For us Americans... A Telstra spokesman said today the link, laid "donkey's years ago", carried very little of the telco's network traffic before yesterday's cut.
This confused me, until I found the idiom.
(and the title had my hopes up)...A hard-drive controller that reads a PGP (or GPG) key into super-volatile onboard cache (maybe with enough juice in it to automatically wipe a few passes of 1's and 0's over it whenever the hard-drive loses power?) and isn't willing to read or write a byte until it gets it, but reports all geometry stuff correctly. Then, which hard-drives are on are a matter of which keys you manually load and type pass-phrases for. And, best of all, all the partitions still see each other, so you don't need to worry about windows stuff suddenly popping up on drive D: and breaking 3,000,000 registry entries that point at C:. Don't want to accidentally format a hard-drive? Simply send it a low-level command to lock. Then, take out the floppy that had your private key, and put it into a locked drawer. You're 100% safe from damaging your hard-drive, your hard-drive doesn't have to be moved around physically, and you don't need to power down to add or remove partitions. Hell, you could even have the controllers have a proprietary set of LEDs that fit into to a normal bay (y'know, so they have a visible face-plate like your cd-rom drive has, like certain SBLIVE!s, I think) and have blinkers for exactly which hard-drive is curently on and which is not. You can even have buttons below each of the available LEDs which, when pressed, drop the key as soon as the hard-drive hasn't been read or written to for 3 seconds. Most software copes just fine with having secondary storage (hard-drives) suddenly disappear, even your/swap partition, I think...certainly usually what happens when you take out a floppy while it's not writing is nothing catastrophic. Rather, you get a read error, which you can choose to fail on.
The best parts of this are:
Your controller is the one responsible for all this. All your hard-drive EVER holds is strongly encrypted bits. Way secure.
Because you have your private key on several diskettes, when the LED is off indicating that you have a hard-drive "off", if you put your disk away then your hard-drive automatically cannot be accessed at all. For "secure" things this is great because you can trust that even if unsecure people use your computer, at best they can only delete the info on your hard-drive, not change it or read it. (Well, they can install keyboard sniffers and so forth, but you know what I mean).
Get this: how about if the controller automagically starts backing up a hard-drive bit-for-bit whenever it's in the off mode. This just isn't possible while software has access to a hard-drive, and is possibly reading or modifying it. The most awesome backup you can have is a bit-by-bit image of each of your hard-drives. Sure it'll need a little massaging if you need to restore to a hard-drive with different geometry, but you get my point.
The best thing is,
any decent kernel can stay entirely in memory.
If the controller has decent programmability, you can ask it to start making a backup every night at 12:00, as soon as every hard-drive has stopped being written or modified.
If you do your scripting right, you don't even need to unmount any of your partitions! (Just make sure your system is COMPLETELY idle at the time).
Isn't life grand?
Of course, we are talking SCSI here. Do you call yourselves Geeks?
"Yeah, I have a dual 1.2 gigahertz athlon".
Oh? What's your hard-drive subsystem on that?
"72 gigger!"
IDE?
"That's E-IDE to you! 5400 RPM too!"
Sigh.
The problem with this is that a spammer can spam whatever@tracker.xeger.net
A better way to do this is to give amazon.com "xeger232524272" instead of amazon_com, and then associate xeger232524272 with amazon.com on your end of the line. You can have a simple script give you another number every time you need a name. Do you need to register something with "Marigolds Inc?" simply execute this at your bash prompt:
#redirectoradd
Short nick: Marigolds Inc
Reason/description: signed up for their "infrequent" newsletter -- once per month they said.
xeger65134556132
In other words, xeger65134556132@tracker.xeger.net is now an active mailbox, and you can cut and paste it over to the web form. Associated with this new mailbox is a date and time (which the "redirectoradd" script adds), a description, the knowledge that it couldn't just be "guessed" (since an 11 digit number is not simply guessable).
Any spam tracker.xeger.net gets that's not associated with an active number is bounced,
except for "xeger@tracker.xeger.net",
which autoresponds so:
Subject: I haven't seen your email!
Body:
Hi, sorry for the inconvenience, but for security reasons this isn't actually my real email address.
To get a real email address, you need to reply to this email with "get real address" as your subject and the body a description of who you are and why you need my email address.
I repeat, your email has NOT been delivered. For your convenience, it is attached in this reply, and any text portion is included below. It will also be included with the email notifying you of my real address, where you can simply forward it.
You wrote:
>Hi Xeger!
> How would you like to get in on this ONCE
> IN A LIFETIME opportunity??? Yes, that's
> right...[etc]
That way, if you need to give out your email address when you're not at your computer, you can still do so. You can have various levels of this, where mail to xeger1 never gets looked at, but xeger2, which you put on your resume, actually does let you look at the mail that you receive there, even while you wait for your prospective employer to establish a "formal" address. If this doesn't strike you like a good idea, you can create a few "spare" addresses with no descriptions associated with them, so that when you give it out to somebody on the spot you can cross that one off of your list and the person can email you directly, while that address is still only associated with one person and you can know if it's ever given out.
for instance:
#redirectorblanklist 5
xeger6513455512123
xeger4351234214985
xeger1215437214963
xeger9467248121546
Which you can then print on a few cards and give them out whenever somebody needs an email address. You can carry around a bunch of preprinted addresses this way, and write down a description every time you give one out, even if it's just at a credit card promotion at the mall.
You can write a description next to the name and put it into your database when you get home.
Sure it's a LITTLE more involved than giving out
billbrady@redirector.xeger.net, but then billbrady can't submit the name "asdfasdf@redirector.xeger.net" to sign you up for the Daffodils Promotion Program at daffodils.com, which mysteriously gets you a lot of spam from a bunch of people you don't know.
Moreover, if everyone started doing what you do currently, then spammers could just guess email addresses and always have them delivered (if they sneak by the spam filter). Not a good idea.
From the discoverer of the formula:
"This formula permits one to compute the n-th binary or hexadecimal digit of pi, without computing the first n-1 digits, by means of a simple scheme that requires very little memory and no multiple precision software. Here are various items that may be of interest: "
Yes, that's right, binary or hexadecimal. In other words, you can forget about doing "cool stuff" with it. Who cares what pi is in binary?
censorship-resistant publishing systems, why they are important
Freenet, vs. Publius
Gnutella, vs. Publius
HTTP, Publius implemented over protocol
Publius, documents, deleting/updating
Publius, implemented over HTTP
Publius, vs. Freenet
Publius, vs. Gnutella
Publius, why it is important
Publius URL, tamper-check mechanism
tamper-check mechanism (Publius URL)
The most important part of all this is that Gnutella is not anonymous!
And from GnutellaNews:
"A big however, however. To speed things up, downloads are not anonymous. Well, we have to make compromises. But again, nobody's keeping logs, and nobody's trying to profile you." Yeah. Right. Until "you" are a broadband user dealing in the filthy spread of Planet of the Apes clips.
(Unexpectedly, the quotation above is from under the big heading "Gnutella is Anonymous"--which refers to the non-centralized nature of the network as a whole -- the initial publisher of a piece is anonymous, but you always know who you're downloading it from--just not whether that's the first-ever download or anything.)
There has been some recent public criticism of Gnutella because it might give child pornography a place to thrive. I am happy to report, however, that those who traffic in child porn will be no safer using Gnutella than they are anywhere else. That's because the users are not anonymous.
Gnutella requires IP addresses in order to make a connection between a site with a file and a site that wants a file. The host IP address is shown as part of the search results in Gnubile, and probably in other clones as well. Ergo, anyone offering files with names that identify the files as child porn is bound to attract the attention of the authorities
But of course the knife cuts both ways: sure the authorities can get the IP of those who are willing to upload you child pornography (because they're sharing it), but they can also get the IP of those who are willing to upload you the illegal Planet of the Apes movie clips.
Again, freenet, folks, freenet.
Plus, as long as you have some legitimate content you're sharing, you can even tell your ISP -- nono, I need to be on the freenet network, because that's where I market my free art, and all the public domain etexts -- I believe that it's important make these public domain texts available, but you know their servers aren't that great.
What's the ISP going to say? "Oh, okay. As long as it's not illegal."
Bam. Each ISP lets its users be part of the network for wholesome reasons, and the network as a whole mysteriously has untraceable illegal content. Win-win situation, where the second win reads "horrible loss", and refers to the rights of copyright holders. But then again, even Jefferson says we shouldn't have copyright anyhow. (No, I haven't read these papers yet, but +5 mod'd trolls keep going on about this stuff, so I might as well throw it in.)
These independent companies operate automated systems that can troll file-swapping networks looking for their clients' work. Once they find it, it is a simple task to figure out the Internet address of the computer that is offering the content to the world
Yeah, if you're stupid. There's a reason a network can be called a "A Distributed Peer-to-Peer Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System". And this is it. Of course most geeks have known this for a long time now. Nothing to see here folks, move right along.
However, Larry encouraged everyone to do their part; newbie friendliness is one thing, but it's important to hold yourself to higher standards than those to which you hold yourself.
Oh, ok. I'm glad they cleared that up. I for one am certainly going to start holding myself to such standards now much more than I'm expecting I will.
(psst! don't let Amazon know!!:) LOLOLOL)
FREE BOOKS ONLINE! NO credit card required! No obligation!
RIGHT HERE!!1 Just click on a link on the left and be taken to the uncensored full texts!!!
Hurry! THey're going fast@ REmember: NO credit card required, it's FREE, no obligation!!1
Here's an excerpt!! (direct from link to full text!!1 http://www.ulib.org/webRoot/Books/_Gutenberg_Etext _Books/etext97/memho10.txt
Adventure VI
The Reigate Puzzle
It was some time before the health of my friend Mr.
Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by
his immense exertions in the spring of '87. The whole
question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the
colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis are too recent in
the minds of the public, and are too intimately
concerned with politics and finance to be fitting
subjects for this series of sketches. They led,
however, in an indirect fashion to a singular and
complex problem which gave my friend an opportunity of
demonstrating the value of a fresh weapon among the
many with which he waged his life-long battle against
crime.
On referring to my notes I see that it was upon the
14th of April that I received a telegram from Lyons
which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the
Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his
sick-room, and was relieved to find that there was
nothing formidable in his symptoms. Even his iron
constitution, however, had broken down under the
strain of an investigation which had extended over two
months, during which period he had never worked less
than fifteen hours a day, and had more than once, as
he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a
stretch. Even the triumphant issue of his labors
could not save him from reaction after so terrible an
exertion, and at a time when Europe was ringing with
his name and when his room was literally ankle-deep
with congratulatory telegrams I found him a prey to
the blackest depression. Even the knowledge that he
had succeeded where the police of three countries had
failed, and that he had outmanoeuvred at every point
the most accomplished swindler in Europe, was
insufficient to rouse him from his nervous
prostration.
Three days later we were back in Baker Street
together; but it was evident that my friend would be
much the better for a change, and the thought of a
week of spring time in the country was full of
attractions to me also. My old friend, Colonel
Hayter, who had come under my professional care in
Afghanistan, had now taken a house near Reigate in
Surrey, and had frequently asked me to come down to
him upon a visit. On the last occasion he had
remarked that if my friend would only come with me he
would be glad to extend his hospitality to him also.
A little diplomacy was needed, but when Holmes
understood that the establishment was a bachelor one,
and that he would be allowed the fullest freedom, he
fell in with my plans and a week after our return from
Lyons we were under the Colonel's roof. Hayter was a
fine old soldier who had seen much of the world, and
he soon found, as I had expected, that Holmes and he
had much in common.
On the evening of our arrival we were sitting in the
Colonel's gun-room after dinner, Holmes stretched upon
the sofa, while Hayter and I looked over his little
armory of Eastern weapons.
"By the way," said he suddenly, "I think I'll take one
of these pistols upstairs with me in case we have an
alarm."
Considering that the person didn't even try to run the computer after "theft-protecting" it, a better solution with the same results (and one that wouldn't have had the computer stolen after "approximately two months") is to simply put it out on your side-walk and pour enough concrete over it so that no computer is even visible, and all you have is a slight bump. An added bonus is that all the skateboard kiddies will entertain you by running over the bump practicing their moves (or "hax0ring", in the lingo.) Way cool. ~
Personally, the movie I've been waiting for all summer is coming out next week -- the re-make of Planet Of The Apes.
....I think I'll wait for the musical.
Snippets follow, curtesy of the simpsons. The broadway show has now been in preparation for I don't know how many years! I can't wait for it to come out!
"Dr. Zaius"
Ape: Help, the human's about to escape. Troy: Get your paws off me, you dirty ape. Ape: [gasping] He can talk!
Apes: [in unison, rythmed] He can talk
He can talk
He can talk
He can talk
He can talk
He can talk
Troy: [singing] I can siiiiiing!
[funky beat of "Rock Me Amadeus" starts playing]
Female Nurse Ape: Ooh, help me Dr. Zaius! Apes: [in unison] Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Oh... Dr. Zaius Ape: Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius.
Troy: What's wrong with me? Zaius: I think you're crazy. Troy: Want a second opinion. Zaius: You're also lazy.
Apes: [in unison] Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
[one ape starts breakdancing]
Oh... Dr. Zaius
Ape: Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius.
Troy: Can I play the piano anymore? Zaius: Of course you can. Troy: Well I couldn't before!
[plays piano]
"You'll Never Make a Monkey Out of Me"
Troy: [singing] I hate every ape I see
From chimpan-a to chimpan-zee
No, you'll never make a monkey out of me
Oh my God, I was wrong
It was Earth all along
You've finally made a monkey Apes: Yes, we've finally made a monkey
Troy: Yes, you've finally made a monkey out of me Apes: Yes, we've finally made a monkey out of you
As of 10:00 (~3.25 hours after the first post I see [6:53] mentioning their getting slashdotted.) The site is still slashdotted. There's no google cache, but here's some info to hold you over (chances are it refers to the same thing Michael does):
The heart of the storage component of the Active Web infrastructure is a terabyte server which will come online in Fall 2000. Because of the cost of commercial terabyte storage systems and the need for OS-level monitoring and customization, it was decided to build the departmental terabyte server from commodity components. The terabyte server itself is a dual-processor Dell PowerEdge 2400 running BSD/OS 4.2, with a AMI MegaRAID Enterprise 1600 hardware RAID adapter (four channel, Ultra160), and a link to the gigabit switch. The disk subsystem consists of two RAID enclosures of nine, 73GB Ultra160 disks each. Tape backup support for the terabyte server is provided by a generic PC connected via a two channel Ultra160 adapter to a dual drive Hewlett-Packard SureStore 2/40 tape library with a storage capacity of 3.2TB. Terabyte file systems will be exported to departmental UNIX systems using Kerberos authentication, and to Windows machines via Samba."
This is from a ucsd "Active Web Equipment Infrastructure Plan" page.. Found by google-ing "terabyte web server SDSC" (since I couldn't find a google cache on michael's URL, but he says SDSC did it).
If anyone managed to snatch a copy of the original before we went down, that, of course would be ideal. Mirror, mirror, anyone?
Normal people, ignore below.
-----
"These are for the goat-weary:" (Though I don't know why people do this -- any decent web browser displays somewhere the target of a link before you click it. These people can viewsource and copy the format of my post for doing this, and stop cluttering your message body with plaintext URL's!)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/07/19/15542 16&cid=14
http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/Department/ActiveWeb/Backg round/Equipment%20Plan.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=terabyte+web+server +SDSC
the point is, the thing could become much more routine if nobody needed to trust a Special Master, which probably needs 'reasonable cause' or something. the thing could become routine this way. ~
In cases like this, it's pretty easy to find out a violation took place. But what about a major closed-source project that
uses pieces of GPL-d code? What if an embedded OS developer decided to use some Linux kernel code, without attribution, in a
proprietary system? Would it be possible to detect the violation (looking for patterns in the binary, for example)?
Well, after all the proprietary compression, optimization, etc, occurs, patterns are unlikely to remain in the binary. We
need to look at the source.
The problem, of course, is that no one who's technical enough to understand the closed source is allowed to look at it --
it's trade secret. One solution might be to arbitrate a demonstration, whereby a standalone computer (not connected to the
internet or anything) is brought in with all the closed source code encrypted on the hard-drive. An armored vehicle and
seventeen pitbulls (read: security guards) escort a skinny pale-hided hacker from Microsoft carrying a single disk with the
key.
The computer, surrounded by lead, is booted off of the disk. A lead screen is placed over and under the keyboard, so that no
EMF (like TEMPEST technology) can read the key clicks, and it is impenetrable to xray to determine the Microsoftian's finger
motions. She or he reaches under the lead covers, types the passphrase, and the computer now has temporary access to the
contents of the encrypted hard-drive.
A second floppy, which has been approved by the government as a fuzzy logic grep against key elements of XYZ source code,
is run, while the first floppy, with the passphrased private key, is removed and placed under a huge magnet. (Now the only copy
of the private key is in volatile ram). As the program is run, it displays and sends to a dot matrix printer lines of code
which are suspiciously close algorithmically (i.e. changed variable names won't confuse it) to what's in the GPL it's
comparing with, together with a likelihood that it's the same code. (100% likelihood would be many pages of text that match
character to character).
This program could take exceptions into account, such as unmodified linking of LGPL'd files. (if I understand the lesser
license correctly). At the end, the system is powered down (cleanly, so that random writes occur over what used to be the
'plaintext' private key), the encrypted hard-drive is removed, and the RAM chips are removed and zapped with a huge magnet to
remove any residual traces of what was the private key.
The printout now can act as a basis for subpoena of specific lines of code from Microsoft, which a court-appointed council
could look at, and would protect closed-source from unnecessary disclosure of its trade secrets. CRC or MD5 sums could also
be printed out for the suspicious code, so that what Microsoft *actually* submits if subpoena'd is what the program
originally looked at. The comparer program would be open-source and could be subjected to any Microsoftian or Other analysis
beforehand to make sure that it acted as advertised.
Anyone see any problems with this arrangement? Certainly the design of the fuzzy comparer would be interesting...it might have to have a fuzzy state machine inside it to 'understand' what specific chunks of code/do/, in addition to understanding whether they perform it the same way (i.e. it doesn't matter if the code looks similar, with different function/variable names, if it doesn't do anything similar, but it DOES matter if it does similar things in a similar way. therefore the program needs to have a fuzzy idea of what chunks of code do. Now that's a computational nightmare if ever I saw one!).
Come to think of it, a floppy probably isn't going to hold that...change it to a second hard-drive instead. Now does the plan sound like a plan?:) ~
(and now is the perfect time to post)
You know how sometimes when take off the front of a computer, there are little fiber-optic-looking things that 'translate' the location of the blinkers, so the LED's actually shine from a different location on the front of the case (when the face-plate is on) from where they are actually located? Well, this is kind of what I'm talking about:
What if you took a really big version of a fiber-optic line, like one that's 19 inches in diameter, but square instead of round, and very short, and cut both ends at such an angle that you could push one end of it up against the face of a 19" monitor, and attach it (at the sides) so it's right up against it, and every pixel goes in that end and comes out the other, and snaked it so that the other end would also be a 19" square plate, but because of the snaking the new image would be translated by a foot. (And, of course, be a foot or so away from the old monitor). The two faces (the two ends of the line) should be parallel. Okay, have you got that pictured? You could sit in front of this thing and the visible face of the fiber-optic cable would look just like a normal monitor? Okay: so now we've "translated" the image of the montitor by a foot.
Now imagine that this monitor is really sitting in a box in a huge strucutre of boxes, and right above it is another 19" monitor, whose image is also "translated" but in such a way that the very bottom of the translated image from this second monitor meets the very top of the image from the first monitor, with only like 1 dead pixel. You probably don't even need a dead pixel, if you push them tightly enough together and their edges are precise enough...
Anyway, to the left you have a box holding a monitor, and to the right you have a box holding a monitor, and each of their images is translated to match up with the one next to it.
In other words, it's like one of those huge displays made up of lots of individual monitors, only without the dead space (which you translate around). The limit to the size of this whole thing is the limit to how far you can translate the image from the monitors farthest from the center of the Giant Image.
So, does someone who knows about fiber-optic lines able to tell me whether this is something that's possible to build? And another thing: I'm looking at a flat CRT, so that's what I had in mind, but would it be possible to translate a curved image into a flat one?
For anyone who's at a workstation, it's the DPI that's more important, not the size of your monitor, and this 40 DPI that people mention for the display linked from this article is...uncompelling. So, I'm looking at a 19" monitor at 1600 x 1200 right now. I can imagine another monitor on top of mine, two to the left and two to the right (I mean the whole thing would be 3 monitors by 2 monitors). Since right now mine costs about $300, this would mean:
For a base price of $1800 I could get a 3 foot by 4 foot display running at 4800 by 2400 with a nice flat screen, which I could easily take apart and carry in 7 trips? (1 per monitor, one for the ultra-light fiber-optic thing that pastes them together?)
Since fiber is flexible, I really don't see why this shouldn't be a possibility...4800 by 2400 is already close to doable by run-of-the-mill $350 agp video cards, so that's not an issue...and for big walls made with this system, you'd use a cluster of computers...so why not? why not just master the image together from a bunch of 15" monitors, and get a huge wall with DPI of whatever each monitor maxes out at? ~
Clusters of computers, or "render farms," used for many years in the movie industry, may take a half-hour or more to render a frame -- the equivalent of the Sandia screen -- but they cannot handle the data set sizes or the interactive rates of the Sandia cluster, which renders huge data sets in seconds.
The Sandia images are created through massively parallel imaging, which could be thought of as the kid brother of massively parallel computing -- a method of orchestrating the individual outputs of many desktop computers to produce a combined output faster than a very complex, single supercomputer. In this case, the image is not created from a single graphics card but instead through the orchestrated outputs of 64 computers splitting data into 16 screens arranged as a 4 by 4 set.
I was going to comment with something else, but this is just too good to resist: right now, as I'm about to hit submit, at the top is a banner flashing "YOUR VIDEO CARD SUCKS" and "UNLESS IT'S THIS ONE" href'd to an nVidia GeForce 3 specs page.
The facility's digitized images, created of 20 million pixels, approach the visual acuity of the eye itself. "The eyeball is the limiting factor, not the screen," says manager and program leader Philip Heermann. "From ten feet away, the image is as good as your eyes are able to see."
From 10 feet away, so is 1600 x 1200. The issue here isn't DPI, it's TOTAL resolution (ie 1600 x 1200 is crystal clear on my 19" monitor, but if you crank it up to a 35" monitor, you can see the pixelization a lot more easily. I have to strain to see a single pixel). This thing is massively huge, that's the point. Ten feet high, thirteen feet wide, like the person said. Hehe, cool. ~
please change your sig from "There should be a moderation option for '-1 Wrong'." to "...Misinformed..."
Then it might have a chance.
There should also be moderation for "mean-spirited", (or vulgar) as when people insult their parent post in an otherwise informed statement. Sure you have a Ph.D. in the field and so know better than I do -- that doesn't mean I'm "talking out of my ass", if I'm an otherwise intelligent person and make a reasonable attempt to understand the situation. However, this moderation is less likely, so let's stick to misinformed. Please do change your sig?
~
My point, Person, was exactly that: Linus is a true programmer, and he is not Swedish. I mentioned the fact that he only speaks Swedish in order to afore-counter any objections people might raise "but Linus is swedish! how can you call them demi-programmers"...he's not swedish, though he speaks a little, and therefore his example does not diminish the force of the phrase "swedes and other demi-programmers". capisce? ~
Mr Glynn said: "What we have is the suggestion that three people have died after drinking this substance, although there is no hard scientific evidence available on this yet. We will be looking at the death certificates and going through the autopspy reports to identify whether or not there is a link."
Yeah! The death certificate always lists the cause of death, so this way, if it says "Died from drinking Red Bull", then we'll know that there's a link! Rock on, "hard scienctific evidence"! ~
Slashdot Mirror
For us Americans...
A Telstra spokesman said today the link, laid "donkey's years ago", carried very little of the telco's network traffic before yesterday's cut.
This confused me, until I found the idiom.
(It wasn't here or here.)
--
The best parts of this are:
- Your controller is the one responsible for all this. All your hard-drive EVER holds is strongly encrypted bits. Way secure.
- Because you have your private key on several diskettes, when the LED is off indicating that you have a hard-drive "off", if you put your disk away then your hard-drive automatically cannot be accessed at all. For "secure" things this is great because you can trust that even if unsecure people use your computer, at best they can only delete the info on your hard-drive, not change it or read it. (Well, they can install keyboard sniffers and so forth, but you know what I mean).
- Get this: how about if the controller automagically starts backing up a hard-drive bit-for-bit whenever it's in the off mode. This just isn't possible while software has access to a hard-drive, and is possibly reading or modifying it. The most awesome backup you can have is a bit-by-bit image of each of your hard-drives. Sure it'll need a little massaging if you need to restore to a hard-drive with different geometry, but you get my point.
Isn't life grand?The best thing is,
any decent kernel can stay entirely in memory. If the controller has decent programmability, you can ask it to start making a backup every night at 12:00, as soon as every hard-drive has stopped being written or modified.
If you do your scripting right, you don't even need to unmount any of your partitions! (Just make sure your system is COMPLETELY idle at the time).
Of course, we are talking SCSI here. Do you call yourselves Geeks?
"Yeah, I have a dual 1.2 gigahertz athlon".
Oh? What's your hard-drive subsystem on that?
"72 gigger!"
IDE?
"That's E-IDE to you! 5400 RPM too!"
Sigh.
--
Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
I light another cigarette; Learn to forget
Well, your fingers weave some quick applets; ROTs their secret alphabets;
DMCA gets on your ass; Wish you'd not never taught that class.
I could do better, but it's late.
--
The problem with this is that a spammer can spam whatever@tracker.xeger.net
A better way to do this is to give amazon.com "xeger232524272" instead of amazon_com, and then associate xeger232524272 with amazon.com on your end of the line. You can have a simple script give you another number every time you need a name. Do you need to register something with "Marigolds Inc?" simply execute this at your bash prompt:
#redirectoradd
Short nick: Marigolds Inc
Reason/description: signed up for their "infrequent" newsletter -- once per month they said.
xeger65134556132
In other words, xeger65134556132@tracker.xeger.net is now an active mailbox, and you can cut and paste it over to the web form. Associated with this new mailbox is a date and time (which the "redirectoradd" script adds), a description, the knowledge that it couldn't just be "guessed" (since an 11 digit number is not simply guessable).
Any spam tracker.xeger.net gets that's not associated with an active number is bounced, except for "xeger@tracker.xeger.net", which autoresponds so:
Subject: I haven't seen your email!
Body:
Hi, sorry for the inconvenience, but for security reasons this isn't actually my real email address. To get a real email address, you need to reply to this email with "get real address" as your subject and the body a description of who you are and why you need my email address.
I repeat, your email has NOT been delivered. For your convenience, it is attached in this reply, and any text portion is included below. It will also be included with the email notifying you of my real address, where you can simply forward it.
You wrote:
>Hi Xeger!
> How would you like to get in on this ONCE
> IN A LIFETIME opportunity??? Yes, that's
> right...[etc]
That way, if you need to give out your email address when you're not at your computer, you can still do so. You can have various levels of this, where mail to xeger1 never gets looked at, but xeger2, which you put on your resume, actually does let you look at the mail that you receive there, even while you wait for your prospective employer to establish a "formal" address. If this doesn't strike you like a good idea, you can create a few "spare" addresses with no descriptions associated with them, so that when you give it out to somebody on the spot you can cross that one off of your list and the person can email you directly, while that address is still only associated with one person and you can know if it's ever given out. for instance:
#redirectorblanklist 5
xeger6513455512123
xeger4351234214985
xeger1215437214963
xeger9467248121546
Which you can then print on a few cards and give them out whenever somebody needs an email address. You can carry around a bunch of preprinted addresses this way, and write down a description every time you give one out, even if it's just at a credit card promotion at the mall. You can write a description next to the name and put it into your database when you get home. Sure it's a LITTLE more involved than giving out billbrady@redirector.xeger.net, but then billbrady can't submit the name "asdfasdf@redirector.xeger.net" to sign you up for the Daffodils Promotion Program at daffodils.com, which mysteriously gets you a lot of spam from a bunch of people you don't know. Moreover, if everyone started doing what you do currently, then spammers could just guess email addresses and always have them delivered (if they sneak by the spam filter). Not a good idea.
What do you think?
--
From the discoverer of the formula:
"This formula permits one to compute the n-th binary or hexadecimal digit of pi, without computing the first n-1 digits, by means of a simple scheme that requires very little memory and no multiple precision software. Here are various items that may be of interest: "
Yes, that's right, binary or hexadecimal. In other words, you can forget about doing "cool stuff" with it. Who cares what pi is in binary?
--
- censorship-resistant publishing systems, why they are important
- Freenet, vs. Publius
- Gnutella, vs. Publius
- HTTP, Publius implemented over protocol
- Publius, documents, deleting/updating
- Publius, implemented over HTTP
- Publius, vs. Freenet
- Publius, vs. Gnutella
- Publius, why it is important
- Publius URL, tamper-check mechanism
- tamper-check mechanism (Publius URL)
The most important part of all this is that Gnutella is not anonymous!And from GnutellaNews: "A big however, however. To speed things up, downloads are not anonymous. Well, we have to make compromises. But again, nobody's keeping logs, and nobody's trying to profile you. " Yeah. Right. Until "you" are a broadband user dealing in the filthy spread of Planet of the Apes clips.
(Unexpectedly, the quotation above is from under the big heading "Gnutella is Anonymous"--which refers to the non-centralized nature of the network as a whole -- the initial publisher of a piece is anonymous, but you always know who you're downloading it from--just not whether that's the first-ever download or anything.)
This CNN article includes: But of course the knife cuts both ways: sure the authorities can get the IP of those who are willing to upload you child pornography (because they're sharing it), but they can also get the IP of those who are willing to upload you the illegal Planet of the Apes movie clips.
Again, freenet, folks, freenet. Plus, as long as you have some legitimate content you're sharing, you can even tell your ISP -- nono, I need to be on the freenet network, because that's where I market my free art, and all the public domain etexts -- I believe that it's important make these public domain texts available, but you know their servers aren't that great.
What's the ISP going to say? "Oh, okay. As long as it's not illegal."
Bam. Each ISP lets its users be part of the network for wholesome reasons, and the network as a whole mysteriously has untraceable illegal content. Win-win situation, where the second win reads "horrible loss", and refers to the rights of copyright holders. But then again, even Jefferson says we shouldn't have copyright anyhow. (No, I haven't read these papers yet, but +5 mod'd trolls keep going on about this stuff, so I might as well throw it in.)
--
These independent companies operate automated systems that can troll file-swapping networks looking for their clients' work. Once they find it, it is a simple task to figure out the Internet address of the computer that is offering the content to the world
Yeah, if you're stupid. There's a reason a network can be called a "A Distributed Peer-to-Peer Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System". And this is it. Of course most geeks have known this for a long time now. Nothing to see here folks, move right along.
--
However, Larry encouraged everyone to do their part; newbie friendliness is one thing, but it's important to hold yourself to higher standards than those to which you hold yourself.
Oh, ok. I'm glad they cleared that up. I for one am certainly going to start holding myself to such standards now much more than I'm expecting I will.
--
(psst! don't let Amazon know!! :) LOLOLOL)
t _Books/etext97/memho10.txt
FREE BOOKS ONLINE! NO credit card required! No obligation!
RIGHT HERE!!1 Just click on a link on the left and be taken to the uncensored full texts!!!
Hurry! THey're going fast@ REmember: NO credit card required, it's FREE, no obligation!!1
Here's an excerpt!! (direct from link to full text!!1 http://www.ulib.org/webRoot/Books/_Gutenberg_Etex
Adventure VI
The Reigate Puzzle
It was some time before the health of my friend Mr.
Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by
his immense exertions in the spring of '87. The whole
question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the
colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis are too recent in
the minds of the public, and are too intimately
concerned with politics and finance to be fitting
subjects for this series of sketches. They led,
however, in an indirect fashion to a singular and
complex problem which gave my friend an opportunity of
demonstrating the value of a fresh weapon among the
many with which he waged his life-long battle against
crime.
On referring to my notes I see that it was upon the
14th of April that I received a telegram from Lyons
which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the
Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his
sick-room, and was relieved to find that there was
nothing formidable in his symptoms. Even his iron
constitution, however, had broken down under the
strain of an investigation which had extended over two
months, during which period he had never worked less
than fifteen hours a day, and had more than once, as
he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a
stretch. Even the triumphant issue of his labors
could not save him from reaction after so terrible an
exertion, and at a time when Europe was ringing with
his name and when his room was literally ankle-deep
with congratulatory telegrams I found him a prey to
the blackest depression. Even the knowledge that he
had succeeded where the police of three countries had
failed, and that he had outmanoeuvred at every point
the most accomplished swindler in Europe, was
insufficient to rouse him from his nervous
prostration.
Three days later we were back in Baker Street
together; but it was evident that my friend would be
much the better for a change, and the thought of a
week of spring time in the country was full of
attractions to me also. My old friend, Colonel
Hayter, who had come under my professional care in
Afghanistan, had now taken a house near Reigate in
Surrey, and had frequently asked me to come down to
him upon a visit. On the last occasion he had
remarked that if my friend would only come with me he
would be glad to extend his hospitality to him also.
A little diplomacy was needed, but when Holmes
understood that the establishment was a bachelor one,
and that he would be allowed the fullest freedom, he
fell in with my plans and a week after our return from
Lyons we were under the Colonel's roof. Hayter was a
fine old soldier who had seen much of the world, and
he soon found, as I had expected, that Holmes and he
had much in common.
On the evening of our arrival we were sitting in the
Colonel's gun-room after dinner, Holmes stretched upon
the sofa, while Hayter and I looked over his little
armory of Eastern weapons.
"By the way," said he suddenly, "I think I'll take one
of these pistols upstairs with me in case we have an
alarm."
"An alarm!" said I.
Bad grammer, spelling and punctuation for it's [sic] own sake.
Engilsh is it's own rweard.
~
Considering that the person didn't even try to run the computer after "theft-protecting" it, a better solution with the same results (and one that wouldn't have had the computer stolen after "approximately two months") is to simply put it out on your side-walk and pour enough concrete over it so that no computer is even visible, and all you have is a slight bump. An added bonus is that all the skateboard kiddies will entertain you by running over the bump practicing their moves (or "hax0ring", in the lingo.) Way cool.
~
Snippets follow, curtesy of the simpsons. The broadway show has now been in preparation for I don't know how many years! I can't wait for it to come out!
"Dr. Zaius"
Ape: Help, the human's about to escape.
Troy: Get your paws off me, you dirty ape.
Ape: [gasping] He can talk!
Apes: [in unison, rythmed] He can talk
He can talk
He can talk
He can talk
He can talk
He can talk
Troy: [singing] I can siiiiiing!
[funky beat of "Rock Me Amadeus" starts playing]
Female Nurse Ape: Ooh, help me Dr. Zaius!
Apes: [in unison] Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Oh... Dr. Zaius
Ape: Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius.
Troy: What's wrong with me?
Zaius: I think you're crazy.
Troy: Want a second opinion.
Zaius: You're also lazy.
Apes: [in unison] Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
[one ape starts breakdancing]
Oh... Dr. Zaius
Ape: Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius.
Troy: Can I play the piano anymore?
Zaius: Of course you can.
Troy: Well I couldn't before!
[plays piano]
"You'll Never Make a Monkey Out of Me"Troy: [singing] I hate every ape I see
From chimpan-a to chimpan-zee
No, you'll never make a monkey out of me
Oh my God, I was wrong
It was Earth all along
You've finally made a monkey
Apes: Yes, we've finally made a monkey
Troy: Yes, you've finally made a monkey out of me
Apes: Yes, we've finally made a monkey out of you
Troy: I love you, Dr. Zaius!
~
This is from a ucsd "Active Web Equipment Infrastructure Plan" page.. Found by google-ing "terabyte web server SDSC" (since I couldn't find a google cache on michael's URL, but he says SDSC did it).
If anyone managed to snatch a copy of the original before we went down, that, of course would be ideal. Mirror, mirror, anyone?
Normal people, ignore below.
-----
"These are for the goat-weary:" (Though I don't know why people do this -- any decent web browser displays somewhere the target of a link before you click it. These people can viewsource and copy the format of my post for doing this, and stop cluttering your message body with plaintext URL's!)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/07/19/1554
http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/Department/ActiveWeb/Back
http://www.google.com/search?q=terabyte+web+serve
~
the point is, the thing could become much more routine if nobody needed to trust a Special Master, which probably needs 'reasonable cause' or something. the thing could become routine this way.
~
The problem, of course, is that no one who's technical enough to understand the closed source is allowed to look at it -- it's trade secret. One solution might be to arbitrate a demonstration, whereby a standalone computer (not connected to the internet or anything) is brought in with all the closed source code encrypted on the hard-drive. An armored vehicle and seventeen pitbulls (read: security guards) escort a skinny pale-hided hacker from Microsoft carrying a single disk with the key.
The computer, surrounded by lead, is booted off of the disk. A lead screen is placed over and under the keyboard, so that no EMF (like TEMPEST technology) can read the key clicks, and it is impenetrable to xray to determine the Microsoftian's finger motions. She or he reaches under the lead covers, types the passphrase, and the computer now has temporary access to the contents of the encrypted hard-drive.
A second floppy, which has been approved by the government as a fuzzy logic grep against key elements of XYZ source code, is run, while the first floppy, with the passphrased private key, is removed and placed under a huge magnet. (Now the only copy of the private key is in volatile ram). As the program is run, it displays and sends to a dot matrix printer lines of code which are suspiciously close algorithmically (i.e. changed variable names won't confuse it) to what's in the GPL it's comparing with, together with a likelihood that it's the same code. (100% likelihood would be many pages of text that match character to character).
This program could take exceptions into account, such as unmodified linking of LGPL'd files. (if I understand the lesser license correctly). At the end, the system is powered down (cleanly, so that random writes occur over what used to be the 'plaintext' private key), the encrypted hard-drive is removed, and the RAM chips are removed and zapped with a huge magnet to remove any residual traces of what was the private key.
The printout now can act as a basis for subpoena of specific lines of code from Microsoft, which a court-appointed council could look at, and would protect closed-source from unnecessary disclosure of its trade secrets. CRC or MD5 sums could also be printed out for the suspicious code, so that what Microsoft *actually* submits if subpoena'd is what the program originally looked at. The comparer program would be open-source and could be subjected to any Microsoftian or Other analysis beforehand to make sure that it acted as advertised.
Anyone see any problems with this arrangement? Certainly the design of the fuzzy comparer would be interesting...it might have to have a fuzzy state machine inside it to 'understand' what specific chunks of code
Come to think of it, a floppy probably isn't going to hold that...change it to a second hard-drive instead. Now does the plan sound like a plan?
~
thanks for the extra time answering me...unfortunately, no slash-dotters seem to care :) perhaps an ask-slashdot is in order...?
~
thanks for the consideration.
~
Damn, and here we were all ready to go and teraform it. What the heck kind of (useful!)vegetation survives that kind of climactic fluctuation?
~
(and now is the perfect time to post)
You know how sometimes when take off the front of a computer, there are little fiber-optic-looking things that 'translate' the location of the blinkers, so the LED's actually shine from a different location on the front of the case (when the face-plate is on) from where they are actually located? Well, this is kind of what I'm talking about:
What if you took a really big version of a fiber-optic line, like one that's 19 inches in diameter, but square instead of round, and very short, and cut both ends at such an angle that you could push one end of it up against the face of a 19" monitor, and attach it (at the sides) so it's right up against it, and every pixel goes in that end and comes out the other, and snaked it so that the other end would also be a 19" square plate, but because of the snaking the new image would be translated by a foot. (And, of course, be a foot or so away from the old monitor). The two faces (the two ends of the line) should be parallel. Okay, have you got that pictured? You could sit in front of this thing and the visible face of the fiber-optic cable would look just like a normal monitor? Okay: so now we've "translated" the image of the montitor by a foot.
Now imagine that this monitor is really sitting in a box in a huge strucutre of boxes, and right above it is another 19" monitor, whose image is also "translated" but in such a way that the very bottom of the translated image from this second monitor meets the very top of the image from the first monitor, with only like 1 dead pixel. You probably don't even need a dead pixel, if you push them tightly enough together and their edges are precise enough...
Anyway, to the left you have a box holding a monitor, and to the right you have a box holding a monitor, and each of their images is translated to match up with the one next to it.
In other words, it's like one of those huge displays made up of lots of individual monitors, only without the dead space (which you translate around). The limit to the size of this whole thing is the limit to how far you can translate the image from the monitors farthest from the center of the Giant Image.
So, does someone who knows about fiber-optic lines able to tell me whether this is something that's possible to build? And another thing: I'm looking at a flat CRT, so that's what I had in mind, but would it be possible to translate a curved image into a flat one?
For anyone who's at a workstation, it's the DPI that's more important, not the size of your monitor, and this 40 DPI that people mention for the display linked from this article is...uncompelling. So, I'm looking at a 19" monitor at 1600 x 1200 right now. I can imagine another monitor on top of mine, two to the left and two to the right (I mean the whole thing would be 3 monitors by 2 monitors). Since right now mine costs about $300, this would mean:
For a base price of $1800 I could get a 3 foot by 4 foot display running at 4800 by 2400 with a nice flat screen, which I could easily take apart and carry in 7 trips? (1 per monitor, one for the ultra-light fiber-optic thing that pastes them together?)
Since fiber is flexible, I really don't see why this shouldn't be a possibility...4800 by 2400 is already close to doable by run-of-the-mill $350 agp video cards, so that's not an issue...and for big walls made with this system, you'd use a cluster of computers...so why not? why not just master the image together from a bunch of 15" monitors, and get a huge wall with DPI of whatever each monitor maxes out at?
~
Now who's stupid? -Homer J.
~
~
please change your sig from "There should be a moderation option for '-1 Wrong'." to "...Misinformed..."
Then it might have a chance.
There should also be moderation for "mean-spirited", (or vulgar) as when people insult their parent post in an otherwise informed statement. Sure you have a Ph.D. in the field and so know better than I do -- that doesn't mean I'm "talking out of my ass", if I'm an otherwise intelligent person and make a reasonable attempt to understand the situation. However, this moderation is less likely, so let's stick to misinformed. Please do change your sig?
~
Oh sure, that has a small foot-print and performance requirements...
But wouldn't it be n times more fitting if it were running SunOS?
Just a thought.
~
My point, Person, was exactly that: Linus is a true programmer, and he is not Swedish. I mentioned the fact that he only speaks Swedish in order to afore-counter any objections people might raise "but Linus is swedish! how can you call them demi-programmers"...he's not swedish, though he speaks a little, and therefore his example does not diminish the force of the phrase "swedes and other demi-programmers". capisce?
~
~