Average rate of 9 cubic feet per year X 7 years = 63 cubic feet.
That's a cube of dirt 4' x 4' x 4'.
Hardly sounds like 'excavating a basement'.
I'm guessing that the 9 cubic feet number is wrong. Maybe 9 square feet (with an undisclosed height of about 8'-10') for an annual average of 72-90 cubic feet and a final excavation of a room about 8' x 8'?
There's a reason the article doesn't answer that question; because the answer is really, really dull.
At least that is what I'm assuming. The truth of the matter is that two weeks prior to the company's servers being hacked (March 30th) Sony Online Entertainment was forced to lay off a large amount of staff (I believe the number I read was 1/3) due to financial reasons. This layoff included programmers, designers, artists, administrative staff, and yes, people involved in the network security division.
I for one seriously doubt that there is really a causal relationship between the reduced network security staff and the breach. Two weeks just isn't long enough for things like that to fall apart. Just because people left the security they set up doesn't immediately shut down.
And for anyone who suspects that the employees who were let go caused the breach themselves, technically all those employees were still employed (there's a legal requirement that employees affected by large scale layoffs like this be given 60 days warning before being laid off, however because of reasons of security once people were given their warning they were sent home and paid for the next 60 days even though they didn't do anything). That would mean those employees would have been endangering six weeks of 'free' pay, their severance, and being paid for unused PTO.
While that doesn't absolutely rule out the possibility it does make it much less likely in my mind.
Yes, but in most of those cases the hacker could already reasonably assume that the password is in existence. As an example use the password "123456". On rockyou.com over 290,000 accounts used that password. That meant that out of 32 million accounts the odds that any given account used the password "123456" was about.9%. Even without feedback informing a hacker that "123456" is overused it is going to be one of the first passwords that they try on any system that will accept a 6 character password composed entirely of digits.
Compare this to a system in which the hacker receives confirmation that "123456" has reached its limit and he knows that 100 accounts are using it. In the first system he doesn't receive any feedback but he can very safely assume that well over 100 accounts are using that password. In the second system even though he receives the feedback the system is more secure against that particular form off attack because there are far fewer accounts using that particular password.
...The final piece of the puzzle is building in protection so that attackers cannot "query" the Oracle to find out what are popular passwords in your system that have reached their max...
Actually that isn't a problem. If a hacker finds out that "passw@rd" has been used 10 times and reached the limits of use they still have to figure out which of the 1,000,000+ accounts use it. Randomly trying accounts means that they have less than a 1 in 100,000 chance of hitting one that accepts it.
This is as opposed to the hacker simply trying "123456" on a system of 1,000,000+ accounts without limits where there will probably be over 9,000 accounts using that particular password (based on the analysis of rockyou.com's passwords back in January).
The problem with this approach is that it fails if the password file itself becomes compromised. If that occurs the hacker can simply hash "passw@rd" and then look for any accounts using that hash. If strong passwords are enforced the hacker would have to launch a brute-force attack to find out that accounts have the hash of passwords such as "i1492,Cstob".
Considering that it is used in over 20 of their products (N.B.: I have no idea how many products BusyBox is used in. These 20 products are just the ones produced by a certain set of companies that are non-compliant. I would speculate that BusyBox is used in far more products where they are compliant) I think we can probably throw out the idea that it is crap.
Considering that it is very easy to comply with GPL as many other posters have pointed out we can throw out the idea that it is a legal mine field. The SFLC didn't even come after them demanding compensation for the previously shipped units. They simply asked them to come into compliance and it was only when they refused that the SFLC filed suit.
At a guess there are issues with a phone being required to stand up to a lot more abuse than a netbook. Just being in someone's pocket while they are walking subjects the phone to an awful lot of repetitive shocks. None of them may be very large but there's a lot of them to knock things loose. A good phone also has to be able to withstand slipping out of someone's hand on occasion and have a reasonable chance of surviving while most people would anticipate a dropped netbook breaking under similar situations. Then squish everything down to an even smaller size than the netbook.
So why is the Chinese iPhone so much cheaper? Again, at a guess there are two factors. The first is that all that work to improve survivability of the phone costs money. If a Chinese company reverse engineers a phone designed by someone else they can save themselves a lot of R&D expense. They can certainly save themselves the research on the form factor since they are copying the look of another phone. The second is that they can probably cut corners in the manufacturing. If an iPhone breaks under conditions most people would view as normal wear and tear the consumer is going to bring it back to AT&T who is going to then send it to Apple. Since the phone is being sent to Apple from AT&T they are more likely to accept it and replace it than if it came from an individual so it ends up costing Apple money to replace phones that shouldn't have broken. Plus they have to deal with bad PR. In the case of the Chinese phone if it breaks you can't take it to the carrier. You have to take it directly to them and they can bog you down with paperwork and/or just refuse to give you a new one.
I don't want to have a video card, hard drive, or CPU that I can't easily upgrade and replace. Why would I want something that would require surgery to do that?
Oh. You're using a Creative Labs Brainblaster XL? Their new Brainblaster OMG has twice the bandwidth and three times the signal resolution.
Yeah, maybe you do get a better signal through hardwiring but lets see what happens in 5 years when I can buy the latest equipment and you are either stuck with the older tech or have to get your head sawn open
Most aircraft mounted guns also weigh significantly more than 5 kg. I know, my first thought was why are they mentioning 9 mm when they are talking about aircraft mounted weaponry? Turns out that they are discussing scaled down versions in that section to the article.
Yes and no. The amount of energy isn't a terrible base line of comparison if you are doing "apples to apples". There are really 3 factors involved; the energy, how rapidly and efficiently the energy is transferred to the target and over how much area. Sunlight is a pretty good way of illustrating this. In full sunlight you can assume that 1 square foot (30cm x 30cm) receives about 100 watts of energy. Since 1 Joule is 1 watt per second that means that in about 7.5 seconds an area roughly the size of your chest would receive about as much energy as a 9mm bullet.
Obviously this has practically no effect on you. However take a magnifying glass a bit over 1 foot across (32 cm) and focus all of the energy into a spot a little under 1/3 of an inch (9 mm) across and all of a sudden you're causing some serious skin trauma. Likewise if the sun were suddenly 7.5 times brighter you would start to peel and blister in a hurry. Combine all the light of 7.5 seconds into a circle 1/3 of an inch across and apply it all in 1/100th of a second and you'll inflict some real damage.
Unfortunately the laser in their example delivers all its energy about 100 times slower than that. There's also a question of how big the target spot is and of course the fact that just the color of the target can cause a substantial amount of the energy to be reflected (substantial in this case being perhaps a few hundred Joules). So while the total amount of energy isn't a terrible way to compare them that does assume that the beam is focused relatively tightly (probably a safe assumption) and delivers the energy as a sudden single shot (which it clearly doesn't). As it is the comparison is less "apples to apples" and more "apples to orangutans".
If it scales down far enough, this would seem to put handheld HELL-guns within an order of magnitude of the striking power offered by conventional small-arms. A 9mm pistol bullet has about 750 joules muzzle energy: a 5kg portable HELL-ray weapon would put out this much energy in a blast less than a second long.
Since 9mm guns tend to be pistols they weigh a lot less than 5kg (11 lbs.). Most semi-automatic pistols are also capable of accurately firing 3-4 rounds per second and as has already been mentioned keeping a 750 joules laser on a target for an entire second would be close to impossible unless the target was completely incapable of movement, so that energy is going to be diffused across the target reducing it's effectiveness pretty severely.
I guess the last thing I feel obligated to point out is that a handheld HELL-gun that is within an order of magnitude of the striking power offered by conventional small arms would have about 75 joules of muzzle energy and would be about as dangerous as a BB gun (You could put your eye out with it). An order of magnitude is a factor of 10.
Sure, if you want to go all high tech with string and everything. What's wrong with carving data into rocks? Not only is the data better protected but you have far better range when transmitting the data through the air as long as you keep your packets small.
Actually it is the summary that is misleading. The program generates a 3D model first, which can be downloaded as a.ply file. The bump map is made from that.
Actually it does create a 3D model. The summary is a bit misleading. I went straight to the website, hoping to get in before the slashdot, and examined some of the results. After the photos are processed a 3D model is built and the bump map is generated off of that. You can also download the model separately as a.ply file.
...It's also 75 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and as it decomposes to CO2 anyway
Not quite sure why but I feel compelled to point out that not only does it convert to CO2 but it does so pretty darn quickly (as I understand it). Methane really wants to combine with oxygen, which is of course why it burns so nicely.
Maybe I feel compelled because I've seen other people throw out the fact that it is so much more potent in an attempt to discredit the idea that CO2 is a major factor in climate change (which you are obviously not trying to do).
Yes, it does generate CO2 but that isn't a problem if the methane is generated from some form of organic waste. In such a case the carbon in the methane was recently (in geological terms) in the air, most likely as CO2, before being pulled out by plants. Burning the methane simply returns it back to the air (admittedly, it would be better if we didn't have to do that but at least it won't increase the amount of atmospheric CO2).
Like using alcohol using methane produced from organic waste is carbon neutral at worst. Given that after the conversion process and after natural processes that further breakdown the organic waste there is still some carbon left behind (the waste won't convert 100% to CO2) there is really a negative, albeit barely, effect on atmospheric carbon.
The carbon in oil, on the other hand, comes from deep underground where it has been sequestered. By digging it up and burning it we are taking it out of the ground and placing it back into the atmosphere.
Of course all those is only important if the methane is produced from organic waste. If the methane is taken from sequestered locations such as methane hydrate deposits in the ocean then burning the methane will add CO2 to the atmosphere.
Each unique external call represents a piece of code that has to be present to make the module work. Assuming the average size of the code referenced by an external function call doesn't change more unique calls would mean the module would need more code to support it. At least I believe that's what the author's thinking is.
Of course that's a pretty big assumption. If you have more external calls because the code being called is leaner and only half the size on average then you could have a 50% increase in the number of function calls and still reduce footprint. Also if all of your calls go to modules that are highly utilized (i.e. most of the code in them is called) you could have a seriously reduced footprint over fewer external calls that are spread out among a large number of lightly utilized modules.
And all of this, of course, ignores the fact that if you are going to be using a version of the operating system for a device such as a cell phone you probably wouldn't chose one of the file systems like NFS but would go for one better suited to the small amount of memory available.
I've got a T-Mobile G1 and there are actually a couple of different programs that do this. The one I'm using (and it seems to me the majority of people are using) is ShopSavvy.
It seems to do a pretty good job of identifying products by barcodes as long as they aren't storebrand items. Its ability to locate the same item at other local stores isn't that great but my guess is that with time they, or someone like them, will build a large enough database and the necessary connections with retailers to make that work. Until then it is mostly useful for looking up reviews for books/DVDs/music and seeing how much I would save going to Amazon, letting me know if I'll save enough to make it worth my while to wait.
A computer is a calculator but that doesn't mean a calculator has to be a computer. This is like saying all salmon (computers) are fish (calculators). This does not automatically imply all fish are salmon.
Of course I'm just talking about a flaw in your logical construct. That flaw does not mean the Antikythera device cannot be a computer. All salmon are fish but not all fish are salmon. If I identify something as a fish I have not ruled out that it could be a salmon. I simply have not logically identified it as a salmon by showing that it is a fish.
Now, if you take the position that all calculators are computers then the logical construct that the Antikythera device must be a computer does hold up, but someone might argue that you are making a false syllogism (untrue premise) at that point.
Neither are Russia or Switzerland. That's why the list says 'EU members states, Switzerland, Russia, and Turkey' instead of 'EU member states; Switzerland, Russia, and Turkey'.:)
I would imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for the system to recognize that certain senders are giving bogus data, especially if this became a big thing. You have to do things like that because even honest users will occasionally send bad data, either because their GPS gets a bad fix or because their car breaks down. Once the system realizes someone is sending bad data it can keep an eye on them. If they continue to send lots and lots of bad data then it just stops paying attention to them altogether.
I believe that what's significant here is how the data is being generated.
The current systems (Garmin and Navteq are just two examples) work, as you said, off traffic reports. This requires a certain infrastructure like roadway sensors or a way for a human agent to gather information about the road.
In the system to be tested the data is automatically generated from the cell phones of drivers. This means no sensors need to be placed and no human agent needs to gather information.
Slashdot Mirror
Average rate of 9 cubic feet per year X 7 years = 63 cubic feet.
That's a cube of dirt 4' x 4' x 4'.
Hardly sounds like 'excavating a basement'.
I'm guessing that the 9 cubic feet number is wrong. Maybe 9 square feet (with an undisclosed height of about 8'-10') for an annual average of 72-90 cubic feet and a final excavation of a room about 8' x 8'?
There's a reason the article doesn't answer that question; because the answer is really, really dull.
At least that is what I'm assuming. The truth of the matter is that two weeks prior to the company's servers being hacked (March 30th) Sony Online Entertainment was forced to lay off a large amount of staff (I believe the number I read was 1/3) due to financial reasons. This layoff included programmers, designers, artists, administrative staff, and yes, people involved in the network security division.
I for one seriously doubt that there is really a causal relationship between the reduced network security staff and the breach. Two weeks just isn't long enough for things like that to fall apart. Just because people left the security they set up doesn't immediately shut down.
And for anyone who suspects that the employees who were let go caused the breach themselves, technically all those employees were still employed (there's a legal requirement that employees affected by large scale layoffs like this be given 60 days warning before being laid off, however because of reasons of security once people were given their warning they were sent home and paid for the next 60 days even though they didn't do anything). That would mean those employees would have been endangering six weeks of 'free' pay, their severance, and being paid for unused PTO.
While that doesn't absolutely rule out the possibility it does make it much less likely in my mind.
Yes, but in most of those cases the hacker could already reasonably assume that the password is in existence. As an example use the password "123456". On rockyou.com over 290,000 accounts used that password. That meant that out of 32 million accounts the odds that any given account used the password "123456" was about .9%. Even without feedback informing a hacker that "123456" is overused it is going to be one of the first passwords that they try on any system that will accept a 6 character password composed entirely of digits.
Compare this to a system in which the hacker receives confirmation that "123456" has reached its limit and he knows that 100 accounts are using it. In the first system he doesn't receive any feedback but he can very safely assume that well over 100 accounts are using that password. In the second system even though he receives the feedback the system is more secure against that particular form off attack because there are far fewer accounts using that particular password.
...The final piece of the puzzle is building in protection so that attackers cannot "query" the Oracle to find out what are popular passwords in your system that have reached their max...
Actually that isn't a problem. If a hacker finds out that "passw@rd" has been used 10 times and reached the limits of use they still have to figure out which of the 1,000,000+ accounts use it. Randomly trying accounts means that they have less than a 1 in 100,000 chance of hitting one that accepts it.
This is as opposed to the hacker simply trying "123456" on a system of 1,000,000+ accounts without limits where there will probably be over 9,000 accounts using that particular password (based on the analysis of rockyou.com's passwords back in January).
The problem with this approach is that it fails if the password file itself becomes compromised. If that occurs the hacker can simply hash "passw@rd" and then look for any accounts using that hash. If strong passwords are enforced the hacker would have to launch a brute-force attack to find out that accounts have the hash of passwords such as "i1492,Cstob".
Considering that it is used in over 20 of their products (N.B.: I have no idea how many products BusyBox is used in. These 20 products are just the ones produced by a certain set of companies that are non-compliant. I would speculate that BusyBox is used in far more products where they are compliant) I think we can probably throw out the idea that it is crap.
Considering that it is very easy to comply with GPL as many other posters have pointed out we can throw out the idea that it is a legal mine field. The SFLC didn't even come after them demanding compensation for the previously shipped units. They simply asked them to come into compliance and it was only when they refused that the SFLC filed suit.
At a guess there are issues with a phone being required to stand up to a lot more abuse than a netbook. Just being in someone's pocket while they are walking subjects the phone to an awful lot of repetitive shocks. None of them may be very large but there's a lot of them to knock things loose. A good phone also has to be able to withstand slipping out of someone's hand on occasion and have a reasonable chance of surviving while most people would anticipate a dropped netbook breaking under similar situations. Then squish everything down to an even smaller size than the netbook.
So why is the Chinese iPhone so much cheaper? Again, at a guess there are two factors. The first is that all that work to improve survivability of the phone costs money. If a Chinese company reverse engineers a phone designed by someone else they can save themselves a lot of R&D expense. They can certainly save themselves the research on the form factor since they are copying the look of another phone. The second is that they can probably cut corners in the manufacturing. If an iPhone breaks under conditions most people would view as normal wear and tear the consumer is going to bring it back to AT&T who is going to then send it to Apple. Since the phone is being sent to Apple from AT&T they are more likely to accept it and replace it than if it came from an individual so it ends up costing Apple money to replace phones that shouldn't have broken. Plus they have to deal with bad PR. In the case of the Chinese phone if it breaks you can't take it to the carrier. You have to take it directly to them and they can bog you down with paperwork and/or just refuse to give you a new one.
Your honor, I would like to refer you to the case of RIAA vs Makeshitup in which it was clearly proven that the RIAA was in the right.
I don't want to have a video card, hard drive, or CPU that I can't easily upgrade and replace. Why would I want something that would require surgery to do that?
Oh. You're using a Creative Labs Brainblaster XL? Their new Brainblaster OMG has twice the bandwidth and three times the signal resolution.
Yeah, maybe you do get a better signal through hardwiring but lets see what happens in 5 years when I can buy the latest equipment and you are either stuck with the older tech or have to get your head sawn open
again.
Most aircraft mounted guns also weigh significantly more than 5 kg. I know, my first thought was why are they mentioning 9 mm when they are talking about aircraft mounted weaponry? Turns out that they are discussing scaled down versions in that section to the article.
Yes and no. The amount of energy isn't a terrible base line of comparison if you are doing "apples to apples". There are really 3 factors involved; the energy, how rapidly and efficiently the energy is transferred to the target and over how much area. Sunlight is a pretty good way of illustrating this. In full sunlight you can assume that 1 square foot (30cm x 30cm) receives about 100 watts of energy. Since 1 Joule is 1 watt per second that means that in about 7.5 seconds an area roughly the size of your chest would receive about as much energy as a 9mm bullet.
Obviously this has practically no effect on you. However take a magnifying glass a bit over 1 foot across (32 cm) and focus all of the energy into a spot a little under 1/3 of an inch (9 mm) across and all of a sudden you're causing some serious skin trauma. Likewise if the sun were suddenly 7.5 times brighter you would start to peel and blister in a hurry. Combine all the light of 7.5 seconds into a circle 1/3 of an inch across and apply it all in 1/100th of a second and you'll inflict some real damage.
Unfortunately the laser in their example delivers all its energy about 100 times slower than that. There's also a question of how big the target spot is and of course the fact that just the color of the target can cause a substantial amount of the energy to be reflected (substantial in this case being perhaps a few hundred Joules). So while the total amount of energy isn't a terrible way to compare them that does assume that the beam is focused relatively tightly (probably a safe assumption) and delivers the energy as a sudden single shot (which it clearly doesn't). As it is the comparison is less "apples to apples" and more "apples to orangutans".
From TFA:
If it scales down far enough, this would seem to put handheld HELL-guns within an order of magnitude of the striking power offered by conventional small-arms. A 9mm pistol bullet has about 750 joules muzzle energy: a 5kg portable HELL-ray weapon would put out this much energy in a blast less than a second long.
Since 9mm guns tend to be pistols they weigh a lot less than 5kg (11 lbs.). Most semi-automatic pistols are also capable of accurately firing 3-4 rounds per second and as has already been mentioned keeping a 750 joules laser on a target for an entire second would be close to impossible unless the target was completely incapable of movement, so that energy is going to be diffused across the target reducing it's effectiveness pretty severely.
I guess the last thing I feel obligated to point out is that a handheld HELL-gun that is within an order of magnitude of the striking power offered by conventional small arms would have about 75 joules of muzzle energy and would be about as dangerous as a BB gun (You could put your eye out with it). An order of magnitude is a factor of 10.
Sure, if you want to go all high tech with string and everything. What's wrong with carving data into rocks? Not only is the data better protected but you have far better range when transmitting the data through the air as long as you keep your packets small.
Actually it is the summary that is misleading. The program generates a 3D model first, which can be downloaded as a .ply file. The bump map is made from that.
Actually it does create a 3D model. The summary is a bit misleading. I went straight to the website, hoping to get in before the slashdot, and examined some of the results. After the photos are processed a 3D model is built and the bump map is generated off of that. You can also download the model separately as a .ply file.
...It's also 75 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and as it decomposes to CO2 anyway
Not quite sure why but I feel compelled to point out that not only does it convert to CO2 but it does so pretty darn quickly (as I understand it). Methane really wants to combine with oxygen, which is of course why it burns so nicely.
Maybe I feel compelled because I've seen other people throw out the fact that it is so much more potent in an attempt to discredit the idea that CO2 is a major factor in climate change (which you are obviously not trying to do).
Hell, that's nothing.
GM, Ford and Chrysler are already selling vehicles powered by organic waste.
Oh. Oil. For a moment I thought you meant the marketing bullshit they ran on.
Yes, it does generate CO2 but that isn't a problem if the methane is generated from some form of organic waste. In such a case the carbon in the methane was recently (in geological terms) in the air, most likely as CO2, before being pulled out by plants. Burning the methane simply returns it back to the air (admittedly, it would be better if we didn't have to do that but at least it won't increase the amount of atmospheric CO2).
Like using alcohol using methane produced from organic waste is carbon neutral at worst. Given that after the conversion process and after natural processes that further breakdown the organic waste there is still some carbon left behind (the waste won't convert 100% to CO2) there is really a negative, albeit barely, effect on atmospheric carbon.
The carbon in oil, on the other hand, comes from deep underground where it has been sequestered. By digging it up and burning it we are taking it out of the ground and placing it back into the atmosphere.
Of course all those is only important if the methane is produced from organic waste. If the methane is taken from sequestered locations such as methane hydrate deposits in the ocean then burning the methane will add CO2 to the atmosphere.
How many to power the laser on a frickin' shark?
Each unique external call represents a piece of code that has to be present to make the module work. Assuming the average size of the code referenced by an external function call doesn't change more unique calls would mean the module would need more code to support it. At least I believe that's what the author's thinking is.
Of course that's a pretty big assumption. If you have more external calls because the code being called is leaner and only half the size on average then you could have a 50% increase in the number of function calls and still reduce footprint. Also if all of your calls go to modules that are highly utilized (i.e. most of the code in them is called) you could have a seriously reduced footprint over fewer external calls that are spread out among a large number of lightly utilized modules.
And all of this, of course, ignores the fact that if you are going to be using a version of the operating system for a device such as a cell phone you probably wouldn't chose one of the file systems like NFS but would go for one better suited to the small amount of memory available.
I've got a T-Mobile G1 and there are actually a couple of different programs that do this. The one I'm using (and it seems to me the majority of people are using) is ShopSavvy.
It seems to do a pretty good job of identifying products by barcodes as long as they aren't storebrand items. Its ability to locate the same item at other local stores isn't that great but my guess is that with time they, or someone like them, will build a large enough database and the necessary connections with retailers to make that work. Until then it is mostly useful for looking up reviews for books/DVDs/music and seeing how much I would save going to Amazon, letting me know if I'll save enough to make it worth my while to wait.
A computer is a calculator but that doesn't mean a calculator has to be a computer. This is like saying all salmon (computers) are fish (calculators). This does not automatically imply all fish are salmon.
Of course I'm just talking about a flaw in your logical construct. That flaw does not mean the Antikythera device cannot be a computer. All salmon are fish but not all fish are salmon. If I identify something as a fish I have not ruled out that it could be a salmon. I simply have not logically identified it as a salmon by showing that it is a fish.
Now, if you take the position that all calculators are computers then the logical construct that the Antikythera device must be a computer does hold up, but someone might argue that you are making a false syllogism (untrue premise) at that point.
Neither are Russia or Switzerland. That's why the list says 'EU members states, Switzerland, Russia, and Turkey' instead of 'EU member states; Switzerland, Russia, and Turkey'. :)
I would imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for the system to recognize that certain senders are giving bogus data, especially if this became a big thing. You have to do things like that because even honest users will occasionally send bad data, either because their GPS gets a bad fix or because their car breaks down. Once the system realizes someone is sending bad data it can keep an eye on them. If they continue to send lots and lots of bad data then it just stops paying attention to them altogether.
I believe that what's significant here is how the data is being generated.
The current systems (Garmin and Navteq are just two examples) work, as you said, off traffic reports. This requires a certain infrastructure like roadway sensors or a way for a human agent to gather information about the road.
In the system to be tested the data is automatically generated from the cell phones of drivers. This means no sensors need to be placed and no human agent needs to gather information.
Doh. I meant 3.5mm, obviously. :)