Somehow I keep thinking of a pneumatic silicone rubber seal, kinda like a molded innertube fitted to a typical face contour.

Variances in the surface would deform and displace its fill fluid, whose internal pressure would maintain the seal as the face contours change.

I have a sound-cancellation headset with some technology like this on the earpieces. They seal pretty well, yet are so comfortable I wear the headset on cold days to keep my ears warm.

In this modern land of anything goes I offer what we all need is a good, solid, minimal, and highly secure PUBLIC foundation system, of which we are all made very aware of exactly how it works, much like I had to "suffer" through years of English classes. Such a system would include a knowledge of HTML, TCP/IP, and a basic windowing system. Have this core system thoroughly understood and bug-free.

If webmasters conform to this, we should be able to limit the amount of hostile code released as there is no receptor for it in our machines, however any webmaster putting stuff on the internet requiring extensions and whatever will take the same risk as those distributing halloween candy to kids.... make those "hold harmless" clauses about as effective as someone distributing razor blades in apples and handing that to kids.

That little business phrase of "<insert applet here> required to view this page" would mean that business accepts FULL and UNLIMITED LIABILITY for mischief carried an any applet he required, just as anyone passing candy to kids also accepts full liability for what is in it.. Even requiring pop-ups would mean the business requiring the pop-ups agrees to full liability for anyone misled by an errant popup - even if that popup did not come from his site. I believe by now all of us see how pop-ups can be used for all sorts of phishing work, as once some hapless user is on some business site, he has to answer whatever the popup asks to make it go away. The popup may look real, but it could be just a planted bug to use the trust a customer had for a business.

I get the very strong idea that such a move would have a very chilling effect on the proliferation of hostile code when the ones who are encouraging its vectors to be installed are also compelled to accept liability for its actions.

If there is computing to be done, that oughta be done on the server side. In my mind, the client should be considered as dumb as a bag of rocks, only capable of sending and receiving data. It seems terribly risky to me to be running any sort of arbitrary code provided from "someone on the internet".

I know there will be cries of "assigning responsibility will be bad for business", however I assert that that is the kind of business I would be better off not having.

I feel what we are seeing right now is the inevitable result of a Congress, lobbied by special interests, passing law benefiting ownership rights and protection rackets of artificially mandated monopolies instead of passing law rewarding job creation.

We now have an entire nation not very gainfully employed. We outsource our core technologies and manufacturing, instead spending our resources on Finance, Insurance, Real Estate and Entertainment.

Oooh! Game time! Gotta Go...

Actually, many times I find the South Park interpretation to be more believable and realistic than the real thing - especially when it comes to religions.

Matt and Trey seem to have pretty good bullshit detectors and have the skill to illustrate their point.

I think a lot of people that get poked at are pissed because they know he is right, but does not want him exposing them for what they are to the general public.

Incidentally, I loved his run at the Mormons, and the way he wrapped up the episode. His Scientology run is a classic spot-on in my book.

If one is so "touchy" on their beliefs, maybe one needs to re-examine whether those beliefs are based on truth or hearsay. Beliefs based on shaky ground in the first place will be threatened by stuff like this. If your belief system is firmly grounded in truth, you can watch anything like this without getting worked up over it.

I think Matt and Trey do a helluva good job. They show more insight into the human condition than most I see on TV these days.

Here are the little doppler 10GHz radar toys I have been playing around with. I had been playing around with a boxful of old radar detector returns - being I had a lot of horns, I put the Gunn diode at the focal point of one and aimed it out, then watched for multipath doppler at the other receiving horns. My intent was to triangulate from several receivers and from that deduce the location of anything moving in the field. Never got that one to work the way I wanted it to... and it drew too much power to boot.

Anyway, I have been lately playing around with these. Cheap. You get a frequency out in the hertz region, with its amplitude and frequency representing the size and speed of the object being sensed. This thing is from what I can tell is the same technology used in supermarket door sensors. Personally, I like hooking them up to variable frequency audio oscillators so if I get woke up in the middle of the night and I think something's in the house... just keep real still and anything moving at all will show up as variances in pitch - and you know right quick if something is moving around anywhere in the house.

What tech do auto makers use for the proximity detectors in car bumpers?

How about these?

Somehow, I am of the belief that the NSA is behind this beta thing.

I get the idea that Linux advocates and NSA aren't exactly the best of friends. I would think the NSA would support a controllable business model, one that can be controlled with regulation and rewards, which will be a team player and work with them in producing consumer products for the masses.

My fear is one day running an unlicensed OS will be as illegal as growing your own pot, making moonshine, growing food from unlicensed seed, or whatever. The surveillance systems to verify compliance are now mostly in place.

Now all one needs to do is pay off some lawmaker to confer rights to doing something, as Congress can and will instantiate methods of legal extortion at the bequest of special interests.

Thanks for the tip, Hairy.... I wish I had some modpoints for you, but all I can do at the present is express my gratitude in words.

A LOT of us are doing a form of whitelisting for exactly the same reason.

How many of us are running programs similar to NOSCRIPT mostly because of hostile code and inattentive webmasters unwittingly distributing malicious code wrapped in advertisements?

I learned about NOSCRIPT right here on Slashdot ( Thanks, guys!!! ) in response to one of my posts where I was whining ( loudly ) about not being to be on the net for more than a few hours before I had to reboot Windows to try to get my system back.

There is a lot of nasty stuff out there, and it seems most of it comes riding in on scripting or coaxing me to run their attachment. Often I have seen them try to piggyback on the trust I have for a business - a business that places that trust at risk if the business insists I enable javascript for his site, then the bad guy uses that coercion of the business model to his own advantage.

I think that is what a lot of the clamor here has been all about. We see wealthy investor type men taking control from the techie base and may force us to "drop our defenses" in order to communicate, and we are collectively screaming "NO" as loud as we can to the deaf ears of the businessman.

I think we have all seen the suit people take down a business, and we don't want it happening here.

Not only will there be fewer stupid comments when these guru types leave... there will also be fewer of the gems these guys also leave. If I wanted social chitchat - I would go to facebook. Try asking a technical question over there.

It will be a lot easier to destroy Slashdot than it was to build it. I just really hate to see it go. I just lost my other favorite site, TheOilDrum, not too long ago. Sure, there are other similar sites, but they are not the same. It was like having my favorite watering hole burn down.

There is only one Slashdotter I know personally, the rest of you I only know by your presence here, yet in a way I feel I am among peers and friends here. You have been very generous to help me when I had problems, as well as give me sanity checks when I go overboard. I do not want to see this go away.

I have also seen Leonard Nimoy on the old "Sea Hunt" TV series ( Lloyd Bridges ) and "Highway Patrol" ( Broderick Crawford ). Old black-and-white TV of the 50's and early 60's. I really enjoy those old shows - when it was about acting and not so much special effects. Those old stars are what made Hollywood so special. Even to this day, I enjoy seeing re-runs of *some* of the old 50's shows ( however, I feel most of them were crap - no different from today ).

I just kept getting cognitive dissonance, as they usually had Nimoy playing the bad guy... and all the time I kept seeing him as Spock. Star Trek was by far my favorite TV series of all time.

My condolences to him and his family. His acting career brought a lot of us into technological interests. The only person that ranked beside Leonard in my book was James Doohan ( Engineer Montgomery Scott ).

Both were role models to me.

The most significant thing anything has is its mind.

It does not even have to be human. Animals become very loved companions as well.

If the mind is sour, I don't have much of a use for it - and do not enjoy its presence.

A woman's mind is by far the most attractive thing she has as far as I am concerned. The rest, although it may be physically attractive, is meaningless if the mind is not there. Something like that, like a porn video, is only good for venting lust, and as soon as the prostatic pressure is released, the want or need of companionship with it is gone. Its just an irritant.

My own take is women spend way way way too much time at department store beauty aisles trying to mimic the celebrities of the day, and not enough pursuing their own intellectual interests.

What makes this particular woman stand out is she DID pursue her intellectual interests - and do I ever find that attractive. Someone who would understand someone else also pursuing intellectual interests instead of just being led around by the men behind the microphones running the "star making machinery".

CPE 1704 TKS

password: Joshua

Its only lucrative because we make it so...

We seem to be so enamored by sports that we will pay for whatever someone markets as sports-related - for what reason I will never know. The whole concept of paying extra for some sports logo emblazoned on a coat or shirt completely escapes me. Even a Star Trek logo does not mean that much to me. If I want some marking on myself or my things, I will put it so myself. I will not mark other's stuff - that's called vandalism.

( I guess that's why I trained for engineering... its about the only thing I seem to understand. Why people will pay for stuff like this is completely beyond me; I cannot even stand having to sit through a game, much less pay attention to it. I would rather post on Slashdot. That oughta tell ya how low on my priorities a game is.... actually it does rank above doing my taxes - which I hate even worse. )

Congrats for feeling that way. I wish more of us had such a conscience.

Consider leaving a decent savings account along with the kids... if something happens to you, you have left a rainy day account to take care of your obligations.

I am hard pressed to trust anyone to pay my bills after my interment. I learned my lesson after years of dutifully paying for dental "insurance", month after month dutifully enclosing my check for "coverage", only to have it explained to me in the dentist's office when an expensive procedure was recommended, that I would not be "covered" because it was "abrasion" and not normal wear and tear. There went several thousand dollars worth of premiums down the drain. No wonder insurance companies can pay agents, build big buildings, and advertise like all getout. They get to keep the premium money, cause sick people don't put up much of a fight. The insurance industry has also found out that if people wise up to their business model, they can go lobby Congress to make their product mandatory. Many Congressmen are quite reticent to "just say NO" to a Lobbyist.