In my skim through the various links, I didn't see what they are proposing to do for practical real-world problems such as phishing. What are they going to do to ensure that a phisher doesn't register a domain with characters that look almost indistinguishible from different characters in a different language, so as to trick users into visiting the phisher's site instead of the legitimate version of the site?
Drifting off topic a bit, if you are sick of getting burned on car loans, buy a used car you can afford without a loan at all. Anything reasonably recent (newer than about 15 years old) will have maintenance costs far lower than the interest alone on a new car.
I've _never_ bought a new car. My current car (a '95 Audi, I bought in 2002) - the total I paid for that car is less than the depreciation that I'd have lost on a 2002 Audi to today - so even if I gave the car away tomorrow, I would still be ahead. Since I could pay with cash, I have no loan interest to repay. I don't have to have full insurance coverage - I can have liability only coverage. The running costs are not that much higher than on a new car - most of the things that I need to spend money on (tires, brakes etc.) are things I would have had to have done had I bought a 2002 model.
What most people fundamentally miss, is concern at the current _extremely rapid_ climate change (it's not questioned that the climate is always changing for various reasons) is not concern about "saving the planet" by saving ourselves. Concern about whether humans are causing rapid climate change (which there are now mountains of evidence in favour of) is _self interest_. The Sun has another five or six billion years of main sequence, and if we act like bacteria in a petri dish - living in an unsustainable manner until either the environment no longer favours our species, or that the resources are used up - in that period of time, the Earth will shrug it off. 100 million years is nothing to the Earth.
We are the first species who can actually predict the course of our actions, and actually stop the disaster from happening in the first place. Concern about this very rapid climate change is all about preserving our technological society. We only have one shot at at - the easy to get at resources are all now gone, so if this society collapses, there cannot be another industrial revolution (at least, not for 100 million years or so).
So the choice is: live sustainably and save ourselves, or don't live sustainably, and doom civilization. The Earth doesn't care either way, the Earth will just shrug us off in what is the short term for the planet - if we doom ourselves, in a couple of hundred million years you'll have to dig for fossils to even tell that humans even existed.
It's clear that we both need to adapt _AND_ we need to find a way to live sustainably. Even if it turns out to be entirely false that human emissions are the main factor in the rapidly changing climate (which is unlikely), resource exhaustion is still a future problem that must be tackled. Living sustainably will solve both problems, and it doesn't mean we all go back to an Edwardian lifestyle either if we engage our brains (and sadly, as a species, we act no more intelligently than bacteria on a petri dish). I think ultimately, if our society survives it'll be luck rather than good planning (luck - as in resources become increasingly scarce at a slow enough rate that the market can force the move to alternatives, at a speed which won't cause economic collapse).
By your standards, Windows and Mac OS X are not mainstream friendly, either. There's things that can only be done in Windows on the command line, and things on the Mac that can only be done on the command line, too. There are plenty of things on Windows you have to do via regedit as well - which is tantamount to editing a text file.
I thought nerve impulses were carried electrochemically by a wave of depolarizations? So not electrical as in signals on a computer bus (travelling close to the speed of light), but more like electrochemical waves (travelling much more slowly, like 120mph) - sort of like an electrochemical domino topple (well, except the dominos can right themselves afterwards). This is of course from school biology lessons, so I'm sure it's simplistic and probably mis-remembered.
He also demonstrates a total lack of reading comprehension: he thinks the GPL tells you how much you will pay for something and how you are allowed to use it, when it does nothing of the sort.
WMV *has* killed these file formats for home movies, though. Every video I've been sent by a friend in the last two years has been WMV, rather than DivX or plain MPEG-4 - and it's been a monumental pain in the ass until VLC could play WMV9 files. All Microsoft have to do is make this new file format the default for Windows photo applications, and before long, when people send you a photo attachment in email, it'll no longer be JPEG, but this new Windows-only patent encumbered format.
The difference between the JPEG group and Microsoft is that the JPEG group doesn't have a desktop OS monopoly to push their file formats. All Microsoft has to do is make their new format the default format for all the Windows built in tools, and sure enough - it won't be long until they own that defacto standard too.
It's already happened pretty much for video. Any random video I get sent by people is almost always in WMV9 format, because Microsoft made their proprietary format the default in Windows.
Sigh. This whole article has demonstrated that it is LESS secure. Had the passports contained a similar device to my credit card - something which you need to make contact with to read - then the writer of the article would not have been able to read the passport through an unopened envelope in the mail stream. Remote wireless can only reduce security.
I still can't work out why passports had to be RFID in the first place. What was wrong with a simpler (and probably cheaper!) device with contacts? Certainly not wear - my Switch card gets used practically daily and hasn't worn out. Even a frequent traveller won't have their passport read more than a dozen times per year.
Already, there have been a couple of incidents (aside to the one flight on Sept.11th, where the passengers tried to seize control once they knew what was going to happen) of the passengers beating the crap out of a potential hijacker - including one case where the would-be hijacker was *killed* by the passengers (he turned out later to not be a hijacker, but just someone who was mentally ill).
The case you're probably most familiar with is Richard "shoe bomber" Reid, who got the crap beaten out of him, and then was tied up, by passengers and cabin crew when he attempted to light the fuse on his shoe bomb.
The Germans certainly are not immune. My 1995 Audi A4 sometimes opens the sun roof completely uncommanded. Sometimes, the passenger side window won't close (you roll it up, it hits the stop so you release the switch, then it rolls itself down back to the position it was in before you rolled it up. So if the window was halfway down when you went to close it, it'll roll itself back down half way). The electric windows also remain energised for a few minutes after removing the key (an EXTREMELY useful feature - meaning when you forget to roll one up, you don't have to turn the ignition back on like with most cars) - but the downside of this is I've walked away from the car, and the passenger side window or the sunroof has decided to open uncommanded. And then it rained.
It hasn't recurred in my car in a while, but all cars are subject to deranged electronics when they get a bit older. And since it's not a reproducable fault, it's very difficult to diagnose the root cause (neither of these faults has recurred in the last year or so).
If you're a British citizen, you don't need a visa to work in Sweden (or anywhere else in the European Union).
Re:Yes but what makes his little project special??
on
DIY Laptop
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· Score: 1
The point I was making was that people were ragging on the guy for doing the project at all, and that he was "wasting his time". Not that the project was more worthy than some other.
Have you made a web page about your project?
Have you submitted a link to Slashdot?
Slashdot's stories are generated by what people _submit_. Your project will get exposure via the FireHose if you merely write journal entries about it.
There IS room on Slashdot for projects like this, which are simple and can be taken on by beginners. If it gets just two software guys to pick up a soldering iron and buy a copy of Horowitz and Hill, then it was worth doing. The nice thing about Slashdot is it's not just about the really hard stuff that few people can do at home - it does cover project ideas that CAN be done by someone just starting out.
My PCBs, by the way, are even RoHS complaint. No lead, not even in the solder (and certainly, new components are RoHS compliant and lead-free). I use the toner transfer system to mask the copper clad board (using a common inexpensive HP laserjet printer, and Tesco's Value Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper, and a household iron), and ferric chloride to etch, and then tin the board with tinning crystals. Although the ferric chloride and tinning crystals aren't nice and must be disposed of properly, being careful and wearing chemical resistant gauntlets means you don't get it on you.
Did he have fun making it? Then it wasn't a waste of time at all. I've seen about half a dozen comments so far, like yours - which completely and utterly miss the point of the project.
I'm making a Z80 based single board computer. Could I just buy a gumstix or ARM development board or whatever and do it quicker and have more CPU power? Of course. But then _I_ wouldn't be designing and making the computer. Why use a Z80? Because I like the Z80. No other reason. If I'm enjoying the project it's not in any way a waste of time, and anyone who comes back with "Why don't you use $SPACE_HEATER_4Ghz CPU instead?" is missing the point so much they'd need a telescope to see it!
Re:More powerful / practical (device just as easy)
on
DIY Laptop
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· Score: 1
Either way why reinvent the wheel there are plenty of embedded OS out there.
I dunno... perhaps it's *fun*?
I'm making a Z80 based single board computer right now. I get replies to my journal entries such as "You shouldn't try to make your own double sided PCBs, get a pcbpool.de to make one for you" and other such things. But these comments *completely* miss the point. I'm making my own double sided PCB because I want to make my own double sided PCB, it's really no more complex than that (and the fact it costs about 1/10th is just an added bonus). I'm sure this guy wanted to make his own mini embedded OS because he wanted to make his own mini embedded OS.
You'll also learn a lot from rolling your own rather than just using some pre-made package, too.
Re:Didn't expect to see a PICAXE processor
on
DIY Laptop
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· Score: 1
Vintage? I'm building a Z80 single board computer on a 160x100mm ('Eurocard') PCB. The Z80 CPU (a 'classic' 40 pin DIL packaged thing, which would happily plug into a ZX Spectrum from 1982) was manufactured only 6 months ago!
The Z80 is still made. It's a great chip for small embedded projects where you want a real computer rather than a microcontroller.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference between Google and IBM is IBM is really worth its market cap, but Google's market cap is a hyperinflated bubble.
In my skim through the various links, I didn't see what they are proposing to do for practical real-world problems such as phishing. What are they going to do to ensure that a phisher doesn't register a domain with characters that look almost indistinguishible from different characters in a different language, so as to trick users into visiting the phisher's site instead of the legitimate version of the site?
8 *meg* BASIC, before CP/M? 8K maybe...
Drifting off topic a bit, if you are sick of getting burned on car loans, buy a used car you can afford without a loan at all. Anything reasonably recent (newer than about 15 years old) will have maintenance costs far lower than the interest alone on a new car.
I've _never_ bought a new car. My current car (a '95 Audi, I bought in 2002) - the total I paid for that car is less than the depreciation that I'd have lost on a 2002 Audi to today - so even if I gave the car away tomorrow, I would still be ahead. Since I could pay with cash, I have no loan interest to repay. I don't have to have full insurance coverage - I can have liability only coverage. The running costs are not that much higher than on a new car - most of the things that I need to spend money on (tires, brakes etc.) are things I would have had to have done had I bought a 2002 model.
Actually, we've not "ruined Eden".
What most people fundamentally miss, is concern at the current _extremely rapid_ climate change (it's not questioned that the climate is always changing for various reasons) is not concern about "saving the planet" by saving ourselves. Concern about whether humans are causing rapid climate change (which there are now mountains of evidence in favour of) is _self interest_. The Sun has another five or six billion years of main sequence, and if we act like bacteria in a petri dish - living in an unsustainable manner until either the environment no longer favours our species, or that the resources are used up - in that period of time, the Earth will shrug it off. 100 million years is nothing to the Earth.
We are the first species who can actually predict the course of our actions, and actually stop the disaster from happening in the first place. Concern about this very rapid climate change is all about preserving our technological society. We only have one shot at at - the easy to get at resources are all now gone, so if this society collapses, there cannot be another industrial revolution (at least, not for 100 million years or so).
So the choice is: live sustainably and save ourselves, or don't live sustainably, and doom civilization. The Earth doesn't care either way, the Earth will just shrug us off in what is the short term for the planet - if we doom ourselves, in a couple of hundred million years you'll have to dig for fossils to even tell that humans even existed.
It's clear that we both need to adapt _AND_ we need to find a way to live sustainably. Even if it turns out to be entirely false that human emissions are the main factor in the rapidly changing climate (which is unlikely), resource exhaustion is still a future problem that must be tackled. Living sustainably will solve both problems, and it doesn't mean we all go back to an Edwardian lifestyle either if we engage our brains (and sadly, as a species, we act no more intelligently than bacteria on a petri dish). I think ultimately, if our society survives it'll be luck rather than good planning (luck - as in resources become increasingly scarce at a slow enough rate that the market can force the move to alternatives, at a speed which won't cause economic collapse).
By your standards, Windows and Mac OS X are not mainstream friendly, either. There's things that can only be done in Windows on the command line, and things on the Mac that can only be done on the command line, too. There are plenty of things on Windows you have to do via regedit as well - which is tantamount to editing a text file.
For international services like domain registrars, switch to UTC already. Running the server on a local timezone will only lead to confusion.
All my internet servers just use UTC. NTP synchronized, naturally.
The trouble is not enough people care. The vast majority just repeat the tired old canard, "If you've got nothing to hide, what have you got to fear?"
I think I might change my name to Winston by deed poll.
I thought nerve impulses were carried electrochemically by a wave of depolarizations? So not electrical as in signals on a computer bus (travelling close to the speed of light), but more like electrochemical waves (travelling much more slowly, like 120mph) - sort of like an electrochemical domino topple (well, except the dominos can right themselves afterwards). This is of course from school biology lessons, so I'm sure it's simplistic and probably mis-remembered.
He also demonstrates a total lack of reading comprehension: he thinks the GPL tells you how much you will pay for something and how you are allowed to use it, when it does nothing of the sort.
WMV *has* killed these file formats for home movies, though. Every video I've been sent by a friend in the last two years has been WMV, rather than DivX or plain MPEG-4 - and it's been a monumental pain in the ass until VLC could play WMV9 files. All Microsoft have to do is make this new file format the default for Windows photo applications, and before long, when people send you a photo attachment in email, it'll no longer be JPEG, but this new Windows-only patent encumbered format.
The difference between the JPEG group and Microsoft is that the JPEG group doesn't have a desktop OS monopoly to push their file formats. All Microsoft has to do is make their new format the default format for all the Windows built in tools, and sure enough - it won't be long until they own that defacto standard too.
It's already happened pretty much for video. Any random video I get sent by people is almost always in WMV9 format, because Microsoft made their proprietary format the default in Windows.
Surely, there's no place like ::1 ?
Sigh. This whole article has demonstrated that it is LESS secure. Had the passports contained a similar device to my credit card - something which you need to make contact with to read - then the writer of the article would not have been able to read the passport through an unopened envelope in the mail stream. Remote wireless can only reduce security.
I still can't work out why passports had to be RFID in the first place. What was wrong with a simpler (and probably cheaper!) device with contacts? Certainly not wear - my Switch card gets used practically daily and hasn't worn out. Even a frequent traveller won't have their passport read more than a dozen times per year.
You're mistaken.
Already, there have been a couple of incidents (aside to the one flight on Sept.11th, where the passengers tried to seize control once they knew what was going to happen) of the passengers beating the crap out of a potential hijacker - including one case where the would-be hijacker was *killed* by the passengers (he turned out later to not be a hijacker, but just someone who was mentally ill).
The case you're probably most familiar with is Richard "shoe bomber" Reid, who got the crap beaten out of him, and then was tied up, by passengers and cabin crew when he attempted to light the fuse on his shoe bomb.
And Doctor... I just remembered, I had the fish too...
Huh? Did you miss the invasion of two countries, and the obvious threat to invade a third?
The Germans certainly are not immune. My 1995 Audi A4 sometimes opens the sun roof completely uncommanded. Sometimes, the passenger side window won't close (you roll it up, it hits the stop so you release the switch, then it rolls itself down back to the position it was in before you rolled it up. So if the window was halfway down when you went to close it, it'll roll itself back down half way). The electric windows also remain energised for a few minutes after removing the key (an EXTREMELY useful feature - meaning when you forget to roll one up, you don't have to turn the ignition back on like with most cars) - but the downside of this is I've walked away from the car, and the passenger side window or the sunroof has decided to open uncommanded. And then it rained.
It hasn't recurred in my car in a while, but all cars are subject to deranged electronics when they get a bit older. And since it's not a reproducable fault, it's very difficult to diagnose the root cause (neither of these faults has recurred in the last year or so).
I saw a package in Best Buy in the software section for this - I don't think it was very expensive, certainly not $200.
If you're a British citizen, you don't need a visa to work in Sweden (or anywhere else in the European Union).
The point I was making was that people were ragging on the guy for doing the project at all, and that he was "wasting his time". Not that the project was more worthy than some other.
Have you made a web page about your project?
Have you submitted a link to Slashdot?
Slashdot's stories are generated by what people _submit_. Your project will get exposure via the FireHose if you merely write journal entries about it.
There IS room on Slashdot for projects like this, which are simple and can be taken on by beginners. If it gets just two software guys to pick up a soldering iron and buy a copy of Horowitz and Hill, then it was worth doing. The nice thing about Slashdot is it's not just about the really hard stuff that few people can do at home - it does cover project ideas that CAN be done by someone just starting out.
My PCBs, by the way, are even RoHS complaint. No lead, not even in the solder (and certainly, new components are RoHS compliant and lead-free). I use the toner transfer system to mask the copper clad board (using a common inexpensive HP laserjet printer, and Tesco's Value Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper, and a household iron), and ferric chloride to etch, and then tin the board with tinning crystals. Although the ferric chloride and tinning crystals aren't nice and must be disposed of properly, being careful and wearing chemical resistant gauntlets means you don't get it on you.
Did he have fun making it? Then it wasn't a waste of time at all. I've seen about half a dozen comments so far, like yours - which completely and utterly miss the point of the project.
I'm making a Z80 based single board computer. Could I just buy a gumstix or ARM development board or whatever and do it quicker and have more CPU power? Of course. But then _I_ wouldn't be designing and making the computer. Why use a Z80? Because I like the Z80. No other reason. If I'm enjoying the project it's not in any way a waste of time, and anyone who comes back with "Why don't you use $SPACE_HEATER_4Ghz CPU instead?" is missing the point so much they'd need a telescope to see it!
I dunno... perhaps it's *fun*?
I'm making a Z80 based single board computer right now. I get replies to my journal entries such as "You shouldn't try to make your own double sided PCBs, get a pcbpool.de to make one for you" and other such things. But these comments *completely* miss the point. I'm making my own double sided PCB because I want to make my own double sided PCB, it's really no more complex than that (and the fact it costs about 1/10th is just an added bonus). I'm sure this guy wanted to make his own mini embedded OS because he wanted to make his own mini embedded OS.
You'll also learn a lot from rolling your own rather than just using some pre-made package, too.
Vintage? I'm building a Z80 single board computer on a 160x100mm ('Eurocard') PCB. The Z80 CPU (a 'classic' 40 pin DIL packaged thing, which would happily plug into a ZX Spectrum from 1982) was manufactured only 6 months ago!
The Z80 is still made. It's a great chip for small embedded projects where you want a real computer rather than a microcontroller.
Then use NeoOffice/J. It's a port of OpenOffice to Aqua. It works just like any other Mac application, and does not require X11.