A fan of Baba O'Riley already, I enjoyed it. As far as Slashvertisements go, this one was at least entertaining.
Can't tell if they were syncing to the already recorded music, but it looks like they recorded the the instruments separately and edited the multitrack recording into the final audio track. They did do a bit of work, and it did make the toy instruments come off better than I would have expected.
If you buy a subsidized phone from a 3rd party retailer ( not the carrier ) they only get their money if you stick around for a while on your contract.
I really wish I could find a comprehensive online index. A few things I'd really like to read:
--The world's hardest crossword puzzle. A friend and I worked on this together, spending hours ( pre-WWW ) at the library searching for answers to clues like "four dimensional hypercube" and "piniped". I'd like to give it a go now with Google's help as well as seeing the answers, which I never saw.
--Someone took a mobile home and worked to make it as energy efficient as possible. I remember it was super-insulated, even having foam "corks" to block off deep set windows at night and keep heat in. A tiny woodstove, maybe one intended for an ice shack, provided all the heat needed.
Every once in a while I'll see someone on Ebay selling issues from the periods I think these ran, and ponder buying a several year set to see if I can find them.
Of course, even better would be if someone put all the old issues online.
I hate the loud commercials ( ones I don't skip with TiVo ) but like others, don't think it requires the government to step in.
Instead, we just need DVRs to skip or TVs to mute, what it deems to be commericials. If relative volume worked well to find and negate the commercials, the networks would be encouraged to level the volume to as not to get skipped or muted.
Besides all the shielding options, perhaps this is a good use for E-paper displays? The persistent nature of the display would minimize the constant refreshing. The slow screen response would be unlikely to be an issue with a ballot.
One issue with phone based GPS units is that they go stupid when there's no cell coverage. Thats easily fixed: Just load the map database onto the unit ahead of time. My standalone Garmin has a map update that comes on DVD that fits on a 2GB memory card with space to spare. With a smartphone with 8GB+ you could easily put the whole US/Canada database on it, or just the part of the country you need.
Garmin had this available for PDAs a while back, before flash memory was cheap. They could release a loadable database you put on the SD card in your Android phone and an app to use it loaded in the phone. They'd probably have better margins on that product than the standalone one.
Another issue with handhelds as car units is satellite visibility. That's where a well done car cradle can help. Charging is done as you go, or you can go wild and have a setup that integrates an external antenna.
Pure online map solutions aren't a good replacement for a standalone, but with cheap memory these days there's no reason a phone can't contain a map database, suplemented by additional information ( like StreetView or aerial photos ) when wireless coverage is available. Loading the entire map database into the unit would not likely be free though.
BofA accounts can be configured to send you notices of deposits or withdrawls exceeding a specified amount. I get them, see if the amount and payee look legit then delete them. A reasonable phishing scam might be to send someone one that looked like those, with a moderate charge of $49.95 to HugeDildos.com. Adding a small link that said "if you didn't make this purchase, click here" would probably be a pretty subtle way of getting you to a phishing page to harvest your username and password without a generic "hey, send us your info" email.
Even if you were to click on the link, a smarter user should notice the lack of BofA cert as well as the "secret image" they present to you. A man-in-the middle attack at this point might not work since they also look for a cookie and if they don't see it they don't present you with the image and will ask you for additional information. This would stand out to a regular user of BofA's site, but someone who logs in twice a year might miss it.
I worked in a facility that was fully TEMPEST shielded in the 80's. Dual airlock doors with full metal seals to get in. The power line leakage problem was taken care of a motor/generator setup. Incoming power only went to an electic motor. The motor was connected by a shaft which spun a generator to supply power to the computer room. With only a mechanical connection no data would be leaking back.
I worked in a facility that was fully TEMPEST shielded in the 80's. Dual airlock doors with full metal seals to get in. The power leakage problem was taken care of a motor/generator setup. Incoming power only went to an electic motor. The motor was connected a shaft which spun a generator to supply power to the computer room. With only a mechanical connection no data would be leaking back.
Yeah, they always gloss over any difficult aspects:
* How do you get them to always wear the GPS shoes when leaving? * How do you get them to keep the batteries charged? * How do you get them to not step in puddles? * GPS may work anywhere on the planet, but most communication links for sending the location information back has a much smaller usable footprint. A sat phone might work more places, but it's going to need a bigger battery and be more finicky. * If it was a mobile phone / GPS combination it wouldn't be too tough to have it send SMS messages to a list of people when the geofence was crossed. More likely though is some middleman wanting to charge $50 a month to "monitor" the GPS.(What? $50 is too much for pay to help your loved one?)
I have what looked like a thumb drive that's a EVDO modem with built in GPS. So small and powerful is the easy part. The logistics of power, visibitily and getting the befuddled user to always use it are the hard parts. They never mention the hard parts.
In 30 years they can dedicate one whole wall of the White House to autographed pics of QEII in silver frames. Maybe they'll arrange them in chronological order, Dorian Gray style.
Even so, it still sounds nicer than DVDs. The least he could have done was bring Blu-Ray.
I've had a GrandCentral account for years, never used it. First thing I did today was login and search the help for "port number". As it has said for the past few years:
"Although you can't currently port your existing number to GrandCentral, we hope to offer this option in the near future. Check out our blog to stay up-to-date with GrandCentral news and learn about new features."
If I have to give the people who call me a new number, it's not worth it. Maybe if I was moving and was getting a new number anyway ( though cell phones and Vonage don't require this ), then I'd use it.
The next logical step is to remote the hamster ball interface, so the hamster in one room is driving the Roomba in the next room. A 360 camera on the Roomba and a full surround projection around the stationary ball would do nicely.
This could be a boon for stay-at-home hamsters. Instead of wandering the same living room day in and day out, their thoughtful owners could plop the hamster in their own personal CircleVision 360 with the remote Roomba wandering in any number of living rooms across the world.
A little training, and a piece of paper proving they had training would be nice. It doesn't mean that they will follow the procedures, but the license fees help to pay for the periodic inspection of their facilities.
I'd lean towards your opinion, except for one thing: There are a multitude of things you can do on your own behalf, but once you want to sell your services, it's different. [see: prostitution]
Electricians, cosmetologists, lawyers all do things that you could many times do yourself. But if you want to sell yourself as an expert to others, there are licensing and other rules.
While SafeNet might only be using public information, but who's to say they aren't also illegally tapping into information they aren't supposed to? If they were licensed P.I.'s their licence would be at risk if they violated the rules. Risk of their professional license is another way to keep them straight, for things that criminal and civil law don't cover.
While it sounds good that a properly trained tech person at the polling places can reduce the chance of the lost votes by following the workaround, it also means that they can make it happen.
If someone were so inclined, and in precints that were predominantly "the other side", intentionally doing the action that causes votes to be dropped might shave a few points from that party.
The existance of procedures that can trigger vote loss should be sufficient to toss the machines.
I've had a few dips in Spam traffic in the past. Same thing as the OP: own domain, own filtering options. Oddly, Spam has become a continous stream of noise that we notice if it's absent. Like someone living in a big city, accustomed to sounds, if it went silent, you'd run to a window to look out to make sure you're not the Omega Man.
The sad thing is that judges are always supposed to be rational people, or at least hand down rational decisions while on the clock. The judge should have called them on this, but didn't, and issued the order. I at least hope they had to shop around to several judges before they found one their lawyers could snooker.
First, the information was already released. The entire presentation was handed out on CDs at the beginning of the conference. All the court order did was prevent a true dialog about the hack.
Second, it could be construed that not releasing the information also has a negative cost. As a public entitiy, the transit agency has a duty to look after the system. The hack points out a flaw in the system. Was the system design opened to public scrutiny prior to its use in an attempt to prevent such a hack? If the hack were not widely known would the agency be working dilligently to fix the flaws?
This is not much different than the "print your own bogus boarding pass" hack. The big worry wasn't really that loved ones could see you off at the gate, but that "bad guys" could go through security, metal detectors and such only to swap tickets with someone who wasn't on the no-fly list. What the release of that hack did was point out a flaw that already existed and provide incentive to fix it, or to drop the whole boarding pass as security sham in the first place.
As to the yelling Fire! in the theater analogy: If there's really a fire, it's Ok to yell.
This is another situation the 1st ammendment was designed to protect. Annoying, painful, expensive, dangerous speech might need to be protected.
For most phones the signal bars are NOT how well you can receive the tower, but the tower sending back to the the phone the RSSI (received signal strength indication) value. This is the tower telling the phone how well it can "hear" it. For sure, your tiny little phone is going to receive a signal from that tower better than it will receive one from your little 600mw handheld phone. Want a better signal? Use a 3-watt car phone.
This is tied to the battery life. A hand held phone will only transmit at the power needed to be received from the tower, only using it's full 600mw when necessary. (using the RSSI from the tower as the guide ). If you are in a situation where you're wobbling between zero and one bars, the phone will crank up it's power and... suck the battery down faster. If you're in an urban area dense with towers, your battery will last longer. Out hiking in the sticks with one bar (or zero when held between your hand and your head) your battery will poop out much quicker.
Real time is different than after the fact. ( I think I already wrote that ) It's easier to create a fake log after the fact, but your times would have to line up. Also, if you had access to the log to alter it, it's probably no good to you as an alibi. In the original article it probably helped that the logs resided with the tracking company.
If you were fighting a ticket it would have to show the correct time the cop pulled you over, the time you drove away after. It would have to show the times you left or arrived at other locations. If the log showed you starting the car at one place and arriving at another the time for the trip would have to match the distance and the fake speed. If you were planning on shaving off 20 mph @ 80 mph then you'd have to fudge the logs to account for 30 hour days.
Self reporting speed is decades old. Pre-GPS commerical trucks in Japan showed the speed of te vehicle by a series of lights on the top of the truck cab. A cop could pull them over for speeding just by looking at the lights.
Tachographs in Europe record speed in commercial vehicles as well.
Shaving 20 mph off the logged speed would never fool anyone. With a small amount of logged data you'd have positions, time and speed. If your speed is reported at 50 meters per second, the position better be different by 50 meters each second. So besides fudging the speed you'd have to fudge the time ( or positions ) as well. Your time as reported in the logged positions would have to run slow in additon to the bugus speed. If that were true, your log would not show you in the position the cop knew you were in at the time of the ticket.
Of course you could retroactively edit the entire log, but doing it in real time would ne tough.
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A fan of Baba O'Riley already, I enjoyed it. As far as Slashvertisements go, this one was at least entertaining.
Can't tell if they were syncing to the already recorded music, but it looks like they recorded the the instruments separately and edited the multitrack recording into the final audio track. They did do a bit of work, and it did make the toy instruments come off better than I would have expected.
If you buy a subsidized phone from a 3rd party retailer ( not the carrier ) they only get their money if you stick around for a while on your contract.
Amazon has a similar policy, dinging you $250 on a Blackberry from AT&T:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=cell_dp_activationLink?ie=UTF8&docId=508597
What's interesting, is Amazon's policy doesn't say anything about dodging the fee if you return the phone.
Thanks to the Dick family, I now have the idea to make the screen saver for my new phone be electric sheep.
I really wish I could find a comprehensive online index. A few things I'd really like to read:
--The world's hardest crossword puzzle. A friend and I worked on this together, spending hours ( pre-WWW ) at the library searching for answers to clues like "four dimensional hypercube" and "piniped". I'd like to give it a go now with Google's help as well as seeing the answers, which I never saw.
--Someone took a mobile home and worked to make it as energy efficient as possible. I remember it was super-insulated, even having foam "corks" to block off deep set windows at night and keep heat in. A tiny woodstove, maybe one intended for an ice shack, provided all the heat needed.
Every once in a while I'll see someone on Ebay selling issues from the periods I think these ran, and ponder buying a several year set to see if I can find them.
Of course, even better would be if someone put all the old issues online.
I hate the loud commercials ( ones I don't skip with TiVo ) but like others, don't think it requires the government to step in.
Instead, we just need DVRs to skip or TVs to mute, what it deems to be commericials. If relative volume worked well to find and negate the commercials, the networks would be encouraged to level the volume to as not to get skipped or muted.
Besides all the shielding options, perhaps this is a good use for E-paper displays? The persistent nature of the display would minimize the constant refreshing. The slow screen response would be unlikely to be an issue with a ballot.
One issue with phone based GPS units is that they go stupid when there's no cell coverage. Thats easily fixed: Just load the map database onto the unit ahead of time. My standalone Garmin has a map update that comes on DVD that fits on a 2GB memory card with space to spare. With a smartphone with 8GB+ you could easily put the whole US/Canada database on it, or just the part of the country you need.
Garmin had this available for PDAs a while back, before flash memory was cheap. They could release a loadable database you put on the SD card in your Android phone and an app to use it loaded in the phone. They'd probably have better margins on that product than the standalone one.
Another issue with handhelds as car units is satellite visibility. That's where a well done car cradle can help. Charging is done as you go, or you can go wild and have a setup that integrates an external antenna.
Pure online map solutions aren't a good replacement for a standalone, but with cheap memory these days there's no reason a phone can't contain a map database, suplemented by additional information ( like StreetView or aerial photos ) when wireless coverage is available. Loading the entire map database into the unit would not likely be free though.
BofA accounts can be configured to send you notices of deposits or withdrawls exceeding a specified amount. I get them, see if the amount and payee look legit then delete them. A reasonable phishing scam might be to send someone one that looked like those, with a moderate charge of $49.95 to HugeDildos.com. Adding a small link that said "if you didn't make this purchase, click here" would probably be a pretty subtle way of getting you to a phishing page to harvest your username and password without a generic "hey, send us your info" email.
Even if you were to click on the link, a smarter user should notice the lack of BofA cert as well as the "secret image" they present to you. A man-in-the middle attack at this point might not work since they also look for a cookie and if they don't see it they don't present you with the image and will ask you for additional information. This would stand out to a regular user of BofA's site, but someone who logs in twice a year might miss it.
I worked in a facility that was fully TEMPEST shielded in the 80's. Dual airlock doors with full metal seals to get in. The power line leakage problem was taken care of a motor/generator setup. Incoming power only went to an electic motor. The motor was connected by a shaft which spun a generator to supply power to the computer room. With only a mechanical connection no data would be leaking back.
I worked in a facility that was fully TEMPEST shielded in the 80's. Dual airlock doors with full metal seals to get in. The power leakage problem was taken care of a motor/generator setup. Incoming power only went to an electic motor. The motor was connected a shaft which spun a generator to supply power to the computer room. With only a mechanical connection no data would be leaking back.
Yeah, they always gloss over any difficult aspects:
* How do you get them to always wear the GPS shoes when leaving?
* How do you get them to keep the batteries charged?
* How do you get them to not step in puddles?
* GPS may work anywhere on the planet, but most communication links for sending the location information back has a much smaller usable footprint. A sat phone might work more places, but it's going to need a bigger battery and be more finicky.
* If it was a mobile phone / GPS combination it wouldn't be too tough to have it send SMS messages to a list of people when the geofence was crossed. More likely though is some middleman wanting to charge $50 a month to "monitor" the GPS.(What? $50 is too much for pay to help your loved one?)
I have what looked like a thumb drive that's a EVDO modem with built in GPS. So small and powerful is the easy part. The logistics of power, visibitily and getting the befuddled user to always use it are the hard parts. They never mention the hard parts.
No, WAAS is satellite based and only provides correction signals used to improve accuracy of GPS measurments.
In 30 years they can dedicate one whole wall of the White House to autographed pics of QEII in silver frames. Maybe they'll arrange them in chronological order, Dorian Gray style.
Even so, it still sounds nicer than DVDs. The least he could have done was bring Blu-Ray.
I've had a GrandCentral account for years, never used it. First thing I did today was login and search the help for "port number". As it has said for the past few years:
"Although you can't currently port your existing number to GrandCentral, we hope to offer this option in the near future. Check out our blog to stay up-to-date with GrandCentral news and learn about new features."
If I have to give the people who call me a new number, it's not worth it. Maybe if I was moving and was getting a new number anyway ( though cell phones and Vonage don't require this ), then I'd use it.
The next logical step is to remote the hamster ball interface, so the hamster in one room is driving the Roomba in the next room. A 360 camera on the Roomba and a full surround projection around the stationary ball would do nicely.
This could be a boon for stay-at-home hamsters. Instead of wandering the same living room day in and day out, their thoughtful owners could plop the hamster in their own personal CircleVision 360 with the remote Roomba wandering in any number of living rooms across the world.
There are bullshit rules, and good rules. Bullshit ones shouldn't invalidate the good ones.
Cosmetologists: Licensing (and training) probably sounded silly, until people started having problems with the flesh eating bacteria and pedicures:
http://www.wptv.com/content/investigative/story.aspx?content_id=e7ee80e8-7df5-4d46-aa21-c6455c92f32d
A little training, and a piece of paper proving they had training would be nice. It doesn't mean that they will follow the procedures, but the license fees help to pay for the periodic inspection of their facilities.
I'd lean towards your opinion, except for one thing: There are a multitude of things you can do on your own behalf, but once you want to sell your services, it's different. [see: prostitution]
Electricians, cosmetologists, lawyers all do things that you could many times do yourself. But if you want to sell yourself as an expert to others, there are licensing and other rules.
While SafeNet might only be using public information, but who's to say they aren't also illegally tapping into information they aren't supposed to? If they were licensed P.I.'s their licence would be at risk if they violated the rules. Risk of their professional license is another way to keep them straight, for things that criminal and civil law don't cover.
While it sounds good that a properly trained tech person at the polling places can reduce the chance of the lost votes by following the workaround, it also means that they can make it happen.
If someone were so inclined, and in precints that were predominantly "the other side", intentionally doing the action that causes votes to be dropped might shave a few points from that party.
The existance of procedures that can trigger vote loss should be sufficient to toss the machines.
I've had a few dips in Spam traffic in the past. Same thing as the OP: own domain, own filtering options. Oddly, Spam has become a continous stream of noise that we notice if it's absent. Like someone living in a big city, accustomed to sounds, if it went silent, you'd run to a window to look out to make sure you're not the Omega Man.
The sad thing is that judges are always supposed to be rational people, or at least hand down rational decisions while on the clock. The judge should have called them on this, but didn't, and issued the order. I at least hope they had to shop around to several judges before they found one their lawyers could snooker.
A couple comments:
First, the information was already released. The entire presentation was handed out on CDs at the beginning of the conference. All the court order did was prevent a true dialog about the hack.
Second, it could be construed that not releasing the information also has a negative cost. As a public entitiy, the transit agency has a duty to look after the system. The hack points out a flaw in the system. Was the system design opened to public scrutiny prior to its use in an attempt to prevent such a hack? If the hack were not widely known would the agency be working dilligently to fix the flaws?
This is not much different than the "print your own bogus boarding pass" hack. The big worry wasn't really that loved ones could see you off at the gate, but that "bad guys" could go through security, metal detectors and such only to swap tickets with someone who wasn't on the no-fly list. What the release of that hack did was point out a flaw that already existed and provide incentive to fix it, or to drop the whole boarding pass as security sham in the first place.
As to the yelling Fire! in the theater analogy: If there's really a fire, it's Ok to yell.
This is another situation the 1st ammendment was designed to protect. Annoying, painful, expensive, dangerous speech might need to be protected.
For most phones the signal bars are NOT how well you can receive the tower, but the tower sending back to the the phone the RSSI (received signal strength indication) value. This is the tower telling the phone how well it can "hear" it. For sure, your tiny little phone is going to receive a signal from that tower better than it will receive one from your little 600mw handheld phone. Want a better signal? Use a 3-watt car phone.
This is tied to the battery life. A hand held phone will only transmit at the power needed to be received from the tower, only using it's full 600mw when necessary. (using the RSSI from the tower as the guide ). If you are in a situation where you're wobbling between zero and one bars, the phone will crank up it's power and... suck the battery down faster. If you're in an urban area dense with towers, your battery will last longer. Out hiking in the sticks with one bar (or zero when held between your hand and your head) your battery will poop out much quicker.
Real time is different than after the fact. ( I think I already wrote that ) It's easier to create a fake log after the fact, but your times would have to line up. Also, if you had access to the log to alter it, it's probably no good to you as an alibi. In the original article it probably helped that the logs resided with the tracking company.
If you were fighting a ticket it would have to show the correct time the cop pulled you over, the time you drove away after. It would have to show the times you left or arrived at other locations. If the log showed you starting the car at one place and arriving at another the time for the trip would have to match the distance and the fake speed.
If you were planning on shaving off 20 mph @ 80 mph then you'd have to fudge the logs to account for 30 hour days.
Self reporting speed is decades old. Pre-GPS commerical trucks in Japan showed the speed of te vehicle by a series of lights on the top of the truck cab. A cop could pull them over for speeding just by looking at the lights.
Tachographs in Europe record speed in commercial vehicles as well.
Shaving 20 mph off the logged speed would never fool anyone. With a small amount of logged data you'd have positions, time and speed. If your speed is reported at 50 meters per second, the position better be different by 50 meters each second. So besides fudging the speed you'd have to fudge the time ( or positions ) as well. Your time as reported in the logged positions would have to run slow in additon to the bugus speed. If that were true, your log would not show you in the position the cop knew you were in at the time of the ticket.
Of course you could retroactively edit the entire log, but doing it in real time would ne tough.