I support your point of view, but I'd like to point out that while Linux users *could* buy a copy of Windows and Office, people with disabilities can't choose not to have them.
Thanks, nasch. I'm glad nobody's thinking of letting biometrics replace credit cards entirely. As far as identity theft goes, as long as you can get the powers that be know what's going on, anthing issued to you can be re-issued, but you're stuck with what you're born with. I think we agree that biometrics can be a good thing, but only if it's used where appropriate.
I've had my credit card info stolen when the swipe machine at a Kinko's was hacked to record everything. That very night I got a call from VISA regarding suspicious account activity; my card was deactivated and they sent me a new one in the mail.
Imagine if I were using a retina or fingerprint scanner instead of a credit card. Replacing my retina/fingerprints isn't nearly as easy.
Biometrics mean you have once chance to keep your identity safe. Afterwards you're screwed for the rest of your life. For this reason I don't think biometrics is going to replace the authentication methods we already have: after a decade of using biometrics, half of us will have had our biometric information stolen and will be back to cards anyways. I'm going to beat the rush and stay with cards now;)
I *can* think of one potential good way to use biometrics: imagine if your drivers licence, etc, contained a jpeg file of your face that's been digitally signed by the issuing organization. That would make forgery much harder.
In summary, I think biometrics can work for applications where you don't care who sees your identifying info, but for any application where you would need to keep it secret, forget it. Not even good for the lazy.
In my home town a few years ago, they made fake debit card machines which looked legit but stole your PIN & account information. There's no reason they couldn't do the same for biometrics.
The big difference between what we have now and biometrics is it's a lot easier to get a new bank card than it is to get a new retina.
Biometrics might be useful in some circumstances, but as a bank card substitute, forget it.
If enough cities build free wireless networks, I wouldn't be surprised if people started tossing out their 20$/month landlines altogether. The next thing I want is a city-sponsored PBX system, so we wouldn't have to pay that much for SkypeOut in order to let people phone from a POTS system.
(Actually I would be happy with the adoption of open standards for VoIP and PBX systems so Skype couldn't leverage a virtual monopoly over us. I'm telling you: I use Skype, but I hope that it will fall one of these days so we can have some open-standards competition goodness.)
You say "Every single new Dell sold in 2008+ [...] is going to have Vista installed on them." If Vista weren't released, wouldn't these computers have XP on them? Will Vista cost so much more for the OEMs that MS will get significantly more income from releasing Vista? And if XP is that much cheaper, maybe people will buy it instead for at least a few years after the Vista release (whenever it may come).
Just after opening AjaxWrite, OS X crashed. This has *never* happened to me before. Does anyone else have OS X crash on them too when they tried out AjaxWrite?
I think the most likely way we're going to get intelligence to other stars is to send AI computers, since they wouldn't mind the long wait. Even if creating AI is hard, if Moore's law holds, in 50 years we'll be able to simulate every neuron in a whole human brain on a computer in real time, so even if we don't understand intelligence, we'll be able to reproduce it. And if biological life is so important to you, send some frozen embrios (or info about their DNA on hard drives, and stock chemicals for building embrios from scratch) and artificial wombs with the computers too - let them build a colony, then defrost their kids.
Far-fetched? In my opinion, it's much more likely than being able to keep whole humans happy on a 100 lightyear trek. Yes, Moore's law might not hold up, but I predict we'll be able to upload brains before sending our fragile bodies intact to distant stars.
As long as the maintenance costs are low, farm robots could do some pretty neat things (maybe weeding and watering the roots as well as picking). They would have to be cheap, though.
It raises an interesting question: is the industrial revolution still going on? Last century's machines depended on the stuff they work on being just so. Will this be the century where machines start to be able to react to their environment in a way that lets them take over a whole new sector of human labour? Or is it simpler and cheaper in the end to keep things as they are? What are the environmental and social costs of feeding a human enough to do the work of a robot?
(Back of the envelope calculation: People need 2000 calories to work 8 hours; 2000 calories = 2.32 kWh = about 15 of electricity - I'd have to say providing electricity to a robot is much more efficient economically (and probably environmentally) than food to a human, even if the human is 100 times more energy efficient).
Here's the rub: the social dimension. I would welcome an economic climate where our time is so valuable that it made economic sense to develop costly machines to do all our menial work. But if technology is the driving force, labour will become cheaper and unemployment will go up. BUT, if labour is cheaply provided by machines, is employment all that necessary? Couldn't we live in a socialist society with machines doing most of the work, and people devoting themselves to art and self-betterment? (Would they?) If machines replaced the jobs of more than half the workers we have now, would the unemployed masses settle for anything less than the said socialism?
All-purpose robots aren't coming any time soon - the computer vision problems are just too difficult. However, if neuroscientists do their job, they might be here in a couple decades. And the above article says we have the technology now to start with migrating at least a few jobs today. I wonder if we shouldn't.
I'm pretty sure they mean the energy equivalent of 10,000 megatonnes on TNT, which is only 465 kg of energy in terms of E = mc^2. Still, that'll hurt more than a snowball...
Why can't they make a non-viewable DRM'ed version freely available for P2P, but then offer the keys needed to view the media through a direct download model? How is this not the best of both worlds?
Speaking of non-standard signage, my home town of Berkeley, CA takes the cake. Here we have 3 out of 4 way stops, indicated by two lines of 1.5" text under the stop sign saying, for example, "Traffic on your right does not stop." God help you if you don't speak English!
My university's registrar office has a native American who cannot be fired because of an affirmative action policy. Whenever some technically-against-the-rules but reasonable request comes up, she'll handle it, because everyone knows she can't be fired. She's saved my ass many a time so far.
"'It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure,' he writes. 'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.'"
You could also say lawyers just help people get a bigger slice of the pie, but that doesn't mean lawyers are bad. They level the playing field, for a cut of the pie.
Also, if courts are inconsistent I want to know about it so we can start fixing them. More transparency is a good thing, even if we don't like what we initially see.
"Yea, find out where is the recurring sequence of 424242...."
Funny! On a more serious note, we know Pi cannot have any repeating sequence in it, because that would make it a rational number. Pi is, however, irrational, as was proven in 1761 by Johann Heinrich Lambert (quoting wikipedia).
but it would be 100% clean and without any radioactive waste
Unfortunately, the only nuclear fusion processes remotely on the horizon now produce lots of neutrons (see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#The_D-T_ fuel_cycle for more details). Even the famous He3 reactions produce neutrons unless you can get the temperature way up.
I'm not saying that fusion power is not worth trying. It's just not the cure-all many people think it is.
There's been a lot of worry about public/provate partnerships, but I think there's a middle ground: have bonded lowest-bid private companies build publically owned services as they are needed.
Private companies are better than the public sector at two things: efficiency and providing specific services people want.
However, private/public partnerships don't always benefit from the private side. If the public sector just payed a contractor a lump sum to provide service X, the cost may not be optimal, and service X may not be what's needed.
How about a setup like this: 1) Have people in a local area agree that if a certain level of service were available to them, they'd be willing to pay some amount for it. Let them name their own price. 2) Provide public companies with data on which services are needed where, and how much people are willing to pay for them. 3) As more people get interested in public wireless, and as tech costs come down, eventually a wireless company will take a contract to ensure people get the service they asked for in 1).
Bonding the companies so they are financially accountable is important. Also it would be good to enforce a spec for the fiber optic backbone of the wireless network which could accomodate future expansion.
Advantages:
1) Market driven pricing 2) Users get to choose the level of service they want 3) No new taxes
Disadvantages:
1) Holes in coverage until the whole city is onboard 2) Inertia
Slashdot Mirror
Dear lynx_user_abroad,
I support your point of view, but I'd like to point out that while Linux users *could* buy a copy of Windows and Office, people with disabilities can't choose not to have them.
Thanks, nasch. I'm glad nobody's thinking of letting biometrics replace credit cards entirely. As far as identity theft goes, as long as you can get the powers that be know what's going on, anthing issued to you can be re-issued, but you're stuck with what you're born with. I think we agree that biometrics can be a good thing, but only if it's used where appropriate.
I've had my credit card info stolen when the swipe machine at a Kinko's was hacked to record everything. That very night I got a call from VISA regarding suspicious account activity; my card was deactivated and they sent me a new one in the mail.
;)
Imagine if I were using a retina or fingerprint scanner instead of a credit card. Replacing my retina/fingerprints isn't nearly as easy.
Biometrics mean you have once chance to keep your identity safe. Afterwards you're screwed for the rest of your life. For this reason I don't think biometrics is going to replace the authentication methods we already have: after a decade of using biometrics, half of us will have had our biometric information stolen and will be back to cards anyways. I'm going to beat the rush and stay with cards now
I *can* think of one potential good way to use biometrics: imagine if your drivers licence, etc, contained a jpeg file of your face that's been digitally signed by the issuing organization. That would make forgery much harder.
In summary, I think biometrics can work for applications where you don't care who sees your identifying info, but for any application where you would need to keep it secret, forget it. Not even good for the lazy.
In my home town a few years ago, they made fake debit card machines which looked legit but stole your PIN & account information. There's no reason they couldn't do the same for biometrics.
The big difference between what we have now and biometrics is it's a lot easier to get a new bank card than it is to get a new retina.
Biometrics might be useful in some circumstances, but as a bank card substitute, forget it.
If enough cities build free wireless networks, I wouldn't be surprised if people started tossing out their 20$/month landlines altogether. The next thing I want is a city-sponsored PBX system, so we wouldn't have to pay that much for SkypeOut in order to let people phone from a POTS system. (Actually I would be happy with the adoption of open standards for VoIP and PBX systems so Skype couldn't leverage a virtual monopoly over us. I'm telling you: I use Skype, but I hope that it will fall one of these days so we can have some open-standards competition goodness.)
You say "Every single new Dell sold in 2008+ [...] is going to have Vista installed on them." If Vista weren't released, wouldn't these computers have XP on them? Will Vista cost so much more for the OEMs that MS will get significantly more income from releasing Vista? And if XP is that much cheaper, maybe people will buy it instead for at least a few years after the Vista release (whenever it may come).
Just after opening AjaxWrite, OS X crashed. This has *never* happened to me before. Does anyone else have OS X crash on them too when they tried out AjaxWrite?
Google didn't give it to them, so they're making a high-profile lawsuit instead. Ingenious.
Disclosure: I am a neuroscientist.
I think the most likely way we're going to get intelligence to other stars is to send AI computers, since they wouldn't mind the long wait. Even if creating AI is hard, if Moore's law holds, in 50 years we'll be able to simulate every neuron in a whole human brain on a computer in real time, so even if we don't understand intelligence, we'll be able to reproduce it. And if biological life is so important to you, send some frozen embrios (or info about their DNA on hard drives, and stock chemicals for building embrios from scratch) and artificial wombs with the computers too - let them build a colony, then defrost their kids.
Far-fetched? In my opinion, it's much more likely than being able to keep whole humans happy on a 100 lightyear trek. Yes, Moore's law might not hold up, but I predict we'll be able to upload brains before sending our fragile bodies intact to distant stars.
Patrick
Won't it be easier to defeat this anti-phishing scheme since Firefox is open source?
(Seriously. If not, please post why not and educate me.)
"Is that an Origami in your pocket, or..."
As long as the maintenance costs are low, farm robots could do some pretty neat things (maybe weeding and watering the roots as well as picking). They would have to be cheap, though.
It raises an interesting question: is the industrial revolution still going on? Last century's machines depended on the stuff they work on being just so. Will this be the century where machines start to be able to react to their environment in a way that lets them take over a whole new sector of human labour? Or is it simpler and cheaper in the end to keep things as they are? What are the environmental and social costs of feeding a human enough to do the work of a robot?
(Back of the envelope calculation:
People need 2000 calories to work 8 hours; 2000 calories = 2.32 kWh = about 15 of electricity - I'd have to say providing electricity to a robot is much more efficient economically (and probably environmentally) than food to a human, even if the human is 100 times more energy efficient).
Here's the rub: the social dimension. I would welcome an economic climate where our time is so valuable that it made economic sense to develop costly machines to do all our menial work. But if technology is the driving force, labour will become cheaper and unemployment will go up. BUT, if labour is cheaply provided by machines, is employment all that necessary? Couldn't we live in a socialist society with machines doing most of the work, and people devoting themselves to art and self-betterment? (Would they?) If machines replaced the jobs of more than half the workers we have now, would the unemployed masses settle for anything less than the said socialism?
All-purpose robots aren't coming any time soon - the computer vision problems are just too difficult. However, if neuroscientists do their job, they might be here in a couple decades. And the above article says we have the technology now to start with migrating at least a few jobs today. I wonder if we shouldn't.
"10,000 megatonnes of energy"
I'm pretty sure they mean the energy equivalent of 10,000 megatonnes on TNT, which is only 465 kg of energy in terms of E = mc^2. Still, that'll hurt more than a snowball...
Why can't they make a non-viewable DRM'ed version freely available for P2P, but then offer the keys needed to view the media through a direct download model? How is this not the best of both worlds?
1. Buy Napster stock.
2. Print speculative article claiming Google wants Napster.
3. Watch Napster share price soar.
4. Profit!
My fav:
On a motorcycle manual:
"Beware the slippery grease-mud, for therein lurks the evil skid demon."
Speaking of non-standard signage, my home town of Berkeley, CA takes the cake. Here we have 3 out of 4 way stops, indicated by two lines of 1.5" text under the stop sign saying, for example, "Traffic on your right does not stop." God help you if you don't speak English!
How can the first post be redundant?
(Seriously?)
My university's registrar office has a native American who cannot be fired because of an affirmative action policy. Whenever some technically-against-the-rules but reasonable request comes up, she'll handle it, because everyone knows she can't be fired. She's saved my ass many a time so far.
"'It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure,' he writes. 'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.'"
You could also say lawyers just help people get a bigger slice of the pie, but that doesn't mean lawyers are bad. They level the playing field, for a cut of the pie.
Also, if courts are inconsistent I want to know about it so we can start fixing them. More transparency is a good thing, even if we don't like what we initially see.
"Yea, find out where is the recurring sequence of 424242...."
Funny! On a more serious note, we know Pi cannot have any repeating sequence in it, because that would make it a rational number. Pi is, however, irrational, as was proven in 1761 by Johann Heinrich Lambert (quoting wikipedia).
but it would be 100% clean and without any radioactive waste Unfortunately, the only nuclear fusion processes remotely on the horizon now produce lots of neutrons (see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#The_D-T_ fuel_cycle for more details). Even the famous He3 reactions produce neutrons unless you can get the temperature way up.
I'm not saying that fusion power is not worth trying. It's just not the cure-all many people think it is.
There's been a lot of worry about public/provate partnerships, but I think there's a middle ground: have bonded lowest-bid private companies build publically owned services as they are needed.
Private companies are better than the public sector at two things: efficiency and providing specific services people want.
However, private/public partnerships don't always benefit from the private side. If the public sector just payed a contractor a lump sum to provide service X, the cost may not be optimal, and service X may not be what's needed.
How about a setup like this:
1) Have people in a local area agree that if a certain level of service were available to them, they'd be willing to pay some amount for it. Let them name their own price.
2) Provide public companies with data on which services are needed where, and how much people are willing to pay for them.
3) As more people get interested in public wireless, and as tech costs come down, eventually a wireless company will take a contract to ensure people get the service they asked for in 1).
Bonding the companies so they are financially accountable is important. Also it would be good to enforce a spec for the fiber optic backbone of the wireless network which could accomodate future expansion.
Advantages:
1) Market driven pricing
2) Users get to choose the level of service they want
3) No new taxes
Disadvantages:
1) Holes in coverage until the whole city is onboard
2) Inertia
What do you folks think?