What do they expect hundreds of lawsuits will do? Stop file sharing? Last time I checked 40% of internet users use file sharing in some form, and there are millions of people sharing illegal, copyrighted files.
This is bigger than they are, and they need to realize that. Maybe when the whole thing started with FTP (even before Napster), they could have put a significant dent in file swapping, but now it's too late. There is already a kind of critical mass that will surpass even the largest file swappers -- IF they are brought down. The system will quickly replace them, and worse yet (for the RIAA), more may even be encouraged by the significant news media this is sure to attract.
Anyone besides me notice a correlation between file sharing, P2P networks, and the metallica lawsuits? It took off. I personally know people who would never had touched a computer that are now online primarily because of the free music and file sharing.
Attempting to bring down the large few isn't going to do anything but perhaps scare a very few small fish off (primarily the consumers). The people who have multi hard disk RAIDS are most probably technically inclined and won't scare easily or find ways to anonomously distribute their files.
Even so, how can the RIAA blame their users? A lot of the pirated music today is full of lyrics about stealing and "playin'", that is, the same product they are trying to sell and the message they are sending is the same one they're fighting. I'm not saying all or even most music is like that, even for the RIAA's holders, I'm just saying teenage eminem fans aren't going to be scared off -- they'll do it anyway.
In a way, the golden age of profiting crazily from record labeling is at an end. What lies ahead is most probably better music, better distribution, and much better artists. Once again in the history of music -- talent and skill are going to be a deciding factor, not "product creation" by multi-billion dollar grossing labels selling over priced junk.
I bet this guy thought he was just the A-example All American Badass. I pulled up to someone like him the other day. Driving a newer trans am, 9 MPG beast, at that. I pull up in my low emission newer Honda, and this guy looks at me, my car, and revs his engine. Yeah I'm a scrawny white boy driving an efficient economy car, so kill me!
I laugh and look the other direction, not giving the fool the time of day. What does he do? Drops clutch and burns out in a very busy suburban intersection. A cop from three lanes down actually pulled out of traffic and drove down the shoulder to nab that bastard. As the light changes to green (it was in the middle of changing when the guy floored it, already red at the other intersections), I proceed and give the guy a nice "bird's eye view" as he is parked on the side of the road, a very disgruntled and very plump officer approaching him.
These types of people, I am realizing, are the same people who used to pick fights on the payground; they have an overwhelming sense of insecurity and are at and endless quest of balance via any other means. He's just another bully, only now he's picking fights on the road.
Don't get me wrong, I love fast machines, I am the proud owner of a Toyota Supra TT. But there is still no excuse for safe driving. It doesn't proove anything to do 110 mph in a 30 mph zone other than you're an idiot and are going to kill people -- eventually -- which is what happened in this case.
Unfortunatly it doesn't seem like this was the guy's first time, and he deserves to be jailed. Those girls probably didn't know what hit them when this 3000 pound monster came hurling down the road at them.
Hmm, thought you couldn't upgrade 95->XP. Anyway, Granny was a light if not totally clueless user, so it's all the same to her anyway (Windows? What's that?). SuSe 8 is actually a little easier for her to use, looks nice with KDE 3, software installation is very easy with YAST and lots of programs are already installed AND organized. It's also easy for me too: no more stupid relatives coming over and deleting files, changing things, etc: I have the root password!
And yes: I did buy SuSe 8.1 Personal Edition, and before that 7.1 Professional ($80 + $39). I don't mind spending my hard earned money on something that's worth it and priced resonably. I'll probably be buying the next version too if it's worth it -- which is what all people should do. Don't buy overpriced software, but don't buy software just to be loyal either; buy it because it works and is good software!
Thinking (and wanting) the best -- Plextor, of course, I purchased a Plextor PlexWriter 16x12x40 drive, and it has been nothing but problems. The first month I had a CD jammed up inside it. I called Plextor and they said I would have to ship it to them and wait at least 6 weeks. Shipped the unit to them 3-day and got it back almost exactly 6 weeks later, and the very first (not joking here) CD I put in it jammed up again.
Well now I was pissed, so I opened up the drive myself to see what I could do and found the problem was a bent piece of plastic from the drive tray assembly. Fixed it -- apparently all they had done was remove the jammed CD and verify the drive could open and close, not caring if the problem occured when a CD was inserted.
Currenly the drive refuses to burn anything but very high quality media at around 8x speed, sometimes 10 but that's risking it. Also the drive tray jams up when ejecting requiring you to push it in.
Thankfully I bought Yamaha's latest drive and it has worked great. The image capability is nice for buring a circular artist - album to the very end of the CD. Has worked great and they will be missed, whereas I will never buy Plextor again.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it disgusting that something as complex and intricate as the space shuttle doesn't/didn't have very advanced monitoring systems to at least know there was significant damage to a major portion of the craft? It really gives me the impression that they have been flying this thing blind on only rudimentary data from an array of sensors.
Something that is traveling at such a high speed, with all the dangers and slightly problems that could arise, should have every square inch of every possible system under some type of either visual or as good as visual, or better, type of monitoring with all sorts of triple rudundancy.
True, the argument can be made that they wouldn't be able to do much if something did get damaged while in space, but still you would know ahead of time and that information is power -- power that could have saved these people's lives or given them that.01% more chance of survival, which is worth it IMO.
I realize that the Shuttle electronics were 1970's era, and perhaps that kind of extensive monitoring wasn't available, but if they do decide to rebuild a shuttle based upon today's standards it would be well within the technical capacity to include an advanced monitoring system.
Also I resent the fact that the first article mentions a lot of software based upon today's technology is unreliable. ANY software is unreliable if not developed with proper design methods and tested with a proper testing methodology. This is science and math here, not some black magic or wine aging. The complexity or speed of a system is not relevant if the code and design of said system is developed under recognized and strict methods. I imagine the same design methodology for life support systems would be a good start -- and you don't see many advanced heart monitors running on ancient hardware.
It's also false about the quote in the article where you can't get more data out of the sensors. Of course you can get more data, use more precise sensors and more of them! Use 10x redundancy...this is people's lives we are talking about here. The real problem, and what the quote should have been, is their older hardware can't handle the extra precision and additional sensors.
It's amazing the lies these people will tell due to misinformation, trying to hide fault, ignornace, or some awful combination of all three. If it is determined that the wing structure was damaged and NASA did not know this quite significant information, I think NASA should at least recognize they were flying with inferior capability and an accident was bound to happen.
I mean, it's like driving your car on a flat tire and complaining when you get into a wreck...something so obvious should have been accounted for and known prior to attempting dangerous re-entry.
My Grandmother used to have AOL and when I installed SuSe 8 with her new cable modem connection, (didn't want to spend $299 on new Windows, and needed something better than 95) it was hell calling up AOL to cancel. She had been a loyal, light user for several years -- any ISP would love to have her, AOL not withstanding. It took at least three calls and several "free 3 month" offers to finally get them to cancel.
These people had her so confused she was even doubting me. They basically said she wouldn't be able to save her AOL contacts, or access the same web sites, on her new service without subscribing to the alternative access plan (bring your own access), to use AOL-only services over her cable connection.
Finally after the 3rd call it was done, not without another fight with another rep. They must get paid based upon how many members they can keep from disconnecting. I remember when I had AOL a long time ago when it was the only ISP with a local number, you could cancel as simply as going to keyword: cancel. Now that seems to have changed, and it speaks in their member retention rates as they fight tooth and nail to hold on to the last of their shrinking subscriber base.
Actually I don't think that is the case anymore. I remember when something similar was the case, and it messed up a lot of security conscience shopping carts, but other than that, I'm not sure how AOL's proxy system works, but my applications do not appear to break or otherwise malfunction when being accessed via a standard AOL dial-up account.
Don't these backbone providers have NOS that monitor for this type of activity? Don't know if it's just because of the job cuts, but my line from UUNET still isn't up (constant activity; can't get a ping out), so I'm stuck with cable that has major upstream from AT&T, whom as I understand it had automatically detected a dramatic increase in traffic on port 1434 and blocked the port.
Funny thing is when I try to ping my UUNET IP address, or at least traceroute to it, from my cable line I get a destination net unreachable -- wtf this thing is supposed to be more reliable than a cable modem!!
Most sites don't store their user password in a cookie, they store a session ID in a cookie that translates to a session ID in a database. Then sensitive information is keyed up with that ID, on the server. The client never recives any of it, unless they are modifying it but it is never put in a cookie or other stateful client storage device.
Upon each page load, the IP address of the original session is checked with the sent cookie ID, and if they don't match, most applications will throw out the session completly. This annoys some with DHCP who like to maintain long sessions, but works a lot of the time for simple ID attacks (since most session IDs are generated from random numbers), because you now need to know both the IP and session ID of the user you want to impersonate. Granted, this can be had with a packet sniffer (for non SSL connections), but so can a lot of personal things. Next they'll be telling us it's quite easy to get into cars: just break the window. That doesn't mean its a security flaw.
Anyway, this is how most [good] sites work. Only fools store sensitive user information in cookies, and I would never subscribe to their site (yes, I check what goes in my cookies).
Also the article/press release (PR for this security company?) seems to be getting client/sever scripting confused, and is generally full of ignorant errors. How can it be trusted with the other claims it makes?
Don't know if we already have this or not, but don't we first need a common voice protocol that is agreed upon and used by all? Kind of like something as ubiqious as TCP?
The last time I checked most of today's phones aren't even hardware compatible with most other carrier networks, and phone manufactures have resorted to having to put 3 different protocols in one phone (tri-mode, etc.). Talk about inefficient.
Wouldn't it be easier if all wireless communication just ran on one set protocol that worked over multiple frequencies? Nevermind the differences in modulation at 900 MHz, 2.4 and 5 GHz, I'm talking about a true high-level/low-level protocol here.
There is no way you're going to be able to stuff an 802.11b/a transceiver into an already high priced, low battery life phone.
If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it.
That seems like what they are trying to do, but this seems a little late in the game. People just didn't realize all the wireless capacity we have right now just floating around -- the only problem is you need x device that supports x protocols and sometimes you need to purchase directly from the wireless carrier. I guess until now, when we have dozens of different standards and NOW we want to connect them all together.
The sad thing about it is if such a device were to be created that could mitigate across all these different protocols and networks, it's going to be one huge complex mess and is going to cost a fortune, when it didn't have to be. Maybe government regulation and forced standards are sometimes a GOOD thing.
...let's try to diagnose exactly what kind of load problem is going on whenever a site is slashdotted. Network, physical, or software?
In the case of this site it looks like it's either heavily overloaded and is timing out opening an include file, has run out of file handles, or the mysql initialisation is failing maybe because there are too many connections opened/pending/generally gone insane to a database probably running on the same server.
Anyone else care to speculate, or know the real reason?
When the XBOX starts up, it loads the hash of the header into memory and decrypts a 2048 bit RSA signature and compares this to the header hash. If it matches, the program proceeds and it loads another section and does the same thing. There is no way to get around this either than knowing the private key or a hardware modification.
The RSA signature used to sign/for comparison purposes used with Xbox execuatables is 2048 bits long.
Common secure internet traffic, carrying thousands of credit card numbers as we speak, uses 128 bit keys (almost always).
It's virturally impossible with today's computational power and methods to break a 2048 bit key. Even if you somehow had all the processing power of all the current distributed systems, it would still take many thousands of years to break using classical methods. You either need several thousand years or an optical/DNA computer whose concept hasn't been refined yet.
In case some of your forget: it gets exponetionally harder as the length of the key increases. It's not like you just have to search a 128 bit key space 16 times. There are fancy methods where by you can get away with knowing some of the key like differential analysis, but when you increase the size of the key the performance of those tend to fall off also where you have no increase over brute force and man in the middle attacks.
So don't even think about joining that futile brute force effort, because it will just waste your time. What Lindows should have done is hire a hit man/career criminal to break into Microsoft or a 3rd party who has the key and steal it. Or optionally pay off an Xbox developer or employee who has similar access. Either way, it would be both cheaper and actually give the real key, unlike all of this nonsense.
I easily was able to find information on Camberley Crick. Here is the story she was squaking about, available via google's cache. She also wrote this little java-based word game. In fact, she seems to be a sort of expert on word games, as evidenced by this first and only post on USENET.
Note: some of these dynamic links won't work, if you really want to, go and find all about this woman's sad life if you want. However, what is funny to me is that now this woman still has all this personal information on the internet, and she also now has an article on the NYT web site about how she hates it (available to the world of course, WITH her name)! HAH!
Some people are just plain dumb I guess. It's like publishing a book and then complaining your privacy has been violated when people read it.
That review really enforces the stereotype that all overclockers are uneducated 34 year old A+ graduates with GED in hand who spend all of their pathetic life playing Quake and Half Life. Flame me or mod me down if you must, but I'm tired of reading 2nd rate reviews -- that's why I read Slashdot, not overclockerswhatever.com.
All through the several pages there are dozens of spelling, grammar, and simply sentences that just don't make sense. That's not to say that I don't mind that, but in this case the content was the same -- a bunch of screen shots with related commentary of someone who on a good day can setup a Linksys router with no issues. I especially like his "(router talk)" parentheses explanation as if to explain the mystic Mbit unit of measure to us simpletons.
Please, leave the detailed screen shots for the manual and the self-serving explanations to someone with can do more than double click on his Dell. We want to see why we should buy this thing in the first place and how it performs, not how to configure it.
As I skimmed over the first several pages looking for graphs I was instead greeted with some very scientific tests of ping time from within a multiplayer game. Then the guy goes on to download two random files from a random location on the Internet as a testament toward the performance of the router, using a web browser.
No technical or scientific consideration was found in this review, and I found it insulting to read. If you must review something, at least know a little about what you're reviewing, and especially how to test it. Don't waste your time reading that nonsense. In fact, I am surprised it was posted to slashdot considering the quality and the background of the reviewer.
This guy should go back to reviewing the newest shoot 'em up or writing up the procedures for overclocking his celeron, and stay away from stuff that is ever so slightly more complicated involving more sophisticated testing and technical reporting.
Normally, I don't get so upset at this sort of thing, but for some reason, idiocy like this has pissed me off today. No, the eardrum does NOT translate vibrations to sound, or any other such nonsense.What the eardrum (or timpanum) does is to act as the first step in hearing something.
Which is good, because you don't know much about how the ear works either. It works like this:
Sound waves travel through the air and into your ear. The pressure from the waves causes a flap of skin to vibrate back and forth due to the difference of pressure between one side and another of the flap. That flap is called your ear drum.
The vibrations cause the pressure inside the ear to change also, and cause the tiny bones in the ear to vibrate. Those bones transfer the vibrationss to the cochlea, a hollow tube-shaped spiral like thing with fluid inside.
On the inside of the cochlea, there are tiny hairs attached to nerve endings, kind of like the flagella of organisms, except when they move they generate an electrical charge that is picked up on the nerves. The cochlea has a tube that is at first large and goes down in size. As it does so, the resonant frequency also does and that's how we can perceive different frequencies. That's why a lot of times people compare the ear's function to that of a Fourier transform, because it is able to take a sound of many frequencies and break it down into each frequency and determine the relative amplitude of each one using the hairs and different sized tubes.
The nerves carry the electrical charges to the auditory center of the brain where they are processed in a very advanced way that even includes how your ear is shaped and depends on it to tune the directional mechanism. There was actually an experiment that changed the shape of the outer ear and as a result the brain had to relearn the new shape and during this process the subject couldn't tell where sounds were coming from. So there is a significant amount of critical engineering here and as you can imagine the human ear is a complex work of art and technically advanced.
Now what is interesting about this tooth speaker (what I call it) is that somehow they are using the skull to transfer the pressure waves (sounds) to the cochlea. There's nothing wrong with that -- actually you can even hear your own body's noises by covering your ears and those are transmitted largely by bone and tissue. You can even hear a very high frequency noise that your nervous system produces when neurons produce a certain response every 1.5 seconds.
My question is that the ear has evolved to be designed so well and so intricately and is a better design than any sound engineer could come up with. Obviously the quality and frequency range of sounds depends on its transfer medium -- for example you can hear many low frequency sounds through wood and all sorts of materials but high frequency doesn't travel well over tighly packed materials, such as solids. The last time I checked bone was pretty solid.
So how are they getting pased that fact, and will it sound like listening to a loud speaker pressed up against wood? I'll bet they have a frequency model of how sound is carried from the tooth to the skull and then to the inner ear, and dynamically adjust the frequencies to represent that model. I'd better hope so or it won't sound too good.
Still though, I can see where this could have applications for those who have had accidents and have problems with their ear drum, etc. Of course there is surgery but in the mean time you can stick one of these things in your mouth and be back to normal (or at least something like it). For the rest of us if the sound quality is good enough it could be the ultimate headphone, but that's really all I see it as being marketed as in the commercial, consumer world.
We have all seen how P2P networks function: usually it's a select few subsidizing the masses who are unwilling to share their resources. People are greedy. Non-geeks are even greedier. Most of the general public wouldn't understand how the idea of using many phones as a relay in a distributed fashion would provide them with their service as well.
Not to mention some technical problems -- look how reliable cellular service is now. Even in very well covered areas, call drops from all ranges of carriers and all types of phones are common enough to be annoying for most people. A Peer-to-Peer cell network would be even more unreliable than the current infrastructure, which would force the need to be verbose with things like repeating data to several relays at a time to minimize points of failure. It might work if you had several dozen relays all capable of working for you -- but that's not an efficient use of bandwidth.
It's helpful to remember that all the phones must share a single pipe which is the air in the frequency they operate in, so there is a finite amount of bandwidth available so it makes sense not to waste any. This is in contrast to p2p on the internet where each host has its own dedicated and usually unshared circuit and more bandwidth can be added by adding more wire.
What is to prevent people from turning their phones off to save the battery, and if that is impossible, taking the battery out completely? What if there are three phones active and only two relays available?
What about the situation where there is a low population density and thus even lower phone density? Is this a solution for urban areas only? Even in urban areas, demand is going to increase and put more stress per phone on the network.
Clearly p2p isn't going to work for cell phones for some time. What the wireless companies need to do is get together and establish a grand this-is-it standard that allows any phone to be used on any network. There are enough providers that the cost of infrastructure development could be spread evenly across the market. This idea is flawed both in the social aspect and technically. Plus in a day when people are increasingly carrying phones around for emergencies, would you want the kind of reliability as afforded by Kazaa, an already developed p2p application?
Isn't amazing how fast technology moves? Remember Jordy from Star Trek? He used that big visor thing to restore his vision, and this is what writers thought would be the technology in the 24th century. Here we are in 2002, and we have a solar powered eye chip that can be implanted into the eye to give people some of their sight back, with no discomfort.
Sure, it isn't perfect and it's only version.1 but as others have mentioned how long before this changes and version 4.0 is out with default 20/15 vision and zoom controls?
Just step back and realize what an accomplishment this is and how fast technology changes everyday. It's almost scary to think what life will be like when I turn 60.
Reminds me of something my Great Grandfather said: "I've seen the world come from stage coach to walking on the moon; nobody will ever lead that kind of life again."
Well if this is the case I would think the rate of progression will disprove this. It's amazing to think we will all outlive the advancements that occured during his lifetime, but we probably will.
This strikes me as a good idea for datacenters who wish to offer dedicated systems to their customers. Normally, this is kind of expensive with rackmounts costing at least $1200 for bottom of the line. However, imagine a lot of these little modules.
You could hook them all up to the network, and boot off of some network attached storage, where the customer OS would be located. This way, if a server would fail, all you would have to do is replace the module and voila, the system is up again.
Nevermind the speed issue -- I think there are some PIII PC104 modules that go into the GHz range. But it would be really cool, considering these things are a lot smaller than standard 19" racks. You could triple the storage space of a datacenter by using these things.
Nevermind the heat issues, but it does seem like a cool idea.
Actually, Monsterhut probably got the best service of all their clients/customers, because they were under court order. One thing a business doesn't do (and can't afford to do), is not follow a court order to the tee, even if it isn't correct or even legal, in this case. You have to do it the legal way, which unfortunatly in this case takes a long time.
If the ISP in this was did not provide faithful and reliable service on par with their performance with the rest of their customers, they would have been found in contempt. That wouldn't look good legally for them, nor would it help their case. Making excuses of upgrades and massive downtime wouldn't fly in a production environment, and would be really childish too.
That's just crazy. I am certainly going to call and fax my representatives today and try to get my point across any way possible..I URGE OTHERS TO DO SO TOO! If only for what will be lost in music, but in freedom.
That's not how it works. Checking that box doesn't cause you to get a lower return or increase the taxes you owe. It only affects the statistical percentage of tax allocation in the IRS -- more boxes equals more percentage of money going to the campaign. The $1 is a cap to make sure it doesn't get too large.
Personally, I would like to see such a thing. Heck, I would like to see something like custom taxes, where you have a base of required stuff to pay, and then you have electives where you can have your say in the balancing of funds. Such a thing would actually encourage people to pay more taxes, because they would be more directly in control of where their money actually goes and what it's used for. This would encourage competition between government programs because they would literally be fighting for their funding. If we (the public) hear about the military buying more of the $500 toilet seats, less people will allocate a lot of money to them. If Medicare is beating up on the elderly again, less money to them. Eventually, they'll fail and be replaced by a new program. And so on the process of evolution...
Doesn't that sound like a democratic way of taxing?
This is totally untrue. Companys pay employees to work and provide a certain function, they *DO NOT* own them. This was discussed on Slashdot a few weeks back. Just because you are getting paid to do task A, and you do task B doesn't mean the employer owns whatever B is. At best it means you are a poor employee.
Now they can own everything you do when you are under a contract that specifically states this (although it's rare and hardly inforceable, similar to contracts that force you to waive rights in sexual harrasment areas in favour of company appointed arbitration).
It helps if you think of companies as people, which is kind of what they are legally. If I hire you to paint my house, and you instead work on a product that ends up selling millions, I would have no claim to that product. I WOULD have a claim to any damages I lost as the result of your working on this other task and for whatever I paid you if I can prove you didn't do your job.
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What do they expect hundreds of lawsuits will do? Stop file sharing? Last time I checked 40% of internet users use file sharing in some form, and there are millions of people sharing illegal, copyrighted files.
This is bigger than they are, and they need to realize that. Maybe when the whole thing started with FTP (even before Napster), they could have put a significant dent in file swapping, but now it's too late. There is already a kind of critical mass that will surpass even the largest file swappers -- IF they are brought down. The system will quickly replace them, and worse yet (for the RIAA), more may even be encouraged by the significant news media this is sure to attract.
Anyone besides me notice a correlation between file sharing, P2P networks, and the metallica lawsuits? It took off. I personally know people who would never had touched a computer that are now online primarily because of the free music and file sharing.
Attempting to bring down the large few isn't going to do anything but perhaps scare a very few small fish off (primarily the consumers). The people who have multi hard disk RAIDS are most probably technically inclined and won't scare easily or find ways to anonomously distribute their files.
Even so, how can the RIAA blame their users? A lot of the pirated music today is full of lyrics about stealing and "playin'", that is, the same product they are trying to sell and the message they are sending is the same one they're fighting. I'm not saying all or even most music is like that, even for the RIAA's holders, I'm just saying teenage eminem fans aren't going to be scared off -- they'll do it anyway.
In a way, the golden age of profiting crazily from record labeling is at an end. What lies ahead is most probably better music, better distribution, and much better artists. Once again in the history of music -- talent and skill are going to be a deciding factor, not "product creation" by multi-billion dollar grossing labels selling over priced junk.
I can't wait!
I bet this guy thought he was just the A-example All American Badass. I pulled up to someone like him the other day. Driving a newer trans am, 9 MPG beast, at that. I pull up in my low emission newer Honda, and this guy looks at me, my car, and revs his engine. Yeah I'm a scrawny white boy driving an efficient economy car, so kill me!
I laugh and look the other direction, not giving the fool the time of day. What does he do? Drops clutch and burns out in a very busy suburban intersection. A cop from three lanes down actually pulled out of traffic and drove down the shoulder to nab that bastard. As the light changes to green (it was in the middle of changing when the guy floored it, already red at the other intersections), I proceed and give the guy a nice "bird's eye view" as he is parked on the side of the road, a very disgruntled and very plump officer approaching him.
These types of people, I am realizing, are the same people who used to pick fights on the payground; they have an overwhelming sense of insecurity and are at and endless quest of balance via any other means. He's just another bully, only now he's picking fights on the road.
Don't get me wrong, I love fast machines, I am the proud owner of a Toyota Supra TT. But there is still no excuse for safe driving. It doesn't proove anything to do 110 mph in a 30 mph zone other than you're an idiot and are going to kill people -- eventually -- which is what happened in this case.
Unfortunatly it doesn't seem like this was the guy's first time, and he deserves to be jailed. Those girls probably didn't know what hit them when this 3000 pound monster came hurling down the road at them.
Hmm, thought you couldn't upgrade 95->XP. Anyway, Granny was a light if not totally clueless user, so it's all the same to her anyway (Windows? What's that?). SuSe 8 is actually a little easier for her to use, looks nice with KDE 3, software installation is very easy with YAST and lots of programs are already installed AND organized. It's also easy for me too: no more stupid relatives coming over and deleting files, changing things, etc: I have the root password!
And yes: I did buy SuSe 8.1 Personal Edition, and before that 7.1 Professional ($80 + $39). I don't mind spending my hard earned money on something that's worth it and priced resonably. I'll probably be buying the next version too if it's worth it -- which is what all people should do. Don't buy overpriced software, but don't buy software just to be loyal either; buy it because it works and is good software!
Ok, I'm done preaching.
Thinking (and wanting) the best -- Plextor, of course, I purchased a Plextor PlexWriter 16x12x40 drive, and it has been nothing but problems. The first month I had a CD jammed up inside it. I called Plextor and they said I would have to ship it to them and wait at least 6 weeks. Shipped the unit to them 3-day and got it back almost exactly 6 weeks later, and the very first (not joking here) CD I put in it jammed up again.
Well now I was pissed, so I opened up the drive myself to see what I could do and found the problem was a bent piece of plastic from the drive tray assembly. Fixed it -- apparently all they had done was remove the jammed CD and verify the drive could open and close, not caring if the problem occured when a CD was inserted.
Currenly the drive refuses to burn anything but very high quality media at around 8x speed, sometimes 10 but that's risking it. Also the drive tray jams up when ejecting requiring you to push it in.
Thankfully I bought Yamaha's latest drive and it has worked great. The image capability is nice for buring a circular artist - album to the very end of the CD. Has worked great and they will be missed, whereas I will never buy Plextor again.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it disgusting that something as complex and intricate as the space shuttle doesn't/didn't have very advanced monitoring systems to at least know there was significant damage to a major portion of the craft? It really gives me the impression that they have been flying this thing blind on only rudimentary data from an array of sensors.
.01% more chance of survival, which is worth it IMO.
Something that is traveling at such a high speed, with all the dangers and slightly problems that could arise, should have every square inch of every possible system under some type of either visual or as good as visual, or better, type of monitoring with all sorts of triple rudundancy.
True, the argument can be made that they wouldn't be able to do much if something did get damaged while in space, but still you would know ahead of time and that information is power -- power that could have saved these people's lives or given them that
I realize that the Shuttle electronics were 1970's era, and perhaps that kind of extensive monitoring wasn't available, but if they do decide to rebuild a shuttle based upon today's standards it would be well within the technical capacity to include an advanced monitoring system.
Also I resent the fact that the first article mentions a lot of software based upon today's technology is unreliable. ANY software is unreliable if not developed with proper design methods and tested with a proper testing methodology. This is science and math here, not some black magic or wine aging. The complexity or speed of a system is not relevant if the code and design of said system is developed under recognized and strict methods. I imagine the same design methodology for life support systems would be a good start -- and you don't see many advanced heart monitors running on ancient hardware.
It's also false about the quote in the article where you can't get more data out of the sensors. Of course you can get more data, use more precise sensors and more of them! Use 10x redundancy...this is people's lives we are talking about here. The real problem, and what the quote should have been, is their older hardware can't handle the extra precision and additional sensors.
It's amazing the lies these people will tell due to misinformation, trying to hide fault, ignornace, or some awful combination of all three. If it is determined that the wing structure was damaged and NASA did not know this quite significant information, I think NASA should at least recognize they were flying with inferior capability and an accident was bound to happen.
I mean, it's like driving your car on a flat tire and complaining when you get into a wreck...something so obvious should have been accounted for and known prior to attempting dangerous re-entry.
My Grandmother used to have AOL and when I installed SuSe 8 with her new cable modem connection, (didn't want to spend $299 on new Windows, and needed something better than 95) it was hell calling up AOL to cancel. She had been a loyal, light user for several years -- any ISP would love to have her, AOL not withstanding. It took at least three calls and several "free 3 month" offers to finally get them to cancel.
These people had her so confused she was even doubting me. They basically said she wouldn't be able to save her AOL contacts, or access the same web sites, on her new service without subscribing to the alternative access plan (bring your own access), to use AOL-only services over her cable connection.
Finally after the 3rd call it was done, not without another fight with another rep. They must get paid based upon how many members they can keep from disconnecting. I remember when I had AOL a long time ago when it was the only ISP with a local number, you could cancel as simply as going to keyword: cancel. Now that seems to have changed, and it speaks in their member retention rates as they fight tooth and nail to hold on to the last of their shrinking subscriber base.
Actually I don't think that is the case anymore. I remember when something similar was the case, and it messed up a lot of security conscience shopping carts, but other than that, I'm not sure how AOL's proxy system works, but my applications do not appear to break or otherwise malfunction when being accessed via a standard AOL dial-up account.
Don't these backbone providers have NOS that monitor for this type of activity? Don't know if it's just because of the job cuts, but my line from UUNET still isn't up (constant activity; can't get a ping out), so I'm stuck with cable that has major upstream from AT&T, whom as I understand it had automatically detected a dramatic increase in traffic on port 1434 and blocked the port.
Funny thing is when I try to ping my UUNET IP address, or at least traceroute to it, from my cable line I get a destination net unreachable -- wtf this thing is supposed to be more reliable than a cable modem!!
Most sites don't store their user password in a cookie, they store a session ID in a cookie that translates to a session ID in a database. Then sensitive information is keyed up with that ID, on the server. The client never recives any of it, unless they are modifying it but it is never put in a cookie or other stateful client storage device.
Upon each page load, the IP address of the original session is checked with the sent cookie ID, and if they don't match, most applications will throw out the session completly. This annoys some with DHCP who like to maintain long sessions, but works a lot of the time for simple ID attacks (since most session IDs are generated from random numbers), because you now need to know both the IP and session ID of the user you want to impersonate. Granted, this can be had with a packet sniffer (for non SSL connections), but so can a lot of personal things. Next they'll be telling us it's quite easy to get into cars: just break the window. That doesn't mean its a security flaw.
Anyway, this is how most [good] sites work. Only fools store sensitive user information in cookies, and I would never subscribe to their site (yes, I check what goes in my cookies).
Also the article/press release (PR for this security company?) seems to be getting client/sever scripting confused, and is generally full of ignorant errors. How can it be trusted with the other claims it makes?
Don't know if we already have this or not, but don't we first need a common voice protocol that is agreed upon and used by all? Kind of like something as ubiqious as TCP?
The last time I checked most of today's phones aren't even hardware compatible with most other carrier networks, and phone manufactures have resorted to having to put 3 different protocols in one phone (tri-mode, etc.). Talk about inefficient.
Wouldn't it be easier if all wireless communication just ran on one set protocol that worked over multiple frequencies? Nevermind the differences in modulation at 900 MHz, 2.4 and 5 GHz, I'm talking about a true high-level/low-level protocol here.
There is no way you're going to be able to stuff an 802.11b/a transceiver into an already high priced, low battery life phone.
If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it.
That seems like what they are trying to do, but this seems a little late in the game. People just didn't realize all the wireless capacity we have right now just floating around -- the only problem is you need x device that supports x protocols and sometimes you need to purchase directly from the wireless carrier. I guess until now, when we have dozens of different standards and NOW we want to connect them all together.
The sad thing about it is if such a device were to be created that could mitigate across all these different protocols and networks, it's going to be one huge complex mess and is going to cost a fortune, when it didn't have to be. Maybe government regulation and forced standards are sometimes a GOOD thing.
...let's try to diagnose exactly what kind of load problem is going on whenever a site is slashdotted. Network, physical, or software?
In the case of this site it looks like it's either heavily overloaded and is timing out opening an include file, has run out of file handles, or the mysql initialisation is failing maybe because there are too many connections opened/pending/generally gone insane to a database probably running on the same server.
Anyone else care to speculate, or know the real reason?
When the XBOX starts up, it loads the hash of the header into memory and decrypts a 2048 bit RSA signature and compares this to the header hash. If it matches, the program proceeds and it loads another section and does the same thing. There is no way to get around this either than knowing the private key or a hardware modification.
The RSA signature used to sign/for comparison purposes used with Xbox execuatables is 2048 bits long.
Common secure internet traffic, carrying thousands of credit card numbers as we speak, uses 128 bit keys (almost always).
It's virturally impossible with today's computational power and methods to break a 2048 bit key. Even if you somehow had all the processing power of all the current distributed systems, it would still take many thousands of years to break using classical methods. You either need several thousand years or an optical/DNA computer whose concept hasn't been refined yet.
In case some of your forget: it gets exponetionally harder as the length of the key increases. It's not like you just have to search a 128 bit key space 16 times. There are fancy methods where by you can get away with knowing some of the key like differential analysis, but when you increase the size of the key the performance of those tend to fall off also where you have no increase over brute force and man in the middle attacks.
So don't even think about joining that futile brute force effort, because it will just waste your time. What Lindows should have done is hire a hit man/career criminal to break into Microsoft or a 3rd party who has the key and steal it. Or optionally pay off an Xbox developer or employee who has similar access. Either way, it would be both cheaper and actually give the real key, unlike all of this nonsense.
I easily was able to find information on Camberley Crick. Here is the story she was squaking about, available via google's cache. She also wrote this little java-based word game. In fact, she seems to be a sort of expert on word games, as evidenced by this first and only post on USENET.
Note: some of these dynamic links won't work, if you really want to, go and find all about this woman's sad life if you want. However, what is funny to me is that now this woman still has all this personal information on the internet, and she also now has an article on the NYT web site about how she hates it (available to the world of course, WITH her name)! HAH!
Some people are just plain dumb I guess. It's like publishing a book and then complaining your privacy has been violated when people read it.
That review really enforces the stereotype that all overclockers are uneducated 34 year old A+ graduates with GED in hand who spend all of their pathetic life playing Quake and Half Life. Flame me or mod me down if you must, but I'm tired of reading 2nd rate reviews -- that's why I read Slashdot, not overclockerswhatever.com.
All through the several pages there are dozens of spelling, grammar, and simply sentences that just don't make sense. That's not to say that I don't mind that, but in this case the content was the same -- a bunch of screen shots with related commentary of someone who on a good day can setup a Linksys router with no issues. I especially like his "(router talk)" parentheses explanation as if to explain the mystic Mbit unit of measure to us simpletons.
Please, leave the detailed screen shots for the manual and the self-serving explanations to someone with can do more than double click on his Dell. We want to see why we should buy this thing in the first place and how it performs, not how to configure it.
As I skimmed over the first several pages looking for graphs I was instead greeted with some very scientific tests of ping time from within a multiplayer game. Then the guy goes on to download two random files from a random location on the Internet as a testament toward the performance of the router, using a web browser.
No technical or scientific consideration was found in this review, and I found it insulting to read. If you must review something, at least know a little about what you're reviewing, and especially how to test it. Don't waste your time reading that nonsense. In fact, I am surprised it was posted to slashdot considering the quality and the background of the reviewer.
This guy should go back to reviewing the newest shoot 'em up or writing up the procedures for overclocking his celeron, and stay away from stuff that is ever so slightly more complicated involving more sophisticated testing and technical reporting.
Normally, I don't get so upset at this sort of thing, but for some reason, idiocy like this has pissed me off today. No, the eardrum does NOT translate vibrations to sound, or any other such nonsense.What the eardrum (or timpanum) does is to act as the first step in hearing something.
Which is good, because you don't know much about how the ear works either. It works like this:
Sound waves travel through the air and into your ear. The pressure from the waves causes a flap of skin to vibrate back and forth due to the difference of pressure between one side and another of the flap. That flap is called your ear drum.
The vibrations cause the pressure inside the ear to change also, and cause the tiny bones in the ear to vibrate. Those bones transfer the vibrationss to the cochlea, a hollow tube-shaped spiral like thing with fluid inside.
On the inside of the cochlea, there are tiny hairs attached to nerve endings, kind of like the flagella of organisms, except when they move they generate an electrical charge that is picked up on the nerves. The cochlea has a tube that is at first large and goes down in size. As it does so, the resonant frequency also does and that's how we can perceive different frequencies. That's why a lot of times people compare the ear's function to that of a Fourier transform, because it is able to take a sound of many frequencies and break it down into each frequency and determine the relative amplitude of each one using the hairs and different sized tubes.
The nerves carry the electrical charges to the auditory center of the brain where they are processed in a very advanced way that even includes how your ear is shaped and depends on it to tune the directional mechanism. There was actually an experiment that changed the shape of the outer ear and as a result the brain had to relearn the new shape and during this process the subject couldn't tell where sounds were coming from. So there is a significant amount of critical engineering here and as you can imagine the human ear is a complex work of art and technically advanced.
Now what is interesting about this tooth speaker (what I call it) is that somehow they are using the skull to transfer the pressure waves (sounds) to the cochlea. There's nothing wrong with that -- actually you can even hear your own body's noises by covering your ears and those are transmitted largely by bone and tissue. You can even hear a very high frequency noise that your nervous system produces when neurons produce a certain response every 1.5 seconds.
My question is that the ear has evolved to be designed so well and so intricately and is a better design than any sound engineer could come up with. Obviously the quality and frequency range of sounds depends on its transfer medium -- for example you can hear many low frequency sounds through wood and all sorts of materials but high frequency doesn't travel well over tighly packed materials, such as solids. The last time I checked bone was pretty solid.
So how are they getting pased that fact, and will it sound like listening to a loud speaker pressed up against wood? I'll bet they have a frequency model of how sound is carried from the tooth to the skull and then to the inner ear, and dynamically adjust the frequencies to represent that model. I'd better hope so or it won't sound too good.
Still though, I can see where this could have applications for those who have had accidents and have problems with their ear drum, etc. Of course there is surgery but in the mean time you can stick one of these things in your mouth and be back to normal (or at least something like it). For the rest of us if the sound quality is good enough it could be the ultimate headphone, but that's really all I see it as being marketed as in the commercial, consumer world.
We have all seen how P2P networks function: usually it's a select few subsidizing the masses who are unwilling to share their resources. People are greedy. Non-geeks are even greedier. Most of the general public wouldn't understand how the idea of using many phones as a relay in a distributed fashion would provide them with their service as well.
Not to mention some technical problems -- look how reliable cellular service is now. Even in very well covered areas, call drops from all ranges of carriers and all types of phones are common enough to be annoying for most people. A Peer-to-Peer cell network would be even more unreliable than the current infrastructure, which would force the need to be verbose with things like repeating data to several relays at a time to minimize points of failure. It might work if you had several dozen relays all capable of working for you -- but that's not an efficient use of bandwidth.
It's helpful to remember that all the phones must share a single pipe which is the air in the frequency they operate in, so there is a finite amount of bandwidth available so it makes sense not to waste any. This is in contrast to p2p on the internet where each host has its own dedicated and usually unshared circuit and more bandwidth can be added by adding more wire.
What is to prevent people from turning their phones off to save the battery, and if that is impossible, taking the battery out completely? What if there are three phones active and only two relays available?
What about the situation where there is a low population density and thus even lower phone density? Is this a solution for urban areas only?
Even in urban areas, demand is going to increase and put more stress per phone on the network.
Clearly p2p isn't going to work for cell phones for some time. What the wireless companies need to do is get together and establish a grand this-is-it standard that allows any phone to be used on any network. There are enough providers that the cost of infrastructure development could be spread evenly across the market. This idea is flawed both in the social aspect and technically. Plus in a day when people are increasingly carrying phones around for emergencies, would you want the kind of reliability as afforded by Kazaa, an already developed p2p application?
Isn't amazing how fast technology moves? Remember Jordy from Star Trek? He used that big visor thing to restore his vision, and this is what writers thought would be the technology in the 24th century. Here we are in 2002, and we have a solar powered eye chip that can be implanted into the eye to give people some of their sight back, with no discomfort.
.1 but as others have mentioned how long before this changes and version 4.0 is out with default 20/15 vision and zoom controls?
Sure, it isn't perfect and it's only version
Just step back and realize what an accomplishment this is and how fast technology changes everyday. It's almost scary to think what life will be like when I turn 60.
Reminds me of something my Great Grandfather said: "I've seen the world come from stage coach to walking on the moon; nobody will ever lead that kind of life again."
Well if this is the case I would think the rate of progression will disprove this. It's amazing to think we will all outlive the advancements that occured during his lifetime, but we probably will.
This article just reaffirms that notion.
This strikes me as a good idea for datacenters who wish to offer dedicated systems to their customers. Normally, this is kind of expensive with rackmounts costing at least $1200 for bottom of the line. However, imagine a lot of these little modules.
You could hook them all up to the network, and boot off of some network attached storage, where the customer OS would be located. This way, if a server would fail, all you would have to do is replace the module and voila, the system is up again.
Nevermind the speed issue -- I think there are some PIII PC104 modules that go into the GHz range. But it would be really cool, considering these things are a lot smaller than standard 19" racks. You could triple the storage space of a datacenter by using these things.
Nevermind the heat issues, but it does seem like a cool idea.
Actually, Monsterhut probably got the best service of all their clients/customers, because they were under court order. One thing a business doesn't do (and can't afford to do), is not follow a court order to the tee, even if it isn't correct or even legal, in this case. You have to do it the legal way, which unfortunatly in this case takes a long time.
If the ISP in this was did not provide faithful and reliable service on par with their performance with the rest of their customers, they would have been found in contempt. That wouldn't look good legally for them, nor would it help their case. Making excuses of upgrades and massive downtime wouldn't fly in a production environment, and would be really childish too.
That's just crazy. I am certainly going to call and fax my representatives today and try to get my point across any way possible..I URGE OTHERS TO DO SO TOO! If only for what will be lost in music, but in freedom.
Wolf FM 128k Stream
Wolf FM 56k Stream
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That's not how it works. Checking that box doesn't cause you to get a lower return or increase the taxes you owe. It only affects the statistical percentage of tax allocation in the IRS -- more boxes equals more percentage of money going to the campaign. The $1 is a cap to make sure it doesn't get too large.
Personally, I would like to see such a thing. Heck, I would like to see something like custom taxes, where you have a base of required stuff to pay, and then you have electives where you can have your say in the balancing of funds. Such a thing would actually encourage people to pay more taxes, because they would be more directly in control of where their money actually goes and what it's used for. This would encourage competition between government programs because they would literally be fighting for their funding. If we (the public) hear about the military buying more of the $500 toilet seats, less people will allocate a lot of money to them. If Medicare is beating up on the elderly again, less money to them. Eventually, they'll fail and be replaced by a new program. And so on the process of evolution...
Doesn't that sound like a democratic way of taxing?
Win2k SP3-b, IE version 5.00.2920.0000
Does not work, giving access denied and page not found errors.
The dunkels.com web site is now unaccessible, giving 403 Forbidden errors...why?
This is totally untrue. Companys pay employees to work and provide a certain function, they *DO NOT* own them. This was discussed on Slashdot a few weeks back. Just because you are getting paid to do task A, and you do task B doesn't mean the employer owns whatever B is. At best it means you are a poor employee.
Now they can own everything you do when you are under a contract that specifically states this (although it's rare and hardly inforceable, similar to contracts that force you to waive rights in sexual harrasment areas in favour of company appointed arbitration).
It helps if you think of companies as people, which is kind of what they are legally. If I hire you to paint my house, and you instead work on a product that ends up selling millions, I would have no claim to that product. I WOULD have a claim to any damages I lost as the result of your working on this other task and for whatever I paid you if I can prove you didn't do your job.