The Tivo 'saber' is only covered in the GPL3. The iPhone came out on the same day as GPL3, so I seriously doubt there is GPL3-only code in there. The GPL2 doesn't deal with Tivoisation at all, which is why v3 was made. If it turns out there is GPL code in the iPhone Apple just need to distribute some publicly available source, they won't have to change the iPhone in any way.
Their 2 camera system seems quite neat, but there would be no way of producing realistic consistency from images. In other words, without someone programming it in manually then your cyberboobs will feel like they're made of concrete. I suppose an electronic force meter could be used to poke various materials to get their feedback, but even without that it would still be good for the female version.
If some US states started a healthcare system like we have here in the UK then it would probably not work. If I slice my hand off doing some DIY then I call for an ambulance and get taken to the nearest hospital, no matter where I am in the country. If I don't want to tell them who I am then I'll still get treatment, although then my medical records will not be available so it is a pretty stupid thing to do.
If this was implemented at the state level in the US then those states with such a system, supported by taxes on those living in the state, would see massive expenditure as people from states all around who do not pay taxes to support this healthcare system come along and use it. To NOT let them use it would be unethical, since they could be in the state for a genuine reason and happen to need some healthcare. Making sure those who get such care pay the taxes for it just seems like a state-run health insurance company, rather than a National Health System. To eliminate this it has to be run in all states at once, and whilst this may be managed at the state level it would need some federal-based legislation to make states adopt it.
If trials of this kind of thing go ahead per-state then it would be interesting to see figures of numbers of patients treated, and I guarantee those hospitals nearer state borders will have more patients treated than their local population would suggest, and also that they would treat more long-term illnesses such as cancer (where driving a distance for treatment is reasonable) than short-term like A&E (which by their nature strike unexpectedly and where quick treatment is important). Of course such figures could then be mutated by health insurance companies to show "Look! In areas with state-run health systems a higher percentage of the population gets cancer than anywhere else!" ("X causes cancer!" arguments, based on statistics rather than evidence, always manage to get into the tabloids), although many would pay health insurance anyway for emergencies, but use neighbouring state's systems for lack of hassle (Sicko is more about those with insurance not getting what they payed for, rather than those without insurance at all). This would benefit the insurance companies since they get their steady subscription coming in, but don't have to pay for a lot of the treatment.
I'm thinking that this time it will be Durex looking to buy out the technology. There is a potentially large untapped market in bestiality, and making inter-species genetic sharing a possibility will cause any sensible zoophile to start buying.
If this ever does become used I'm sure enough people will complain that it becomes illegal if it isn't already.
What I don't understand is this line: "Its chip generates a separate, random code for each ink cartridge, thus requiring a would-be hacker to break every successive cartridge's code to make use of the cartridge."
I thought the point of hacking it would be to make non-branded cartridges work, which means only one manufacturer's cartridge needs to be hacked then every cheaper one just has to use that one code. If cartridges are being refilled then there is no need to hack the system at all, just take it out, drill a hole in the top, inject ink into it and plug it back in, no microchip cryptography in sight.
"In other words it is an SD device is an HD world"
Thank you for the broad generalisation:)
-- Someone who doesn't rot their brain with TV and computer games
I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks ago and he was mentioning some folk metal band he liked and came out with "They're really good, but they're still unsigned. They sell their own music from their website and stuff. It's a real shame." I liked what I heard until that last sentence. For some reason being free from the rule of any record contract and still getting the most important services that such a contract would give one is 'a real shame'. I had to put him straight on that, but it seems like another case of out-of-contemporary-context thinking.
I can't stop myself from thinking that if Yahoo! hadn't made forwarding email messages from me@yahoo.com (or even using POP3 access) a 'premium service' then I could get all of my Yahoo! mail sent to me@gmail.com already if I wanted to, and thus consolidate both addresses in a useful way that is transparent to people sending me messages to either. But of course, if Yahoo! didn't make those things 'premium' then I wouldn't have defected to Gmail in the first place...
I'd just like to say that immigration has nothing to do with over-population on a world-wide scale (unless of course you are on about all of those damned Martians!). Over-population should be countered by education, contraception, etc. (never abstinance!)
In my experience the GPL is a great time saver, since having a license appear whenever a program is installed gets tiresome. This is obviously needed by proprietary programs, where they all have their own stupid death-yoga clauses, but merely putting a notice like "This program is distributed under the GNU GPL version 2, see the file COPYING for details" on the first screen of an installer (I am assuming you are on about Windows installation wizards here, and not some kind of Debian package installer, because that would definetly be a no-no) is sufficient, since many users have already read the GPL.
After reading the GNU GPL, GNU LGPL, BSD, Mozilla, X11 and a couple of other licenses there is no real reason to read any more since most computer uses can be accomplished with programs under those.
But Yahoo! stop you from using OutLook itself! The reason Gmail doesn't try to emulate an email client program is because if that is what you want then use a real one using POP. Yahoo!'s target audience seems to be people who like desktop email programs, but the ONLY feature those people want (since they can apply their own spam filters, etc.) is the ability to use their desktop email program!
I admit that my University's webmail system is useful considering how many computers I can use it from around the campus, but for my personal email I only use one computer so I don't care if is accessible from anywhere, because I only need it accessible from here. (And before you say that is my specific usage and many other people prefer webmail, then Gmail offers both!)
I agree with the many people saying that any alien intelligence probably would not be able to decode such a transmission, but the transmission itself is all that is required, not the specifics of the contents. (Mind you, we have been sending these out for years anyway)
If any communication with a completely unknown alien intelligence is ever attempted then it will have to start with the lowest common denominators; the most likely ones being transmission type and maths. What I mean is that using radio waves to encode a 2D representation of 3D space using light and sound in a format designed for Earth-based electronic boxes in a language arbitrarily created over hundreds of years (many native speakers of which still do not understand it fully) has so many assumptions made about the recipient that any significant response would be as likely to occur on YouTube as sent through space back to us in a format we understand.
Therefore the common denominators are maths, because that is a universal truth outside the realms of physics (who cares whether in a different universe electrons have a slightly different charge? a^2 + b^2 = c^2 will still apply to right angled triangles), and the medium of transmission (since anybody receiving a radio broadcast comprehends radio, anyone recieving laser transmissions comprehends lasers. If the aliens don't understand radio/lasers/whatever-else-is-used then it doesn't matter because they won't acknowledge the existance of the transmission anyway). Once contact is made then a common language/encoding can be built up (picture the difficulty of communication during live satellite news interviews, but multiplied by a hell of a lot)
This reminds me of a TV drama/documentary exploring what might happen if alien intelligence is discovered. An astronomy centre on Earth picks up a repeating source of energy that they think is a pulsar, but it turns out to be a directed laser beam pulsing on and off in a ratio of pi (ie. on for an arbitrary length, off, on for the same length, off, on for the same length, off, on for 0.1415927...... of that length). It turned out that Earth's broadcasts had reached an alien intelligence lightyears away, and through their detection of the radio waves' source they had crafted a response (so the content didn't matter, just the radio signal itself) using lasers to reduce the power output needed. This pi signal had been received for decades, but nobody noticed it, and it was only when one bright young researcher sent a duplicate response that things started getting interesting, with a whole new language of mathematics encoded in laser pulses being built up as a common medium of communication between the two races (thus we learnt whole new ways of applying maths which the aliens had developed centuries earlier, that lead to new technology utilising this maths, etc. [for those who watch the Fast Show, imagine the implications of Dexter Math!]) and at no point did the transmissions contain naked people, pretty pictures of flowers or anything else which assumes something outside of maths and lasers (although it is theoretically possible that over a vast timeframe the transmissions' complexity could have built up enough to transmit something like this, that would be making assumptions about sight, sound and other perceptions. I mean, even cats get confused by a mirror for god's sake!)
So in summary, they won't understand what is in the transmission, so just send anything mathematical that can be easily understood, keep sending it over and over, use radio waves to broadcast across the galaxy but switch to lasers when a recipient is pinpointed... oh, and remember to employ plenty of bright, young researchers (my CV is attached......)
PS: Thank you/. for obliterating my formatting and making me look like a dumbass
When Smallpox was eradicated there were samples kept in labs. Why? Someone might break in and release it! Well, that is true, but the world is a very big place, and it would be arrogant to assume that nobody else has kept any samples or that it doesn't still exist in the wild in some isolated area, and it would be downright suicidal to destroy the only resource you have in the case of a future epidemic.
The same sort of idea applies to nuclear weapons, but the scary thing about those is that they can be created from scratch (since that is how most things are invented) so getting rid of your deterrant would only be feasable if you could guarantee that nobody would ever create another nuclear weapon ever again. Since that would involve wiping out the whole human race you could get your weapons to detonate themselves and kill 2 birds with one stone (or 6 billion people with 60,000 nuclear warheads).
With that said, the numbers are just ridiculous now. MAD only works up to a certain point, when one side can say "I have twice as many nukes as you" to which the other replies "So what? I don't need any more, I can still destroy the planet", then the nuclear box is ticked and the technology moves on to more accurate targetting systems for conventional weapons so one side can still attack, then say "Don't send your nukes, mine wasn't nuclear. Besides, I only hit the military facility but you would wipe out civilians"
The apps I have tried downloading (just to see if it would work you understand, I wouldn't actually use them) have asked to install some WGA software, but underneath they offer an "alternative" method, which involves getting a tiny app which outputs a code which you then enter into the site. This app works perfectly well in a regular WINE installation and checks out as having a Genuine Microsoft Windows System, thus letting a GNU/Linux user download Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, etc.
I don't know whether this is relevant or not, and I assume that option will disappear once WGA is firmly entrenched in every Windows installation, but I thought I should point it out.
In my opinion windows is crap. Yes. It may have some features that other some other OS doesn't have (actually I think these "features" are actually only there because of developer support for windows, eg "Mac doesn't play my games" - That's not a FEATURE, it would be if macs weren't CAPABLE of playing 2D games, but they aren't as supported.) anyway, the main reason I don't use windows is because of it's legal battles and stuff. If windows wasn't around then all of our apps might be using Java (or probably better) on every architecture imaginable, loads of "Vapourware" products would exist... Who knows, we may be flying around in VR with our brains in jars, but the point is m$ keep ripping off ideas (often then patenting them) making it impossible for others to progress. Eg. Mac is brought out in black and white with crappy multitasking. Then Amiga is brought out with pre-emptive multitasking, thousands of colours etc. Stuff should be built up but what do most people today use? Non pre-emptive multitasking, slow, insecure OS on a machine that needs HUNDREDS of MHz to get away from it's original use with a character based interface. Meanwhile QNX is popular only in embedded markets, PowerPC is only being implemented where people CARE about performance (next-gen consoles) and anyone with a good idea has to battle it out with other legitimate innovators for around 4%-6% of the market share!
Slashdot Mirror
Did any of those involved (outside the Microsoft lobbyists) actually read it? I mean personally? The whole thing? Somehow I have my doubts...
It violates 235 patents don'tcha know
The Tivo 'saber' is only covered in the GPL3. The iPhone came out on the same day as GPL3, so I seriously doubt there is GPL3-only code in there. The GPL2 doesn't deal with Tivoisation at all, which is why v3 was made. If it turns out there is GPL code in the iPhone Apple just need to distribute some publicly available source, they won't have to change the iPhone in any way.
Combine this with plates coated in carbon nanotubes and the storage would go way up. Hopefully the Sony versions won't explode though.
Their 2 camera system seems quite neat, but there would be no way of producing realistic consistency from images. In other words, without someone programming it in manually then your cyberboobs will feel like they're made of concrete. I suppose an electronic force meter could be used to poke various materials to get their feedback, but even without that it would still be good for the female version.
If some US states started a healthcare system like we have here in the UK then it would probably not work. If I slice my hand off doing some DIY then I call for an ambulance and get taken to the nearest hospital, no matter where I am in the country. If I don't want to tell them who I am then I'll still get treatment, although then my medical records will not be available so it is a pretty stupid thing to do. If this was implemented at the state level in the US then those states with such a system, supported by taxes on those living in the state, would see massive expenditure as people from states all around who do not pay taxes to support this healthcare system come along and use it. To NOT let them use it would be unethical, since they could be in the state for a genuine reason and happen to need some healthcare. Making sure those who get such care pay the taxes for it just seems like a state-run health insurance company, rather than a National Health System. To eliminate this it has to be run in all states at once, and whilst this may be managed at the state level it would need some federal-based legislation to make states adopt it. If trials of this kind of thing go ahead per-state then it would be interesting to see figures of numbers of patients treated, and I guarantee those hospitals nearer state borders will have more patients treated than their local population would suggest, and also that they would treat more long-term illnesses such as cancer (where driving a distance for treatment is reasonable) than short-term like A&E (which by their nature strike unexpectedly and where quick treatment is important). Of course such figures could then be mutated by health insurance companies to show "Look! In areas with state-run health systems a higher percentage of the population gets cancer than anywhere else!" ("X causes cancer!" arguments, based on statistics rather than evidence, always manage to get into the tabloids), although many would pay health insurance anyway for emergencies, but use neighbouring state's systems for lack of hassle (Sicko is more about those with insurance not getting what they payed for, rather than those without insurance at all). This would benefit the insurance companies since they get their steady subscription coming in, but don't have to pay for a lot of the treatment.
I'm thinking that this time it will be Durex looking to buy out the technology. There is a potentially large untapped market in bestiality, and making inter-species genetic sharing a possibility will cause any sensible zoophile to start buying.
If this ever does become used I'm sure enough people will complain that it becomes illegal if it isn't already. What I don't understand is this line: "Its chip generates a separate, random code for each ink cartridge, thus requiring a would-be hacker to break every successive cartridge's code to make use of the cartridge." I thought the point of hacking it would be to make non-branded cartridges work, which means only one manufacturer's cartridge needs to be hacked then every cheaper one just has to use that one code. If cartridges are being refilled then there is no need to hack the system at all, just take it out, drill a hole in the top, inject ink into it and plug it back in, no microchip cryptography in sight.
"In other words it is an SD device is an HD world" Thank you for the broad generalisation :)
-- Someone who doesn't rot their brain with TV and computer games
I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks ago and he was mentioning some folk metal band he liked and came out with "They're really good, but they're still unsigned. They sell their own music from their website and stuff. It's a real shame." I liked what I heard until that last sentence. For some reason being free from the rule of any record contract and still getting the most important services that such a contract would give one is 'a real shame'. I had to put him straight on that, but it seems like another case of out-of-contemporary-context thinking.
I can't stop myself from thinking that if Yahoo! hadn't made forwarding email messages from me@yahoo.com (or even using POP3 access) a 'premium service' then I could get all of my Yahoo! mail sent to me@gmail.com already if I wanted to, and thus consolidate both addresses in a useful way that is transparent to people sending me messages to either. But of course, if Yahoo! didn't make those things 'premium' then I wouldn't have defected to Gmail in the first place...
So here it is: http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.21 47.html
enjoy
I'd just like to say that immigration has nothing to do with over-population on a world-wide scale (unless of course you are on about all of those damned Martians!). Over-population should be countered by education, contraception, etc. (never abstinance!)
In my experience the GPL is a great time saver, since having a license appear whenever a program is installed gets tiresome. This is obviously needed by proprietary programs, where they all have their own stupid death-yoga clauses, but merely putting a notice like "This program is distributed under the GNU GPL version 2, see the file COPYING for details" on the first screen of an installer (I am assuming you are on about Windows installation wizards here, and not some kind of Debian package installer, because that would definetly be a no-no) is sufficient, since many users have already read the GPL. After reading the GNU GPL, GNU LGPL, BSD, Mozilla, X11 and a couple of other licenses there is no real reason to read any more since most computer uses can be accomplished with programs under those.
I think this is a bad idea. It has been tried before but all of the test candidates sank: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine#Modern_subm arines
But Yahoo! stop you from using OutLook itself! The reason Gmail doesn't try to emulate an email client program is because if that is what you want then use a real one using POP. Yahoo!'s target audience seems to be people who like desktop email programs, but the ONLY feature those people want (since they can apply their own spam filters, etc.) is the ability to use their desktop email program! I admit that my University's webmail system is useful considering how many computers I can use it from around the campus, but for my personal email I only use one computer so I don't care if is accessible from anywhere, because I only need it accessible from here. (And before you say that is my specific usage and many other people prefer webmail, then Gmail offers both!)
I agree with the many people saying that any alien intelligence probably would not be able to decode such a transmission, but the transmission itself is all that is required, not the specifics of the contents. (Mind you, we have been sending these out for years anyway) If any communication with a completely unknown alien intelligence is ever attempted then it will have to start with the lowest common denominators; the most likely ones being transmission type and maths. What I mean is that using radio waves to encode a 2D representation of 3D space using light and sound in a format designed for Earth-based electronic boxes in a language arbitrarily created over hundreds of years (many native speakers of which still do not understand it fully) has so many assumptions made about the recipient that any significant response would be as likely to occur on YouTube as sent through space back to us in a format we understand. Therefore the common denominators are maths, because that is a universal truth outside the realms of physics (who cares whether in a different universe electrons have a slightly different charge? a^2 + b^2 = c^2 will still apply to right angled triangles), and the medium of transmission (since anybody receiving a radio broadcast comprehends radio, anyone recieving laser transmissions comprehends lasers. If the aliens don't understand radio/lasers/whatever-else-is-used then it doesn't matter because they won't acknowledge the existance of the transmission anyway). Once contact is made then a common language/encoding can be built up (picture the difficulty of communication during live satellite news interviews, but multiplied by a hell of a lot) This reminds me of a TV drama/documentary exploring what might happen if alien intelligence is discovered. An astronomy centre on Earth picks up a repeating source of energy that they think is a pulsar, but it turns out to be a directed laser beam pulsing on and off in a ratio of pi (ie. on for an arbitrary length, off, on for the same length, off, on for the same length, off, on for 0.1415927...... of that length). It turned out that Earth's broadcasts had reached an alien intelligence lightyears away, and through their detection of the radio waves' source they had crafted a response (so the content didn't matter, just the radio signal itself) using lasers to reduce the power output needed. This pi signal had been received for decades, but nobody noticed it, and it was only when one bright young researcher sent a duplicate response that things started getting interesting, with a whole new language of mathematics encoded in laser pulses being built up as a common medium of communication between the two races (thus we learnt whole new ways of applying maths which the aliens had developed centuries earlier, that lead to new technology utilising this maths, etc. [for those who watch the Fast Show, imagine the implications of Dexter Math!]) and at no point did the transmissions contain naked people, pretty pictures of flowers or anything else which assumes something outside of maths and lasers (although it is theoretically possible that over a vast timeframe the transmissions' complexity could have built up enough to transmit something like this, that would be making assumptions about sight, sound and other perceptions. I mean, even cats get confused by a mirror for god's sake!) So in summary, they won't understand what is in the transmission, so just send anything mathematical that can be easily understood, keep sending it over and over, use radio waves to broadcast across the galaxy but switch to lasers when a recipient is pinpointed... oh, and remember to employ plenty of bright, young researchers (my CV is attached......) PS: Thank you /. for obliterating my formatting and making me look like a dumbass
What? Put SODIUM and CHLORINE on my chips? Are you crazy???!!
When Smallpox was eradicated there were samples kept in labs. Why? Someone might break in and release it! Well, that is true, but the world is a very big place, and it would be arrogant to assume that nobody else has kept any samples or that it doesn't still exist in the wild in some isolated area, and it would be downright suicidal to destroy the only resource you have in the case of a future epidemic. The same sort of idea applies to nuclear weapons, but the scary thing about those is that they can be created from scratch (since that is how most things are invented) so getting rid of your deterrant would only be feasable if you could guarantee that nobody would ever create another nuclear weapon ever again. Since that would involve wiping out the whole human race you could get your weapons to detonate themselves and kill 2 birds with one stone (or 6 billion people with 60,000 nuclear warheads). With that said, the numbers are just ridiculous now. MAD only works up to a certain point, when one side can say "I have twice as many nukes as you" to which the other replies "So what? I don't need any more, I can still destroy the planet", then the nuclear box is ticked and the technology moves on to more accurate targetting systems for conventional weapons so one side can still attack, then say "Don't send your nukes, mine wasn't nuclear. Besides, I only hit the military facility but you would wipe out civilians"
The apps I have tried downloading (just to see if it would work you understand, I wouldn't actually use them) have asked to install some WGA software, but underneath they offer an "alternative" method, which involves getting a tiny app which outputs a code which you then enter into the site. This app works perfectly well in a regular WINE installation and checks out as having a Genuine Microsoft Windows System, thus letting a GNU/Linux user download Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, etc. I don't know whether this is relevant or not, and I assume that option will disappear once WGA is firmly entrenched in every Windows installation, but I thought I should point it out.
In my opinion windows is crap. Yes. It may have some features that other some other OS doesn't have (actually I think these "features" are actually only there because of developer support for windows, eg "Mac doesn't play my games" - That's not a FEATURE, it would be if macs weren't CAPABLE of playing 2D games, but they aren't as supported.) anyway, the main reason I don't use windows is because of it's legal battles and stuff. If windows wasn't around then all of our apps might be using Java (or probably better) on every architecture imaginable, loads of "Vapourware" products would exist... Who knows, we may be flying around in VR with our brains in jars, but the point is m$ keep ripping off ideas (often then patenting them) making it impossible for others to progress. Eg. Mac is brought out in black and white with crappy multitasking. Then Amiga is brought out with pre-emptive multitasking, thousands of colours etc. Stuff should be built up but what do most people today use? Non pre-emptive multitasking, slow, insecure OS on a machine that needs HUNDREDS of MHz to get away from it's original use with a character based interface. Meanwhile QNX is popular only in embedded markets, PowerPC is only being implemented where people CARE about performance (next-gen consoles) and anyone with a good idea has to battle it out with other legitimate innovators for around 4%-6% of the market share!