting into life extension research, I would opt with the life extension because there will be plenty of time to do what you please later.
I think Aubrey is a bit more altruistic about why he wants to do this, but even if dupes money out of people, he still faces mortality like the rest of us.
Are there that many people into dolls and make-believe or are there too many people who are too depressed just being themselves?
Hey now!
No one calls my Ultramarines dolls!
But seriously, humans (even older adults) like to play with things that many would consider to be toys or dolls. Take the Sims for example and the massive following of Warhammer 40,000.
You could say the same thing about people who watch sports or like to watch fast cars going around in circles all day. Its a pastime, not a sign of clinical depression.
Maybe you weren't paying attention to all the illegal and now seemingly legalized wiretapping? Its not too hard to envision a future where sending encrypted data that the 'gubmint' doesn't have a backdoor to across national borders will be illegal, or at least require a license.
The thing about data is that it doesn't have to be grown in the jungles for a while before being transferred somewhere. The neat thing about data is that it can be transferred in multitudes of ways electronically thereby making physical copies a moot point.
One of the tricks the East Germans and the KGB did in the 80s was to use low baud modems disguised as calculators which they'd punch in the data they want to transfer and then walk up to any old pay phone and send a call to the Russian Embassy which could send an encrypted message without anyone being able to do anything about it. The West did similar things in the Eastern block but often used shortwave radio and read data out and were gone before someone could triangulate them.
Now pay phones and short wave radios aren't that popular these days but anyone using clandestine situations (and I'm talking about Russian and Chinese operations) would most likley use internet cafes and stenographic techniques with files. The only way to prevent that would be to shut down the internet which makes the whole thing useless.
You could outlaw the technology but anyone dealing with that kind of issues has a disposal unit which they are going to drop their laptop in as soon as someone kicks down the door.
What I'm trying to say, anyone worth their salt is going to be transferring data over the internet because its harder to detect and harder to determine who and where its going from and who its going to. Anyone who is carrying the data on them through customs is a dumbass and shouldn't be in the business of espionage.
Again... Truecrypt is for mom and pop who want to protect their data from theives. If you are worried about the CIA, Chinese, or Russian equivalents then you need something a bit more.
It will be difficult to make a "biofuel" engine that won't run just fine on petroleum.
If we are talking about bio-diesel, the main issue is replacing all the rubber hoses in the fuel injection process due to bio-diesel's tendency to dissolve rubber. Once you bypass that hurdle, a conversion of a standard diesel to bio-diesel isn't a major jump.
Of course if we are talking about converting engines from gasoline to ethanol, then its a bit more tedious
But once they've retooled the assembly line, its no longer a problem.
You miss the point. Anyone who truly has something to hide to the extent of worrying about torture will have an utterly plausible explanation or ten prepared. That won't stop someone who is willing to use torture from continuing until they get more or you have resisted for so long that they believe you are telling the truth when you're saying there is no more.
Look. If you are being tortured for using truecrypt then you have bigger things to worry about. If you are in the US or European countries and you are being tortured then the rule of law has been thrown out the window.
Otherwise, if you are in other countries where torture is the norm, then you have to mitigate such issues by such things or cyanide tablets and giving having the carriers of the data ignorant to what the passwords are or the contents of the data they are carrying.
If you were really smart you'd develop a self destruct system in which if someone did breach your security you could instantly destroy your data or have a system in which the data is rendered unusable if you give them a certain password.
Most of the scenarios are far what is warranted by truecrypt which is to prevent unauthorized access to data when the computer itself has been physical compromised (like theft).
After all 10,000 laptops were stolen at the airport last year and if you do carry personal information on a computer you travel with, truecrypt sounds like the best method to keep theives from getting to your information if they do steal your laptop.
No, I'm quite positive that you do have a hidden volume. It's where you're storing all of your terrorist secrets, and unless you reveal the password then this ballpeen hammer has a date with your fingers.
The smart thing to do would have a password and encryption system that makes the data unreadable if such a key was used. That way when they ask for the password, you give them one that destroys the key on the disk thereby making the data unreadable. At that point they could torture you all they'd like but the original password will never work again.
I'm not sure how such a thing could be implemented on the hard drive itself with the encryption perhaps on the MBR in which forces you to boot from the hard drive if you want to read the information.
They might not 'catch a criminal' this way, but it could be seen as 'preventative'... no point in smuggling illegal data in a hidden truecrypt volume if they routinely destroy them. They can destroy hidden volumes without knowing they are there.
I never got this "Smuggling illegal data" thing. If you want to transfer something across international borders, its not like you have to tape hard drives to yourself under your shirt. All you have to do is use the internet.
If a law enforcement agency destroyed the "illegal data" in the process of looking for it, then it serves the purposes of the person hiding the data from them. If it was that important they would have made backups somewhere else.
Simply putting an unprepared human being in a Lily isolation tank which only affects our classic 5 senses puts people in stress. Sure you can get your TV eyes and microphone ears but how will a brain/mind really function without feedback from a "body".
Are you so sure?
Isn't stress related to other organs than the brain as well? If your heart could not increase its rate, or your adrenaline glands couldn't fire off, or you couldn't hyperventilate then by what means are you could to stress out? You can't have a heart attack either because you most likley have a machine just pumping blood into your brain no matter what you are thinking.
Obviously, you'd probaly have chemicals in your brain going off, but we really do not know what happens when you take a brain out of the human body and keep it alive just by itself.
I'm sure it would be a very odd experience. You wouldn't feel heat, pain, hunger, or even the need to breathe.
If it did become a problem, it would only be needed to "fool" the brain into think that there was a body. Basically a machine that feed electrical impulses that imitate the nerves going back to your brain from your body parts.
You'd be so bored you'd want to die.
World of Warcraft proves otherwise.
I personally don't like WoW, but I'm just saying it doesn't take much to entertain people for hundreds if not thousands of hours per year.
You could be in a vat of this chemical keeping your brain alive forever. And no sensory input. It would be worse than being buried alive and it would last forever (or a very long time, at least).
If you could master lucid dreaming, then it would be a paradise.
Otherwise... You could always have someone check on you every now and then. Its not that hard. I suppose if the "brain in a jar" lifestyle did get popular, there would be facilities specifically for the care and storage of such persons like one has for old people at a retirement home.
Nobody's watching? You better tell the 4 billion people who were planning to do just that...
Historically, the Olympics have gotten low viewership in the West even when we host the Olympics. I think the Beijing estimates are a bit rosy even though they would now of course be higher due to domestic viewership in China.