Well, it keeps the development in the hands of the mobile phone companies
***BINGO***
I suspect the real customer (Cingular, Sprint, etc) DOESN'T WANT the consumer to be able to develop on it.
Consider this:
The Motorola V180 phone (average color LCD phone) runs Java apps on it. Its main external port is a USB outlet. The entire Java mobile phone development kit (and program for uploading apps) is freely available on Motorola's websites. Documentation is fair, and free.
HOWEVER In one of the behind-the-scenes settings of this phone is an option that disables the ability to upload Java apps via the USB port. The freely available Motorola software cannot change it.
WHY would such an option even exist? So wireless carriers can enable this option and force its consumers to BUY games/apps for $$$.
On second thought, they easily **could** have added the capability for consumers to upload MP3 ringtones via the USB port. But they didn't. Such a feature would completely destroy the ring-tone industry.
To all who like to see the government make laws: Let's out-law the creation, maintanence, and development of "artifical scarcity".
I laught everytime I see that infomercial on the cordless soldering iron. They show a guy soldering electronic stuff with it... 99.9% of the US is never even going to think about it. The only people who might do some soldering are some audiophiles who will solder a little wire to their speakers.
Look at the way the general public is inept at maintaining their own computer. Soon, people will call electricians to change lightbulbs...
I wonder if ScuttleMonkey is getting a share of the ad revenues....
When stupid stuff like this gets posted, a flame war against the submitter and editor ensues... Which means a whole lot of page views... Which means that little banner at the top of the page gets reloaded a lot... (and probably more click-thoughts from the sheer volume of people involved)
And for subscribers who join in, they get to deplete their subscription even faster... Which makes them re-subscribe more often... Which means more $$$$ for slashdot...
My subscription was a gift from a friend. While it was a very nice gift, I'm starting to get tired of the./ editor's tactics. I don't see myself renewing it in the near future.
I would be willing to support slashdot if discussion was encouraged through the posting of truly interesting stories... Unfortunately, the editors seem to think that thinly-disguised advertisement 'articles', viewpoints on the computer industry written by humanities scholars, and pseudo-science are what the readership wants to see.
Perhaps CowboyNeal should start making some useful polls like "What would you like to see on Slashdot?" 1) Interesting Industry Articles 2) New Science Breakthroughs 3) Issues related to technological rights 4) Programming Articles 5) SPAM,CRAP, and other scatology
That may be, but as soon as someone publishes a paper about using this method for transmitting data somehow involving people (e.g. hand-held device), they are going to start calling it bio-quantium-cryptography.
ogle was really the first major search engine that not only didn't sell any spots or anything, but actively fought against tricks to try and bias your results higher.
I realize when they first started, this may have been true?
But with the targeted advertising and "Sponsored Links", is Google any different than the rest?
Errr, I'm still reading up on this Trusted Computing stuff...
I thought the point of it was to only enable certain (signed) applications to execute.... (e.g. only Windows Media Player plays songs, and only outputing them to a (trusted) sound card driver).
Forget about what VMware would be able to emulate or not --- wouldn't such a system simply just prevent VMware from executing at all?!?!?!
If they have the capability to view and log applications, why should it stop only there?
Even if you could see the light, react, and unplug the cable in 1ms, you would be way too late.
On a 10MB bit/s link, that would mean about 1000 bytes would have already gotten out (which would be a complete packet).
Unfortunately, human eyes don't see things last a little less than on the order of ~20ms. Which means either that LED on the router has to remain on for a long duration after a single packet, or it takes multiple packets to turn it on. Which means the *instant* the light appears to be on, it is too late.
And who says this stuff is only going to phone home the *instant* you open a document/program/etc... It could easily queue the packet and wait for the internet connection to come back up.. And given the nature of Trusted Computing, this may not be something than can easily be disabled.
I'm starting to wonder if the day will come when I pull the plug out of my computer -- PERMANENTLY!
1. They thought they were doing the correct thing. This is after their training. After getting approved for acting as a government official. After talking to another trained person (each other). (And MAYBE after talking to other trained persons, including their supervisor.)
Sadly, good intentions are by far the most destructive force in our society. The truly corrupt are relatively few in any group. However, they often succeed in motivating earnest people to do their bidding, by convincing them that these people are doing something good.
Not convinced? Then why does social engineering work so well? Because most people *want* to help, to make something better, they want to do something good. Unfortunately, they often don't exercise enough critical thinking to question whether or not their actions will have the intended effect.
Nope, you probably just fall into the small group that can be described as "observant". Are you talking about climate changes or recent US events?
Remember what 1st grade was like? Remember the kids that would only act in their interest and never take responsibility for their actions? The ones that would wine and cry when they got caught? Well, I think they got BS degrees in Business or Marketing and are running our companies!
On another note, I saw a "Stretch Hummer" today. Looked about 3/4 of a School Bus in length. It saddens me not that there aren't government regulations against such vehicles, but that enough of the public demands these vehicles.
I bet most people don't know what "Tragedy of the Commons" means... If they did, the word wouldn't exist.
Most companies seem to thrive by tricking the customers into entering in agreements that are not legal.
My cable company recently added a clause to the effect that 'I agree.... that they can upgrade/change my service without my consent at any time'...
And what about the often-used clause 'This agreement may change at anytime without notice'.... (How can I agree to something that may have already changed?)
And of course the general public is as wise to this as they were to phishing in 1990.
The reason these people don't complain are twofold:
a) They are very patient. They probably spend much more time reading the page than they do waiting for it to load. b) They don't know how it could be different.
Sorta - more like "more renewable". Think solar panels are "renewable"? Well, they wear out, break, etc. Manufacture of new ones requires someone to mine the silicon from the ground, transport it to a factory/fab, assemble/produce/etc it, and transport it to where it should go.
Silicon: Only a finite amount exists on Earth. Transportation: What is going to power the bulldozer, dump-truck, etc? Goods truck? etc? Fabrication: What about chemicals and energy required to manufacture the solar panel?
If any one of these items becomes scarce, PV energy will not be called "renewable".
Perhaps there really is enough metals and minerals to last a really really long time. Of course if the population keeps growing and advancing, who knows? (I think most westerners don't realize that in terms of *numbers*, MOST (more than half) of the world's population don't produce, use, and own so much crap... [orders of magnitude less]) Even worse, it is this "other half" that is growing at a much faster rate than Western civilization, and they want "in" on the goods!
In high school, I remember learning about what happens when a certain kind of soap/chemical enters a nature river/stream. Algae rapidly grow and thrive. They grow so quickly that they deplete all the oxygen in the water -- leading to their own demise (and killing everything else in the process).
I've been trying hard, but I don't see how human civilization is really any different.
Do you think that many humanities students will cope with the marked absence of the "My Documents" folder? Or how about the lack of a "A:\", "C:\", and "D:\" drives?
And what if they have a USB stick?
OpenOffice will be too different -- paragraph settings and margins are all differently arranged than Word.
I really hate to say this, but a non-trivial percentage of Electrical/Computer Engineering undergrad students don't know anything about Linux, and aren't exactly wizards at Windows either.
I'm not sure if these schools have to pay all that much. They get volume academic licenses. Microsoft wants them to use their products, otherwise the students may not when they go into the real world.
But yes, there should be more encouragement with Linux. 5 years ago, I started using Redhat almost exclusively at home. That only lasted a few months until a friend introduced me to Gentoo (it was a bit more primitive then). I immediately switched and have no regrets. An operating system like Gentoo **forces** the user to really learn how Linux works.. Distros like RedHat hide way too much from the user. As soon as X stops working, they will be helpless, as they won't know how to use the commandline tools or what files in/etc do what.
There should be a formal course that does the following: 2/3 of semester: Build a complete Linux from Scratch workstation 1/3 of semester: Build a complete Gentoo workstation/server, and maintain/update it.
LFS would teach people what libraries do what and how things work. Gentoo would teach them how to update/add/remove programs from source in a maintainable manner.
Yeah. Such actions would be probably called "terrorist acts" or something like that.
All China has to do is to only allow outgoing SSL connections to a hand-picked "whitelist" of servers... (e.g. well-known companies). They probably won't bother until enough people start breaching the firewall.
Of course, then the next untapped way to securely send information would be to embed it in audio CDS. Audio CDS store (digitally) 16-bit audio. But the low 8-bits are pretty much inaudible. Data could easily be encoded there, which would mean 300-400MB of data and still a full 70+minutes of high-quality music on a pure *audio* CD. Compressed/encrypted data won't have much self-correlation -- and neither do the low few bits of images/audio acquired from the real world. Even more sophisticated schemes exist that and would be even much more stealhly.
it's more of a social meme than a biological trait.
ditto... And the trend toward capitalism + individualism probably only re-inforced it...
How many women want to be raising children from three men, without their support? How many men want to be supporting and caring for someone elses children [e.g. children born after "marriage"]?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it keeps the development in the hands of the mobile phone companies
***BINGO***
I suspect the real customer (Cingular, Sprint, etc) DOESN'T WANT the consumer to be able to develop on it.
Consider this:
The Motorola V180 phone (average color LCD phone) runs Java apps on it. Its main external port is a USB outlet. The entire Java mobile phone development kit (and program for uploading apps) is freely available on Motorola's websites. Documentation is fair, and free.
HOWEVER In one of the behind-the-scenes settings of this phone is an option that disables the ability to upload Java apps via the USB port. The freely available Motorola software cannot change it.
WHY would such an option even exist? So wireless carriers can enable this option and force its consumers to BUY games/apps for $$$.
On second thought, they easily **could** have added the capability for consumers to upload MP3 ringtones via the USB port. But they didn't. Such a feature would completely destroy the ring-tone industry.
To all who like to see the government make laws: Let's out-law the creation, maintanence, and development of "artifical scarcity".
but kicks ass when I flip it to draw.
Dude, your flipping it in the wrong direction!
Dude, they're getting Dells! MUHAHAHAHHAHA!
Does that mean lawyers and telemarketers were the vestigal lion-bait group?
There very very few hobbyists now...
I laught everytime I see that infomercial on the cordless soldering iron. They show a guy soldering electronic stuff with it... 99.9% of the US is never even going to think about it. The only people who might do some soldering are some audiophiles who will solder a little wire to their speakers.
Look at the way the general public is inept at maintaining their own computer. Soon, people will call electricians to change lightbulbs...
dump files into a PCI card when I want to transfer info.
Which PCI card would that be? The sound card???
I wonder if ScuttleMonkey is getting a share of the ad revenues....
./ editor's tactics. I don't see myself renewing it in the near future.
When stupid stuff like this gets posted, a flame war against the submitter and editor ensues... Which means a whole lot of page views... Which means that little banner at the top of the page gets reloaded a lot... (and probably more click-thoughts from the sheer volume of people involved)
And for subscribers who join in, they get to deplete their subscription even faster... Which makes them re-subscribe more often... Which means more $$$$ for slashdot...
My subscription was a gift from a friend. While it was a very nice gift, I'm starting to get tired of the
I would be willing to support slashdot if discussion was encouraged through the posting of truly interesting stories... Unfortunately, the editors seem to think that thinly-disguised advertisement 'articles', viewpoints on the computer industry written by humanities scholars, and pseudo-science are what the readership wants to see.
Perhaps CowboyNeal should start making some useful polls like "What would you like to see on Slashdot?"
1) Interesting Industry Articles
2) New Science Breakthroughs
3) Issues related to technological rights
4) Programming Articles
5) SPAM,CRAP, and other scatology
[Guess which one is the "CowboyNeal" option]
What is it with this tedious Perl clique on Slashdot?
Dunno... Make most of the "out of work" coders are Perl programmers.
That may be, but as soon as someone publishes a paper about using this method for transmitting data somehow involving people (e.g. hand-held device), they are going to start calling it bio-quantium-cryptography.
Example:
F@ck you!
ogle was really the first major search engine that not only didn't sell any spots or anything, but actively fought against tricks to try and bias your results higher.
I realize when they first started, this may have been true?
But with the targeted advertising and "Sponsored Links", is Google any different than the rest?
Errr, I'm still reading up on this Trusted Computing stuff...
I thought the point of it was to only enable certain (signed) applications to execute.... (e.g. only Windows Media Player plays songs, and only outputing them to a (trusted) sound card driver).
Forget about what VMware would be able to emulate or not --- wouldn't such a system simply just prevent VMware from executing at all?!?!?!
If they have the capability to view and log applications, why should it stop only there?
Even if you could see the light, react, and unplug the cable in 1ms, you would be way too late.
On a 10MB bit/s link, that would mean about 1000 bytes would have already gotten out (which would be a complete packet).
Unfortunately, human eyes don't see things last a little less than on the order of ~20ms. Which means either that LED on the router has to remain on for a long duration after a single packet, or it takes multiple packets to turn it on. Which means the *instant* the light appears to be on, it is too late.
And who says this stuff is only going to phone home the *instant* you open a document/program/etc... It could easily queue the packet and wait for the internet connection to come back up.. And given the nature of Trusted Computing, this may not be something than can easily be disabled.
I'm starting to wonder if the day will come when I pull the plug out of my computer -- PERMANENTLY!
Well, Sonic (hamburger) commercials are now educating the public on the difference between "bits" and "bytes"...
In about 300 years, maybe they can take on DRM.
1. They thought they were doing the correct thing. This is after their training. After getting approved for acting as a government official. After talking to another trained person (each other). (And MAYBE after talking to other trained persons, including their supervisor.)
Sadly, good intentions are by far the most destructive force in our society. The truly corrupt are relatively few in any group. However, they often succeed in motivating earnest people to do their bidding, by convincing them that these people are doing something good.
Not convinced? Then why does social engineering work so well? Because most people *want* to help, to make something better, they want to do something good. Unfortunately, they often don't exercise enough critical thinking to question whether or not their actions will have the intended effect.
I live in a country that was like this not too long ago. I'd rather not have to go back to it, or see anyone else forced to either.
Oh, so you also live in the United States? Must be one of the southern states...
Am I psychic, or just really, really cynical?
Nope, you probably just fall into the small group that can be described as "observant". Are you talking about climate changes or recent US events?
Remember what 1st grade was like? Remember the kids that would only act in their interest and never take responsibility for their actions? The ones that would wine and cry when they got caught? Well, I think they got BS degrees in Business or Marketing and are running our companies!
On another note, I saw a "Stretch Hummer" today. Looked about 3/4 of a School Bus in length. It saddens me not that there aren't government regulations against such vehicles, but that enough of the public demands these vehicles.
I bet most people don't know what "Tragedy of the Commons" means... If they did, the word wouldn't exist.
Cliff does slashdot for the advertisement money, as do most of the other "editors".
Most companies seem to thrive by tricking the customers into entering in agreements that are not legal.
.... that they can upgrade/change my service without my consent at any time'...
My cable company recently added a clause to the effect that 'I agree
And what about the often-used clause 'This agreement may change at anytime without notice'.... (How can I agree to something that may have already changed?)
And of course the general public is as wise to this as they were to phishing in 1990.
Dialup is still limited to 53k (w/o compression).
The reason these people don't complain are twofold:
a) They are very patient. They probably spend much more time reading the page than they do waiting for it to load.
b) They don't know how it could be different.
Are these coordinates right. In Google Earth, I only see water.
we DO have renewable sources of energy
Sorta - more like "more renewable". Think solar panels are "renewable"? Well, they wear out, break, etc. Manufacture of new ones requires someone to mine the silicon from the ground, transport it to a factory/fab, assemble/produce/etc it, and transport it to where it should go.
Silicon: Only a finite amount exists on Earth.
Transportation: What is going to power the bulldozer, dump-truck, etc? Goods truck? etc?
Fabrication: What about chemicals and energy required to manufacture the solar panel?
If any one of these items becomes scarce, PV energy will not be called "renewable".
Perhaps there really is enough metals and minerals to last a really really long time. Of course if the population keeps growing and advancing, who knows? (I think most westerners don't realize that in terms of *numbers*, MOST (more than half) of the world's population don't produce, use, and own so much crap... [orders of magnitude less]) Even worse, it is this "other half" that is growing at a much faster rate than Western civilization, and they want "in" on the goods!
In high school, I remember learning about what happens when a certain kind of soap/chemical enters a nature river/stream. Algae rapidly grow and thrive. They grow so quickly that they deplete all the oxygen in the water -- leading to their own demise (and killing everything else in the process).
I've been trying hard, but I don't see how human civilization is really any different.
Do you think that many humanities students will cope with the marked absence of the "My Documents" folder? Or how about the lack of a "A:\", "C:\", and "D:\" drives?
/etc do what.
And what if they have a USB stick?
OpenOffice will be too different -- paragraph settings and margins are all differently arranged than Word.
I really hate to say this, but a non-trivial percentage of Electrical/Computer Engineering undergrad students don't know anything about Linux, and aren't exactly wizards at Windows either.
I'm not sure if these schools have to pay all that much. They get volume academic licenses. Microsoft wants them to use their products, otherwise the students may not when they go into the real world.
But yes, there should be more encouragement with Linux. 5 years ago, I started using Redhat almost exclusively at home. That only lasted a few months until a friend introduced me to Gentoo (it was a bit more primitive then). I immediately switched and have no regrets. An operating system like Gentoo **forces** the user to really learn how Linux works.. Distros like RedHat hide way too much from the user. As soon as X stops working, they will be helpless, as they won't know how to use the commandline tools or what files in
There should be a formal course that does the following:
2/3 of semester: Build a complete Linux from Scratch workstation
1/3 of semester: Build a complete Gentoo workstation/server, and maintain/update it.
LFS would teach people what libraries do what and how things work. Gentoo would teach them how to update/add/remove programs from source in a maintainable manner.
Yeah. Such actions would be probably called "terrorist acts" or something like that.
All China has to do is to only allow outgoing SSL connections to a hand-picked "whitelist" of servers... (e.g. well-known companies). They probably won't bother until enough people start breaching the firewall.
Of course, then the next untapped way to securely send information would be to embed it in audio CDS. Audio CDS store (digitally) 16-bit audio. But the low 8-bits are pretty much inaudible. Data could easily be encoded there, which would mean 300-400MB of data and still a full 70+minutes of high-quality music on a pure *audio* CD. Compressed/encrypted data won't have much self-correlation -- and neither do the low few bits of images/audio acquired from the real world. Even more sophisticated schemes exist that and would be even much more stealhly.
it's more of a social meme than a biological trait.
ditto... And the trend toward capitalism + individualism probably only re-inforced it...
How many women want to be raising children from three men, without their support? How many men want to be supporting and caring for someone elses children [e.g. children born after "marriage"]?