How do DVRs work in Europe? I'm pretty sure you can't run a HDD, tuner, and encoder in 0.5 watts. Even if you're doing a straight dump from digital without the encode step, that HDD is going to run you right over your power budget.
Well, DVRs inherently have trouble turning themselves off. Theoretically they could go to sleep when there is nothing scheduled for recording, and pop back up if someone taps a button on the remote, but nobody does that yet. Simply turning off when someone hits the off button would prevent them from doing their job.
CableCard was designed to fail. It wouldn't exist at all without the FCC mandate (trying to break the cable company's stranglehold on STBs), so they went out of their way to make them as inconvenient and discourage people from using them. Cablecards are a threat to the traditional vertical monopoly cable companies enjoy, which is why they are trying so hard to make them a failure.
Kingston used to have a good reputation, but it's clear the company has been taken over by fly by night managers. I wouldn't buy anything from them today.
The worst thing is, at least when I took it 15 years ago, the AP CS test really wasn't that hard. Compared to the AP Math tests it was a breeze. IIRC it didn't have a single algorithm proof and only got about as deep as basic performance counting (big O notation type stuff). Beyond that most of the questions were pretty straightforward to anybody who had built a few programs.
Maybe. People have been toying with laser comms for a long time now with mixed success. They can be made to work and have great bandwidth but tend to be fiddly and have lots of trouble with environmental effects. For satellite to satellite comms they work great until there's a big planet in the way (which blocks RF too, so no big difference there), but for satellite to ground they're a lot harder to keep working.
Civil Asset Forfeiture doesn't require that you're found guilty. The government gets to take your stuff and sell it just to make sure you don't have money to defend yourself with.
Synaptics makes the worst touch pads, except for everybody else who makes touch pads for laptops. Synaptics is really the top of the shitheap that is PC touchpads these days.
A Gawker link? Was the National Enquirer too credible?
I really don't see the scam here. One can argue unfair competition because they're not playing by the same rules as existing taxi companies, but they deliver on the rides promised for the fares promised. They don't ask anything of other cab companies. I really can't find the scam angle at all.
The bigger problem for cab companies is that Uber is proving to be a disruptive technology. They are able to offer considerably cheaper fares and service that is just as good or better than traditional cabs. They carry taxi insurance (through Uber), the payment system makes it impossible for the driver to monkey with his meter to gouge customers, it's just more efficient. Their biggest crime is not paying attention to the artificial barrier to entry that allows traditional cab companies to limit competition and charge monopoly prices.
The required licenses must be expensive for a reason
The reason is to create a barrier to entry into the taxicab market so the established players can charge higher fares. That's the only thing those licenses provide. The cab companies are complaining about the system that they themselves set up.
This isn't about solving crime. It's about protecting history and making sure the first hand accounts are properly recorded before the people with first hand knowledge pass away. So there are two options:
1. Find some technical/legal/whatever solution that allows the people to come forward and tell their story and have it recorded in the history books, but avoid prosecution.
2. Lose the history and still prosecute nobody because obviously they won't want to come forward if it just puts them right in jail.
The problem is the attacker here is the people who write the laws. They are also the people who can protect themselves from prosecution and hide behind veils of secrecy if they do break their own laws. You can't trust the laws to protect you. That's why everybody is looking for technical solutions.
In this case, the hidden crypto could simply be a one time pad that you store. One time pads are always secure as long as the source of random numbers you used was good. It might require a fair bit of storage, but archivists know a thing or two about long term shelf stable storage.
Added bonus: If you use the "sink it to the bottom of the ocean and recover it later" approach you will be guaranteed to have a cool and low radiation environment for the material. Hopefully it will be dry too, but that's harder to guarantee.
The problem is that radiation might mess up whatever you're storing the key on, especially if you're talking about a15 year window. There are some difficulties with this approach on a long timescale (we don't make batteries that last 15 years, and it would be hard to extract energy from the environment).
Still, there are long term timers that could be made to work. You could literally do a Pitch Drop experiment and have the bottom plate be pressure sensitive and spring loaded (make sure you choose springs that won't get weak over time) to cut the tether and allow the package to float to the surface. Maybe it has a solar panel on it (well protected at the bottom, exposed only when the tether is cut) and a radio that starts transmitting continuously once it has power. The final piece of the puzzle is some sort of stable long term funding solution that insures that once the radio transmission starts there will be someone listening for it, and preferably able to go out and physically recover the debris from the ocean.
Many Kickstarters setup Paypal or other pre-order sites after the fact. Theoretically the point of Kickstarter is to get a product started, so once it is released the people need a plan for regular sales anyway. Adding a traditional pre-order channel to that is hardly a stretch after you've done a Kickstarter.
For a failed campaign however, that pre-order site would have to cover all of your expenses because failed Kickstarters do not give the backers any money. The pledges are simply never processed. If you couldn't get enough traction on Kickstarter, your chances with some random site are pretty darn slim.
It is not unheard of for people to make a new Kickstarter for the same product if the first one fails, especially if it shows a reasonable amount of interest the first time around and the backers didn't realize until too late that they needed to advertise more or simply make a better Kickstarter page.
All major browser manufacturers are putting an enormous amount of effort into making Javascript fast. Every year it gets more and more efficient. Already you can do quite complex tasks on a browser without noticeable slowdown (see: Google Docs). As long as you aren't doing something silly like ray tracing with Javascript, even my 8 year old chip is more than enough.
The sad thing is that my positively ancient Core2Duo 2.4Ghz is still plenty fast for most tasks these days. This isn't the old days where upgrading the CPU every couple of years gave noticeable improvements to the OS and generic applications like word processors and web browsers. Worse, application developers have been focusing on improving speed (especially on browsers) instead of just jamming in more features. Its getting harder and harder to find motivation to upgrade. We really need some CPU dependent killer app to convince people to get back on the upgrade treadmill. Maybe some sort of AI?
Or maybe it's just fine that even cheap chips are plenty powerful for most people and we can stop worrying about it. Sort of like how even cheap cars can hit highway speeds with little effort these days, and do so with good safety margins, good gas mileage, and little maintenance. Enthusiasts will complain that they have no soul, but for regular people they're perfectly good and free up resources for other endeavors.
If you're going to post stories about a Kickstarter, do it BEFORE THEY END. It's pointless to post after the Kickstarter has ended. Given the way the Editorial cycle works on Slashdot, you should probably post at least a week before they end, so the story shows up at least a couple of days before it's too late to do anything about it. I had never heard of this Kickstarter until this story, and I suspect I'm not the only person in this boat.
Luckily they're LEOs so their garbage will come down in a reasonable amount of time, even if Google goes tits up and shuts the whole thing down without ceremony.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess someone at the FBI was not happy with ManTech? Did ManTech know about the hacks ahead of time? There's so much weird with this story.
Wow, color me amazed that such an architecture still exists in 2014.
Every single name on this bill has a (D) next to it. It will never make it to the floor in the house.
How do DVRs work in Europe? I'm pretty sure you can't run a HDD, tuner, and encoder in 0.5 watts. Even if you're doing a straight dump from digital without the encode step, that HDD is going to run you right over your power budget.
Well, DVRs inherently have trouble turning themselves off. Theoretically they could go to sleep when there is nothing scheduled for recording, and pop back up if someone taps a button on the remote, but nobody does that yet. Simply turning off when someone hits the off button would prevent them from doing their job.
CableCard was designed to fail. It wouldn't exist at all without the FCC mandate (trying to break the cable company's stranglehold on STBs), so they went out of their way to make them as inconvenient and discourage people from using them. Cablecards are a threat to the traditional vertical monopoly cable companies enjoy, which is why they are trying so hard to make them a failure.
Kingston used to have a good reputation, but it's clear the company has been taken over by fly by night managers. I wouldn't buy anything from them today.
The worst thing is, at least when I took it 15 years ago, the AP CS test really wasn't that hard. Compared to the AP Math tests it was a breeze. IIRC it didn't have a single algorithm proof and only got about as deep as basic performance counting (big O notation type stuff). Beyond that most of the questions were pretty straightforward to anybody who had built a few programs.
Maybe. People have been toying with laser comms for a long time now with mixed success. They can be made to work and have great bandwidth but tend to be fiddly and have lots of trouble with environmental effects. For satellite to satellite comms they work great until there's a big planet in the way (which blocks RF too, so no big difference there), but for satellite to ground they're a lot harder to keep working.
While they didn't hit their Kickstarter Goal, this is exactly the sort of thing they were trying to make last year.
Civil Asset Forfeiture doesn't require that you're found guilty. The government gets to take your stuff and sell it just to make sure you don't have money to defend yourself with.
Synaptics makes the worst touch pads, except for everybody else who makes touch pads for laptops. Synaptics is really the top of the shitheap that is PC touchpads these days.
A Gawker link? Was the National Enquirer too credible?
I really don't see the scam here. One can argue unfair competition because they're not playing by the same rules as existing taxi companies, but they deliver on the rides promised for the fares promised. They don't ask anything of other cab companies. I really can't find the scam angle at all.
The bigger problem for cab companies is that Uber is proving to be a disruptive technology. They are able to offer considerably cheaper fares and service that is just as good or better than traditional cabs. They carry taxi insurance (through Uber), the payment system makes it impossible for the driver to monkey with his meter to gouge customers, it's just more efficient. Their biggest crime is not paying attention to the artificial barrier to entry that allows traditional cab companies to limit competition and charge monopoly prices.
The reason is to create a barrier to entry into the taxicab market so the established players can charge higher fares. That's the only thing those licenses provide. The cab companies are complaining about the system that they themselves set up.
I prefer /etc/rc.conf personally. I'm not sure why every interface needs its own config file.
This isn't about solving crime. It's about protecting history and making sure the first hand accounts are properly recorded before the people with first hand knowledge pass away. So there are two options:
1. Find some technical/legal/whatever solution that allows the people to come forward and tell their story and have it recorded in the history books, but avoid prosecution.
2. Lose the history and still prosecute nobody because obviously they won't want to come forward if it just puts them right in jail.
That's why this is a fiasco.
The problem is the attacker here is the people who write the laws. They are also the people who can protect themselves from prosecution and hide behind veils of secrecy if they do break their own laws. You can't trust the laws to protect you. That's why everybody is looking for technical solutions.
In this case, the hidden crypto could simply be a one time pad that you store. One time pads are always secure as long as the source of random numbers you used was good. It might require a fair bit of storage, but archivists know a thing or two about long term shelf stable storage.
Added bonus: If you use the "sink it to the bottom of the ocean and recover it later" approach you will be guaranteed to have a cool and low radiation environment for the material. Hopefully it will be dry too, but that's harder to guarantee.
The problem is that radiation might mess up whatever you're storing the key on, especially if you're talking about a15 year window. There are some difficulties with this approach on a long timescale (we don't make batteries that last 15 years, and it would be hard to extract energy from the environment).
Still, there are long term timers that could be made to work. You could literally do a Pitch Drop experiment and have the bottom plate be pressure sensitive and spring loaded (make sure you choose springs that won't get weak over time) to cut the tether and allow the package to float to the surface. Maybe it has a solar panel on it (well protected at the bottom, exposed only when the tether is cut) and a radio that starts transmitting continuously once it has power. The final piece of the puzzle is some sort of stable long term funding solution that insures that once the radio transmission starts there will be someone listening for it, and preferably able to go out and physically recover the debris from the ocean.
Many Kickstarters setup Paypal or other pre-order sites after the fact. Theoretically the point of Kickstarter is to get a product started, so once it is released the people need a plan for regular sales anyway. Adding a traditional pre-order channel to that is hardly a stretch after you've done a Kickstarter.
For a failed campaign however, that pre-order site would have to cover all of your expenses because failed Kickstarters do not give the backers any money. The pledges are simply never processed. If you couldn't get enough traction on Kickstarter, your chances with some random site are pretty darn slim.
It is not unheard of for people to make a new Kickstarter for the same product if the first one fails, especially if it shows a reasonable amount of interest the first time around and the backers didn't realize until too late that they needed to advertise more or simply make a better Kickstarter page.
All major browser manufacturers are putting an enormous amount of effort into making Javascript fast. Every year it gets more and more efficient. Already you can do quite complex tasks on a browser without noticeable slowdown (see: Google Docs). As long as you aren't doing something silly like ray tracing with Javascript, even my 8 year old chip is more than enough.
The sad thing is that my positively ancient Core2Duo 2.4Ghz is still plenty fast for most tasks these days. This isn't the old days where upgrading the CPU every couple of years gave noticeable improvements to the OS and generic applications like word processors and web browsers. Worse, application developers have been focusing on improving speed (especially on browsers) instead of just jamming in more features. Its getting harder and harder to find motivation to upgrade. We really need some CPU dependent killer app to convince people to get back on the upgrade treadmill. Maybe some sort of AI?
Or maybe it's just fine that even cheap chips are plenty powerful for most people and we can stop worrying about it. Sort of like how even cheap cars can hit highway speeds with little effort these days, and do so with good safety margins, good gas mileage, and little maintenance. Enthusiasts will complain that they have no soul, but for regular people they're perfectly good and free up resources for other endeavors.
If you're going to post stories about a Kickstarter, do it BEFORE THEY END. It's pointless to post after the Kickstarter has ended. Given the way the Editorial cycle works on Slashdot, you should probably post at least a week before they end, so the story shows up at least a couple of days before it's too late to do anything about it. I had never heard of this Kickstarter until this story, and I suspect I'm not the only person in this boat.
Luckily they're LEOs so their garbage will come down in a reasonable amount of time, even if Google goes tits up and shuts the whole thing down without ceremony.
They put money into it, but I don't think Google engineers were spending much time buiding/launching the bird.