Remove your vehicle's radio from the dashboard while still leaving it connected. Tune it to an AM station. Unplug the antenna connector from the rear of it.
Wow. No signal degradation.
Now tune to an FM station.
Nothing but static and unlistenable shit.
The motto? The antenna is for the benefit of FM reception. There's generally a ferrite antenna internal to the unit for AM reception.
I have two holes to punch into Acer's new notebook:
(1) Their illustration of a Pentium III-M processor is good for a laugh. Check out the lower-right corner of the second page of the brochure, and tell me that isn't an FCPGA Coppermine Pentium III sitting on top of a circuit board.
(2) More than likely, they've implemented the hard drive protection using an IBM Travelstar hard drive, which has a password-protection option (although this is very rarely used in the real world). Why am I poopooing this? Keep reading.
Section 11.8 of the Travelstar 48GH Specifications (page 87, PDF page 101) details IBM's security system. I would imagine this can be circumvented in one of two ways, the first being in the hard drive itself and the second being part of the notebook's security implementation.
First, there's a Master Password in addition to the normal User Password. If you don't know what the Master Password is, and don't know that only you know both passwords, anyone with access to the Master Password (quite likely any high-level Acer technician) can send a Device Unlock command to the drive along with the Master Password and voilà, the oyster opens to reveal the pearls inside. (No, you can't read the passwords out of the drive's EEPROM; it's stored in a non-externally-addressable area of the disk. Even if you know and control both passwords, though, I'd imagine there are undocumented commands to reset the password or unlock the drive regardless of the password. If you're thinking that IBM would need to be able to unlock drives to refurbish/repair them, they wouldn't, because there's a command which will write zeroes to every externally-addressable sector on the drive then unlock the drive and erase the password. No hard drive maker that I know of guarantees the integrity of the data on any hard drive that's sent to them.)
Second, I'd be very surprised if they had gone any further than storing the Travelstar's access password in CMOS or an EEPROM part, and sending it to the drive if the fingerprint matches what's stored there as well. (They couldn't store a one-way hash of the drive password, because any obfuscation would have to be reversable to be able to feed the password to the drive.) Therefore, anyone with an SMD rework station and an EEPROM reader could probably extract the password from the CMOS/EEPROM.
In summary, I wouldn't trust state secrets to this. I would recommend PGP Corporate Desktop instead as the closest thing a mortal can get to decent data security. (An interesting aside: You know how the government erases drives holding classified information before they're resold? They don't. The drives are physically destroyed. For good reason.)
If there's one thing the Slashdot crowd has figured out, it's to not count one's chickens before they've hatched.
As soon as the Harry Fox Agency gets wind of this, I'm sure they'll go after this new variant with just as much zeal.
However, since it appears as though the site truly IS hosted in Russia (rather than having a North American-based site with a.RU address), it just might stick around for a while after all!
[ 8 ]
RIPE whois query for www.lyricsdot.ru (195.34.224.76):
In Europe and Israel (where I live and work), we have 91.0 MHz overall to play with, and 9 channels, numbered 1 through 9. Of those 9 channels, 1, 6, and 11 don't overlap at all, allowing as many as three access points to operate in close proximity of each other.
Is it just me, or does something not quite make sense here?
Buy the CD at HMV, then. They accept returns within 30 days on *everything* they sell (even DVDs). This (and the Club Card program) is the main reason I buy almost all my music/DVDs there.
I work for a company that, stats wise, generates 4x the volume of email of any other company in Canada, on a per-employee basis (we've been doing email on IBM mainframes since before most companies had computers).
Re:Does PCS *need* GPS for positional data?
on
GPS Meets PCS
·
· Score: 3, Informative
the international GSM emergency number (I forgot it)
112 will get you the authorities in every country with a GSM network. North America's 911 is 999 in England, for example, but 112 will get you there no matter where you are.
If the industry is losing billions to copying, and they've made it impossible, we can expect to see prices fall to say $4.99, right?
Of course not, you fool! Think of the sheer amount of overhead added to the production of each CD due to the copy-protection process! That amount of added work will surely result in a price higher than the $4.99 you suggest.
The eagle-eyed will notice that the formula for computing the cost to the record company of copy-protecting a given CD is:
I remember signing up to be notified when my name hit the top of the list to be able to purchase one of these.
So did I.
I never heard anything.
I heard back from them. I got an email stating that my number (1620-something, IIRC), had come up and that I was welcome to place an order.
The only problem was that was fourteen (14) months after I had registered with them for a spot in line. By that time, I had already spent the money I was saving for it, and the new headunit I'd also need, on something else.
US weekly deaths of innocent people attributable to smoking: ~0
US weekly deaths of innocent people attributable to drinking: ~0
You are presuming that everyone who smokes/drinks, or a statistically insignificant proportion of those who smoke/drink, continues to do so willingly, and is not doing it because they are addicted to it. Both nicotine and alcohol have been found to be highly addictive -- in fact, nicotine is more addictive than cocaine.
Your brain and keyboard don't mean squat when you want to order a book from Amazon and it says "Passport required." When all commercial sites require this, you are left with no choice but to sign up and have your data managed by M$. Either that, or forgo purchasing online and start buying all your stuff from brick & mortar shops with cash.
The moment Amazon does this, the moment they lose my business. I can go down to Chapters, sit in a comfortable chair (with a Starbucks only a few steps away, no less), and read ALL DAY, without ever being asked to buy anything. When I find something I like, I buy it at my own leisurely pace.
It's civil, and it doesn't require my data being held by third parties [for my own protection/because I'm a fucking moron like all the other consumers].
Steve Kirsch suggests a number of techniques for putting a plane in "safe mode" that auto-lands it's self in case of emergency... hijacking or even the Payne Stuart situation.
Well, I guess it'll be a good thing the plane will land itself in Safe Mode, because it'll be damn-near impossible for the pilot and copilot to see anything on the cockpit displays when they're in shite-resolution 256-color mode!
Similarly, why did MS build bug reporting tools into XP and IE 6? To build a better product. Too bad that they are all basically new versions. Anyone know if this is in the final release?
Yes, it is. In XP (build 2600 RTM), in the System Control Panel, Advanced tab, there's an Error Reporting button which spawns a dialog with the following options:
o Disable error reporting
[ ] But notify me when errors occur
o Enable error reporting
[ ] Windows operating system
[ ] Programs[Choose Programs...]
Slashdot Mirror
Remove your vehicle's radio from the dashboard while still leaving it connected. Tune it to an AM station. Unplug the antenna connector from the rear of it.
Wow. No signal degradation.
Now tune to an FM station.
Nothing but static and unlistenable shit.
The motto? The antenna is for the benefit of FM reception. There's generally a ferrite antenna internal to the unit for AM reception.
Well, at least one person figured it out...
I have two holes to punch into Acer's new notebook:
(1) Their illustration of a Pentium III-M processor is good for a laugh. Check out the lower-right corner of the second page of the brochure, and tell me that isn't an FCPGA Coppermine Pentium III sitting on top of a circuit board.
(2) More than likely, they've implemented the hard drive protection using an IBM Travelstar hard drive, which has a password-protection option (although this is very rarely used in the real world). Why am I poopooing this? Keep reading.
Section 11.8 of the Travelstar 48GH Specifications (page 87, PDF page 101) details IBM's security system. I would imagine this can be circumvented in one of two ways, the first being in the hard drive itself and the second being part of the notebook's security implementation.
First, there's a Master Password in addition to the normal User Password. If you don't know what the Master Password is, and don't know that only you know both passwords, anyone with access to the Master Password (quite likely any high-level Acer technician) can send a Device Unlock command to the drive along with the Master Password and voilà, the oyster opens to reveal the pearls inside. (No, you can't read the passwords out of the drive's EEPROM; it's stored in a non-externally-addressable area of the disk. Even if you know and control both passwords, though, I'd imagine there are undocumented commands to reset the password or unlock the drive regardless of the password. If you're thinking that IBM would need to be able to unlock drives to refurbish/repair them, they wouldn't, because there's a command which will write zeroes to every externally-addressable sector on the drive then unlock the drive and erase the password. No hard drive maker that I know of guarantees the integrity of the data on any hard drive that's sent to them.)
Second, I'd be very surprised if they had gone any further than storing the Travelstar's access password in CMOS or an EEPROM part, and sending it to the drive if the fingerprint matches what's stored there as well. (They couldn't store a one-way hash of the drive password, because any obfuscation would have to be reversable to be able to feed the password to the drive.) Therefore, anyone with an SMD rework station and an EEPROM reader could probably extract the password from the CMOS/EEPROM.
In summary, I wouldn't trust state secrets to this. I would recommend PGP Corporate Desktop instead as the closest thing a mortal can get to decent data security. (An interesting aside: You know how the government erases drives holding classified information before they're resold? They don't. The drives are physically destroyed. For good reason.)
LyricsDot which is not going to close
.RU address), it just might stick around for a while after all!
If there's one thing the Slashdot crowd has figured out, it's to not count one's chickens before they've hatched.
As soon as the Harry Fox Agency gets wind of this, I'm sure they'll go after this new variant with just as much zeal.
However, since it appears as though the site truly IS hosted in Russia (rather than having a North American-based site with a
[ 8 ]
RIPE whois query for www.lyricsdot.ru (195.34.224.76):
inetnum: 195.34.224.0 - 195.34.224.255
netname: AOR2-1-NET
descr: Lipetsk regional network
country: RU
admin-c: AOR2-RIPE
tech-c: AOR2-RIPE
rev-srv: ns1.lipetsk.ru
rev-srv: ns2.lipetsk.ru
rev-srv: ns.vrn.ru
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: AOR2-MNT-RIPE
changed: aor@takthq.lietsk.su 19980321
source: RIPE
route: 195.34.224.0/19
descr: Lipetsk Regional Public Network
origin: AS8570
mnt-by: AOR2-MNT-RIPE
changed: aor@takthq.lipetsk.su 19971207
source: RIPE
person: Alexander I Ostankov
address: JSC "Lipetskelectrosvyaz"
address: Lipetsk regional NIC
address: 5, Plekhanova str.
address: SU-398000 Lipetsk, Russia
phone: +7 0742 470909
phone: +7 0742 470916
fax-no: +7 0742 744823
e-mail: aor@lipetsk.ru
nic-hdl: AOR2-RIPE
mnt-by: AOR2-MNT-RIPE
changed: aor@takthq.lipetsk.su 19981223
source: RIPE
In Europe and Israel (where I live and work), we have 91.0 MHz overall to play with, and 9 channels, numbered 1 through 9. Of those 9 channels, 1, 6, and 11 don't overlap at all, allowing as many as three access points to operate in close proximity of each other.
Is it just me, or does something not quite make sense here?
DX8.1 compatibility (What is that anyway?)
That would be DirectX 8.1.
Buy the CD at HMV, then. They accept returns within 30 days on *everything* they sell (even DVDs). This (and the Club Card program) is the main reason I buy almost all my music/DVDs there.
I work for a company that, stats wise, generates 4x the volume of email of any other company in Canada, on a per-employee basis (we've been doing email on IBM mainframes since before most companies had computers).
Which company would this happen to be?
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
(You have been trolled. You have lost. Have a nice day.)
...with decent pictures here.
...stupid lameness filter...
This winter, [...] I witnessed someone on a motorcycle
Apparently he had it coming...
the international GSM emergency number (I forgot it)
112 will get you the authorities in every country with a GSM network. North America's 911 is 999 in England, for example, but 112 will get you there no matter where you are.
Handy little number to know...
Someone is not checking the (non) links!
Somehow that makes me think of Hooters in Amsterdam...
(I'd post a link, but Slashdot's search is b0rken right now.)
Here's my mirror (Windows only, unfortunately).
Don't hit this mirror before 8:15AM EDT since the file is currently being uploaded to the webserver.
If the industry is losing billions to copying, and they've made it impossible, we can expect to see prices fall to say $4.99, right?
Of course not, you fool! Think of the sheer amount of overhead added to the production of each CD due to the copy-protection process! That amount of added work will surely result in a price higher than the $4.99 you suggest.
The eagle-eyed will notice that the formula for computing the cost to the record company of copy-protecting a given CD is:
(current_cost_of_CD - $4.99) = copy_protection_cost
Can you figure out what the copy-protection-adjusted price of that $4.99 CD will be?
I remember signing up to be notified when my name hit the top of the list to be able to purchase one of these.
So did I.
I never heard anything.
I heard back from them. I got an email stating that my number (1620-something, IIRC), had come up and that I was welcome to place an order.
The only problem was that was fourteen (14) months after I had registered with them for a spot in line. By that time, I had already spent the money I was saving for it, and the new headunit I'd also need, on something else.
Not even an AM radio built in.
Open your PC's case, put an AM radio inside and turn it on, and close the case back up. See what sort of signal you get.
Speak not from whence you know not.
US weekly deaths of innocent people attributable to smoking: ~0
US weekly deaths of innocent people attributable to drinking: ~0
You are presuming that everyone who smokes/drinks, or a statistically insignificant proportion of those who smoke/drink, continues to do so willingly, and is not doing it because they are addicted to it. Both nicotine and alcohol have been found to be highly addictive -- in fact, nicotine is more addictive than cocaine.
We have far, far more people dying in traffic accidents, and it's very likely that nearly half those deaths are victims of another driver's idiocy.
In other news, a new study has shown that nearly half of students in American schools and universities had below-average marks.
Your brain and keyboard don't mean squat when you want to order a book from Amazon and it says "Passport required." When all commercial sites require this, you are left with no choice but to sign up and have your data managed by M$. Either that, or forgo purchasing online and start buying all your stuff from brick & mortar shops with cash.
The moment Amazon does this, the moment they lose my business. I can go down to Chapters, sit in a comfortable chair (with a Starbucks only a few steps away, no less), and read ALL DAY, without ever being asked to buy anything. When I find something I like, I buy it at my own leisurely pace.
It's civil, and it doesn't require my data being held by third parties [for my own protection/because I'm a fucking moron like all the other consumers].
Steve Kirsch suggests a number of techniques for putting a plane in "safe mode" that auto-lands it's self in case of emergency ... hijacking or even the Payne Stuart situation.
Well, I guess it'll be a good thing the plane will land itself in Safe Mode, because it'll be damn-near impossible for the pilot and copilot to see anything on the cockpit displays when they're in shite-resolution 256-color mode!
Robin Williams is trolling Slashdot!!!
Similarly, why did MS build bug reporting tools into XP and IE 6? To build a better product. Too bad that they are all basically new versions. Anyone know if this is in the final release?
Yes, it is. In XP (build 2600 RTM), in the System Control Panel, Advanced tab, there's an Error Reporting button which spawns a dialog with the following options:
o Disable error reporting
[ ] But notify me when errors occur
o Enable error reporting
[ ] Windows operating system
[ ] Programs[Choose Programs...]
[OK][Cancel]
( "o" = radio button, "[ ]" = checkbox, "[OK]" = button)
No, they aren't laser diodes. Open it up and look at it -- it's an ultrabright red LED.
Our sympathies to the relatives of the victims of the World Trade Center collapse.
Now do the right thing, Mr. Bush -- if Osama bin Laden was behind this, find him and his henchmen and blow them into the next dimension.