"If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors," Ballmer wrote.
Isn't that basically what they just got done doing with ISO? Buy the votes to get their way "by-the-rules"?
I wonder why no one has challenged them on this? While of course it's never a good idea to expect the courts to make sensible decisions in such cases, you'd think someone would at least try for a "suddenotbreakofcommonsense" tag here?
Re:Frustrating, but not really...
on
NXP RFID Cracked
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'd first have to assume that directional antennas work at range. Has anyone tried hacking together a nice gain antenna to an RFID reader, to see how many feet away you can be to read one?
And they ask "why?" Because there's nothing to bolster your company like buying a standards committee or two. I wonder which one they'll shop for next? ISO is going to be a pretty tough bargain to beat.
That stage is where you are trying to make the end cycle as accurate as possible. If you can say, get a resonator to slip one or two cycles per a given period, it's to your advantage to go for a higher clock rate, and then divide down. When you divide down, you also divide down the error. So if your resonator might slip +/- 4 cycles in a period, and you are dividing it down by 8, then resulting signal may slip +/- 0.5 cycles per the same period.
Something I'm surprised the article did not point out is its applications in lower frequency use. If you want to create a stable clock that counts seconds, you don't make an oscillator at 1hz (one beat per second), you create one that does much more, say 1000hz, and then divide that by 1000. So if you are off by a few cycles it doesn't matter much. The greater this multiplication the better. So a fairly stable 4.5ghz reference could be divided down to make an extremely accurate and stable say, 500mhz signal.
well yes it is nice that you don't have to panic if you forget to lock a door or something there. But I suspect my reality is wasted on your attempt at sarcasm.
If that's the case, isn't there some law to prevent you from squeezing your only competition by placing unjustifiable limitations on the market? Not saying they're a monopoly, but it looks like that's what they're attempting to create with this new requirement they are placing on their vendors.
There should be something illegal about pressuring business associates in one market you have control over, to stifle competition in another market you are also involved in.
They live in a loft IN downtown kansas city. Not a lot of people live IN the city, 99% are in the burbs. All the loft buildings in the area are secure buildings, you have to get buzzed in. This one has an art gallery on 1st floor so security is tighter than the usual on top of that. These are warehouse buildings, they occupy entire city blocks and are 3-5 floors tall, it's a big place. Unless you know where the apartment you are looking for is at, it can take awhile to find it once you get in, because the place is a maze of hallways. In this case it was a Sunday evening so none of the people at the building office were in, and they had to run the list of people on the directory at the keypad several times before they could get one of her neighbors to buzz them in.
Also once you get IN the building, you have at least two more locked doors to cross at various stairways before you even get to her loft. One of her neighbors had to escort them to her loft after buzzing them in.
Most systems like this have a very wide berth on the checks because the false negatives are a lot higher profile than the false positives. One higher-up getting locked out of a building because of a bit of dirt on his finger is a stronger motive for change than the possibility that 1 in 100 could get in that should not.
Those can work against you too. My mom's got a security system in her apartment building, which is also secured. She was in a hurry one day and entered the wrong code to the alarm when she opened her apartment door, and re-entered it and it silenced as it should. 30 minutes later (!!) there's a knock on the door and looking out thru the hole she sees a row of cops lining the hallway all the way to the end, and a guy dressed in a white coat at the door "wanting to talk". She insisted it must be a mistake since the alarm company always calls before sending the cops. not when you enter the hostage code. oops! So they insisted on coming in for a bit and while they chatted with the white-coat, several of the officers methodically swept their place making sure there wasn't a guy with a weapon holding one of the family members hostage in a closet or something. It had taken them over 20 minutes to get someone else to buzz them into the building or they'd have been there a lot sooner.
Many have also speculated that it was not Apple's desire to lock down the phone to the extent that it has been, and that AT&T has placed certain requirements on the iPhone that Apple believes is not in the best interest of their business model. It would not surprise me in the least that when the exclusive Apple / AT&T deal expires, we will see the iPhone immediately become a much more open platform. Surely not as open as everyone wants, but certainly more open than it currently is. But even then I think we'll see people continue to complain that Apple is not as open as they'd like them to be, no matter how open they go.
This fits perfectly with Apple's present behavior of locking the phone down to a certain point, and not pushing it. I think if Apple really wanted to lock the iPhone down, we would not be seeing jailbreaking anything like this.
In the interest of fairness, the amount of time required to hack them doesn't matter much. It's not like that hack was made up on the spot. It was waiting for that day in the contest and was probably developed weeks ago over the course of several days. After everyone's prefab exploits were tested in the first 20 minutes, THEN people started plinking on the keyboards for the next 6 hrs in desperation hoping to get lucky on something new.
part of this proof involved eliminating similar combinations. A solved cube has 24 variations. (viewed from any one of six faces, in any of four rotations)
Universities can afford their own lab. I see this as a way for medium size companies to get to peek their heads inside the world of nanotech and see if there's an angle they can follow up for real benefits.
when you consider the cost of the equipment you'd have to have in the lab, and the lab itself really, there's a huge overhead. We've seen so many things recently where non-intuitive applications of nanotech are suggesting huge benefits, now everyone can afford a shot in the lab to play with an idea and see if it's worth investing in.
When I hear someone saying they can feel or be adversely affected by radio waves I want to yell 'quack' but I suppose that's not the right term for it. Just plain batty? I'd love to see her get some "professional evaluation" to quantify her state of mind. I suppose what you call it depends on whether you think they're just putting on a show, or honestly believe it.
I posted a reply to an earlier comment here http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=498264&cid=22855510 but I wanted to add a little more to it to specifically answer your question rather than just respond to the other reply, and to make sure you see this response since the above was not a reply TO you.
You should look for one of these hood enclosures, and place your computer in it, off to the side. Or even under the desk I suppose. Then use an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor, assuming you're not concerned with the monitor disappearing too. If that's an issue, bolt the cable to the inside of the hood before it gets to the computer.
This would allow you to use your computer with confidence and no inconvenience, and if you needed to take the laptop with you, you could get at it easily.
There are also lockable security bars you can get that go across the laptop at the hinge, and allow full access to the computer while providing a high grade of prevention from removal, better than a kensington lock etc.
I have my own personal laptop that i use at both of my jobs, and I don't leave it at work. If you need a machine to remote into, you might consider a cheap box you can VNC into from home, something you wouldn't care if it walked away.
All the advertising blurb about the strength of the cable is nonsense, the weak point on all laptop security cables is the anchor which is just a hole cut in plastic.
In every laptop case I have see so far, there is a hardened steel reinforcement inside the case at the location of the lock port. It's not a LOT more, but it's enough that you are going to at least need to shatter a 3/4" hole in the case to get the lock out. It's not merely a matter of busting a little plastic lip.
A lot of the desktop variations have the hole for the lock go into the inner sheet metal of the frame, so you are going to have to deform some metal to get the lock out by force.
And nothing screams "this is stolen property" quite like a seriously busted up lock port. Makes it a bit harder to fence.
There are really three classes of answers being provided to the OP.
1) suggestions for avoiding the risk altogether. ("don't leave the laptop, do you work with thieves", etc) 2) suggestions for theft deterrent (audible alarms, minor physical security) 3) suggestions for theft prevention (cases, serious locks, etc)
From the sounds of it, option 3 is the only one he is interested in, and is receiving the least help with. It's like a vending machine. You don't put a bell on a vending machine and you don't put it on the honor system. You put a massive lock on it and build it with thick steel. It has to be able to stand up to thieves that have all the time in the world, and may even have some tools. Attempting to solve the problem by methods 1 or 2 is a complete waste of time.
I've seen things like this in libraries. It's a steel hooded case, ventilated, and the computer is inside. When you work with the computer, you unlock the latch and the solid steel door swings up and in like an old style garage door. I haven't seen any of these recently, but they offer good physical security, good ventilation, minimal inconvenience, and the computer can continue to operate while secured. It's bulky and looks like crap on your desk - it's not meant for aesthetics, it's meant to secure your stuff, and it's what's required. I'm amazed no one has suggested this to him yet. They're used in computer kiosks also, where you have to have say, a pod of 4 or 6 computers for public access during hours, and secured at night because of minimal nighttime security, like in a mall.
The term "radioactive fallout" is the key here. Bombs detonated at altitude don't suck up debris like those detonated on the ground. All of the reports on high altitude nuclear tests say something on the order of "but there was little to no lingering radiation due to the high altitude detonation". It's when they blow up on the ground, suck up a bunch of stuff (dirt, houses whatever) and irradiate it, and then DROP it. That fine layer of ash everywhere is insanely radioactive. Even the Tsar Bomba didn't leave much radioactivity behind. (though the heat did turn a lot of rock and dirt below it to either glass or ash...)
A "good" nuclear bomb will consume almost all its fissionable material in the explosion, and the only radiation left behind is the fallout. A good "dirty bomb" doesn't even need to be nuclear. In most cases it would just be a bunch of highly radioactive crap encasing a powerful conventional bomb. The idea there is not to fission the radioactive material, but to distribute it in a concentrated form over a wide area. Although a nuclear dirty bomb may be more effective for the intended purpose, it's a lot harder to set off a nuke than it is to make a dirty bomb. Dirty bombs don't destroy the target, they merely render it uninhabitable.
As far as "uninhabitable" is concerned, that's all relative. Chernobyl has a thriving ecosystem right now. No people, (permanent residents anyway) but lots of plants and animals. (some would say the area improved since all the people left) It depends on how much you want to bump your cancer risk rate. If someone set off a dirty bomb in a small city, most of the people would leave, but some would stay. They wouldn't all just drop dead the next day, but you'd see a huge spike in health problems, mainly cancer, in those that remained. It's also rather hard to get new people to move into somewhere that's radioactive. The radioactivity rate would also vary around the area, and may change with time due to wind etc. That's the point of the dirty bomb, to deny your opponent access to his resources without going to the trouble and expense of destroying them.
As far as a "mop up job", radioactive dust is not something you can just mop up. It gets into the dirt and the water system. You can either cover it up, or haul it away. It's like a toxic waste site. You can't just spray some Mr Clean on it and call it good. Only time fixes radioactivity.
Slashdot Mirror
"If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors," Ballmer wrote.
Isn't that basically what they just got done doing with ISO? Buy the votes to get their way "by-the-rules"?
I wonder why no one has challenged them on this? While of course it's never a good idea to expect the courts to make sensible decisions in such cases, you'd think someone would at least try for a "suddenotbreakofcommonsense" tag here?
I'd first have to assume that directional antennas work at range. Has anyone tried hacking together a nice gain antenna to an RFID reader, to see how many feet away you can be to read one?
And they ask "why?" Because there's nothing to bolster your company like buying a standards committee or two. I wonder which one they'll shop for next? ISO is going to be a pretty tough bargain to beat.
That stage is where you are trying to make the end cycle as accurate as possible. If you can say, get a resonator to slip one or two cycles per a given period, it's to your advantage to go for a higher clock rate, and then divide down. When you divide down, you also divide down the error. So if your resonator might slip +/- 4 cycles in a period, and you are dividing it down by 8, then resulting signal may slip +/- 0.5 cycles per the same period.
Something I'm surprised the article did not point out is its applications in lower frequency use. If you want to create a stable clock that counts seconds, you don't make an oscillator at 1hz (one beat per second), you create one that does much more, say 1000hz, and then divide that by 1000. So if you are off by a few cycles it doesn't matter much. The greater this multiplication the better. So a fairly stable 4.5ghz reference could be divided down to make an extremely accurate and stable say, 500mhz signal.
well yes it is nice that you don't have to panic if you forget to lock a door or something there. But I suspect my reality is wasted on your attempt at sarcasm.
If that's the case, isn't there some law to prevent you from squeezing your only competition by placing unjustifiable limitations on the market? Not saying they're a monopoly, but it looks like that's what they're attempting to create with this new requirement they are placing on their vendors.
There should be something illegal about pressuring business associates in one market you have control over, to stifle competition in another market you are also involved in.
They live in a loft IN downtown kansas city. Not a lot of people live IN the city, 99% are in the burbs. All the loft buildings in the area are secure buildings, you have to get buzzed in. This one has an art gallery on 1st floor so security is tighter than the usual on top of that. These are warehouse buildings, they occupy entire city blocks and are 3-5 floors tall, it's a big place. Unless you know where the apartment you are looking for is at, it can take awhile to find it once you get in, because the place is a maze of hallways. In this case it was a Sunday evening so none of the people at the building office were in, and they had to run the list of people on the directory at the keypad several times before they could get one of her neighbors to buzz them in.
Also once you get IN the building, you have at least two more locked doors to cross at various stairways before you even get to her loft. One of her neighbors had to escort them to her loft after buzzing them in.
I admit, it is absurd, but that's what it took.
Most systems like this have a very wide berth on the checks because the false negatives are a lot higher profile than the false positives. One higher-up getting locked out of a building because of a bit of dirt on his finger is a stronger motive for change than the possibility that 1 in 100 could get in that should not.
Those can work against you too. My mom's got a security system in her apartment building, which is also secured. She was in a hurry one day and entered the wrong code to the alarm when she opened her apartment door, and re-entered it and it silenced as it should. 30 minutes later (!!) there's a knock on the door and looking out thru the hole she sees a row of cops lining the hallway all the way to the end, and a guy dressed in a white coat at the door "wanting to talk". She insisted it must be a mistake since the alarm company always calls before sending the cops. not when you enter the hostage code. oops! So they insisted on coming in for a bit and while they chatted with the white-coat, several of the officers methodically swept their place making sure there wasn't a guy with a weapon holding one of the family members hostage in a closet or something. It had taken them over 20 minutes to get someone else to buzz them into the building or they'd have been there a lot sooner.
Many have also speculated that it was not Apple's desire to lock down the phone to the extent that it has been, and that AT&T has placed certain requirements on the iPhone that Apple believes is not in the best interest of their business model. It would not surprise me in the least that when the exclusive Apple / AT&T deal expires, we will see the iPhone immediately become a much more open platform. Surely not as open as everyone wants, but certainly more open than it currently is. But even then I think we'll see people continue to complain that Apple is not as open as they'd like them to be, no matter how open they go.
This fits perfectly with Apple's present behavior of locking the phone down to a certain point, and not pushing it. I think if Apple really wanted to lock the iPhone down, we would not be seeing jailbreaking anything like this.
I thought DD stood for "data duplicate" ?
In the interest of fairness, the amount of time required to hack them doesn't matter much. It's not like that hack was made up on the spot. It was waiting for that day in the contest and was probably developed weeks ago over the course of several days. After everyone's prefab exploits were tested in the first 20 minutes, THEN people started plinking on the keyboards for the next 6 hrs in desperation hoping to get lucky on something new.
part of this proof involved eliminating similar combinations. A solved cube has 24 variations. (viewed from any one of six faces, in any of four rotations)
Universities can afford their own lab. I see this as a way for medium size companies to get to peek their heads inside the world of nanotech and see if there's an angle they can follow up for real benefits.
when you consider the cost of the equipment you'd have to have in the lab, and the lab itself really, there's a huge overhead. We've seen so many things recently where non-intuitive applications of nanotech are suggesting huge benefits, now everyone can afford a shot in the lab to play with an idea and see if it's worth investing in.
When I hear someone saying they can feel or be adversely affected by radio waves I want to yell 'quack' but I suppose that's not the right term for it. Just plain batty? I'd love to see her get some "professional evaluation" to quantify her state of mind. I suppose what you call it depends on whether you think they're just putting on a show, or honestly believe it.
I posted a reply to an earlier comment here http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=498264&cid=22855510 but I wanted to add a little more to it to specifically answer your question rather than just respond to the other reply, and to make sure you see this response since the above was not a reply TO you.
You should look for one of these hood enclosures, and place your computer in it, off to the side. Or even under the desk I suppose. Then use an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor, assuming you're not concerned with the monitor disappearing too. If that's an issue, bolt the cable to the inside of the hood before it gets to the computer.
This would allow you to use your computer with confidence and no inconvenience, and if you needed to take the laptop with you, you could get at it easily.
There are also lockable security bars you can get that go across the laptop at the hinge, and allow full access to the computer while providing a high grade of prevention from removal, better than a kensington lock etc.
I have my own personal laptop that i use at both of my jobs, and I don't leave it at work. If you need a machine to remote into, you might consider a cheap box you can VNC into from home, something you wouldn't care if it walked away.
All the advertising blurb about the strength of the cable is nonsense, the weak point on all laptop security cables is the anchor which is just a hole cut in plastic.
In every laptop case I have see so far, there is a hardened steel reinforcement inside the case at the location of the lock port. It's not a LOT more, but it's enough that you are going to at least need to shatter a 3/4" hole in the case to get the lock out. It's not merely a matter of busting a little plastic lip.
A lot of the desktop variations have the hole for the lock go into the inner sheet metal of the frame, so you are going to have to deform some metal to get the lock out by force.
And nothing screams "this is stolen property" quite like a seriously busted up lock port. Makes it a bit harder to fence.
There are really three classes of answers being provided to the OP.
1) suggestions for avoiding the risk altogether. ("don't leave the laptop, do you work with thieves", etc)
2) suggestions for theft deterrent (audible alarms, minor physical security)
3) suggestions for theft prevention (cases, serious locks, etc)
From the sounds of it, option 3 is the only one he is interested in, and is receiving the least help with. It's like a vending machine. You don't put a bell on a vending machine and you don't put it on the honor system. You put a massive lock on it and build it with thick steel. It has to be able to stand up to thieves that have all the time in the world, and may even have some tools. Attempting to solve the problem by methods 1 or 2 is a complete waste of time.
I've seen things like this in libraries. It's a steel hooded case, ventilated, and the computer is inside. When you work with the computer, you unlock the latch and the solid steel door swings up and in like an old style garage door. I haven't seen any of these recently, but they offer good physical security, good ventilation, minimal inconvenience, and the computer can continue to operate while secured. It's bulky and looks like crap on your desk - it's not meant for aesthetics, it's meant to secure your stuff, and it's what's required. I'm amazed no one has suggested this to him yet. They're used in computer kiosks also, where you have to have say, a pod of 4 or 6 computers for public access during hours, and secured at night because of minimal nighttime security, like in a mall.
The term "radioactive fallout" is the key here. Bombs detonated at altitude don't suck up debris like those detonated on the ground. All of the reports on high altitude nuclear tests say something on the order of "but there was little to no lingering radiation due to the high altitude detonation". It's when they blow up on the ground, suck up a bunch of stuff (dirt, houses whatever) and irradiate it, and then DROP it. That fine layer of ash everywhere is insanely radioactive. Even the Tsar Bomba didn't leave much radioactivity behind. (though the heat did turn a lot of rock and dirt below it to either glass or ash...)
A "good" nuclear bomb will consume almost all its fissionable material in the explosion, and the only radiation left behind is the fallout. A good "dirty bomb" doesn't even need to be nuclear. In most cases it would just be a bunch of highly radioactive crap encasing a powerful conventional bomb. The idea there is not to fission the radioactive material, but to distribute it in a concentrated form over a wide area. Although a nuclear dirty bomb may be more effective for the intended purpose, it's a lot harder to set off a nuke than it is to make a dirty bomb. Dirty bombs don't destroy the target, they merely render it uninhabitable.
As far as "uninhabitable" is concerned, that's all relative. Chernobyl has a thriving ecosystem right now. No people, (permanent residents anyway) but lots of plants and animals. (some would say the area improved since all the people left) It depends on how much you want to bump your cancer risk rate. If someone set off a dirty bomb in a small city, most of the people would leave, but some would stay. They wouldn't all just drop dead the next day, but you'd see a huge spike in health problems, mainly cancer, in those that remained. It's also rather hard to get new people to move into somewhere that's radioactive. The radioactivity rate would also vary around the area, and may change with time due to wind etc. That's the point of the dirty bomb, to deny your opponent access to his resources without going to the trouble and expense of destroying them.
As far as a "mop up job", radioactive dust is not something you can just mop up. It gets into the dirt and the water system. You can either cover it up, or haul it away. It's like a toxic waste site. You can't just spray some Mr Clean on it and call it good. Only time fixes radioactivity.
So at what point does the silliness of excuses stop and we start calling "destruction of evidence"?
children swallowing on of the bulbs
I'll wait for the one where the kid swallows it and THEN lights it up.
hey it's day-glo baby!
tho the 6k issue could make the video rather short.
inspire fear, contain pornography, or endanger national security
... that'd be inspire fear in the government leaders that the people might SEE what they're really doing
... as in, see the government naked and have some of their dirty secrets exposed for all to see
Lets see. inspire fear
or, contain pornography
and finally, endanger national security would be endanger their position of power by inciting unrest
There, that's better.
all it takes is a bored geek with a soldering iron and some spare time
That's a quote I'm going to have to remember. Maybe work it into a tshirt... thx
and I just put my soldering iron away for the evening.