Comcast's TOS explicitly disallow running any form of public server or P2P services, so I really don't see why people are complaining about it.
I completely agree to the terms of service. Now let them enforce it and try to stop my complaints. They can kick me off anytime they like and apparently from the ToS, for any reason.
I completely agree with him. The votes are without worth.
Compare the situation in the US to that of one of the many dictatorships around the world were elections are held but only one party can be elected. The elections in these dictatorships only serve as a propaganda tool. I am not arguing that this happened in the US deliberately but that it happened by default because of the use of plurality itself. The difference is there are two choices instead of one.
If you were a special interest and you wanted to have influence after the election what would you do? In a dictatorship you pay the party who will be elected. In the US, you pay both of them.
And anyway, could you be so certain which candidate was most popular, especially if every other voter was hiding their true feelings too?
Most voters DO hide their true feelings because the electoral system can not accurately represent them. At best they vote for the lessor of two evils. Without what I like to think of as a conspiracy of doves, the situation is stable and any minority (or even majority if they are divided minorities) who disagrees becomes powerless.
Democracy is hard and has lots of problems, but it's still the best form of government among those we know.
HiThere (15173) is identifying the specific implementation of democracy that the US uses and not democracy itself. Elections flawed using plurality do not produce democratic results. One of their effects is to increase the power of special interests.
And you seriously think this is better anywhere else? Many European nations have institutionalized special interests far more than the US. Britain has become an Orwellian state and gone from empire to irrelevant.
I agree about the European nations (after all, they have been in existence longer) however their situation does not justify using a flawed electoral method in the US. If anything, I would hope that they would recognize the problem since much of the research on the subject originated there.
You could go a step further and conceive a world in which not only servers, but even things we take for granted, such as a hard drive or DVD-R disc, would be regulated.
Mike said, "First thing you need is Social Security and driver's license." Gordon looked puzzled. "Driver license? For what, mass driver? Disk drive?"
I'd like to point out that IEC 60958 (aka coaxial S/PDIF) is supposed to be ground-isolated at the receiver side.
I actually never knew that. Of course as you point out nothing is built that way which I assume is the reason I have never noticed a ground isolated coaxial S/PDIF port. The data rate is not that high so I am surprised it could not be handled the same way that MIDI did it.
I only point this out because you were seriously discussing the relative merits of balanced speaker cables, and felt a powerful desire to feed your bizarre lunacy.
I am actually no longer sure why I included this. I have done my own power amp design and have a lot of experience with RF induced AM rectified noise and bias issues cause by speaker cable pickup but never considered shielded or balanced speaker cables acceptable as a solution. I just use heavy gauge zip cord if the amplifier is not actually in the speaker cabinet.
I have also seen, diagnosed, and early on with my own equipment designs caused some spectacular ground current failures. It is hard to imaging what a 400 watt audio amplifier can look like during catastrophic failure but a flashy Hollywood submarine movie where an electrical panel shorts out is pretty close. I have been naturally sensitive to ground loops since that incident and have not worn a watch or a ring in a long time.:)
Electrical impulses propogate much, _much_ slower than the speed of light when run through copper (and perhaps fiber optics since the light beam has to bounce around so much that the path is many times longer?)
"Much much slower" is a pretty big exaggeration. Propagation velocity using a solid polyethylene dielectric is 66% and that is about as slow as it gets for electrical signals. Some glasses are as low as 50%. Store and forward ethernet switches at 100 Mbits/s have to add at least 150 microseconds per switch for 1500 byte packets which is about 22 kilometers at 50%. Cut through switching or a hub could lower this significantly of course.
Long distance optical fiber links would use graded index fibers which do not have internal reflections as such. The varying dielectric constant across the cross section of the fiber keeps the photons traveling down the center.
I do not particularly disagree with the points that you make however certain cells phones, and in particular TDMA transmitters like those used for GSM, are effectively AM transmitters with a period in the millisecond range which is about the worst case scenario for audio equipment at both the line and power level. Professional equipment should not have a problem (especially if proper cabling is used) but consumer equipment and wiring is prone to having severe issues caused by AM rectification and bias point changes.
Off hand the only thing I suspect might be worse then one of those GSM phones for causing audio problems would be an amateur radio 6 meter hand held transmitting AM but luckily they are very rare. 100 watts of 6 meters from my car is bad enough.:)
Line level outputs are usually unbalanced but dedicated headphone outputs are often balanced to provide for 4 times the power using the same supply voltage.
In either case proper circuit design and filtering is necessary to handle AM modulated RF. Shielding can help significantly but can also cause problems with ground loops for instance if not properly handled.
Constant or relatively constant envelope RF transmissions do not usually cause this type of problem. TDMA however assigns a specific time slot for the client to transmit in. Since the client is only receiving outside of this time slot, the transmitter is continuously sending bursts of relatively high power RF with a period on the order of milliseconds. The effect you hear is basically identical to what happens when a nonlinear device, usually a semiconductor junction, detects an AM transmission except the modulating frequency is much lower producing a buzz instead of a tone.
Line level audio circuits tend to be particularly susceptable however audio power amplifiers can also have problems when the speaker cables pick up the RF. The only real way around it is proper filtering and design.
In fact, I fail to see the point of fiber other than that TOSLINK got established early on for audio already.
Common mode noise suppression in digital or analog line level signal wiring can be very important. Naturally, none of the current copper standards except ethernet and Midi provide ground isolation. USB and Firewire can be isolated at the endpoints but that is rare except in medical or industrial equipment. Professional quality audio equipment relies on balanced wiring of course which largely although not completely mitigates the problem as far as noise is concerned.
Digital signals of course enjoy huge amounts of noise rejection because of their very nature but physical damage from ground loops is still possible. RS-232 serial and VGA connections seem to be particularly prone to problems of this type but so far their replacements seem to have learned a lesson about cable shield and signal ground connections.
Speaker cable runs do not normally need to be balanced or shielded because proper output amplifier design will reject conducted or radiated RF interference.
I agree however that in a majority of installations copper cabling (and analog) is completely adequate.
Actually 3ware isn't a very good SATA-RAID-card brand.
Which ones are then? I have actually had very good results with my old 7500 series 3ware (PATA, not SATA) cards although I would purchase differently today or maybe go with Linux or BSD based NAS.
"With strong steganography, the correct key is necessary to recover the message or to even prove that the message exists."
Not if you leave the lower noise original "carrier" (photo/sound file) around and a copy of steganographic software that isn't installed by default.
Even the strongest steganographic (or cryptographic) algorithm can be defeated through user incompetence.:) Just ask the committee that approved WEP or any users who rely on low entropy passwords. *
If I am creating my own continuous tone and likely compressed images and relying on them for steganographic data transmission, why would I keep the originals?
People might find the software and the original and then ask you some questions. In the UK or similar countries they might then start asking you for your keys, which you are required by law to hand over.
I anticipate the day UK authorities use this provision to hold and/or persecute someone for reasons having nothing to do with withholding cryptographic keys. I suppose they could learn a lesson from US law enforcement and tie this in with property seizure although I suspect the former could teach a thing or two to the later.
* Oddly enough, I have had problems recently with passwords being rejected for being too good. Apparently, 128 bit randomly generated hexadecimal numbers are insecure in some way I do not understand.
My understanding is that they are already tracking the sequence number and forging a separate packet instead of just flipping the RST flag in the existing connection.
I had to review how IPSEC AH mode works and found that the flags are considered mutable and are not authenticated by IPSEC unless you use tunnel mode which provides full packet encapsulation. In that case, Comcast would only be able to conduct traffic analysis and could only use their RST attack on the tunnel itself which could be made resistant. TCP/IP does not have to make use of the RST flag. It just provides for more efficient connection management.
Your story reminds me of one that Bob Pease of National Semiconductor fame recounted:
I recollect the story of one of the pioneering transistor companies, back in the '60s. They had agreed to ship to their customers transistors with an AQL (Acceptable Quality Level) of 2%, which was pretty good for those days. So the tester would test 98 good parts and put them in the box. Then, following her instructions, she would add 2 bad transistors to finish off the box, thus bringing the quality to the exact level desired. This went on for some time, until one of the customers got suspicious, because the two bad transistors were always in the same corner of the box! Then things were changed....
I thought most electronics would run better at extremely cold temperatures.
That is only the case if designed that way. Besides the effect on electrical characteristics, the things that have to be taken into consideration include physical changes in the materials themselves and the thermal expansion coefficients. I suspect the later is a major issue for the landers because failure will tend to be irreversible. I suppose if they are RoHS compliant and use tin solders that could also cause a problem at low temperatures.
I have tested my own designs down to liquid nitrogen temperatures and electrical performance issues were never a problem even with precision analog circuits. Failures were always associated with the mechanical aspects including stress fractures at the package interfaces and within the packages themselves. We had to replace the plastic air circulation fans in the chamber with metal ones after they shattered do to their residual stress from the injection molding process.
The use of strong encryption does not preclude defending the 4th amendment. There is no reason not to implement defense in depth to reach the goal of secure personal communications. If anything, the events of 9/11 show the weakness in relying on brittle security in any form.
When software like this is distributed, however, anyone who receives it may potentially figure out where/how it hides the files, and once one person figures it out anyone can then find any files hidden that way, rendering that method of steganography useless.
This is only true for weak forms of steganography in much the same way that it is true for weak forms of cryptography.
With strong steganography, the correct key is necessary to recover the message or to even prove that the message exists. Hiding the specific algorithm is not a required for security.
Some spread spectrum communication techniques (but not all) have this property as well. If the received signal is significantly below the received noise level, then recovery or even detection is not possible without the correct spreading sequence.
That sure sounds a lot like nitrogen triiodide but I never had an interest in its optical properties. One of our batches somehow ended up painted into door jams, inside drawer edges, and scattered all over the floor. It was all good clean purple fun.
If our biological sciences become advanced enough, our decedents will be able to restore homo sapiens from backup media. It might make an interesting high school project.
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I completely agree to the terms of service. Now let them enforce it and try to stop my complaints. They can kick me off anytime they like and apparently from the ToS, for any reason.
I am not blocking forged RST packets from Comcast IP addresses. I am just placing them into a very long delay queue in my traffic shaper.
Compare the situation in the US to that of one of the many dictatorships around the world were elections are held but only one party can be elected. The elections in these dictatorships only serve as a propaganda tool. I am not arguing that this happened in the US deliberately but that it happened by default because of the use of plurality itself. The difference is there are two choices instead of one.
If you were a special interest and you wanted to have influence after the election what would you do? In a dictatorship you pay the party who will be elected. In the US, you pay both of them.
Most voters DO hide their true feelings because the electoral system can not accurately represent them. At best they vote for the lessor of two evils. Without what I like to think of as a conspiracy of doves, the situation is stable and any minority (or even majority if they are divided minorities) who disagrees becomes powerless.
Democracy is hard and has lots of problems, but it's still the best form of government among those we know.
HiThere (15173) is identifying the specific implementation of democracy that the US uses and not democracy itself. Elections flawed using plurality do not produce democratic results. One of their effects is to increase the power of special interests.
And you seriously think this is better anywhere else? Many European nations have institutionalized special interests far more than the US. Britain has become an Orwellian state and gone from empire to irrelevant.
I agree about the European nations (after all, they have been in existence longer) however their situation does not justify using a flawed electoral method in the US. If anything, I would hope that they would recognize the problem since much of the research on the subject originated there.
Mike said, "First thing you need is Social Security and driver's license."
Gordon looked puzzled. "Driver license? For what, mass driver? Disk drive?"
http://www.baen.com/library/067172052X/067172052X.htm
I actually never knew that. Of course as you point out nothing is built that way which I assume is the reason I have never noticed a ground isolated coaxial S/PDIF port. The data rate is not that high so I am surprised it could not be handled the same way that MIDI did it.
I am actually no longer sure why I included this. I have done my own power amp design and have a lot of experience with RF induced AM rectified noise and bias issues cause by speaker cable pickup but never considered shielded or balanced speaker cables acceptable as a solution. I just use heavy gauge zip cord if the amplifier is not actually in the speaker cabinet.
I have also seen, diagnosed, and early on with my own equipment designs caused some spectacular ground current failures. It is hard to imaging what a 400 watt audio amplifier can look like during catastrophic failure but a flashy Hollywood submarine movie where an electrical panel shorts out is pretty close. I have been naturally sensitive to ground loops since that incident and have not worn a watch or a ring in a long time.
"Much much slower" is a pretty big exaggeration. Propagation velocity using a solid polyethylene dielectric is 66% and that is about as slow as it gets for electrical signals. Some glasses are as low as 50%. Store and forward ethernet switches at 100 Mbits/s have to add at least 150 microseconds per switch for 1500 byte packets which is about 22 kilometers at 50%. Cut through switching or a hub could lower this significantly of course.
Long distance optical fiber links would use graded index fibers which do not have internal reflections as such. The varying dielectric constant across the cross section of the fiber keeps the photons traveling down the center.
I do not particularly disagree with the points that you make however certain cells phones, and in particular TDMA transmitters like those used for GSM, are effectively AM transmitters with a period in the millisecond range which is about the worst case scenario for audio equipment at both the line and power level. Professional equipment should not have a problem (especially if proper cabling is used) but consumer equipment and wiring is prone to having severe issues caused by AM rectification and bias point changes.
:)
Off hand the only thing I suspect might be worse then one of those GSM phones for causing audio problems would be an amateur radio 6 meter hand held transmitting AM but luckily they are very rare. 100 watts of 6 meters from my car is bad enough.
Line level outputs are usually unbalanced but dedicated headphone outputs are often balanced to provide for 4 times the power using the same supply voltage.
In either case proper circuit design and filtering is necessary to handle AM modulated RF. Shielding can help significantly but can also cause problems with ground loops for instance if not properly handled.
Constant or relatively constant envelope RF transmissions do not usually cause this type of problem. TDMA however assigns a specific time slot for the client to transmit in. Since the client is only receiving outside of this time slot, the transmitter is continuously sending bursts of relatively high power RF with a period on the order of milliseconds. The effect you hear is basically identical to what happens when a nonlinear device, usually a semiconductor junction, detects an AM transmission except the modulating frequency is much lower producing a buzz instead of a tone.
Line level audio circuits tend to be particularly susceptable however audio power amplifiers can also have problems when the speaker cables pick up the RF. The only real way around it is proper filtering and design.
Common mode noise suppression in digital or analog line level signal wiring can be very important. Naturally, none of the current copper standards except ethernet and Midi provide ground isolation. USB and Firewire can be isolated at the endpoints but that is rare except in medical or industrial equipment. Professional quality audio equipment relies on balanced wiring of course which largely although not completely mitigates the problem as far as noise is concerned.
Digital signals of course enjoy huge amounts of noise rejection because of their very nature but physical damage from ground loops is still possible. RS-232 serial and VGA connections seem to be particularly prone to problems of this type but so far their replacements seem to have learned a lesson about cable shield and signal ground connections.
Speaker cable runs do not normally need to be balanced or shielded because proper output amplifier design will reject conducted or radiated RF interference.
I agree however that in a majority of installations copper cabling (and analog) is completely adequate.
Why use FPGAs when you could go custom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Crack
Of course, if you are dead set on FPGAs, the machines are available now:
http://www.copacobana.org/index.html
Which ones are then? I have actually had very good results with my old 7500 series 3ware (PATA, not SATA) cards although I would purchase differently today or maybe go with Linux or BSD based NAS.
What about the cost of the bicycle though? I doubt replacing it every week or two as it gets stolen would be attractive.
Two chicks at the same time, man. And I think if you were a millionaire you could hook that up, too; 'cause chicks dig dudes with money.
Even the strongest steganographic (or cryptographic) algorithm can be defeated through user incompetence.
If I am creating my own continuous tone and likely compressed images and relying on them for steganographic data transmission, why would I keep the originals?
I anticipate the day UK authorities use this provision to hold and/or persecute someone for reasons having nothing to do with withholding cryptographic keys. I suppose they could learn a lesson from US law enforcement and tie this in with property seizure although I suspect the former could teach a thing or two to the later.
* Oddly enough, I have had problems recently with passwords being rejected for being too good. Apparently, 128 bit randomly generated hexadecimal numbers are insecure in some way I do not understand.
My understanding is that they are already tracking the sequence number and forging a separate packet instead of just flipping the RST flag in the existing connection.
I had to review how IPSEC AH mode works and found that the flags are considered mutable and are not authenticated by IPSEC unless you use tunnel mode which provides full packet encapsulation. In that case, Comcast would only be able to conduct traffic analysis and could only use their RST attack on the tunnel itself which could be made resistant. TCP/IP does not have to make use of the RST flag. It just provides for more efficient connection management.
http://www.national.com/rap/Story/0,1562,19,00.html
That is only the case if designed that way. Besides the effect on electrical characteristics, the things that have to be taken into consideration include physical changes in the materials themselves and the thermal expansion coefficients. I suspect the later is a major issue for the landers because failure will tend to be irreversible. I suppose if they are RoHS compliant and use tin solders that could also cause a problem at low temperatures.
I have tested my own designs down to liquid nitrogen temperatures and electrical performance issues were never a problem even with precision analog circuits. Failures were always associated with the mechanical aspects including stress fractures at the package interfaces and within the packages themselves. We had to replace the plastic air circulation fans in the chamber with metal ones after they shattered do to their residual stress from the injection molding process.
The use of strong encryption does not preclude defending the 4th amendment. There is no reason not to implement defense in depth to reach the goal of secure personal communications. If anything, the events of 9/11 show the weakness in relying on brittle security in any form.
This is only true for weak forms of steganography in much the same way that it is true for weak forms of cryptography.
With strong steganography, the correct key is necessary to recover the message or to even prove that the message exists. Hiding the specific algorithm is not a required for security.
Some spread spectrum communication techniques (but not all) have this property as well. If the received signal is significantly below the received noise level, then recovery or even detection is not possible without the correct spreading sequence.
That sure sounds a lot like nitrogen triiodide but I never had an interest in its optical properties. One of our batches somehow ended up painted into door jams, inside drawer edges, and scattered all over the floor. It was all good clean purple fun.
If our biological sciences become advanced enough, our decedents will be able to restore homo sapiens from backup media. It might make an interesting high school project.
Do I believe in The Bible? Hell! I've seen one!
So which box is next?
There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.