the problem with that is you need 2 Big Ugly Dish, at least to get super long range. he has one. for normal ranges, it's pretty unsightly to use a BUD when you can e-bay smaller sat tv/sat internet dishes people are trying to offload.
well, if you ever have a manager from hell, who eventually moves to get you fired, maybe you'd get the idea of how stressful (especially in a down economy) his efforts to get you fired can be.
the guy made a big mistake, but, it's not like he brought in a machine gun and mowed down half the office. doesn't excuse him for committing the crimes he did make, but it does explain how a human being, confronted with something they just can't handle might cope with it.
so perhaps large institutions that begin a process to fire someone, should remove their passwords to any mission critical services until the process results either in a firing, or a determination that he/she hasn't done anything worth being fired over.
well, then, we just need biometrics and a centralized database of which human is using the computer now, and when one person's biometrics get stolen/forged they have to go through a whole bureaucratic mess to be able to use the internet anymore.
oh wait, we're in America, so that would never fly. but i can imagine a day, where you have to run a program that checks a webcam, and sends an encrypted OK to use sites. and if there isn't a webcam showing a person, then you can't access, much easier than captchas in a way, since the blind, and blind+deaf could easily still have a webcam, rather than trying to get through captchas.
flash based drives simplify mil spec laptops, though. imagine having to design a laptop with a conventional HDD knowing that it has to survive being thrown into the back of a jeep carelessly, or be able to still work after a soldier pile dived on top of it trying to avoid machine gun fire, or even expected to still work if it had taken a pretty big shock as a result of nearby artillery or grenade blasts.
they used to have really good shock absorbing cages to protect the drive...
"The point of the obfuscation was to slow down analysis of the code and require special tools (SpiderMonkey) that average web users don't have."
noscript is an easy firefox add-on. if you're advising 'normal' people how to use the internet safely, you'd have told them to use noscript and only allow really trusted sites that you can't live without.
personally, I don't trust any site that much. besides, with noscript, slashdot tells you to use the old style instead of the new style layout.
"Is it just me or is this way of getting around it mind-blowingly obvious."
even more mind blowingly obvious, is noscript. it's pretty hard for java/javascript based malware to infect you when the browser won't automatically launch javascript or java.
(and, I suspect, more efficient and hopefully at least somewhat less polluting and poisonous propulsion methods.)
because that solid fuel booster that produces water as a by product is oh so toxic. the most toxic byproduct of the main booster, is chlorine, and we release a lot more making acid free paper.
now, the later stages use more toxic fuels, but they are in a portion of the atmosphere beyond they hydrosphere, and thus permanently remain in space, oh we're polluting the upper atmosphere my gosh! whatever will all the satellites and UFOs do!
reminds me of back in the day, there was this ad on usenet in bad engrish, "run you computer faster" other posters were quick to point out he meant 'run your computer faster' but i went with 'he just forgot the punctuation!' "Run You computer, Faster *whip crack noise*"
"Oh please. This is why I love Slashdot. I'm as big of a MS hater as the next guy, but those who ignore MS's progress from the Blaster days are just spewing FUD. A default Windows SP2 installation, with non-executable buffers (DEP) left enabled for Core windows services, running on supporting hardware will not get owned by just sitting on an infected network. I challenge any Slashdoter who thinks otherwise to prove it. Of course, when people start browsing porn sites with the default browser things get tricky, but that's no longer a remote, automated attack."
http://www.grc.com/ click on 'sheilds up' and do a 'common port scan' with windows firewall as your only inbound protection. Since i use a dedicated hardware firewall i can't post those results here, but here were my results... note: the first test failed because 1 port identified as 'closed' instead of as 'stealth' as for the last, i didn't disable ping, because i use ping a lot myself.
btw these are the ports scanned "0, 21, 22, 23, 25, 79, 80, 110, 113, 119, 135, 139, 143, 389, 443, 445, 1002, 1024, 1025, 1026, 1027, 1028, 1029, 1030, 1720, 5000" I seem top recall that even with a linksys wireless router, many of these ports were still 'open' to complete internet strangers. yeah, that's part of why i switched to always having a hardware firewall.
"Solicited TCP Packets: RECEIVED (FAILED) -- As detailed in the port report below, one or more of your system's ports actively responded to our deliberate attempts to establish a connection. It is generally possible to increase your system's security by hiding it from the probes of potentially hostile hackers. Please see the details presented by the specific port links below, as well as the various resources on this site, and in our extremely helpful and active user community.
Unsolicited Packets: PASSED -- No Internet packets of any sort were received from your system as a side-effect of our attempts to elicit some response from any of the ports listed above. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system remained wisely silent. (Except for the fact that not all of its ports are completely stealthed as shown below.)
Ping Reply: RECEIVED (FAILED) -- Your system REPLIED to our Ping (ICMP Echo) requests, making it visible on the Internet. Most personal firewalls can be configured to block, drop, and ignore such ping requests in order to better hide systems from hackers. This is highly recommended since "Ping" is among the oldest and most common methods used to locate systems prior to further exploitation."
you are completely misrepresenting the data available!
#1 the 'original guide was written pre sp2' is true, but has nothing to do with current survival times, or the new SANS vista 'surviving the first day' guide.
the 4 minute time? what is it 'really' it's the length of time it takes for any internet enabled machine to receive an attempted compromise that would have infected a vulnerable machine. the very article, had you read it would have informed you that WINDOWS FIREWALL DOES NOT STOP ALL ATTACKS, SANS is most worried about malicious websites, and P2P applications, because people tend to allow those types of communication through all their firewalls. infection rates have gone up, and the whole point is that sans is now offering a guide that Every vista using computer newbie should be required to read completely before they ever get internet (not that they will) http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/windows/1298.php
SANS says windows firewall improved things, yet contrarily Survival times have GONE DOWN since windows firewall was introduced. i remember when windows survival time was 13 minutes, today it is 4 minutes, that means since the last time i paid attention, the number of attempted attacks have gone up by 333%
oh and hey, there wouldn't be an attack every 4 minutes on every pc on the internet, if there was some glorious magic bullet firewall that came with sp2 that blocks every outside hacking attempt.
one of 2 things must be true, 1. enough people run old machines without a firewall. 2, the most widely used firewalls don't block hacking attempts. it could even be both! why would hackers bother letting compromised windows systems send that much data, if it didn't catch people with their pants down, couldn't they utilize the available bandwidth more efficiently?
"This program very clearly penetrates every firewall on the market, including Zone Alarm. It sends data out to a server (in this case, grc.com, just like Steve Gibson's LeakTest), and then retrieves data in response--completely bypassing your firewall."
the thing is, he wrote a 3k program that uses IE to get internet data, if you allow IE, every program is allowed by outbound firewalls, as far as not protecting inbound, windows firewall is still the worst, it doesn't specifically block any inbound data to any default windows service that i can tell... it just lets a completely strange computer connect on netbios because that protocol is supported for file and network sharing, regardless of if you have it turned on on not.
which means of course, that if you go online to download your patch you're already hosed. this is why i downloaded and pre installed SP3 on every system i had to maintain in any event of a format, before connecting the internet, i also install a decent firewall before as well.
i know this is/. but straight from TFA, one of his supervisors tried to get the guy canned, and Failed, from there on, he had a couple weeks with his usual permissions, and he set up a program to check what people were reporting about him, as well as set (obviously) a time bomb that would only go off if he didn't have access to reset the time bomb that would make him the only guy with a working password.
I think ironically, that someone working there, Disabled his Password (he reportedly gave one to police) then his time bomb went off leaving the system with NO passwords at all,
and to compound things, they've been using the system 'as-is' because they need it desperately, to do daily jobs. what's going to happen when they find out the whole setup was left password less, the past month of data encrypted and irretrievable, and the only way for admins to work on it is by losing a months worth of data?
and here's the thing, TFA is completely tainted with 'worst case scenarios' they totally assume he gave them wrong passwords (ignoring the fact that it might have been a 'time bomb' leaving the system password less) and also assume that he might have given people on the outside access to the system, with no proof... they also think he has it set so he can destroy data with a cell phone, i mean come on, get real he had like a week or two to plan this from when his supervisor tried to fire him, until they finally fired him..
IMO this guy had a personal disagreement with his manager, and was fired because that guy was working full time trying to find a way to fire someone he disliked.. considering he earned an extra 30k as a trouble shooter and was able to pull off a time bomb, i'm sure he knew what he was doing with technology...
"Not to mention that in 5 billion years, Earth will be totally vitrified by a red giant (namely, the Sun)."
nobody actually knows exactly when that will happen, it's purely hypothesis without any real data, other than the energy output of the sun, and a few recorded events that happened billions of years ago, in far flung parts of the milky way that happened to reach earth while scientists were figuring out what happens to yellow stars in decline.
it could come sooner, it could come later, because the sun is so inconsistent in the amount of fusion going on in it's core... even the wikipedia citation about the sun becoming a red dwarf (in about 5 billion years) postulates several alternative possibilities..
besides, if human technology survives until the sun becomes a dwarf, by then there should easily be the technology to either recreate a human civilization on one of Jupiter's moons, or even perhaps going interstellar in a type of space arc, in search of a more newly born star with a stable planetary body.
exactly, the northwest passage is a huge channel of sea water, for that channel to become completely ice free is a huge difference from ships getting through there over a course of 3 years...
i imagine that if the 2000, voyage was ice free, satellite images still showed a considerable amount of the passage still having ice shelves. the point of my post was that things are getting worse, and the evidence he linked to actually confirmed that at one point, it took 3 years to sail a ship through because it would get ice locked, 1/3 of the way through every winter, and then in 2000 it could be sailed through in 1 year with no ice lock problem..
the problem is simple, none of the energy companies want to be held responsible for what they've done, they can pinpoint exactly what happened to big tobacco, even though the tobacco industry knew for decades before anyone else that smoking was killing people... so energy companies are fighting with all the dirty underhanded tactics available to them. making pseudo science about global cooling, etc.
windows, prior to vista had no 'sandbox' feature set, so this program creates it's own sandbox, eg: loading warden into it's own program. remember most wow players are still using XP...
the point was, this 'cheat' was running warden(the name of WoW's anti-cheat run time) in a sandbox that couldn't 'detect' the cheat, because it was loaded into a sandbox where it could only see what the cheat programmer allowed it to see.
about rapid charging a Lithium-ion-polymer battery "The voltage of a Li-poly cell varies from about 2.7 V (discharged) to about 4.23 V (fully charged), and 'Li-poly cells have to be protected from overcharge by limiting the applied voltage to no more than 4.235 V per cell used in a series combination. Overcharging a Li-poly battery will likely result in explosion and/or fire.' During discharge on load, the load has to be removed as soon as the voltage drops below approximately 3.0 V per cell (used in a series combination), or else the battery will subsequently no longer accept a full charge and may experience problems holding voltage under load."
limiting applied voltage to 4.235 volt per cell, means rapid charging is only possible with a massive array of very small LiP batteries. Exploding batteries are not fun for anyone.
oh and hey, depending on how you make the LiP battery you might need to cook the battery on a silver plate at 200-300 degrees Centigrade. that's ~400-750 Fahrenheit, um yeah, that kind of process does make it harder to ramp up to a mass produced product, probably why there are 2 methods of making LiP batteries.
"Default installation on new machines and network effects ("I can have the same programs/open the same files as everyone else I know, and I can use the same interface I've seen elsewhere") DO make it convenient. Not necessarily good, but convenient.
If another OS can get enough market share, and open standards take off, some of that will go away. But it does exist."
Well, when my parents were having troubles with a rootkit (same one i was having trouble with) i switched one of their PCs to ubuntu, it made fixing the problem much simpler. the other one had to be windows, though, but if more geeks exposed relatives with 2 or more PCs to linux desktops like ubuntu, it would just be a matter of time before people start 'demanding' linux availability.
my dad for one, likes the sudoku game that comes with ubuntu by default a lot. he also plays card games, and i've even set up vlc links to internet radio, he likes the linux machine just fine.
"Continental drift maps are usually drawn by moving around the outlines of the modern continents for the most part"
actually, no, what is primarily used is geological core examination, where they look at all the layers of rock, at the atomic decay of various isotopes, etc, etc, the idea came from someone looking at the continents, and saying it looks like Africa and south America fit together like a jigsaw piece. just the appearance alone, wasn't enough to 'scientifically' prove or date when areas were pieced together, but it did keep some scientist going, until they could prove that the continents were once pieced together..
oh hey, and if the continental plates move apart at a rate of 3 inches a year within 500 million years a single plate would travel the entire circumference of the earth.
"I got a pretty good feel of "high temperature" superconducting being vaporware."
You might want to ask anyone who's ever been in a MRI why the dang thing works at all without it's superconducting super magnets.
by 'high temperature' right now we mean somewhere around 90-110K prior to 1986 high temperature meant 'below 22K' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSCCO BSCCO is the most common superconductor, at least for lines, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YBCO YBCO is better for super conducting super magnets. at least if I'm understanding the wikis on them correctly.
although, according to some website, they claimed that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niobium-tin (used with liquid helium cooling) was the superconductor used with MRI machinery.
oh hey, and what about the maglev train in japan, or various ones in germany?? do you honestly think that doing magleg based on normal electromagnets would be energy efficient?
yeah, yeah superconductors that require LN or LH cooling, automatically cost a lot of money, but here's the thing, these LN2 superconductor lines, aren't going to run 24/7 365... they of course are going to load test them, but after that because they're part of a redundant backup power grid setup, they're just going to not cool and not use them, expect when the grid really needs them to not fail.
most likely this project was just to line the pockets of someone who was friends with the right people, since DHS paid for it in a no-bid contract! all the tech on superconductors is fairly simple, we're using them in maglev trains and MRI machines every day...
Don't worry, in 5 billion years, when we collide with Andromeda, we'll be in a very exciting galaxy... i don't think scientists really know what happens when 2 galaxies collide, but the coolest thing that could happen is 2 habituated solar systems, coming within easy radio range of one another.
I believe a while back scientists were predicting that the formation of large gas giants, and small, earth like planets was more common than earlier thought, thus improving the odds of extra terrestrial life.
now if only a scientifically advanced civilization can survive for 5 billion years, and still be able to send radio waves to passerby solar systems.
I don't have much faith in humans surviving that long, population growth problems, limited resources, the possibility of 'real' atomic war...
Slashdot Mirror
the problem with that is you need 2 Big Ugly Dish, at least to get super long range. he has one. for normal ranges, it's pretty unsightly to use a BUD when you can e-bay smaller sat tv/sat internet dishes people are trying to offload.
well, if you ever have a manager from hell, who eventually moves to get you fired, maybe you'd get the idea of how stressful (especially in a down economy) his efforts to get you fired can be.
the guy made a big mistake, but, it's not like he brought in a machine gun and mowed down half the office. doesn't excuse him for committing the crimes he did make, but it does explain how a human being, confronted with something they just can't handle might cope with it.
so perhaps large institutions that begin a process to fire someone, should remove their passwords to any mission critical services until the process results either in a firing, or a determination that he/she hasn't done anything worth being fired over.
well, then, we just need biometrics and a centralized database of which human is using the computer now, and when one person's biometrics get stolen/forged they have to go through a whole bureaucratic mess to be able to use the internet anymore.
oh wait, we're in America, so that would never fly. but i can imagine a day, where you have to run a program that checks a webcam, and sends an encrypted OK to use sites. and if there isn't a webcam showing a person, then you can't access, much easier than captchas in a way, since the blind, and blind+deaf could easily still have a webcam, rather than trying to get through captchas.
flash based drives simplify mil spec laptops, though. imagine having to design a laptop with a conventional HDD knowing that it has to survive being thrown into the back of a jeep carelessly, or be able to still work after a soldier pile dived on top of it trying to avoid machine gun fire, or even expected to still work if it had taken a pretty big shock as a result of nearby artillery or grenade blasts.
they used to have really good shock absorbing cages to protect the drive...
"The point of the obfuscation was to slow down analysis of the code and require special tools (SpiderMonkey) that average web users don't have."
noscript is an easy firefox add-on. if you're advising 'normal' people how to use the internet safely, you'd have told them to use noscript and only allow really trusted sites that you can't live without.
personally, I don't trust any site that much. besides, with noscript, slashdot tells you to use the old style instead of the new style layout.
"Is it just me or is this way of getting around it mind-blowingly obvious."
even more mind blowingly obvious, is noscript. it's pretty hard for java/javascript based malware to infect you when the browser won't automatically launch javascript or java.
(and, I suspect, more efficient and hopefully at least somewhat less polluting and poisonous propulsion methods.)
because that solid fuel booster that produces water as a by product is oh so toxic. the most toxic byproduct of the main booster, is chlorine, and we release a lot more making acid free paper.
now, the later stages use more toxic fuels, but they are in a portion of the atmosphere beyond they hydrosphere, and thus permanently remain in space, oh we're polluting the upper atmosphere my gosh! whatever will all the satellites and UFOs do!
reminds me of back in the day, there was this ad on usenet in bad engrish, "run you computer faster" other posters were quick to point out he meant 'run your computer faster' but i went with 'he just forgot the punctuation!' "Run You computer, Faster *whip crack noise*"
Was that you? I reported a lot of code red reports that i got on my apache log, especially the ones in university netblocks!
I was probably the guy who reported the ip address of your code red machine to your admins!
"Oh please. This is why I love Slashdot. I'm as big of a MS hater as the next guy, but those who ignore MS's progress from the Blaster days are just spewing FUD. A default Windows SP2 installation, with non-executable buffers (DEP) left enabled for Core windows services, running on supporting hardware will not get owned by just sitting on an infected network. I challenge any Slashdoter who thinks otherwise to prove it. Of course, when people start browsing porn sites with the default browser things get tricky, but that's no longer a remote, automated attack."
http://www.grc.com/ click on 'sheilds up' and do a 'common port scan' with windows firewall as your only inbound protection. Since i use a dedicated hardware firewall i can't post those results here, but here were my results... note: the first test failed because 1 port identified as 'closed' instead of as 'stealth' as for the last, i didn't disable ping, because i use ping a lot myself.
btw these are the ports scanned "0, 21, 22, 23, 25, 79, 80, 110, 113, 119, 135, 139, 143, 389, 443, 445, 1002, 1024, 1025, 1026, 1027, 1028, 1029, 1030, 1720, 5000" I seem top recall that even with a linksys wireless router, many of these ports were still 'open' to complete internet strangers. yeah, that's part of why i switched to always having a hardware firewall.
"Solicited TCP Packets: RECEIVED (FAILED) -- As detailed in the port report below, one or more of your system's ports actively responded to our deliberate attempts to establish a connection. It is generally possible to increase your system's security by hiding it from the probes of potentially hostile hackers. Please see the details presented by the specific port links below, as well as the various resources on this site, and in our extremely helpful and active user community.
Unsolicited Packets: PASSED -- No Internet packets of any sort were received from your system as a side-effect of our attempts to elicit some response from any of the ports listed above. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system remained wisely silent. (Except for the fact that not all of its ports are completely stealthed as shown below.)
Ping Reply: RECEIVED (FAILED) -- Your system REPLIED to our Ping (ICMP Echo) requests, making it visible on the Internet. Most personal firewalls can be configured to block, drop, and ignore such ping requests in order to better hide systems from hackers. This is highly recommended since "Ping" is among the oldest and most common methods used to locate systems prior to further exploitation."
you are completely misrepresenting the data available!
#1 the 'original guide was written pre sp2' is true, but has nothing to do with current survival times, or the new SANS vista 'surviving the first day' guide.
the 4 minute time? what is it 'really' it's the length of time it takes for any internet enabled machine to receive an attempted compromise that would have infected a vulnerable machine. the very article, had you read it would have informed you that WINDOWS FIREWALL DOES NOT STOP ALL ATTACKS, SANS is most worried about malicious websites, and P2P applications, because people tend to allow those types of communication through all their firewalls. infection rates have gone up, and the whole point is that sans is now offering a guide that Every vista using computer newbie should be required to read completely before they ever get internet (not that they will) http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/windows/1298.php
SANS says windows firewall improved things, yet contrarily Survival times have GONE DOWN since windows firewall was introduced. i remember when windows survival time was 13 minutes, today it is 4 minutes, that means since the last time i paid attention, the number of attempted attacks have gone up by 333%
oh and hey, there wouldn't be an attack every 4 minutes on every pc on the internet, if there was some glorious magic bullet firewall that came with sp2 that blocks every outside hacking attempt.
one of 2 things must be true, 1. enough people run old machines without a firewall. 2, the most widely used firewalls don't block hacking attempts. it could even be both! why would hackers bother letting compromised windows systems send that much data, if it didn't catch people with their pants down, couldn't they utilize the available bandwidth more efficiently?
"if you hadn't installed a 3rd party FW in to your Windows XP computer, you'd be safe."
http://www.firewallleaktester.com/tests.php
http://tooleaky.zensoft.com/
"This program very clearly penetrates every firewall on the market, including Zone Alarm. It sends data out to a server (in this case, grc.com, just like Steve Gibson's LeakTest), and then retrieves data in response--completely bypassing your firewall."
the thing is, he wrote a 3k program that uses IE to get internet data, if you allow IE, every program is allowed by outbound firewalls, as far as not protecting inbound, windows firewall is still the worst, it doesn't specifically block any inbound data to any default windows service that i can tell... it just lets a completely strange computer connect on netbios because that protocol is supported for file and network sharing, regardless of if you have it turned on on not.
which means of course, that if you go online to download your patch you're already hosed. this is why i downloaded and pre installed SP3 on every system i had to maintain in any event of a format, before connecting the internet, i also install a decent firewall before as well.
what firewall? windows firewall was the only firewall to score a 0 in a comprehensive test of firewall programs.
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;159719021
the guy said he plugged in the wrong cable, circumventing his hardware firewall.
i know this is /. but straight from TFA, one of his supervisors tried to get the guy canned, and Failed, from there on, he had a couple weeks with his usual permissions, and he set up a program to check what people were reporting about him, as well as set (obviously) a time bomb that would only go off if he didn't have access to reset the time bomb that would make him the only guy with a working password.
I think ironically, that someone working there, Disabled his Password (he reportedly gave one to police) then his time bomb went off leaving the system with NO passwords at all,
and to compound things, they've been using the system 'as-is' because they need it desperately, to do daily jobs. what's going to happen when they find out the whole setup was left password less, the past month of data encrypted and irretrievable, and the only way for admins to work on it is by losing a months worth of data?
and here's the thing, TFA is completely tainted with 'worst case scenarios' they totally assume he gave them wrong passwords (ignoring the fact that it might have been a 'time bomb' leaving the system password less) and also assume that he might have given people on the outside access to the system, with no proof... they also think he has it set so he can destroy data with a cell phone, i mean come on, get real he had like a week or two to plan this from when his supervisor tried to fire him, until they finally fired him..
IMO this guy had a personal disagreement with his manager, and was fired because that guy was working full time trying to find a way to fire someone he disliked.. considering he earned an extra 30k as a trouble shooter and was able to pull off a time bomb, i'm sure he knew what he was doing with technology...
"Not to mention that in 5 billion years, Earth will be totally vitrified by a red giant (namely, the Sun)."
nobody actually knows exactly when that will happen, it's purely hypothesis without any real data, other than the energy output of the sun, and a few recorded events that happened billions of years ago, in far flung parts of the milky way that happened to reach earth while scientists were figuring out what happens to yellow stars in decline.
it could come sooner, it could come later, because the sun is so inconsistent in the amount of fusion going on in it's core... even the wikipedia citation about the sun becoming a red dwarf (in about 5 billion years) postulates several alternative possibilities..
besides, if human technology survives until the sun becomes a dwarf, by then there should easily be the technology to either recreate a human civilization on one of Jupiter's moons, or even perhaps going interstellar in a type of space arc, in search of a more newly born star with a stable planetary body.
exactly, the northwest passage is a huge channel of sea water, for that channel to become completely ice free is a huge difference from ships getting through there over a course of 3 years...
i imagine that if the 2000, voyage was ice free, satellite images still showed a considerable amount of the passage still having ice shelves. the point of my post was that things are getting worse, and the evidence he linked to actually confirmed that at one point, it took 3 years to sail a ship through because it would get ice locked, 1/3 of the way through every winter, and then in 2000 it could be sailed through in 1 year with no ice lock problem..
the problem is simple, none of the energy companies want to be held responsible for what they've done, they can pinpoint exactly what happened to big tobacco, even though the tobacco industry knew for decades before anyone else that smoking was killing people... so energy companies are fighting with all the dirty underhanded tactics available to them. making pseudo science about global cooling, etc.
windows, prior to vista had no 'sandbox' feature set, so this program creates it's own sandbox, eg: loading warden into it's own program. remember most wow players are still using XP...
if there Really was 'global cooling' would http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/27/1650207&from=rss the north pole be projected to be completely ice free for the first time in recorded history?
not to mention, in 2007 that the northwest passage was completely ice free for the first time in recorded history. (and it's going to be open this year too)http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/15/2023212&tid=14
maybe the northeast passage will be ice free for the first time this year too, but i haven't heard about that yet.
the point was, this 'cheat' was running warden(the name of WoW's anti-cheat run time) in a sandbox that couldn't 'detect' the cheat, because it was loaded into a sandbox where it could only see what the cheat programmer allowed it to see.
that article mentions NASA not the USAF... in fact it doesn't mention aircraft at all.
about rapid charging a Lithium-ion-polymer battery
"The voltage of a Li-poly cell varies from about 2.7 V (discharged) to about 4.23 V (fully charged), and 'Li-poly cells have to be protected from overcharge by limiting the applied voltage to no more than 4.235 V per cell used in a series combination. Overcharging a Li-poly battery will likely result in explosion and/or fire.' During discharge on load, the load has to be removed as soon as the voltage drops below approximately 3.0 V per cell (used in a series combination), or else the battery will subsequently no longer accept a full charge and may experience problems holding voltage under load."
limiting applied voltage to 4.235 volt per cell, means rapid charging is only possible with a massive array of very small LiP batteries. Exploding batteries are not fun for anyone.
oh and hey, depending on how you make the LiP battery you might need to cook the battery on a silver plate at 200-300 degrees Centigrade.
that's ~400-750 Fahrenheit, um yeah, that kind of process does make it harder to ramp up to a mass produced product, probably why there are 2 methods of making LiP batteries.
"Default installation on new machines and network effects ("I can have the same programs/open the same files as everyone else I know, and I can use the same interface I've seen elsewhere") DO make it convenient. Not necessarily good, but convenient.
If another OS can get enough market share, and open standards take off, some of that will go away. But it does exist."
Well, when my parents were having troubles with a rootkit (same one i was having trouble with) i switched one of their PCs to ubuntu, it made fixing the problem much simpler. the other one had to be windows, though, but if more geeks exposed relatives with 2 or more PCs to linux desktops like ubuntu, it would just be a matter of time before people start 'demanding' linux availability.
my dad for one, likes the sudoku game that comes with ubuntu by default a lot. he also plays card games, and i've even set up vlc links to internet radio, he likes the linux machine just fine.
"Continental drift maps are usually drawn by moving around the outlines of the modern continents for the most part"
actually, no, what is primarily used is geological core examination, where they look at all the layers of rock, at the atomic decay of various isotopes, etc, etc, the idea came from someone looking at the continents, and saying it looks like Africa and south America fit together like a jigsaw piece. just the appearance alone, wasn't enough to 'scientifically' prove or date when areas were pieced together, but it did keep some scientist going, until they could prove that the continents were once pieced together..
oh hey, and if the continental plates move apart at a rate of 3 inches a year within 500 million years a single plate would travel the entire circumference of the earth.
"I got a pretty good feel of "high temperature" superconducting being vaporware."
You might want to ask anyone who's ever been in a MRI why the dang thing works at all without it's superconducting super magnets.
by 'high temperature' right now we mean somewhere around 90-110K prior to 1986 high temperature meant 'below 22K'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSCCO BSCCO is the most common superconductor, at least for lines, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YBCO YBCO is better for super conducting super magnets. at least if I'm understanding the wikis on them correctly.
although, according to some website, they claimed that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niobium-tin (used with liquid helium cooling) was the superconductor used with MRI machinery.
oh hey, and what about the maglev train in japan, or various ones in germany?? do you honestly think that doing magleg based on normal electromagnets would be energy efficient?
yeah, yeah superconductors that require LN or LH cooling, automatically cost a lot of money, but here's the thing, these LN2 superconductor lines, aren't going to run 24/7 365... they of course are going to load test them, but after that because they're part of a redundant backup power grid setup, they're just going to not cool and not use them, expect when the grid really needs them to not fail.
most likely this project was just to line the pockets of someone who was friends with the right people, since DHS paid for it in a no-bid contract! all the tech on superconductors is fairly simple, we're using them in maglev trains and MRI machines every day...
Don't worry, in 5 billion years, when we collide with Andromeda, we'll be in a very exciting galaxy... i don't think scientists really know what happens when 2 galaxies collide, but the coolest thing that could happen is 2 habituated solar systems, coming within easy radio range of one another.
I believe a while back scientists were predicting that the formation of large gas giants, and small, earth like planets was more common than earlier thought, thus improving the odds of extra terrestrial life.
now if only a scientifically advanced civilization can survive for 5 billion years, and still be able to send radio waves to passerby solar systems.
I don't have much faith in humans surviving that long, population growth problems, limited resources, the possibility of 'real' atomic war...