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User: Inspector

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Comments · 133

  1. Re:My vote goes to on The Corporate Lame Name Game · · Score: 1

    I understood what you meant. Got to agree with you there, that was a wierd moderation.

  2. Re:Ick on Wearables From IBM Japan · · Score: 1

    I'm a member of the Cyborg Group (yes, that's actually what it's called :) at the University of Toronto, working for Prof. Steve Mann. As a member of that group, I work with and develope software for the latest wearable computing equipment all the time. One of the devices we have is the Xybernaught, which is a lean mean PII 233 with a couple gigs of HD space and a hundred or so megs of ram, all squished into a package about 5" long, 3" wide, and 2" deep. When we received these machines, they came preinstalled with Win98. We do all of our development using linux for numerous reasons, almost all of which have to do with the fact that windows IS a cumbersome OS for use on such platforms. The first test we ran was a power consumption comparison. When two identical (hardware wise) Xybernaughts were powered up together, one running Debian Linux, the other running the brand new, preinstalled version of windows, the windows machine sucked the battery dry much faster than the debian machine.

  3. Re:Can you imagine.... on Wearables From IBM Japan · · Score: 1

    Hear hear! That's just one of the reasons these things shouldn't use voice recognition. Can you imagine hundreds of people shouting commands into the pickup mikes on their wearcomps all the time?

    "NETSCAPE...SCROLL MODE...DOWN...DOWN...SELECT...CLOSE WINDOW..."

    What a neverending cacophonous din!

  4. Re:Esoterism is good for you :) on Shimura-Taniyama-Weil (STW) Solved · · Score: 1

    Ah, control systems! If only it were that easy!

  5. Re:They /are/ way too similar. on Court Tells Disney to Pull Go.com Logo · · Score: 1

    Also, were goto to sue a textile company with a very similar logo, they would most likely lose the suit, because the key here is "similar industry". Logo copywrite law was instantiated to prevent business A from stealing business B's clients by misrepresenting themselves as business A, which disney HAS (unintentionally) done.

  6. Re:Deeply discreditable article on Linux in the Enterprise: Fact vs. FUD · · Score: 1

    LOL, I think that's the funniest thing I've read all night! :) Ah, Slashdot makes me laugh!

  7. Re:Its technically possible, but... on Declassified Tempest Material Comes Online · · Score: 1

    http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html#What%20i s

    Go to this page, and look around. Specifically, this page:

    http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf

    has direct reference to the use of electronics to decode the signal created by the electron beam. The concept was first executed by wim Van Eck. The signal is so strong in fact, that images have been successfully recovered from over half a kilometer away, through concrete.

  8. Re:LCD on Declassified Tempest Material Comes Online · · Score: 1

    Apparently quite well, depending on your display. As I mentioned above, as long as your display sweeps out its image pixel by pixel, decoding the emissions (from energized LCD elements, electron beams, plasma display elements, etc...) is quite trivial. According to http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf some LCD screens produce a clearer image on the decoder than the CRTs they tested. Guess water monitors are the only safe alternative ;)

  9. Re:Faraday Cage? on Declassified Tempest Material Comes Online · · Score: 1

    I think you just about nailed the donkey's ass to the goal post there. I don't know about you, but the prospect of encasing my entire room in a solid metal cage (wire frame will not kill all emissions, only full metal), with special filtering equipment on the power line does seem to be more than just a "simple solution" as you put it. :)

  10. Re:And we should be concerned because? on Declassified Tempest Material Comes Online · · Score: 2

    OK, I'm not sure if I understand you, but are you complaining because you think we don't want the government to protect its own data? If so, you got it wrong.

    I don't like the classification of TEMPEST data and specifications because it makes it difficult for ME to protect MY data. It's the same thing as crypto.

  11. Re:And we should be concerned because? on Declassified Tempest Material Comes Online · · Score: 1

    That is not so. Read the links from the above article; TEMPEST refers to BOTH. Classified government and Military equipment can be "TEMPEST certified", meaning that the emissions are adequately contained according to a set standard. A "TEMPEST attack" refers to the detection and decoding of these emissions.

  12. Re:LCD on Declassified Tempest Material Comes Online · · Score: 1

    This is not so. Emissions from LCD screens can be easier to decode than those from monitors. Active matrix LCD screens create very strong and clear emissions. As long as a display uses some form of pixel sweep where each pixel is activated at a unique time, then the emissions are simple to decode.

    Unless of course the monitor doesn't run on electricity. Anyone got a water monitor? ;)

  13. Re:I'm no expert, but... on Declassified Tempest Material Comes Online · · Score: 1

    No, it reads the emissions themselves. The electron beam that draws the pixels on your screen is focussed by extremely strong magnetic or electric fields (depending on the monitor). There is a large voltage drop (~800 Volts) from the back of the tube to the front. As the intensity of the beam changes, so do the magnetic and electric fields generated by the beam. These fluctuations are what the receiver/decoder uses to rebuild the image on another screen.

  14. Awe Bullshit on Why geek geniuses may lack social graces · · Score: 1

    You can't define "nerd" or "geek" in absolute terms. It varies from place to place and person to person. The meaning of both words switched when I graduated from high school and went to university.

  15. Re:Organization Systems on Wearable PCs · · Score: 1

    You'd be absolutly amazed by how much info just sits in the history file. Got a URL to save? Dump it at the command prompt. Phone number to remember? Dump it at the command prompt. I'm not kidding here. :)

  16. Anonymous Coward on Wearable PCs · · Score: 1

    Posting anon I see. Nuff said.

  17. Laser eye tap on Wearable PCs · · Score: 1

    You don't have to refocus your eyes. The laser eyetap device projects the image right on to your retina, so it has an infinite depth of field and is always in focus, no matter where you're looking.

  18. Groundbreaking & retail? on Wearable PCs · · Score: 1

    Uh, so new and interesting prototypes shouldn't be discussed here, on the site for geeks who are interested in cutting edge, non mainstream technology? Wearcomps will not be a "retail product" for a while yet. There are numerous boundaries that need to be surmounted first. Part of that process is discussing the limitations of the technologies that we have now, and how to get around those limitations. It's what Steve Mann does with his cyborg group at U of T every Friday afternoon, and I don't see why people on Slashdot can't contribute their thoughts and feelings too.

    If you're not interested in indepth discussion of new ideas and technology, then go read CNN.

  19. Re:You call that "modest"? on Wearable PCs · · Score: 1

    I wish Neil :) It looks like the netwinders have been nixed because of funding ($250G is a little pricy) so instead I'm scrounging around for discarded 486s. Know any handy place where I can pick some up for free?

    P.S. No matter how much you wish it, you are NOT object oriented :)

  20. 64 processor shirt on Wearable PCs · · Score: 0

    Woohoo, that's me! This is my thesis this year; Steve Mann is my thesis supervisor. I'm actually not working on the shirt itself, but on the software that will run the shirt. We're going to put together a modist beowulf cluster to do testing and development on, then if and when the shirt gets done, we'll port our stuff to it.

  21. Come to Canada! on Feature: US Govt & Invasion of Privacy · · Score: 1

    Hey! Come to Canada! We have the least amount of persecution in North America! Which means we only burn one or two people at the stake a week. Tell me that's not inviting. You could live a few years before someone gets around to screwing up the rights that pertain to you. ;)

  22. Re:Supply and Demand on Feature: Why Being a Computer Game Developer Sucks · · Score: 1

    Which people? Granted console gamers will buy the same old tripe over and over again, but there's a whole other sector of the market out there to be exploited. I and most of my friends stopped buying games when the Quest (sierra type games) dissappeared. You can definitly make money selling slick FPSs to fourteen year olds, but small business probably has a better chance of profiting from a more mature slice of the market.

  23. STOP - A! on Changing the Keyboard · · Score: 1

    I always thought the stop A keypress was kind of funny. You can get the biggest, fastest, hulking mother of a multiprocessor Sun Server, hosting thousands of sites, routing millions of emails, and all it takes is a little STOP-A to bring the whole thing to an instant and screaching halt. At least with Sun stations, it usually only happens when you expressly hit those keys, unlike certain other architectures, running certian other operating systems ;)

  24. Lose your rights? on Mitnick Finally Receives Federal Sentence · · Score: 1

    Uh, since when do you lose your rights when you break the law? You lose your privilages as a free citizen, but not your rights.

  25. You're a jerk. on Mitnick Finally Receives Federal Sentence · · Score: 1

    It was funny man, it doesn't matter what language it was written in. And maybe the guy wanted all his code on one line.

    P.S. I may not program in Basic any more, but I started with it 15 years ago; old languages deserve respect!