Slashdot Mirror

This concept is explored in much greater detail in Chris Anderson's blog, The Long Tail, and his accompanying article, also named The Long Tail.

This wired article on vlogging highlighted a number of new video sites including one called RocketBoom. RocketBoom's author, Amanda Congdon, puts up new video content everyday, Monday through Friday, and by all appearances does a great job. Each day is a separate html page providing quicktime, winmedia and torrent versions of her clips.

A typical clip runs about 2-3 minutes and the .mov and .wmv files run about 20-30MB in size. To properly experience the site requires a good broadband connection, which I have. So far so good.

But it begs the question: who's paying for all that server bandwidth? She solicits no donations, and seems to have survived the exposure wired.com gave her. Can sites like these truly be done inexpensively? If so, how?

For the record, I have no affiliation with her, have never met her, but enthusiastically applaud her efforts. If it is indeed easy to acquire the resources, bandwidth and video production tools necessary to create quality vlog content my guess is we're probably seeing the beginning of a true internet paradigm shift. My gut tells me however, that's a big 'if.'

I'll leave the question of whether we should or not for another day.

Ethanol is a great gasoline additive to reduce emissions, but if you crunch the numbers head to head against biodiesel as a supplemental or replacement fuel, at least in this country where we can't grow sugar cane, biodiesel wins.

As stricter sulfur limits phase in for fossil diesel over the next few years, you'll see the SULEV/PZEV manufacturing market respond with diesel/electric hybrids... one of the reasons why Toyota's 2004 and later hybrid drivetrain was made to be interchangible. Current levels of sulfur prevent this by making emissions control technology too expensive.

At that point biodiesel will experience a surge since most of the factors that make diesels unpopular in the "clean burning" crowd will no longer be valid -- and most any diesel will take biodiesel straight or mixed with fossil diesel without any mods or adjustments. The whole market is just waiting and gearing up for the time when those diesel sulfur limits take effect in the U.S.

http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,66949,00 .html

Perhaps.... but on the other hand, perhaps not.

But renewable energy will not sustain us for some time. The demand for energy is too great and too immediate, and good conditions are too rare

I agree, but the need for a sustainable energy infrastructure is clear, and the sooner we start the long journey, the sooner we'll get there. At this point a large-scale "Manhattan Project" style program would be a very good idea on national-security grounds alone, if only we had a government with the guts/brains to look past the special interests of its campaign contributors and more than 48 months into the future.

The reason why the smartcar isn't allowed in the U.S. is because it is utterly and entirely unsafe. The thing crashes at like 15mph and you're lucky to live.

Unfortunately that's just bullshit. Smartcars have their issues (with a top speed on 135kph, and poor acceleration they aren't exactly ideal for highway driving) but safety is not amongst them. They are surprisingly well designed. Here's an article from Wired that discusses the safety issues of smartcars. In crash tests they actually rate better than Ford Escorts.

Jedidiah,

• It also gets 70 miles per gallon, and you can fit three side by side in a standard parking spot.
• ... plus a sticker price starting at $13,000...
• Her plastic-bodied ride, nearly 4 feet shorter than a Mini, is the least fast, least furious thing ever to hit US streets.
• With its wimpy 50-horsepower engine, the Fortwo takes 20 seconds to get from zero to 60.
• ... the Smart SUV will debut in January at the Detroit Auto Show and arrive for sale in 2006 for about $20,000.
• But any current models that come from overseas will have to be retrofit to pass more stringent US emission standards.

• Idiots,
• Cheaters, or
• MIT students.

Whether they intended it or not, and whether they like it or not, this very web page is evidence of a successful viral marketing campaign for Apple's products.

Critics and skeptics have made a lot of good points about the impossibility of piracy as a means to success for Apple's market share. In posting these good points, they contribute to the buzz that is quickly spreading across the 'net. As the buzz buzzes, greater numbers of geeks and hackers become curious and try out OSx86.

While this may not turn into direct sales from the geeks and hackers, those who like Apple's OS may very well recommend to friends, family and possibly even the procurement department for the enterprise whose network they manage, that the next computer purchased be one that runs OSX. Innocent bystanders who come across the Internet buzz may also suddenly be moved to consider Apple systems, when previously they had not.

Anyone who has been to a system administration conference knows that they are about the geekiest place on Earth. Although it may not be the geeks who sign the checks for big hardware orders, it is they who recommend what to buy. Technology companies are well aware of this fact, as evidenced by the vendor exhibitions at these conferences.

Apple should be very happy that people are spending their time to try out their OS, hacked, stolen or otherwise.

Check out the article here: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68306, 00.html

From the wired coverage of this story: 'No one knows exactly why OSx86 appears to be running faster on the PCs than the Mac OS does on today's Macs. "To be honest, we're not sure," said a hacker nicknamed "cmoski," who said he works for a large software company.'

Kick ass! I can keep track of my key bindings in Duke Nukem Forever!

If it's Wired you can.

[Please, no libel suits or flames. I don't have the time or energy.]

On the brighter side (heh), cities do end up with lots and lots of roof space that currently more or less goes to waste. I suspect that sooner or later someone will find a way to make use of all the energy that currently just bounces off the roof and makes your air conditioner work harder. And the bonus is that you don't have to transport the generated electricity anywhere -- you can make use of it on location.

/. posted a link to a story a little while ago where a guy built a model of something similar, with plans to scale things up massively. But I think his plan would only work with depths you can only get in the ocean (I could be wrong).

I would much rather see a thorium reactor.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68045, 00.html

On a smaller scale this design does away with the per-mirror tracking devices by using a single pair of motors to control the entire array. I don't know if the idea would scale up well, or not.

Umm... he likes tall girls?

Judging from his picture, I don't think liking girls is a concern at all.

Not that many girls would like him either... Day-Glo pink hair and an outfit right out of the 70s? Someone call the fashion police!

Why don't we let FedEx know what we think of this action?

https://www.fedex.com/cgi-bin/qrf2.cgi?link=4&firs t=y&formpage=general

Here's the message that I sent:

I saw this article today in Wired:

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68492,00. html

I think it's despicable that FedEx is using the DMCA to harass a guy who can't afford furniture and is just trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation. Perhaps you have forgotten the time that the owner of FedEx gambled the company payroll in Vegas to save the company.

As a result of this incident, I will be shipping with UPS whenever possible.

I also know a few hundred thousand other people who feel the same way:

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/08/11/1715204.shtml ?tid=123&tid=17

Here are the pics

http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68492,00.html ?tw=wn_tophead_2

What i find funny is that you think that porn isn't going to be a major player in this market. There have been a couple of articles recently about how porn may end up choosing the winner. Here is one article of many.

More directly though, more space is ALWAYS a good thing. 25 hours seems like too much? what about 5 or 6? You obviously have never bought an 8 hour porn video. Ahem.

And i find it amazing that after just saying that dvd was adapted for better picture quality you then say hd-dvd/blu-ray won't be for the same reason!! By that logic people would rather watch dvds then go to the movies because film gives you too much detail. There are many reasons why people can prefer dvds over film but lack of quality isn't one of them.

This is offtopic, but because it didn't survive the submission I did I thought it would be best to post it attached to another Google story.

A few days ago I noticed several websites which are linked by default in the Google Personalized Homepage show staggering increases in web traffic and page views. According to Alexa.com Wired more than doubled and also Slashdot , the NY Times and the Washington Post show remarkable growth at the end of july.

Is this a redefinition of 'slashdotting' or is there something else going on?

Eh. First off, according to the Tom's Hardware article, these players would have to be permanently connected to the internet. Where have I heard about something like that before... Perhaps from DivX, which required the players to be connected to a phone line to "phone home" every now and again... and I'm sure we all know how well that turned out.

Besides, what's to prevent a hacker from filtering out this self-destruct code from the downstream content anyway? I mean, it's not like this internet connection is protected or anything. If the content provider sends a packet to reflash the player, just don't let it get to the player. Have something in between to filter it out.

As usual, there are a bunch of fundamental flaws in DRM that will always keep coming back no matter what the content providers try to do. I see DVD Jon cracking this in a week after it's put out on the streets.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.htm l?pg=1&topic=robot&topic_set=

You might be thinking of this article. I'm just glad UF could follow in the high schoolers' footsteps.

Did anyone else read that as "Sanely Moving from World to the Web?"

I was thinking "Oh God, not another article from Wired!"

And while I don't want to encourage the posting of every article in Wired on /., I also feel compelled to cite why I thought the above. So, realizing that this post will probably only be read by 2 other people at most... the article is here: http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/start.html?pg =3

I think one thing Amazon will have going for them is their website. Assuming they leverage a lot of their existing code, their initial US launch should be miles ahead of Netflix. While Amazon is constantly adding new features that help me find interesting things in the long tail, I don't think Netflix has made an improvement to their website in the two years I've been a customer.

Don't get me wrong, I like Netflix, but the recommendations they make for me are almost always off target. On the other hand, Amazon is always presenting me with interesting recommendations on music and books.

That's just one feature that I expect they will execute better than Netflix. They also have a slew of fetaures Netflix doesn't offer. Some of the ones I've found useful include "the page you made", "customers who bought this also bought this", "customers who viewed this also viewed this".

Then's there's "Artist Essentials". Just getting into jazz but overwhelmed by the many choices for say, Ella Fitzgerald? Then check out her "Artist Essentials". It's just a static list, so how hard could it be to implement? But if you want an opinion from Netflix about the best movies of, say, Jim Jarmusch, well, you're just SOL.

All in all, I'd say Amazon's entry into this market will introduce some good competition, and we're all going to benefit.

diamonds aren't rare, they are held hostage by a cartel. two of the hooligans would be arrested the minute they set foot in the US. Secondly we can manufacture diamonds. The electronic industry can make use of this. The cartel can try to stop it but the electronics industry is much bigger and can easily trump it.

Now that our side is dominant and impleneting it's policies (mostly rolling back socialism in favor of classical liberalism) it is now the Democratic party yelling STOP! in an attempt to preserve their gains.

Towards classical liberalism? Really?

Since when is a $1.2 TRILLION Medicare spending bill (passed by Dubya) something that a smaller government would do?

The idea that Bush is any fiscal conservative at all is a bunch of cracksmokery.

You clearly don't read enough of the Cato Institute which called him a "Progressive President" or The Economist magazine or Reason magazine where Bush's spending record is concerned. Oh, and Bush's "lean budget" this year? It's "like being the slimmest sumo wrestler in the ring."

Soaring yearly budget deficits approaching 5% of yearly GDP are not the work of any "classical liberal"; those deficits -- as the great (and *real* classical liberal) economist Milton Friedman once wrote of deficits decades ago -- are nothing more than a tax increase on future generations. 90% steel tarriffs (ruled illegal by the WTO) are certainly not the work of any free-trading classical liberal (although to his credit, CAFTA is admittedly a nice step).

The very notion that President Bush is returning us to a more classical liberal -- a.k.a. moderate libertarian -- society is almost completely intellectually-bankrupt, whether we are discussing economics (as we are in this thread) or social policy.

We've hit Bush's economic leg, and find he hasn't one to stand on. Clearly Bush has little in the way of classical liberal leanings there (his Social Security reform aside, although even there, his plan will effectively discredit the value of private investment by greatly restricting the basket of investments into which people may invest). What about his classical liberal views on social policy?

He doesn't have a leg to stand on there either.

The real classical liberals would not have attacked a foreign nation unprovoked (Iraq), although they certainly would've fought back against the 9/11 attackers (i.e., we would have gone to Afghanistan, as we actually did). Classical liberals believe in the value of privacy; Bush does not. Classical liberals (usually) support private gun ownership; Bush supported the Assault Weapons Ban even though even the anti-gun Violence Policy Center's own leader said the AWB was of little value (the re-enactment of the AWB thankfully died in Congress, no thanks to Bush). The classical liberals of today -- like Milton Friedman -- support the legalization, or at least decriminalization of illegal drugs; Bush, like any conservative, opposes it (thanks to Ronald Reagan's promotion of the so-failed-even-some-Republicans-admit-it-now "war on drugs").

As a final nail in his socially non-classical liberal policy: on free speech, classical liberals love freedom of speech -- they wrote the First Amendment after all! We would allow full, free, and unrestricted speech on our airwaves (with exceptions perhaps only for very-specific, very limited national security instances, e.g. disallowing the announcement of the procedures and launch codes for any of our nuclear missiles, though

What are you talking about? This is not some huge circuit board they're talking about implanting in people, it's a tiny sliver of platic and metal far less than the size of a dime; http://www.adsx.com/prodservpart/graphics/verichip .jpg. These costs you're talking about won't be any more than a prick in the arm and a minimal charge, especially if you have health insurance. This isn't major surgery or anything. From a Wired magazine article: "The rice-size device costs $200. Those implanted must also pay for the doctor's injection fee and a monthly $10 database maintenance charge, said ADS spokesman Matthew Cossolotto." (http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,55999,00 .html) If this is a govornment-backed movement, then the price would be even less than that, as no doubt the database they are talking about would be govornment-maintained, so we're talking about a $200 initial fee, plus an injection fee (note "injection," not "expensive surgery"), all of which would likely be subsidied by the govornment, so pretty much a minimal cost to the end user. I mean, I can understand being freaked out by the idea, but there's no need to be alarmist. -Julius

That's the short answer.

Here's a better reason why not to.

How Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson Blew the Microsoft Trial

Basically, the evidence biased him so much that he couldn't keep his mouth shut, which caused the case to get irreparably damaged. How's that for irony?

Whatever your love or hate for Microsoft tech, my main peeve is this: With a certified monopoly at the helm, there is NO WAY for us to measure what cool things MIGHT have gotten developed had this 900 lb. gorilla not put a choke-hold on my beloved industry. Opportunity cost...

As you know, I am guessing, Microsoft was seen as the David fighting the Goliath IBM.

One thing that Microsoft certainly did innovate is the XMLHTTPRequestObject.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68403- 2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1

If Cisco told the professor, "You're full of BS, there's no way to hack a router..." Then their hubris and ignorance deserves a bit of this...

Sadly, you Johnnies-come-lately will never blend in with we true-blue old school Mac users.

Wired has a running thing on the last page of every issue, Found: Artifacts from the Future. One of them is on this exact subject. It is here. I very much support both of these ideas. Open source makes sure no one's screwing with the machines intentionally and a hard copy makes sure people can't lie. Well not exactly, but it makes it harder.

Cisco Web Site Hacked 3:18 PM

According to an article at ZDNet, Cisco's web site has been hacked and they are advising users to change their passwords. As someone who was at Ciscogate (Michael Lynn's Blackhat presentation) I can not go without wondering if this event is related. Lynn stated in his presentation last week that the older IOS archives were removed from the download site due to his research. That begs the question, did someone hack Cisco's site in an attempt to get at those versions of IOS? BTW, if you are still looking for the orginal presentation this previous slashdot story mentions an article at Wired, which has a link to lynn-cisco.pdf

From: Kim Christensen (kichrist) [mailto:kichrist@cisco.com%5D
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 11:58 AM
Subject: CISCO - CCO Passwords

Dear Cisco Partner,

I'd like to bring your attention to an issue thatmay cause minor inconvenience for customers and partners.

You may experience issues with yourlogin to www.cisco.com

You will be required to reset your password, please send an email to cco-locksmith@cisco.com from the same email address that is associated with your CCO userid. Within a few minutes you should receive a new working password back to that same email address.

Please note that when you send an email to cco-locksmith@cisco.com - the only requirement is that the email is sent from the same email address associated with your userid to receive the return email with the new password. Once this is received you should be able to reset your password to one of your own choosing.

It ispossible that you are not impacted by this issue but I wanted to ensure you are aware of this in the event you have a problem logging into CCO today.

Your Cisco Channel Team

And Mike Lynn already settled with Cisco, but I suppose it's par for the course to get in one more jab.

Also, the "major flaws" could only be referring to two things:

- flaws that have already been long fixed (six months before Black Hat), that Lynn, in his opinion, didn't believe Cisco identified as "critical enough" to its customers, but nonetheless, as I already said, are fixed; or

- general IOS flaws that will only materialize for architectural reasons in the next major iteration of Cisco's routers that Lynn felt it was important enough to have a frank discussion about, but are not yet shipping.

In other words, Cisco's technical response was such that the vulnerabilities in shipping products are already fixed, and the vulnerability Lynn claims is a real killer allegedly exists in products that aren't even shipping yet and won't be for some time; it flies in the face of logic to believe that Cisco would ignore such vulnerabilities in yet-to-ship products, once identified. Yes, Cisco didn't believe it at first, but it sent engineering staff, and were proven wrong. One can only assume the engineer Cisco sent for the very purpose of confirming this general issue in turn confirmed to Cisco that the problem was indeed real.

Furthermore, it's likely that Lynn broke no law (save possible civil violations of contract and/or trade secret provisions), so any FBI investigation, if not over already, is moot. Ironically, several members of the government, including possibly Air Force OSI and/or NSA congratulated Lynn after his talk at Black Hat, even giving him a challenge coin for his work. Don't worry: Lynn's work isn't lost on those who value security, but don't presume that there is a huge conspiracy just because someone was willing to quit his job to reveal the secrets of a sometime-competitor. A little more of the Cisco/ISS background in this issue - including what I would consider fairly questionably motivated references by ISS about this flaw being Cisco's "Witty" - is provided in the earlier Wired interview.

Don't say that chicken is more eatable than dog.

Different cultures also have different criteria for which animal can be their pets.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67513, 00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

It's just when you download ROMs that you don't own in cart form that you're breaking copyright laws.

No. As the successful lawsuit against (the old) mp3.com demonstrated, just because you have one legal copy of a work doesn't entitle you to get other copies from other sources. To extract a ROM image from a cartridge you possess is fine, but to download it from elsewhere is illegal. Equally illegal as if you had downloaded without owning the cart at all!

Possession of authorized copy entitles you to convert that copy into other forms, but not to recieve new copies already in other formats.

I wrote that in 1999, and I didn't even start working on BitTorrent until 2001," Cohen said. "I find it really unpleasant that I even have to worry about it. ...

That was written in a combative confrontation style; I wasn't really talking about anything. It was a reaction-getting thing.... I think it's pretty clear the way that was written is that it was written in voice. It was an exaggerated character speaking it.

I actually read TFA, saw something about implosions caused by high currents, and an old neuron fired.

Quoting (actually retyping) TFPDF:
The current caused the liner to implode at extreme speeds, with unrivaled symmetry, precision and reproducibility.

This appears to describe the Quarter Shrinker, so here it is:
http://teslamania.delete.org/frames/shrinkergaller y.html

The (short-short) recent Wired article on The Quarter Shrinker:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/start.htm l?pg=9

Giving a new, literal meaning to "blinded by science" ...

Well, just because you have never even heard of something does not make it false.

A while back there was a stink about Palm Pilots being able to sniff out and emulate car door unlocking codes via IR. Here's a link to a wired article that mentions it. A quick Google will turn up more. You should really hit Google before you hit the bold tag.

Linkee-dinkee-doo.

That's pretty cool, but this story about four underpriviledged high school kids from Arizona and their ROV is worth a read. With little funding and experience, they take on college students and, well, you'll see...

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.htm l

This doesn't invalidate their patent but it shows that it isn't just some idea no one else is mulling over: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65347, 00.html

I'm sure Bill would happily pay Linus a million or two if he could legally prevent Linus from writing any more code.

From the office of Linus Torvalds
Date: 10.31.2008
To: BillG
From: Linus
(...)
When you hired me three years ago, you had to realize that I was going to speak my mind, no matter what the consequences. You told me that if I ever hit a wall with Steve or his people, I should let you know.
(...)
Myself, I thought I was making some pretty outrageous demands. I was stunned when you agreed to accept the General Public License mandating that everything you added at the level of the new operating system would remain open. But you've been true to your side of the bargain, and you've won my respect. You never made me alter my goal, which was world domination for Linux. I'll never forget your line: "Come on, Linus, infect the mothership." I still believe that was the best recruiting pitch ever uttered. We both took a lot of criticism from our partisans, but look what we've accomplished. The world is using software that doesn't suck!

The real issue at hand, at least with Cisco router owners, is not the fact that Lynn released information concerning the exploit, but the fact that Cisco would not tell anyone about it. Time and time again has shown how security through obscurity is not real security, especially when Cisco's source code had been stolen.

The reality of it is that Cisco fixed the exploit last April with a patch and no longer offers the vulnerable IOS for download on their site. The problem with that though is that they did not inform anyone what the patch fixed and who needed to download it. Most people who are vulnerable to this attack are those who have not updated to Cisco's version as of April (which are a few I'm sure. No point on upgrading a working system with a patch that could break you.)
The real problem is Cisco and their disregard to release information over a severe vulnerability in order to press forward their new OS next year.

Jorn is that you?!!!

Daniel Terdiman wrote about this same issue some weeks back. He spoke with Prof. Beth Noveck of New York Law School who had created the concept of "Peer to Patent" - an interesting proposal to this problem to say the least.

Wow. The making nice is the first step that leads us to Linus being hired by Microsoft to put Windows on Linux

Gary Wolf is a prophet.

Back in February, Wired ran this this

I'd be far from surprised to hear Cisco were notified of this 3 months ago, hence Lynn's frustration and his decision to publicly talk about the flaw.

Exactly. IIRC from another article this morning, the flaw was disclosed a while ago, I think in April. He publicly announced it on Wednesday July 27th. That's indeed around 3 months.

Using any buffer overflow or similar flaw, he showed how you could take control of the IOS (the OS on the router?). The IOS is supposed to be abstracted from the hardware and immune to this type of flaw.. this wasn't supposed to be possible before. So this flaw isn't tied to a specific low-level buffer-exploit vulnerabilty, so it's not enough to patch that vulnerabilty, because as soon as another is discovered, the IOS will be vulnerable too.

From other posts, it seems Cisco is usually quite reactive to flaw disclosure. Maybe this flaw was bigger and tougher to fix than the usual, but according to a Wired article. CISCO wanted to keep the flaw secret until next year, when a patched IOS beta would be released.

Lynn found this outrageous.

Outrageous enough to quit his job on the spot, burn himself from the industry's eye, and expose himself to a lawsuit from Cisco. Doesn't that make you think?