I can imagine that this was an "accident." Imagine a computer pre-infected with Chernobyl. User runs Outlook or Outlook Express as their mail client. User receives a copy of Klez in their mail.
Since the user is clueless enough to still have Chernobyl hanging around, they open the Klez attachment. Klez does its thing. The file Klez picks to graft itself on to for the outbound mail has Chernobyl already. *Poof!* A Chernobyl-carrying Klez.
No need for eeevil on the part of whoever put them together. Just need a doofus.
Since we're talking STATIC electricity, there is, by definition, NO current flow.
The problem with static charge buildup and FETs is called punchthrough. Electric field strength is measured in Volts per Meter (V/m) The gate thickness of a typical CMOS FET is on the order of nanometers (1x10^-9 m).
Our 15 kV static voltage produces in the gate region of the FET a field of (15kV)/(40x10^-9 m) = 375x10^9 V/m.
According to this link the dielectric strength of (Pyrex) glass 14x10^6 V/m. Applying a field stronger than this will cause ionization of the material: electrons will be literally knocked off their atoms! This ionization allows a current to flow through the (normally) insulative material, called dielectric breakdown. In a CMOS FET, gate insulator ionization leaves residual conduction paths, ruining the transistor (punchthrough).
CMOS FETS have very thin gate insulators to increase performance, but the side-effect is that they can tolerate only very small static gate voltages without damage.
Using the most comprehensive Windows® vulnerability database on the market, and an extensive UNIX database, STAT® Scanner Professional Edition performs a complete security analysis of Windows NT®, Windows® 2000/XP and Sun(TM) Solaris(TM) UNIX , RedHat(TM) Linux®, and Mandrake(TM) Linux® resources. Enables users to accurately identify and eliminate network security deficiencies that can allow hacker intrusion. STAT Scanner Professional automatically detects over 1,600 vulnerabilities and corrects a large percentage of them with the exclusive AutoFix feature. Reporting capabilities range from high-level, consolidated management reports to detailed reports used by network administrators.
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Uses coal. If I remember correctly, it's the #1 fuel for power generating plants.
If you ever visit Orlando, drive east on SR-520 (the Bee Line). About halfway out, look to your left. That is a coal-fired plant.
Near Atlanta? Plant Wansly is coal-fired. So is McDonnough. I may be wrong, but all power generation plants in Georgia besides Votgle and Hatch I think are coal-fired. (Hatch and Votgle are nuclear)
Closer to where I live, between Cocoa and Titusville are two gas-fired power generation plants. Natural gas. To the south in Fort Pierce is a nuclear plant. Another nuclear plant is in Crystal River. FPL and other Florida generators seem to be more diversified in their fuel choices.
As for recycling, I do it because I pay to do it. Every month on my city water/waste bill is a line item for recycling. If I'm paying for the pick-up, I might as well make use of it. Don't get me started on the ethics of PAYING for a recycling service. It's obvious that it doesn't work if the pubplic has to PAY for the privelige of recycling!
More proofreading goodness from Cliff!
on
Music Filesystems?
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
from the endtroducing-the-MFS! dept.
I thought that it was "introducing", but what do I know? Cliff may be using a word that I've not been endtroduced to yet!
It's not "insanely difficult" to design a processor "from scratch."
Start with modest goals, and work up. I just recently finished designing my own 16-bit implementation of Doug Jones'Ultimate RISC processor. I'm waiting for parts to arrive so I can commence construction. I've not done digital hardware in about ten years, but I completed the design in less than a week of "a few minutes here, a few minutes there" consideration. It includes:
I don't understand why it wouldn't; if they can make a chemical bomb that penetrates that much stuff and functions, I'm sure a fission device could. The physics of the impact would be the same, but the required explosive payload would be smaller for the fission device.
That's the key: do more with less. Nuclear weapons weren't developed because of their Eeeevil factor, but because they can deliver such a large punch with such a relatively diminutive package. Before the Trinity test there was the "100 Ton" calibration experiment. 108 tons of high explosive was detonated to examine the effects of fission fallout and instrument calibration. 108 tons of high explosive was huge compared to the Trinity Gadget, even though the Gadget was 185 times as powerful.
This place has all you want to know about the "Golden Age" of American nuclear testing.
This is a picture of the Hardtack II / De Baca test, which was a small nuclear gravity bomb (11.3 inches in diameter, 15 inches long, weight 66 lb). It had a "disappointing" 2.2 kTon yield.
How small did they get? Here's the W54 (Davey Crockett) warhead, normally used as a rocket mortar round. It weighs 50 pounds, and has a yield of 22 TONS. Not Kilotons. Not megatons. Tons.
Of course small nuclear devices are possible, even workable. Not every miltary explosive needs to be like Castle/Bravo (the largest nuclear device the US has tested).
Also, when I go out and burn a fresh copy of Linux onto a CDR, I am paying a royalty to the MPAA and RIAA, on the purchase of that blank recording media, even though it will
never contain music or movies. I back up my mail spool to CDR, I've just kicked some more cash over to the RIAA, who uses that money to fund and further restrict what I can
do with my own data.
Why are you using MUSIC CDs for data? I thought that only MUSIC CDs (they're even labeled that way!) have the RIAA tax; plain CD-Rs don't.
That's the great thing about the Constitution - it's always evolving, based on the decisions and judgements handed down by the Supreme Court.
Wrong! I couldn't disagree more. The liberalization of the Supreme Court and its re-interpretation of the Consitution of the United States have made this country a worse place, not a better place.
Although I can't find it at the moment, it seems like I once read (or heard?) Walter Williams discuss the folly of a "living" Constitution. Basically the problem is this: if the rules are malleable, the game doesn't work.
The Framers didn't intend us to have a country run by the rules of Calvinball, but thanks to your gleefully activist Supreme Court, that's what we've got.
Gamespeopleplay are known for their unchanging rules that are known and understood by everyone. The Constitution was intended to be a "set in stone" framework for government, not a warm and fuzzy Silly Putty ruleset.
That doesn't mean that the Framers intended the Consistution to never change: they included provisions for incorporating amendments. To be constitutionally correct, if The People wanted a right to privacy added, then the amendment process would be utilized to add it. As it reads, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution of the United States.
The job of the courts is to apply law, not interpret it. A corollary of this is that Congress should not write vague and nebulous laws, but that's a seperate issue. Even in the presence of poorly written laws, the courts should only make use of the literal verbage; to stray from that standard to find "original intent" or whatever is a departure from their constitutional duties and is an invitiation to impeachment from Congress (see Article 3, Section 1: shall hold their offices during good behaviour).
What really bugs me is DirectTV. After sending up a few satellites, what more do they have to do when adding new customers? They make more dishes but thats probably about it. Once in a while they might have to do some upgrades but I doubt it. These people are now paying 40 bucks a month to a company that is probably taking 35 dollars of that and putting it right in their pocket. Its discusting, I just wish I would have came up with the idea sooner =-).
I doubt Hughes is making too much money on DirecTV yet. You seem to think that satellites are cheap; "all" you have to do is throw one up there and the cash just starts rolling in.
First of all, launching a comm satellite can cost upwards of twenty or more MILLION dollars for a disposable rocket. Doesn't the shuttle cost like $1 billion per launch to operate? That's just for vehicle delivery, and doesn't count the cost of designing and building the bird.
Next, the DirecTV birds are not your normal comm satellites. Their downlink sections are huge. The bird sits 22,500 miles away, and all I need to receive enough signal to be usable is a 18" dish? That satellite is screaming. That costs money. I imagine that the satellites cost more than $100 million. Each.
Satellite TV providers are at a disadvantage with respect to cable operators in that they must build out their entire infrastructure before they can sign their first customer. Traditionally, early adoptors of cable pay for the expansion of the covered territory.
Digital satellite radio has the same build-out problems and costs. So did Iridium, for that matter. So will Teledesic.
They're not making as much money as you think simply because their initial cash outlay to get started was (ahem) astronomical. I bet they're still working to recoup their initial investment.
The electrons move (as a result of an applied voltage) at what is known as the drift velocity. A example in copper is also available.
Current doesn't stop (your "current move, current not move" parenthetical). Current is not a thing, but is a description of a situation: moving charge is a current. An Ampere is defined as one Coulomb of charge passing a reference plane in one second.
How fast a signal propagates down a wire is its group velocity.
The "friction" mentioned by the original poster I interpret to be a flawed understanding of how resisivity works. Electrical signals travelling through resistive materials are attenuated, not slowed down, due to the resistance. Changes in velocity are due to changes in the dielectic constant.
Not even close. When a track is mastered to vinyl, it goes through a LOT of compression (the audio kind, not the data kind) and EQ'ing, especially in the low-mids (IIRC). A CD has an entirely different mastering process and technique-set (more work with the highs and high-mids, less compression).
There's no compression of the audio or data kind (and technically, the audio kind == the data kind).
The equalization (emphasis) used in the recording of vinyl records is for noise (hiss) reduction. The high-end signal is increased (pre-emphasis) when recorded. Upon playback, the turntable preamp reduces the high-end signal level (de-emphasis). This also reduces the high-frequency noise (hiss) of dragging a stylus through a groove cut (well, pressed) in a material that exhibits surface roughness.
This is somewhat similar, at least to my ear, to what early-version Dolby noise reduction does. If you play a Dolby-recorded tape on a player that doesn't have the circuitry to decode it, it sounds "brighter." That is, the high-frequency range is louder than it "should" be.
Since there's no mechanism for a CD to hiss, this kind of noise reduction isn't needed.
Oddly, from what I understand a few early CDs were indeed recorded with the vinyl pre-emphasis added. Ick. Now *that* would sound bad. CD players have never had de-emphasis circuits!
How do you get a refund for the Windows CE license you aren't using
Although this is only tangentially on-topic, I would have moderated this (+1, Funny), not (-1, Offtopic). I suppose the moderator has no sense of humor, though.
The price for the HP is right; I just got a HandspringVisor Prism for Christmas, and I am pretty sure that my wife paid the $300 they're asking for it. I'm having a ball with it, just running Palm OS!
I just have to ask, "Why?" Although Linux on a PDA is cool from a gee-whiz standpoint, I think that it's probably overkill from a day-to-day use standpoint (but then, so is Windows!). I want my PDA to be like a digital toaster: simple to use, predictable and dependable. All extra complexity just gets in the way of speed and on-the-run operability. I don't think running telnet (or ssh) on a tiny little handheld with no keyboard is going to be very fun. I would think that the older, larger HP devices that had a full keyboard would be better suited.
It was cute the first time, but that was long ago. Now it's just annoying.
Just because you learned the plural form of the name of a large beast of burden ends with "en" doesn't mean that all English nouns ending in "x" are pluralized that way.
You claim to be involved with post-secondary education. If you were, you'd realize that the word is "boxes," with an "S."
As far as corporations not needing 3D visualization, you must be ignororing whole segments of industry: petroleum, aerospace, and communications jump immediately to mind. Automotive and consumer products design is enhanced via use of 3D virtual prototyping. There's more to life than finance, food service and retail!
If an animal is raised in captivity, doesn't that automatically make it domesticated?
Just because an animal is domesticated doesn't mean it'd make a good pet.
"Domesticated animals" are those that are raised by people (in captivity?) for some purpose. That purpose can be companionship (cats, dogs), food (cows, chickens) or perhaps clothing (cows, fox, geese). They're all domesticated, however.
Slashdot Mirror
If you had read the post, you'd have noticed that Toshiba WOULD NOT TAKE THE THING BACK. No refunds or exchanges.
Don't be a doofus: He's tried the easy thing, and they refused to honor the customer.
I can imagine that this was an "accident." Imagine a computer pre-infected with Chernobyl. User runs Outlook or Outlook Express as their mail client. User receives a copy of Klez in their mail.
Since the user is clueless enough to still have Chernobyl hanging around, they open the Klez attachment. Klez does its thing. The file Klez picks to graft itself on to for the outbound mail has Chernobyl already. *Poof!* A Chernobyl-carrying Klez.
No need for eeevil on the part of whoever put them together. Just need a doofus.
Actually, it is the voltage.
Since we're talking STATIC electricity, there is, by definition, NO current flow.
The problem with static charge buildup and FETs is called punchthrough. Electric field strength is measured in Volts per Meter (V/m) The gate thickness of a typical CMOS FET is on the order of nanometers (1x10^-9 m).
Our 15 kV static voltage produces in the gate region of the FET a field of (15kV)/(40x10^-9 m) = 375x10^9 V/m.
According to this link the dielectric strength of (Pyrex) glass 14x10^6 V/m. Applying a field stronger than this will cause ionization of the material: electrons will be literally knocked off their atoms! This ionization allows a current to flow through the (normally) insulative material, called dielectric breakdown. In a CMOS FET, gate insulator ionization leaves residual conduction paths, ruining the transistor (punchthrough).
CMOS FETS have very thin gate insulators to increase performance, but the side-effect is that they can tolerate only very small static gate voltages without damage.
(posted as code to circumvent Lameness Filter)
n dex.asp)
(link: http://www.statonline.com/solutions/vuln_assess/i
STAT® SCANNER
Automatically detect and correct security threats
STAT® Scanner Professional Edition
Using the most comprehensive Windows® vulnerability database on the market, and an extensive UNIX database, STAT® Scanner Professional Edition performs a complete security analysis of Windows NT®, Windows® 2000/XP and Sun(TM) Solaris(TM) UNIX , RedHat(TM) Linux®, and Mandrake(TM) Linux® resources. Enables users to accurately identify and eliminate network security deficiencies that can allow hacker intrusion. STAT Scanner Professional automatically detects over 1,600 vulnerabilities and corrects a large percentage of them with the exclusive AutoFix feature. Reporting capabilities range from high-level, consolidated management reports to detailed reports used by network administrators.
The STAT vulnerabilities database arms users with the tools they need to combat the escalating hacker environment through monthly updates, available for convenient download on the STAT Premier Customer site.
STAT® Scanner Discovery Edition
Interested in experiencing the power of STAT Scanner? Try STAT Scanner Discovery Edition, a FREE limited-time product with many of the features of STAT Scanner Professional:
* Automatically detects over 1,600 vulnerabilities
* Corrects 20 of the most common vulnerabilities with the exclusive AutoFix feature
Try STAT Scanner Discovery Edition today for FREE!
How about Harris?
Uses coal. If I remember correctly, it's the #1 fuel for power generating plants.
If you ever visit Orlando, drive east on SR-520 (the Bee Line). About halfway out, look to your left. That is a coal-fired plant.
Near Atlanta? Plant Wansly is coal-fired. So is McDonnough. I may be wrong, but all power generation plants in Georgia besides Votgle and Hatch I think are coal-fired. (Hatch and Votgle are nuclear)
Closer to where I live, between Cocoa and Titusville are two gas-fired power generation plants. Natural gas. To the south in Fort Pierce is a nuclear plant. Another nuclear plant is in Crystal River. FPL and other Florida generators seem to be more diversified in their fuel choices.
As for recycling, I do it because I pay to do it. Every month on my city water/waste bill is a line item for recycling. If I'm paying for the pick-up, I might as well make use of it. Don't get me started on the ethics of PAYING for a recycling service. It's obvious that it doesn't work if the pubplic has to PAY for the privelige of recycling!
I thought that it was "introducing", but what do I know? Cliff may be using a word that I've not been endtroduced to yet!
Start with modest goals, and work up. I just recently finished designing my own 16-bit implementation of Doug Jones' Ultimate RISC processor. I'm waiting for parts to arrive so I can commence construction. I've not done digital hardware in about ten years, but I completed the design in less than a week of "a few minutes here, a few minutes there" consideration. It includes:
Yet to do, but not required for operation:
I've had the stripe on my credit cards be degaussed over time, but nobody ever figured them for forged credit cards.
:)
I've actually had more problems with the stripes WEARING off, which makes them kinda hard to read
If your driver's license is scrubbed through continual use, the strip will wear off, just like a credit card.
I don't understand why it wouldn't; if they can make a chemical bomb that penetrates that much stuff and functions, I'm sure a fission device could. The physics of the impact would be the same, but the required explosive payload would be smaller for the fission device.
That's the key: do more with less. Nuclear weapons weren't developed because of their Eeeevil factor, but because they can deliver such a large punch with such a relatively diminutive package. Before the Trinity test there was the "100 Ton" calibration experiment. 108 tons of high explosive was detonated to examine the effects of fission fallout and instrument calibration. 108 tons of high explosive was huge compared to the Trinity Gadget, even though the Gadget was 185 times as powerful.
This place has all you want to know about the "Golden Age" of American nuclear testing.
This is a picture of the Hardtack II / De Baca test, which was a small nuclear gravity bomb (11.3 inches in diameter, 15 inches long, weight 66 lb). It had a "disappointing" 2.2 kTon yield.
Even more interesting is Upshot-Knothole / Grable which was a nuclear cannon shell.
How small did they get? Here's the W54 (Davey Crockett) warhead, normally used as a rocket mortar round. It weighs 50 pounds, and has a yield of 22 TONS. Not Kilotons. Not megatons. Tons.
Of course small nuclear devices are possible, even workable. Not every miltary explosive needs to be like Castle/Bravo (the largest nuclear device the US has tested).
Why are you using MUSIC CDs for data? I thought that only MUSIC CDs (they're even labeled that way!) have the RIAA tax; plain CD-Rs don't.
I was really hoping for a (+1, Funny), but oh well. I wasn't trying to be pedantic. At least, not too much :)
Decent [sic] will no longer be tolerated? I suppose that only indecent posts will be allowed to stay. Trolls, links to goatse.cx, that kind of thing.
Isn't that called Slashdot?
I think you meant dissent.
Wrong! I couldn't disagree more. The liberalization of the Supreme Court and its re-interpretation of the Consitution of the United States have made this country a worse place, not a better place.
Although I can't find it at the moment, it seems like I once read (or heard?) Walter Williams discuss the folly of a "living" Constitution. Basically the problem is this: if the rules are malleable, the game doesn't work.
The Framers didn't intend us to have a country run by the rules of Calvinball, but thanks to your gleefully activist Supreme Court, that's what we've got.
Games people play are known for their unchanging rules that are known and understood by everyone. The Constitution was intended to be a "set in stone" framework for government, not a warm and fuzzy Silly Putty ruleset.
That doesn't mean that the Framers intended the Consistution to never change: they included provisions for incorporating amendments. To be constitutionally correct, if The People wanted a right to privacy added, then the amendment process would be utilized to add it. As it reads, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution of the United States.
The job of the courts is to apply law, not interpret it. A corollary of this is that Congress should not write vague and nebulous laws, but that's a seperate issue. Even in the presence of poorly written laws, the courts should only make use of the literal verbage; to stray from that standard to find "original intent" or whatever is a departure from their constitutional duties and is an invitiation to impeachment from Congress (see Article 3, Section 1: shall hold their offices during good behaviour).
You mean like THIS?
I doubt Hughes is making too much money on DirecTV yet. You seem to think that satellites are cheap; "all" you have to do is throw one up there and the cash just starts rolling in.
First of all, launching a comm satellite can cost upwards of twenty or more MILLION dollars for a disposable rocket. Doesn't the shuttle cost like $1 billion per launch to operate? That's just for vehicle delivery, and doesn't count the cost of designing and building the bird.
Next, the DirecTV birds are not your normal comm satellites. Their downlink sections are huge. The bird sits 22,500 miles away, and all I need to receive enough signal to be usable is a 18" dish? That satellite is screaming. That costs money. I imagine that the satellites cost more than $100 million. Each.
Satellite TV providers are at a disadvantage with respect to cable operators in that they must build out their entire infrastructure before they can sign their first customer. Traditionally, early adoptors of cable pay for the expansion of the covered territory.
Digital satellite radio has the same build-out problems and costs. So did Iridium, for that matter. So will Teledesic.
They're not making as much money as you think simply because their initial cash outlay to get started was (ahem) astronomical. I bet they're still working to recoup their initial investment.
The electrons move (as a result of an applied voltage) at what is known as the drift velocity. A example in copper is also available.
Current doesn't stop (your "current move, current not move" parenthetical). Current is not a thing, but is a description of a situation: moving charge is a current. An Ampere is defined as one Coulomb of charge passing a reference plane in one second.
How fast a signal propagates down a wire is its group velocity.
The "friction" mentioned by the original poster I interpret to be a flawed understanding of how resisivity works. Electrical signals travelling through resistive materials are attenuated, not slowed down, due to the resistance. Changes in velocity are due to changes in the dielectic constant.
There's no compression of the audio or data kind (and technically, the audio kind == the data kind).
The equalization (emphasis) used in the recording of vinyl records is for noise (hiss) reduction. The high-end signal is increased (pre-emphasis) when recorded. Upon playback, the turntable preamp reduces the high-end signal level (de-emphasis). This also reduces the high-frequency noise (hiss) of dragging a stylus through a groove cut (well, pressed) in a material that exhibits surface roughness.
This is somewhat similar, at least to my ear, to what early-version Dolby noise reduction does. If you play a Dolby-recorded tape on a player that doesn't have the circuitry to decode it, it sounds "brighter." That is, the high-frequency range is louder than it "should" be.
Since there's no mechanism for a CD to hiss, this kind of noise reduction isn't needed.
Oddly, from what I understand a few early CDs were indeed recorded with the vinyl pre-emphasis added. Ick. Now *that* would sound bad. CD players have never had de-emphasis circuits!
But would not symlinks fix this guy's problems?
/pics/family/pets/rover /animals/canines/mine
He said he wants pictures of his dog in two different places...
bash$ln -s
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. They do busses too, you know (Grew up in Atlanta suburbs: East Point, Fairburn). Also, they have on-demand handicapped transportation, and other services.
Although this is only tangentially on-topic, I would have moderated this (+1, Funny), not (-1, Offtopic). I suppose the moderator has no sense of humor, though.
The price for the HP is right; I just got a Handspring Visor Prism for Christmas, and I am pretty sure that my wife paid the $300 they're asking for it. I'm having a ball with it, just running Palm OS!
I just have to ask, "Why?" Although Linux on a PDA is cool from a gee-whiz standpoint, I think that it's probably overkill from a day-to-day use standpoint (but then, so is Windows!). I want my PDA to be like a digital toaster: simple to use, predictable and dependable. All extra complexity just gets in the way of speed and on-the-run operability. I don't think running telnet (or ssh) on a tiny little handheld with no keyboard is going to be very fun. I would think that the older, larger HP devices that had a full keyboard would be better suited.
Boxes Boxes Boxes!
It was cute the first time, but that was long ago. Now it's just annoying.
Just because you learned the plural form of the name of a large beast of burden ends with "en" doesn't mean that all English nouns ending in "x" are pluralized that way.
You claim to be involved with post-secondary education. If you were, you'd realize that the word is "boxes," with an "S."
As far as corporations not needing 3D visualization, you must be ignororing whole segments of industry: petroleum, aerospace, and communications jump immediately to mind. Automotive and consumer products design is enhanced via use of 3D virtual prototyping. There's more to life than finance, food service and retail!
What are they all doing at the airport?
And why not Ronald Reagan National Airport? It's open again and *much* more convenient!
If an animal is raised in captivity, doesn't that automatically make it domesticated?
Just because an animal is domesticated doesn't mean it'd make a good pet.
"Domesticated animals" are those that are raised by people (in captivity?) for some purpose. That purpose can be companionship (cats, dogs), food (cows, chickens) or perhaps clothing (cows, fox, geese). They're all domesticated, however.