Re:how about a cell phone jammer?
on
GPS Jamming for $50
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Actually that was a story... (I think...) however cell jammers that are sold are currently illegal however for private citizens to use depending on a variety of factors"
You need a license to transmit most forms of radio signal, and you need a license to receive others. Most people don't have a license to transmit GPS frequencies, nor to receive [interpret, not just absorb] speed-radar frequencies.
With mobile phones, I believe that your license to transmit depends on you using a class of transmitter which has been tested and approved by radio licensing. A nokia phone will have passed such approvals; your phone jammer will not. (on the grounds that it causes interference to other devices, which consumer products should not do under EMI legislation)
The jammer here claims it needs to be quite close to the receiver to work well, with a good line-of sight. Well assuming you know enough about the GPS aerial's location that you can jam it effectively, would it not be more useful to pad the aerial with lead, or even to unplug it?
"The aforementioned light and sound shows - the radios in some cars change volume unexpectedly."
As someone who's using voice-recognition software at work, yes they have a remarkable tendancy to interpret background noise as something they recognise: why would anyone rely on voice-recognition for anything like car controls?
At the very least, it can be made to work by having a PTT button, echoing what the computer thought the command was, and requiring an OK. I wouldn't be too surprised if the BMW's were interpreting "*cough*err..(engine noise)" as "radio:volume:down"
"Jammers are great, until the high-explosive warheads start homing in on your signal."
I don't think car rental companies have access to HARM missiles, nor would they be too keen to fire one at your jammer in a New York shopping centre. But then, I'm not a marketer; what would i know?
Has anyone translated the circuit diagram, or do I need to do that myself?
"When your really think about it, the they [disney, who created their empire from public domain] trying to prevent stories from enterring the public domain is even more hypocritical."
More than hyprocritical; it's absolutely disgusting, and I hope that everyone here will baulk at the idea of even looking at Disney in the future.
Me? If someone gives my kid cousin a Disney film for christmas, that's as offensive to me as if they'd given KKK videos or BNP leaflets as gifts, and I'm not too bothered about explaining why.
"The DMCA charge fails because of the reverse engineering parts of the law. - DUH!"
Bring a lawsuit for reverse-engineering the DMCA to determine who can be sued for a given law, rather than the normal method of looking at a suspect then finding the right law.
"Then again, i dont think you can make a universal key"
I wouldn't be surprised, with some 'modern' car keys.
"Hello, I'm key number 6978"
"Welcome, key 6978, I've opened the car for you"
Even the keys which use a trivial cypher-chain are just as vulnerable to attaching a counter to a transmitter and just starting to transmit codes.
If you're worried it will take too long, go into a carpark with a big antenna: you're more likely to hit a key sooner, and most cars are dumb enough to light up when they're unlocked.
I don't want to toss it [laptop] out until I can either recover the harddrive data myself or until I can safely dispose of the harddrive.
Aluminium powder, rust powder, mix 50/50, and light with a blowtorch. Try not to enclose the mixture lest it explode (i.e. take the platters out of their case first), but you'll need to put some of the mixture in a short pipe to stop the flame blowing powder away as you light it.
Magnesium is the easy way to light these, if you can get hold of a fuse.
American readers: it's possible you broke some laws by reading that.
"Mandrake has a great niche as the desktop distribution for the computer power-user who is not necc. all that knowledgeable about Linux"
More to the point, Mandrake's 'niche', as you call it, is to be the best linux distribution for pretty much everyone who's not running either a server or a distributed computing project.
And even those people probably use Mandrake for their own computer. It's a great distribution for anyone who wants a real computer (graphical desktop), even if the kernel-compilers and ASM-programmers may look down on it.
I think it would be more accurate to say that we dislike microsoft shareholders, and large companies in general. We like bill gates, even if his programs are only toys.
A guy at my old office refused to believe that the field wasn't initialised until after the first click (try specifying so many mines that you have a 1/10 probability of missing one, and you'll still be okay on the first go)
It would've been nice to prove that, by setting up just such a game, but unfortunately the Windows license agreement forbids reverse engineering.
You can't count the votes before they're all cast, otherwise you'd allow positive feedback and group-think, which is undesirable.
However, in the UK, you can ask a sample of people how they voted, and use that as a representative sample.
Except, of course, if you just bought an expensive proprietry system to count the exit polls, and suddenly realise that your voice-recognition system can't handle as many calls as you were expecting.
So they'd have been better-off with a perl script and some distributed servers to collect and report their localalities. So what's new? Consultants fail again. Big software projects fail again.
"The GPL says: If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. That's quite different than "the GPL doesn't apply is there's a patent"."
I think the original point is this: if someone is distributing code whose license says "You may only distribute this if there are no patents on it, otherwise you're breaking copyright law" is then left with only two options:
Either they have to remove any patent barriers to distributing the software
Or they have to admit that they were illegally distributing copyrighted software in massive quantities.
"Anyway, even if you did create a distributed project, you would only be able to decrypt one internet session from one person. Not everyone's traffic. It would be entirely pointless."
Perhaps almost as usefully, the crowds protocol could be used to merge the traffic from many computers accessing the node (they can all talk to each other of course, they have WiFi) -- thus allowing the host not to have to monitor peoples' connections on request, as he would not be able to.
All encrypted connections need to stop somewhere, right? So why would you open a crypto layer to anonymizer.org and trust them, when you could just chaff your net traffic with other people in the same cafe?
"why we have to treat it any different than in the real world..[STEAL confidential information]"
The obvious difference is that you can't steal an electronic copy of confidential information, at least not in any definition of "steal" that the law understands.
If it's not property, it can't be stolen. Data is not property, neither are ideas, neither is music. That's why they need different laws.
If we take each others' disks, we still have only one disk. If we take each others' ideas, we now have two ideas.
Perhaps this is why one in every hundred americans (one in forty black people) is in prison, at rather considerable expense to the taxpayer which is only slightly offset by the fact that they (or you, possibly in future) get to make Nike trainers for cheaper than slave labour, and recycle Dell's PCs for "free" at their own health risk.
An article comments more, if someone would like to mirror before we swamp GeoCities
Slashdot Mirror
"Actually that was a story... (I think...) however cell jammers that are sold are currently illegal however for private citizens to use depending on a variety of factors"
You need a license to transmit most forms of radio signal, and you need a license to receive others. Most people don't have a license to transmit GPS frequencies, nor to receive [interpret, not just absorb] speed-radar frequencies.
With mobile phones, I believe that your license to transmit depends on you using a class of transmitter which has been tested and approved by radio licensing. A nokia phone will have passed such approvals; your phone jammer will not. (on the grounds that it causes interference to other devices, which consumer products should not do under EMI legislation)
The jammer here claims it needs to be quite close to the receiver to work well, with a good line-of sight. Well assuming you know enough about the GPS aerial's location that you can jam it effectively, would it not be more useful to pad the aerial with lead, or even to unplug it?
"The aforementioned light and sound shows - the radios in some cars change volume unexpectedly."
As someone who's using voice-recognition software at work, yes they have a remarkable tendancy to interpret background noise as something they recognise: why would anyone rely on voice-recognition for anything like car controls?
At the very least, it can be made to work by having a PTT button, echoing what the computer thought the command was, and requiring an OK. I wouldn't be too surprised if the BMW's were interpreting "*cough*err..(engine noise)" as "radio:volume:down"
"Jammers are great, until the high-explosive warheads start homing in on your signal."
I don't think car rental companies have access to HARM missiles, nor would they be too keen to fire one at your jammer in a New York shopping centre. But then, I'm not a marketer; what would i know?
Has anyone translated the circuit diagram, or do I need to do that myself?
"This slowdown of sales has everything to do with P2P and nothing whatsoever to do with a slowing global economy. (Should I use the "R" Word?)"
What have Rabbits got to do with it?
"When your really think about it, the they [disney, who created their empire from public domain] trying to prevent stories from enterring the public domain is even more hypocritical."
More than hyprocritical; it's absolutely disgusting, and I hope that everyone here will baulk at the idea of even looking at Disney in the future.
Me? If someone gives my kid cousin a Disney film for christmas, that's as offensive to me as if they'd given KKK videos or BNP leaflets as gifts, and I'm not too bothered about explaining why.
"People forget the lesson of the man who died on the cross to preserve the American way of life."
W.T.F.?
Do you have any idea what the american way of life represents, compared to anything you might find a Jew dying for?
"The DMCA charge fails because of the reverse engineering parts of the law. - DUH!"
Bring a lawsuit for reverse-engineering the DMCA to determine who can be sued for a given law, rather than the normal method of looking at a suspect then finding the right law.
"Then again, i dont think you can make a universal key"
I wouldn't be surprised, with some 'modern' car keys.
"Hello, I'm key number 6978"
"Welcome, key 6978, I've opened the car for you"
Even the keys which use a trivial cypher-chain are just as vulnerable to attaching a counter to a transmitter and just starting to transmit codes.
If you're worried it will take too long, go into a carpark with a big antenna: you're more likely to hit a key sooner, and most cars are dumb enough to light up when they're unlocked.
I don't want to toss it [laptop] out until I can either recover the harddrive data myself or until I can safely dispose of the harddrive.
Aluminium powder, rust powder, mix 50/50, and light with a blowtorch. Try not to enclose the mixture lest it explode (i.e. take the platters out of their case first), but you'll need to put some of the mixture in a short pipe to stop the flame blowing powder away as you light it.
Magnesium is the easy way to light these, if you can get hold of a fuse.
American readers: it's possible you broke some laws by reading that.
"Mandrake has a great niche as the desktop distribution for the computer power-user who is not necc. all that knowledgeable about Linux"
More to the point, Mandrake's 'niche', as you call it, is to be the best linux distribution for pretty much everyone who's not running either a server or a distributed computing project.
And even those people probably use Mandrake for their own computer. It's a great distribution for anyone who wants a real computer (graphical desktop), even if the kernel-compilers and ASM-programmers may look down on it.
"The Sun ONE Server is the first single sign-on server based on the liberty Alliance project. And its at version 6.0"
Yeah, you can't trust version 1.0 software: look at Windows!
"So we all hate Bill Gates."
I think it would be more accurate to say that we dislike microsoft shareholders, and large companies in general. We like bill gates, even if his programs are only toys.
"If you wanted to work for him you had to sign away all your rights to any patents you develop to him."
And that reminds you of whose employment contract exactly? Surely not everyone who reads slashdot?
re: Minesweeper source code
A guy at my old office refused to believe that the field wasn't initialised until after the first click (try specifying so many mines that you have a 1/10 probability of missing one, and you'll still be okay on the first go)
It would've been nice to prove that, by setting up just such a game, but unfortunately the Windows license agreement forbids reverse engineering.
"So, no more lawsuits [slashdot.org]
but instead there will be worms
From bad to evil."
So no more worms
for those who write them
go to prison
Okay, once the Indian government has seen the source code, so that they know the americans aren't using it to spy on them...
How do they know the precompiled binary copy they get on CD is safe?
"So what exactly makes you think it'll only search your shared folder?"
I could give you a pretty good explanation of why it won't search my PGP Disk.
Perhaps the only safe way to run a gnutella client will be on UserModeLinux in future, where each program appears to be running on its own machine.
Who wants to start an open source project to replace this failed service.
GNU.Free ?
You can't count the votes before they're all cast, otherwise you'd allow positive feedback and group-think, which is undesirable.
However, in the UK, you can ask a sample of people how they voted, and use that as a representative sample.
Except, of course, if you just bought an expensive proprietry system to count the exit polls, and suddenly realise that your voice-recognition system can't handle as many calls as you were expecting.
So they'd have been better-off with a perl script and some distributed servers to collect and report their localalities. So what's new? Consultants fail again. Big software projects fail again.
"attack of the red planet"
Damn commies! Who gave them linux anyway?
"Why not go with a Rune [tripod.com] based system for the LOTR fan base?"
The obvious reason is because it's phonetic, but it would still be a cool idea.
(says someone who's been writing in runes for years)
"The GPL says: If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. That's quite different than "the GPL doesn't apply is there's a patent"."
I think the original point is this: if someone is distributing code whose license says "You may only distribute this if there are no patents on it, otherwise you're breaking copyright law" is then left with only two options:
Either they have to remove any patent barriers to distributing the software
Or they have to admit that they were illegally distributing copyrighted software in massive quantities.
Try explaining that one to a judge.
"Anyway, even if you did create a distributed project, you would only be able to decrypt one internet session from one person. Not everyone's traffic. It would be entirely pointless."
Perhaps almost as usefully, the crowds protocol could be used to merge the traffic from many computers accessing the node (they can all talk to each other of course, they have WiFi) -- thus allowing the host not to have to monitor peoples' connections on request, as he would not be able to.
All encrypted connections need to stop somewhere, right? So why would you open a crypto layer to anonymizer.org and trust them, when you could just chaff your net traffic with other people in the same cafe?
"why we have to treat it any different than in the real world..[STEAL confidential information]"
The obvious difference is that you can't steal an electronic copy of confidential information, at least not in any definition of "steal" that the law understands.
If it's not property, it can't be stolen. Data is not property, neither are ideas, neither is music. That's why they need different laws.
If we take each others' disks, we still have only one disk. If we take each others' ideas, we now have two ideas.
"I don't have a problem with locking them up"
Perhaps this is why one in every hundred americans (one in forty black people) is in prison, at rather considerable expense to the taxpayer which is only slightly offset by the fact that they (or you, possibly in future) get to make Nike trainers for cheaper than slave labour, and recycle Dell's PCs for "free" at their own health risk.
An article comments more, if someone would like to mirror before we swamp GeoCities