The machine has a takeoff weight of 560 tons. 300 passengers less-than-max, means at 100kg/passenger (person plus luggage) 30 tons. Nah, that doesn't make the machine much lighter than normal. (maybe 350 passengers at 120kg, 50 tons?)
What DOES make it lighter than normal is that the flight only took 2 hours. So they possibly had only for about 3.5 hours of fuel on board. For a longer flight they may need for 12 or 14 hours worth of fuel. That's going to make a difference of about two hundred tons.
And to keep the 200 tons of fuel in the air for the first several hours on the longer flight is going to cost some extra fuel.
I have not read the patent or the link. But even from the slashdot article it is clear that the invention is not about classical linked lists.
If you have a linked list, but need some other "order" in the list, you can add a second pointer along that other "order". For example, if you have records that you can order by "name" or "employee number", you can use a "next_by_name" and a "next_by_Enumber" pointer.
Slightly more messy when you add/delete an item on the list, but speeds up things if you have to walk the list along both orders regularly....
Now the reason that I need only a few words in the abstract to understand what this is all about is that I used this technique as a student in a lab assignment back in '86.
(i.e. a reasonably competent engineer given the same problem to solve would likely find the same solution. If that's the case, the solution is not innovative, and the patent should be denied.)
Apparently, you're hung up on he assumption that "evolve" implies "getting better". Where did you get that idea?
In fact a bunch of bacteria that start to show resistance against antibiotics are indeed "getting better" at surviving in a surrounding where the antibiotics are abundant. Evolution is "local". It might not present a global "optimum".
In fact, the book "the selfish gene" allowed us to realize that it is a gene that propagates through the population. (For example, "bigger tail" and "like bigger tail in a mate" genes will enhance and stimulate eachother, while they are not good for the whole population, and in fact will make the whole population "less fit").
IANAL, but patents are supposed to be "public knowledge". So someone who builds a machine based on my patent has done nothing If he tells someone about it, nothing wrong. If he improves on it, nothing wrong. Now, if he sells the improved machine, he will first need to negotiate a licence for the patented technology.
In short, I don't think you can prevent someone from giving a talk about your patented technology.
Not true. As long as they keep giving out keys to software players on PCs, yes. If they only allow tamper-proof hardware player to own keys this will hold up much longer.
And the problem with TPM is that you still have access to the hardware. If you've got that and enough time and skill, TPM eventually won't matter, either.
Not true. TPM can and should hold a key inside some tamper resistant module. The key should NOT ever leave the module. The module will destroy the key when tampering is suspected.
So, a modern computer, where the CPU doesn't have any ROM (Code + key) onboard, does NOT satisfy the requirements.
Suppose we take an Atmel AVR CPU. It can be programmed not to divulge a key it holds. You could then ask it to decode a volume key. However before it gives this decoded value, it should determine that the entity it divulges the key to is also trusted. This is is extremely difficult to guarantee.
The TPM model, applied to hardware players and HD monitors works. Monitor and player are both designed to destroy their key when tampered with. Both use public key cryptography to determine the validity of the other side, so they allow setup of an encrypted link.
DRM becomes extremely difficult if you want to allow a general puropose PC with some software to decode the protected content as well.....
The KNMI (Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut), our offical government-sponsored weather forcast service screwed up royally yesterday.
They predicted a snow-storm for yesterday. Enough snow to completely disrupt the whole country. Weather-alarm!!!
The only thing that happened is that they scared a lot of people into staying at home, or go home early. The evening rush hour therfore had a max total traffic jam of only 12km. Instead of the normal 250km!
Oh, and indeed streets were white for a couple of hours. But the snow was gone before nightfall....
I will bet that people will not heed their advice as much the next time they sound the weather-alarm.
My first reaction was: That will just make it mad.
After reading part of the article, they argue that the speed of escape of one hole doesn't influence the speed of escape in another. This is fine, if you have a volcano with two holes spewing. You might slow one down if the flow of lava there is "annoying".
But Volcanoes in general tend not to show the behaviour of "Mwah there is hole, the lava flow will be proportional to the size of the hole". Volcanoes tend to "want to" spew this much material, and if it can't get out, pressure builds up until something bursts. Volently.
Standard encryption is easy. Keep your keys safe from the bad guys and as long as you use a reasonable encryption, things are fine.
DRM is difficult: You have to give the end user the keys, and then trust that only the uses that you've prescribed are allowed. Giving the keys to the end user is stupid, so the keys are given ONLY to a trusted module inside the end users machine. That trusted module is supposed to A) keep the keys secret, and B) enforce the rules that accompany the key. (e.g. you rented this for a week and a week has gone by).
If you have a general purpose computer, it's very difficult to have a trusted software module that can't be cracked somewhere inside.
In the backup-hddvd case, examining the core of the userspace program revealed volume and title keys. But the "master keys" are still somewhere inside.
In this case the operating systems trusted platform that should prevent that kind of tricks has been broken. Now you can insert your own debugger into the trusted core, and examine other stuff inside the trusted platform. Or you can claim to be a trusted driver, who has to have access to the unencrypted HD content.
In any case, as long as there is no hardware trusted module, it is always possible to run a good enough simulation, and run the DRM software under the simulation in a virtual machine.
And even if you DO have a hardare DRM module, I don't think it's possible to get right if you have a passive element on one side. For example a HDDVD is passive. So it can't verify the other side, and only give up the keys if it has confirmed the other side to be a trusted DRM module.
you can thus take legal action against them directly,
Ok Great idea. I'll use that then...
One little problem. If it's not illegal, what do I sue them for? The 30 seconds it takes me to get my phone out of my pocket, to hit "no"? That's about EUR 1.- , provided I can convince the judge that I should be earning EUR 120.- an hour....
There is no problem if I get bothered by a bluetooth ad once every year. Then I'll cover the costs myself. But as spamming is so very cheap per "delivered message", the same is likely to happen here: We'll be covered in the stuff. So unless there is a law against it, there is nothing we can do about it. No law will be made BEFORE it becomes a problem. Unless the general "spam" laws just happen to apply, which apparently here in holland they don't.
They claimed last week that they hadn't gotten any complaints. So I complained.
I also offered to forward my spam to them. Not immediately the commercial messages themselves, only just the subject and a question wether they want to recieve the full message. They only have to hit "NO" or "Delete" not recieve the full message.
Funny how they didn't seem to be interested in my offer....;-)
Well, the amount of electricity needed, 8MJ is given in the article. Some quick math shows that you need to run your Ford Escape (SUV) engine (112 kW) for about 5 minutes to recharge.
You need about 0.06 seconds of the output of a large (1000MW) electrical powerplant to recharge the 64 MJ version.
So, the figures come to: 50m/s for 2.5" and 70m/s for a 3.5" 15kRPM drive. For the units impaired, that's 180 km/h and 250 km/h. Or 112 Mph and 157 mph.
However the numbers for 3.5" drives are unrealistic, because nobody has ever made a 15kRPM drive with 3.5" platters. Already the 10k RPM drives have smaller platters than 3.5".
That's why they don't have any 3.5" 15kRPM drives. Sure, 15k drives exist, and they come with the "metal" so that they fit into your standard 3.5" drive bays, but the disks are barely larger than what would fit into a 2.5" drive.
In europe, we have a defined "level" that you're supposed to achieve to be able to graduate to the "fit for university" level. This "level" comes with a set of subjects and how far you need to be in each subject to be able to pass.
In the United States, each highschool graduation level is more or less different. So what the SAT tries to measure is/what/ level you've achieved in highschool, not a pass-or-fail at a certain specified level.
According to the tests at the college I attended, my highschool educated me to 4 semesters worth of French (min 3 required to pass as: "knows a foreign language"). I was able to skip lots of math classes with my Dutch highschool math. Similar for phisics.
So, what happens if the bloke who does the blog dislikes my comment, and despite I followed the rules "forgets" to click: this is a valid comment, refund this guy his $1?
I'm out $1. Not/that/ bad, but it increases the threshold for posting a reaction. At least it does for me.
My brain somehow treats "couple" and "several" or in this case "recent" as the same. I could say that English is not my native language. However I make the same mistake in Dutch, which IS my native language.
Steve is quoted as "Crikey, the F*&^*&^ bit me". Which proves to me that he occasionally got too close to dangerous animals.
When things go fatally wrong, there are usually a coulple of "bad luck" factors that are involved. In this case, he got stung in a sensitive place.
In the news today here in Holland: Guy jumps out of 3rd story window because his house is on fire. That's well high enough to get yourself killed (we count ground floor, 1st, 2nd over here, so 3rd floor is about 9m up). He was lucky, broke both legs.
Also in the news: Last year 11 prisoners died in a fire at Schiphol Airport. The report about this was leaked today, and "several errors were made by various organizations contributing to the tragedy".
Had the stingray hit Steve's arm, he'd make a "crikey, he stung me" remark again, and he'd have exciting footage for TV. Allow 70 poisonous animals to make a strike at you (but miss), and 30 to actually bite you, it becomes likely that one of them is "lucky" and kills you.
A marine expert is quoted as saying about 30 people died in the last couple of years. That counts as: "Be careful with stingrays, they could be deadly" to me. Maybe that's BECAUSE I'm not a marine expert.
I found a news report that says: "He was swimming over a bull stingray when the stingray suddenly stopped, turned around, and... " (don't remember the wording, but it stung Steve).
So maybe you're right: Maybe he wasn't poking at the animal.
"Stingrays are placid animals and will only attack when they feel threatened".
Apparently Steve got the animal into a position where it felt threatened. It is his professional knowledge that should predict the situation when an animal starts to feel threatened and might attack, especially with "mostly placid, but will attack when it feels threatened" animals.
As far as I know, he started out with the crocodiles, expanded into snakes, spiders, scorpions and other dangerous animals when his series became hits. So, I don't see him as an expert on just crocodiles and snakes.
Next, he was filming. Viewers want action. He was always provoking the animals if they just wanted to sit there. Now, on the day he died, we're unlikely to hear from an official source wether he was actively interacting with the animal or if he was just passing by.
My guess is that Steve Irwing wouldn't pass by an opportunity to film a possibly deadly animal. He had acute vision, and was good at spotting wild animals worth shooting. My guess is that he spotted the fish, interacted with it, and got surprised by it's speed (or his own slowness in water).
I don't consider stingrays mostly harmless.
But yes, officially your theory is just as valid. (but IMHO less likely).
Dealing with risks.
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have always had the impression that Steve got slightly too close to the dangerous animals. Sure, he was better at this than I am, and he probably "knew what he was doing" most of the time.....
But still.... If at one point in time you decide to do something dangerous that has a 1/1000 chance of getting you killed, there is a better than 99% chance (99.9% in fact) that you'll survive. If this happens a couple of times during your lifetime. Fine. If 1000 people live similarly dangerously as you, some get killed. Fact of life.
Because Steve did this kind of dangerous stuff on a dayly basis, his chances of survival drop significantly. Statistics.
In practise it's worse than what theoretical statistics predict: after surviving 99 dangerous (say 1/1000) situations humans think they have things under control, and will start to engage in even more dangerous behaviour (say 1/100). Pushing the limits.
Freak accident? No. Statistics caught up with him.
or you could just take the common sense approach and use products that rely on algorithms that are open, widely tested and reviewed, and known secure ... and in reply I quote the blurb from the article on slashdot:
"Even after you use cryptography, you are never quite sure that it is protecting you like it is supposed to do."
If it claims to use AES, does it really? Even if it actually does, are you sure it doesn't conveniently store the key somewhere? Even if it doesn't do anything this stupid, are you sure it doesn't leak one bit of your key in every encrypted block?
The implementation around a secure algorithm is just as important as the algorithm itself. Even if you have the source, some problems can be difficult to detect.
Slashdot Mirror
lowering the number of those[takeoffs and landings] (by more passengers on a single flight) must improve overall safety.
"safety" numbers are done by the passenger-km. So when the geese hit the engines, more casualties.
More passengers on a plane don't make it safer: Every passenger has exactly one ("risky") takeoff and one landing.
I was going to type a couple of numbers for you, but they are all there:
8 0/specifications.html
http://www.airbus.com/en/aircraftfamilies/a380/a3
The machine has a takeoff weight of 560 tons. 300 passengers less-than-max, means at 100kg/passenger (person plus luggage) 30 tons. Nah, that doesn't make the machine much lighter than normal. (maybe 350 passengers at 120kg, 50 tons?)
What DOES make it lighter than normal is that the flight only took 2 hours. So they possibly had only for about 3.5 hours of fuel on board. For a longer flight they may need for 12 or 14 hours worth of fuel. That's going to make a difference of about two hundred tons.
And to keep the 200 tons of fuel in the air for the first several hours on the longer flight is going to cost some extra fuel.
I have not read the patent or the link. But even from the slashdot article it is clear that the invention is not about classical linked lists.
If you have a linked list, but need some other "order" in the list, you can add a second pointer along that other "order". For example, if you have records that you can order by "name" or "employee number", you can use a "next_by_name" and a "next_by_Enumber" pointer.
Slightly more messy when you add/delete an item on the list, but speeds up things if you have to walk the list along both orders regularly....
Now the reason that I need only a few words in the abstract to understand what this is all about is that I used this technique as a student in a lab assignment back in '86.
(i.e. a reasonably competent engineer given the same problem to solve would likely find the same solution. If that's the case, the solution is not innovative, and the patent should be denied.)
Apparently, you're hung up on he assumption that "evolve" implies "getting better". Where did you get that idea?
In fact a bunch of bacteria that start to show resistance against antibiotics are indeed "getting better" at surviving in a surrounding where the antibiotics are abundant. Evolution is "local". It might not present a global "optimum".
In fact, the book "the selfish gene" allowed us to realize that it is a gene that propagates through the population. (For example, "bigger tail" and "like bigger tail in a mate" genes will enhance and stimulate eachother, while they are not good for the whole population, and in fact will make the whole population "less fit").
IANAL, but patents are supposed to be "public knowledge". So someone who builds a machine based on my patent has done nothing If he tells someone about it, nothing wrong. If he improves on it, nothing wrong. Now, if he sells the improved machine, he will first need to negotiate a licence for the patented technology.
In short, I don't think you can prevent someone from giving a talk about your patented technology.
Dialing in? The alarm cuts any ongoing conversation, hangs up, and then dials the central alarm service.
AACS is cracked!
Not true. As long as they keep giving out keys to software players on PCs, yes. If they only allow tamper-proof hardware player to own keys this will hold up much longer.
And the problem with TPM is that you still have access to the hardware. If you've got that and enough time and skill, TPM eventually won't matter, either.
Not true. TPM can and should hold a key inside some tamper resistant module. The key should NOT ever leave the module. The module will destroy the key when tampering is suspected.
So, a modern computer, where the CPU doesn't have any ROM (Code + key) onboard, does NOT satisfy the requirements.
Suppose we take an Atmel AVR CPU. It can be programmed not to divulge a key it holds. You could then ask it to decode a volume key. However before it gives this decoded value, it should determine that the entity it divulges the key to is also trusted. This is is extremely difficult to guarantee.
The TPM model, applied to hardware players and HD monitors works. Monitor and player are both designed to destroy their key when tampered with. Both use public key cryptography to determine the validity of the other side, so they allow setup of an encrypted link.
DRM becomes extremely difficult if you want to allow a general puropose PC with some software to decode the protected content as well.....
The KNMI (Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut), our offical government-sponsored weather forcast service screwed up royally yesterday.
They predicted a snow-storm for yesterday. Enough snow to completely disrupt the whole country. Weather-alarm!!!
The only thing that happened is that they scared a lot of people into staying at home, or go home early. The evening rush hour therfore had a max total traffic jam of only 12km. Instead of the normal 250km!
Oh, and indeed streets were white for a couple of hours. But the snow was gone before nightfall....
I will bet that people will not heed their advice as much the next time they sound the weather-alarm.
My first reaction was: That will just make it mad.
After reading part of the article, they argue that the speed of escape of one hole doesn't influence the speed of escape in another. This is fine, if you have a volcano with two holes spewing. You might slow one down if the flow of lava there is "annoying".
But Volcanoes in general tend not to show the behaviour of "Mwah there is hole, the lava flow will be proportional to the size of the hole". Volcanoes tend to "want to" spew this much material, and if it can't get out, pressure builds up until something bursts. Volently.
Standard encryption is easy. Keep your keys safe from the bad guys and as long as you use a reasonable encryption, things are fine.
DRM is difficult: You have to give the end user the keys, and then trust that only the uses that you've prescribed are allowed. Giving the keys to the end user is stupid, so the keys are given ONLY to a trusted module inside the end users machine. That trusted module is supposed to A) keep the keys secret, and B) enforce the rules that accompany the key. (e.g. you rented this for a week and a week has gone by).
If you have a general purpose computer, it's very difficult to have a trusted software module that can't be cracked somewhere inside.
In the backup-hddvd case, examining the core of the userspace program revealed volume and title keys. But the "master keys" are still somewhere inside.
In this case the operating systems trusted platform that should prevent that kind of tricks has been broken. Now you can insert your own debugger into the trusted core, and examine other stuff inside the trusted platform. Or you can claim to be a trusted driver, who has to have access to the unencrypted HD content.
In any case, as long as there is no hardware trusted module, it is always possible to run a good enough simulation, and run the DRM software under the simulation in a virtual machine.
And even if you DO have a hardare DRM module, I don't think it's possible to get right if you have a passive element on one side. For example a HDDVD is passive. So it can't verify the other side, and only give up the keys if it has confirmed the other side to be a trusted DRM module.
you can thus take legal action against them directly,
Ok Great idea. I'll use that then...
One little problem. If it's not illegal, what do I sue them for? The 30 seconds it takes me to get my phone out of my pocket, to hit "no"? That's about EUR 1.- , provided I can convince the judge that I should be earning EUR 120.- an hour....
There is no problem if I get bothered by a bluetooth ad once every year. Then I'll cover the costs myself. But as spamming is so very cheap per "delivered message", the same is likely to happen here: We'll be covered in the stuff. So unless there is a law against it, there is nothing we can do about it. No law will be made BEFORE it becomes a problem. Unless the general "spam" laws just happen to apply, which apparently here in holland they don't.
They claimed last week that they hadn't gotten any complaints. So I complained.
;-)
I also offered to forward my spam to them. Not immediately the commercial messages themselves, only just the subject and a question wether they want to recieve the full message. They only have to hit "NO" or "Delete" not recieve the full message.
Funny how they didn't seem to be interested in my offer....
Well, the amount of electricity needed, 8MJ is given in the article. Some quick math shows that you need to run your Ford Escape (SUV) engine (112 kW) for about 5 minutes to recharge.
You need about 0.06 seconds of the output of a large (1000MW) electrical powerplant to recharge the 64 MJ version.
So, the figures come to: 50m/s for 2.5" and 70m/s for a 3.5" 15kRPM drive. For the units impaired, that's 180 km/h and 250 km/h. Or 112 Mph and 157 mph.
However the numbers for 3.5" drives are unrealistic, because nobody has ever made a 15kRPM drive with 3.5" platters. Already the 10k RPM drives have smaller platters than 3.5".
That's why they don't have any 3.5" 15kRPM drives. Sure, 15k drives exist, and they come with the "metal" so that they fit into your standard 3.5" drive bays, but the disks are barely larger than what would fit into a 2.5" drive.
In europe, we have a defined "level" that you're supposed to achieve to be able to graduate to the "fit for university" level. This "level" comes with a set of subjects and how far you need to be in each subject to be able to pass.
/what/ level you've achieved in highschool, not a pass-or-fail at a certain specified level.
In the United States, each highschool graduation level is more or less different. So what the SAT tries to measure is
According to the tests at the college I attended, my highschool educated me to 4 semesters worth of French (min 3 required to pass as: "knows a foreign language"). I was able to skip lots of math classes with my Dutch highschool math. Similar for phisics.
So, what happens if the bloke who does the blog dislikes my comment, and despite I followed the rules "forgets" to click: this is a valid comment, refund this guy his $1?
/that/ bad, but it increases the threshold for posting a reaction. At least it does for me.
I'm out $1. Not
My brain somehow treats "couple" and "several" or in this case "recent" as the same. I could say that English is not my native language. However I make the same mistake in Dutch, which IS my native language.
Steve is quoted as "Crikey, the F*&^*&^ bit me". Which proves to me that he occasionally got too close to dangerous animals.
When things go fatally wrong, there are usually a coulple of "bad luck" factors that are involved. In this case, he got stung in a sensitive place.
In the news today here in Holland: Guy jumps out of 3rd story window because his house is on fire. That's well high enough to get yourself killed (we count ground floor, 1st, 2nd over here, so 3rd floor is about 9m up). He was lucky, broke both legs.
Also in the news: Last year 11 prisoners died in a fire at Schiphol Airport. The report about this was leaked today, and "several errors were made by various organizations contributing to the tragedy".
Had the stingray hit Steve's arm, he'd make a "crikey, he stung me" remark again, and he'd have exciting footage for TV. Allow 70 poisonous animals to make a strike at you (but miss), and 30 to actually bite you, it becomes likely that one of them is "lucky" and kills you.
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg ?articleid=155897
A marine expert is quoted as saying about 30 people died in the last couple of years. That counts as: "Be careful with stingrays, they could be deadly" to me. Maybe that's BECAUSE I'm not a marine expert.
... " (don't remember the wording, but it stung Steve).
I found a news report that says: "He was swimming over a bull stingray when the stingray suddenly stopped, turned around, and
So maybe you're right: Maybe he wasn't poking at the animal.
"Stingrays are placid animals and will only attack when they feel threatened".
Apparently Steve got the animal into a position where it felt threatened. It is his professional knowledge that should predict the situation when an animal starts to feel threatened and might attack, especially with "mostly placid, but will attack when it feels threatened" animals.
As far as I know, he started out with the crocodiles, expanded into snakes, spiders, scorpions and other dangerous animals when his series became hits. So, I don't see him as an expert on just crocodiles and snakes.
Next, he was filming. Viewers want action. He was always provoking the animals if they just wanted to sit there. Now, on the day he died, we're unlikely to hear from an official source wether he was actively interacting with the animal or if he was just passing by.
My guess is that Steve Irwing wouldn't pass by an opportunity to film a possibly deadly animal. He had acute vision, and was good at spotting wild animals worth shooting. My guess is that he spotted the fish, interacted with it, and got surprised by it's speed (or his own slowness in water).
I don't consider stingrays mostly harmless.
But yes, officially your theory is just as valid. (but IMHO less likely).
I have always had the impression that Steve got slightly too close to the dangerous animals. Sure, he was better at this than I am, and he probably "knew what he was doing" most of the time.....
But still.... If at one point in time you decide to do something dangerous that has a 1/1000 chance of getting you killed, there is a better than 99% chance (99.9% in fact) that you'll survive. If this happens a couple of times during your lifetime. Fine. If 1000 people live similarly dangerously as you, some get killed. Fact of life.
Because Steve did this kind of dangerous stuff on a dayly basis, his chances of survival drop significantly. Statistics.
In practise it's worse than what theoretical statistics predict: after surviving 99 dangerous (say 1/1000) situations humans think they have things under control, and will start to engage in even more dangerous behaviour (say 1/100). Pushing the limits.
Freak accident? No. Statistics caught up with him.
or you could just take the common sense approach and use products that rely on algorithms that are open, widely tested and reviewed, and known secure ... and in reply I quote the blurb from the article on slashdot:
"Even after you use cryptography, you are never quite sure that it is protecting you like it is supposed to do."
If it claims to use AES, does it really? Even if it actually does, are you sure it doesn't conveniently store the key somewhere? Even if it doesn't do anything this stupid, are you sure it doesn't leak one bit of your key in every encrypted block?
The implementation around a secure algorithm is just as important as the algorithm itself. Even if you have the source, some problems can be difficult to detect.