The only problems is lack of choice of hardware and paying a premium for another OS:
From Dell (in the UK) if you want Linux, you are limited to exactly 1 laptop; and if you spec it the same as the equivalent Windows offering it works out exactly the same price (£249).
Which kind of begs the question: Are Dell making more money on the Linux version? Or do they have to pay Microsoft for this laptop anyway?
And why can't they sort something out about the bigger problem, namely that it is near impossible to buy a computer without any OS installed at all; so you get to choose whatever OS you want.
According to truecrypt (and my limited understanding). What you do is this:
1) Setup an encrypted volume (password=dummy) 2) Put some plausible files in the volume (secrets.txt - full of information you don't mind others seeing) 3) Create a hidden volume (within the first encrypted volume) (password=secret) 4) Put your real secret stuff in here.
When you use the partition you use the (password=secret) and get access to the hidden volume, should the police turn up tell them that the password is dummy, and all they see is "secrets.txt"
The clever part is that it is impossible to tell whether there is a hidden volume or not as the space that it occupies is normally full of random data anyway.
He then created a cloned card, and with help from another technology expert, changed all the data on the new card. This included the physical details of the bearer, name, fingerprints and other information.
Lets hope this puts the final nail in the coffin for this stupid idea.
Federal agents at the Defcon 17 conference were shocked to discover that they had been caught in the sights of an RFID reader connected to a web camera...
erm... not quite what the Wired Article says:
But the device, which had a read range of 2 to 3 feet, caught only five people carrying RFID cards before Feds attending the conference got wind of the project and were concerned they might have been scanned
Still I suppose the Feds have probably hacked into the Wired Article and fixed that one...
Putting in 'traps' to catch plagiarism didn't work for Fred L. Worth. He deliberately added some 'made up' facts into his "The Trivia Encyclopedia" including: "Columbo's first name was Philip"
When this appeared as a Trivial Pursuit question, he attempted to sue, but it was thrown out of court on the basis that many sources had been used to make the questions. http://www.triviahalloffame.com/columbo.aspx
I guess it is a case of: Copy one source - plagiarism; Copy many sources - research.
Look, I admit that their claims sound unlikely, but you can't just dismiss all claims out of hand because "they break the laws of physics". The fact is that they break the current laws of physics.
Hell, there could be all sorts of unlikely explanations that don't even break the current laws of physics (like perhaps some mass is being converted into energy)
Real Science means conducting experiments and taking measurements. The 'laws' of physics are only as good as the experiments and measurements taken.
The fact is that the experiments have been conducted, and it appears that it doesn't work. It doesn't mean that the Jury are 'idiots' for trying to test it - it means that they are scientists.
I agree, plus we are effectively subsidising people who live outside cities - am I'm willing to bet that in general that the demographic of these people will not be towards the low end of the income scale.
Then the tiger's centre of mass is probably about 2.5ft up anyway so it more about being able to jump 33ft flat.
Also speed doesn't translate into distance in this simplistic way either: if it did humans would be almost able to jump the distance (max speed = 26.25mph) which is close as damm it to the 26.7mph required.
I agree with the original poster. If we must have some sort of DRM then watermarking is the way to go. Let people do what they want with their content, but let the copyright owners have tracability.
I'm involved with people who are researching this, and I have to say that the state of the art is exteremly impressive.
The current methods take a secret key + ID and embed this into the image (or video). The secret key is known by the copyright holder and can change on a per content basis.
They tell me that even if an attacker knows the algorithm (but not the secret key embedded in it), the best attack approach is still to average different images together (so called collusion attack).
For images it is possible to still detect the different attackers upto about 10 colluders - i.e. give the IDs of all 10 attackers. For video you can multiply this up by several orders of magnitude to 1,000,000s because of the shear amount of material available.
I've seen demos where camcorder footage of a movie in a theatre has been encoded to a low bitrate and resolution and they were still able to get the ID after a few frames.
Hmmm, I wonder whether he'll sell any more books as a result of this:
From the website:
There is a large amount of relevant material in A New Kind of Science.
The reason that the backwards compatibility is not as good, is because the original Japanese versions of the PS3 had a PS2 chip inside to handle the backwards compatibilty.
The newer versions of the PS3 will do the backwards compatability using emulation and not the actual PS2 hardware.
This means that the machines might be: a)Quieter. b)A better spec machine than the original version (less H/W bugs). c)Less prone to breaking.
Another advantage I've come across is that you can put a brigther bulb in a light fitting only designed to take a low wattage bulb.
e.g. if the light fitting says "40W Max" you can put in a "100W equivilent" CFL bulb since this is really only 20W in terms of actual power, and it is the heat that they are worried about.
Collective musical composition...
Collective painting...
I agree with the the posts saying that being creative by (a large) commitee is a non-starter.
A better system would be to have a large number of people suggesting ideas and have a small number (one?) actually writing the script
I came across one of these puzzles last night...
on
Celebrating Puzzles
·
· Score: 5, Funny
"Perhaps the most famous class of physics-based puzzles is one of the most ancient: puzzle vessels. Usually built in the form of a cup or a jug, these vessels offer the challenge that one must drink from them, or fill them up, without spilling any liquid"
I think I came across one of these last night in the pub. The funny thing was it seemed to get more difficult as the night went on.
If they have implemented the watermark correctly it is true that the best (statistical) way to remove it is to 'average' together lots of copies. But in most watermarking systems you will be able to retreive the ID of *all* the copies used to make the averaged version (albeit at a reduced certainty).
To defeat this sort of system would probably require >>200 different copies.
Presumably harnessing this energy is affecting the interaction with the earth and the moon or slowing the earth down (I mean the energy has to come from somewhere right? - and I guess it isn't the sun in this case).
I guess the effect is negiligable, but it kind of bothers me that we might be slowly crashing the moon into the Earth or something (which would be slightly worse than a Nuclear accident:-)
Does anyone no where the energy actually comes from for tidal power?
ALL CONSUMERS IN THE UNITED STATES WHO OWM MGM WIDESCREEN DVDS IDENTIFIED IN THIS NOTICE
So I guess that means it is only important where you live, not what the region encoding is. If you are still unsure you can call the Claims Administrator at the folling toll-free number 1-800-285-2168
Failing that I'd call watchdog:-) (UK's consumer 'justice' programme)
Please feel free to correct me if I wrong (I'm sure you will!). My comments were relating more to the multiple cells than the internal vector processors on each cell.
Cray type architectures are basically vector parallel processors. In this case it *is* possible to get compilers to pull vector type operations out of tight serial loops (gee this looks like a vector multiply etc.).
Even then a programmer either has to: a) Use well defined libraries (vector operations etc.) b) Know something about the hardware to write loops in the 'correct' way for the compiler to figure out what's going on.
A more difficult problem is how to compile for 'loosely coupled' architectures (like the cell) - Even if each individual cell contains vector processors.
Now you have to write what effectively amounts to large amounts of multithreaded code - behaving cooperatively on a system with an unknown number of nodes.
Now you either need: a) A really intelligent compiler or b) A really intelligent programmer
One question which was not addressed fully in the article was how do you compile/test programs for this thing.
The potential of parallel architectures has never been in doubt since the early days of the Cray monsters - but how to compile code to use all the features efficiently has.
I don't believe that we see the full advantage of these types of architecture exploited without some similar break-through in software tools.
Slashdot Mirror
The only problems is lack of choice of hardware and paying a premium for another OS:
From Dell (in the UK) if you want Linux, you are limited to exactly 1 laptop; and if you spec it the same as the equivalent Windows offering it works out exactly the same price (£249).
Which kind of begs the question:
Are Dell making more money on the Linux version? Or do they have to pay Microsoft for this laptop anyway?
I totally agree with your comment.
And why can't they sort something out about the bigger problem, namely that it is near impossible to buy a computer without any OS installed at all; so you get to choose whatever OS you want.
According to truecrypt (and my limited understanding). What you do is this:
1) Setup an encrypted volume (password=dummy)
2) Put some plausible files in the volume (secrets.txt - full of information you don't mind others seeing)
3) Create a hidden volume (within the first encrypted volume) (password=secret)
4) Put your real secret stuff in here.
When you use the partition you use the (password=secret) and get access to the hidden volume, should the police turn up tell them that the password is dummy, and all they see is "secrets.txt"
The clever part is that it is impossible to tell whether there is a hidden volume or not as the space that it occupies is normally full of random data anyway.
More details here:
http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=security-precautions
I unfortunately read the article...
He then created a cloned card, and with help from another technology expert, changed all the data on the new card. This included the physical details of the bearer, name, fingerprints and other information.
Lets hope this puts the final nail in the coffin for this stupid idea.
Federal agents at the Defcon 17 conference were shocked to discover that they had been caught in the sights of an RFID reader connected to a web camera...
erm... not quite what the Wired Article says:
But the device, which had a read range of 2 to 3 feet, caught only five people carrying RFID cards before Feds attending the conference got wind of the project and were concerned they might have been scanned
Still I suppose the Feds have probably hacked into the Wired Article and fixed that one...
Putting in 'traps' to catch plagiarism didn't work for Fred L. Worth.
He deliberately added some 'made up' facts into his "The Trivia Encyclopedia" including:
"Columbo's first name was Philip"
When this appeared as a Trivial Pursuit question, he attempted to sue, but it was thrown out of court on the basis that many sources had been used to make the questions. http://www.triviahalloffame.com/columbo.aspx
I guess it is a case of: Copy one source - plagiarism; Copy many sources - research.
Look, I admit that their claims sound unlikely, but you can't just dismiss all claims out of hand because "they break the laws of physics". The fact is that they break the current laws of physics.
Hell, there could be all sorts of unlikely explanations that don't even break the current laws of physics (like perhaps some mass is being converted into energy)
Real Science means conducting experiments and taking measurements. The 'laws' of physics are only as good as the experiments and measurements taken.
The fact is that the experiments have been conducted, and it appears that it doesn't work. It doesn't mean that the Jury are 'idiots' for trying to test it - it means that they are scientists.
I agree, plus we are effectively subsidising people who live outside cities - am I'm willing to bet that in general that the demographic of these people will not be towards the low end of the income scale.
I agree, but they also calculated that they could clear 12.5ft 33ft away at that speed, which humans definetly can't do.
Looking at this diagram: http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/01/03/mn_grotto.jpg You can see that it is 33ft along and 2.5ft up for starters. (12ft is from the bottom of the moat, not from where the tiger jumped).
Then the tiger's centre of mass is probably about 2.5ft up anyway so it more about being able to jump 33ft flat.
Also speed doesn't translate into distance in this simplistic way either: if it did humans would be almost able to jump the distance (max speed = 26.25mph) which is close as damm it to the 26.7mph required.
I agree with the original poster. If we must have some sort of DRM then watermarking is the way to go. Let people do what they want with their content, but let the copyright owners have tracability.
I'm involved with people who are researching this, and I have to say that the state of the art is exteremly impressive.
The current methods take a secret key + ID and embed this into the image (or video). The secret key is known by the copyright holder and can change on a per content basis.
They tell me that even if an attacker knows the algorithm (but not the secret key embedded in it), the best attack approach is still to average different images together (so called collusion attack).
For images it is possible to still detect the different attackers upto about 10 colluders - i.e. give the IDs of all 10 attackers. For video you can multiply this up by several orders of magnitude to 1,000,000s because of the shear amount of material available.
I've seen demos where camcorder footage of a movie in a theatre has been encoded to a low bitrate and resolution and they were still able to get the ID after a few frames.
He said the valuable commodity at greatest risk on local area networks was information.
What, not like gold bullion or something?
With the nice big red arrow saying "Hello, I'm no where near where live, please come by and rob my house."
Hmmm, I wonder whether he'll sell any more books as a result of this: From the website: There is a large amount of relevant material in A New Kind of Science.
The reason that the backwards compatibility is not as good, is because the original Japanese versions of the PS3 had a PS2 chip inside to handle the backwards compatibilty.
The newer versions of the PS3 will do the backwards compatability using emulation and not the actual PS2 hardware.
This means that the machines might be:
a)Quieter.
b)A better spec machine than the original version (less H/W bugs).
c)Less prone to breaking.
I'm a big fan of these bulbs.
Another advantage I've come across is that you can put a brigther bulb in a light fitting only designed to take a low wattage bulb.
e.g. if the light fitting says "40W Max" you can put in a "100W equivilent" CFL bulb since this is really only 20W in terms of actual power, and it is the heat that they are worried about.
Collective musical composition... Collective painting... I agree with the the posts saying that being creative by (a large) commitee is a non-starter. A better system would be to have a large number of people suggesting ideas and have a small number (one?) actually writing the script
"Perhaps the most famous class of physics-based puzzles is one of the most ancient: puzzle vessels. Usually built in the form of a cup or a jug, these vessels offer the challenge that one must drink from them, or fill them up, without spilling any liquid"
I think I came across one of these last night in the pub. The funny thing was it seemed to get more difficult as the night went on.
Not necessarly true,
If they have implemented the watermark correctly it is true that the best (statistical) way to remove it is to 'average' together lots of copies. But in most watermarking systems you will be able to retreive the ID of *all* the copies used to make the averaged version (albeit at a reduced certainty).
To defeat this sort of system would probably require >>200 different copies.
Presumably harnessing this energy is affecting the interaction with the earth and the moon or slowing the earth down (I mean the energy has to come from somewhere right? - and I guess it isn't the sun in this case).
:-)
I guess the effect is negiligable, but it kind of bothers me that we might be slowly crashing the moon into the Earth or something (which would be slightly worse than a Nuclear accident
Does anyone no where the energy actually comes from for tidal power?
From the notice of class action settlement:
:-) (UK's consumer 'justice' programme)
ALL CONSUMERS IN THE UNITED STATES WHO OWM MGM WIDESCREEN DVDS IDENTIFIED IN THIS NOTICE
So I guess that means it is only important where you live, not what the region encoding is. If you are still unsure you can call the Claims Administrator at the folling toll-free number 1-800-285-2168
Failing that I'd call watchdog
...and the PS2 had (has) terrible software tools, developers *hate* programming for it compared with other consoles.
There is no way you can write high performance software for the PS2 without knowing about the internal architecture specifics.
Please feel free to correct me if I wrong (I'm sure you will!). My comments were relating more to the multiple cells than the internal vector processors on each cell.
Cray type architectures are basically vector parallel processors. In this case it *is* possible to get compilers to pull vector type operations out of tight serial loops (gee this looks like a vector multiply etc.).
Even then a programmer either has to:
a) Use well defined libraries (vector operations etc.)
b) Know something about the hardware to write loops in the 'correct' way for the compiler to figure out what's going on.
A more difficult problem is how to compile for 'loosely coupled' architectures (like the cell) - Even if each individual cell contains vector processors.
Now you have to write what effectively amounts to large amounts of multithreaded code - behaving cooperatively on a system with an unknown number of nodes.
Now you either need:
a) A really intelligent compiler
or
b) A really intelligent programmer
One question which was not addressed fully in the article was how do you compile/test programs for this thing.
The potential of parallel architectures has never been in doubt since the early days of the Cray monsters - but how to compile code to use all the features efficiently has.
I don't believe that we see the full advantage of these types of architecture exploited without some similar break-through in software tools.
Mind you the hardware rocks...
Does this imply that reasonable steps should be taken by gun manufactures to prevents guns from being used for crimes?
Oh I'm sorry that's unconstitutional...