If you find some sort of enjoyment in trying to lose someone a job because they aren't as god damn superior as you. Well, why don't you get your smart ass on a helpdesk and you can set everyone straight.
I don't mean people should try and get help desk people fired. If you're that worried, just don't ask the person's name. I am simply relating a story about a technique that worked for me. Admittedly, it was with a different ISP and only dialup, but the recording got me high enough up the support chain that I could talk to somone who knows about firewalling who agreed that, in my position, the company's threat to close my account was unreasonable (All I was doing was running my connection through one computer as a proxy, for security.)
Maybe it wouldn't work in this case. I don't know. I don't live in America, and I don't have much experience dealing with American companies.
Michael.
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
That's what I'd go for. Obviously, the GPL is probably fine too.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
They do not care, nor have the resources to even detect most violations of their TOS.
Try this: Set a tape recorder up on the phone. Set it to record. Phone up customer service, and say:
You: Hi. It this @home customer service?
Them: Yes.
You: Who am I talking to, please?
Them: This is Julie.
You: I have a quick question about your TOS.
Them: Okay...
You: Can I put a firewall between my computers and your service? I'm worried about security.
Them: Yeah, I guess.
You: By the way, do you have the date?
Them: Sure, it's 14/08/2000.
If they ever disconnect you, call up, ask for the most senoir person you can get, and play the tape back.
Well, it could work.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
They might blindly hate the idea of using Microsoft software. This *is*/.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Re:the web isn't the answer to everything!
on
Online Voting?
·
· Score: 2
Hey,
Even if all the encryption and validity and security and anonymity issues were worked out, there's nothing to guarantee that a neighbour hasn't walked into my home, pointed a gun in my face and ordered me to vote for someone.
No, but there's nothing in the current system to stop you going to vote, giving in your ID, getting the slip of paper, going into the booth, and taking out a digital camera and snapping the paper. Give in the voting slip, go home, print off 10 identical forms, vote 'liberal'(or whatever) on all of them, then go to your mate's house and give him the 10 pieces of paper. He goes to vote, gives in his ID, gets his paper, votes 'liberal', then gets out the 10 additional voting slips, and as he puts his paper into the vote box, putting in the other 10. Voilia! Your vote importance is amplified 10 times.
The truth of the matter is nobody would go to the bother for just one extra vote. Or 10 extra votes. They might for 100 votes, but they'd get found out when people noticed the big wad of 100 papers they were trying to slot into the box for counting. If your neighbour forces you to vote one way, call the police and have them haul him off to jail for the next few years.
Just my $0.02,
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Re:The impossibility of Online Voting
on
Online Voting?
·
· Score: 1
Hey,
If voters have the option of rejecting ALL candidates, then negative campaigning, slick sales-talk and promotional campaigns will be less effective and much less popular.
(In the UK, at least) you have the option to Abstain. You go to the voting place, hand over your form thingy, take your slip of paper and scribble all over it.
Unfortunately, the majority of people couldn't be bothered to do that. Those who do vote may choose to abstain, but you have to remember: if people made thier votes based on quantifiable (sp?) measures of performance, election candidates wouldn't need to put on makeup before going on TV.
If I wanted to secure a voting system, I'd have computers connect to a server, then have people put thier election smart-cards into a slot on thier computer. The computer recieves, say, 1kb of random data from the server (different for every voter, of course), signed with the server's private key. The voter's computer then feeds the random data to the smart card. The card has been programmed with a built-in private/public key combo. The public part is also held be the government. The smart card signs the random data and feeds it back to the computer. The computer forwards the (signed) random data to the server. The server checks the signature, checks the random data is the same as it sent out, and checks the person hasn't already voted in this election. The server then sends the voter's computer one of, say, 5 blocks of random data, each 2kb in size. The choice of blocks that are sent rotates, so each block is sent out an equal number of times. When this block is being transmitted it is, of course, encrypted to the private key that is held on the smart card. The voter's computer recieves the data and sends it to the smart card. The smart card decrypts it and works out it's SHA-1 hash, which it returns to the computer. The computer sends this hash to the server, acknowledging the block has been correctly recieved. The voter's computer then breaks the link to the first server, and connects to the other. Let's call it the 'booth server'. The client computer gets some random data from the smart card, and sends it to the booth server. The booth server signs it and sends it back. The voter computer then feeds the signed data to the smart card, along with the 2kb data block it recieved earlier. The computer then asks the voter for thier vote. This too is fed to the smart card. The smart card checks the signature from the booth server and, if it is valid, decrypts the 2kb data block. Then it appends the vote to the 2kb data block encrypts it, then sends it to the booth server. The booth server decrypts it, counts the votes, and makes a note of which of the 5 2kb data blocks was used. When the voting it complete, the booth server checks the same number of each type of block was used. If so, the vote was secure.
But I must say, the idea of Joe Sixpack switching windows to vote as he waits for 'playboy.com' to load is a bit scary...
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
'1337' is mocking script kiddie hackers, as in 'H3y! |'m a 1337 5r1p7 k1dd3 h4x0r' (Hey, I'm a elite script kiddie hacker). This comes from thier stupid habit of putting CapITalS wHERE tHey sHOUldN'T bE and u51n9 numbers or S¥^^bئ instead of letters, having really bad spelling and switching S for Z.
These 'havkers' tend to be idiots who can't actually code, but download 'Back Orifice' and such programs and use them online, and tell themselves lhey have amazing 1337 5killz. Them they go on IRC and join #hack and t41k with thier 1337 buddies about r00t1n6 however many b0xez.
We take thier writing and use it sarcastically, as a joke.
It's funny.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
1) we still need services.. who wants to do the dirty work?
Good point. I forgot about services... maybe some things would be made self-replicating, removing the need for repairs. Other than that, I guess the people who used to work in manufacturing would have to be moved to tertiary work, like we are currently seeing with more and more manufacture being moved to countries that don't have expences like, for example, health and safety.
2) But if there were no patents/copyrights then all it would take is one person to release the plans for the replicator...
I was kinda drawing on DeCSS here. Many people have a copy of css_descramble.c but there aren't any Linux DVD players yet. I guess it would take rather longer than we've had so far.
The main problem is that the government has too much power
Heh... that and replicators not existing...
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
"But why, (if I may be so bold) didn't anyone seem to care when Yahoo, CNN.com etc. were being brought down by attackers?"
Well, most people who brows K5, or for that matter/., know how pathetically easy it is to run a DoS. We know that anyone with the most rudimentry knowledge can do it. It's so easy it's not even worth doing. We know that some idiot teenager 'decided' he didn't like K5, so thought it would be funny to DoS it. I looked at K5 every now and then. Now I can't. Because of him. BECAUSE OF SOME STUPID SCRIPT KIDDIE, I CAN'T LOOK AT A WEBSITE I WANT TO LOOK AT.
As you may be able to detect, I am upset.
The reason I wasn't so upset about the DDoSes against Yahoo and similar is because I don't use them. I don't want a portal. If I want to search, metacrawler.com is great. If I want news, I have news.bbc.co.uk. What's more, if I use these services, my screen won't be cluttered with offers of free webspace at Yahoo! Geocites or stock tickers or web directories.
I never use Yahoo. Or CNN. If I did, I might be angry that a service had been taken away from me. As it hadn't, I wasn't that upset. To use a slightly offensive comparison, Yahoo was a stranger getting shot, but K5 was my buddy getting shot.
"it's important to remember that even corporate web sites (if they're any good) have people behind them who really do care"
Indeed they do, but only care the same as shop assistants care about you having a nice day (Well, maybe a little more care than that). If CNN went under tomorrow, I don't think the web team would be rerouting the cnn.com DNS entries to thier home ADSL lines so they can carry on providing a service for thier users.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
1) Star trek - Everyone can have as much of everything as they want, using the amazing replication machine. World hunger is abolished. The fundamental rules of economics, such as resources being scarce, collapse. Nobody needs to work in manufacture. Seen as nobody needs to manufacture, people who enjoy it (i.e. me) can develop new products and distribute them for free (No need for money... what is there to buy?) to show how clever they are. People will change to do money-irrelevent work, like exploring space and things. We will live in a futuristic utopia.
2) What would be more likely to happen - when the replication device is in it's infancy, high-profit companies will crush it, by offering all developers money to work on something else (Think of development of clean fuels). If one developer is missed for bribery, they will finish the product. plans will be distributed on the internet, but it will be hard to use, probably not suitable for anything practical (like DECSS). Large manufacturers will find out. Every time something is replicated, hundreds of multimillion dollar patent-infringement lawsuits will be launched. Original developers will be ruined financially. In the end, a shaky product will be produced, and plans will be publically made availiable. It will likely involve lots of very complicated embedded processors that people will have trouble acquiring, but they will start to become more widespread. Initally, large companies will start launching lawsuits against users for patent infringement. This will continue for some time, until the replicators become so widespread the companies notice severe drops in profit. They will then pay^H^H^Hlobby the Government to pass some jargon-filled law, like the '2020 Digital patent enforcement act' (Oops, I meant to get an e-commerce and an internet and a millenium in that title...). This law will be passed, mainly due to the bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hdonations made by companies to politicians funds. This law will specify that all these replication machines are illigal, worse-than-murder disasters for America, they should be destroyed and the users executed by being slowly lowered into a sea of maggots.
Inintially there will be some token gesture arrests, but some manufacturers will try to cash in with a for-profit kitchen replicator. These will be brought. Eventually, most people will have replicators, like most people have TVs. These replicators will take little disks holding the blueprints for items to replicate. Companies will make money be selling replicator data-disks. A lot of people in manufacture will become unemployed, but that's okay because they will be able to replicate food. A new type of money will be introduced that can't be replicated due to some special property. After a while, people will start sharing thier disks around a bit. They will justify it to themselves, saying, it isn't the original designer taking the hit, it's the greedy corperation that is charging you for the disk. People will begin sharing the disks more. Say, 5 households per disk. The companies will realize they are now getting 1/5th of the income they once were. Whilst they could say 'Ah well, we don't have a manufacturing division, we don't need the money', they won't. They'll simply opt for a 500% increase in price. This will force more people to share disks. Sharing will increase, every time slightly less money being made. Eventually, the large companies will give up and stop producing at all. The quality of products will fall dramatically. There will be freely availiable alternatives, but they won't be as polished and user-friendly. Some people will design things because they enjoy doing it, but they won't be as motivated as paid people are. The majority of people won't explore the universe or design new things, prefering instead to stay at home and eat replicated fast food and have sex with thier replicated Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) until they die from heart attacks from the food or exhaustion after they set thier Sarah Michelle Gellar to 'Insanitable' sex appetite. Those who don't die will continue to replicate things like 16-foot yachts until the world's oceans are totally saturated with them. You won't be able to drive for all the stretch limos, rolls-royces and private hellicopters littering the streets. Power plants will begin to collapse under the demand of all the replicating people are doing. There will be some sort of restriction on how much you can replicate. Anything you don't want can be burned to generate electricity to power your replicator. Eventually, everyone will have all the things they need in the world. Replication will slow as people find there aren't any options better than what they already have. People will say 'Hey, I can't replicate anything better than this 16-processor motherboard loaded with 16 20Ghz Pentium 5 processors. Then people will realize nobody is producing anything new. Power credits to operate your replicator will become a sort of currency. Anyone who develops a product better than an existing one can sell the plans to people who will give him replicator credits in return. Soon, people will start doing whatever they're good at doing and selling the results to get credits. Then somone will say 'hey, why are we carrying out all these difficult power transfers with lotties full of ni-cad batterise? Why don't we place physical power distribution in the hands of the government and have little pieces of paper that represent power credits? We could have big ones called 'Dollars' and little ones called 'Cents'. The economy will be back at the start of it's evolution, and things will end up rather like they are today, just totally different.
Well, that's my prediction. I'm likely totally wrong.
Ciao,
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
The problem with subject tags is that it doesn't eliminate the cost-shifting.
It does if ISPs offer a checkbox on thier signup forms for "Store *ADV*?" so at the same time as choosing your POP password, you can choose for all messages with ADV in thier titles to be deleted at the mail server. The same could be done at SMTP servers.
Maybe...
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
I don't see how Antigravity (Boots, ship or other wise) will help in the real problem.
Well, at the current costs of launching 1kg into space (About "£2000 / $3000 IIRC), to launch parts to build, say, the 'Starship Enterprise' would cost the GDP of every nation on earth, all added together (On top of that, you have the cost of actually making the components). If an antigravity conduit into space could be established using a spinning disk (Which could probably be done quite cheaply if the theory is as it sounds), getting things into space would be cheaper.
I think....
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
The mutations are random. The "survival of fittest" is not.
Mmm-kay. First I'd like to say I think evolution is the nearest thing we have to a correct theory.
I think the point the poster was trying to make is that if we all evolved randomly, there would be more difference in our bodily designs, i.e. the designs of our bodies are similar to each other. We all have two kidneys. They are around the abdomen. I wouldn't expect this much similarity if the only requirements of existance were a) random selection and b) survival. People with only one kidney would still survive. How come there aren't any?
Who knows? Maybe I havn't got a clue. I'm no biology expert.
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Do you know what I think would be cool? If my Information Technology class did simething like this. How about some I/O?
I'd go for a burgler alarm. Give the students some resources: computer, Simple IO (Think 'Lego Mindstorms'), and some detectio systems like window alarms. Do it in groups of, say, 4 people, self-organised peer groups. But let the better students bring in thier own resources, and have somewhere secure to store them. You know, things like movement sensors, RS232 to 8-bit converters, webcams, light beams, touch-sensitive floor panels, radio connections, web cameras, UPS, encrypted connection to an outside monitoring station, whatever. Tell them to trigger a big, red light when they detect things.
Give each student one room to protect. Then get the other student groups to try to break in without setting off the alarm.
Oh, and make all documentation optional.
That's my idea of fun. But then, I'm a geek.
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
games!! (Score:1) by ARColeslaw on Wed August 02, 05:55 PM GMT (#1) (User #66892 Info) program 3d games!!! woo hoo!!
This is the FIRST POST, yet it has been moderated redundant. I'd say the moderator in question was browsing highest posts first or somesuch. Please, moderators, if you want to list something redundant do, but check it is redundant first.
I nearly posted anonymously to protect my karma, but havn't. I have pleanty (And enter pretty low anyway... I won't be loosing sleep over 2 or 3 points lost).
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Do you think anyone's registered PointAndLaugh@hotmail.com??? What about Throw.Sh1t@hotmail.com??? Swear@hotmail.com??? Laugh.At.Lame.OS@hotmail.com???
Spamproof-ish as well. The possibilities are endless...
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
You wouldn't need to take down the entire US for that.
Of you ask me, an attack on a physical entity, i.e. transatlantic fibreoptic repeaters, would be far more effective. Sure, router sabotage would be destructive, but there are tighter bottleknecks around...
Just my $0.02 ($0.00000000002 after appropriate EU VAT, taxes, currency conversion and depreciation)
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
I think it has, yes. Or at least, a high percentage of users aren't exactly tearing through units. Here are some extracts from my stats:
Results Received: 135 Total CPU Time: 2487 hr 18 min Last result returned: Sat Mar 18 21:44:27 2000 UTC Your rank out of 2180053 total users is: 218171st place. The total number of users who have this rank: 1258 You have completed more work units than: 89.935% of our users.
I've come to prefer Distributed.net, which I changed to after the continual failures of my clients to retrieve new work units half the time, or work through my (correctly configured) HTTP proxy. Distributed.net seemed much cooler. Plus it is much more configurable.
That's me, though.
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Plus the single-processor board has a different processor on it.
But then, anyone who'd be desperate to spend a three-figure sum on a card so they can donate more spare processor time without having to loose any of thier spare processor time deserves to be ripped off.
Just my $0.02
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
If I ran a credit card company, I'd have options of:
1) All merchants 2) All merchants except blacklisted 3) No merchents except whitelisted 4) Authorise
You'd have a choice, a normal credit card, a credit card that couldn't be used at companies that had a record of mischarging customers, a credit card that only works at popular shops that have a good trade record, and a card where you telephone before buying anything and say 'I'd like to authorise 'Jon's Pr0n-o-rama' to take $15 per month from my card', or 'I'm going shopping. I'd like to authorise the spending of $150 on my card, within the next 2 hours'.
This could be a good cash safety feature, or it could just be annoying... more likely annoying, after a while.
Some peer review might be in order?
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Obviously the idea is to communicate without anyone knowing.
My reccommendation would depend on the time you want the data delivered in. If you have a long time for each communication, I would advise you set up a dialogue over the post. You send regular letters to your cousin in China, writing about all sorts of family subjects. You don't conceal and hidden information in these messages. Every time you have some secret information, you send your friend a big American movie that would be hard to get in China. I can't comment on video availiability in China, but I don't expect it's that great. Anyway, you send off your video of, say, 'The Matrix'. Both you and your friend have some sort of video editing system. You could use pretty much anything, but I like the Danmere Backer range. You go to the very end of the video, after the film, stick some tape over the snapped-off tag, then record your message, in whatever format you want. Rewind the video, remove the tape to write-protect the tape, if possible, get somebody who works at a shop to shrink-wrap it for you, then post it off. A few weeks later, he posts back your video with a letter of thanks, and his reply recorded over your old message.
Whilst the time requirements are quite strict, and there may be difficulties posting videos from abroad, I doubt government searchers are going to open your shrink-wrapped video and watch the entire thing, end to end, in case you have a secret message encoded in it. You could camoflage your message with a regular exchange of non-messaged tapes if you want.
If you want to communicate more quickly, I'd go for steganography. I personally use steganos which is windows-only (gasp!) but uses something they call Dynamic Cell Spreading (DyCeS). If it was me programming it, I'd ask for a password, then I'd hash the password, and number all the pixels. If the hash started with hex 7C1..., I'd encrypt the message with the password provided, then put the first bit in cell 7C1, and repeat this several times. That way, people looking at your message wouldn't be able to tell which cells to check for hidden messages. This could be done against a background of normal photographs, as camoflage.
Then again, I didn't write the program, and don't have any information on how the DyCeS algorithm works, and havn't a clue how to write a steganography program.
Maybe some peer review could be in order?
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Slashdot Mirror
You sir, are a wanker.
Oh.
If you find some sort of enjoyment in trying to lose someone a job because they aren't as god damn superior as you. Well, why don't you get your smart ass on a helpdesk and you can set everyone straight.
I don't mean people should try and get help desk people fired. If you're that worried, just don't ask the person's name. I am simply relating a story about a technique that worked for me. Admittedly, it was with a different ISP and only dialup, but the recording got me high enough up the support chain that I could talk to somone who knows about firewalling who agreed that, in my position, the company's threat to close my account was unreasonable (All I was doing was running my connection through one computer as a proxy, for security.)
Maybe it wouldn't work in this case. I don't know. I don't live in America, and I don't have much experience dealing with American companies.
Michael.
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
Where I am, it's legal as long as one of the two parties are aware of the recording.
Check for your locale.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
You might do better with the GNU Free Documentation License:
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
That's what I'd go for. Obviously, the GPL is probably fine too.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
They do not care, nor have the resources to even detect most violations of their TOS.
Try this: Set a tape recorder up on the phone. Set it to record. Phone up customer service, and say:
You: Hi. It this @home customer service?
Them: Yes.
You: Who am I talking to, please?
Them: This is Julie.
You: I have a quick question about your TOS.
Them: Okay...
You: Can I put a firewall between my computers and your service? I'm worried about security.
Them: Yeah, I guess.
You: By the way, do you have the date?
Them: Sure, it's 14/08/2000.
If they ever disconnect you, call up, ask for the most senoir person you can get, and play the tape back.
Well, it could work.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
here in Kitchener-Waterloo, people on @Home with Rogers have reported regular port scans (21,23,80) from security.home.com or some such hostname.
Why not ban the IP? is that against the TOS??
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
/.
They might blindly hate the idea of using Microsoft software. This *is*
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Even if all the encryption and validity and security and anonymity issues were worked out, there's nothing to guarantee that a neighbour hasn't walked into my home, pointed a gun in my face and ordered me to vote for someone.
No, but there's nothing in the current system to stop you going to vote, giving in your ID, getting the slip of paper, going into the booth, and taking out a digital camera and snapping the paper. Give in the voting slip, go home, print off 10 identical forms, vote 'liberal'(or whatever) on all of them, then go to your mate's house and give him the 10 pieces of paper. He goes to vote, gives in his ID, gets his paper, votes 'liberal', then gets out the 10 additional voting slips, and as he puts his paper into the vote box, putting in the other 10. Voilia! Your vote importance is amplified 10 times.
The truth of the matter is nobody would go to the bother for just one extra vote. Or 10 extra votes. They might for 100 votes, but they'd get found out when people noticed the big wad of 100 papers they were trying to slot into the box for counting. If your neighbour forces you to vote one way, call the police and have them haul him off to jail for the next few years.
Just my $0.02,
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
If voters have the option of rejecting ALL candidates, then negative campaigning, slick sales-talk and promotional campaigns will be less effective and much less popular.
(In the UK, at least) you have the option to Abstain. You go to the voting place, hand over your form thingy, take your slip of paper and scribble all over it.
Unfortunately, the majority of people couldn't be bothered to do that. Those who do vote may choose to abstain, but you have to remember: if people made thier votes based on quantifiable (sp?) measures of performance, election candidates wouldn't need to put on makeup before going on TV.
If I wanted to secure a voting system, I'd have computers connect to a server, then have people put thier election smart-cards into a slot on thier computer. The computer recieves, say, 1kb of random data from the server (different for every voter, of course), signed with the server's private key. The voter's computer then feeds the random data to the smart card. The card has been programmed with a built-in private/public key combo. The public part is also held be the government. The smart card signs the random data and feeds it back to the computer. The computer forwards the (signed) random data to the server. The server checks the signature, checks the random data is the same as it sent out, and checks the person hasn't already voted in this election. The server then sends the voter's computer one of, say, 5 blocks of random data, each 2kb in size. The choice of blocks that are sent rotates, so each block is sent out an equal number of times. When this block is being transmitted it is, of course, encrypted to the private key that is held on the smart card. The voter's computer recieves the data and sends it to the smart card. The smart card decrypts it and works out it's SHA-1 hash, which it returns to the computer. The computer sends this hash to the server, acknowledging the block has been correctly recieved. The voter's computer then breaks the link to the first server, and connects to the other. Let's call it the 'booth server'. The client computer gets some random data from the smart card, and sends it to the booth server. The booth server signs it and sends it back. The voter computer then feeds the signed data to the smart card, along with the 2kb data block it recieved earlier. The computer then asks the voter for thier vote. This too is fed to the smart card. The smart card checks the signature from the booth server and, if it is valid, decrypts the 2kb data block. Then it appends the vote to the 2kb data block encrypts it, then sends it to the booth server. The booth server decrypts it, counts the votes, and makes a note of which of the 5 2kb data blocks was used. When the voting it complete, the booth server checks the same number of each type of block was used. If so, the vote was secure.
But I must say, the idea of Joe Sixpack switching windows to vote as he waits for 'playboy.com' to load is a bit scary...
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
'1337' is mocking script kiddie hackers, as in 'H3y! |'m a 1337 5r1p7 k1dd3 h4x0r' (Hey, I'm a elite script kiddie hacker). This comes from thier stupid habit of putting CapITalS wHERE tHey sHOUldN'T bE and u51n9 numbers or S¥^^bئ instead of letters, having really bad spelling and switching S for Z.
These 'havkers' tend to be idiots who can't actually code, but download 'Back Orifice' and such programs and use them online, and tell themselves lhey have amazing 1337 5killz. Them they go on IRC and join #hack and t41k with thier 1337 buddies about r00t1n6 however many b0xez.
We take thier writing and use it sarcastically, as a joke.
It's funny.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
1) we still need services.. who wants to do the dirty work?
Good point. I forgot about services... maybe some things would be made self-replicating, removing the need for repairs. Other than that, I guess the people who used to work in manufacturing would have to be moved to tertiary work, like we are currently seeing with more and more manufacture being moved to countries that don't have expences like, for example, health and safety.
2) But if there were no patents/copyrights then all it would take is one person to release the plans for the replicator...
I was kinda drawing on DeCSS here. Many people have a copy of css_descramble.c but there aren't any Linux DVD players yet. I guess it would take rather longer than we've had so far.
The main problem is that the government has too much power
Heh... that and replicators not existing...
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
/., know how pathetically easy it is to run a DoS. We know that anyone with the most rudimentry knowledge can do it. It's so easy it's not even worth doing. We know that some idiot teenager 'decided' he didn't like K5, so thought it would be funny to DoS it. I looked at K5 every now and then. Now I can't. Because of him. BECAUSE OF SOME STUPID SCRIPT KIDDIE, I CAN'T LOOK AT A WEBSITE I WANT TO LOOK AT.
"But why, (if I may be so bold) didn't anyone seem to care when Yahoo, CNN.com etc. were being brought down by attackers?"
Well, most people who brows K5, or for that matter
As you may be able to detect, I am upset.
The reason I wasn't so upset about the DDoSes against Yahoo and similar is because I don't use them. I don't want a portal. If I want to search, metacrawler.com is great. If I want news, I have news.bbc.co.uk. What's more, if I use these services, my screen won't be cluttered with offers of free webspace at Yahoo! Geocites or stock tickers or web directories.
I never use Yahoo. Or CNN. If I did, I might be angry that a service had been taken away from me. As it hadn't, I wasn't that upset. To use a slightly offensive comparison, Yahoo was a stranger getting shot, but K5 was my buddy getting shot.
"it's important to remember that even corporate web sites (if they're any good) have people behind them who really do care"
Indeed they do, but only care the same as shop assistants care about you having a nice day (Well, maybe a little more care than that). If CNN went under tomorrow, I don't think the web team would be rerouting the cnn.com DNS entries to thier home ADSL lines so they can carry on providing a service for thier users.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
I'll deal with two different ideas here.
1) Star trek - Everyone can have as much of everything as they want, using the amazing replication machine. World hunger is abolished. The fundamental rules of economics, such as resources being scarce, collapse. Nobody needs to work in manufacture. Seen as nobody needs to manufacture, people who enjoy it (i.e. me) can develop new products and distribute them for free (No need for money... what is there to buy?) to show how clever they are. People will change to do money-irrelevent work, like exploring space and things. We will live in a futuristic utopia.
2) What would be more likely to happen - when the replication device is in it's infancy, high-profit companies will crush it, by offering all developers money to work on something else (Think of development of clean fuels). If one developer is missed for bribery, they will finish the product. plans will be distributed on the internet, but it will be hard to use, probably not suitable for anything practical (like DECSS). Large manufacturers will find out. Every time something is replicated, hundreds of multimillion dollar patent-infringement lawsuits will be launched. Original developers will be ruined financially. In the end, a shaky product will be produced, and plans will be publically made availiable. It will likely involve lots of very complicated embedded processors that people will have trouble acquiring, but they will start to become more widespread. Initally, large companies will start launching lawsuits against users for patent infringement. This will continue for some time, until the replicators become so widespread the companies notice severe drops in profit. They will then pay^H^H^Hlobby the Government to pass some jargon-filled law, like the '2020 Digital patent enforcement act' (Oops, I meant to get an e-commerce and an internet and a millenium in that title...). This law will be passed, mainly due to the bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hdonations made by companies to politicians funds. This law will specify that all these replication machines are illigal, worse-than-murder disasters for America, they should be destroyed and the users executed by being slowly lowered into a sea of maggots.
Inintially there will be some token gesture arrests, but some manufacturers will try to cash in with a for-profit kitchen replicator. These will be brought. Eventually, most people will have replicators, like most people have TVs. These replicators will take little disks holding the blueprints for items to replicate. Companies will make money be selling replicator data-disks. A lot of people in manufacture will become unemployed, but that's okay because they will be able to replicate food. A new type of money will be introduced that can't be replicated due to some special property. After a while, people will start sharing thier disks around a bit. They will justify it to themselves, saying, it isn't the original designer taking the hit, it's the greedy corperation that is charging you for the disk. People will begin sharing the disks more. Say, 5 households per disk. The companies will realize they are now getting 1/5th of the income they once were. Whilst they could say 'Ah well, we don't have a manufacturing division, we don't need the money', they won't. They'll simply opt for a 500% increase in price. This will force more people to share disks. Sharing will increase, every time slightly less money being made. Eventually, the large companies will give up and stop producing at all. The quality of products will fall dramatically. There will be freely availiable alternatives, but they won't be as polished and user-friendly. Some people will design things because they enjoy doing it, but they won't be as motivated as paid people are. The majority of people won't explore the universe or design new things, prefering instead to stay at home and eat replicated fast food and have sex with thier replicated Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) until they die from heart attacks from the food or exhaustion after they set thier Sarah Michelle Gellar to 'Insanitable' sex appetite. Those who don't die will continue to replicate things like 16-foot yachts until the world's oceans are totally saturated with them. You won't be able to drive for all the stretch limos, rolls-royces and private hellicopters littering the streets. Power plants will begin to collapse under the demand of all the replicating people are doing. There will be some sort of restriction on how much you can replicate. Anything you don't want can be burned to generate electricity to power your replicator. Eventually, everyone will have all the things they need in the world. Replication will slow as people find there aren't any options better than what they already have. People will say 'Hey, I can't replicate anything better than this 16-processor motherboard loaded with 16 20Ghz Pentium 5 processors. Then people will realize nobody is producing anything new. Power credits to operate your replicator will become a sort of currency. Anyone who develops a product better than an existing one can sell the plans to people who will give him replicator credits in return. Soon, people will start doing whatever they're good at doing and selling the results to get credits. Then somone will say 'hey, why are we carrying out all these difficult power transfers with lotties full of ni-cad batterise? Why don't we place physical power distribution in the hands of the government and have little pieces of paper that represent power credits? We could have big ones called 'Dollars' and little ones called 'Cents'. The economy will be back at the start of it's evolution, and things will end up rather like they are today, just totally different.
Well, that's my prediction. I'm likely totally wrong.
Ciao,
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
I wondered about this... by my testing, it looks like you were right. Here's what I did:
I had to find a relitavely popular website. One that had publicbly viewable stats. I went for http://www.geocities.com/walters_mission/. If you look at the site, apparently it had, like, a million hits so it seems like a good stats source to me. Obviously, it isn't a totally representative cross-section of teh internet-using population, but it's good enouth for our reasons.
Decided on this site, I looked at it's system stats. Here are the stats for Resolution.
Res -> Count -> % of total
800x600 -> 139348 -> 41.32%
1024x768 -> 124705 -> 36.98%
1280x1024 -> 23333 -> 6.92%
1152x864 -> 17569 -> 5.21%
640x480 -> 17142 -> 5.08%
Other -> 9909 -> 2.93%
1600x1200 -> 5170 -> 1.53%
So yes, most people do use 800x600, but 1024x768 isn't at all far behind. 16bpp was the top colour depth too. Good call.
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey!
The problem with subject tags is that it doesn't eliminate the cost-shifting.
It does if ISPs offer a checkbox on thier signup forms for "Store *ADV*?" so at the same time as choosing your POP password, you can choose for all messages with ADV in thier titles to be deleted at the mail server. The same could be done at SMTP servers.
Maybe...
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey!
I don't see how Antigravity (Boots, ship or other wise) will help in the real problem.
Well, at the current costs of launching 1kg into space (About "£2000 / $3000 IIRC), to launch parts to build, say, the 'Starship Enterprise' would cost the GDP of every nation on earth, all added together (On top of that, you have the cost of actually making the components). If an antigravity conduit into space could be established using a spinning disk (Which could probably be done quite cheaply if the theory is as it sounds), getting things into space would be cheaper.
I think....
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
The mutations are random. The "survival of fittest" is not.
Mmm-kay. First I'd like to say I think evolution is the nearest thing we have to a correct theory.
I think the point the poster was trying to make is that if we all evolved randomly, there would be more difference in our bodily designs, i.e. the designs of our bodies are similar to each other. We all have two kidneys. They are around the abdomen. I wouldn't expect this much similarity if the only requirements of existance were a) random selection and b) survival. People with only one kidney would still survive. How come there aren't any?
Who knows? Maybe I havn't got a clue. I'm no biology expert.
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
Henceforth, my worldview shall be yo-centric.
My world is already yoyo-centric. It's funny to see the look on peoples' faces when you tell people:
Me: "My world's yoyo centric."
Them: "I don't understand."
Me: "That's because your brain is only a half-yoyo."
Try it yourself! a yoyo-centric world.
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
Do you know what I think would be cool? If my Information Technology class did simething like this. How about some I/O?
I'd go for a burgler alarm. Give the students some resources: computer, Simple IO (Think 'Lego Mindstorms'), and some detectio systems like window alarms. Do it in groups of, say, 4 people, self-organised peer groups. But let the better students bring in thier own resources, and have somewhere secure to store them. You know, things like movement sensors, RS232 to 8-bit converters, webcams, light beams, touch-sensitive floor panels, radio connections, web cameras, UPS, encrypted connection to an outside monitoring station, whatever. Tell them to trigger a big, red light when they detect things.
Give each student one room to protect. Then get the other student groups to try to break in without setting off the alarm.
Oh, and make all documentation optional.
That's my idea of fun. But then, I'm a geek.
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey,
games!! (Score:1)
by ARColeslaw on Wed August 02, 05:55 PM GMT (#1)
(User #66892 Info)
program 3d games!!! woo hoo!!
This is the FIRST POST, yet it has been moderated redundant. I'd say the moderator in question was browsing highest posts first or somesuch. Please, moderators, if you want to list something redundant do, but check it is redundant first.
I nearly posted anonymously to protect my karma, but havn't. I have pleanty (And enter pretty low anyway... I won't be loosing sleep over 2 or 3 points lost).
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey!
But then geeks laugh at them anyway.
Do you think anyone's registered PointAndLaugh@hotmail.com??? What about Throw.Sh1t@hotmail.com??? Swear@hotmail.com??? Laugh.At.Lame.OS@hotmail.com???
Spamproof-ish as well. The possibilities are endless...
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey
You wouldn't need to take down the entire US for that.
Of you ask me, an attack on a physical entity, i.e. transatlantic fibreoptic repeaters, would be far more effective. Sure, router sabotage would be destructive, but there are tighter bottleknecks around...
Just my $0.02 ($0.00000000002 after appropriate EU VAT, taxes, currency conversion and depreciation)
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey!
SETI@Home cpu power has dropped off
I think it has, yes. Or at least, a high percentage of users aren't exactly tearing through units. Here are some extracts from my stats:
Results Received: 135
Total CPU Time: 2487 hr 18 min
Last result returned: Sat Mar 18 21:44:27 2000 UTC
Your rank out of 2180053 total users is: 218171st place.
The total number of users who have this rank: 1258
You have completed more work units than: 89.935% of our users.
I've come to prefer Distributed.net, which I changed to after the continual failures of my clients to retrieve new work units half the time, or work through my (correctly configured) HTTP proxy. Distributed.net seemed much cooler. Plus it is much more configurable.
That's me, though.
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey!
There are no slots!
Plus the single-processor board has a different processor on it.
But then, anyone who'd be desperate to spend a three-figure sum on a card so they can donate more spare processor time without having to loose any of thier spare processor time deserves to be ripped off.
Just my $0.02
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey!
If I ran a credit card company, I'd have options of:
1) All merchants
2) All merchants except blacklisted
3) No merchents except whitelisted
4) Authorise
You'd have a choice, a normal credit card, a credit card that couldn't be used at companies that had a record of mischarging customers, a credit card that only works at popular shops that have a good trade record, and a card where you telephone before buying anything and say 'I'd like to authorise 'Jon's Pr0n-o-rama' to take $15 per month from my card', or 'I'm going shopping. I'd like to authorise the spending of $150 on my card, within the next 2 hours'.
This could be a good cash safety feature, or it could just be annoying... more likely annoying, after a while.
Some peer review might be in order?
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
Hey!
Obviously the idea is to communicate without anyone knowing.
My reccommendation would depend on the time you want the data delivered in. If you have a long time for each communication, I would advise you set up a dialogue over the post. You send regular letters to your cousin in China, writing about all sorts of family subjects. You don't conceal and hidden information in these messages. Every time you have some secret information, you send your friend a big American movie that would be hard to get in China. I can't comment on video availiability in China, but I don't expect it's that great. Anyway, you send off your video of, say, 'The Matrix'. Both you and your friend have some sort of video editing system. You could use pretty much anything, but I like the Danmere Backer range. You go to the very end of the video, after the film, stick some tape over the snapped-off tag, then record your message, in whatever format you want. Rewind the video, remove the tape to write-protect the tape, if possible, get somebody who works at a shop to shrink-wrap it for you, then post it off. A few weeks later, he posts back your video with a letter of thanks, and his reply recorded over your old message.
Whilst the time requirements are quite strict, and there may be difficulties posting videos from abroad, I doubt government searchers are going to open your shrink-wrapped video and watch the entire thing, end to end, in case you have a secret message encoded in it. You could camoflage your message with a regular exchange of non-messaged tapes if you want.
If you want to communicate more quickly, I'd go for steganography. I personally use steganos which is windows-only (gasp!) but uses something they call Dynamic Cell Spreading (DyCeS). If it was me programming it, I'd ask for a password, then I'd hash the password, and number all the pixels. If the hash started with hex 7C1..., I'd encrypt the message with the password provided, then put the first bit in cell 7C1, and repeat this several times. That way, people looking at your message wouldn't be able to tell which cells to check for hidden messages. This could be done against a background of normal photographs, as camoflage.
Then again, I didn't write the program, and don't have any information on how the DyCeS algorithm works, and havn't a clue how to write a steganography program.
Maybe some peer review could be in order?
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.