They didn't capture a drone intact, they displayed a mockup, and a bad one at that.
All this talk about creating their own drone is more propaganda to prop up the Iranian government's "rep" in the middle east among Islamic countries, who pretty much buy everything Iran's news agencies pump out, clonebrush photoshops, crappy models and all.
Geez, we still don't have broadband in large parts of Michigan. Dialup is still a reality, not a bad memory (as it should be) for many people - some of whom are nestled within the populous southeastern quarter of the lower peninsula.
I thought I'd give Metro a try, and while this UI makes sense for a tablet, it's complete CRAP for a keyboard and mouse (let alone trackball). Gestures have never worked for the desktop, and a UI that offers ZERO visual cues tot he user is beyond useless.
I'm baffled that Microsoft has essentially tossed decades of research into the trash in favor of a Tablet-centric UI. There is a reason why we have desktops and tablets... they are considerably different in form and function. Unifying the interface is an incredibly stupid move.
Mark my words, Windows 8 will be shunned worse than Vista on the desktop.
Sadly, Microsoft will probably consider it a success when it sells millions in the tablet and phone market.
Hmmm... just thought of a few improvements... on the back of the card, the current vote # and tallies could be printed, further enhancing the audit trail.
For those not understanding public key encryption (might be a couple here on Slashdot, unlikely as that seems), the public key allows you to unencrypt the data encrypted with the private key. This provides for data integrity, since nobody can easily defeat such encryption - ONLY THE PRIVATE KEY could make a valid encrypted chunk of data for the selection, and the user keeps that, not providing it for the tally machine - and has the secondary check of seeing that the tally machine accurately read out his votes; the scan card can be re-read at a later time if there is any dispute int he totals, since the public key is intact with that encrypted data.
All of these steps provide redundancy and validation for the voters that use these systems.
An ideal electronic voting system uses three machines:
1) Key card issuing machine - Provides a scan card with public and private keys printed in a bar code at the top. The private key is in a tear-off portion.
2) Selection machine - scan card is inserted and citizen makes selections. When finished, after proper review of selections, an encrypted bar code is printed in the remaining blank portion of the scan card.
3) Tally machine - The user then proceeds to the tally machine, where they are instructed to tear off the private key portion of the card (leaving the public key intact, along with the selections), and they insert the scan card into the tally machine, which provides feedback on the results read from the encrypted card to the voter.
The tear off portion can be kept, and a readable number on the card can even be used to verify the vote is in the system over the web (the key might even be used to verify the identity of the voter, without actually being TIED to the voter).
The scan card would then provide traceability, and the voter's tear off strip provides further confirmation. The cards could easily be re-scanned if there was an issue with the vote count.
Just my 2 cents worth... not that any politician, on either side of the aisle, would want a verifiable, reliable voting system in place.
Was Area 51 even a facility back then? Whatever they recovered from Roswell went to "Hangar 18" - an environmental test facility at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.
Even most skeptics agree on that (regardless of what they thought was recovered).
Anybody claiming Area 51 involvement in the Roswell incident instantly loses all credibility.
75% of the uploaders are behind one of 100 proxies
Pick any torrent proxy... I'm guessing they simply gathered IP addresses and failed to examine where they originated from. People are stupid if they aren't behind a torrent proxy, with all of the lawsuit-happy organizations out there like the RIAA. It also avoids getting a DMCA notice just because you were downloading an album that got scratched up when little Johnny decided to play fetch with Fido using your CD collection.
Funny how BTGuard seems to be one of the top uploaders! That guy is some kind of pirate!
Actually, Sony had announced they were removing OtherOS from the slim in August/September '09.
It angered hackers who didn't see why it needed to be removed, since it added no extra cost (as a software feature) to the console. In fact, it was only present on the "Fat" PS3 consoles when GeoHot announced his memory glitch exploit.
Another interesting fact in all of this is that GeoHot **HAD** the master key from that exploit. He didn't reveal it and pretty much left the scene at that point, only to return in full force when the Failoverflow guys made their big splash at the CCC over Christmas break.
I have some suspicions about some goings on behind the scene, but I'd prefer not to voice them and give Sony hearsay evidence of questionable veracity; nonetheless, GeoHot's exploit did allow hackers more access to the inner workings of the system. The release of the Jailbreak Exploit gave an unprecedented level of access to hackers, who were free to explore and map syscalls deep into the hypervisor. The Jailbreak dongle was a fairly clever combination of an entirely new exploit accessable with Sony's Service Jig mode. It is reasonable to assume, though not for sure, that GeoHot's exploit allowed the Jailbreak engineers to find that exploit.
GeoHot's stand against piracy is well known in the scene, and for Sony to pursue him like this is a bit ridiculous, but I expected this from the moment I first saw the CCC vids and the keys started getting published. Sony is no longer run by "hardware guys" - it's run by the people who came up from the ranks of the movie and recording industry arms of Sony. Their mindset is to sue first, ask questions later. Their case against George Hotz is full of holes that nay competent defense lawyer will drive bulldozers through and clean up.
Not to mention this is going before Judge Seeborg, previously heard of in these circles for his Facebook case - where the little guy won against the big guy. If he understands the technical issues at hand (as he seems to), and isn't bought off by Sony (which they WILL try and do), Sony doesn't stand a chance.
Yeah, this is spreading through our company exchange server. I never opened one of these PDF files, but people are getting mails spoofed using my e-mail (but other people's names). Extremely annoying, but our IT people seem to have this hammered down, as new attempts appear and disappear almost immediately from my inbox (and they don't go to delete or junk).
I heartily approve the death penalty for the asshats pulling this sort of crap.
No, what I am trying to express is that when we see a problem with HTML5, why is there absolutely no discussion about FIXING the problem? You are absolutely right about rushing into things, but the process for HTML5 is slower than molasses in a freezer. Nobody wants to add the DRM measures that will make embedded video a palatable option for the big boys (the players in this game that really matter).
Lots of potentially useful features, in hindsight, were left out of prior HTML specs. Browsers compensated by creating their own extensions which were sometimes incorporated into later standards. It's created a nightmarish web of compatibility issues today for authoring web sites, but that has little to do with what is going on now - one of the apparent mandates of HTML5 is to supersede the need for Flash or Silverlight, and those plugins have established the pattern through iterations of versions (well, Flash pioneered this, mostly, Silverlight just followed).
HTML5 isn't about looking forward - it's about looking backward at the mature standards ALREADY ESTABLISHED and incorporating them into the body of HTML itself. It's not even rocket science. Steve Jobs has the nerve to anoint HTML5 as a superior replacement for Flash on his beloved closed platform, but as we see, it's far from that.
Worse, the standards committee has little interest in actually making changes on a standard that isn't going to be finalized for years. WTF?
It's broken. Fix it now. If we are years from finalizing, then we have plenty of time to fix it again if there was some sort of shortsighted omission.
So how long should users wait for HTML5 to gel? The internet moves in its own measure of time, and HTML5 seems to be taking things at a glacial pace... we know all the issues surrounding the delivery of video content... YouTube has been using Flash to do it for 5 years now, and when was the first time you saw the dreaded "buffering" on a RealVideo clip on your Netscape browser?
HTML5 **should** be an established standard by now. Instead, a committee seems to be doing everything in its power to hold it back... what happened to the heady days of the internet when a standard popped onto the scene and quickly matured to give way for the next one? YES - many were not perfect, but that's why standards evolve. Instead, we now seem to be on this endless, "Duke Nukem Forever"-like quest to perfect the thing, even if it takes 10 or more years before it settles out.
What sort of insanity is that??!?
If HTML5 isn't a standard yet, and isn't suitable, then let's get cracking and establish what needs to be done NOW. We live in the Wiki-age... instant updates, instant results, instant gratification. We know what needs to be fixed, yet the response from the HTML5 folks is "it isn't mature yet, give it time!!!" - but if it's so fluid yet, and not "official" yet, why can't we make any changes to it??!??
The whole process is taking too long, and it feels like this "standard" is hardly fluid or forming, yet we are urged to give it time... time for what? Nobody wants to change it! So we wait years for a standard to "mature" even while it cannot, apparently be changed... meanwhile, YouTube and many other people will look forward to HTML6 to fix the mistakes that nobody will fix in HTML5.
The process has become broken. I don't know where the failure is, exactly, but when people complain about incomplete/malformed specs on a standard that WON'T change, but are told to wait for it to finalize, there is something wrong, even forgetting we are still being told HTML5 won't be "finalized" (even if it never actually changes) for YEARS.
On a side note, I see that YouTube has not gotten to any of my videos with this "automagic" speech recognition-generated closed captions. I was hoping they would try and make one for this video of mine, just to see what it generated.
I like the "CC" feature... it makes it very simple to do those Hitler Downfall parodies... but I was surprised that I was the first to actually make one using the feature. My video features closed captions for both the original German-to-English translation, and a Lost parody script. I also provide a handy download to a text-editable SRT file so others can make their own (does that make me a bad person?).
The nice thing is that you can add as many subtitle files as you like... and give each of them separate titles. It understands language, so presumably, my parody can be run through translator (on the fly) for any other language. Now, one "blank" can provide hundreds of alternate parodies from one YouTube video.
I just wonder if this "automatic" feature will try and create subtitles on my blank, with subtitles already loaded.
Yeah, it doesn't offer the capabilities of the Misa, but you can noodle a bit with your Guitar Hero/Rock Band controllers, drums or guitars. I just got it hooked up and it works (with a bit of chaining between MIDItar, Max, LoopBe and Fruity Loops).
If nothing else, MIDItar makes for an inexpensive MIDI drum kit - and for that use, it's pretty effective.
Actually, as an Oregon Democract, this is one issue where I'd like to punch my governor in the teeth.
Not only is this proposal an offensive infringement of my rights, but it also takes away incentives to buy more fuel efficient vehicles. The core reasoning for this tax scheme is that greater fuel efficiency has led to serious drops in state fuel tax revenues. But rather than embrace this as a good thing, the "brain trust" in Salem would rather take away the incentive.
It's like being upset that less smokers means less sin taxes and deciding to put a high tax on nicotine gum to compensate. What. The. Hell.
You forgot to add.... deciding to put a high tax on nicotine gum to compensate and installing cameras in your homes and offices to monitor your usage.
The tax makes no sense, the means to get that tax make no sense; that makes it perfect for politicians to pass into law.
Big non-story here... Bing is going to be influenced by a lot of factors, but the same search on Google turns up Bing's top result in it's top ten. I doubt there is any bias going on here... to program such a bias would be impossible (context detection is still difficult to determine, programatically), and skewing the data for specific searches would be impractical.
If we were talking single-word phrases, I might be convinced, but phrases push this conspiracy theory into implausibility.
It's just as likely registers could be corrupted, or the "rollback" state. Wouldn't be easier to have, I dunno, maybe error correction/detection involved, instead of some arbitrary cosmic ray detector?
Sometimes the more "esoteric" designers attempt to get simply leads to more potential for disaster.
Cosmic ray detection would be far better for random number generation, than anything else.
Motion sensing is all well and good, but you need accuracy with respect to the video screen, and cameras sensing infrared points is the ideal way to do it these days.
I could see a combination providing a much more enhanced experience, though.
The difficulty will come when developers try and create user interfaces that are intuitive and don't quickly tire the user's arms.
Slashdot Mirror
They didn't capture a drone intact, they displayed a mockup, and a bad one at that.
All this talk about creating their own drone is more propaganda to prop up the Iranian government's "rep" in the middle east among Islamic countries, who pretty much buy everything Iran's news agencies pump out, clonebrush photoshops, crappy models and all.
I'll be impressed when they figure out how to harness entangled particles to achieve instant transfer of information over vast distances.
Imagine a world with no RF generated, yet completely connected. Better yet... imagine the entire solar system or beyond connected with such a network.
Geez, we still don't have broadband in large parts of Michigan. Dialup is still a reality, not a bad memory (as it should be) for many people - some of whom are nestled within the populous southeastern quarter of the lower peninsula.
I thought I'd give Metro a try, and while this UI makes sense for a tablet, it's complete CRAP for a keyboard and mouse (let alone trackball). Gestures have never worked for the desktop, and a UI that offers ZERO visual cues tot he user is beyond useless.
I'm baffled that Microsoft has essentially tossed decades of research into the trash in favor of a Tablet-centric UI. There is a reason why we have desktops and tablets... they are considerably different in form and function. Unifying the interface is an incredibly stupid move.
Mark my words, Windows 8 will be shunned worse than Vista on the desktop.
Sadly, Microsoft will probably consider it a success when it sells millions in the tablet and phone market.
Hmmm... just thought of a few improvements... on the back of the card, the current vote # and tallies could be printed, further enhancing the audit trail.
For those not understanding public key encryption (might be a couple here on Slashdot, unlikely as that seems), the public key allows you to unencrypt the data encrypted with the private key. This provides for data integrity, since nobody can easily defeat such encryption - ONLY THE PRIVATE KEY could make a valid encrypted chunk of data for the selection, and the user keeps that, not providing it for the tally machine - and has the secondary check of seeing that the tally machine accurately read out his votes; the scan card can be re-read at a later time if there is any dispute int he totals, since the public key is intact with that encrypted data.
All of these steps provide redundancy and validation for the voters that use these systems.
An ideal electronic voting system uses three machines:
1) Key card issuing machine - Provides a scan card with public and private keys printed in a bar code at the top. The private key is in a tear-off portion.
2) Selection machine - scan card is inserted and citizen makes selections. When finished, after proper review of selections, an encrypted bar code is printed in the remaining blank portion of the scan card.
3) Tally machine - The user then proceeds to the tally machine, where they are instructed to tear off the private key portion of the card (leaving the public key intact, along with the selections), and they insert the scan card into the tally machine, which provides feedback on the results read from the encrypted card to the voter.
The tear off portion can be kept, and a readable number on the card can even be used to verify the vote is in the system over the web (the key might even be used to verify the identity of the voter, without actually being TIED to the voter).
The scan card would then provide traceability, and the voter's tear off strip provides further confirmation. The cards could easily be re-scanned if there was an issue with the vote count.
Just my 2 cents worth... not that any politician, on either side of the aisle, would want a verifiable, reliable voting system in place.
Was Area 51 even a facility back then? Whatever they recovered from Roswell went to "Hangar 18" - an environmental test facility at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.
Even most skeptics agree on that (regardless of what they thought was recovered).
Anybody claiming Area 51 involvement in the Roswell incident instantly loses all credibility.
Yes, because we know Boeing and Honeywell have no interest in keeping WiFi on a short, monetized leash in aircraft...
http://www.boeing.com/Features/2010/04/bds_feat_BBSN_031210.html
75% of the uploaders are behind one of 100 proxies
Pick any torrent proxy... I'm guessing they simply gathered IP addresses and failed to examine where they originated from. People are stupid if they aren't behind a torrent proxy, with all of the lawsuit-happy organizations out there like the RIAA. It also avoids getting a DMCA notice just because you were downloading an album that got scratched up when little Johnny decided to play fetch with Fido using your CD collection.
Funny how BTGuard seems to be one of the top uploaders! That guy is some kind of pirate!
Actually, Sony had announced they were removing OtherOS from the slim in August/September '09.
It angered hackers who didn't see why it needed to be removed, since it added no extra cost (as a software feature) to the console. In fact, it was only present on the "Fat" PS3 consoles when GeoHot announced his memory glitch exploit.
Another interesting fact in all of this is that GeoHot **HAD** the master key from that exploit. He didn't reveal it and pretty much left the scene at that point, only to return in full force when the Failoverflow guys made their big splash at the CCC over Christmas break.
I have some suspicions about some goings on behind the scene, but I'd prefer not to voice them and give Sony hearsay evidence of questionable veracity; nonetheless, GeoHot's exploit did allow hackers more access to the inner workings of the system. The release of the Jailbreak Exploit gave an unprecedented level of access to hackers, who were free to explore and map syscalls deep into the hypervisor. The Jailbreak dongle was a fairly clever combination of an entirely new exploit accessable with Sony's Service Jig mode. It is reasonable to assume, though not for sure, that GeoHot's exploit allowed the Jailbreak engineers to find that exploit.
GeoHot's stand against piracy is well known in the scene, and for Sony to pursue him like this is a bit ridiculous, but I expected this from the moment I first saw the CCC vids and the keys started getting published. Sony is no longer run by "hardware guys" - it's run by the people who came up from the ranks of the movie and recording industry arms of Sony. Their mindset is to sue first, ask questions later. Their case against George Hotz is full of holes that nay competent defense lawyer will drive bulldozers through and clean up.
Not to mention this is going before Judge Seeborg, previously heard of in these circles for his Facebook case - where the little guy won against the big guy. If he understands the technical issues at hand (as he seems to), and isn't bought off by Sony (which they WILL try and do), Sony doesn't stand a chance.
Yeah, this is spreading through our company exchange server. I never opened one of these PDF files, but people are getting mails spoofed using my e-mail (but other people's names). Extremely annoying, but our IT people seem to have this hammered down, as new attempts appear and disappear almost immediately from my inbox (and they don't go to delete or junk).
I heartily approve the death penalty for the asshats pulling this sort of crap.
No, what I am trying to express is that when we see a problem with HTML5, why is there absolutely no discussion about FIXING the problem? You are absolutely right about rushing into things, but the process for HTML5 is slower than molasses in a freezer. Nobody wants to add the DRM measures that will make embedded video a palatable option for the big boys (the players in this game that really matter).
Lots of potentially useful features, in hindsight, were left out of prior HTML specs. Browsers compensated by creating their own extensions which were sometimes incorporated into later standards. It's created a nightmarish web of compatibility issues today for authoring web sites, but that has little to do with what is going on now - one of the apparent mandates of HTML5 is to supersede the need for Flash or Silverlight, and those plugins have established the pattern through iterations of versions (well, Flash pioneered this, mostly, Silverlight just followed).
HTML5 isn't about looking forward - it's about looking backward at the mature standards ALREADY ESTABLISHED and incorporating them into the body of HTML itself. It's not even rocket science. Steve Jobs has the nerve to anoint HTML5 as a superior replacement for Flash on his beloved closed platform, but as we see, it's far from that.
Worse, the standards committee has little interest in actually making changes on a standard that isn't going to be finalized for years. WTF?
It's broken. Fix it now. If we are years from finalizing, then we have plenty of time to fix it again if there was some sort of shortsighted omission.
Does this really have to be so hard?
So how long should users wait for HTML5 to gel? The internet moves in its own measure of time, and HTML5 seems to be taking things at a glacial pace... we know all the issues surrounding the delivery of video content... YouTube has been using Flash to do it for 5 years now, and when was the first time you saw the dreaded "buffering" on a RealVideo clip on your Netscape browser?
HTML5 **should** be an established standard by now. Instead, a committee seems to be doing everything in its power to hold it back... what happened to the heady days of the internet when a standard popped onto the scene and quickly matured to give way for the next one? YES - many were not perfect, but that's why standards evolve. Instead, we now seem to be on this endless, "Duke Nukem Forever"-like quest to perfect the thing, even if it takes 10 or more years before it settles out.
What sort of insanity is that??!?
If HTML5 isn't a standard yet, and isn't suitable, then let's get cracking and establish what needs to be done NOW. We live in the Wiki-age... instant updates, instant results, instant gratification. We know what needs to be fixed, yet the response from the HTML5 folks is "it isn't mature yet, give it time!!!" - but if it's so fluid yet, and not "official" yet, why can't we make any changes to it??!??
The whole process is taking too long, and it feels like this "standard" is hardly fluid or forming, yet we are urged to give it time... time for what? Nobody wants to change it! So we wait years for a standard to "mature" even while it cannot, apparently be changed... meanwhile, YouTube and many other people will look forward to HTML6 to fix the mistakes that nobody will fix in HTML5.
The process has become broken. I don't know where the failure is, exactly, but when people complain about incomplete/malformed specs on a standard that WON'T change, but are told to wait for it to finalize, there is something wrong, even forgetting we are still being told HTML5 won't be "finalized" (even if it never actually changes) for YEARS.
Looks like they put a DMCA takedown notice on the entire country.
On a side note, I see that YouTube has not gotten to any of my videos with this "automagic" speech recognition-generated closed captions. I was hoping they would try and make one for this video of mine, just to see what it generated.
I like the "CC" feature... it makes it very simple to do those Hitler Downfall parodies... but I was surprised that I was the first to actually make one using the feature. My video features closed captions for both the original German-to-English translation, and a Lost parody script. I also provide a handy download to a text-editable SRT file so others can make their own (does that make me a bad person?).
The nice thing is that you can add as many subtitle files as you like... and give each of them separate titles. It understands language, so presumably, my parody can be run through translator (on the fly) for any other language. Now, one "blank" can provide hundreds of alternate parodies from one YouTube video.
I just wonder if this "automatic" feature will try and create subtitles on my blank, with subtitles already loaded.
Yeah, it doesn't offer the capabilities of the Misa, but you can noodle a bit with your Guitar Hero/Rock Band controllers, drums or guitars. I just got it hooked up and it works (with a bit of chaining between MIDItar, Max, LoopBe and Fruity Loops).
If nothing else, MIDItar makes for an inexpensive MIDI drum kit - and for that use, it's pretty effective.
Actually, as an Oregon Democract, this is one issue where I'd like to punch my governor in the teeth.
Not only is this proposal an offensive infringement of my rights, but it also takes away incentives to buy more fuel efficient vehicles. The core reasoning for this tax scheme is that greater fuel efficiency has led to serious drops in state fuel tax revenues. But rather than embrace this as a good thing, the "brain trust" in Salem would rather take away the incentive.
It's like being upset that less smokers means less sin taxes and deciding to put a high tax on nicotine gum to compensate. What. The. Hell.
You forgot to add.... deciding to put a high tax on nicotine gum to compensate and installing cameras in your homes and offices to monitor your usage.
The tax makes no sense, the means to get that tax make no sense; that makes it perfect for politicians to pass into law.
Big non-story here... Bing is going to be influenced by a lot of factors, but the same search on Google turns up Bing's top result in it's top ten. I doubt there is any bias going on here... to program such a bias would be impossible (context detection is still difficult to determine, programatically), and skewing the data for specific searches would be impractical.
If we were talking single-word phrases, I might be convinced, but phrases push this conspiracy theory into implausibility.
Here's a good article on the subject.
Life imitates art... sad but too true.
Looks like they are just following through with the plans made for SurgeTV.
Slashdot covered this already....
Just put Richard D. James' face on everybody.
It's just as likely registers could be corrupted, or the "rollback" state. Wouldn't be easier to have, I dunno, maybe error correction/detection involved, instead of some arbitrary cosmic ray detector?
Sometimes the more "esoteric" designers attempt to get simply leads to more potential for disaster.
Cosmic ray detection would be far better for random number generation, than anything else.
Former agent? I think he just played one on TV.
Motion sensing is all well and good, but you need accuracy with respect to the video screen, and cameras sensing infrared points is the ideal way to do it these days.
I could see a combination providing a much more enhanced experience, though.
The difficulty will come when developers try and create user interfaces that are intuitive and don't quickly tire the user's arms.