if there are so many intelligences in the universe, where are they?
A larva has no idea that butterfly phase even exists. It does not have senses to perceive the larger world yet. This is one of many possible explanations.
Our attempts to discover civilizations using optical and radio astronomy could be naive at best, given the FTL issue. Our own civilization may be unrecognizable in just 100 years (everyone is a cyborg, datasphere etc.) - and we are talking about civilizations distributed in time frame of millions of years!
What if the task that the client is doing is illegal? For example, it can portscan computers of some Super Secret Agency, or it can work on cracking of materials protected under DMCA... Will the owner of the computer be able to prove that he didn't know what is going on? Even if so, will he ever get his computer back? I don't think so.
No laughs, this would make a very good service. I hear many good songs on radio. The catch is that songs and announcements are all in Spanish, and I don't understand it:-( This service would allow me to identify music and then buy it.
AOL appliance costs more and delivers more. People don't want to buy an appliance to be stuck with one tiny provider (like Netpliance). It must be either generic appliance (ThinkNIC) that will work with any ISP, or a BIG provider like AOL.
some country (possibly not even Russia?) now has what they need
I doubt that any government had anything to do with this alleged break-in. Why in the world would a trained cyber-spy create lots and lots of new accounts knowing very well that this activity will be logged? Especially if he hasn't disabled logging first (assuming that he had domain admin privileges which are required to create accounts anyway).
From what I read in popular literature, if a military intelligence wants to steal some secret chances are that nobody will ever learn about it - at least, not in several years. (USA learned about leaks to China after it got its own data stolen back!)
A professional also would pay much more attention to hiding and disguising himself. Anyone can create a Hotmail account which would be as good as any to collect sniffed passwords. Ability to lay low and just sniff more passwords may be extremely valuable.
Most importantly, a MI professional may simply choose to use old and reliable way: infiltrate the organization and sneaker-net the data (on CD or HDD). I would assume that developers can take their laptops home. With large number of developers and large number of hires it would not be difficult to recruit someone or even let the secret agent himself through. Leaks like that are likely, and it is very difficult to detect them.
As someone else mentioned, a government can also simply pay for the privilege to see the code. Many companies have access to NT/Win2K code. The search for vulnerabilities probably would violate the license, but a government isn't going to admit that!
Therefore, if the break-in actually occurred it was a script kiddie work, judging by his efforts being directed towards less productive work (creating accounts) instead of emailing absolutely everything outside of the company. Microsoft seems to have decent network connection, so if Win2K is 3e7 LOCs it would be only 600 MB uncompressed - just one CD, hardly a big file these days.
Obviously MS is a low value proposition in artistic department:-)
They wanted to show computer nerds, so they needed something exotic. MS Windows wouldn't cut it. If this system is also a good eye candy then the choice is obvious.
It is also good for BSD and Linux - free advertising!
Two days ago Discovery Channel ran "The New Detectives" where a police officer had to decrypt a MS Word document protected by passphrase. They had to ask assistance from someone better equipped (probably local FBI lab) and the password appeared to be "godhelp".
Even if that lame password (easy target for any dictionary attack) can pose an obstacle to the investigation I don't think they will have any luck with 256-bit symmetric Rijndael:-) If someone wants to protect his personal documents then there is no need for public key crypto. Memorize a verse of an obscure poet, invent rules of capitalization and use it as a passphrase. If it is longer than truly random key length then the attacker will be better off just trying the binary key itself. Not that he will ever succeed...
It's an incredibly difficult thing to engineer rotating structures in space and *still* maintain the correct position in space in order to keep orbit.
The orbit of your center of mass will stay the same regardless of what you do with the station. You need an engine to change the orbit.
If the station has rotating parts then it becomes more stable because gyros tend to keep their axis of rotation. However when a force is applied they generate precession effect which might be unwelcomed.
A correct design of a rotating station will require a lot of innovative thinking. We don't have bearings, for one, that work in vacuum, don't need lubricants, don't need maintenance and can hold segments as heavy as hundreds of tons. The segment with antennas, telescopes etc. has to be mechanically insulated from the rotating part (anyone has an idea of an airlock?) because you want to keep your telescopes fixed, not spinning. Furthermore, the joint may need to allow 3-D rotation (pretty much as a ball joint). This is not as easy as launching few tin cans and tying them together with a rope.
That's because verything NASA does, including disasters, is much more efficient than the Soyuz projects.
The Shuttle was designed to be cheaper than rockets, but that hasn't happened. The Shuttle has to be taken apart, inspected and put back together before every flight. Rockets, however, are assembled practically on a conveyor belt, maybe tens per month (just count launches). So rockets are cheaper and therefore more efficient. Shuttle, on the other hand, is more technologically advanced and this is good too.
there was no time to warn the astronauts. What good would the rocket do then, other than more efficiently destroy the remains of the capsule when it exploded?
Two notes. First, the explosion of an engine is detected automatically. No human intervention is required or even possible. You are right, there would be no time to press a button. That's what computers are for.
Another note is about ruggedness of the capsule. Soyuz has a small round (more or less) capsule that is used to return from the orbit. This capsule withstands the fiery descent, slowing down from orbital speeds to zero. It is all solid metal; the capsule can withstand the explosion on launch easily (it's not a detonation - it is just a big fire). The only problem is that if the capsule falls into flames it will be too hot and occupants will die. The solid fuel rocket on top takes care of that by moving the capsule far enough from the launch pad.
The problem with Shuttle is that it does not have such strong capsule. Another bad issue is that the Shuttle uses solid fuel boosters as its main energy source in initial stages of ascent. Those are literally bombs and they do explode, maybe they can even detonate. Solid fuel rocket can not be stopped after it ignites. Soyuz and Proton, however, don't use solid fuel - they use liquid, 2-component fuel: amil (tetraoxid of nytrogenium N2O4) and geptil - unsymmetrical dymethyl hydrazine). They burn very hot but don't detonate; all you get is a big fireball. If Challenger had a sturdy capsule then it could withstand the explosion and destruction of the Shuttle itself. The parachute (safely mounted inside the capsule) would deploy after the incident and everyone would have been alive.
I definitely blame Shuttle design for the Challenger deaths. Good designer would never just "hope" that all goes well. You must include severe malfunctions into your plans and have a backup that helps.
don't forget the chance that the rocket you are on going up to Mir might blow up too.
This is not particularly dangerous, and actually it happened before (once, as I recall). Soyuz vehicles have an autonomous, very simple and powerful solid fuel rocket right on top of the capsule where cosmonauts are. In case of fire/explosion on launch that rocket detaches the capsule and brings it few kilometers away from the launch pad. This happens very quickly, and accelerations are substantial (like 10+ g) but not unbearable for few seconds.
The Shuttle never had such system and still doesn't have.
And now we know you connect to the internet with apps running as root
We know; the cracker doesn't. Telnet does not send any HTTP headers to the Web server and there is no way to find out from this very TCP session. I can think only of identd (which is evil anyway and is not installed by default by many distros). This request will be indistinguishable from millions of other hits.
I'd rather take a high-end Athlon or PIII w/Speedstep then some "emulating processor" any day.
The correct engineering approach would be to take whatever CPU solves the given problem better.
If you have 30W 16" TFT screen then probably you shouldn't care about few watts saved on processor. However if you got mini-notebook with transflective LCD (that can work in full color without backlight) then you should pull out your calculator. More and more devices fit the latter category these days.
Thanks for explanation! However if "people will still be able to watch stuff on their old television sets [...] with a digital receiver/converter box" then we will be still able to tape that analog signal with existing analog VCRs - unless that digital converter box is capable of inserting macromedia-like noise into its output signal. This is possible if TV set tolerates macromedia signals and VCR does not.
Analog TV signal processing is not a rocket science any more, and probably an off-the-shelf FPGA, fast microcontroller or DSP will do the job!
If this (Digital TV) is the mandatory broadcast standard (I've heard by 2006, IIRC), looks like I'll be getting all my entertainment the old-fashioned way
First of all, HDTV is very far from being ready for mass market. I am sure that in 2006 we will be watching the very same analog TV as today. This is because most customers don't need anything that HDTV offers. High resolution assumes either huge screen or eagle-like vision. Super-duper audio quality is irrelevant for many people - after all, most of TV appeal is picture. High cost will remain a problem, and I doubt that it will drop any time soon. Even if it does, so will the cost of analog TV sets.
Secondly, -precise- recording of digital signals will be more difficult anyway because the amount of data in HDTV signal is higher than in analog channel. You would need to record an MPEG data stream directly as it is received, or re-encode it in HDTV VCR. This isn't cheap. Another approach is to export decoded and smoothed, resized NTSC signal. This would wreck the whole idea of HDTV, and difference in formats may cut part of the image too.
As I see it, entire HDTV business is much ado about nothing. I don't need HDTV. What I need is good programming on analog TV - and that's not something I should hold my breath for.
It should be noted that many distribution channels, notably satellite and cable, aren't interested in blocking you from recording. They want to sell more channels to you, and if you can't tape them you won't purchase them! Satellite links already come in digital form and I don't think anyone will be launching new birds in 2006 only to comply with HDTV, and new receivers in millions of homes would be costly to upgrade too.
So basically MPAA and their henchmen try their tactics again, but I think the natural resistance is too great, and their efforts will not succeed.
Older 486 may be too slow. USB host controllers generate a lot of interrupts and HCD has to do a lot of complicated work in interrupts. So quite a few devices (Isoc, like video cameras) won't work and other will work slower than they should.
Re:Most americans can't take animation seriously
on
End Of Fox Animation
·
· Score: 1
I don't remember any nipples in Evangelion
There are some, like in Shinji's dream when he was dissolved by Eva. For more psychoanalysis see FAQ.
Infrastructure is good enough. The problem is not there.
How long can a date field be? [...] is it not time to enforce at the protocol level some basic validity?
This would assume that we trust data because the data is now supposedly correct. Then an obvious exploit would be to forge invalid data!
The Right Way to fix the buffer overflow here is to assume that data is incorrect in any possible way - too long, too short, contains unexpected characters (like zeros) etc. etc. So the software does not depend on the data that it is processing.
if your employer "forces" you to use this stuff, just remember that in most countries you can always quit
Another way is to avoid Lookout, IE, MediaPlayer and any other apps that you don't like or don't trust. Got a special accounting package or an expensive PCB design tool? Fine, run it. Most likely PADS won't be handling your mail.
However Internet software is available in all shapes and forms, from Pine to all those GUI mail clients. Try Netscape or Opera or Lynx... there is a choice.
So even if you have to run Windows, most harm comes not from OS kernel but from user apps. Choose them wisely and be happy.
Slashdot Mirror
- the OS (postulate Linux)
Good...
- the proper device drivers for the tuner card
Already there. Brooktree chip is supported, and it is used in most cards. I have one and it works great.
- the GUI and program management utilities
streamer -s 320x240 -f mjpeg -r 15 -t 5000 -o test.avi
xanim test.avi
That's all.
function Blackhole() {
local log=""
if [ "x$1" = "x-l" ]
then
log="-l"
shift
fi
while [ ! "x$1" = "x" ]
do
ipchains -A input -d $1 -s $ANYWHERE \
-i $INTERNAL_INTERFACE -j REJECT
ipchains -A input -s $1 -d $ANYWHERE \
-j DENY $log
ipchains -A output -s $ANYWHERE \
-d $1 -j REJECT $log
shift
done
}
# Reject everything from/to Doubleclick on all interfaces.
Blackhole 204.253.104.0/24
Blackhole 205.138.3.0/24
Blackhole 208.184.29.0/24
Blackhole 208.32.211.0/24
Blackhole 209.67.38.0/24
A larva has no idea that butterfly phase even exists. It does not have senses to perceive the larger world yet. This is one of many possible explanations.
Our attempts to discover civilizations using optical and radio astronomy could be naive at best, given the FTL issue. Our own civilization may be unrecognizable in just 100 years (everyone is a cyborg, datasphere etc.) - and we are talking about civilizations distributed in time frame of millions of years!
No; feed them exactly at midnight, and make it quick :-) you have zero seconds, during which it will be neither before nor after midnight!
What if the task that the client is doing is illegal? For example, it can portscan computers of some Super Secret Agency, or it can work on cracking of materials protected under DMCA... Will the owner of the computer be able to prove that he didn't know what is going on? Even if so, will he ever get his computer back? I don't think so.
No laughs, this would make a very good service. I hear many good songs on radio. The catch is that songs and announcements are all in Spanish, and I don't understand it :-( This service would allow me to identify music and then buy it.
AOL appliance costs more and delivers more. People don't want to buy an appliance to be stuck with one tiny provider (like Netpliance). It must be either generic appliance (ThinkNIC) that will work with any ISP, or a BIG provider like AOL.
I doubt that any government had anything to do with this alleged break-in. Why in the world would a trained cyber-spy create lots and lots of new accounts knowing very well that this activity will be logged? Especially if he hasn't disabled logging first (assuming that he had domain admin privileges which are required to create accounts anyway).
From what I read in popular literature, if a military intelligence wants to steal some secret chances are that nobody will ever learn about it - at least, not in several years. (USA learned about leaks to China after it got its own data stolen back!)
A professional also would pay much more attention to hiding and disguising himself. Anyone can create a Hotmail account which would be as good as any to collect sniffed passwords. Ability to lay low and just sniff more passwords may be extremely valuable.
Most importantly, a MI professional may simply choose to use old and reliable way: infiltrate the organization and sneaker-net the data (on CD or HDD). I would assume that developers can take their laptops home. With large number of developers and large number of hires it would not be difficult to recruit someone or even let the secret agent himself through. Leaks like that are likely, and it is very difficult to detect them.
As someone else mentioned, a government can also simply pay for the privilege to see the code. Many companies have access to NT/Win2K code. The search for vulnerabilities probably would violate the license, but a government isn't going to admit that!
Therefore, if the break-in actually occurred it was a script kiddie work, judging by his efforts being directed towards less productive work (creating accounts) instead of emailing absolutely everything outside of the company. Microsoft seems to have decent network connection, so if Win2K is 3e7 LOCs it would be only 600 MB uncompressed - just one CD, hardly a big file these days.
They wanted to show computer nerds, so they needed something exotic. MS Windows wouldn't cut it. If this system is also a good eye candy then the choice is obvious.
It is also good for BSD and Linux - free advertising!
Even if that lame password (easy target for any dictionary attack) can pose an obstacle to the investigation I don't think they will have any luck with 256-bit symmetric Rijndael :-) If someone wants to protect his personal documents then there is no need for public key crypto. Memorize a verse of an obscure poet, invent rules of capitalization and use it as a passphrase. If it is longer than truly random key length then the attacker will be better off just trying the binary key itself. Not that he will ever succeed...
The orbit of your center of mass will stay the same regardless of what you do with the station. You need an engine to change the orbit.
If the station has rotating parts then it becomes more stable because gyros tend to keep their axis of rotation. However when a force is applied they generate precession effect which might be unwelcomed.
A correct design of a rotating station will require a lot of innovative thinking. We don't have bearings, for one, that work in vacuum, don't need lubricants, don't need maintenance and can hold segments as heavy as hundreds of tons. The segment with antennas, telescopes etc. has to be mechanically insulated from the rotating part (anyone has an idea of an airlock?) because you want to keep your telescopes fixed, not spinning. Furthermore, the joint may need to allow 3-D rotation (pretty much as a ball joint). This is not as easy as launching few tin cans and tying them together with a rope.
Soyuz rockets don't use amil/geptil pair. Instead they use liquid oxygen and kerosene. Hardly a dangerous fuel :-) Details are here.
The Shuttle was designed to be cheaper than rockets, but that hasn't happened. The Shuttle has to be taken apart, inspected and put back together before every flight. Rockets, however, are assembled practically on a conveyor belt, maybe tens per month (just count launches). So rockets are cheaper and therefore more efficient. Shuttle, on the other hand, is more technologically advanced and this is good too.
there was no time to warn the astronauts. What good would the rocket do then, other than more efficiently destroy the remains of the capsule when it exploded?
Two notes. First, the explosion of an engine is detected automatically. No human intervention is required or even possible. You are right, there would be no time to press a button. That's what computers are for.
Another note is about ruggedness of the capsule. Soyuz has a small round (more or less) capsule that is used to return from the orbit. This capsule withstands the fiery descent, slowing down from orbital speeds to zero. It is all solid metal; the capsule can withstand the explosion on launch easily (it's not a detonation - it is just a big fire). The only problem is that if the capsule falls into flames it will be too hot and occupants will die. The solid fuel rocket on top takes care of that by moving the capsule far enough from the launch pad.
The problem with Shuttle is that it does not have such strong capsule. Another bad issue is that the Shuttle uses solid fuel boosters as its main energy source in initial stages of ascent. Those are literally bombs and they do explode, maybe they can even detonate. Solid fuel rocket can not be stopped after it ignites. Soyuz and Proton, however, don't use solid fuel - they use liquid, 2-component fuel: amil (tetraoxid of nytrogenium N2O4) and geptil - unsymmetrical dymethyl hydrazine). They burn very hot but don't detonate; all you get is a big fireball. If Challenger had a sturdy capsule then it could withstand the explosion and destruction of the Shuttle itself. The parachute (safely mounted inside the capsule) would deploy after the incident and everyone would have been alive.
I definitely blame Shuttle design for the Challenger deaths. Good designer would never just "hope" that all goes well. You must include severe malfunctions into your plans and have a backup that helps.
This is not particularly dangerous, and actually it happened before (once, as I recall). Soyuz vehicles have an autonomous, very simple and powerful solid fuel rocket right on top of the capsule where cosmonauts are. In case of fire/explosion on launch that rocket detaches the capsule and brings it few kilometers away from the launch pad. This happens very quickly, and accelerations are substantial (like 10+ g) but not unbearable for few seconds.
The Shuttle never had such system and still doesn't have.
Too late: Finnegan Software did that years ago! Check it out.
There could be only one explanation. You are less than 100 feet from USA-Germany border and the server is on the other side :-)
We know; the cracker doesn't. Telnet does not send any HTTP headers to the Web server and there is no way to find out from this very TCP session. I can think only of identd (which is evil anyway and is not installed by default by many distros). This request will be indistinguishable from millions of other hits.
The correct engineering approach would be to take whatever CPU solves the given problem better.
If you have 30W 16" TFT screen then probably you shouldn't care about few watts saved on processor. However if you got mini-notebook with transflective LCD (that can work in full color without backlight) then you should pull out your calculator. More and more devices fit the latter category these days.
Analog TV signal processing is not a rocket science any more, and probably an off-the-shelf FPGA, fast microcontroller or DSP will do the job!
First of all, HDTV is very far from being ready for mass market. I am sure that in 2006 we will be watching the very same analog TV as today. This is because most customers don't need anything that HDTV offers. High resolution assumes either huge screen or eagle-like vision. Super-duper audio quality is irrelevant for many people - after all, most of TV appeal is picture. High cost will remain a problem, and I doubt that it will drop any time soon. Even if it does, so will the cost of analog TV sets.
Secondly, -precise- recording of digital signals will be more difficult anyway because the amount of data in HDTV signal is higher than in analog channel. You would need to record an MPEG data stream directly as it is received, or re-encode it in HDTV VCR. This isn't cheap. Another approach is to export decoded and smoothed, resized NTSC signal. This would wreck the whole idea of HDTV, and difference in formats may cut part of the image too.
As I see it, entire HDTV business is much ado about nothing. I don't need HDTV. What I need is good programming on analog TV - and that's not something I should hold my breath for.
It should be noted that many distribution channels, notably satellite and cable, aren't interested in blocking you from recording. They want to sell more channels to you, and if you can't tape them you won't purchase them! Satellite links already come in digital form and I don't think anyone will be launching new birds in 2006 only to comply with HDTV, and new receivers in millions of homes would be costly to upgrade too.
So basically MPAA and their henchmen try their tactics again, but I think the natural resistance is too great, and their efforts will not succeed.
Symbol owns majority of bar code scanner patents, so DC either pays royalties to Symbol (most likely) or is in for a surprise.
Older 486 may be too slow. USB host controllers generate a lot of interrupts and HCD has to do a lot of complicated work in interrupts. So quite a few devices (Isoc, like video cameras) won't work and other will work slower than they should.
There are some, like in Shinji's dream when he was dissolved by Eva. For more psychoanalysis see FAQ.
How long can a date field be? [...] is it not time to enforce at the protocol level some basic validity?
This would assume that we trust data because the data is now supposedly correct. Then an obvious exploit would be to forge invalid data!
The Right Way to fix the buffer overflow here is to assume that data is incorrect in any possible way - too long, too short, contains unexpected characters (like zeros) etc. etc. So the software does not depend on the data that it is processing.
Another way is to avoid Lookout, IE, MediaPlayer and any other apps that you don't like or don't trust. Got a special accounting package or an expensive PCB design tool? Fine, run it. Most likely PADS won't be handling your mail.
However Internet software is available in all shapes and forms, from Pine to all those GUI mail clients. Try Netscape or Opera or Lynx... there is a choice.
So even if you have to run Windows, most harm comes not from OS kernel but from user apps. Choose them wisely and be happy.