From: "Media" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Why is it that the X-internet scares the hell out of me?
ermm, perhaps becuase it is one of those off-key naff 'noxious verbal marketing trinkets doomed for oblivion ?? ;-)) > this example: do %image.png... is REALLY COOL ! YES Max I am glad you appreciate it. I am sure I will need some help ;-) > BUT ... > > What a wonderfull way for mallicious people to include nasty stuff... its > completely hidden from normal users AND they see ".png" and tell themsleves > ... oh its just an image... no worry... DOH... > > I mean, it would be easy to _replace_ a perfectly OK script in an image with > a nasty one for any _in_competent programmer! > > If all kind of x-internet systems become commonplace, is it just me or isn't > it MUCH easier for the computing industry to go haywire? Well, yes&no: As always depends on who uses it, how, for what, just like everything else in this world. The computing industry already always are haywire.. memes keep on meming - that's what makes them memes if you know what I meme. The move away from an industry which is still dominated by people sitting in front of PC-based devices to include appliances and widespread *group* connectivity cannot happen without a number of hardware software and cultural advances. Among these is a suitable vocabulary which sticks. X-internet sounds too much like last years bubblegum. But some of the ideas are very cool and one sees all kinds of effort towards them based on current platforms: templated wikilogs: [VANILLA Radio UserLand Zope Cheetah ...] X-internet: [MS.NET REBOL Groove ...] xtox: [Gnutella etc] http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~rachna/courses/infoviz/gtv/ Some of what we don't yet have are: - ubiquitous broadband use [cable optic or wireless] - network-savvy-dumb appliances [for example: hifi-like digital storage devices which adapt cleanly to available broadband networks. Have their own built-in web/ftp servers or whatever to allow access configuration locally and remotely, users and permission management. vices which behave in hardware similar to REBOL's "send" function. cars, cameras, construction components, classrooms, office furniture, display screens with phones which all do the same.. medical devices, travel ticket systems, equipment diagnostics etc. It is great you raise the *errorist issue because it means one must proceed to the next step which is good scheme for various contexts: edit parse transfer verify load I think one would want to apply some encrypted pass-key mechanism with components at several levels: - in another datablock inside the image - referenced inside the images embedded script - in the 'do-ing REBOL script One reason for embedding image-source metadata is to help track any changes to the image+data itself, say by doing a checksum compare to a source file at a specified url. Although one can use any language, REBOL seems ideal for image embedding because it is so compact and cross-platform. One could even imagine bundling special executable players in a 'starter' image. [Encap-ed REBOL/View app or something..] It could be a way for REBOL to distinguish itself: a lover app [as opposed to a killer app] PNG spec offers some useful features already one could apply for safer REBOL http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/PNG-Chunks.html ... Text Information Each of the text chunks contains as its first field a keyword [1-79 chars] that indicates the type of information represented by the text string. Other keywords may be invented for other purposes. Keywords of general interest can be registered with the maintainers of the PNG specification. However, it is also permitted to use private unregistered keywords. (Private keywords should be reasonably self-explanatory, in order to minimize the chance that the same keyword will be used for incompatible purposes by different people.) ... zTXt chunk contains textual data, just as tEXt does; however, zTXt takes advantage of compression. The zTXt and tEXt chunks are semantically equivalent, but zTXt is recommended for storing large blocks of text. ... more details http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/PNG-Decoders.html#D.Text-chunk-processing http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/PNG-Encoders.html#E.Use-of-private-chunks - Jason -- To unsubscribe from this list, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, without the quotes.
