"The official added that there is no evidence of any espionage"
On the other hand . . .
We all know how much professional espionage agents who steal information from governments like to leave evidence.
How much evidence was there that "hackers" were at fault when the last laptop was reported missing. Or when the general public steals a laptop are they "Malicious Hackers", and government officials are so legitimate that even espionage doesn't take place without evidence. (like what, shirlock holmes pipe was left in the vault?)
I say we declare a war on the government before they make their war on us official.
I suppose then I shouldn't call PepsiCos product pepsi, because then other companies like Coca Cola may hear about there secret product and get strange ideas about competition and then we'd have capitalism.
While i'm at it, I should return my spent cans ASAP to the company so I'm not "Freely Advertising" there product, lest they lose control over the entire product line.
I won't speak about unsaid company anymore as it may cause a lawsuit, since I am blatently abusing my right to free speech by reproducing there copyrighted name in this digitally reproducable forum.
"The main point of computer games is to allow us to experience things that we can't do in real life. If you make the interaction too realistic, then it becomes just as hard to play the game as it is to do the real thing (and not as rewarding.)"
The reason I play computer games is to experience things that couldn't possibly happen to me in real life. ie: getting shot in the head every 5 minutes playing half-life on Cogeco Server. Every once in a while it's interesting to break the rules a little bit, with cheats for games or walkthroughs, or better interfaces.
BUT...
The idea behind games is not to miss out on experiencing the reality of a games makeup, but to miss out on the reality of threats to your life.
If I could play multiplayer street fighter by actually fighting with my whole body, (But not getting my ass kicked for real by my oponent), I'd opt for that interface over a crapass joystick any day.
"My only question is what happens in the cases of a virus like the famed 'Melissa' who automatically passes it's self around?"
All virii pass themselves around. That's the definition of a virus.
My question is, what are the rules for spreading Trojan Horses. They are not virii as they do not replicate, but are malicious. Well then, if the law covers not virii but malicious compiled code, than can AOL be sued on another count for its client software obfuscating access to any other provider, or Microsoft for advertising in there installation programs. After all, its not something you were warned about or bargained for.
Intellectual Property can not be governed as if it were a physical product.
I will admit right now I am not a physicist. I'm wondering if anybody has experimented with detecting evanescent waves through its effects on the outcome of quantum particle behavior?
Off the top of my head: since an electron has the ability to 'tunnel' through a barrier under quantum mechanics (that is, without charging the barrier or moving around it), wouldn't an electromagnetic wave, even an evanescent wave have an outcome on the results of this?
Pointing an evanescent wave at the face of an electron barrier with electrons present on one side, could have a definite observable effect on the energy levels found on the other side of the barrier, as it may hinder or facilitate the quantum-leap which is observed.
So, (my numbers are all wrong), say a 30,000 voltamp charge should discharge 1 voltamp across a 50 micron barrier every second; under the help of an evanescent wave, you could simply check for voltamp levels higher than 1 on the other side.
"some kind of EMF is still present in the 'forward' part of the interface, generating some field patterns named 'evanescent waves'."
I apologize for not understanding the technical data on this subject, could you answer me this:
If these waves are a product of pure imaginary numbers, how were they detected? Why would an experiment even take place if they can not be detected? To detect a loss of energy would work in the experiment, since it would signal that energy is being carried forward, that would also mean... they are transmitting energy (this is not the case I know).
"I spent a week just having them go through the red tape of contacting one company, having them issue a work order with another company, then having the second company issue a work order with the third company, making me three times removed from the problem."
Reading, "they are WORLDWIDE, NOT AMERICAN TLDs.", along with, "I'm sure that they are thinking - 'lets give the companies an alternative TLD to use'. Unfortunately, if I was an EU company, I would still register the.com,.net and.org TLDs anyway."
I am reminded of 2600s current battle with Verizon. In the May 2nd (I believe)issue of Off The Hook 2600 mentioned Verizon buying up all available TLDs, including misspellings of Verizon along with... get this, VerizonSucks.com. To outdo them, 2600 mentioned "Hey, why don't we register VerizonREALLYsucks.com, it doesn't appear they got that one yet". Apparently they did follow through and register it, within a few days they received a letter demanding the domain rights be handed over, and over-night mail be sent back to Verizon with the required information to transfer the domain.
(For those of you who don't know, Verizon is a recent merger involving Bell Atlantic and various other phone companies)
Needless to say, 2600 is now ensnared in about 5 court cases including this new one. I find it interesting that with SO many legitimate TLDs for a domain, Corporate rights are still maintained over every one. It appears a precedent setting case will be involved with this new threat by Verizon.
Somebody should register VerizonSucks.EU or.TV, I would like to know how American law holds out over in Europe or Tuvulu. 8-).
My point though is simply that we should really question what the validity of these TLDs really are. I mean, is a phone company really an Organization, a Commerce, a Network, a US, a CA, an EU.... all at the same time? If nobody follows the rules on these TLDs, and corporate America can do what they wish with any of them, why the hell have anything but.SO? (sellout). That's my pun.
If we're going to standardize naming conventions, I think we should require that Everybody follow them. Especially Corporate America, as it has the least right to be on the internet. The internet was certainly not built by "www.Flowers.Org (roses.com)", and it is certainly not alive because of them.
When I go to hotsex.org I expect an organization of dedicated non-profit sexual professionals. If I wanted to pay, I'd be at the COM site.
"Microsoft intends to propose offering a version of Windows that "hides" access to the browser in the operating system. Microsoft contends that the two products now are fully integrated and cannot be separated."
- what gives microsoft the right to 'contend' anything? To say the two are integrated are like saying Qbasic.exe & Edit.com are integrated. It would take all of a few seconds to remove the code for the browser completely. To "Hide" the software simply means that microsoft will have IE located on the programs menu when you load windows instead of automatically putting it on the desktop. Or it will appear when you set internet options under control panel.
Either way, Microsoft is BSing there way through this case from start to finish. They make the world happy by saying they will "open source" there stuff, as kaphka said, "they're talking about opening the Windows APIs, i.e. giving outside developers the same access that the Office developers have. ". This has nothing to do with Open Sourcing, it's the equivilant of Microsoft adding more crap to their start menu. They're going to advertise how configurable and easy MS Windows will be in the future; meanwhile, you'll just be developing their own drivers for them. If you can't change the Kernal, who cares what the hell you can do with a bad OS.
Then MS claims they won't actually remove there internet software, but rather make it more obscure. How obscure can anything be in windows, it will sit there and rot on your harddrive, and become corrupt as often as it ever has due to its huge size and never-been-optimized, bad spaghetti code, infinite monkeys developing, long reboot, short uptime same-as-always nature!
Microsoft should patent a, "Method for Updating and Ensuring Complex System Stability". Essentially it would be a small 4 line program which reboots WinX systems every 30 minutes without prompting for confirmation from the user.
This would decrease Windows downtime exponentially, as the average windows system crashes every 35 minutes. With a stable new OS in memory just before crash time, they could eliminate that bug completely!
Instead of patenting the code though, they should just patent the process of "Rebooting", since essentially that is all there code would really be doing. Sounds miniscule under the microscope, but think of the possibilities. An OS with zero logged downtime!. And Microsoft would be the first to think of patenting "Rebooting as a means of maintaining system stability". Legally, we all know they have the right to it, who in the world associates rebooting for continued use with any OS other than Windows?
Unfortunately all you Linux lovers out there will be screwed when they do patent it. Next time your system crashes, legally, you'll have to throw them out and go get new ones.
Damnit. I can get "The message is" from any sentence in this crypto. First I got it from "From: The house at Outspar Ave", then I got it much easier from combining the first sentence before the comma with the last sentence after the last comma, hoping sentences would be made by taking the pairs from the beginning and the end and putting them together. But the thing that bothers me most about it, is that I also got "Salvatore" from the encrypted text after I already got, "The message is" using my original 4 - 5 rules to decrypt it. I couldn't get Dali though, so I have no clue.
I'm going to work on this for 8 more hours, but the thing I want to comment on is that from what I've done alone, I can say that this message did *not* require a word database to cypher. By using simple rules (not that they are being used) such as, "vowels negate all leading consenants within a cypher word" (just for example), you would turn sentences into groups of cyphered consenants which need only vowels between them.
That way, you could add quite a bit of wording to the cypher'd message which would be easily skipped over (knowing the rules) when decrypting. Any sentence, if you have rules to allow you to increase its cyphered size can be made to sound legitimate, the problem is you will end up with a message 4 times as large.
I think that's what's being done here, if you look at, "From: The House at Outspar Ave", you can already see there are more letters than there are within, "The message is". The annoying part of it is, is that the sentence backwards is the perfect amount of letters in the first 3 words.
I'm going insane. I apologize to everyone who does not follow.
Anyone here ever write messages down the left hand side of there high-school essays, a guy I knew used to write "Catholics Smell" down his margin in every essay. He was an A+ student.
"It is a manufacturing process patent. It isn't look, it isn't size, it isn't feel.", that is my point exactly. I would like to see the patent for there process, because I am willing to bet that it involves making circuit boards & connecting electronic components to it. The same process used for everything; perhaps they use a less corrosive acid on the perf boards and do some ionizing here & there. Essentially it is the same process used by any other company for there small devices.
Why should we allow companies like PepsiCo and CocaCola to patent there own Colors, only to be used against us, and other small companies who unknowingly happen to use the same shade of blue or red, or produce a device using some or all of the same methods employed by SmartData.
Once in our lives, maybe when we were kids, we happened to make PepsiCo's shade of Blue, or one which fell under there patent legally. I am sure that SmartData has not invented the wheel with there "credit card sized" pc production.
My point is that patenting new forms of technology may be important to ensure there success. Patenting old forms of technology is monopolizing on a pirated market.
Unless these new devices use bio-nano-technology in there production, there patent is going to simply be covering old-ground, and introducing fear to the implementation of new ideas. Whether a patent can be legally backed up or not is irrelevant, the original purpose of the patent was to cover small inventors from being ripped off by huge financial leeches soon after producing new forms of technology. The size of there device is directly involved in the discussion, since they are patenting a process which creates already existing devices, in a way every other company has already shown a vested interest in doing themselves.
By putting down there flag first, we the consumers will suffer under a monopolization of technology we have all been waiting for, and waiting for from many different competing companies to ensure our rights as consumers are met with diversity and competition.
"his company has applied for a patent on 'technology that enables the production of cost effective credit card sized modular pocket internet appliances."
The device is very interesting, but what gives SmartData the right to patent it? 3Com's devices are very close to credit card sized considering they include a screen. And why should one company have a patent over the "size" of a computer? It isn't like everyone isn't going down the road to fingernail sized computing, so why don't we collectively patent, "Technology that enables production of cost effective finger-nail sized computing devices."
The idea of patenting the technology used to create it, appears to keep the "freedom" of competition for making devices of this size open. That's can't possibly be. Manufacturing computers is done in exactly the same ways, if someone happens to patent a process which is slightly more efficient, than all they are really doing is slowing the progression of the industry, and I don't think we should stand for it.
As it is, any single company which introduces new technology can already stand to suffer under some competition, that's what keeps them producing there devices for a reasonable price and with enhancements.
Look at the amount of time it took for Palm devices to drop drastically in price, and offer peripherals like... software to go with the modem, or keyboards, nice screens, now color screens. This is because 3Com introduced a great device and only improved on it as the market demanded. They introduced a modem, but nobody had professionally developed syncing or internet apps for it. The modem's still a 14.4.
As open-source supporters, we should oppose vague patents on any new technology which are only to be used as scare-tactics and for monopolizing new markets.
"A simple solution to your man in the middle attack: Transmit a standard radio signal with timing pulses at the same time as the signal going over the fiber. Both go at the speed of light, so middleman X has no time to decrypt and reencrypt the signals (which is the only way the attack can work) without also somehow hijacking the radio signal."
All of a sudden the solution involves using radiowaves transmitted through the air. These signals can also be muted and re-transmitted by X. Solutions to cryptographic flaws can not be overcome through obscurity or increasing the value of a cryptographic setup.
I won't even get in to the inherent problems with a system that requires two different mediums to transmit the same signal. I will mention however that radiowaves are much more limited than even some office networks, they do not always travel from A - B at the speed of light being subject to cloud-jumps, bouncing, slowed by the atmosphere.
Either way, if a radiowave + physical network connection form of encryption was introduced, then a radiowave + physical network connection form of decryption would be also.
This encryption routine may be good for single parties, or wealthy backers, but once again, that's just security through the obscurity of using something not well known, or through costly setups. The cryptography itself is still flawed in that it only guards against tampering between two points, it does not guard against decryption by people who do intercept it.
Once a signal is intercepted and understood, nothing lies in the way of forging it again for the intended receiver.
DES encryption (just for example) guards against this easily by keeping the decrypting key an absolute secret. As would one-time scratch keys if they were not required to be transmitted.
I don't understand why it's not possible for a man-in-the-middle attack. If point A transmits to B, and X is in the middle, what prevents X from simply decoding A's message, and passing it on to B with its own key. Each person at A & B would never know there signal was being intercepted; especially since its a one-time scratch key. There would be no verification between A & B directly, only between A & X; X & B.
You could argue that A could simply tell B in its message what its keys hash or CRC was. A protocol could be introduced to do it automatically, but X could simply modify the protocol to introduce its own scratch key for B to receive. This is no good either unless each party hand keys in there own hash or CRC at completely random spots, and in random ways, in each packet or message.
Zero Knowledge has there own 'Freedom' software package. I know there are other packages like it, but it is the one I have read the most documentation on. It uses DES encryption accross a line of servers wishing to run the Freedom Server Software.
It sort of works like this, though i'm not 100% accurate. The client encrypts there own message with the receivers public key. The first server on the internet encrypts the message a second time with the next servers public key. Each server after that removes a layer of encryption and adds its own to be removed by the next. The message always stays encrypted, but the second layer of encryption is to hide where the message was last sent from.
Somehow in that method, any fullscale attack on a router or servers packets will only give you the last hop of the message, nothing before it; and good luck using a word file to brute force a message encrypted twice.
This client - server - server . . . - client encryption routine could be used on a large scale with one-time scratch keys, but it still leaves the man in the middle attack open. All one has to do is implement packet forwarding on one of the servers, and the encryption routine, though repeated up to 20 times accross the internet is entirely useless.
With Freedom's DES routine however, a public key is used meaning the encrypted message can be double encrypted by each server and forwarded, so once it is unencrypted by each server to forward, it is still under a layer of encryption. (Believe that's the methodology).
By introducing encryption at the physical point-to-point transmission level, you lose the power of obscurity; your method for developing a key of any type is right there in the transmission itself. Encryption atleast requires the Obscurity of the decrypting key! That's why you don't pass someone a scratch-key encrypted message with the scratch-key at the same time.
On ZDNet's Talkback, one user said, "I think Napster has a point here in that they can't be considered solely responsible for people using their software to trade and distribute copyrighted material.".
Another user mentioned that he can burn any cd he wishes, as can anyone who owns a CD burner. CD Burners sell for as little as $60CDN (Though, those burners are horrible).
Does Dr. Dre have the right to sue HP for the Cd writers they create, or Compaq for simply including CD Writers in there low-end systems?
What about using a Tape recorder? I believe this so-called lawyer contacted as many artists as he could and convinced them legal action was necessary & profitable. Hey it's worth a few bucks for the sellouts.
I'm white, so I obviously don't know, but I thought Hip Hop was about cutting out the industry and generating a life for the poor artists that are dedicated to it.
If it weren't for the people that actually want to listen to his music, Dr. Dre would be nowhere. Especially considering the industries profits increase as these little kids get music they like and run out for the CD to sponsor there image.
Maybe he's just angry people hear his stuff and decide they'd rather buy something else.
It's possible I missed something in the article, however, the article starts with:
""We only have single-substance science, which does not account for compounding effects. So the overall scale of the problem is far greater than previously estimated."
Is it just me, or is this an assumption meant to back up his findings? I mean, if they do not understand the correlations between the effects of substances in the food we eat, the livelihood of our brains, the whole circle etc. Then what makes this statement true?
It would be like me saying, "We only have Boolean Logic, so Fuzzy Logic is far greater [in terms of...]"
There is no proof. Though maybe evidence of some sort exists to back this up, the paper starts by degrading itself with an assumption. The proof is in the undeniable totality of understanding the compound effects.
It could be quite possible that the "compounding effects" tend to cancel each other out in a non-hazerdous way.
I think craw made a good point regarding this, though it's hard to tell if he made a point at all. "All this crap has already been covered here when the specs of the PSII was first revealed. All of this was covered during discussion about Wassenaar (limits on theoretical operations per second).".
It's possible the Japanese are simply afraid of breaking the Wassenaar agreement (or somebody is), by releasing a console with enough computing power to do standard DES encryption at 128 bits or higher.
The PS2 may, though I don't know, already have the DES algorithm hardwired to authenticate Sony games, and therefore the new ability to program the unit easily would result in a very simple way to encrypt beyond the limits allowed for export.
These news reporters always get things like this wrong, or lie about the information they receive for ratings. I'm sure encryption is important in the guidance of tomahawk missles, perhaps the anonymous author of the article at Reuters limited (a respected journalism firm?) simply misused a quote.
Journalist train of thought:
"And why is the hardware of the Playstation 2 a threat" "It contains encryption algorithms which break export regulations, and which are easily programmable"
[hmm, that's boring] "And what is encryption used for?" "Everything from credit card authentication to guiding tomahawk missiles"
"The law requires the trade ministry's approval for the export of restricted products worth more than 50,000 yen ($472)."
Does anybody know of any simple ways around this? Do you need to enter japan to order 2 consoles or less?
Isn't it possible for someone to compile a list of names & signatures of people who wish to order the PSx2's in the west? Then for each person who only wants one, a second exists to be sold legally at a retail location.
Re:Life in my high school as a "security threat"
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Laptops In Education
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You know, that's an interesting point you made about teaching students. - "hire you to teach some of our students how to do all that nifty stuff."
I do not enjoy insulting the teaching profession. My experience however has been that very few teachers are currently capable of teaching technology in an... applicable way. It could be that most teachers decide to teach after obtaining a BA, and not a BsC. (sp?). It could be that the teaching profession makes quite a bit less than members of mostly all other computer professions - so teaching computers is really a draw-back for those who can.
Whatever the reason, I would gladly offer to teach a certification oriented high-school course in computer science. Whether it be for general computer technician certification or Microsoft Networking (which I admit is the unfortunate standard at the moment).
I think more people involved in the business-of-computers should be offering there time towards such a worthy cause. Then maybe the computer industry would have a lot less frauds and scam artists.
Maybe some person should orchestrate a group of professionals to "ok" text books, hardware purchases and class room material at the very least in secondary schools.
If anyone is serious about consulting for education, I am in the Toronto - Hamilton, Ontario, Canada area.
my business page: www.mds-networks.com (under construction) My email address for no-spam: styles905@sympatico.ca
Having a system with a modem & HDD that reads software off of an easily creatable medium means this device could be used for more than just games and bad TV.
It could be used to browse the web, transfer documents, do your taxes. A display at local retail stores could be used for causing denail of service attacks on government installations. I'm guessing the harddrive could be replaced with a larger hard drive very easily; yet it's being marketed as a gaming system meaning it won't have the retail value of a standard computer system.
This means cheaper technology for those who know how to use it; and it will be available very soon. I'm guessing unboxed, "My son never plays it", versions will be in the newspapers for a fraction of their cost within 6 months of release.
I think as long as we're reliving our youth and trying to get ever closer to the first computer; You know, the reptile with fingers . . .
Someone should undertake a project, or post a link to an all-in-one site which hosts emulators, games and software (software whose copyright has run-out of course), for all the old systems we grew up with, and wish we grew up with.
The Altair, ZX81, LISA. Then on to the fabulous 80's, the Tandy CalecoVision (sp?), TRS-80, Apple IIc, ICON, ATARi, Amiga 2000... the list goes on and on. As far back as 1996 I tried to start an all-in-one collection on my BBS but I had a very hard time getting either games that worked with the emulators, or the emulators for the games off of the net.
"the key isn't teaching with or on the computer it's allowing kids to be comfortable with them."
Is being comfortable with expensive subsidized laptops really more important than being comfortable with the thousands of dollars pr. school computer systems already in use?
It appears to me that schools are spending way too much money on computers to appear to parents & officals that they are current & technologically proficient.
It really doesn't mean anything for a student to have an expensive computer system with no guidance or training - I mean, how comfortable are most people fixing their cars? How many drivers never had mandatory instruction on driving?
I'm Two years out of high-school; and there's a couple things I'd just like to mention about my experiences, in Canada at least.
First things first though, "One commenter pointed out that a specially designed red-and-blue laptop adorned with a NYC logo or something similar would be the perfect theft protection -- since you couldn't sell it to anyone, it's not likely to be stolen.". What reasons would I have to not buy a stolen red & blue NYC laptop on E-Bay? If you're going to wire everyone, I'm sure the thieves will get high-tech too, I know I would. Second of all, what are the odds that these laptops have specially designed software running on them. Odds are they are going to be made for MicroSoft software (I mean, who else in the world develops software right?). If they can work under MS Specs, I know a Linux OS will work on them too. At the very least they will require a floppy drive, and any type of drive access can be hacked. With millions of these devices in production and widely available on the black market, I know there will be hacks available even if they're a $200.00US hack.
Secondly, I've been using computers in school since kindergarden. My mother taught me Basic programming at home on a CalecoVision computer in grade 1, and I've coded in Basic on a home-made Apple 2c, TRS-80, IBM PC, and some entirely graphical workstation introduced to canadian schools around 1988 (ICONs); to name a few. I still remember watching the computer reps discuss the incredible possibilities of a wired generation in front of my teachers and my whole class.
The result of all this? I learned basic programming from my mother. No file reading/writing though, just INPUT A$ and PRINT. I tried to find books on ASM and at the very least file reading and writing in BASIC. To this day, I don't know if any of those old version of BASIC even support it. My teachers definately didn't know anything about it, and BASIC was even removed from the computers. My mother freaked on one of the worst teachers I've ever had because she Had accused me of being a slacker. When my mother asked her if she was challenging me and informed her that I programmed computers, BASIC went back on immediately (she wasn't aware). So 4 more years of elementary school basic were at my disposal. Whoopie. That was when I was finished drawing pictures on the computers for class assignments (All the way through school!).
When I was 14 I taught myself C, and took a course at a local college a year later. In high school my C teacher borrowed my notes in gr. 12 & OAC. A year earlier, in grade eleven I begged to take a C++ course because I was under the impression I was ready for it. Unfortunately my teacher didn't even know TURING, the required gr. 11 course - which was what he was teaching, and I ended up teaching the class when they felt like doing assignments.
I spent my years in high-school troubleshooting network problems in the computer labs and recovering teachers personal files when they brought there PCs in for me to take a look at.
In OAC I was accused of being a "hacker" because after a co-op at the school board computer tech dept. one technician had it out for me. He did some hardcore investigating and discovered I visited www.2600.com and www.l0pht.com regularly (Though I used to show him the sites, the advisories, and check his NEW Win98 systems for security flaws). My Vice Principal heard I was doing something evil, and assumed I had been looking at pr0n, so I got a half-hour lecture on why Pornography is immoral and almost lost about 3 credits for that on top of the implications that I was a "malicious" computer user, though only the term "Hacker" was ever used.
I believe introducing computers in schools is the first step, and that was taken many years ago. Now I think we need to introduce users to the computers; I know things have not changed since I've left. In fact, my two favourite teachers left the school, one become a software developer, the other as far as I know dropped teaching computers though he's the only one in the whole area I know of that can.
College instructors and Certification programs need to be introduced to schools. Certifications that are standards and are not given out by teachers who have a vested interest in the pass/fail rate of there classes. Such as an A+ course or MCSE group of courses taught in high-school which leave students with the opportunity to call Sylvan or other testing centers to receive certification; and make the certifications count towards there marks in later courses.
Possibly in some areas. I hear american DSL is expensive, but i'm not sure if that's just a rumor. Here in Ontario, DSL from Bell Sympatico is the same price as "At Home" Cable service.
DSL may vary greatly, but in my area at least, they don't offer it more than 3Kms from the main backbone. The tech support is much easier to get a hold of, and slightly more competant. The speed of Cable in the entire area goes down dramatically during peak times of day. I havn't noticed that with my DSL at all.
During good times of day, though Cable should be twice as fast, or comparibly, my friends on cable get about 30% faster downloads. That doesn't even make a difference with most sites I visit, since they are run from bogged servers.
The downside is I'm using PPPoE and my IP changes every time I re-login, which is like daily for me; bad video card. 8-)
Slashdot Mirror
"The official added that there is no evidence of any espionage"
On the other hand . . .
We all know how much professional espionage agents who steal information from governments like to leave evidence.
How much evidence was there that "hackers" were at fault when the last laptop was reported missing. Or when the general public steals a laptop are they "Malicious Hackers", and government officials are so legitimate that even espionage doesn't take place without evidence. (like what, shirlock holmes pipe was left in the vault?)
I say we declare a war on the government before they make their war on us official.
Or is it already?
I suppose then I shouldn't call PepsiCos product pepsi, because then other companies like Coca Cola may hear about there secret product and get strange ideas about competition and then we'd have capitalism.
While i'm at it, I should return my spent cans ASAP to the company so I'm not "Freely Advertising" there product, lest they lose control over the entire product line.
I won't speak about unsaid company anymore as it may cause a lawsuit, since I am blatently abusing my right to free speech by reproducing there copyrighted name in this digitally reproducable forum.
"The main point of computer games is to allow us to experience things that we can't do in real life. If you make the interaction too realistic, then it becomes just as hard to play the game as it is to do the real thing (and not as rewarding.)"
...
The reason I play computer games is to experience things that couldn't possibly happen to me in real life. ie: getting shot in the head every 5 minutes playing half-life on Cogeco Server. Every once in a while it's interesting to break the rules a little bit, with cheats for games or walkthroughs, or better interfaces.
BUT
The idea behind games is not to miss out on experiencing the reality of a games makeup, but to miss out on the reality of threats to your life.
If I could play multiplayer street fighter by actually fighting with my whole body, (But not getting my ass kicked for real by my oponent), I'd opt for that interface over a crapass joystick any day.
Bring on the lightsaber!
"My only question is what happens in the cases of a virus like the famed 'Melissa' who automatically passes it's self around?"
All virii pass themselves around. That's the definition of a virus.
My question is, what are the rules for spreading Trojan Horses. They are not virii as they do not replicate, but are malicious. Well then, if the law covers not virii but malicious compiled code, than can AOL be sued on another count for its client software obfuscating access to any other provider, or Microsoft for advertising in there installation programs. After all, its not something you were warned about or bargained for.
Intellectual Property can not be governed as if it were a physical product.
I will admit right now I am not a physicist. I'm wondering if anybody has experimented with detecting evanescent waves through its effects on the outcome of quantum particle behavior?
Off the top of my head: since an electron has the ability to 'tunnel' through a barrier under quantum mechanics (that is, without charging the barrier or moving around it), wouldn't an electromagnetic wave, even an evanescent wave have an outcome on the results of this?
Pointing an evanescent wave at the face of an electron barrier with electrons present on one side, could have a definite observable effect on the energy levels found on the other side of the barrier, as it may hinder or facilitate the quantum-leap which is observed.
So, (my numbers are all wrong), say a 30,000 voltamp charge should discharge 1 voltamp across a 50 micron barrier every second; under the help of an evanescent wave, you could simply check for voltamp levels higher than 1 on the other side.
Where's the flaw?
"some kind of EMF is still present in the 'forward' part of the interface, generating some field patterns named 'evanescent waves'."
I apologize for not understanding the technical data on this subject, could you answer me this:
If these waves are a product of pure imaginary numbers, how were they detected? Why would an experiment even take place if they can not be detected? To detect a loss of energy would work in the experiment, since it would signal that energy is being carried forward, that would also mean... they are transmitting energy (this is not the case I know).
"I spent a week just having them go through the red tape of contacting one company, having them issue a work order with another company, then having the second company issue a work order with the third company, making me three times removed from the problem."
Sounds like a story for www.verizonREALLYsucks.com.
Reading, "they are WORLDWIDE, NOT AMERICAN TLDs.", along with, "I'm sure that they are thinking - 'lets give the companies an alternative TLD to use'. Unfortunately, if I was an EU company, I would still register the .com, .net and .org TLDs anyway."
.TV, I would like to know how American law holds out over in Europe or Tuvulu. 8-).
.SO? (sellout). That's my pun.
I am reminded of 2600s current battle with Verizon. In the May 2nd (I believe)issue of Off The Hook 2600 mentioned Verizon buying up all available TLDs, including misspellings of Verizon along with... get this, VerizonSucks.com. To outdo them, 2600 mentioned "Hey, why don't we register VerizonREALLYsucks.com, it doesn't appear they got that one yet". Apparently they did follow through and register it, within a few days they received a letter demanding the domain rights be handed over, and over-night mail be sent back to Verizon with the required information to transfer the domain.
(For those of you who don't know, Verizon is a recent merger involving Bell Atlantic and various other phone companies)
Needless to say, 2600 is now ensnared in about 5 court cases including this new one. I find it interesting that with SO many legitimate TLDs for a domain, Corporate rights are still maintained over every one. It appears a precedent setting case will be involved with this new threat by Verizon.
Somebody should register VerizonSucks.EU or
My point though is simply that we should really question what the validity of these TLDs really are. I mean, is a phone company really an Organization, a Commerce, a Network, a US, a CA, an EU.... all at the same time? If nobody follows the rules on these TLDs, and corporate America can do what they wish with any of them, why the hell have anything but
If we're going to standardize naming conventions, I think we should require that Everybody follow them. Especially Corporate America, as it has the least right to be on the internet. The internet was certainly not built by "www.Flowers.Org (roses.com)", and it is certainly not alive because of them.
When I go to hotsex.org I expect an organization of dedicated non-profit sexual professionals. If I wanted to pay, I'd be at the COM site.
Get my drift?
"Microsoft intends to propose offering a version of Windows that "hides" access to the browser in the operating system. Microsoft contends that the two products now are fully integrated and cannot be separated."
- what gives microsoft the right to 'contend' anything? To say the two are integrated are like saying Qbasic.exe & Edit.com are integrated. It would take all of a few seconds to remove the code for the browser completely. To "Hide" the software simply means that microsoft will have IE located on the programs menu when you load windows instead of automatically putting it on the desktop. Or it will appear when you set internet options under control panel.
Either way, Microsoft is BSing there way through this case from start to finish. They make the world happy by saying they will "open source" there stuff, as kaphka said, "they're talking about opening the Windows APIs, i.e. giving outside developers the same access that the Office developers have. ". This has nothing to do with Open Sourcing, it's the equivilant of Microsoft adding more crap to their start menu. They're going to advertise how configurable and easy MS Windows will be in the future; meanwhile, you'll just be developing their own drivers for them. If you can't change the Kernal, who cares what the hell you can do with a bad OS.
Then MS claims they won't actually remove there internet software, but rather make it more obscure. How obscure can anything be in windows, it will sit there and rot on your harddrive, and become corrupt as often as it ever has due to its huge size and never-been-optimized, bad spaghetti code, infinite monkeys developing, long reboot, short uptime same-as-always nature!
That's my nickle.
Microsoft should patent a, "Method for Updating and Ensuring Complex System Stability". Essentially it would be a small 4 line program which reboots WinX systems every 30 minutes without prompting for confirmation from the user.
This would decrease Windows downtime exponentially, as the average windows system crashes every 35 minutes. With a stable new OS in memory just before crash time, they could eliminate that bug completely!
Instead of patenting the code though, they should just patent the process of "Rebooting", since essentially that is all there code would really be doing. Sounds miniscule under the microscope, but think of the possibilities. An OS with zero logged downtime!. And Microsoft would be the first to think of patenting "Rebooting as a means of maintaining system stability". Legally, we all know they have the right to it, who in the world associates rebooting for continued use with any OS other than Windows?
Unfortunately all you Linux lovers out there will be screwed when they do patent it. Next time your system crashes, legally, you'll have to throw them out and go get new ones.
Damnit. I can get "The message is" from any sentence in this crypto. First I got it from "From: The house at Outspar Ave", then I got it much easier from combining the first sentence before the comma with the last sentence after the last comma, hoping sentences would be made by taking the pairs from the beginning and the end and putting them together. But the thing that bothers me most about it, is that I also got "Salvatore" from the encrypted text after I already got, "The message is" using my original 4 - 5 rules to decrypt it. I couldn't get Dali though, so I have no clue.
I'm going to work on this for 8 more hours, but the thing I want to comment on is that from what I've done alone, I can say that this message did *not* require a word database to cypher. By using simple rules (not that they are being used) such as, "vowels negate all leading consenants within a cypher word" (just for example), you would turn sentences into groups of cyphered consenants which need only vowels between them.
That way, you could add quite a bit of wording to the cypher'd message which would be easily skipped over (knowing the rules) when decrypting. Any sentence, if you have rules to allow you to increase its cyphered size can be made to sound legitimate, the problem is you will end up with a message 4 times as large.
I think that's what's being done here, if you look at, "From: The House at Outspar Ave", you can already see there are more letters than there are within, "The message is". The annoying part of it is, is that the sentence backwards is the perfect amount of letters in the first 3 words.
I'm going insane. I apologize to everyone who does not follow.
Anyone here ever write messages down the left hand side of there high-school essays, a guy I knew used to write "Catholics Smell" down his margin in every essay. He was an A+ student.
"It is a manufacturing process patent. It isn't look, it isn't size, it isn't feel.", that is my point exactly. I would like to see the patent for there process, because I am willing to bet that it involves making circuit boards & connecting electronic components to it. The same process used for everything; perhaps they use a less corrosive acid on the perf boards and do some ionizing here & there. Essentially it is the same process used by any other company for there small devices.
Why should we allow companies like PepsiCo and CocaCola to patent there own Colors, only to be used against us, and other small companies who unknowingly happen to use the same shade of blue or red, or produce a device using some or all of the same methods employed by SmartData.
Once in our lives, maybe when we were kids, we happened to make PepsiCo's shade of Blue, or one which fell under there patent legally. I am sure that SmartData has not invented the wheel with there "credit card sized" pc production.
My point is that patenting new forms of technology may be important to ensure there success. Patenting old forms of technology is monopolizing on a pirated market.
Unless these new devices use bio-nano-technology in there production, there patent is going to simply be covering old-ground, and introducing fear to the implementation of new ideas. Whether a patent can be legally backed up or not is irrelevant, the original purpose of the patent was to cover small inventors from being ripped off by huge financial leeches soon after producing new forms of technology. The size of there device is directly involved in the discussion, since they are patenting a process which creates already existing devices, in a way every other company has already shown a vested interest in doing themselves.
By putting down there flag first, we the consumers will suffer under a monopolization of technology we have all been waiting for, and waiting for from many different competing companies to ensure our rights as consumers are met with diversity and competition.
"his company has applied for a patent on 'technology that enables the production of cost effective credit card sized modular pocket internet appliances."
The device is very interesting, but what gives SmartData the right to patent it? 3Com's devices are very close to credit card sized considering they include a screen. And why should one company have a patent over the "size" of a computer? It isn't like everyone isn't going down the road to fingernail sized computing, so why don't we collectively patent, "Technology that enables production of cost effective finger-nail sized computing devices."
The idea of patenting the technology used to create it, appears to keep the "freedom" of competition for making devices of this size open. That's can't possibly be. Manufacturing computers is done in exactly the same ways, if someone happens to patent a process which is slightly more efficient, than all they are really doing is slowing the progression of the industry, and I don't think we should stand for it.
As it is, any single company which introduces new technology can already stand to suffer under some competition, that's what keeps them producing there devices for a reasonable price and with enhancements.
Look at the amount of time it took for Palm devices to drop drastically in price, and offer peripherals like... software to go with the modem, or keyboards, nice screens, now color screens. This is because 3Com introduced a great device and only improved on it as the market demanded. They introduced a modem, but nobody had professionally developed syncing or internet apps for it. The modem's still a 14.4.
As open-source supporters, we should oppose vague patents on any new technology which are only to be used as scare-tactics and for monopolizing new markets.
"A simple solution to your man in the middle attack: Transmit a standard radio signal with timing pulses at the same time as the signal going over the fiber. Both go at the speed of light, so middleman X has no time to decrypt and reencrypt the signals (which is the only way the attack can work) without also somehow hijacking the radio signal."
All of a sudden the solution involves using radiowaves transmitted through the air. These signals can also be muted and re-transmitted by X. Solutions to cryptographic flaws can not be overcome through obscurity or increasing the value of a cryptographic setup.
I won't even get in to the inherent problems with a system that requires two different mediums to transmit the same signal. I will mention however that radiowaves are much more limited than even some office networks, they do not always travel from A - B at the speed of light being subject to cloud-jumps, bouncing, slowed by the atmosphere.
Either way, if a radiowave + physical network connection form of encryption was introduced, then a radiowave + physical network connection form of decryption would be also.
This encryption routine may be good for single parties, or wealthy backers, but once again, that's just security through the obscurity of using something not well known, or through costly setups. The cryptography itself is still flawed in that it only guards against tampering between two points, it does not guard against decryption by people who do intercept it.
Once a signal is intercepted and understood, nothing lies in the way of forging it again for the intended receiver.
DES encryption (just for example) guards against this easily by keeping the decrypting key an absolute secret. As would one-time scratch keys if they were not required to be transmitted.
I don't understand why it's not possible for a man-in-the-middle attack. If point A transmits to B, and X is in the middle, what prevents X from simply decoding A's message, and passing it on to B with its own key. Each person at A & B would never know there signal was being intercepted; especially since its a one-time scratch key. There would be no verification between A & B directly, only between A & X; X & B.
You could argue that A could simply tell B in its message what its keys hash or CRC was. A protocol could be introduced to do it automatically, but X could simply modify the protocol to introduce its own scratch key for B to receive. This is no good either unless each party hand keys in there own hash or CRC at completely random spots, and in random ways, in each packet or message.
Zero Knowledge has there own 'Freedom' software package. I know there are other packages like it, but it is the one I have read the most documentation on. It uses DES encryption accross a line of servers wishing to run the Freedom Server Software.
It sort of works like this, though i'm not 100% accurate. The client encrypts there own message with the receivers public key. The first server on the internet encrypts the message a second time with the next servers public key. Each server after that removes a layer of encryption and adds its own to be removed by the next. The message always stays encrypted, but the second layer of encryption is to hide where the message was last sent from.
Somehow in that method, any fullscale attack on a router or servers packets will only give you the last hop of the message, nothing before it; and good luck using a word file to brute force a message encrypted twice.
This client - server - server . . . - client encryption routine could be used on a large scale with one-time scratch keys, but it still leaves the man in the middle attack open. All one has to do is implement packet forwarding on one of the servers, and the encryption routine, though repeated up to 20 times accross the internet is entirely useless.
With Freedom's DES routine however, a public key is used meaning the encrypted message can be double encrypted by each server and forwarded, so once it is unencrypted by each server to forward, it is still under a layer of encryption. (Believe that's the methodology).
By introducing encryption at the physical point-to-point transmission level, you lose the power of obscurity; your method for developing a key of any type is right there in the transmission itself. Encryption atleast requires the Obscurity of the decrypting key! That's why you don't pass someone a scratch-key encrypted message with the scratch-key at the same time.
On ZDNet's Talkback, one user said, "I think Napster has a point here in that they can't be considered solely responsible for people using their software to trade and distribute copyrighted material.".
Another user mentioned that he can burn any cd he wishes, as can anyone who owns a CD burner. CD Burners sell for as little as $60CDN (Though, those burners are horrible).
Does Dr. Dre have the right to sue HP for the Cd writers they create, or Compaq for simply including CD Writers in there low-end systems?
What about using a Tape recorder? I believe this so-called lawyer contacted as many artists as he could and convinced them legal action was necessary & profitable. Hey it's worth a few bucks for the sellouts.
I'm white, so I obviously don't know, but I thought Hip Hop was about cutting out the industry and generating a life for the poor artists that are dedicated to it.
If it weren't for the people that actually want to listen to his music, Dr. Dre would be nowhere. Especially considering the industries profits increase as these little kids get music they like and run out for the CD to sponsor there image.
Maybe he's just angry people hear his stuff and decide they'd rather buy something else.
It's possible I missed something in the article, however, the article starts with:
...]"
""We only have single-substance science, which does not account for compounding effects. So the overall scale of the problem is far greater than previously estimated."
Is it just me, or is this an assumption meant to back up his findings? I mean, if they do not understand the correlations between the effects of substances in the food we eat, the livelihood of our brains, the whole circle etc. Then what makes this statement true?
It would be like me saying, "We only have Boolean Logic, so Fuzzy Logic is far greater [in terms of
There is no proof. Though maybe evidence of some sort exists to back this up, the paper starts by degrading itself with an assumption. The proof is in the undeniable totality of understanding the compound effects.
It could be quite possible that the "compounding effects" tend to cancel each other out in a non-hazerdous way.
Egads, could I be wrong?
I think craw made a good point regarding this, though it's hard to tell if he made a point at all. "All this crap has already been covered here when the specs of the PSII was first revealed. All of this was covered during discussion about Wassenaar (limits on theoretical operations per second).".
It's possible the Japanese are simply afraid of breaking the Wassenaar agreement (or somebody is), by releasing a console with enough computing power to do standard DES encryption at 128 bits or higher.
The PS2 may, though I don't know, already have the DES algorithm hardwired to authenticate Sony games, and therefore the new ability to program the unit easily would result in a very simple way to encrypt beyond the limits allowed for export.
These news reporters always get things like this wrong, or lie about the information they receive for ratings. I'm sure encryption is important in the guidance of tomahawk missles, perhaps the anonymous author of the article at Reuters limited (a respected journalism firm?) simply misused a quote.
Journalist train of thought:
"And why is the hardware of the Playstation 2 a threat"
"It contains encryption algorithms which break export regulations, and which are easily programmable"
[hmm, that's boring]
"And what is encryption used for?"
"Everything from credit card authentication to guiding tomahawk missiles"
That's where your news comes from.
"The law requires the trade ministry's approval for the export of restricted products worth more than 50,000 yen ($472)."
Does anybody know of any simple ways around this? Do you need to enter japan to order 2 consoles or less?
Isn't it possible for someone to compile a list of names & signatures of people who wish to order the PSx2's in the west? Then for each person who only wants one, a second exists to be sold legally at a retail location.
You know, that's an interesting point you made about teaching students. - "hire you to teach some of our students how to do all that nifty stuff."
... applicable way. It could be that most teachers decide to teach after obtaining a BA, and not a BsC. (sp?). It could be that the teaching profession makes quite a bit less than members of mostly all other computer professions - so teaching computers is really a draw-back for those who can.
I do not enjoy insulting the teaching profession. My experience however has been that very few teachers are currently capable of teaching technology in an
Whatever the reason, I would gladly offer to teach a certification oriented high-school course in computer science. Whether it be for general computer technician certification or Microsoft Networking (which I admit is the unfortunate standard at the moment).
I think more people involved in the business-of-computers should be offering there time towards such a worthy cause. Then maybe the computer industry would have a lot less frauds and scam artists.
Maybe some person should orchestrate a group of professionals to "ok" text books, hardware purchases and class room material at the very least in secondary schools.
If anyone is serious about consulting for education, I am in the Toronto - Hamilton, Ontario, Canada area.
my business page: www.mds-networks.com (under construction)
My email address for no-spam:
styles905@sympatico.ca
Having a system with a modem & HDD that reads software off of an easily creatable medium means this device could be used for more than just games and bad TV.
It could be used to browse the web, transfer documents, do your taxes. A display at local retail stores could be used for causing denail of service attacks on government installations. I'm guessing the harddrive could be replaced with a larger hard drive very easily; yet it's being marketed as a gaming system meaning it won't have the retail value of a standard computer system.
This means cheaper technology for those who know how to use it; and it will be available very soon. I'm guessing unboxed, "My son never plays it", versions will be in the newspapers for a fraction of their cost within 6 months of release.
I think as long as we're reliving our youth and trying to get ever closer to the first computer; You know, the reptile with fingers . . .
Someone should undertake a project, or post a link to an all-in-one site which hosts emulators, games and software (software whose copyright has run-out of course), for all the old systems we grew up with, and wish we grew up with.
The Altair, ZX81, LISA. Then on to the fabulous 80's, the Tandy CalecoVision (sp?), TRS-80, Apple IIc, ICON, ATARi, Amiga 2000... the list goes on and on. As far back as 1996 I tried to start an all-in-one collection on my BBS but I had a very hard time getting either games that worked with the emulators, or the emulators for the games off of the net.
"the key isn't teaching with or on the computer it's allowing kids to be comfortable with them."
Is being comfortable with expensive subsidized laptops really more important than being comfortable with the thousands of dollars pr. school computer systems already in use?
It appears to me that schools are spending way too much money on computers to appear to parents & officals that they are current & technologically proficient.
It really doesn't mean anything for a student to have an expensive computer system with no guidance or training - I mean, how comfortable are most people fixing their cars? How many drivers never had mandatory instruction on driving?
I'm Two years out of high-school; and there's a couple things I'd just like to mention about my experiences, in Canada at least.
First things first though, "One commenter pointed out that a specially designed red-and-blue laptop adorned with a NYC logo or something similar would be the perfect theft protection -- since you couldn't sell it to anyone, it's not likely to be stolen.". What reasons would I have to not buy a stolen red & blue NYC laptop on E-Bay? If you're going to wire everyone, I'm sure the thieves will get high-tech too, I know I would. Second of all, what are the odds that these laptops have specially designed software running on them. Odds are they are going to be made for MicroSoft software (I mean, who else in the world develops software right?). If they can work under MS Specs, I know a Linux OS will work on them too. At the very least they will require a floppy drive, and any type of drive access can be hacked. With millions of these devices in production and widely available on the black market, I know there will be hacks available even if they're a $200.00US hack.
Secondly, I've been using computers in school since kindergarden. My mother taught me Basic programming at home on a CalecoVision computer in grade 1, and I've coded in Basic on a home-made Apple 2c, TRS-80, IBM PC, and some entirely graphical workstation introduced to canadian schools around 1988 (ICONs); to name a few. I still remember watching the computer reps discuss the incredible possibilities of a wired generation in front of my teachers and my whole class.
The result of all this? I learned basic programming from my mother. No file reading/writing though, just INPUT A$ and PRINT. I tried to find books on ASM and at the very least file reading and writing in BASIC. To this day, I don't know if any of those old version of BASIC even support it. My teachers definately didn't know anything about it, and BASIC was even removed from the computers. My mother freaked on one of the worst teachers I've ever had because she Had accused me of being a slacker. When my mother asked her if she was challenging me and informed her that I programmed computers, BASIC went back on immediately (she wasn't aware). So 4 more years of elementary school basic were at my disposal. Whoopie. That was when I was finished drawing pictures on the computers for class assignments (All the way through school!).
When I was 14 I taught myself C, and took a course at a local college a year later. In high school my C teacher borrowed my notes in gr. 12 & OAC. A year earlier, in grade eleven I begged to take a C++ course because I was under the impression I was ready for it. Unfortunately my teacher didn't even know TURING, the required gr. 11 course - which was what he was teaching, and I ended up teaching the class when they felt like doing assignments.
I spent my years in high-school troubleshooting network problems in the computer labs and recovering teachers personal files when they brought there PCs in for me to take a look at.
In OAC I was accused of being a "hacker" because after a co-op at the school board computer tech dept. one technician had it out for me. He did some hardcore investigating and discovered I visited www.2600.com and www.l0pht.com regularly (Though I used to show him the sites, the advisories, and check his NEW Win98 systems for security flaws). My Vice Principal heard I was doing something evil, and assumed I had been looking at pr0n, so I got a half-hour lecture on why Pornography is immoral and almost lost about 3 credits for that on top of the implications that I was a "malicious" computer user, though only the term "Hacker" was ever used.
I believe introducing computers in schools is the first step, and that was taken many years ago. Now I think we need to introduce users to the computers; I know things have not changed since I've left. In fact, my two favourite teachers left the school, one become a software developer, the other as far as I know dropped teaching computers though he's the only one in the whole area I know of that can.
College instructors and Certification programs need to be introduced to schools. Certifications that are standards and are not given out by teachers who have a vested interest in the pass/fail rate of there classes. Such as an A+ course or MCSE group of courses taught in high-school which leave students with the opportunity to call Sylvan or other testing centers to receive certification; and make the certifications count towards there marks in later courses.
Possibly in some areas. I hear american DSL is expensive, but i'm not sure if that's just a rumor. Here in Ontario, DSL from Bell Sympatico is the same price as "At Home" Cable service.
DSL may vary greatly, but in my area at least, they don't offer it more than 3Kms from the main backbone. The tech support is much easier to get a hold of, and slightly more competant. The speed of Cable in the entire area goes down dramatically during peak times of day. I havn't noticed that with my DSL at all.
During good times of day, though Cable should be twice as fast, or comparibly, my friends on cable get about 30% faster downloads. That doesn't even make a difference with most sites I visit, since they are run from bogged servers.
The downside is I'm using PPPoE and my IP changes every time I re-login, which is like daily for me; bad video card. 8-)
sorry, hope that was on topic.