First, I doubt if a anti-ship missile/ topedo use shaped-charge... Unlike the WWI era battleship, the hull is pretty thin nowadays. No need to design the war head in a way to penetrate the "armour".
This brings to the second point. The mechanisms of destruction is quite different: tank/armour vehicle have heavy armour. The warhead of RPG (or even tank shell) does not have that much of explosive... The design is to maximise the penentration, ie, produce a concentrated flow of super hot metal jet in the case of shaped charge. But for the ship scenario, it is more like weak (but huge) armour against big warhead. The 100kg of explosive can do a lot of raw damage... The same applies to artillary shell. I have heard a military expert's tv interview.... His comment was there will be a no show if a tank is being hit directly by a 155mm artillary shell. Even if the system can stop the shell from super-shield. The blast wave itself can problem kill the occupiers.... Of course, how to deliver that direct hit is another matter.... He said he just wanted to illustrate one point that protective system will fail at some point not matter how much money you put into it...
I would be interested to know how is this different from commerically available "helix" antenna.
I've being told the reason that the Navman GPS uses a helix antenna for their clip-on iPaq GPS. I have seen their engineer disassmbled one unit a while ago (2-3 yrs). The antenna is like a few wires glued on a piece of flexble plastic sheet. The sheet is rolled up to form a helix before placing into the enclosure.
In most cases, the reporters are refering to the monitoring/ high level control software (SCADA). It should not be that bad as long as NT is not controlling anything lower level and not connected anyhow to the outside...
If they really use windows for this kind of operation, I am not that surprise they are using NT rather than win2k/xp. The reason is simple. The ship was commissioned a while ago... At that time, winxp may not even come out, and win2k was not that stable. They need something that have an okay track record and reasonable stable. NT is a rational choice (although I would probably state away from MS OS for this sort of thing)....
Linford also told the conference that some 70 percent of spam is sent from China by American spam outfits who are hosting their servers with Chinese ISPs. In many cases the spammers have set up firewalls so that the ISPs can't actually see what's being hosted. "We keep battling with Chinese ISPs who don't understand what we are complaining about," said Linford
Here is an important point. No doubt there will be some Chinese ISPs decide to turn a blind eye on spammers' sites.... But, if everyone do that, the spammers do not need to firewall the ISP. Who knows what's actually happening over there?
As many around here have pointed out, the bulk (80%) of the spam are sent by compromised cable/DSL machines. In other words, even if you can find the IP the email is originated from, it offers no solution to you.
The "70%" figure mentioned earlir on refers to the percentage of url embedded in the spam (e.g. the store for the V1a4Ga) that uses an IP from China... If you manage to instruct your spam filter to read inside the email main body, you may have a solution.
On the other hand, I don't think it will be a long lasting solution.... If spammers can send spam thru compromised machine, they should be able to web host their site thru a compromised machine...
Or use a solution that is available now: Australia and New Zealand have adopted "plastic" notes for a while... I believe it is a big barrier for the cottage counterfeiting groups.
From the perspective of another New Zealander, I doubt the following statement, "Lots of people I know were spending hundreds of dollars a month on text charges with Vodafone"...
The voice mobile service in NZ is more expensive than most developed country. Here links to the most generous plan from Vodafone that is the major rival against Telecom. It is something like NZD$40 (about US$25) for 300 min of offpeak min. $1/min on peak hours... Forget about the daytime plans... They are 5 times more expansive. Since voice service is so expensive, most secondary and university students rely on text message for communication... Many of them are on prepaid as they cannot afford the monthly fee.
Here comes to the point: many of them found $40 expensive, do they have the few hundred buck for texting? Students in general don't earn much. Some university students receive allowance from the government at a rate of $500/month. Accomodation can easily be more than that...
IMO, the current chaos is created by the "all you can eat" mentality. I know many secondary students start sending bulk forward messages, joke etc... Before then, texting was for something more crucial like "I got stuck in the traffic", "Let's meet at xyz 7pm tonite"... It really catches Telecom off guard... We cannot exclude the possiblity that some of the texting records are broken with the aid of computers.
Telecom is the bully in the local telco market... But, in this event, I don't blame them for cutting the $10 unlimited texting deal... It is clear since the first day that the $10 deal is a limited promotion with time limit...
It may work if the whitelist is well maintained. Also, we will have to think about how to avoid filtering off legitmate email from people you don't know before. They can be students intended to apply to the University. They can also be customer completing email registration after purchased your product...
The proportion of SPAM originated from the SMTP server of ISP, universities and legitmate companies is pretty small. The proposed whitelist must be well maintained and include all.... Possibly in a way similar to domain name registration.
It is a common misunderstanding. While most web server these spams are pointing to may be located overseas, most of spams are originated from US. Mostly likely from hijacked fast cable/DSL connected home machines.
You may think it is okay to block email from China or even the whole Asia because you don't know some Asians in person, but please check again where your RAM, mobo, anime etc come from... A lot of companies and university have collaborations overseas as well...
We don't really have much options left... Basically, you will have to blacklist all the high boardband provider's IP range (rr, earthlink etc)... Sorry, geeks, your email server will no longer work... It is not really an ideal solution. The other idea is kind of similar to secured DNS, ie, mail server retrieves "good IPs" from a central server. Email originated elsewhere are assigned with very low priority or filtered out altogether.
Everyone needs to be registered with their mail server with the governing body (similar to the domain name idea), say for $100 per IP. It is not that expensive if you really need that... But, prohibitive for spammer... Yes, it makes home run email server more expensive... But, you cannot get a domain name for free anyway. Why should we expect email server to be free? It may be the solution to get the economy of spamming right again.
I am thinking about buying something similar (for ARM based, decent amount of flash, with ethernet). The best deal I can get is about $250 + complusive DHL option (another $40-50 to Australia/New Zeland). At the same time, I know I can get it for half the price if I can secure an order of 25+... Cannot find enough like minded geeks from my class to make a bulk order.
I feel that we can take advantage of some consumer electronics product... A lot of them are slightly modification of the reference design... Don't know where to start though... Any suggestion is welcome.
I feel that experience with ARM based embedded system will be a good item on an EE student's CV. I wonder what's the most cost effective platform that I should get if I want to play with it?
Many software houses cannot get the security right for their products. There must be some unique problem upon this.
First, it is the testing problem. For most features, e.g. number of request handled by a database, compression ratio of a video encoding software, the correctness of an accounting package, the test is easier to construct than the software itself. For security related enhancement, the difficulty is about the same (similar applies to stability).
Second, it is the actual developing problem. For most small/medium size software house (except the security related ones), I doubt if they have specialist who knows security/ encryption of that kind of stuff. One day, when the PHB wants some more security feature in the product, he would most likely deploying some programmers skilled in other areas to work on this. Obvious, it won't work that well....
I have read numerous comment in slashdot this morning regarding the trend is not green as the electricity-powered bike is going to replace the human powered ones...
Yes, it is a fact. On the other hand, I don't think people will say the use of public transport like train/bus is not green. People can always walk, but, when the city gets larger, some form of transport is neccessary. In Mao's days, it was "revolutionary" to act and look like a proletariat. You should not care about the appearance that much. Arriving work sweaty is acceptable. For urban white collar Chinese workers nowadays, I don't think it is (will be) the norm...
Then, what are the available solutions? Public transport is alway one. To determine whether e-bike is a environmentally sensible solution, we got to compare e-bike with vehicle, rather than walking. According to London Cycling Campagin, the typical power consumption (for electric-assist bike) is 100 to 150 watts, compared with about 15000 watts for a car. In other words, a typical car trip can power 100s of e-bike trip. My gut feeling is it is more efficent than bus (a bus take about 100 passenger, but I think it burns more fuel than car)... Plus, the biker can still get a bit of exercise. So, what else are you asking for?
Xiahua may not be the most reliable info source... On the other hand, I want to point out some interesting cultural difference to fellow./ers.
First, the teenagers are not necessary "seeking information" in internet cafe. They are not likely to be the politcal dissent kind that most are thinking about. Or else, they will try to be as low key as possible. The "illegal" info can also be porn, mp3 etc. The most usual activity is PC gaming.
Second, video arcade (internet cafe nowadays) can be a real trouble spot for the teens who don't want to go home at midnight. Car is not that accessible in most Asian countries. Flats are small. Teens need to find a place to have their first cigarette, need to have a place to get together with their in-group...
Quite naturally, fist fights and gangster problems are quite common in this sort of environment... The nature is a bit similar to a bar without alcohol. Even Hongkong under the UK colonial control (before 1997) need to impose similar rule for the video arcade, ie no children under 16 are allowed to enter standard video arcade. Quite a few secondary friends had got beaten up/ money taken by the gangsters in the video arcades when they were young (sneaked into of course)...
Curb the free internet access is of course one of the communist party's agenda. But, the very real teenage problem should not be overlooked either.
O/C Dothan is pretty cool even when compare with top of the line P4 or Athlon-64 x86-secret in English. On the other hand, Althlon-64 3400+ has a core clock speed of 2.2GHz, slightly lower than that of the O/C Dothan (2.4GHz)... Of course, if we talk about processing power/power consumption, Dothan wins by a mile...
Intel is starting to recover from the CPU design competition. The 3.4GHz clock speed P4 is just unnecessarily too high....
This can be hard to find, but it is really a very enjoyable experience. For the hikers/trampers/campers around here, try to bring some tea in your next trip. Tea works best with spring water. Nothing can beat a cup of green/brown tea in a cold winter night when you are in the wild.
Comparing the "exploitation" of your skills with, say, child labor in Hong Kong -- that's just word games. Check the fact first, dude! According to the CIA factbook, the GDP in HongKong is $27000/yr on par of Japan ($28000/yr). What sort of salary do you want to pay for their "child labor"??? The world has been changed many many times....
I am afraid you got to read the article as well, not just the charts... Latest distillation methods (MSF, MED) require less electricity, but after you add the extra heating requirement, the energy bill can still be higher than reverse osmosis (RO)...
An extract from Saltwater Desalination Chapter 1 For example, in addition to the 3,500 to 7,000 kWh/AF of energy required for electricity, the thermal energy needs for a MSF distillation plant is estimated at 270 million Btu/AF (about 26,000 kWh/AF);
c.f. the energy for 2 passes RO is 6500-12000 kWh/AF.
I am not adorsing what the Chinese Government is doing. But, I am afraid the WTO's dissatifaction about the US ban on online gambling is not a good comparison here.
If US bans any form of gambling outright, WTO will not step in. Since US has already got local operators (casinos) that offers similar product, WTO banning online gambling is not fair.
In the case of Chinese internet blocking, you cannot find a local Chinese weblog provider that can escape government censor. If Chinese government is consistent with this practice, WTO cannot say much.... Just like a Muslim country that does not allow importing pork is not a violation of the WTO trade rules as long as they don't allow the locals...
So, think about something else if you really want to protest.
Re:What about other carbon arrangements?
on
Buckyballs Kill Fish
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I have heard that another carbon arrangement, known as diamond, is a pretty toxic chemical that affects the brain of many female homo sapien. It is also known to be additive.
Strangely, this material seems to have little effect on male home sapien, although the lack of it seems to affect the reproductive potential of that subspecies.
Monkelectric is not exaggerating. A lot of weak programmers lack basic maths skill
There was a trend in some small companies to employ polytech rather than university CS grad in my home town (not in the States)... I am not trying to discredit those who have genuine interest in programming, but don't follow the traditional education route. Most who study in these polytech CS course do not have the relevant {academic/programming} background, but want to join IT as a mean to earn big bucks. The employers' argument was "see, those polytech guys learn VC++ with VB since day one" or "the calculus crap is no use in real life, the univ grads don't receive real training"....
A lot of the employers suffered a bit further down the track... I have heard a real story from my vacation job boss. His business friend was selling him the idea of "don't employ univ grad" and told him about how productive that one of his new boys was during the first month....
Problem striked after a couple of months. That new guy got stuck at work doing nothing for the next 2 months. The boss found out the reason at the end. While he was very skillful in creating GUI with MFC, he could not figure out the arithmatic so that he can place a square within a rectangular (window) of different sizes....
I don't think so... At least in the academic world, that's the other way round. Many non English speaking researchers can write good English, but their spoken English is only so and so.
Good written English has a strong correlation to good education; Good spoken English has a strong correlation to good exposure to the English speaking crowd... That's a bit different....
Slashdot Mirror
First, I doubt if a anti-ship missile/ topedo use shaped-charge... Unlike the WWI era battleship, the hull is pretty thin nowadays. No need to design the war head in a way to penetrate the "armour".
This brings to the second point. The mechanisms of destruction is quite different: tank/armour vehicle have heavy armour. The warhead of RPG (or even tank shell) does not have that much of explosive... The design is to maximise the penentration, ie, produce a concentrated flow of super hot metal jet in the case of shaped charge. But for the ship scenario, it is more like weak (but huge) armour against big warhead. The 100kg of explosive can do a lot of raw damage... The same applies to artillary shell. I have heard a military expert's tv interview.... His comment was there will be a no show if a tank is being hit directly by a 155mm artillary shell. Even if the system can stop the shell from super-shield. The blast wave itself can problem kill the occupiers.... Of course, how to deliver that direct hit is another matter.... He said he just wanted to illustrate one point that protective system will fail at some point not matter how much money you put into it...
I would be interested to know how is this different from commerically available "helix" antenna.
I've being told the reason that the Navman GPS uses a helix antenna for their clip-on iPaq GPS. I have seen their engineer disassmbled one unit a while ago (2-3 yrs). The antenna is like a few wires glued on a piece of flexble plastic sheet. The sheet is rolled up to form a helix before placing into the enclosure.
In most cases, the reporters are refering to the monitoring/ high level control software (SCADA). It should not be that bad as long as NT is not controlling anything lower level and not connected anyhow to the outside...
If they really use windows for this kind of operation, I am not that surprise they are using NT rather than win2k/xp. The reason is simple. The ship was commissioned a while ago... At that time, winxp may not even come out, and win2k was not that stable. They need something that have an okay track record and reasonable stable. NT is a rational choice (although I would probably state away from MS OS for this sort of thing)....
Here is an important point. No doubt there will be some Chinese ISPs decide to turn a blind eye on spammers' sites.... But, if everyone do that, the spammers do not need to firewall the ISP. Who knows what's actually happening over there?
The US is the largest spammer in the world.
:-)
Russia is the largest supplier for compromised PC.
China is the largest spam relays.
Now I see the new world order in the post cold war era! May SPAM be the saviour of the world
As many around here have pointed out, the bulk (80%) of the spam are sent by compromised cable/DSL machines. In other words, even if you can find the IP the email is originated from, it offers no solution to you.
The "70%" figure mentioned earlir on refers to the percentage of url embedded in the spam (e.g. the store for the V1a4Ga) that uses an IP from China... If you manage to instruct your spam filter to read inside the email main body, you may have a solution.
On the other hand, I don't think it will be a long lasting solution.... If spammers can send spam thru compromised machine, they should be able to web host their site thru a compromised machine...
Or use a solution that is available now:
Australia and New Zealand have adopted "plastic" notes for a while... I believe it is a big barrier for the cottage counterfeiting groups.
From the perspective of another New Zealander, I doubt the following statement, "Lots of people I know were spending hundreds of dollars a month on text charges with Vodafone"...
The voice mobile service in NZ is more expensive than most developed country. Here links to the most generous plan from Vodafone that is the major rival against Telecom. It is something like NZD$40 (about US$25) for 300 min of offpeak min. $1/min on peak hours... Forget about the daytime plans... They are 5 times more expansive. Since voice service is so expensive, most secondary and university students rely on text message for communication... Many of them are on prepaid as they cannot afford the monthly fee.
Here comes to the point: many of them found $40 expensive, do they have the few hundred buck for texting? Students in general don't earn much. Some university students receive allowance from the government at a rate of $500/month. Accomodation can easily be more than that...
IMO, the current chaos is created by the "all you can eat" mentality. I know many secondary students start sending bulk forward messages, joke etc... Before then, texting was for something more crucial like "I got stuck in the traffic", "Let's meet at xyz 7pm tonite"... It really catches Telecom off guard... We cannot exclude the possiblity that some of the texting records are broken with the aid of computers.
Telecom is the bully in the local telco market... But, in this event, I don't blame them for cutting the $10 unlimited texting deal... It is clear since the first day that the $10 deal is a limited promotion with time limit...
What a huge contribution! The problem of shirt ironing is now gone.... But, wait a minute... how about the goddamned pair of trousers.
It may work if the whitelist is well maintained. Also, we will have to think about how to avoid filtering off legitmate email from people you don't know before. They can be students intended to apply to the University. They can also be customer completing email registration after purchased your product...
The proportion of SPAM originated from the SMTP server of ISP, universities and legitmate companies is pretty small. The proposed whitelist must be well maintained and include all.... Possibly in a way similar to domain name registration.
It is a common misunderstanding. While most web server these spams are pointing to may be located overseas, most of spams are originated from US. Mostly likely from hijacked fast cable/DSL connected home machines.
You may think it is okay to block email from China or even the whole Asia because you don't know some Asians in person, but please check again where your RAM, mobo, anime etc come from... A lot of companies and university have collaborations overseas as well...
We don't really have much options left... Basically, you will have to blacklist all the high boardband provider's IP range (rr, earthlink etc)... Sorry, geeks, your email server will no longer work... It is not really an ideal solution. The other idea is kind of similar to secured DNS, ie, mail server retrieves "good IPs" from a central server. Email originated elsewhere are assigned with very low priority or filtered out altogether.
Everyone needs to be registered with their mail server with the governing body (similar to the domain name idea), say for $100 per IP. It is not that expensive if you really need that... But, prohibitive for spammer... Yes, it makes home run email server more expensive... But, you cannot get a domain name for free anyway. Why should we expect email server to be free? It may be the solution to get the economy of spamming right again.
I am thinking about buying something similar (for ARM based, decent amount of flash, with ethernet). The best deal I can get is about $250 + complusive DHL option (another $40-50 to Australia/New Zeland). At the same time, I know I can get it for half the price if I can secure an order of 25+... Cannot find enough like minded geeks from my class to make a bulk order.
I feel that we can take advantage of some consumer electronics product... A lot of them are slightly modification of the reference design... Don't know where to start though... Any suggestion is welcome.
I feel that experience with ARM based embedded system will be a good item on an EE student's CV. I wonder what's the most cost effective platform that I should get if I want to play with it?
Many software houses cannot get the security right for their products. There must be some unique problem upon this.
First, it is the testing problem. For most features, e.g. number of request handled by a database, compression ratio of a video encoding software, the correctness of an accounting package, the test is easier to construct than the software itself. For security related enhancement, the difficulty is about the same (similar applies to stability).
Second, it is the actual developing problem. For most small/medium size software house (except the security related ones), I doubt if they have specialist who knows security/ encryption of that kind of stuff. One day, when the PHB wants some more security feature in the product, he would most likely deploying some programmers skilled in other areas to work on this. Obvious, it won't work that well....
I have read numerous comment in slashdot this morning regarding the trend is not green as the electricity-powered bike is going to replace the human powered ones...
Yes, it is a fact. On the other hand, I don't think people will say the use of public transport like train/bus is not green. People can always walk, but, when the city gets larger, some form of transport is neccessary. In Mao's days, it was "revolutionary" to act and look like a proletariat. You should not care about the appearance that much. Arriving work sweaty is acceptable. For urban white collar Chinese workers nowadays, I don't think it is (will be) the norm...
Then, what are the available solutions? Public transport is alway one. To determine whether e-bike is a environmentally sensible solution, we got to compare e-bike with vehicle, rather than walking. According to London Cycling Campagin, the typical power consumption (for electric-assist bike) is 100 to 150 watts, compared with about 15000 watts for a car. In other words, a typical car trip can power 100s of e-bike trip. My gut feeling is it is more efficent than bus (a bus take about 100 passenger, but I think it burns more fuel than car)... Plus, the biker can still get a bit of exercise. So, what else are you asking for?
I know how to create a "Tabloid" now: :-)
combining any two Letters between the PHB and his
secretaries
Xiahua may not be the most reliable info source... On the other hand, I want to point out some interesting cultural difference to fellow ./ers.
First, the teenagers are not necessary "seeking information" in internet cafe. They are not likely to be the politcal dissent kind that most are thinking about. Or else, they will try to be as low key as possible. The "illegal" info can also be porn, mp3 etc. The most usual activity is PC gaming.
Second, video arcade (internet cafe nowadays) can be a real trouble spot for the teens who don't want to go home at midnight. Car is not that accessible in most Asian countries. Flats are small. Teens need to find a place to have their first cigarette, need to have a place to get together with their in-group...
Quite naturally, fist fights and gangster problems are quite common in this sort of environment... The nature is a bit similar to a bar without alcohol. Even Hongkong under the UK colonial control (before 1997) need to impose similar rule for the video arcade, ie no children under 16 are allowed to enter standard video arcade. Quite a few secondary friends had got beaten up/ money taken by the gangsters in the video arcades when they were young (sneaked into of course)...
Curb the free internet access is of course one of the communist party's agenda. But, the very real teenage problem should not be overlooked either.
O/C Dothan is pretty cool even when compare with top of the line P4 or Athlon-64
x86-secret in English. On the other hand, Althlon-64 3400+ has a core clock speed of 2.2GHz, slightly lower than that of the O/C Dothan (2.4GHz)... Of course, if we talk about processing power/power consumption, Dothan wins by a mile...
Intel is starting to recover from the CPU design competition. The 3.4GHz clock speed P4 is just unnecessarily too high....
This can be hard to find, but it is really a very enjoyable experience. For the hikers/trampers/campers around here, try to bring some tea in your next trip. Tea works best with spring water. Nothing can beat a cup of green/brown tea in a cold winter night when you are in the wild.
Comparing the "exploitation" of your skills with, say, child labor in Hong Kong -- that's just word games. ....
Check the fact first, dude! According to the CIA factbook, the GDP in HongKong is $27000/yr on par of Japan ($28000/yr). What sort of salary do you want to pay for their "child labor"??? The world has been changed many many times
I am afraid you got to read the article as well, not just the charts... Latest distillation methods (MSF, MED) require less electricity, but after you add the extra heating requirement, the energy bill can still be higher than reverse osmosis (RO)...
An extract from Saltwater Desalination Chapter 1
For example, in addition to the 3,500 to 7,000 kWh/AF of energy required for electricity, the thermal energy needs for a MSF distillation plant is estimated at 270 million Btu/AF (about 26,000 kWh/AF);
c.f. the energy for 2 passes RO is 6500-12000 kWh/AF.
I am not adorsing what the Chinese Government is doing. But, I am afraid the WTO's dissatifaction about the US ban on online gambling is not a good comparison here.
If US bans any form of gambling outright, WTO will not step in. Since US has already got local operators (casinos) that offers similar product, WTO banning online gambling is not fair.
In the case of Chinese internet blocking, you cannot find a local Chinese weblog provider that can escape government censor. If Chinese government is consistent with this practice, WTO cannot say much.... Just like a Muslim country that does not allow importing pork is not a violation of the WTO trade rules as long as they don't allow the locals...
So, think about something else if you really want to protest.
I have heard that another carbon arrangement, known as diamond, is a pretty toxic chemical that affects the brain of many female homo sapien. It is also known to be additive.
Strangely, this material seems to have little effect on male home sapien, although the lack of it seems to affect the reproductive potential of that subspecies.
Monkelectric is not exaggerating. A lot of weak programmers lack basic maths skill
There was a trend in some small companies to employ polytech rather than university CS grad in my home town (not in the States)... I am not trying to discredit those who have genuine interest in programming, but don't follow the traditional education route. Most who study in these polytech CS course do not have the relevant {academic/programming} background, but want to join IT as a mean to earn big bucks. The employers' argument was "see, those polytech guys learn VC++ with VB since day one" or "the calculus crap is no use in real life, the univ grads don't receive real training"....
A lot of the employers suffered a bit further down the track... I have heard a real story from my vacation job boss. His business friend was selling him the idea of "don't employ univ grad" and told him about how productive that one of his new boys was during the first month....
Problem striked after a couple of months. That new guy got stuck at work doing nothing for the next 2 months. The boss found out the reason at the end. While he was very skillful in creating GUI with MFC, he could not figure out the arithmatic so that he can place a square within a rectangular (window) of different sizes....
I don't think so... At least in the academic world, that's the other way round. Many non English speaking researchers can write good English, but their spoken English is only so and so.
Good written English has a strong correlation to good education; Good spoken English has a strong correlation to good exposure to the English speaking crowd... That's a bit different....