Although some could argue that it should be considered an art form, handwriting boils down to a basic communication skill that everyone should at least know how to do; passibly, if not elegantly. But, typing is much more efficient and more useful in today's society, so it's only natural (and good!) that cursive gives way to better ways to communicate. My skills with a quill and parchment are rusty too, but I don't see the problem there.
So, when do we see a movement to ditch the old-fashioned QWERTY keyboard and move to something better there, too?
I'll have to disagree here. If you are hoping for a geeky book, you will be disappointed in the watered-down technology. If you are reading it as a just a way to pass the weekend, you will be disappointed in the story. Very few high points in an otherwise predictable plot. Re-read Sphere, The Terminal Man, or The Andromeda Strain instead.
Be sure to follow local building codes! Apparently, conduit can act like a chimeny or a fresh air vent to help a fire along, so they are sometimes frowned on in residential construction, or you may be required to cap all unused ones.
I might also recommend if you make this investment in CAT5 , go plenum. It will keep intereference down from power cords and light fixtures that would impede plain ole CAT5. It costs more, but definitely worth it.
Actually, plenum cable will do nothing for interference. As another posted has said, "plenum" cabling is rated for use in places where toxic fumes created by burning the insulation is a bad thing. In some places, it's use is required by law.
What you are thinking about, I think, is shielded cable, (Shielded Twisted Pair, instead of Unshielded Twisted Pair) which does no good unless you use the shielding properly. Just running STP cable instead of UTP will probably not help with interference unless the shield is grounded at one end.
But, no matter. Most people in a residential setting would be hard pressed to prove that any networking problems they have is due to electrical interference with the CAT5. That's what the Twisted Pair part of the cable is for.
What model of bike had serial output? I have been looking for an exercise bike with USB or serial data output.
Most "commercial" (read: health-club quality) equipment has such a feature. Ask for "CSAFE" compatible equipment, then go to Fitlinxx who maintains the open standard. Disclaimer: I design exercise equipment electronics, but do not work for this company.
So I have this CD, with a "photodetector" which somehow magically converts a short burst of infrared light (while this thing is spinning in the drive) into enough power to run not only a smart chip to decode the pulse train, but to also power an LED to talk back to the drive?
Ok, let's assume that the first part works. How does this CD also magically know how fast it is spinning and when the LED is over the lens of the reader so it can time its replies to the drive? Now I put this thing in my 50x CD-ROM and all of the timing is screwed up.
According to their website, their technology is "... impracticable (sic) to crack since it is hardware based and is based on dynamic protection." If it's burned to a CD, it ain't dynamic. Only one set of encrypted data means that even if 100 keys can decrypt it, once it's decrypted once, the fact that 99 other keys will work is immaterial.
It seems to be a bit iffy, to say the least. The only way this would have a remote chance of suceeding would be for each disk to have a program that controls the drive at a very low level: a known rotation, repeatedly reading a certain sector to keep the lens and photodetector/LED assembly aligned long enough to do the data transfer, and overriding the very strong error correcting that is inherent in CD-ROMs. All do-able functions, but easy to screw up on a different drive or firmware revision.
From the article, this is being heard in Federal court in San Francisco. NDS is a UK company, Canal+ is French, and Nagra is Swiss. So, why is this in a US Federal court? Granted, DirecTV and Echostar are US companies, but they are not involved in the suit... yet.
It is common knowledge that all robots eventually run amok and start slashing/electrocuting the people around them, so by doing this, we solve all sorts of problems at once: shaking down of software bugs, reducing the overcrowding of nursing homes, etc. The only downside is, then we will have to subsidize the prune farmers and the people at CBS for lack the huge drop-off in demand.
He gave the impression necessary financial infusions have been piecemeal and sporadic. He also said that he would go to bat for the employees and that if he didn't get his way, "I'm outta here."
Oooh, what a threat from the big, bad CEO! If the company folds due to lack of funding, he's outta here! Kinda like the other employees, eh?
The reality is that sometimes you really like what you do and don't want to leave the situation.
So what? Sometimes you have to do things you don't necessarily like. I personally would rather quit and take whatever job I passed on the way home rather than hang around and build up debt that would take me 10 years to pay off. But that's just me.
Of course, if I had enough savings to ride out the storm and pick and choose my options, I would perhaps think differently. But I wouldn't "take one for the team" at the expense of my family.
Again, I have a lot of respect for people who heard a tune on Napster and went out and bought the album [...] But I think that for every principled music listener like that, there were probably five people in their dorm rooms or at home in high school who were just amassing free music because it was cheap and there
A-HA! I think you are right! And you have stumbled upon a point that isn't stressed enough: if someone downloads music for free that they would not be able to buy, where is the lost profit?
Yes, if I go out and steal a CD, that is something physical that somebody had to pay for, so the record store loses money. If I download (steal, if you will) an.MP3, no one loses money, because if I am a broke student, I simply could not buy it in physical form.
For someone to cry "Lost Profit!" for my action is dead wrong, because they wouldn't have had my money anyway!
Living inside a cubicle. That just sounds so sad...
And even sadder... that the people outside of the cubicles (and usually in charge of those on the inside of them) have this mentality... and don't understand sarcasm.
What is so wrong about the card? Let's check the parent post for some ideas:
you have to register with the city you live in
tell them where you live and, if you move, unregister with your old city and register in the new one
They can always track you
You have to have an ID card [...] And I even think there is a fine if you do not carry it with you.
I think that covers that question fairly well. Now, on to the second half of your question (which you forgot to ask):
What are the benefits of this system?
A false sense of security when I board an airplane, because all of the nice people chose to register themselves with the government, so obviously there are no terrorists on board.
Another piece of plastic to replace when I lose my wallet.
Another token which links all of my data to each other and to me to make the theft of my identity easier.
Umm...
I know us Americans are paranoid about our privacy, but honestly, don't you see any problem with the scenario outlined above?
A "voluntary" ID card? Who is buying this idea? Do they have any idea what are they even talking about? Why would I "choose" to carry this? If I can just choose to not carry the card, when I am challenged, I can simply state that I don't have an ID, and they will have to accomodate me, because after all, this is voluntary, right?
So the whole system is worthless. Hence, this is just a smooth way to introduce the concept. Anyone who believes this is going to be voluntary is looney.
But if it doesn't provide enough of a load, the central office won't be able to tell that the phone is off the hook, and so will never provide an audio path.
Why not just put the this gizmo and your answering machine on the same extention?
Think about it: ten minutes on hold on a toll-free line (their expense), five minutes of techie-time. Even at a modest $10/hr for the techie, that's almost a dollar spent on him, plus the phone charge.
Their phone cost is next to nothing; if they don't just purchase their WATS access at a flat $XX,XXX/month (which I'm sure they do), they purchase it in bulk for less than $0.03/minute. It's cheaper for them to leave you on hold for 10 minutes than to hire another person to actually answer your call.
And as for getting your info via "Caller ID" (actually ANI for 800 service); can't you still make IP phone calls via MSN's site?
This technique was also used in a Pohl story, Gold at the Starbow's End, I think. This technique would work for non-random data, as any (lossless) compression will work for non-random data. The example you give (English text) is not random, though. Compression=removing redundancy in the source, and therein lies the problem; the source of this contest is random data, skew-adjusted to remove any possible redundancy that could be exploited.
Godelization is a cool idea, but the problem with this technique is twofold: huge amounts of processing power required, and a massive numbering system (can anyone say "4096-bit" integer?) with absolute precision, growing larger as the source becomes larger. This could be helped somewhat by encoding the source in blocks, rather than one large stream of bits.
BTW, I don't believe there would be any "delta" involved, as any positive integer can be expressed as a product of primes.
But the liquid nitrogen wasn't there to keep the processors nice and cool (but may have been a nice side effect of using the N2). IR sensors must be kept as close to absolute zero as possible, to minimize the amount of heat energy that the system is picking up from itself. See NASA'S WIRE project for more (and some broken links). This project was designed with solid hydrogen to cool the sensors, but the cover opened prematurely after launch and boiled off all of the hydrogen.
More on topic, how long until we see some benchmarks on Tom's Hardware or some such site that tells us how often this 'clock modulation' kicks on under load? The white paper at Intel's site says the PROCHOT# signal is available on an external pin, it would be an easy thing for someone with motivation to hook up a 'scope or data logger to this pin and watch it do it's thing.
This article also completely glosses over the fact that the vast majority of these CPUs they are counting run absolutely no OS at all. Do you think that your microwave needs some sort of pre-emptive realtime OS to allow input on a keypad, click a relay on and off, and count down from 2:00? How about the chip that monitors the battery level in your electric razor? No task switching there, either. Many, MANY companies building embedded devices don't bother to license an OS for their product simply because it would be a waste of money. It isn't that difficult to do this with a bit of careful assembly.
And many of the competing solutions mentioned in this article are not Open Source, they are just as proprietary as Windows, just built specifically for the embedded market.
On December 22nd, as a precautionary measure I wrote to inform you of an
attack on our computer systems. Regrettably, until now, we have not been
able to update you or comment publicly on the situation, due to an ongoing
investigation into the matter.
While the FBI investigation is ongoing, I can now give you an update on our
internal investigation, which has uncovered evidence which suggests that
Egghead.com's existing security systems interrupted the intrusion while it
was in progress, and that customer data has not been compromised.
In addition, reports from the credit card companies with whom we work
suggest that fewer than 7,500 credit card accounts registered with us
have shown possible fraudulent activity. This is a very small fraction --
less than two tenths of one percent -- of the approximately three million
credit cards registered with Egghead.com. At this point it is difficult
to determine whether any fraudulent activity on this relatively small
number of credit cards can be traced back to the attack on our system, or
whether it may be the result of credit card theft elsewhere. At this point,
the evidence we have gathered to-date suggests that these credit card
numbers were NOT obtained from our site.
We have heard from many of you, and we thank you for your support and
patience as we continue the complex investigation into this unfortunate
incident. I realize that taking this precautionary measure of informing you
and the credit card companies of the breach resulted in the cancellation of
credit cards, and even embarrassment, for some of you, and we sincerely
apologize for any trouble this may have caused. However, that was the risk
we ran by going public, and it is important to understand that the actions
taken by the credit card issuers were also out of their eagerness to protect
your best interests.
Our first priority has been to protect our customers. We deeply regret
any inconvenience recent events may have caused you, but we believed that
going public with this information would help limit any possible damage,
and give you the choice of taking precautions to protect your privacy. I
believe strongly that this was the prudent and responsible course of action
for our company -- or any company -- faced with this situation.
Through our joint efforts with Kroll Associates over the past few weeks, we
have taken additional steps to reduce the possibility of future incidents by
continuing to strengthen our security measures. This is an ongoing process
that we continue to take very seriously. All of the information that we have
gathered has been turned over to the FBI, which is conducting an ongoing
investigation.
Below is the press release we will be issuing on Monday, January 8th. If
you have questions, please contact our Customer Service Department at
1-800-EGGHEAD (1-800-344-4323), which is open from 5:00 AM - 7:00PM
Pacific Time, Monday through Friday, and 7:00 AM - 3:00 PM Pacific Time,
Saturday and Sunday. You can also send an email by visiting this URL:
Slashdot Mirror
So, when do we see a movement to ditch the old-fashioned QWERTY keyboard and move to something better there, too?
I'll have to disagree here.
If you are hoping for a geeky book, you will be disappointed in the watered-down technology. If you are reading it as a just a way to pass the weekend, you will be disappointed in the story. Very few high points in an otherwise predictable plot.
Re-read Sphere, The Terminal Man, or The Andromeda Strain instead.
Be sure to follow local building codes! Apparently, conduit can act like a chimeny or a fresh air vent to help a fire along, so they are sometimes frowned on in residential construction, or you may be required to cap all unused ones.
Actually, plenum cable will do nothing for interference. As another posted has said, "plenum" cabling is rated for use in places where toxic fumes created by burning the insulation is a bad thing. In some places, it's use is required by law.
What you are thinking about, I think, is shielded cable, (Shielded Twisted Pair, instead of Unshielded Twisted Pair) which does no good unless you use the shielding properly. Just running STP cable instead of UTP will probably not help with interference unless the shield is grounded at one end.
But, no matter. Most people in a residential setting would be hard pressed to prove that any networking problems they have is due to electrical interference with the CAT5. That's what the Twisted Pair part of the cable is for.
Most "commercial" (read: health-club quality) equipment has such a feature. Ask for "CSAFE" compatible equipment, then go to Fitlinxx who maintains the open standard.
Disclaimer: I design exercise equipment electronics, but do not work for this company.
Ok, please tell me where I'm wrong here:
So I have this CD, with a "photodetector" which somehow magically converts a short burst of infrared light (while this thing is spinning in the drive) into enough power to run not only a smart chip to decode the pulse train, but to also power an LED to talk back to the drive?
Ok, let's assume that the first part works. How does this CD also magically know how fast it is spinning and when the LED is over the lens of the reader so it can time its replies to the drive? Now I put this thing in my 50x CD-ROM and all of the timing is screwed up.
According to their website, their technology is "... impracticable (sic) to crack since it is hardware based and is based on dynamic protection." If it's burned to a CD, it ain't dynamic. Only one set of encrypted data means that even if 100 keys can decrypt it, once it's decrypted once, the fact that 99 other keys will work is immaterial.
It seems to be a bit iffy, to say the least. The only way this would have a remote chance of suceeding would be for each disk to have a program that controls the drive at a very low level: a known rotation, repeatedly reading a certain sector to keep the lens and photodetector/LED assembly aligned long enough to do the data transfer, and overriding the very strong error correcting that is inherent in CD-ROMs. All do-able functions, but easy to screw up on a different drive or firmware revision.
So, what am I missing?
From the article, this is being heard in Federal court in San Francisco. NDS is a UK company, Canal+ is French, and Nagra is Swiss. So, why is this in a US Federal court? Granted, DirecTV and Echostar are US companies, but they are not involved in the suit... yet.
It is common knowledge that all robots eventually run amok and start slashing/electrocuting the people around them, so by doing this, we solve all sorts of problems at once: shaking down of software bugs, reducing the overcrowding of nursing homes, etc. The only downside is, then we will have to subsidize the prune farmers and the people at CBS for lack the huge drop-off in demand.
No, this is the best quote:
He gave the impression necessary financial infusions have been piecemeal and sporadic. He also said that he would go to bat for the employees and that if he didn't get his way, "I'm outta here."
Oooh, what a threat from the big, bad CEO! If the company folds due to lack of funding, he's outta here! Kinda like the other employees, eh?
I think from the sound of things, even irc.2600.com would be a better choice than defending himself.
What's that you say? A tarrif on devices designed to play music in MP3 format?
If it doesn't fall under the category now, how long will it be until my computer is a "piracy device"?
So what? Sometimes you have to do things you don't necessarily like. I personally would rather quit and take whatever job I passed on the way home rather than hang around and build up debt that would take me 10 years to pay off. But that's just me.
Of course, if I had enough savings to ride out the storm and pick and choose my options, I would perhaps think differently. But I wouldn't "take one for the team" at the expense of my family.
A-HA! I think you are right! And you have stumbled upon a point that isn't stressed enough: if someone downloads music for free that they would not be able to buy, where is the lost profit?
Yes, if I go out and steal a CD, that is something physical that somebody had to pay for, so the record store loses money. If I download (steal, if you will) an .MP3, no one loses money, because if I am a broke student, I simply could not buy it in physical form.
For someone to cry "Lost Profit!" for my action is dead wrong, because they wouldn't have had my money anyway!
Living inside a cubicle. That just sounds so sad...
And even sadder... that the people outside of the cubicles (and usually in charge of those on the inside of them) have this mentality... and don't understand sarcasm.
Or about as dumb as assuming someone is smart because they graduated from Harvard.
- What is so wrong about the card? Let's check the parent post for some ideas:
- you have to register with the city you live in
- tell them where you live and, if you move, unregister with your old city and register in the new one
- They can always track you
- You have to have an ID card [...] And I even think there is a fine if you do not carry it with you.
I think that covers that question fairly well. Now, on to the second half of your question (which you forgot to ask):- What are the benefits of this system?
- A false sense of security when I board an airplane, because all of the nice people chose to register themselves with the government, so obviously there are no terrorists on board.
- Another piece of plastic to replace when I lose my wallet.
- Another token which links all of my data to each other and to me to make the theft of my identity easier.
- Umm...
I know us Americans are paranoid about our privacy, but honestly, don't you see any problem with the scenario outlined above?A "voluntary" ID card? Who is buying this idea? Do they have any idea what are they even talking about? Why would I "choose" to carry this? If I can just choose to not carry the card, when I am challenged, I can simply state that I don't have an ID, and they will have to accomodate me, because after all, this is voluntary, right?
So the whole system is worthless. Hence, this is just a smooth way to introduce the concept. Anyone who believes this is going to be voluntary is looney.
Why not just put the this gizmo and your answering machine on the same extention?
Their phone cost is next to nothing; if they don't just purchase their WATS access at a flat $XX,XXX/month (which I'm sure they do), they purchase it in bulk for less than $0.03/minute. It's cheaper for them to leave you on hold for 10 minutes than to hire another person to actually answer your call.
And as for getting your info via "Caller ID" (actually ANI for 800 service); can't you still make IP phone calls via MSN's site?
That's because good compressors remove as much redundancy as possible on the first pass.
Godelization is a cool idea, but the problem with this technique is twofold: huge amounts of processing power required, and a massive numbering system (can anyone say "4096-bit" integer?) with absolute precision, growing larger as the source becomes larger. This could be helped somewhat by encoding the source in blocks, rather than one large stream of bits.
BTW, I don't believe there would be any "delta" involved, as any positive integer can be expressed as a product of primes.
More on topic, how long until we see some benchmarks on Tom's Hardware or some such site that tells us how often this 'clock modulation' kicks on under load? The white paper at Intel's site says the PROCHOT# signal is available on an external pin, it would be an easy thing for someone with motivation to hook up a 'scope or data logger to this pin and watch it do it's thing.
And many of the competing solutions mentioned in this article are not Open Source, they are just as proprietary as Windows, just built specifically for the embedded market.
Here is the letter (bold face emphasis is mine):
u estions_login.htm
Dear Customer,
On December 22nd, as a precautionary measure I wrote to inform you of an
attack on our computer systems. Regrettably, until now, we have not been
able to update you or comment publicly on the situation, due to an ongoing
investigation into the matter.
While the FBI investigation is ongoing, I can now give you an update on our
internal investigation, which has uncovered evidence which suggests that
Egghead.com's existing security systems interrupted the intrusion while it
was in progress, and that customer data has not been compromised.
In addition, reports from the credit card companies with whom we work
suggest that fewer than 7,500 credit card accounts registered with us
have shown possible fraudulent activity. This is a very small fraction --
less than two tenths of one percent -- of the approximately three million
credit cards registered with Egghead.com. At this point it is difficult
to determine whether any fraudulent activity on this relatively small
number of credit cards can be traced back to the attack on our system, or
whether it may be the result of credit card theft elsewhere. At this point,
the evidence we have gathered to-date suggests that these credit card
numbers were NOT obtained from our site.
We have heard from many of you, and we thank you for your support and
patience as we continue the complex investigation into this unfortunate
incident. I realize that taking this precautionary measure of informing you
and the credit card companies of the breach resulted in the cancellation of
credit cards, and even embarrassment, for some of you, and we sincerely
apologize for any trouble this may have caused. However, that was the risk
we ran by going public, and it is important to understand that the actions
taken by the credit card issuers were also out of their eagerness to protect
your best interests.
Our first priority has been to protect our customers. We deeply regret
any inconvenience recent events may have caused you, but we believed that
going public with this information would help limit any possible damage,
and give you the choice of taking precautions to protect your privacy. I
believe strongly that this was the prudent and responsible course of action
for our company -- or any company -- faced with this situation.
Through our joint efforts with Kroll Associates over the past few weeks, we
have taken additional steps to reduce the possibility of future incidents by
continuing to strengthen our security measures. This is an ongoing process
that we continue to take very seriously. All of the information that we have
gathered has been turned over to the FBI, which is conducting an ongoing
investigation.
Below is the press release we will be issuing on Monday, January 8th. If
you have questions, please contact our Customer Service Department at
1-800-EGGHEAD (1-800-344-4323), which is open from 5:00 AM - 7:00PM
Pacific Time, Monday through Friday, and 7:00 AM - 3:00 PM Pacific Time,
Saturday and Sunday. You can also send an email by visiting this URL:
https://www.egghead.com/custserv/actreq/general_q
Respectfully,
Jeff Sheahan
President & CEO
Egghead.com, Inc.