The "patent" fig 9 discusses how to get the NCSA Mosaic 2.4 browser to display his object. He did NOT invent the Internet. He did NOT even invent NCSA Mosaic. He claims to have invented a way to view *his* 3D imaging object within a standard (at the time) browser. While there are some applicatons for viewing 3D within a browser, but I don't think they all need X-Windows protocols and the specific framework laid out in this patent to work within that particular viewing paradigm. Lets not panic just yet.

But if they had that much power they would have to be shooting at WWII Japanese aircraft carriers or German panzer tanks, and that war is already over. Why waste the time?

Besides, a link off of the article says "a one-ton vehicle moving at 100 mph equals a megajoule of energy", and therefor 33 Megajoules is clearly over the 88 mph threashold the car needs, and them some. Using electricity the gun you can at least save you on gas. Its just the sudden starts and stops that we need to learn to deal with.

Back in 1980 my counselor at University of Maryland informed me that I would be unable to graduate on time because I was not unable to get into my last course. That was because for 5 semesters I was unable to get a prerequisite course called "Intro to Computer Science". All the engineering and computer science majors had over booked the available computer lab time and the closest I had gotten was 73'rd in line. Yes, you got it, if 73 people dropped out of that class, in the first two weeks, then I could take the class. Problem is if the course is that bad I'm not sure I wanted to be in that class!

Oh well. At that point I realized that I had already been screwed by this thing called a computer and I didn't even know what the heck it was yet. Not to be beaten and then kicked when down, I forced the University to 'creatively' come up with another way for me to graduate (a semester late, but graduated none the less), and then went out and I bought this Sinclair kit and built my own computer in my dorm room.

I had to buy all the solder, wire, and stuff, to be able to build and assemble it, and then I went down the dorm hallway knocking on doors until I found someone that actually had taken that computer science class and dragged him down to my room and had them explain what they did. With a three line program printing out my name in a loop I allowed him to go back to his party, and it was history from there. The local electronics swap shop had numerous visits as I bought a second hand teletype keyboard, power supplies, and odds and ends, and rewired them all to interface with this little computer. It morphed over time to have more memory than it was ever designed to have and lots of relays and controls for all sorts of things. The creation kept growing in both size and complexity. Every peripheral that was ever designed for the Sinclair, and later the Timex version of it, was in there somewhere, and then many many creations of my own.

After graduating I began taking courses in microprocessors and digital electronics and was part of the manufacturing engine that built the next generation of computers. Eventually I became a Computer Scientist, now with fond memories if those simple days, when it was fairly easy to see how something worked and to find ways to improve upon it. Its nice to see that others have fond memories as well. The Sinclair was one of a kind.

Don't forget the part about reminding us that the White House is not the Justice Department, and that they are therefore the wrong branch of the Government to be concerned with prosecutions of any political figures. Only the Justice Department has the authority to perform an investigation, and forgetting of course that little fact about any Justice Department officials being appointed to office. Like they have no "real" influence in the JD. ;)

Reply coming - 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ...

1) Buy one good part
2) Buy one PCR machine
3) Buy a bazillion counterfeit parts
4) apply PCR'ed DNA to counterfeit parts
5) Profit!

Two very excellent questions. To the second question I would say that any Government can only control what is owned by its own corporations, and also only control that which is also controllable by current technology. Yes, there are legal agreements with foreign countries, but then controlling this technology may just be harder than you think.

Ok, to the first question I would say that there is no top level domains in a truly distributed system, at least that would be the goal. Every site that wants to be listed in the distributed PKI would need to cross sign keys with several other organizations with whom they would verify and attest to their partners authenticity. Only a few organizations would have to be signed by entities with a normal DNSSEC certificate to anchor the chain of trust. When a client receives a certificate for a site for the first time it would take some additional time to do the initial verification, by walking the p2p chain of trusts until it leads to a certificate that the user has trusted and cached, or finds a regular DNSSEC record that matches their p2p records. Because of the extra overhead getting started is the biggest problem, but once you have a trusted certificate it only helps you authenticate the next one faster. Think of it this way, with the 'Six degrees of Keven Bacon' scenario if you are into one type of hobby, business, or media (e.g. Gaming software) then the rest of that similar kind of media (e.g. Computer software) is not very far away by the rules of graph theory. There will likely be a quick path between the two, and you only need spend that additional time researching that chain the first time around if you cache your own certificates. Idealistically you would cache your favorite sites and toss the ones you don't use (LRU algorithm).

If any Justice department or Government tries to force one entity to revoke their own signing certificate it only would affect the targeted site if all its cross signings were simultaniously revoked. A revocation actually doesn't have to affect the site that is being targeted since the targeted sites certificate was physically modified when it was signed and thus its signature is indelible. The chain of trust might tell you the certificate was revoked, but you could choose to ignore that if you wish providing you still trust their server. As long as there is a path through the certificate chain of trust to someone you know and trust, then you will always know you are talking to the site you wanted to.

This cross signing method does leave the system open to the general PKI social engineering tricks, such as someone posing as an individual from some company they don't belong to, therefore that authentication step needs to be factored into the signing agreements somehow. The client should be made aware of any changes to certificates so that the user can choose what they want to do. The web site can always find new organizations to cross sign with if the need should arise, so when that happens the client should see that the chain of trust be checked again.

By using the same peer to peer technology that has been attacked by the big Media companies we could invent a distributed DNSSEC tool set (e.g. client proxy, dynamic servers ) so that there is no centralized root domains to be quashed or lobotomized by any Government, domestic or foreign. A web site with its own signing key could create and send out a broadcast packet containing its hosts IP information, complete with a signed token which can be verified by any server or peer, and would include a time stamp and to live indicator in the packet to aid in self revocation. Any local peers which intercept the initial announcement packet could pass that information on to seed the any p2p DNS community at large, via a large and dynamic but voluntary set of DNSSEC seed trackers. Any DNSSEC information which is not cryptographically verifiable would not be accepted or forwarded at the seeder/tracker level, as only verifiable addresses would be added to the p2p distributed database, and newer packets always supersede older packets.

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When an Internet client connects to the Internet it puts out a request to locate any local seeder/trackers, and then requests from them any addresses that the client requires. The dynamic seeder/trackers split up the domain information to organize the domain data efficiently, as to ensure the proper data replication in case of network partitioning or link failures. The client request is returned if found in its cache, otherwise it is forwarded based on the current domain mapping between servers. Before trusting the returned DNS record the client would first need to verify that DNS record via the sites published PKI public key.

Without a single centralized point of control there would be no way to 'take a domain down' once the information is published to the cloud. The weakest link would be at the ISP's Internet connection, but then the initial DNS injection point need not be at the same location, as any client even on a dialup connection could inject the initial announcement packets if it contains the properly signed data.

Yes, I realize there have been some p2p efforts in the past, but its now time to take this seriously.

Thought we killed this rumour last year. I guess not, here it is again.

There are a number of places where the original content is available, but I don't have the time at the moment to dig it all out again. Look at the story from last year if anyone has the desire.

There are many kinds of intelligence and any 'brain teaser' plays upon elements which may have no bearing on the job being sought. If any questions are asked during an interview, or brain teasers given, then those should have a direct relationship to the subject matter required for the position. Anything other than that is going to give a biased result and is probably closer to drawing straws than to real science. Having a greater amount of one kind of intelligence or creativity may give an edge to the person being interviewed but it is not a direct bearing on competency for most job positions. If you are hiring based on creativity you should test one way, and mathematical skills for another. No singular test is perfect, but it should best be tailored towards the qualities required to fill that specific role. Test for what is important, as someone with a 250 IQ may not stay in that secretarial position for very long, even though they got all the answers correct on the test.

Pssst, i realize that was a pun, but don't make *that* kind of comparison in public! or things will start to get very strange around here.

If the public realizes that the Orangutans can catch onto technology much faster than the current legislature, then the Orangutans will be brought in to run the country much more efficiently, and for just bananas. (I tapped into their skype network, and I have personal knowledge that the Orangutans are already plotting against SOPA, and are intending to vote it down quickly to put the bill out of its misery once and for all.)

Once the Orangutans get their seat of power they will likely bring in the Gorillas for security enforcement details, and the next thing you know we have a live Planet Of The Apes situation going on! There will be pandemonium, screaming, people running crazy in the streets, you know, pretty much just the the usual. Nobody will even notice the shift of power until the legislature itself realizes the pay checks have stopped coming in, and they are then forced to give up their Learjets and resign from the DC area golf clubs. All this chaos just because some left wing zookeeper thought iPads were soooo cool.