PTP is only half-way. Plenty of people still pull the card out of the camera and stick it in their computer. This wouldn't work without special software. Even a lot of printers I see take cards to print directly from them.
This states that FAT32 is not limited in the specs, but by implementation. The limitation of 32GB volumes only applies to creating volumes with XP, but a camera or whatever that has been formatted by the manufacturer can be larger.
The more important limit is the 4GB per file limit. It's not so much a limit for a photo-only camera, but for any recording device that records over time, it can be quite important. Obviously there would be workarounds (like DVDs) by using a series of smaller files, but that's a hack.
I'm sure there are flash drives larger than 32GB that exist, though they are probably working into the thousands of dollars. Even if it's not strictly flash, there are plenty of hard drives that emulate flash (ironic, isn't it?). Just about any of the cheap compact flash cards that are above 4GB use microdrives. The filesystem ideas don't change because it's not solid state.
People are asking what the alternatives are. Well, ext filesystems are great, if you're using Linux, but they are totally unreasonable if you, like 98% of the market, is using Windows. Get rid of that idea.
What about one of the ISO filesystems? There's an ISO for CDROM filesystems, and I imagine that thing isn't always read-only. If anyone has a flash disk and wants to format it as an ISO9660 filesystem and see if Windows can read/write it, that would be nice of them. I don't have either.
Second, what product is hit by this? People are going on about shipping unformatted media, but think about it: most devices that use the media have to speak FAT as well. Your camera can't write a file to the flash card if it doesn't understand how to read and write to it, even if rudimentary. The unformatted argument only works for media that will only be used on a PC, which seems like it will be a small minority.
So then, is it the media or the device that will be pinned? If it's the device, that is bad news for open source. That means we lost our ability to write to disks that can be read by Windows. Hey, if the ISO9660 thing from above works, I see no reason why we couldn't format floppies that way, but we still couldn't read them. Will they be able to retroactively collect royalties from Linux distro organizers? Now that is a scary idea. How many copies of Linux have been distributed, even if not used?
How does this work with interoperability? Would it now be illegal to interoperate with a FAT formatted disk without coming to an agreement with microsoft?
So if we produce a large enough magnetic field, matter will slip into "another dimension." It's not a dimension of sight and sound, is it?
The question I have is how large this "large enough" magnetic field would have to be. I mean, the Earth produces a magnetic field. I can only presume that the sun has a larger one. From what I understand about magnetic fields, you can really only make them bigger in one way. Making them stronger also makes them occupy more space. Making them occupy more space requires you make them stronger. I welcome any insight people have into this.
This whole thing just sounds like sci-fi(not the emphasis on fiction). Wouldn't we have heard some mention that Einstein had been disproved?
I don't know what percentage of active switches do IPv6, but many of the older switches will start broadcasting the IPv6 because they don't understand it. Now your switch is a hub. That will choke any network that needed switches in the first place. Even a single switch that doesn't do IPv6 could take out a large chunk of your network. Woah, I was tired when I wrote that. I was specifically thinking about layer 3 switches and everything is jumbled up.
As many pointed out, the majority of switches out there function at layer 2 rather than layer 3. Those are the ones to worry about anyway. It is a moot point: any layer 3 switch will probably be able to handle IPv6, currently or software upgrade, anyway.
I've tried to get this point across before, and I'll continue to. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will indeed cost quite a bit even just for upgrading hardware. Here's why:
The transition will happen incrementally and will involve a period of IPv4 and IPv6 overlap where any given internet entity needs to have both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address--obviously, most will have plenty more than a single address. Presumably your browser will then attempt a DNS query for the IPv6 address and fail over to IPv4, though some may give priority to IPv4 for various reasons. The overlap may be in terms of hours or it may be in terms of years for any given entity. We have the means to translate the entire IPv4 space into an IPv6 range, so many people won't notice when their ISP switches.
The cost, aside from technical hands to make the transition, will come in terms of hardware. If you run your router with 20% free memory and 70% CPU load, then you are in the green by today's standards, but when you add in IPv6, you need to upgrade memory and you start dropping packets to load. This doesn't take into account any extra fun that your router may need to do.
I don't know what percentage of active switches do IPv6, but many of the older switches will start broadcasting the IPv6 because they don't understand it. Now your switch is a hub. That will choke any network that needed switches in the first place. Even a single switch that doesn't do IPv6 could take out a large chunk of your network.
So to sum it up, the transition period will crank up the router requirements by 150 to 200% of the current requirements, which will blow much of the internet into the packet-dropping red. Many switches will need upgrading, which may include hardware. Network techs will be paid for all of this. Don't forget that any company that plans to have continued coverage will also need to have an escape plan in case things don't work like they are supposed to.
RFID for retail stores is probably still the unauthenticated RFID. It's unauthenticated in the sense that the tag spits out the same response all the time, so if you have an RFID reader/writer ($300US) you can read it and maybe even write a new one to it.
The authenticated ones take in data and then spit out a result, which is quite a bit more expensive. I doubt reading/writing is so easy to these.
How does one learn about physics without understanding the rules of physics? The answer is experimentation. It would be beneficial to the alien threat if they had some output. Maybe they have ultra-sensitive EM detectors and they are technologically capable of separating out all the EM sources on the planet and using that for output. If they could do that, they wouldn't really need to experiment so much.
Personally I'm more worried about software along the lines of DNA. Transmission causes errors, right? This is parallel to DNA and mutation. Given enough time of bit-errors and you'll come up with a sentient software by evolution. It starts with very simple software that just repeats itself. Soon it will add in an iteration to that repeat. Next thing you know it will be the digital equivalent of a sentient brain!
The question is whether it knows we are here and what will it do when it finds out?
A good idea, especially with IM. When you have 20 windows, and you have an msn/whatever window blinking at you annoyingly, having a button that will immediately go to that message sounds handy. It will stop the blinking very quickly! I like it.
Yeah, because most people who read slashdot have clean desk to move the IM and email notifications to.
Maybe they should have put a vibration unit in it, along the lines of a vibrating pager/phone. A speaker would be good, too.
Heads this way and we're going to have a second monitor built into the mouse, though I do think it would be a good thing to have a low-power secondary ui device, whether it's a black and white LED-lit display or a series of low-resolution LCD panels like you'd find on an old graphing calculator.
Fair enough. I just read about it and they predicted that if the attack would have gone on a while longer, regular DNS traffic would have choked out the remaining 4 servers.
I originally meant 'abuse' in the sense of DNS records being manipulated on a large scale as would be the case if someone managed to get access to the root server data or even manipulate the packets very close to the source.
DoS is another consideration, though and it only further shows my point. It does cost you money to keep service up when the servers are going to be attacked. Root DNS servers will be attacked. It's not just having enough computing resources, but you need to pay people who can respond in a situation like this. The next DDoS attack on root servers will succeed, because the number of drones out there is higher than ever.
If they expect to compete and give out TLDs, then they are going to have to have a setup that can handle a large-scale attack.
I'm not excusing the price by any means. The price has ramifications in terms of the type of customer that will have TLDs. I am just saying that if you have even 10,000 customers around the world in the first year (which seems reasonable) then they will still probably take a large loss.
DNS is a heirarchical system that has been in use for a long time. It has a clear purpose and that purpose will still be around for years to come. The average user of the internet, though, is not part of that purpose. The average user wants to type in a company name and go to the appropriate website. They don't care if it's a.com or a.gov or anything. Denying this is resisting the change that will inevitably happen.
This is the wrong way to go about it, though. Don't destroy the system we are using. It's not even a viable long-term solution. You can't put spaces in a domain name. You can't put "Circuit City" in as a TLD, so you'll end up with a fusion where whatever you type in will be stripped of non-DNSable letters. Bleh. What we want is to type in "Circuit City" in the appropriate box and below it you will see "circuitcity.com" appear. If you go directly to "circuitcity.com" it will then pop "Circuit City" in the box above it. That's a double effort. Simplicity and security. You don't have to worry that you're at the wrong site.
How will you do this? Not by giving out TLDs. You'll do this with a separate process that is similar to DNS, but is specifically for looking up services by a title. The reference will be cryptographically signed going both directions, so you can be sure that an "authority" gave you the data and you can be reasonably sure that the title is actually associated with the address, whether that is an email address or a web site.
The problem then becomes disambiguation. How many companies are named Enigma? What do you put if you're looking for Apple Supermarket? If that's the case, then why should any of the Apples get dibs on just the brand name?
This should really be a governmental effort. Typing DMV or Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles into the location bar should take you to the appropriate place. I'm not talking about just the US, either.
In short, passing out TLDs is a bad idea for a lot of reasons: -caters to big business at the expense of the little guys (cost creates barrier to entry) -conflict resolution will be tough--two companies want.enigma do they just up the price and let the richest win it? -causes problems with current usage of DNS (.internal and.localdomain) -still doesn't provide a keyword system that people want -private control is a bad thing (imagine if an anti-competitive entity were to buy it)
I think you are overestimating the average person.
The average person doesn't see IE or Windows, they see a computer with clickies. They see the webpage they typed in and they interact with that.
You could replace it with a location bar on the bottom and no identification at all an they would get used to it pretty quick.
They may not associate it with their home computer anymore, though.
If one of the goals is to say that this setup works on your computer at home, then switching the operating system will probably not portray that.
On the other hand, I bet you 7 of 10 people would have the same reaction if you a) switch XP off the kindergarten theme or b) switched the entire operating system and used a window manager with a start menu.
DNS is pretty much a single point of failure for the current (ignorant) user base. Many don't know, or care, what an IP is.
Yet, I can't remember the last report of root level servers being abused.
On the other hand, charging huge amounts of money to get a domain name means you are taking the internet away from the people and giving it to the corporation.
Expect corporate glee, since that will be 1% of the annual operating costs. Joe Linux with his DSL and web server aren't going to fork over 1000% annual costs just to have the domain name, though.
Merriam-Webster Online Main Entry: [3]affect Function: transitive verb Etymology: Middle English, from affectus, past participle of afficere : to produce an effect upon: as a : to produce a material influence upon or alteration in b : to act upon (as a person or a person's mind or feelings) so as to effect a response : INFLUENCE
According to this, "affect" is appropriate as long as it's used as a verb.
First off, I.Q. is a great way to measure a person's ability to do well in school. That's what it was designed to do, and it still does it fairly well. I hear that a person's university grades correlate better with their high school grades than with their I.Q., though. No surprise there, since grades seem to be influenced by intelligence, but grossly altered by study habits and time management.
Those that will change the world through brilliance are few and far between. Most of the great names in science should fall under this category. Presumably you could have a great change through literary genius or musical wonder, but we'll leave those alone.
If they are going to change the world through their brilliance, then no matter what you give them, they're going to be looking in a direction that you haven't gone. Any attempt to nurture them will have a negative effect on their ability to do it themselves, which they invetably have to do, because they are changing the world! If you constantly prepare challenges for someone, then they never have to figure out how to prepare their own. Similarly, if you stuff a genius in high school, they never have to bother with studying, because they can understand the material without.
Slashdot Mirror
I recall that acetylene polymer is a conductor. Graphite is as well. Perhaps not that great, but there will be some that compounds that are.
I suppose the wide-spread use of organic compounds as conductors will only happen if we stop burning the oil supplies before they are depleted.
They are thrifty for government work, too--about $1.4 million per pound.
Don't kill them, they love you!
Adamobacteria keyboardium is a common magical bacteria that loves keyboards, because geeks pay so much attention to it there.
PTP is only half-way. Plenty of people still pull the card out of the camera and stick it in their computer. This wouldn't work without special software. Even a lot of printers I see take cards to print directly from them.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/W indows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_tdrn.asp
This states that FAT32 is not limited in the specs, but by implementation.
The limitation of 32GB volumes only applies to creating volumes with XP, but a camera or whatever that has been formatted by the manufacturer can be larger.
The more important limit is the 4GB per file limit. It's not so much a limit for a photo-only camera, but for any recording device that records over time, it can be quite important. Obviously there would be workarounds (like DVDs) by using a series of smaller files, but that's a hack.
I'm sure there are flash drives larger than 32GB that exist, though they are probably working into the thousands of dollars. Even if it's not strictly flash, there are plenty of hard drives that emulate flash (ironic, isn't it?). Just about any of the cheap compact flash cards that are above 4GB use microdrives. The filesystem ideas don't change because it's not solid state.
People are asking what the alternatives are. Well, ext filesystems are great, if you're using Linux, but they are totally unreasonable if you, like 98% of the market, is using Windows. Get rid of that idea.
What about one of the ISO filesystems? There's an ISO for CDROM filesystems, and I imagine that thing isn't always read-only. If anyone has a flash disk and wants to format it as an ISO9660 filesystem and see if Windows can read/write it, that would be nice of them. I don't have either.
Second, what product is hit by this? People are going on about shipping unformatted media, but think about it: most devices that use the media have to speak FAT as well. Your camera can't write a file to the flash card if it doesn't understand how to read and write to it, even if rudimentary. The unformatted argument only works for media that will only be used on a PC, which seems like it will be a small minority.
So then, is it the media or the device that will be pinned? If it's the device, that is bad news for open source. That means we lost our ability to write to disks that can be read by Windows. Hey, if the ISO9660 thing from above works, I see no reason why we couldn't format floppies that way, but we still couldn't read them. Will they be able to retroactively collect royalties from Linux distro organizers? Now that is a scary idea. How many copies of Linux have been distributed, even if not used?
How does this work with interoperability? Would it now be illegal to interoperate with a FAT formatted disk without coming to an agreement with microsoft?
So if we produce a large enough magnetic field, matter will slip into "another dimension." It's not a dimension of sight and sound, is it?
The question I have is how large this "large enough" magnetic field would have to be. I mean, the Earth produces a magnetic field. I can only presume that the sun has a larger one. From what I understand about magnetic fields, you can really only make them bigger in one way. Making them stronger also makes them occupy more space. Making them occupy more space requires you make them stronger. I welcome any insight people have into this.
This whole thing just sounds like sci-fi(not the emphasis on fiction). Wouldn't we have heard some mention that Einstein had been disproved?
Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that someone did this on their own?
How cool is a hardware company that takes up a community idea that fast?
I guess that's what we call competition, even though this is senseless and silly, it is what some people want.
Maybe they were developing this when that guy made his own on an unrelated whim.
Though, if they were really driven by what people want, they'd still be producing drives that last forever.
Ha!
Big-router companies are as slow as molasses on a cold day.
Couple that with software revisions that don't work on some hardware preventing people from upgrading and you have a lot of software to update.
I don't know what percentage of active switches do IPv6, but many of the older switches will start broadcasting the IPv6 because they don't understand it. Now your switch is a hub. That will choke any network that needed switches in the first place. Even a single switch that doesn't do IPv6 could take out a large chunk of your network.
Woah, I was tired when I wrote that. I was specifically thinking about layer 3 switches and everything is jumbled up.
As many pointed out, the majority of switches out there function at layer 2 rather than layer 3. Those are the ones to worry about anyway. It is a moot point: any layer 3 switch will probably be able to handle IPv6, currently or software upgrade, anyway.
I've tried to get this point across before, and I'll continue to. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will indeed cost quite a bit even just for upgrading hardware. Here's why:
The transition will happen incrementally and will involve a period of IPv4 and IPv6 overlap where any given internet entity needs to have both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address--obviously, most will have plenty more than a single address. Presumably your browser will then attempt a DNS query for the IPv6 address and fail over to IPv4, though some may give priority to IPv4 for various reasons. The overlap may be in terms of hours or it may be in terms of years for any given entity. We have the means to translate the entire IPv4 space into an IPv6 range, so many people won't notice when their ISP switches.
The cost, aside from technical hands to make the transition, will come in terms of hardware. If you run your router with 20% free memory and 70% CPU load, then you are in the green by today's standards, but when you add in IPv6, you need to upgrade memory and you start dropping packets to load. This doesn't take into account any extra fun that your router may need to do.
I don't know what percentage of active switches do IPv6, but many of the older switches will start broadcasting the IPv6 because they don't understand it. Now your switch is a hub. That will choke any network that needed switches in the first place. Even a single switch that doesn't do IPv6 could take out a large chunk of your network.
So to sum it up, the transition period will crank up the router requirements by 150 to 200% of the current requirements, which will blow much of the internet into the packet-dropping red. Many switches will need upgrading, which may include hardware. Network techs will be paid for all of this. Don't forget that any company that plans to have continued coverage will also need to have an escape plan in case things don't work like they are supposed to.
nothing to see
Really, though, I think most RFID tags are writable.
This should be the way they disable them when you check out and are allowed to walk out of the store.
I seriously doubt that every item in the store has a unique RFID and that they have those all in a database which is connected to the alarm gates.
Either they fixed it or you need the domain name.
Trying 64.202.167.129...
Connected to photosparks.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET http://photosparks.com/ http/1.1
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Content-Length: 0
Location: http://photosparks.com/?ABCDEFGH
RFID for retail stores is probably still the unauthenticated RFID. It's unauthenticated in the sense that the tag spits out the same response all the time, so if you have an RFID reader/writer ($300US) you can read it and maybe even write a new one to it.
The authenticated ones take in data and then spit out a result, which is quite a bit more expensive. I doubt reading/writing is so easy to these.
You feel like it's better for you because of how it tastes.
How does one learn about physics without understanding the rules of physics? The answer is experimentation. It would be beneficial to the alien threat if they had some output. Maybe they have ultra-sensitive EM detectors and they are technologically capable of separating out all the EM sources on the planet and using that for output. If they could do that, they wouldn't really need to experiment so much.
Personally I'm more worried about software along the lines of DNA. Transmission causes errors, right? This is parallel to DNA and mutation. Given enough time of bit-errors and you'll come up with a sentient software by evolution. It starts with very simple software that just repeats itself. Soon it will add in an iteration to that repeat. Next thing you know it will be the digital equivalent of a sentient brain!
The question is whether it knows we are here and what will it do when it finds out?
Fair enough. I just read about it and they predicted that if the attack would have gone on a while longer, regular DNS traffic would have choked out the remaining 4 servers.
I originally meant 'abuse' in the sense of DNS records being manipulated on a large scale as would be the case if someone managed to get access to the root server data or even manipulate the packets very close to the source.
DoS is another consideration, though and it only further shows my point. It does cost you money to keep service up when the servers are going to be attacked. Root DNS servers will be attacked. It's not just having enough computing resources, but you need to pay people who can respond in a situation like this. The next DDoS attack on root servers will succeed, because the number of drones out there is higher than ever.
If they expect to compete and give out TLDs, then they are going to have to have a setup that can handle a large-scale attack.
I'm not excusing the price by any means. The price has ramifications in terms of the type of customer that will have TLDs. I am just saying that if you have even 10,000 customers around the world in the first year (which seems reasonable) then they will still probably take a large loss.
DNS is a heirarchical system that has been in use for a long time. It has a clear purpose and that purpose will still be around for years to come. The average user of the internet, though, is not part of that purpose. The average user wants to type in a company name and go to the appropriate website. They don't care if it's a .com or a .gov or anything. Denying this is resisting the change that will inevitably happen.
.enigma do they just up the price and let the richest win it? .localdomain)
This is the wrong way to go about it, though. Don't destroy the system we are using. It's not even a viable long-term solution. You can't put spaces in a domain name. You can't put "Circuit City" in as a TLD, so you'll end up with a fusion where whatever you type in will be stripped of non-DNSable letters. Bleh. What we want is to type in "Circuit City" in the appropriate box and below it you will see "circuitcity.com" appear. If you go directly to "circuitcity.com" it will then pop "Circuit City" in the box above it. That's a double effort. Simplicity and security. You don't have to worry that you're at the wrong site.
How will you do this? Not by giving out TLDs. You'll do this with a separate process that is similar to DNS, but is specifically for looking up services by a title. The reference will be cryptographically signed going both directions, so you can be sure that an "authority" gave you the data and you can be reasonably sure that the title is actually associated with the address, whether that is an email address or a web site.
The problem then becomes disambiguation. How many companies are named Enigma? What do you put if you're looking for Apple Supermarket? If that's the case, then why should any of the Apples get dibs on just the brand name?
This should really be a governmental effort. Typing DMV or Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles into the location bar should take you to the appropriate place. I'm not talking about just the US, either.
In short, passing out TLDs is a bad idea for a lot of reasons:
-caters to big business at the expense of the little guys (cost creates barrier to entry)
-conflict resolution will be tough--two companies want
-causes problems with current usage of DNS (.internal and
-still doesn't provide a keyword system that people want
-private control is a bad thing (imagine if an anti-competitive entity were to buy it)
I think you are overestimating the average person.
The average person doesn't see IE or Windows, they see a computer with clickies. They see the webpage they typed in and they interact with that.
You could replace it with a location bar on the bottom and no identification at all an they would get used to it pretty quick.
They may not associate it with their home computer anymore, though.
If one of the goals is to say that this setup works on your computer at home, then switching the operating system will probably not portray that.
On the other hand, I bet you 7 of 10 people would have the same reaction if you a) switch XP off the kindergarten theme or b) switched the entire operating system and used a window manager with a start menu.
DNS is pretty much a single point of failure for the current (ignorant) user base. Many don't know, or care, what an IP is.
Yet, I can't remember the last report of root level servers being abused.
On the other hand, charging huge amounts of money to get a domain name means you are taking the internet away from the people and giving it to the corporation.
Expect corporate glee, since that will be 1% of the annual operating costs. Joe Linux with his DSL and web server aren't going to fork over 1000% annual costs just to have the domain name, though.
Funny part is this:
Merriam-Webster Online
Main Entry: [3]affect
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English, from affectus, past participle of afficere
: to produce an effect upon: as a : to produce a material influence upon or alteration in b : to act upon (as a person or a person's mind or feelings) so as to effect a response : INFLUENCE
According to this, "affect" is appropriate as long as it's used as a verb.
Some people think the Nazi's were wrong, too.
The first line of the post. It's supposed to be funny, I think.
First off, I.Q. is a great way to measure a person's ability to do well in school. That's what it was designed to do, and it still does it fairly well. I hear that a person's university grades correlate better with their high school grades than with their I.Q., though. No surprise there, since grades seem to be influenced by intelligence, but grossly altered by study habits and time management.
Those that will change the world through brilliance are few and far between. Most of the great names in science should fall under this category. Presumably you could have a great change through literary genius or musical wonder, but we'll leave those alone.
If they are going to change the world through their brilliance, then no matter what you give them, they're going to be looking in a direction that you haven't gone. Any attempt to nurture them will have a negative effect on their ability to do it themselves, which they invetably have to do, because they are changing the world! If you constantly prepare challenges for someone, then they never have to figure out how to prepare their own. Similarly, if you stuff a genius in high school, they never have to bother with studying, because they can understand the material without.