Wasn't the OP just talking about using fusion to generate energy, or maybe even fission if we can work out a good way to deal with the byproducts? In which case, I agree with him that it seems a lot more likely that a civilization would develop a controlled fusion capability long before they get to the point of realistically being able to build a Dyson sphere.
In Buddhism, Karma is not seen as a physical or metaphysical force that forces you to pay back your evil deeds, but rather as a psychological principle.
If that's the case, what's the deal with the Buddhist belief in reincarnation? I was under the impression that one's next incarnation supposed to be based on the karma of the current one. Are you saying that this is something that the individual does to him or herself, i.e. if you come back as a cockroach, you've essentially chosen subconsciously to do so because you know you've been bad (oversimplifying, I realize, but I trust you get my drift)? Does that also mean that you could be the most evil person imaginable, and at the last minute before death, if you let go of your past, you can be reborn into a wonderful incarnation?
One reason I ask is that I've previously wondered, if Buddhists don't believe in a sentient deity, how they believe the karma accounts are kept, in effect.
Not really. You see, at some point, after all the electronic security, after it checks the serial number, maximum speed, etc, it must send electricity to the motors on the wheels (and the control circutry for those motors).
Simply by-pass the security, and send electricity direct to the motors.
That isn't likely to work. The computerized control circuitry for the motors - the bit that actually does the work that keeps the Segway balanced - is most likely part of the same circuitry that checks the key. The Segway is running a program, and that program will only run if it's given the right password, via the iButton key. It's not likely to be at all like the security door example you gave, because a Segway's motors need something much more complicated than a simple one-shot 12VDC signal to keep the device balanced. The only way to do what you suggest would be if you inserted control circuitry that replicated the Segway's balancing capabilities. May as well build your own, in that case.
I am sure there is a fundamental flaw in this concept. See, this circuitry which is protected and activatable with the iButton, will simply turn on or off the electronics of the segway. If you simply bypass the whole junk and replace it with a wire, the segway will run without the need for the key.
That's not likely to be true. The Segway is completely dependent on a computing capability in order to remain upright - it has solid-state gyroscopes (MEMS devices) that monitor its position, providing data to the computer which controls the wheels as necessary in response. The "ignition" mechanism is most likely part of this same computing structure - it acts like a password required to activate the program, not some kind of external key mechanism. "Bypassing" it would leave you with a pushtoy.
According to this page, the two buttons listed under "Cryptographic" are both Java buttons. Then there are also some "Monetary" buttons which support an SHA1 algorithm, but I don't know how general they are.
I have a Java iButton, and the focus of the SDK is on its cryptographic capabilities. If you're looking for something general-purpose with that feature, it would be the one.
I've written plenty of code like you describe, and even back a few years, cracked some via reverse engineering. Anything that someone is at all serious about protecting tends to have a more sophisticated check than just a single test that can be shortcircuited like that. It's the first thing anyone writing code like that thinks about (if they even remotely know what they're doing).
The XBox is a different situation, because it's designed to run outside software and has a published API, an SDK, etc. The Segway is a dedicated piece of hardware, and the characteristics and API of its software is unknown, and it's not designed to run outside software. In theory, the Segway could be a lot harder to crack than the XBox. In practice, it all depends on how much effort the Segway people put into protecting it.
Or, the thief could just apply a two-byte patch to the Segway's operating software and start it up.
But without inside info, how would you know which two bytes, or for that matter, that only two bytes are involved? If the key reading algorithm reads a number of other parameters from the button, like max speed, the affected code could be more than just two bytes. And reverse engineering might break the Segway, so you'd have to plan to break at least one and steal some more...
score -1, too realistic, get search warrent for his garage.
:)
Actually, my knowledge of this comes from having helped a friend set up an iButton security system, and wondering about the possibility for hacking the system in that context. Since an ordinary iButton has its serial number printed on the button, if you had an iButton emulator, you could "duplicate" a key simply by writing down its serial number.
The Segway uses iButtons from Dalsemi[/Maxim] as its ignition and control keys. The basic iButton is just a factory-encoded serial number (64 bits, I think) stored in a small metal button (fits on a keyring) which can be read electronically by touching it to a reader.
Afaik, the Segway uses a version of the iButton which stores a small amount of other data in addition to the serial number. So, what the Segway probably does is check that the serial number matches what it expects, and also reads the data in the iButton to determine things like the maximum speed it's allowed to go. IIRC, at least one of the Segway keys is speed-limited, for "valet parking" etc.
So, to hotwire a Segway electronically (as opposed to somehow bypassing the electronic circuitry, if that's possible), you need to at least (a) determine what iButton serial number your Segway expects (hmm - wonder if it's printed on the Segway somewhere?) and (b) build a small iButton simulator which generates the required signal, using the documented OneWire protocol. However, you'd need to do some additional work to simulate the data storage on the iButton. You'd probably need to reverse engineer an existing Segway iButton key for that part - which should be easy, if you have access to a key.
Bottom line: hotwiring a Segway would take some work, and it would be tough without access to a Segway key to play with, but once you'd done one, it might be pretty easy to do the next one. A big question is how easy it would be to determine the serial number it expects, if you don't have the key. That could be a real barrier.
BTW, if you want a much more secure authentication mechanism, the Java version of the iButton will do public/private key encryption on the button, so it can be sent a challenge encrypted with your public key, and it will decrypt it with your private key and send it back to the challenger. Now that should be hard to hack.
It would be great if religion really succeeded in healing hearts. Unfortunately, the exact opposite seems to be true, historically and still today. Perhaps you're saying that your particular religion, apparently Christianity, is better in that regard than others such as Judaism or Islam. A debatable, but ultimately irrelevant point.
Religion is a sociobiological mechanism for intragroup cohesion, which at that level is specifically intended to do one of two things: assimilate other groups, or failing that, defend against them or even conquer them. As such, religion has no claim to any moral high ground, except on an internal basis, which I'm afraid is not sufficiently moral for me.
You really dilute your argument with stuff like the bit about the capacitor in your ceiling fan. You went to Home Depot looking for a capacitor? Um, hello?? Did you try an electronic supply store - maybe an online one? The fact that most people don't (want to) know enough to repair their own ceiling fans is hardly evidence of big brother. Rather, we get the system that suits the majority, in general.
As for cars, you're in dreamland. In my experience, cars are a heck of a lot more reliable now than they were, say, in the 1970's. And if you're thinking older than that, you're probably confusing it with the fact that they were easier to fix - because they weren't computer controlled, yada yada. You want a retro car with no modern parts, you're free to build one and try to get other people to buy it. I wouldn't buy one, though - I like the reliability and fuel-efficiency of computer controlled fuel injection (tuning carbs - feh, I have better things to do). Of course pollution control is nice too.
If you mix your legitimate points up with standard same-in-every-generation "things were better in the old days", you lose all credibility and will be rightly dismissed as irrelevant, with your time having passed.
You need to examine your beliefs more closely and try to separate out your unwillingness to accept change, from your dislike of having others have unreasonable control or power over your life. The latter is a more valid concern. The fact that the world is no longer the way you remember it from your formative years, is no-one's problem but your own.
...since their discoveries change our understanding of the universe. For example, it was physicists (broadly speaking) who made the Earth spherical for us - before that, it was flat. Physicists literally change the world, on a fairly regular basis.
Besides, god is a bit of a slacker, at least when it comes to creation - he spent a week on creating heaven and earth, and doesn't seem to have done much since. Or perhaps he's off working on Universe 2.0. Either way, someone's gotta take over where he left off...
Your 6502/Z80 Apple ][ clone - is the Z80 on an add-in card, or on the motherboard? Z80 add-in cards were pretty standard stuff for the Apple ][, as you may know - mainly to support running CP/M. But when running CP/M, processing occurred on the Z80, and the host machine essentially acted as an I/O processor.
If your machine has the Z80 on the motherboard, my guess is it would have been the same sort of thing, just more integrated.
Use geo-thermal energy to power such a mag-lev launcher thing... I find that preferable.
Uh - where's that kind of geo-thermal energy going to come from? Oh, I get it - you must be talking about sticking a vehicle in a volcano and artificially triggering an eruption. POW! Seattle is buried in lava, but a melted blob of steel will have been launched into space. Woohoo!
Jesus of Nazareth did not die so we could enjoy eggs and chocolate bunnies!
Are you sure? Christians enjoy eggs and chocoloate bunnies because despite the attempts of many clueless religious nuts, Christianity did not succeed in stamping out the natural human instinct for enjoying life, in the form of festivals and celebrations in which everyone can share - not just those who believe that their life is controlled by an imaginary being.
Celebrations of renewal and fertility in springtime, involving common symbols such as eggs and rabbits, were widespread before Christianity came along, and they continue today. In one sense, your sig is accurate, in that Jesus of Nazareth has nothing to do with it, other than the fact that the churches that exploit his name co-opted other traditions as part of their relentless assimilation of followers. But in another sense, the sig is wrong, since based on his record, I suspect Jesus of Nazareth would have no problem with people enjoying eggs and chocolate bunnies, even - and perhaps especially - on the anniversary of his death.
It's possible that on some micro-benchmarks like the one you mention, Java with JIT might outperform some other languages on some edge cases. But for real systems, Java is slower. I've more than once had to port Java systems to other languages for no other reason than speed - and the speed improvements have been dramatic. One big issue seems to be that method dispatch in Java can be relatively slow. And since everything's a method...
Using typical Slashdot grammar, it's asking whether it's illegal for Data to mine for product pricing.
See, the problem is that Data's positronic brain and direct computer interface gives him an unfair advantage over humans who are mining for product pricing. So, the obvious solution was to make Data mining for product pricing, illegal.
I think you're right. By releasing Caldera, they may have relinquished any rights they had!
I imagine they can claim that they were previously unaware of the infringement. That's why they've now stopped selling their Linux.
The problem I see them running into is that their claim seems to be based not so much on specific violations relating to copied source code, but on the general idea that people working under non-disclosures later "disclosed" information in the form of source code which they wrote for Linux, thus violating their agreements.
There are a lot of problems with this. Perhaps SCO misunderstood what they were purchasing. Unix is not some brand-new system that was developed in a secret lab, with code disclosed to no-one. The violations Caldera is claiming are likely to be vague and almost impossible to prove. Unless they have specific information to the contrary, anything in Linux might very well have been put there by someone with the necessary knowledge who was not bound by an agreement. The Unix code base has been subject to all sorts of outside interactions over the years.
This legal action is simply a mark of SCO's desperation and lack of income from products. If they're lucky, they might collect an out-of-court settlement from IBM and some other deep pocket customers they choose to go after. They'll never win anything substantial in court, though.
Are these poor habits encouraged by VB? (Enquiring minds want to know...)
Yes. BASIC is the language which inspired this famous quote:
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
Visual BASIC just takes all that mind-mutilating badness and wraps it in a GUI package. VB is actually not so bad if you treat it as a scripting language for Windows forms, but it shouldn't be confused with real programming languages.
I suspect cascadefx's logic goes something like this: when you shine an ultraviolet light on some things, they fluoresce. Following from the universally accepted axiom "where there's smoke, there's fire", we can conclude that where there's fluorescence, there must be ultraviolet. Therefore, if you have a fluorescent light, naturally, it must be actually be... an ultraviolet light!
I'm really curious about this - which international standard is that? Is it an EU thing? Last I knew, the EC didn't mandate it in the formatting of Euro amounts, for example - it's up to individual countries.
All the major English-speaking countries (England, US, Canada, Australia, and some others) use the comma as the thousands separator. Last I knew, France and Sweden used spaces as a separator, and Switzerland used apostrophes. So just which countries, aside from a few in Europe, use the period, and who has agreed to the standard you mention?
Is there some sort of relationship between bag thickness and the propensity to not recycle it or stick it in the trash? Or maybe they're just so light they float out easily.;-)
Ding ding ding! Right answer. The problem with the very thin plastic bags is that they blow around, even blowing out of trash dumps. This has nothing to do with individuals littering.
Slashdot Mirror
Now you've gone and made me hungry... Mmmm, cats...
Wasn't the OP just talking about using fusion to generate energy, or maybe even fission if we can work out a good way to deal with the byproducts? In which case, I agree with him that it seems a lot more likely that a civilization would develop a controlled fusion capability long before they get to the point of realistically being able to build a Dyson sphere.
In Buddhism, Karma is not seen as a physical or metaphysical force that forces you to pay back your evil deeds, but rather as a psychological principle.
If that's the case, what's the deal with the Buddhist belief in reincarnation? I was under the impression that one's next incarnation supposed to be based on the karma of the current one. Are you saying that this is something that the individual does to him or herself, i.e. if you come back as a cockroach, you've essentially chosen subconsciously to do so because you know you've been bad (oversimplifying, I realize, but I trust you get my drift)? Does that also mean that you could be the most evil person imaginable, and at the last minute before death, if you let go of your past, you can be reborn into a wonderful incarnation?
One reason I ask is that I've previously wondered, if Buddhists don't believe in a sentient deity, how they believe the karma accounts are kept, in effect.
That isn't likely to work. The computerized control circuitry for the motors - the bit that actually does the work that keeps the Segway balanced - is most likely part of the same circuitry that checks the key. The Segway is running a program, and that program will only run if it's given the right password, via the iButton key. It's not likely to be at all like the security door example you gave, because a Segway's motors need something much more complicated than a simple one-shot 12VDC signal to keep the device balanced. The only way to do what you suggest would be if you inserted control circuitry that replicated the Segway's balancing capabilities. May as well build your own, in that case.
That's not likely to be true. The Segway is completely dependent on a computing capability in order to remain upright - it has solid-state gyroscopes (MEMS devices) that monitor its position, providing data to the computer which controls the wheels as necessary in response. The "ignition" mechanism is most likely part of this same computing structure - it acts like a password required to activate the program, not some kind of external key mechanism. "Bypassing" it would leave you with a pushtoy.
That's why I use a Hotmail address!! Rumsfeld will have to deal with Bill Gates first... oh wait...
I have a Java iButton, and the focus of the SDK is on its cryptographic capabilities. If you're looking for something general-purpose with that feature, it would be the one.
The XBox is a different situation, because it's designed to run outside software and has a published API, an SDK, etc. The Segway is a dedicated piece of hardware, and the characteristics and API of its software is unknown, and it's not designed to run outside software. In theory, the Segway could be a lot harder to crack than the XBox. In practice, it all depends on how much effort the Segway people put into protecting it.
But without inside info, how would you know which two bytes, or for that matter, that only two bytes are involved? If the key reading algorithm reads a number of other parameters from the button, like max speed, the affected code could be more than just two bytes. And reverse engineering might break the Segway, so you'd have to plan to break at least one and steal some more...
Actually, my knowledge of this comes from having helped a friend set up an iButton security system, and wondering about the possibility for hacking the system in that context. Since an ordinary iButton has its serial number printed on the button, if you had an iButton emulator, you could "duplicate" a key simply by writing down its serial number.
Afaik, the Segway uses a version of the iButton which stores a small amount of other data in addition to the serial number. So, what the Segway probably does is check that the serial number matches what it expects, and also reads the data in the iButton to determine things like the maximum speed it's allowed to go. IIRC, at least one of the Segway keys is speed-limited, for "valet parking" etc.
So, to hotwire a Segway electronically (as opposed to somehow bypassing the electronic circuitry, if that's possible), you need to at least (a) determine what iButton serial number your Segway expects (hmm - wonder if it's printed on the Segway somewhere?) and (b) build a small iButton simulator which generates the required signal, using the documented OneWire protocol. However, you'd need to do some additional work to simulate the data storage on the iButton. You'd probably need to reverse engineer an existing Segway iButton key for that part - which should be easy, if you have access to a key.
Bottom line: hotwiring a Segway would take some work, and it would be tough without access to a Segway key to play with, but once you'd done one, it might be pretty easy to do the next one. A big question is how easy it would be to determine the serial number it expects, if you don't have the key. That could be a real barrier.
BTW, if you want a much more secure authentication mechanism, the Java version of the iButton will do public/private key encryption on the button, so it can be sent a challenge encrypted with your public key, and it will decrypt it with your private key and send it back to the challenger. Now that should be hard to hack.
Religion is a sociobiological mechanism for intragroup cohesion, which at that level is specifically intended to do one of two things: assimilate other groups, or failing that, defend against them or even conquer them. As such, religion has no claim to any moral high ground, except on an internal basis, which I'm afraid is not sufficiently moral for me.
As for cars, you're in dreamland. In my experience, cars are a heck of a lot more reliable now than they were, say, in the 1970's. And if you're thinking older than that, you're probably confusing it with the fact that they were easier to fix - because they weren't computer controlled, yada yada. You want a retro car with no modern parts, you're free to build one and try to get other people to buy it. I wouldn't buy one, though - I like the reliability and fuel-efficiency of computer controlled fuel injection (tuning carbs - feh, I have better things to do). Of course pollution control is nice too.
If you mix your legitimate points up with standard same-in-every-generation "things were better in the old days", you lose all credibility and will be rightly dismissed as irrelevant, with your time having passed.
You need to examine your beliefs more closely and try to separate out your unwillingness to accept change, from your dislike of having others have unreasonable control or power over your life. The latter is a more valid concern. The fact that the world is no longer the way you remember it from your formative years, is no-one's problem but your own.
Besides, god is a bit of a slacker, at least when it comes to creation - he spent a week on creating heaven and earth, and doesn't seem to have done much since. Or perhaps he's off working on Universe 2.0. Either way, someone's gotta take over where he left off...
If your machine has the Z80 on the motherboard, my guess is it would have been the same sort of thing, just more integrated.
Uh - where's that kind of geo-thermal energy going to come from? Oh, I get it - you must be talking about sticking a vehicle in a volcano and artificially triggering an eruption. POW! Seattle is buried in lava, but a melted blob of steel will have been launched into space. Woohoo!
You're supposed to say "Imagine a Beow...
Oh never mind.
Jesus of Nazareth did not die so we could enjoy eggs and chocolate bunnies!
Are you sure? Christians enjoy eggs and chocoloate bunnies because despite the attempts of many clueless religious nuts, Christianity did not succeed in stamping out the natural human instinct for enjoying life, in the form of festivals and celebrations in which everyone can share - not just those who believe that their life is controlled by an imaginary being.
Celebrations of renewal and fertility in springtime, involving common symbols such as eggs and rabbits, were widespread before Christianity came along, and they continue today. In one sense, your sig is accurate, in that Jesus of Nazareth has nothing to do with it, other than the fact that the churches that exploit his name co-opted other traditions as part of their relentless assimilation of followers. But in another sense, the sig is wrong, since based on his record, I suspect Jesus of Nazareth would have no problem with people enjoying eggs and chocolate bunnies, even - and perhaps especially - on the anniversary of his death.
It's possible that on some micro-benchmarks like the one you mention, Java with JIT might outperform some other languages on some edge cases. But for real systems, Java is slower. I've more than once had to port Java systems to other languages for no other reason than speed - and the speed improvements have been dramatic. One big issue seems to be that method dispatch in Java can be relatively slow. And since everything's a method...
See, the problem is that Data's positronic brain and direct computer interface gives him an unfair advantage over humans who are mining for product pricing. So, the obvious solution was to make Data mining for product pricing, illegal.
I imagine they can claim that they were previously unaware of the infringement. That's why they've now stopped selling their Linux.
The problem I see them running into is that their claim seems to be based not so much on specific violations relating to copied source code, but on the general idea that people working under non-disclosures later "disclosed" information in the form of source code which they wrote for Linux, thus violating their agreements.
There are a lot of problems with this. Perhaps SCO misunderstood what they were purchasing. Unix is not some brand-new system that was developed in a secret lab, with code disclosed to no-one. The violations Caldera is claiming are likely to be vague and almost impossible to prove. Unless they have specific information to the contrary, anything in Linux might very well have been put there by someone with the necessary knowledge who was not bound by an agreement. The Unix code base has been subject to all sorts of outside interactions over the years.
This legal action is simply a mark of SCO's desperation and lack of income from products. If they're lucky, they might collect an out-of-court settlement from IBM and some other deep pocket customers they choose to go after. They'll never win anything substantial in court, though.
Yes. BASIC is the language which inspired this famous quote:
Visual BASIC just takes all that mind-mutilating badness and wraps it in a GUI package. VB is actually not so bad if you treat it as a scripting language for Windows forms, but it shouldn't be confused with real programming languages.Fans of this logical style might wish to study Monty Python: A lesson in logical thought"...
All the major English-speaking countries (England, US, Canada, Australia, and some others) use the comma as the thousands separator. Last I knew, France and Sweden used spaces as a separator, and Switzerland used apostrophes. So just which countries, aside from a few in Europe, use the period, and who has agreed to the standard you mention?
Ding ding ding! Right answer. The problem with the very thin plastic bags is that they blow around, even blowing out of trash dumps. This has nothing to do with individuals littering.