I find myself both frightened and disturbed by the incredible amounts of knowledge...
All that information is openly available in books and science magazines. The real secret is in exact knowledge of how to do things, not in the principle how things should be working. For example, the physicists knew how to make the bomb before the Manhattan Project started; and it took years and billions of dollars to actually make it work.
I'm curious now - given the materials necessary, how many slashdotters could construct a working nuclear weapon?
Probably everyone could do so. The real question would be "how close to the optimum yield you will get?" - because the easiest way to make a bomb would be to take two pieces of uranium in two hands, and to bring them together as fast as you can. This will result in -some- explosion, but not very powerful one. The secret is in how you assemble the critical mass in under microseconds, and those who know won't tell.
All of these attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists (the latest one in Spain, all in Russia).
You could have mentioned Basque extremists and IRA, but those are not very active. Red Brigades are gone for decades. Unabomber sits in jail. So pretty much the grandparent is right, 99% of modern terrorism is perpetrated by Islamists.
I checked out the manual, and the remote controller for the robot is probably more complex and has more keys than the one in Heavy Gear II. Note: HG2 uses all the keys on your keyboard, and then some:-)
Also, a bunch of D-size batteries is not enough for any serious use. I shall wait until they upgrade it to some low-end fusion power unit.
For most sane people just posession of a defective lock would be proof enough that you obtained it. The value of the lock ($50) is not high enough to worry about lock thieves:-)
But of course the company acts as if you need to prove with papers to a judge and jury that you bought the lock. Hardly anyone can find these old receipts, even if they exist. A class action lawsuit, though, can fix that - there are just too many people with these locks, millions.
Those old thermal faxes are quite nice. You only replace the paper once in a while, and you also know when to replace (the red strip shows up.)
Now I have a fax here that prints using the same thermal printing method, only through a thin plastic film. It has tons of problems - the film is not biodegradable, you can read everything off of it (unless you shred, which is a pain too) and you never know when it is going to run out of the film. Replacement of the film takes 5 minutes, since you have to take apart half of the fax. Compare that to a roll that you just drop into place.
Of course, even better faxes use laser printing engines, but then you pay for the toner and/or the drum, and still they run out of supplies on you, and they also need lots of power for the heater.
So if you only need an occasional fax with some less than important material, thermal paper is fine. You can always copy the important pages.
boards will say "Darl, he took on IBM - we need a go getter like him"
Darl would be too busy defending himself against IBM counter-suit, as well as the class action of SCO stockholders (he wasted how many of their own millions on what? Did knowingly spent the money for nothing, or just out of sheer stupidity? These will be the questions.)
People act like there is no alternative to computers at a hospital. Like if the power goes out, everyone dies.
If you work in a hospital then you probably know that there are things that are necessary to sustain life of some patients. If these devices fail people will die within minutes, and no manual procedure can man 30 respirators at the same time; you won't even find your patients in darkness.
And if you check the operating theater, you will see that it likely has two independent power sources (from two different cables, best if from two different power companies) and a diesel generator in a small building outside. That is because power failure during any moderate surgery will kill the patient one way or another - you can't keep him under anesthetic because you don't know what is happening to him, and you can't wake him up because he won't survive the pain.
Do you honestly believe thay'd start charging royalties on every email sent or something crazy like that? Get real.
I'm afraid it's someone else who must get real. MS, as any other company, is required to extract as much profit as possible from any and all assets it owns, or else shareholders will file a lawsuit. This happens.
Besides, why MS would not do that? They can do it in a smart way - provide Windows users with a free license, and everyone else has to pay $1000 per license. Where will Linux or BSD be there? Who will be using these OSes for mail transfer? Hardly anyone, that's who.
You must look beyond your nose to see the danger, and it must be said "no" while it is still possible.
You can't talk like this to your business partners (who pay you). When you fight for contracts and sales you can't just tell the customer "contact me only my way, or go away", because the customer will go away.
I am not surprised that you saw a difference between amplifier A and amplifier B which had nothing to do with each other and most likely were built to different specs by different people.
This test has nothing to do with tubes vs. silicon. There are differences, and I had to study the behavior of vacuum tubes (for radio broadcasting; hundreds of kW is typical, get that with transistors!) There are differences everywhere, though, not just in tubes. Even the power supply for vacuum tubes (+300V) has different parameters from +24V one and causes different type of distortion.
So these tests have nothing to do with tubes, and everything to do with the amplifier itself. For example, vacuum tubes have high output impedance, and a transformer is usually used - which has its own frequency response, what a surprise! But a transistor based amplifier has no such need, and a transformer is pretty much unheard of. Difference right here.
You can do the same change to the sound if you feed it through an old shoebox that has "Vacuum Tubes" written on it with a Sharpie marker. Just don't tell the listener that there is nothing in the box:-)
As a reference, look here.
It's done all the time. Very many government contractors have some clearance. Many companies won't even hire you if you can't get a clearance (such as not a citizen.) If you can get one but don't have any yet, not a problem - work on something else while the papers are in motion.
It is not contradictory. A business may sell office furniture, and they have computers with MS Excel to keep track of stuff. But it doesn't mean they have to write custom apps to do this better or faster. If they get more orders they will work longer, or finally hire another mouse clicker. They may be even right about that.
Such a business will not need any software or IT people. The computer comes from Dell preloaded with everything they need, and if worst comes to worst Dell tech support will walk them through reinstallation of everything from scratch. Modern hardware is designed to be simple, so pretty much anyone can set up the network and share files. 99.9% of businesses don't need more than that. Not even backup:-)
Many years ago there was a profession of watch repair, and people with magnifying glasses were sitting there and tinkering with delicate wheels. Not any more; a watch is a commodity now; for a few dollars you can get one, and it will work for longer than you care to keep it without you even paying attention to it. IT quickly becomes such a job, something that many people can do and very few people are willing to pay for.
I think you mix project management and project engineering. A project manager runs spreadsheets and timelines and the budget. A project engineer selects what ${foo}s go into $bar and how they are connected. Projects often are led by senior engineers and managed by accountants.
But to answer your question, get some experience and knowledge and one day you will be asked to lead a project (unless you demonstrate inability to do so, such as antisocial habits of/.ters:-)
In many states(of the world), there is no law against using software which has been lawfully obtained.
Of course. This is equivalent to breaking the lock on your own house because you lost the keys. Noone sane would suggest that you must contact the builder of the house or go to jail. The house is yours, and you are free to enter it in any way you like.
And if the builder intentionally hanged a 10 ton anvil at the door (to break your skull when you break the door,) there is no doubt about who is the guilty party here.
The right to use the product (or to enter the house) is yours not because you posess the key, but because you purchased that right. There are always people who want to restrict the way you may use the software, but aside from most obvious abuse your right to use is unrelated to how you use it. Naturally, the product may not work as you want it to work (and you can't enter the house through the chimney), but that's your own technical concern, not a legal one (says/me not being a L).
When someone looks for some software he has a specific goal in mind. For example, I needed a specific iButton authorization module, so I found it for $30 or so, paid right there and got the s/w running without delay. How could I possibly pay some money and then wait indefinitely until some other event, outside of my control, occurs? I needed the stuff right now, and I believe most people buy the software because they need it here and now.
The purchase of serial numbers is usually done over email, and guess how easy it is to lose the whole account with some free email provider?
Of course the email asks you to print it in triplicate and keep it in a safe place, but how many people do that? If they lose the serial and have to reinstall, what they are to do? It would not be illegal for them to use a pirated serial since they paid their due and they can even show the expense on the credit card bill.
No, I actually described the "equally automated, specialized tool" that would be better at cracking the code than the reverse engineering of the chip. It's in last paragraph(s) of my previous post.
I only was commenting on the fact that it is very difficult, to the point of infeasibility, to recreate a modern ASIC design with its roots in an HDL. As I said, you will be better off making a specialized device, full of FPGAs, that would be throwing gigakeys per second at the chip and testing which keys work and which don't. Then you can recreate the secret key. But if the key is long enough even this will take forever.
Slashdot Mirror
All that information is openly available in books and science magazines. The real secret is in exact knowledge of how to do things, not in the principle how things should be working. For example, the physicists knew how to make the bomb before the Manhattan Project started; and it took years and billions of dollars to actually make it work.
I'm curious now - given the materials necessary, how many slashdotters could construct a working nuclear weapon?
Probably everyone could do so. The real question would be "how close to the optimum yield you will get?" - because the easiest way to make a bomb would be to take two pieces of uranium in two hands, and to bring them together as fast as you can. This will result in -some- explosion, but not very powerful one. The secret is in how you assemble the critical mass in under microseconds, and those who know won't tell.
You could have mentioned Basque extremists and IRA, but those are not very active. Red Brigades are gone for decades. Unabomber sits in jail. So pretty much the grandparent is right, 99% of modern terrorism is perpetrated by Islamists.
Where the radiation comes from then?
Also, a bunch of D-size batteries is not enough for any serious use. I shall wait until they upgrade it to some low-end fusion power unit.
But of course the company acts as if you need to prove with papers to a judge and jury that you bought the lock. Hardly anyone can find these old receipts, even if they exist. A class action lawsuit, though, can fix that - there are just too many people with these locks, millions.
Those old thermal faxes are quite nice. You only replace the paper once in a while, and you also know when to replace (the red strip shows up.)
Now I have a fax here that prints using the same thermal printing method, only through a thin plastic film. It has tons of problems - the film is not biodegradable, you can read everything off of it (unless you shred, which is a pain too) and you never know when it is going to run out of the film. Replacement of the film takes 5 minutes, since you have to take apart half of the fax. Compare that to a roll that you just drop into place.
Of course, even better faxes use laser printing engines, but then you pay for the toner and/or the drum, and still they run out of supplies on you, and they also need lots of power for the heater.
So if you only need an occasional fax with some less than important material, thermal paper is fine. You can always copy the important pages.
Darl would be too busy defending himself against IBM counter-suit, as well as the class action of SCO stockholders (he wasted how many of their own millions on what? Did knowingly spent the money for nothing, or just out of sheer stupidity? These will be the questions.)
Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most out of your computer.
You must be running a Microsoft Windows operating system in order to use Windows Update.
If you work in a hospital then you probably know that there are things that are necessary to sustain life of some patients. If these devices fail people will die within minutes, and no manual procedure can man 30 respirators at the same time; you won't even find your patients in darkness.
And if you check the operating theater, you will see that it likely has two independent power sources (from two different cables, best if from two different power companies) and a diesel generator in a small building outside. That is because power failure during any moderate surgery will kill the patient one way or another - you can't keep him under anesthetic because you don't know what is happening to him, and you can't wake him up because he won't survive the pain.
I'm afraid it's someone else who must get real. MS, as any other company, is required to extract as much profit as possible from any and all assets it owns, or else shareholders will file a lawsuit. This happens.
Besides, why MS would not do that? They can do it in a smart way - provide Windows users with a free license, and everyone else has to pay $1000 per license. Where will Linux or BSD be there? Who will be using these OSes for mail transfer? Hardly anyone, that's who.
You must look beyond your nose to see the danger, and it must be said "no" while it is still possible.
You can't talk like this to your business partners (who pay you). When you fight for contracts and sales you can't just tell the customer "contact me only my way, or go away", because the customer will go away.
A thief steals your car and then offers you one free ride. Should you be grateful or angry?
No, I am actually like you, and I have to watch what I say in presence of a customer :-)
This test has nothing to do with tubes vs. silicon. There are differences, and I had to study the behavior of vacuum tubes (for radio broadcasting; hundreds of kW is typical, get that with transistors!) There are differences everywhere, though, not just in tubes. Even the power supply for vacuum tubes (+300V) has different parameters from +24V one and causes different type of distortion.
So these tests have nothing to do with tubes, and everything to do with the amplifier itself. For example, vacuum tubes have high output impedance, and a transformer is usually used - which has its own frequency response, what a surprise! But a transistor based amplifier has no such need, and a transformer is pretty much unheard of. Difference right here.
You can do the same change to the sound if you feed it through an old shoebox that has "Vacuum Tubes" written on it with a Sharpie marker. Just don't tell the listener that there is nothing in the box :-)
I hope none of your sales/marketing people overheard this conversation, otherwise you'd be fired in no time...
As a reference, look here. It's done all the time. Very many government contractors have some clearance. Many companies won't even hire you if you can't get a clearance (such as not a citizen.) If you can get one but don't have any yet, not a problem - work on something else while the papers are in motion.
Such a business will not need any software or IT people. The computer comes from Dell preloaded with everything they need, and if worst comes to worst Dell tech support will walk them through reinstallation of everything from scratch. Modern hardware is designed to be simple, so pretty much anyone can set up the network and share files. 99.9% of businesses don't need more than that. Not even backup :-)
Many years ago there was a profession of watch repair, and people with magnifying glasses were sitting there and tinkering with delicate wheels. Not any more; a watch is a commodity now; for a few dollars you can get one, and it will work for longer than you care to keep it without you even paying attention to it. IT quickly becomes such a job, something that many people can do and very few people are willing to pay for.
But to answer your question, get some experience and knowledge and one day you will be asked to lead a project (unless you demonstrate inability to do so, such as antisocial habits of /.ters :-)
Of course. This is equivalent to breaking the lock on your own house because you lost the keys. Noone sane would suggest that you must contact the builder of the house or go to jail. The house is yours, and you are free to enter it in any way you like.
And if the builder intentionally hanged a 10 ton anvil at the door (to break your skull when you break the door,) there is no doubt about who is the guilty party here.
The right to use the product (or to enter the house) is yours not because you posess the key, but because you purchased that right. There are always people who want to restrict the way you may use the software, but aside from most obvious abuse your right to use is unrelated to how you use it. Naturally, the product may not work as you want it to work (and you can't enter the house through the chimney), but that's your own technical concern, not a legal one (says /me not being a L).
Toms Ridges come and go, the DOD stays.
Get a job that requires a security clearance. It won't be outsourced.
When someone looks for some software he has a specific goal in mind. For example, I needed a specific iButton authorization module, so I found it for $30 or so, paid right there and got the s/w running without delay. How could I possibly pay some money and then wait indefinitely until some other event, outside of my control, occurs? I needed the stuff right now, and I believe most people buy the software because they need it here and now.
Of course the email asks you to print it in triplicate and keep it in a safe place, but how many people do that? If they lose the serial and have to reinstall, what they are to do? It would not be illegal for them to use a pirated serial since they paid their due and they can even show the expense on the credit card bill.
I only was commenting on the fact that it is very difficult, to the point of infeasibility, to recreate a modern ASIC design with its roots in an HDL. As I said, you will be better off making a specialized device, full of FPGAs, that would be throwing gigakeys per second at the chip and testing which keys work and which don't. Then you can recreate the secret key. But if the key is long enough even this will take forever.