My ADE 651 bomb detector works on the same principle. Just this morning, I determined that the suspicious package on my left contains a dangerous explosive device, whereas the very similar package on my right is perfectly saf
'First of all, this is not a big issue. If you're experiencing this, most likely it's not the phone at all -- most likely you're just living in a place where there's bad reception, in which case the solution is simple: you need to move.
Or maybe you're living in a place with good reception but you just need to buy a bumper for your phone and/or wear latex gloves while holding the phone.'
'Surely the only way to really scan a computer is by booting into a guaranteed-clean OS?'
Yes, and there are a bunch of different, generally Linux-based, bootable CDs that do exactly this. Several of the major antivirus companies make these available, and I tried about half a dozen last year. Not all of them worked well (out of date, or ran slowly, or found too many false positives and deleted them without asking!), but I was happy with the Avira Rescue System:
One nice thing about this one is that they update the image 'several times a day' so you don't have to rely on the target system being networked to do an up to date scan (though a net update option is available if you can use it). Hardware support could be more complete (I had to revert to a VGA connection on one system) but otherwise no problems. I haven't tried running this from a flash drive, but there's a guide here:
'Just wait until the MPAA hears about this! They'll try everything in their powers to show how this 'Made for Torrent' content has harmed them because no one had to pay for it.'
One thing the MPAA might get a little upset about is the list of 'DISCO members' (there must be a joke there) which the official VODO site is linking to for direct downloads rather than torrents. These are just filesharing blogs stuffed full of Rapidshare links to copyrighted media. If VODO wants to stay squeaky clean they might want to re-think their linking policy...
Looks like the Martians must have engineered this quite recently:
"Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars."
'The fact is he hacked into government servers he had no business accessing. We can argue motives and harm done all we want but it doesn't change the fact a crime was committed.'
Though of course when the data is something REALLY important (like a movie or an mp3) it's the admin who failed to secure the system who should be punished:
Hmm, sounds more like Milo Minderbinder. From TFA:
"Documents seen by the Guardian show that Cathcart has acted as a paid agent for Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr al-Qasimi in a multimillion-pound campaign to "undermine the current regime's standing"...Cathcart, a miniature steam train enthusiast and chairman of his local parish council who operates from modest offices in the outer London suburbs, cuts an unlikely figure in the plot, which involves highly paid US PR consultants, Washington lobbyists and former US-special forces strategists hired at a cost of at least $3.7m (£2.6m)."
Is this a serious attempt to 'undermine the current regime's standing', or just a successful scheme for undermining the Sheikh's bank balance? I guess Cathcart's alleged cut of the proceeds will really help him expand his model train layout, though.
It is, of course, a complete coincidence that this data, which naturally only covers the expenditure of the previous government, is now being released by the new government just as it starts to slash public spending by several billion pounds. Somehow I suspect the 'cloak of secrecy' hasn't been sent to Oxfam, but is neatly folded in a cupboard at 10 Downing St ready for future use.
'She said that little was said at that point about exactly how they procured this method, but it is something possible only with new technologies that have evolved in the past decade.'
Yes, their method clearly depends on RNAi (RNA interference), for which the key paper only came out in 1998, and the Nobel Committee obviously didn't regard the discovery as 'simple enough'!:
It wasn't until 2001 that RNAi was demonstrated in mammalian cells, so its use as a standard tool in molecular biology only dates back to the last decade. To apply this sort of strategy to Ebola also requires knowledge of its genome sequence, which also wasn't complete until the 90s, as well as an effective method of getting the active molecules into infected cells (like the lipid-based packaging approach used here). There is indeed active research aimed at applying RNAi to other viruses, including HIV, but it's far from straightforward.
'And makes too much out of 'synthetic biology'. For every nasty, dangerous issue that purely synthetic biology is faced with, the same issues occur with our current technology. Want to weaponize an E. coli - you could do that with current recombinant techniques. Creating the sequence de novo won't necessarily make the problem more dangerous - or even easier.'
Which is pretty much the most insightful comment in this thread. We've been manipulating bacteria and viruses for decades. Arbitrary genes encoding any nasty protein that takes your fancy can be inserted into a wide range of microorganisms using existing technology. The Venter group's work is a fantastic technical achievment, but does not increase the risk of a terrorist group or rogue state developing a biological weapon. Far easier for them to tweak an existing pathogen that billions of years of evolution have exquisitely adapted to infecting humans. Easier still (and much more plausible) to take an 'off the shelf' bug like Anthrax and weaponise it without the need for any genetic manipulation at all.
I'm also curious about how the writer of TFA thinks molecular biology research actually works. The sequences of any number of pathogens, down to the individual genes that make them virulent, are freely available on the net from sites like NCBI, making them rather easier to get hold of than The Economist's own paywalled 'premium content'. Pretty much everything else that has been sequenced is out there too, including the Venter group's synthetic mycoplasma genome, which can be found right here:
'If we are taking such precautions to insure that this data key will not be destroyed, would not in the worst case scenario virtually every piece of data that ISN'T buried under a mountain be gone too?'
Well, if I've learned anything from James Bond films, their precautions ('Accompanied by burly security guards in black uniforms, scientists carried a time capsule through a labyrinth of tunnels and five security zones to a vault near the slopes of chic ski resort Gstaad.') pretty much ensure the whole thing will be destroyed by sabotage within a month, probably in a large explosion. Bet you 'Andreas Rauber' owns at least one white cat, has installed a large, obvious, self destruct button in the central chamber, and will insist on explaining his world domination plans in detail to the first MI6 agent his guards capture.
'The point is that a great many of the computers he accessed didn't even have password protection. And while that doesn't excuse McKinnon's intrusion, it does explain why the US armed forces are annoyed about this all. McKinnon made them look like idiots, and so they want to make an example of him in return.'
Which is of course the time-honoured response to breaches of inadequate military/government security. Here's Richard Feynman on a fence at Los Alamos:
'One day I discovered that the workmen who lived further out and wanted to come in were too lazy to go around through the gate, and so they had cut themselves a hole in the fence. So I went out the gate, went over to the hole and came in, went out again, and so on, until the sergeant at the gate begins to wonder what's happening. How come this guy is always going out and never coming in? And, of course, his natural reaction was to call the lieutenant and try to put me in jail for doing this. I explained that there was a hole...You see, I was always trying to straighten people out. And so I made a bet with somebody that I could tell about the hole in the fence in a letter, and mail it out. And sure enough, I did. And the way I did it was I said, "You should see the way they administer this place (that's what we were allowed to say). There's a hole in the fence 71 feet away from such and such a place, that's this size and that size, that you can walk through."...Now, what can they do? They can't say to me that there is no such hole? I mean, what are they going to do? It's their own hard luck that there's such a hole. They should fix the hole. So I got that one through.'
By the logic of one recent case, perhaps it's the US admins who failed to password protect the PCs who whould be extradited:
'I have the feeling the conviction has more to do with a bunch of white supremacists holding large quantities of ricin, than that actual act of learning how to make it.'
However, in the other case mentioned in TFA (the most worrying from a civil liberties point of view), Terrance Brown was apparently just compiling stuff available elsewhere (mostly or entirely online) and selling it on a CD:
This includes everything from 'Fruit Machine Cheating' and the 'Big Book Of Chemical, Powder, And Thermonuclear Explosives' to the infamous 'Al Qaeda Training Manual' - looks like he indiscriminately trawled the net for anything vaguely terrorist/anarchist related and lumped it all together. It was probably the AQ manual that caught the attention of the police. This has featured in other UK cases and is apparently illegal here, though freely available from many respectable sites including one at the US Department of Justice and another at the USAF Air University:
I guess the implications of our Trusted Ally in the War on Terror distributing terrorist material via official government and military websites have never been fully explored...
Some of Google's partners have addressed this need by making Android phones that are cheaper than the iTouch (I'm posting this on one). Phone chips aren't expensive. Apple maintains an artificial price differential between the iTouch and the iPhone (where PAYG or unlocked units are available) for marketing reasons.
'I'm just surprised nobody has done it yet. A manual-everything camera seems to be the best way to teach photography skills, but perhaps I'm just living in the past. My little Pentax MX SLR, dating from the 70's, still compares favourably in terms of size and weight with modern DSLRS and I just enjoy the straightforward interface more than any DSLRs I've tried.'
I you want a retro experience, check out the digital rangefinder cameras. The Leica M8 and M8 are closely modelled on a design Leitz/Leica has been using since the M3 of the 1950s, and lenses dating back over half a century are fully compatible (a simple adapter makes older lenses from the 30s and 40s available as well). Since focus and aperture are controlled from the lens, and the camera has a shutter speed dial in the usual place, the basic interface is unchanged (there are some extra buttons and an LCD to handle the digital stuff). A third party camera, the Epson RD-1, also works with the Leica lenses and even includes a 'wind on' lever! (obviously there's no film to wind, but the mechanical shutter still needs to be cocked). It's a shame all these cameras are so expensive, though at least an investment in lenses can last for several generations. A few years ago I emailed a tech support question to Leica about a lens dating back to the 30s. They calmly asked for the serial number and then proceeded to answer the query just as if this were a modern item rather than a 70 year old museum piece.
'But as far as I know, theres nothing stopping you from putting it up on your web site as well or submitting it in publication in other journals.'
Nature has exclusive publication rights for the first 6 months, after which you're free to submit the paper to a public repository or put it up on your own site:
This is rather more enlightened than some other major journals, which still require a copyright transfer to the publisher, but obviously falls short of full open access from day 1. But I think most people who get a paper in Nature will happily accept this compromise! (at least for now).
Incidentally, some form of open access is pretty much being forced on traditional publishers by major funding bodies, which now commonly require that most or all funded publications are submitted to journals that provide this (time delays are generally allowed), e.g.:
'Camera 7: looking at the Underground Experimental Cavern from the Saleve side.' 'Camera 8: looking out of the window of the 1st Floor of the SCX building that houses the CMS Control room.'
If they greenlight that, can 'Gollum: The Animated Series' be far behind? Every week Gollum (Andy Serkis), aided by his sense of mischief and magic ring, plays an amusing prank on the Goblin King (Bob Hoskins), pausing only to compose an apposite riddle and wrestle with the soul-destroying horror of enslavement to the dark power of Sauron.
Slashdot Mirror
Just be thankful you're not in this timeline:
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm
My ADE 651 bomb detector works on the same principle. Just this morning, I determined that the suspicious package on my left contains a dangerous explosive device, whereas the very similar package on my right is perfectly saf
[No Carrier]
'Where the hell did that come from?'
Direct advice from Steve:
'First of all, this is not a big issue. If you're experiencing this, most likely it's not the phone at all -- most likely you're just living in a place where there's bad reception, in which case the solution is simple: you need to move.
Or maybe you're living in a place with good reception but you just need to buy a bumper for your phone and/or wear latex gloves while holding the phone.'
http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/06/you-assholes-need-to-stop-sending-emails-to-me-about-this-antenna-issue.html
'Surely the only way to really scan a computer is by booting into a guaranteed-clean OS?'
Yes, and there are a bunch of different, generally Linux-based, bootable CDs that do exactly this. Several of the major antivirus companies make these available, and I tried about half a dozen last year. Not all of them worked well (out of date, or ran slowly, or found too many false positives and deleted them without asking!), but I was happy with the Avira Rescue System:
http://www.free-av.com/en/tools/12/avira_antivir_rescue_system.html
One nice thing about this one is that they update the image 'several times a day' so you don't have to rely on the target system being networked to do an up to date scan (though a net update option is available if you can use it). Hardware support could be more complete (I had to revert to a VGA connection on one system) but otherwise no problems. I haven't tried running this from a flash drive, but there's a guide here:
http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=94935
It seems that one of the jobs of the GG of Canada is periodically meeting the Aga Khan:
http://archive.gg.ca/media/pho/index_e.asp?GalleryID=584
http://www.akdn.org/photos_show.asp?Sid=47
Now, how would Shatner handle this situation..?
'Just wait until the MPAA hears about this! They'll try everything in their powers to show how this 'Made for Torrent' content has harmed them because no one had to pay for it.'
One thing the MPAA might get a little upset about is the list of 'DISCO members' (there must be a joke there) which the official VODO site is linking to for direct downloads rather than torrents. These are just filesharing blogs stuffed full of Rapidshare links to copyrighted media. If VODO wants to stay squeaky clean they might want to re-think their linking policy...
Looks like the Martians must have engineered this quite recently:
"Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars."
- HG Wells, _The War of the Worlds_ [1898]
Don't worry, it's just CADIE experimenting:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/cadie/index.html
'The fact is he hacked into government servers he had no business accessing. We can argue motives and harm done all we want but it doesn't change the fact a crime was committed.'
Though of course when the data is something REALLY important (like a movie or an mp3) it's the admin who failed to secure the system who should be punished:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37107291/ns/technology_and_science-security/
Hmm, sounds more like Milo Minderbinder. From TFA:
"Documents seen by the Guardian show that Cathcart has acted as a paid agent for Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr al-Qasimi in a multimillion-pound campaign to "undermine the current regime's standing"...Cathcart, a miniature steam train enthusiast and chairman of his local parish council who operates from modest offices in the outer London suburbs, cuts an unlikely figure in the plot, which involves highly paid US PR consultants, Washington lobbyists and former US-special forces strategists hired at a cost of at least $3.7m (£2.6m)."
Is this a serious attempt to 'undermine the current regime's standing', or just a successful scheme for undermining the Sheikh's bank balance? I guess Cathcart's alleged cut of the proceeds will really help him expand his model train layout, though.
'I'd have expected you'd have had to apply, and it would have been posted to you on a stack of DVDs.'
They tried that previously, but ran into some minor difficulties:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lost-in-the-post-the-personal-details-of-25-million-people-758867.html
It is, of course, a complete coincidence that this data, which naturally only covers the expenditure of the previous government, is now being released by the new government just as it starts to slash public spending by several billion pounds. Somehow I suspect the 'cloak of secrecy' hasn't been sent to Oxfam, but is neatly folded in a cupboard at 10 Downing St ready for future use.
'She said that little was said at that point about exactly how they procured this method, but it is something possible only with new technologies that have evolved in the past decade.'
Yes, their method clearly depends on RNAi (RNA interference), for which the key paper only came out in 1998, and the Nobel Committee obviously didn't regard the discovery as 'simple enough'!:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2006/adv.html
It wasn't until 2001 that RNAi was demonstrated in mammalian cells, so its use as a standard tool in molecular biology only dates back to the last decade. To apply this sort of strategy to Ebola also requires knowledge of its genome sequence, which also wasn't complete until the 90s, as well as an effective method of getting the active molecules into infected cells (like the lipid-based packaging approach used here). There is indeed active research aimed at applying RNAi to other viruses, including HIV, but it's far from straightforward.
Kevin Warwick was Mark Gasson's PhD supervisor and remains a close collaborator:
http://www.reading.ac.uk/sse/about/staff/publications/m-n-gasson-publications.aspx
'Interesting... How do you suppose laser chopsticks would compare to, say, a laser spanner, or a sonic screwdriver?'
Well, there's a definitive answer to the screwdriver question here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue4On8QINxQ
'And makes too much out of 'synthetic biology'. For every nasty, dangerous issue that purely synthetic biology is faced with, the same issues occur with our current technology. Want to weaponize an E. coli - you could do that with current recombinant techniques. Creating the sequence de novo won't necessarily make the problem more dangerous - or even easier.'
Which is pretty much the most insightful comment in this thread. We've been manipulating bacteria and viruses for decades. Arbitrary genes encoding any nasty protein that takes your fancy can be inserted into a wide range of microorganisms using existing technology. The Venter group's work is a fantastic technical achievment, but does not increase the risk of a terrorist group or rogue state developing a biological weapon. Far easier for them to tweak an existing pathogen that billions of years of evolution have exquisitely adapted to infecting humans. Easier still (and much more plausible) to take an 'off the shelf' bug like Anthrax and weaponise it without the need for any genetic manipulation at all.
I'm also curious about how the writer of TFA thinks molecular biology research actually works. The sequences of any number of pathogens, down to the individual genes that make them virulent, are freely available on the net from sites like NCBI, making them rather easier to get hold of than The Economist's own paywalled 'premium content'. Pretty much everything else that has been sequenced is out there too, including the Venter group's synthetic mycoplasma genome, which can be found right here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/296455217
In what way is this not already 'open source'?
'If we are taking such precautions to insure that this data key will not be destroyed, would not in the worst case scenario virtually every piece of data that ISN'T buried under a mountain be gone too?'
Well, if I've learned anything from James Bond films, their precautions ('Accompanied by burly security guards in black uniforms, scientists carried a time capsule through a labyrinth of tunnels and five security zones to a vault near the slopes of chic ski resort Gstaad.') pretty much ensure the whole thing will be destroyed by sabotage within a month, probably in a large explosion. Bet you 'Andreas Rauber' owns at least one white cat, has installed a large, obvious, self destruct button in the central chamber, and will insist on explaining his world domination plans in detail to the first MI6 agent his guards capture.
'The point is that a great many of the computers he accessed didn't even have password protection. And while that doesn't excuse McKinnon's intrusion, it does explain why the US armed forces are annoyed about this all. McKinnon made them look like idiots, and so they want to make an example of him in return.'
Which is of course the time-honoured response to breaches of inadequate military/government security. Here's Richard Feynman on a fence at Los Alamos:
http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/14/2/FeynmanLosAlamos.htm
'One day I discovered that the workmen who lived further out and wanted to come in were too lazy to go around through the gate, and so they had cut themselves a hole in the fence. So I went out the gate, went over to the hole and came in, went out again, and so on, until the sergeant at the gate begins to wonder what's happening. How come this guy is always going out and never coming in? And, of course, his natural reaction was to call the lieutenant and try to put me in jail for doing this. I explained that there was a hole...You see, I was always trying to straighten people out. And so I made a bet with somebody that I could tell about the hole in the fence in a letter, and mail it out. And sure enough, I did. And the way I did it was I said, "You should see the way they administer this place (that's what we were allowed to say). There's a hole in the fence 71 feet away from such and such a place, that's this size and that size, that you can walk through."...Now, what can they do? They can't say to me that there is no such hole? I mean, what are they going to do? It's their own hard luck that there's such a hole. They should fix the hole. So I got that one through.'
By the logic of one recent case, perhaps it's the US admins who failed to password protect the PCs who whould be extradited:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37107291/ns/technology_and_science-security/
'I have the feeling the conviction has more to do with a bunch of white supremacists holding large quantities of ricin, than that actual act of learning how to make it.'
However, in the other case mentioned in TFA (the most worrying from a civil liberties point of view), Terrance Brown was apparently just compiling stuff available elsewhere (mostly or entirely online) and selling it on a CD:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070108155556/www.anarchist-cookbook.com/CD.htm
This includes everything from 'Fruit Machine Cheating' and the 'Big Book Of Chemical, Powder, And Thermonuclear Explosives' to the infamous 'Al Qaeda Training Manual' - looks like he indiscriminately trawled the net for anything vaguely terrorist/anarchist related and lumped it all together. It was probably the AQ manual that caught the attention of the police. This has featured in other UK cases and is apparently illegal here, though freely available from many respectable sites including one at the US Department of Justice and another at the USAF Air University:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda_Handbook
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/30/notts_al_qaeda_manual_case/
I guess the implications of our Trusted Ally in the War on Terror distributing terrorist material via official government and military websites have never been fully explored...
>To this day that magical sound of two modems negotiating a connection gets me excited.
Obligatory XKCD:
http://www.xkcd.com/598/
'Can you try to look ... blockier?'
'Not having read TFA, I could be wrong, but it sounds like an array-based detection system.'
You're spot on. There's a better article than TFA at LLNL Public Affairs:
https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2010/NR-10-05-02.html
Looks like they're using a Nimblegen platform, at least in the original version of the array:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18478124
One application is screening human vaccines for contamination with various viruses:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20375174
Some of Google's partners have addressed this need by making Android phones that are cheaper than the iTouch (I'm posting this on one). Phone chips aren't expensive. Apple maintains an artificial price differential between the iTouch and the iPhone (where PAYG or unlocked units are available) for marketing reasons.
'I'm just surprised nobody has done it yet. A manual-everything camera seems to be the best way to teach photography skills, but perhaps I'm just living in the past. My little Pentax MX SLR, dating from the 70's, still compares favourably in terms of size and weight with modern DSLRS and I just enjoy the straightforward interface more than any DSLRs I've tried.'
I you want a retro experience, check out the digital rangefinder cameras. The Leica M8 and M8 are closely modelled on a design Leitz/Leica has been using since the M3 of the 1950s, and lenses dating back over half a century are fully compatible (a simple adapter makes older lenses from the 30s and 40s available as well). Since focus and aperture are controlled from the lens, and the camera has a shutter speed dial in the usual place, the basic interface is unchanged (there are some extra buttons and an LCD to handle the digital stuff). A third party camera, the Epson RD-1, also works with the Leica lenses and even includes a 'wind on' lever! (obviously there's no film to wind, but the mechanical shutter still needs to be cocked). It's a shame all these cameras are so expensive, though at least an investment in lenses can last for several generations. A few years ago I emailed a tech support question to Leica about a lens dating back to the 30s. They calmly asked for the serial number and then proceeded to answer the query just as if this were a modern item rather than a 70 year old museum piece.
'But as far as I know, theres nothing stopping you from putting it up on your web site as well or submitting it in publication in other journals.'
Nature has exclusive publication rights for the first 6 months, after which you're free to submit the paper to a public repository or put it up on your own site:
http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/license.html
This is rather more enlightened than some other major journals, which still require a copyright transfer to the publisher, but obviously falls short of full open access from day 1. But I think most people who get a paper in Nature will happily accept this compromise! (at least for now).
Incidentally, some form of open access is pretty much being forced on traditional publishers by major funding bodies, which now commonly require that most or all funded publications are submitted to journals that provide this (time delays are generally allowed), e.g.:
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/
http://science.cancerresearchuk.org/gapp/terms/openaccess_ukpmc/
So things are at least moving in the right direction.
The live webcams are also worth checking out:
'Camera 7: looking at the Underground Experimental Cavern from the Saleve side.'
'Camera 8: looking out of the window of the 1st Floor of the SCX building that houses the CMS Control room.'
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
If they greenlight that, can 'Gollum: The Animated Series' be far behind? Every week Gollum (Andy Serkis), aided by his sense of mischief and magic ring, plays an amusing prank on the Goblin King (Bob Hoskins), pausing only to compose an apposite riddle and wrestle with the soul-destroying horror of enslavement to the dark power of Sauron.