The market is the prosumer camera that uses the LCD for framing and focus. That eats a lot of battery, but then does someone's mom taking pictures at a birthday party need a hydrogen fuel cell battery? As other people have pointed out, I don't think that's the right application for this technology.
A hydrogen fuel cell battery is probably really unsuitable for many applications because hydrogen is difficult to handle. If you want a fuel cell for a mass market appliance then one fueled by butane makes rather more sense.
RTF patent application. They want to centralize fuel storage and distribute it to the attachements to each generate their own power in their own fuel cells.
It would appear to make more sense to use some kind of electrical connection. Robust electrical connectors are rather easier than robust connectors for liquid or gas. Even a short circuit is less dangerous than a fuel leak.
If one can make any argument at all, it is for segregating schoolchildren based on ability, not arbitrary factors such as race, sex, or even religion.
There have been all sorts of methods used to segregate students of the basis of "ability" which turn out to have quite a degree of "arbitrary" involved.
So, since data follows these laws (rather than the laws of physics as they apply to physical goods) people feel like they are being cheated when they are asked to pretend like data follows the laws of physical matter.
In the past "data" was often tightly bound to physical media, thus it was possible for people to accept this fiction. Developments in technology have been making the link between "media" and "content" less relevent over at least the last half century or so.
What about the potential sale that we are "stealing" by copying a game? We tend to respond to such a representation of the situation with great cynicism. We feel like the only reason you feel entitled to every single "potential sale" is because of your insistence in everyone pretending that an abundant good is not abundant.
There's also a false dicotemy involved with assuming that everyone who "pirates" would otherwise buy, they could just as easily do without. That's before even considering that the only copy available to some people may be a "pirate copy".
We also feel that the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism doesn't guarantee a ROI on any kind of development project, so when you pound your fist in frustration at your inability to monetize your efforts we just say, "so try something else...thats what every other entrepreneur in the world has had to do...what makes you special? If you can't make money making games, do something else, and stop whining."
That "something else" could include the likes of getting payment (or contracts for payment) before you produce a game. Producing a product then hoping for customers will always carry the risk that those customers simply don't exist.
Lastly...the age-old mantra that if you can't get money for every copy of a game sold then nobody will produce games. I call BS. Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continued piracy. Enough people pay for the games (even though they don't have to) that the industry remains profitable.
If an industry is profitable then that is a good thing, especially considering the current state of the global economy...
3D printers create by default quite brittle objects, as it is lots of little dots of plastic glued together. To get a resistant plastic copy you should make a mold and then compress plastic inside of it.
In which case the output of the 3d printer makes a perfectly good pattern:)
First step would be to not give Google all your data. I have no problem with the company (as yet), but I understand that all they are is a for-profit company.
As well as being a company in a part of the world with very few data protection laws. Whilst not perfect such laws do restrict your risk of access to governments and criminals:)
If Google has all your data to the point you need to make this post, I think you may have other more pressing things to worry about... like the fact that it may no longer really be your data any more.
It technically still belongs to them. In the same way that the MPAA/RIAA's "content" still belongs to them...
I know you meant this as a joke, but your suggestion actually would allow a user to regain control of their data, albeit probably not in the most flexible way.
It might enable them to regain control of their future data. But they have almost certainly lost control of their current data. About the only way of retaining control over your data whilst having a third party store it would be if you encrypt in such a way that that party will never have access to anything other than the cyphertext. Which has the side effect that you can't process that data with web based apps.
With a correct implementation - that uses good cryptography - it is quite possible to have secure stored value cards.
However good the cryptography such a card would be vulnerable to a "known plaintext" attack. Since an attacker can see how the encrypted information changes as they alter the value of the card and compare several with the same value. To make things easier these systems tend to use proprietary cryptography which equates to very poor cryptography. In the case of Mifare Classic this was described by Bruce Schneier as "kindergarten cryptography". Maybe they'd have done better to use something like the "Vigenere Cipher" which was at least considered unbreakable for 300 years.
I don't know about the Charlie card system, but the issue with many transit cards is that it's difficult or impossible for moving vehicles to always be able to check in with the network database to determine the value of an account.
It's just as well that people typically only get on and off buses which are stopped:) With trains there are often ticket operated barriers which never move.
What I want to know is how a system like this is even possible. Why should the value available on a smart card actually be something that can be changed by the person holding the card.
Because the people designing these systems don't know what they are doing. This dosn't just apply to RFID systems. There was a case recently involving a magnetic strip card which could be "cloned" by the using nothing more sophisticated than scissors/knife together sticky tape/glue
Shouldn't the card just have an ID, and that ID is tied to an account, which is tied to a person.
Unless it's intended to also use the system to track specific individuals then you don't need any such tying. Just a method of ensuing that every ticket has a unique ID. That only one instance of a ticket with a given ID is in use at any time in the system and that a "never issued ID" or one reported lost/stolen cannot be used.
Maybe put the amount on the card, so the bus doesn't have to call home every time someone steps on a bus, but at least keep all transactions in a database so they can check for fraud after the fact.
A bus might well "call home" periodically anyway, for such things as uploading it's position/CCTV footage/etc at this point it can check the tickets which have recently been used. If it isn't possible to operate a data link all the time.
It seems like the way they have it set up, would be the equivalent of having your bank account balance completely controllable by modifying the information on your bank card.
IIRC at one time it was possible get around withdrawal limits by modifying/cloning cards since they used a read/write area to record this information on the card. So as to enable offline/batch operation of machines.
Even retail stores have this figured out so that their gift cards only hold a number, and the actual value on the card is stored in some computer database.
Probably only as a consequence of being exploited though:)
All that proves is that the people suing are even stupider than they seem because they're trying to stop something that's already on the internet, and we all know how that goes.
It's actually even worst than that. By the action of suing they have drawn attention to the issue. As well as "confirming" the research. Probably also ensuring that the relevent information will wind up being published in places it wasn't likely to end up before before. Note that the article mentions that thousands of people (not covered by the injunction) already have copies of the "paper". Some of those copies may be already out of the court's jurisdiction too.
For quite a lot of us, a TV is something that is 20" to 30" tops and while VHS really is bad enough that a DVD makes a difference,
There are other important differences between VHS and DVD. Such as a smaller and less fragile media, random access (subject to DRM issues), ability to change speed without degrading the picture (or a limit on how long you can pause for), etc. You only need to replace one machine to get these benefits. Whereas with BluRay to DVD there are fewer "improvements" and for the major one you need to spend lots of money, assuming that DRM dosn't cause issues. What might make more sense would be to have BluRay disks with more content on than standard DVDs.
Linux is the OS that propeller heads use. If a noob tries to install it, encounters a problem and asks for help, they get the standard "RTFM" response,
USE!=INSTALL. No doubt your "noob" would run into all sorts of problems trying to install Windows too.
For one I would like to end the electoral system in the US. That would the power away from state governments to manufacture electoral votes via gerrymandering every 2-6 years. This could possibly be done via constitutional convention but the likelihood is nil.
There is a simple way to make gerrymandering hard that is to separate political party membership from voter registration. Maybe even have people who want to be a member of a political party joining a party (or even parties) by filling out a membership application. Which is the way most of the rest of the planet does things.
I have an open source solution. How about marking pieces of paper with a pen, and then having teams of human beings count them?
It's okay with me for election results to take an extra day or two if they wide open and monitored at every level by volunteers.
Where this method is used results are typically available within hours. Also few, if any, US elections are in any way "time critical" since the results don't take effect for months...
The researcher replaced the digital signatures on the passports with ones of his own creation when altering the photographs... if the equipment used to test had actually compared the digital signatures to those on file, it would have immediately spotted the tampering. Problem is most countries aren't sharing their signatures yet, making those checks impotent. For now, at least (and not saying there aren't other vulnerabilities).
Any guesses on how secure the private keys for these signatures are likely to be?
A HDD password is, as the parent mentioned, a part of the ATA spec. It's stored on the HDD itself and cannot be conveniently reset. The drive is unusable in another machine, unless that machine's BIOS supports HDD passwords and you happen to know the password.
The BIOS support is only needed if you intend to boot from the HDD in question.
A hard drive password wouldn't technically be encryption. It's just a level of access restrictions. It works with the firmware of the micro-controller board to regulate access to the device. If I remember right, swapping the control boards on identical drives and placing it in a different computer could get around that. There are some issues with that though, the the encryption places some code in the boot sector which if read by the drive's controller (on the drive, not the main board) will block access to the disk without the controler answering the code in however it does that.
If you have the resources then you could probably use a controller board with hacked firmware...
This is built into almost all drives and is part of the ATA spec. If it isn't present on your main board, it is likely that it just wasn't implemented in the bios your manufacturer used.
BIOS support for feeding the controller a password tends to be most common on laptops.
If one was the NT login, were the admins smart enough to disable the LM Hash? Still, booting it with a *NIX CD and blanking the SAM password for administrator is trivial.
Makes more sense to take a copy of the disk first. Which leaves the original unaltered.
Is there something I'm missing about this? Are there a (whopping!) two password scheme that could actually make something more secure then just booting it with something else and pulling data off? A HDD password will make things more difficult...
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Do there even exist SLR lenses today which are not powered by the camera?
:)
Those which are powered by the human operating the camera
The market is the prosumer camera that uses the LCD for framing and focus. That eats a lot of battery, but then does someone's mom taking pictures at a birthday party need a hydrogen fuel cell battery? As other people have pointed out, I don't think that's the right application for this technology.
A hydrogen fuel cell battery is probably really unsuitable for many applications because hydrogen is difficult to handle. If you want a fuel cell for a mass market appliance then one fueled by butane makes rather more sense.
RTF patent application. They want to centralize fuel storage and distribute it to the attachements to each generate their own power in their own fuel cells.
It would appear to make more sense to use some kind of electrical connection. Robust electrical connectors are rather easier than robust connectors for liquid or gas. Even a short circuit is less dangerous than a fuel leak.
Good luck selling people a can of explosive pressurised gas they have to hold close to their body,
People will quite happily do this with butane.
If one can make any argument at all, it is for segregating schoolchildren based on ability, not arbitrary factors such as race, sex, or even religion.
There have been all sorts of methods used to segregate students of the basis of "ability" which turn out to have quite a degree of "arbitrary" involved.
Whether it's a disability or not, I think we should seriously consider segregating the two populations and putting them in different classrooms.
There are a lot more criteria you could use to segregate students.
I bet that, to achieve their best, they'll need radically different teaching methods.
Unless you have some plan segregate an entire society people in each of these catagories are still going to have to interact with those in the other.
So, since data follows these laws (rather than the laws of physics as they apply to physical goods) people feel like they are being cheated when they are asked to pretend like data follows the laws of physical matter.
In the past "data" was often tightly bound to physical media, thus it was possible for people to accept this fiction. Developments in technology have been making the link between "media" and "content" less relevent over at least the last half century or so.
What about the potential sale that we are "stealing" by copying a game? We tend to respond to such a representation of the situation with great cynicism. We feel like the only reason you feel entitled to every single "potential sale" is because of your insistence in everyone pretending that an abundant good is not abundant.
There's also a false dicotemy involved with assuming that everyone who "pirates" would otherwise buy, they could just as easily do without. That's before even considering that the only copy available to some people may be a "pirate copy".
We also feel that the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism doesn't guarantee a ROI on any kind of development project, so when you pound your fist in frustration at your inability to monetize your efforts we just say, "so try something else...thats what every other entrepreneur in the world has had to do...what makes you special? If you can't make money making games, do something else, and stop whining."
That "something else" could include the likes of getting payment (or contracts for payment) before you produce a game. Producing a product then hoping for customers will always carry the risk that those customers simply don't exist.
Lastly...the age-old mantra that if you can't get money for every copy of a game sold then nobody will produce games. I call BS. Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continued piracy. Enough people pay for the games (even though they don't have to) that the industry remains profitable.
If an industry is profitable then that is a good thing, especially considering the current state of the global economy...
3D printers create by default quite brittle objects, as it is lots of little dots of plastic glued together. To get a resistant plastic copy you should make a mold and then compress plastic inside of it.
:)
In which case the output of the 3d printer makes a perfectly good pattern
What makes you think that they back up the users' data? (Note: users, not customers.)
Not being able to restore a "user's" data, for the benefit of that user dosn't mean that they don't back it up for the benefit of someone else...
First step would be to not give Google all your data. I have no problem with the company (as yet), but I understand that all they are is a for-profit company.
:)
As well as being a company in a part of the world with very few data protection laws. Whilst not perfect such laws do restrict your risk of access to governments and criminals
If Google has all your data to the point you need to make this post, I think you may have other more pressing things to worry about... like the fact that it may no longer really be your data any more.
It technically still belongs to them. In the same way that the MPAA/RIAA's "content" still belongs to them...
I know you meant this as a joke, but your suggestion actually would allow a user to regain control of their data, albeit probably not in the most flexible way.
It might enable them to regain control of their future data. But they have almost certainly lost control of their current data.
About the only way of retaining control over your data whilst having a third party store it would be if you encrypt in such a way that that party will never have access to anything other than the cyphertext. Which has the side effect that you can't process that data with web based apps.
With a correct implementation - that uses good cryptography - it is quite possible to have secure stored value cards.
However good the cryptography such a card would be vulnerable to a "known plaintext" attack. Since an attacker can see how the encrypted information changes as they alter the value of the card and compare several with the same value.
To make things easier these systems tend to use proprietary cryptography which equates to very poor cryptography. In the case of Mifare Classic this was described by Bruce Schneier as "kindergarten cryptography". Maybe they'd have done better to use something like the "Vigenere Cipher" which was at least considered unbreakable for 300 years.
I don't know about the Charlie card system, but the issue with many transit cards is that it's difficult or impossible for moving vehicles to always be able to check in with the network database to determine the value of an account.
:) With trains there are often ticket operated barriers which never move.
It's just as well that people typically only get on and off buses which are stopped
What I want to know is how a system like this is even possible. Why should the value available on a smart card actually be something that can be changed by the person holding the card.
:)
Because the people designing these systems don't know what they are doing. This dosn't just apply to RFID systems. There was a case recently involving a magnetic strip card which could be "cloned" by the using nothing more sophisticated than scissors/knife together sticky tape/glue
Shouldn't the card just have an ID, and that ID is tied to an account, which is tied to a person.
Unless it's intended to also use the system to track specific individuals then you don't need any such tying. Just a method of ensuing that every ticket has a unique ID. That only one instance of a ticket with a given ID is in use at any time in the system and that a "never issued ID" or one reported lost/stolen cannot be used.
Maybe put the amount on the card, so the bus doesn't have to call home every time someone steps on a bus, but at least keep all transactions in a database so they can check for fraud after the fact.
A bus might well "call home" periodically anyway, for such things as uploading it's position/CCTV footage/etc at this point it can check the tickets which have recently been used. If it isn't possible to operate a data link all the time.
It seems like the way they have it set up, would be the equivalent of having your bank account balance completely controllable by modifying the information on your bank card.
IIRC at one time it was possible get around withdrawal limits by modifying/cloning cards since they used a read/write area to record this information on the card. So as to enable offline/batch operation of machines.
Even retail stores have this figured out so that their gift cards only hold a number, and the actual value on the card is stored in some computer database.
Probably only as a consequence of being exploited though
All that proves is that the people suing are even stupider than they seem because they're trying to stop something that's already on the internet, and we all know how that goes.
It's actually even worst than that. By the action of suing they have drawn attention to the issue. As well as "confirming" the research.
Probably also ensuring that the relevent information will wind up being published in places it wasn't likely to end up before before. Note that the article mentions that thousands of people (not covered by the injunction) already have copies of the "paper". Some of those copies may be already out of the court's jurisdiction too.
For quite a lot of us, a TV is something that is 20" to 30" tops and while VHS really is bad enough that a DVD makes a difference,
There are other important differences between VHS and DVD. Such as a smaller and less fragile media, random access (subject to DRM issues), ability to change speed without degrading the picture (or a limit on how long you can pause for), etc. You only need to replace one machine to get these benefits.
Whereas with BluRay to DVD there are fewer "improvements" and for the major one you need to spend lots of money, assuming that DRM dosn't cause issues. What might make more sense would be to have BluRay disks with more content on than standard DVDs.
Linux is the OS that propeller heads use. If a noob tries to install it, encounters a problem and asks for help, they get the standard "RTFM" response,
USE!=INSTALL. No doubt your "noob" would run into all sorts of problems trying to install Windows too.
For one I would like to end the electoral system in the US. That would the power away from state governments to manufacture electoral votes via gerrymandering every 2-6 years. This could possibly be done via constitutional convention but the likelihood is nil.
There is a simple way to make gerrymandering hard that is to separate political party membership from voter registration. Maybe even have people who want to be a member of a political party joining a party (or even parties) by filling out a membership application.
Which is the way most of the rest of the planet does things.
You might be OK with the extra day or so, but will the TV news folks allow it?
They never appear to have a problem finding something to broadcast, so I'm sure they would have no real problem.
I have an open source solution. How about marking pieces of paper with a pen, and then having teams of human beings count them?
It's okay with me for election results to take an extra day or two if they wide open and monitored at every level by volunteers.
Where this method is used results are typically available within hours. Also few, if any, US elections are in any way "time critical" since the results don't take effect for months...
I really wish the Olympics were pay-per-view only then I couldn't accidently swich onto it.
Or even confined to "sports channels".
The researcher replaced the digital signatures on the passports with ones of his own creation when altering the photographs... if the equipment used to test had actually compared the digital signatures to those on file, it would have immediately spotted the tampering. Problem is most countries aren't sharing their signatures yet, making those checks impotent. For now, at least (and not saying there aren't other vulnerabilities).
Any guesses on how secure the private keys for these signatures are likely to be?
A HDD password is, as the parent mentioned, a part of the ATA spec. It's stored on the HDD itself and cannot be conveniently reset. The drive is unusable in another machine, unless that machine's BIOS supports HDD passwords and you happen to know the password.
The BIOS support is only needed if you intend to boot from the HDD in question.
A hard drive password wouldn't technically be encryption. It's just a level of access restrictions. It works with the firmware of the micro-controller board to regulate access to the device.
If I remember right, swapping the control boards on identical drives and placing it in a different computer could get around that. There are some issues with that though, the the encryption places some code in the boot sector which if read by the drive's controller (on the drive, not the main board) will block access to the disk without the controler answering the code in however it does that.
If you have the resources then you could probably use a controller board with hacked firmware...
This is built into almost all drives and is part of the ATA spec. If it isn't present on your main board, it is likely that it just wasn't implemented in the bios your manufacturer used.
BIOS support for feeding the controller a password tends to be most common on laptops.
If one was the NT login, were the admins smart enough to disable the LM Hash? Still, booting it with a *NIX CD and blanking the SAM password for administrator is trivial.
Makes more sense to take a copy of the disk first. Which leaves the original unaltered.
Is there something I'm missing about this? Are there a (whopping!) two password scheme that could actually make something more secure then just booting it with something else and pulling data off?
A HDD password will make things more difficult...