It's an interesting concept, but I don't think it will open any legal barriers to putting their OS on the XBox. I'm not even sure that there are legal barriers, a la antitrust convictions or otherwise. At any rate, a third party group making a hobby out of violating the EULA is not going to give MS the legal justification for doing anything that they couldn't already do.
Wait a minute, that was stupid. Not a case FILLED with foam, but something like two layers of metal with a few inches of foam in between them. Air would flow through the case as it does in conventional cases, except most of the noise would be contained within the sound-insulated walls.
I'm a complete amateur when it comes to case design, so this may be a moronic question. Nevertheless, I brazenly forge ahead.
Has anyone built a case that wasn't made out of thin sheets of metal? What if you made a case filled with sound insulation such as styrofoam or eggshell foam, leaving only the air intake/exhaust vents exposed?
Seems to me that so much money is being spent on making PC components quiet, presumably so we can nuzzle our faces next to the motherboard and take a nap, but why can't we just isolate the sound inside the box? It's my -novice- understanding of airflow design that little or no heat is dissipated by using a metal box; the heat is transfered through the moving air. Well, keep the air moving and soundproof the case.
Is this a stupid idea? Maybe it's like my idea to make a solar powered, weather balloon lifted, permanently high altitude platform for launching space missions - a fool proof and economical plan for capitalist conquest! I just need to develop an attention span and find some fundin-- HEY! Something shiny!
Um... Hard drives have been doing this for a long time. That's why you can open a huge file in one program yet keep your game of minesweeper running while you wait.
The problem you describe will happen when the processor needs the data to continue processing and it isn't in memory yet. The solution to this would be more memory and programming to take advantage of it, in other words, transfering the data from the fixed disk to the memory early enough that the process doesn't wait for IO. That increases the memory footprint. People will complain about the footprint and they'll complain about waiting for IO, so pick a middle road and stick to it.
Yeah, good point. Anything to get rid of those dirty foreigners. You really clued yourself in to my subtle hidden agenda, like when I said, "[Fewer international students] will certainly be a loss."
Considering that many people feel that corporations in America are abusing the immigration laws to bring in foreign CS people who undercut the domestic workers' salary expectations, I don't call this a tragedy. If there had been problems with grad school admissions in chemistry, physics, mathematics, or medical schools, I think this would be a serious issue. Unfortunately for these international students, they won't be able to swamp schools in the states in a field that is currently saturated with entry level candidates. Boo hoo.
It's really miserable that I've taken the time to explain this, but you know about those dirty American students - can't figure anything out for themselves.
This is exactly how my work week goes, except I come in 30-35 minutes late through the side door. I just finished writing 8 lines of code that I had completed in my head at least 8 days ago, and I figure I'm done for the week.
I am applying to grad school for Computer Science this spring, and it turns out that many schools only require the subject test (what this news it about) if you are an international student or if you did poorly on the general test and want to show that you have potential in your area.
I'm sure not all schools use this approach, but many do. Maybe we'll see fewer international students coming in this year. That will certainly be a loss, but like I said, I'm applying and I really don't mind a temporary loss of competition.;)
My girlfriend is hot. I love to look at other girls, naturally, since I am a male. I'm also a computer geek who lifts weights and I'm not at all worried about being lonely in life.
I'm not worried about being too educated. Working in research would suit me just fine. I would happily trade the stresses and pressures of that career for working in a cubicle like Dilbert. If push comes to shove, I would rather be a college professor than have some 9-5 job where I'm always rushing the deadline to get Sham-in-a-Box ver. 9.03 out the door.
And let's not forget what the future holds for a recent graduate with a BS in CS - a truck load of debt and any shitty job he is lucky enough to land. The golden days of CS are not now. We are unquestionably in a period where there are more emerging CS degrees than jobs. The market will surely balance this eventually, but in the mean time, I have a life to deal with, bills to pay, and cynicism to nurture.
So no, I'm not exactly worried about the possible negative ramifications of getting a higher education. If I can't make it into grad school, I am very seriously considering enlisting, since a BS in mathematics and a BS in computer science have gotten me nothing but debt.
Don't leave the Bastard Operator from Hell out of this. You must have a copy, electronic or print, always close at hand to guide you through tougher situations you encounter in your career.
by deciding to go to grad school. I'm in my early 20s, with no meaningful work experience in the field, competing with droves of laid off, older, more experienced workers. Even if I find an entry-level position, then I have to compete with everybody else who graduated last May. It's vicious.
I'm not asking for much. I just want a chance to live at least as well as I did with no income at college (meaning: don't starve, basic cable, internet, and shelter), not default on my loans, and most importantly to me gain experience toward building a better career. I'm looking for an opportunity, not compensation.
Screw the job market. I'm going back to the college life, late nights, late mornings, parties, beautiful women everywhere, lots of beer, and no drug tests. In a few years, I'll have at least a Master's, but that's only if I completely fail to achieve a PhD. Screw the job market. Screw the job market. Stay in school. A teaching assistantship + college lifestyle if far superior and better for your future than developing an ulcer at 23 trying to get an entry level job.
So who's going to put fingerprint scanners on the a, s, d, f, j, k, l, and ; keys? That sounds like a bad idea too. How about scanners on the office doorknob? Now everyone will occasionally walk into a closed door, not just clumsy people who fumble with the handle.
Combine technology for great security! I don't see how there is any security improvement in this invention, and it runs the risk of irritating the user it claims to protect. Further, it doesn't sound that reliable or tolerant to real world abuse and attrition. This sounds more like a warning to dump your investments in the company than a promising new innovation.
"In the same way that black-and-white TVs switched to color, we really think displays are going to switch to 3-D," Stephen Bold, managing director of Sharp Laboratories of Europe Ltd, said after a news conference.
Hm, seems to me that going from B&W to color was a no-brainer. It just seems to me that to make this transition to 3D as widespread as color TV, we would have to really want a 3D display all the time. Spend your 40 hour work week staring at a flickering, retina burning, 3D workspace. I'm thankful that using my computer doesn't require depth perception, and mimics a flat document rather than an interactive, immersive, buzzword, buzzword, environment.
Hilary Rosen was on the television last night mocking the EFF acronym and spreading what I regret to label plain lies. She was explaining the RIAA's proposed plan with an analogy to the coast guard.
She described the P2P scene as a harbor, where everyone has their "house" on the shore. There's a lot of traffic in the harbor, and the RIAA is going to "interdict" in this traffic to prevent illegal file transfers from taking place. She completely glossed over the fact that this involves interfering with my property and privacy. She assumed that there was some reason that the citizens of the United States should transfer police duties to a corporate funded self-interest group.
Unfortunately, the EFF spokesperson wasn't much of a match for her. Her argument was too soft. If you're going up against a corporate self-interest group, go for the throat, go for blood, and go quickly. She should have pointed out that this sets a legal precedent to commit digital vandalism from afar with legal immunity (terrifying to the average person). She should have mentioned that there is no way for the RIAA to differentiate between American citizens legally exercising their fair-use rights and criminals (uninteresting, but...) and she should have likened this to burning books if the RIAA doesn't know how you got it (terrifying). She failed to represent the loss of privacy and liberty in the name of closed-market corporate profits.
She should have pointed out that TV studios don't sell TV shows for $18 each to consumers, newspapers don't derive their profits from selling content to readers, movies sell an in-theater experience for a reasonable price, and radio is free. We would need legislation to sell each of these to the consumer for $2 a song/article/episode, because doing so would artificially prop up a broken business model. Nobody complains about bands' merchandise and concert ticket sales - because consumers feel that there is value in these products. Take the hint - consumers do not want to pay $18 for crappy CDs.
Is this not an American market economy, where failing business models and unpopular products fail due to a lack of demand? It's looking more and more like a command economy where useless and unpopular products are perpetuated by beauracracy.
In summary, I was horrified to see Hilary Rosen acting like a complete fool, mocking the EFF name, spreading untruths, and all the while being accepted by the anchors as someone trying to do the right thing, while the EFF spokesperson was treated as some sort of hippy wacko. The EFF person should have been more cunning and critical, and she should have immediately and unquestionably taken up a stance as protecting the American people from corporate corruption, a very effective angle these days.
I'm sure their design decisions were pretty interesting. They did say that the atmosphere was denser than they had previously thought, so presumable the craft parachuted more slowly than anticipated, all other things being equal. Then again, they adjusted their estimate of the planet's core as well, so all bets are off as far as I know.
That was my interpretation too. I got the feeling that if Nastard put a paragraph up top saying, "This isn't commercially related to the [Topic] For Dummies books, they can be found [a href="publisher, Amazon, etc."]here[/a]," then the issue would probably be "resolved".
Kinda knee-jerk, in my opinion. Protect free speech, but don't go crazy because some lawyer is doing his job, and making an attempt at being polite while doing so.
Feh, that's nothing. In college, I would log into an entire row of machines in the lab. Remove all the rolling office chairs but one, and you're on the fast track to zoning out for hours on code.
I thought they were going declare this site illegal! We Americans wouldn't stand for that!
You can screw up our votes, censor us, lie to us, and treat us like criminals, but you can't take away our liberty to be apathetic lazy morons. What is with all this rabble rousing these days, anyway? Isn't it easier to just shut up and go along with whatever the government says? That's the American way... [disengage bitter cynicism]
This is only going to make UCSD look terrible. Whatever happened to empowering young people to think critically?
Yes, I did write an unclear paragraph. Gold star for pointing that out.
It took 4 years and 300,000 processors to exhaust the majority of the name space and get lucky enough to find the correct key. That has been demonstrated, that is the accomplishment.
RC5-64 has been proven "insecure"? Hardly. Without even moving to RC5-65 as you have suggested, the very same message can be recoded with a new, randomly generated 64 byte key, encoded with a different number of passes than the previous run, or with a different word size, and the key space will be just as large as for this contest. It only took ~$15,000,000 in hardware, 4 years of electricity, 4 years of maintenance, and four trips around the sun to crack this message of about 50 characters. Gosh, what's to stop anybody from doing it whenever they want to?
It's not just "really hard". It's this hard. Water freezes at 0 celcius, not "when it gets cold enough". It's a stake in the ground, an achievement, and a demonstration (rather than a theoretical limit) that it is not feasible to attack RC5-64 encryption with any regularity, convenience, or economy.
And that comment about distributing the prize money? I encoded that with "rhetorical musing". I am and was well aware of how the money will actually be split, which did not impede my ability to use a little satire to illustrate that a 300,000 processor distributed network is hardly a reasonable way to attack RC5, but thanks for your input anyway.
And just for fun, I was motivated to peruse the contents of this report, mainly for the material that appears on page 39 and the summaries of RC5's results when faced with other attacks.
Many people seem to think that this proves that the security is now insecure, or that the 300,000+ volunteers and 4 years of work means that this is an impractical security breach and the award is meaningless. The boat left you standing on the dock.
As it says in the PR, the scientific achievement here is that the security has now been quantified. The security challenge isn't just "super tough" to crack, or "practically impossible", but required exactly X bajillion processor cycles to crack. It's like the difference between "water freezes when it gets really cold," and "water freezes at 0 Celcius." That knowledge doesn't make your ice box less useful, but you do know how to configure the thing to make ice cubes.
The real question on my mind is whether or not that $10,000 prize will be distributed among the 300,000+ distributed volunteers. Prize money indeed...
In the article, they briefly mention that IBM has some 200GHz technology in the lab and is manufacturing 120GHz tech. In the context of the article, it seem they're saying that IBM can manufacture a 120GHz circuit, but this is not for a PC. I'm certainly no electrical engineer, so the article did make me dizzy, but it was interesting nonetheless.
Sorry, this is not the same article as this Slashdot article. The ZDNet article is exactly the same as the CNet article, except the ZDNet article includes this INSIGHTFUL EASTER EGG OF KNOWLEDGE at the end:
"The big issue there, he said, was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software."
Hey, you know what? That's the first good point I've heard in response to hackers vs. no hackers.
In the absence of a "secure Xbox network", hackers with Xboxes running linux are still potential customers for Xbox games, where the profit is, and it's still money that wasn't spent on a PS2 or Gamecube. It boosts the console sales volume for Microsoft, which makes license sales easier and more appealling to developers.
That whole situation changes if we remember that MS wants to implement a console network (which had slipped my mind entirely) then the presence of hacked boxes DOES have an impact on all the non-hacking customers. That would definitely outweigh the potential profits made from selling an occasional Xbox game to a hacker, and therefore Microsoft's decision to combat mod chippers finally makes financial sense.
It took two days, two threads, and four posts to reach an intelligent response. Thanks.
I agree this is a bad idea. Ironically, yesterday I posted in response to MS's move to thwart hackers of the Xbox, pointing out that it would be in Microsoft's best interest to sell Xboxes even if they are bought by hackers, and 10 people responded to say that I'm a stupid loser.
Today someone posts that hackers should buy an Xbox, and 2 people post that this suggestion is misguided because it would benefit Microsoft.
I'm glad we all got this cleared up. It is bad for Microsoft to sell Xboxes to hackers, as long as it is good for Microsoft to sell Xboxes for hackers. Slashdot mob logic prevails.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's just my humble, non-lawyer opinion.
Wait a minute, that was stupid. Not a case FILLED with foam, but something like two layers of metal with a few inches of foam in between them. Air would flow through the case as it does in conventional cases, except most of the noise would be contained within the sound-insulated walls.
Has anyone built a case that wasn't made out of thin sheets of metal? What if you made a case filled with sound insulation such as styrofoam or eggshell foam, leaving only the air intake/exhaust vents exposed?
Seems to me that so much money is being spent on making PC components quiet, presumably so we can nuzzle our faces next to the motherboard and take a nap, but why can't we just isolate the sound inside the box? It's my -novice- understanding of airflow design that little or no heat is dissipated by using a metal box; the heat is transfered through the moving air. Well, keep the air moving and soundproof the case.
Is this a stupid idea? Maybe it's like my idea to make a solar powered, weather balloon lifted, permanently high altitude platform for launching space missions - a fool proof and economical plan for capitalist conquest! I just need to develop an attention span and find some fundin-- HEY! Something shiny!
The problem you describe will happen when the processor needs the data to continue processing and it isn't in memory yet. The solution to this would be more memory and programming to take advantage of it, in other words, transfering the data from the fixed disk to the memory early enough that the process doesn't wait for IO. That increases the memory footprint. People will complain about the footprint and they'll complain about waiting for IO, so pick a middle road and stick to it.
Considering that many people feel that corporations in America are abusing the immigration laws to bring in foreign CS people who undercut the domestic workers' salary expectations, I don't call this a tragedy. If there had been problems with grad school admissions in chemistry, physics, mathematics, or medical schools, I think this would be a serious issue. Unfortunately for these international students, they won't be able to swamp schools in the states in a field that is currently saturated with entry level candidates. Boo hoo.
It's really miserable that I've taken the time to explain this, but you know about those dirty American students - can't figure anything out for themselves.
This is exactly how my work week goes, except I come in 30-35 minutes late through the side door. I just finished writing 8 lines of code that I had completed in my head at least 8 days ago, and I figure I'm done for the week.
I'm sure not all schools use this approach, but many do. Maybe we'll see fewer international students coming in this year. That will certainly be a loss, but like I said, I'm applying and I really don't mind a temporary loss of competition. ;)
Let me put my personal spin on this.
My girlfriend is hot. I love to look at other girls, naturally, since I am a male. I'm also a computer geek who lifts weights and I'm not at all worried about being lonely in life.
I'm not worried about being too educated. Working in research would suit me just fine. I would happily trade the stresses and pressures of that career for working in a cubicle like Dilbert. If push comes to shove, I would rather be a college professor than have some 9-5 job where I'm always rushing the deadline to get Sham-in-a-Box ver. 9.03 out the door.
And let's not forget what the future holds for a recent graduate with a BS in CS - a truck load of debt and any shitty job he is lucky enough to land. The golden days of CS are not now. We are unquestionably in a period where there are more emerging CS degrees than jobs. The market will surely balance this eventually, but in the mean time, I have a life to deal with, bills to pay, and cynicism to nurture.
So no, I'm not exactly worried about the possible negative ramifications of getting a higher education. If I can't make it into grad school, I am very seriously considering enlisting, since a BS in mathematics and a BS in computer science have gotten me nothing but debt.
Here, hold this for a minute...
I'm not asking for much. I just want a chance to live at least as well as I did with no income at college (meaning: don't starve, basic cable, internet, and shelter), not default on my loans, and most importantly to me gain experience toward building a better career. I'm looking for an opportunity, not compensation.
Screw the job market. I'm going back to the college life, late nights, late mornings, parties, beautiful women everywhere, lots of beer, and no drug tests. In a few years, I'll have at least a Master's, but that's only if I completely fail to achieve a PhD. Screw the job market. Screw the job market. Stay in school. A teaching assistantship + college lifestyle if far superior and better for your future than developing an ulcer at 23 trying to get an entry level job.
Combine technology for great security! I don't see how there is any security improvement in this invention, and it runs the risk of irritating the user it claims to protect. Further, it doesn't sound that reliable or tolerant to real world abuse and attrition. This sounds more like a warning to dump your investments in the company than a promising new innovation.
Hm, seems to me that going from B&W to color was a no-brainer. It just seems to me that to make this transition to 3D as widespread as color TV, we would have to really want a 3D display all the time. Spend your 40 hour work week staring at a flickering, retina burning, 3D workspace. I'm thankful that using my computer doesn't require depth perception, and mimics a flat document rather than an interactive, immersive, buzzword, buzzword, environment.
She described the P2P scene as a harbor, where everyone has their "house" on the shore. There's a lot of traffic in the harbor, and the RIAA is going to "interdict" in this traffic to prevent illegal file transfers from taking place. She completely glossed over the fact that this involves interfering with my property and privacy. She assumed that there was some reason that the citizens of the United States should transfer police duties to a corporate funded self-interest group.
Unfortunately, the EFF spokesperson wasn't much of a match for her. Her argument was too soft. If you're going up against a corporate self-interest group, go for the throat, go for blood, and go quickly. She should have pointed out that this sets a legal precedent to commit digital vandalism from afar with legal immunity (terrifying to the average person). She should have mentioned that there is no way for the RIAA to differentiate between American citizens legally exercising their fair-use rights and criminals (uninteresting, but...) and she should have likened this to burning books if the RIAA doesn't know how you got it (terrifying). She failed to represent the loss of privacy and liberty in the name of closed-market corporate profits.
She should have pointed out that TV studios don't sell TV shows for $18 each to consumers, newspapers don't derive their profits from selling content to readers, movies sell an in-theater experience for a reasonable price, and radio is free. We would need legislation to sell each of these to the consumer for $2 a song/article/episode, because doing so would artificially prop up a broken business model. Nobody complains about bands' merchandise and concert ticket sales - because consumers feel that there is value in these products. Take the hint - consumers do not want to pay $18 for crappy CDs.
Is this not an American market economy, where failing business models and unpopular products fail due to a lack of demand? It's looking more and more like a command economy where useless and unpopular products are perpetuated by beauracracy.
In summary, I was horrified to see Hilary Rosen acting like a complete fool, mocking the EFF name, spreading untruths, and all the while being accepted by the anchors as someone trying to do the right thing, while the EFF spokesperson was treated as some sort of hippy wacko. The EFF person should have been more cunning and critical, and she should have immediately and unquestionably taken up a stance as protecting the American people from corporate corruption, a very effective angle these days.
I'm sure their design decisions were pretty interesting. They did say that the atmosphere was denser than they had previously thought, so presumable the craft parachuted more slowly than anticipated, all other things being equal. Then again, they adjusted their estimate of the planet's core as well, so all bets are off as far as I know.
Kinda knee-jerk, in my opinion. Protect free speech, but don't go crazy because some lawyer is doing his job, and making an attempt at being polite while doing so.
Feh, that's nothing. In college, I would log into an entire row of machines in the lab. Remove all the rolling office chairs but one, and you're on the fast track to zoning out for hours on code.
Good point, thanks for the correction.
You can screw up our votes, censor us, lie to us, and treat us like criminals, but you can't take away our liberty to be apathetic lazy morons. What is with all this rabble rousing these days, anyway? Isn't it easier to just shut up and go along with whatever the government says? That's the American way... [disengage bitter cynicism]
This is only going to make UCSD look terrible. Whatever happened to empowering young people to think critically?
It took 4 years and 300,000 processors to exhaust the majority of the name space and get lucky enough to find the correct key. That has been demonstrated, that is the accomplishment.
RC5-64 has been proven "insecure"? Hardly. Without even moving to RC5-65 as you have suggested, the very same message can be recoded with a new, randomly generated 64 byte key, encoded with a different number of passes than the previous run, or with a different word size, and the key space will be just as large as for this contest. It only took ~$15,000,000 in hardware, 4 years of electricity, 4 years of maintenance, and four trips around the sun to crack this message of about 50 characters. Gosh, what's to stop anybody from doing it whenever they want to?
It's not just "really hard". It's this hard. Water freezes at 0 celcius, not "when it gets cold enough". It's a stake in the ground, an achievement, and a demonstration (rather than a theoretical limit) that it is not feasible to attack RC5-64 encryption with any regularity, convenience, or economy.
And that comment about distributing the prize money? I encoded that with "rhetorical musing". I am and was well aware of how the money will actually be split, which did not impede my ability to use a little satire to illustrate that a 300,000 processor distributed network is hardly a reasonable way to attack RC5, but thanks for your input anyway.
And just for fun, I was motivated to peruse the contents of this report, mainly for the material that appears on page 39 and the summaries of RC5's results when faced with other attacks.
Many people seem to think that this proves that the security is now insecure, or that the 300,000+ volunteers and 4 years of work means that this is an impractical security breach and the award is meaningless. The boat left you standing on the dock.
As it says in the PR, the scientific achievement here is that the security has now been quantified. The security challenge isn't just "super tough" to crack, or "practically impossible", but required exactly X bajillion processor cycles to crack. It's like the difference between "water freezes when it gets really cold," and "water freezes at 0 Celcius." That knowledge doesn't make your ice box less useful, but you do know how to configure the thing to make ice cubes.
The real question on my mind is whether or not that $10,000 prize will be distributed among the 300,000+ distributed volunteers. Prize money indeed...
In the article, they briefly mention that IBM has some 200GHz technology in the lab and is manufacturing 120GHz tech. In the context of the article, it seem they're saying that IBM can manufacture a 120GHz circuit, but this is not for a PC. I'm certainly no electrical engineer, so the article did make me dizzy, but it was interesting nonetheless.
Proving that you only need to babble in bold text to get modded up.
In the absence of a "secure Xbox network", hackers with Xboxes running linux are still potential customers for Xbox games, where the profit is, and it's still money that wasn't spent on a PS2 or Gamecube. It boosts the console sales volume for Microsoft, which makes license sales easier and more appealling to developers.
That whole situation changes if we remember that MS wants to implement a console network (which had slipped my mind entirely) then the presence of hacked boxes DOES have an impact on all the non-hacking customers. That would definitely outweigh the potential profits made from selling an occasional Xbox game to a hacker, and therefore Microsoft's decision to combat mod chippers finally makes financial sense.
It took two days, two threads, and four posts to reach an intelligent response. Thanks.
Today someone posts that hackers should buy an Xbox, and 2 people post that this suggestion is misguided because it would benefit Microsoft.
I'm glad we all got this cleared up. It is bad for Microsoft to sell Xboxes to hackers, as long as it is good for Microsoft to sell Xboxes for hackers. Slashdot mob logic prevails.