Aha, but what if people dress as firemen, set off the computerised alarm system and run in to extinguish it, climb through the vents, sneak into the secret computer vault which has a touch-sensitive floor, heat and sound sensors, all of which are 'on' and connectsd to a big alarm, but they don't have such technology as, ooh, turning the power off?
I don't know about you people, but I don't often use bookmarks. www.slashdot.org, www.userfriendly.org and www.pointlesswasteoftime.com are the sites I think are good. They aren't bookmarked; I can type the URL faster than I can fiddle with those stupid bookmarks. The sites I bookmark are those that look a little interesting, but either aren't good enough for memorisation or have a long, confusing URL like http://www.rollanet.org/~joeh/10ghz/n6gn_article.h tml. Wouldn't a better judge of site quality be the number of repeat visitors?
I think a better question would have been "Can we tell if the PS/2 is A Disappointment seen as very few people own one?" or perhaps "Do any slashdot readers own PS/2s yet?" or even "Why do people insist on writing PS/2 instead of PS2, even though the PS2 acronym is unused, but PS/2 refers to the mouse/keyboard interface ports present on most PCs?"
I bet most people thought that was a joke. Including the author.
They were wrong.
http://www.dansdata.com/cfide.htm is a review of an interesting product: A Small, cheap adapter to let you use a CompactFlash memory card as a plain IDE drive. Only AU$38. It is doubtless availiable in the US from other suppliers, and a large order would probably be quite cheap.
Qoute: If you were wondering whether CompactFlash cards really could work as plain old IDE devices, this adapter ought to put your doubts to rest. The thing's just, essentially, a pin converter. 40 pin IDE connector on one side, standard pushbutton-eject CompactFlash socket on the other, power connector hanging off on a wire. It doesn't even have an activity light.
If you can put up with the cost of CompactFlash cards (Which can be very high, although I don't have any details to hand), you have here a very nice storage solution; just plug it into an IDE cable and tell Windows it's a removable disk drive and it's installed, and your students can get cards in a range of capacities, from one or two megabytes to 500+. It has no moving parts, so not only is it reliable, but it also provides VERY fast access. Solid state drive, anyone?
A lot of mention have been made in this discussion of zip disks. I would like to take this oppertunity to say: Noooooo! Zip disks suck! They often lock up and won't read, and the capacity is big for just holding documents, but too small to install your programs on.
If you don't mind about accessing files from non-school computers, why not set up your computers to create a mapped drive to \\server\username, where a user's files are? This would be easy to do, and could be like a floppy drive but without the floppy, and with a different drive letter. People wouldn't be able to use zip disks or whatever on thier home computers either, so this would work quite well if people have individual usernames. You'd also be able to see who's saving pr0n to disks on the school's connection.
Other than that, I'm not sure what to suggest. There's lots of potential solutions out there, and wrtten elsewhere in the discussion. I'd take a look at them.
He said missions in this decade will concentrate on finding the best spot on Mars to pick up rock samples.
Man, that must be one seriously satisfying job. Imagine going to meetings...
Manager: So, what have you accomplished this decade, John?
John: I have identified a selection of potential candidate sites for landing a robot on Mars to pick up bits of rock!
Manager: Good work!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Re:Canadian government plot
on
D&D Trailer
·
· Score: 2
Hey,
when I type DnD into IE5... it leads me to think this movie is some sort of plot by the Canadian Armed Forces
These canadians have a thing called the Department of National Defense, leading to the acronym DND. This is in thier domain names (like http://www.dnd.ca/).
Search engines tend to give priority to keywords found in domain names, because they tend to have more chance of having a relationship. This is happening here.
Conscience strikes: should I see this movie and give my money to Time-Warner?
Why not go to your cinema, pay to see a small, independent movie then when they let you in, 'accidentally' go into the wrong screen (These big multi-screen cinemas sure are getting big nowerdays) and watch it, whilst giving your money to the small independents?
It's not really legal, but as has ben said so many times before: It's not stealing unless something is missing.
Thermite is nasty stuff. Here is a good and easy way to make it. The first step is to get some iron-oxide (which is RUST!). Here is a good way to make large quantities in a short time:
- Get a DC power supply, like the one used on a train set. Cut the connector off, seperate the wires, and strip them both.
- Now you need a jar of water with a tablespoon or so of sodium chloride (SALT!) added to it. This makes the water conductive.
- Now insert both wires into the mixture (I am assuming you plugged the convertor in...) and let them sit for five minutes. One of them will start bubbling more than the other. This is the POSITIVE(+) wire. If you do not do this test right, the final product will be the opposite (chemically) of rust, which is RUST ACID. You have no use for this here (although it IS useful!).
- Anyway, put the nail tied to the positive wire into the jar. Now put the negative wire in the other end. Now let it sit overnight and in the morning scrape the rust off of the nail & repeat until you got a bunch of rust on the bottom of the glass. Be generous with your rust collection. If you are going through the trouble of making thermite, you might as well make a lot, right?
- Now remove the excess water and pour the crusty solution onto a cookie sheet. Dry it in the sun for a few hours, or inside overnight. It should be an orange-brown color (although I have seen it in many different colors! Sometimes the color gets f***ed up, what can I say... but it is still iron oxide!)
- Crush the rust into a fine powder and heat it in a cast-iron pot until it is red. Now mix the pure iron oxide with pure alluminum filings which can be bought or filed down by hand from an aluminum tube or bar. The ratio or iron oxide to aluminum is 8 grams to 3 grams.
- Thermite requires a LOT of heat (more than a blow torch!) to ignite. However, a magnesium ribbon (which isn't too hard to find... say you need it for a school experiment if you want) will do the trick. It takes the heat from the burning magnesium to light the thermite.
- You want electrical ignition, so get yourself a 120w lightbulb. These get really hot when on. Carefully break away the glass and wrap the magnesium around the filament, solder two wires on for power and pack the thermite around it.
- Congratulations! You have your very own hard disk destruct tool! Just add electricity.
This, however, would not destroy printed copies or removable media. To do this, go down your local radio shack and get a few solenoids. These are little bars that shoots out of a block when electricity is provided. Now get an equal number of self-defence CS spray canisters. Wedge the solenoids in the CS spray triggers and blue-tack them around your office, by your computer, above the door etc. running wires between them. Wire these into the office alarm, the same as your light-bulb. Now if you get an intruder, they get 15 bottles of CS spray pumped into the office, detering even the most determined thief.
I did something like this for a school project once...
I wouldn't do this. It might keep normal people alive, but think what would happen if an open-source person was on life support...
Heart monitor: beep... beep... beep... beep...
Patient: Cool, Linux
Heart monitor: beep
Nurse: Ah, you're awake. How are you feeling?
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: (Blatently ignores nurse) Say, did you bring my bag in? it should have a floppy disk in marked 'Emergency boot floppy'.
Heart monitor: beep
Nurse: Um... okay, here you are sir. What are you going to do?
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Nothing.
Heart monitor: beep
Nurse: Okay. You concentrate on getting better now. (Leaves)
Heart monitor: beep
Patient turns over heart monitor.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Hmm... no floppy drive.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient reaches into bedside cabinate and pulls out a bag. Rummages through it for a few minutes, then comes out holding an fdd.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Bingo!
Heart monitor: beep
Patient pulls out a Leatherman multi-tool and unscrews teh back of te heart monitor, then pulls out a ribbon cable, which he plugs into the fdd.
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: (Enters) Ah, you've recovered. As you can see, the tripple heart bypass went according to plan. You see that machine you're holding? That's the new heart monitor. That's just programming your new pacemaker over a wireless LAN connection. Whatever you do, don't deactivate it.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Do me a favour? Unplug it and plug it back in again.
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: Oh. Okay. (Does)
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Thanks.
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: What are you doing?
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: I'm reprogramming this linux box to work as an MP3 player. I've got few hours of MP3s on this CD-R...
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: Careful, if you stop it working, your pacemaker might not install properly.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Don't worry, I can always restore the data from a backup I have here.
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: Well, you're the expert.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Okay, if I put this CD in, it should play the MP3s I recorded onto it this morning...
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: Say, it does still do the pacemaker thing doesn't it?
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: What pacemak...
Heart monitor: beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
Remember, everyone: Don't try to get a root prompt on hospital property. Or a shell prompt. Or a even a KDE session.
My Gimp enhanched copy kicks your weaselly "scratch removal" programs but dood.
Aha, but I've got a bit of tail copy-and-pasted further down, removing the apparent break, and the reduced image size hides the inconsistencies.
At the cost of some quality, I reduced the file size by 59% to uust 30,769 bytes over your 76,012 bytes. Mine also had a translation. And my HTML tags were right. And I remembered the www. on my website address (Your site didn't seem to diaplay without it).
Interestingly, according to This review on zdnet, you can often get past commercial face recognition software by taking a photo of the person's face, printing it out as a mask, cutting a nose hole (for someone with a similar nose), and putting on:
The face recognition systems proved easier to crack than the fingerprint or voice recognition systems. We tried to gain entry using a mask we created by printing a digital image from a color printer. This didn't work. But then we cut a nose hole in the mask and placed the mask on someone with a somewhat similar nose. At the default thresholds, we were able to fool Miros's TrueFace Network several times and Visionics' FaceIt NT once.
Retina, hand and fingerprint scanners would be as secure as could be expected but facial geometry systems tend to be less secure. Multi-camera set-ups would doubtless be more secure, but the price would start getting very high.
Personally, my favourite technology is te retina (or iris) scanner, because they can distunguish living from dead, so there's no risk of someone taking a chainsaw to your hand to get access to your bank account. They'll just have to do it at gunpoint...
But is it possible for someone to just make an identical copy of my smart ID card, and 'become me'?
This depends on how well the security is done. The simplest smart cards simply store data, i.e. you input data and then if you send a standardised command, you get it back.
The most advanced smart cards process commands like an unopenable, solid box with a computer in.
An example way they could identify each card securely would go something like this:
Verifying terminal sends the card some random data
Smart card accepts data and is programmed to digitally sign it with a public/private key algorithm.
Smart card returns data to terminal
A more complex model might be:
Every card has a private key, and every card has a matching public key, held in a goverment database.
A goverment terminal sends a request for data (i.e. What is this person's SSN?) signed with an official goverment key
The smart card checks the govt signature against the public key stored internally.
The smart card returns the requested data, signed with the card's private key.
The govt terminal checks the signature against the public key database.
They can take pretty much as much programming as you care to put in, if you buy a good card. You could, for example, require a password to be sent to the card before it works. Anything you want, within reason. Including wiping the card if someone tried to probe it.
If you wanted to make yourself a new identity, if you could get a blank card and a copy of the programming, and you could get a new public key inserted on the official database, it might be possible to make yourself a card, but it would require substantial technical knowledgability, if it was all secured properly. It would probably be easier to wrongly send for the ID card requisition forms and fill them in with fake details.
My mirror is up at http://www.btinternet.com/~Micha el. Tandy/msad.jpg. I've run it through a scratch removal program I've been working on to get rid of the center line, optimised the image and put on Booker's translation.
This could be cool. When I'm king of the world, all planning permission documents will heve to be renewed, and all diagrams will have to be supplied in the form of Quake III or Counterstrike maps: It should be much less effort to make your home/school/office/supermarket/whatever into a map!
A quick search of the SpamCop database reveals postmaster@amazon.com as a candidate address, not neseceriy (sp?) for complaining to, but at least for putting on/. for spambots to collect. postmaster@amazon.com refuses to accept SpamCop reports, and that gets them on *my* e-mail thing.
A TRACERT of www.amazon.com ends up going through a whole bunch of gblx.net URLs, so I had a look at www.gblx.net:
Global Crossing is a new breed in the world of telecommunications. Leading-edge technology. Global reach. The ability to rapidly deploy new services. A next-generation network designed to support voice, data and bandwidth-intensive applications.
Putting the URL the gblx website ends up redirecting us to (globalcrossing.com) into the Spamcop host tracker gives us:
Statistics:
ISP score:380
Note, this is not necessarily a reflection on the specific address given. It is rather based on the overall ISP score.
Email from this host would be detained by SpamCop Filters: isp score:380
Found abuse address: abuse@globalcenter.net
So you could always send complaining e-mails to abuse@globalcenter.net if it gets too bad. They're bound to do something.
I feel I should give something back to the Internet community, so I have reached a decision: I will lend my internet and economical expertise to any dot-com startup who cares to ask, and all I ask in return is one small thing: control of the.xxx TLD, and legislation that all porn sites must use the.xxx domain. I will provide.xxx domains for only $15 per year, as long as providers create an account (username Mike1024 password Pass-1234) for me^H$Hmy inspectors to... uh... uh... check that the site is appropriate for the TLD.
In (Vaguely) related news (link), The Russian Space Agency rejected a last-minute change in the launch of the first International Space Station module next week, a Russian idea that had mystified the U.S. space agency, officials said.
i4u.com has some interesting sample photos. They really put into perspective how low the resolution is.
Unfortunately, I think this watch would be too heavy/bulky to wear all the time, every day. That rules it out as a tiny portable camera you could have on hand for those 'spontaneous kodac moments' when you didn't have a better camara with you. The only application I can think of other than that is in having a camera where you're not supposed to, i.e. exams, concerts, etc.
And as a gimmickey toy to show off to your mates, of course. That's why I want one.
There's also the small matter that The UK is slightly smaller than Oregon. When the US has 275,562,673 citizens and the UK has only 59,511,464 (21% the population of the US), it seems fair to assume we will only produce 21% of the amazing super-geniuses.
Uh... am I the only person who can't see how anyone could dream about tetris? I mean... it's possible to dream about a specific problem, like tactics on Deus Ex or how to approach a particular problem, but tetris pieces fall randomly, so there has to be quite a bit of real-time thought as to what you should do, but no long-term consideration of tactics. I'd be more worried about people deraming about playing tetris than people not getting better at tetris by dreaming about it.
Anything watermarked that hits Napster, iMesh, Gnutella, etc. is fully traceable.
Indeed, but CDs are produced in bulk. It would be massively more expensive to make every CD different, so the best they could do would be to say "Oh no! This MP3 was copied from a UK production run" or similar. Besides, you could pay cash when you buy the CD and once it has propogated throughout the Napster/Gnutella/Whatever network, you could delete your MP3 and just use your CD.
Fat chance Microsoft will sign a driver that fails to disable What-U-Hear
My Soundblaster Live Platinum has what you hear. My other computers have SB Lives and SB Live Values. All support what-u-hear. If ME wouldn't support them, that would suck totally. You could quite easily make a double-ended audio wire to connect your headphone socket into your microphone socket.
1) Download SDMI file
2) Download compatible player
3) Set your sound card input to 'What you hear' or whatever equivilent
4) Start your choice.wav recorder, like 'Sound Recorder', free in Windows 3.1
5) Press 'Record'
6) Play SDMI file
7) Wait until end of play
8) Press stop
9) Encode your.wav to an MP3, using your choice encoder
10) Put on gnutella
Or if you have a hardware player:
1) Prepare player to play music normally
2) Dismantle the player, until you get down to a loudspeaker. Cut off the two wires and solder them into a standard microphone audio jack from your local hardware store
3) Start your choice.wav recorder and click 'record'
4) Plug the new microphone jack into your sound card
5) Play SDMI file
6) Wait until end of play and click 'stop'
7) Encode.wav file into MP3
8) Put on gnutella
Clever eh? I'll take my $10,000 in cash, sterling used notes please.
Slashdot Mirror
Um. There is no `outside' to a network like this.
Aha, but what if people dress as firemen, set off the computerised alarm system and run in to extinguish it, climb through the vents, sneak into the secret computer vault which has a touch-sensitive floor, heat and sound sensors, all of which are 'on' and connectsd to a big alarm, but they don't have such technology as, ooh, turning the power off?
Aha! Hadn't thought of that, had you?
(Note: That post was a joke)
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Many of us feel that we should have the right to GPL any code we produce, but the university makes lots of money off of licensing.
Well, it's your code, and you're paying to go to university. I suggest an argument of:
"Ah, so we should pay you to come to your university and write valuable code, so you can sell it and make big profits???"
You wrote it. Very slowly: It. Is. Your. Code.
It they want your code, they can damn well pay you to write it, like a real company.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I don't know about you people, but I don't often use bookmarks. www.slashdot.org, www.userfriendly.org and www.pointlesswasteoftime.com are the sites I think are good. They aren't bookmarked; I can type the URL faster than I can fiddle with those stupid bookmarks. The sites I bookmark are those that look a little interesting, but either aren't good enough for memorisation or have a long, confusing URL like http://www.rollanet.org/~joeh/10ghz/n6gn_article.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Is the PS/2 A Disappointment?
I think a better question would have been "Can we tell if the PS/2 is A Disappointment seen as very few people own one?" or perhaps "Do any slashdot readers own PS/2s yet?" or even "Why do people insist on writing PS/2 instead of PS2, even though the PS2 acronym is unused, but PS/2 refers to the mouse/keyboard interface ports present on most PCs?"
This post has been a joke.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
How about handing out rio mp3 pocket players
I bet most people thought that was a joke. Including the author.
They were wrong.
http://www.dansdata.com/cfide.htm is a review of an interesting product: A Small, cheap adapter to let you use a CompactFlash memory card as a plain IDE drive. Only AU$38. It is doubtless availiable in the US from other suppliers, and a large order would probably be quite cheap.
Qoute: If you were wondering whether CompactFlash cards really could work as plain old IDE devices, this adapter ought to put your doubts to rest. The thing's just, essentially, a pin converter. 40 pin IDE connector on one side, standard pushbutton-eject CompactFlash socket on the other, power connector hanging off on a wire. It doesn't even have an activity light.
If you can put up with the cost of CompactFlash cards (Which can be very high, although I don't have any details to hand), you have here a very nice storage solution; just plug it into an IDE cable and tell Windows it's a removable disk drive and it's installed, and your students can get cards in a range of capacities, from one or two megabytes to 500+. It has no moving parts, so not only is it reliable, but it also provides VERY fast access. Solid state drive, anyone?
A lot of mention have been made in this discussion of zip disks. I would like to take this oppertunity to say: Noooooo! Zip disks suck! They often lock up and won't read, and the capacity is big for just holding documents, but too small to install your programs on.
If you don't mind about accessing files from non-school computers, why not set up your computers to create a mapped drive to \\server\username, where a user's files are? This would be easy to do, and could be like a floppy drive but without the floppy, and with a different drive letter. People wouldn't be able to use zip disks or whatever on thier home computers either, so this would work quite well if people have individual usernames. You'd also be able to see who's saving pr0n to disks on the school's connection.
Other than that, I'm not sure what to suggest. There's lots of potential solutions out there, and wrtten elsewhere in the discussion. I'd take a look at them.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
He said missions in this decade will concentrate on finding the best spot on Mars to pick up rock samples.
Man, that must be one seriously satisfying job. Imagine going to meetings...
Manager: So, what have you accomplished this decade, John?
John: I have identified a selection of potential candidate sites for landing a robot on Mars to pick up bits of rock!
Manager: Good work!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
when I type DnD into IE5... it leads me to think this movie is some sort of plot by the Canadian Armed Forces
These canadians have a thing called the Department of National Defense, leading to the acronym DND. This is in thier domain names (like http://www.dnd.ca/).
Search engines tend to give priority to keywords found in domain names, because they tend to have more chance of having a relationship. This is happening here.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Conscience strikes: should I see this movie and give my money to Time-Warner?
Why not go to your cinema, pay to see a small, independent movie then when they let you in, 'accidentally' go into the wrong screen (These big multi-screen cinemas sure are getting big nowerdays) and watch it, whilst giving your money to the small independents?
It's not really legal, but as has ben said so many times before: It's not stealing unless something is missing.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
- Get a DC power supply, like the one used on a train set. Cut the connector off, seperate the wires, and strip them both.
- Now you need a jar of water with a tablespoon or so of sodium chloride (SALT!) added to it. This makes the water conductive.
- Now insert both wires into the mixture (I am assuming you plugged the convertor in...) and let them sit for five minutes. One of them will start bubbling more than the other. This is the POSITIVE(+) wire. If you do not do this test right, the final product will be the opposite (chemically) of rust, which is RUST ACID. You have no use for this here (although it IS useful!).
- Anyway, put the nail tied to the positive wire into the jar. Now put the negative wire in the other end. Now let it sit overnight and in the morning scrape the rust off of the nail & repeat until you got a bunch of rust on the bottom of the glass. Be generous with your rust collection. If you are going through the trouble of making thermite, you might as well make a lot, right?
- Now remove the excess water and pour the crusty solution onto a cookie sheet. Dry it in the sun for a few hours, or inside overnight. It should be an orange-brown color (although I have seen it in many different colors! Sometimes the color gets f***ed up, what can I say... but it is still iron oxide!)
- Crush the rust into a fine powder and heat it in a cast-iron pot until it is red. Now mix the pure iron oxide with pure alluminum filings which can be bought or filed down by hand from an aluminum tube or bar. The ratio or iron oxide to aluminum is 8 grams to 3 grams.
- Thermite requires a LOT of heat (more than a blow torch!) to ignite. However, a magnesium ribbon (which isn't too hard to find... say you need it for a school experiment if you want) will do the trick. It takes the heat from the burning magnesium to light the thermite.
- You want electrical ignition, so get yourself a 120w lightbulb. These get really hot when on. Carefully break away the glass and wrap the magnesium around the filament, solder two wires on for power and pack the thermite around it.
- Congratulations! You have your very own hard disk destruct tool! Just add electricity.
This, however, would not destroy printed copies or removable media. To do this, go down your local radio shack and get a few solenoids. These are little bars that shoots out of a block when electricity is provided. Now get an equal number of self-defence CS spray canisters. Wedge the solenoids in the CS spray triggers and blue-tack them around your office, by your computer, above the door etc. running wires between them. Wire these into the office alarm, the same as your light-bulb. Now if you get an intruder, they get 15 bottles of CS spray pumped into the office, detering even the most determined thief.
I did something like this for a school project once...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I wouldn't do this. It might keep normal people alive, but think what would happen if an open-source person was on life support...
Heart monitor: beep... beep... beep... beep...
Patient: Cool, Linux
Heart monitor: beep
Nurse: Ah, you're awake. How are you feeling?
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: (Blatently ignores nurse) Say, did you bring my bag in? it should have a floppy disk in marked 'Emergency boot floppy'.
Heart monitor: beep
Nurse: Um... okay, here you are sir. What are you going to do?
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Nothing.
Heart monitor: beep
Nurse: Okay. You concentrate on getting better now. (Leaves)
Heart monitor: beep
Patient turns over heart monitor.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Hmm... no floppy drive.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient reaches into bedside cabinate and pulls out a bag. Rummages through it for a few minutes, then comes out holding an fdd.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Bingo!
Heart monitor: beep
Patient pulls out a Leatherman multi-tool and unscrews teh back of te heart monitor, then pulls out a ribbon cable, which he plugs into the fdd.
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: (Enters) Ah, you've recovered. As you can see, the tripple heart bypass went according to plan. You see that machine you're holding? That's the new heart monitor. That's just programming your new pacemaker over a wireless LAN connection. Whatever you do, don't deactivate it.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Do me a favour? Unplug it and plug it back in again.
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: Oh. Okay. (Does)
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Thanks.
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: What are you doing?
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: I'm reprogramming this linux box to work as an MP3 player. I've got few hours of MP3s on this CD-R...
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: Careful, if you stop it working, your pacemaker might not install properly.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Don't worry, I can always restore the data from a backup I have here.
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: Well, you're the expert.
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: Okay, if I put this CD in, it should play the MP3s I recorded onto it this morning...
Heart monitor: beep
Doctor: Say, it does still do the pacemaker thing doesn't it?
Heart monitor: beep
Patient: What pacemak...
Heart monitor: beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
Remember, everyone: Don't try to get a root prompt on hospital property. Or a shell prompt. Or a even a KDE session.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
My Gimp enhanched copy kicks your weaselly "scratch removal" programs but dood.
Aha, but I've got a bit of tail copy-and-pasted further down, removing the apparent break, and the reduced image size hides the inconsistencies.
At the cost of some quality, I reduced the file size by 59% to uust 30,769 bytes over your 76,012 bytes. Mine also had a translation. And my HTML tags were right. And I remembered the www. on my website address (Your site didn't seem to diaplay without it).
Your scratch removal is better though...
Michael.
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Your facial geometry
Interestingly, according to This review on zdnet, you can often get past commercial face recognition software by taking a photo of the person's face, printing it out as a mask, cutting a nose hole (for someone with a similar nose), and putting on:
The face recognition systems proved easier to crack than the fingerprint or voice recognition systems. We tried to gain entry using a mask we created by printing a digital image from a color printer. This didn't work. But then we cut a nose hole in the mask and placed the mask on someone with a somewhat similar nose. At the default thresholds, we were able to fool Miros's TrueFace Network several times and Visionics' FaceIt NT once.
Retina, hand and fingerprint scanners would be as secure as could be expected but facial geometry systems tend to be less secure. Multi-camera set-ups would doubtless be more secure, but the price would start getting very high.
Personally, my favourite technology is te retina (or iris) scanner, because they can distunguish living from dead, so there's no risk of someone taking a chainsaw to your hand to get access to your bank account. They'll just have to do it at gunpoint...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
But is it possible for someone to just make an identical copy of my smart ID card, and 'become me'?
This depends on how well the security is done. The simplest smart cards simply store data, i.e. you input data and then if you send a standardised command, you get it back.
The most advanced smart cards process commands like an unopenable, solid box with a computer in.
An example way they could identify each card securely would go something like this:
Verifying terminal sends the card some random data
Smart card accepts data and is programmed to digitally sign it with a public/private key algorithm.
Smart card returns data to terminal
A more complex model might be:
Every card has a private key, and every card has a matching public key, held in a goverment database.
A goverment terminal sends a request for data (i.e. What is this person's SSN?) signed with an official goverment key
The smart card checks the govt signature against the public key stored internally.
The smart card returns the requested data, signed with the card's private key.
The govt terminal checks the signature against the public key database.
They can take pretty much as much programming as you care to put in, if you buy a good card. You could, for example, require a password to be sent to the card before it works. Anything you want, within reason. Including wiping the card if someone tried to probe it.
If you wanted to make yourself a new identity, if you could get a blank card and a copy of the programming, and you could get a new public key inserted on the official database, it might be possible to make yourself a card, but it would require substantial technical knowledgability, if it was all secured properly. It would probably be easier to wrongly send for the ID card requisition forms and fill them in with fake details.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
My mirror is up at http://www.btinternet.com/~Micha el. Tandy/msad.jpg. I've run it through a scratch removal program I've been working on to get rid of the center line, optimised the image and put on Booker's translation.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
This could be cool. When I'm king of the world, all planning permission documents will heve to be renewed, and all diagrams will have to be supplied in the form of Quake III or Counterstrike maps: It should be much less effort to make your home/school/office/supermarket/whatever into a map!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
A quick search of the SpamCop database reveals postmaster@amazon.com as a candidate address, not neseceriy (sp?) for complaining to, but at least for putting on
A TRACERT of www.amazon.com ends up going through a whole bunch of gblx.net URLs, so I had a look at www.gblx.net:
Global Crossing is a new breed in the world of telecommunications. Leading-edge technology. Global reach. The ability to rapidly deploy new services. A next-generation network designed to support voice, data and bandwidth-intensive applications.
Putting the URL the gblx website ends up redirecting us to (globalcrossing.com) into the Spamcop host tracker gives us:
Statistics:
ISP score:380
Note, this is not necessarily a reflection on the specific address given. It is rather based on the overall ISP score.
Email from this host would be detained by SpamCop Filters: isp score:380
Found abuse address: abuse@globalcenter.net
So you could always send complaining e-mails to abuse@globalcenter.net if it gets too bad. They're bound to do something.
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I feel I should give something back to the Internet community, so I have reached a decision: I will lend my internet and economical expertise to any dot-com startup who cares to ask, and all I ask in return is one small thing: control of the
Think about it...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
In (Vaguely) related news (link), The Russian Space Agency rejected a last-minute change in the launch of the first International Space Station module next week, a Russian idea that had mystified the U.S. space agency, officials said.
Well, *I* found it interesting.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
i4u.com has some interesting sample photos. They really put into perspective how low the resolution is.
Unfortunately, I think this watch would be too heavy/bulky to wear all the time, every day. That rules it out as a tiny portable camera you could have on hand for those 'spontaneous kodac moments' when you didn't have a better camara with you. The only application I can think of other than that is in having a camera where you're not supposed to, i.e. exams, concerts, etc.
And as a gimmickey toy to show off to your mates, of course. That's why I want one.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
There's also the small matter that The UK is slightly smaller than Oregon. When the US has 275,562,673 citizens and the UK has only 59,511,464 (21% the population of the US), it seems fair to assume we will only produce 21% of the amazing super-geniuses.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Uh... am I the only person who can't see how anyone could dream about tetris? I mean... it's possible to dream about a specific problem, like tactics on Deus Ex or how to approach a particular problem, but tetris pieces fall randomly, so there has to be quite a bit of real-time thought as to what you should do, but no long-term consideration of tactics. I'd be more worried about people deraming about playing tetris than people not getting better at tetris by dreaming about it.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Anything watermarked that hits Napster, iMesh, Gnutella, etc. is fully traceable.
Indeed, but CDs are produced in bulk. It would be massively more expensive to make every CD different, so the best they could do would be to say "Oh no! This MP3 was copied from a UK production run" or similar. Besides, you could pay cash when you buy the CD and once it has propogated throughout the Napster/Gnutella/Whatever network, you could delete your MP3 and just use your CD.
Fat chance Microsoft will sign a driver that fails to disable What-U-Hear
My Soundblaster Live Platinum has what you hear. My other computers have SB Lives and SB Live Values. All support what-u-hear. If ME wouldn't support them, that would suck totally. You could quite easily make a double-ended audio wire to connect your headphone socket into your microphone socket.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Here's how to crack your SDMI-campatible player:
1) Download SDMI file
2) Download compatible player
3) Set your sound card input to 'What you hear' or whatever equivilent
4) Start your choice
5) Press 'Record'
6) Play SDMI file
7) Wait until end of play
8) Press stop
9) Encode your
10) Put on gnutella
Or if you have a hardware player:
1) Prepare player to play music normally
2) Dismantle the player, until you get down to a loudspeaker. Cut off the two wires and solder them into a standard microphone audio jack from your local hardware store
3) Start your choice
4) Plug the new microphone jack into your sound card
5) Play SDMI file
6) Wait until end of play and click 'stop'
7) Encode
8) Put on gnutella
Clever eh? I'll take my $10,000 in cash, sterling used notes please.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.