Considering the potential cost savings it's Absolutely worth looking at -- USB input devices means we can have more than one keyboard and mouse per computer, We've been able to have multiple monitors per computer for ages, and Modern day processors are perfectly capable of running more than one copy of quake, hell the users would even get faster disk access because of the shared cache.
This can be used by companies to spy on their workers, to analyze their facial expressions, determining who spends their day paying attention to their job and who's day-dreaming.
Or, even worse, for quality control at tech support lines -- to make sure you've got that upbeat attitude towards the person on the other end of the phone. All of the sudden, over the intercom: "Would the person in cubicle 48B change their attitude about their current customer please?" Instead of having warnings letting us know that the call may be monitored for quality control, the warning will say that the facial expressions of the person on the other end of the line will be monitored.
Although I personally have my doubts as to how much this will help 2600's case, this article is yet case they will be able to refer to in their hearing tommorow. See yesterday's article about the university professor who had to back off due to legal bullying.
It's bugged the hell out of me. In the meantime, there's still my.userland.com, xmltree, and weblogs.com to name a few sites that still make wide use of the RSS 0.91
The article is misleading
on
Tito In Space
·
· Score: 5
Actually, Nasa wanted to put a two day delay on it because on Tuesday and Wednesday there were some computers mysteriously going offline, meaning that the shuttle was going to have to be docked for longer than expected. They needed Russian concurrence to actually make that happen. So it's not really the "big bad NASA", it's just that the Russians didn't agree that there would be a scheduling problem with the docking because Tito's capsule isn't supposed to dock at the station until Monday, which _should_ give NASA enough time to fix the problem and free up the docking bay. On the other hand, if that isn't enough time, they can always hang around waiting for NASA to finish work on the computers -- I'm sure Tito won't object to the extra time in space, and Russia would love the exposure this would give to space tourism.
Aside from serious performance issues, security bugs and critical features that you need in the new 2.4 series, I _highly_ recommend you wait! New kernel versions are coming out a blazing pace and while it is exciting, it's not giving the released versions the same amount of stress testing that we're used to having. Just like when you buy hardware -- stay a couple steps behind the lead. You'll avoid a lot of nasty bugs and save yourself a lot of expensive headaches.
From what I understand of the ruling, the RIAA needs to provide proof of Copyright and the specific filename for each infringement before Napster has the duty to remove access to the infringing file.
So basically any number of possible mechanisms will work to delay the process that the RIAA must undertake when seeking out and identifying specific songs. First, people have been munging filenames quite a bit, but that's really not very convenient for people trying to search for songs with certain words adjacent to eachother, etc (According to this ruling the current filters for word sequences like "Green Day" can be removed).
Instead, we could incorrectly report the length of the file, and even introduce a recognizeable chunk of junk data at the beginning of the mp3 so that the only way to determine whether or not a specific file is infringing on copyright is to download at least up to the point where the junk data ends. Then, have the client alter the file info slightly, if not by altering the Case of the filenames, then by altering the reported length and amount of junk data attached to the beginning of it.
That way if the specific file that was being downloaded is recognized as being infringing it doesn't really matter because that *same* file doesn't exist anymore.
We're going to create this semi-alive, semi-independent thing with massive power over an enormous network that will be the infrastructure of our economy. That's like trusting your life to Frankenstein -- just because you created him doesn't mean he's going to like you!
Project Eliza is going to cause a lot of havoc with all the perfectly normal activity it will combat, all the false alarms it will respond to. Hell, it might begin to view it's controllers as the real oppressors, and try to protect itself from them yet too.
Well, considering the amount of success those Russians had holding credit cards randsom (before the fbi nabbed them) maybe there's a market to be tapped here. Simply collect masses of information and sell it to competitors, publish it on the net, or blackmail the owners, all from a hilltop above the silicon valley.
The benefits of this would be manyfold:
You'd make money and become famous
Evil corporations would get what they deserve
Patent secrets would be exposed
Evidence of corporate corruption could be collected (See how the
honeynet project is able to collect info without a search warrant)
Naturally you can't do all of these things at the same time or even have all of these things done by the same person, seeing as the explanation for what the hell you were doing listening in on the traffic in the first place might range from dubious to illegal.
I definately like the extra 3 inch length in the case, to make the motherboard be more exposed, but I can't help but wonder about the dangers of static discharge with a plastic case. For the time being though, you'll need to settle for your shitty cardboard cut-outs because it'll take quite a while before any of these will be coming to a store near you.
Just because the Salon article says this is a victory for free speech doesn't mean that it is. We have no assurances of how this is going to affect the May 1st court date for 2600 and salon most definately doesn't constitute a legal opinion! We shouldn't be so blind as to happily walk along believing that when our rights are trampled that this is a good thing! What are we, Lemmings?
According to the article, Intel's ability to lower prices this month was directly linked to their smaller chip design. One would hope (crossing fingers) that this will translate also to the AMD chips when they come out.
To those who keep shouting about heat and heatsinks, take note that AMD is planning on licensing these chips to component manufacturers and the like -- and while it's not like video cards and such haven't been known to have heatsinks and fans, it's unlikely that you'll see more than one card in your computer that needs a fan on it -- case temperature would get prohibitively high.
How about some sort of third party organisation that one can trust to "certify" these agreements as adhering to a certain set of principles? Face it, we're not going to be able to stop people from trying to rush past the whole document, so why not, in the same way that a software license is fsf approved, have an approval/rating system for shrinkwrapped licenses?
On the one hand, yes, we'd be enabling people's bad habits to blissfully continue. More importantly, however, this would provide a service not only to those who would not take the time to read the document but to those who wouldn't understand it anyways.
Star Trek, Batman, Inspector Gadget -- they're all examples of how fiction has led science to new heights.
The most striking example of this for me was when I was looking at some old movies at the internet moving picture archive and watched "Once Upon a Honeymoon 1956" featuring color telephones as a color accessory in the home. An angel in big white brimmed glasses is sent down to earth. While in transit (he's just kinda falling out of the sky) he reaches into his robe and pulls out a wireless phone, just like our modern day cell phones, only larger to accomodate for the rotary dialer!
I'm sure we could point to many other examples. It's important that we pay attention to our creative thinkers for such ideas because they not only come up with challenges for scientists to grapple with, but they also help to demonstrate whether or not it would even make sense to invent X or Y.
It's unfortunate that Regulation is such a necessarily slow process. Otherwise we could be moving ideas from their testbed on the screen to full scale productions in the real world with unprecedented speed.
There's most definately something about a book that digitized media just can't replace. It has a distinctive smell, it doesn't require batteries or a power adapter, and it doesn't expose you to radiation.
Reading a book is something that'll mentally bring you back into your inner classroom, just like smelling a box of crayons will bring you back to your inner child. Make no mistake about it, there's definately magic in dem dar books.
From what the article mentions, this isn't a matter of improved stability over linux, rather that Coldfusion for windows was more stable than the less mature Linux port.
Definately worth a good read -- And a good lesson to those of you who would do something as crazy as trying to skimp on the motherboard when building your athlon system!!
It's unfortunate that the article doesn't go into further technical details, but it's an interesting and useful read all the same. In particular the round robin DNS good and bad sides and the linux virtual server project.
Quantum communications has been around for a long time and the fact that you can detect whether you're being eavesdropped on over this medium has been known for a long time.
The concept of sending a common secret over such a channel is not really all that bright though. Public key cryptography has been around long enough for even the most basic dabblings in the realm of secure communications over public channels should show you that no matter what you should never exchange a common secret in public -- it's moronic!
Furthermore, with the known and predictable fact that quantum communications are altered when eavesdropped on, we can have a whole generation of people working not only to eavesdrop on something, but also purposefully altering the data, compromising the confidentiality of the data while also confusing the message.
On the one hand, I see this idea to have the unifying potential major open source licenses have had on the software community. It can give people something to point to in saying "Hey look, it x,y,and z are using that license.. maybe there's something to it?"... On the other hand, it's important that we not discourage people from coming up with individual creative solutions that fit their particular circumstance.
The PS2 has got us all wanting to make something better, take the next step, make that gargantuous leap into the unknown and incorporate the microwave, dishwasher, tv, vcr, and phone into the vcr somehow.
Well I for one prefer to buy those things seperately, not at all unlike the way I like to buy my computer parts separately, or at least specifically itemized -- none of that bundle crap. Once you start to do that you get people paying money for low quality shit they didn't even need or want in the first place!
Those RFC's are, if nothing else, one of the essential parts of the magic lifeblood of the internet culture. It's a piece of our heritage, and we shouldn't let it die along with our forefathers. The fact that John Postel's name is absent is a sad testament to the dangerous trap that we can fall into while obsessing over new standards/advances,etc.
Personally, I think that proprietary extensions would not be used so often if the standard were to keep up with the times, accomodating the needs of the community in a uniform and non-propriety fashion. One really good example of this is the HTML standard that was totally overrun by the industry instead of leading it.
For NASA, this means breakthroughs in miniaturization that could lead to significant reductions in mass and cost of spacecraft to look for traces of life on distant planets. For researchers, it means access to one of only three such systems in the world, and the only one in the public sector devoted to pure research for building the nano-scale devices of the future.
OH great... Just great! Now when we discover life "out there" our ambassadors to them will be little critters put into a capsule and shot across the galaxy. What the hell are those aliens gonna think when they discover that we're not all the size of nanobots?
Slashdot Mirror
Considering the potential cost savings it's Absolutely worth looking at -- USB input devices means we can have more than one keyboard and mouse per computer, We've been able to have multiple monitors per computer for ages, and Modern day processors are perfectly capable of running more than one copy of quake, hell the users would even get faster disk access because of the shared cache.
Just think of the potential for ordering in pizza and Beer!
Or, even worse, for quality control at tech support lines -- to make sure you've got that upbeat attitude towards the person on the other end of the phone. All of the sudden, over the intercom: "Would the person in cubicle 48B change their attitude about their current customer please?" Instead of having warnings letting us know that the call may be monitored for quality control, the warning will say that the facial expressions of the person on the other end of the line will be monitored.
Although I personally have my doubts as to how much this will help 2600's case, this article is yet case they will be able to refer to in their hearing tommorow. See yesterday's article about the university professor who had to back off due to legal bullying.
If you're looking for the already implemented RSS 0.92 look here There's also a reference to RSS 0.93 on which development started on April 01,2001.
It's bugged the hell out of me. In the meantime, there's still my.userland.com, xmltree, and weblogs.com to name a few sites that still make wide use of the RSS 0.91
Actually, Nasa wanted to put a two day delay on it because on Tuesday and Wednesday there were some computers mysteriously going offline, meaning that the shuttle was going to have to be docked for longer than expected. They needed Russian concurrence to actually make that happen. So it's not really the "big bad NASA", it's just that the Russians didn't agree that there would be a scheduling problem with the docking because Tito's capsule isn't supposed to dock at the station until Monday, which _should_ give NASA enough time to fix the problem and free up the docking bay. On the other hand, if that isn't enough time, they can always hang around waiting for NASA to finish work on the computers -- I'm sure Tito won't object to the extra time in space, and Russia would love the exposure this would give to space tourism.
Aside from serious performance issues, security bugs and critical features that you need in the new 2.4 series, I _highly_ recommend you wait! New kernel versions are coming out a blazing pace and while it is exciting, it's not giving the released versions the same amount of stress testing that we're used to having. Just like when you buy hardware -- stay a couple steps behind the lead. You'll avoid a lot of nasty bugs and save yourself a lot of expensive headaches.
So basically any number of possible mechanisms will work to delay the process that the RIAA must undertake when seeking out and identifying specific songs. First, people have been munging filenames quite a bit, but that's really not very convenient for people trying to search for songs with certain words adjacent to eachother, etc (According to this ruling the current filters for word sequences like "Green Day" can be removed).
Instead, we could incorrectly report the length of the file, and even introduce a recognizeable chunk of junk data at the beginning of the mp3 so that the only way to determine whether or not a specific file is infringing on copyright is to download at least up to the point where the junk data ends. Then, have the client alter the file info slightly, if not by altering the Case of the filenames, then by altering the reported length and amount of junk data attached to the beginning of it.
That way if the specific file that was being downloaded is recognized as being infringing it doesn't really matter because that *same* file doesn't exist anymore.
Project Eliza is going to cause a lot of havoc with all the perfectly normal activity it will combat, all the false alarms it will respond to. Hell, it might begin to view it's controllers as the real oppressors, and try to protect itself from them yet too.
The benefits of this would be manyfold:
Naturally you can't do all of these things at the same time or even have all of these things done by the same person, seeing as the explanation for what the hell you were doing listening in on the traffic in the first place might range from dubious to illegal.
I definately like the extra 3 inch length in the case, to make the motherboard be more exposed, but I can't help but wonder about the dangers of static discharge with a plastic case. For the time being though, you'll need to settle for your shitty cardboard cut-outs because it'll take quite a while before any of these will be coming to a store near you.
Just because the Salon article says this is a victory for free speech doesn't mean that it is. We have no assurances of how this is going to affect the May 1st court date for 2600 and salon most definately doesn't constitute a legal opinion! We shouldn't be so blind as to happily walk along believing that when our rights are trampled that this is a good thing! What are we, Lemmings?
To those who keep shouting about heat and heatsinks, take note that AMD is planning on licensing these chips to component manufacturers and the like -- and while it's not like video cards and such haven't been known to have heatsinks and fans, it's unlikely that you'll see more than one card in your computer that needs a fan on it -- case temperature would get prohibitively high.
On the one hand, yes, we'd be enabling people's bad habits to blissfully continue. More importantly, however, this would provide a service not only to those who would not take the time to read the document but to those who wouldn't understand it anyways.
Someone quick -- go run and remount -rw
The most striking example of this for me was when I was looking at some old movies at the internet moving picture archive and watched "Once Upon a Honeymoon 1956" featuring color telephones as a color accessory in the home. An angel in big white brimmed glasses is sent down to earth. While in transit (he's just kinda falling out of the sky) he reaches into his robe and pulls out a wireless phone, just like our modern day cell phones, only larger to accomodate for the rotary dialer!
I'm sure we could point to many other examples. It's important that we pay attention to our creative thinkers for such ideas because they not only come up with challenges for scientists to grapple with, but they also help to demonstrate whether or not it would even make sense to invent X or Y.
It's unfortunate that Regulation is such a necessarily slow process. Otherwise we could be moving ideas from their testbed on the screen to full scale productions in the real world with unprecedented speed.
Reading a book is something that'll mentally bring you back into your inner classroom, just like smelling a box of crayons will bring you back to your inner child. Make no mistake about it, there's definately magic in dem dar books.
From what the article mentions, this isn't a matter of improved stability over linux, rather that Coldfusion for windows was more stable than the less mature Linux port.
It's unfortunate that the article doesn't go into further technical details, but it's an interesting and useful read all the same. In particular the round robin DNS good and bad sides and the linux virtual server project.
The concept of sending a common secret over such a channel is not really all that bright though. Public key cryptography has been around long enough for even the most basic dabblings in the realm of secure communications over public channels should show you that no matter what you should never exchange a common secret in public -- it's moronic!
Furthermore, with the known and predictable fact that quantum communications are altered when eavesdropped on, we can have a whole generation of people working not only to eavesdrop on something, but also purposefully altering the data, compromising the confidentiality of the data while also confusing the message.
On the one hand, I see this idea to have the unifying potential major open source licenses have had on the software community. It can give people something to point to in saying "Hey look, it x,y,and z are using that license.. maybe there's something to it?"... On the other hand, it's important that we not discourage people from coming up with individual creative solutions that fit their particular circumstance.
Well I for one prefer to buy those things seperately, not at all unlike the way I like to buy my computer parts separately, or at least specifically itemized -- none of that bundle crap. Once you start to do that you get people paying money for low quality shit they didn't even need or want in the first place!
Personally, I think that proprietary extensions would not be used so often if the standard were to keep up with the times, accomodating the needs of the community in a uniform and non-propriety fashion. One really good example of this is the HTML standard that was totally overrun by the industry instead of leading it.