GAH! Yahoo and AOL weren't cracked, they were DOSed. And that is not a splitting-hairs distinction either.
Media coverage of the "rash of internet vandalism" has been idiotic in the extreme, and by issuing silly characterizations of these events you're joining the crowd. I know it's a single word, but since you're trying to fit in you should know that precise usage is required. Buzzword dropping is for ZDNet and Wired.
As far as the Ford thing, yes, wow, golly, use of the internet is becoming just as ubiquitous as the television and the telephone. And that's the one place where the two stories meet in the middle -- on the one hand, a major corporation supplying internet access to its employers as it would any other commodity benefit, and on the other hand the mass media pushing the DOS story to the top of the headlines. Yet more proof that the internet is no longer a curiosity, but a part of our basic infrastructure.
We've come a long way from the days when a SLIP connection to a university was unheard of and the Morris Worm was a sidebar on Page 8 of the paper...
Alas, what a stifling culture we live in. How I yearn to run free and shit myself like I did when I was young!
You're doing a pretty good job of that already.
All your posts on this topic illustrate that you've completely missed the point of this article. It's not the censoring of porn as such that people object to, it's the censoring of a broad swath of material that has nothing to do with pornography. Banning objective (and even non objective), informative views on homosexuality, abortion, masturbation, and other highly charged social and societal topics is not "protection" of anything at all. It's a way of enforcing one set of views by preventing the audience from fully informing themselves of all the alternatives.
Libraries are a place where people go to learn about things. To the extent that everyone agrees that pornography is not a useful learning tool (and even then...), it should not be allowed in libraries. But when we start down the path of restricting access to material because we don't agree with its views, we start down the path that leads away from freedom.
These religious right people aren't interested in protecting anyone. They're interested in controlling what information children can get access to. They *have* to discourage independent thought in the early years; if kids start being able to go out and get a balanced view on life, sex, and religion, then these kids might start forming their own opinions. It's not just about pornography, it's about anything that leads to independent thought or the questioning of their dogma. You consider the blocking of "safe sex" or literary criticism sites is a flaw in the censorware ; these people consider it a plus. In their minds, you shouldn't be thinking about that sort of thing anyway, so it's better to err on the side of purity. After all, if you start looking at well-intentioned sites about how sex is actually good for you, you might start wondering if the things they're preaching at you are really all that valid. And we just can't have that now, can we?
Did you not follow the development of previous kernel versions? There were 95 versions of 1.1->1.2, 99 versions of 1.3->2.0 followed by 14 2.0pre, and 132 versions of 2.1->2.2. So 41 would be an incredibly short development cycle given the trend. If you want to help hurry it along, run the development kernels on a spare box (or your main box if you like) and help squash bugs.
If you look at the "score card and net results" link off to the side, Red Hat scored 6.35 while UnixWare scored 6.10 overall. In the important benchmarks, Red Hat scored 6.7 to UnixWare's 3.3 in File Services, 7.4 to UnixWare's 7.5 in Network Benchmark, and 7 to Unixware's 5 in Security.
Granted Red Hat was mentioned last in the "wrapping up" section, but in the actual table of rankings it's third not last.
These folks are clearly in it for the money. Read their website, it's like a brochure for an IPO. It's full of "we will"'s and "leverage" and all kinds of silly superlatives that they provide no evidence to support.
I think the worst has to be the little "LinuxOne Receives Another Initial Software Order" blurb on the sidebar. What's this supposed to be, a subliminal message?
Just reading their site makes me feel like I've been coated in a fine mist of smarm. Yes, these folks have a right to redistribute whatever they want and make claims about it etc. etc. just like anyone else can with GPL'd software.
But it still stinks of greed and a fast-buck mentality.
Well, it seems like this site is dead so it's pretty much a moot point. But there are already ports of Linux that work just fine on the Mips R4300, and 4 mb of SDRAM is plenty to get up and running. It's not that this would be a particulary useful thing to do, but it would be fun.
I guess it could be a real kick if you ported Linux to it, along with a version of SVGAlib that could take advantage of some of the hardware, then got MAME up and running on the whole beast.
Right. But until then I'll play MAME on my Athlon and leave the R4300s at work:)
Same bad analogy problem as memes
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The Regulon
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· Score: 2
This is just like the tired concept of memes. Rather than try to understand how the human mind works, we just give up and anthropomorphize ideas, making ourselves passive receptacles and giving information the mythical ability to travel at will whether we like it or not.
The fact is, there is plenty of competition out there. I don't find most television media interesting, so I shut it off. In this hokey framework, I am acting as my own regulon. If information is cleverly presented or entertaining or informative enough, I watch it : it is selected to survive. If not, it's toast.
Attempting to apply Darwinian theory to the use of remote controls by television viewers. Now there is a useless idea that isn't fit to survive...
Big Media has always been quick to shoot itself in the foot. They also said that the VCR would be the end of the film industry. Today's statistics don't quite agree with that viewpoint.
Just because a medium can be used to copy their product, doesn't mean it won't also increase their sales to the point that the lost revenue due to copying is offset a hundred times by the gains in sales.
What's it matter if two people run around with bootlegged copies of oh say a Lard album, when twenty people downloaded "The Power of Lard!", liked it, then ran over to Alternative Tentacles' website or Amazon.com and ordered their CD?
Thieves! Thieves and Liars! Hypocrites and Bastards!
I picked this up last weekend but haven't had a chance to start it yet. I'm a little trepidatious; I thought Virtual Light was "just OK" and I really didn't find Idoru engaging enough. I guess I still really pine for the edge that the "Sprawl Saga" trilogy had. But the world moves on I guess.
It is rather neat that just the day before I first saw this book I'd decided to compare the three versions of the title song I have -- the ones by the Velvet Underground, Japan, and Apoptygma Berzerk. Nostalgia's love, O come to me...
"A blackened shroud, a hand-me-down gown Of rags and silks, a costume Fit for one who sits and cries For all tomorrow's parties"
Really, it doesn't matter if the "facts" in this article are true. Yes, it mostly sounds like the typical saber-rattling rhetoric of a communist power attempting to scare its neighbors. Its biggest effect will be to contribute to the growing wave of sinophobia in the world at large and America in particular. And that's a good thing. Because while we are here trying to get China into the WTO and make them a Most Favored Nation, they continue to oppress their people, they continue to oppress the people of Tibet (talk about "peaceful coexistence with neighbors -- ha!), they continue to threaten Taiwan with armed takeover, and they continue to build and aim nuclear missiles at our cities. We, the United States, are the most powerful nation on Earth ; for that we are reviled and hated, and we've made mistakes in the past, but by and large we try to do the Right Thing. The Chinese do not, and if we don't watch them, perhaps one day the United States won't be the most powerful nation on Earth, and then the anti American crowds that love to hate our corporations and our Big Macs will really have something to cry about.
There was an episode of Max Headroom (I first saw this one in 1987!!) where a robotic fly with basically a webcam is used to spy on the board of Network XXIII. Unfortunately it lands on one of the board members' shoulder and another guy swats it with his scarf, thinking it was just a pesky housefly. Of course, the fly was invented and built by Bryce, who was very upset at its demise.
I would have forgotten all about it but this was rerun on Bravo this weekend. Funny coincidence.
* Allow long-distance truckers to use the same transponder signaling device to communicate with authorities in each of the states they travel, eliminating time-consuming paperwork checks.
Ever heard of Citizen's Band aka CB? Channel 9 is for communicating with the authorities in emergencies. As for paperwork, I believe they also inspect and weigh the truck at this time, which is not a step I think is a good idea to skip.
Actually, the PrePass system (http://www.cvo.com) available in some states makes use of RFID technology and weigh-in-motion scales to allow truckers to skip stopping at weigh stations; everything is done automatically and all the billing and paperwork goes to the right places. Truckers love it since it means they don't have to wait in line for the scales.
At any rate, you're absolutely right that most of this technology already exists (I'm an especially big fan of the radar detector with SWS technology). The thing I'd like to see is for all of this to get integrated -- it would be nice to have a combination OnTrack type of thing in every car, which can receive messages, identify the vehicle, serve as a toll/parking lot tag, etc. That's where I hope this is all going.
As far as the trackball thing, ugh, the way GM makes everything else in cars all we need is a single point of failure system to break all the electronics in the vehicle at once....;)
(regarding the toll booth thing, for example) Okay, assume you're not broadcasting a cc#, just an ID number.. What's to prevent someone copying that and running up charges on your account?
The fact is, that any system like this can be duplicated and abused, while it's in its infancy.. Look at all the fraud that has occured (and still occurs) with cell-phone theft.. It's not hard to see that the system is becoming available before the means to secure it.
The biggest obstacle is that the type of tags used in ETC systems are of the passive-backscatter variety. That is, they receive a signal from an antenna and reflect it back; the tag may or may not contain a battery depending on how much data it needs to insert into the signal, whether it supports a write capability, etc.
The point being, that it's not easy to read such a tag, since you need a fairly powerful (and very large and bulky) antenna to get any sort of range. If you were to try and sit on an overpass and sniff tags, you'd need a roughly 9-square-foot antenna and a hefty power source -- not very inconspicuous.
If you are lucky enough to be in an area that uses reprogrammable tags (tags whose ID can be changed), and manage to get hold of someone's tag ID and clone it, then you still run a pretty good risk of getting caught. The unlucky person who's tag you're cloning will probably notice the high charge on their statement and complain to the agency ; they'll flag the tag to automatically have an image captured every time it's used, and eventually you'll get caught.
All that risk and trouble to evade a 4-dollar toll? I don't think so...
It would be so easy for the authorities to use it for speed enforcement purposes, though. Put two gates on the road, a known distance apart. When any given car passes through both of them, you get two timestamps. Subtract the first from the second to get an elapsed-time figure. Divide by the distance between the gates (known) to get an average velocity. If this velocity is greater than the speed limit for the road (plus a little "slop" to guard against computational errors, say, 5 mph), issue the driver a ticket.
This sort of rumor has been going around for a long time, but no one ever seems to have gotten such a ticket (but they know someone who did). Hmm...
This type of thing really wouldn't stand up in court (due to lack of evidence), and would be too politically unacceptable. The toll road itself gains no benefit from doing this, so they won't do it, and on the other hand the first time someone gets a ticket due to an error it would show up on the front page. Not likely to happen.
I remember when I was working on a demo of the video capture software for one of these systems (cameras are used to record vehicle type mismatches, expired accounts, and no-tag violations) I put in a line on the text inserter that showed a speed calculation provided by the overhead profiler device (accurate to within 5mph). I was mostly doing this to amuse myself (since I was testing the thing with my own car!) and to show the client agency what could be done with it. They just went ballistic, and kept insisting (long after we'd happily agreed) that it be taken off.
The point is, this sort of law enforcement / privacy invasion issue is too politically charged to ever really happen. It's possible, sure, simple even. But that's why we have media and voting, and all it takes is enough angry people and the officials in charge are kept in line.
Traffic signals use RF induction loops, which are cheap and durable. These only work really well for seeing large chunks of metal; motorcycles and even some small automobiles (ones made mostly of composites) don't do well on them either.
Radar isn't a good idea for these types of things. There are other sensors, such as light curtains or overhead laser profilers, which can provide accurate images reliably, regardless of the size of the vehicle.
You'd be surprised at how small transponders are; the ones most often used today are about the size of a pack of cigarettes or a mouse and weigh about as much.
And it's true that the best way to avoid congestion is for everyone to give up their vehicles, but that's hardly likely to happen anytime soon. Best to use technology to solve problems, rather than giving up and living in a cave somewhere.
A lot of posters here have so far raised some valid concerns, but as someone who is involved in the IVHS world (specifically electronic toll collection systems) I think I can say that this is a good thing for the FCC to do, and it helps the development of a technology that has already proven very beneficial.
Privacy concerns are common, but in every existing implementation of this sort of system legal safeguards are put in place. None of these systems can be used for speed enforcement purposes; in fact the only ticket you can get from a toll collection system is one for blowing through the toll with an expired account (or no account at all). These systems are also generally required by law to either provide a way of anonymizing the user or to provide a means of defeating the system (i.e. disable the tag so that the account isnt read if you're on a trip you want noone to keep a record of).
As far as the benefit and convenience, these things speak for themselves: ask anyone who uses E-ZPass on the East Coast, Florida SunPass, CalTrans' FasTrak, Atlanta's GA400 Cruise Card, and a host of others. Some states use a similar system for truckers, called PrePass, which uses transponders and weigh-in-motion scales built into the interstate to allow truckers to bypass weigh stations while still having their weight checked.
Some cities, such as Houston, use the transponders for the toll-collection systems in a secondary traffic-management role : antennas around the city monitor the flow of traffic and detect traffic jams and other problems by sampling the movement of the transponders. In this case, the account and other vehicle information isn't used, just the fact that vehicles are moving about is information enough.
Some models of radar detector can already read signals and warn of emergency vehicles and/or receive text messages sent by a portable roadside antenna; these can warn of traffic congestion problems, accidents, etc., and are another way of helping traffic flow. The biggest problem contributing to traffic jams stemming from accidents etc, is that by the time drivers know about a problem, they've gone too far to turn around or take an alternate route.
In short, traffic management systems using radio transmitters and other technologies are already in place in various locations. Steps like the FCC has taken will help all of these sytems standardize and become interoperable, which will help everyone on the road.
This always happens. Remember the two fake cousins on the Dukes of Hazzard who showed up for the third season when the original actors left, who looked just like Bo and Luke but weren't? Or the poor guy who looked just like Johnny Depp on Jump Street after he left? Or the dark haired guy and the blond guy, who were supposed to be Apollo and Starbuck's kids on Galactica 1980, who were in their 20s even though Commander Adama hadnt aged a day?
I *am* kidding about comparing those shows to the X-files, but there's truth in all this: network executives always take great shows and ruin them by trying to "keep the magic going" after the original stars leave. Instead of doing the right thing and cancelling the show, or making a truly different spinoff with a few of the remaining characters, they instead create what effectively becomes a parody of the original by sticking in clones of the actors and hiring bad writers to do canned remakes of old episodes. And then the show becomes tainted; instead of a great few seasons and a brilliant ending we're left with the memory of yet another gasping struggle for ratings.
This always happens. Remember the two fake cousins on the Dukes of Hazzard who showed up for the third season when the original actors left, who looked just like Bo and Luke but weren't? Or the poor guy who looked just like Johnny Depp on Jump Street after he left? Or the dark haired guy and the blond guy, who were supposed to be Apollo and Starbuck's kids on Galactica 1980, who were in their 20s even though Commander Adama hadnt aged a day? I *am* kidding about comparing those shows to the X-files, but there's truth in all this: network executives always take great shows and ruin them by trying to "keep the magic going" after the original stars leave. Instead of doing the right thing and cancelling the show, or making a truly different spinoff with a few of the remaining characters, they instead create what effectively becomes a parody of the original by sticking in clones of the actors and hiring bad writers to do canned remakes of old episodes. And then the show becomes tainted; instead of a great few seasons and a brilliant ending we're left with the memory of yet another gasping struggle for ratings. It's had a good life, let it die with dignity.
The Voodoo3 can do 32-bit color in 2D. It is only limited to 16-bit color textures in 3D. I'm happily running X at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color as I type this.
XFree86_3DFX-SVGA-3.3.3-5 [debecker@sycorax ~]$ xdpyinfo name of display::0.0 version number: 11.0 vendor string: The XFree86 Project, Inc; VMWare; Daryll Strauss ... screen #0: dimensions: 1280x1024 pixels (433x347 millimeters) resolution: 75x75 dots per inch depths (1): 24 root window id: 0x26 depth of root window: 24 planes ... visual: visual id: 0x22 class: TrueColor depth: 24 planes ...
Oh, and Q3test for Linux absolutely rocks at 1024x768 on this system:)
This was a completely nothing article. It was a slow news day and the guy had nothing to write about, so he came up with the only negative thing left (all of the usual ZDnet FUD has been beaten into the dirt by now) with which to smear Linux: ad hominem attacks against its creator.
But that's actually a good thing on a couple of levels. On the cheap-shot, anti-MS side (which I'm always willing to jab at) there's the very real notion that when someone has truly lost a debate but doesn't want to admit it, they resort to slinging mud. Maybe this guy is so motivated, maybe not. As they say, "I'm just sayin'". The other, more balanced way to look at it is that on a slow news day, journalists are willing write something, anything, about Linux, because they know it'll get them noticed and talked about one way or another.
And that is a sure sign of Linux's success.
Re:He wasn't writing wills with this configuration
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Dell finds "Oldest PC"
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· Score: 1
As someone stated above, the owner of the machine posted on ZDNet that he had upgraded the computer to 48K of memory. That's plenty enough to do serious work; I remember coding some pretty useful stuff on a VIC-20 with 5KB (3.5 available to the user) and later upgraded to 16K of RAM, so 48K would seem luxurious by comparison. The Altair was a pretty simple machine, but with enough RAM boards and a decent terminal I could see doing the kind of stuff he was describing.
Personally I liked this article, if only because it's one of the few "PC" related ones that doesnt make me feel old -- I got my first computer (the aforementioned VIC-20) in 1981 when I was 11. These kids today with their hair and their clothes...
Geeks read Wired as if it were the Koran. Everybody else read it because they were afraid not to.
ROTFL. Wannabe geeks read it. IT managers who wanted to act cool, hip, and aware read it. Wired wasn't in any way visionary; nearly everything ever published in Wired was years out of date. It was probably cool for people who had never heard of William Gibson or Tim Berners-Lee until they leafed through its glossy pages, but for true geeks it was mostly a sad commentary on the way pop media misinterprets technological and cultural phenomena.
Granted, as far as mainstream media goes it wasn't that bad (one only has to look for the old Time magazine article on "cyberpunk" for evidence) but to say it was ever cutting edge is laughable.
If it bothers people so much, there are plenty of ways around the banner ads. Personally, I just see a narrow white band with the Internet JunkBUSTER logo on it.
Slashdot Mirror
GAH! Yahoo and AOL weren't cracked, they were DOSed. And that is not a splitting-hairs distinction either.
Media coverage of the "rash of internet vandalism" has been idiotic in the extreme, and by issuing silly characterizations of these events you're joining the crowd. I know it's a single word, but since you're trying to fit in you should know that precise usage is required. Buzzword dropping is for ZDNet and Wired.
As far as the Ford thing, yes, wow, golly, use of the internet is becoming just as ubiquitous as the television and the telephone. And that's the one place where the two stories meet in the middle -- on the one hand, a major corporation supplying internet access to its employers as it would any other commodity benefit, and on the other hand the mass media pushing the DOS story to the top of the headlines. Yet more proof that the internet is no longer a curiosity, but a part of our basic infrastructure.
We've come a long way from the days when a SLIP connection to a university was unheard of and the Morris Worm was a sidebar on Page 8 of the paper...
Alas, what a stifling culture we live in. How I yearn to run free and shit myself like I did when I was young!
You're doing a pretty good job of that already.
All your posts on this topic illustrate that you've completely missed the point of this article. It's not the censoring of porn as such that people object to, it's the censoring of a broad swath of material that has nothing to do with pornography. Banning objective (and even non objective), informative views on homosexuality, abortion, masturbation, and other highly charged social and societal topics is not "protection" of anything at all. It's a way of enforcing one set of views by preventing the audience from fully informing themselves of all the alternatives.
Libraries are a place where people go to learn about things. To the extent that everyone agrees that pornography is not a useful learning tool (and even then...), it should not be allowed in libraries. But when we start down the path of restricting access to material because we don't agree with its views, we start down the path that leads away from freedom.
These religious right people aren't interested in protecting anyone. They're interested in controlling what information children can get access to. They *have* to discourage independent thought in the early years; if kids start being able to go out and get a balanced view on life, sex, and religion, then these kids might start forming their own opinions. It's not just about pornography, it's about anything that leads to independent thought or the questioning of their dogma. You consider the blocking of "safe sex" or literary criticism sites is a flaw in the censorware ; these people consider it a plus. In their minds, you shouldn't be thinking about that sort of thing anyway, so it's better to err on the side of purity. After all, if you start looking at well-intentioned sites about how sex is actually good for you, you might start wondering if the things they're preaching at you are really all that valid. And we just can't have that now, can we?
Did you not follow the development of previous kernel versions? There were 95 versions of 1.1->1.2, 99 versions of 1.3->2.0 followed by 14 2.0pre, and 132 versions of 2.1->2.2. So 41 would be an incredibly short development cycle given the trend. If you want to help hurry it along, run the development kernels on a spare box (or your main box if you like) and help squash bugs.
If you look at the "score card and net results" link off to the side, Red Hat scored 6.35 while UnixWare scored 6.10 overall. In the important benchmarks, Red Hat scored 6.7 to UnixWare's 3.3 in File Services, 7.4 to UnixWare's 7.5 in Network Benchmark, and 7 to Unixware's 5 in Security.
Granted Red Hat was mentioned last in the "wrapping up" section, but in the actual table of rankings it's third not last.
These folks are clearly in it for the money. Read their website, it's like a brochure for an IPO. It's full of "we will"'s and "leverage" and all kinds of silly superlatives that they provide no evidence to support.
I think the worst has to be the little "LinuxOne Receives Another Initial Software Order" blurb on the sidebar. What's this supposed to be, a subliminal message?
Just reading their site makes me feel like I've been coated in a fine mist of smarm. Yes, these folks have a right to redistribute whatever they want and make claims about it etc. etc. just like anyone else can with GPL'd software.
But it still stinks of greed and a fast-buck mentality.
Well, it seems like this site is dead so it's pretty much a moot point. But there are already ports of Linux that work just fine on the Mips R4300, and 4 mb of SDRAM is plenty to get up and running. It's not that this would be a particulary useful thing to do, but it would be fun.
:)
I guess it could be a real kick if you ported Linux to it, along with a version of SVGAlib that could take advantage of some of the hardware, then got MAME up and running on the whole beast.
Right. But until then I'll play MAME on my Athlon and leave the R4300s at work
This is just like the tired concept of memes. Rather than try to understand how the human mind works, we just give up and anthropomorphize ideas, making ourselves passive receptacles and giving information the mythical ability to travel at will whether we like it or not.
The fact is, there is plenty of competition out there. I don't find most television media interesting, so I shut it off. In this hokey framework, I am acting as my own regulon. If information is cleverly presented or entertaining or informative enough, I watch it : it is selected to survive. If not, it's toast.
Attempting to apply Darwinian theory to the use of remote controls by television viewers. Now there is a useless idea that isn't fit to survive...
Big Media has always been quick to shoot itself in the foot. They also said that the VCR would be the end of the film industry. Today's statistics don't quite agree with that viewpoint.
Just because a medium can be used to copy their product, doesn't mean it won't also increase their sales to the point that the lost revenue due to copying is offset a hundred times by the gains in sales.
What's it matter if two people run around with bootlegged copies of oh say a Lard album, when twenty people downloaded "The Power of Lard!", liked it, then ran over to Alternative Tentacles' website or Amazon.com and ordered their CD?
Thieves! Thieves and Liars! Hypocrites and Bastards!
I picked this up last weekend but haven't had a chance to start it yet. I'm a little trepidatious; I thought Virtual Light was "just OK" and I really didn't find Idoru engaging enough. I guess I still really pine for the edge that the "Sprawl Saga" trilogy had. But the world moves on I guess.
It is rather neat that just the day before I first saw this book I'd decided to compare the three versions of the title song I have -- the ones by the Velvet Underground, Japan, and Apoptygma Berzerk. Nostalgia's love, O come to me...
"A blackened shroud, a hand-me-down gown
Of rags and silks, a costume
Fit for one who sits and cries
For all tomorrow's parties"
Really, it doesn't matter if the "facts" in this article are true. Yes, it mostly sounds like the typical saber-rattling rhetoric of a communist power attempting to scare its neighbors. Its biggest effect will be to contribute to the growing wave of sinophobia in the world at large and America in particular. And that's a good thing. Because while we are here trying to get China into the WTO and make them a Most Favored Nation, they continue to oppress their people, they continue to oppress the people of Tibet (talk about "peaceful coexistence with neighbors -- ha!), they continue to threaten Taiwan with armed takeover, and they continue to build and aim nuclear missiles at our cities. We, the United States, are the most powerful nation on Earth ; for that we are reviled and hated, and we've made mistakes in the past, but by and large we try to do the Right Thing. The Chinese do not, and if we don't watch them, perhaps one day the United States won't be the most powerful nation on Earth, and then the anti American crowds that love to hate our corporations and our Big Macs will really have something to cry about.
There was an episode of Max Headroom (I first saw this one in 1987!!) where a robotic fly with basically a webcam is used to spy on the board of Network XXIII. Unfortunately it lands on one of the board members' shoulder and another guy swats it with his scarf, thinking it was just a pesky housefly. Of course, the fly was invented and built by Bryce, who was very upset at its demise.
I would have forgotten all about it but this was rerun on Bravo this weekend. Funny coincidence.
Sycorax
;)
Caliban
Prospero
Miranda
Ariel
Trinculo
...this is my home network, so there will be more when I get more boxen
* Allow long-distance truckers to use the same transponder signaling device to communicate with authorities in each of the states they travel, eliminating time-consuming paperwork checks.
;)
Ever heard of Citizen's Band aka CB? Channel 9 is for communicating with the authorities in emergencies. As for paperwork, I believe they also inspect and weigh the truck at this time, which is not a step I think is a good idea to skip.
Actually, the PrePass system (http://www.cvo.com) available in some states makes use of RFID technology and weigh-in-motion scales to allow truckers to skip stopping at weigh stations; everything is done automatically and all the billing and paperwork goes to the right places. Truckers love it since it means they don't have to wait in line for the scales.
At any rate, you're absolutely right that most of this technology already exists (I'm an especially big fan of the radar detector with SWS technology). The thing I'd like to see is for all of this to get integrated -- it would be nice to have a combination OnTrack type of thing in every car, which can receive messages, identify the vehicle, serve as a toll/parking lot tag, etc. That's where I hope this is all going.
As far as the trackball thing, ugh, the way GM makes everything else in cars all we need is a single point of failure system to break all the electronics in the vehicle at once....
(regarding the toll booth thing, for example) Okay, assume you're not broadcasting a cc#, just an ID number.. What's to prevent someone copying that and running up charges on your account?
The fact is, that any system like this can be duplicated and abused, while it's in its infancy.. Look at all the fraud that has occured (and still occurs) with cell-phone theft.. It's not hard to see that the system is becoming available before the means to secure it.
The biggest obstacle is that the type of tags used in ETC systems are of the passive-backscatter variety. That is, they receive a signal from an antenna and reflect it back; the tag may or may not contain a battery depending on how much data it needs to insert into the signal, whether it supports a write capability, etc.
The point being, that it's not easy to read such a tag, since you need a fairly powerful (and very large and bulky) antenna to get any sort of range. If you were to try and sit on an overpass and sniff tags, you'd need a roughly 9-square-foot antenna and a hefty power source -- not very inconspicuous.
If you are lucky enough to be in an area that uses reprogrammable tags (tags whose ID can be changed), and manage to get hold of someone's tag ID and clone it, then you still run a pretty good risk of getting caught. The unlucky person who's tag you're cloning will probably notice the high charge on their statement and complain to the agency ; they'll flag the tag to automatically have an image captured every time it's used, and eventually you'll get caught.
All that risk and trouble to evade a 4-dollar toll? I don't think so...
It would be so easy for the authorities to use it for speed enforcement purposes, though. Put two gates on the road, a known distance apart. When any given car passes through both of them, you get two timestamps. Subtract the first from the second to get an elapsed-time figure. Divide by the distance between the gates (known) to get an average velocity. If this velocity is greater than the speed limit for the road (plus a little "slop" to guard against computational errors, say, 5 mph), issue the driver a ticket.
This sort of rumor has been going around for a long time, but no one ever seems to have gotten such a ticket (but they know someone who did). Hmm...
This type of thing really wouldn't stand up in court (due to lack of evidence), and would be too politically unacceptable. The toll road itself gains no benefit from doing this, so they won't do it, and on the other hand the first time someone gets a ticket due to an error it would show up on the front page. Not likely to happen.
I remember when I was working on a demo of the video capture software for one of these systems (cameras are used to record vehicle type mismatches, expired accounts, and no-tag violations) I put in a line on the text inserter that showed a speed calculation provided by the overhead profiler device (accurate to within 5mph). I was mostly doing this to amuse myself (since I was testing the thing with my own car!) and to show the client agency what could be done with it. They just went ballistic, and kept insisting (long after we'd happily agreed) that it be taken off.
The point is, this sort of law enforcement / privacy invasion issue is too politically charged to ever really happen. It's possible, sure, simple even. But that's why we have media and voting, and all it takes is enough angry people and the officials in charge are kept in line.
Traffic signals use RF induction loops, which are cheap and durable. These only work really well for seeing large chunks of metal; motorcycles and even some small automobiles (ones made mostly of composites) don't do well on them either.
Radar isn't a good idea for these types of things. There are other sensors, such as light curtains or overhead laser profilers, which can provide accurate images reliably, regardless of the size of the vehicle.
You'd be surprised at how small transponders are; the ones most often used today are about the size of a pack of cigarettes or a mouse and weigh about as much.
And it's true that the best way to avoid congestion is for everyone to give up their vehicles, but that's hardly likely to happen anytime soon. Best to use technology to solve problems, rather than giving up and living in a cave somewhere.
A lot of posters here have so far raised some valid concerns, but as someone who is involved in the IVHS world (specifically electronic toll collection systems) I think I can say that this is a good thing for the FCC to do, and it helps the development of a technology that has already proven very beneficial.
Privacy concerns are common, but in every existing implementation of this sort of system legal safeguards are put in place. None of these systems can be used for speed enforcement purposes; in fact the only ticket you can get from a toll collection system is one for blowing through the toll with an expired account (or no account at all). These systems are also generally required by law to either provide a way of anonymizing the user or to provide a means of defeating the system (i.e. disable the tag so that the account isnt read if you're on a trip you want noone to keep a record of).
As far as the benefit and convenience, these things speak for themselves: ask anyone who uses E-ZPass on the East Coast, Florida SunPass, CalTrans' FasTrak, Atlanta's GA400 Cruise Card, and a host of others. Some states use a similar system for truckers, called PrePass, which uses transponders and weigh-in-motion scales built into the interstate to allow truckers to bypass weigh stations while still having their weight checked.
Some cities, such as Houston, use the transponders for the toll-collection systems in a secondary traffic-management role : antennas around the city monitor the flow of traffic and detect traffic jams and other problems by sampling the movement of the transponders. In this case, the account and other vehicle information isn't used, just the fact that vehicles are moving about is information enough.
Some models of radar detector can already read signals and warn of emergency vehicles and/or receive text messages sent by a portable roadside antenna; these can warn of traffic congestion problems, accidents, etc., and are another way of helping traffic flow. The biggest problem contributing to traffic jams stemming from accidents etc, is that by the time drivers know about a problem, they've gone too far to turn around or take an alternate route.
In short, traffic management systems using radio transmitters and other technologies are already in place in various locations. Steps like the FCC has taken will help all of these sytems standardize and become interoperable, which will help everyone on the road.
This always happens. Remember the two fake cousins on the Dukes of Hazzard who showed up for the third season when the original actors left, who looked just like Bo and Luke but weren't? Or the poor guy who looked just like Johnny Depp on Jump Street after he left? Or the dark haired guy and the blond guy, who were supposed to be Apollo and Starbuck's kids on Galactica 1980, who were in their 20s even though Commander Adama hadnt aged a day?
I *am* kidding about comparing those shows to the X-files, but there's truth in all this: network executives always take great shows and ruin them by trying to "keep the magic going" after the original stars leave. Instead of doing the right thing and cancelling the show, or making a truly different spinoff with a few of the remaining characters, they instead create what effectively becomes a parody of the original by sticking in clones of the actors and hiring bad writers to do canned remakes of old episodes. And then the show becomes tainted; instead of a great few seasons and a brilliant ending we're left with the memory of yet another gasping struggle for ratings.
It's had a good life, let it die with dignity.
This always happens. Remember the two fake cousins on the Dukes of Hazzard who showed up for the third season when the original actors left, who looked just like Bo and Luke but weren't? Or the poor guy who looked just like Johnny Depp on Jump Street after he left? Or the dark haired guy and the blond guy, who were supposed to be Apollo and Starbuck's kids on Galactica 1980, who were in their 20s even though Commander Adama hadnt aged a day? I *am* kidding about comparing those shows to the X-files, but there's truth in all this: network executives always take great shows and ruin them by trying to "keep the magic going" after the original stars leave. Instead of doing the right thing and cancelling the show, or making a truly different spinoff with a few of the remaining characters, they instead create what effectively becomes a parody of the original by sticking in clones of the actors and hiring bad writers to do canned remakes of old episodes. And then the show becomes tainted; instead of a great few seasons and a brilliant ending we're left with the memory of yet another gasping struggle for ratings. It's had a good life, let it die with dignity.
The Voodoo3 can do 32-bit color in 2D. It is only limited to 16-bit color textures in 3D. I'm happily running X at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color as I type this.
:0.0
:)
XFree86_3DFX-SVGA-3.3.3-5
[debecker@sycorax ~]$ xdpyinfo
name of display:
version number: 11.0
vendor string: The XFree86 Project, Inc; VMWare; Daryll Strauss
...
screen #0:
dimensions: 1280x1024 pixels (433x347 millimeters)
resolution: 75x75 dots per inch
depths (1): 24
root window id: 0x26
depth of root window: 24 planes
...
visual:
visual id: 0x22
class: TrueColor
depth: 24 planes
...
Oh, and Q3test for Linux absolutely rocks at 1024x768 on this system
This was a completely nothing article. It was a slow news day and the guy had nothing to write about, so he came up with the only negative thing left (all of the usual ZDnet FUD has been beaten into the dirt by now) with which to smear Linux: ad hominem attacks against its creator.
But that's actually a good thing on a couple of levels. On the cheap-shot, anti-MS side (which I'm always willing to jab at) there's the very real notion that when someone has truly lost a debate but doesn't want to admit it, they resort to slinging mud. Maybe this guy is so motivated, maybe not. As they say, "I'm just sayin'". The other, more balanced way to look at it is that on a slow news day, journalists are willing write something, anything, about Linux, because they know it'll get them noticed and talked about one way or another.
And that is a sure sign of Linux's success.
As someone stated above, the owner of the machine posted on ZDNet that he had upgraded the computer to 48K of memory. That's plenty enough to do serious work; I remember coding some pretty useful stuff on a VIC-20 with 5KB (3.5 available to the user) and later upgraded to 16K of RAM, so 48K would seem luxurious by comparison. The Altair was a pretty simple machine, but with enough RAM boards and a decent terminal I could see doing the kind of stuff he was describing.
Personally I liked this article, if only because it's one of the few "PC" related ones that doesnt make me feel old -- I got my first computer (the aforementioned VIC-20) in 1981 when I was 11. These kids today with their hair and their clothes...
Geeks read Wired as if it were the Koran. Everybody else read it because they were afraid not to.
ROTFL. Wannabe geeks read it. IT managers who wanted to act cool, hip, and aware read it. Wired wasn't in any way visionary; nearly everything ever published in Wired was years out of date. It was probably cool for people who had never heard of William Gibson or Tim Berners-Lee until they leafed through its glossy pages, but for true geeks it was mostly a sad commentary on the way pop media misinterprets technological and cultural phenomena.
Granted, as far as mainstream media goes it wasn't that bad (one only has to look for the old Time magazine article on "cyberpunk" for evidence) but to say it was ever cutting edge is laughable.
If it bothers people so much, there are plenty of ways around the banner ads. Personally, I just see a narrow white band with the Internet JunkBUSTER logo on it.
:)
Tastes great, less filling