Since I haven't seen this mentioned yet, I've been looking a little into the same thing lately and have come across the N20U, I don't have a lot of specs but do some Google searching on the N20U (top result is http://www.armcomputer.com/n20u/home.htm) and you can see what it's like. ATI 8meg graphics adapter, PCMCIA stuff included, but from what I've seen it's essentially a barebones laptop (no processor or HDD even) that you can customize out how you want. Mobile PIIIs can be had for the $100-$200 range off of pricewatch and 2.5" HDDs aren't too expensive. it may end up being the same price as a dell or ibm, but hey you built it yourself. I've seen a couple float through Ebay but you could probably buy direct.
What makes you think XP is any better? AFAIK it requires new drivers like win2k
It's mostly for the video capture. WinXP recognizes the... I think it's called WDM, something like that... device interface on my video/capture card. Win2k doesn't -or I should say didn't, I haven't tried recently - recognize it.
Yeah it probably means I should buy a less shitty capture card. But the difference between $300 for a capture card and $30 (friend at MS company store) was noticable.
I wanted to run Win2k at home but various cheap and rather suspect hardware and peripherals wouldn't allow me to (video capture, smart media reader) as well as some software didn't like the migration to the NT platform vary well.
I imagine there may be a few others like me out there who want the stability of 2000, just can't run it for compatability reasons - and thus we're left with WinXP.
The article/ad says the target audience is people who haven't yet bought a CD Burner or don't have space in their computers. I can't imagine anyone with 200+ megs of MP3s to trade not already having a better way to shuffle bits around.
I wonder how the RIAA feels about a company marketing to those damned illegal Traders.
A metric ton of money I'd say. Of course this has been the plan all along. Lose 5 billion over the course of 4 years before the division is profitable, then it'll make them a mint. That's why the xbox will likely succeed (not necessarily dominate but probably not fail). MSFT can afford to bleed money on something they think will eventually make them money.
Again this is just off of what I've heard from the avsforum.com threads but the Tivo phones home the first time to try and set the clock and download the latest version of the client software. If you don't have a subscription I don't think it upgrades the software (you'll have the default installed version). With version 1.3 I believe everything works fine, with version 2.0+ of the software you'll start to get a nag screen. I seem to recall hearing (but can't find a link) that there may be a version out now or comming out soon that removes the nag screen. perhaps it was the new 2.5.1 but I don't rightly recall.
Actually the subscription you pay isn't for the "seasons pass" (thats a built in feature that lets you record all occurances of one show) you pay for the clickable TV guide listings esentially (that and the ability for it to learn your preferences). If you elect not to subscribe to the service it's basically what you described, a digital VCR that you tell to record from a certain time to a certain time on a specifi chanel.
This is probably - and I do stress probably - one of those "we only support outlook and outlook express" sort of things. I mean technically AT&T@Home only allows Windows9x and Mac machines to use their network, but that sure hasn't stopped me. This way the tech support people only have to know (or deal with) two fairly similar programs.
What's with the big red button on the MIT Bathroom display? If it does nothing may I suggest the "Please Fed-Ex me Toilet paper" internet alert button.
Next feature request: send remote flushes to the Foo Floor toilet.
If you check out the sellers home page (missilebases.com) You'll see that this is one has had quite a bit of work done to it to make it worth the 1.5 mil. They normally go for about $200,000 and then usually just have a few hangers on the surface and maybe some of the interior structure still intact.
I do like the idea of using the silo as a scuba diving tank though (they did that at one site).
It has an IP rate of 67, meaning it's capable of lying under water for hours, and it can put up with a fall of 1.5 meters against concrete.
Does anyone remember the Panasonic Toughbook - they had similar toughness (though I don't think they could sit underwater). You get a whole real computer and some of the models even have built in wireless/GPS capabilities. Granted they cost upwards of 5 grand and probably only have about 4 hours of battery life (though 8 hours doesn't seem like much for a PDA to me), but still sweet.
I'd be interested to see what an IP Rate of 100 (or zero, whichever is better, also assuming a 100 point scale) could handle. Elephants can sit on it while you work maybe?
BTW, whats with the random "number of physicial machines hosted on windows" bit at the end of the post there? Do all slashdot articles now automatically include a little MSFT bashing - hidden in the PERL soup somewhere?:)
Thats a rough rule at best - and one I often see flexed, and often flex myself - but 2 versions of any critical dependancy is often the accepted standard I see. In general it seems that for main stream applications it is reasonable to expect the user to be within 2 versions of the current latest version of whatever you're working on. It is reasonable to expect someone to be running at least - say - RedHat 5.x, or netscape 3 (IE 4 if you have the choice). Much beyond that and it seems that it is an unreasonable expectation of the user that the latest version of the software will work on their system. A hardware analogy is that at some point you just have to say, "I'm sorry 486SX_User_01, but this just isn't going to run on your system (at any decent speed)"
For dependancies like the compiler listed in the question, if it was available in said 2-previous-versions of the distribution it is a reasonable expectation.
These CDs won't play on standard CD players, are not encoded in the popular MP3 format, and will not play on a computer until the user enters personal information.
Actually the suit says that they won't play in standard Audio CD drives in computers, not that the CD won't play in a stand alone CD player. I should hope that the music stores them selves would refuse to carry something that won't even play in a regular CD player.
While the whole process is working out less than ideal, I'm pleased to see the government taking an active stance on bringing 3G to the states. I know there are a couple of GSM cel carriers here in the states now but they don't really have the same coverage as the old CDM and TDMA (I think those are the acronymns) systems that AT&T and such have. I'd love to have some of the whiz-bang new phones (or one of the more stylish australian models) but because the rest of the world operates on a different system I'm out of luck.
Chalk it up to good intentions but (potentially) poor implementation I suppose.
I thought that was odd too, this is the letter I wrote to my congression representatives (all three). It was actually a letter too. I typed it, but it cost me 33 cents of my hard earned money to get it to each of them. Somehow that seems to make worlds of difference over email letters. Anywhow, I hope everyone else will take the time to do it too. Letters don't have to be long or eliquent (as mine surely isn't) but hopefully it'll get the point across. ------------
Dear Senator Murray,
I am writing to you today to voice my concern over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I am concerned that the central issue with the DMCA - my "fair use" access rights to information I have purchased - was deemed "out of scope" in the governmental report DMCA Section 104 Report released by the US Copyright Office in August 2001. As a user of the Linux operating system I have grown accustomed to using tools created by others, or creating my own, when no corporation has deemed it worthwhile to provide those tools for me - namely a means for watching DVD videos on my computer. Under the DMCA those tools, and my possession or others' creation of them has been deemed illegal. Likewise it is now illegal for me to make a safe backup of information or computer software - for my own use - if that backup should require a tool to access the information locked away by a company's copy protection scheme. I cannot count the hundreds to thousands of dollars in software I have lost because I was unable to make a safe backup copy of the discs I purchased only to have those discs corrupted or damage. As you can see this law unfairly infringes on my rights to legal access to information I have purchased. The DMCA also infringes on our scientists ability to do research as you can see by the actions taken against Princeton's professor Felton. Professor Felton has barred from presenting research on the nature of cryptography because the DMCA had rendered his actions while conducting research illegal.
Ben Franklin said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance; I have no wish to stand by and watch as my rights are trampled on. I hope that I can count on your support to strike down or seriously amend this unjust and unlawful piece of legislation. If you have any questions for me or would like to know more about the public's stance on this law please feel free to contact me.
If you don't see the problem with this, let me try this. You can buy these CD's, but in order to do that, you have to buy this CD player. And this CD case. And this CD labeling system. You may never use these tools, but that's how the CD's come - bundled with all this other stuff.
That's not a terribly good comparison since you're taking something relatively cheap (cd) and bundling it with something expensive (player). In this situation it would be like you're pissed because you wanted to buy a CD and play it on your 8-track deck but "the man" is forcing you to buy a CD player. A slightly more accurate analogy would be Wanting to buy a CD player, where your choice is the $199 Sony model or the free instructions to make your own. With the sony player you also get the entire NSync collection - it's crap, but you don't have a choice.
I'm not willing to comment on the ethics or convenience of this situation because I like installing an OS and having at least rudamentary internet connectivity installed with it and hate Windows Encoder (Xing and VideoCapturix for me). If my Dell came with Win-NOIE and netscape installed and I had to reformat it and then had to figure out how the hell to get a browser back on there with no built in net connectivity and no install disks for it I'd be pretty damn pissed. Can't use FTP because that was removed since it was illegally bundled and has since been stripped out.
It's disappointing that there's no more info on the CRT depth reduction in the writeup other than :
S-Cubed works by bending beams of electrons in a way that allows the electron gun -- which shoots out the beams -- to be moved closer to the screen.
A quick check of Sarnoff's website doesn't reveal much either - their last press release was in late July. Pretty slick company though - nothing wrong with Flexible plastic LCD's (again light on the details). You'd think they'd be a little more forthcomming with details, but I guess in the world of patents you can't risk anything.
I have to wonder what the battery life of some of these CD/MP3 player hybrids are. The TDK player listed on ThinkGeek says it has an 8 minute anti-skip buffer when running in MP3 mode - that's got to suck some serious juice.
Anyone have any experience with these?
That and half of what I want in my MP3 player for is no mechanical parts to skip or break.
There was an idea raised on/. a while back that I thought was pretty good, I think a hybrid of the two would be even better. Someone (no link, sorry) suggested that a security firm could notify the manufacturer first - give them maybe a months notice or so - and then release to the public. The idea being that a patch could be developed and released before too many l33t h4x0rs got a chance to exploit it.
A slightly better proposal - and one that would add a little pressure to the manufacturuer - would be to release some details to the public, full to the manufacturer, with promise that full details would be released shortly. The manufacturers would have time to patch, the public would know something was wrong and (conceivably) pressure them into getting it fixed and soon.
Of course that really only applies to closed source projects.
To put it simply, the modern high-tech world depends on this stuff. And while most of us have images of squeaky-clean chip factories and such -- in marked contrast to sleazy textile sweatshops -- it turns out that this industry has a dark side that takes a major toll on human lives
The sad thing is I think you would be hard pressed to find ANY industry that doesn't depend on some "sleazy textile sweatshop" at some point. I would wager that most of us are wearing at least one piece of clothing produced under less than ideal conditions.
Lets also not forget that caps have been around for a hell of a lot longer than the "modern hi-tech industry".
I don't quite see how this could be decoded perfectly on the other end. I mean suppose I have a single node xml document:
<docroot>
<Node_of_type_crap> hi </Node_of_type_crap>
</docroot>
But NEED that node to be named "Node_of_type_crap" on the end of whatever I'm transmitting it to (rather than some arbitrary bit value) that information is going to have to be transmitted eventually and that will take up space. Not saying this won't be a huge bandwidth saver, but the 200 bytes -> 2 bytes compression can't be that common.
Re:Ease of Attack
on
Code Redux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Slashdot Mirror
So to read your newspaper I need a battery.
Actually, to read my newspaper in the dark you would need a battery. if you've got an outside light source there is no need to backlight it.
I think he was trying to build a sense of commonality, pointing out that everyone has security vulnerabilities. Given the two choices:
1) "list of microsoft viruses" - slashdot answer "hahaha microsoft sucks"
2) "list of viruses" - slashdot answer "wtf? linux doesn't suck like that"
I'd say he went with the right choice. Plus he does work for microsoft afterall.
Since I haven't seen this mentioned yet, I've been looking a little into the same thing lately and have come across the N20U, I don't have a lot of specs but do some Google searching on the N20U (top result is http://www.armcomputer.com/n20u/home.htm) and you can see what it's like. ATI 8meg graphics adapter, PCMCIA stuff included, but from what I've seen it's essentially a barebones laptop (no processor or HDD even) that you can customize out how you want. Mobile PIIIs can be had for the $100-$200 range off of pricewatch and 2.5" HDDs aren't too expensive. it may end up being the same price as a dell or ibm, but hey you built it yourself. I've seen a couple float through Ebay but you could probably buy direct.
Cheers,
- Sawbones
What makes you think XP is any better? AFAIK it requires new drivers like win2k
... I think it's called WDM, something like that... device interface on my video/capture card. Win2k doesn't -or I should say didn't, I haven't tried recently - recognize it.
It's mostly for the video capture. WinXP recognizes the
Yeah it probably means I should buy a less shitty capture card. But the difference between $300 for a capture card and $30 (friend at MS company store) was noticable.
I wanted to run Win2k at home but various cheap and rather suspect hardware and peripherals wouldn't allow me to (video capture, smart media reader) as well as some software didn't like the migration to the NT platform vary well.
I imagine there may be a few others like me out there who want the stability of 2000, just can't run it for compatability reasons - and thus we're left with WinXP.
The article/ad says the target audience is people who haven't yet bought a CD Burner or don't have space in their computers. I can't imagine anyone with 200+ megs of MP3s to trade not already having a better way to shuffle bits around.
I wonder how the RIAA feels about a company marketing to those damned illegal Traders.
A metric ton of money I'd say. Of course this has been the plan all along. Lose 5 billion over the course of 4 years before the division is profitable, then it'll make them a mint. That's why the xbox will likely succeed (not necessarily dominate but probably not fail). MSFT can afford to bleed money on something they think will eventually make them money.
Again this is just off of what I've heard from the avsforum.com threads but the Tivo phones home the first time to try and set the clock and download the latest version of the client software. If you don't have a subscription I don't think it upgrades the software (you'll have the default installed version). With version 1.3 I believe everything works fine, with version 2.0+ of the software you'll start to get a nag screen. I seem to recall hearing (but can't find a link) that there may be a version out now or comming out soon that removes the nag screen. perhaps it was the new 2.5.1 but I don't rightly recall.
Actually the subscription you pay isn't for the "seasons pass" (thats a built in feature that lets you record all occurances of one show) you pay for the clickable TV guide listings esentially (that and the ability for it to learn your preferences). If you elect not to subscribe to the service it's basically what you described, a digital VCR that you tell to record from a certain time to a certain time on a specifi chanel.
- Sawbones
This is probably - and I do stress probably - one of those "we only support outlook and outlook express" sort of things. I mean technically AT&T@Home only allows Windows9x and Mac machines to use their network, but that sure hasn't stopped me. This way the tech support people only have to know (or deal with) two fairly similar programs.
At least one hopes thats it.
What's with the big red button on the MIT Bathroom display? If it does nothing may I suggest the "Please Fed-Ex me Toilet paper" internet alert button.
Next feature request: send remote flushes to the Foo Floor toilet.
If you check out the sellers home page (missilebases.com) You'll see that this is one has had quite a bit of work done to it to make it worth the 1.5 mil. They normally go for about $200,000 and then usually just have a few hangers on the surface and maybe some of the interior structure still intact.
I do like the idea of using the silo as a scuba diving tank though (they did that at one site).
Quote the news post:
At least they're offering refunds.
It has an IP rate of 67, meaning it's capable of lying under water for hours, and it can put up with a fall of 1.5 meters against concrete.
:)
Does anyone remember the Panasonic Toughbook - they had similar toughness (though I don't think they could sit underwater). You get a whole real computer and some of the models even have built in wireless/GPS capabilities. Granted they cost upwards of 5 grand and probably only have about 4 hours of battery life (though 8 hours doesn't seem like much for a PDA to me), but still sweet.
I'd be interested to see what an IP Rate of 100 (or zero, whichever is better, also assuming a 100 point scale) could handle. Elephants can sit on it while you work maybe?
BTW, whats with the random "number of physicial machines hosted on windows" bit at the end of the post there? Do all slashdot articles now automatically include a little MSFT bashing - hidden in the PERL soup somewhere?
Thats a rough rule at best - and one I often see flexed, and often flex myself - but 2 versions of any critical dependancy is often the accepted standard I see. In general it seems that for main stream applications it is reasonable to expect the user to be within 2 versions of the current latest version of whatever you're working on. It is reasonable to expect someone to be running at least - say - RedHat 5.x, or netscape 3 (IE 4 if you have the choice). Much beyond that and it seems that it is an unreasonable expectation of the user that the latest version of the software will work on their system. A hardware analogy is that at some point you just have to say, "I'm sorry 486SX_User_01, but this just isn't going to run on your system (at any decent speed)"
For dependancies like the compiler listed in the question, if it was available in said 2-previous-versions of the distribution it is a reasonable expectation.
Just my 46 Lira.
These CDs won't play on standard CD players, are not encoded in the popular MP3 format, and will not play on a computer until the user enters personal information.
Actually the suit says that they won't play in standard Audio CD drives in computers, not that the CD won't play in a stand alone CD player. I should hope that the music stores them selves would refuse to carry something that won't even play in a regular CD player.
While the whole process is working out less than ideal, I'm pleased to see the government taking an active stance on bringing 3G to the states. I know there are a couple of GSM cel carriers here in the states now but they don't really have the same coverage as the old CDM and TDMA (I think those are the acronymns) systems that AT&T and such have. I'd love to have some of the whiz-bang new phones (or one of the more stylish australian models) but because the rest of the world operates on a different system I'm out of luck.
Chalk it up to good intentions but (potentially) poor implementation I suppose.
------------
Dear Senator Murray,
I am writing to you today to voice my concern over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I am concerned that the central issue with the DMCA - my "fair use" access rights to information I have purchased - was deemed "out of scope" in the governmental report DMCA Section 104 Report released by the US Copyright Office in August 2001. As a user of the Linux operating system I have grown accustomed to using tools created by others, or creating my own, when no corporation has deemed it worthwhile to provide those tools for me - namely a means for watching DVD videos on my computer. Under the DMCA those tools, and my possession or others' creation of them has been deemed illegal. Likewise it is now illegal for me to make a safe backup of information or computer software - for my own use - if that backup should require a tool to access the information locked away by a company's copy protection scheme. I cannot count the hundreds to thousands of dollars in software I have lost because I was unable to make a safe backup copy of the discs I purchased only to have those discs corrupted or damage. As you can see this law unfairly infringes on my rights to legal access to information I have purchased. The DMCA also infringes on our scientists ability to do research as you can see by the actions taken against Princeton's professor Felton. Professor Felton has barred from presenting research on the nature of cryptography because the DMCA had rendered his actions while conducting research illegal.
Ben Franklin said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance; I have no wish to stand by and watch as my rights are trampled on. I hope that I can count on your support to strike down or seriously amend this unjust and unlawful piece of legislation. If you have any questions for me or would like to know more about the public's stance on this law please feel free to contact me.
Thank you.
Your Constituent,
That's not a terribly good comparison since you're taking something relatively cheap (cd) and bundling it with something expensive (player). In this situation it would be like you're pissed because you wanted to buy a CD and play it on your 8-track deck but "the man" is forcing you to buy a CD player. A slightly more accurate analogy would be Wanting to buy a CD player, where your choice is the $199 Sony model or the free instructions to make your own. With the sony player you also get the entire NSync collection - it's crap, but you don't have a choice.
I'm not willing to comment on the ethics or convenience of this situation because I like installing an OS and having at least rudamentary internet connectivity installed with it and hate Windows Encoder (Xing and VideoCapturix for me). If my Dell came with Win-NOIE and netscape installed and I had to reformat it and then had to figure out how the hell to get a browser back on there with no built in net connectivity and no install disks for it I'd be pretty damn pissed. Can't use FTP because that was removed since it was illegally bundled and has since been stripped out.
A quick check of Sarnoff's website doesn't reveal much either - their last press release was in late July. Pretty slick company though - nothing wrong with Flexible plastic LCD's (again light on the details). You'd think they'd be a little more forthcomming with details, but I guess in the world of patents you can't risk anything.
I have to wonder what the battery life of some of these CD/MP3 player hybrids are. The TDK player listed on ThinkGeek says it has an 8 minute anti-skip buffer when running in MP3 mode - that's got to suck some serious juice.
Anyone have any experience with these?
That and half of what I want in my MP3 player for is no mechanical parts to skip or break.
There was an idea raised on /. a while back that I thought was pretty good, I think a hybrid of the two would be even better. Someone (no link, sorry) suggested that a security firm could notify the manufacturer first - give them maybe a months notice or so - and then release to the public. The idea being that a patch could be developed and released before too many l33t h4x0rs got a chance to exploit it.
A slightly better proposal - and one that would add a little pressure to the manufacturuer - would be to release some details to the public, full to the manufacturer, with promise that full details would be released shortly. The manufacturers would have time to patch, the public would know something was wrong and (conceivably) pressure them into getting it fixed and soon.
Of course that really only applies to closed source projects.
It could work.
To put it simply, the modern high-tech world depends on this stuff. And while most of us have images of squeaky-clean chip factories and such -- in marked contrast to sleazy textile sweatshops -- it turns out that this industry has a dark side that takes a major toll on human lives
The sad thing is I think you would be hard pressed to find ANY industry that doesn't depend on some "sleazy textile sweatshop" at some point. I would wager that most of us are wearing at least one piece of clothing produced under less than ideal conditions.
Lets also not forget that caps have been around for a hell of a lot longer than the "modern hi-tech industry".
I don't quite see how this could be decoded perfectly on the other end. I mean suppose I have a single node xml document:
<docroot>
<Node_of_type_crap> hi </Node_of_type_crap>
</docroot>
But NEED that node to be named "Node_of_type_crap" on the end of whatever I'm transmitting it to (rather than some arbitrary bit value) that information is going to have to be transmitted eventually and that will take up space. Not saying this won't be a huge bandwidth saver, but the 200 bytes -> 2 bytes compression can't be that common.
Myself I might be tempted to do
s \ All+Users\Desktop\PATCH+YOUR+IIS.txt
root.exe?/C+echo+Do+it+>+C:\Documents+and+Setting
perhaps with a little more explaination than "Do IT".