Oh yeah, that reminds me, I've seen something like that before: the Abit SecureIDE. It's a USB key + inline IDE device that encrypts (using 40bit DES, not massively strong) the contents of the HDD at the hardware level, so isn't device-driver dependant. Can't say I've tried it, but it looks interesting and relatively cheap (~40USD).
Of course, as others have already pointed out, if someone determined has got unmonitored physical access to your hardware then the game is pretty much lost anyway... though a device like this, along with a locked case + drives cover, file level encryption, no bootable removable media such as CD/floppy makes things a bit trickier for the opportunist. Like Shrek said (OK, I'm paraphrasing), security's like an onion, it's all about *layers*;)
Why not just go with a case that acts as the heatsink?
What, like the Zalman TNN 500A? Looks very nice but very expensive, though I'm sure it'd find favour in recording studios and the like (when teamed up with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 low noise HDD, for instance).
Another link (but be warned, it references Tom's....[new page]...Hardware)
...the broken PGP signature on the e-mail update Microsoft sent round relating to this? (The original was fine.) Just seemed a bit sloppy from a company who's now supposed to be taking security so seriously is all...
Don't get me wrong, I'd *love* to see an implementation of the Gecko engine on a PocketPC, but this thing's going nowhere far. Why?
Cause it's ONLY FOR LINUX. Yes, I know there are various flavours for PocketPCs, but how many people (outside of the geek domain) do you know that change the OS on their PDA? NONE, that's how many (percentage-wise overall I'd reckon under 0.001% of the market). A PDA is a fully functional device as it is; you might install a few other apps on you PPC or Palm, but average Joe is NOT going to spend a day f*cking round getting Opie/Familiar working (risking turning it into a paperweight) and then spend a week learning all the new applications just to get a better browser than PocketIE (which *does* suck ass, but not enough to change the entire OS).
If, on the other hand, they could write it to support WinCE/PocketPC 2000/2002/2003 then I'd image a lot of people would be very interested...
I don't disagree with with you're saying, I just think you're missing one of the major points.
Forcing MS to provide other people's software... well why not? Realistically you have how many choices of vendors for a PC Operating System? *ONE* If they happen to provide their own browser and/or media player with that OS then every other browser or media player vendor is *shit out of luck* because 100% of their Windows market are already supplied (and by extension use, via convenience, ignorance, or whatever) the Microsoft one, and if it "works well enough" and is free why should they change? This allows Microsoft to then broach even more markets such as licences for streaming media servers, and all-round entrencment into the lucrative media format market. How many portable devices now support WMP? All of 'em, that's how many (hell, even the iPod would via the PortalPlayer firmware if Apple hadn't disabled it), and every manufacturer pays a per-device licence fee for the priviledge, kerching$$$! So, to recap, the likes of Real, Apple's Quicktime, DivX, are all at a serious disadvantage FROM THE OUTSET because Microsoft abused their MONOPOLY. It's already too late for browsers, but it's not for the media market.
What makes it onto the list of options for the default media player (or browser) is the massively tricky part though, but hey.
The only other option, the one you'd say would suck ("I have to have IE to get Firefox") and which to an extend I'd I agree, is FAIR though. No default browser at all means a level playing field. You want a browser, go buy a PC magazine and install it from the coverdisk, or get a friend to sort you out with one. You only have to do it once. Otherwise you'll just stick with what you've got 'cause "it came with it", or "it's good enough", and that'll be the only option supplied: the Microsoft one.
THAT is the ultimate problem, hooking the apps into the OS (via undocumented APIs or whatever) is just another tactic to gain market share, but when they can get 100% market share BY DEFAULT then that point is moot:(
Hmm, you have no beef with bundling, but you use Firefox?
Would you recommend Firefox to the average user as an alternative to IE? I'd assume that to be a "Yes"? After all it's a better product: it's free, less prone to spyware, blocks popups by default, excellent standards support and is easy to use, so would be ideal, right?
"But IE is already there on my desktop so I'll just use that. I don't want to download and install another browser and I'm not too sure how it'd work, so I'll just stick with what came with my computer."
Can you see the problem there? Microsoft uses its operating system monopoly to broach other markets and exclude that market's competitors by providing only their software but not the third parties. THAT is the crux of the issue the European Commission has with Microsoft, and why *everyone* should have a problem with anti-competitive bundling: it stifles competition and innovation, is bad for the end-user and a downright blatant abuse of their monopoly.
The newest free RealOne player's not actually that bad.
Unfortunately, trying to find the free version on their website is about as easy as completing Zork - I always wondered what happened to the Infocom coders, guess Real must've hired them!:)
It's worth pointing out that the leading cause of hearing loss and tinnitus is indeed in-ear headphones, as typically these pump a lot more energy directly into the ear canals than your typical on-ear cans (though these can still do damage obviously). You should *always* turn the volume down, press play, then turn up to a comfortable level - if you can still hear external noise and find it distracting then buy better headphones! The Sony MDR in-canals, as others have mentioned, are a pretty good, yet economical option (around USD$30-40)and also come in white for the iPod fashion conscious). Higher end are the Etymolics and Shures - the E3C in particular is perfect for iPods and can be had for around USD$180 or less. While this may seem like a lot of money, you get what you pay for and these are seriously good in-canal 'phones with superb noise rejection. Consider this: if you listen to a hour of music with them every day they'll work out at around 50 cents per day for a year... not much at all for the quality you get. Hell, if you're rich you can even get custom moulds of your ears taken and plug 'em into your Shures, or get a pair of Ultimate Ears, mmmmmhhh.
As for car stereos, well I'd say you're more likely to get permanent damage from clubs/venues/concerts but the theory's the same. You know when you walk out of the place and your ears are ringing, then they're still ringing when you wake up the next morning? That's *permanent* hearing damage in action and you should most definitely heed the warning signs (as the parent posts both stress). Ear defenders such as the cheap roll-in-your-fingers foam type can be found in most chemists/pharmacies/home depots, provide excellent noise reduction and are remarkably cheap (around USD$3 for several pairs): I'd recommend carrying a pair with you in you record bag or whatever, just in case. Seriously, these'll at the very least save your top-end hearing in later life, or in more extreme cases save you from the constant life-sapping annoyance of that permanent ringing in your ears.
Remember, these are the people who insist on everything going through an x-ray machine, even materials that are highly sensitive to rays and easily damaged, because they know best and because the machines are "harmless".
Worth pointing out that I've had mostly positive experiences when transporting photographic film through airports. My advice would be to take the films out of the cardboard packaging (keeping the cartridges and sheet film in their respective plastic containers), then put all these in a clear plastic bag. Take it out of your hand luggage when approaching the inspectors & x-ray machine, then politely ask for the film to be "hand inspected" - most will be happy to oblige and will use a wand-type device around the film cartridges (I think this reacts with chemicals relating to explosives).
The only negative responses I've had were in small airports (such as coming back home) or with particularly lazy guards - there were several instances in the UK where you'd ask, the guy'd say "no, cause they don't damage films" and you'd come back with "well as a professional photographer who's read all the evidence plus the recommendations of the Royal Photographic Society, BJP, etc. I'd respectfully disagree..." but they'd just flat out refuse, put your films through and on collecting them at the other side you'd see the film wands and trays propped behind the machine - just too bloody lazy, grrr.
As for the evidence, well it's not entirely clear cut, but for anything serious I'd recommend caution. It depends entirely on the operator and what scanning strength they use - if for instance you use one of those "film protector" cases they'll usually just dial-up the gain until the "see through it" so as such I'd advise against the use of these, but it just indicates that it's down to luck as much as anything if you do put it through. I'd also strongly recommend hand inspection of film with speeds of over ISO 800 as the evidence is a lot more distinct for sensitive high-speed films (these fog much more easily). Also esp. worth it when you'll be travelling on multiple flights (and therefore experience serveral scans) as the fogging effect is cumulative.
Hardly. They did publish a list of people the express dissatisfaction to, which in hindsight was an incredibly stupid mistake, but the wording wasn't anywhere near the "spam/flame all these people" you make out. Arguably they didn't expect many people to respond as the Firebird community (much like the Delphi community that uses Firebird) is fairly small, tight-knit and rational - so they didn't expect people to behave childishly by flooding the mailboxes of the Mozilla team.
However, because it made "good news" to have an open-source battle (or to create one, which the media is sometimes guilty of) it gained publicity fast and was picked up by people on both sides, including those who'd probably used neither product who thought it'd be good to fan the flames and as a result things escalated wildly - to the extent that some stupid Firebird fanboys mailbombed the Moz devteam while on the other hand some idiotic Mozilla zealots found an SSL bug in the Firebird website and deleted everything...
So to say that only the "FirebirdDB people" handled things improperly is a pretty wide-sweeping generalisation that, if you stepped back a bit and checked out the facts, might reveal a slight subconscious leaning to Mozilla 'cause you like their browser? I've used both products and saw plenty of mistakes made on *both sides*...
The beauty of identity theft + biometrics is that there's no way to issue another account.:)
That's also the fundamental flaw though. If someone cracks the system you can't reissue the keys (like you can in PGP/GPG for instance)... unless you can do an iris/fingerprint replacement scheme that is?!
I can see it now, my passport has just expired so it's off to the DVLA to go and get a new pair of eyes...
Kodak's become a bit of a joke in the pro 35mm digital community with this one I'm afraid - originally posting up some very poor (in both technique and image-quality) images in this sample page, then getting someone to hastily redo them a week or so later after,. There've been numerous firmware updates to try and fix the noise problems (as the other reply to your post pointed out) but all this's done really is weaken Kodak's reputation of not being able to get it right first time, as well as highlight *the myth that megapixels = image quality* (which is certainly not the case).
It's worth mentioning of course that the logistics of using a 3rd-party sensor that you must integrate into a camera body with the associated electronics in a very short timescale (before sensor technology advances again) is an incredibly difficult and expensive task - so much so that if you get it wrong you'll have an obsolete product that doesn't even cover the development and production costs, and this may well be the situation Kodak have ended up with on this one - esp. giving competition with Nikon due to them using the Nikon mount.
The current king of 35mm full-frame sensor digital is Canon with the 1Ds (the studio version of the 1D, which is now in it's second iteration: the 1Ds mk.II). It was more than twice the price of the Kodak when it was first announced, but pros really don't care if it allows them to do their jobs better, which it very much does. Check out the following links:
Still, I'll be sticking with my EOS-3's, L lenses and Minolta DiMage 5400 filmscanner for a little while longer... until a more reasonably priced full-frame Canon-mount digi comes out, anyway:)
Favourite (rediscovered) remix is probably Freelance Hellraiser's "Smells Like Booty" - can't go wrong mixing Nirvana and Destiny's Child! Oh, and Empire State Human (.co.uk) did a good mix of Kelis's Milkshake vs. Whitey's TwoFaced, pretty rocking though fairly straightforward.
Other names that spring to mind - Girls On Top (Richard X - of SugaBabes fame), Kurtis Rush, etc.
Hehe, you think that's worrying? How about the case of Mike Batt (of the UK childrens' TV animation "the Wombles" fame) being sued for alledgedly plagiarising John Cage's composition "4'33" - which consisted of four minutes and thirty three seconds of... silence! His track was one minute of silence and, presumably as a joke, was credited to Batt/Cage, which is probably what the frenzied lawyers jumped on to kick off the lawsuit.
Mike paid out an alledged six figure sum in an out of court settlement to the John Cage Trust, shocking stuff! You can read the CNN coverage here and also at ChartAttack. Sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction;)
All good points CSK, *please* take the time to submit these via the feedback form.
BTW the BBC *isn't* government owned, it's and independent entity funded through the TV licence fee - a GBP109 p.a. mandatory fee for anyone that owns a telly in the UK. As such they're supposed to be able to independently report on government matters, which is hugely advantageous to state-owned media (e.g. Italy, where the president owns 2/3 of the media!). However, after the whitewash that was the Hutton report the resultant damage to free press may well restrict the BBC to hold back on government criticism, which I'm sure Teflon Tony and Co. will be most pleased with.
Extremely high DPI scans are usually more like 350MB upwards (for 35mm colour film anyway), standard A4 paper sketches/drawings may hold less data? It may be worth getting your work scanned with the best flatbed you can find - Agfa have always made excellent professional colour-profiled devices but there are plenty other to choose from (*make sure* you profile the device as generally colour accuracy is as important as resolution). If you know a graphic designer they'll have access to one of these or know someone who has (unless you've aready got one that is!).
I'd also advise getting your work photographed, if possible, as an analogue backup. If you know any pro photographers they should be able to do this for you - it's fairly easy: use a tripod, high quality prime lens (the best primes tend to be sharper than zooms and with less distortion), colour-balanced lighting, high res. archival slide film (negative doesm't archive well), shoot a colour test and gamma chart on the first frame so you can gauge the characteristics of the film, etc. A pro will know all this anyway, and it's actually a remarkably cheap process if you've got a knowledgeable friend:)
You can also get this film scanned at 5400dpi upwards (drum) - it'd be interesting to compare these to the flatbed results! Anyway, there's plenty of advice on archiving photographic film on photo.net and this, while not perfect by any means, is an excellent backup "human readable" medium despite its flaws.
As for the highest quality CDs? Over at cdfreaks.com I gathered the following info:
(Copying from an article by "Halcyon" below - sorry I can't find the URL right now)
Verbatim DataLifePlus CD-R 700Mb 24X Super AZO - Test winner of the PC Professionell 3/2002. Lowest number of errors. It also has a decent label side protection although not on the level of Basf/Emtec Ceram Guard. The best amongs disc tested in regards to aging related stability.
Teac CD-R 700 MB 24x - Very good disc, with amongst the most lowest inherent error levels of all discs tested (especially at higher writing speeds). Test winner of PC-Welt 1/2002. Lowest number of errors.
Basf Ceram Guard 1-12x (older - some stock still around) EMTEC Ceram Guard 1-24x - Both of the above are essentially the same, although the Emtec 24x version is a later batch and has a higher writing speed grade. Both manufactured by Tayio Yuden (one of the best). In addition they have a VERY TOUGH ceramic coating on the label side (where CDs are most vulnerable to scratches). This is the disc I use myself out of the consumer brand choices if I want a copy that must tolerate normal handling without starting to develop errors.
TDK Reflex Ultra CD-R 80 24x - Very good tested quality in PC Pro 3/2002. Tayio Yuden manufactured.
Sony CD-R 700 Mb CDQ 80 N2 24x - Very good tested quality in PC Pro 3/2002. Tayio Yuden manufactured.
---
Oh, and Philips Silver Premium are supposed to be among the best too, as are the Kodak archival gold's (but they're no longer manufactured unfortunately).
However, these results cannot be extrapolated to very long times because chemical changes in the environment that may take place with time were not taken into account.
If you're covering issues like that you're talking about a long time (thousands of years?)!
From the sounds of things you *do* trust a format: your hard disk! What would happen if that died? D'you have and redundancy on this such as RAID-1? If so, what'd happen if you got a virus that wiped everything? Tape/CDR/DVDR archival backups?
Spare disks sometimes count but only if the documents are never going to change and the disk is archived, otherwise there'll always be a "newer version" and it'll most likely be on your primary disk (which may be a point of failure).
Not trying to be pendantic but hard disks are not infallible, I've had plenty die in my time.
Like you said, they weren't going to let this happen as it'd have spoilt the Mac exclusivity that the iPod originally enjoyed and hamper adoption of their favoured codec, not to mention having to pay a per-player licence to Microsoft. They'd have to have had a massively good reason to keep WMA in, and there wasn't one. Simple as that!
What I'm interested in is was it possible to do forensics before the box was switched off, and was there an IDS (such as Snort) installed and positioned in such a place as to be useful? If so then hopefully the attacker may have been logged by the IDS which may leave some vital clues as to the methodology the hacker used, and may even have logged the root exploit's raw packets.
For anyone that's curious I'd recommend a look at the Honeynet Project's Challenges page, esp. the Scan of the Month sample incident and submitted answers from the community - very good for learning how to perform an analysis.
For admins that'd like a way to check for rootkits I'd recommend looking at chkrootkit. While it's not a 100% reliable method (and there may be restrictions: for instance, compiling it on a compromised remote box from uploaded source isn't secure*), it's good as a quick 'n' dirty check. Worth a look at the links at the bottom of the above site too for more info on rootkits, there're some excellent articles listed.
Also of interest would be Nessus - a vulnerability scanner which uses NMAP and other tools that may identify potential points of ingress on a suspect box.
*In this case you'd be best off running pre-compiled trusted binaries off a read-only source such as a CD, or mounting the suspect drive on another machine - though this depends on whether you can get physical access to the box to do either, or if you have truly awesome datacenter techs that can help!
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, that reminds me, I've seen something like that before: the Abit SecureIDE. It's a USB key + inline IDE device that encrypts (using 40bit DES, not massively strong) the contents of the HDD at the hardware level, so isn't device-driver dependant. Can't say I've tried it, but it looks interesting and relatively cheap (~40USD).
Of course, as others have already pointed out, if someone determined has got unmonitored physical access to your hardware then the game is pretty much lost anyway... though a device like this, along with a locked case + drives cover, file level encryption, no bootable removable media such as CD/floppy makes things a bit trickier for the opportunist. Like Shrek said (OK, I'm paraphrasing), security's like an onion, it's all about *layers* ;)
Another link (but be warned, it references Tom's....[new page]...Hardware)
...over at SecurityFocus - Voice over IP Security by Matthew Tanase
...the broken PGP signature on the e-mail update Microsoft sent round relating to this? (The original was fine.) Just seemed a bit sloppy from a company who's now supposed to be taking security so seriously is all...
BTW The Register chastised MS for marking the original as only "important", looks like they were right on the money!Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky...
Try to take over the world!
NARF!
Don't get me wrong, I'd *love* to see an implementation of the Gecko engine on a PocketPC, but this thing's going nowhere far. Why?
Cause it's ONLY FOR LINUX. Yes, I know there are various flavours for PocketPCs, but how many people (outside of the geek domain) do you know that change the OS on their PDA? NONE, that's how many (percentage-wise overall I'd reckon under 0.001% of the market). A PDA is a fully functional device as it is; you might install a few other apps on you PPC or Palm, but average Joe is NOT going to spend a day f*cking round getting Opie/Familiar working (risking turning it into a paperweight) and then spend a week learning all the new applications just to get a better browser than PocketIE (which *does* suck ass, but not enough to change the entire OS).
If, on the other hand, they could write it to support WinCE/PocketPC 2000/2002/2003 then I'd image a lot of people would be very interested...
I don't disagree with with you're saying, I just think you're missing one of the major points.
:(
Forcing MS to provide other people's software... well why not? Realistically you have how many choices of vendors for a PC Operating System?
*ONE*
If they happen to provide their own browser and/or media player with that OS then every other browser or media player vendor is *shit out of luck* because 100% of their Windows market are already supplied (and by extension use, via convenience, ignorance, or whatever) the Microsoft one, and if it "works well enough" and is free why should they change? This allows Microsoft to then broach even more markets such as licences for streaming media servers, and all-round entrencment into the lucrative media format market. How many portable devices now support WMP? All of 'em, that's how many (hell, even the iPod would via the PortalPlayer firmware if Apple hadn't disabled it), and every manufacturer pays a per-device licence fee for the priviledge, kerching$$$! So, to recap, the likes of Real, Apple's Quicktime, DivX, are all at a serious disadvantage FROM THE OUTSET because Microsoft abused their MONOPOLY. It's already too late for browsers, but it's not for the media market.
What makes it onto the list of options for the default media player (or browser) is the massively tricky part though, but hey.
The only other option, the one you'd say would suck ("I have to have IE to get Firefox") and which to an extend I'd I agree, is FAIR though. No default browser at all means a level playing field. You want a browser, go buy a PC magazine and install it from the coverdisk, or get a friend to sort you out with one. You only have to do it once. Otherwise you'll just stick with what you've got 'cause "it came with it", or "it's good enough", and that'll be the only option supplied: the Microsoft one.
THAT is the ultimate problem, hooking the apps into the OS (via undocumented APIs or whatever) is just another tactic to gain market share, but when they can get 100% market share BY DEFAULT then that point is moot
Hmm, you have no beef with bundling, but you use Firefox?
Would you recommend Firefox to the average user as an alternative to IE? I'd assume that to be a "Yes"? After all it's a better product: it's free, less prone to spyware, blocks popups by default, excellent standards support and is easy to use, so would be ideal, right?
"But IE is already there on my desktop so I'll just use that. I don't want to download and install another browser and I'm not too sure how it'd work, so I'll just stick with what came with my computer."
Can you see the problem there? Microsoft uses its operating system monopoly to broach other markets and exclude that market's competitors by providing only their software but not the third parties. THAT is the crux of the issue the European Commission has with Microsoft, and why *everyone* should have a problem with anti-competitive bundling: it stifles competition and innovation, is bad for the end-user and a downright blatant abuse of their monopoly.
The newest free RealOne player's not actually that bad.
Unfortunately, trying to find the free version on their website is about as easy as completing Zork - I always wondered what happened to the Infocom coders, guess Real must've hired them! :)
It's worth pointing out that the leading cause of hearing loss and tinnitus is indeed in-ear headphones, as typically these pump a lot more energy directly into the ear canals than your typical on-ear cans (though these can still do damage obviously). You should *always* turn the volume down, press play, then turn up to a comfortable level - if you can still hear external noise and find it distracting then buy better headphones! The Sony MDR in-canals, as others have mentioned, are a pretty good, yet economical option (around USD$30-40)and also come in white for the iPod fashion conscious). Higher end are the Etymolics and Shures - the E3C in particular is perfect for iPods and can be had for around USD$180 or less. While this may seem like a lot of money, you get what you pay for and these are seriously good in-canal 'phones with superb noise rejection. Consider this: if you listen to a hour of music with them every day they'll work out at around 50 cents per day for a year... not much at all for the quality you get. Hell, if you're rich you can even get custom moulds of your ears taken and plug 'em into your Shures, or get a pair of Ultimate Ears, mmmmmhhh.
As for car stereos, well I'd say you're more likely to get permanent damage from clubs/venues/concerts but the theory's the same. You know when you walk out of the place and your ears are ringing, then they're still ringing when you wake up the next morning? That's *permanent* hearing damage in action and you should most definitely heed the warning signs (as the parent posts both stress). Ear defenders such as the cheap roll-in-your-fingers foam type can be found in most chemists/pharmacies/home depots, provide excellent noise reduction and are remarkably cheap (around USD$3 for several pairs): I'd recommend carrying a pair with you in you record bag or whatever, just in case. Seriously, these'll at the very least save your top-end hearing in later life, or in more extreme cases save you from the constant life-sapping annoyance of that permanent ringing in your ears.
Worth pointing out that I've had mostly positive experiences when transporting photographic film through airports. My advice would be to take the films out of the cardboard packaging (keeping the cartridges and sheet film in their respective plastic containers), then put all these in a clear plastic bag. Take it out of your hand luggage when approaching the inspectors & x-ray machine, then politely ask for the film to be "hand inspected" - most will be happy to oblige and will use a wand-type device around the film cartridges (I think this reacts with chemicals relating to explosives).
The only negative responses I've had were in small airports (such as coming back home) or with particularly lazy guards - there were several instances in the UK where you'd ask, the guy'd say "no, cause they don't damage films" and you'd come back with "well as a professional photographer who's read all the evidence plus the recommendations of the Royal Photographic Society, BJP, etc. I'd respectfully disagree..." but they'd just flat out refuse, put your films through and on collecting them at the other side you'd see the film wands and trays propped behind the machine - just too bloody lazy, grrr.
As for the evidence, well it's not entirely clear cut, but for anything serious I'd recommend caution. It depends entirely on the operator and what scanning strength they use - if for instance you use one of those "film protector" cases they'll usually just dial-up the gain until the "see through it" so as such I'd advise against the use of these, but it just indicates that it's down to luck as much as anything if you do put it through. I'd also strongly recommend hand inspection of film with speeds of over ISO 800 as the evidence is a lot more distinct for sensitive high-speed films (these fog much more easily). Also esp. worth it when you'll be travelling on multiple flights (and therefore experience serveral scans) as the fogging effect is cumulative.
Hardly. They did publish a list of people the express dissatisfaction to, which in hindsight was an incredibly stupid mistake, but the wording wasn't anywhere near the "spam/flame all these people" you make out. Arguably they didn't expect many people to respond as the Firebird community (much like the Delphi community that uses Firebird) is fairly small, tight-knit and rational - so they didn't expect people to behave childishly by flooding the mailboxes of the Mozilla team.
However, because it made "good news" to have an open-source battle (or to create one, which the media is sometimes guilty of) it gained publicity fast and was picked up by people on both sides, including those who'd probably used neither product who thought it'd be good to fan the flames and as a result things escalated wildly - to the extent that some stupid Firebird fanboys mailbombed the Moz devteam while on the other hand some idiotic Mozilla zealots found an SSL bug in the Firebird website and deleted everything...
So to say that only the "FirebirdDB people" handled things improperly is a pretty wide-sweeping generalisation that, if you stepped back a bit and checked out the facts, might reveal a slight subconscious leaning to Mozilla 'cause you like their browser? I've used both products and saw plenty of mistakes made on *both sides*...
FYI I did a a writeup of events last time around.
That's also the fundamental flaw though. If someone cracks the system you can't reissue the keys (like you can in PGP/GPG for instance)... unless you can do an iris/fingerprint replacement scheme that is?!
I can see it now, my passport has just expired so it's off to the DVLA to go and get a new pair of eyes...
Oops, that should be:
t ml
(the studio version of the 1D, which is now in it's second iteration: the 1D mk.II)
This one's of more use to sports-shooters as it'll do 8.5FPS for a burst of 40 images (or 20 RAW). There are some more details of the 1D mk.II here:
http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/eos1dm2/html/menu.h
Kodak's become a bit of a joke in the pro 35mm digital community with this one I'm afraid - originally posting up some very poor (in both technique and image-quality) images in this sample page, then getting someone to hastily redo them a week or so later after,. There've been numerous firmware updates to try and fix the noise problems (as the other reply to your post pointed out) but all this's done really is weaken Kodak's reputation of not being able to get it right first time, as well as highlight *the myth that megapixels = image quality* (which is certainly not the case).
e b.canon.jp/Imaging/eos1dm2/index.html
t tp://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/ 1ds/1ds-field.shtmlD s_review/
:)
It's worth mentioning of course that the logistics of using a 3rd-party sensor that you must integrate into a camera body with the associated electronics in a very short timescale (before sensor technology advances again) is an incredibly difficult and expensive task - so much so that if you get it wrong you'll have an obsolete product that doesn't even cover the development and production costs, and this may well be the situation Kodak have ended up with on this one - esp. giving competition with Nikon due to them using the Nikon mount.
The current king of 35mm full-frame sensor digital is Canon with the 1Ds (the studio version of the 1D, which is now in it's second iteration: the 1Ds mk.II). It was more than twice the price of the Kodak when it was first announced, but pros really don't care if it allows them to do their jobs better, which it very much does. Check out the following links:
http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/EOS1DS
http://w
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos1ds/
h
http://www.fredmiranda.com/1
Still, I'll be sticking with my EOS-3's, L lenses and Minolta DiMage 5400 filmscanner for a little while longer... until a more reasonably priced full-frame Canon-mount digi comes out, anyway
Hehe, good post :)
Favourite (rediscovered) remix is probably Freelance Hellraiser's "Smells Like Booty" - can't go wrong mixing Nirvana and Destiny's Child! Oh, and Empire State Human (.co.uk) did a good mix of Kelis's Milkshake vs. Whitey's TwoFaced, pretty rocking though fairly straightforward.
Other names that spring to mind - Girls On Top (Richard X - of SugaBabes fame), Kurtis Rush, etc.
Hehe, you think that's worrying? How about the case of Mike Batt (of the UK childrens' TV animation "the Wombles" fame) being sued for alledgedly plagiarising John Cage's composition "4'33" - which consisted of four minutes and thirty three seconds of... silence! His track was one minute of silence and, presumably as a joke, was credited to Batt/Cage, which is probably what the frenzied lawyers jumped on to kick off the lawsuit.
Mike paid out an alledged six figure sum in an out of court settlement to the John Cage Trust, shocking stuff! You can read the CNN coverage here and also at ChartAttack. Sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction ;)
All good points CSK, *please* take the time to submit these via the feedback form.
BTW the BBC *isn't* government owned, it's and independent entity funded through the TV licence fee - a GBP109 p.a. mandatory fee for anyone that owns a telly in the UK. As such they're supposed to be able to independently report on government matters, which is hugely advantageous to state-owned media (e.g. Italy, where the president owns 2/3 of the media!). However, after the whitewash that was the Hutton report the resultant damage to free press may well restrict the BBC to hold back on government criticism, which I'm sure Teflon Tony and Co. will be most pleased with.
Extremely high DPI scans are usually more like 350MB upwards (for 35mm colour film anyway), standard A4 paper sketches/drawings may hold less data? It may be worth getting your work scanned with the best flatbed you can find - Agfa have always made excellent professional colour-profiled devices but there are plenty other to choose from (*make sure* you profile the device as generally colour accuracy is as important as resolution). If you know a graphic designer they'll have access to one of these or know someone who has (unless you've aready got one that is!).
:)
I'd also advise getting your work photographed, if possible, as an analogue backup. If you know any pro photographers they should be able to do this for you - it's fairly easy: use a tripod, high quality prime lens (the best primes tend to be sharper than zooms and with less distortion), colour-balanced lighting, high res. archival slide film (negative doesm't archive well), shoot a colour test and gamma chart on the first frame so you can gauge the characteristics of the film, etc. A pro will know all this anyway, and it's actually a remarkably cheap process if you've got a knowledgeable friend
You can also get this film scanned at 5400dpi upwards (drum) - it'd be interesting to compare these to the flatbed results! Anyway, there's plenty of advice on archiving photographic film on photo.net and this, while not perfect by any means, is an excellent backup "human readable" medium despite its flaws.
As for the highest quality CDs? Over at cdfreaks.com I gathered the following info:
(Copying from an article by "Halcyon" below - sorry I can't find the URL right now)
Verbatim DataLifePlus CD-R 700Mb 24X Super AZO
- Test winner of the PC Professionell 3/2002. Lowest number of errors. It also has a decent label side protection although not on the level of Basf/Emtec Ceram Guard. The best amongs disc tested in regards to aging related stability.
Teac CD-R 700 MB 24x
- Very good disc, with amongst the most lowest inherent error levels of all discs tested (especially at higher writing speeds). Test winner of PC-Welt 1/2002. Lowest number of errors.
Basf Ceram Guard 1-12x (older - some stock still around)
EMTEC Ceram Guard 1-24x
- Both of the above are essentially the same, although the Emtec 24x version is a later batch and has a higher writing speed grade. Both manufactured by Tayio Yuden (one of the best). In addition they have a VERY TOUGH ceramic coating on the label side (where CDs are most vulnerable to scratches). This is the disc I use myself out of the consumer brand choices if I want a copy that must tolerate normal handling without starting to develop errors.
TDK Reflex Ultra CD-R 80 24x
- Very good tested quality in PC Pro 3/2002. Tayio Yuden manufactured.
Sony CD-R 700 Mb CDQ 80 N2 24x
- Very good tested quality in PC Pro 3/2002. Tayio Yuden manufactured.
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Oh, and Philips Silver Premium are supposed to be among the best too, as are the Kodak archival gold's (but they're no longer manufactured unfortunately).
Hope that's of some help!
See the Rosetta Project that uses Norsam Technologies HD-Rosetta is a very interesting real-world example. Reading the Los Alamos National Labs tests of HD-Rosetta gives some amazing results: 300 deg. C for 65 hours or exposures to saltwater/tap water/a simulated marine air environment for 15 weeks did not affect readability of the text!
My favourite bit is where they say: If you're covering issues like that you're talking about a long time (thousands of years?)!
From the sounds of things you *do* trust a format: your hard disk! What would happen if that died? D'you have and redundancy on this such as RAID-1? If so, what'd happen if you got a virus that wiped everything? Tape/CDR/DVDR archival backups?
Spare disks sometimes count but only if the documents are never going to change and the disk is archived, otherwise there'll always be a "newer version" and it'll most likely be on your primary disk (which may be a point of failure).
Not trying to be pendantic but hard disks are not infallible, I've had plenty die in my time.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. If you look at the technology the iPod was built on you'll find it already supports WMA by default (it's the PortalPlayer PP5002 platform) - Apple must've disabled this in the firmware.
Like you said, they weren't going to let this happen as it'd have spoilt the Mac exclusivity that the iPod originally enjoyed and hamper adoption of their favoured codec, not to mention having to pay a per-player licence to Microsoft. They'd have to have had a massively good reason to keep WMA in, and there wasn't one. Simple as that!
What I'm interested in is was it possible to do forensics before the box was switched off, and was there an IDS (such as Snort) installed and positioned in such a place as to be useful? If so then hopefully the attacker may have been logged by the IDS which may leave some vital clues as to the methodology the hacker used, and may even have logged the root exploit's raw packets.
For anyone that's curious I'd recommend a look at the Honeynet Project's Challenges page, esp. the Scan of the Month sample incident and submitted answers from the community - very good for learning how to perform an analysis.
For admins that'd like a way to check for rootkits I'd recommend looking at chkrootkit. While it's not a 100% reliable method (and there may be restrictions: for instance, compiling it on a compromised remote box from uploaded source isn't secure*), it's good as a quick 'n' dirty check. Worth a look at the links at the bottom of the above site too for more info on rootkits, there're some excellent articles listed.
Also of interest would be Nessus - a vulnerability scanner which uses NMAP and other tools that may identify potential points of ingress on a suspect box.
*In this case you'd be best off running pre-compiled trusted binaries off a read-only source such as a CD, or mounting the suspect drive on another machine - though this depends on whether you can get physical access to the box to do either, or if you have truly awesome datacenter techs that can help!