Cracks the encryption? Huh? Common public key cryptosystems are impossible to crack *today*.
Cracks as in opens the box with a screwdriver and clips on some probe leads. The service equipment must have the key if it's going to understand the car's computer, and the service equipment is in the hands of the 'hostile' third party. It's the same principle as designing an XBox mod chip or skimming the DVD decryption key, not trying to crack public key cryptography.
Any mechanic caught giving away the keys to the cars they fix has his contract terminated, and meanwhile, any leaked keys are only useful for those specific cars.
Doesn't terminating the mechanic's contract for giving customers information about their vehicles kind of contradict this next bit?
Note, this system doesn't require any form of "punitive" contract terms or anything like that.
Cancelling their contract seems pretty punitive to me, although I'll grant that this system will keep the bulk of cars' individual 'private' keys out of the hands of their owners (as would simply building a dealership service network and keeping it all in-house).
Why the hell is this offtopic? It's true - this hippie-frenzy focus on non-incandescent light sources is idiotic. Any time you're running any kind of active heating, the thermal inefficiency of incandescent lights becomes a nonissue because the heat output is not wasted. And with the usage cycle they're talking about, a $0.90 incandescent bulb should last at least 2 years. While I agree that it's nice to see LED lighting starting to measure up to the good old bulb-and-tungsten-wire approach, I don't think there's much concrete reason to move away from incandescents in cold climates. Hot climates, there's a small but measurable advantage.
Oh no! You have posited a situation in which a part of my suggestion may not be optimal! My entire suggestion is therefore worthless and I should not have suggested it. I stand corrected, oh great one.
Normal typing sounds and mouse clicks are often at least as loud as you'd need your vocal click to be. If even that is a problem, you could always just press a button like normal people.
You know what would happen? The manufacturers would encrypt all output coming from their car computers, and would include decryption hardware on the gear they sell to the mechanics. Those mechanics would then be placed under a strict contract (which, according to Libertarian thinking, is perfectly reasonable... the government, after all, should exist primarily to enforce voluntary contracts between individuals) such that any attempt to break down, reverse engineer, or otherwise misuse the equipment would result in termination of their contract and repossession of the equipment in question.
So an interested third party gains a mechanic contract, obtains the gear, cracks the encryption and produces their own gear, which they get rich selling to dealerships. They don't care if their contract is terminated, and punitive terms in the contract (further than termination and possible repossession of the original gear) are likely to be unenforceable.
I don't think I'm that clever a libertarian so I don't know if this would work but a variant should be plausible. The only recourse for the car manufacturers then would be to lock down their vehicles so that no third parties could do any maintenance whatsoever, and the manufacturers had a monopoly on after-sale repairs. Hmm... maybe this libertarian stuff isn't quite so good after all. After all, wasn't it Ford that said "If I could find a way to gain a monopoly on fuel, I'd give cars away for free"?
In reading the article, they're asking for OBD-II. They want a way to be alerted for the problem causing the "Check Engine" light, and to be able to clear it. Amazingly enough, every car sold in America since the 1996 model year has this ability. A friend asked me to have a look at his 1997 truck. I happened to have my $100 code reader in the car, so I plugged it in, and voila, "here's your faults". 3 codes were present.
In a way... but how long do you think it'll be until the 'check engine light' query simply returns a "Car Requires Dealer Service" message plus an encrypted packet giving the actual cause? Then the dealer can charge you $300 when all the car was crying about was "spark plug in cylinder 6 is dirty".
Well... actually I can see the two combining. They could easily use encryption to lock out third-party parts manufacturers. Imagine if you couldn't get an aftermarket window motor, for example, because aftermarket parts manufacturers couldn't legally figure out how to make it talk to the car's central computer?
With the mouse you have to start pushing your mouse across the mousepad, wait for it to reach its destination, and then fire. With touch you just tap the spot
You're forgetting the huge speed amplification you get with a mouse, and the fact that you still need to move something (your finger, or your cursor) to that spot to tap it. Moving my mouse about 2 inches moves my cursor through about 15 inches. Moving my finger 15 inches to press a button requires moving my whole arm 15 inches.
What I want to see is accurate gaze tracking. If I stare at the center of a button, it stays static in my field of view - even if my eye's making microscopic movements, it should be possible to reverse-engineer the pattern to determine the point of gaze. Couple that with a physical switch to 'click' (I like the idea of making a 'click' noise with your tongue for a simple, intuitive, self-contained interface) and you have the only point-and-click device that will beat a mouse (no, you with the track ball sit down, it's just an upside down mouse).
Exactly. In fact I'd say more along the lines of "nothing, ever." Touchscreens are a fun idea but except for very specific cases (pocketable computers, public terminals a la ticket machines at train stations for instance) they're horrible in practice. You get grubby fingerprints all over your screen and the ergonomics are bad - extended use will require either a weird sitting position or severe shoulder strain. On top of that, you always have your fingers/hands in front of whatever you're trying to select.
What I really want to see is the idea that was floating around a few years ago for iPhone-style tablet devices, where the back of the device is a multitouch sensor and the touch points are displayed as cursors on the screen. No grubby fingerprints, no fat fingers in the way.
Um, what? You say that like it's a bad thing. I bet you also call politicians "flip-floppers" and say they have "weak leadership" when they change their policies based on global and local events. There's a place for unquestioning adherence to the status quo, but that place is not in scientific research.
Oh wait, I get it, you're a troll parodying those Intelligent Design drones. Damn, you're good.
Or rather, as my chemistry teacher told me in highschool, it's not the alcohol that damages your brain cells, it's dehydration during the hangover. Stay well hydrated and you can get as tanked as you like. Your liver may hate you but your brain will be fine.:D
(I am not a doctor and neither is he, we both like alcohol though.;)
Other classes of animal are unlikely to have melanin in their hair- their hair isn't really hair to begin with anyway, it's something else.
What? O.o Is this one of those crazy "animals don't have souls therefore their hair isn't really hair" arguments? For your edification and education, melanin occurs in friggin' almost everything and does an amazing variety of cool things.
Only mammals and their distant cousins the marsupials, have hair as humans do.
So at some stage, we shall get all our hair requirements from ninja farms. Because ninjas are mammals.
Dude, she saw a simple chemistry demonstration, was interested, and then suggested he use it for gaming. She may very well be the perfect woman. And the perfect woman likes geeks.;)
No slashdot car analogy is complete without a pedantic correction. To match units, it should be "car is able to produce 340Nm of torque (200 horsepower) of gallons of gas". Which is even more ridiculous, and therefore I like it better.
Then again I remember some kid in primary school telling me he could breathe through his eyes. I thought that was just him being retarded until I found out that my cousin can blow air through her tear ducts at will.:P
Well, if you're in management, then social factors are part of the job. So a manajerk is by definition incompetent. Likewise, a hyper-competent tech might be a jerk in the sense of telling you to rack off if you invite him to join you for lunch, but technical communication is part of his job. If he tells you to rack off when you ask for interface specs for the current project, then he's likewise incompetent.
Not necessarily, I find alot of peope who KNOW they're good at their job will act like they're better than everyone who works below them.
No. I a healthy firm, people who KNOW they're good at their job, and are RIGHT, actually ARE better than everyone who works below them. That's why those people haven't been promoted yet.
I always feel like niceness is their way of compensating for absolutely sucking. It's a survival mechanism when you're a failure.
I'm so going to lose karma for this, but... you mean the way fat chicks always have a 'nice personality' while the hot ones are often bitches? If you're very desirable for *ahem* functional reasons, you don't have to cultivate 'niceness' in order to be sought after.
so if someone buys the book and cuts out the frontpage, my client can still grab the release from pirate bay, run the detector and
I think by this next bit:
nail the guy to the wall that shared it.
you actually mean
find out it was uploaded in Tzen-shi-nhet by a guy who owns a rice paddy and a goat, and there's no way you're going to get him extradited for uploading a Mills and Boone.
Slashdot Mirror
Cracks the encryption? Huh? Common public key cryptosystems are impossible to crack *today*.
Cracks as in opens the box with a screwdriver and clips on some probe leads. The service equipment must have the key if it's going to understand the car's computer, and the service equipment is in the hands of the 'hostile' third party. It's the same principle as designing an XBox mod chip or skimming the DVD decryption key, not trying to crack public key cryptography.
Any mechanic caught giving away the keys to the cars they fix has his contract terminated, and meanwhile, any leaked keys are only useful for those specific cars.
Doesn't terminating the mechanic's contract for giving customers information about their vehicles kind of contradict this next bit?
Note, this system doesn't require any form of "punitive" contract terms or anything like that.
Cancelling their contract seems pretty punitive to me, although I'll grant that this system will keep the bulk of cars' individual 'private' keys out of the hands of their owners (as would simply building a dealership service network and keeping it all in-house).
Why the hell is this offtopic? It's true - this hippie-frenzy focus on non-incandescent light sources is idiotic. Any time you're running any kind of active heating, the thermal inefficiency of incandescent lights becomes a nonissue because the heat output is not wasted. And with the usage cycle they're talking about, a $0.90 incandescent bulb should last at least 2 years. While I agree that it's nice to see LED lighting starting to measure up to the good old bulb-and-tungsten-wire approach, I don't think there's much concrete reason to move away from incandescents in cold climates. Hot climates, there's a small but measurable advantage.
Oh no! You have posited a situation in which a part of my suggestion may not be optimal! My entire suggestion is therefore worthless and I should not have suggested it. I stand corrected, oh great one.
Normal typing sounds and mouse clicks are often at least as loud as you'd need your vocal click to be. If even that is a problem, you could always just press a button like normal people.
Really; how many more generations before this mindset dies for good? What is *wrong* with you ppl?
It'll never 'die for good' while there's some personal evolutionary advantage to be gained by screwing the collective. Which will probably be never.
You know what would happen? The manufacturers would encrypt all output coming from their car computers, and would include decryption hardware on the gear they sell to the mechanics. Those mechanics would then be placed under a strict contract (which, according to Libertarian thinking, is perfectly reasonable... the government, after all, should exist primarily to enforce voluntary contracts between individuals) such that any attempt to break down, reverse engineer, or otherwise misuse the equipment would result in termination of their contract and repossession of the equipment in question.
So an interested third party gains a mechanic contract, obtains the gear, cracks the encryption and produces their own gear, which they get rich selling to dealerships. They don't care if their contract is terminated, and punitive terms in the contract (further than termination and possible repossession of the original gear) are likely to be unenforceable.
I don't think I'm that clever a libertarian so I don't know if this would work but a variant should be plausible. The only recourse for the car manufacturers then would be to lock down their vehicles so that no third parties could do any maintenance whatsoever, and the manufacturers had a monopoly on after-sale repairs. Hmm... maybe this libertarian stuff isn't quite so good after all. After all, wasn't it Ford that said "If I could find a way to gain a monopoly on fuel, I'd give cars away for free"?
In reading the article, they're asking for OBD-II. They want a way to be alerted for the problem causing the "Check Engine" light, and to be able to clear it. Amazingly enough, every car sold in America since the 1996 model year has this ability. A friend asked me to have a look at his 1997 truck. I happened to have my $100 code reader in the car, so I plugged it in, and voila, "here's your faults". 3 codes were present.
In a way... but how long do you think it'll be until the 'check engine light' query simply returns a "Car Requires Dealer Service" message plus an encrypted packet giving the actual cause? Then the dealer can charge you $300 when all the car was crying about was "spark plug in cylinder 6 is dirty".
Well... actually I can see the two combining. They could easily use encryption to lock out third-party parts manufacturers. Imagine if you couldn't get an aftermarket window motor, for example, because aftermarket parts manufacturers couldn't legally figure out how to make it talk to the car's central computer?
With the mouse you have to start pushing your mouse across the mousepad, wait for it to reach its destination, and then fire. With touch you just tap the spot
You're forgetting the huge speed amplification you get with a mouse, and the fact that you still need to move something (your finger, or your cursor) to that spot to tap it. Moving my mouse about 2 inches moves my cursor through about 15 inches. Moving my finger 15 inches to press a button requires moving my whole arm 15 inches.
What I want to see is accurate gaze tracking. If I stare at the center of a button, it stays static in my field of view - even if my eye's making microscopic movements, it should be possible to reverse-engineer the pattern to determine the point of gaze. Couple that with a physical switch to 'click' (I like the idea of making a 'click' noise with your tongue for a simple, intuitive, self-contained interface) and you have the only point-and-click device that will beat a mouse (no, you with the track ball sit down, it's just an upside down mouse).
Exactly. In fact I'd say more along the lines of "nothing, ever." Touchscreens are a fun idea but except for very specific cases (pocketable computers, public terminals a la ticket machines at train stations for instance) they're horrible in practice. You get grubby fingerprints all over your screen and the ergonomics are bad - extended use will require either a weird sitting position or severe shoulder strain. On top of that, you always have your fingers/hands in front of whatever you're trying to select.
What I really want to see is the idea that was floating around a few years ago for iPhone-style tablet devices, where the back of the device is a multitouch sensor and the touch points are displayed as cursors on the screen. No grubby fingerprints, no fat fingers in the way.
Um, what? You say that like it's a bad thing. I bet you also call politicians "flip-floppers" and say they have "weak leadership" when they change their policies based on global and local events. There's a place for unquestioning adherence to the status quo, but that place is not in scientific research.
Oh wait, I get it, you're a troll parodying those Intelligent Design drones. Damn, you're good.
Anyone know the scoop on muscle cells?
I'm not a cellular biologist but I'd suspect muscles have a set number of fibres but that each fibre is made of many cells. Would that make sense?
Informative statement: If X = human then they'll be human brain cells.
Alternative funny statement: If they were grown by the brain of an ex they will probably be bitter and angry.
Or rather, as my chemistry teacher told me in highschool, it's not the alcohol that damages your brain cells, it's dehydration during the hangover. Stay well hydrated and you can get as tanked as you like. Your liver may hate you but your brain will be fine. :D
;)
(I am not a doctor and neither is he, we both like alcohol though.
Other classes of animal are unlikely to have melanin in their hair- their hair isn't really hair to begin with anyway, it's something else.
What? O.o Is this one of those crazy "animals don't have souls therefore their hair isn't really hair" arguments? For your edification and education, melanin occurs in friggin' almost everything and does an amazing variety of cool things.
Only mammals and their distant cousins the marsupials, have hair as humans do.
So at some stage, we shall get all our hair requirements from ninja farms. Because ninjas are mammals.
Umm, yes it is. What's next, are you going to say you can borrow yourself out of debt?
11/10 on the troll-o-meter. I salute you, sir.
Dude, she saw a simple chemistry demonstration, was interested, and then suggested he use it for gaming. She may very well be the perfect woman. And the perfect woman likes geeks. ;)
No slashdot car analogy is complete without a pedantic correction. To match units, it should be "car is able to produce 340Nm of torque (200 horsepower) of gallons of gas". Which is even more ridiculous, and therefore I like it better.
You breathe through your ears? O.o
:P
Then again I remember some kid in primary school telling me he could breathe through his eyes. I thought that was just him being retarded until I found out that my cousin can blow air through her tear ducts at will.
Well, if you're in management, then social factors are part of the job. So a manajerk is by definition incompetent. Likewise, a hyper-competent tech might be a jerk in the sense of telling you to rack off if you invite him to join you for lunch, but technical communication is part of his job. If he tells you to rack off when you ask for interface specs for the current project, then he's likewise incompetent.
And then you make nitroglycerin out of the lard and no-one pays anything!
Not necessarily, I find alot of peope who KNOW they're good at their job will act like they're better than everyone who works below them.
No. I a healthy firm, people who KNOW they're good at their job, and are RIGHT, actually ARE better than everyone who works below them. That's why those people haven't been promoted yet.
It's the user. All engineering ingenuity is involved in a struggle against human stupidity. Stupidity is now and always will be winning.
I always feel like niceness is their way of compensating for absolutely sucking. It's a survival mechanism when you're a failure.
I'm so going to lose karma for this, but... you mean the way fat chicks always have a 'nice personality' while the hot ones are often bitches? If you're very desirable for *ahem* functional reasons, you don't have to cultivate 'niceness' in order to be sought after.
"Mr. Laurio, never trust a beautiful woman. Especially one who's interested in you." - Magneto, X2
so if someone buys the book and cuts out the frontpage, my client can still grab the release from pirate bay, run the detector and
I think by this next bit:
nail the guy to the wall that shared it.
you actually mean
find out it was uploaded in Tzen-shi-nhet by a guy who owns a rice paddy and a goat, and there's no way you're going to get him extradited for uploading a Mills and Boone.