This is yet another attack that the developer of loop-AES thought about while typically every other disk encryption tool out there is vulnerable. [...] "Loop encryption key scrubbing moves and inverts key bits in kernel RAM so that the thin oxide which forms the storage capacitor dielectric of DRAM cells is not permitted to develop detectable property. For more info, see Peter Gutmann's paper."
I'm afraid it doesn't. Here is the code from Gutmann's paper:
The code above protects against detectable 'wear' that occurs if RAM holds the same value for a long time. With inversion, the RAM holds normal and inverted values for equal time, and therefore doesn't wear in one direction or the other.
The attack described in the article relies on removing the RAM from a targeted machine (or rebooting the target machine) and capturing the contents of RAM before it has a chance to clear (which takes a few minutes, they report). In the example of the code above, they would capture both 'key' and 'keyState' and would therefore know the key, and if the key was inverted or not (of course, even if they did not know whether the key was inverted, it would be trivial to try it both inverted and uninverted).
I suppose in a system with a write-back cache, it might be possible to keep the key permanently in the CPU's cache, where this attack would be substantially less practical. However, caches are not supposed to be used like that, so it may be difficult to implement.
Kid you may, but Mathematica is a computer algebra system, which means its good at manipulating symbolic mathematics.
Of course, MATLAB has the Symbolic Math Toolbox, which "includes the most recent computational kernel from Waterloo Maple Software, Maple 10", thereby completing the Matlab/Maple/Mathematica circle of confusion.
I don't really think a prize is necessary for this technology.
Who said anything about a prize? The PC World article talks about 'funding for research', i.e. cash given to researchers to develop new technology.
Unlike space travel, reearch in chip design have shown to be profitable at the commercial level, [...] Whether or not a prize is offered, faster computers and better technology are what we as consumers expect in this area, and what we will pay for.
It's true that a lot of commercial effort goes into current chips and the improvement thereof, but there isn't much commercial effort going into areas like quantum computing because the potential rewards are a loooooong way off. Your money is much safer invested in designing a 32-core Core2ThirtyTwo to be made in 3 years, compared to quantum computing, a technology that faces substantial scalability roadblocks and that no-one knows how to design algorithms for.
Most of the current quantum computers which have been demonstrated rely on Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), but it is thought this technique will not scale well - it is believed less than 100 qubits would be possible. As of 2006, the largest quantum computer ever demonstrated was 12 qubits (making it capable of such tasks as quickly finding the prime factors of a number... as long as that number is less than 4096.
In summary, promising future technologies often make poor investments because they are (a) experimental and (b) a long way off. So some funding to make research possible wouldn't go amiss.
300 terawatt of power = 3x10^14 W 30 femtosecond = 3x10^-14 s
The duty cycle is 30 femtoseconds per 10 seconds.
If the '300 terrawatts' of power is consumed for 30 femtoseconds per 10 seconds, the average power consumption over 10 seconds is (3 * ((10^14) W) * 3 * ((10^(-14)) s)) / (10 s) = 0.9 watts
If, on the other hand, the 300 terrawatts is the average power consumption over 10 seconds, the power consumption when the laser is on is (3 * ((10^14) W) * (10 s)) / (3 * (10^(-14)) s) = 1.0 × 10^29 watts = 100,000 yottawatts
Yotta- is the largest SI prefix, and the total energy output of the Sun is 383 YW.
I suspect the former interpretation is more likely. This laser isn't so impressive when you realise it takes less power than my computer monitor... when my computer monitor is turned off.
or to say that universities have a responsibility to cover up lawbreaking by their students
NO. WRONG ATTITUDE.
Why should the universities have a responsibility to turn over their students? Especially on practically no evidence?
I'm sorry, but this is pretty much like saying "You're with us, or you're with the terrorists." Refusing to cooperate doesn't mean you're suddenly taking the other side, or that you're "covering up" anything, or, indeed, that there is even something to cover up.
It's pretty easy to gather evidence - so easy, in fact, I assumed the record labels do it. You just connect to a torrent, download the content to ensure it is infringing, and log time/IP address of all the other peers who are downloading/uploading.
You then take this evidence to court, and the court issues a subpoena for the recorded holder of the IP address (the university) to identify the person using the IP address at that time.
If record labels have enough evidence to get courts to issue subpoenas (they could easily gather this much evidence), and have a court-issued subpoena, I hardly call that "hardly no evidence". I also wouldn't say I have a "You're with us, or you're with the terrorists" attitude.
The issue is that people who are accused of downloading music should get a fair hearing, the chance to defend themselves (mistakes do happen) and face a punishment proportionate to the "damage" done to industry and society by their "crime".
Well, I did say that some of the fines talked about on slashdot are inexplicably large, and that people who are wrongly accused should be entitled to reclaim reasonable costs for their defence.
I was under the impression that you could go to court, demonstrate (through inspection by an impartial expert third party) that there was no evidence of file sharing on your computer (e.g. your MP3s are ripped from CDs, or are from iTunes, or are distributed as MP3s by the copyright holders; and you don't have KaZaA or something installed with your MP3 directory shared, your BitTorrent client has only legitimate downloads running, etc.) and you'd be let off. It should take an afternoon, and cost no more than a few hundred dollars, which the record labels have to pay after you are found innocent.
The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy -- corporate "content," as the Big 4 call their formulaic outpourings.' In a scathing indictment not only of the major record labels, but of those schools, administrators, and educators who have yet to take a stand against it
The way I see it is: If the content is so terrible, don't download it. As you will not be infringing on anyone's copyright, you will not get sued.
If the content is good enough that you want access to it, you either have to pay for it, or accept a small but nonzero chance of being sued and fined for copyright infringement.
I also don't see that universities need to cover for students engaging in copyright infringement. If you connect to a torrent of 'Heroes' or 'House' or whatever, your IP address gets recorded, and the copyright holders subpoena the university to know what user had that IP address at that time, why does the university need to 'take a stand against it'?
Now, I'd certainly agree that some stories on slashdot talk about inexplicably large fines being requested. And certainly innocent people who are wrongly accused should be entitled to reclaim reasonable costs for their defence. But to say students are being forced to buy record labels' music, or to say that universities have a responsibility to cover up lawbreaking by their students, doesn't really make sense to me.
In other words I found the article less 'scathing' and more 'worded emotively'.
How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super-premium data transmission?"
How can Microsoft justify the high-cost of vista premium when all you get is a DVD that cost less than $0.25 to produce?
How can phone companies charge more for international telephone calls than they do for international data transmission, like Skype, which transmits the same audio?
How can Apple justify factory macbook upgrades which cost more than doing the same upgrades yourself?
How can air lines and train companies justify changing ticket prices for the same service closer to departure, when the cost of providing the service remains the same?
How can Intel make a bunch of Core 2 chips then justify charging a premium for the ones that remain stable at higher clock rates, when both fast and slow chips cost the same amount to make?
The answer is: The companies can charge what they like for products, the cost of production doesn't have to factor into the price at all. Companies like to maximise profits, therefore they set their prices at a point where they will make the most profit - which usually means high enough to make a good profit per item, but low enough not to drive customers to competitors.
I always wonder what happens if there's a fault in the vote counter? Ultimately, you must have one final decision maker, even if its task is somewhat simpler than the feeder systems that 'propose' the actions.
You're right - that's the 'other' problem with N-version programming. There are several ideas on how to combat it:
1. The vote counter should be substantially simpler than the N-version-programmed code. Autopilot software is complicated, finding the median of three outputs is not complicated. The voter can hence be made simple, be more thoroughly validated (code walkthroughs, formal methods validation, random input testing etc), and thus you can have confidence in the voter.
2. Hardware voting. You have three wing angle control programs, each one controls a motor, and the three motors are all connected to the same axle, which is connected to the wing. If motor 1 wants to go up while motors 2 and 3 want to go down, two motors have more force than one, so the wing goes down.
3. In some signal combination cases, such as safety cut-outs doing "enable machine if (A=safe)and(B=safe)and(C=safe)" you can combine the three systems' outputs with a series of relays (a relay is an electromagnet-operated switch). So for voltage to get to your dangerous machine it has to go through relay A, relay B, then relay C. If any of the three systems needs to trigger a cut-out they just open their relay and the machine stops. And if relay A has a fault, it's no problem: you still have relay B and relay C!
Airbus Industrie on the 320 used two different processor architectures and three separate teams working on flight software to ensure that the same problem would not occur on two out of three computers. Does anyone know if Boeing used the same practice for their flight systems?
N-version programming has been proposed as a method of incorporating fault tolerance into software. Multiple versions of a program (i.e. ''N'') are prepared and executed in parallel. Their outputs are collected and examined by a voter, and, if theyare not identical, it is assumed that the majority is correct. This method depends for its reliability improvement on the assumption that programs that have been developed independently will fail independently. In this paper an experiment is described in which the fundamental axiom is tested. A total of twenty seven versions of a program were prepared independently from the same specification at two universities and then subjected to one million tests. The results of the tests revealed that the programs were individually extremely reliable but that the number of tests in which more than one program failed was substantially more than expected. The results of these tests are presented along with an analysis of some of the faults that were found in the programs. Background information on the programmers used is also summarized. The conclusion from this experiment is that N-version programming must be used with care and that analysis of its reliability must include the effect of dependent errors.
Of course, one would think there would be two types of redundancy: The software would be N-version programmed and there would be separate systems for each engine. The chances of two independent N-version-programmed programs failing at the same instant seems particularly low.
It's easy to jump to the it-must-be-the-computers conclusion because PCs are unreliable in everyday use compared to washing machines, cars or compact disk players. But until the accident investigators' report comes out there really isn't much evidence to base speculations upon; the problem could have been anything.
I think I'll have to wait for something with a bigger screen and a faster clock speed.
I've got some good news for you then: You don't have to settle for a 13 inch screen and 1.8GHz processor at $2,099! For just $1,999.00 you can get a macbook pro with a 2.2GHz processor, the same RAM, a bigger hard disk, a bigger screen (still LED-backlit), free built-in gigabit ethernet, firewire, a decent graphics chip, you can avoid the glossy screen, RAM and HDD are user-upgradable - and you get all this for $100 less!
Or is being thin a really big selling point for you?
I've never understood why anyone would choose MAC filtering or a hidden SSID instead of (or as well as) WPA encryption.
To extend your analogy, if your door has locks you know to be secure, planting a bush in front of your door will provide a negligible security benefit, so what's the point? Planting a bush instead of engaging the locks would seem an unwise decision, too.
"Knowing that Barnes had availed himself of counseling services made available to all students by VSU, Zaccari secretly and repeatedly met with Barnes's counselor seeking to justify his decision to expel him," the lawsuit states. "What he learned from both the campus counseling center and from Barnes's private psychiatrist who was consulted in the matter, however, was that Barnes had never exhibited any violent tendencies
University administrators looking at students' public facebook pages is perhaps a bit odd, but for administrators to have access to counselling records and private medical records seems like a far more important invasion of privacy to me.
This case demonstrates why privacy of medical records is so important - you complain about a car park being built and a paper-pusher with an axe to grind accesses your medical records and paints you as a madman if you ever set foot in a psychologist's office.
1. A computer peripheral including one or more keys, each key having a plurality of light emitting diodes disposed on a face of the key, each of the light emitting diodes being operable to switch on or off in response to a data signal received from an application specific integrated circuit dedicated to the key.
2. The computer peripheral of claim 1, wherein the computer peripheral is a computer keyboard.
3. The computer peripheral of claim 1, wherein the light emitting diodes are organic light emitting diodes.
4. The computer peripheral of claim 1, wherein the light emitting diodes are placed in a dot matrix pattern on each key and operable to display symbols indicating an action that will be performed by a computer connected to the peripheral when the key is depressed by a user.
5. The computer peripheral of claim 1, wherein the light emitting diodes are switched on and off with a predetermined frequency to create animation effects on the key face.
[And so on - you get the picture.]
Each claim is a separate invention, which Apple claims the exclusive right to produce. In other words, Apple claims the exclusive rights to produce computer peripherals with keys, where those keys have more than one LED on, and those LEDs are on/off controlled, and that control is performed by a per-key ASIC.
For example, claim 1 of Apple's patent would cover the two-LED backlit power button on my monitor only if it is controlled by an ASIC dedicated to the button.
So, what's the point of claim 2, saying "The computer peripheral of claim 1, wherein the computer peripheral is a computer keyboard." - in other words claiming a subset of what is already claimed? That's a dependent claim, due to "Clarification of the independent claim language" and "Possible invalidity of base claim".
So, for example, if Art Lebedev has prior art/a patent which invalidates claim 1, Apple would still have (e.g.) claim 5, animated keys, claim 7, images displayed across multiple keys, etc. Of course, claims 5 and 7 could be also invalidated if someone has prior art on them.
So, what have Art Levedev done anyway? I can't find any patent numbers for their product, but I can find this patent, (I'll call it 'IBM's patent') which contains the claim:
1. Apparatus comprising: a plurality of key buttons, wherein each of the key buttons includes a transparent central portion; a support structure mounting each of the key buttons to move vertically; a plurality of resilient members, wherein each of the resilient members holds one of the key buttons upward within the support structure; a plurality of traducers, each producing an electrical signal in response to downward movement of a key button in the plurality of key buttons; a display screen extending under each of the key buttons and under the support structure to provide changeable display patterns visible through the central portion of each of the key buttons.
2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the display screen includes a liquid crystal display.
3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the liquid crystal display is transilluminated.
4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the display screen includes a plasma display.
Windows has no other choices because content providers will not accept other solutions. UnBox has no other choices because content providers will not accept other solutions. Netflix has no other choices because content providers will not accept other solutions.
There'll be no cake and two weeks of paid slacking for you.
Two weeks of paid slacking? Gee, sounds like Microsoft is really missing out there.
If someone has turned in their resignation why would you want to keep them around for two more weeks anyway? Their work should already be documented and "two weeks of paid slacking" doesn't sound like valuable work to me.
Show me some evidence that Americans have an aversion to robots. You can't, because it doesn't exist.
Well, as Wikipedia notes, western films (such as The Terminator, The Matrix, and I, Robot) quite often involve killer robots. This seems a stark contrast to Japanese media like, Chobits, in which a guy falls in love with a robot.
FTA: There's an obvious comfort level with the now five-year-old iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner. It doesn't look like us or any of our pets. We understand that there is some intelligence in there, but we are not threatened by it. If iRobot had made a 4-foot-tall Roomba with a face and a hand to hold a vacuum hose, the company wouldn't have sold more than ten units. [...] For the past few years, I thought that a successful Pleo launch or more companies competing with the AIBO or even the Roomba would spell success for the robotics industry. [...] The consumer robotics market is not going to explode. American consumers simply aren't mature enough.
It's certainly true that it would be harder to sell bipedal robots than roombas, but not for the reason the writer thinks.
The Roomba costs $200. A second hand AIBO costs several thousand dollars. The four foot three inch bipedal ASIMO costs in the region of $1,000,000.
The $200 vacuuming robot is a commercial success because it does a job well and people can afford it. An Aibo or Asimo, on the other hand, is like a Segway: Expensive and more like a toy than a tool.
Certainly, Japanese culture seems more 'into' humanoid robots - (girl) robots are commonplace in games like Persona 3 and Xenosaga - but if you want to see American robotics in action, you need look no further than the Urban Challenge.
I would simply say that cultures like Japan's are interested in robots for robots' sake, while American culture is more interested in 'what can robots do for me?' - and neither approach is inherently better than the other.
How is a uniform going to inspire creative thought? If what matters is what people have on their minds, why care about what they have on their bodies?
I agree that it's unwise to ignore RMS due to his clothes. However, dressing eccentrically may distract people from your core message - as this very conversation shows. We aren't talking about software patents - we're talking about no shoes? Doesn't he hurt his feet?
In other words, he might think that wearing a suit could help advance his (anti-software-patent) cause, and do it for this reason.
The Japanese blur their porn, and so someone has invented a device that removes it and restores the original image. This is possible because it performs a transformation from a limited set every time and so all you need is one clean sample.
Properly designed blurring filters cannot be reversed so easily! Alternately, instead of blurring, they could just use black squares to cover stuff up.
The fact that Google offered to make a $4.6 billion bid for the spectrum implies (1) Google has $4.6 billion in capital available, and (2) Google has a use for that spectrum.
It seems reasonable to assume they would make a bid, even without the four openness rules - after all, if they win they can make their own openness rules, and if they don't win, it costs them nothing.
Throwing more money at it isn't necessarily the fix needed. If you read the article and the wikipedia entry on the school you learn the following:
* Dwight Morrow High School, the subject of the article, shares its campus with the (separate) Academies@Englewood. * Academies@Englewood is a "four-year comprehensive magnet public high school program [...] to raise the standard of public education for Englewood residents, and to attract white residents of Englewood and Englewood Cliffs back to the public school system. * Academies@Englewood already has 'major'-like academies: Finance, Information Systems, Law and Public Safety, Pre-Engineering and Biomedicine. * "The academy has highly-qualified teachers as well better resources." "longer school day, rigorous and engaging core academic curriculum, technology, upgraded classroom materials and equipment not available to Dwight Morrow students, climate reflecting high expectations, inviting classrooms. Students are spirited and proud of their school and opportunities."
A@E produces better results, surprising no-one - after all, it has better facilities, highly qualified teachers, and is specially designed by the district to attract children who would otherwise be in private education.
So, seeing these better results, Dwight Morrow High School wants to emulate them. This seems logical enough. But of all the things they choose to copy, they don't choose the longer day, the upgraded classroom materials or the highly-qualified teachers - they copy the 'academy' structure. Hence, majors are invented.
I suspect that majors will not bring Dwight Morrow High School up to the same standards as A@E because an academy structure is only part of A@E's success. To do that would require the upgraded facilities A@E offers, and that costs cash money.
I agree that there are situations where throwing money at a problem doesn't help, but in getting a poorly-equipped school to perform as well as a well-equipped school, I can see how money would be a key ingredient.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid it doesn't. Here is the code from Gutmann's paper:
Flipping:
Using:
The code above protects against detectable 'wear' that occurs if RAM holds the same value for a long time. With inversion, the RAM holds normal and inverted values for equal time, and therefore doesn't wear in one direction or the other.
The attack described in the article relies on removing the RAM from a targeted machine (or rebooting the target machine) and capturing the contents of RAM before it has a chance to clear (which takes a few minutes, they report). In the example of the code above, they would capture both 'key' and 'keyState' and would therefore know the key, and if the key was inverted or not (of course, even if they did not know whether the key was inverted, it would be trivial to try it both inverted and uninverted).
I suppose in a system with a write-back cache, it might be possible to keep the key permanently in the CPU's cache, where this attack would be substantially less practical. However, caches are not supposed to be used like that, so it may be difficult to implement.
Of course, MATLAB has the Symbolic Math Toolbox, which "includes the most recent computational kernel from Waterloo Maple Software, Maple 10", thereby completing the Matlab/Maple/Mathematica circle of confusion.
the CEO [...] I'm sure his pocket change could hire a contractor to test this.
:)
I'm not sure the $20 Chinese-made USB hard drive caddy market has produced many millionaire celebrity CEOs
Michael
I don't really think a prize is necessary for this technology.
Who said anything about a prize? The PC World article talks about 'funding for research', i.e. cash given to researchers to develop new technology.
Unlike space travel, reearch in chip design have shown to be profitable at the commercial level, [...] Whether or not a prize is offered, faster computers and better technology are what we as consumers expect in this area, and what we will pay for.
It's true that a lot of commercial effort goes into current chips and the improvement thereof, but there isn't much commercial effort going into areas like quantum computing because the potential rewards are a loooooong way off. Your money is much safer invested in designing a 32-core Core2ThirtyTwo to be made in 3 years, compared to quantum computing, a technology that faces substantial scalability roadblocks and that no-one knows how to design algorithms for.
Most of the current quantum computers which have been demonstrated rely on Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), but it is thought this technique will not scale well - it is believed less than 100 qubits would be possible. As of 2006, the largest quantum computer ever demonstrated was 12 qubits (making it capable of such tasks as quickly finding the prime factors of a number... as long as that number is less than 4096.
In summary, promising future technologies often make poor investments because they are (a) experimental and (b) a long way off. So some funding to make research possible wouldn't go amiss.
Just my $0.02.
300 terawatt of power = 3x10^14 W
30 femtosecond = 3x10^-14 s
The duty cycle is 30 femtoseconds per 10 seconds.
If the '300 terrawatts' of power is consumed for 30 femtoseconds per 10 seconds, the average power consumption over 10 seconds is (3 * ((10^14) W) * 3 * ((10^(-14)) s)) / (10 s) = 0.9 watts
If, on the other hand, the 300 terrawatts is the average power consumption over 10 seconds, the power consumption when the laser is on is (3 * ((10^14) W) * (10 s)) / (3 * (10^(-14)) s) = 1.0 × 10^29 watts = 100,000 yottawatts
Yotta- is the largest SI prefix, and the total energy output of the Sun is 383 YW.
I suspect the former interpretation is more likely. This laser isn't so impressive when you realise it takes less power than my computer monitor... when my computer monitor is turned off.
It's pretty easy to gather evidence - so easy, in fact, I assumed the record labels do it. You just connect to a torrent, download the content to ensure it is infringing, and log time/IP address of all the other peers who are downloading/uploading.
You then take this evidence to court, and the court issues a subpoena for the recorded holder of the IP address (the university) to identify the person using the IP address at that time.
If record labels have enough evidence to get courts to issue subpoenas (they could easily gather this much evidence), and have a court-issued subpoena, I hardly call that "hardly no evidence". I also wouldn't say I have a "You're with us, or you're with the terrorists" attitude.
Well, I did say that some of the fines talked about on slashdot are inexplicably large, and that people who are wrongly accused should be entitled to reclaim reasonable costs for their defence.
I was under the impression that you could go to court, demonstrate (through inspection by an impartial expert third party) that there was no evidence of file sharing on your computer (e.g. your MP3s are ripped from CDs, or are from iTunes, or are distributed as MP3s by the copyright holders; and you don't have KaZaA or something installed with your MP3 directory shared, your BitTorrent client has only legitimate downloads running, etc.) and you'd be let off. It should take an afternoon, and cost no more than a few hundred dollars, which the record labels have to pay after you are found innocent.
Does it not work like that?
The way I see it is: If the content is so terrible, don't download it. As you will not be infringing on anyone's copyright, you will not get sued.
If the content is good enough that you want access to it, you either have to pay for it, or accept a small but nonzero chance of being sued and fined for copyright infringement.
I also don't see that universities need to cover for students engaging in copyright infringement. If you connect to a torrent of 'Heroes' or 'House' or whatever, your IP address gets recorded, and the copyright holders subpoena the university to know what user had that IP address at that time, why does the university need to 'take a stand against it'?
Now, I'd certainly agree that some stories on slashdot talk about inexplicably large fines being requested. And certainly innocent people who are wrongly accused should be entitled to reclaim reasonable costs for their defence. But to say students are being forced to buy record labels' music, or to say that universities have a responsibility to cover up lawbreaking by their students, doesn't really make sense to me.
In other words I found the article less 'scathing' and more 'worded emotively'.
Just my $0.02.
How can Microsoft justify the high-cost of vista premium when all you get is a DVD that cost less than $0.25 to produce?
How can phone companies charge more for international telephone calls than they do for international data transmission, like Skype, which transmits the same audio?
How can Apple justify factory macbook upgrades which cost more than doing the same upgrades yourself?
How can air lines and train companies justify changing ticket prices for the same service closer to departure, when the cost of providing the service remains the same?
How can Intel make a bunch of Core 2 chips then justify charging a premium for the ones that remain stable at higher clock rates, when both fast and slow chips cost the same amount to make?
The answer is: The companies can charge what they like for products, the cost of production doesn't have to factor into the price at all. Companies like to maximise profits, therefore they set their prices at a point where they will make the most profit - which usually means high enough to make a good profit per item, but low enough not to drive customers to competitors.
You're right - that's the 'other' problem with N-version programming. There are several ideas on how to combat it:
1. The vote counter should be substantially simpler than the N-version-programmed code. Autopilot software is complicated, finding the median of three outputs is not complicated. The voter can hence be made simple, be more thoroughly validated (code walkthroughs, formal methods validation, random input testing etc), and thus you can have confidence in the voter.
2. Hardware voting. You have three wing angle control programs, each one controls a motor, and the three motors are all connected to the same axle, which is connected to the wing. If motor 1 wants to go up while motors 2 and 3 want to go down, two motors have more force than one, so the wing goes down.
3. In some signal combination cases, such as safety cut-outs doing "enable machine if (A=safe)and(B=safe)and(C=safe)" you can combine the three systems' outputs with a series of relays (a relay is an electromagnet-operated switch). So for voltage to get to your dangerous machine it has to go through relay A, relay B, then relay C. If any of the three systems needs to trigger a cut-out they just open their relay and the machine stops. And if relay A has a fault, it's no problem: you still have relay B and relay C!
They probably do. This is the time to whip out An experimental evaluation of the assumption of independence in multiversion programming by Knight and Leveson. It's a 47-page paper, but here's the summary:
Of course, one would think there would be two types of redundancy: The software would be N-version programmed and there would be separate systems for each engine. The chances of two independent N-version-programmed programs failing at the same instant seems particularly low.
It's easy to jump to the it-must-be-the-computers conclusion because PCs are unreliable in everyday use compared to washing machines, cars or compact disk players. But until the accident investigators' report comes out there really isn't much evidence to base speculations upon; the problem could have been anything.
Just my $0.02
I think I'll have to wait for something with a bigger screen and a faster clock speed.
I've got some good news for you then: You don't have to settle for a 13 inch screen and 1.8GHz processor at $2,099! For just $1,999.00 you can get a macbook pro with a 2.2GHz processor, the same RAM, a bigger hard disk, a bigger screen (still LED-backlit), free built-in gigabit ethernet, firewire, a decent graphics chip, you can avoid the glossy screen, RAM and HDD are user-upgradable - and you get all this for $100 less!
Or is being thin a really big selling point for you?
this thing is powered by some sort of mechanical actuators meaning that it certainly is not a trebuchet.
Those are AC servo motors. From the colour of the robot and be blurry photos I think it's a KUKA KR 150-2 K or something similar.
I've never understood why anyone would choose MAC filtering or a hidden SSID instead of (or as well as) WPA encryption.
To extend your analogy, if your door has locks you know to be secure, planting a bush in front of your door will provide a negligible security benefit, so what's the point? Planting a bush instead of engaging the locks would seem an unwise decision, too.
Why use hidden SSID/MAC filtering at all?
Just my $0.02
University administrators looking at students' public facebook pages is perhaps a bit odd, but for administrators to have access to counselling records and private medical records seems like a far more important invasion of privacy to me.
This case demonstrates why privacy of medical records is so important - you complain about a car park being built and a paper-pusher with an axe to grind accesses your medical records and paints you as a madman if you ever set foot in a psychologist's office.
Sounds good - let's take a look!
Each claim is a separate invention, which Apple claims the exclusive right to produce. In other words, Apple claims the exclusive rights to produce computer peripherals with keys, where those keys have more than one LED on, and those LEDs are on/off controlled, and that control is performed by a per-key ASIC.
For example, claim 1 of Apple's patent would cover the two-LED backlit power button on my monitor only if it is controlled by an ASIC dedicated to the button.
So, what's the point of claim 2, saying "The computer peripheral of claim 1, wherein the computer peripheral is a computer keyboard." - in other words claiming a subset of what is already claimed? That's a dependent claim, due to "Clarification of the independent claim language" and "Possible invalidity of base claim".
So, for example, if Art Lebedev has prior art/a patent which invalidates claim 1, Apple would still have (e.g.) claim 5, animated keys, claim 7, images displayed across multiple keys, etc. Of course, claims 5 and 7 could be also invalidated if someone has prior art on them.
So, what have Art Levedev done anyway? I can't find any patent numbers for their product, but I can find this patent, (I'll call it 'IBM's patent') which contains the claim:
Windows has no other choices because content providers will not accept other solutions. UnBox has no other choices because content providers will not accept other solutions. Netflix has no other choices because content providers will not accept other solutions.
Fixed that for you.
Calling somebody who apparently was in the top 99.9% on his college entrance exams [...] an idiot is 'pretty much' lame.
In the top 99.9%, you say? That's a claim you don't hear every day...
Two weeks of paid slacking? Gee, sounds like Microsoft is really missing out there.
If someone has turned in their resignation why would you want to keep them around for two more weeks anyway? Their work should already be documented and "two weeks of paid slacking" doesn't sound like valuable work to me.
Show me some evidence that Americans have an aversion to robots. You can't, because it doesn't exist.
Well, as Wikipedia notes, western films (such as The Terminator, The Matrix, and I, Robot) quite often involve killer robots. This seems a stark contrast to Japanese media like, Chobits, in which a guy falls in love with a robot.
FTA: There's an obvious comfort level with the now five-year-old iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner. It doesn't look like us or any of our pets. We understand that there is some intelligence in there, but we are not threatened by it. If iRobot had made a 4-foot-tall Roomba with a face and a hand to hold a vacuum hose, the company wouldn't have sold more than ten units. [...] For the past few years, I thought that a successful Pleo launch or more companies competing with the AIBO or even the Roomba would spell success for the robotics industry. [...] The consumer robotics market is not going to explode. American consumers simply aren't mature enough.
It's certainly true that it would be harder to sell bipedal robots than roombas, but not for the reason the writer thinks.
The Roomba costs $200. A second hand AIBO costs several thousand dollars. The four foot three inch bipedal ASIMO costs in the region of $1,000,000.
The $200 vacuuming robot is a commercial success because it does a job well and people can afford it. An Aibo or Asimo, on the other hand, is like a Segway: Expensive and more like a toy than a tool.
Certainly, Japanese culture seems more 'into' humanoid robots - (girl) robots are commonplace in games like Persona 3 and Xenosaga - but if you want to see American robotics in action, you need look no further than the Urban Challenge.
I would simply say that cultures like Japan's are interested in robots for robots' sake, while American culture is more interested in 'what can robots do for me?' - and neither approach is inherently better than the other.
Just my $0.02.
How is a uniform going to inspire creative thought? If what matters is what people have on their minds, why care about what they have on their bodies?
I agree that it's unwise to ignore RMS due to his clothes. However, dressing eccentrically may distract people from your core message - as this very conversation shows. We aren't talking about software patents - we're talking about no shoes? Doesn't he hurt his feet?
In other words, he might think that wearing a suit could help advance his (anti-software-patent) cause, and do it for this reason.
Just my $0.02
The Japanese blur their porn, and so someone has invented a device that removes it and restores the original image. This is possible because it performs a transformation from a limited set every time and so all you need is one clean sample.
You realise that several (Japanese, I think) blurring algorithms are specifically designed to be reversible, right?
Properly designed blurring filters cannot be reversed so easily! Alternately, instead of blurring, they could just use black squares to cover stuff up.
The fact that Google offered to make a $4.6 billion bid for the spectrum implies (1) Google has $4.6 billion in capital available, and (2) Google has a use for that spectrum.
It seems reasonable to assume they would make a bid, even without the four openness rules - after all, if they win they can make their own openness rules, and if they don't win, it costs them nothing.
* Dwight Morrow High School, the subject of the article, shares its campus with the (separate) Academies@Englewood.
* Academies@Englewood is a "four-year comprehensive magnet public high school program [...] to raise the standard of public education for Englewood residents, and to attract white residents of Englewood and Englewood Cliffs back to the public school system.
* Academies@Englewood already has 'major'-like academies: Finance, Information Systems, Law and Public Safety, Pre-Engineering and Biomedicine.
* "The academy has highly-qualified teachers as well better resources." "longer school day, rigorous and engaging core academic curriculum, technology, upgraded classroom materials and equipment not available to Dwight Morrow students, climate reflecting high expectations, inviting classrooms. Students are spirited and proud of their school and opportunities."
A@E produces better results, surprising no-one - after all, it has better facilities, highly qualified teachers, and is specially designed by the district to attract children who would otherwise be in private education.
So, seeing these better results, Dwight Morrow High School wants to emulate them. This seems logical enough. But of all the things they choose to copy, they don't choose the longer day, the upgraded classroom materials or the highly-qualified teachers - they copy the 'academy' structure. Hence, majors are invented.
I suspect that majors will not bring Dwight Morrow High School up to the same standards as A@E because an academy structure is only part of A@E's success. To do that would require the upgraded facilities A@E offers, and that costs cash money.
I agree that there are situations where throwing money at a problem doesn't help, but in getting a poorly-equipped school to perform as well as a well-equipped school, I can see how money would be a key ingredient.
Just my $0.02.