Now I admit I didn't do more than speed-read the first bit of the linked paper for this protocol, but at first glance it looks to utilize three separate "encryption wrapper" stages, where having a known static key embedded would only defeat one of those three.
I can't say if that is enough to do as you claim however maybe you're right.
So you go through nine jurisdictions, get a court warrant in each and find the decryption key is 0xDEADBEEF. Then what?
On the political side, I can't answer your question because I am of the belief this can't possibly work politically. There's no real need to break something that was broken from the start after all.
Why is it that kids these days spend days upon days watching people play video games on Youtube and Twitch when they could spend those days playing games themselves? While we may never find out why
Why is it that kids and adults these days spend days upon days watching people play sports games on TV and Cable when they could spend those days playing sports games themselves? While we may never find out why
What if one of those "democratic governments" is the U.S.? Then it is just one government sending eight agents overseas, each with a $5 wrench, to "persuade" the other operators to "agree" that the message must be decrypted. They don't need to go to those governments, they just need to get the guy sitting at the terminal.
Agreed.
Maybe if all the people claiming to be the "good guys" actually followed the rule of law, that may not be a problem. But unfortunately that is not the case so we will never really know.
It would be great if the US, and in fact all of the "5 eyes", were not included due to not being democratic, but I don't expect for a second that will be the case.
A second best option would be for the "5 eyes" to count only as one, but that is still vulnerable to the lack of rule of law as you point out.
The guy making the protocol seems to be under some impression the US wouldn't be willing to physically attack the presidents of the remaining 4 nations to obtain access to their keys, because such a thing would be an act of war.
But as history has shown, the US cares not for such laws and would be more than willing to do exactly that if no legal option was available to them. (While hypocritically using the same thing as an excuse to legally go to war with and destroy any nation that attempted a physical attack on our highest government officials)
That is why I don't believe my cynicism is misplaced when I say this idea won't work as intended at all.
It's DiceDot now. Corporate probably has focus groups of soccer moms saying the site assumes too much knowledge.
As amusing as that thought is, you don't need a focus group, just look at the anon coward posts in literally every single story that complain about not spelling out common 30 year old technical terms - like TCP or DOS. They even bitch that a link to wikipedia is too much work for them.
Granted that just raises the question "Why are we listening to ACs?", but sadly these people are not made up boogiemen, and their numbers seem to be on the rise:/
Is he claiming he found a way to safely have backdoored communications?
Nope. He is claiming he has implemented a method requiring multiple key servers to unanimously decide to work together to decrypt a message.
Specifically there are nine servers, all of which must be used together. If 8 of the 9 wish to decrypt something but 1 chooses not to assist, the message can not be decrypted.
He then suggests in his opinion that if those nine servers are spread around the world such that one is in control of by different democratic governments, it would follow that all nine of those governments must then agree the message in question needs to be decrypted.
So far as the axiom holds that "technology can do nothing except enforce a policy" - he is correct.
The question remains about those policies of course, not just at the time the nine servers are deployed and used but also for all time into the future. Something he states no opinion on, which is also probably wise. My own cynicism has great doubts about that as well.
It's also worth pointing out that at least in the alpha stage of testing the protocol is currently in, this backdoor really is a "US backdoor", as for testing purposes all nine of those key servers are hosted within amazon cloud, so all under control of the same government. During development testing this is fine, but the people testing the protocol should be absolutely aware of this fact. Test the other aspects of the protocol, assure the protocol as implemented matches exactly the theory. Find and fix bugs. But it is not to be used for trusted communications yet.
The next major hurdle of course is the very policies that need to be drafted and in place before the servers are codified to enforce them. You know how governments and policies can be some times. It very well may be the case the policies never actually make it to a state anyone agrees is worth using, making the protocol a bit useless, even if not at the fault of the protocol itself.
Don't you by very nature of the HTTP protocol need to ASK for this content? I know this is splitting hairs but I can't imagine that your reasoning would fly.
That's the entire point. I asked for an image. Not executable code, not an image with executable code, but an image. (Note I made no complaint about getting that image I asked for)
Say you ask me to send you money. Are you arguing you have no right to complain about the anthrax in the envelope so long as I actually did include money along with it too?
It could also be argued, much more concisely in fact, that the advertisers are guilty of violating the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act, one count accessing a computer system without authorization, multiple counts accessing computer networks without authorization, plus the multiple counts of fraud and counterfeiting their malware performs on their behalf.
I'm OK with a DMCA violation that is a $150,000 fine (max penalty) so long as these people get their 60 years in prison (max sentence) as well.
Then there's the awesome Witcher devs, who simply flip the bird to copy pro altogether, I still see cracks(aka copies, in this case) show up for witcher 3 but the game has done fabulously, simply because it's awesome, everyone loves them and wants to see them be successful for making something so wonderful and for steadfastly refusing to be dicks about DLC. That's the best copy pro of all.
Funny that is the first example I see provided.
Just Cause 3 has been in my Steam wishlist since it was announced at E3. The "This game requires 3rd party DRM registration" message that showed twice in a row kept me from pre-ordering, but remained in my wishlist on the off chance it was some mistake or typo.
Unsure of the exact release date but I first saw it Dec 4th (A Friday) and it wasn't out the weekend before, so was sometime that week. The multiple 3rd party signup warning was no mistake or typo. And I still refuse to purchase it. Each week I am in steam catching up on the prior five days of wishlist additions and new releases, I keep debating on removing it. I generally drop over $100 per week at steam, and in some cases with many good games coming out (this past November and December being good examples) occasionally 2-3 times that. Those two months combined I spent just under $800.
Witcher 3 I dropped the $60 for right after release (again on the weekend - such is the free time schedule these days) I've since also purchased the full expansion pack (aka season pass) for another $25, so a total of $85 spent so far.
This also urged me to purchase Witcher 1 to complete the series (I already had Witcher 2 from a few years ago, also bought it on release at $60) I think #1 cost $15 or $20 for the enhanced edition by the time I bought it.
That's a total of $160-165 in a 6ish year period going just to CD Project Red - exactly because they spend their time and developer man hours catering to me, the paying gamer.
Just Cause / Squenix however spends their time and developer hours catering to non-paying "pirates", literally at the expense of people like me, the paying gamer. They went out of their way to cripple my experience to instead make exactly zero dollars more than they would have before, except they also lost at least my $60 if not very likely more.
All due to DRM that accuses me of being a thieving criminal because I paid them money, and prevents me from playing the very game I paid money for. I never hear that complaint from pirates, who so far have always gotten to play the game they paid nothing for, even if not on release day as being the only trade off.
Fuck that, and fuck DRM.
These companies need to learn that it is NOT the pirates that will pay their bills and paychecks, it is only us paying customers that can do that, and only if you don't smack us in the face with legal threats and insults while giving us a shittier product than you give to the non-paying customers.
Theft does not require me to take something you already have. Theft can require me to take something you are entitled to but you haven't received it yet.
I am entitled to a million dollars of your money. Since that check hasn't arrived or cleared, you are a thief. I hope you go to jail for it:P
I don't recall anything overtly sexist, save perhaps for Riker's alpha male swagger, but I'm assuming that was because they wanted some sort of James T. Kirk in the show. I do remember Data bedding one of his ship mates, maybe that's what they're talking about.
There is a lot of really horrible season 1 episodes with things like sexism and racism taken to extremes.
The ep you are thinking of was "The Naked Now", although that script was a direct copy from the original series ep "The Naked Time", so I can understand your conclusion regarding having a Kirk figure in TNG.
<enable-nerd level='high'>
But there was also "Justice", a planet of nearly naked people who spend most of their time "playing at making love" (although also attempting to punish Wesley with death for breaking a law he committed no act to break. Although killing Wesley, not sure I want to hold that against them:P )
"Haven" which promotes the forced marriage of Troy against her will as a good thing. "The Dauphin" in s2 is the same theme just the forced marriage of a non-show regular against her will.
"Angel One" with the planet only women can be in government and men only sex slaves or laborers (not feminism, but sexism against males none the less)
"Up The Long Ladder" where picard forces the peoples of two worlds to forced mating and polygamy/polyandry, where one of those worlds are people consisting of only clones who don't have sex, had sexual reproduction evolved out of their makeup generations past, and find the idea both disgusting and repulsive. (closest bad analogy I can think of: imagine forced sex with someone of the same gender if you are straight, or with someone of the opposite sex if your not. Next, imagine you are the "lucky" one that gets the forced sex with someone who prefers making their own new holes that you didn't have before) Picard even makes fun of them and the situation saying "In time they will get used to it, and maybe even enjoy it" followed by laughter of the bridge crew present. Yes Picard, let's assign to you 5 husbands with forced sex every day and night, and see how much you "maybe even learn to enjoy it":P
And the worst IMHO is "The Child", where Troy is raped in her sleep and impregnated by an alien being, where multiple times through the show she behaves and talks as if she enjoyed it, and that it was the best experience of her life. Note she wasn't just referring to having/raising the child, but the entire experience explicitly including the impregnation, despite not being awake during. No feelings of being violated, not even a "mixed bag" sort of thing, just a wonderful experience through and through.
Some honorable mentions are "Where No One Has Gone Before" awkwardly and painfully exploring all of the joys of man-boy-love between Wesley and that traveler guy. (Though I admit everything was "only implied" and not outright stated, so it's understandable if one decides to not interpret the show in that way)
Plus "Code of Honor", where in it is shown in the trek universe there actually is a planet of all black people, and they only get the one, with a leader that talks like James Earl Jones with an extra helping of tribal ebonics. (Disgustingly an episode completely forgotten about a couple years later when writer Michael Baron publicly claimed that black people aren't specifically being excluded from being actors on the show, it's just that in LA there are not many black actors in existence to choose from. Of course obviously not true but this ep proves it isn't even true in his own tiny sphere of influence let alone in general.)
I'm sure you can find even longer lists of sexism and such in trek if you look. These are just the ones that stand out to me personally as particularly embarrassing to have watched.
There's not much prior to 1983 that can't be fixed with new parts from Mouser/Digikey/whoever, a soldering iron, some time, and possibly a low-end oscilloscope.
Not that I agree with GP of course (Kids these days, so spoiled by the little things like "standards" and "compatibility") But you left one item out of your bill of materials - someone that knows of those things and what to do with them beyond burning themselves:P
For a non-technical person not in the know (or knowing someone that is), that can initially seem pretty expensive, if they even realize it is possible at all. Keep in mind non-technical people these days believe that when Windows won't boot, the entire computer is broken and needs thrown away and replaced. Even the "I know it's just a software problem but I don't know what to do about it" crowd seems to be dwindling away to nothing.
Ironically, it's pretty likely someone at the data recovery service they paid either had someone like that on staff already, or knows of someone to do work on their own older computers, used to read the media provided by the client.
BTW I don't at all mean to belittle our EE brethren by likening them to a BOM line item, we're all friends here right? Or if not, just call me "Mr Keyboard Pecker":P
A more likely cause of the problem is that computers that ran CP/M typically had unusual disk drives - that is, the number of tracks, sectors per track, etc, varied tremendously between manufacturer.
I still have an Apple II ZVX4 controller card to connect to a shugart 8" floppy drive, and those drives were seemingly designed around having a different track/sector layout between identical model drives from the same manufacturer.
The drive had two adjustable POTs to slightly change exactly where within the region a track should roughly be to where it actually is, and from what I remember also being able to slightly adjust the rotational speed.
This was explained in the manual as a method to provide compatibility with floppy disks from other computers using the exact same hardware setup, let alone different brands makes and models.
For some reason I also seem to remember similar adjustment trims and pots, although internally, in the original apple disk II drive (The full height, typically black rough plastic face, ribbon cable based drives), but it wouldn't surprise me if such things remained internal for the newer "no user serviceable parts inside" disk II drives in standard beige at half height with "standard" db25 cables.
I guess it was all worth it to have just over 1 megabyte of storage per disk (600k per side) compared to the 5.25" disks that stored 160k (80k per side) under dos 3 and prodos.
Those 10 megabyte hard drives were completely out of my price range as a kid:P
[Transcript of operator overheard in surgery control operations]
OK lets just cut this open here. Now spread these ribs open. Yes that's it, one more cut and clamp and...
Uh oh sir, it looks like your Oracle licencing isn't up to date. I'm contractually bound not to support this setup as-is. You'll need to contact your account representative first.
I'll just drain this general anesthetic out of you lickity split and let you go do what you need to do, then please call our main number back and reference ticket #429437
Have a good day and thank you for using Jonney Surgen!
In particular, you shouldn't define the character primitive to be functionally equivalent to a substring of unbounded length.
Do your strings hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you cast them as an int? Can you cast them as a float? Do you constantly manipulate em, with that null string terminator? Do your strings hang low?
Be sure to tip your unbounded length strings, we'll be here all night.
Also, another fail in this whole slashdot in 2016 is that this news was all over everywhere else. I keep seeing news fit for non nerds on here that made its way to me hours, days, or even weeks earlier on other sites.
Yes, that's how Slashdot works. It's pretty difficult to REpost a story if it hasn't been posted for the first time yet.
Has UNIX ever considered the poor people who actually were born on 19700101? And who have to prove it to every single damn webpage out there?
Unix time was (occasionally is) represented by a 32 bit signed integer, meaning both zero and negative values can be stored just fine.
Only people who are 115 years old or more would have any problems on those old unix systems. Specifically dates prior to 1901-12-13.
However even that limitation has been fixed roughly a decade ago when "time_t" was modified to be a 64 bit signed integer.
Negative values in 64 bits is supposed to be a couple hundred billion years (or so I've been told, I don't have that many fingers to count on to verify), which should be sufficient to handle the full age of the universe up through now, and into the future as positive values well past when anyone in the human race will likely care:P
Why can't you sell a phone? the license goes with the hardware.
So you finally admit Apple is fully licensed to use these patents (you just said the license goes with the hardware Apple purchased to put in their phones)
That's actually a great idea. A wireless charging device would fit in perfectly with this type of thing, and can be protected from direct contact just like the LCD could be.
As you note the state of wireless charging standards today sort of sucks, but there are a couple standards being pushed they could work with, and anything to push adoption faster is likely to be only a good thing.
Hopefully these things are engineered such that the charging section can be upgraded or replaced as time goes on.
Damn, they have some good technology if they've design 55 inch screens that for 12 years can (a) work properly even under the most optimistic of conditions, and (b) resist vandalism for 12 years.
Not really, it's pretty easy to do.
There are plenty of "LCD Armor" enclosures available to lock an LCD in that still allow viewing and are designed to keep the monitor safe from all but the most extreme forms of abuse. ATMs and kiosks at the mall have used them for years with a pretty decent track record.
Additionally the enclosures have a key lock so they can be opened, thus when the LCD dies it can be replaced with another working one, which they can do for 12 years if they wish.
You are quite correct about the USB ports being a horrible idea though. There is no real way to protect their connector(s), and you just know at least one asshole out there will plug in a USB zapper to fry the power supply itself, not to mention being filled with gum or worse.
They really should remove the USB charger part of this thing for their own benefit, while at the same time no one else should use the USB charger part of this thing for their own safety.
Yeah, exactly, except someone who is handy could just get a short USB extension cable, strip back the outer jacket, expose the data pair (white and green twisted pair, I believe) and just cut them, then put heatshrink or electrical tape over where you modded the cable and you're done. Would cost you less than a dollar and take all of 10 minutes of your time.
I've done pretty much exactly that before, although there was a couple additional steps involved.
This was way back when the iPhone 3g just came out, and I was annoyed that most (real) USB chargers would do nothing more than connect the GND and +5v pins, which by USB spec is how the charger states it only has 500ma available. To inform a device there is more amperage available, the USB spec states you need to have voltage on the two data pins.
The iPhone 3g could suck down up to 1000ma if available, which involved having +2.0v on one data pin, and a bit more on the other data pin. (+2.75v going by the link I found below. Sorry, the memory isn't too good these days)
I had a USB extension cable laying around that had a normal USB connector on one end, and a small weighted plastic base on the other end with the jack. It was intended to sit on your desk and let you plug in flash drives and be all pretty and convenient I think. But to me the plastic base was the perfect place to solder in the two resistors between +5v and the data pins and keep all the ugliness out of sight.
Doing the soldering free-hand instead of digging up some perfboard made it take about 15 minutes, so you are pretty spot on. I already had the parts laying around so didn't cost me anything, but that USB cable on amazon above was just the first result I found so I'm sure isn't the cheapest available, but even that is only $7.
Since then the "USB Condoms" other people have been posting about have dropped in price to about the same as building one yourself, plus they look a lot slicker and professionally made, and quite short compared to my 3 foot monstrosity, so I just purchase them now.
Not only does such a device help protect your hardware from the unknowns out there, but in the case of Apple connecting an iOS device over USB would auto-launch iTunes, an annoyingly long and most of the time unwanted process just to get a bit of recharge. There have been other devices in the past I remember doing similar, auto running some software when the computer detects it. Totally annoying when one is capable of running programs on their own when needed:P
Thankfully Android never went down that path, but even there a USB condom is useful as the devices usually show up as a flash drive with your camera pictures on it which could be copied from you unwantingly, and a few models I have seen expose this as read/write! At work I have group policies set to deny read access to any "\\\\.\\autorun.inf" file (aka that file at the root of any drive path) as well as to log to a server the fact explorer.exe tried to read one along with the exe name it tries to run. A co-workers Android phone got infected by Windows malware we discovered this way, as some infected PC copied an autorun.inf and a [random-letters].exe to his phone, to attempt to infect other Windows PCs it got connected to. Obviously the phone itself wasn't infected, and as he mainly only plugged the thing in at home (Linux) and at work (Windows yes but with the above GPO), and so he never noticed it was playing infectious carrier to anything he plugged into.
Now of course that won't protect you against someone sabotaging the port so it outright damages someone's device; has anyone heard of someone intentionally sabotaging USB ports so anything you plug into them gets damaged?
Slashdot Mirror
At least I don't know any algorithm that can prove the correct decryption key is embedded without actually decrypting the message.
On the technical side this does exist and is quite possible.
It is known as Secret Sharing
One example algorithm for this is called Shamir's Secret Sharing
Now I admit I didn't do more than speed-read the first bit of the linked paper for this protocol, but at first glance it looks to utilize three separate "encryption wrapper" stages, where having a known static key embedded would only defeat one of those three.
I can't say if that is enough to do as you claim however maybe you're right.
So you go through nine jurisdictions, get a court warrant in each and find the decryption key is 0xDEADBEEF. Then what?
On the political side, I can't answer your question because I am of the belief this can't possibly work politically. There's no real need to break something that was broken from the start after all.
Why is it that kids these days spend days upon days watching people play video games on Youtube and Twitch when they could spend those days playing games themselves? While we may never find out why
Why is it that kids and adults these days spend days upon days watching people play sports games on TV and Cable when they could spend those days playing sports games themselves? While we may never find out why
What if one of those "democratic governments" is the U.S.? Then it is just one government sending eight agents overseas, each with a $5 wrench, to "persuade" the other operators to "agree" that the message must be decrypted. They don't need to go to those governments, they just need to get the guy sitting at the terminal.
Agreed.
Maybe if all the people claiming to be the "good guys" actually followed the rule of law, that may not be a problem. But unfortunately that is not the case so we will never really know.
It would be great if the US, and in fact all of the "5 eyes", were not included due to not being democratic, but I don't expect for a second that will be the case.
A second best option would be for the "5 eyes" to count only as one, but that is still vulnerable to the lack of rule of law as you point out.
The guy making the protocol seems to be under some impression the US wouldn't be willing to physically attack the presidents of the remaining 4 nations to obtain access to their keys, because such a thing would be an act of war.
But as history has shown, the US cares not for such laws and would be more than willing to do exactly that if no legal option was available to them.
(While hypocritically using the same thing as an excuse to legally go to war with and destroy any nation that attempted a physical attack on our highest government officials)
That is why I don't believe my cynicism is misplaced when I say this idea won't work as intended at all.
How can we trust that there isn't a deal (perhaps made under duress) to give one of those countries access to all keys in secret?
Like I said, you can't trust that.
It's DiceDot now. Corporate probably has focus groups of soccer moms saying the site assumes too much knowledge.
As amusing as that thought is, you don't need a focus group, just look at the anon coward posts in literally every single story that complain about not spelling out common 30 year old technical terms - like TCP or DOS.
They even bitch that a link to wikipedia is too much work for them.
Granted that just raises the question "Why are we listening to ACs?", but sadly these people are not made up boogiemen, and their numbers seem to be on the rise :/
Is he claiming he found a way to safely have backdoored communications?
Nope. He is claiming he has implemented a method requiring multiple key servers to unanimously decide to work together to decrypt a message.
Specifically there are nine servers, all of which must be used together. If 8 of the 9 wish to decrypt something but 1 chooses not to assist, the message can not be decrypted.
He then suggests in his opinion that if those nine servers are spread around the world such that one is in control of by different democratic governments, it would follow that all nine of those governments must then agree the message in question needs to be decrypted.
So far as the axiom holds that "technology can do nothing except enforce a policy" - he is correct.
The question remains about those policies of course, not just at the time the nine servers are deployed and used but also for all time into the future.
Something he states no opinion on, which is also probably wise. My own cynicism has great doubts about that as well.
It's also worth pointing out that at least in the alpha stage of testing the protocol is currently in, this backdoor really is a "US backdoor", as for testing purposes all nine of those key servers are hosted within amazon cloud, so all under control of the same government.
During development testing this is fine, but the people testing the protocol should be absolutely aware of this fact. Test the other aspects of the protocol, assure the protocol as implemented matches exactly the theory. Find and fix bugs. But it is not to be used for trusted communications yet.
The next major hurdle of course is the very policies that need to be drafted and in place before the servers are codified to enforce them.
You know how governments and policies can be some times. It very well may be the case the policies never actually make it to a state anyone agrees is worth using, making the protocol a bit useless, even if not at the fault of the protocol itself.
Don't you by very nature of the HTTP protocol need to ASK for this content? I know this is splitting hairs but I can't imagine that your reasoning would fly.
That's the entire point.
I asked for an image. Not executable code, not an image with executable code, but an image.
(Note I made no complaint about getting that image I asked for)
Say you ask me to send you money. Are you arguing you have no right to complain about the anthrax in the envelope so long as I actually did include money along with it too?
It could also be argued, much more concisely in fact, that the advertisers are guilty of violating the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act, one count accessing a computer system without authorization, multiple counts accessing computer networks without authorization, plus the multiple counts of fraud and counterfeiting their malware performs on their behalf.
I'm OK with a DMCA violation that is a $150,000 fine (max penalty) so long as these people get their 60 years in prison (max sentence) as well.
Then there's the awesome Witcher devs, who simply flip the bird to copy pro altogether, I still see cracks(aka copies, in this case) show up for witcher 3 but the game has done fabulously, simply because it's awesome, everyone loves them and wants to see them be successful for making something so wonderful and for steadfastly refusing to be dicks about DLC. That's the best copy pro of all.
Funny that is the first example I see provided.
Just Cause 3 has been in my Steam wishlist since it was announced at E3. The "This game requires 3rd party DRM registration" message that showed twice in a row kept me from pre-ordering, but remained in my wishlist on the off chance it was some mistake or typo.
Unsure of the exact release date but I first saw it Dec 4th (A Friday) and it wasn't out the weekend before, so was sometime that week.
The multiple 3rd party signup warning was no mistake or typo. And I still refuse to purchase it.
Each week I am in steam catching up on the prior five days of wishlist additions and new releases, I keep debating on removing it.
I generally drop over $100 per week at steam, and in some cases with many good games coming out (this past November and December being good examples) occasionally 2-3 times that. Those two months combined I spent just under $800.
Witcher 3 I dropped the $60 for right after release (again on the weekend - such is the free time schedule these days)
I've since also purchased the full expansion pack (aka season pass) for another $25, so a total of $85 spent so far.
This also urged me to purchase Witcher 1 to complete the series (I already had Witcher 2 from a few years ago, also bought it on release at $60)
I think #1 cost $15 or $20 for the enhanced edition by the time I bought it.
That's a total of $160-165 in a 6ish year period going just to CD Project Red - exactly because they spend their time and developer man hours catering to me, the paying gamer.
Just Cause / Squenix however spends their time and developer hours catering to non-paying "pirates", literally at the expense of people like me, the paying gamer.
They went out of their way to cripple my experience to instead make exactly zero dollars more than they would have before, except they also lost at least my $60 if not very likely more.
All due to DRM that accuses me of being a thieving criminal because I paid them money, and prevents me from playing the very game I paid money for.
I never hear that complaint from pirates, who so far have always gotten to play the game they paid nothing for, even if not on release day as being the only trade off.
Fuck that, and fuck DRM.
These companies need to learn that it is NOT the pirates that will pay their bills and paychecks, it is only us paying customers that can do that, and only if you don't smack us in the face with legal threats and insults while giving us a shittier product than you give to the non-paying customers.
Theft does not require me to take something you already have. Theft can require me to take something you are entitled to but you haven't received it yet.
I am entitled to a million dollars of your money. :P
Since that check hasn't arrived or cleared, you are a thief. I hope you go to jail for it
I don't recall anything overtly sexist, save perhaps for Riker's alpha male swagger, but I'm assuming that was because they wanted some sort of James T. Kirk in the show. I do remember Data bedding one of his ship mates, maybe that's what they're talking about.
There is a lot of really horrible season 1 episodes with things like sexism and racism taken to extremes.
The ep you are thinking of was "The Naked Now", although that script was a direct copy from the original series ep "The Naked Time", so I can understand your conclusion regarding having a Kirk figure in TNG.
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But there was also "Justice", a planet of nearly naked people who spend most of their time "playing at making love" (although also attempting to punish Wesley with death for breaking a law he committed no act to break. Although killing Wesley, not sure I want to hold that against them :P )
"Haven" which promotes the forced marriage of Troy against her will as a good thing.
"The Dauphin" in s2 is the same theme just the forced marriage of a non-show regular against her will.
"Angel One" with the planet only women can be in government and men only sex slaves or laborers (not feminism, but sexism against males none the less)
"Up The Long Ladder" where picard forces the peoples of two worlds to forced mating and polygamy/polyandry, where one of those worlds are people consisting of only clones who don't have sex, had sexual reproduction evolved out of their makeup generations past, and find the idea both disgusting and repulsive. :P
(closest bad analogy I can think of: imagine forced sex with someone of the same gender if you are straight, or with someone of the opposite sex if your not. Next, imagine you are the "lucky" one that gets the forced sex with someone who prefers making their own new holes that you didn't have before)
Picard even makes fun of them and the situation saying "In time they will get used to it, and maybe even enjoy it" followed by laughter of the bridge crew present.
Yes Picard, let's assign to you 5 husbands with forced sex every day and night, and see how much you "maybe even learn to enjoy it"
And the worst IMHO is "The Child", where Troy is raped in her sleep and impregnated by an alien being, where multiple times through the show she behaves and talks as if she enjoyed it, and that it was the best experience of her life.
Note she wasn't just referring to having/raising the child, but the entire experience explicitly including the impregnation, despite not being awake during.
No feelings of being violated, not even a "mixed bag" sort of thing, just a wonderful experience through and through.
Some honorable mentions are "Where No One Has Gone Before" awkwardly and painfully exploring all of the joys of man-boy-love between Wesley and that traveler guy.
(Though I admit everything was "only implied" and not outright stated, so it's understandable if one decides to not interpret the show in that way)
Plus "Code of Honor", where in it is shown in the trek universe there actually is a planet of all black people, and they only get the one, with a leader that talks like James Earl Jones with an extra helping of tribal ebonics.
(Disgustingly an episode completely forgotten about a couple years later when writer Michael Baron publicly claimed that black people aren't specifically being excluded from being actors on the show, it's just that in LA there are not many black actors in existence to choose from. Of course obviously not true but this ep proves it isn't even true in his own tiny sphere of influence let alone in general.)
I'm sure you can find even longer lists of sexism and such in trek if you look. These are just the ones that stand out to me personally as particularly embarrassing to have watched.
There's not much prior to 1983 that can't be fixed with new parts from Mouser/Digikey/whoever, a soldering iron, some time, and possibly a low-end oscilloscope.
Not that I agree with GP of course (Kids these days, so spoiled by the little things like "standards" and "compatibility") :P
But you left one item out of your bill of materials - someone that knows of those things and what to do with them beyond burning themselves
For a non-technical person not in the know (or knowing someone that is), that can initially seem pretty expensive, if they even realize it is possible at all.
Keep in mind non-technical people these days believe that when Windows won't boot, the entire computer is broken and needs thrown away and replaced. Even the "I know it's just a software problem but I don't know what to do about it" crowd seems to be dwindling away to nothing.
Ironically, it's pretty likely someone at the data recovery service they paid either had someone like that on staff already, or knows of someone to do work on their own older computers, used to read the media provided by the client.
BTW I don't at all mean to belittle our EE brethren by likening them to a BOM line item, we're all friends here right? Or if not, just call me "Mr Keyboard Pecker" :P
A more likely cause of the problem is that computers that ran CP/M typically had unusual disk drives - that is, the number of tracks, sectors per track, etc, varied tremendously between manufacturer.
I still have an Apple II ZVX4 controller card to connect to a shugart 8" floppy drive, and those drives were seemingly designed around having a different track/sector layout between identical model drives from the same manufacturer.
The drive had two adjustable POTs to slightly change exactly where within the region a track should roughly be to where it actually is, and from what I remember also being able to slightly adjust the rotational speed.
This was explained in the manual as a method to provide compatibility with floppy disks from other computers using the exact same hardware setup, let alone different brands makes and models.
For some reason I also seem to remember similar adjustment trims and pots, although internally, in the original apple disk II drive (The full height, typically black rough plastic face, ribbon cable based drives), but it wouldn't surprise me if such things remained internal for the newer "no user serviceable parts inside" disk II drives in standard beige at half height with "standard" db25 cables.
I guess it was all worth it to have just over 1 megabyte of storage per disk (600k per side) compared to the 5.25" disks that stored 160k (80k per side) under dos 3 and prodos.
Those 10 megabyte hard drives were completely out of my price range as a kid :P
[Transcript of operator overheard in surgery control operations]
OK lets just cut this open here. Now spread these ribs open. Yes that's it, one more cut and clamp and...
Uh oh sir, it looks like your Oracle licencing isn't up to date. I'm contractually bound not to support this setup as-is. You'll need to contact your account representative first.
I'll just drain this general anesthetic out of you lickity split and let you go do what you need to do, then please call our main number back and reference ticket #429437
Have a good day and thank you for using Jonney Surgen!
So they won't give to Pakistan what they gave to India, eh?
According to the article you posted and this slashdot article, they did give to Pakistan what they gave to India - which was absolutely nothing.
Didn't you read either one of them?
In particular, you shouldn't define the character primitive to be functionally equivalent to a substring of unbounded length.
Do your strings hang low? Do they wobble to and fro?
Can you cast them as an int? Can you cast them as a float?
Do you constantly manipulate em, with that null string terminator?
Do your strings hang low?
Be sure to tip your unbounded length strings, we'll be here all night.
Also, another fail in this whole slashdot in 2016 is that this news was all over everywhere else. I keep seeing news fit for non nerds on here that made its way to me hours, days, or even weeks earlier on other sites.
Yes, that's how Slashdot works. It's pretty difficult to REpost a story if it hasn't been posted for the first time yet.
31 fingers actually. I lost the 32nd in the great Canadian bacon catastrophe of '78.
Has UNIX ever considered the poor people who actually were born on 19700101? And who have to prove it to every single damn webpage out there?
Unix time was (occasionally is) represented by a 32 bit signed integer, meaning both zero and negative values can be stored just fine.
Only people who are 115 years old or more would have any problems on those old unix systems.
Specifically dates prior to 1901-12-13.
However even that limitation has been fixed roughly a decade ago when "time_t" was modified to be a 64 bit signed integer.
Negative values in 64 bits is supposed to be a couple hundred billion years (or so I've been told, I don't have that many fingers to count on to verify), which should be sufficient to handle the full age of the universe up through now, and into the future as positive values well past when anyone in the human race will likely care :P
Why can't you sell a phone? the license goes with the hardware.
So you finally admit Apple is fully licensed to use these patents (you just said the license goes with the hardware Apple purchased to put in their phones)
That's actually a great idea. A wireless charging device would fit in perfectly with this type of thing, and can be protected from direct contact just like the LCD could be.
As you note the state of wireless charging standards today sort of sucks, but there are a couple standards being pushed they could work with, and anything to push adoption faster is likely to be only a good thing.
Hopefully these things are engineered such that the charging section can be upgraded or replaced as time goes on.
If not, who made this decision, and what qualified this individual to do so?
The dogs owner made the decision, and he is qualified because he isn't an animal torturer like you who enjoys seeing living things in agony.
Sincerely, fuck you.
Damn, they have some good technology if they've design 55 inch screens that for 12 years can (a) work properly even under the most optimistic of conditions, and (b) resist vandalism for 12 years.
Not really, it's pretty easy to do.
There are plenty of "LCD Armor" enclosures available to lock an LCD in that still allow viewing and are designed to keep the monitor safe from all but the most extreme forms of abuse.
ATMs and kiosks at the mall have used them for years with a pretty decent track record.
Additionally the enclosures have a key lock so they can be opened, thus when the LCD dies it can be replaced with another working one, which they can do for 12 years if they wish.
You are quite correct about the USB ports being a horrible idea though.
There is no real way to protect their connector(s), and you just know at least one asshole out there will plug in a USB zapper to fry the power supply itself, not to mention being filled with gum or worse.
They really should remove the USB charger part of this thing for their own benefit, while at the same time no one else should use the USB charger part of this thing for their own safety.
Yeah, exactly, except someone who is handy could just get a short USB extension cable, strip back the outer jacket, expose the data pair (white and green twisted pair, I believe) and just cut them, then put heatshrink or electrical tape over where you modded the cable and you're done. Would cost you less than a dollar and take all of 10 minutes of your time.
I've done pretty much exactly that before, although there was a couple additional steps involved.
This was way back when the iPhone 3g just came out, and I was annoyed that most (real) USB chargers would do nothing more than connect the GND and +5v pins, which by USB spec is how the charger states it only has 500ma available.
To inform a device there is more amperage available, the USB spec states you need to have voltage on the two data pins.
The iPhone 3g could suck down up to 1000ma if available, which involved having +2.0v on one data pin, and a bit more on the other data pin. (+2.75v going by the link I found below. Sorry, the memory isn't too good these days)
I had a USB extension cable laying around that had a normal USB connector on one end, and a small weighted plastic base on the other end with the jack. It was intended to sit on your desk and let you plug in flash drives and be all pretty and convenient I think.
But to me the plastic base was the perfect place to solder in the two resistors between +5v and the data pins and keep all the ugliness out of sight.
The cable was something like this, although not the exact same model:
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-5ft-Desktop-Extension-Cable/dp/B001K9BFB8
Here is a lookup table of resistances/voltages needed on the two data pins to signal various amperages:
https://www.voltaicsystems.com/blog/choosing-usb-pin-voltages-for-iphones-and-ipads/
Doing the soldering free-hand instead of digging up some perfboard made it take about 15 minutes, so you are pretty spot on.
I already had the parts laying around so didn't cost me anything, but that USB cable on amazon above was just the first result I found so I'm sure isn't the cheapest available, but even that is only $7.
Since then the "USB Condoms" other people have been posting about have dropped in price to about the same as building one yourself, plus they look a lot slicker and professionally made, and quite short compared to my 3 foot monstrosity, so I just purchase them now.
Not only does such a device help protect your hardware from the unknowns out there, but in the case of Apple connecting an iOS device over USB would auto-launch iTunes, an annoyingly long and most of the time unwanted process just to get a bit of recharge. :P
There have been other devices in the past I remember doing similar, auto running some software when the computer detects it. Totally annoying when one is capable of running programs on their own when needed
Thankfully Android never went down that path, but even there a USB condom is useful as the devices usually show up as a flash drive with your camera pictures on it which could be copied from you unwantingly, and a few models I have seen expose this as read/write!
At work I have group policies set to deny read access to any "\\\\.\\autorun.inf" file (aka that file at the root of any drive path) as well as to log to a server the fact explorer.exe tried to read one along with the exe name it tries to run.
A co-workers Android phone got infected by Windows malware we discovered this way, as some infected PC copied an autorun.inf and a [random-letters].exe to his phone, to attempt to infect other Windows PCs it got connected to.
Obviously the phone itself wasn't infected, and as he mainly only plugged the thing in at home (Linux) and at work (Windows yes but with the above GPO), and so he never noticed it was playing infectious carrier to anything he plugged into.
TL;DR - Always be safe and wrap yur wire!
Now of course that won't protect you against someone sabotaging the port so it outright damages someone's device; has anyone heard of someone intentionally sabotaging USB ports so anything you plug into them gets damaged?
Yup!
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/10/the-usb-killer-version-2-0/