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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."

49 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by RebelTycoon · · Score: 4, Funny

    ljb and his Perl code from hell...

    Here's the Perl script --
    $/=\4;map{?OS/2?|$f&&$f++==2?$c-=2+vec($_,0,32 )/4: ++$c||s/../\0\0/s;print}"


    we can all sleep better knowing that bits can flip in 76 characters... I hope this was a school assignment!

    I guess some people find pleasure in this.. Personally I prefer women.

    1. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by EricWright · · Score: 4, Informative
      I hope this was a schoold assignment

      Three words: perlgolf.sourceforge.net

    2. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by flacco · · Score: 4, Funny
      Here's the Perl script -- $/=\4;map{?OS/2?|$f&&$f++==2?$c-=2+vec($_,0,32)/4: ++$c||s/../\0\0/s;print}"

      I guess some people find pleasure in this.. Personally I prefer women.

      Well, me too, but I silently recite things like this to myself to keep from blowing my wad too fast.

      --
      pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
    3. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by RealAlaskan · · Score: 5, Funny
      we can all sleep better knowing that bits can flip in 76 characters... I hope this was a school assignment!

      I guess some people find pleasure in this.. Personally I prefer women.

      Women? For flipping bits? You are strange.

    4. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      "I guess some people find pleasure in this.. Personally I prefer women."

      At least he's found his pleasure... ;)

    5. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by iapetus · · Score: 5, Funny

      I prefer women who find pleasure in 76-byte Perl scripts for bit-flipping. :)

      --
      ++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
      Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
    6. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Funny

      I pleasure women who prefer bits.

      no, wait; that didn't come out quite right..

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    7. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by Idarubicin · · Score: 3, Funny
      I prefer women who find pleasure in 76-byte Perl scripts for bit-flipping. :)

      I'm sorry; I'm as much of a geek as the next guy, but if your women are finding pleasure in Perl scripts, then you're doing something horribly wrong.

      --
      ~Idarubicin
    8. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by RollingThunder · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, the women just like having their bits flipped. ;)

    9. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by Black+Copter+Control · · Score: 5, Funny
      Women? For flipping bits? You are strange.

      I don't know about you, but my bits get flipped by attractive women on a regular basis.

      --
      OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
    10. Re:and the winner of uber geek 2002 is.... by gosand · · Score: 4, Funny
      Well, me too, but I silently recite things like this to myself to keep from blowing my wad too fast.

      Yep, nothing like a good ol' Perl necklace.

      --

      My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  2. "Compatible" by Gorimek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The new Firewire is signal compatible, but it has a new plug. So you need adapters to plug old cables into the new PowerBooks.

    Haven't heard of why they did this, but I guess they had a reason. Hopefully a good one.

    1. Re:"Compatible" by mbessey · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just so you know:
      There is one "classic" Firewire port and one Firewire 800 port on the 17" Powerbook. So no need for an adapter.

      I remember hearing somewhere that the Powerbook comes with an adapter so you can plug old Firewire cables into the Firewire 800 port, but I couldn't find any confirmation of that on the Apple site.

      -Mark

    2. Re:"Compatible" by isolenz · · Score: 4, Informative

      The new Firewire is signal compatible, but it has a new plug. So you need adapters to plug old cables into the new PowerBooks.

      Actually, the new powerbooks (as awesome as they are) come complete with an 1394 AND 1394b connections. So users won't need adapters, they'll just have two ports for their firewire peripherals. If the user takes up all the bandwidth on the 400mb/s port, he can then get an adapter for the 800mb/s and keep on adding new devices.

      Apple will think of any problem like this before release, and then fix it.

      -isolenz

    3. Re:"Compatible" by SoCalChris · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:"Compatible" by Detritus · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm not going to buy a new car until I can find one with a top speed that is an order of magnitude higher than my current car. I don't want to hear any whining about the difficulty of designing cars that are aerodynamically stable at Mach 1.2.

      --
      Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
    5. Re:"Compatible" by AJWM · · Score: 5, Informative

      The 1394b spec actually calls for speeds up to 3200 Mb/sec, being an 8x improvment over the 1394a spec (800, 1600 and 3200 vs 100, 200 and 400). The spec also calls for cable lengths up to 50 meters over plastic fibre, as I recall.

      The current Apple implementation may be a price/performance trade-off.

      --
      -- Alastair
    6. Re:"Compatible" by 90XDoubleSide · · Score: 5, Informative

      Firewire 800 uses 9 pins instead of 6, and it uses optical cable to get longer range (100 meters on FW800 vs. 4.5 on FW400 and 5 on USB2). See the Apple FireWire page.

      --
      "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
    7. Re:"Compatible" by Overzeetop · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Now that's what I'm talkin' about. 3.2 Gb/s is a worthwhile number. I can see this as a potentially useful tool for memory-based photoshop swap-files, or truly fast portable downloads.

      For those who might question that there isn't a soft spot in my heart for Apple, ya'll should know that I cut my digital teeth hand assembling 6502 machine code one summer...just for fun.

      And for those who scoffed at my 10E+1 requirement, or used physical comparisons (my folks brand new Audi has a CD player which can't read a CD-R, how can I expect revolutionary results anywhere in the auto industry?) it is typical for a factor or 8 or 10 to go by before most folks upgrade.

      Network speeds are nicely partitioned - 10, 100, gigabit. Cds to DVDs are about 8x in storage. Blu-ray, or HD-DVD, or whatever takes over will probably have to see another 6x-10x to be really useful. I'll admit that most processor jumps are in 2x increments, but - I'll be honest - I rarely buy each iteration, preferring to skip two at a time (6502+64kB to 8086+640kB to P75+8MB to K6-350+128MB to P4-2.4+384MB...soon to be a gig... being my upgrades) with minor tweaks along the way. 33.6 to 56k modems? Yawn - I got at 56 'cause my 33.6 broke ant there was no price difference. I bypassed starband and waited for DSL.

      There may be very few applications for 3.2Gb transfers right now, but they will come. I paid $110 for my first firewire card, and it was a bargain at that price. It still serves me well for DV transfers. I'll worry about FW2 when I have to stream uncompressed HD @ 1920p around the house.

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    8. Re:"Compatible" by emoon · · Score: 4, Informative
      From Macintouch discussion on the new PowerBooks
      As the name implies, it is an 800Mbps implementation of the IEEE-1394b standard. It utilizes a new connector, dubbed bilingual, and developed specifically to support the new interface. As before, there are connections for signals as well as power. There is still no guaranteed power spec for supplied bus power. With an appropriate adaptor, FireWire 800 bilingual connections can be used with legacy 6-pin or 4-pin connections, now dubbed FireWire 400.

      FireWire 800 peripherals should be compatible with existing, slower devices provided the right adaptor cable is used. LaCie FireWire 800 products (see separate announcement) include 2 cables - a "FireWire 800 to FireWire 800" and a "FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 (6-pin)". The FireWire 800 connector is called bilingual, as it signifies the interface is compatible with legacy as well as new, faster interfaces.

      IEEE-1394b also specifies a "beta" connector option. This is for FireWire interfaces that cannot be used at the lower, legacy and compatible speeds. Detailed information is available at the Molex website.

      So the new plug is a feature enhancement, not a brazen way to force people to buy new cables...whenever someone ships FireWire 800 only products
    9. Re:"Compatible" by Lars+T. · · Score: 4, Informative
      Pure theory. Reality. More reality. Need I go on?

      Gotta love Google ;-)

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

  3. bitflipping by banks · · Score: 3, Funny

    Perhaps ljb is running his bit-flipping script on The Neo Project....

    On, Off, On, Off.....

    --
    --Use this space for notes--
  4. X-Box Crack & Cheating by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Cheating is the bane of online gaming.

    I find closed systems distasteful, too, but wouldn't it help out a lot with cheating?

    1. Re:X-Box Crack & Cheating by Derek · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I find closed systems distasteful, too, but wouldn't it help out a lot with cheating?
      Sure, the same way that the new homeland security act will help prevent terrorism...

      -Derek

  5. Man after Man by potaz · · Score: 5, Informative

    He did finish the book "Man after Man". The basic idea was that we genetically engineer about 3 or 4 different races (plain dwellers, undersea people, etc.) and then end up dying off when the magnetic poles reverse. The rest of the book shows how these races evolve over the next thousands of years. Pretty neat stuff, lots of pictures and thought put into it.

  6. Cool, but a waste of time by Dougthebug · · Score: 3, Funny

    While I think most distributed computing projects are pretty cool, this xBox thing seems like a waste of time.

    Microsoft will have gone open source by the time they break that key...

  7. I can flip bits in 3 characters! by teamhasnoi · · Score: 4, Funny
    0=1

    I am a COMPUTER GOD!

  8. Firewire would be nice... by evilviper · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Firewire would be nice if more devices supported it. Unfortunately, Firewire is looking like SCSI, and USB is looking like IDE/ATA.

    Sure, no one who knows what they are talking about would argue that USB is better, but they will say that USB comes with more computers, and is cheaper for device manufacturers because of it's compatibility modes. eg. You won't see a firewire mouse with a $1 tranciever that allows it to plug right into PS/2--or a Firewire to Parallel & Serial adapter.

    I really think Firewire missed the boat on making it easy and cheap for device manufactuers to add Firewire support to their devices... USB obviously didn't.

    Firewire's main advantage is it's speed (which still doesn't come close to Ethernet--which further narrows Firewire's market) over USB, but I suspect, if they don't do a better job enticing device makers, Firewire could just as well disappear in favor of USB everywhere.

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    1. Re:Firewire would be nice... by Guy+Harris · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Is there faster ethernet available that I've not heard about?

      Well, there's 10 gigabit Ethernet, and Intel are now sampling a card that supports it.

    2. Re:Firewire would be nice... by tbmaddux · · Score: 5, Informative
      You won't see a firewire mouse...
      Well, good! What mouse needs to transmit data on the order of gigabits per second (IEEE 1394b specs with speeds of 0.8, 1.6, 3.2 Gbps which BTW also refutes your claim that its speed doesn't come close to Ethernet)?

      Apple has it right. Use USB for low-power low-bandwidth serial devices like mice, most printers and scanners, and heck even Zip drives, and use FireWire for the high-bandwidth peripherals. The connectors are small enough that our laptops can handle multiples of each. So bring 'em all!

      FYI, an old but still accurate response to the announcement of USB 2.0 from David Every.

      --
      Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
  9. Re: Computers use binary, remember? by RodgerDodger · · Score: 5, Funny

    It is an order of magnitude. Observe:

    New Speed = Old Speed x 10

    If you think a doubling of speed isn't impressive, then you've been jaded too long.

    --
    "Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
  10. Too bad it requires googleflops. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Seriously, rsa-2048 is like giving a million monkeys a million type writers, its not going to work.

    Encryption is powerful for a reason, people DON'T want their files being crax0red. rc5-72 projects gonna take 3000 YEARS to crack.

    The "standard", 128-bit is 2^64 times stronger than 64 bit. it is FUTILE to even TRY and crack it. Once somethings encrypted with it, the ONLY way to crack it is to comprimise the key.

    RSA-2048 on the other hand, requires factorisation of huge numbers that are not computable with todays computers, unless you have a couple of trillion orders of magnatude of the current age of the universe to spare.

    IT'S Microsoft's box, It's what THEY are in control with, IT'S THEIR Black box! Microsoft Isnt gonna let any old idiot write crap for its machine, If you wanna put linux on a console, get a Playstation 2 and the OFFICAL KIT!

    1. Re:Too bad it requires googleflops. by ChaosDiscord · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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?

  11. "man after man" by Hubert_Shrump · · Score: 3, Informative

    He did finish it.

    My copy says (C) 1990

    It's not just creepy anymore.

    --
    Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
  12. Impossible to obfuscate C? Surely you jest... by douglips · · Score: 5, Informative
    Never heard of the the The International Obfuscated C Code Contest, I supposed.

    Here's an example (natori), from the Year 2000 winners:
    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <math.h>
    double l;main(_,o,O){return putchar((_--+22&&_+44&&main(_,-43,_),_&&o)?(main(- 43,++o,O),((l=(o+21)/sqrt(3-O*22-O*O),l*l<4&&(fabs (((time(0)-607728)%2551443)/405859.-4.7+acos(l/2)) <1.57))[" #"])):10);}

    It supposedly generates a picture of the moon in it's current phase.

    Impossible? feh.
  13. WiebeTech has 1394b too by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 5, Informative
    Here are articles about WiebeTech's announcement of 1394b support:

    WiebeTech also now supports ATA-6 (large IDE drives) in its FireWire bridge product line.

    (WiebeTech is my consulting client. I did the firmware and user interface for FireWire Encrypt).

    --
    Request your free CD of my piano music.
  14. 76 characters? Hah! by Chymaera · · Score: 4, Funny

    Tom7's haiku still takes the cake with regards to brevity:

    The OS/2 chunk
    has a bit for embedding.
    Set it to zero.

    52, by my count, counting spaces--beat that!

  15. One more application... by unicorn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was in Best Buy, or The Good Guys the other day, and happened to see a display of stereo equipment. The manufacturer was pitching the product line as using Firewire to interconnect all the devices. Personally I think this is a great design. Suddenly each device has a power cord, and a single data cable. And then the reciever has a "hub" built in. FAR less spaghetti behind the system, FAR less opportunities for noise to leak into the wiring, etc.

    --
    "Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
    1. Re:One more application... by ruiner13 · · Score: 3, Informative
      I was in Best Buy, or The Good Guys the other day, and happened to see a display of stereo equipment. The manufacturer was pitching the product line as using Firewire to interconnect all the devices. Personally I think this is a great design. Suddenly each device has a power cord, and a single data cable. And then the reciever has a "hub" built in. FAR less spaghetti behind the system, FAR less opportunities for noise to leak into the wiring, etc.

      The manufacturer is mitsubishi, they call it Net Command and they have all their pro. equipment firewire enabled. When you connect any device, it appears in a device manager-like screen where you can choose to send video and/or sound to any connected device that can output video and/or sound. Very cool, and WAAAAY better than RCA, coax, S-Video, or Component.

      --

      today is spelling optional day.

  16. my take on the Perl bit flipper by Dr.+Awktagon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    His one-liner doesn't seem to update the checksum? There is a checksum someplace in there.

    How do I know this interesting fact? Because last year I tried writing my own one-liner, but couldn't squeeze it down to one line because of the checksum.

    Here's what I came up with at the time, which according to diff produces identical output to the C code:

    $/=$_;s''$_=<>;?OS/2?g;$n=pos>>2;$f=-n+1,32);-f/2+ 4,16)=0;(-n
    ,32))=unpack"x$f%32C".-n+2,32),$_;pri nt';s'-'vec($_,$'g;eval

    121 bytes if you take out the newlines. And any slashdot-inserted spaces.

    No, I have no idea how it works any more. The code is placed in $_, the '-' is not as it seems, eval() runs the code in $_, and that's all I can tell you. Welcome to Perl!

    1. Re:my take on the Perl bit flipper by Tom7 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've been told that the checksum isn't actually checked by windows -- apparently, my program updates it incorrectly (using an 8-bit sum instead of a 32-bit one) and doesn't update some other global header checksum. I haven't fixed the program in case I ever end up going to court over it (where it might matter that I haven't touched the page in 6 years), and because it works anyway...

  17. IEEE1394 isn't going away. by dmaxwell · · Score: 5, Informative

    Firewire has one other point in it's favor aside from speed. USB requires a PC to arbitrate the bus while Firewire does not. It is possible to transfer video from DV camera to DV camera with a Firewire cable for instance. If the camera in question understands the partition and filesystem formats, it can even be downloaded directly onto a Firewire hard drive. I also remember reading somewhere that USB is bursty compared to Firewire. That is, properly designed Firewire devices have higher sustained data rates than any form of USB. This is more shades of IDE vs. SCSI I suppose.

    Basically, USB is intended to interface devices to PCs. Intel likes it that way. Firewire is meant to interconnect devices to each other as well as PCs.

  18. What I hate about firewire video by t0qer · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is a windows only issue, but why is it that the DV manufacturers decided in their infinite wisdom to make it so you could only capture in one format (DV)?

    I used to love using my analog BT878 card to do software mpeg compression while I captured. It saved me a ton of disk space and let me capture many different things.

    The recomended disk space for 2 hours of DV is 30 gigs. Since I had no other option I just went out and bought an 80 gig drive.

    So I guess my question to the 1394b creators is, will I be able to software compress a DV stream as I capture it? Or will I have to use oodles of disk space like I do now.

    1. Re:What I hate about firewire video by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 3, Informative

      DV is already compressed. Each frame is compressed individually for a constant data rate of 25 megabits per seconds.

      Some video editing programs (like Final Cut) allow you to edit the video while it is still on the DV tape, then render it to a Quicktime movie directly. You do not need an intermediate copy on the hard disk.

    2. Re:What I hate about firewire video by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The general idea is that you only use lossy interframe compression once, when you're all done editing and are producing final output. Otherwise, you get artifacts from multiple compression/decompression passes.

    3. Re:What I hate about firewire video by AJWM · · Score: 3, Interesting

      DV manufacturers decided in their infinite wisdom to make it so you could only capture in one format (DV)?

      Um, what would you expect a DV manufacturer to make?

      will I be able to software compress a DV stream as I capture it?

      A DV stream is already digital, you don't need to "capture" it. And it's already compressed (it's similar to MJPEG). And there are actually two DV formats (well, more than that if you count NTSC vs PAL), 25 Mb/sec (the usual) and higher quality 50 Mb/sec used in high end professional gear.

      Oh, and not all Firewire video is DV. There are some applications (notably machine vision) where you don't want any compression artifacts, so you run an uncompressed data stream over the wire. Requires specialized gear.

      my question to the 1394b creators

      All of which has nothing to do with 1394b. DV over 1394a only uses 100 Mb/sec of bandwidth, and a lot of that is empty packets (the main constraint is the timing, if you're sending real-time video you use an isochronous channel on the firewire). 1394b probably (I haven't looked at that part of the spec) means you can run more isochronous channels at the same time, for simultaneous real-time video streams, but I don't know for sure. Either way the DV format doesn't change.

      --
      -- Alastair
  19. Re:Anyone thought of this when trying to crack.. by burris · · Score: 4, Informative
    Uh yeah, that was thought of a few thousand years ago. Known as "Direct Search Factorization" it is basically brute force and the slowest algorithm. There are much faster algorithms available and they have been used on the RSA factoring challenges.


    A page on factoring algorithms


    burris

  20. Oh yeah? by Anonymous+DWord · · Score: 5, Funny

    !1

    --
    "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
  21. I think you've got it wrong by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Misunderstanding on your part when you use the word 'capture'.

    "This is a windows only issues, but why is it that the DV manufacturers decided in their infinite wisdom to make it so you could only record in one format (DV)?"

    DV is the format the recording is stored on the tape. There *is* no 'capture' method when you transfer to the PC. Now, what you want is a program that converts from the DV stream into your codec of choice *before* it is stored onto the drive.