is it just me, or couldn't this type of thing be done using current devices with an update to the unit'ss firmware
In GSM phones it's already being done in the tiny, tiny chipcard. But that encryption is only between handset and basestation (the main ISDN/POTS network is not encrypted), it's not particularly good (can be decrypted and tapped with a 100K machine - if not (much) cheaper), and of course the telco has the key (so, so does your government, among others).
This is end-to-end using Diffie-Hellman for key-exchange (you read up a checksum to make sure there is no man in the middle -- kind of biometrics!) and AES+twofish for encryption (AES and twofish were chosen/designed for being efficient in hardware). It wouldn't take much to make this into some sort of standard for encrypting voice-over-IP/digitalwhatever, but handset makers would have to feel inclined to implement it and to refrain from backdooring it.
I am a little concerned, though, that this kind of technology might fall into the wrong hands. For instance, have the manufacturers considered the applications for which terrorists might use these? I hardly think that the NAH6 would like to see their products used to slaughter innocent Americans, or even Amsterdaminians. Encryption is certainly a worthwhile tool, but I think it's far more likely to be exploited by the wicked than the virtuous, as it's the bad guys who've got something to hind.
Real criminals have had access to, say, laptops connected to gsm phones that run speakfreely or simply any voip product over-ssh/ipsec/pptp/whatever for years..
Most importantly though, this cryptophone does nothing to conceal traffic data; i.e. "who's calling who". This information is not much use in corporate espionage, but worth its weight in gold in criminal investigations (and much easier to sort through than voice calls).
Perhaps you missed the bit about building the world's 38th most powerful computer (based on June '03 figures) in 17 hours? Damn impressive by any counts.
Well, since June '03 approximately 3600 hours have passed; 211 times 17 hours - who knows what the competition is up to;-)
We haven't built a robot to play tennis either, tennis is simply a different problem with a much much larger data set, just like go.
A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent. Well, maybe with a hole in there for serving.
A chess game with a 19x19 board would send a computer into shock too.
Less so than Go, since with Go the number of possible moves at each junction in time is larger than in chess - Go on a chess-sized board still features a larger search space than chess. Just like 110 in binary is less than 110 in decimal.
Yes, because companies never have websites with their details on. Companies never operate/trade etc in public view, allowing opinions of them to be formed and perhaps shared/disseminated by mass media or even individuals on their 'blogs.
Yet, companies seem kind of reluctant to openly post "we support government X that randomly kills thousands at a whim" kind of information on their website, while personal websites might contain such shamefully incriminating nuggets as "I like Dilbert" or "I'm a X denomination Y believer".
Did you know that in some countries, employers can't ask applicants to supply a picture with their resume? That's to prevent employees from only inviting white folks to interviews. Any idea where that came from? Because it happened.
And yes, every slashdot post is potential incriminating material.. "He once said Foo about company Bar, and they're a client of ours".. "He made a Pointy Haired Boss joke!".. Etc. etc.
So yes, I have a bland website. Just as bland as any corporation's website.
And they are effectively removing the aspect of XBox that made it cost effective and appealing to developers: easy porting to the PC through common components and CPU architecture.
I very much doubt the ActiveX APIs on the next XBox will differ much from the ActiveX found on ordinary PC hardware. Most of the rest, the compiler takes care of. How difficult is it to port most apps from linux-ppc to linux-i386, or even from linux-ppc to freebsd-i386? The XBox already runs on not-quite-standard hardware and not-quite-windows-2k/xp..
Let me explain.. You see, MacOS X "Panther" is actually MacOS 10.3. But they use the X so you can see it's with windows, but X windows skipped version numbers all the way to X11 (0.7 more) some years back to show people that it was like windows 3.11, but now Apple has gone back to 10, because 10 in Roman numerals is X, which is why the successor to windows 2000 is windows XP to show it's just as good (they used the full 2000 to show it's Y2K compliant in windows 2000, but now they can use double digits, because no one will think windows was made in 1910), but they added the P, which stands for Panther because it's not as slow as X11 on MacOS X.
The potential for near-limitless energy is especially appealing, though fossil fules would sitll be used in most of our transportation systems for some time to come (no one I know has a mass-market purely-electrical car with over a 150 mile range or better speed than 60 MPH, please send in any info on e-cars that are better).
Maybe not purely electrical (well, in a sense it is), but cars powered by internal combustion engines running on hydrogen are pretty feasible. Iceland is running busses on hydrogen in stead of diesel oil, and preparing to switch over to hydrogen over gasoline altogether.
> Punch Cards: No more worrying if that last CD backup you did of your system is > really readable.
If someone produced this method of backup it would be funny twice. Once as soon as it was released, and secondly in 100 years time when it's the only computer output from 2003 which is still readable (Actually, the joke might still be funny in a few thousand years time).
Use compression formats that are easy to fix if a few bits go bad (e.g. no spanning ZIP archives which are useless if the last disk goes missing).
Such as? I've been using spanning RAR archives for collections of files that require something like 20 CDs to fill, and all the files are a little under 200MiB, so if I were to archive them all so no file spans a CD It'd probably take (guessing here) maybe 25-30 CDs instead. So what would your recommendation be?
Actually RAR is quite good in that it can retrieve the files contained in a single.Rxx file without needing any of the others.
OTOH, I've had slightly better luck fixing broken ARJ files that RAR files (let alone ZIP files).
Probably RAR+PAR is the best way to go (though finding RAR implementations/ports (e.g. 7-zip) for future platforms might be tricky since it's not the most popular format.. PAR, the same of course, but it's not strictly necessary, rather a back up measure).
tar+gzip files don't have RAR's nice properties w.r.t. one part being readable if you lose the others, but it's a nice standardized and already quite ancient format - adding PAR files (or another form of integrity checking and redundancy) is a much higher priority than with RARs though.
The exact RAR:PAR or TAR:PAR ratio is a gamble anyway.
I think "loseable" would be a better one.. I can't even find the remote control for my TV most of the time (and I have 3 RCs); it would be a BAD idea to have all sorts of controls that do different things and contain state information.. Can you imagine losing the volume knob?
Don't buy from stores that have humid, warm warehouses.
How are you supposed to know the conditions for the warehouse for a given store? I doubt even the employees of the store would know the answer to this.
Well, you could shop in a friendly mom-n-pop store where they do know this. And avoid MegaCorps where they have no storage, so the media is just in a big stack in the store itself (they turn on the heat/airco in the morning, off at night, nice temperature fluctuations)..
Or buy your stuff where you know they shift a lot of it (it's obviously not old stock), so it couldn't have been in (bad)storage for that long. It helps if the packaging is opaque (no UV) and sealed airtight.
All media degrades. The trick is to use redundant data, and re-copy it before the media is expected to fail.
And don't forget to store archival media in an archive. That's right; cool (doesn't have to be freezing, but a consistent not-warm temperature), dark, low humidity. Non-damp basements spring to mind (as long as you don't have heating equipment in there).
You might consider sealing off CD-R media in an airtight container, such as a (zip-lock) plastic baggy of suitable quality. If it's an opaque one that locks out light as well, all the better.
If you're in the archive (basement) and need light, take care not to hit your archive media with direct light, and take care that UV light is kept to a minimum (i.e. fluorescent lighting is usually better than incandescent lighting).
It also helps to use standard 650MB CD-R media with the ISO 9660 filesystem, in stead of the latest and greatest 818 MB overburned FooFS combination.
Don't burn at 52 speed. Use media that is specced for the lowest speed you can find, and burn it at that speed or lower. You need to drink coffee anyway.
Consider tape backups. Consider a regular archiving/back-up cycle, so that if a piece of media is a dud, you'll have a duplicate from the week before or after.
Store media before use under the same conditions as you would the written archival piece. Don't buy from stores that have humid, warm warehouses.
Index and catalogue your archive. Not only will it make it easier to find things, it will also help to find or sort out duplicates - handy if you switch to a different media and re-archive your old CD-Rs on DVD for example. Archive the index as well.
Use integrity checks, such as checksums. Use compression formats that are easy to fix if a few bits go bad (e.g. no spanning ZIP archives which are useless if the last disk goes missing).
Mix lots of media, unless you're sure that what you've got is a high quality. That way, if wednesday's backup is a dud because of crappy media, the backup from tuesday might at least be better.
Once in a time, randomly check media to see that it's still readable.
Another poster asked about CD-R based RAID; you can just use PAR files (of USENET fame).
Bel1649.nl - you can check out competitors at bellen.com (though they take commissions and may lag in their pricelistings) The nifty thing about bel1649 is that you'll get a computerized voice telling you how much the call costs before you're put through, so if they change the costs, you'll now immediately. Teledump, telediscount and telestunt operate 09xx numbers which are amazingly cheap so you don't even have to subscribe to a C(P)S operator, but the quality of those is not the best in the world - also handy to use on your mobile (1649 also operates a 020 number to call from your mobile). There are of course myriad others.
Practically speaking, just how vulnerable is WEP? If my friend has a good non-dictionary password and uses "256 bit" encryption, is he reasonably safe from casual hijacking?
He's save for about 6 million packets worth of traffic - a few hours. After that any kid with a laptop, a wireless card, and wepcrack 0wnz0rs his 455.
In this case, nobody likes banner ads, and everyone selfishly wants to block them.
I know people who love them. Some even like pop up ads. Except the gator ones. Something about being spooked that a password saving app is contacting the intarweb all the time.
Of course, these are exactly the sort of people who should be signed up to the DNC list (everybody say "hi, mom"..)
If you use blockers to remove banners from content it is costing someone else money to produce and deliver to you, it is not the advertising that is a parasite. You are the parasite.
Have you even given any thought to the other sources of entertainment your website has displaced? People are surfing the web more, and watching less TV! Buying less magazines! Reading less books! Not standing around outside killing time listening to some guy with a violin and chucking coins into his hat! You sir, are a thief!
Next time you don't read an ad in the paper, or walk by a starbuck's and don't buy something "because you don't like coffee", I hope you turn into a pillar of salt!
Now I'm off to look at the banners on 20 websites, click on each and every banner, and buy the product, because I absolutely MUST.
This is, from my understanding of it, how much of the dot-com bubble worked.
And as a result, there is not a single internet company on the face of the earth. No one uses the internet, right?
Warchests only work in the short term. Eventually companies will start making profits, if only because the lossy ones will have died. Did you know Yahoo! is posting profits these days?
2.9 cents per minute? Feh! I can call any regular phone number in the US for 1 cent per minute..
The kicker? That's one EUROcent.. And I'm calling from The Netherlands. Using our equivalent of a 1010 LD operator (a 4.5ct fee per call put through, no monthly fees except what I already pay my ILEC).
Yes, prices can go down. If international calls can be terminated for less than 0.01 USD per minute, so can domestic ones.
Isn't this like the manufacturers of cars that don't have seatbelts putting a bounty on the heads of drunk drivers who crash into their unsafe cars, say, killing families of four in the process?
Yeah, it's all the DUI guy's fault, no product-liability here! In fact, we're really swell guys, closing the barn door after the horse got out and all..
It's a great PR move for people who don't have a sense of irony, which fortunately includes the majority of Americans, and Alanis Morissette.
Oh boy, this is really bad. I remember when they put that region encoding on DVDs, and boy, you sure can't find any region-free DVD players on the market, no sirree.. And it's not like big name brands make DVD players with "unintentional" "secret" "maintenance" backdoors that can switch off the region code restrictions by entering some code that was "accidentally" "leaked" to the internet. That never happens! If it did, why, perhaps people would start buying the models that did have those "accidental" backdoors, in preference to the models that don't..
The natural, cheap-shot 'have you stopped beating your wife yet' question for Szulik was: 'You're saying all these people who go down to the store looking for an alternative should buy Windows?' So we asked it, largely for the personal entertainment value of watching him desperately swimming for the shore. We certainly didn't intend to use it to construct an entirely unfair hit-magnet Linux-screamer story. Some people, however, are not so particular. Plus they steal other people's questions - watch it, kid.
Slashdot Mirror
is it just me, or couldn't this type of thing be done using current devices with an update to the unit'ss firmware
In GSM phones it's already being done in the tiny, tiny chipcard. But that encryption is only between handset and basestation (the main ISDN/POTS network is not encrypted), it's not particularly good (can be decrypted and tapped with a 100K machine - if not (much) cheaper), and of course the telco has the key (so, so does your government, among others).
This is end-to-end using Diffie-Hellman for key-exchange (you read up a checksum to make sure there is no man in the middle -- kind of biometrics!) and AES+twofish for encryption (AES and twofish were chosen/designed for being efficient in hardware). It wouldn't take much to make this into some sort of standard for encrypting voice-over-IP/digitalwhatever, but handset makers would have to feel inclined to implement it and to refrain from backdooring it.
I am a little concerned, though, that this kind of technology might fall into the wrong hands. For instance, have the manufacturers considered the applications for which terrorists might use these? I hardly think that the NAH6 would like to see their products used to slaughter innocent Americans, or even Amsterdaminians. Encryption is certainly a worthwhile tool, but I think it's far more likely to be exploited by the wicked than the virtuous, as it's the bad guys who've got something to hind.
Real criminals have had access to, say, laptops connected to gsm phones that run speakfreely or simply any voip product over-ssh/ipsec/pptp/whatever for years..
Most importantly though, this cryptophone does nothing to conceal traffic data; i.e. "who's calling who". This information is not much use in corporate espionage, but worth its weight in gold in criminal investigations (and much easier to sort through than voice calls).
Where is the invention and innovation?
;-)
Perhaps you missed the bit about building the world's 38th most powerful computer (based on June '03 figures) in 17 hours? Damn impressive by any counts.
Well, since June '03 approximately 3600 hours have passed; 211 times 17 hours - who knows what the competition is up to
Windows gives you IE and... Notepad. Way to go, GNU/Linux!
Sorry, but this is blatant FUD. Every version of windows to date, with the notable exception of the OS on the X-Box, has included Solitaire. So there.
We haven't built a robot to play tennis either, tennis is simply a different problem with a much much larger data set, just like go.
A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent. Well, maybe with a hole in there for serving.
A chess game with a 19x19 board would send a computer into shock too.
Less so than Go, since with Go the number of possible moves at each junction in time is larger than in chess - Go on a chess-sized board still features a larger search space than chess. Just like 110 in binary is less than 110 in decimal.
Yes, because companies never have websites with their details on. Companies never operate/trade etc in public view, allowing opinions of them to be formed and perhaps shared/disseminated by mass media or even individuals on their 'blogs.
Yet, companies seem kind of reluctant to openly post "we support government X that randomly kills thousands at a whim" kind of information on their website, while personal websites might contain such shamefully incriminating nuggets as "I like Dilbert" or "I'm a X denomination Y believer".
Did you know that in some countries, employers can't ask applicants to supply a picture with their resume? That's to prevent employees from only inviting white folks to interviews. Any idea where that came from? Because it happened.
And yes, every slashdot post is potential incriminating material.. "He once said Foo about company Bar, and they're a client of ours".. "He made a Pointy Haired Boss joke!".. Etc. etc.
So yes, I have a bland website. Just as bland as any corporation's website.
Duece: Batteries are a chemical conversion of electricity to a chemical reaction and back. Every conversion takes energy.
"Lisa! In this house we obey the second
law of thermodynamics!"
-Homer (after Lisa builds a perpetual-motion machine)
small correction... you mean DirectX and not ActiveX...
My bad. Damn Xes cropping up all over the place.
And they are effectively removing the aspect of XBox that made it cost effective and appealing to developers: easy porting to the PC through common components and CPU architecture.
I very much doubt the ActiveX APIs on the next XBox will differ much from the ActiveX found on ordinary PC hardware. Most of the rest, the compiler takes care of. How difficult is it to port most apps from linux-ppc to linux-i386, or even from linux-ppc to freebsd-i386?
The XBox already runs on not-quite-standard hardware and not-quite-windows-2k/xp..
Let me explain.. You see, MacOS X "Panther" is actually MacOS 10.3. But they use the X so you can see it's with windows, but X windows skipped version numbers all the way to X11 (0.7 more) some years back to show people that it was like windows 3.11, but now Apple has gone back to 10, because 10 in Roman numerals is X, which is why the successor to windows 2000 is windows XP to show it's just as good (they used the full 2000 to show it's Y2K compliant in windows 2000, but now they can use double digits, because no one will think windows was made in 1910), but they added the P, which stands for Panther because it's not as slow as X11 on MacOS X.
The potential for near-limitless energy is especially appealing, though fossil fules would sitll be used in most of our transportation systems for some time to come (no one I know has a mass-market purely-electrical car with over a 150 mile range or better speed than 60 MPH, please send in any info on e-cars that are better).
Maybe not purely electrical (well, in a sense it is), but cars powered by internal combustion engines running on hydrogen are pretty feasible. Iceland is running busses on hydrogen in stead of diesel oil, and preparing to switch over to hydrogen over gasoline altogether.
Ford is doing some things.
> Punch Cards: No more worrying if that last CD backup you did of your system is
;-)
> really readable.
If someone produced this method of backup it would be funny twice. Once as soon as it was released, and secondly in 100 years time when it's the only computer output from 2003 which is still readable (Actually, the joke might still be funny in a few thousand years time).
What about the hanging chads?
Use compression formats that are easy to fix if a few bits go bad (e.g. no spanning ZIP archives which are useless if the last disk goes missing).
.Rxx file without needing any of the others.
Such as? I've been using spanning RAR archives for collections of files that require something like 20 CDs to fill, and all the files are a little under 200MiB, so if I were to archive them all so no file spans a CD It'd probably take (guessing here) maybe 25-30 CDs instead. So what would your recommendation be?
Actually RAR is quite good in that it can retrieve the files contained in a single
OTOH, I've had slightly better luck fixing broken ARJ files that RAR files (let alone ZIP files).
Probably RAR+PAR is the best way to go (though finding RAR implementations/ports (e.g. 7-zip) for future platforms might be tricky since it's not the most popular format.. PAR, the same of course, but it's not strictly necessary, rather a back up measure).
tar+gzip files don't have RAR's nice properties w.r.t. one part being readable if you lose the others, but it's a nice standardized and already quite ancient format - adding PAR files (or another form of integrity checking and redundancy) is a much higher priority than with RARs though.
The exact RAR:PAR or TAR:PAR ratio is a gamble anyway.
I think "loseable" would be a better one.. I can't even find the remote control for my TV most of the time (and I have 3 RCs); it would be a BAD idea to have all sorts of controls that do different things and contain state information.. Can you imagine losing the volume knob?
Don't buy from stores that have humid, warm warehouses.
How are you supposed to know the conditions for the warehouse for a given store? I doubt even the employees of the store would know the answer to this.
Well, you could shop in a friendly mom-n-pop store where they do know this. And avoid MegaCorps where they have no storage, so the media is just in a big stack in the store itself (they turn on the heat/airco in the morning, off at night, nice temperature fluctuations)..
Or buy your stuff where you know they shift a lot of it (it's obviously not old stock), so it couldn't have been in (bad)storage for that long.
It helps if the packaging is opaque (no UV) and sealed airtight.
What is an acceptable digital archival media?
All media degrades. The trick is to use redundant data, and re-copy it before the media is expected to fail.
And don't forget to store archival media in an archive. That's right; cool (doesn't have to be freezing, but a consistent not-warm temperature), dark, low humidity.
Non-damp basements spring to mind (as long as you don't have heating equipment in there).
You might consider sealing off CD-R media in an airtight container, such as a (zip-lock) plastic baggy of suitable quality. If it's an opaque one that locks out light as well, all the better.
If you're in the archive (basement) and need light, take care not to hit your archive media with direct light, and take care that UV light is kept to a minimum (i.e. fluorescent lighting is usually better than incandescent lighting).
It also helps to use standard 650MB CD-R media with the ISO 9660 filesystem, in stead of the latest and greatest 818 MB overburned FooFS combination.
Don't burn at 52 speed. Use media that is specced for the lowest speed you can find, and burn it at that speed or lower. You need to drink coffee anyway.
Consider tape backups. Consider a regular archiving/back-up cycle, so that if a piece of media is a dud, you'll have a duplicate from the week before or after.
Store media before use under the same conditions as you would the written archival piece. Don't buy from stores that have humid, warm warehouses.
Index and catalogue your archive. Not only will it make it easier to find things, it will also help to find or sort out duplicates - handy if you switch to a different media and re-archive your old CD-Rs on DVD for example. Archive the index as well.
Use integrity checks, such as checksums. Use compression formats that are easy to fix if a few bits go bad (e.g. no spanning ZIP archives which are useless if the last disk goes missing).
Mix lots of media, unless you're sure that what you've got is a high quality. That way, if wednesday's backup is a dud because of crappy media, the backup from tuesday might at least be better.
Once in a time, randomly check media to see that it's still readable.
Another poster asked about CD-R based RAID; you can just use PAR files (of USENET fame).
Bel1649.nl - you can check out competitors at bellen.com (though they take commissions and may lag in their pricelistings) The nifty thing about bel1649 is that you'll get a computerized voice telling you how much the call costs before you're put through, so if they change the costs, you'll now immediately. Teledump, telediscount and telestunt operate 09xx numbers which are amazingly cheap so you don't even have to subscribe to a C(P)S operator, but the quality of those is not the best in the world - also handy to use on your mobile (1649 also operates a 020 number to call from your mobile). There are of course myriad others.
Practically speaking, just how vulnerable is WEP? If my friend has a good non-dictionary password and uses "256 bit" encryption, is he reasonably safe from casual hijacking?
He's save for about 6 million packets worth of traffic - a few hours. After that any kid with a laptop, a wireless card, and wepcrack 0wnz0rs his 455.
paper here
In this case, nobody likes banner ads, and everyone selfishly wants to block them.
I know people who love them. Some even like pop up ads. Except the gator ones. Something about being spooked that a password saving app is contacting the intarweb all the time.
Of course, these are exactly the sort of people who should be signed up to the DNC list (everybody say "hi, mom"..)
If you use blockers to remove banners from content it is costing someone else money to produce and deliver to you, it is not the advertising that is a parasite. You are the parasite.
Have you even given any thought to the other sources of entertainment your website has displaced? People are surfing the web more, and watching less TV! Buying less magazines! Reading less books! Not standing around outside killing time listening to some guy with a violin and chucking coins into his hat! You sir, are a thief!
Next time you don't read an ad in the paper, or walk by a starbuck's and don't buy something "because you don't like coffee", I hope you turn into a pillar of salt!
Now I'm off to look at the banners on 20 websites, click on each and every banner, and buy the product, because I absolutely MUST.
This is, from my understanding of it, how much of the dot-com bubble worked.
And as a result, there is not a single internet company on the face of the earth. No one uses the internet, right?
Warchests only work in the short term. Eventually companies will start making profits, if only because the lossy ones will have died. Did you know Yahoo! is posting profits these days?
2.9 cents per minute? Feh! I can call any regular phone number in the US for 1 cent per minute..
The kicker? That's one EUROcent.. And I'm calling from The Netherlands. Using our equivalent of a 1010 LD operator (a 4.5ct fee per call put through, no monthly fees except what I already pay my ILEC).
Yes, prices can go down. If international calls can be terminated for less than 0.01 USD per minute, so can domestic ones.
Isn't this like the manufacturers of cars that don't have seatbelts putting a bounty on the heads of drunk drivers who crash into their unsafe cars, say, killing families of four in the process?
Yeah, it's all the DUI guy's fault, no product-liability here! In fact, we're really swell guys, closing the barn door after the horse got out and all..
It's a great PR move for people who don't have a sense of irony, which fortunately includes the majority of Americans, and Alanis Morissette.
Oh boy, this is really bad. I remember when they put that region encoding on DVDs, and boy, you sure can't find any region-free DVD players on the market, no sirree.. And it's not like big name brands make DVD players with "unintentional" "secret" "maintenance" backdoors that can switch off the region code restrictions by entering some code that was "accidentally" "leaked" to the internet. That never happens! If it did, why, perhaps people would start buying the models that did have those "accidental" backdoors, in preference to the models that don't..
Over at The Register..
The natural, cheap-shot 'have you stopped beating your wife yet' question for Szulik was: 'You're saying all these people who go down to the store looking for an alternative should buy Windows?' So we asked it, largely for the personal entertainment value of watching him desperately swimming for the shore. We certainly didn't intend to use it to construct an entirely unfair hit-magnet Linux-screamer story. Some people, however, are not so particular. Plus they steal other people's questions - watch it, kid.