Forgive me for my ignorance (and I haven't RTFA), but my understanding of RFID is the only way to tell what an RFID device is is by listening to it broadcast. Well, if you listen to a device broadcast enough, particularly if you listen in on a conversation between it and what it's supposed to talk to...doesn't it then become relatively simple to create your own RFID device that broadcasts all the same things as the original chip, and responds in all the same ways to input?
Seems to me it's just another instance of "DRM doesn't work," only in this case all the communication between supposedly secure nodes literally has to take place in the open air...
Dan Aris
Well, I don't know if I can answer your question in terms of the technical limitations of RFID - but in general, your argument ignores the possibility that RFID data is being encrypted.
For instance: suppose the subway fare system uses a set of encryption keys - some of these keys will be stored on the fare cards (the RFID devices) and some will be stored in the machines that interact with these cards...
Now suppose the interaction starts with one of these machines broadcasting, looking for a fare card... In some part of the initial handshaking the machine sends out a transaction number - encoded using an encryption key that fare cards can decode. In all further communication that transaction number is part of the encryption key used by the fare card.
You can listen in on this transaction, but you can't do anything with it unless you can decode the messages... You can't replicate the transaction because your response has to include the transaction ID given to you by the gate machine...
So in the context of an "uncloneable" chip - you could create another chip that pretends to have the same "Physical Uncloneable Functions" - but that depends on first knowing exactly what they are... If it's handled in a static way and not encoded, that's pretty easy. If it's handled in a way that one RF exchange only gets you one part of the data you'd need to replicate the thing - or if the data you'd need to replicate the chip is encrypted, then that makes the problem substantially harder...
Fundamentally, though, I believe you're correct - if it can be made once, it can be made again... The trick is to make it difficult to do that.
Perf said "30 years ago, they stuck a card into their Atari to play a game.". Atari didn't release the VCS until 1977. So yeah, we're talking 30 years ago.
Prior to that (and the Fairchild Channel F the previous year) there wasn't much in the way of cartridge games at all - mostly systems that could play a few different variants of "Pong" or maybe a simple light-gun game... If you want to talk about the home video games of (nearly) 40 years ago, you're looking at things like the "Magnavox Odyssey" - which had cartridges, sure - but these only contained jumpers (nothing as sophisticated as a ROM) and the different games relied heavily on outside props.
The whole project has been carefully and hermetically sealed to ensure that not a drop of future can get in.
Aw, but Future is such great stuff! It makes a nice gloss coat for both before and after you apply decals... you can dip clear parts in it to get a brilliant shine that won't haze from super glue fumes... You can even use it to make small clear windows... It self-levels, you don't need to thin it before airbrushing it, it's dirt-cheap and available at just about any supermarket. Hell, you could even polish your floors with it, if you wanted to...
One of those lasers they claim can destroy missiles should easily be able to zap a bit of space junk.
Ah, but there's a trick to that, you know?
See, the amount of destructive potential needed to damage a missile sufficiently to prevent it from successfully continuing in its firing arc, reaching its target, and exploding is much less than it would take to vaporize a solid object in space or even just break it up and send it into the atmosphere...
Let's suppose this is a laser-based system - it might be able to disable a missile by hitting it with a beam, heating up the material along the beam enough to cut through the outer casing, destroy circuits, cut fuel lines, whatever... Enough, one would hope, that the missile will break up in the atmosphere instead of reaching target and detonating...
Now, try that with a random piece of junk from a satellite explosion: what happens? Maybe you cut that piece of junk in half with the laser - but all that changes in instead of one piece of junk there in orbit, now you've got two. The amount of mass and the velocity it's moving hasn't changed by any significant amount... To get rid of the junk you need to either fetch it, or de-orbit it and make it burn up in the atmosphere.
My current gaming addiction (if you want to call it that) has very little to do with immersion...
Basically, I play Dr. Mario online. It's not really the sort of game that has much of a "second world" quality to it... But I do play a fair bit, I am pretty good, and sometimes wind up eating a lot more of my free time with it than I'd like... Sometimes it even invades my consciousness a bit - I'll wind up visualizing chain combos at random times...
I wouldn't argue with someone who says immersive features contribute to game addiction, but they're by no means necessary...
P.S.: if you ever happen to see me in-game, I am Dr. Kooky.
I guess this had to happen eventually - the Sun, mother to our own Mother Earth, is having a "spotless" month - the great change is upon her. It can be a difficult adjustment - but it is, after all, a part of life...
One restaurant owner attempted to use a Zapper to break into his cash register - but he failed... Then, to add insult to injury, a sprite of a hunting dog popped up from behind his taskbar, giggled at him, and then disappeared again.
If you your string concatenation operator is distinct from your addition operator, it's simple to tell whether you are dealing with a string or a number from context. Plus it lets you do neat stuff like:
my $filename = 'file0000';
$filename++; # = file0001
Why write more code than you have to?
And if you have more than 10000 files? Not to worry, your filename will advance from "file9999" to "filf0000" - the counter system is naturally extensible......There's something to be said for telling the language exactly what you want it to do, rather than trusting that the default behavior, whatever it may be, will do what you want... especially when you're dealing with a funky concept like "incrementing text"...
I think this makes a certain amount of sense when 99% of what you're doing is dealing with text (command-line arguments, form input on the web, database queries, whatever) - it makes it very convenient to deal with text in terms of the usual meaning applied to that text, and apply your results back to a textual context without a separate operation.
I don't particularly like this in general - but I would say that I'm not prepared to write it off entirely...
P.S. And, btw, ask the.Net crowd about scripting languages. M$ already brainwashed them. Will you see, C# is not scripting, CLR is not interpreter. Scripts sucks because they sucks and C# is better. Scripting languages are dead. End of topic. Move on.
Really? Is that what the culture's like? I am not really a part of that so I don't know... My impression was that.NET had a lot to offer for users of Unix scripting languages - really good interaction with other languages and applications' scripting interfaces, good bindings to system facilities, and the ability to take advantage of the CLR for just-in-time compilation...
Someone else was bitching that this story did show up on the front page, and wasn't tucked away in the Politics section to make it easier to filter out...
So it seems like you don't come out ahead by reporting, you actually lose money...
You come out ahead until you get caught, in which case you're looking at having to pay the tax, interest and penalties on pain of tax evasion charges.
I was setting that issue aside for the moment. Yes, I know that it's tax evasion. That's not the point.
I was just contesting the idea put forth in the grandparent post that by not paying the use tax, and as a result losing the tax deduction you'd get from paying it, you're effectively losing the money anyway. You don't gain as much from the deduction as you lose from paying the tax - you're not getting a free ride, basically.
In 2006, Exxon's EBT (earnings before tax) was $67.4 billion, it paid $27.9 billion in taxes (41.4% tax rate), and its NIAT (net income after tax), or profit, was $39.5 billion. So, where does that 27.9 BILLION dollars come from. The taxpayer.
Use tax is also not well enforced because use tax can be deducted on tax forms, so what you don't report in use tax doesn't increase your tax return. In a sense, you're paying use tax indirectly by not reporting your purchases.
Well, wait, aren't "deductions" deducted from your income, not from your income tax? I don't get how reporting use tax saves you money...
Reporting: you pay use tax, use tax is deducted from your income, your income tax goes down by a small fraction of the amount you paid in use tax (unless you know how to work the system - in which case a deduction could put your income numbers into a more comfortable bracket or something...)
Not reporting: you don't pay the tax and don't claim the deduction.
So it seems like you don't come out ahead by reporting, you actually lose money...
How is the Omegathon an "event (or) exhibit from (a) major publisher"?
Or should that have been parsed as ((events) and (exhibits from major publishers)) rather than ((events and exhibits) from major publishers)? If so that doesn't make sense... I mean, you don't think E for All is gonna have "events"?
Maybe there should be a bit of Javascript in Slashcode - when you hover over a sentence in the summary it'll pop up a sentence diagram...
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't Frist Psto one of the Jedi who fought in the clone wars??
ok, my bad , i forgot its adults here for a moment, mea culpa, dont shoot me
(and if you do, clean up the mess...)
Man, how could you possibly forget that the folks who post on Slashdot are adults?
*looks around at the posts, drops the filter threshold...*
Erm, never mind...
Around the survivors, a perimeter create!
(Every pair of genes is a hand-me-down...)
Forgive me for my ignorance (and I haven't RTFA), but my understanding of RFID is the only way to tell what an RFID device is is by listening to it broadcast. Well, if you listen to a device broadcast enough, particularly if you listen in on a conversation between it and what it's supposed to talk to...doesn't it then become relatively simple to create your own RFID device that broadcasts all the same things as the original chip, and responds in all the same ways to input?
Seems to me it's just another instance of "DRM doesn't work," only in this case all the communication between supposedly secure nodes literally has to take place in the open air...
Dan Aris
Well, I don't know if I can answer your question in terms of the technical limitations of RFID - but in general, your argument ignores the possibility that RFID data is being encrypted.
For instance: suppose the subway fare system uses a set of encryption keys - some of these keys will be stored on the fare cards (the RFID devices) and some will be stored in the machines that interact with these cards...
Now suppose the interaction starts with one of these machines broadcasting, looking for a fare card... In some part of the initial handshaking the machine sends out a transaction number - encoded using an encryption key that fare cards can decode. In all further communication that transaction number is part of the encryption key used by the fare card.
You can listen in on this transaction, but you can't do anything with it unless you can decode the messages... You can't replicate the transaction because your response has to include the transaction ID given to you by the gate machine...
So in the context of an "uncloneable" chip - you could create another chip that pretends to have the same "Physical Uncloneable Functions" - but that depends on first knowing exactly what they are... If it's handled in a static way and not encoded, that's pretty easy. If it's handled in a way that one RF exchange only gets you one part of the data you'd need to replicate the thing - or if the data you'd need to replicate the chip is encrypted, then that makes the problem substantially harder...
Fundamentally, though, I believe you're correct - if it can be made once, it can be made again... The trick is to make it difficult to do that.
umm, i live in the world and sh** so ... what is ... spore ???
I also live in the world. What is sh**? Is that anything like "shit"? Should I try a google search?
1970 is closer to 40 years then 30
Did you forget what year this is ?
And 1978 was 30 years ago. What's your point?
Perf said "30 years ago, they stuck a card into their Atari to play a game.". Atari didn't release the VCS until 1977. So yeah, we're talking 30 years ago.
Prior to that (and the Fairchild Channel F the previous year) there wasn't much in the way of cartridge games at all - mostly systems that could play a few different variants of "Pong" or maybe a simple light-gun game... If you want to talk about the home video games of (nearly) 40 years ago, you're looking at things like the "Magnavox Odyssey" - which had cartridges, sure - but these only contained jumpers (nothing as sophisticated as a ROM) and the different games relied heavily on outside props.
future proof of what though?
Why, future, of course!
The whole project has been carefully and hermetically sealed to ensure that not a drop of future can get in.
Aw, but Future is such great stuff! It makes a nice gloss coat for both before and after you apply decals... you can dip clear parts in it to get a brilliant shine that won't haze from super glue fumes... You can even use it to make small clear windows... It self-levels, you don't need to thin it before airbrushing it, it's dirt-cheap and available at just about any supermarket. Hell, you could even polish your floors with it, if you wanted to...
If I had one of those monogamy genes, I'd want to help it thrive - so I'd go find a bunch o' girls and get 'em pregnant...
I just mentioned that to my Martian friend, and he said "Gzornak frokka wa Hubble, flrckin earthling!"
Meh, give the Martian some water, and he'll grok that he is your bitch.
One of those lasers they claim can destroy missiles should easily be able to zap a bit of space junk.
Ah, but there's a trick to that, you know?
See, the amount of destructive potential needed to damage a missile sufficiently to prevent it from successfully continuing in its firing arc, reaching its target, and exploding is much less than it would take to vaporize a solid object in space or even just break it up and send it into the atmosphere...
Let's suppose this is a laser-based system - it might be able to disable a missile by hitting it with a beam, heating up the material along the beam enough to cut through the outer casing, destroy circuits, cut fuel lines, whatever... Enough, one would hope, that the missile will break up in the atmosphere instead of reaching target and detonating...
Now, try that with a random piece of junk from a satellite explosion: what happens? Maybe you cut that piece of junk in half with the laser - but all that changes in instead of one piece of junk there in orbit, now you've got two. The amount of mass and the velocity it's moving hasn't changed by any significant amount... To get rid of the junk you need to either fetch it, or de-orbit it and make it burn up in the atmosphere.
My current gaming addiction (if you want to call it that) has very little to do with immersion...
Basically, I play Dr. Mario online. It's not really the sort of game that has much of a "second world" quality to it... But I do play a fair bit, I am pretty good, and sometimes wind up eating a lot more of my free time with it than I'd like... Sometimes it even invades my consciousness a bit - I'll wind up visualizing chain combos at random times...
I wouldn't argue with someone who says immersive features contribute to game addiction, but they're by no means necessary...
P.S.: if you ever happen to see me in-game, I am Dr. Kooky.
I guess this had to happen eventually - the Sun, mother to our own Mother Earth, is having a "spotless" month - the great change is upon her. It can be a difficult adjustment - but it is, after all, a part of life...
One restaurant owner attempted to use a Zapper to break into his cash register - but he failed... Then, to add insult to injury, a sprite of a hunting dog popped up from behind his taskbar, giggled at him, and then disappeared again.
If you your string concatenation operator is distinct from your addition operator, it's simple to tell whether you are dealing with a string or a number from context. Plus it lets you do neat stuff like:
my $filename = 'file0000';
$filename++; # = file0001
Why write more code than you have to?
And if you have more than 10000 files? Not to worry, your filename will advance from "file9999" to "filf0000" - the counter system is naturally extensible... ...There's something to be said for telling the language exactly what you want it to do, rather than trusting that the default behavior, whatever it may be, will do what you want... especially when you're dealing with a funky concept like "incrementing text"...
I think this makes a certain amount of sense when 99% of what you're doing is dealing with text (command-line arguments, form input on the web, database queries, whatever) - it makes it very convenient to deal with text in terms of the usual meaning applied to that text, and apply your results back to a textual context without a separate operation.
I don't particularly like this in general - but I would say that I'm not prepared to write it off entirely...
You are quite right. But it still applies to evil creatures like PHP.
Damn straight...
I have serious doubts about the usefulness of this kind of language feature, compared to its painful consequences...
P.S. And, btw, ask the .Net crowd about scripting languages. M$ already brainwashed them. Will you see, C# is not scripting, CLR is not interpreter. Scripts sucks because they sucks and C# is better. Scripting languages are dead. End of topic. Move on.
Really? Is that what the culture's like? I am not really a part of that so I don't know... My impression was that .NET had a lot to offer for users of Unix scripting languages - really good interaction with other languages and applications' scripting interfaces, good bindings to system facilities, and the ability to take advantage of the CLR for just-in-time compilation...
Someone else was bitching that this story did show up on the front page, and wasn't tucked away in the Politics section to make it easier to filter out...
I think it's just sloppy editing, really.
No, the steak is the same. It just didn't come with the house vegetables and mashed potatoes.
Or... It's like the Civilian Hummer - in place of weapon and armor fittings, they put in cup holders...
No, the advertisement authority did the right thing here. "The entire internet" is a lofty claim, and Apple isn't living up to it.
Who does? Seriously, is there any computer that can take advantage of everything out there?
There is - and when it finally becomes self-aware, I recommend finding yourself a nice fallout shelter, a bunch of weapons, and getting a pet dog.
So it seems like you don't come out ahead by reporting, you actually lose money...
You come out ahead until you get caught, in which case you're looking at having to pay the tax, interest and penalties on pain of tax evasion charges.
I was setting that issue aside for the moment. Yes, I know that it's tax evasion. That's not the point.
I was just contesting the idea put forth in the grandparent post that by not paying the use tax, and as a result losing the tax deduction you'd get from paying it, you're effectively losing the money anyway. You don't gain as much from the deduction as you lose from paying the tax - you're not getting a free ride, basically.
In 2006, Exxon's EBT (earnings before tax) was $67.4 billion, it paid $27.9 billion in taxes (41.4% tax rate), and its NIAT (net income after tax), or profit, was $39.5 billion. So, where does that 27.9 BILLION dollars come from. The taxpayer.
So basically, tax money comes from tax-payers...
By definition, I think...
Any dollar, ANY, that Exxon paid in taxes came out of THE PEOPLE'S pocket. There is no other source.
Well, Exxon is made up of people as well - so I don't think this is saying much...
Use tax is also not well enforced because use tax can be deducted on tax forms, so what you don't report in use tax doesn't increase your tax return. In a sense, you're paying use tax indirectly by not reporting your purchases.
Well, wait, aren't "deductions" deducted from your income, not from your income tax? I don't get how reporting use tax saves you money...
Reporting: you pay use tax, use tax is deducted from your income, your income tax goes down by a small fraction of the amount you paid in use tax (unless you know how to work the system - in which case a deduction could put your income numbers into a more comfortable bracket or something...)
Not reporting: you don't pay the tax and don't claim the deduction.
So it seems like you don't come out ahead by reporting, you actually lose money...
How is the Omegathon an "event (or) exhibit from (a) major publisher"?
Or should that have been parsed as ((events) and (exhibits from major publishers)) rather than ((events and exhibits) from major publishers)? If so that doesn't make sense... I mean, you don't think E for All is gonna have "events"?
Maybe there should be a bit of Javascript in Slashcode - when you hover over a sentence in the summary it'll pop up a sentence diagram...