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If you were to use high speed vacuum sealed flywheels on magnetic bearings then the friction is obviously very low, and the limit on the lifetime of the system is a material limit. Currently a fair amount of development cash is beiong spent on making fibre materials to use in flywheels which don't fail catastrophically, have predictable and high failure stresses and low creep.

There was an article about this in Wired a few months back.

As featured a year ago on /., and in Wired, ooh, long since.

bm :)-~

Microsoft's DNS actually went down two days in a row. The first day was a router misconfiguration. I remember because a lot of my office was having problems with IE loading its default homepage (msn.com). After checking things out it was pretty clear that even with an ip address from whois for their dns servers that traceroutes died at an MS router. i.e. you could get to the DNS router that was doing the round robin for the DNS servers, so it wasn't being DoSed. Go to this Wired article where Microsoft spokespersons admit that it was a router misconfiguration. And we know that Microsoft's PR people are always putting down Microsoft products and services as being the worst.

After the 23 hours it took Microsoft to figure out it had a bad router config, the skript kitties obviously decided that this poor router had to be rebaptised in a stream of packets, a veritable flood of packets. I don't condone it, but the fact that MS took 23 hours to figure out they had a bad router config causing them a DoS and took another few days to decide that they should outsource their DNS to someone who could provide a distributed and reliable service shows a top heavy beast that could not compete without the monopoly (District Court ruling stands until the Milton Friedman acolytes on the Appeals Court hand down a verdict as a resume addendum to Dubya for selection to the Supreme Court.) power that they possess.

Why would Vivendi want to buy mp3.com in the shadow of their legal battle with the RIAA in which they were sued for more than their net value? It doesn't make business sense.

it was named after Aimee Deep. So the question is, will she change her name?

Actually, you don't need to look to something as radical as logic to see the source of Dr. Laura's allegedly moral objections to porn.

It turns out that her attacks on the American Library Association and pornography in libraries began, by a strange coincidence, shortly after some amateur porn photos she'd done during an extramarital affair in the 70s leaked onto the net (search on "Dr. Laura Naked" to find the uncensored version). She sued over the photos, but the suit was dropped. Interestingly, the porn company that bought the photos also brought a lawsuit against the amateur sites which posted them. There was a great interview with the guy who took the photos which I'm afraid I can't find. He talked about her "sleeping her way to the top" of the radio industry.

Whenever somebody takes the moral high ground in attacking others, I immediately suspect them of doing the same. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," as I'm sure Dr. Laura herself would quote.

See also the Stop Dr. Laura site for further amusements.

also:
these links have some additional information about H.R. 1542

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43709,00 .html

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-5881148.html

http://www.broadbandweek.com/news/010507/print/010 507_news_tauzin.htm

_f

if they're implementing an ID system like this, then you know it's the correct technological solution.

What? Huh?!

I cannot imagine how mandatory identification for use of the Internet (as though it's a drug like alcohol) would not stifle the civil liberties of the good people of Mumbai.

Politics and agendas play large roles even in "forwards" nations. If such measures were introduced in the States, neither you nor I would be very likely to "know it's the correct technological solution." I don't know where all this naivete is coming from, but I do know that you your subjective opinion places too much trust in the government for your own good.

A law punishing pornography shows that the government of Mumbai is far more succeptible to extremist moral standards than interested in preserving civil liberties.

Journalism in this case is immune from criticism, as there was only a letter published, much like the first few pages of any magazine off the shelf. The letter itself was purely factual and to the point, only making one subjective argument about the tentative state of anonymity in Mumbai. If you prefer an alternate editorial format, don't let us stop you.

"A mature individual" realizes his or her priorities, and civil liberty really should become one of yours.

One politician who deserves to be recognized is Russ Feingold, the idiosyncratic senator from Wisconsin. Best known for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill (and one of the few politicians to refuse PAC money in a campaign for national office), Feingold has also long been one of the few tech-savvy people in a notoriously over-age, anti-tech government body. His finest hour in this regard was the Leahy-Feingold bill to overturn the Communications Decency Act, which was left to the courts to litigate; but he's often spoken out on issues near and dear to the EFF, with support for encryption freedoms and online privacy.

The only Senator who really outstrips him in this area is Patrick Leahy, D-VT, who takes the lead on more tech issues (Feingold often being a co-sponsor), especially since Feingold has put so much effort into the campaign finance issue.

But especially in those early days around 1995, when hardly anyone really knew what the internet was, Feingold said on the Senate floor,

Guaranteeing the Internet is free of speech restrictions, other than the statutory restrictions on obscenity and pornography which already exist, should be of concern to all Americans who want to be able to freely discuss issues of importance to them regardless of whether others might view those statements as offensive or distasteful. Shifting political views about what types of speech are unsuitable should not be allowed to determine what is or is not an appropriate use of electronic communications. While the current target of our political climate is indecent speech (the so-called "seven dirty words"), a weakening of First Amendment protections could lead to the censorship of other crucial types of speech, including religious expression and political dissent. I believe the censorship of the Internet is a perilous road for the Congress to walk down. It sets a dangerous precedent for First Amendment protections and it is unclear where that road will end.

Very impressive. Remember, this was nineteen-ninety-five, TIME magazine was running cover stories suggesting the internet was some sinister force creeping into our homes, and most people still had to have the word explained to them. In those days, it was difficult to find anyone who would stand up for the rights of internet users, who were seen as a fringe group of suspicious characters, hackers, pornographers, terrorists and worse -- rather than today's view that the internet is a basic utility to be enjoyed by all citizens. Fortunately, shortly after this I attended a Rotary Club meeting where he spoke (we are from the same home town), and in the Q&A time I stood up and let him know that a lot of people online considered him a hero.
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lake effect weblog

While it all may smell suspiciously of nostalgia, Scott won't suffer those who long for the days before mom and pop showed up online.

"The one thing I don't hold truck with is people saying to me that everything's gone downhill since then, that the new people are ruining everything," said Scott. "It took me four years to track down all these textfiles; people can now download them in 45 minutes. That's not going downhill."

Not that I think these people are cool or anything, but how about:

Master P: Believe it. A couple years ago, I read that he was in the top fifty list of richest men under 40 from his record label empire that he runs, No Limit. He made 365 million in one year-- that topped Michael Jordan. He turned thirty this year.

Michael Dell: Currently aged 34 years. Started and has run Dell computers through his 20s. Now has 21 billion dollars.

Seth Warshavsky: At the helm of the largest online porn entity-- IEG (Internet Entertainment Group) at age 24. He started and has run the company responsible for profitting off the online Dr. Laura nude pics and the Tommy Lee and P. Anderson video. In 1997 it grossed $20 million. Granted, unlike Dell, this guy has some morals and taste.

Some usage I remember:

1. (Describing a PC) Equipped with sound, video, and CD-ROM.
2. (Describing a game or web site) Graphically intensive, with sound and/or video.
3. (Describing a data protocol) Able to support multiple services - e.g. ATM, which is designed to support voice, data, and video
4. (Describing an industry segment) Broadly defined to include game developers, web designers, software developers, and editors of fancy magazines about same
5. (Describing a neighborhood) A place where innovative, cutting-edge companies producing 1, 2, and 4 (but not 3) locate.

But it's really obsolete usage by now. I haven't seen it in common usage in several years, except to describe slow, graphically intensive web sites that make me want to uninstall Flash.

(Note that it's 404 in the Jargon File. Probably because it's so amorphous as to be useless as jargon.)

The review mentions an article in the Atlantic in 1945 about hyperlinks, and Tim Berners-Lee, but no mention of the Ted Nelson's infamous 'Xanadu' project. The last I heard of it was an article in Wired in 1995 (found here) but I haven't heard anything since then.
Xanadu was supposed be be a two-way hypertext system, not only could you link other documents to your own, but you could link your document to others. Needless to say, there was much wailing and hand-wringing over copyright, IP and so forth, and the general consensus is that Nelson is a bit weird, but it's an interesting story, none the less.
-----------------

K, here's
the article I was referencing in my above post (GASP! Fact checking on /.!!!).
Towards the bottom of the first page it talks about "Gary Gordon, vice president of cyber-forensics technology at WetStone Technologies, based in Freeville, New York, said that his firm has made progress in creating a tool to detect steganography." and how they've run this on a web spider pulling random images from the 'net and found steg'd images.
Pretty good read, perhaps I should send this onto Mr. Katz as well??

Following a few links from the "prototype" story leads to this Wired Article:

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,43389,00 .html

As the article states, in order to use this technology, you will have to have the correct version of Windows media player installed. If WMP decides that it doesn't want to play your MP3 because the watermark tells it that it doesn't have permission, then just play the MP3 in Winamp (or some other media player that ignores watermarks). Assuming that the DMCA doesn't make those kind of players illegal, we have nothing to worry about. The information that we want, the song, is not encrypted.

I wonder if AOL has taken the time to filter regular expressions such as pr0n/s3x/etc. Then I also wonder how are kids doing homework on "sexual reproduction" or "sexual organisms" are going to fair when using AOL.

I suggest you try this for yourself using AOL's parental controls. Alternatively, you can read the Wired article...it appears that the neural net is smart enough to tell the difference between pornography (or p0rn0gr4fi3) and sex education, STDs, etc.

Here's another one I found a couple days ago. According to an article in Wired, it sounds like Microsoft is developing their own version of SDMI. (Article here.) Their proposed scheme will listen for watermarks in all of the music you play, and refuse to play any watermarked music that doesn't have a digital signature attached. Of course, digital signatures can only be included with WMA files, so don't plan on playing any watermarked MP3 music on Windows 2006. Fortunately, this is just a Microsoft Research project, so it's not going to appear in an operating system any time soon. It's a bit scary how close this gets to forcing everyone to use WMA for much of their commercial music needs. I'm sure they'd never take it that far, though.

This topic reminded me of an article I read several years ago in Wired. Fortunately, that site maintains a freely accessible online archive of past issues, so I was able to dig up a link.

The article talks about how great that technology was (is) and how theories exist about how the owner of a delivery truck company leveraged influence with the city managers to get the tube system dismantled so that he could sell delivery trucks to the city.

Here's a link to the article.

So what is the big deal with XML Schema? XML Schema is important because it provides the widgets to define a "card catalogue" for your library of data, be it air plane parts, phone bill, hotel reservations, or porn.

Now metadata has been with us since the mud table libraries of Mesopotamia (they had indexes of stuff so they could find how many cows were traded in the Xth year of SomeRulerDude), however the printing press is what made all the difference. You see, before the printing press books were so expensive and time consuming to write, there were not that many of them. The general strategy to manage a library was an index of all the books. As long as the book population was not too big, then this works. For example, when you search on google for "McCain", you get congressman, porn sites, and damn near everything in between. Search engines today are just really, really big indexes of stuff. Still in the stone ages, aye?

The printing press changed that and forced libraries to find an EXTENSIBLE way to keep up with books. The Dewey Decimal System is a great example. So I pose to you the following question, "When was the last time the DDS was updated?" Well, how long have they been publishing books on computer science, biogenetics, or nanotechnology. The DDS is an extensible system to classify knowledge. So I leave you with the following statement...

HTML was the functional equivalent of the printing press, which is just an electronic version of fast, cheap publication. HTML forced us to follow down the path of XML, just like the printing press forced Mister Dewey to put on his thinking cap. The only difference is that the printing press took a few hundred years to do its thing where HTML only took a few years to do its thing.

Now for all the other XML specs out there (SAX & DOM, RDF, XSLT, XHTML, XPointer, etc) are just tools to work with your (library of) data. Better to have many specialized tools that can evolve independently than one big honking tool, aye? Use only the tools you need.

So does TBL's dream of a semantic web make more sense now...?

If you want some links, try...

Danny Hillis - The big picture

Roger Costello's XML Schema Tutorials

"You can drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror as long as nothing is ahead of you. Not enough software professionals are engaged in forward thinking." - Bill Joy

This is so weird and sad. Check the story about a 16 year old daughter of the Aimster founder: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,43441,00.ht ml

She's pretty hot http://aimster.com/fanclub/photos.html but she's being pimped by her dad to attract people so they use Aimster.

All I can say is: Keep your pimp arm strong, bro!

Story w/out annoying Flash ad here.

Wired also has the story.

I love the preemptive strike (although I worry about Boies' track record as of late), but what I love the most is how one of the founders pimps out his 16 year old daughter! She is cute though...what do you think /.ers (asked w/ no fear now that I know that 95% of you are also male)?

The author got this mail:

ANNOUNCING: THE WORLD'S FIRST LINE OF PERSONAL SATELLITE TRACKING DEVICES!!

So he rang them up, eventually got onto "Mr. Benson", and wrote up the whole adventure. I tell you, the Spamworld sounds like a parallel universe.

The article is at htt://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.10/spam.html.

So it's somehow not good to provide personal information for free (physical) stuff but it's OK to provide personal information for "free" Web mail? Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail want your personal info too. So to answer your question, no, they're not free -- you pay with your information, just like other freebies. And unlike a sample of coffee or whatever, once you're locked in to Hotmail and the like, getting out is another story.

Check this out... But I don't think it's available sealed against liquid "spills"..

Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)

My first thought was that Bluetooth enables this feature, as in this article's quote:

Wireless security company Ensure Technologies introduced XyLoc technology that uses Bluetooth to authenticate people on a PC. The system unlocks a workstation when a person with a Bluetooth access card approaches a workstation, said marketing manager Lynn Pollack.

However, Bluetooth requires that individuals are wearing a device, which leaves the question of how to handle the deviceless. Wow, now you've hit on something really exciting, a system that reads a person's face and reacts appropriately as you described next.

Have your computer automatically minimize that quake game when your boss/mom walks into the room.

OR plays a .wav file saying "I have a higher score than you do, na, na..." if your best friend walks in!

Wired ran an incredible article on this a few months back.

J.

Wired ran an incredible article on this a few months back.

J.

If you find a new job right after you get fired at the old one, a simple new H1B-application (not the approval) will keep you in-status.

And apart from that, it seems the INS has some new policies about treating H1B-layoffed that still hang around in the country.

Didn't military use cell phone techology back in those years, even prior to that?

The FCC has been a bit moronic on its regulation practices, past present and future. I wonder if their regulations have hindered technology from advancing tech to something better than it could have been.

This is coming as a pleasant surprise to just about everybody it affects.

Acknowledging the "turbulent time in the tech industry," an INS official said her agency will not force H-1B visa holders to leave the country if they haven't found new employment within 10 days of being terminated.

"We are going to let things slide," agency spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt said.

In fact, that 10-day deadline may not even exist at all. Nowhere in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 -- and its amendments, which contain H-1B provisions -- is there any language that stipulates a timeframe in which a terminated employee must leave the country before the visa expires.

read on

pimped BlackBox themes

Well, looks like we have yet another example of a corporate hegemony abusing it's powers via threats of lawsuits. Same story, different day.

So what? I have serious doubts that bitching about it on /. is going to change a goddamn thing. In fact, I have serious doubts that *anything* is going to change a goddamn thing. Give money to the EFF or EPIC or whoever, but it doesn't fucking matter. The governments of the world continue to give more and more power to moneyed interests with little regard for the good of democracy or freedom. Modern governments almost exclusively represent the will of multinationals, and I just refuse to consider this a Good Thing(tm) no matter what the Randroids say. *Anything* that throws a wrench in the ability for corporations to make money is vilified, ridiculed, or just ignored. Witness Bruce Schneier's highly-ignored testimony before the committee considering the DCMA, or or the FBI pulling unknown shenangians related to the recent world trade meeting in Quebec.

Nothing can beat capitalism. Nothing. Not guns, not religion, not science, not hedonism. When you get in the way of capitalism, you will get fucked and you won't even get a reach-around. Go ahead, bitch about it on /. or wherever. It won't change a fucking thing. Especially when the vast majority of the population are TV zombies, Q3/B&W/CS zombies, NFL/NHL/NBA zombies, or just plain idiots.

Tune in. Turn on. Drop out. That's the best advice I've heard. Of course, I'm writing this from my cushy job in a cubicle, sitting on a Sun Ultra.

GRRRRrrrrr.

Seriously, this would be a boon for NASA. Currently, they're pushing the limits of backup technology and it's expected to get worse.

A "cube library" (as opposed to tape) with a little shuttle to move the cubes around would be a godsend even if the laser to read them costs 300k.

Picture one of these; the laser might take up most of it, but the savings would be incredible.

I support the increasing shift of IT people into less dominant market areas in hardware and software.

AMD instead of intel, Linux instead of Windows.

This big sites application is a sort of branding model.

The technical applications of each hardware or software solution vary. what is concludable at this point is that monopoly based business models are disfavored the more people use less dominant technologies.

If folks can switch from Colgate to Aqua Fresh for stupid reasons, people can save money and take a little more time with their technology to break out of the monopoly mold.

It's basically a matter of building brand loyalty.
This spork says, Fuck the FBI

How quickly you forget! You do not remember the awfulness of the foldout (oh yes) cover of Wired 4.06??? BEHOLD! TREMBLE IN HIS PALENESS!!

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,43203,00.ht ml

Salon, Wired, and almost every other major web publication offers some option like this, and they are always about 50 times more readable than the "standard" version, and all the text is on a single page, so you don't have to wait for five pages. Most of the time, you don't have any annoying banner ads, either.

So, a honeynet is just like any other firewall protected network, except for the fact that people are actually paying attention to network security?

While I don't think I agree with the effectiveness of a 'dedicated' honeynet over any other real network, this does bring to light the interesting effect this will have on network security in general. Right now, l33t k1dd3z have a 'you can't catch me' attitude. Witness the recent exploits of a Welsh hacker who thought that he was so far above the law that he could do what he wanted to any website he wanted in the name of his own little sense of morality.

Most of these kids *know*, not just think, that they are never going to be caught.

As more and more business and organizatons employ honeypots and 'honeynets', trying to catch crackers before they crack, more and more cases of idiots like these are going to get in trouble for breaking the law. Rooting a server is going to be seen less and less like fairly innocent grafitti and more and more like knocking over a convenience store and beating up the clerk, and then walking out with only a slushee. People will still do it, but attacks will be fewer and further between, and the people who get cracked will be those who've invited it by not putting up the equivalents of bullet-proof glass and panic alarms.

http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MDH-10.html

Al Gore said in a CNN interview in March of 1999, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

You can read more about it here: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,18390,00 .html

Read a newspaper.

----

...in this Wired article.

As far as wireless LANs go, you have two choices - either Proxim (HomeRF/OpenAir) or 802.11b. 802.11b offers a higher data rate (Max 11Mbit), however the HomeRF protocol supports both voice and data over the same protocol (the latency on 802.11b makes it so that voice cannot be supported). The HomeRF protocol also has better multipath which means that in most homes you should get better range. The downside is that the HomeRF protocol currently only supports ~2Mbit speed. However the FCC recently ruled that the HomeRF protocol can now operate at four times the speed, which means that companies will probably soon come out with 8Mbit units sometime in the future. Another thing you may want to think about is that using a GSM cellphone has been known to interfere with 802.11b wireless networks.

Riiiigggghhhttt... I'm sure that would be well liked on cramped airplanes. Here's a better idea(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/flywh eel.html). Now I don't know the viability of converting such a storage unit to a smaller size, but the way I see it, we should be able to fit a fairly good size wheel in the space of most battery packs today (only now they must be square, not rectangular). The best part is that the battery lasts almost indefinitly and cannot be overcharged. Plus, since it is aligned with elctromagnets, it can possibily be made highly shock resistent. Probably not perfect, but a much cleaner idea than a MEM.

This article in wired in 1997 discusses cyborgism.

There was another essay, also in wired, discussing the fact that we are already cyborgs as a species, due to thinks like Lasik, pacemakers, sub-cue drug supplies, internal hearing aids, contact lenses, digital watches and the ilk.
The intersection of science fiction and reality is always fascinating. How often are inventors/researchers inspired by books/movies/tv shows to invent what they do?
Of course, now I'll probably get modded down as Offtopic. I fear no moderation! I am a man, not a number!
This message brought to you by user number 3441075.


Brant

I wondered why this looked so familar then I realized Wired also had a story not too long ago about the dude as well.Geiss is also another great WinAMP visualization plugin as well.

Backyard Boxing online?That's unpossible!
ICQ:47685501

My ISP got on MAPS' shit list, and my brother's ISP blocked all my email to my brother.

Excuse me, then you were paying money to a shitty ISP, and it's good that you left. That is exactly the effect intended when a network refuses to be a responsible member of the Internet community.

You didn't say whether your ISP was in MAPS RSS or RBL. We know to get in MAPS RSS, a mail server must:

• Be open to third-party relay.
• Be proven to have relayed spam mail in the past.
• Be unwilling to correct the problem

I challenge you to prove otherwise. So far, you are just full of hot air.

Note that they're too chickshit to block AOL or MSN -- I guess even MAPS don't have enough lawyers to fight those guys.

OK, now you're talking out of your ass. What, are you a really good troll or something? MAPS did put MSN on their blacklist.

I think MAPS is lacking in some areas, but your bad experience with a bad ISP is not going to convince me you have a legitimate gripe.

You should not have had to contact MAPS for any reason; your ISP, being the ones blacklisted, should have done what needed to be done.

You sound like an end-user. Let me tell you, it's very hard to get into the RBL if you are a competent organization with well-clued system administrators.

Here, at Central Oregon Internet, we've been using MAPS since nearly the beginning (meaning, years), and I can count the number of problems with legit mail being dropped on ONE HAND (and guess what? I'm a nice sysadmin that will allow email to come in from blacklisted hosts if a customer needs mail from there--but I will try hard to get the offending network to get themselves off the blacklist, and if I see any spam from them, they don't get any more special treatment. See, your brother's ISP sucks, too). A couple of weeks ago, MAPS checking was turned off for three days, and the amount of spam reported by our users skyrocketed. That is all the proof I need of the effectiveness of MAPS.

Ran an article that had a similar title a while back. You can read it Here

David Brin was right; the cameras are coming. Make sure that we can watch our leaders and police as easily as they can watch us.

A.I. is based on a Brian Aldiss short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long"

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.01/ffsupertoy s_pr.html