Where did they arrive at that price point? The main point of thin clients is price. You can buy a full PC for that price.
I've been looking into building my own linux-based thin clients for distributed processing purposes. I priced all the needed parts for a very hefty machine at less than $300. Maybe they aren't going the x86 route?
The article makes it sound like the PS2 and higher MHZ computers are outrighted banned and will never be available in China unless laws are changed. This is not true.. the author is just trying to cause a stir. Sony only has to apply for an export license, which is a very simple process. Undoubtably they will be granted export permission immediately.
"The worm then searches the local file drive for the following file types and deletes them:.c,.cpp,.asm,.doc,.sls, and.ptp, thereby deleting Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. "
Glad I use cc/hh/gas files...:) Seems pretty evil to go after programmers like that.
I don't believe the RSA can stop someone from publishing. There are several court case that ruled crypto and other elements of national security are protected by the first amendment. The most famous case was the first publishing of how to make a nuclear bomb in scientific america.
The RSA can intervien if he trying to patent something (in which case RSA can claim they are knew how to do it) or he was being funded by government grants in which case sometimes the government can decide what he publishes.
Except for one-time pads, encryption methods today cannot be "proven" in a rigid scientific manner, which means that you can never trust them 100%. There have been a number of conspiracy theories over the years about NSA. For example DES, was initially developed by IBM. NSA suggested a change to S-box which supposedly made the algorithm more secure. I believe IBM never commented as to why they accepted this change, but many people feared it added a backdoor. Through the years many symmetrical algorithms have come and gone and DES was one of the few that held it's ground against newer crypto-analysis.
I think most conspiracies are just that. While symmetrical algorithms are breakable by brute force, there is very little else you can do. The field symmetric encryption has enough study that many cryptographers would be willing to risk their life on such methods. Choosing a long enough key will make brute force impossible (considering the amount of energy required to move a single electron that many times the distance of one nanometer).
Asymmetrical encryption is a different matter. RSA (used by PGP and SSL) has the largest amount of study, so it is often trusted more than Elliptical, or some of the newer matrix based asymmetrical algorithms. RSA's breakability depends on the ability to factor large numbers. Over the years new factoring methods such as quadratic sleeve factoring have been invented that make RSA weaker and weaker. In general you need N*N number of bits to be as secure as symmetrical algorithm. Improvements to factoring have been incremental and not ground breaking and many people they will never go beyond ~O(sqrt(N)).
But there are practical reasons why you shouldn't be afraid of the government snooping on you. First, you are most likely boring. Unless you work for a foreign government, or you are involved in the weapons industry the RSA probably doesn't care about you. Even if you use PGP to trade child pron, the RSA has bigger problems to worry about. If they RSA had some magically decryption algorithm, there is so much information out there, that they cannot dedicate hardware to decrypting messages unless they believe it is a matter of national security. Most, if not all, of the information they collect is in plain-text form. If everyone used PKZIP to encode their messages, this would be probably require more processing power than they could handle to scan the data.
Local officals are a million times more likely to just raid your house and use "find" rather than try to tape your phone line. In fact I've never heard of a single case where local officals have tapped a modem-line and decrypted a message. It's much easier, cheaper, and faster to go straight to the source.
Bottom line is using PGP with any length key is probably safe. Use keys >2048 bit keys if you are selling nuclear weapons.
Copying software is like counterfeiting money. When you copy money you do not effect the economy in anyway until you try to trade with someone else. Same goes for software, if you have a legal copy of a piece of software and you copy it, you aren't hurting anyone. In fact US law specifically allows you to copy your own software. Once these copied items are transferred to someone else, inflation on a very small occurs because the value of everyone else's money/software has decreased. Not many people will argue that counterfeiting money is a bad thing. If everyone did this we would be back to trading in gold and sheep. So why is software "counterfeiting" so much more prevalent? All it takes is a decent color printer and a scanner to start making decent looking $20 bills. The government has a vested interest in protecting the monetary system, but does not care as much about software piracy. Money counterfeiting is treated as a very serious crime and copying of a single $1 bill will call the attention of the FBI and get an investigator assigned to the case. But I have not heard of a single case in recent history in which the FBI has arrested a warez web site owner. Usually it is the software industry that tries to shut down these sites, but almost never is an arrest made. If software piracy was made a serious crime it wouldn't be as prevalent, but that wouldn't solve the problem.
Another issue is that software has an inflation rate that is extremely high. Consider if you bought a $2000 software package today. Version 2.0 comes out in 9 months and that package has lost most of it's value. If you tried to sell it on ebay I doubt you could get half of what you paid for it. Often the value obtained from the use of the software is lost as well because you have to upgrade just to keep up with your competitors. This makes software a bad investment and people know that. If money lost value that quickly people would not use it. Software vendors counter this issue sometimes by offering free lifetime/limited time upgrades. But, even with lifetime upgrades inflation will come from competitors who offer similar but better products for lower prices. Free software is an extreme case of this.
Of course, the purpose of money and software are totally different. The analogy can only be carried out so far but I think it's one worth contemplating.
The thing about making money on an IPO is the visibility of the company. The word "mp3" has gotten a huge amount of free press, and is almost a household word now. Add on a ".com", and you have yourself a hit. I once counted the number of news stories coming out for "mp3" versus "linux" and somedays it surpassed linux! (btw, the number one tech-headline is usually Microsoft). Granted mp3.com may not be a good long term investment, but you can be certain that it will have a fast climb to start with. People buy stock for sites they use.. who cares if they can make money:)
The article states that you will have to have an FAA approved license. I assume this means that you will also have to follow FAA regulations, making this much less interesting. i.e. Basically it is just a twist on a helicopter. You will be limited on where you can take of and land from unless you live in the country. As well you will have to file flight plans and stay at reserved altitudes.
Though I have a VFR license, flying a helicopter is a bit scary for me because engine failure means you have to count on auto-rotate to land safely and then your landing choices are very slim pickings. This vehichle looks like it would become unstable if one of the engines failed and I doubt it has any sort of auto-rotate that could significantly slow it's fall, meaning certain death. You would have to be a brave soul to ride in it... probably all flights thus far have been un-maned.
Hmm. As an investor in 3com for several years, it's interesting to see how the rest of world views their value. The core of business is pretty sounds and has a lot of potential. They also have good mind share because everyone and their dog has a Palm-Pilot, especially investor types. But as of recent they took a sharp plunge on the market. Announcing anything internet related is always good for a healthly boost in stock price. This can be seen today, I expect 3com to be up about 2 points before the market closes. Even though 3com's development efforts in this area have not been secret, it takes the main stream press (such as WSJ) to make people aware of it.
I doubt it is accidental that they chose to first demonstrate PP7 in New York (aka NYSE). I got a demonstration 4-5 months ago, and I thought it was pretty cool - mostly for it's small size. The PP7 sales price is pretty high thus a limited appeal, but I expect the price to be half that within a year. I can imagine a lot of companies using a PP7 as part of an eletronic tracking system such as used by UPS and other delivery services.
Great story! I seem to remember that the day before all this occured, he was out golfing with his buddies and one of them was eaten by the gator. The proof was discovered after cutting open the gator.
I think a Java-based client would be a lot easier to use because you can support operations like drag and drop and other things people have come to expect. I can't image a new person trying to use the interface as you have it now. A nice idea though.
Yeah! It new that someday this would change, but I never expected it so soon. While the justice ruling is only for "source code" and not binaries, it is trival to export a compiler and source in one package. In fact, one could successful argue that assembly language is "source code" therefore, you need only ship a dissasembler with your binary product, as binary is a "compressed" form of assembly language. Heck, it's almost as easy to read as LISP anyway.:)
(note: this is obviosuly not an informed legal opinion)
why is 10mbit too slow? You can play TV quality mpeg over it just fine (~190K/sec). You shouldn't have trouble with DVD quality even. You could probably stream 6 different movies using wireless. Wireless is nice if you have a big house and don't want to run wires everywhere (or are renting like me). Of course wireless is a little more expensive for the cards and you can usually only have ~10 computers on the same frequency band (not bad for a house).
I've been thinking about building one of these: The cost aren't that bad for a 24+hour unit. All you need is:
$110 Motherboard with K6 266 and sound/video $25 16MB RAM $240 17Gig HD $200 mpeg encoder board $70 TV tuner ----- $755
Technically you need 95/98, as I don't think there are any drivers for mpeg encoder boards for linux.
And, if you want to go real cheap.. Use a wireless ethernet card and boot off another computer -- geting dual use of your big fat hard drive.
if anyone is think about doing this, let me know.. I want to do it so I can keep my video collection digital and watch it anywhere in my house with the press of a button (as well as MP3s!)
2 years ago Sony wouldn't let anyone without at least 1 million dollars (publicly stated) into PSX development. Then they changed their tune a little bit and but out the "hobby" version, in order to try to capture some of the brain power of up and comers without any money. These systems cost $300 and anyone can buy one. I've never heard of anyone who used this who published a game, but I sure a few jobs were had. Actual PSX dev systems from PSYQ cost ~$5000 for a system with a CDROM emulator... not entirely unaffordable, but still PC dev is a lot cheaper considering you still need a PC to work with the dev system..
Anyway PSYQ is now using standard SCSI parts so their system could be cheap, but the price hasn't really dropped. If I had to make a PS game today I would just emulate it on a PC and do most of my owrk there. Not possible when it first came out, but not very difficult today.
Jonathan
Chumbawumba came out *before* the clinton scandal
on
Lycos Mp3 Lawsuit?
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· Score: 1
At age 25, i've voted maybe once or twice in my life and found no need to write letters to senators or follow the washington scene. What they have been doing there has had, until now, very little effect on the tech industry. Now that the internet is perhaps the hotest buzz word on the planet, senators wanting to make the news are going to trying to do something, *anything*, to "help it out". The problem with congress is that it moves about 1/1000ths of the pace of the tech industry. What seems like a good idea today, might be enacted as law, only tomorrow to find it doesn't work and must be challanged in court, a time laborius task. Take encryption, one of the fundaments of computer science, for example. Look at all the hoops companies have to jump through to use it. What if *compression* were against the law because it aids child pornographers?
Congress needs to keep their hands off things. We can work out our problems much faster, and if we make a mistake, our competition will let us know.
While I'm not going to break down and vote this year (we'd be voting on the net now if we had encryption), I will be writing some letters to all the politicals.
We need another scandal to keep them tied up longer!
Jonathan
I flip right past it everytime
on
Saving MST3K
·
· Score: 1
I once liked the show, but now... it doesn't hold my attention for more than 300ms, the time it takes me to go to the next channel. I love the SciFi channel and I know they can do a lot better than mst3k, it's about time they canceled it. btw, is just me or is the new low budget mtv show really entertaining? (the sock puppets).
Slashdot Mirror
Where did they arrive at that price point? The main point of thin clients is price. You can buy a full PC for that price.
I've been looking into building my own linux-based thin clients for distributed processing purposes. I priced all the needed parts for a very hefty machine at less than $300. Maybe they aren't going the x86 route?
The article makes it sound like the PS2 and higher MHZ computers are outrighted banned and will never be available in China unless laws are changed. This is not true.. the author is just trying to cause a stir. Sony only has to apply for an export license, which is a very simple process. Undoubtably they will be granted export permission immediately.
"The worm then searches the local file drive for the following file types and deletes them: .c, .cpp, .asm, .doc, .sls, and .ptp, thereby deleting Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. "
:) Seems pretty evil to go after programmers like that.
Glad I use cc/hh/gas files...
I don't believe the RSA can stop someone from publishing. There are several court case that ruled crypto and other elements of national security are protected by the first amendment. The most famous case was the first publishing of how to make a nuclear bomb in scientific america.
The RSA can intervien if he trying to patent something (in which case RSA can claim they are knew how to do it) or he was being funded by government grants in which case sometimes the government can decide what he publishes.
I think most conspiracies are just that. While symmetrical algorithms are breakable by brute force, there is very little else you can do. The field symmetric encryption has enough study that many cryptographers would be willing to risk their life on such methods. Choosing a long enough key will make brute force impossible (considering the amount of energy required to move a single electron that many times the distance of one nanometer).
Asymmetrical encryption is a different matter. RSA (used by PGP and SSL) has the largest amount of study, so it is often trusted more than Elliptical, or some of the newer matrix based asymmetrical algorithms. RSA's breakability depends on the ability to factor large numbers. Over the years new factoring methods such as quadratic sleeve factoring have been invented that make RSA weaker and weaker. In general you need N*N number of bits to be as secure as symmetrical algorithm. Improvements to factoring have been incremental and not ground breaking and many people they will never go beyond ~O(sqrt(N)).
But there are practical reasons why you shouldn't be afraid of the government snooping on you. First, you are most likely boring. Unless you work for a foreign government, or you are involved in the weapons industry the RSA probably doesn't care about you. Even if you use PGP to trade child pron, the RSA has bigger problems to worry about. If they RSA had some magically decryption algorithm, there is so much information out there, that they cannot dedicate hardware to decrypting messages unless they believe it is a matter of national security. Most, if not all, of the information they collect is in plain-text form. If everyone used PKZIP to encode their messages, this would be probably require more processing power than they could handle to scan the data.
Local officals are a million times more likely to just raid your house and use "find" rather than try to tape your phone line. In fact I've never heard of a single case where local officals have tapped a modem-line and decrypted a message. It's much easier, cheaper, and faster to go straight to the source.
Bottom line is using PGP with any length key is probably safe. Use keys >2048 bit keys if you are selling nuclear weapons.
Another issue is that software has an inflation rate that is extremely high. Consider if you bought a $2000 software package today. Version 2.0 comes out in 9 months and that package has lost most of it's value. If you tried to sell it on ebay I doubt you could get half of what you paid for it. Often the value obtained from the use of the software is lost as well because you have to upgrade just to keep up with your competitors. This makes software a bad investment and people know that. If money lost value that quickly people would not use it. Software vendors counter this issue sometimes by offering free lifetime/limited time upgrades. But, even with lifetime upgrades inflation will come from competitors who offer similar but better products for lower prices. Free software is an extreme case of this.
Of course, the purpose of money and software are totally different. The analogy can only be carried out so far but I think it's one worth contemplating.
Jonathan
Though I have a VFR license, flying a helicopter is a bit scary for me because engine failure means you have to count on auto-rotate to land safely and then your landing choices are very slim pickings. This vehichle looks like it would become unstable if one of the engines failed and I doubt it has any sort of auto-rotate that could significantly slow it's fall, meaning certain death. You would have to be a brave soul to ride in it... probably all flights thus far have been un-maned.
Jonathan
jonathanclark.com
The irony here is that encryption could allow people to vote from home. If I could vote from my web browser I would.
I doubt it is accidental that they chose to first demonstrate PP7 in New York (aka NYSE). I got a demonstration 4-5 months ago, and I thought it was pretty cool - mostly for it's small size. The PP7 sales price is pretty high thus a limited appeal, but I expect the price to be half that within a year. I can imagine a lot of companies using a PP7 as part of an eletronic tracking system such as used by UPS and other delivery services.
jonathclark.com
Great story! I seem to remember that the day before all this occured, he was out golfing with his buddies and one of them was eaten by the gator. The proof was discovered after cutting open the gator.
Poor chap.
hehe. Sock it to 'em!
I think a Java-based client would be a lot easier to use because you can support operations like drag and drop and other things people have come to expect. I can't image a new person trying to use the interface as you have it now. A nice idea though.
Yeah! It new that someday this would change, but I never expected it so soon. While the justice ruling is only for "source code" and not binaries, it is trival to export a compiler and source in one package. In fact, one could successful argue that assembly language is "source code" therefore, you need only ship a dissasembler with your binary product, as binary is a "compressed" form of assembly language. Heck, it's almost as easy to read as LISP anyway. :)
(note: this is obviosuly not an informed legal opinion)
for a description and picture of these guys, go to http://jonathanclark.com and click on Heros at the top.
Yes, slashdot gets paid when you buy using the link posted by Rob... So go buy the book. :)
I was looking for a good SF book to read anyway.
You are using one now. It's called slashdot.
why is 10mbit too slow? You can play TV quality mpeg over it just fine (~190K/sec). You shouldn't have trouble with DVD quality even. You could probably stream 6 different movies using wireless. Wireless is nice if you have a big house and don't want to run wires everywhere (or are renting like me). Of course wireless is a little more expensive for the cards and you can usually only have ~10 computers on the same frequency band (not bad for a house).
oops I can't add. that comes out to
~$645, of course you will probably pay $50-$100 in shipping.
I've been thinking about building one of these: The cost aren't that bad for a 24+hour unit. All you need is:
$110 Motherboard with K6 266 and sound/video
$25 16MB RAM
$240 17Gig HD
$200 mpeg encoder board
$70 TV tuner
-----
$755
Technically you need 95/98, as I don't think there are any drivers for mpeg encoder boards for linux.
And, if you want to go real cheap.. Use a wireless ethernet card and boot off another computer -- geting dual use of your big fat
hard drive.
if anyone is think about doing this, let me know.. I want to do it so I can keep my video collection digital and watch it anywhere in my house with the press of a button (as well as MP3s!)
Jonathan
2 years ago Sony wouldn't let anyone without at least 1 million dollars (publicly stated) into PSX development. Then they changed their tune a little bit and but out the "hobby" version, in order to try to capture some of the brain power of up and comers without any money. These systems cost $300 and anyone can buy one. I've never heard of anyone who used this who published a game, but I sure a few jobs were had. Actual PSX dev systems from PSYQ cost ~$5000 for a system with a CDROM emulator... not entirely unaffordable, but still PC dev is a lot cheaper considering you still need a PC to work with the dev system..
Anyway PSYQ is now using standard SCSI parts so their system could be cheap, but the price hasn't really dropped. If I had to make a PS game today I would just emulate it on a PC and do most of my owrk there. Not possible when it first came out, but not very difficult today.
Jonathan
or where you being sarcastic?
Chumbawumba came out over a year and a half ago.
At age 25, i've voted maybe once or twice in my life and found no need to write letters to senators or follow the washington scene. What they have been doing there has had, until now, very little effect on the tech industry. Now that the internet is perhaps the hotest buzz word on the planet, senators wanting to make the news are going to trying to do something, *anything*, to "help it out". The problem with congress is that it moves about 1/1000ths of the pace of the tech industry. What seems like a good idea today, might be enacted as law, only tomorrow to find it doesn't work and must be challanged in court, a time laborius task. Take
encryption, one of the fundaments of computer science, for example. Look at all the hoops companies have to jump through to use it. What if *compression* were against the law because it aids child pornographers?
Congress needs to keep their hands off things. We can work out our problems much faster, and if we make a mistake, our competition will let us know.
While I'm not going to break down and vote this year (we'd be voting on the net now if we had encryption), I will be writing some letters to all the politicals.
We need another scandal to keep them tied up longer!
Jonathan
I once liked the show, but now... it doesn't hold my attention for more than 300ms, the time it takes me to go to the next channel. I love the SciFi channel and I know they can do a lot better than mst3k, it's about time they canceled it. btw, is just me or is the new low budget mtv show really entertaining? (the sock puppets).