I really liked the way the IE for Solaris would capture the pointer and refuse to let go until the program was killed from another terminal.
BWT, as far as I could tell MS did not "program for unix" it looked like that most of the 30Mb program size consisted of a 3rd party compatibility library that implemented a huge swath of Windows API...badly.
the "distinquish identical twins" is hype and irrelevant.
As with all such systems it doesn't recognise faces but a metric derived from the face. It's entirely possible that two or more different faces can have the same metric (within the limits of the measuring process.)
So what do you do if someone matches your metric and is a terrorist? Unless you solve the false positive problem, and in a population of a billion people there are always going to be many false positives, you haven't solved face recognition.
This is not a theoretical problem. Already people have been falsely imprisoned because their DNA matches some found at a crime scene.
This quest for perfect identification is a waste of time and money.
Guess what? There is NO way I'm going to do business with a cold caller from another continent.
The annoying thing is the various country do-not-call arrangements do not cross country boundaries.
The only cold calls I now get are from the USA trying to sell me timeshares in Florida or to tell be I've "won" some price in some game I never entered.
Nobody expects MS to produce totally bug free code.
What we do expect is an operating system that does NOT allow the execution of programs or scripts supplied by an external source with high priviledges.
The US thinks that taking nail clippers from passengers makes air travel more secure. It doesn't but it looks as though it might.
Most computer security looks outwards to the internet, forgetting that the biggest threat is sitting inside the firewall.
We are all surrounded by pretend security that is in position just because it looks good. Real security is a pain in the backside. It is disruptive to the people who have to work with it and it's very expensive. It's also complex and difficult to implement.
If the security officer in a company cannot overrule EVERY single person in the company on a matter of security, the job is a joke and exists merely as a butt-covering operation.
Concider the pocket calculator. Every low end pocket calculator is now made in China and the wholesale cost must be $5 or less each; yet these calculators have all the functions that a $100 calculator had just 10 years ago.
The same process will happen to graphics and video cards. The chinese will license and tweek older card designs and flood the market with $10 cards that are "good enough" As they will be running very low cost operations there will be no desire to spend money developing and supporting in-house drivers.
If the Open Source community wants to lobby any company, start with these chinese companies. They will be open to any method of reducing costs.
one of the nice thing about computers is that clever people keep on designing faster and faster CPUs and memory.
All kinds of specialist hardware has disappeared over the years as the function could be implemented as s/w -- cheaper to develop, cheaper to deploy.
A h/w decoder has some chance of being controlled by an outside agency if only because there is a company to take to court. The s/w equivalent is uncontrollable.
The french have a few image satellites and have always been willing to sell the images on the open market.
If the report is true it's yet another example of stupid non-security that does nothing to improve security yet is also damaging to the existing market.
IIRC, US special forces walked around important Bagdad buildings with GPS wristwatches to ensure accurate targeting so they didn't have to rely on maps or satellite images.
The only reasonable spam solution is email acceptance rate limits by the major email routers.
A zombie PC will rapidly move from a low emmission of emails to a much more rapid rate. If the upstream email routers rate limit email transmission based on historical information you strangle the spam at source.
Spam isn't eliminated, but it's seriously limited hopefully to the point where it is unprofitable.
All other methods do not address the major characteristic of spam, the large number of emails and the very low response rate.
You can collect terabytes of low grade information and look for little diamonds of high grade intelligence.
Guess what?
You will find them by the score.
You are attempting to identify an extremely rare occurence - maybe 1 person in a billion boards a plane with the intent to highjack it - the false positives will always dominate the results. The cops will be chasing shadows, detaining and searching the wrong people.
Spend the money on real security, such as security guard training (and better pay.)
MS will innovate upto the point they dominate the market. At that point they retain their position by other, less ethical, means while the product stagnates but brings in piles of cash either by direct sales or by pre-install licensing.
The best current examples are IE and Windows.
Always remember, MS is afraid of change because it is expensive and will always work to stifle a technology while they struggle to catch up.
Billy Boy is a capitalist. He wants to own a) the means of production and b) the means of distribution of AV media.
He doesn't want to share any of either. He really does believe that Microsoft deserves 100% ownership of both.
He will talk down CDs and DVDs not because he has a better alternative but because they are currently independent and do not rely exclusively on any MS product.
Slashdot Mirror
I really liked the way the IE for Solaris would capture the pointer and refuse to let go until the program was killed from another terminal.
BWT, as far as I could tell MS did not "program for unix" it looked like that most of the 30Mb program size consisted of a 3rd party compatibility library that implemented a huge swath of Windows API...badly.
When your 2nd cousin uses your best joke at someone elses wedding you can get the bastard locked up..
We've been waiting for this for years!
Has this daft law ever been used to deal with an actual, real, evil, acid-spitting terrorist? Ever?
All buildings will need a guest system so that's one obvious attack vector.
Alternatively, you attack the card issuing system or the people who run it. That way you get a valid card and gain access as needed.
There will have to be a system to deal with lost cards, that's another good way to attack the scheme.
So why isn't your email publically available in Slashdot?
You can try and listen to everything but then you will spend all the time eliminating false positives.
More data doesn't automatically imply better intelligence. Quite often it just dilutes the good stuff that you should be paying better attention to.
100% security is impossible. The good guys have to get it right every single time; the bad guys just have to get it right once.
(Isn't that correct NSA?)
The problem with secrets is that they rarely last.
If your business model is based on a secret then you end up spending more on protecting the secret than developing new products.
the "distinquish identical twins" is hype and irrelevant.
As with all such systems it doesn't recognise faces but a metric derived from the face. It's entirely possible that two or more different faces can have the same metric (within the limits of the measuring process.)
So what do you do if someone matches your metric and is a terrorist? Unless you solve the false positive problem, and in a population of a billion people there are always going to be many false positives, you haven't solved face recognition.
This is not a theoretical problem. Already people have been falsely imprisoned because their DNA matches some found at a crime scene.
This quest for perfect identification is a waste of time and money.
Guess what? There is NO way I'm going to do business with a cold caller from another continent.
The annoying thing is the various country do-not-call arrangements do not cross country boundaries.
The only cold calls I now get are from the USA trying to sell me timeshares in Florida or to tell be I've "won" some price in some game I never entered.
Commercial TV started to die the day the remote control was invented.
From that day, people could avoid the ads without leaving the chair, and they did so.
Nobody expects MS to produce totally bug free code.
What we do expect is an operating system that does NOT allow the execution of programs or scripts supplied by an external source with high priviledges.
as it addresses the wrong problem.
The US thinks that taking nail clippers from passengers makes air travel more secure. It doesn't but it looks as though it might.
Most computer security looks outwards to the internet, forgetting that the biggest threat is sitting inside the firewall.
We are all surrounded by pretend security that is in position just because it looks good. Real security is a pain in the backside. It is disruptive to the people who have to work with it and it's very expensive. It's also complex and difficult to implement.
If the security officer in a company cannot overrule EVERY single person in the company on a matter of security, the job is a joke and exists merely as a butt-covering operation.
I would guess the maths works for any flexible membrane moving in a fluid so it may well have extensive applications in medical engineering.
...free!
Concider the pocket calculator. Every low end pocket calculator is now made in China and the wholesale cost must be $5 or less each; yet these calculators have all the functions that a $100 calculator had just 10 years ago.
The same process will happen to graphics and video cards. The chinese will license and tweek older card designs and flood the market with $10 cards that are "good enough" As they will be running very low cost operations there will be no desire to spend money developing and supporting in-house drivers.
If the Open Source community wants to lobby any company, start with these chinese companies. They will be open to any method of reducing costs.
I'm sure that the IBM lawyers will spend many a happy hour reading whatever appears.
one of the nice thing about computers is that clever people keep on designing faster and faster CPUs and memory.
All kinds of specialist hardware has disappeared over the years as the function could be implemented as s/w -- cheaper to develop, cheaper to deploy.
A h/w decoder has some chance of being controlled by an outside agency if only because there is a company to take to court. The s/w equivalent is uncontrollable.
The system may be slow but it's also expensive.
That is the real problem - if SCO had attacked a smaller company that couldn't afford to defend itself they might have won by default years ago.
There is no justice when the difference between winning and losing is the amount of money you can spend on lawyers.
The french have a few image satellites and have always been willing to sell the images on the open market.
If the report is true it's yet another example of stupid non-security that does nothing to improve security yet is also damaging to the existing market.
IIRC, US special forces walked around important Bagdad buildings with GPS wristwatches to ensure accurate targeting so they didn't have to rely on maps or satellite images.
The only reasonable spam solution is email acceptance rate limits by the major email routers.
A zombie PC will rapidly move from a low emmission of emails to a much more rapid rate. If the upstream email routers rate limit email transmission based on historical information you strangle the spam at source.
Spam isn't eliminated, but it's seriously limited hopefully to the point where it is
unprofitable.
All other methods do not address the major characteristic of spam, the large number of emails and the very low response rate.
So when will the copyright police be round to collect all the non-DRM equipment?
Will there be public executions of people who build their own crystal sets to listen to AM radio?
You can collect terabytes of low grade information and look for little diamonds of high grade intelligence.
Guess what?
You will find them by the score.
You are attempting to identify an extremely rare occurence - maybe 1 person in a billion boards a plane with the intent to highjack it - the false positives will always dominate the results. The cops will be chasing shadows, detaining and searching the wrong people.
Spend the money on real security, such as security guard training (and better pay.)
Why does the US government want to destroy it's own computer technology industry? It's own economy?
It's the kind of policy that a.... terrorist might think up.
MS will innovate upto the point they dominate the market. At that point they retain their position by other, less ethical, means while the product stagnates but brings in piles of cash either by direct sales or by pre-install licensing.
The best current examples are IE and Windows.
Always remember, MS is afraid of change because it is expensive and will always work to stifle a technology while they struggle to catch up.
Billy Boy is a capitalist. He wants to own a) the means of production and b) the means of distribution of AV media.
He doesn't want to share any of either. He really does believe that Microsoft deserves 100% ownership of both.
He will talk down CDs and DVDs not because he has a better alternative but because they are currently independent and do not rely exclusively on any MS product.
Surely by now everybody would have dumped Unix for NT. That's what billy boy promised years ago.
Why wait four years for a castrated unix wannabe when you can get the real thing right now?