They should also have to choose between legal and technological protection. If they want to use DRM to enforce policies that aren't based in copyright law (and there's no way for a piece of software to distinguish what's legal fair use), then I see no reason to grant them copyright protection. The purpose of copyright is to promote creation and enrich society. Fair use is a necessary part of that, as is the ability to use the work after the copyright period expires. They should not be allowed to renege on half of the bargain and expect the other half to continue to hold.
If they want DRM, fine. But pick one. They shouldn't be allowed to lock up our culture and expect legal assistance in doing so.
Huh? We're talking about measuring the solar wind, ie interplanetary vacuum. As in, positioned at a distance comparable to Earth's orbit. The instrument in question would be more like a particle detector than a microphone or pressure gauge. (IANA astrophysicist.)
The solar wind has a pressure, and you can measure it. And it changes. You could interpret that pressure as sound. It would be quiet by terrestrial standards, but an event like this would definitely make noise.
Of course, your microphone wouldn't bear much resemblance to a terrestrial one; measuring pressures that low is a tricky thing.
What would it sound like, anyway? It's a pressure wave, aka a sound wave (mostly, there's apparently magnetic effects involved too), but really loud. Really, really loud. But, that sharp rise and fall in pressure has a definable sound to it. I'm sure someone will do a better job than I can, but I think it would sound a lot like a "pop" but with tonality to it -- it's not a sharp-edged delta function, but rather a bandpass-filtered version of one. It looks from the scale, though, like it's a very low frequency wave -- well into the subsonic regime. You wouldn't so much hear it or even feel it as get blown back and forth by it. Well, neglecting that detail about the energy levels involved. Suffice to say that overpowered stereo your neighbor has wouldn't come close...
Marijuana is not opium. The majority of marijuana in the US is locally grown. Terrorist connections to opium have zero relevance to marijuana. They are not the same drug, and they are not the same market. Responding to comments about marijuana by presenting evidence about opium makes you look either clueless or highly disingenuous.
And that's relevant to the parent posts' point how, exactly?
I know more than one person who will smoke weed, but won't smoke opium because it actually does support terrorists, at least somewhat...
The fact that you have a personal objection to other people's drug of choice doesn't necessarily mean those people are supporting terrorists. I suppose a straw man argument is better than an outright fabrication, but you're dangerously close to the claims of the A.G.
If you don't like darknet mode, don't use it. 0.7 has both darknet and opennet available.
There are lots of reasons why darknets are better, but if you'd rather use an opennet instead no one is stopping you. You can get to the network either way.
No, traffic monitoring at the ISP level wouldn't be sufficient to de-anonymize freenet (in theory; there may be bugs etc, but that's the idea). However, that combined with a large number of nodes operated by the attacker probably would, at least if the target is running opennet or can be convinced to create a darknet connection to the attacker.
The assumptions about ISPs and telecoms required for Freenet to guarantee anonymity are far fewer than you seem to think they are. The major one is that use of encryption needs to be legal, and given the prevalence of SSL for web browsing that seems likely to remain the case.
Future versions of Freenet will include steganographic transport layers, which should make it even harder to attack.
What makes you say 0.5 is more secure than 0.7? There have been a large number of improvements, especially security ones. Not to mention it's faster...
Yes, but why would that be a problem? The really CPU-intensive stuff is handled in native code anyway on most platforms (with Java fallbacks). I'm running it on a 1.4GHz Athlon (not exactly modern...) and it's using typically 10-20% of the CPU (though that number will rise on a faster connection).
Performance is limited by network connections, mostly. The real performance question is how quickly the developers can improve it and find and fix bugs, and if they say Java helps in that regard, then Java is a good choice.
If you can trust literally no one, you're screwed no matter what. But it's easy to imagine cases where the government or mafiaa are actively trying to figure out who's doing what, but you can trust people you know face to face.
Only the primary design goal of Freenet: make the people uploading and downloading the content anonymous! If you're using bittorrent, it's easy for the Bad People (government, isp, mafiaa) to tell what you're uploading and downloading. Not so with Freenet (it probably can be done, but it would take a *lot* of effort).
It is easy to tell that someone is running Freenet (still harder than bittorrent, though -- with everything encrypted and ports randomized, it requires traffic analysis). But it's hard to tell who's downloading or uploading what.
Yes, it's faster. No, it's not fast, but it is usable.
There are some browser setting changes that help a lot; Freenet includes a Firefox profile with the appropriate changes for use when browsing Freenet. It won't ever be as fast as the web, but most freesites are quite usable. Plenty of people report success downloading largish files (isos, etc).
You'll want to leave your node connected for a while; it will get faster over the first few minutes / hours it's installed, and somewhat even after that, especially as your node begins to cache popular data. As always, having a fast network connection helps a lot.
A couple turns of fine solder around the prongs of an (unplugged) electrical plug, against the plastic (so it's hard to spot).
Not fatal, but will make quite the bang when your victim plugs it in. Use thin solder and it won't even trip the breaker. Lead-free is highly recommended...
I'll discuss the safety concerns, since I think they're important, but I'll leave the rest of the discussion be.
The fact that the propellants tend to mix and burn or explode only after a failure may have little impact on the overall effect, but it has a huge impact on how you mitigate the risk. It means that if you can keep high speed bits of metal out of the propellant tanks, you can keep the fireball from happening (for that scenario; there are other risk factors).
Soyuz may be *regarded* as safe, but that doens't mean that safety was the *primary* design concern. Your assertions to the contrary, most rockets simply aren't designed with safety as the primary goal. I assert that you can see this in the test programs, even if you don't care to read the numerous reports on the industry. The test programs simply aren't long enough to demonstrate the requisite safety record. Much as you might like to think that putting people on rockets means that safety becomes the primary goal, NASA and company still design for performance first and foremost. You say there aren't margins available on an orbital rocket, yet the Russian rockets routinely use margins higher than NASA would even think of using. Sure, there isn't a lot of room, but the room available isn't zero, either. And if you're designing for safety, you spend some of that on things like giving your engines blast shields and redundant valves.
Rockets have a long history of failures. That isn't inherent to the technology, though. The energies and temperatures involved are high, but they're not absurd. The stresses involved in the metals can be very similar to those in jet engines, which have a very good safety record. The most obvious place where you can disagree with me is the chamber wall, but even if you do, the chamber wall can fail safely. XCOR has had more than one chamber burn-through in tests, and then engine will fail gracefully when it happens -- you wouldn't even be able to tell anything was wrong from the outside, except that the plume would look funny. It also shows up very quickly on the sensors, and they can shut down the engine or turn on a warning light for the pilot as desired (XCOR has taken both approaches at different times). The other normal source of engine failures is in the turbopumps; XCOR solves that problem by not having turbopumps. The Rocket Racer and Lynx both use piston pumps, operating at lower speeds, lower stress, and lower pressure than traditional turbopumps. Pressure in the chambers and everywhere else is also reduced relative to traditional engines; I can't say specifically, but suffice to say it's a lot lower than most NASA engines. There is a performance penalty, but not a huge one, and the numbers still work for orbit.
When you get right down to it, the conditions in a rocket are tougher than in a jet engine, but not unreasonably so -- and the interaction between the hot stuff and the engine is much, much less. There is no reason rockets can't be comparably safe; what the historical record speaks to is that they aren't normally *designed* that way, from the very start of the design. You can't tack safety on to an existing design, it has to be there from the start -- which is what most traditional engines are missing.
When I say propellant choice doesn't matter from an energy content standpoint, I meant purely for safety concerns, not stage performance concerns. Even Nitrous / HTPB has more energy in it than TNT, and is within a factor of 2 of LOX / Kerosene or LOX / Methane. Sure, that makes a difference, but it's a difference of degree, not a qualitative one. You *could* go to orbit on any of them, but you'd be silly to try on nitrous. Remember also that from a safety standpoint, most of the high-energy failures (as opposed to simply engine-out and such) start with the chamber as a pressure vessel failure, or in the pumps as a turbine failure. In the former case, the bipropellants are safer because the pressure vessel in question (the chamber / nozzle) is smaller
XCOR is sensible. If there were physical reasons you couldn't ride the vehicle that didn't interfere with doing your job, I'm sure they'd figure something out.
The proper term is "spaceflight participant." I don't think the FAA has any specific requirements, but it would be unwise if you're in particularly bad health. The rough guideline Jeff has used is that if you're in good enough shape that you can walk a mile without excessive difficulty, and you can fit in the seat, you can fly.
Throw it away and buy a new one, like with any cheap plastic product, why?
Besides, if it's expensive enough for that to be a bad option, there are things like silicone rubbers that don't dry rot. I have no idea if this technique works on those, but I'm guessing it will.
The chips are already waterproof, as are the PCBs. The problem is the connections from chip to PCB, and to things off the PCB -- power connectors, memory sockets, etc. Keyboards and such are also a problem, not to mention CD drives or anything else with exposed moving parts.
A waterproof laptop would be very nice, but this isn't all that relevant. Besides, I doubt we're talking about high-performance chips here anyway.
People who care about security don't tend to be distracted by shiny things.
Some of us like our shiny things, but are aware enough of security that we'd rather use a more secure browser. Sure, anyone on a mission critical system can probably live without it, but why shouldn't my home PC that I watch Youtube videos on be secure? If they can make it work, and be usable, I'm all for it.
Lynx has been in the works in a real sense for some time now. The Rocket Racer is the sort of contract work XCOR *likes*. I believe, but can't say for sure, that Lynx has been part of the business plan since nearly the start of the company, in some form or other. And yes, the EZ-Rocket is a technology demonstrator; however, the demonstration was basically intended to be "XCOR can build multi-engine rocket vehicles," not just a piece of eye candy to attract attention to the engines. There's a large quantity of work involved in taking an engine that runs on the stand and integrating into an airframe; XCOR has worked to develop that expertise, it's not just something they do on occasion if they have to for a contract.
Slashdot Mirror
They should also have to choose between legal and technological protection. If they want to use DRM to enforce policies that aren't based in copyright law (and there's no way for a piece of software to distinguish what's legal fair use), then I see no reason to grant them copyright protection. The purpose of copyright is to promote creation and enrich society. Fair use is a necessary part of that, as is the ability to use the work after the copyright period expires. They should not be allowed to renege on half of the bargain and expect the other half to continue to hold.
If they want DRM, fine. But pick one. They shouldn't be allowed to lock up our culture and expect legal assistance in doing so.
Huh? We're talking about measuring the solar wind, ie interplanetary vacuum. As in, positioned at a distance comparable to Earth's orbit. The instrument in question would be more like a particle detector than a microphone or pressure gauge. (IANA astrophysicist.)
The solar wind has a pressure, and you can measure it. And it changes. You could interpret that pressure as sound. It would be quiet by terrestrial standards, but an event like this would definitely make noise.
Of course, your microphone wouldn't bear much resemblance to a terrestrial one; measuring pressures that low is a tricky thing.
What would it sound like, anyway? It's a pressure wave, aka a sound wave (mostly, there's apparently magnetic effects involved too), but really loud. Really, really loud. But, that sharp rise and fall in pressure has a definable sound to it. I'm sure someone will do a better job than I can, but I think it would sound a lot like a "pop" but with tonality to it -- it's not a sharp-edged delta function, but rather a bandpass-filtered version of one. It looks from the scale, though, like it's a very low frequency wave -- well into the subsonic regime. You wouldn't so much hear it or even feel it as get blown back and forth by it. Well, neglecting that detail about the energy levels involved. Suffice to say that overpowered stereo your neighbor has wouldn't come close...
You didn't read my comment, did you?
Marijuana is not opium. The majority of marijuana in the US is locally grown. Terrorist connections to opium have zero relevance to marijuana. They are not the same drug, and they are not the same market. Responding to comments about marijuana by presenting evidence about opium makes you look either clueless or highly disingenuous.
And that's relevant to the parent posts' point how, exactly?
I know more than one person who will smoke weed, but won't smoke opium because it actually does support terrorists, at least somewhat...
The fact that you have a personal objection to other people's drug of choice doesn't necessarily mean those people are supporting terrorists. I suppose a straw man argument is better than an outright fabrication, but you're dangerously close to the claims of the A.G.
That's an odd thing to say, considering that there are plenty of people out there using Freenet who haven't been arrested / disappeared / etc.
Perhaps you should get your tinfoil hat resized.
The first link from the Ultimate Freenet Index (one of the larger index sites) is to images of violence in Tibet.
Is that somehow not good enough for you?
Link (requires freenet to be installed and running.)
If you don't like darknet mode, don't use it. 0.7 has both darknet and opennet available.
There are lots of reasons why darknets are better, but if you'd rather use an opennet instead no one is stopping you. You can get to the network either way.
No, traffic monitoring at the ISP level wouldn't be sufficient to de-anonymize freenet (in theory; there may be bugs etc, but that's the idea). However, that combined with a large number of nodes operated by the attacker probably would, at least if the target is running opennet or can be convinced to create a darknet connection to the attacker.
The assumptions about ISPs and telecoms required for Freenet to guarantee anonymity are far fewer than you seem to think they are. The major one is that use of encryption needs to be legal, and given the prevalence of SSL for web browsing that seems likely to remain the case.
Future versions of Freenet will include steganographic transport layers, which should make it even harder to attack.
If you don't like darknet mode, then don't use it. If you like it, use it. It's that simple. 0.7 has both available.
What makes you say 0.5 is more secure than 0.7? There have been a large number of improvements, especially security ones. Not to mention it's faster...
Yes, but why would that be a problem? The really CPU-intensive stuff is handled in native code anyway on most platforms (with Java fallbacks). I'm running it on a 1.4GHz Athlon (not exactly modern...) and it's using typically 10-20% of the CPU (though that number will rise on a faster connection).
Performance is limited by network connections, mostly. The real performance question is how quickly the developers can improve it and find and fix bugs, and if they say Java helps in that regard, then Java is a good choice.
If you can trust literally no one, you're screwed no matter what. But it's easy to imagine cases where the government or mafiaa are actively trying to figure out who's doing what, but you can trust people you know face to face.
Only the primary design goal of Freenet: make the people uploading and downloading the content anonymous! If you're using bittorrent, it's easy for the Bad People (government, isp, mafiaa) to tell what you're uploading and downloading. Not so with Freenet (it probably can be done, but it would take a *lot* of effort).
It is easy to tell that someone is running Freenet (still harder than bittorrent, though -- with everything encrypted and ports randomized, it requires traffic analysis). But it's hard to tell who's downloading or uploading what.
Yes, it's faster. No, it's not fast, but it is usable.
There are some browser setting changes that help a lot; Freenet includes a Firefox profile with the appropriate changes for use when browsing Freenet. It won't ever be as fast as the web, but most freesites are quite usable. Plenty of people report success downloading largish files (isos, etc).
You'll want to leave your node connected for a while; it will get faster over the first few minutes / hours it's installed, and somewhat even after that, especially as your node begins to cache popular data. As always, having a fast network connection helps a lot.
A couple turns of fine solder around the prongs of an (unplugged) electrical plug, against the plastic (so it's hard to spot).
Not fatal, but will make quite the bang when your victim plugs it in. Use thin solder and it won't even trip the breaker. Lead-free is highly recommended...
Database jokes are the best.
Of course, xkcd did it best...
xkcd
I'll discuss the safety concerns, since I think they're important, but I'll leave the rest of the discussion be.
The fact that the propellants tend to mix and burn or explode only after a failure may have little impact on the overall effect, but it has a huge impact on how you mitigate the risk. It means that if you can keep high speed bits of metal out of the propellant tanks, you can keep the fireball from happening (for that scenario; there are other risk factors).
Soyuz may be *regarded* as safe, but that doens't mean that safety was the *primary* design concern. Your assertions to the contrary, most rockets simply aren't designed with safety as the primary goal. I assert that you can see this in the test programs, even if you don't care to read the numerous reports on the industry. The test programs simply aren't long enough to demonstrate the requisite safety record. Much as you might like to think that putting people on rockets means that safety becomes the primary goal, NASA and company still design for performance first and foremost. You say there aren't margins available on an orbital rocket, yet the Russian rockets routinely use margins higher than NASA would even think of using. Sure, there isn't a lot of room, but the room available isn't zero, either. And if you're designing for safety, you spend some of that on things like giving your engines blast shields and redundant valves.
Rockets have a long history of failures. That isn't inherent to the technology, though. The energies and temperatures involved are high, but they're not absurd. The stresses involved in the metals can be very similar to those in jet engines, which have a very good safety record. The most obvious place where you can disagree with me is the chamber wall, but even if you do, the chamber wall can fail safely. XCOR has had more than one chamber burn-through in tests, and then engine will fail gracefully when it happens -- you wouldn't even be able to tell anything was wrong from the outside, except that the plume would look funny. It also shows up very quickly on the sensors, and they can shut down the engine or turn on a warning light for the pilot as desired (XCOR has taken both approaches at different times). The other normal source of engine failures is in the turbopumps; XCOR solves that problem by not having turbopumps. The Rocket Racer and Lynx both use piston pumps, operating at lower speeds, lower stress, and lower pressure than traditional turbopumps. Pressure in the chambers and everywhere else is also reduced relative to traditional engines; I can't say specifically, but suffice to say it's a lot lower than most NASA engines. There is a performance penalty, but not a huge one, and the numbers still work for orbit.
When you get right down to it, the conditions in a rocket are tougher than in a jet engine, but not unreasonably so -- and the interaction between the hot stuff and the engine is much, much less. There is no reason rockets can't be comparably safe; what the historical record speaks to is that they aren't normally *designed* that way, from the very start of the design. You can't tack safety on to an existing design, it has to be there from the start -- which is what most traditional engines are missing.
When I say propellant choice doesn't matter from an energy content standpoint, I meant purely for safety concerns, not stage performance concerns. Even Nitrous / HTPB has more energy in it than TNT, and is within a factor of 2 of LOX / Kerosene or LOX / Methane. Sure, that makes a difference, but it's a difference of degree, not a qualitative one. You *could* go to orbit on any of them, but you'd be silly to try on nitrous. Remember also that from a safety standpoint, most of the high-energy failures (as opposed to simply engine-out and such) start with the chamber as a pressure vessel failure, or in the pumps as a turbine failure. In the former case, the bipropellants are safer because the pressure vessel in question (the chamber / nozzle) is smaller
XCOR is sensible. If there were physical reasons you couldn't ride the vehicle that didn't interfere with doing your job, I'm sure they'd figure something out.
The proper term is "spaceflight participant." I don't think the FAA has any specific requirements, but it would be unwise if you're in particularly bad health. The rough guideline Jeff has used is that if you're in good enough shape that you can walk a mile without excessive difficulty, and you can fit in the seat, you can fly.
Throw it away and buy a new one, like with any cheap plastic product, why?
Besides, if it's expensive enough for that to be a bad option, there are things like silicone rubbers that don't dry rot. I have no idea if this technique works on those, but I'm guessing it will.
The chips are already waterproof, as are the PCBs. The problem is the connections from chip to PCB, and to things off the PCB -- power connectors, memory sockets, etc. Keyboards and such are also a problem, not to mention CD drives or anything else with exposed moving parts.
A waterproof laptop would be very nice, but this isn't all that relevant. Besides, I doubt we're talking about high-performance chips here anyway.
People who care about security don't tend to be distracted by shiny things.
Some of us like our shiny things, but are aware enough of security that we'd rather use a more secure browser. Sure, anyone on a mission critical system can probably live without it, but why shouldn't my home PC that I watch Youtube videos on be secure? If they can make it work, and be usable, I'm all for it.
Lynx has been in the works in a real sense for some time now. The Rocket Racer is the sort of contract work XCOR *likes*. I believe, but can't say for sure, that Lynx has been part of the business plan since nearly the start of the company, in some form or other. And yes, the EZ-Rocket is a technology demonstrator; however, the demonstration was basically intended to be "XCOR can build multi-engine rocket vehicles," not just a piece of eye candy to attract attention to the engines. There's a large quantity of work involved in taking an engine that runs on the stand and integrating into an airframe; XCOR has worked to develop that expertise, it's not just something they do on occasion if they have to for a contract.