If their expert is such an "expert" then why did he not simply unerase what he thinks was erased? Shouldn't that be part of their due diligence in proving the case? Prove to me that what was erased was what you were looking for!
Nothing you erase is just magically "gone" unless you put *a lot* of effort into making sure it is gone. If the owner made sure that it was gone using a millitary grade wipe utility then statistically they should be able to prove that too! Even then they need proof that the owner was smart enough to be capable of performing this kind of disk wipe and a complete reinstall of the OS.
Not being able to utilize 100% of the computing power is inherent in the design of the Cell processor. Don't get me wrong, its a powerful chip, but its like any multi/distributed/multithreaded-processor. With the Cell it takes time to set up and tear down the configuration between the processors, and if there is no data to work on this very nanosecond then that processor is starved and is essentially spinning and waiting for something to do. The cell has some unique capabilities to configure its processor units in parallel or in a serial data flow through shared memory, but if the task can not be broken down into appropriate computational algorithms that keep every processor unit busy then you are simply not running at 100%.
Big money will always win until its obvious that the number of votes will not get the incumbent reelected. At that point the laws will be in our favor again, and only then the courts will recognize "our rights" again and pass judgment in our favor. As long as money influences the "law" that is being written we will continue to slide ever so closer to the edge of despair. Voice that opinion and we will all be better off sooner rather than later. You can complain here on slashdot until the cows come home, but until the politicians know about it your voice is still mute.
Sorry for poping the bubble, but thats the "LAW" we are talking about here. Who is right makes no difference until the law makers agree. Your voice counts, but not here in this forum. Go make a difference where it counts. Sad, but true.
Just go http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page= 2005010107100653 do the math. Despite what some say MS does not invent much, they just acquire what they want. If they can't acquire it they take it, one way or another, but not necessarily in that order. They are business, men with a vengeance.
Lets just think about this for a minute. CPU's generate heat, which is not a 100% efficient process. The device is 20-30% efficient even then. To get by on using an inefficient power source the CPU would have to be as efficient as possible. Once it is efficient enough to run on reduced power it will generate less heat, and thus less electrical power. See where this is going? It can't be a perpetual device if it runs at a net loss. If it can't be the only power source for the CPU why build it in? At best it will only convert SOME of the waste heat to run some other part of the computer. Cooling comes to mind because the power to run the cooling is directly related to the heat generated, but turning a mechanical fan would take perhaps more energy than the device could generate at that given temperature. The device itself needs cooling to work. It does not sound to me to be practical even for running that. At best it will require an external source of BTU's and cooling to power the device for a small payback in terms of electrical power.
What would make a difference if such a device could work for all wavelengths of radiation converting all nearby sources of light, radio, static RF, and heat into usable power. Not just a "solar cell" but a radiation rectifier. Even at 20% efficiency there would be plenty of energy to harness if the spectrum was wide enough.
The DMCA was designed to keep people from circumventing encryption methodologies. It does not prevent research for security purposes. Disclosing the problems with the code is very different than showing everyone how to get around the encryption (if any) that protects some resource. Any researcher has to make tough choices in what to say and what not to say as a balance of making the system safe to use or overreaching the goals of a security analyst. Trashing the companies software should not be the goal, but rather having a system that works and is publicly verifiable should be the main challenge.
I love Open Source, but proprietary systems should not be discounted. We need to employ strict software assurance methodologies so that everyone can be sure of the systems we are going to trust with the very future of our Democracy. The companies that want to market these products should be forced by contract to provide everything, including source code, binaries, and hardware to a panel of independent (not the political party) security engineers before allowing such a product to be used for any public election. That panel needs to be organized by representatives of the people and not the corporations or political parties. The reports generated by this group must have a peer review for completeness by a second independent security team before the selection of any equipment could be made. Only a system receiving unanimous approval from both teams should ever be considered, and the election itself should be monitored by people well versed in both computer and physical security practices, not the manufacturer or incumbents or political organizers.
As a software security professional and scientist I would gladly volunteer for either task given the opportunity.
Take a look at www.groklaw.net for the current issues of the day. There is lots of discussion over the corporate slime-balls who are unethical, even if their actions are not provably illegal(yet). Take a good look at the page for Microsoft and discuss the methods employed for dealing with their competition.
Look at source code from the masters of programing such as ACE, TAO, and BOOST. Look at "Design Patterns" and learn to recognize where and how each would be applied. Design your own patterns that could have been used for past projects, and "design" new patterns for new projects. Get your hands dirty in learning several programming languages and learn their strengths and weaknesses and be able to choose which is best for any given project, and be able to defend that position (you may have to). Learn how to program "secure code". (Its not as easy as you might think.) Learn reverse engineering, debugging skills, and know your operating system internals.
The relationship affects the job sometimes. In general, to be good at IT one needs to be immersed in technology and keeping current on a constantly changing and complex field of study. This balance is sometimes skewed by the individual them self who uses 'the job' as an escape from the relationship and so its not the job that kills the relationship, as the relationship was already over. In IT its just easier to bury your head and let the relationship die of natural causes (neglect).I have seen this many times before.
IT is a VERY broad field to ask about, and you should be much more specific. IT customer support personnel get yelled at day in and day out which makes for 'a bad day' almost everyday. Other positions (like mine) allow the person to be very creative and thus they have a more positive outlook on life and their relationships. Which type are we talking about here?
There may be some predisposition for the reason a type of person gets into a type of IT in the first place, therefor the person affects IT not the other way around. My own divorce had nothing to do with my job, but it had everything to do with her job. More specifically it was her personality that made her incapable of keeping any one IT job (aka 'her boss') for more than six months, and it was her personality that went through four cars in just under two years (had to find one she liked enough to keep), and it was her personality that made her start a consulting business and hire accountants and lawyers (but still called me for technical advise). Once she rolling in the money and was hanging out with business men and lawyers you can guess what happened next. All that was her choice in life, and I just tried to be supportive because you can't change who a person is inside no matter how you might want to try. All you can do is try to satisfy, nurture, and care for them (e.g. like 13 years of 'trying to'). At this point I'm glad she 'did it' because today I am a lot happier than she is. I've been remarried for many years now and still loving life. In contrast she will never be happy, even though we both still work in what you might call 'IT'. Our worlds are very different now, but she still calls for technical advise.
Just how perfect of a circle does one really need? Whats the point of all this rogue "memorization"? I'm sure my calculator was dually impressed, even though it never suffered from any accuracy problems in the past.
Only when its in its 'testing mode'. They would not want to destroy the sensor during peace time, but they'd be crazy to put that much money into a system that can target a satelite but not put enough umph behind it to take it out, if needed. We are not talking about a chineese kid with a simple green laser pointer here, this is a serious laser control system if it can do that is implied by the article.
What Microsoft said was "Our own intellectual property was stolen from us and used to create this tool" but what I hear was "You see, this hacker waltzed right through our corporate defenses, identified the one server out of a gazillion file servers that had that code, stole it, and wrote a new patch, all in under 24 hours of our new release".
Now, in my mind, the guy would have to be an ace cracker, a network sleuth, a crackerjack programmer, and completely clairvoyant to know where to even get the copyrighted code from. So, either Microsoft is stupid enough to not know that DRM as a technology simply can not work, or they are stupid enough to have a completely failed corporate security infrastructure and policy in maintaining it. If I were in their shoes I would just claim that I didn't know that DRM could ever be a workable solution, otherwise who would ever want to buy a "secure operating system" from them? (joke, joke)
1) [-] increased prices due to inflation => decreased CD sales (normal inflation)
2) [-] increased cost incurred from deploying DRM technology => decreased overall sales (DRM drives cost up; even technology that can't possibly work, it still costs money to deploy)
3) [-] increased level of junk recordings => decreased CD sales (where pricing no longer reflects value)
4) [-] decreased quality/value of published works => decreased CD sales (RIAA still forces us to buy a full CD full of junk just to get the one song)
5) [-] decrease in useability of the media format/platform for different devices => decreased sales (again DRM directly counters profit, not all player devices work anymore)
6) [--] increased cynicism and contempt for the RIAA => decreased sales (where the customer is always wrong for wanting to listen to what the just bought)
7) [+] increase of tools to counter DRM => increased CD sales (DRM can't work in the long term)
8) [+] increase of non DRM purchasing channels => increased online sales, but not CD's
I just finished a project where the disk drives needed to be erased/destroyed at the conclusion of each software inspection that I performed. I had to do considerable research in this area because there was a zero tolerance for any data recovery. Electronic erasure is inadequate, period. A smart person with $3k in his/her pocket and access to the junk yard of choice could put together the equipment necessary to recover your data as long as the disk platters are not "physically" destroyed. Degaussing is not much better at protecting your data from the wrong people than the software disk wipe, though it might satisfy your management since they don't usually understand the physics involved.
Your bottom line best bet is on physical destruction. In my case I had to do this "in the field" which severely limits your methodologies that you can deploy. Just try bringing caustic acids on an airplane these days! Or shipping huge degaussing equipment. Besides that, in my case it had to be done on site, and then you have to contend with their security personnel as well. The answer to my problem was a $20 battery powered Dremel tool and an abrasive rubberized pad. No problems with 110,120,220,240, 50 or 60 Hz power issues. You can pick one of these up cheaply sold as a "pumpkin carver" tool in Oct if you don't mind a bright orange casing.
For the actual destruction it takes about five minutes to disassemble a disk drive, and about 15 minutes per platter to make it unrecoverable. Contrast this to wiping or the expense of degaussing. Given that the larger the capacity disk the longer the wipe time, the cheap Dremel is a lot faster! The expense of the degausing equipment is a large investment in contrast with the $20 Dremel, and there is no contest even when factoring in the pay scale of the person performing the destruction. The only issue I had on site was that the newer laptops use glass platters which take too long to "polish" the magnetic surface and were prone to break in the process, but they can be reduced to sand in a matter of seconds with it folded in a common everyday news paper and even your cheapest hammer.
Bottom line, your inexpensive path is sometimes still the best!
With nothing more than the "telnet" program I can send you what ever email I want from the "jb2@whitehouse.gov", or any other organization I so choose. Go ahead, fire your boss! Maybe it was his idea, or maybe his bosses bosses boss? Hell, fire everyone! Close down the plant, except for the janitor of course, he's too cool, and somebody needs to turn out the lights!
Just kidding here about the boss bit, but the telnet part is *very true*. Don't even believe email if it is signed with a crypto certificate that you know you can trust. It could still be a hacker who got access to your bosses email account and company address book. How many bosses you know that would detect that their account was breached? Not many, unless you work for a security firm.
Just don't believe the email until you talk to your supervisors boss to see that it was authorized. Your boss may just be hoping you don't show up so they can fire you with cause.
What is next? Quantum dots! One scientific discovery recently made (and mentioned here a while back) is that placing quantum dots in the beam of an led laser increased the light output substantially with zero power added. Now all we/.'ers need is a good supply of quantum dots!
That being said I am experimenting with a solar lighting system that charges a battery during the day and lights my entire house at night, for free (minus the cost of throwing the system together im my basement of course). My lighting needs will not burn any foreign oil or add to the global warming situation. Not only that but the bulbs will last longer than any of the equivalent CFL's that it would have taken to do the same job! You need to factor in the lifetime before compairing total costs.
What, and unsuported language? Its a great idea as far as teaching inovation, bu there is no future unless someone else comes up with an open source version of mindstormes, since its been discontinued by lego. What a shame though...
Nobody, no matter how bright they are knows everything. When you can influence a person to learn something new they will latch on to you because you empower them to become better at what they want to do well in, other wise you are just wasting your time. I had one interview that started at 5:00 pm after work, and lasted until the 1:30 am in the morning and we never got halfway through his list of questions. The problem was that I had multiple answers, none of what he had considered and all of which demonstrated that there was much for him to know and learn. He realized during that interview that I was the one that could do the best job for the company, not to mention his own career path. The next morning I turned down the job flat despite the money, because they were using SCO Unix (Pre Caldera, Pre-SCOg).
Beyond the DoD Labs and big Defense corporations there are also laboratories based in academia that do research work for the defense department, but also non-government organizations as well. I have been around the block a few times and when it comes to the variety of work, organizations like Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (www.jhuapl.edu) are wonderful places to be if you like to invent the future and solve problems in the real world. There is every kind of work imaginable from designing advanced hyper speed aircraft engines, sensors for space probes, medical devices, and many other fields of research. There is always something new going on to learn about so its a great place to retire if you are a "professional student" like me. btw - I have met more rocket scientist at jhuapl than I ever did working for years at NASA.
There's an old story about how train rails come to be separated by the distance they are.
Sounds like you just argued my point on pitching the old system to me.
As for people not wanting to use new technology, you could start the system up as a large cities metro system then grow it over time. Most people live and work in the same area, but this technology does not lock you in as you can still drive away from "the system" as you normally would. You would just have to worry about fuel for the enhanced power plant or recharging, just like you do today. The beauty of the system is that you recharge in route so that when you get there you have plenty of power for the 'last hop' of the journey home. The infrastructure does not have to go from door to door!
...erase and replace them with M$ versions of same, charge your account for it, and prevent you from reinstalling that nasty "iCounterfitMusic"(TM) ever again. But I am sure "Mr Music/video-clipy" will look real cute dancing on your screen while its blasting away.;)
Is to make a new type of vehicle, toss the old concept, and invest in a new infrastructure.
First you start out with a lightweight shell on wheels and implant a form of linear accelerator into just the highways. The inductance of the magnetic field in the roadway is powered by natural sources whenever possible, and the "controlled" stray magnetic field from the roadway accelerator induces a reactive field in the vehicles lightweight battery charging system which will power the vehicle for short distances from the highway to home or work. For longer range distances from the highway the rack mountable battery system is exchanged for a larger power plant (hybrid, fuel cell, turbo desel, etc) for travel where the "infrastructure" does not yet exist.
The roadways can now become single high speed lane each direction because the cars communicate, cooperate, and physicaly couple for combined "drafting" to cut wind friction by literally having no space between them. There will be few accidents and thus no traffic jams caused by them. Since there are no moving parts required during highway travel, except for the wheels, there are also fewer breakdowns, many of which can be assisted off the road by its peers via built in coupling.
This form of travel needs to be a "cooperative process" so everyone can get where they are going with the least amount of wasted energy and loss of time.
If SCOg failed to make a case then the source code was not a part of any previous version of AIX/Dynix and therefor could not be a derivative of AT&T code, nor was it ever distributed in a version of AIX/Dynix, therefor it was never "in" a published AIX/Dynix. If it was never in a distributed AIX/Dynix then it could not be copied "from" AIX/Dynix and improperly inserted into Linux. Therefor it was new code developed by IBM inhouse and its their right to put the code where they wish, even if that means into Linux. Source code stored or misfiled on the same CMVC host does not somehow contaminate its bits preventing it from ever being used.
Developer code is deleted all the time, sometimes just because it is not good enough to include in a live distribution. Was it R&D, proof of concept? Hey, they don't even say in the article what the code was that was deleted. It could have been an algorithm for an embedded system that removes bubblegum from under students chairs. And everyone knows that realtime embedded Linux would be better at that than AIX/Dynix!
Slashdot Mirror
See Magnetic force microscopy (MFM)
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/procee
Nothing you erase is just magically "gone" unless you put *a lot* of effort into making sure it is gone. If the owner made sure that it was gone using a millitary grade wipe utility then statistically they should be able to prove that too! Even then they need proof that the owner was smart enough to be capable of performing this kind of disk wipe and a complete reinstall of the OS.
Not being able to utilize 100% of the computing power is inherent in the design of the Cell processor. Don't get me wrong, its a powerful chip, but its like any multi/distributed/multithreaded-processor. With the Cell it takes time to set up and tear down the configuration between the processors, and if there is no data to work on this very nanosecond then that processor is starved and is essentially spinning and waiting for something to do. The cell has some unique capabilities to configure its processor units in parallel or in a serial data flow through shared memory, but if the task can not be broken down into appropriate computational algorithms that keep every processor unit busy then you are simply not running at 100%.
Sorry for poping the bubble, but thats the "LAW" we are talking about here. Who is right makes no difference until the law makers agree. Your voice counts, but not here in this forum. Go make a difference where it counts. Sad, but true.
Just go http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page= 2005010107100653 do the math. Despite what some say MS does not invent much, they just acquire what they want. If they can't acquire it they take it, one way or another, but not necessarily in that order. They are business, men with a vengeance.
What would make a difference if such a device could work for all wavelengths of radiation converting all nearby sources of light, radio, static RF, and heat into usable power. Not just a "solar cell" but a radiation rectifier. Even at 20% efficiency there would be plenty of energy to harness if the spectrum was wide enough.
Oh, sorry Bill. My mistake. We already hired someone for that postion.
I love Open Source, but proprietary systems should not be discounted. We need to employ strict software assurance methodologies so that everyone can be sure of the systems we are going to trust with the very future of our Democracy. The companies that want to market these products should be forced by contract to provide everything, including source code, binaries, and hardware to a panel of independent (not the political party) security engineers before allowing such a product to be used for any public election. That panel needs to be organized by representatives of the people and not the corporations or political parties. The reports generated by this group must have a peer review for completeness by a second independent security team before the selection of any equipment could be made. Only a system receiving unanimous approval from both teams should ever be considered, and the election itself should be monitored by people well versed in both computer and physical security practices, not the manufacturer or incumbents or political organizers.
As a software security professional and scientist I would gladly volunteer for either task given the opportunity.
Take a look at www.groklaw.net for the current issues of the day. There is lots of discussion over the corporate slime-balls who are unethical, even if their actions are not provably illegal(yet). Take a good look at the page for Microsoft and discuss the methods employed for dealing with their competition.
Look at source code from the masters of programing such as ACE, TAO, and BOOST. Look at "Design Patterns" and learn to recognize where and how each would be applied. Design your own patterns that could have been used for past projects, and "design" new patterns for new projects. Get your hands dirty in learning several programming languages and learn their strengths and weaknesses and be able to choose which is best for any given project, and be able to defend that position (you may have to). Learn how to program "secure code". (Its not as easy as you might think.) Learn reverse engineering, debugging skills, and know your operating system internals.
The relationship affects the job sometimes. In general, to be good at IT one needs to be immersed in technology and keeping current on a constantly changing and complex field of study. This balance is sometimes skewed by the individual them self who uses 'the job' as an escape from the relationship and so its not the job that kills the relationship, as the relationship was already over. In IT its just easier to bury your head and let the relationship die of natural causes (neglect).I have seen this many times before.
IT is a VERY broad field to ask about, and you should be much more specific. IT customer support personnel get yelled at day in and day out which makes for 'a bad day' almost everyday. Other positions (like mine) allow the person to be very creative and thus they have a more positive outlook on life and their relationships. Which type are we talking about here?
There may be some predisposition for the reason a type of person gets into a type of IT in the first place, therefor the person affects IT not the other way around. My own divorce had nothing to do with my job, but it had everything to do with her job. More specifically it was her personality that made her incapable of keeping any one IT job (aka 'her boss') for more than six months, and it was her personality that went through four cars in just under two years (had to find one she liked enough to keep), and it was her personality that made her start a consulting business and hire accountants and lawyers (but still called me for technical advise). Once she rolling in the money and was hanging out with business men and lawyers you can guess what happened next. All that was her choice in life, and I just tried to be supportive because you can't change who a person is inside no matter how you might want to try. All you can do is try to satisfy, nurture, and care for them (e.g. like 13 years of 'trying to'). At this point I'm glad she 'did it' because today I am a lot happier than she is. I've been remarried for many years now and still loving life. In contrast she will never be happy, even though we both still work in what you might call 'IT'. Our worlds are very different now, but she still calls for technical advise.
Just how perfect of a circle does one really need? Whats the point of all this rogue "memorization"? I'm sure my calculator was dually impressed, even though it never suffered from any accuracy problems in the past.
Only when its in its 'testing mode'. They would not want to destroy the sensor during peace time, but they'd be crazy to put that much money into a system that can target a satelite but not put enough umph behind it to take it out, if needed. We are not talking about a chineese kid with a simple green laser pointer here, this is a serious laser control system if it can do that is implied by the article.
Now, in my mind, the guy would have to be an ace cracker, a network sleuth, a crackerjack programmer, and completely clairvoyant to know where to even get the copyrighted code from. So, either Microsoft is stupid enough to not know that DRM as a technology simply can not work, or they are stupid enough to have a completely failed corporate security infrastructure and policy in maintaining it. If I were in their shoes I would just claim that I didn't know that DRM could ever be a workable solution, otherwise who would ever want to buy a "secure operating system" from them? (joke, joke)
1) [-] increased prices due to inflation => decreased CD sales
(normal inflation)
2) [-] increased cost incurred from deploying DRM technology => decreased overall sales
(DRM drives cost up; even technology that can't possibly work, it still costs money to deploy)
3) [-] increased level of junk recordings => decreased CD sales
(where pricing no longer reflects value)
4) [-] decreased quality/value of published works => decreased CD sales
(RIAA still forces us to buy a full CD full of junk just to get the one song)
5) [-] decrease in useability of the media format/platform for different devices => decreased sales
(again DRM directly counters profit, not all player devices work anymore)
6) [--] increased cynicism and contempt for the RIAA => decreased sales
(where the customer is always wrong for wanting to listen to what the just bought)
7) [+] increase of tools to counter DRM => increased CD sales
(DRM can't work in the long term)
8) [+] increase of non DRM purchasing channels => increased online sales, but not CD's
This reminds me of some childhood story books:
Ok, RIAA, "what is wrong with this picture".
Your bottom line best bet is on physical destruction. In my case I had to do this "in the field" which severely limits your methodologies that you can deploy. Just try bringing caustic acids on an airplane these days! Or shipping huge degaussing equipment. Besides that, in my case it had to be done on site, and then you have to contend with their security personnel as well. The answer to my problem was a $20 battery powered Dremel tool and an abrasive rubberized pad. No problems with 110,120,220,240, 50 or 60 Hz power issues. You can pick one of these up cheaply sold as a "pumpkin carver" tool in Oct if you don't mind a bright orange casing.
For the actual destruction it takes about five minutes to disassemble a disk drive, and about 15 minutes per platter to make it unrecoverable. Contrast this to wiping or the expense of degaussing. Given that the larger the capacity disk the longer the wipe time, the cheap Dremel is a lot faster! The expense of the degausing equipment is a large investment in contrast with the $20 Dremel, and there is no contest even when factoring in the pay scale of the person performing the destruction. The only issue I had on site was that the newer laptops use glass platters which take too long to "polish" the magnetic surface and were prone to break in the process, but they can be reduced to sand in a matter of seconds with it folded in a common everyday news paper and even your cheapest hammer.
Bottom line, your inexpensive path is sometimes still the best!
Just kidding here about the boss bit, but the telnet part is *very true*. Don't even believe email if it is signed with a crypto certificate that you know you can trust. It could still be a hacker who got access to your bosses email account and company address book. How many bosses you know that would detect that their account was breached? Not many, unless you work for a security firm.
Just don't believe the email until you talk to your supervisors boss to see that it was authorized. Your boss may just be hoping you don't show up so they can fire you with cause.
What is next? Quantum dots! One scientific discovery recently made (and mentioned here a while back) is that placing quantum dots in the beam of an led laser increased the light output substantially with zero power added. Now all we /.'ers need is a good supply of quantum dots!
Just take a look at the power consumption specs here
http://www.superbrightleds.com/led_prods.htm
The purchase price still sucks though.
That being said I am experimenting with a solar lighting system that charges a battery during the day and lights my entire house at night, for free (minus the cost of throwing the system together im my basement of course). My lighting needs will not burn any foreign oil or add to the global warming situation. Not only that but the bulbs will last longer than any of the equivalent CFL's that it would have taken to do the same job! You need to factor in the lifetime before compairing total costs.
What, and unsuported language? Its a great idea as far as teaching inovation, bu there is no future unless someone else comes up with an open source version of mindstormes, since its been discontinued by lego. What a shame though...
Nobody, no matter how bright they are knows everything. When you can influence a person to learn something new they will latch on to you because you empower them to become better at what they want to do well in, other wise you are just wasting your time. I had one interview that started at 5:00 pm after work, and lasted until the 1:30 am in the morning and we never got halfway through his list of questions. The problem was that I had multiple answers, none of what he had considered and all of which demonstrated that there was much for him to know and learn. He realized during that interview that I was the one that could do the best job for the company, not to mention his own career path. The next morning I turned down the job flat despite the money, because they were using SCO Unix (Pre Caldera, Pre-SCOg).
Beyond the DoD Labs and big Defense corporations there are also laboratories based in academia that do research work for the defense department, but also non-government organizations as well. I have been around the block a few times and when it comes to the variety of work, organizations like Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (www.jhuapl.edu) are wonderful places to be if you like to invent the future and solve problems in the real world. There is every kind of work imaginable from designing advanced hyper speed aircraft engines, sensors for space probes, medical devices, and many other fields of research. There is always something new going on to learn about so its a great place to retire if you are a "professional student" like me. btw - I have met more rocket scientist at jhuapl than I ever did working for years at NASA.
Sounds like you just argued my point on pitching the old system to me.
As for people not wanting to use new technology, you could start the system up as a large cities metro system then grow it over time. Most people live and work in the same area, but this technology does not lock you in as you can still drive away from "the system" as you normally would. You would just have to worry about fuel for the enhanced power plant or recharging, just like you do today. The beauty of the system is that you recharge in route so that when you get there you have plenty of power for the 'last hop' of the journey home. The infrastructure does not have to go from door to door!
...erase and replace them with M$ versions of same, charge your account for it, and prevent you from reinstalling that nasty "iCounterfitMusic"(TM) ever again. But I am sure "Mr Music/video-clipy" will look real cute dancing on your screen while its blasting away. ;)
First you start out with a lightweight shell on wheels and implant a form of linear accelerator into just the highways. The inductance of the magnetic field in the roadway is powered by natural sources whenever possible, and the "controlled" stray magnetic field from the roadway accelerator induces a reactive field in the vehicles lightweight battery charging system which will power the vehicle for short distances from the highway to home or work. For longer range distances from the highway the rack mountable battery system is exchanged for a larger power plant (hybrid, fuel cell, turbo desel, etc) for travel where the "infrastructure" does not yet exist.
The roadways can now become single high speed lane each direction because the cars communicate, cooperate, and physicaly couple for combined "drafting" to cut wind friction by literally having no space between them. There will be few accidents and thus no traffic jams caused by them. Since there are no moving parts required during highway travel, except for the wheels, there are also fewer breakdowns, many of which can be assisted off the road by its peers via built in coupling.
This form of travel needs to be a "cooperative process" so everyone can get where they are going with the least amount of wasted energy and loss of time.
Developer code is deleted all the time, sometimes just because it is not good enough to include in a live distribution. Was it R&D, proof of concept? Hey, they don't even say in the article what the code was that was deleted. It could have been an algorithm for an embedded system that removes bubblegum from under students chairs. And everyone knows that realtime embedded Linux would be better at that than AIX/Dynix!