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HJ Hibbett wrote a lovely nostalgic song called "Hey Hey 16k" which can be downloaded at

http://www.aas.mcmail.com/aas024/mp3.htm

I could never afford a Speccy...

It's frequently observed as a ghostly blue light in the deep water holding tanks for freshly-spent fissile material from nuclear reactors. Some of the active particles travel faster than the speed of light in the water, leading to the Cerenkov effect.

Venera 14 was built to last 30 minutes but apparently lasted for 120 minutes on the surface before the probe was destroyed due to intense heat and pressure. Huygens had a window of 90 minutes for transmitting data and actually lasted for over 120 minutes. I don't know the data rate of Venera 14, but I'd imagine that it was less than that of Huygens.

"What next, a massive government database system to track every message and contacts between people?"

Like this, or maybe this, or this
I don't know if the Chinese have a system like this yet, but we already have Echelon, so were set.

(For those of you to lazy to read all the articles, Echelon is a global communications spy network run by the NSA (with cooperation, in the form of listening posts, from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It gives them the capability to listen to and monitor any broadcast transmission on the planet.)

Well, why, it *is* possible indeed, according to the specs in the manual. If you bought a starship and both the manual and the ship dealer clearly state it can reach warp 8, you could sue them if it didn't.

Yes, warp 8 is possible, but not recommended, as the Federation imposed warp 4.7 as a limit for most ships, after Enterprise 1701-D encountered subspace ruptures in a highly travelled area of space in the Alpha Quadrant. If you travel faster than this, you can cause these ruptures - and get fined.

Maybe you find this and this interesting.

Be careful... Drive safely and boldly where no man has gone before

As for the labelling, I've seen it by the game publisher (PS2 games) and by the manufacturer (Gamecube Games). PC games are different. I don't remember seeing the photo-sensitive warning in every one.

On PC games I suggest you read all the README files and any other TEXT file on the game's main directory. This is especially true of games that have no manual or printed documentation.

Games without flashing effects are obviously your best bet. Almost every game has them. Even games without flashing could trigger you. I'd say try out the game first, but in your example, you wouldn't know it.

This essay on Epilepsy on the Screen mentions the warnings are completely voluntary.

So far, every single Game Cube game has the warning. I take that as a sign that part of the licensing agreement requires the Nintendo-written warning.

I always hoped for either Spike Milligan or Vivian Stanshall to play Slartibartfast, but they're both dead now, which kind of screws it.

when are these jerks gonna put a deflector shield on the shuttle like a proper starship?

...is measured quantitatively in terms of kiloquads?

Relativity only uses c, the speed of light in the vacuum. Hence this doesn't affect relativity.

When particles go through a material faster than light goes through that material the result is Cerenkov Radiation, with quick google search gives a short and quick description here and a longer in depth one here. Cerenkov radiation is basically like a sonic boom of light that produces the blue glow seen around nuclear reactors where the beta particles from the fisson are travelling faster than light through the surrounding water.

Would that be Snarf or snarf?

Businesses or individuals determined to receive no more unwanted magazines or literature should write a letter to the sender, in a pre-paid envelope if provided, saying that they do not want more copies, quoting the code number on the mailing address label. Note that items marked 'return to sender' are likely to be diverted to landfill by the Post Office (Consignia).

• This is a local shop for local people! Don't touch the pretty things!

The only thing lower than quoting someone else's words in your sig is misquoting them. It's the precious things

I just can't keep all those bosons and their quarks straight !

Here are a couple links about measuring Big G (Luther and Towler):

An entertaining mix of real science and Star Trek
The Controversy over Newton's Gravitational Constant
Enjoy !

Check out this European Parliament report on COMINT of automated processing for intelligence purposes of intercepted broadband systems. The author, Duncan Campbell, believes that the key means of accessing long distance optical fibre cables is by tampering with optoelectronic "repeaters".

You can download the full study or others on civil liberties directly from the European Parliament STOA site.

I've always felt that two uniprocessor machines are better than one dual-processor machine, especially if you're already considering loadbalancing multiple webservers. If you're being charge for rackspace, you might consider buying a custom-built box containing two PCs. here's one available in the UK (retailing for just under £2000 for a decent spec).

There are a couple of reasons for the EU wanting to drop encryption restrictions and the US being pissed off:

• The EU parliament commissioned Duncan Campbell to produce the
  STOA report which details the Echelon project and the fact the NSA sells commercial secrets to enable US companies to steal massive global contracts from under the noses of their EU counterparts. The French were so affected by the revelations they switched from the most draconian encryption policy (they banned all encryption, even by their own citizens) to the most liberal (instant raising to 128-bit with a view to dropping limits asap).
  
• The scandals involving both Lotus Notes (confirmed) and Microsoft (allegedly) deliberately leaking private keys to the NSA. The Swedish government was publicly outraged as their MPs use Lotus Notes for confidential communications. There is now an aura of distrust around US 'blessed' software and we will see a push towards Open Source software as well as a drop on encryption export restrictions.
  

So is the future looking rosier? Not for us in the UK, which is one of the most oppresive governments in the world. Take a look at the watered down RIP bill (you can only imagine what the original bill was like, hint: key escrow). For the rest of Europe, will they convince businesses to spend effort and manpower in creating secure systems as opposed to buying cheap, painless, out-of-the-box NSA friendly software? A nice but distant dream.

Phillip.

This bit on Workfactor Reduction Fields in the European Parliament report that was referred to in the article came as a blow - even though I knew it to be true already.

Just for my peace of mind, could a few technically competent individuals please reassure me once again about how secure my 4096-bit PGP key is please?

It's all the more interesting when you think that the valuation of all the internet stocks rely upon the continued growth of internet commerce, and that relies on people sending credit card information over the internet. I find it hard to believe that the current versions of the browsers do not have back doors built into them.

--

In general, this report, prepared by and for the European Parliment, is an excellent summary of what the NSA is up to. The NSA has about 27 patents, all relating to what we like to call Echelon, which is basically a giant search engine. It's entirely automated, and it looks for things that might be of interest to security. No one is reading your mail however, or listening to your phone (as if anyone wants to know how many times you ordered pizza last week).

Why patent? Two reasons - 1) there is a big industry devoted to equipment and software explicity used by security agencies, and since the G funded the research, well, by golly, why *shouldn't* they make money on the technology? And 2) although it seems counter-intuitive, patenting is a way of securing the NSA's claim of ownership on the technology, and thus its dissemination.

If you're not a terrorist, then the only real complaint is that we live in a hyper-paranoid country that spends billions (probably trillions) protecting itself, when in fact a more generous, humanitarian foreign policy (connected with the yet more hypothetical willingness of the US population to care) might be a better use of our time and money. If we stopped pissing off all the other countries, maybe we wouldn't have to worry about terrorists. In fact, there has been a groundswell of political complaint that in fact there is little evidence that all this money is justified in the absence of any concrete threat.

Mostly, it sucks that the NSA has the patent on all the cool searching technology out there.

"Key findings concerning the state of the art in Comint include :

• Comprehensive systems exist to access, intercept and process every important modern form of communications, with few exceptions (section 2, technical annexe);
• Contrary to reports in the press, effective "word spotting" search systems automatically to select telephone calls of intelligence interest are not yet available, despite 30 years of research. However, speaker recognition systems - in effect, "voiceprints" - have been developed and are deployed to recognise the speech of targeted individuals making international telephone calls;
• Recent diplomatic initiatives by the United States government seeking European agreement to the "key escrow" system of cryptography masked intelligence collection requirements, and formed part of a long-term program which has undermined and continues to undermine the communications privacy of non-US nationals, including European governments, companies and citizens;
• There is wide-ranging evidence indicating that major governments are routinely utilising communications intelligence to provide commercial advantage to companies and trade."

These are just the major findings condensed, all the details and the evidence have been published in that report. In an earlier report, An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control, we get the very welcome conclusion:

"If even half of these allegations are true then the European Parliament must act to ensure that such powerful surveillance systems operate to a more democratic consensus now that the Cold War has ended. Clearly, the Overseas policies of European Union Member States are not always congruent with those of the USA and in commercial terms, espionage is espionage. No proper Authority in the USA would allow a similar EU spy network to operate from American soil without strict limitations, if at all. Following full discussion on the implications of the operations of these networks, the European Parliament is advised to set up appropriate independent audit and oversight procedures and that any effort to outlaw encryption by EU citizens should be denied until and unless such democratic and accountable systems are in place, if at all."

It's pretty much certain that ECHELON exists, (the 1999 report contains interesting technical details and speculation, for those interested) and it's doing more than just monitoring those seeking the downfall of global capitalism.

Given that they have these capabilities, and that they are well known for paranoia, they'll more than likely be using these things to "ensure national security isn't breached". So, if you send round mail containing made up stuff about, say, TEMPEST, bacterial cultures, etc etc, they'll probably have filters to detect those signatures; too many keywords will strain the system AND its operators who have to check its output. So go ahead and jam up the bugger :-)

interception capabilities 2000

...snip

Report to the Director General for Research of the European Parliament (Scientific and Technical Options Assessment programme office) on the development of surveillance technology and risk of abuse of economic information.

This study considers the state of the art in Communications intelligence (Comint) of automated processing for intelligence purposes of intercepted broadband multi-language leased or common carrier systems, and its applicability to Comint targeting and selection, including speech recognition.

....snip

. We gave away our privacy long ago the last hope of being annon in even a big city is perishing with the latest release of facial recognition software ... couple that with your DMV license photo and that's all it takes.

we should focus on low rent hacks

see also nyc camera project

Folks, before going all crazy /. style *please* read the paper that's linked from the techwire report. Bear in mind that the new law only covers domestic UK transmissions -- seeing as international transmissions are already monitored via eschelon and it's derivatives. It goes into great detail on what methods are currently in place for monitoring traffic (voice prints) and which ones are being developed (word recgonition!).

As far as monitoring within the EU, I can see a number of memeber nations throwing hissy fits. Wasn't it just within the last decade that Germany started allowing for electronic survailence by domestic authorities? (someone please correct me there)

...is here

This is an official report in the EC. It covers sigint and comint, what is done and how, in quite some detail.

The problem is that the link is external, but the 'http' bit is missing, so it appears as internal to the site.

You want: www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_co ver.htm

This report is a Good Thing for a number of reasons. It documents how the NSA and our "national security state" have been joined at the hip to U.S. economic interests. It corroborates various reports over the years of state sponsored economic surveillance. It debunks that argument that key-recovery is needed for law enforcement. Lots of good stuff with the authoratative imprimateur of the EU.

But the real good news is found in both " Comint capabilities after 2000" and in " Policy issues for the European Parliament". The cost of ComInt surveillance has proven to be prohibitive - a waste of time and money. And the rise of optical fibre networks has rendered snooping methods obsolete. But best of all, "Communications intelligence organisations recognise that the long war against civil and commercial cryptography has been lost."

Finally, check out this recommendation:

Consideration could be given to a countermeasure whereby, if systems with disabled cryptographic systems are sold outside the United States, they should be required to conform to an "open standard" such that third parties and other nations may provide additional applications which restore the level of security to at least enjoyed by domestic US customers.

This report is a Good Thing for a number of reasons. It documents how the NSA and our "national security state" have been joined at the hip to U.S. economic interests. It corroborates various reports over the years of state sponsored economic surveillance. It debunks that argument that key-recovery is needed for law enforcement. Lots of good stuff with the authoratative imprimateur of the EU.

But the real good news is found in both " Comint capabilities after 2000" and in " Policy issues for the European Parliament". The cost of ComInt surveillance has proven to be prohibitive - a waste of time and money. And the rise of optical fibre networks has rendered snooping methods obsolete. But best of all, "Communications intelligence organisations recognise that the long war against civil and commercial cryptography has been lost."

Finally, check out this recommendation:

Consideration could be given to a countermeasure whereby, if systems with disabled cryptographic systems are sold outside the United States, they should be required to conform to an "open standard" such that third parties and other nations may provide additional applications which restore the level of security to at least enjoyed by domestic US customers.

This report is a Good Thing for a number of reasons. It documents how the NSA and our "national security state" have been joined at the hip to U.S. economic interests. It corroborates various reports over the years of state sponsored economic surveillance. It debunks that argument that key-recovery is needed for law enforcement. Lots of good stuff with the authoratative imprimateur of the EU.

But the real good news is found in both " Comint capabilities after 2000" and in " Policy issues for the European Parliament". The cost of ComInt surveillance has proven to be prohibitive - a waste of time and money. And the rise of optical fibre networks has rendered snooping methods obsolete. But best of all, "Communications intelligence organisations recognise that the long war against civil and commercial cryptography has been lost."

Finally, check out this recommendation:

Consideration could be given to a countermeasure whereby, if systems with disabled cryptographic systems are sold outside the United States, they should be required to conform to an "open standard" such that third parties and other nations may provide additional applications which restore the level of security to at least enjoyed by domestic US customers.

Hmm. Reading... They sound just a little too paranoid to me. The reason so much European traffic is going through Vienna VIRGINIA is not the NSA, or even BGP finding empty routes through the US, exactly... it's because European long distance rates are so high it's cheaper to cross the Atlantic twice!

They do it because the big aerospace co's make their hardware. They protect or help out these co's by telling them the European's competitor's bid, and then the US co. bids lower to get the job.


Intercepting international communications

Privacy Rights: Echelon and the UKUSA

go and do a search in your favorite search engine and type in the 3 letter acronym and echelon. See what you get. Very educational.

just don't say the word echelon out loud.

but hey they're only covering "foreign" non-domestic communications right? um. uh. hmm.

The one in the TechWeb article is slightly mangled... if you didn't figure it out, try this.

Check out the May 1999 STOA newsletter for a very quick summary (scroll down a bit). None of it is US authored, AFAICT.

The complete report has some nice recommendations. Such as:

2. At the technical level, protective measures may best be focused on defeating hostile Comint activity by denying access or, where this is impractical or impossible, preventing processing of message content and associated traffic information by general use of cryptography.

5. At the present time, Internet browsers and other software used in almost every personal computer in Europe is deliberately disabled such that "secure" communications they send can, if collected, be read without difficulty by NSA. US manufacturers are compelled to make these arrangements under US export rules. A level playing field is important. Consideration could be given to a countermeasure whereby, if systems with disabled cryptographic systems are sold outside the United States, they should be required to conform to an "open standard" such that third parties and other nations may provide additional
applications which restore the level of security to at least enjoyed by domestic US customers.

We could tell them that is already possible :)

The complete report has some nice recommendations. Such as:

2. At the technical level, protective measures may best be focused on defeating hostile Comint activity by denying access or, where this is impractical or impossible, preventing processing of message content and associated traffic information by general use of cryptography.

5. At the present time, Internet browsers and other software used in almost every personal computer in Europe is deliberately disabled such that "secure" communications they send can, if collected, be read without difficulty by NSA. US manufacturers are compelled to make these arrangements under US export rules. A level playing field is important. Consideration could be given to a countermeasure whereby, if systems with disabled cryptographic systems are sold outside the United States, they should be required to conform to an "open standard" such that third parties and other nations may provide additional
applications which restore the level of security to at least enjoyed by domestic US customers.

We could tell them that is already possible :)