Not for Saabs. None of the manufacturers (blitzsafe et al) make one yet that can interface with the Saab head units. The problem (among other things) is the encrypted interface between the Saab OEM CD Changer and the head unit, designed to make both "unstealable".
I ended up replacing my 9-3's head unit to hook my iPod up to.
Not necessarily. For example, it's claimed that even transcoding from MP3 to MP3 is bad. In my mind, that means it's a bad codec, but does the alternative exist?
If a codec were "intelligent" in this way (i.e., it only removes information from a deterministic set of "useless" info, and won't lose more data on a second pass), it could be transcoded without penalty. A different such "intelligent" codec might have a different set of useless info, so transcoding between them may result in additional loss. But that means there would also exist some "perfect" intelligent codec that had the correct definition of "useless bits". It would toss only the bits that truly contained no information.
Just curious - anyone have any recommendations of sites or books on lossy codecs?
I see people bandying about the claims that re-encoding from lossy to lossy codec gets worse. Of course, it sounds so obvious. But here's my question - hopefully someone can point me to an explanation. If a codec took a WAV file, say, and truly took out only the bits you couldn't hear anyway, why wouldn't you be able to de-compress it to WAV (not the same WAV of course, since it's lossy), and then re-compress it to the exact same file it created the first time - in other words, why can't the codec say "Hey, there's nothing here I can remove, because it's all audible or distinguishable"?
These "intelligently lossy" codecs should be able to be transcoded infinite times without any loss in quality, assuming they had the same definition of "losable data."
I'd like to be educated - it seems like it should be possible with an intelligent codec, yet I've never seen one.
That's because you're an idiot. A GigaByte is 1 billion bytes. Did you not even read the NIST page that's been linked to several times before? Just because some members of the computer industry hijacked the SI prefixes and mistakenly applied them to binary scales, doesn't make them correct. A Gibibyte is 2^30 bytes. That's what your operating system is reporting.
The hard drive manufacturers have for years been putting those stupid labels explaining exactly what they mean by "GB" to help people like you.
How many more comments like this will there be? If you click the stupid link, you see that you need a USB key each time you boot if you want to be able to decrypt the hard drive. They need the MB, the HD, and your key.
Do you also have the right to listen to people's cell phone conversations that "travel through your body"?
Do you have the right to tap into the cable on the curb and watch free TV? Do you have the right to splice into your neighbor's phone line to bill your calls to him?
The fact that the medium is radio waves rather than a cable doesn't give you the right to the content. It's irrelevant.
DirecTV distributes copyrighted material to customers who pay for it. Stealing that signal is no different from any other intellectual property theft. If you want to argue that not paying for copyrighted information is OK, that's a different argument.
Which is why this is interesting, since it uses a phased array antenna, instead of an actual moving dish. Minimal re-pointing delays.
Also new is the $10 fee to add the mobile programming. Normally if you have DirecTV in your RV, you need a separate subscription, not just the $5 "add-a-receiver" fee, since there's no phone line attached.
The 3x7x series iPaqs have built-in bluetooth. All 3xyy where x > 7 iPaqs have built-in SD/MMC slots, and all of them need a sleeve for a compactflash card (the sleeve makes them very bulky). I think PocketPC 2002 started with the x = 7 line (on StrongARM hardware), and the XScale started with x = 8. Sleeves are also available for just about anything else you want - bluetooth + CF, PCMCIA, GSM/GPRS, etc. The Axim seems to be a killer deal compared to a 3850 or 3950 type iPaq. But, the iPaq does have a very nice shape and style to it. The Axim looks kinda clunky.
So just for the record, my Sony Vaio laptop has a 3600 mAh battery (about the same as the optional one you mention above), and it runs for 4-5 hours. 10 inch screen (with backlight, too!), built-in wi-fi, PIII 850M with spinning fan!, hard-drive with moving parts. I'm pretty sure this little thing will last a while if they produce a 3600mAh battery for it. It consumes a fraction of the power of the average laptop - no moving parts, tiny screen, low-power CPU, etc.
That's not correct. With vision (and any GSM carrier's GPRS offering), it's packet-switched data. There are no per-minute fees. If you use the old "wireless web" or any other carriers circuit switched data system, it's the opposite - you pay by the minute, regardless of whether you're downloading anything.
Check the plans for the data-specific devices you linked to - you can't get the standard voice plans, and the data is far more expensive. $40 only gets to 20MB, and voice calls are charged per-minute.
"If it isn't small enough to fit in my pocket, then it may as well be as big as my backpack."
Do you actually use a laptop frequently, though? I used to think like that too, until I started going on trips where I had to use a laptop throughout a conference, for example. I borrowed a friend's HP OmniBook 500 for the first trips - it's a few years old, but was the "ultra-slim" model at the time - 1 inch thick, probably 4 pounds without the docking station, 8 pounds with it. That's actually a lot of weight dragging on your shoulders, and it was pretty unwieldy to whip it out every time I had to plug in and check my messages at the office. And the battery life sucked - 1.5-2 hours, even though it claimed 3-5 hours. I can't imagine how people deal with those monsters they call laptops nowadays. They're bigger than the old Zenith brick I used to have, from around 1989 or so! After dragging the Omnibook through Atlanta recently, I went out and bought a Sony VAIO SRX, and it was definitely a good decision. I didn't realize how miserable it was lugging the HP around until I got the VAIO. It's about the size of an 8x10 sheet of paper, so I can take it to meetings now at work. It's small enough to open discretely without making a big scene just to take some notes or look up a document (the built-in Wi-Fi helps).
I think there's a lot to be said for "in-between" devices like the PictureBook or a slim laptop. If it's small enough to carry in your hand without being a burden, you're much more likely to use it for business purposes, though I agree for personal use, pocket-size is the way to go.
I recently bought a Sony VAIO SRX - not quite as small as the PictureBook, but still smaller than just about anything else out there (there are a few in its class - Fujitsu has a nice offering with built-in DVD drive). I recommend you take a look at it if you're looking for a small form-factor without sacrificing usability. It's got a usable keyboard, and a touchpad (pointing sticks drive me nuts - otherwise I was really looking at the picturebook). The battery life on the standard battery is about 4 hours or so for normal usage, and the 10.4 inch screen (1024x768) is very easy to see and read. Built-in Wi-Fi is the best thing since sliced bread - I don't even use my Home Theater PC anymore for quick internet stuff - it's faster to flip open the laptop and use the wireless connection from the couch, and I don't have to fumble around with a bunch of remotes.
Performance is good for business use - it's got integrated Intel 815 graphics (bleh), an 850MHz mobile PIII, and 256MB of RAM standard. I paid $1300 at Best Buy for the SRX-87, with a $100 rebate. The 87 is the now-discontinued model, so they are (or were) dirt cheap. The only difference between the 87 and the current line seems to be that the new ones come with a CDRW/DVD Combo Drive - I got a DVD drive. There's no docking station or port replicator - the drives are i.Link (Firewire)
You're incorrect. The MitM's account number isn't even in the message - he's substituting it so that the deposit goes into his own account.
You can determine trivially the portion of the OTP used to encrypt any known-plaintext. You XOR the cyphertext with the known-plaintext. But that portion of the key is (by definition, since it's random and one-time) unrelated to the key used for any other portion of the message, so it only helps you decrypt the plaintext you already knew.
But for an active change, you can use the portion of the key used for the account number, and substitute your own account number in the message. It will decrypt properly at the other end, and you get the deposit. You can't decrypt messages with a portion of known plaintext, but there are other attacks.
This is misleading. Even if you read all 2^1024 messages (every possible 1024-bit message), you still wouldn't know which one was the original plaintext. Absolutely unbreakable means absolutely unbreakable. "Attack at dawn" can encrypt to the same cyphertext as "Dinner's at 5". Or "Dinner's at 8" for that matter. Unless you knew the original plaintext anyway, you can't determine which was the correct key. And if you knew the plaintext, well, you wouldn't be trying to figure it out. And since it's one-time, even after you got the key for "Dinner's at 5", you still wouldn't be able to read the next sentence.
No, because in that case the car still has 280 horsepower. This is like saying it accelerates like a 280 horsepower car when you drive it down hill.
If they were being intellectually honest, they would have advertised it in the first place as being capable of more than 16 bit color, since you can dither 16 bits just as well as 12. It's the fact that they changed the measuring criteria before they "restated" the capabilities. Duh.
How do you weaken something that gives you more rights than normally allowed under copyright law?
It's made clear in the GPL - if you don't want to agree with the license, that's fine, because it doesn't attempt to take away any rights you already have. Standard commercial licenses restrict usage that might otherwise be legal, so the click-through license is needed to strengthen the license.
Ted Rall has a number of columns on the alleged oil conspiracy. It's rather interesting where Hamid Karzai came from, and everyone else's convenient connections to oil and Afghanistan.
If they're selling this product mostly to Windows folks, they've decided to support this optimizing software on Windows only. It might be a poor technical choice, but I assure you that "connection optimizing software" isn't a figment of their imagination.
You're right. It's called "spoofing", whereby the TCP connection is terminated at each end by a spoofer, and the packets sent over the satellite are not actually TCP.
The reason not using a spoofer leads to bad performance is the large bandwidth/delay product of the satellite link. TCP is limited to around 60kbps over a standard satellite link, whereas spoofing enables you to use the whole pipe.
The reason not using a spoofer leads to excess traffic is TCP retransmissions. Packet loss is not ignorable in a satellite link, and each time you lose one satellite packet (which are far less than the 1500 bytes an IP packet may be), you may lose the entire TCP window. With spoofing, however, the remote satellite modem tells you to retransmit only the lost packets. TCP over satellite is very bad - it can easily lead to congestive collapse as retransmissions overload the system.
Remember the judge in France who decided that Yahoo had to determine if a visitor was French, and prevent them from seeing auctions involving Nazi memorabilia?
Slashdot Mirror
Not for Saabs. None of the manufacturers (blitzsafe et al) make one yet that can interface with the Saab head units. The problem (among other things) is the encrypted interface between the Saab OEM CD Changer and the head unit, designed to make both "unstealable".
I ended up replacing my 9-3's head unit to hook my iPod up to.
You have a Saab 95 (ninety-five). The new one is a 9-5 (nine-five).
The 5 is superscript on the badge.
Not necessarily. For example, it's claimed that even transcoding from MP3 to MP3 is bad. In my mind, that means it's a bad codec, but does the alternative exist?
If a codec were "intelligent" in this way (i.e., it only removes information from a deterministic set of "useless" info, and won't lose more data on a second pass), it could be transcoded without penalty. A different such "intelligent" codec might have a different set of useless info, so transcoding between them may result in additional loss. But that means there would also exist some "perfect" intelligent codec that had the correct definition of "useless bits". It would toss only the bits that truly contained no information.
Just curious - anyone have any recommendations of sites or books on lossy codecs?
I see people bandying about the claims that re-encoding from lossy to lossy codec gets worse. Of course, it sounds so obvious. But here's my question - hopefully someone can point me to an explanation. If a codec took a WAV file, say, and truly took out only the bits you couldn't hear anyway, why wouldn't you be able to de-compress it to WAV (not the same WAV of course, since it's lossy), and then re-compress it to the exact same file it created the first time - in other words, why can't the codec say "Hey, there's nothing here I can remove, because it's all audible or distinguishable"?
These "intelligently lossy" codecs should be able to be transcoded infinite times without any loss in quality, assuming they had the same definition of "losable data."
I'd like to be educated - it seems like it should be possible with an intelligent codec, yet I've never seen one.
That's because you're an idiot. A GigaByte is 1 billion bytes. Did you not even read the NIST page that's been linked to several times before? Just because some members of the computer industry hijacked the SI prefixes and mistakenly applied them to binary scales, doesn't make them correct. A Gibibyte is 2^30 bytes. That's what your operating system is reporting.
The hard drive manufacturers have for years been putting those stupid labels explaining exactly what they mean by "GB" to help people like you.
UTV? You mean Ultimate TV, the product made by *MICROSOFT*? Sure, my Ultimate TV box runs Linux.....
How many more comments like this will there be? If you click the stupid link, you see that you need a USB key each time you boot if you want to be able to decrypt the hard drive. They need the MB, the HD, and your key.
I think he's talking about September 11th. It was all over the news - I'm sure google can pull up something for you :-)
Do you also have the right to listen to people's cell phone conversations that "travel through your body"?
Do you have the right to tap into the cable on the curb and watch free TV? Do you have the right to splice into your neighbor's phone line to bill your calls to him?
The fact that the medium is radio waves rather than a cable doesn't give you the right to the content. It's irrelevant.
DirecTV distributes copyrighted material to customers who pay for it. Stealing that signal is no different from any other intellectual property theft. If you want to argue that not paying for copyrighted information is OK, that's a different argument.
Which is why this is interesting, since it uses a phased array antenna, instead of an actual moving dish. Minimal re-pointing delays.
Also new is the $10 fee to add the mobile programming. Normally if you have DirecTV in your RV, you need a separate subscription, not just the $5 "add-a-receiver" fee, since there's no phone line attached.
The 3x7x series iPaqs have built-in bluetooth. All 3xyy where x > 7 iPaqs have built-in SD/MMC slots, and all of them need a sleeve for a compactflash card (the sleeve makes them very bulky). I think PocketPC 2002 started with the x = 7 line (on StrongARM hardware), and the XScale started with x = 8.
Sleeves are also available for just about anything else you want - bluetooth + CF, PCMCIA, GSM/GPRS, etc. The Axim seems to be a killer deal compared to a 3850 or 3950 type iPaq. But, the iPaq does have a very nice shape and style to it. The Axim looks kinda clunky.
So just for the record, my Sony Vaio laptop has a 3600 mAh battery (about the same as the optional one you mention above), and it runs for 4-5 hours. 10 inch screen (with backlight, too!), built-in wi-fi, PIII 850M with spinning fan!, hard-drive with moving parts. I'm pretty sure this little thing will last a while if they produce a 3600mAh battery for it. It consumes a fraction of the power of the average laptop - no moving parts, tiny screen, low-power CPU, etc.
That's not correct. With vision (and any GSM carrier's GPRS offering), it's packet-switched data. There are no per-minute fees. If you use the old "wireless web" or any other carriers circuit switched data system, it's the opposite - you pay by the minute, regardless of whether you're downloading anything.
Check the plans for the data-specific devices you linked to - you can't get the standard voice plans, and the data is far more expensive. $40 only gets to 20MB, and voice calls are charged per-minute.
"If it isn't small enough to fit in my pocket, then it may as well be as big as my backpack."
Do you actually use a laptop frequently, though? I used to think like that too, until I started going on trips where I had to use a laptop throughout a conference, for example. I borrowed a friend's HP OmniBook 500 for the first trips - it's a few years old, but was the "ultra-slim" model at the time - 1 inch thick, probably 4 pounds without the docking station, 8 pounds with it. That's actually a lot of weight dragging on your shoulders, and it was pretty unwieldy to whip it out every time I had to plug in and check my messages at the office. And the battery life sucked - 1.5-2 hours, even though it claimed 3-5 hours. I can't imagine how people deal with those monsters they call laptops nowadays. They're bigger than the old Zenith brick I used to have, from around 1989 or so! After dragging the Omnibook through Atlanta recently, I went out and bought a Sony VAIO SRX, and it was definitely a good decision. I didn't realize how miserable it was lugging the HP around until I got the VAIO. It's about the size of an 8x10 sheet of paper, so I can take it to meetings now at work. It's small enough to open discretely without making a big scene just to take some notes or look up a document (the built-in Wi-Fi helps).
I think there's a lot to be said for "in-between" devices like the PictureBook or a slim laptop. If it's small enough to carry in your hand without being a burden, you're much more likely to use it for business purposes, though I agree for personal use, pocket-size is the way to go.
I recently bought a Sony VAIO SRX - not quite as small as the PictureBook, but still smaller than just about anything else out there (there are a few in its class - Fujitsu has a nice offering with built-in DVD drive). I recommend you take a look at it if you're looking for a small form-factor without sacrificing usability. It's got a usable keyboard, and a touchpad (pointing sticks drive me nuts - otherwise I was really looking at the picturebook). The battery life on the standard battery is about 4 hours or so for normal usage, and the 10.4 inch screen (1024x768) is very easy to see and read. Built-in Wi-Fi is the best thing since sliced bread - I don't even use my Home Theater PC anymore for quick internet stuff - it's faster to flip open the laptop and use the wireless connection from the couch, and I don't have to fumble around with a bunch of remotes.
Performance is good for business use - it's got integrated Intel 815 graphics (bleh), an 850MHz mobile PIII, and 256MB of RAM standard. I paid $1300 at Best Buy for the SRX-87, with a $100 rebate. The 87 is the now-discontinued model, so they are (or were) dirt cheap. The only difference between the 87 and the current line seems to be that the new ones come with a CDRW/DVD Combo Drive - I got a DVD drive. There's no docking station or port replicator - the drives are i.Link (Firewire)
Also, it mostly runs Linux, according to Linux-Laptop.net
You're incorrect. The MitM's account number isn't even in the message - he's substituting it so that the deposit goes into his own account.
You can determine trivially the portion of the OTP used to encrypt any known-plaintext. You XOR the cyphertext with the known-plaintext. But that portion of the key is (by definition, since it's random and one-time) unrelated to the key used for any other portion of the message, so it only helps you decrypt the plaintext you already knew.
But for an active change, you can use the portion of the key used for the account number, and substitute your own account number in the message. It will decrypt properly at the other end, and you get the deposit. You can't decrypt messages with a portion of known plaintext, but there are other attacks.
Wow - somebody who doesn't understand one-time pads calling another guy who doesn't understand one-time pads an "encryption rookie".
This is misleading. Even if you read all 2^1024 messages (every possible 1024-bit message), you still wouldn't know which one was the original plaintext. Absolutely unbreakable means absolutely unbreakable. "Attack at dawn" can encrypt to the same cyphertext as "Dinner's at 5". Or "Dinner's at 8" for that matter. Unless you knew the original plaintext anyway, you can't determine which was the correct key. And if you knew the plaintext, well, you wouldn't be trying to figure it out. And since it's one-time, even after you got the key for "Dinner's at 5", you still wouldn't be able to read the next sentence.
Then what's your opinion of people who release mods for games? Or hacks for software?
It's the same thing - do people own the right to modify media once they buy it, to better suit their needs?
No, because in that case the car still has 280 horsepower. This is like saying it accelerates like a 280 horsepower car when you drive it down hill.
If they were being intellectually honest, they would have advertised it in the first place as being capable of more than 16 bit color, since you can dither 16 bits just as well as 12. It's the fact that they changed the measuring criteria before they "restated" the capabilities. Duh.
How do you weaken something that gives you more rights than normally allowed under copyright law?
It's made clear in the GPL - if you don't want to agree with the license, that's fine, because it doesn't attempt to take away any rights you already have. Standard commercial licenses restrict usage that might otherwise be legal, so the click-through license is needed to strengthen the license.
Ted Rall has a number of columns on the alleged oil conspiracy. It's rather interesting where Hamid Karzai came from, and everyone else's convenient connections to oil and Afghanistan.
If they're selling this product mostly to Windows folks, they've decided to support this optimizing software on Windows only. It might be a poor technical choice, but I assure you that "connection optimizing software" isn't a figment of their imagination.
You're right. It's called "spoofing", whereby the TCP connection is terminated at each end by a spoofer, and the packets sent over the satellite are not actually TCP.
The reason not using a spoofer leads to bad performance is the large bandwidth/delay product of the satellite link. TCP is limited to around 60kbps over a standard satellite link, whereas spoofing enables you to use the whole pipe.
The reason not using a spoofer leads to excess traffic is TCP retransmissions. Packet loss is not ignorable in a satellite link, and each time you lose one satellite packet (which are far less than the 1500 bytes an IP packet may be), you may lose the entire TCP window. With spoofing, however, the remote satellite modem tells you to retransmit only the lost packets. TCP over satellite is very bad - it can easily lead to congestive collapse as retransmissions overload the system.
Remember the judge in France who decided that Yahoo had to determine if a visitor was French, and prevent them from seeing auctions involving Nazi memorabilia?