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  1. Re:Huh? on Detecting Chess Cheats Taxes Computers · · Score: 2

    When I was young... (yes keep off the lawn please!)
    I participated a school-chess evening, and drove my contenders mad... just searching for reasonable valid options, not having a strategy, end-play ect., they were thinking "why the f**k does he do that? he has to have some meaning for that stupid move".
    Eventually I got 7th in the pool. (of 7) so my strategy did not work. but had a good evening.

  2. In the open market? on Ask Slashdot: Any Smart Phones Made Under Worker-Friendly Conditions? · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    No, as it will cost to much to pay your employees good money, and good conditions.
    The greedy will only be satisfied (if possible) if there are people working as slaves.

  3. Re:Ice Cream Sandwich? on Google Employees Are Receiving Ice Cream Sandwich Upgrade · · Score: 1

    This product may contain traces of nuts

  4. Re:jaded on 30 Years of the BBC Micro · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can do better...

    Sinclair ZX 81 with 1KB total memory.
    I do not recall how many bytes were free for programming, but 30 lines of BASIC was about the biggest before going out of memory.

  5. Re:What's more sad? on Man Calls 911 To Fix Broken iPhone · · Score: 1

    ...

    5) Profit?

  6. Re:250MW ? on 8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars · · Score: 1

    250 milli-Watt hours you say? that is quite a bit.

    the only reason that kilo is a small k, is that you write kg for unity kilogram, and km for unity distance, and have different units for Mm or Mg (megameter and megagram.

    every decade below 1 unit is small and above is a capital letter.

  7. Re:No on Antenna Arrays Could Replace Satellite TV Dishes · · Score: 1

    No. The LNB has gotten better, the 'antenna' that a dish uses, they used to be 1.2 dB, and 0.9 dB if you wanted something expensive. todays standard is 0.3 dB, so you have enough with about a quarter of the original signal.

    My not so expensive 6 year old dish system still receives the same signal strenght.

  8. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power on Cooking With Your USB Ports · · Score: 1

    Oh, well, they invented 100W 'Heat bulbs' in Germany last month. They give off 99.9% efficient heat, and additionally also some visible light, and they fall outside the EU provisions for lighting equipment.

  9. Re:How to interface with a 'smart meter' on Security Holes Found In "Smart" Meters · · Score: 2, Informative

    The IR is also using a simple RS232 interface (9600,8,n,1) with some fixed password XOR encryption.
    I did program(move program into device, set clock, set tarifs)/analyse(= read fault reports)/readout (check readings) these some years ago in a factory which made them for the european market.

    I did not have the time to break the encryption, but had some work on coupling these things to GPRS modems. wired connection used the same encryption back then.

    just using a breakoutbox and a second PC-port sniffing the serial data.

  10. Re:Insanity on Court Says Parents Can Block PA "Sexting" Prosecutions · · Score: 1

    just get out of that basement and play on the lawn...

  11. How to count manual votes in the Netherlands on Software Bug Adds 5K Votes To Election · · Score: 1

    I was a voter in last weeks european elections, and stayed until the votes for the office were counted. (you are allowed to stay after the office closes)
    Almost nothing can go wrong, and can always be detected and mostly corrected.

    voters are counted, handed out votes are counted, incorrectly filled in votes are counted and marked 'invalid' and stored seperately.
    received votes are counted as they are inserted in the box.
    After closure, all counts are compared.
    Then the box is opened, and all votes are counted and compared to previously counted.
    Then votes are sorted and counted to the results and added back up to give vote count again.
    All counts are written down on official paper, votes are sealed and paper and votes are brought to central counting office of city where they can be counted again the day after (first tallies are reported upstream.)

    Counting is fair by having counters of several political parties and city officials at every voting office
    a typical office has 5 people . 1 checking Identity, 2 counting voters/checking revoked identities, 3 counting and giving votes, 4 counting received votes, 5 extra for toilet-visits

  12. Re:Just Throw It on the Meme Heap on 45-Year-Old Modem Used To Surf the Web · · Score: 1

    The standard required 1 second of 'no data' before and after the +++, or does that cheap winmodem just extends(extinguish) this standard?

  13. Re:All I have to say is... on Australia, UK To Test Vehicle Speed-Limiting Devices · · Score: 1

    No, just make a milliWatt transmitter with noise on the appropriate frequency, and all vehicles in a 500 meter range will be allowed to drive faster, or just stop dead.

    The german Maut-system (pay for cargo on highways) has the provision: if the system fails, you need to take the first exit of the highway and continue on secondary roads, or just park and wait until system gets restored.

  14. what is needed for this to work...??? on Investigators Replicate Nokia 1100 Banking Hack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1. physical access to SIM-card to get the IMSI
    2. info on bank account / phone number
    3. hacking in PC/internet connection to determine if/when the code is used.
    4. raise no suspicion when a code is sent and not received by the original recipient, and recipient is not able to call/being called or send/receive text because the original phone will be blocked until it is paired again with the GSM-system (power cycled)
    5. you need to have a bank that does have this system. (mine does not)

    so not as viable as it looks.

  15. Re:Attention all personnel on State of Colorado Calls Firefox Insecure, IE6 Safe · · Score: 1

    The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment regrets that this service is not avaialble at this time.

    when you quote, please quote literal, including errors.

  16. Re:Well do that in EU on Amtrak Photo Contestant Arrested By Amtrak Police · · Score: 1

    But... you are not allowed to publish the images when a (any) person who is recognizable on the picture has any objections to such publication, and you are required to remove such pictures when requested.

  17. Re:How it works (I think) and possible attacks on World's First "Unclonable" RFID Chip · · Score: 1

    at a: 1. if the manufacturer has all challenge-responses combo's for all chips, and need to verify them in real time, they need a very big server-farm, and any network-fault would kill the response-time. (or the system)

    2. delay-time is not acceptable in a RFID-card:
    bleep-bleep---read fault, you need to wait 5 minutes to try again... likely missed my train.

  18. Re:Still waiting for robot cars on EU Reserves a Frequency For Talking Cars · · Score: 1

    a human can press reset to errors like:
    Cabin light failed
    air conditioner temp high
    doors are not closed
    and even non trivial things like:
    engine temperature rising

    We do have an automated bus-system in Rotterdam, but this is just not good enough, When a bird/rabbit hops on the track: emergency brake, Then some plastic bag flies over: emergency brake

  19. Re:Nothing New on Software Price Gap Between the US and Europe · · Score: 1

    Maybe you're waiting for SP2.. as SP1 (8.04.01) already has happened 2008-07-01
    8.04.02 is due 2009-01-01
    8.10 is due 2008-10-01

  20. Re:Scare tactics on UK Banking Law Blames Customers For Insecure OS · · Score: 1

    with the Rabobank, there are four stages:
    1 identify https://www.rabobank.nl/ in the browser
    2 enter 1-time pin (out of random reader) and account number for identification and access.
    your screen name appears on the site
    3 enter transactions
    4 you get transaction pin (and amount if it is >â500) and enter those in reader, and you get another 1 time pin for completion.

    The Random reader has a clock built in, and this is also encoded in the pin, so your pin is only valid for a couple of minutes (clock running fast/slow is computed with step 1, at server-side) so you cannot authenticate with another reader as you logged in with

  21. Re:You know what would be even better? on Dell Set to Introduce AMD's Triple-core Phenom CPU · · Score: 1

    I do remember the Spectrum having 16K of ROM, 16K of RAM (with shared video) and 32K RAM.
    Nothing can you do about the Z80 having 65535 bytes addres-space, so 80K needs a hardware-hack.
    The 32K chips were pin-compatible with the 64 bit, except for a removed pin.

  22. Re:Voting in the netherlands on Group Sues To Stop German E-Voting · · Score: 1

    Not anymore we don't...
    All references to voting machines are scrapped from our voting regulations (dec 10 2007) and all electronic voting equipment have their validation revoked (sept 2007)

  23. Re:Ubuntu is hard on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn - Desktop Linux Matured · · Score: 1

    Just try the 'Kubuntu' version....
    Thats Ubuntu but with KDE instead of Gnome
    And last week I tried KDE and I was lost too, with my 15 month Gnome experience.

    The (ubuntu gnome) disk-management has recently been moved from system/administration to applications/system_tools