I can remember when boo.com did their relaunch, they covered Camden (in London) with these little stickers. They were everywhere, lampposts, dustbins, trees, etc. This was all part of their "modern urbanist" image.
Camden Borough Council was well pissed off because each one had some crazy adhesive on them. It took them about three months and god knows how many thousand pounds to clear them off all. For fly posting you can get fined £1000 per poster... or sticker in this case, boo.com could face a £60m charge easily... which is more than their market cap:)
Is it me or has anyone else noticed how the plot and events of Tommorrow Never Dies are coming true?
Ok... there was the blowing up of MI6 buildinglate last year, they did this in the movie.
There was the theives who tried to steal an expensive diamond from the Millennium Dome then tried to get away on a speed boat on the thames. Remember the black speedboat blasting past the Millennium Dome in the film?
The chinese standoff and the dispute about terratorial waters/air when the spy plane crashed a couple of weeks ago. It was the Royal Navy in the film.
Nah... in the UK cell companies have been putting phone masts on school roofs and plain fields for years now, and it's never done me any harm... nor the mad cows.
It's a safety thing you know... when you came home from school a night you would glow, so nobody could run you over by mistake.
Cellnet was once an independent company I believe, but BT took them over years ago, so it's actually a whole owned subsidiary of BT.
BT would have loved to rollout ADSL four years ago but their leased line dept was too worried about being shafted.
BT is a company full of contradictions with fingers in every pie, and they have never been able to shake off their mentality and inefficiencies of the state dinosaur days. They also had a number of failed deals, one with MCI then AT&T for example. That's why there's so many conflicts and why the managements in such a mess... and consequently why they're £30 billion in debt, their market cap is only £28b, so they owe more than they're worth!
Personally, after being shafted by them for a number of years, I have little sympathy for them, when they called last week begging me to have ADSL installed, I took great delight in telling to fsck off because I have a cable modem and they're 5 years to late.
They were planning to float or merge Cellnet to relieve debt.
As for the payphones, they cannot abandon them, they have a universal provision agreement that legally requires them to install payphones and lines in rural areas. So they're being forced to adapt, an alien concept to BT, their new 'web phones' are actually quite good, there's quite a few in the tube stations that provide access for free to promote interest.
Using the payphones as mini mobile base stations is a good idea too, especially in the city where signals can be weak due to the multipath problems big buildings present. Having a base station at ground level would alleviate those problems.
Of course, there's always the irony of BT leasing the base stations to rival phone providers that are competing with BT|Cellnet and the pay phone itself. Love it.
Failure has always been en vouge in art
on
The Art of Failure
·
· Score: 1
The notion that all things digital are shiny new miracles is quickly becoming a tarnished idea of the past. Certainly this applies to the economic and social ennui generated by each new announcement of a yet another crashed dot-com. With every passing day, the sleek, glowing promise of high-tech is starting to seem like history.
"
Recent Clash With Microsoft's Jim Allchin
on
Ask Robert Young
·
· Score: 1
Is there any truth behind a recent debate which you purportedly clashed with Microsoft's Jim Allchin over the alledged "un-american" nature of Open Source software.
The US version of BattleBots has just started showing on British TV also, we've had RobotWars since 1996, compared, BattleBots is fundamentally the same but with a load of grandiose crap added on. I'm sorry, but the boxing style presenter just does my head in.
I was interested to see the British robots competing on BattleBots... they did quite well also, but they've had 5 years practice... how long has BattleBots been about?
I wonder if MS have created some chip to inextricably tie software to the X-Box hardware? At $299-399 they're just begging for the Slashdot hackers (vultures?:) to come along to 'fully exploit the true potential of the x-box'.
I, and obviously many other people see this turning into an open source TiVo, MP3, DivX Deux player, good firewall box etc. It even includes an Ethernet and USB ports, so it's practically begging to have its OS 're-adjusted'.
When you're selling a box at a loss, or very thin profit line at best, will Microsoft accommodate this? I can imagine the X-Box hacking sites being taken down through the DMCA already... "Unauthorised breach of a copy protection device"?
Verisign practically have a monopoly market here, they bought up Thawte a few months back, and I believe they now own the certificate services that belonged to RSA. So if you want a SSL cert, Verisign have the monopoly.
Also, you have to remember this isn't a fundamental part of the net like DNS, whoever manages to "persuade" the browser makers (read: MS) basically gets complete access to the market.
The Georgia Tech design uses the IP Tables firewall functions in the latest Linux kernel to provide the packet-filtering operation. When a client joins the wireless/walk-up network, the firewall/router hands out a DHCP address. To authorize access, the client must open a Web browser. The HTTP or HTTPS (HTTP Secure) request from the client triggers an automatic redirect to an authentication page from the gateway, and the authentication request is passed to a Kerberos server. If authentication is successful, a PERL script adds the IP address to the rules file, making it a "known" address to the IP Tables firewall process
There was some papers available from their site, however it seems to be firewalled now, but it's still available through google cache. Here's the intro page
Not quite, it does actually make perfect sense, none of the above are harmful to Open Source developers in the UK because algorithms aren't patentable. You can use RSA, LZW and Frauenhofer without any retribution, even though the latter is even a European invention,
Obviously the US patent office is different concern, but the UK doesn't set their rules.
Not quite, the RSA patent is not valid in the UK because their patent office also didn't/doesn't allow algorithms to be patented, since they're not tangible.
Also, public key crypto was actually first developed in the UK by GCHQ before it was even a twinke in Diffie or Hellmann's eye. Secondly, it would have been insulting to expect the Brit's to pay royalties on a invention that actually first originated in the UK, bit like the jet engine debacle all over again.
First of all, you're making assertions about me. It is possible for somebody entertain thought contrary to their own for the purpose of analysis (just ask a lawyer).
My post was to simply explain what "might" happen, that doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the sort of power governments can use to pressure people, but it does help to have a realistic view point. You might not like 50% of the things that your government does, you either choose to point them out... or you ignore them and hope it will all go away.
I don't particularly care who the platform belongs to, however I was simply making a case from the perspective of the British Government's, the government could still maintain the platform is part of the United Kingdom, they have certainly hinted in this direction a couple of times, so that's a fair hypothesize to point out.
I still maintain, if HeavenCo were involved with running servers for questionable businesses or persons, they could be seen as an accessory to crime, the same way the US doesn't like Libya because it took so long to hand over Lockerbie suspects, or the way the US doesn't like Afghanistan for harbouring Osla Bin Ladin, you could state that the majority of the Afghan people haven't done anything wrong.
The laws in the US come down squarely on the side of business, not the individual. For all of our bragging and chest-beating about our freedoms, we don't have squat that big business doesn't give us or permit us to have. We're all slaves over here, most of us just don't know it yet.
Fix the laws at home then, it's a sad state of affairs when you have to go running from the US to protect your freedom of speech, you would believe that in itself would make a lot of people think. I know that sounds easier said than done, however fixing the problem would be far easier than finding offshore solutions. Ask what's wrong with your own government if you cannot conduct a perfectly legal business without encountering privacy problems, then fix those problems, this is what democracy is all about (when it works properly).
But that's beside the point. What if you don't live in a "halfway decent" country? What if you live in China, or another country with a reputation of human rights violations for dissenters?
You appeal to a country that has a respect for human right rights and freedoms, the Chinese dissidents could simply look to the US for a server, they already do.
What if you are an oppressed group of Kurdish rebels who want to use groupware like Lotus Notes and Quickplace to collaborate about planning the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
The US already offers support for Iraqi dissident groups.
I still maintain, if HeavenCo was found harbouring records for illicit businesses then HeavenCo themselves could be held liable for being an accessory to those illicit operations, and yes the proprietors could get dragged into this situation, regardless of your offshore status. As the article states, your corporate immunity doesn't account for much in serious situations like that.
What really disgusts me the most about your post is your ignorant assertion that encryption and privacy is for criminals..
Not the case, I merely stated relevant agencies would be interested in the type of data travelling over those links, and despite attempts to encrypt the data they would find a way to read it, the same way they could decrypt my PGP enciphered emails if the really wanted.
It is logical to assert that certain agencies would be particularly interested in the operations of these services.
Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.
Just because somebody came along and said "I declare this independent" is not enough, try doing that in the middle of WestMinster, you wont be acknowledged by many people.
Of course, this is all arbitrary anyway, they could just pressure the ISP to stop providing the land microwave/satellite/radio/fibre link.
If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.
At the moment, nobody appears to be bothered to Sealand, however I'm sure many governments are looking into how do deal with this 'problem' behind the scenes, at a recent G8 summit last year there was an item on the agenda on how to tackle international 'data heavens'.
I'm sure the NSA guys at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire (England) are very interested in HeavenCo's com links, what's the point of having a data heaven if all the information is being also feed straight into an intelligence agency? Fair enough they're using an encrypted link, however I wouldn't like to pit a puny 256K link against the powers that be, whatever strength of crypto being used.
The agencies would actually be pleased about this because they know the data going over the line has a good chance of being illicit, however say the same data was travelling over a standard US-UK backbone, it would basically be undetectable on the public net because of the sheer amount of traffic.
Infact just by using the HeavenCo service you're slapping a massive "look at me" label on your back... and as the crypto article pointed out yesterday, criminals just want to blend into the crowd, having your data pass through to an offshore server really makes you stand out from the either.
I wonder how HeavenCo processes its money? If money is basically being laundered into your account from some dodgy business outfit, that also raises some eyebrows.
Well, good luck to them, but I really don't fancy their chances, stuff like this has been around for years, however none of them have managed to escape the grasp of government control. And with SeaLand just being a stones throw off the English coast, I really don't like their chances.
Re:American Television - Killed by commerce
on
15 Minutes
·
· Score: 1
I think he means that the talent is so thinly spread out that no single channel has any decent content, they all end up the same, producing the same mediocre programmes that are indistinguishable from the other networks.
Yeah "Junkyard Wars" is good (it used to be called "Scrapheap Challenge", it was changed so the Yanks understand), quite a lot of stuff on channel 4 is decent, I think they're doing a Robot Wars in the US now too.
"do you offer silent thanks to your government for having stopped any attempts to offer you a tempting alternative?"
Oh but they have, they want you to watch "BBC Parliament":)
Re:American Television - Killed by commerce
on
15 Minutes
·
· Score: 1
I like Channel4 too, they're really revitalised themselves over the last two years into a innovative channel, it's mainly because they work with hundreds of little independent production houses rather than going wholesale with two or three (even though the latter would make more commercial sense).
However, even though channel 4 is supported by advertising, I feel it couldn't exist in its current form is it went purely commercial rather than state owned. A pure commercial outfit would go for the highest bang-for-the-buck and drop anything apart from high rating programmes, then it would sell the crap out itself with those ratings... whoring out the content for as much cash as possible, whilst pushing for the lowest expenditure as possible on producing the content. Another decent channel down the toilet.
It's nice to see that Channel4 makes cash and is self-supporting, it's also nice to see a channel that doesn't exist purely to make cash.
Re:American Television - Killed by commerce
on
15 Minutes
·
· Score: 1
No... it's worth watching, people wouldn't be willing to pay their TV license if it was junk. I'd rather pay ~ £130 a year for some decent commercial free content than sit through endless hours of mind numbing TV that exists for no other purpose but to drive up ratings for insidious TV commercials. The problem is, when every channel becomes like the aforementioned, the standards descend lower and lower, you just end up with programmes that appeal to the lowest common denominator.
A service that exists purely to supply information is also held in a higher regard with more focus on journalistic integrity than a service that exists purely to sell commercials, it's easy to see how a particular bias may creep into your content if you consider reporting some something that is contrary to your sponsors' interests.
ITV and Channel 5 have to keep their operations to an acceptable quality otherwise the BBC will walk all over them when it comes to ratings, even though the BBC doesn't even operate primarily on ratings, but quality. The BBC has its faults, even if you don't watch, its purpose is still felt because it keeps all the other channels in check.
Also, look at the number of times Slashdot has pointed to News Online articles, by this very virtue it must have some value, regardless of whatever you purport.
BTW. you can actually get hundreds of channels through digital satellite, cable and terrestrial channels... most of it being junk or niche content obviously.
Actually, I think it has more to do with creating a pure optical based laser so fibre doesn't have to be terminated back into electronics at routers (this slows everything down precipitously).
This is very much "pure research" though, so it could be applied or adapted to anything, including CPU's.
Slashdot Mirror
Not forgetting Infiband either.
I can remember when boo.com did their relaunch, they covered Camden (in London) with these little stickers. They were everywhere, lampposts, dustbins, trees, etc. This was all part of their "modern urbanist" image.
:)
Camden Borough Council was well pissed off because each one had some crazy adhesive on them. It took them about three months and god knows how many thousand pounds to clear them off all. For fly posting you can get fined £1000 per poster... or sticker in this case, boo.com could face a £60m charge easily... which is more than their market cap
Is it me or has anyone else noticed how the plot and events of Tommorrow Never Dies are coming true?
Ok... there was the blowing up of MI6 buildinglate last year, they did this in the movie.
There was the theives who tried to steal an expensive diamond from the Millennium Dome then tried to get away on a speed boat on the thames. Remember the black speedboat blasting past the Millennium Dome in the film?
The chinese standoff and the dispute about terratorial waters/air when the spy plane crashed a couple of weeks ago. It was the Royal Navy in the film.
What else?
That should be :-
My god... look what all this monolithic media does to your spelling and grammar too!
damn.
My god... look what all this monolithic does to your spelling and grammar too!
Nah... in the UK cell companies have been putting phone masts on school roofs and plain fields for years now, and it's never done me any harm... nor the mad cows.
It's a safety thing you know... when you came home from school a night you would glow, so nobody could run you over by mistake.
I have to go talk to a tree now, goodbye.
If you wanna see people who are truely "anti-cell phone" check Phone Bashing , hilarious.
Cellnet was once an independent company I believe, but BT took them over years ago, so it's actually a whole owned subsidiary of BT.
BT would have loved to rollout ADSL four years ago but their leased line dept was too worried about being shafted.
BT is a company full of contradictions with fingers in every pie, and they have never been able to shake off their mentality and inefficiencies of the state dinosaur days. They also had a number of failed deals, one with MCI then AT&T for example. That's why there's so many conflicts and why the managements in such a mess... and consequently why they're £30 billion in debt, their market cap is only £28b, so they owe more than they're worth!
Personally, after being shafted by them for a number of years, I have little sympathy for them, when they called last week begging me to have ADSL installed, I took great delight in telling to fsck off because I have a cable modem and they're 5 years to late.
They were planning to float or merge Cellnet to relieve debt.
As for the payphones, they cannot abandon them, they have a universal provision agreement that legally requires them to install payphones and lines in rural areas. So they're being forced to adapt, an alien concept to BT, their new 'web phones' are actually quite good, there's quite a few in the tube stations that provide access for free to promote interest.
Using the payphones as mini mobile base stations is a good idea too, especially in the city where signals can be weak due to the multipath problems big buildings present. Having a base station at ground level would alleviate those problems.
Of course, there's always the irony of BT leasing the base stations to rival phone providers that are competing with BT|Cellnet and the pay phone itself. Love it.
Is there any truth behind a recent debate which you purportedly clashed with Microsoft's Jim Allchin over the alledged "un-american" nature of Open Source software.
The US version of BattleBots has just started showing on British TV also, we've had RobotWars since 1996, compared, BattleBots is fundamentally the same but with a load of grandiose crap added on. I'm sorry, but the boxing style presenter just does my head in.
I was interested to see the British robots competing on BattleBots... they did quite well also, but they've had 5 years practice... how long has BattleBots been about?
I wonder if MS have created some chip to inextricably tie software to the X-Box hardware? At $299-399 they're just begging for the Slashdot hackers (vultures? :) to come along to 'fully exploit the true potential of the x-box'.
I, and obviously many other people see this turning into an open source TiVo, MP3, DivX Deux player, good firewall box etc. It even includes an Ethernet and USB ports, so it's practically begging to have its OS 're-adjusted'.
When you're selling a box at a loss, or very thin profit line at best, will Microsoft accommodate this? I can imagine the X-Box hacking sites being taken down through the DMCA already... "Unauthorised breach of a copy protection device"?
And the one thing that is more stigmatised than failure in the UK... is success.
Az.
Does it require people to manually update their master certificates? This usually doesn't go down too well with joe-sixpack.
Verisign practically have a monopoly market here, they bought up Thawte a few months back, and I believe they now own the certificate services that belonged to RSA. So if you want a SSL cert, Verisign have the monopoly.
Also, you have to remember this isn't a fundamental part of the net like DNS, whoever manages to "persuade" the browser makers (read: MS) basically gets complete access to the market.
There's also some papers here and here
On an unrelated note, there's been some research on locating users using 802.11b.
You can read more about the security they implemented in Security Still Up in the Air.
They basically used iptables to allow the wireless MAC address onto the wired LAN after the client had been authenticated off a Kerbros server.
Not quite, it does actually make perfect sense, none of the above are harmful to Open Source developers in the UK because algorithms aren't patentable. You can use RSA, LZW and Frauenhofer without any retribution, even though the latter is even a European invention,
Obviously the US patent office is different concern, but the UK doesn't set their rules.
Not quite, the RSA patent is not valid in the UK because their patent office also didn't/doesn't allow algorithms to be patented, since they're not tangible.
Also, public key crypto was actually first developed in the UK by GCHQ before it was even a twinke in Diffie or Hellmann's eye. Secondly, it would have been insulting to expect the Brit's to pay royalties on a invention that actually first originated in the UK, bit like the jet engine debacle all over again.
First of all, you're making assertions about me. It is possible for somebody entertain thought contrary to their own for the purpose of analysis (just ask a lawyer).
My post was to simply explain what "might" happen, that doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the sort of power governments can use to pressure people, but it does help to have a realistic view point. You might not like 50% of the things that your government does, you either choose to point them out... or you ignore them and hope it will all go away.
I don't particularly care who the platform belongs to, however I was simply making a case from the perspective of the British Government's, the government could still maintain the platform is part of the United Kingdom, they have certainly hinted in this direction a couple of times, so that's a fair hypothesize to point out.
I still maintain, if HeavenCo were involved with running servers for questionable businesses or persons, they could be seen as an accessory to crime, the same way the US doesn't like Libya because it took so long to hand over Lockerbie suspects, or the way the US doesn't like Afghanistan for harbouring Osla Bin Ladin, you could state that the majority of the Afghan people haven't done anything wrong.
The laws in the US come down squarely on the side of business, not the individual. For all of our bragging and chest-beating about our freedoms, we don't have squat that big business doesn't give us or permit us to have. We're all slaves over here, most of us just don't know it yet.
Fix the laws at home then, it's a sad state of affairs when you have to go running from the US to protect your freedom of speech, you would believe that in itself would make a lot of people think. I know that sounds easier said than done, however fixing the problem would be far easier than finding offshore solutions. Ask what's wrong with your own government if you cannot conduct a perfectly legal business without encountering privacy problems, then fix those problems, this is what democracy is all about (when it works properly).
But that's beside the point. What if you don't live in a "halfway decent" country? What if you live in China, or another country with a reputation of human rights violations for dissenters?
You appeal to a country that has a respect for human right rights and freedoms, the Chinese dissidents could simply look to the US for a server, they already do.
What if you are an oppressed group of Kurdish rebels who want to use groupware like Lotus Notes and Quickplace to collaborate about planning the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
The US already offers support for Iraqi dissident groups.
I still maintain, if HeavenCo was found harbouring records for illicit businesses then HeavenCo themselves could be held liable for being an accessory to those illicit operations, and yes the proprietors could get dragged into this situation, regardless of your offshore status. As the article states, your corporate immunity doesn't account for much in serious situations like that.
What really disgusts me the most about your post is your ignorant assertion that encryption and privacy is for criminals..
Not the case, I merely stated relevant agencies would be interested in the type of data travelling over those links, and despite attempts to encrypt the data they would find a way to read it, the same way they could decrypt my PGP enciphered emails if the really wanted.
It is logical to assert that certain agencies would be particularly interested in the operations of these services.
Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.
Just because somebody came along and said "I declare this independent" is not enough, try doing that in the middle of WestMinster, you wont be acknowledged by many people.
Of course, this is all arbitrary anyway, they could just pressure the ISP to stop providing the land microwave/satellite/radio/fibre link.
If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.
At the moment, nobody appears to be bothered to Sealand, however I'm sure many governments are looking into how do deal with this 'problem' behind the scenes, at a recent G8 summit last year there was an item on the agenda on how to tackle international 'data heavens'.
I'm sure the NSA guys at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire (England) are very interested in HeavenCo's com links, what's the point of having a data heaven if all the information is being also feed straight into an intelligence agency? Fair enough they're using an encrypted link, however I wouldn't like to pit a puny 256K link against the powers that be, whatever strength of crypto being used.
The agencies would actually be pleased about this because they know the data going over the line has a good chance of being illicit, however say the same data was travelling over a standard US-UK backbone, it would basically be undetectable on the public net because of the sheer amount of traffic.
Infact just by using the HeavenCo service you're slapping a massive "look at me" label on your back... and as the crypto article pointed out yesterday, criminals just want to blend into the crowd, having your data pass through to an offshore server really makes you stand out from the either.
I wonder how HeavenCo processes its money? If money is basically being laundered into your account from some dodgy business outfit, that also raises some eyebrows.
Well, good luck to them, but I really don't fancy their chances, stuff like this has been around for years, however none of them have managed to escape the grasp of government control. And with SeaLand just being a stones throw off the English coast, I really don't like their chances.
Yeah "Junkyard Wars" is good (it used to be called "Scrapheap Challenge", it was changed so the Yanks understand), quite a lot of stuff on channel 4 is decent, I think they're doing a Robot Wars in the US now too.
Oh but they have, they want you to watch "BBC Parliament"
I like Channel4 too, they're really revitalised themselves over the last two years into a innovative channel, it's mainly because they work with hundreds of little independent production houses rather than going wholesale with two or three (even though the latter would make more commercial sense).
However, even though channel 4 is supported by advertising, I feel it couldn't exist in its current form is it went purely commercial rather than state owned. A pure commercial outfit would go for the highest bang-for-the-buck and drop anything apart from high rating programmes, then it would sell the crap out itself with those ratings... whoring out the content for as much cash as possible, whilst pushing for the lowest expenditure as possible on producing the content. Another decent channel down the toilet.
It's nice to see that Channel4 makes cash and is self-supporting, it's also nice to see a channel that doesn't exist purely to make cash.
No... it's worth watching, people wouldn't be willing to pay their TV license if it was junk. I'd rather pay ~ £130 a year for some decent commercial free content than sit through endless hours of mind numbing TV that exists for no other purpose but to drive up ratings for insidious TV commercials. The problem is, when every channel becomes like the aforementioned, the standards descend lower and lower, you just end up with programmes that appeal to the lowest common denominator.
A service that exists purely to supply information is also held in a higher regard with more focus on journalistic integrity than a service that exists purely to sell commercials, it's easy to see how a particular bias may creep into your content if you consider reporting some something that is contrary to your sponsors' interests.
ITV and Channel 5 have to keep their operations to an acceptable quality otherwise the BBC will walk all over them when it comes to ratings, even though the BBC doesn't even operate primarily on ratings, but quality. The BBC has its faults, even if you don't watch, its purpose is still felt because it keeps all the other channels in check.
Also, look at the number of times Slashdot has pointed to News Online articles, by this very virtue it must have some value, regardless of whatever you purport.
BTW. you can actually get hundreds of channels through digital satellite, cable and terrestrial channels... most of it being junk or niche content obviously.
Actually, I think it has more to do with creating a pure optical based laser so fibre doesn't have to be terminated back into electronics at routers (this slows everything down precipitously).
This is very much "pure research" though, so it could be applied or adapted to anything, including CPU's.