Hackers only started exploiting this 3 weeks ago...that we know of. It is likely that on some irc channel a couple of hackers are congratulating themselves on having kept this exploit under wraps for the last half decade.
A team of scientists from the Marine Science Institute in Bologna claims to have found the crater left by the aerial blast of a comet or asteroid in 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia.
When I was young my dad ran an electronics store. We got some surplus X-Ray machines for parts, and they had dozens of large capacitors, each larger than a soda can. I remember taking screwdriver and shorting the leads to discharge them. Most arced impressively - fortunately we didn't have to learn the hard way how much charge they still held.
Most 7400 series ICs can be replaced with a relatively small number of transistors. Obtaining or even manufacturing the basic transistor is orders of magnitude easier than producing even the simplest CPU. If you can create the fundamental logic gates, even mechanically, then you can produce a computer.
I find projects like this very comforting. Maybe I'm mildly paranoid, but every now and then I wonder what life would be like if society collapses. Most of the technology we enjoy today can only be produced via huge infrastructures made possible by large, advanced, stable societies. This project shows that fundamental computing technology can be reproduced with relative ease on a very small scale with limited resources. That's a great thing. Time to make some hard copies of this computer design!
We use the Wii too. There's nothing like a 20 foot diagonal measure screen with a 3000 lumen projector and an 18" subwoofer to make playing video games a little more fun.
How about if they stop molesting children. Period. I doubt it makes much difference to a 4 year old whether or not photography is involved while they are being sexually assaulted.
Hello??? It's a digital protocol, it either makes it through or it doesn't.
Correct, and if the data doesn't make it through, it has to be resent (talking specifically about USB cables now). So even with digital there are certainly many states between something working perfectly or not working at all, and they usually have to do with throughput.
These people should be making lie detectors! Really, I don't see how this could work well universally. Personally, my palms don't sweat much, but I know people whose do very easily. Pretty much if they hold onto something, regardless if they are stressed or not, their hand will become very sweaty. These biometrics vary so much from person to person I don't see how this could work very well. The system would also have to take environmental factors into consideration, like temperature and humidity.
Saying that Windows 95 is just a new GUI compared to Windows 3.1 is totally insane. The jump between 3.1 and 95 is probably the single biggest leap the OS has ever made.
The guy is really out there, saying stuff like "He's been talking for two hours, I think I can have two minutes." Um, he's a presidential candidate, you're not. Also note how the crowd applauds when he is pulled away from the mike.
It would be illegal if the website had a EULA that forbid me from blocking ads, that I explicitly agreed to. In that case I would be in breach of contract.
However, I have never entered to any such agreement, so I have no remorse or legal concern for blocking flash or anything else that I don't want my browser to display.
Next thing you know, some company will be whining because someone with poor eyesight has their font size cranked way up, which pushes content down the page, interfering with the company's high-dollar advertising spot that used to be visible without scrolling.
The article only touches on this (last word in the entire story), but this should have ramifications in studying and treating dyslexia. At first glance, it would seem very strange how people could suffer from dyslexia. Why would they perceive pairs of letters and numbers as flipped, if we read in a serial fashion? If both eyes aren't even looking at the same letter then the physiology begins to make more sense - somewhere along the way the information isn't being assembled in the proper order.
I keep hearing people whine about the Mechanical Turk interface. Each image only requires one mouse click and two keyboard presses (no mouse movement at all required). Here's how:
1 - When you manually accept the first hit, make sure you check "Automatically accept the next HIT". 2 - Press the END key to scroll all the way down to see the image. 3 - Click the mouse on Yes or No. 4 - Press the ENTER key to accept the HIT. 5 - Goto 2
I've found two images that are really good candidates for a crash. One was at 38.020248,-119.368515. It looks like a line of tree damage, with a bright object at the edge of the tree line.
Next, I keep hearing people saying that laypeople aren't useful for something like this. This is simply to flag interesting images so experts can spend their time looking only at the most likely candidates. Also, this is free for them. So they could use an algorithm something like this: Show each image to at least 5 people. Each time someone says "Yes" to a specific image, show it to two additional people, up to a max of 20 reviews. Sort the images by descending Yes vote count and show them to the experts in that order.
Dan East
Re:Does this really improve the odds of finding hi
on
Help Find Steve Fossett
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I press the "End" key to scroll all the way down. Look at the image. Click Yes or No. Click Submit Hit. Three interactions per image.
These "feel good" kind of stories are really annoying, because they leave out so many details that most people end up with a completely skewed perception of the facts. I did a quick search to get an idea if 2.5 MPG was good for a boat. Here's an article that tested the fuel efficiency of some standard boats - ie boats with normal hulls that sit down in the water, with regular screw propeller propulsion. So they should be pretty poor compared to many other style hulls, etc.
One particular boat has a V8 350 cubic inch engine that can do 51 MPH. So that's pretty fast. At that speed the boat gets 2.4 MPG, which is basically the same as the boat in the story. At a slower speed of 26.9 MPH it gets 3.6 MPG, which is almost 50% better than the "spider boat". Now obviously the range of these boats are vastly reduced - it's like rocketry, where the more fuel you carry to gain distance, the more weight you have to haul, so the actual gain in distance is only small (or perhaps even negative). So these boats can't begin to touch 5000 miles on one tank.
So perhaps the significance of this story is ratio of the range to fuel efficiency? If so, it would have been nice if the author would have simply said that.
The article is very light on details. To remove "radiactivity" from water, you really need to remove radiactive substances from the water. So this mineral is what, like a filter that removes any and all molecular impurities from water, leaving only H2O molecules?
In the video the guy says there is no computer or operating system. Maybe its all embedded, but obviously it has a CPU running their software.
As far as being just a toy, this thing could actually be quite useful. It could be used to enhance vision, sort of like Geordi's visor in Star Trek. It could display things outside of human vision, or amplify small differences to make them more apparent. Of course it could be used for night vision too. Personally, I would be interested in the hardware if I write my own software / filters for it. The point is, with this type of augmented vision, the sky's pretty much the limit. Imagine if it was OCRing what you look at real-time, so that you could look at something, and the system could display additional information about uncommon words (nouns like place names, product names, etc).
How about the Photosynth demo Microsoft did, where they would take many 2D images of buildings, and reconstruct them in 3D, allowing the user to zoom in in massive detail (if someone had taken photos of that particular place). If that type of image recognition could be done real-time to match what you are currently looking at, then you could look at the inside of a building without entering it. Or zoom in or out, or pan or change your POV entirely, without actually moving your body.
This translates only from English to those languages, making it far less valuable than the other way around.
I have visited a number of websites over the years which did something similar, if perhaps not as accurately or to as many languages.
Also, this caught my interest: The website translator engine took approximately an hour to create, with the language database occupying two hundred hours to line up cuneiforms and hieroglyphics with text descriptors and make a hierarchy to prioritize the information.
So the complexity lies completely within the database, and thus only requires some basic code to look up into the database and spit out results.
Speculating is fun, so I will. Many physical devices that require exacting manufacturing processes are sold under different models of varying specs. The devices with the least manufacturing defects are the high-end, expensive models, while those with more defects are sold for less. The best example is CPUs, the difference between speeds being the amount of manufacturing defects. So perhaps with these drives they have to use different firmware depending on the quality of the platter, and for marketing they took a simpler route and sell them all under the same model with lowest-common-denominator specs.
Slashdot Mirror
Hackers only started exploiting this 3 weeks ago ...that we know of. It is likely that on some irc channel a couple of hackers are congratulating themselves on having kept this exploit under wraps for the last half decade.
Dan East
A team of scientists from the Marine Science Institute in Bologna claims to have found the crater left by the aerial blast of a comet or asteroid in 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia.
This is nothing but a bunch of bologna.
Dan East
Here are two of the videos.
In this one he is target practicing on an apple:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=90d_1194444897
This video is a bunch of stills; a picture of his school, and various pictures of him with his gun:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=369_1194449557
Dan East
The summary (and even the article) is a bit confusing. They're spending $500 on 4 components:
CPU
GPU
Motherboard
RAM
It is assumed you already have the other components (PSU, case, HDD, etc)
Dan East
When I was young my dad ran an electronics store. We got some surplus X-Ray machines for parts, and they had dozens of large capacitors, each larger than a soda can. I remember taking screwdriver and shorting the leads to discharge them. Most arced impressively - fortunately we didn't have to learn the hard way how much charge they still held.
Dan East
Most 7400 series ICs can be replaced with a relatively small number of transistors. Obtaining or even manufacturing the basic transistor is orders of magnitude easier than producing even the simplest CPU. If you can create the fundamental logic gates, even mechanically, then you can produce a computer.
Dan East
I find projects like this very comforting. Maybe I'm mildly paranoid, but every now and then I wonder what life would be like if society collapses. Most of the technology we enjoy today can only be produced via huge infrastructures made possible by large, advanced, stable societies. This project shows that fundamental computing technology can be reproduced with relative ease on a very small scale with limited resources. That's a great thing. Time to make some hard copies of this computer design!
Dan East
We use the Wii too. There's nothing like a 20 foot diagonal measure screen with a 3000 lumen projector and an 18" subwoofer to make playing video games a little more fun.
Dan East
How about if they stop molesting children. Period. I doubt it makes much difference to a 4 year old whether or not photography is involved while they are being sexually assaulted.
Dan East
Hello??? It's a digital protocol, it either makes it through or it doesn't.
Correct, and if the data doesn't make it through, it has to be resent (talking specifically about USB cables now). So even with digital there are certainly many states between something working perfectly or not working at all, and they usually have to do with throughput.
Dan East
I like this one better:
Anthromorphized
Roving
Asymmetrically
Gaited
Off-balance
Robotic
Novelty
Dan East
These people should be making lie detectors! Really, I don't see how this could work well universally. Personally, my palms don't sweat much, but I know people whose do very easily. Pretty much if they hold onto something, regardless if they are stressed or not, their hand will become very sweaty. These biometrics vary so much from person to person I don't see how this could work very well. The system would also have to take environmental factors into consideration, like temperature and humidity.
Dan East
Saying that Windows 95 is just a new GUI compared to Windows 3.1 is totally insane. The jump between 3.1 and 95 is probably the single biggest leap the OS has ever made.
Dan East
I watched three different videos of this at liveleak.com. Here's one in its entirety.
The police action was completely justified.
The guy is really out there, saying stuff like "He's been talking for two hours, I think I can have two minutes." Um, he's a presidential candidate, you're not. Also note how the crowd applauds when he is pulled away from the mike.
Dan East
I hope linux makes significant inroads, but I fear it will make as big of an impact in the cellular arena as it did in the PDA market.
Dan East
It would be illegal if the website had a EULA that forbid me from blocking ads, that I explicitly agreed to. In that case I would be in breach of contract.
However, I have never entered to any such agreement, so I have no remorse or legal concern for blocking flash or anything else that I don't want my browser to display.
Next thing you know, some company will be whining because someone with poor eyesight has their font size cranked way up, which pushes content down the page, interfering with the company's high-dollar advertising spot that used to be visible without scrolling.
Dan East
I'm insulted. The geek pictured on the Slashdot page doesn't even have real glasses. In fact, they don't even have lenses!
Now, if you noticed that as well, then yes, you are a geek too, and Slashdot is your favorite site to visit regularly.
Dan East
The article only touches on this (last word in the entire story), but this should have ramifications in studying and treating dyslexia. At first glance, it would seem very strange how people could suffer from dyslexia. Why would they perceive pairs of letters and numbers as flipped, if we read in a serial fashion? If both eyes aren't even looking at the same letter then the physiology begins to make more sense - somewhere along the way the information isn't being assembled in the proper order.
Dan East
I keep hearing people whine about the Mechanical Turk interface. Each image only requires one mouse click and two keyboard presses (no mouse movement at all required). Here's how:
1 - When you manually accept the first hit, make sure you check "Automatically accept the next HIT".
2 - Press the END key to scroll all the way down to see the image.
3 - Click the mouse on Yes or No.
4 - Press the ENTER key to accept the HIT.
5 - Goto 2
I've found two images that are really good candidates for a crash. One was at 38.020248,-119.368515. It looks like a line of tree damage, with a bright object at the edge of the tree line.
Next, I keep hearing people saying that laypeople aren't useful for something like this. This is simply to flag interesting images so experts can spend their time looking only at the most likely candidates. Also, this is free for them. So they could use an algorithm something like this:
Show each image to at least 5 people.
Each time someone says "Yes" to a specific image, show it to two additional people, up to a max of 20 reviews.
Sort the images by descending Yes vote count and show them to the experts in that order.
Dan East
I press the "End" key to scroll all the way down. Look at the image. Click Yes or No. Click Submit Hit. Three interactions per image.
Dan East
These "feel good" kind of stories are really annoying, because they leave out so many details that most people end up with a completely skewed perception of the facts.
I did a quick search to get an idea if 2.5 MPG was good for a boat. Here's an article that tested the fuel efficiency of some standard boats - ie boats with normal hulls that sit down in the water, with regular screw propeller propulsion. So they should be pretty poor compared to many other style hulls, etc.
One particular boat has a V8 350 cubic inch engine that can do 51 MPH. So that's pretty fast. At that speed the boat gets 2.4 MPG, which is basically the same as the boat in the story. At a slower speed of 26.9 MPH it gets 3.6 MPG, which is almost 50% better than the "spider boat". Now obviously the range of these boats are vastly reduced - it's like rocketry, where the more fuel you carry to gain distance, the more weight you have to haul, so the actual gain in distance is only small (or perhaps even negative). So these boats can't begin to touch 5000 miles on one tank.
So perhaps the significance of this story is ratio of the range to fuel efficiency? If so, it would have been nice if the author would have simply said that.
Dan East
The article is very light on details. To remove "radiactivity" from water, you really need to remove radiactive substances from the water. So this mineral is what, like a filter that removes any and all molecular impurities from water, leaving only H2O molecules?
Dan East
In the video the guy says there is no computer or operating system. Maybe its all embedded, but obviously it has a CPU running their software.
As far as being just a toy, this thing could actually be quite useful. It could be used to enhance vision, sort of like Geordi's visor in Star Trek. It could display things outside of human vision, or amplify small differences to make them more apparent. Of course it could be used for night vision too. Personally, I would be interested in the hardware if I write my own software / filters for it. The point is, with this type of augmented vision, the sky's pretty much the limit. Imagine if it was OCRing what you look at real-time, so that you could look at something, and the system could display additional information about uncommon words (nouns like place names, product names, etc).
How about the Photosynth demo Microsoft did, where they would take many 2D images of buildings, and reconstruct them in 3D, allowing the user to zoom in in massive detail (if someone had taken photos of that particular place). If that type of image recognition could be done real-time to match what you are currently looking at, then you could look at the inside of a building without entering it. Or zoom in or out, or pan or change your POV entirely, without actually moving your body.
Dan East
This translates only from English to those languages, making it far less valuable than the other way around.
I have visited a number of websites over the years which did something similar, if perhaps not as accurately or to as many languages.
Also, this caught my interest:
The website translator engine took approximately an hour to create, with the language database occupying two hundred hours to line up cuneiforms and hieroglyphics with text descriptors and make a hierarchy to prioritize the information.
So the complexity lies completely within the database, and thus only requires some basic code to look up into the database and spit out results.
Dan East
Speculating is fun, so I will. Many physical devices that require exacting manufacturing processes are sold under different models of varying specs. The devices with the least manufacturing defects are the high-end, expensive models, while those with more defects are sold for less. The best example is CPUs, the difference between speeds being the amount of manufacturing defects. So perhaps with these drives they have to use different firmware depending on the quality of the platter, and for marketing they took a simpler route and sell them all under the same model with lowest-common-denominator specs.
Dan East