From the way I read the article, it sounded as if the kiosk scanned ALL tags that came within 20 inches AUTOMATICALLY... using the info to bring up a photograph on the kiosk's display... but only after the student touched his photo would the database record the contact.
That's THIS year. Six months from now: "Too many kids are not bothering to touch the screen. It'd be a lot easier for them if we remove the touchscreen requirement. After all, the kiosk is autoscanning anyway..."
Six months from that: "Equipment is disappearing from the A/V room. Can we get one of those autoscanners added to the doorframe?"
The following year: "These new improved, cheaper autoscanners are practically invisible. Buy a thousand and put 'em up on every doorframe in the building, and every fifteen feet in the hallways."
1. To go SSL, you'll need a server certificate. Either you buy one from Verisign or Thawte, or you self-sign your own. The bad thing about the latter is that everyone who visits your page has to accept it the first time they visit; usually not a big deal.
2. Security belongs in the application as well as in the web server. For instance, if your web app takes user input and constructs SQL from it, it may be vulnerable to SQL injection. There is nothing you can do to the web server to immunize your app against SQL injection; you have to fix the app.
You know what's really annoying, though? Windows 2000 thinks that NOTEPAD.EXE is soooo important, that if you try to delete it or overwrite it, Windows File Protection restores it for you automatically!
but it'd be nice if a single, built-in action could do it all for you...
It can. Set up two users on your Windows box. With the first one, turn off everything you don't want. Leave the second alone.
The meat of writing is words, not formatting. Formatting makes it easier for the eye, but the words are the important part.
Writers are really good at putting words together in pleasant ways. That is why we pay them. We do not pay them to set type. We used to pay typesetters to set type; now we pay Microsoft to write programs that set type. AND IT'S STILL LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE WRITING.
If a writer tells me that GUI word processors distract him from his writing, I'll listen to him, and applaud his choice of less distracting tools, because I like his writing.
An electric light does not distract you from writing. Spending an hour setting up a stylesheet does.
I remember VDE... from my CP/M days. God, I loved that thing. Even though I'm devoted to vim now, I think my fingers still remember some ^k commands... and definitely ^x=down, ^e=up, ^s=left, ^d=right, ^c=pgdn, ^r=pgup.
On the other hand, building a space elevator *ON* Mars could be a very good idea. Mars is lighter, yet rotates at about the same speed, so synchronous orbit is much lower. This means the elevator is much shorter, meaning we can use weaker materials. And we get cheap access to the surface of Mars!
Ok, nobody knows why we might want cheap access to the surface of Mars yet. But if we ever do...
BTW, the moon would not make a good platform for a space elevator. It rotates far too slowly, making lunar synchronous orbit ridiculously far out.
Well, no; it's going the same angular speed as the ground, and each point along its length is going the same horizontal speed as the air would if there were no wind. But there will be lots of wind; there always is; our atmosphere does tend to move around a bit.
The velocity at the outer edge would be larger than orbital velocity is at that distance. That's part of the point! Just by climbing to the top of the cable and letting go, your spacecraft not only gets out of the gravity well but gets hurled completely out of orbit!
centrifugal force at the bottom would probably rip up a big chunk of paradise...
No. Tidal forces on the cable make it want to stay vertical. The center of gravity is in geosynchronous orbit; therefore the bottom end of the cable stays above one spot on the earth, even while it's still descending.
You don't even have to do that much. If all you're concerned with is the MD5 of the whole file, just add a space (or better, a space and two or three random characters) to the end of the Title in the MD3 Tag. The file is now different.
This is essentially what spammers try to do to escape MMP detectors. Of course it doesn't work well, because the MMP Detectors stop MD5'ing the entire message and instead (I presume) use something like the rsync algorithm to compare differences. Which is what the RIAA will advance to...
The photon is the exchange particle for the electromagnetic field. When two electrons approach each other, "virtual" photons carry the field between them.
I stopped reading the EE Times article after this stupid mistake:
As computer chips increasingly make use of photons (instead of electrons) to carry data...
Computer chips don't use electrons to carry data; they use photons. If getting a bit from one side of the chip to the other required moving an electron, we'd be hearing about Intel's new 4 Hertz processor next week.
Take a look at the headers of a news message sometime.
Use an account at a premium news provider that you paid for with a money order purchased and mailed from outside your home city. (There are reportedly still a few who don't try to verify any personal information you give.) Then use one or more chained TCP/IP proxies, particularly those in China. Or else use MixMaster with a mail-to-news gateway. Both well within the capabilities of Slashdot readers.
Yes, receiving anonymously is fairly easy (if you use a server that doesn't keep download records), but sending anonymously is somewhat more difficult.
Regardless of the server's log policies, both anon receiving and sending are easier to achieve than with any other P2P channels.
(Note that what I am describing merely approaches deniability for Usenet posts. With your actual ISP's assistance, it is of course possible to monitor all your traffic, including proxied traffic. Tracing Mixmaster traffic is far more difficult.)
Actually, if they were storing md5sum, header information etc. into a database as the items came in (which is exactly what the NSA would do if they were tracking Usenet like this),
You are of course right. Change MD5 Sum to Number of times any of the strings "AB", "CD", or "EF" appear in the body of the article and it meets my original claim of impossibility.
OK, so say we keep this archive for a year. That's 730 x 160gb hard drives. Forget internet bandwidth; forget LAN bandwidth; where the fuck are you going to get enough hard drive controller bandwidth to be able to search such a monster?
"OK, archive, give me the md5 hashes of every article posted between the hours of 10:00 and 11:00 (except Wednesdays) during 2002. Don't forget the porn. Count how many of the hashes contain both the hex strings 'DEAD' and 'BEEF'."
"Hmm, I'll have to get back to you... I should have an answer by 2012."
The more draconian changes they make to their products, the less attractive their products are to me. To quote Pulp Fiction, "We'd have to be talkin' about one motherfuckin' charming pig."
The Xbox is *NOT* sold as a lease-only device. It is sold as a hardware device with a license for its software. I OWN the plastic metal and silicon; I am legally allowed to do anything with the object that I please, as long as I violate no laws. This includes playing licensed games, running linux, using it as a boat anchor or for target practice, selling it or renting it to others, jamming it up my anus... Microsoft has no say in what I do with the hardware.
This is because Microsoft did not release this device as lease-only hardware. They sold it to me. If they had wanted to lease it to me, then their rights would be different; however, you can be damned sure I wouldn't touch one of the goddamned things.
As noted in another reply, the pathetic attempt is Slashdot's, not mine. I made the decision to provide my email address to people with a brain when I gave it to slashdot - which, necessarily, was before I started "pontificating" with it.
If you open the case (and void your warranty) and then go through various machinations, using an external linux machine, to copy the filesystem from the original drive to a new drive, you can replace the original drive with your new drive. This new drive will work in the xbox with the original software or with linux.
If you open the case (and void your warranty) and attach a second drive to the IDE. The new drive will be visible under linux.
If you attach a USB drive to the controller port using a USBxbox controller cable, the new drive will be visible under linux.
(My current plan) You can store the big files on another PC on your LAN and have the xbox-linux machine simply use them, through NFS.
And yet, you asked "Why shouldn't we develop Linux on the XBox?" When very few people are in similar situations like you, there's no motivation, that's why.
Actually, I asked "Why shouldn't we run Linux on them?"
Linux on the xbox is a hobby. I am obviously not the only one with that hobby.
This whole story is made to appear as if there's lots of people queing up to hack the XBox. Nothing can be farther from reality.
There are more people interested in running linux on the xbox than, say, there are people studying the linguistic origins of Beowulf. Five minutes with google would prove that.
Why are you so intent on discouraging people from using linux on the xbox? You remind me of David Sternlight arguing against PGP.
Slashdot Mirror
no text
Starting to look more believable...
From the way I read the article, it sounded as if the kiosk scanned ALL tags that came within 20 inches AUTOMATICALLY ... using the info to bring up a photograph on the kiosk's display ... but only after the student touched his photo would the database record the contact.
That's THIS year. Six months from now: "Too many kids are not bothering to touch the screen. It'd be a lot easier for them if we remove the touchscreen requirement. After all, the kiosk is autoscanning anyway ..."
Six months from that: "Equipment is disappearing from the A/V room. Can we get one of those autoscanners added to the doorframe?"
The following year: "These new improved, cheaper autoscanners are practically invisible. Buy a thousand and put 'em up on every doorframe in the building, and every fifteen feet in the hallways."
1. To go SSL, you'll need a server certificate. Either you buy one from Verisign or Thawte, or you self-sign your own. The bad thing about the latter is that everyone who visits your page has to accept it the first time they visit; usually not a big deal.
2. Security belongs in the application as well as in the web server. For instance, if your web app takes user input and constructs SQL from it, it may be vulnerable to SQL injection. There is nothing you can do to the web server to immunize your app against SQL injection; you have to fix the app.
You know what's really annoying, though? Windows 2000 thinks that NOTEPAD.EXE is soooo important, that if you try to delete it or overwrite it, Windows File Protection restores it for you automatically!
but it'd be nice if a single, built-in action could do it all for you... It can. Set up two users on your Windows box. With the first one, turn off everything you don't want. Leave the second alone.
The meat of writing is words, not formatting. Formatting makes it easier for the eye, but the words are the important part.
Writers are really good at putting words together in pleasant ways. That is why we pay them. We do not pay them to set type. We used to pay typesetters to set type; now we pay Microsoft to write programs that set type. AND IT'S STILL LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE WRITING.
If a writer tells me that GUI word processors distract him from his writing, I'll listen to him, and applaud his choice of less distracting tools, because I like his writing.
An electric light does not distract you from writing. Spending an hour setting up a stylesheet does.
I remember VDE ... from my CP/M days. God, I loved that thing. Even though I'm devoted to vim now, I think my fingers still remember some ^k commands ... and definitely ^x=down, ^e=up, ^s=left, ^d=right, ^c=pgdn, ^r=pgup.
So, start by writing a COBOL interpreter in C++, then put your COBOL program in string data.
On the other hand, building a space elevator *ON* Mars could be a very good idea. Mars is lighter, yet rotates at about the same speed, so synchronous orbit is much lower. This means the elevator is much shorter, meaning we can use weaker materials. And we get cheap access to the surface of Mars! Ok, nobody knows why we might want cheap access to the surface of Mars yet. But if we ever do ...
BTW, the moon would not make a good platform for a space elevator. It rotates far too slowly, making lunar synchronous orbit ridiculously far out.
Well, no; it's going the same angular speed as the ground, and each point along its length is going the same horizontal speed as the air would if there were no wind. But there will be lots of wind; there always is; our atmosphere does tend to move around a bit.
The velocity at the outer edge would be larger than orbital velocity is at that distance. That's part of the point! Just by climbing to the top of the cable and letting go, your spacecraft not only gets out of the gravity well but gets hurled completely out of orbit! centrifugal force at the bottom would probably rip up a big chunk of paradise ...
No. Tidal forces on the cable make it want to stay vertical. The center of gravity is in geosynchronous orbit; therefore the bottom end of the cable stays above one spot on the earth, even while it's still descending.
You don't even have to do that much. If all you're concerned with is the MD5 of the whole file, just add a space (or better, a space and two or three random characters) to the end of the Title in the MD3 Tag. The file is now different.
This is essentially what spammers try to do to escape MMP detectors. Of course it doesn't work well, because the MMP Detectors stop MD5'ing the entire message and instead (I presume) use something like the rsync algorithm to compare differences. Which is what the RIAA will advance to...
The photon is the exchange particle for the electromagnetic field. When two electrons approach each other, "virtual" photons carry the field between them.
I stopped reading the EE Times article after this stupid mistake:
As computer chips increasingly make use of photons (instead of electrons) to carry data...
Computer chips don't use electrons to carry data; they use photons. If getting a bit from one side of the chip to the other required moving an electron, we'd be hearing about Intel's new 4 Hertz processor next week.
Congress could end copyright law with one bill.
And all that's required for that to happen is for Count Dracula to turn them all into vampire zombies controlled by his force of will.
Use an account at a premium news provider that you paid for with a money order purchased and mailed from outside your home city. (There are reportedly still a few who don't try to verify any personal information you give.) Then use one or more chained TCP/IP proxies, particularly those in China. Or else use MixMaster with a mail-to-news gateway. Both well within the capabilities of Slashdot readers.
Regardless of the server's log policies, both anon receiving and sending are easier to achieve than with any other P2P channels.
(Note that what I am describing merely approaches deniability for Usenet posts. With your actual ISP's assistance, it is of course possible to monitor all your traffic, including proxied traffic. Tracing Mixmaster traffic is far more difficult.)
Anonymity is far more easily achieved on Usenet than in other P2P situations.
You are of course right. Change MD5 Sum to Number of times any of the strings "AB", "CD", or "EF" appear in the body of the article and it meets my original claim of impossibility.
OK, so say we keep this archive for a year. That's 730 x 160gb hard drives. Forget internet bandwidth; forget LAN bandwidth; where the fuck are you going to get enough hard drive controller bandwidth to be able to search such a monster?
... I should have an answer by 2012."
"OK, archive, give me the md5 hashes of every article posted between the hours of 10:00 and 11:00 (except Wednesdays) during 2002. Don't forget the porn. Count how many of the hashes contain both the hex strings 'DEAD' and 'BEEF'."
"Hmm, I'll have to get back to you
The more draconian changes they make to their products, the less attractive their products are to me. To quote Pulp Fiction, "We'd have to be talkin' about one motherfuckin' charming pig."
The Xbox is *NOT* sold as a lease-only device. It is sold as a hardware device with a license for its software. I OWN the plastic metal and silicon; I am legally allowed to do anything with the object that I please, as long as I violate no laws. This includes playing licensed games, running linux, using it as a boat anchor or for target practice, selling it or renting it to others, jamming it up my anus ... Microsoft has no say in what I do with the hardware.
This is because Microsoft did not release this device as lease-only hardware. They sold it to me. If they had wanted to lease it to me, then their rights would be different; however, you can be damned sure I wouldn't touch one of the goddamned things.
As noted in another reply, the pathetic attempt is Slashdot's, not mine. I made the decision to provide my email address to people with a brain when I gave it to slashdot - which, necessarily, was before I started "pontificating" with it.
[reposted in correct format]
And yet, you asked "Why shouldn't we develop Linux on the XBox?" When very few people are in similar situations like you, there's no motivation, that's why.
Actually, I asked "Why shouldn't we run Linux on them?"
Linux on the xbox is a hobby. I am obviously not the only one with that hobby.
This whole story is made to appear as if there's lots of people queing up to hack the XBox. Nothing can be farther from reality.
There are more people interested in running linux on the xbox than, say, there are people studying the linguistic origins of Beowulf. Five minutes with google would prove that.
Why are you so intent on discouraging people from using linux on the xbox? You remind me of David Sternlight arguing against PGP.