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Haven't they been doing this for years? Path Intelligence's patent application for the system that tracks cell phones in shopping centers cites this kind of thing as prior art...

Joe Barbera (animation producer/director, half of the Hanna-Barbera team) a long while back had a pen with ink with his own DNA embedded in it made; it's his "autograph" pen.

Old news from someone smarter than the a-ver-age bear...

Anobit also owns a bunch of patents which might fit well for a new bunch of patent lawsuits

RFC1149 is the one you are looking for.

No, Windows suck as much as people think (if not more).

There's a unit of measure for suckiness:

3.3) Just HOW MUCH does this system suck?

The ASR standard unit of suckiness is the Lovelace (Ll).
This is defined as: One Lovelace is the amount of force (measured in dynes)
it takes to draw a round ball weighing e Troy Ounces down a tube it fits
exactly (in air) at a speed of pi attoparsecs/microfortnight.

Like Farads, this is a rather large measurement. Thus, Plan 9 sucks a few
mLl, for instance, while your average Microsoft product achieves many Ll.

... according to google is

terrorism/terrizm/
Noun:
The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

*The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.*

how many governments does that definition cover?

how many politicians?

as someone who was born, (mostly) grew up in, and currently lives in, a country where the term "terrorism/terrorist" is used in SO many contexts - .lk for those who want to know (not .us like many would think) - the word "terrorism" is more accurately defined as "that guy over there that we don't agree with"..

unfortunately, "terrorist" has become a new witch-hunt word - equal in power (or a VERY close second to "pedo")

i think it is time that we ALL start identifying ourselves as terrorists.. because close to every political statement we make - including "seriously.. can you imagine life with THAT guy in office" while standing at the water cooler - can be construed as terrorism..

this is one of the reasons that the UN has yet to define terrorism.. because if they were to do so, many - in fact, most - governments would fall under the "terrorist" definition.

my advice; call, email, write a letter, send a pigeon to senator leiberman (and any others supporting this bill and tell them "you are not with us. you are not with the terrorists. you ARE a terrorist".. maybe they will get the clue

Suchetha "why yes, i am a terrorist" Wijenayake

It's discussed here.

Basically, with DNSSEC, DNS cannot be tampered with. All you have to is have the DNS then itself provide the cert, which the registrar then signs.

Basically, instead of having to send a CA our public key, and having them sign it and email it back, we just use the existing fact that, under DNSSEC, DNS records are signed, and stick so we just our public key in there. And unsigned keys can be checked there. Actually, it might be smart to have a specific mark on those keys, saying 'Check against DNS'.

This requires DNSSEC to actually roll out everywhere, of course, and requires client support. (And it requires DNS server support if we're actually going to use CERT records, but instead it could be something like SPF does...just use specially marked TXT records, and maybe just use the key fingerprint instead of the entire key.)

This actually has advantages over the current system. For example, it's trivial to revoke keys, whereas now, not so much. Domain owners can even 'revoke' keys they don't know about, like when they buy a name from someone else who still has SSL keys for it. The rules is: Whatever key is in the DNS work, if there's a security issue, just take that key out, put a different one in.

Of course, for a while, both DNS keys and CA keys would need to both work, but I actually think that, at some point, we should stop letting random frickin third parties in Belgium or Korea or wherever decide who is authorized to run an encrypted version of our domain name. The only person who is authorized to talk about what my domains are doing is my registrar and anyone they've delegated to! But certs could still be signed on top of that, to certify stuff like mailing addresses and company names and stuff. (Aka, the 'domain verification' signing would still be useful.)

They do. Police cameras include a hash of the image.

This according to the Wikipedia page on speed limit enforcement:

"In August 2005, in Sydney, Australia a speed camera photograph was challenged on the basis that an MD5 cryptographic hash function used to protect the digital photograph from tampering was not robust enough to guarantee that it had not been altered. Magistrate Lawrence Lawson demanded that the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) produce an expert witness who could prove the photographs were tamper-proof, but the RTA was unable to provide such evidence. The defendant was acquitted and awarded court costs.[39]"

There's also a US patent application from last year (04/08/2010): Method and Apparatus for Tamper Proof Camera Logs.

RFC1149

And your proof is ... ?

Gravitational energy loss can be observed in astronomical objects. See http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part4/ However, even though gravity is predicted to be retarded (meaning the waves spread from the location a body was at, not where it is) - the force projected is toward the current position, giving the appearance of instant force exchange as required by Newton. Without it, stable orbits aren't possible, which we can disprove by numerous counterexamples. Observing gravitational ripples is a current hot subject. The existence of a gravitational wave spread pretty much guarantees it's at c (most likely) or less (less likely). If it's faster, well that would be very interesting.

While you guys were going "LOL we're gonna need a bigger boat", I skimmed the claims of the two-stage patent application (20100326045).

Basically, the novel element in each claim is some parts commonality (uising the same engine, more or less) for the first and second stage. Variations in specific claims include reusing the first-stage motor to propel the second stage, recovering a used first-stage motor to use as a second stage motor (or vice versa) on the next launch, or using multiple engines for the first stage, and one identical engine for the second stage.

I'm pretty sure I've seen some of these published exactly in the '90s (specifically the multi-engine first stage, single-engine second stage and the first-stage/second-stage motor reuse), and even if not, using multiple motors in the first stage, single motor in the second stage, is surely obvious from the Saturn V's use of 5 J-2 motors in the second stage and 1 J-2 in the third stage.

So guys, can we let up on the "OMG boatz0rs!", read the patent, and discuss any prior art you know of?

ok, this older patent for doing the same process to macroscopic sapphire (by the same people) supports your claim.

In 1973, no less. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc439.html

No, what you thought was a "non-conducting part of the case" is not part of the case; it is part of the plug. You read the patent.

http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20110201213

For example, plug connector 800 can include a cosmetic cap 804.

It wouldn't help hold the plug in at all.

The actual patent states this to describe that figure: (well, what I could find, anyway - it doesn't include the figures, but it references the ones that were in TFA)

FIG. 8 is a cross-sectional view of a plug connector 800 mated with a low profile plug receptacle 802 that illustrates a magnetic retention mechanism according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the embodiment shown, plug connector 800 is similar in general construction to custom plug connector 400 of FIG. 4. For example, plug connector 800 can include a cosmetic cap 804. Low profile plug receptacle 802 is similar in general construction to receptacle 200 of FIG. 2A.

In various embodiments, low profile plug receptacle 802 can include a magnet 806 and plug connector 800 can include a ferrous attractor 808 (e.g., a ferromagnetic material such as steel). In one embodiment, the ferrous attractor 808 can be a discrete object embedded in the plug and/or connector body of plug connector 800. In another embodiment, ferrous attractor 808 can be integrated into the structure of the plug or connector body; for instance, the entire plug can be constructed of a ferromagnetic material.

In other words, a standard plug would fall out of the port, unless it was made from a ferromagnetic material or had a bit of ferromagnetic material embedded so that it would be held in the port by a magnet.

Unless I'm reading that wrong.

I think you mean ten years ago not 'the last twenty years'.

No, people were predicting Apple's demise way back around 1991.

Just look at this one earnings story for a reference of what sparked that round of speculation:
http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/News-opinion-and-commentary/Digital-net-up-as-Apple-posts-decline-Profits-off-by-28-at-Digital.html

I dont think so

Patent #1 is finding a safe time to update your software. That means Ubuntu and Windows update violate Oracle's patents because they check at a certain time of the day.

Patent #2 Is finding out which bits of code are changed in a patch. Gnu Diff, RHN, and Patch violate Oracle's new property on checking to see how a patch changed a file.

This is very scary. Basically Oracle can simply sue every Linux distro because it has diff, patch, yum/apt-get, or synaptic and I would not be surprised to see Oracle file injuctions to halt every free distro from existence as they love to pick on the small guys who little pockets who can't defend themselves.

Oracle's true intentions are not in the software product but it's patents. The RHN is effectively Oracle's IP until they can throw it out in court.

Patent #1 is finding a safe time to update your software. That means Ubuntu and Windows update violate Oracle's patents because they check at a certain time of the day.

Patent #2 Is finding out which bits of code are changed in a patch. Gnu Diff, RHN, and Patch violate Oracle's new property on checking to see how a patch changed a file.

This is very scary. Basically Oracle can simply sue every Linux distro because it has diff, patch, yum/apt-get, or synaptic and I would not be surprised to see Oracle file injuctions to halt every free distro from existence as they love to pick on the small guys who little pockets who can't defend themselves.

Oracle's true intentions are not in the software product but it's patents. The RHN is effectively Oracle's IP until they can throw it out in court.

This is very true. But the actual claims aren't much better:

http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20110078583

A method of accessing applications for social networking, searching sharing and communication in a plurality of network(s), said method comprising the steps of:registering and/or integrating at least one application(s) from one or more networks at a central server by one or more application provider(s);selecting at least one registered application(s) by at least one user;installing said at least one selected application(s) at one or more networks as per predefined settings or preferences or user data; andpresenting at least one installed applications(s) and/or selective application(s) data to one or more users at one or more networks based on said predefined settings or preferences or user data or domain specific profiles.

and so on. I don't read patents for a living, but I can usually read them, and nothing in this one gets any traction at all that I can find. If you find something cogent in it, I'd love to hear it. Mostly what I see are vague, meaningless claims followed by a delusionally grandiose background (managing, I note, to misspell "kazaa" in the process).

doesn't RFC 3514 already address this?

No, sir. First of all, being able to draw lines/circles is in no way comparable to having some toolkit ready in order to build a GUI. Note this is not about coding widgets, but building GUIs out of ready-to-use widgets. However, irrelevant. You seem to wrongly assume the inverse of my statement would also hold, which is definitely not true, i.e. by saying 'Beginners shouldn't start with creating GUIs', I in no way say that advanced programmers should. Generally, it is *always* a failure to design something to be GUI based from the beginning. Unfortunately, Windows does in no way encourage people to separate front- and backends, worse, it makes it look like that wouldn't make sense at all. That is what leads people to the terribly invalid assumption that the CLI would be inferior, or obsolete, like you implied in your comment (since you mention windows as if there was nothing else, (or as if it was a meaningful reference at all) i assume you're exclusively using windows). Look at four decades of unix history, if you want some confirmation that it is still perfectly valid, and usually the best way to go, to write programs according to the filter pattern, as mentioned in this beautiful book http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch11s06.html

True that. One should negotiate one's wages with a multinational corporation as equal individuals, not go brute force with collective bargaining.

I prefer Ken Thompson's philosophy: When in doubt, use brute force.

something like this? http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4941.html

A perfect program/OS would very quickly gobble up all available memory by storing and caching useful stuff...and then free it up the instant it was needed elsewhere. That turns out to be harder than it sounds, since procs generally don't know or care about totally memory usage,

Maybe if we had some sort of super-program, something that could monitor the other programs and decide what RAM is needed where. It would operate on behalf of these programs to make sure that the most commonly used data was cached in RAM, even between different processes. Why, there could even be a system so that processes could just ask for data and this super-program would cache it. On second thought, that would never work.

WAIT, WAT? When did this discussion switch over to talking about the AIX object data manager?

Let's face it. Windows doesn't have a monopoly in OSs with a non-transparent non-intuitive hard-to-access system configuration repository. AIX is one of the biggest commercial Unix variants out there, and will make any sysadmin raised in a sane SunOS/Linux environment pull out every hair in his/her head.

I think AIX is the reason that the informal motto of the system administration community is "Down, not across".

(

Also, to answer the question of what J. L. Tympanum should read, a good starting point: The alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ.

Just once is fine. It's a rhetorical device.

You missed your snowclone a bit.

That is what this is for:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2606.html
2. TLDs for Testing, & Documentation Examples
  ".example" is recommended for use in documentation or as examples.
3. Reserved Example Second Level Domain Names
      The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) also currently has the
      following second level domain names reserved which can be used as
      examples.

                example.com
                example.net
                example.org

Somebody should have read the official documentation before creating their own ~

This link has a tabular description of the differences between sh & a small raft of other shells, including bash. Bash syntax is very similar similar to sh, but there are a few gotchas, which I'm too long out of the game to remember.

IP over Avian Carrier could bypass the problem entirely! http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2549.html

I've been reading your comments for years, and though you're consistently against FLOSS, you're usually more polite. Unix (and linux by extension) has never cared about the desktop: in the early days of Wintel, they didn't even care about x86.

Also, you say 1% of the desktop, I say Unix is the most popular and prevalent OS in history.

Robert Metcalf [the inventor of Ethernet] says that if something comes along to replace Ethernet, it will be called “Ethernet”, so therefore Ethernet will never die. Unix has already undergone several such transformations. - Ken Thompson, quoted here:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s02.html

I don't really think it's elitist to say that software developers might use computers differently, or to say that Windows has serious design flaws. You're also doing this funny thing where you talk like Android, Mac OSX, and iOS aren't all unixes---when I'm hacking any of them, I use the same commands. Makes it pretty easy. From this perspective, the only thing going down hard is Microsoft. Do you really want to bet on which will still be around in 50 years, Windows or Unix? I'm betting on the entire desktop metaphor being dead by then.

The naming conventions are indeed retarded. Software developers don't seem to have any talents for presentation.

There's always RFC 1149, but that's not easy for uploading stuff to Youtube either.

That's something of a presumption, given the fact that condoms can still be bought "ribbed for her pleasure".

Um, I think there is a bit of a difference between "ribbed" and "spiny"...

True, but...have you seen what they put on dildos? Clearly, spines do have some kind of appeal.

Oh, you mean those ones that look kinda like a Barrel Cactus?

LOL, I guess you got me there! ;-P

RFC 2468: I REMEMBER IANA

(not linking ietf.org, since it is so dang slow)

MacOS 9, with a much smaller deployment base than MacOS X, had TONS of viruses for it.

I'm not so sure you're using that word "TONS" correctly. The Macintosh Virus FAQ says there were about 40, which includes "related threats", stuff like: a disk that had a Windows virus on it managing to do some damage when the Mac was running emulation software, and malicious Hypercard stacks.

Yeah, it's most useful anyway in a corporate setting, and then I'm in the habit of telling people to expect it. The only reason I'd use it outside of work is to send a bulk mail in which I put everyone on BCC. That though is incredibly rare.

I do the same but I do it because I respect *other* peoples privacy. Usually it's a joke or something funny that I want to send around. They chose to give me their email address not everyone else I know so that's when I bcc it. There are many other things that I use bcc for.

But I note that only people who have no business speaking about the direction of technology try to create a meme about it to hide their inadequate grasp of it. Maybe gmail doesn't support bcc but that's a choice of the email *client* not the email protocol. Perhaps this ill informed blogger should consult with RFC 2076 - Common Internet Message Headers or RFC 2822 section 3.6.3. Destination address fields before announcing that a particular piece of functionality is in demise, as long as people choose to write free software there will be an email client to support bcc. I just checked the RFC and it tells me support is still there and I can't see the people who spent all that time writing that functionality into sendmail, postfix, etc etc taking that support away anytime soon.

It's not that easy. Radio/TV transmissions leaking into space are very weak. There could be an alien civilization at 10 light years from us, and we could aim our arecibo dish straight at them, without picking up anything. Our only hope is that they'll point a very powerful transmitter straight in our direction, at exactly the same time as we point our most sensitive receiver in their direction. The chances of this happening are astronomically small.

And of course, most suitable alien planets are much further away, reducing the chances even more.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part6/section-12.html

The problem is that it's already patented:
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20080275938

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html

The dictators may intimidate the two or three ISPs into shutting off the internet, but they can't shoot all the birds out of the sky!

That being said, Linux is just a better platform to build something like this on. Sure, you can do it with Windows and make it work, but it's just more and unnecessarily difficult.

I keep hearing this, but never see any technical details. Why is this so?

I had extensive Windows programming experience before I switched to Linux about ten years ago and, basically, it boils down to the Unix philosophy.

Linux is a system made by programmers for programmers. Windows is a system made following directions of the marketing department.

>

In answer to 1: Zhang, Mao and Wang describe in their paper how to
defend against such attacks - by simply enabling prioritization of
routing traffic - something that is possible on most commercial
routers. If ISPs do this, then it seems that the attack in the paper
would be thwarted. I don't know how many ISPs do enable this, but if
such an attack were seen in the wild, I'm certain most of them would.

Obvious question here. Does anyone not implement this? I note RFC 1266 section 9.3 specifically recommends the usage of measures to achieve this effect (and then note from above, this was published in 1991).

This has been done since 1990!

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html

What happens when someone resolves an IPv6 address and their software and/or IP configuration won't support it? The point is that websites have to be 100% backwards compatible with IPv4 but an IPv6 presence will be optional. The point is that everything/everyone will have to maintain IPv4 compatibility which means there is simply no incentive to go dual-stack.

I refer the honourable gentleman to RFC1886.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3041.html

what advantage does this technology hold over trains?

Is recently patented?

what advantage does this technology hold over trains?

Is recently patented?

This is totally, 100% wrong. "best effort" refers to the fact that in packet-switched networks, there are NO GUARANTEES whether a packet will reach its destination.

Bzzt... wrong.

Did it not occur to you that what exactly 'best effort' entails depends on the context in which it is used?

If you tell your kid you want them to put in their Best Effort to get an A in chemistry; this does not mean you want them to violate rules of the system (such as looking at another student's paper during the test, stealing the answer key, etc).

When we are talking about QoS, the accepted definition for best effort is noted in RFC2474, RFC 3644

rfc 2474,

A "default" PHB MUST be available in a DS-compliant node. This is the common, best-effort forwarding behavior available in existing routers as standardized in [RFC1812]. When no other agreements are in place, it is assumed that packets belong to this aggregate.

Such packets MAY be sent into a network without adhering to any particular rules and the network will deliver as many of these packets as possible and as soon as possible, subject to other resource policy constraints.

A reasonable implementation of this PHB would be a queueing discipline that sends packets of this aggregate whenever the output link is not required to satisfy another PHB. A reasonable policy for constructing services would ensure that the aggregate was not "starved". This could be enforced by a mechanism in each node that reserves some minimal resources (e.g, buffers, bandwidth) for Default behavior aggregates. This permits senders that are not differentiated services-aware to continue to use the network in the same manner as today. The impact of the introduction of differentiated services into a domain on the service expectations of its customers and peers is a complex matter involving policy decisions by the domain and is outside the scope of this document. The RECOMMENDED codepoint for the Default PHB is the bit pattern ' 000000'; the value '000000' MUST map to a PHB that meets these specifications. The codepoint chosen for Default behavior is compatible with existing practice [RFC791]. Where a codepoint is not mapped to a standardized or local use PHB, it SHOULD be mapped to the Default PHB.

A packet initially marked for the Default behavior MAY be re-marked with another codepoint as it passes a boundary into a DS domain so that it will be forwarded using a different PHB within that domain, possibly subject to some negotiated agreement between the peering domains.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3041.html

Already used in Windows, the most popular desktop OS.