What's really bugging me is that our elected representatives (all of them) seemed to have no trouble re-authorizing the PATRIOT act, and seem to be willing to give Bush and his cronies free rein as they ignore the laws and the Constitution (or claim it doesn't apply to them)
Wake up guys! This isn't just "business as usual"...stand up to these clowns (or does that just happen when the President gets a BJ in the Oval Office?)
Your problem is not interception of the radio signals, your problem is the (US) federally mandated CALEA interface on every switch in the network. A mobile-to-mobile call almost always (unless you're both on the same tower) needs to pass over a landline, and to do that, it needs to be unencrypted.
It's been a while since I did any of this, but I checked, and GSM, like most of the low-bit-rate systems, uses a vocoder-based codec. Vocoders do one thing well, encode the human voice (they do this by using a vocal tract model and transmitting the time-varying parameters of this model). They typically don't handle background noise well, if at all, because it can't be reproduced using a model of the vocal tract.
So, anyone trying to use a modern cellular phone to transmit steganosonic background noise, is going to find that they have an abysmally small data throughput rate.
I'm thinking that the earlier poster is right, this is someone solving a problem that doesn't exist (and probably getting a nice chunk of grant money for their trouble). The cell phone itself will garble any background noise quite well enough!
You (or more likely, the Hon. Judge Kent) owe me a new keyboard. I always thought the law was dry and boring. Judge Kent's courtroom must be a fun place indeed (as long as you're not an idiot, like the plaintiff's lawyer)
Went there a few years ago, before they built the Colossus reconstruction. They were having a military collectors' flea market at the same time. Take the guided tour. There's an Enigma you can try out, and a ham radio club (GB2BP?). It's also fun just walking around the grounds. Just a 1/4 mile walk from the Bletchley railroad station on the Milton Keynes train out of London (sorry, forget which London station you leave from).
Mom worked at Nebraska Avenue during the war, so I'm really getting a kick out of this...
It's like DSL, only worse. It radiates into the HF environment, interfering with things like ham radio and shortwave broadcast. And it's a bad idea. You'll always be on shared media, fighting terrible RFI and on a medium that was never designed to move anything but 60Hz power. That's in addition to the fact that the medium also has deadly voltages on it. Bad idea.
How true. It's unlikely that 9/11 would succeed again, given the almost 10-to-1 passengers-to-badguys ratio. Even if they're armed, they'll run out of ammo, and a grenade is a threat, not a guarantee of success. I'd rather the TSA start a new campaign along the lines of the title sentence. Maybe make it a little more positive, something like "together, we can do something about it" and encourage individual and group action against threats, rather than treat us all like suspects.
Ford may *claim* the right to restrict likenesses of their trademark being used in calendars, etc. But, after years of these calendars being published without objection, they may have lost the right to complain. Given that automobile fan clubs have been around almost as long as automobiles, and that most of them have either the manufacturer's or car model's name as part of the organization's name, I'd say Ford is a bit late in voicing their objection. Mostly, because 99% of the images are of vehicles, and only 1% of the image is a barely recognizeable trademarked logo. Does Ford believe that every newspaper photo of a wrecked Ford requires their approval?
If it were my club, I'd find another printer. And sell the calendars myself through my web site. If Ford objects again, have your lawyer ask them why last year's calendar wasn't a problem for them.
And no, I don't think I do need Ford's permission to write a review of their vehicle. Assuming my review contains facts and clearly delineates my personal opinions, it's called free speech, and I don't need Ford's permission.
I'm willing to bet at least some of those companies couldn't find the original paper receipts and product packaging demanded by the BSA. The BSA's standards are overly strict IMHO, and the last time this topic came up, the best advice was from a couple of lawyers who posted "don't let 'em past the front doors, tell them to come back with a subpoena."
Has anyone actually gone to court with copies of purchase orders and records of payment to vendors?
AT&T will only be filtering stuff copyrighted by "big media". Your stuff, or Slashdot, will not be affected. AT&T obviously has an agenda here, and it's not about protecting everybody's copyrighted material, just copyrighted material that's owned by their "partners". Of course, you could become AT&T's partner, if you would like to pay them some large amount of money...
If I had to guess, I'd say this is about AT&T not getting sued by the big media companies. They seem to be bending over backwards, but hey, they're already forwarding all your traffic to the NSA, so maybe they've figured out a way to reuse the same equipment to filter media files?
One of my favorite books. Though the terminology is becoming quaint -- secretaries, typewriters and listings! So now, it's both a nostalgic look back into the early days of software development, as well as a warning to future developers...
I use an old PC, running Ubuntu Server, with two 320G drives in a software RAID 0 configuration. I also use the box as an SSH and FTP server for external access to my stuff.
Every 6 months or so, I buy a new hard drive, pull one of the RAID drives, replace it with the new drive and let the RAID rebuild the new drive. $120 for a new drive, minimal backup hassle.
I alternate the drive I replace, so hopefully, I'm dealing with any drive lifetime issues at the same time I backup.
Namely, the Actiontec router they use. It's not just a router, it also demultiplexes the TV stream from the fiber, so you can't just substitute your own.
Problem is, the firmware in the router doesn't work very well. Those who have done more experiments than I, claim the NAT address mapping table is *way* too small. The symptoms are that you have intermittent connection loss...my experience was with a wireless link, and we lost the connection at random, 2-3 times a day...no problem, just restart the interface, but the point is, Verizon's not perfect either
>The Moller skycar is a little more revolutionary, since it takes off and lands vertically
Well, at least it *would* be if it actually *did* take off and land. So far, it only seems to have done that once, with the possible assistance of a crane.
On the other hand, the Moller Skycar *has* provided years of employment and income for its inventor.
Ballmer probably spends that every week on new furniture.
One of the linked articles says Timeline is now solely in the business of licensing their patents, having sold off their software and development business. Looks like they may have picked the wrong company to troll...
I was with Data General for 14 years. Went from TTL to PALs and then did CPLDs and FPGAs for 3Com. Being able to build an entire design inside one chip by writing code *absolutely rocks*! And there's no more rework at the lab bench...just retype, resimulate and go!
It's an order of magnitude harder to do this with wire-wrap and 74xx series ICs than it is to do in an FPGA. The guy did a nice job of documenting it, too, and the finished product looks very professional. The old school front panel is a nice touch.
I didn't read far enough to tell if it's compatible with an existing machine, or whether he designed his own instruction set. Either way, writing a microcoded instruction set is not a trivial task. Then he needed an assembler and compiler for it. Then, he had to get Minix to compile and run. Very neat. He does mention that he's a software developer for HP. I suspect H & P are looking down on him, smiling.
They almost got me twice with a fake "Continue" button on the order confirmation page.
After you type in your credit card info, and authorize the purchase you intended to make, the website pops up a receipt/confirmation page (just as you'd expect). At the bottom of that screen, is a "Continue" button. Below that button, in very small type, almost the same color as the page background, perhaps even below the bottom of the screen, so you'd need to scroll down to see it, is a disclaimer that tells you that by clicking the above button, you're authorizing the transfer of your data to WLI.
The next page you see asks you for a second confirmation (perhaps your email address), and in a way that does not make clear that you are not providing it to WLI...and at NO time are you told that your credit card information has been sent to WLI. You are not explicitly asked to authorize the charge.
The places I caught doing this were unaware of it, and angry about it. The WLI link comes pre-packaged in the "storefront" or "ecommerce solution" that the merchant obtains from their hosting service. My suspicion is that this is a deal between WLI and the storefront software provider, not the merchant.
It's definitely for real and a continuing problem...my experience was several years ago, and at the time, I bookmarked this site, which is still active:
I agree that thin clients are pretty amazing. We evaluated some (using the AMD LX800, as a matter of fact) for a project I worked on. Although they were running an embedded Linux (Devon, HP and Wyse were the ones we looked at), with minimal RAM and a compact flash "disk", the performance was impressive when browsing the web and playing flash videos. The client was only interested in the Linux OS:-)
My understanding is that there's a platform (or at least some basic requirements) specified for CE (or Windows Mobile, or whatever it is now). The XO hardware is *so* different from anything resembling the standard PC platform -- to the level of a custom shared memory/display controller -- that I think it would be a big job even getting CE to run. In spite of what Microsoft says, I don't think anything remotely resembling XP will ever run on XO. At best, it would be running on a 500MHz Pentium (the AMD LX500), but without any of the hardware support (including no hard drive for paging) it would expect to see. Supporting all the XO's neat features, camera, audio, handwriting recognition, mono/color display, and the big one, power management, will all require new work. XO's mesh networking as well is completely outside the envelope for Windows.
That's not to say that they can't do it. Like you say, it's *just* a port (more like a complete rewrite, though) to different hardware! I'm sure Microsoft can do pretty much anything they want to -- they have the bodies and the cash, and I'm sure, executive backing for this project.
The software that MS will provide will, by necessity, be hardware-specific to the XO platform. You almost have to do that, as there's no hard drive (you'll need a flash file system instead) and minimal RAM, and a non-standard display. As a matter of fact, XO doesn't look anything like the platform MS is used to running on.
The OS Microsoft finally provides may look like XP to the user, but I suspect it's going to be more like a highly modified WinCE inside.
They'll give the OS away...after all, it will only run on the XO...and advertise how they're helping to educate the developing world's children -- the Microsoft way.
And the reason they're going to all this effort?
I think MS sees this as a strategic move. OLPC potentially delivers a pretty large number of young eyeballs. It would be a *very* Bad Thing for their first exposure to computers to involve a friendly penguin wearing the label "Linux".
Much better for future MS sales that they see the Windows logo.
Slashdot Mirror
For providing the first facts I've seen on this topic.
Come up to Massachusetts and ply your trade. From what I've been able to observe of our traffic controls, they're badly in need of some engineering!
What's really bugging me is that our elected representatives (all of them) seemed to have no trouble re-authorizing the PATRIOT act, and seem to be willing to give Bush and his cronies free rein as they ignore the laws and the Constitution (or claim it doesn't apply to them)
Wake up guys! This isn't just "business as usual"...stand up to these clowns (or does that just happen when the President gets a BJ in the Oval Office?)
Your problem is not interception of the radio signals, your problem is the (US) federally mandated CALEA interface on every switch in the network.
A mobile-to-mobile call almost always (unless you're both on the same tower) needs to pass over a landline, and to do that, it needs to be unencrypted.
It's been a while since I did any of this, but I checked, and GSM, like most of the low-bit-rate systems, uses a vocoder-based codec. Vocoders do one thing well, encode the human voice (they do this by using a vocal tract model and transmitting the time-varying parameters of this model). They typically don't handle background noise well, if at all, because it can't be reproduced using a model of the vocal tract.
So, anyone trying to use a modern cellular phone to transmit steganosonic background noise, is going to find that they have an abysmally small data throughput rate.
I'm thinking that the earlier poster is right, this is someone solving a problem that doesn't exist (and probably getting a nice chunk of grant money for their trouble). The cell phone itself will garble any background noise quite well enough!
You (or more likely, the Hon. Judge Kent) owe me a new keyboard. I always thought the law was dry and boring. Judge Kent's courtroom must be a fun place indeed (as long as you're not an idiot, like the plaintiff's lawyer)
Went there a few years ago, before they built the Colossus reconstruction. They were having a military collectors' flea market at the same time. Take the guided tour. There's an Enigma you can try out, and a ham radio club (GB2BP?). It's also fun just walking around the grounds. Just a 1/4 mile walk from the Bletchley railroad station on the Milton Keynes train out of London (sorry, forget which London station you leave from).
Mom worked at Nebraska Avenue during the war, so I'm really getting a kick out of this...
For the obvious...and also, from the looks of it, for the use of landlubbers who haven't yet "found their sea-legs".
"The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed..."
Further details on the glider from the designer's web site: http://www.webbresearch.com/thermal_glider.htm
...the odds are about 50/50 that whoever gets your old number will want to be on the list anyway.
It's like DSL, only worse. It radiates into the HF environment, interfering with things like ham radio and shortwave broadcast.
And it's a bad idea. You'll always be on shared media, fighting terrible RFI and on a medium that was never designed to move anything but 60Hz power. That's in addition to the fact that the medium also has deadly voltages on it. Bad idea.
How true. It's unlikely that 9/11 would succeed again, given the almost 10-to-1 passengers-to-badguys ratio. Even if they're armed, they'll run out of ammo, and a grenade is a threat, not a guarantee of success. I'd rather the TSA start a new campaign along the lines of the title sentence. Maybe make it a little more positive, something like "together, we can do something about it" and encourage individual and group action against threats, rather than treat us all like suspects.
Fat chance of that ever happening, though.
Ford may *claim* the right to restrict likenesses of their trademark being used in calendars, etc. But, after years of these calendars being published without objection, they may have lost the right to complain. Given that automobile fan clubs have been around almost as long as automobiles, and that most of them have either the manufacturer's or car model's name as part of the organization's name, I'd say Ford is a bit late in voicing their objection. Mostly, because 99% of the images are of vehicles, and only 1% of the image is a barely recognizeable trademarked logo. Does Ford believe that every newspaper photo of a wrecked Ford requires their approval?
If it were my club, I'd find another printer. And sell the calendars myself through my web site. If Ford objects again, have your lawyer ask them why last year's calendar wasn't a problem for them.
And no, I don't think I do need Ford's permission to write a review of their vehicle. Assuming my review contains facts and clearly delineates my personal opinions, it's called free speech, and I don't need Ford's permission.
I'm willing to bet at least some of those companies couldn't find the
original paper receipts and product packaging demanded by the BSA.
The BSA's standards are overly strict IMHO, and the last time this
topic came up, the best advice was from a couple of lawyers who
posted "don't let 'em past the front doors, tell them to come back with a subpoena."
Has anyone actually gone to court with copies of purchase orders and
records of payment to vendors?
AT&T will only be filtering stuff copyrighted by "big media". Your stuff, or Slashdot, will not be affected. AT&T obviously has an agenda here, and it's not about protecting everybody's copyrighted material, just copyrighted material that's owned by their "partners". Of course, you could become AT&T's partner, if you would like to pay them some large amount of money...
If I had to guess, I'd say this is about AT&T not getting sued by the big media companies. They seem to be bending over backwards, but hey, they're already forwarding all your traffic to the NSA, so maybe they've figured out a way to reuse the same equipment to filter media files?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071201221628452
One of my favorite books. Though the terminology is becoming quaint -- secretaries, typewriters and listings!
So now, it's both a nostalgic look back into the early days of software development, as well as a warning to future developers...
I use an old PC, running Ubuntu Server, with two 320G drives in a software RAID 0 configuration.
I also use the box as an SSH and FTP server for external access to my stuff.
Every 6 months or so, I buy a new hard drive, pull one of the RAID drives, replace it with the new
drive and let the RAID rebuild the new drive. $120 for a new drive, minimal backup hassle.
I alternate the drive I replace, so hopefully, I'm dealing with any drive lifetime issues at the same time I backup.
Namely, the Actiontec router they use. It's not just a router, it also demultiplexes the TV stream from the fiber, so you can't just substitute your own.
Problem is, the firmware in the router doesn't work very well. Those who have done more experiments than I, claim the NAT address mapping table is *way* too small. The symptoms are that you have intermittent connection loss...my experience was with a wireless link, and we lost the connection at random, 2-3 times a day...no problem, just restart the interface, but the point is, Verizon's not perfect either
>The Moller skycar is a little more revolutionary, since it takes off and lands vertically
Well, at least it *would* be if it actually *did* take off and land. So far, it only seems to have done that once, with the possible assistance of a crane.
On the other hand, the Moller Skycar *has* provided years of employment and income for its inventor.
Ballmer probably spends that every week on new furniture.
One of the linked articles says Timeline is now solely in the business of licensing their patents, having sold off their software and development business. Looks like they may have picked the wrong company to troll...
...I get a kick out of FPGAs.
I was with Data General for 14 years. Went from TTL to PALs and then did CPLDs and FPGAs for 3Com. Being able to build an entire design inside one chip by writing code *absolutely rocks*! And there's no more rework at the lab bench...just retype, resimulate and go!
It's an order of magnitude harder to do this with wire-wrap and 74xx series ICs than it is to do in an FPGA.
The guy did a nice job of documenting it, too, and the finished product looks very professional.
The old school front panel is a nice touch.
I didn't read far enough to tell if it's compatible with an existing machine, or whether he designed his own instruction set. Either way, writing a microcoded instruction set is not a trivial task. Then he needed an assembler and compiler for it. Then, he had to get Minix to compile and run. Very neat. He does mention that he's a software developer for HP. I suspect H & P are looking down on him, smiling.
Nice job.
They almost got me twice with a fake "Continue" button on the order confirmation page.
After you type in your credit card info, and authorize the purchase you intended to make, the website pops up a receipt/confirmation page (just as you'd expect). At the bottom of that screen, is a "Continue" button. Below that button, in very small type, almost the same color as the page background, perhaps even below the bottom of the screen, so you'd need to scroll down to see it, is a disclaimer that tells you that by clicking the above button, you're authorizing the transfer of your data to WLI.
The next page you see asks you for a second confirmation (perhaps your email address), and in a way that does not make clear that you are not providing it to WLI...and at NO time are you told that your credit card information has been sent to WLI. You are not explicitly asked to authorize the charge.
The places I caught doing this were unaware of it, and angry about it. The WLI link comes pre-packaged in the "storefront" or "ecommerce solution" that the merchant obtains from their hosting service. My suspicion is that this is a deal between WLI and the storefront software provider, not the merchant.
It's definitely for real and a continuing problem...my experience was several years ago, and at the time, I bookmarked this site, which is still active:
http://adam.rosi-kessel.org/weblog/the_man/webloyalty_aka_wli_reservations_is_a_scam.html/
The other way they get you to click is to offer you a "credit on your next order"...
I agree that thin clients are pretty amazing. We evaluated some (using the AMD LX800, as a matter of fact) for a project I worked on. Although they were running an embedded Linux (Devon, HP and Wyse were the ones we looked at), with minimal RAM and a compact flash "disk", the performance was impressive when browsing the web and playing flash videos. The client was only interested in the Linux OS :-)
My understanding is that there's a platform (or at least some basic requirements) specified for CE (or Windows Mobile, or whatever it is now). The XO hardware is *so* different from anything resembling the standard PC platform -- to the level of a custom shared memory/display controller -- that I think it would be a big job even getting CE to run. In spite of what Microsoft says, I don't think anything remotely resembling XP will ever run on XO. At best, it would be running on a 500MHz Pentium (the AMD LX500), but without any of the hardware support (including no hard drive for paging) it would expect to see. Supporting all the XO's neat features, camera, audio, handwriting recognition, mono/color display, and the big one, power management, will all require new work. XO's mesh networking as well is completely outside the envelope for Windows.
That's not to say that they can't do it. Like you say, it's *just* a port (more like a complete rewrite, though) to different hardware! I'm sure Microsoft can do pretty much anything they want to -- they have the bodies and the cash, and I'm sure, executive backing for this project.
The software that MS will provide will, by necessity, be hardware-specific to the XO platform.
You almost have to do that, as there's no hard drive (you'll need a flash file system instead)
and minimal RAM, and a non-standard display. As a matter of fact, XO doesn't look anything like the
platform MS is used to running on.
The OS Microsoft finally provides may look like XP to the user,
but I suspect it's going to be more like a highly modified WinCE inside.
They'll give the OS away...after all, it will only run on the XO...and advertise how
they're helping to educate the developing world's children -- the Microsoft way.
And the reason they're going to all this effort?
I think MS sees this as a strategic move. OLPC potentially delivers a pretty
large number of young eyeballs. It would be a *very* Bad Thing for their
first exposure to computers to involve a friendly penguin wearing the label "Linux".
Much better for future MS sales that they see the Windows logo.