Slashback: Embed, Dougal, FireWire

Slashback this evening brings you a few corrections, updates, amplifications and reversals -- read on for more on the Xbox key cracking project, the new version of FireWire, and more.

Reality is just an illustrator's concept. In regards to the speculative piece about what animals will look like in the future, Ken Colangelo writes: "The author of After Man was Dougal Dixon, not Dougal Adams. He's got a pretty long track record as an amazing bio-illustrator.

He had, at one point, spoken of a book he was working on called "Man After Man" I believe. This would discuss what man would evolve into. In any case, I am probably his biggest (only?) fan and would appreciate it if you'd tell slashdot to correct his name ... This guy clearly needs to be working in speculative evolution again, now that computer graphics have caught up to his abilities. Animal Planet just doesn't seem to be that great at it."

A bit more on that secret FireWire, since it's no longer secret. cwill1004 writes "As was speculated yesterday, it turns out that Apple is indeed including a new higher-speed FireWire on its new laptops. Dubbed IEEE1394b, it appears to be primarily for external storage devices. One article on the Storage Supersite says that LaCie, Maxtor, SmartDisk, and Indigita have already hopped on board. The best part: IEEE1394b is backwards compatible, and available on both Mac and PC."

Perl undoes simplicity itself. ljb writes " I've re-written Tom Murphy's 'embed' bit-flipping program in Perl. At 76 characters (shorter than a standard 80-character width terminal line), I believe this qualifies as a Perl "one-liner". Heck, you could even fit this on an old IBM punchcard (ignoring character set limitations). Here's the Perl script --
$/=\4;map{?OS/2?|$f&&$f++==2?$c-=2+vec($_,0,32)/4: ++$c||s/../\0\0/s;print}<>"

So get distributed crackin' ... scubacuda writes "On. Off. Now it's on again? According to PC World (et al), The Neo Project again tackles the challenge of cracking Microsoft's encryption key."

Comments

Re:"Compatible"

[SoCalChris]

Only Apple would put forth a "revolutionary" new product which offers a measly 2x improvement. Note to technologists: please offer an order of magnitude (give or take) before making us by everything over again.

The bandwidth of firewire is extremely high, especially compared to other competing technologies like USB1.0. I think doubling the bandwidth is pretty impressive.

I do agree with you however that they should have tried to keep the original plugs for compatibility, but who knows, they probably had a good reason to use a new style.

Besides, how much would it cost to go out and get a new IEEE1394b daughterboard for your computer? A USB2.0 card can be had for under $50, so I would imagine the new IEEE1394b will be around there pretty soon anyways. It's not like you will have to go replace your entire computer and perephials to use the new technology.

Re:Too bad it requires googleflops.

[ChaosDiscord]

IT'S Microsoft's box, It's what THEY are in control with, IT'S THEIR Black box!

If it's their box, what exactly did I pay $200 for? The nifty packing material?