Those are good points but I think that what Google is positioning this browser as and what everyone is missing is to make a platform play.
They are creating a browser that can be an application launch platform for their own applications. Think Java Web Start or what applets were maybe supposed to do for Java Apps but never did.
Imagine this if Chrome can even grab a little bit of market share as a pobro (plain old browser) - yes I just made that up. In the future imagine how much better it can be for google to say oh you want to use our apps offline just grab chrome.
It makes much more sense than downloading a plugin for firefox or IE where they don't have development control or architectural freedom.
So this is why there is the lack of fanfare and other general publicity one would expect. They are trying to sneak a platform play in here and hope no-one will fully notice.
I can't believe it but I actually agree with someone here. As someone who knows and develops RFID software the probability of fiscally feasible implants is such an afterthought its not even funny.
Most of implant cases in RFID have been for FUN. Thats right most of them have done it because it's cool or they can start a trend. You know what the same can be said for tattoos, piercings and dying your teeth black (not that I have anything against that)
Its simply not a good implementation of technology. Most implantable RFID is very very low power meaning 3 - 6 inches at best. Can you imagine the amount of readers needed to track your every move like Micheal Jackson in Billie Jean.
You want to be paranoid then be paranoid about gps enabled cell phones. Those are far better at doing the job.
That's a pretty hefty price for a small increase in speed and range. I am still skeptical as to how 802.11N will actually play out.
The problem was that it took too long to come out and it has given a big foothold for other players such as WiMax etc to maybe get a hold of the market. The promise of 802.11n and other wireless networks is to eventually increase the range so that you can have coverage over a larger area for a mesh type network but I think that with the amount of time and cost issues involved that another technology would be better suited.
As for home and small biz use 802G seems to be better but the speed is always nice. Not at that price though
History shows that it is not the product or the core engine itself that causes something to have an effect but the way it is sold, the way it is packaged and the way it is marketed.
Let's face it, yes Ubuntu may have borrowed a lot but it also has pioneered a lot and I am not speaking strictly technically - though they have done that as well just look at their source control tool developed for Ubuntu.
What mark has done very well is build up a community and give a sense of purpose and advancement something that was seriously lacking in the Debian base from which it was born.
Again Mark is a businessman and he realizes that Technology without implementation is nothing. This interview itself does not really speak of much new things but it would be an injustice to say that Mark and the Ubuntu project did not pioneer or do anything of significance.
You have a point but one main thing you are forgetting is that your statement only applies to American Schools.
As an Indian raised in America I can attest to the difference in the schooling and parenting between the culture. Students here are not as restricted and you come into college a lot more mature than college students in India.
In general you live a far more sheltered life and even college is a much more sheltered experience - meaning no big frat parties and lots of fun and easygoing co-eds. Well I went to to a tech school so I wouldn't know anything about that anyways !!
So giving such free access when they go to college is probably ruining a lot of students lives and though I am completely against it I can understand.
Also you have to understand that the society is far more restrictive there and the viewing of pron is generally looked at unfavorably.
I am sure you remember the first time you discovered pron. Now imagine that happening in your freshman year of one of the most competitive and grueling universities anywhere.
The application for the blind is very interesting. Would the person have an RFID reader near them that voices out the products they are walking by? It is a creative application though it would obviously have to be tried to really know.
But to answer your question RFID though it does in fact have radio in its nomeclature does not mean that you can simply set up really large antenna's and just read at an unlimited distance. It works by basically bouncing very concentrated radio waves off of a small tag with a small antenna that can basically break up the signal and retransmit it back a 100 times weaker. Those are the UHF tags that are being used in Walmart etc.
The ones in your library are probably HF tags which work off a magnetic field. That is why it's range is vastly reduced. Even if you could get a really strong magnet the tag and it's ability to respond back to the magnetic signal is still weak so the range will still be small.
With current technology it would be impossible for anybody to read the information without being extremely close to you. Maybe in a subway type situation it could be possible but again the reader itself is not a micro-sized device so it would have to be carefully hidden.
The danger is always there and honestly the government could do it but I think that they have far more effective high tech gadgetry to monitor you than RFID. The one that is scary about RFID is that you do have a lot more information being collected by the library, stores etc. The government could tap into the store's data via a subpoena or just plain take it. But this has always been a problem and is even so with google etc.
As we generate more data you are going to leave more tracks behind. Somebody somewhere is storing this.
I think the government has much more information on you anyways than you would think they do with an RFID card. The RFID tag is just another identification marker. It is slightly more secure, more convenient than Barcodes and that is all. Yes it can be read at a range and sometimes you may not know they are being read but the costs and effort to do that is astronomical. Wireless also is easy to track. There are gps, cell phones and a host of other markers as well.
One thing we do agree on is that RFID is not going to save or doom the world. We will work from there. I think the RFID puzzle is just too hyped. It is a good identification solution, not terribly secure but efficient and has the ability to be mass produced for good economical value. There will invariably be mistakes made in its application just like mistakes made in the early days of the web with shopping carts, phishing sites, etc. I believe it will work itself out. Call me an optimist but I use the web daily and it is incredibly insecure.
I simply don't buy the fact that it makes it easier to track or identify bits of you. If you wanted to spend the money then anything can do that. I am more scared of cell phones as they contain a lot more information. Google has more information on you too but that is another topic altogether.
With technology comes more data and with more data comes the ability for abuse. This is how it has always been. But I wouldn't go back to the middle ages because I could live in obscurity and have my privacy preserved.
Those are some good points but methinks you should should go a little light on the X-Files reruns. Just kidding, pardon my dry humor and I love X-Files too before they got all wacky.
The bottom line is that RFID is not any more secure or any less secure than what you currently have. Do you have a credit card? A bank card? Then you are have already been violated.
The RFID used in credit cards and passports are HF (13.56 mhz). The range on these tags is incredibly small. Even with the best equipment you cannot read farther than 6 - 12 inches. You can build a fancy contraption with a huge antenna and power co-efficient but you will probably cause a lot of damage to other components before you are going to increase that range not to mention looking like a walking weather station.
Also HF is notoriously bad at high speed so it is going to be hard for anyone to track your tires much less to hide an antenna in the ground they are quite fragile too. Also the readers themselves require power, circuitry, and ethernet/wireless conection etc etc blah blah. You can see my point.
The point is that there are far easier ways to steal information. Take for instance myself. I know quite a bit about RFID, I can get acess to the best RFID equipment but even with all that if I wanted to steal your information I would much rather hold you up (or hire someone else to do it) than to devise an elaborate plot where I would have to monitor your habits and then set up readers in your path so that I can get your information.
Also now that I know you are going to be armed with tin-foil I guess I pretty much have no other choice than to stick you up.
As a software developer in the RFID industry and trying to effectively merge open source and RFID I always hear these kinds of things from our clients, slashdotters, family and random people on the street. RFID is insecure, it's the end of the world, we are all going to be puppets, you wouldn't believe the kind of responses I get during thanksgiving.
And what I tell everyone is RFID is not the end-all technology to solve every identification need. Also there is no one kind of tag so it is silly to say that RFID in and of itself is insecure.
The truth is that tags can be secure or they can be cheap but very rarely both. It is impossible to be able to have them both with the current economies of scale. The ones used in the passport are most definitely not the high-end tags with memory and cryptographic capabilities. There are some active tags that can do public/private key validation but they also cost a fortune. The governments are going to go with the cheapest version.
They know full well it is going to be cracked. It is not a big deal as it is not that hard to steal or copy the current passport anyways so they have not really digressed. This was meant to be a pilot (that somehow went into production) to check how efficient it could be and also serve as a vehicle for making further enhancements and putting more data.
As other slashdotters have pointed out it is still impossible to actually modify the information on the tags. When this is possible then that is really newsworthy because now people can actually change other people's information and wreak havoc.
But until then there are far easier and cheaper ways to find out someone's Social Security and date of birth on the web.
The PS3 is merely a short time phenomenon. The only reason it is showing a blip on the BD radar is because it is cheaper than any other Blue-Ray player (not very hard to do) and doubles as a game system. This allows them to tap into two markets: the videophile and the games enthusiast and hope that there is a lot of "Cross Mojination" going on.
But come on guys. Just because geeks are buying it does not mean that it will win the war. The truth is that Joe Beer Pack looks at a PS3 and still sees $600 for a movie player or video game machine or whatever.
The PS3 Blu-Ray phenomenon is absolutely short lived and driven by movie enthusiasts who want Blu-Ray movies but doesn't want to pay the $1k tag that the other players demand.
The real winner will be the one who hits the $200 mark and not with some add-on either (sorry MS you don't get off easy either). It has to be easily understood and replace the current dvd player profile which I think that HD-DVD has the best chance of doing.
Then Joe Beer Pack will be like hmm I got this big tv for the Super Bowl. Maybe I can use it to play this nifty High Def DVD thing what is it called again oh yeah HD-DVD and impress the ladies with my tech savvy. He is not going to say well I want high-def movies let me buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 + HD-DVD addon and be viewed as a video-game playing geek.
Disclaimer: I own the X360, I am a video-game playing geek and received the HD-DVD as a gift. I would not have purchased it by myself but I must say I enjoy the HD-DVD experience so far.
I can see the slashdot/mac crowd is already coming up with creative ideas. Using this as a game system is a little far out. I mean come on using this as a wii type controller sounds cool until it takes a little flight out of your oily hands. However I think the real potential is in the car.
Many cars already have iPod integration now imagine if they had iphone integration. All you do is plug the iPhone presumably through the same type of connector as the ipod. It will automatically work as the iPod does but also now will plug into the handsfree system of your car. That would be really sweet.
The icing on the cake would be if there was a OSX interface for your car central dashboard. There are already many people with touch screen devices. Now the iPhone becomes the enabling point for the whole car experience. With a navigation widget and your own custom built widgets you can automatically get a nav system and any thing else the creative Mac Widget community comes up with.
This would be a neat idea and something I would definitely like to see.
Now if only it could do something to improve people's driving. Especially in the New York area. Now that would be a real revolution Steve.
I think this is more of a move towards VMWare than it is for helping out Web Developers.
Let's look at why? The majority of web developers I know develop on the mac anyways. I don't see why Microsoft would really care so much about this niche crowd who always beat up on MS. No - What this does is it gives them an opportunity to gain some favor in the community and also push another product which microsoft is so good at doing.
Not being paranoid but I am just thinking about what makes sense for Microsoft as a business. They really want to push VirtualPC and you can see this in their partnerships with Xen and the feeling that they are loosing massive market share to VMWare (which they are btw).
So this is more of a counter with the guise of backward compatibility.
If they really wanted to help out Web Developers they would have simply included a IE6 mode in IE7 as an update that lets you switch between the rendering engines. I am sure this would be possible and also much easier to a web developer.
Yes but you see this is exactly what RFID helps with.
"The Human Factor fails to function correctly"
This what RFID helps to a certain extent. With the amount of stress the security and baggage personnel have their mistake level has gone up greatly. RFID allows an automated system that prevents this and makes it so they can just focus on their work.
Though I am very much against RFID in passports. RFID in baggage makes a lot of sense. Just google Delta, RFID and Atlanta to see some case studies where RFID reduced the number of lost baggages and also reduced the amount of processing time it took for a bag. In some cases by 33%.
This allows less load on airport employees and is actually needed to handle the increased traffic. So like you said growing passenger numbers and security is a concern but unless you are going to add more employees (which face it any compay won't do) you need technology to do it for you.
Hmm you make good points but not all of them are correct. Human sleep has evolved based on the culmination of past requirements for survival. This meant that not being out at night was most necessary for surviving the predators of the past. Now there are obviously a lot of other factors that come into this such as the earth's magnetic field and also our body's own circadian rhythm which is tied up with other factors most of which are genetic.
Also in terms of the stages of sleep mainly REM that is not always the way the body needs to progress through the phases. There is a method of sleeping called polyphasic sleep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep which can actually change the cycles and steps needed to get to REM sleep. Famous people such as DaVinci and Buckminster Fuller have professed to being on this pattern for years.
Also I know this works because I have actually tried it for 2 months as an experiment. If work permitted napping during the day I would still be on it but unfortunately it does not. There is a great Yahoo group called the uberman mailing list that has a melting pot of people who have tried this method.
So I think that sleep is not such a cut and dry science as some people claim. That is why some people can sleep only 4-5 hours a day and still be immensely productive while other need up to 12. It is a matter of mental brainwaves and like you said evolutionary approach to the sleep genre which will affect people differently.
I think putting OpenSolaris under GPL makes much more sense than doing the same for Java.
There are very good models of developing OS under GPL such as Linux. This would make it a very easy transition to get the GPL model into OpenSolaris.
Also this would no doubt attract a lot of the linux developers out there and as any open source project knows the number and management of developers is ultimately what makes it the top dog.
Also though it is slightly off-topic I also think that Java under GPL would not benefit as much because the model of contribution is really not as easily understood as the OS world.
I think it is unfair to compare RedHat to Windows like everyone has been doing.
The real value of Linux and its support costs is when you compare it to traditional Unix and custom Alpha, DEC type environments.
Compared to these, heck even compared to Solaris, AIX support Linux and Red Hat is a bargain.
Comparing prices to Windows Server is unfair and also you have to look at the other range of Open Source products that run much better on Linux than Windows (such as Apache).
The value of Linux is much faster, more stable and better tools than Windows configurations for similar price and support. Also the fact that it can compete on the same level as Unix flavors (Solaris, AIX) for a much lower price is the bonus.
As someone who works with RFID regularly the report does not surprise me.
The biggest problem with RFID is that too many industries (government included) are implementing it because it is a neat technology. In reality it is great for some things but not so good for others.
I do think that RFID will eventually be good for adding more information and for use as human id's but only with a supplementatl verification system like BioMetrics.
But even just RFID alone is in no way less secure than printing a number on your passport that uniquely identifies you. I think that your passport number is a much easier counterfeit target than a chip in your passport.
If you just clone the chip it is very unlikely that customs will only want to check your chip and not the rest of your passport or your picture.
As an avid OSS supporter especially BSD I do believe in what Theo is saying. I have followed his rants and raves over the years and in general HIS points are right on as always though his method of conveying them is not always the best.
However I don't see the big deal honestly. OLPC is simply leveraging its power to get work done, something it really can't do in the open source community. I am sure if there was some (Theo perhaps) who offered to write the mesh-networking algorithms for an open card then they would go for that one but I don't see anybody offering. If this is a required feature which really does seem so then they need to leverage their position and power to get this done.
Let's not forget that though the OLPC is a non-profit and OSS based and blah, blah blah it is at heart a business, funded by businesses and CEO's, and let's not forget that all businesses (yes even google) look for future revenue. That is what the OLPC project represents to the sponsoring companies, a huge user base that they can reach, open up new markets and hopefully sell some products down the line while breaking even or perhaps even making a little money by selling to these markets (sorry for the string of run-on's)
So in this case it is not bad to go with a chip if there are no alternatives. Now if Theo or someone else offered to write this and/or there was an open vendor that could do it and then they still chose Marvell perhaps because of some cost-savings then he has a valid rant, otherwise if there is not choice then the business must run, money must be made and the children must get their laptops.
I can imagine a remake of Pink Floyd's wall - "We don't need no OLPC, We don't need no Mesh Control" sorry bad joke....
I have always thought that success of YouTube and MySpace is directly linked to the users of US and it is a ticking clock.
At some point the market will be saturated here and as far as I know people in Europe either despise or don't care about Myspace. Now Youtube is certainly a different story and I do use them fairly often but they need to change their model.
Unfortunately I don't think that localizing their own service will really help because services like YouTube especially for audiences in Europe is based a large part on viral marketing. Without the word of mouth aspect they wouldn't be as big as they are and they simply don't have the word of mouth going for them abroad.
If they were smart they would buy this company and make it a YouTube network. Built off the YouTube bandwith and infrastructure running YouTube software but localized and started by a local company. Now that would work well to scale the YouTube model.
Ok first of all I am not selling any RFID products. I work for an RFID software company that is working on making this technology more accessible to regular people. Also I work on Open Source to make this free for others with interest. How am I trying to push an agenda?
Second of all there are tons of security concerns but the physical limitations of RFID are so severe especially with the ones that are used on the passports that you would have to steal someone's passport and invest in a lot of equipment and programmers to do so.
All I am trying to say is that it is in no way less secure than it is right now. You are not really losing anything and meanwhile the government gains a lot of benefits.
As for the government tracking your every move they do that anyways didn't you ever watch the X-Files. Come on now.
You do make some good points but they are not anything that are not dangers right now.
1) If somebody stole your passport right now they have an easily readable number as opposed to a chip which they would have to invest in expensive hardware for and also happen to be a hacker of sorts or know how to go on blackhat forums and find the encryption algorithm for the US passports. Don't you think this would be a much bigger barrier to entry than just a passport with all your information printed out.
2) Yes you really don't know what is on the passport and this is an excellent point. But really lets face it do you know how much information they have correlated to your ssn? Or how much information is secretly encoded in the bar stripe of your credit card? Neither do I, does that mean there is nothing there?
I think that if you zapped your passport you are probably going to have an unpleasant search at customs or check-in.
I am already brown so I have to go through that quite frequently. I really don't want to give them any extra chances:)
Slashdot Mirror
Those are good points but I think that what Google is positioning this browser as and what everyone is missing is to make a platform play.
They are creating a browser that can be an application launch platform for their own applications. Think Java Web Start or what applets were maybe supposed to do for Java Apps but never did.
Imagine this if Chrome can even grab a little bit of market share as a pobro (plain old browser) - yes I just made that up. In the future imagine how much better it can be for google to say oh you want to use our apps offline just grab chrome.
It makes much more sense than downloading a plugin for firefox or IE where they don't have development control or architectural freedom.
So this is why there is the lack of fanfare and other general publicity one would expect. They are trying to sneak a platform play in here and hope no-one will fully notice.
Oh my god they killed Lenny. You Bastards!!!
Wow,
I can't believe it but I actually agree with someone here. As someone who knows and develops RFID software the probability of fiscally feasible implants is such an afterthought its not even funny.
Most of implant cases in RFID have been for FUN. Thats right most of them have done it because it's cool or they can start a trend. You know what the same can be said for tattoos, piercings and dying your teeth black (not that I have anything against that)
Its simply not a good implementation of technology. Most implantable RFID is very very low power meaning 3 - 6 inches at best. Can you imagine the amount of readers needed to track your every move like Micheal Jackson in Billie Jean.
You want to be paranoid then be paranoid about gps enabled cell phones. Those are far better at doing the job.
Read the link?
You must be new here.
Wow,
That's a pretty hefty price for a small increase in speed and range. I am still skeptical as to how 802.11N will actually play out.
The problem was that it took too long to come out and it has given a big foothold for other players such as WiMax etc to maybe get a hold of the market. The promise of 802.11n and other wireless networks is to eventually increase the range so that you can have coverage over a larger area for a mesh type network but I think that with the amount of time and cost issues involved that another technology would be better suited.
As for home and small biz use 802G seems to be better but the speed is always nice. Not at that price though
Well I think that is a little bit unfair.
History shows that it is not the product or the core engine itself that causes something to have an effect but the way it is sold, the way it is packaged and the way it is marketed.
Let's face it, yes Ubuntu may have borrowed a lot but it also has pioneered a lot and I am not speaking strictly technically - though they have done that as well just look at their source control tool developed for Ubuntu.
What mark has done very well is build up a community and give a sense of purpose and advancement something that was seriously lacking in the Debian base from which it was born.
Again Mark is a businessman and he realizes that Technology without implementation is nothing. This interview itself does not really speak of much new things but it would be an injustice to say that Mark and the Ubuntu project did not pioneer or do anything of significance.
This really is one of the best ideas I have heard for subscription music in a really long time.
Actually it's one of the best ideas I have heard on slashdot in a while.
Somebody mod these two up and somebody in the music industry please listen.
You have a point but one main thing you are forgetting is that your statement only applies to American Schools.
As an Indian raised in America I can attest to the difference in the schooling and parenting between the culture. Students here are not as restricted and you come into college a lot more mature than college students in India.
In general you live a far more sheltered life and even college is a much more sheltered experience - meaning no big frat parties and lots of fun and easygoing co-eds. Well I went to to a tech school so I wouldn't know anything about that anyways !!
So giving such free access when they go to college is probably ruining a lot of students lives and though I am completely against it I can understand.
Also you have to understand that the society is far more restrictive there and the viewing of pron is generally looked at unfavorably.
I am sure you remember the first time you discovered pron. Now imagine that happening in your freshman year of one of the most competitive and grueling universities anywhere.
The application for the blind is very interesting. Would the person have an RFID reader near them that voices out the products they are walking by? It is a creative application though it would obviously have to be tried to really know.
But to answer your question RFID though it does in fact have radio in its nomeclature does not mean that you can simply set up really large antenna's and just read at an unlimited distance. It works by basically bouncing very concentrated radio waves off of a small tag with a small antenna that can basically break up the signal and retransmit it back a 100 times weaker. Those are the UHF tags that are being used in Walmart etc.
The ones in your library are probably HF tags which work off a magnetic field. That is why it's range is vastly reduced. Even if you could get a really strong magnet the tag and it's ability to respond back to the magnetic signal is still weak so the range will still be small.
With current technology it would be impossible for anybody to read the information without being extremely close to you. Maybe in a subway type situation it could be possible but again the reader itself is not a micro-sized device so it would have to be carefully hidden.
The danger is always there and honestly the government could do it but I think that they have far more effective high tech gadgetry to monitor you than RFID. The one that is scary about RFID is that you do have a lot more information being collected by the library, stores etc. The government could tap into the store's data via a subpoena or just plain take it. But this has always been a problem and is even so with google etc.
As we generate more data you are going to leave more tracks behind. Somebody somewhere is storing this.
I guess we can agree to disagree :)
I think the government has much more information on you anyways than you would think they do with an RFID card. The RFID tag is just another identification marker. It is slightly more secure, more convenient than Barcodes and that is all. Yes it can be read at a range and sometimes you may not know they are being read but the costs and effort to do that is astronomical. Wireless also is easy to track. There are gps, cell phones and a host of other markers as well.
One thing we do agree on is that RFID is not going to save or doom the world. We will work from there. I think the RFID puzzle is just too hyped. It is a good identification solution, not terribly secure but efficient and has the ability to be mass produced for good economical value. There will invariably be mistakes made in its application just like mistakes made in the early days of the web with shopping carts, phishing sites, etc. I believe it will work itself out. Call me an optimist but I use the web daily and it is incredibly insecure.
I simply don't buy the fact that it makes it easier to track or identify bits of you. If you wanted to spend the money then anything can do that. I am more scared of cell phones as they contain a lot more information. Google has more information on you too but that is another topic altogether.
With technology comes more data and with more data comes the ability for abuse. This is how it has always been. But I wouldn't go back to the middle ages because I could live in obscurity and have my privacy preserved.
Those are some good points but methinks you should should go a little light on the X-Files reruns. Just kidding, pardon my dry humor and I love X-Files too before they got all wacky.
The bottom line is that RFID is not any more secure or any less secure than what you currently have. Do you have a credit card? A bank card? Then you are have already been violated.
The RFID used in credit cards and passports are HF (13.56 mhz). The range on these tags is incredibly small. Even with the best equipment you cannot read farther than 6 - 12 inches. You can build a fancy contraption with a huge antenna and power co-efficient but you will probably cause a lot of damage to other components before you are going to increase that range not to mention looking like a walking weather station.
Also HF is notoriously bad at high speed so it is going to be hard for anyone to track your tires much less to hide an antenna in the ground they are quite fragile too. Also the readers themselves require power, circuitry, and ethernet/wireless conection etc etc blah blah. You can see my point.
The point is that there are far easier ways to steal information. Take for instance myself. I know quite a bit about RFID, I can get acess to the best RFID equipment but even with all that if I wanted to steal your information I would much rather hold you up (or hire someone else to do it) than to devise an elaborate plot where I would have to monitor your habits and then set up readers in your path so that I can get your information.
Also now that I know you are going to be armed with tin-foil I guess I pretty much have no other choice than to stick you up.
Now, Hands UP and hand over your wallet!!!
All your Id's are belong to us....
As a software developer in the RFID industry and trying to effectively merge open source and RFID I always hear these kinds of things from our clients, slashdotters, family and random people on the street. RFID is insecure, it's the end of the world, we are all going to be puppets, you wouldn't believe the kind of responses I get during thanksgiving.
And what I tell everyone is RFID is not the end-all technology to solve every identification need. Also there is no one kind of tag so it is silly to say that RFID in and of itself is insecure.
The truth is that tags can be secure or they can be cheap but very rarely both. It is impossible to be able to have them both with the current economies of scale. The ones used in the passport are most definitely not the high-end tags with memory and cryptographic capabilities. There are some active tags that can do public/private key validation but they also cost a fortune. The governments are going to go with the cheapest version.
They know full well it is going to be cracked. It is not a big deal as it is not that hard to steal or copy the current passport anyways so they have not really digressed. This was meant to be a pilot (that somehow went into production) to check how efficient it could be and also serve as a vehicle for making further enhancements and putting more data.
As other slashdotters have pointed out it is still impossible to actually modify the information on the tags. When this is possible then that is really newsworthy because now people can actually change other people's information and wreak havoc.
But until then there are far easier and cheaper ways to find out someone's Social Security and date of birth on the web.
I think you hit it exactly on the head.
The PS3 is merely a short time phenomenon. The only reason it is showing a blip on the BD radar is because it is cheaper than any other Blue-Ray player (not very hard to do) and doubles as a game system. This allows them to tap into two markets: the videophile and the games enthusiast and hope that there is a lot of "Cross Mojination" going on.
But come on guys. Just because geeks are buying it does not mean that it will win the war. The truth is that Joe Beer Pack looks at a PS3 and still sees $600 for a movie player or video game machine or whatever.
The PS3 Blu-Ray phenomenon is absolutely short lived and driven by movie enthusiasts who want Blu-Ray movies but doesn't want to pay the $1k tag that the other players demand.
The real winner will be the one who hits the $200 mark and not with some add-on either (sorry MS you don't get off easy either). It has to be easily understood and replace the current dvd player profile which I think that HD-DVD has the best chance of doing.
Then Joe Beer Pack will be like hmm I got this big tv for the Super Bowl. Maybe I can use it to play this nifty High Def DVD thing what is it called again oh yeah HD-DVD and impress the ladies with my tech savvy. He is not going to say well I want high-def movies let me buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 + HD-DVD addon and be viewed as a video-game playing geek.
Disclaimer: I own the X360, I am a video-game playing geek and received the HD-DVD as a gift. I would not have purchased it by myself but I must say I enjoy the HD-DVD experience so far.
Ok,
I can see the slashdot/mac crowd is already coming up with creative ideas. Using this as a game system is a little far out. I mean come on using this as a wii type controller sounds cool until it takes a little flight out of your oily hands. However I think the real potential is in the car.
Many cars already have iPod integration now imagine if they had iphone integration. All you do is plug the iPhone presumably through the same type of connector as the ipod. It will automatically work as the iPod does but also now will plug into the handsfree system of your car. That would be really sweet.
The icing on the cake would be if there was a OSX interface for your car central dashboard. There are already many people with touch screen devices. Now the iPhone becomes the enabling point for the whole car experience. With a navigation widget and your own custom built widgets you can automatically get a nav system and any thing else the creative Mac Widget community comes up with.
This would be a neat idea and something I would definitely like to see.
Now if only it could do something to improve people's driving. Especially in the New York area. Now that would be a real revolution Steve.
I think this is more of a move towards VMWare than it is for helping out Web Developers.
Let's look at why? The majority of web developers I know develop on the mac anyways. I don't see why Microsoft would really care so much about this niche crowd who always beat up on MS. No - What this does is it gives them an opportunity to gain some favor in the community and also push another product which microsoft is so good at doing.
Not being paranoid but I am just thinking about what makes sense for Microsoft as a business. They really want to push VirtualPC and you can see this in their partnerships with Xen and the feeling that they are loosing massive market share to VMWare (which they are btw).
So this is more of a counter with the guise of backward compatibility.
If they really wanted to help out Web Developers they would have simply included a IE6 mode in IE7 as an update that lets you switch between the rendering engines. I am sure this would be possible and also much easier to a web developer.
Yes but you see this is exactly what RFID helps with.
"The Human Factor fails to function correctly"
This what RFID helps to a certain extent. With the amount of stress the security and baggage personnel have their mistake level has gone up greatly. RFID allows an automated system that prevents this and makes it so they can just focus on their work.
Though I am very much against RFID in passports. RFID in baggage makes a lot of sense. Just google Delta, RFID and Atlanta to see some case studies where RFID reduced the number of lost baggages and also reduced the amount of processing time it took for a bag. In some cases by 33%.
This allows less load on airport employees and is actually needed to handle the increased traffic. So like you said growing passenger numbers and security is a concern but unless you are going to add more employees (which face it any compay won't do) you need technology to do it for you.
In this case the best tech for that is RFID.
Hmm you make good points but not all of them are correct. Human sleep has evolved based on the culmination of past requirements for survival. This meant that not being out at night was most necessary for surviving the predators of the past. Now there are obviously a lot of other factors that come into this such as the earth's magnetic field and also our body's own circadian rhythm which is tied up with other factors most of which are genetic.
Also in terms of the stages of sleep mainly REM that is not always the way the body needs to progress through the phases. There is a method of sleeping called polyphasic sleep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep which can actually change the cycles and steps needed to get to REM sleep. Famous people such as DaVinci and Buckminster Fuller have professed to being on this pattern for years.
Also I know this works because I have actually tried it for 2 months as an experiment. If work permitted napping during the day I would still be on it but unfortunately it does not. There is a great Yahoo group called the uberman mailing list that has a melting pot of people who have tried this method.
So I think that sleep is not such a cut and dry science as some people claim. That is why some people can sleep only 4-5 hours a day and still be immensely productive while other need up to 12. It is a matter of mental brainwaves and like you said evolutionary approach to the sleep genre which will affect people differently.
I think putting OpenSolaris under GPL makes much more sense than doing the same for Java.
There are very good models of developing OS under GPL such as Linux. This would make it a very easy transition to get the GPL model into OpenSolaris.
Also this would no doubt attract a lot of the linux developers out there and as any open source project knows the number and management of developers is ultimately what makes it the top dog.
Also though it is slightly off-topic I also think that Java under GPL would not benefit as much because the model of contribution is really not as easily understood as the OS world.
I think it is unfair to compare RedHat to Windows like everyone has been doing.
The real value of Linux and its support costs is when you compare it to traditional Unix and custom Alpha, DEC type environments.
Compared to these, heck even compared to Solaris, AIX support Linux and Red Hat is a bargain.
Comparing prices to Windows Server is unfair and also you have to look at the other range of Open Source products that run much better on Linux than Windows (such as Apache).
The value of Linux is much faster, more stable and better tools than Windows configurations for similar price and support. Also the fact that it can compete on the same level as Unix flavors (Solaris, AIX) for a much lower price is the bonus.
As someone who works with RFID regularly the report does not surprise me.
The biggest problem with RFID is that too many industries (government included) are implementing it because it is a neat technology. In reality it is great for some things but not so good for others.
I do think that RFID will eventually be good for adding more information and for use as human id's but only with a supplementatl verification system like BioMetrics.
But even just RFID alone is in no way less secure than printing a number on your passport that uniquely identifies you. I think that your passport number is a much easier counterfeit target than a chip in your passport.
If you just clone the chip it is very unlikely that customs will only want to check your chip and not the rest of your passport or your picture.
As an avid OSS supporter especially BSD I do believe in what Theo is saying. I have followed his rants and raves over the years and in general HIS points are right on as always though his method of conveying them is not always the best.
However I don't see the big deal honestly. OLPC is simply leveraging its power to get work done, something it really can't do in the open source community. I am sure if there was some (Theo perhaps) who offered to write the mesh-networking algorithms for an open card then they would go for that one but I don't see anybody offering. If this is a required feature which really does seem so then they need to leverage their position and power to get this done.
Let's not forget that though the OLPC is a non-profit and OSS based and blah, blah blah it is at heart a business, funded by businesses and CEO's, and let's not forget that all businesses (yes even google) look for future revenue. That is what the OLPC project represents to the sponsoring companies, a huge user base that they can reach, open up new markets and hopefully sell some products down the line while breaking even or perhaps even making a little money by selling to these markets (sorry for the string of run-on's)
So in this case it is not bad to go with a chip if there are no alternatives. Now if Theo or someone else offered to write this and/or there was an open vendor that could do it and then they still chose Marvell perhaps because of some cost-savings then he has a valid rant, otherwise if there is not choice then the business must run, money must be made and the children must get their laptops.
I can imagine a remake of Pink Floyd's wall - "We don't need no OLPC, We don't need no Mesh Control" sorry bad joke....
Also Mac has known problems with supporting AD2P (audio over bluetooth).
Not flaming the Mac as I own one but their bluetooth support is not much better than Windows.
I have always thought that success of YouTube and MySpace is directly linked to the users of US and it is a ticking clock.
At some point the market will be saturated here and as far as I know people in Europe either despise or don't care about Myspace. Now Youtube is certainly a different story and I do use them fairly often but they need to change their model.
Unfortunately I don't think that localizing their own service will really help because services like YouTube especially for audiences in Europe is based a large part on viral marketing. Without the word of mouth aspect they wouldn't be as big as they are and they simply don't have the word of mouth going for them abroad.
If they were smart they would buy this company and make it a YouTube network. Built off the YouTube bandwith and infrastructure running YouTube software but localized and started by a local company. Now that would work well to scale the YouTube model.
Ok first of all I am not selling any RFID products. I work for an RFID software company that is working on making this technology more accessible to regular people. Also I work on Open Source to make this free for others with interest. How am I trying to push an agenda?
Second of all there are tons of security concerns but the physical limitations of RFID are so severe especially with the ones that are used on the passports that you would have to steal someone's passport and invest in a lot of equipment and programmers to do so.
All I am trying to say is that it is in no way less secure than it is right now. You are not really losing anything and meanwhile the government gains a lot of benefits.
As for the government tracking your every move they do that anyways didn't you ever watch the X-Files. Come on now.
You do make some good points but they are not anything that are not dangers right now.
:)
1) If somebody stole your passport right now they have an easily readable number as opposed to a chip which they would have to invest in expensive hardware for and also happen to be a hacker of sorts or know how to go on blackhat forums and find the encryption algorithm for the US passports. Don't you think this would be a much bigger barrier to entry than just a passport with all your information printed out.
2) Yes you really don't know what is on the passport and this is an excellent point. But really lets face it do you know how much information they have correlated to your ssn? Or how much information is secretly encoded in the bar stripe of your credit card? Neither do I, does that mean there is nothing there?
I think that if you zapped your passport you are probably going to have an unpleasant search at customs or check-in.
I am already brown so I have to go through that quite frequently. I really don't want to give them any extra chances