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I hope they'll have a license agreement form like the form they had for their driver DDK a cooupe of years ago. ;-)

(No image editor was used to create this image. They just forgot to set the read-only flag for that form. :-D)

Here's a technical PDF on the system. Guess what? This is a Trusted Computing system!

It specifies devices to contain security module / security component. It specifies that this security component contains a crypto key and that the owner is forbidden to know or read his own keys (that is what they mean when the PDF says "non cloneable"). It specifies using public key cryptography for chips to exchange communication keys in a manner secure against the owner, and specifies Confidentiality as establishing communication links which are secure against the owner "eavesdropping" on his own data. It specifies Authenticity capabilites, meaning that neither the owner nor any competitor can produce a device that can be substituted in your own network in place of a given device. Any attempt at an interoperable substitution will lack the required manufacturer's cryptographic key and signature to authenticate the device, and other devices can reject the substitute and reject its connections and prohibit it from operating in the original device's place.

Every time the PDF uses the word secure or security, it is used in the sense of securing the system against the owner. The PDF literally classifies the owner as an "intruder" at one point, and to be secure against him.

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What is next, capturing video? Or scanning file contents?

I expect them to jack your mouse drivers and use the optical mice as scanners to scan the paperwork on your desk.

Whether histerical or not, whether dangerous or not, I am for TRUTH in labelling.

"Warning: Lark's Vomit!"

Personally, I think this is a dangerous precedent. Adding a 'phage is not a substitute for having proper food handling standards (and testing) to prevent Listeria contamination in the first place. Listeriosis may be unpleasant for those unfortunate enough to get it (a mere 7.4 people per million), but it acts as a red flag indicating there's a problem that needs to be fixed. Giving people a "magic spray" just encourages them to take shortcuts, leading to more outbreaks of other food contamination. (No doubt the FDA's "solution" is to add more 'phages - didn't they learn anything from the misuse of antibiotics?)

"Ulch - that meat was tainted! You feel deathly sick." - Nethack.

This would be quite surprising to me. It is true that you can copy any personal detail you want into these cards.

But besides some personal details passports are also supposed to have a secret in them that gets proved without revealing it. The article makes no mention of it. Its called "active authentication", RSA labs has been writing about it for years. The US and many others are supposed to require it. IIRC it is done by having the passport sign a challenge with a secret key or something like that.

The only way to get to a secret in the chip would be to really mess with the chip, acids, electron microscopes, side channels, the article mention just "reading" it.

The RFID tag is supposed to tamper resistant. That is, it is supposed to forget whatever secrets it holds if it detects any attempt to tamper with the chip. One manufacturer advertises with voltage, frequency, temperature and light sensors.

Philips also appears quite serious about preventing side channel analysis attacks as well.

Now I have the impression that the whole point of standardizing on complex contactless cards was to keep little players out of the market. (RFID is covered by several patents and hard to implement power efficiently without serious fabrication facilities) The only excuse I heard for requiring contactless cards was that it somehow saved time standardizing the readers....

This is why I would expect other big manufacturers to have done their homework as well.

Is there a chance this attack only clones the parts that are supposed to be readily accessible? Fooling a reader without the "active authentication" is easy. And since a reader would need a government public key I guess getting a reader with it would be a little harder than just buying one.

(Also the Basic Access Control feature sucks. With moderate computing power you can understand the communication between passport and reader at an airport without seeing the passport.)

How dare you post that without screenshots! Everybody loves screenshots!

UGA screenshot

well, it can

Not to flame, or anything...but
You are not an authority on what is ruled out or not, and i know that technically, this isn't a mouse-ball, http://sprite.student.utwente.nl/~jeroen/projects/ mouseeye/ This is an example of odd things done out of unlikely devices. While this was a modification, there's no telling that there won't be something similar built in, and if it were built in, it would probably be better.

Nintendo is best known for their eccentric ideas, so don't say it's not going to happen until they say so. What if there's a plug-in feature, and you can set it atop the Television to aim at the user, and use it as an eye-toy? Just making a statement that Nintendo above all else is one of the most innovative gaming companies, with the largest quantity of free thinkers on their team. I suppose you can say, they're like Apple, but done right. (Though, if you ask me, that's not hard to do.)

It's no more a camera than your computer mouse is.
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http://sprite.student.utwente.nl/~jeroen/projects/ mouseeye/

Ok so it's not a camera, but it's cool anyway.

"what they are trying to do hasn't really been done before"

The Hierarchical File System
DBFS
Project: OCFS

`next to ZERO file formats that are currently in widespread use by the computing world know anything about "metadata"'

ReiserFS
XFS

This problem has been recognized for a while, but mainly from the point of view people who are challenged by technology to begin with, not your savvy person you just want the thing to phone. However, it's interesting to note these simple phones are not only required so you don't accidently delete your voice mail message, but much more importantly, to save lives. For many people, a mobile phone is an emergency device. The result is, if you shop, you can find a simple phone. And just imagine how cool you look as a nerd with a phone designed for your granny..uhm..well.

This is a Dutch phone with just three buttons aimed at the ederly and disabled people:
http://www.mybell.nl/

Other "senior" phones:
http://www.mijntoestel.nl/
http://www.revah.nl/Revah%20Telecom/ITT/Easy5afb.h tm
http://www.utnws.utwente.nl/utnieuws/data/38/11/mo biel.html
http://www.secufone.com/

http://sprite.student.utwente.nl/~jeroen/projects/ mouseeye/

I think you could get away with a 256x256 sensor (real cheap IC) that is hooked up with a plastic lens to read a 1/2" square area at roughly 300dpi.

It could break the image up into tiles, and autocorrelate them as you scan to build up the document on the fly in the onboard memory. An ARM core with a few meg of onboard RAM and flash, maybe a DSP, it shouldn't take much to make that possible in a mouse-sized, lightweight device.

Put a few LEDs on top that tell you where to move the "mouse" to get full coverage of the page since you don't have a realtime preview.

Instructions might say: "Move mouse in back and forth scanning motion over text you want to capture. Do not rotate mouse for best results."
Of course you could omit parts of the page that are blank or you don't want to copy.

What do you think about that?

Funniest and cheapest defence against Wild Weasels I've ever heard of using a modded microwave oven.

I thought that at first too, but soon realised that it was just some text at the bottom of one of his screen shots.

Not really any more tasteless than the original sketch, though.

Though you showed that wet quicksand like in the movies was a myth, a week later after the show aired a scientific study came out showing that empty spaces under dry sand could develop and implied that this could be the source of the anecdotal quicksand stories.

It's not hard to think of how the sand at the very top might become wet over the dry empty sand structures (like after a rainstorm), then you would have true quicksand like in the movies. Rather than have the sand wet in the whole tank as you did on the show. Plus, you gave no thought to empty voids that might develop under wet sand.

I think that this myth that you 'busted' is entirely 'plausible' (esp. with just dry sand).

Website for the scientific study with video.

Prosecution: Caspar Schlitz, I put it to you that you were, on February 5th this year, very depressed with malice aforethought, and did moan quietly, contrary to the Cheerful Noises Act.

Schlitz: I did.

Defence: May I just explain, m'lud, that the reason for my client's behaviour was that his wife had just died that morning.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lay in a valley far, far away in the mountains the most contented kingdom the world has ever known. It was called Happy Valley, and it was ruled over by a wise old king called Otto. And all his subjects flourished and were happy, and there were no discontents or grumblers, because wise King Otto had had them all put to death, along with the trade union leaders, many years before. And all the happy folk of Happy Valley sang and danced all day long, and anyone who was for any reason miserable or unhappy or who had any difficult personal problem was prosecuted under the Happiness Act.

Happy Valley

Scotty/Tkined seem to offer all that you need. Decent diagramming, real-time network monitoring and alerting, totally scriptable in Tcl. For graph drawing wizardry, take a look at GraphViz.

or check it directly (since openoffice.org is swamped)
http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~adrian/

Windows
http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/file?info_has h=%18%F6%20s%FD%FA%DA%D5%91%86%94%10%DE%A5%8FV%B6% 1Fi%A1

Linux x86
http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/file?info_has h=%90%F7%EA%13%9AC%1E%05V%97%05%E2%5D%96%07%E40%CD l%B2

Windows
http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/file?info_has h=%18%F6%20s%FD%FA%DA%D5%91%86%94%10%DE%A5%8FV%B6% 1Fi%A1

Linux x86
http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/file?info_has h=%90%F7%EA%13%9AC%1E%05V%97%05%E2%5D%96%07%E40%CD l%B2

http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/

The success of the Dutch team has (finally) caused others to take up the challenge. One is another from the Netherlands, the http://www.solarteamtwente.nl/nieuws.php Solutra team (http://www.utwente.nl/ University of Twente). Compared to the Delftian guys, these people are novices, but it's nice to see some real rivalry and competition being initiated. I saw them practice, just a few days before the went to Australia, and asked if they has practiced changing tires (which I think is the important thing in winning the challenge). The answer: no, not yet, do you think that's important?
Remember that it really is a challenge, since temperatures inside the car can get more than 50 degrees Celsius.

Speaking of torrents; you may find them here: http://borft.student.utwente.nl/openoffice/torrent s/ or have a look at the p2p page: http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/download.ht ml

Well... I'd guess with some kind of advertising scheme. Maybe an additional fee to use it to communicate with the other part of the sale.

Oh, and by the way. I love your documentation for the Unreal2Engine server query protocol, I wrote a modulefor python using it. :)

A recent study (I was one of the contributors, plug admitted) was done by a Dutch University. The link to the website is http://stitch.ewi.utwente.nl/detail/chakra/-page=e n-info.htm, but to be honest I don't know if the results are currently online.

I know someone else who has *huge*... tracks of land!

(Monty Python's Meaning of life reference).

You mean a DBFS?
http://ozy.student.utwente.nl/projects/dbfs/

Hate to be a pain, but didn't he say not to say dia? I don't know. I know nothing about diagramming in linux. Just thought I'de be annoying and point that out.

There's always one :)

The problem with dia is a) the hideous symbol sets, and b) the completely unintuitive interface. Open up Dia and, within 10 minutes, figure out how to add or remove points from connecting lines without googling it...

Other than Kivio (which is non-free unless you get the rather cripple-icious Koffice version) the only OTHER one I can think of it TCM, which is even less intuitive than Dia. It still holds a place in my heart, though. Right in that blood-clot ...

I hope they can apply this tech to LCD displays, which are like giant-area microchips. The yield on LCD batches is low (only maxing at 60%), because defects come per cm^2, (mostly) regardless of transistor featuresize. One (or a few, depending on the QA of the manufacturer) defect can spoil a whole unit; more area means more chances of spoilage. If HP's redundancy means a pixel has two chances to survive defects, the yield might multiply greatly, as the odds of two defects in a single pixel's area is very small. Huge LCDs, like those that might cover a wall, are practically impossible to make without defects. This redundancy might enable them, while slashing the prices. I'd love to see the day when my "desktop display" returned the size of my "desktop" to of my 1x2m desk, rather than 17" diagonal of my notebook.

Unions report that 3 out of 5 union deaths in the world are in Colombia. Colombia is an extremely violent place. The Colombian government works together with the large land owners' paramilitary forces, there's a revolving door between Colombian government military and the paramilitary. They are both working against the FARC; It's hard to believe that the Unions are not considered a tentacle of the FARC. In Colombia, the rule is: Go home, be quiet, be with your family, obey whatever rules authorities give you, whoever the authorities are.

My girlfriend was raised in Colombia, as was her sister. I know about Colombia from what they have said, what a pen-pal in Colombia has said, and from what I have researched on my own.

It's entirely believable to me that Coka-Cola works hard (probably violently, perhaps indirectly) against union workers in Colombia. That place is freaking nuts. Many communities rely on the local mob to build their schools.

I like to tell fellow programmers: "You thought Snow-Crash was the kind of place you wanted to live? Well, you can experience a lower-tech version of it right now: Go To Colombia."

As for how people get involved with protests, even when they don't know all the facts themselves, I refer you to the two-step flow of mass media communication. (This link provides a very helpful picture.) Basically, she grew up with people she trusts and loves. One (or a very few) of these people make it their business to keep informed on the subject. She trusts this person, and is convinced (probably legitimately) by this person. This is the person you need her to refer you to, and this is the person you need to argue with. It is legitimate to act on behalf of anothers thinking, if you can trust that the person is paying attention.

yes, yes, yes! finally some sense in this debate! and btw, what's the status of this sort of thing for linux? is dbfs still under development? how about beagle?

Next, on "Blackmail", we play "Stop the film".

Sadly my website http://www.rogertheshrubber.net/ has already fallen victim to the hordes of the digital pearl harbour. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.

Live Organ Transplants sketch from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

Becoming Catholic happens at baptism, always.

http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/ is the tracker

OOo_2.0bc_Win32Intel_install.zip
OOo_2.0bc_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz
these are direct links to the windows and linux installers.

http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/ is the tracker

OOo_2.0bc_Win32Intel_install.zip
OOo_2.0bc_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz
these are direct links to the windows and linux installers.

http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/ is the tracker

OOo_2.0bc_Win32Intel_install.zip
OOo_2.0bc_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz
these are direct links to the windows and linux installers.

someone on /. knows who Schopenhauer is

(Cite)

The press release linked doesn't mention it, but nature has an implementation of this phenomenon called the Snapping Shrimp. This tiny bugger creates a cavitation buble with a claw that actually stuns prey with the shockwave generated. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I first saw video of this.

Maybe we will see the rise of genetically engineered shrimp that can live in the reactor and keep the system up for peanuts?

Here is a link on the shrimp How Snapping Shrimp Snap

That's all well and good, but if that new law works the way it is supposed to, the Battleship Microsoft might be sunk by The Crimson Permanent Assurance.

mirror here and here (WMV format only)

mirror here and here (WMV format only)

I smell Monty Python .

At the other extreme I have noticed that microwave ovens do little for the data integrity of CD-ROMs and other forms of optical storage.

This and other Public Service Announcements regarding microwave ovens can be found HERE

The brazil nut experiment reminded me of this fascinating result. If you shake a container of granular material, the granular material spontaneously collects together in one place.

The same page also has a cool video of granular eruption.

Pixar does Disney better than Disney does now. I suspect that since idiot asshole (Michael Eisner, we're talking Disney in this case) will be gone by the time Pixar fulfills the current contract that they might re-sign with Disney for distribution, hopefully under a less rapacious agreement.