You are assuming that these items (ATM card, passport, etc) continue to function or be valid with a disabled chip.
I see no reason why an ATM card shouldn't continue to function with a damaged RFID chip embedded in it. As long as the magnetic strip is intact, you should be able to make purchases the 'old fashioned' way, by swiping. And if that doesn't work, there's no reason why the cashier shouldn't be able to enter your number manually. It's not as if all card readers will be retrofitted to check for the RFID chip (though I suppose your bank's verification system could decide not to authorize the transaction based on its absence).
The passport, you may be on to something. I'm glad I got mine renewed before they started putting tags in them - hopefully in another eight or nine years we'll know if it was a good idea or not.
Patents have no point to them. I'm surprised that they're still around, because all they do is help companies create a monopoly over a product.
That is exactly the point - a government enforced monopoly for a limited period of time. Without patents, any company could just come along and rip off your design, into which you poured time and money with R&D, and begin selling it, most likely undercutting you on the cost, since you are trying to make up your expenses.
The problem is not the idea of patents - in theory, at least to me, they seem like a decent and necessary idea. The problem is that not all industries are the same, and current patent law is outdated for the software industry. What we need is for legislators to wake up and realize that a one-law-fits-all approach does not work.
Google thinks Mapudungun too:), but M$ thinks otherwise. Actually, the spelling seems to differ depending on your own language.
Before anyone jumps onto the MS bashing bandwagon over the spelling ("OMG they are so careless they cant even spel teh name right!!1"), I'll throw out that this is probably just a difference in transliteration / orthography. According to Wikipedia, there is no native writing system for it, and all proposed systems have used the Latin alphabet, so it's not even really a matter of transliteration. Sheesh. In that case, they should be happy to have any outside support in preserving their language.
That said, it strikes me as ridiculous to consider a human language as intellectual property, or to consider this as an abuse of human rights somehow. This is not simply a matter of control over the 'official' version of a language, like the Academie Française, but control over who is allowed to use it. I'm not upset that millions of Indians (in India) use what I consider to be a mutilated version of English on a daily basis; to the contrary, they are helping to ensure the dominance of English as the global language to know. Sure, maybe Microsoft should consult with tribal elders or whatnot - this would seem like a smart thing to do just to make sure you're doing a good job. But if they want to make a shitty translation, or even a good, non-sanctioned one, no one should be able to stop them.
As an American student currently living in France, I thought I'd add my two centimes.
I recommend France to anyone looking to make the plunge. It's what I did, and you really can't beat it. Good food, beautiful women, nice people.
Hm. I live in Nice, and if your idea of a beautiful woman is one that chain-smokes and has more piercings than fingers, come on over. I know it's not like that everywhere (Nice is particularly bad in this respect), but still. At least the smoking in public places will be going in 2007-2008.
There are some things I'm not entirely happy about. Police here can ask you for ID on the streets (though it's never happened to me)
It happened to me twice in less than two months. I have a theory about why, too - I think it's because I'm brown. Seriously, though, in over 20 years of living in the US I have never been stopped by the police. Be prepared for it here - _always_ carry ID.
In all, I really can't recommend France as a place to live for disenchanted Americans (and yes, I do speak French). It's a blast to visit, but I'd never want to live here.
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy.
When you assume....
In other news, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor (formerly Andrew Diggs Taylor) commented on the media's frequent mischaracterization of him as female, even though he is merely one of several transvestite judges in the state's district court.
I swear to god, am I in some tiny minority who doesn't believe that this book was all about promulgating the infallible virtue of these three laws, but was instead a series of parables about the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma?
No. Well, maybe. I never read I, Robot, but I did read The Naked Sun and The Caves of Steel, and I feel the same way you do whenever someone points to the laws as an example of something to strive towards in implementation.
From a plain English reading of the text "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed", I am forced to conclude that the program will not through inaction allow any human being to be harmed. This isn't just silly; it's nonsensical. The Kwik-E-Mart's being robbed, and the program, through inaction (since it's running on a computer in another state, and has nothing to do with a convenience store), fails to save Apu from being shot in the leg. Has it violated the terms of it's own license? What does this clause even mean?
That's a good point, and there's probably a some truth to it. On the other hand, it's not exactly accurate to say that screwing around with computers can't injure anyone. I do CAD work that gets output to a large CNC router, and by setting some values incorrectly, I could at the very least create a situation resulting in the possible loss of a hand, if not more.
steal milk from the cows, which we then had to curdle in the bathroom sink.
When I went to school, the cow hadn't even been domesticated! We had to capture wild buffalo and breed them over and over again. You kids don't appreciate the hard work we had to do so you could milk 'cows'. And a bathroom? Don't get me started.
The school's only motive to police their own networks internally is to increase availible netowrk bandwidth. They'll do that at the pipe because bandwidth costs a lot, and a single firewall filter does not. However, adding a packet sniffer to each subnet and each switch is really damned expensive, much more so than increasing bandwidth to account for it, so there's no reason they'll do it.
Amen to that. The University of Maryland, College Park, does exactly this. The packet shaper places Bittorent at the bottom, so that we get rates of 0.1 Kb/s or something. While this is annoying because it prevents the legit uses of bittorent, I can understand it - if they didn't shape, they'd have huge bills to pay for internet access. But within the network, it appears that they couldn't care less, since it doesn't cost them anything. Not sure how long that is going to last, though - the threat of a lawsuit might be enough to get them to crap their pants.
"We have implemented a new computer usage policy that disallows the usage of IM software, as it can be used to share copyrighted material."
I remember those. I'm sort of surprised that you could just switch the clock multiplier while the CPU is on without causing any problems, though. But I guess if the pulses are just coming faster, it wouldn't be any wiser.
Such version would come at the expense of NVidia's reputation; if ATI keeps their drivers closed, ATI will have the more stable package in the typical consumers' eye.
Um, no. The 'typical consumer' will not even be aware that nVidia is releasing modified drivers, much less be able download and install them (and all of that on Linux). And if the attitude in the OSS community is that nVidia's modified drivers are crappy, and ATI's don't exist, which brand do you think they will be more loyal to?
You can sell nuclear energy to me when you can answer the question "What do we do with 48 tons of nuclear waste generated per year per plant"?
RTFA. He specifically addresses the issue of waste. And in case you don't want to read the article, here is what he has to say (addressing common myths about nuclear power):
Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.
The Wikipedia article on the Brown's Ferry doesn't mention that any radiation was released from the incident, just that the unit was shut down after a fire was started by a worker searching for air leaks with a candle.
Yeah, I noticed that as well. I've been running Quake 3 on a dual monitor setup for a while, at 2560 x 1024. Pretty amazing, except for the whole bar in the middle. I'm considering getting a third monitor, setting the field of view at about 150 degrees, and angling the outer two.
Unfortunately, it's a bitch to configure most games to support multiple monitors. Quake is probably the easiest I've dealt with, but some (like Half-Life / CS) simply won't work, which is a real bummer. Often an argument against including multi-mon support is that it provides an unfair advantage in multiplayer games to people who can afford it. This is true to an extent, but having a faster computer / better internet does the same. Multi-mon setups are great, but haven't reached their full potential yet.
Oh, and widescreen movies across two monitors are pretty nice, too.
I finally understand. This is clearly a vast conspiracy of some SGO (sub-governmental organization) to slowly remove words from our vocabulary by making them offensive! First 'retarded', then 'gay'... who knows what word will be get you stared at next?
I understand completely. One of the big features that sold me on my PDA was USB host capability. It works now - I can plug flash drives / external hard drives into the pda (albeit, with an extra cable, and using beta drivers I had to download and install myself). It would be a hell of a lot more convenient if they just slapped a USB port on the thing, and if there were actually drivers for more than just mass storage.
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You are assuming that these items (ATM card, passport, etc) continue to function or be valid with a disabled chip.
I see no reason why an ATM card shouldn't continue to function with a damaged RFID chip embedded in it. As long as the magnetic strip is intact, you should be able to make purchases the 'old fashioned' way, by swiping. And if that doesn't work, there's no reason why the cashier shouldn't be able to enter your number manually. It's not as if all card readers will be retrofitted to check for the RFID chip (though I suppose your bank's verification system could decide not to authorize the transaction based on its absence).
The passport, you may be on to something. I'm glad I got mine renewed before they started putting tags in them - hopefully in another eight or nine years we'll know if it was a good idea or not.
Patents have no point to them. I'm surprised that they're still around, because all they do is help companies create a monopoly over a product.
That is exactly the point - a government enforced monopoly for a limited period of time. Without patents, any company could just come along and rip off your design, into which you poured time and money with R&D, and begin selling it, most likely undercutting you on the cost, since you are trying to make up your expenses.
The problem is not the idea of patents - in theory, at least to me, they seem like a decent and necessary idea. The problem is that not all industries are the same, and current patent law is outdated for the software industry. What we need is for legislators to wake up and realize that a one-law-fits-all approach does not work.
Google thinks Mapudungun too :), but M$ thinks otherwise. Actually, the spelling seems to differ depending on your own language.
Before anyone jumps onto the MS bashing bandwagon over the spelling ("OMG they are so careless they cant even spel teh name right!!1"), I'll throw out that this is probably just a difference in transliteration / orthography. According to Wikipedia, there is no native writing system for it, and all proposed systems have used the Latin alphabet, so it's not even really a matter of transliteration. Sheesh. In that case, they should be happy to have any outside support in preserving their language.
That said, it strikes me as ridiculous to consider a human language as intellectual property, or to consider this as an abuse of human rights somehow. This is not simply a matter of control over the 'official' version of a language, like the Academie Française, but control over who is allowed to use it. I'm not upset that millions of Indians (in India) use what I consider to be a mutilated version of English on a daily basis; to the contrary, they are helping to ensure the dominance of English as the global language to know. Sure, maybe Microsoft should consult with tribal elders or whatnot - this would seem like a smart thing to do just to make sure you're doing a good job. But if they want to make a shitty translation, or even a good, non-sanctioned one, no one should be able to stop them.
Hm. I live in Nice, and if your idea of a beautiful woman is one that chain-smokes and has more piercings than fingers, come on over. I know it's not like that everywhere (Nice is particularly bad in this respect), but still. At least the smoking in public places will be going in 2007-2008.
It happened to me twice in less than two months. I have a theory about why, too - I think it's because I'm brown. Seriously, though, in over 20 years of living in the US I have never been stopped by the police. Be prepared for it here - _always_ carry ID.
In all, I really can't recommend France as a place to live for disenchanted Americans (and yes, I do speak French). It's a blast to visit, but I'd never want to live here.
"He'll"? From the article:
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy.
When you assume....
In other news, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor (formerly Andrew Diggs Taylor) commented on the media's frequent mischaracterization of him as female, even though he is merely one of several transvestite judges in the state's district court.
And now, Stephen Colbert style, it's true! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Diggs_Taylor
Just kidding.
I swear to god, am I in some tiny minority who doesn't believe that this book was all about promulgating the infallible virtue of these three laws, but was instead a series of parables about the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma?
No. Well, maybe. I never read I, Robot, but I did read The Naked Sun and The Caves of Steel, and I feel the same way you do whenever someone points to the laws as an example of something to strive towards in implementation.
From a plain English reading of the text "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed", I am forced to conclude that the program will not through inaction allow any human being to be harmed. This isn't just silly; it's nonsensical. The Kwik-E-Mart's being robbed, and the program, through inaction (since it's running on a computer in another state, and has nothing to do with a convenience store), fails to save Apu from being shot in the leg. Has it violated the terms of it's own license? What does this clause even mean?
Doesn't anyone know that the word google isn't a verb, isn't owned by a company, but actually refers to a mathematical number?
Actually, I think you're referring to a googol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol
I'll let somebody else point out that the orbit is 133 years, not 150.
The orbit is 133 years, not 150.
1. Download WGA Notification
2. Find out your copy of XP is pirated
3. Fail to download critical updates, thus helping the terrorists win.
Ergo, WGA help the terrorists win!
(including the sweet dessert wine type called aszú, made with a proportion of moldy grapes :-)
For those of you who were wondering about the mold: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_rot
That's a good point, and there's probably a some truth to it. On the other hand, it's not exactly accurate to say that screwing around with computers can't injure anyone. I do CAD work that gets output to a large CNC router, and by setting some values incorrectly, I could at the very least create a situation resulting in the possible loss of a hand, if not more.
steal milk from the cows, which we then had to curdle in the bathroom sink.
When I went to school, the cow hadn't even been domesticated! We had to capture wild buffalo and breed them over and over again. You kids don't appreciate the hard work we had to do so you could milk 'cows'. And a bathroom? Don't get me started.
compagnies... comagnies... compagniy... compagny...
All I can say is, wow.
You forgot the whining "Think of teh children!" protestor.
Did any one else read this as, First Neutron Pulse from Super Nintendo System?
The school's only motive to police their own networks internally is to increase availible netowrk bandwidth. They'll do that at the pipe because bandwidth costs a lot, and a single firewall filter does not. However, adding a packet sniffer to each subnet and each switch is really damned expensive, much more so than increasing bandwidth to account for it, so there's no reason they'll do it.
Amen to that. The University of Maryland, College Park, does exactly this. The packet shaper places Bittorent at the bottom, so that we get rates of 0.1 Kb/s or something. While this is annoying because it prevents the legit uses of bittorent, I can understand it - if they didn't shape, they'd have huge bills to pay for internet access. But within the network, it appears that they couldn't care less, since it doesn't cost them anything. Not sure how long that is going to last, though - the threat of a lawsuit might be enough to get them to crap their pants.
"We have implemented a new computer usage policy that disallows the usage of IM software, as it can be used to share copyrighted material."
Umm...changing the SSID does nothing, in terms of security.
Well, if I'm looking to hop on someone's network, I always go for the ones called 'linksys' first... so maybe I'd be less likely to hop on theirs!
I remember those. I'm sort of surprised that you could just switch the clock multiplier while the CPU is on without causing any problems, though. But I guess if the pulses are just coming faster, it wouldn't be any wiser.
Such version would come at the expense of NVidia's reputation; if ATI keeps their drivers closed, ATI will have the more stable package in the typical consumers' eye.
Um, no. The 'typical consumer' will not even be aware that nVidia is releasing modified drivers, much less be able download and install them (and all of that on Linux). And if the attitude in the OSS community is that nVidia's modified drivers are crappy, and ATI's don't exist, which brand do you think they will be more loyal to?
You can sell nuclear energy to me when you can answer the question "What do we do with 48 tons of nuclear waste generated per year per plant"?
RTFA. He specifically addresses the issue of waste. And in case you don't want to read the article, here is what he has to say (addressing common myths about nuclear power):
Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.
The Wikipedia article on the Brown's Ferry doesn't mention that any radiation was released from the incident, just that the unit was shut down after a fire was started by a worker searching for air leaks with a candle.
Yeah, I noticed that as well. I've been running Quake 3 on a dual monitor setup for a while, at 2560 x 1024. Pretty amazing, except for the whole bar in the middle. I'm considering getting a third monitor, setting the field of view at about 150 degrees, and angling the outer two. Unfortunately, it's a bitch to configure most games to support multiple monitors. Quake is probably the easiest I've dealt with, but some (like Half-Life / CS) simply won't work, which is a real bummer. Often an argument against including multi-mon support is that it provides an unfair advantage in multiplayer games to people who can afford it. This is true to an extent, but having a faster computer / better internet does the same. Multi-mon setups are great, but haven't reached their full potential yet. Oh, and widescreen movies across two monitors are pretty nice, too.
'Entymology' is for insects. 'Etymology' is for words.
I finally understand. This is clearly a vast conspiracy of some SGO (sub-governmental organization) to slowly remove words from our vocabulary by making them offensive! First 'retarded', then 'gay'... who knows what word will be get you stared at next?
I understand completely. One of the big features that sold me on my PDA was USB host capability. It works now - I can plug flash drives / external hard drives into the pda (albeit, with an extra cable, and using beta drivers I had to download and install myself). It would be a hell of a lot more convenient if they just slapped a USB port on the thing, and if there were actually drivers for more than just mass storage.