These are available now for full colour, and work on any injket printer that you can load media into directly and print to with any software.
Why would you wait until they come out with this project (black and white only) that only works with specially designed writers which supports their own special media when using their special software (which appears to be a printer emulating driver)?
The part of the picture that you're missing is "locked into using their technology", and if their technology isn't available (any one of the 3 necessary components), then you're out of luck. I can use any media on any printer that loads directly, and print it with any software.
Ah yes, but bottled water is "trendy", and it's a visible sign that you're both a "person with a healthy lifestyle" and can afford to "buy water".
(or so it seems)
But no, I firmly believe this won't find a niche. Most people wanting blank media just want them at absolutely the lowest cost possible...
The Yamaha one wasn't much more than an interesting gimmick - I saw it in a store, but there was nothing that especially made me want to buy one. Feel free to disagree, but we can compare notes in a year:)
BTW: The latest Epsons print directly onto coated CD/DVDs with no sticky label and no stomper. It's easily as convenient as this device and full colour... And printable media is already out there and easily available.
I was just sort of wondering about this exact thing...
How reasonable is an "internet" ban? Would it also be reasonable to ban such people from "using a telephone", "watching TV", or "sending or receiving mail"?
They probably have a case to make if they want to ban a specific activity (ie: chat rooms), but a global ban is pretty much both impossible to enforce, and could be easily viewed as unreasonable.
Part of a solution here might be to have a double-authentication system where you'd need to type a passphrase on the keyboard, but then also use the mouse to perform some sort of graphical authentication.
Here's an idea:
Assuming that rather than a straight password, the software used 4 different password areas in the dialog box (ala drivecrypt/truecrypt):
Type password 1, then click a specific location on an image shifted to a random x/y position on the screen, and optionally "wrapped" around the edges of the screen to make the location even more random (this type of "click the image" password protection is used on several pocketpc password applications).
Repeat for passwords 3-4. Then evaluate the passkey's hash (including mouse-click positions) to determine if it's valid or not. Without knowing the passkey, and the X-Y pixel location clicked for each part of the passkey, it wouldn't be possible to decrypt the drive.
Just the X-Y clicking alone would give you a considerable increase in security - unless they could capture images of your screen and where you're clicking, snooping mouse coordinates and clicks themselves wouldn't gain you anything.
Sure you can hear the difference, any audiophile will tell you that...
You just need your $300 ipod hooked to your $5000 stereo amplifier with $400 "monster" cables, making sure that your $8000 speakers are precisely tuned to your 600sq/f "luxury" yuppy downtown highrise condo's acoustics.
The true sound you hear is that of money being wasted...:) An audiophile and their money are soon parted!
This is why it makes a LOT of sense to install strong encryption software that's loaded BEFORE the OS, making the computer totally inaccessible if you don't know the password.
They can have all of the spyware they want, but if they can't even get the system to boot, they'll never manage to install it, and if the software also logs/displays failed or incomplete access attempts, it'll be tipping the owner off that someone was trying to tinker.
For "secure" computing, I'd be picking a laptop with a bootable encryption system (ala the now-defunct safeboot solo, drivecrypt plus pack, etc). If you were especially paranoid, you could even epoxy the case and peripheral access panels shut to make sure that nobody was going to get inside and add a hardware keylogger.
I suppose you could also sleep with it, and take it everywhere with you, but that may be overkill unless you're especially guilty;P
On the subject of passwords, it would probably be a good idea to remember half the passphrase as something you can easily remember, and put another 10 or 12 random characters/digits on something easily destroy-able like a stick of chewing gum. If you're ever grabbed by unfriendly agents, pop the gum in your mouth, chew a few times, and all possibility of data being recovered is gone. And you have some extremely good plausible denyability for the password.
I went with a iMate PDA2K (MS PocketPC 2003SE + GSM Cell phone + keyboard + builtin WiFi). It's a pretty amazing package... The only downside is that the VGA camera in it still sucks.
Other than that, it does everything I want... Including playing DIVX files from my PC. Can fit 3 or 4 full DVDs + lots of other files on my 1gb SD card in it.
It's a good point about using an alternate address for your tracker - or even using an alternate static IP for that box if you have one available.
Most (all?) torrent servers offer an option to reject unauthorized external torrents though. I personally use Azureus, which is a great bittorrent client, as well as a server. There's an option in there to reject serving torrents that aren't authorized by the admin.
They could tell you, but then they'd need to kill you.
Heck, we poured beer into Drew in vain a few weeks back when he was visiting Vancouver, and he wouldn't even tell us when drunk! Of course, this could just mean that Ultrafark is an especially clever ploy to get people to buy Drew beer...
Perhaps we'll need to pour beer into Wil next [as I understand it, UF was his idea in the first place as a bit of a joke, but actually might become something]...
The Fark lawyeress DID say that cunning plans were afoot, but she wouldn't tell us either, and it's no use to try plying a lawyer with free beer...
I love the show as much as the next person, and I've learned a lot from it, but there are some parts of it that are just a little too BS for me...
ie: having their forensics guy take a 320x200-ish video surveillance snapshot and enhancing it to see the bad guy in a reflection from someone's eyeball, etc...
Anyone who thinks that only the middle east has religious extremists who are willing to go to any lengths to accomplish their goals (politicial or otherwise) are fools.
Religious extremists in north america are every bit as frightening and every bit as dangerous.
Wow... Nowhere even like that here. Loads on my system were at, or under 10 seconds. Loading the initial game to get to the main menu takes about 30-45 sec.
If there are 2-minute in-game load times, there's something seriously wrong with your config.
Just another thought (as this is similar to an application that I brainstormed with a friend a couple years back):
It would be great to have a "trickle-sync" directory designation, so you could automatically share amongst group members. It would work like this:
One person would drop files into a directory designated as "trickle-sync", and it would be slowly passed-along to everyone else in the group automatically without any prompting (assuming they enabled that feature on their machines). Rather than using full available bandwidth, it might be set to, say, a 5kb/sec maximum or something (or dynamically adjust the bandwidth depending on what else is happening on the network at the time).
The idea being that if you found a new song, program, video file etc. that you think other people in your group might be interested in, you'd just drop it in that folder and eventually everyone else would get it automatically and save them the trouble of having to go look for it and download it.
The trickle-sync folder could have a maximum size limit on it, so if new files arrived and the folder was over-size, it would delete the oldest files first to make room for the new stuff.
It's interesting, I heard an ad on the radio while driving home the other day. It said something to the effect of:
"What do you call it when a software package is installed on multiple computers in your office? It's called PIRACY, and it's illegal, please contact the (blah blah blah antipirating corp, etc)".
It's especially funny, because when I heard the ad, my intial reaction was "I call it 'open office', open source software, freeware, linux, etc".
Apparently according to the ad, nobody uses anything other than commercial software in their offices anymore. If I was starting a business, you'd be sure that even though the machines would probably run windows (preinstalled with the computer I suppose), they'd all be running open-office and not MS office.
It would be interesting to offer an alternate version of keyhole that could distribute the dataset over client computers...
I'm envisioning something like this:
When you sign up for keyhole, you're given a couple of choices:
-Pay for a subscription
-Host distributed imaging data and receive a free subscription (the keyhole main server could ping you every couple of hours and so long as you're serving data, for say 10 days a month, you get a free subscription). If you're serving, you need to have a couple gigs worth of data on your system, and allow a minimum of say, 15k/sec upstream.
So when a client connects, it talks to the main server and finds the IP of distributed servers that hold the dataset in question. It then tries to connect to multiple servers (torrent style) and get the data it needs. As the imaging data is uploaded, the main keyhole server spreads the data around it's distributed network based on the frequency the data is requested and the relative geographic proximity to those requests.
I'd love to know how your friends were playing the game several days before they unlocked it. Unless your friends were magazine reviewers, what you're claiming is impossible...
It wasn't available through ANY pirate channels before the release, and I was enjoying playing it before the pirates did.
I'm a paying steam customer, and I was thrilled with the way it was delievered and unlocked. I (and a WHOLE lot of other people) hammered the Steam servers at 12:00:01 AM when it was released, and it unlocked flawlessly in about 10 minutes.
You can also right-click on any loaded game in the list and select "backup".
BTW: It was just added as a feature a few weeks back, so I don't blame you for missing it. It would be nice if they advertised changes like that a bit more prominently.
I'm also impressed with the ease of activation. I was really expecting that there would be server overload issues, etc. But it fired up and began the unlocking process within seconds of restarting (12:00:30am, GMT -8).
Took about 10-15 minutes for the content unlock, as it seemed to unlock a chunk, then download a tiny bit, then unlock another chunk and so on.
Very impressed:). Now if Valve only fixes the flaw that makes it possible to steal Steam accounts (no email verification before allowing an email address change), Steam will be about perfect in my books. I suppose another way of fixing this would be to allow you to reclaim your account at any time by punching in the credit card number you used to purchase a Steam game or something.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who can't see the article:
Mirrordot Mirror
N.
Then allow me to comment further
These are available now for full colour, and work on any injket printer that you can load media into directly and print to with any software.
Why would you wait until they come out with this project (black and white only) that only works with specially designed writers which supports their own special media when using their special software (which appears to be a printer emulating driver)?
The part of the picture that you're missing is "locked into using their technology", and if their technology isn't available (any one of the 3 necessary components), then you're out of luck. I can use any media on any printer that loads directly, and print it with any software.
N.
Ah yes, but bottled water is "trendy", and it's a visible sign that you're both a "person with a healthy lifestyle" and can afford to "buy water".
:)
(or so it seems)
But no, I firmly believe this won't find a niche. Most people wanting blank media just want them at absolutely the lowest cost possible...
The Yamaha one wasn't much more than an interesting gimmick - I saw it in a store, but there was nothing that especially made me want to buy one. Feel free to disagree, but we can compare notes in a year
BTW: The latest Epsons print directly onto coated CD/DVDs with no sticky label and no stomper. It's easily as convenient as this device and full colour... And printable media is already out there and easily available.
N.
Didn't sound like they'd be getting it anyway...
N.
Interesting idea, but it's not going to fly.
I just buy inkjet coated CDR/DVDRs now. Really cheap and full-color prints on my Epson R200 that can fool people into thinking they're stamped DVDs.
My DVD authoring clients love getting check discs on them. No more "sharpie discs".
I just can't see this technology being common when you need special media - sorry, try again.
N.
I was just sort of wondering about this exact thing...
How reasonable is an "internet" ban? Would it also be reasonable to ban such people from "using a telephone", "watching TV", or "sending or receiving mail"?
They probably have a case to make if they want to ban a specific activity (ie: chat rooms), but a global ban is pretty much both impossible to enforce, and could be easily viewed as unreasonable.
N.
Part of a solution here might be to have a double-authentication system where you'd need to type a passphrase on the keyboard, but then also use the mouse to perform some sort of graphical authentication.
Here's an idea:
Assuming that rather than a straight password, the software used 4 different password areas in the dialog box (ala drivecrypt/truecrypt):
Type password 1, then click a specific location on an image shifted to a random x/y position on the screen, and optionally "wrapped" around the edges of the screen to make the location even more random (this type of "click the image" password protection is used on several pocketpc password applications).
Repeat for passwords 3-4. Then evaluate the passkey's hash (including mouse-click positions) to determine if it's valid or not. Without knowing the passkey, and the X-Y pixel location clicked for each part of the passkey, it wouldn't be possible to decrypt the drive.
Just the X-Y clicking alone would give you a considerable increase in security - unless they could capture images of your screen and where you're clicking, snooping mouse coordinates and clicks themselves wouldn't gain you anything.
N.
Sure you can hear the difference, any audiophile will tell you that...
:) An audiophile and their money are soon parted!
You just need your $300 ipod hooked to your $5000 stereo amplifier with $400 "monster" cables, making sure that your $8000 speakers are precisely tuned to your 600sq/f "luxury" yuppy downtown highrise condo's acoustics.
The true sound you hear is that of money being wasted...
N.
This is why it makes a LOT of sense to install strong encryption software that's loaded BEFORE the OS, making the computer totally inaccessible if you don't know the password.
;P
They can have all of the spyware they want, but if they can't even get the system to boot, they'll never manage to install it, and if the software also logs/displays failed or incomplete access attempts, it'll be tipping the owner off that someone was trying to tinker.
For "secure" computing, I'd be picking a laptop with a bootable encryption system (ala the now-defunct safeboot solo, drivecrypt plus pack, etc). If you were especially paranoid, you could even epoxy the case and peripheral access panels shut to make sure that nobody was going to get inside and add a hardware keylogger.
I suppose you could also sleep with it, and take it everywhere with you, but that may be overkill unless you're especially guilty
On the subject of passwords, it would probably be a good idea to remember half the passphrase as something you can easily remember, and put another 10 or 12 random characters/digits on something easily destroy-able like a stick of chewing gum. If you're ever grabbed by unfriendly agents, pop the gum in your mouth, chew a few times, and all possibility of data being recovered is gone. And you have some extremely good plausible denyability for the password.
N.
Actually, even a P910 is pretty old news now...
I went with a iMate PDA2K (MS PocketPC 2003SE + GSM Cell phone + keyboard + builtin WiFi). It's a pretty amazing package... The only downside is that the VGA camera in it still sucks.
Other than that, it does everything I want... Including playing DIVX files from my PC. Can fit 3 or 4 full DVDs + lots of other files on my 1gb SD card in it.
For me, it's basically a laptop replacement.
N.
Funny how it's always the religions who are trying to restrict other people's freedoms...
They don't like something, so YOU shouldn't be allowed to do it.
Nice
N.
It's a good point about using an alternate address for your tracker - or even using an alternate static IP for that box if you have one available.
Most (all?) torrent servers offer an option to reject unauthorized external torrents though. I personally use Azureus, which is a great bittorrent client, as well as a server. There's an option in there to reject serving torrents that aren't authorized by the admin.
N.
They could tell you, but then they'd need to kill you.
Heck, we poured beer into Drew in vain a few weeks back when he was visiting Vancouver, and he wouldn't even tell us when drunk! Of course, this could just mean that Ultrafark is an especially clever ploy to get people to buy Drew beer...
Perhaps we'll need to pour beer into Wil next [as I understand it, UF was his idea in the first place as a bit of a joke, but actually might become something]...
The Fark lawyeress DID say that cunning plans were afoot, but she wouldn't tell us either, and it's no use to try plying a lawyer with free beer...
N.
Well, may be a little too factual for CSI ;P
I love the show as much as the next person, and I've learned a lot from it, but there are some parts of it that are just a little too BS for me...
ie: having their forensics guy take a 320x200-ish video surveillance snapshot and enhancing it to see the bad guy in a reflection from someone's eyeball, etc...
N.
Well, IMHO, you're absolutely right to be scared.
Anyone who thinks that only the middle east has religious extremists who are willing to go to any lengths to accomplish their goals (politicial or otherwise) are fools.
Religious extremists in north america are every bit as frightening and every bit as dangerous.
N.
I'm sorry. but I don't care... It's too expensive for a game that I might not even be interested in playing in a couple of months.
How about $50 and six months of play time included... As it is. I have no interest in playing WoW.
Wow... Nowhere even like that here. Loads on my system were at, or under 10 seconds. Loading the initial game to get to the main menu takes about 30-45 sec.
If there are 2-minute in-game load times, there's something seriously wrong with your config.
N.
Just another thought (as this is similar to an application that I brainstormed with a friend a couple years back):
It would be great to have a "trickle-sync" directory designation, so you could automatically share amongst group members. It would work like this:
One person would drop files into a directory designated as "trickle-sync", and it would be slowly passed-along to everyone else in the group automatically without any prompting (assuming they enabled that feature on their machines). Rather than using full available bandwidth, it might be set to, say, a 5kb/sec maximum or something (or dynamically adjust the bandwidth depending on what else is happening on the network at the time).
The idea being that if you found a new song, program, video file etc. that you think other people in your group might be interested in, you'd just drop it in that folder and eventually everyone else would get it automatically and save them the trouble of having to go look for it and download it.
The trickle-sync folder could have a maximum size limit on it, so if new files arrived and the folder was over-size, it would delete the oldest files first to make room for the new stuff.
N.
Just check their forums.
It will NOT share files with MP3 or WMA extensions. Who knows that filetypes they'll decide to block next.
If they get rid of those restrictions (and the 30 person maximum) I'll bite. Until then, it's simple an interesting bit of software that I'll pass on.
N.
It's interesting, I heard an ad on the radio while driving home the other day. It said something to the effect of:
"What do you call it when a software package is installed on multiple computers in your office? It's called PIRACY, and it's illegal, please contact the (blah blah blah antipirating corp, etc)".
It's especially funny, because when I heard the ad, my intial reaction was "I call it 'open office', open source software, freeware, linux, etc".
Apparently according to the ad, nobody uses anything other than commercial software in their offices anymore. If I was starting a business, you'd be sure that even though the machines would probably run windows (preinstalled with the computer I suppose), they'd all be running open-office and not MS office.
N.
It would be interesting to offer an alternate version of keyhole that could distribute the dataset over client computers...
I'm envisioning something like this:
When you sign up for keyhole, you're given a couple of choices:
-Pay for a subscription
-Host distributed imaging data and receive a free subscription (the keyhole main server could ping you every couple of hours and so long as you're serving data, for say 10 days a month, you get a free subscription). If you're serving, you need to have a couple gigs worth of data on your system, and allow a minimum of say, 15k/sec upstream.
So when a client connects, it talks to the main server and finds the IP of distributed servers that hold the dataset in question. It then tries to connect to multiple servers (torrent style) and get the data it needs. As the imaging data is uploaded, the main keyhole server spreads the data around it's distributed network based on the frequency the data is requested and the relative geographic proximity to those requests.
N.
I'd love to know how your friends were playing the game several days before they unlocked it. Unless your friends were magazine reviewers, what you're claiming is impossible...
It wasn't available through ANY pirate channels before the release, and I was enjoying playing it before the pirates did.
I'm a paying steam customer, and I was thrilled with the way it was delievered and unlocked. I (and a WHOLE lot of other people) hammered the Steam servers at 12:00:01 AM when it was released, and it unlocked flawlessly in about 10 minutes.
I'll happily purchase other games through Steam.
N.
You can also right-click on any loaded game in the list and select "backup".
BTW: It was just added as a feature a few weeks back, so I don't blame you for missing it. It would be nice if they advertised changes like that a bit more prominently.
N.
I'm also impressed with the ease of activation. I was really expecting that there would be server overload issues, etc. But it fired up and began the unlocking process within seconds of restarting (12:00:30am, GMT -8).
:). Now if Valve only fixes the flaw that makes it possible to steal Steam accounts (no email verification before allowing an email address change), Steam will be about perfect in my books. I suppose another way of fixing this would be to allow you to reclaim your account at any time by punching in the credit card number you used to purchase a Steam game or something.
Took about 10-15 minutes for the content unlock, as it seemed to unlock a chunk, then download a tiny bit, then unlock another chunk and so on.
Very impressed
N.
Well, it's against Valve's EULA to sell Steam accounts, but of course that doesn't stop people from doing it.
Though there have been many reports about people on Ebay getting burned with fake/fraudlent Steam accounts.
N.