Heck, new drivers shouldn't even be necessary. If I remember my AT command set, a simple AT&Q0 should kill both error correction and data compression.
If I remember right, there are even lower layers of error handling built into the analog signal handling.
Of course, now we're completely outside the range where I have a technical fucking clue, so we'll have to wait for someone with more knowledge of V.90 to step in.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Now, of course we can't have something this cool without making it useful in the most obscene manner.
Doom gave us the process manager from hell. (Literally.) Come to think of it, SimCity *could* make an interesting process manager, with change in logsize over time representing trash, and erroring processes on fire.
What else could we do to make SimCity a useful environment? Accurate maps of cities merged into SimCity might be a fun toy, particularly with a HandSpring Visor supplied w/ GPS functionality.
That'd be interesting--walking around a SimRealCity...
All we need is a module interface.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Naming objects after something or someone is a time honored human tradition, enjoyed by cathedrals(Saints), weapons of war, and federal buildings.
Descriptive (as opposed to family class) Numbers belong in IPs, not in the names. Management which attempts to look professional by forcing mnemonics out of names is merely making their staff less efficient; humans are shockingly efficient at handling large numbers of names.
We're not that good at identifying objects by number, unless those numbers are drastically inconsistent(thus, the low number of phone numbers we know that are almost identical).
Myth, Literature, Movies, Movie Genres, Computer Components, Biology(I'm itching to have a Mitochondrial web cluster), Famous Wars, Famous Scientists, Tremendous Disasters(Hindenberg just went up in flames), Great Treaties(Versailles is looking OK for now...but I have a feeling it might fall apart), etc.
Humor is always good, but mainly when its subtle. That way, there's always plausable deniability.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Consider for a moment that compression has a time delay factor intrinsic within it--the longer one waits, the more redundant data can be filtered out of a transmission block.
Modems, by default, execute Run Length Encoding(RLE) algorithms, which if I remember correctly are statements along the lines of "Here's a string of 64 0's" instead of literally sending the stream of 0's.
Of course, to *know* one is sending 64 0's, one has to operate on a 64 byte delay. So a key strategy for reducing lag is actually sending those 64 0's live rather than waiting the delay period.
This isn't really a bad idea--waiting for the delay period when highly tuned networking applications which would *never* send such a "low entropy"(translation: almost devoid of unique information content) string is foolish.
Now, disabling modem compression is a well known tactic for decreasing ping time, and tools have been out to reconfigure Windows to do thus for years. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that all these modems have different is a new driver disk.
56K modem technology has been described as the biggest technical hack the industry has ever seen, and I'm inclined to agree. That it works at all is near-miraculous(although actually it doesn't really go as fast as advertised, thus 3Com's upcoming $5 coupon slap on the wrists for claiming net connections would be twice as fast).
Intrinisic in the protocol are error-checking codes. Error checking *also* introduces delays, as you need to wait for the data to come in before you can sum it. Reduce your error checking, or decrease the check interval, or tweak in any number of hacks, and lag can decrease.
Also intrinsic is connection recovery--by speeding this up, making this more effective, or both, 3Com gets an edge. That there appears to be specific functionality reserved for specific ISP hardware leads me to suspect there's off-standard code being put into use.
This isn't necessarily bad.
I'd be interested in more technical documentation as to what they've done--anyone from 3Com got a real link for the rest of us?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Happy Birthday, Linus. You rule. You knew that. Yet, somehow, you're the most down to earth person the computer industry has ever deigned with fame.
In a world of saccharine sweet commercialized PR drones, your normality makes you possibly one of the few true role models for all of us--children, students, professionals, people.
You don't need to save the world to be a role model. You've changed it, for the better, and yet stayed the humble and decent person you were before the experience.
You also know how to party. So stop reading this post and go enjoy your birthday. We've enjoyed you.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
P.S.: For all those who aren't here to wish you a happy b-day:
Joyeux Anniversaire À Vous, Linus! Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Linus! Compleanno Felice A Voi, Linus! Aniversário Feliz A Você, Linus! Feliz Cumpleaños A Usted, Linus! Babelfish is one wonderful what, Linus!
It is reasonably obvious that flexible semiconductors will lead to revolutions in wearable computing. It's not particularly obvious what those revolutions will be.
To be fair, IBM isn't the first company to be dealing with flexible technologies--the e-ink system is almost a fabric, and OLED(Organic Light Emitting Diode) manufacturers have been hacking away for years trying to get something marketable.
However, IBM's announcement is another sign in the coming change.
Ask your grandparents about the plastics revolution. The ability to easily form objects in any shape and texture created tremendous economic shifts throughout the world. (The fact that the leading Plastics company was just replaced on the Dow by a major tech bellwhether is rather significant in this context.) The fact that computer hardware will be able to undergo its own "plastics revolution" may indeed forge a shocking, nearly unrecognizable by today's technology shift in product concepts.
Flexible displays: Expect products like e-books whose pages soothingly glow, even in darkness. These will at least be offered, though they won't do all that well unless the resolution gets very high and the price gets extremely low.
One thing that will happen is that huge displays should finally become cheap and easy to create. Present LCD systems are woefully inadequate for creating multi-panel displays, so you don't really see display systems created that have mosaics of large LCD screens arrayed border to border in a wide screen display. The "off screen" space cannot be just eliminated. Flexible technology offers the ability to "fold back" the non-visible support wiring, so each panel could be placed directly alongside an ajoining display. Toss in a bit of alignment and "at the factory" gluing and you have only a thin black line admitting that the pieces were once distinct.
What's likely to be a complete hit, though, would be the coming wave of wrist computing. I've seen holders for Palmpilots for the wrist--trust me, the Palm belongs on your palm. Early iterations of "Wrist Computing" will look more like "Rex On A Watchband"--a 2" by 1" rectangular LCD that the user simply wears at all times. Such a product would be extremely well recieved by the geek community, but the size of the screen would be considered too gawky and unfashionable by many women(half the population, folks) and the classier types. Smaller variants would follow, but people would complain that they could no longer select individual "buttons" on the display.
Compaq's excellent "Rock and Scroll" would be tried, but it still wouldn't solve everything.
Flexible displays would fix the entire scope of problems. By default, only a small display would be presented by the wristcomp. Incoming pages, number of emails outstanding, maybe even time. (Joke.) On pressing a button, one or two displays would slide up towards the elbow and/or down towards the palm. The display would now be wide enough to read emails, accept input, display visuals, etc. A simple squeeze motion would spring lock the one or two expanded viewers back into their contracted position.
Note, the displays themselves wouldn't be flexible--they'd merely be thin enough to have multiple panels fit within a single watch width.
Of course, with this much flexibility, we can expect Sony to take it to the nth design degree, making the entire product fashionable beyond compare.
You thought the walkman was huge? Imagine an entire networked computing platform that plays music, gives directions, keeps you organized, and almost literally becomes a part of you.
The only thing possibly cooler could be HUD Contacts. (And yes--these developments help with that too.)
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
I don't think you can really call the New York Madonna Incident (NYMI) an "enforcement" by Christians. I would call it one of the few triumphs of good taste in the past decade.
I didn't say it was wrong. I said it was enforcement. There's a difference.
Until fairly recently, art was the creation of beauty, not social commentary except in a very few instances.
I'm no expert of art, but Picasso's Guernica isn't all that recent, and neither are the centuries of political cartoons that have littered newspapers for as long as we can remember.
I don't think the caricature was invented in the 20th century.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
People: This is gonna be a weird one. Yes, I could spout endlessly about the ridiculousness of real-time price gouging. But complaining about what is the obvious part--reverse engineering the why is where things get interesting.
Welcome to the new misshapen love child of greed and interactivity.
Coca Cola deigns itself an entertainment provider--this is cool and all, but I get the off feeling that they want to turn their coke machines into something you need to spend an extra thirty seconds standing in front of, doing something, anything as long as they get to inject their brand into progressively higher levels of conscious thought and thus more lasting mindshare.
There are strategists right now drooling over the possibilities of giving a dime off a coke in return for knowing who the Coca Cola BlowJob Woman Of The Month is, or whatever else somebody pays Coca Cola to inject into the national consciousness.
Advertising is starting to get very strange--its hardcore but the very successful funding of television combined with the progessively more desperate advances of Internet properties losing the patience of their Venture Capitalist Sugar Daddies is starting to put their whim at even more of a spotlight in American culture.
There are more than a small amount of irony in the fact that where religion wanes, a new breed of idolatry takes even greater relevance.
As I see it, American culture has created the all too peculiar Caged Idol, whose likeness, usage, and applications are tightly controlled under penalty of legal harassment. One truly has to stand back and appreciate the openness of religion--anyone is free to paint Jesus, or, with no small amount of irony, sculpt a likeness of Mao. Religion is no stranger to enforcement against those who would criticize(witness the furor over the recent New York art exhibit), but in general, religions that allow any imagery is pretty free regarding who may create it.
Entire swaths of society have abandoned religion, but they're no strangers to idols. As one of my friends observed, "Most people at this school find someone interesting if they have a new Abercrombie shirt on."
In a culture where idols are trotted out for selling everything from identities to shoes(or do I repeat myself?), the usage of variable pricing schemes is but a sign of a new level of integration between divergent aspects of American Culture: Idol Worship meets The Almighty Sale.
Temperature sensors are but a ruse--the real concept that Coca Cola wants to play with is the idea that the price of a Coke can change. For simplicity, they'll start out by giving you ten cents off if you slide your card--the knowledge that it was *you* who bought that coke is worth more than a dime. As time goes on, they'll unveil their hyperactive dispensers with LCD touch screen quizzes--remember the national consciousness injections? Those who are "in with Coke" get cheaper product. Those who don't pay more money, which is enough of a pain to force them to answer correctly.
Will this work? Possibly. Will it be degrading beyond all compare? Very possibly.
Comments?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
My university currently has a large NT network deployed, all authenticating and file serving off 2 servers (for 10,000 students). It takes upwards of 15 minutes to log in -- the 486s that were hanging around when I started here actually let me get my work done faster (but God do I feel old saying that).
Does this affect student-owned hardware as well? Are students asked/forced to login by default?
Please contact me.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
The circumstances of the relative evils are not what's at issue here.
It doesn't matter that Rape is less evil than Murder, nor that losing one's school is somehow less painful than losing one's home. Have you considered that a GED doesn't let you get into many universities?
While there is an aspect of the potential, bear in mind that there were immediate responses in both lynch mobs--otherwise innocents were scapegoated and exiled, on the will of those who were once innocents. The mob acted in revulsion and horror at the unthinking, inhuman way their brethren was treated; they proceded to treat Those Of The Enemy in the exact same unthinking and inhuman manner.
Do not look at this in terms of travesties of Justice. Look at it in terms of the human tragedy--the transfer of evil from those who committed grevious acts out of isolation or insanity to those who had neither.
Think of the kids growing up in Kosovo who want nothing else but to grow up and kill some Serbs. Purely potential, yes--but utterly tragic; possibly more tragic even than the murder of their parents.
Again, there are no easy answers. Maybe that's what bothers me about M2K so much.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
If Lycos filters possible customers from its searches, they run the risk of accepting responsiblity to filter customers from finding contraband results.
In other words, if they refuse to be "just a conduit to other sites", then they're responsible for where they send people.
Lycos doesn't need that exposure, considering mp3.lycos.com.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
No offence meant. Sorry, but you can only write some constructive critiques on a meaningful statement - and yours was, ehem, just a metaphore, with no constructive arguments, proliferating a stereotype view on biosciences.
What stereotype? That biotech is essentially the equivalent of hacking a dynamically self evolving codebase composed of organics? This isn't a stereotype, it's a common observation.
Using a virus to insert genetic codes to rebuild organs and inserting a trojan horse to send passwords to a remote site are not entirely different from one another.
That biotech has been around for far longer than computer security doesn't make it any less interesting to watch the striking similarities. Packet generators vs. Gene sequencers, for example. Create the arbitrary, mix and match, pipe and filter.
No, it doesn't work exactly like that. But the dreams are in both places.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
There is a tangible difference between teachers being taught the psychologies of youth and mentorship and a test being used to single out The Different as A Threat.
Filtering out the human touch in the name of increased efficiency is not the solution. One does not sooth psychic damage through machinery.
If you think about it, teachers don't exactly get much respect either. In some respects, they're even more tragic than the outcasts that get left unprotected.
Interesting how pretty much everyone in certain institutions is dehumanized to some degree...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
TurboLinux is making alot of noise regarding the work they've done, meanwhile aren't they just taking an existing (very impressive) kernel patch referencing Virtual Servers and claiming it as their own?
There's an aspect of dirty PR pool going on here.
Gotta love, incidentally, more Linux bashing by SCO. Their hatred is so tangible. Then again, at least they're honest.
Overall, I hope Linus doesn't feel pressured to incorporate a technically inferior solution because somebody is attempting an ad hoc kernel power grab. We don't want people saying to Linus, "You're going to put this into the kernel because we've made it the standard." Embrace and Extend indeed.
That being said, I've heard very good things about the patch TurboLinux has appropriated without due credit. I've also heard some insanely interesting things about MOSIX, the virtual server project started in Israel and made GPL around six or eight months ago. Mosix is immensely interesting mainly because of its ability for seamless and invisible process migration--all processes, not just those written via PVM/MPI, get automagically clustered.
Very, very cool.
Comments from people more knowledgable than I about the details glossed over in this would be most appreciated.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Well, congratulations. You made me laugh: when I talk about computers, computer geeks laugh at me - "lamer". Now it's my turn to call someone that name:-) You seem to know about biology as much as I do about TCP/IP (or less, in fact).
My ex is a combined science major leaning towards natural sciences, has a distinct leaning towards forensic criminology, and might pull off a FBI internship. I think I might have picked up a piece of Bio or two along the way.
What does a guy hafta do to get your respect, describe the chemical structure of acytocholine(sp, doh) or put in a diagram of ATP reactions?
No need for insults, Jan. Would have appreciated some constructive criticism--here's what followed:
1. You know that one: if architects make houses the way programists... etc. How about that one: if biologists worked the way programists...etc.?
...then the pharmaceutical industry would be worshipping Dr. Mengel. You can't rollback to a previous age of a human to erase the detrimental effects of certain pills:-)
2. People have been doing biotech much longer than they have been doing programming. You could say abacus is a primitive computer. Well, it is nothing compared to what our ancestors did to the ancestor of an apple (and I don't mean the computer company:-) ).
Your point? I agree with you fully. Biotech is ancient. You could somewhat deign the above an ancient form of piping the output of one command through the filter of another, over and over again.
3. Remember that you work with DNA and not living organisms.
Remember that reverse engineers work on binary bits and undocumented protocol streams--DNA and RNA, if you wish:-)
Unlike hardware, there's no evolutionary motive to obfuscate. Of course, the natural structure ain't exactly easy to decode.
4. Remember that you have to do with randomly evolving clones every time you take a breathe. You have no idea how much diversity is surrounding you.
I'm not sure all evolution is random. It is not ludicrous by any means to believe that lifeforms possess some degree of internal guidance of their progeny towards a more advanced version. Who knows--maybe an environmental condition of "always too cold" either causes gametes to be selected that suggest greater fur growth, or possibly even for internal systems to design innovative heating solutions to pass to the next generation. I'm very interested in any science you might know of to this regard--note, I'm not saying that any external force is guiding evolution; I'm saying I find it highly probable that advanced species might develop internal systems for the updating of their genetic code--that not all evolution is random.
We don't particularly understand how the immune system profers pattern matching memories to T-Cells; perhaps the messaging components involved there are more influential than we might think.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
The "Microsoft VM" is correct. Its kinda a cross between Java, DOS, and the toaster. Plus some unholy relics from another dimention. It sure as hell isn't a JVM.
It runs Java applets, it's faster than a WOW Potato Chip, and it's surprisingly stable(unlike anything embedded in Netscape).
C'mon. You know you'd love it if it came from Linus. You know you'd praise its speed, and say that its bugs would be worked out soon enough, etc.
Linux bigotry isn't any more rational than PHBigotry, but it sure is a hell of alot more annoying.
This is coming from a hardcore Linux user, btw.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Are you completely insane?!? I don't care how many people they unjustifiably throw out of school, it's only a fraction of the tradgy of a dozen kids getting murdered!
I'm speechless... doumbfounded... agast that you would think something like that...I'm going to just presume that you weren't thinking too well when you said it.
Let me rephrase the question, then.
Suppose it's fifty years ago, and a town is paralyzed in fear--there's a serial rapist. He's found, he's black, he's lynched.
Only a truly cruel and crazed person would violate the town women in that manner--something must be done to make them feel secure--no, to make the town more secure. The remaining black families must be run out of town, or live in eternal fear.
Most are run out. Some stay. None feel secure.
What's more tragic, I ask you? The women who were raped by the insane, or the families that were exiled by the righteous victims?
These aren't idle questions. Stuff like this happened. In some places, it still happens.
There are no easy answers, Ky'dishar. That those victimized lash out and create victims anew is probably the most tragic flaw in human nature the world has ever known. It's awful to see innocent children die; it's more awful to see innocent children losing their innocence by culling their herds in an act of retribution. That intolerance and unjustified hate was both denounced and practiced by the same mob scares me more than the acts of two deluded students.
Respond, if you read this. I've actually been thinking about this alot lately.
Umm...donors can make whatever demands they want. It's their money, and if the burden is too heavy then the recipient can turn it down. I presume it's basic contract law.
Ah, but what should universities accept? What policies may be purchased? What's not for sale?
Remember, donors operate on a standard basis--whatever amount of control is standard, they'll probably want a little more but not the whole bag. As that "little more" becomes the standard, "little more" begins to mean more...and more...
That's the nice thing about zero influence: The standard never shifts.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Damnit Jon, no "geek students" are "sounding the alarm".
Sure they've been. I'd put down $20 right now he's been getting a steady stream of emails on the topic.
I was scared rather shitless myself, considering I spent many a lunch period literally just walking around campus for 50 minutes because I had nowhere to go.
Who knows what they might have had the studies to prove if they had my complete psychographic profile by default. I'd have been kicked out for getting to school late.
Yours Truly,
Dan kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
P.S. Those dead students? What's a bigger tragedy, dozens of students dead, or dozens of students being asked to leave their high school a year before they graduate because some yahoos shot up the school in their outfit, were weird, and made the cheerleaders nervous?
P.P.S. Oh, you did hear that the Trenchcoat Mafia had nothing--zero--zilch to do with the Columbine events, didn't you? Yup, they didn't like the two kids either. Of course, don't expect to see that on ABC News. It was just in the police report that only Salon chose to cover.
I've been trying to bounce Mosaic-2000 around in my head for a while. After all, we're all screaming that Doom Does Not A Serial Killer Make, and neither does a penchant for trenchcoats. What if Katz is overreacting--what if this software program is really a way for knee-jerk bureaucrats to get their suspicions laughed at by an impartial analyzer? We know that expert systems used to diagnose heart attack systems can, in some circumstances, be even more effective than trained physicians at cross-referencing indications, contraindications, and other tasks necessary to come up--quickly--with an accurate solution.
So, if heart attacks can be diagnosed accurately, why not violent behavior?
After all, I may not be normal, but what do I have to hide? I'm not going to kill anyone.
Us good people don't have anything to fear.
Oh. I've heard that before, haven't I.
Framing Mosiac 2000 as anti-geek is myopic. A psychographic dragnet such as this is quite possibly the most disturbing concept I've heard in quite some time, and should be on the top ten lists of every privacy advocate in the country. Suppose the data compiled was absolutely accurate--a fallacy I will address later--suddenly, a complete profile of your identity has been compiled automatically. Your character type, your likely reactions to various forms of coercion, your fears, your dreams, an invaluable pantheon of knowledge about how to control you and how to react to you--all sitting in a file, based upon answers you were compelled to supply.
And that's if the data's accurate!
It's tough to not see Orwell when people keep using 1984 as a study guide.
Of course, the chances that such information might actually be accurate isn't exactly high. Yes, it's true that expert systems do wonderfully for heart attack victims. Heart Attack Victims don't usually intentionally lie about their symptoms--students do. What's so beautiful about it all is how natural it is:
A close friend of mine grew up ill, and because of the pain she saw her parents experience from her illness, she learned to mask that pain from them and the people around her. Children learn very quickly--there are expectations of you, you are to meet them not in terms of reality but in terms of perception.
Testers like Mosiac 2000, which cannot be written without an implicit bias towards a given desired social identity(non-violent passive, Mr. Orwell?), will quickly be seen as another overbearing set of expectations to fulfill. And children, masters of the art from birth, will learn to adapt to the tests, and "pass them" like any other standardized centrifuge of a test.
Not that this is easy, or without consequence. Shoving your self into a corner has a way of making you even more isolated, even more wrong. Or, of course, it's just another way to fuck the system that's trying to do the same to you. Either way, useless data.
But what of this semi-mythical test? How do we know that it doesn't really know what to ask?
The fact that it was apparently designed using Grade A Felon Material probably isn't a good thing. Reminds me alot of the controversy when some serious yahoos took feminism way too far and posted fliers across their university containing the photo of one guy with the words underneath: POTENTIAL RAPIST.
They picked the poor schmuck at random.
In a world where every student is a potential assassin, where the mob demands the right to psychoanalyze on penalty of exclusion, where everyone and everything must be open and analyzed and identical and conformant and not too much and not too little and nothing in between...is there any room for childhood?
For finding oneself?
How can you find yourself when the test already knows who you are?
What do you say to the kid who the test claims will kill his family?
Technology is a wonderful thing. Kids don't even need to grow up anymore; computers will do it for them.
Of course, it won't work, at first. There will be problems. There would be gnashing of teeth. But with time, the psychographic profiles of the kindergartners will be compared with their profiles when they finally grow up to their violent and sexual destinies, and the next generation of kindergartners will be more correctly controlled.
Who needs privacy. The babies are dying. You don't have privacy anyway, Mcnealy told me so, the babies are dying. You don't want the babies to die, do you? Are you a baby killer too?
No. I guess I grew up in time.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
C is much, much easier to hack on than to code from scratch. I know, I'm a much better code hacker than a coder.
I am convinced, though, that Java would be far, far more universal had it been deployed better. It seems to me that Sun, in its zeal to shift the deployment pain from the client to the server, shifted pain that didn't need to exist in the first place.
What, did Sun fire every single one of it's UI guys? Or is there a presumption that developers can handle any nasty UI problems that are tossed at them? Might explain vi...;-)
[No, I'm not getting into a language war. This is beyond language.]
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Slashdot Mirror
The Doctor said this would happen if you stopped taking your medication.
Fucking hologram.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Names like Hindenberg, Titanic, Andrea Doria, Valdez, Challenger should be reserved for Windows machines.
In all fairness, Windows has gotten quite good at handling random reboots.
This is not a strong area of ext2, to say the least.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Yes Dan, Linus will have your baby!
ROFLMAO!
Lemme put it this way, AC:
Good: Linus's Birthday.
Evil: Th is Photograph.
Any questions?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Heck, new drivers shouldn't even be necessary. If I remember my AT command set, a simple AT&Q0 should kill both error correction and data compression.
If I remember right, there are even lower layers of error handling built into the analog signal handling.
Of course, now we're completely outside the range where I have a technical fucking clue, so we'll have to wait for someone with more knowledge of V.90 to step in.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Now, of course we can't have something this cool without making it useful in the most obscene manner.
Doom gave us the process manager from hell. (Literally.) Come to think of it, SimCity *could* make an interesting process manager, with change in logsize over time representing trash, and erroring processes on fire.
What else could we do to make SimCity a useful environment? Accurate maps of cities merged into SimCity might be a fun toy, particularly with a HandSpring Visor supplied w/ GPS functionality.
That'd be interesting--walking around a SimRealCity...
All we need is a module interface.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Naming objects after something or someone is a time honored human tradition, enjoyed by cathedrals(Saints), weapons of war, and federal buildings.
Descriptive (as opposed to family class) Numbers belong in IPs, not in the names. Management which attempts to look professional by forcing mnemonics out of names is merely making their staff less efficient; humans are shockingly efficient at handling large numbers of names.
We're not that good at identifying objects by number, unless those numbers are drastically inconsistent(thus, the low number of phone numbers we know that are almost identical).
Myth, Literature, Movies, Movie Genres, Computer Components, Biology(I'm itching to have a Mitochondrial web cluster), Famous Wars, Famous Scientists, Tremendous Disasters(Hindenberg just went up in flames), Great Treaties(Versailles is looking OK for now...but I have a feeling it might fall apart), etc.
Humor is always good, but mainly when its subtle. That way, there's always plausable deniability.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Consider for a moment that compression has a time delay factor intrinsic within it--the longer one waits, the more redundant data can be filtered out of a transmission block.
Modems, by default, execute Run Length Encoding(RLE) algorithms, which if I remember correctly are statements along the lines of "Here's a string of 64 0's" instead of literally sending the stream of 0's.
Of course, to *know* one is sending 64 0's, one has to operate on a 64 byte delay. So a key strategy for reducing lag is actually sending those 64 0's live rather than waiting the delay period.
This isn't really a bad idea--waiting for the delay period when highly tuned networking applications which would *never* send such a "low entropy"(translation: almost devoid of unique information content) string is foolish.
Now, disabling modem compression is a well known tactic for decreasing ping time, and tools have been out to reconfigure Windows to do thus for years. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that all these modems have different is a new driver disk.
56K modem technology has been described as the biggest technical hack the industry has ever seen, and I'm inclined to agree. That it works at all is near-miraculous(although actually it doesn't really go as fast as advertised, thus 3Com's upcoming $5 coupon slap on the wrists for claiming net connections would be twice as fast).
Intrinisic in the protocol are error-checking codes. Error checking *also* introduces delays, as you need to wait for the data to come in before you can sum it. Reduce your error checking, or decrease the check interval, or tweak in any number of hacks, and lag can decrease.
Also intrinsic is connection recovery--by speeding this up, making this more effective, or both, 3Com gets an edge. That there appears to be specific functionality reserved for specific ISP hardware leads me to suspect there's off-standard code being put into use.
This isn't necessarily bad.
I'd be interested in more technical documentation as to what they've done--anyone from 3Com got a real link for the rest of us?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Dear Linus:
Happy Birthday, Linus. You rule. You knew that. Yet, somehow, you're the most down to earth person the computer industry has ever deigned with fame.
In a world of saccharine sweet commercialized PR drones, your normality makes you possibly one of the few true role models for all of us--children, students, professionals, people.
You don't need to save the world to be a role model. You've changed it, for the better, and yet stayed the humble and decent person you were before the experience.
You also know how to party. So stop reading this post and go enjoy your birthday. We've enjoyed you.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
P.S.: For all those who aren't here to wish you a happy b-day:
Joyeux Anniversaire À Vous, Linus!
Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Linus!
Compleanno Felice A Voi, Linus!
Aniversário Feliz A Você, Linus!
Feliz Cumpleaños A Usted, Linus!
Babelfish is one wonderful what, Linus!
It is reasonably obvious that flexible semiconductors will lead to revolutions in wearable computing. It's not particularly obvious what those revolutions will be.
To be fair, IBM isn't the first company to be dealing with flexible technologies--the e-ink system is almost a fabric, and OLED(Organic Light Emitting Diode) manufacturers have been hacking away for years trying to get something marketable.
However, IBM's announcement is another sign in the coming change.
Ask your grandparents about the plastics revolution. The ability to easily form objects in any shape and texture created tremendous economic shifts throughout the world. (The fact that the leading Plastics company was just replaced on the Dow by a major tech bellwhether is rather significant in this context.) The fact that computer hardware will be able to undergo its own "plastics revolution" may indeed forge a shocking, nearly unrecognizable by today's technology shift in product concepts.
Flexible displays: Expect products like e-books whose pages soothingly glow, even in darkness. These will at least be offered, though they won't do all that well unless the resolution gets very high and the price gets extremely low.
One thing that will happen is that huge displays should finally become cheap and easy to create. Present LCD systems are woefully inadequate for creating multi-panel displays, so you don't really see display systems created that have mosaics of large LCD screens arrayed border to border in a wide screen display. The "off screen" space cannot be just eliminated. Flexible technology offers the ability to "fold back" the non-visible support wiring, so each panel could be placed directly alongside an ajoining display. Toss in a bit of alignment and "at the factory" gluing and you have only a thin black line admitting that the pieces were once distinct.
What's likely to be a complete hit, though, would be the coming wave of wrist computing. I've seen holders for Palmpilots for the wrist--trust me, the Palm belongs on your palm. Early iterations of "Wrist Computing" will look more like "Rex On A Watchband"--a 2" by 1" rectangular LCD that the user simply wears at all times. Such a product would be extremely well recieved by the geek community, but the size of the screen would be considered too gawky and unfashionable by many women(half the population, folks) and the classier types. Smaller variants would follow, but people would complain that they could no longer select individual "buttons" on the display.
Compaq's excellent "Rock and Scroll" would be tried, but it still wouldn't solve everything.
Flexible displays would fix the entire scope of problems. By default, only a small display would be presented by the wristcomp. Incoming pages, number of emails outstanding, maybe even time. (Joke.) On pressing a button, one or two displays would slide up towards the elbow and/or down towards the palm. The display would now be wide enough to read emails, accept input, display visuals, etc. A simple squeeze motion would spring lock the one or two expanded viewers back into their contracted position.
Note, the displays themselves wouldn't be flexible--they'd merely be thin enough to have multiple panels fit within a single watch width.
Of course, with this much flexibility, we can expect Sony to take it to the nth design degree, making the entire product fashionable beyond compare.
You thought the walkman was huge? Imagine an entire networked computing platform that plays music, gives directions, keeps you organized, and almost literally becomes a part of you.
The only thing possibly cooler could be HUD Contacts. (And yes--these developments help with that too.)
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I don't think you can really call the New York Madonna Incident (NYMI) an "enforcement" by Christians. I would call it one of the few triumphs of good taste in the past decade.
I didn't say it was wrong. I said it was enforcement. There's a difference.
Until fairly recently, art was the creation of beauty, not social commentary except in a very few instances.
I'm no expert of art, but Picasso's Guernica isn't all that recent, and neither are the centuries of political cartoons that have littered newspapers for as long as we can remember.
I don't think the caricature was invented in the 20th century.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
People: This is gonna be a weird one. Yes, I could spout endlessly about the ridiculousness of real-time price gouging. But complaining about what is the obvious part--reverse engineering the why is where things get interesting.
Welcome to the new misshapen love child of greed and interactivity.
Coca Cola deigns itself an entertainment provider--this is cool and all, but I get the off feeling that they want to turn their coke machines into something you need to spend an extra thirty seconds standing in front of, doing something, anything as long as they get to inject their brand into progressively higher levels of conscious thought and thus more lasting mindshare.
There are strategists right now drooling over the possibilities of giving a dime off a coke in return for knowing who the Coca Cola BlowJob Woman Of The Month is, or whatever else somebody pays Coca Cola to inject into the national consciousness.
Advertising is starting to get very strange--its hardcore but the very successful funding of television combined with the progessively more desperate advances of Internet properties losing the patience of their Venture Capitalist Sugar Daddies is starting to put their whim at even more of a spotlight in American culture.
There are more than a small amount of irony in the fact that where religion wanes, a new breed of idolatry takes even greater relevance.
As I see it, American culture has created the all too peculiar Caged Idol, whose likeness, usage, and applications are tightly controlled under penalty of legal harassment. One truly has to stand back and appreciate the openness of religion--anyone is free to paint Jesus, or, with no small amount of irony, sculpt a likeness of Mao. Religion is no stranger to enforcement against those who would criticize(witness the furor over the recent New York art exhibit), but in general, religions that allow any imagery is pretty free regarding who may create it.
Entire swaths of society have abandoned religion, but they're no strangers to idols. As one of my friends observed, "Most people at this school find someone interesting if they have a new Abercrombie shirt on."
In a culture where idols are trotted out for selling everything from identities to shoes(or do I repeat myself?), the usage of variable pricing schemes is but a sign of a new level of integration between divergent aspects of American Culture: Idol Worship meets The Almighty Sale.
Temperature sensors are but a ruse--the real concept that Coca Cola wants to play with is the idea that the price of a Coke can change. For simplicity, they'll start out by giving you ten cents off if you slide your card--the knowledge that it was *you* who bought that coke is worth more than a dime. As time goes on, they'll unveil their hyperactive dispensers with LCD touch screen quizzes--remember the national consciousness injections? Those who are "in with Coke" get cheaper product. Those who don't pay more money, which is enough of a pain to force them to answer correctly.
Will this work? Possibly. Will it be degrading beyond all compare? Very possibly.
Comments?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
My university currently has a large NT network deployed, all authenticating and file serving off 2 servers (for 10,000 students). It takes upwards of 15 minutes to log in -- the 486s that were hanging around when I started here actually let me get my work done faster (but God do I feel old saying that).
Does this affect student-owned hardware as well? Are students asked/forced to login by default?
Please contact me.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
P.S. He has no email address listed.
So, in a word, no.
Clue deposit accepted. Thank you, drive through.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
The circumstances of the relative evils are not what's at issue here.
It doesn't matter that Rape is less evil than Murder, nor that losing one's school is somehow less painful than losing one's home. Have you considered that a GED doesn't let you get into many universities?
While there is an aspect of the potential, bear in mind that there were immediate responses in both lynch mobs--otherwise innocents were scapegoated and exiled, on the will of those who were once innocents. The mob acted in revulsion and horror at the unthinking, inhuman way their brethren was treated; they proceded to treat Those Of The Enemy in the exact same unthinking and inhuman manner.
Do not look at this in terms of travesties of Justice. Look at it in terms of the human tragedy--the transfer of evil from those who committed grevious acts out of isolation or insanity to those who had neither.
Think of the kids growing up in Kosovo who want nothing else but to grow up and kill some Serbs. Purely potential, yes--but utterly tragic; possibly more tragic even than the murder of their parents.
Again, there are no easy answers. Maybe that's what bothers me about M2K so much.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
If Lycos filters possible customers from its searches, they run the risk of accepting responsiblity to filter customers from finding contraband results.
In other words, if they refuse to be "just a conduit to other sites", then they're responsible for where they send people.
Lycos doesn't need that exposure, considering mp3.lycos.com.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
January--
No offence meant. Sorry, but you can only write some constructive critiques on a meaningful statement - and yours was, ehem, just a metaphore, with no constructive arguments, proliferating a stereotype view on biosciences.
What stereotype? That biotech is essentially the equivalent of hacking a dynamically self evolving codebase composed of organics? This isn't a stereotype, it's a common observation.
Using a virus to insert genetic codes to rebuild organs and inserting a trojan horse to send passwords to a remote site are not entirely different from one another.
That biotech has been around for far longer than computer security doesn't make it any less interesting to watch the striking similarities. Packet generators vs. Gene sequencers, for example. Create the arbitrary, mix and match, pipe and filter.
No, it doesn't work exactly like that. But the dreams are in both places.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
There is a tangible difference between teachers being taught the psychologies of youth and mentorship and a test being used to single out The Different as A Threat.
Filtering out the human touch in the name of increased efficiency is not the solution. One does not sooth psychic damage through machinery.
If you think about it, teachers don't exactly get much respect either. In some respects, they're even more tragic than the outcasts that get left unprotected.
Interesting how pretty much everyone in certain institutions is dehumanized to some degree...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
TurboLinux is making alot of noise regarding the work they've done, meanwhile aren't they just taking an existing (very impressive) kernel patch referencing Virtual Servers and claiming it as their own?
There's an aspect of dirty PR pool going on here.
Gotta love, incidentally, more Linux bashing by SCO. Their hatred is so tangible. Then again, at least they're honest.
Overall, I hope Linus doesn't feel pressured to incorporate a technically inferior solution because somebody is attempting an ad hoc kernel power grab. We don't want people saying to Linus, "You're going to put this into the kernel because we've made it the standard." Embrace and Extend indeed.
That being said, I've heard very good things about the patch TurboLinux has appropriated without due credit. I've also heard some insanely interesting things about MOSIX, the virtual server project started in Israel and made GPL around six or eight months ago. Mosix is immensely interesting mainly because of its ability for seamless and invisible process migration--all processes, not just those written via PVM/MPI, get automagically clustered.
Very, very cool.
Comments from people more knowledgable than I about the details glossed over in this would be most appreciated.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Well, congratulations. You made me laugh: when I talk about computers, computer geeks laugh at me - "lamer". Now it's my turn to call someone that name :-) You seem to know about biology as much as I do about TCP/IP (or less, in fact).
:-)
:-) ).
:-)
My ex is a combined science major leaning towards natural sciences, has a distinct leaning towards forensic criminology, and might pull off a FBI internship. I think I might have picked up a piece of Bio or two along the way.
What does a guy hafta do to get your respect, describe the chemical structure of acytocholine(sp, doh) or put in a diagram of ATP reactions?
No need for insults, Jan. Would have appreciated some constructive criticism--here's what followed:
1. You know that one: if architects make houses the way programists... etc. How about that one: if biologists worked the way programists...etc.?
...then the pharmaceutical industry would be worshipping Dr. Mengel. You can't rollback to a previous age of a human to erase the detrimental effects of certain pills
2. People have been doing biotech much longer than they have been doing programming. You could say abacus is a primitive computer. Well, it is nothing compared to what our ancestors did to the ancestor of an apple (and I don't mean the computer company
Your point? I agree with you fully. Biotech is ancient. You could somewhat deign the above an ancient form of piping the output of one command through the filter of another, over and over again.
3. Remember that you work with DNA and not living organisms.
Remember that reverse engineers work on binary bits and undocumented protocol streams--DNA and RNA, if you wish
Unlike hardware, there's no evolutionary motive to obfuscate. Of course, the natural structure ain't exactly easy to decode.
4. Remember that you have to do with randomly evolving clones every time you take a breathe. You have no idea how much diversity is surrounding you.
I'm not sure all evolution is random. It is not ludicrous by any means to believe that lifeforms possess some degree of internal guidance of their progeny towards a more advanced version. Who knows--maybe an environmental condition of "always too cold" either causes gametes to be selected that suggest greater fur growth, or possibly even for internal systems to design innovative heating solutions to pass to the next generation. I'm very interested in any science you might know of to this regard--note, I'm not saying that any external force is guiding evolution; I'm saying I find it highly probable that advanced species might develop internal systems for the updating of their genetic code--that not all evolution is random.
We don't particularly understand how the immune system profers pattern matching memories to T-Cells; perhaps the messaging components involved there are more influential than we might think.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
The "Microsoft VM" is correct. Its kinda a cross between Java, DOS, and the toaster. Plus some unholy relics from another dimention. It sure as hell isn't a JVM.
It runs Java applets, it's faster than a WOW Potato Chip, and it's surprisingly stable(unlike anything embedded in Netscape).
C'mon. You know you'd love it if it came from Linus. You know you'd praise its speed, and say that its bugs would be worked out soon enough, etc.
Linux bigotry isn't any more rational than PHBigotry, but it sure is a hell of alot more annoying.
This is coming from a hardcore Linux user, btw.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Are you completely insane?!? I don't care how many people they unjustifiably throw out of school, it's only a fraction of the tradgy of a dozen kids getting murdered!
I'm speechless... doumbfounded... agast that you would think something like that...I'm going to just presume that you weren't thinking too well when you said it.
Let me rephrase the question, then.
Suppose it's fifty years ago, and a town is paralyzed in fear--there's a serial rapist. He's found, he's black, he's lynched.
Only a truly cruel and crazed person would violate the town women in that manner--something must be done to make them feel secure--no, to make the town more secure. The remaining black families must be run out of town, or live in eternal fear.
Most are run out. Some stay. None feel secure.
What's more tragic, I ask you? The women who were raped by the insane, or the families that were exiled by the righteous victims?
These aren't idle questions. Stuff like this happened. In some places, it still happens.
There are no easy answers, Ky'dishar. That those victimized lash out and create victims anew is probably the most tragic flaw in human nature the world has ever known. It's awful to see innocent children die; it's more awful to see innocent children losing their innocence by culling their herds in an act of retribution. That intolerance and unjustified hate was both denounced and practiced by the same mob scares me more than the acts of two deluded students.
Respond, if you read this. I've actually been thinking about this alot lately.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
Umm...donors can make whatever demands they want. It's their money, and if the burden is too heavy then the recipient can turn it down. I presume it's basic contract law.
Ah, but what should universities accept? What policies may be purchased? What's not for sale?
Remember, donors operate on a standard basis--whatever amount of control is standard, they'll probably want a little more but not the whole bag. As that "little more" becomes the standard, "little more" begins to mean more...and more...
That's the nice thing about zero influence: The standard never shifts.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Damnit Jon, no "geek students" are "sounding the alarm".
Sure they've been. I'd put down $20 right now he's been getting a steady stream of emails on the topic.
I was scared rather shitless myself, considering I spent many a lunch period literally just walking around campus for 50 minutes because I had nowhere to go.
Who knows what they might have had the studies to prove if they had my complete psychographic profile by default. I'd have been kicked out for getting to school late.
Yours Truly,
Dan kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
P.S. Those dead students? What's a bigger tragedy, dozens of students dead, or dozens of students being asked to leave their high school a year before they graduate because some yahoos shot up the school in their outfit, were weird, and made the cheerleaders nervous?
P.P.S. Oh, you did hear that the Trenchcoat Mafia had nothing--zero--zilch to do with the Columbine events, didn't you? Yup, they didn't like the two kids either. Of course, don't expect to see that on ABC News. It was just in the police report that only Salon chose to cover.
I've been trying to bounce Mosaic-2000 around in my head for a while. After all, we're all screaming that Doom Does Not A Serial Killer Make, and neither does a penchant for trenchcoats. What if Katz is overreacting--what if this software program is really a way for knee-jerk bureaucrats to get their suspicions laughed at by an impartial analyzer? We know that expert systems used to diagnose heart attack systems can, in some circumstances, be even more effective than trained physicians at cross-referencing indications, contraindications, and other tasks necessary to come up--quickly--with an accurate solution.
So, if heart attacks can be diagnosed accurately, why not violent behavior?
After all, I may not be normal, but what do I have to hide? I'm not going to kill anyone.
Us good people don't have anything to fear.
Oh. I've heard that before, haven't I.
Framing Mosiac 2000 as anti-geek is myopic. A psychographic dragnet such as this is quite possibly the most disturbing concept I've heard in quite some time, and should be on the top ten lists of every privacy advocate in the country. Suppose the data compiled was absolutely accurate--a fallacy I will address later--suddenly, a complete profile of your identity has been compiled automatically. Your character type, your likely reactions to various forms of coercion, your fears, your dreams, an invaluable pantheon of knowledge about how to control you and how to react to you--all sitting in a file, based upon answers you were compelled to supply.
And that's if the data's accurate!
It's tough to not see Orwell when people keep using 1984 as a study guide.
Of course, the chances that such information might actually be accurate isn't exactly high. Yes, it's true that expert systems do wonderfully for heart attack victims. Heart Attack Victims don't usually intentionally lie about their symptoms--students do. What's so beautiful about it all is how natural it is:
A close friend of mine grew up ill, and because of the pain she saw her parents experience from her illness, she learned to mask that pain from them and the people around her. Children learn very quickly--there are expectations of you, you are to meet them not in terms of reality but in terms of perception.
Testers like Mosiac 2000, which cannot be written without an implicit bias towards a given desired social identity(non-violent passive, Mr. Orwell?), will quickly be seen as another overbearing set of expectations to fulfill. And children, masters of the art from birth, will learn to adapt to the tests, and "pass them" like any other standardized centrifuge of a test.
Not that this is easy, or without consequence. Shoving your self into a corner has a way of making you even more isolated, even more wrong. Or, of course, it's just another way to fuck the system that's trying to do the same to you. Either way, useless data.
But what of this semi-mythical test? How do we know that it doesn't really know what to ask?
The fact that it was apparently designed using Grade A Felon Material probably isn't a good thing. Reminds me alot of the controversy when some serious yahoos took feminism way too far and posted fliers across their university containing the photo of one guy with the words underneath: POTENTIAL RAPIST.
They picked the poor schmuck at random.
In a world where every student is a potential assassin, where the mob demands the right to psychoanalyze on penalty of exclusion, where everyone and everything must be open and analyzed and identical and conformant and not too much and not too little and nothing in between...is there any room for childhood?
For finding oneself?
How can you find yourself when the test already knows who you are?
What do you say to the kid who the test claims will kill his family?
Technology is a wonderful thing. Kids don't even need to grow up anymore; computers will do it for them.
Of course, it won't work, at first. There will be problems. There would be gnashing of teeth. But with time, the psychographic profiles of the kindergartners will be compared with their profiles when they finally grow up to their violent and sexual destinies, and the next generation of kindergartners will be more correctly controlled.
Who needs privacy. The babies are dying. You don't have privacy anyway, Mcnealy told me so, the babies are dying. You don't want the babies to die, do you? Are you a baby killer too?
No. I guess I grew up in time.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
C is much, much easier to hack on than to code from scratch. I know, I'm a much better code hacker than a coder.
I am convinced, though, that Java would be far, far more universal had it been deployed better. It seems to me that Sun, in its zeal to shift the deployment pain from the client to the server, shifted pain that didn't need to exist in the first place.
What, did Sun fire every single one of it's UI guys? Or is there a presumption that developers can handle any nasty UI problems that are tossed at them? Might explain vi...;-)
[No, I'm not getting into a language war. This is beyond language.]
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com