Security is a system problem, and requires you to look beyond the boundaries of software.
Breaking security requires to find a side-channel, where secure information leaks through. Just when you thought you found the perfect software solution, there's some chap that starts probing your address bus or checking the power consumption profile of your processor. Darn!
But is this so much different ?
The point of the post was that people are tagged using bodily properties. If you store thumb ridge count, that's as personal and private as storing minutia locations.
There's a whole lot of issues involved in using biometric data for identification. This reference from IEEE Proceedings covers a lot of them:
"Comparing passwords, tokens, and biometrics for user authentication", O'Gorman, L.;
Proceedings of the IEEE , Volume: 91 , Issue: 12 , Dec. 2003, Pages:2021 - 2040
That only shows how timely the definition of a supercomputer is. 100 common desktop machines are very uncommon and obsolete 3 years from now.
I think energy efficiency (MOPS/Watt) is a very relevant metric. The reason why my PDA cannot do wideband software radio or anything that needs lots of GOPS is energy-efficiency. If the same PDA could carry 100 XScale processors instead of 1 with the same battery lifetime, I'm sure we'll have applications for it in no time.
I couldn't agree more with this. Technical marketing of products focuses on expressing the basic characteristics with only one or two numbers, and then expects the customer to base their choice on those numbers and balance those against product price.
Unfortunately, those numbers rarely express the real points you mentioned above. Programmable systems are really only half a product, and the software/firmware you run on top of it is essential to make it complete.
Uh ? I'm confused.. so DRM would allow Microsoft to restrict the document types that go with their tools ? Like there would be a restriction on the brand of fuel you can put into a car ?
Actually I would expect that a DRM scheme allows me, as a user, to control who is doing what to my documents.
Probably this is too trivial - but since you have not turned it on for a long time, some electronic component has aged and now chokes. Typically capacitors grow old easily.
Can you open it up and locate the source of the noise more precisely ? (Guess I shouldn't even have asked this..)
From the comments it seems people think a 'crash' requires a hard reboot or so. But from what I know it does not mean that the machine hangs (how would you send an error message to MS in that case ?). Rather, it is some sort of 'critical application error' for which you get these little popup windows.
The 5% statistic is a probably a little bit low as well. First, when this 'critical application error' window comes, it asks if you want to submit a report to Microsoft (Personally I never click 'send'. It's an obvious privacy flaw).
Secondly, the '5% of machines' is also restricted to machines that are continously networked. So the actual number must be bigger.
In any case, people on/. seems sooo sensitive when it comes to Windows. Coexist and be happy !
Well.. might be a little late now.
But how would these computers rank in FLOPS (or whatever relevant OPS) per Watt ? How many Operations per Joule ? In the age of portability and embeddedness, I am also interested in getting a maximum amount of computing power in any place I choose.
A classic for cryptographers is
Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Menzenes, Van Oorschot and Vanstone.
Very accessible imho. You can even download it and read it completely before you buy it.
I have no horror story ready. But, the post made me wonder. What is currently the most sensitive part in a PC (in terms of MTBF)? A logical answer would be 'the mechanics': hard drives, keyboards, etc. But is this still true with submicron-technology processors clocked at GHz speeds and consuming 50 Watts (as much as a good soldering iron..) ? In other words, are aging effects in silicon chips worse than PC mechanics or not ?
I agree that designers in general (both embedded software developers as well as hardware developeres) tend to confine themselves in their own level of abstraction. The black box model here helps as a divide-and-conquer mechanism. If for exmaple you are writing device drivers, you would abstract hardware to memory locations and registers. And at the same time, you hope that the device API - the abstraction you are building for the layer above you - is general enough to cover all applications.
That by itself is a good thing. However, it assumes that there is some intelligent being that has outlined the layers of abstraction and black-boxes upfront. This is hard, and relies on extensive experience. How would one go about and select an OS for an embedded system, for example? How much knowledge about the application or device is used in making this selection ? (And how much of this choice is 'just guessing') ?
Thus people use black-box models (like OS'es) because they are known to yield some results, not necessarily the best one.
Years later, Baer ran into Nolan Bushnell and Gene Lipkin, Atari director of marketing, on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show. According to Baer, Bushnell introduced him as 'the father of video games'. Baer smiled and said: 'I wish you would have said that to the press'.
Storing books online is one thing. Gutenberg also needs readers to be successful. How many readers are willing to read.txt or.pdf files instead of printed material ?
Several times I downloaded Gutenberg books, with the intention to read them from laptop or screen lateron. Turns out this is too inconvenient, when compared to paper print.
If only electronic paper would be at 1c a page...
Video Game Archeology
on
The 1991 "X-Box"
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's a pity so many/.ers think posting old schematics is not relevant.
I think it actually is. For example, the ATARI 2600 console has chip schematics here.
And I would love to find designs for the early Space Invaders, or Galaga systems. Why ? Because the average multimedia PC today is maybe a 1000X more powerful than those older systems, yet playability of all those new games has not increased by the same amount. Video Game Archeology can teach me.
By the way - even if those scans are fake, the/. forum finds out anyhow.
The Internet was shown to be a scale-free network by U. Notre Dame physicist Barabasi. It means that the majority of the Web Page Requests is only for a fraction of the total Web Pages (the 'hubs').
Thus the 98% DNS Queries might be needed for only a minority of connections (I am assuming that Web Traffic is the bulk of Internet Traffic here).
a developer can, based on your comments, do any of the following
collect data that will improve the software code.
This includes reading books, surfing the web,...
rework the code.
For example writing documentation, throw away/rewrite, use
shorter development cycles and early releases.
work on multiple things/ problems at the same time and apply a multi-threading development style.
go out and interact with others to decide the next logical 'do what you have to do' step.
relax and wait until stress level is high enough.
This list looks quite useful to me. For my own project (hardware simulation), it seems that the logical thing to do would be to go out and ask either a beta user or a fellow developer for early feedback.
Slashdot Mirror
Security is a system problem, and requires you to look beyond the boundaries of software.
Breaking security requires to find a side-channel, where secure information leaks through. Just when you thought you found the perfect software solution, there's some chap that starts probing your address bus or checking the power consumption profile of your processor. Darn!
But is this so much different ? The point of the post was that people are tagged using bodily properties. If you store thumb ridge count, that's as personal and private as storing minutia locations. There's a whole lot of issues involved in using biometric data for identification. This reference from IEEE Proceedings covers a lot of them: "Comparing passwords, tokens, and biometrics for user authentication", O'Gorman, L.; Proceedings of the IEEE , Volume: 91 , Issue: 12 , Dec. 2003, Pages:2021 - 2040
That only shows how timely the definition of a supercomputer is. 100 common desktop machines are very uncommon and obsolete 3 years from now.
I think energy efficiency (MOPS/Watt) is a very relevant metric. The reason why my PDA cannot do wideband software radio or anything that needs lots of GOPS is energy-efficiency. If the same PDA could carry 100 XScale processors instead of 1 with the same battery lifetime, I'm sure we'll have applications for it in no time.
I couldn't agree more with this. Technical marketing of products focuses on expressing the basic characteristics with only one or two numbers, and then expects the customer to base their choice on those numbers and balance those against product price. Unfortunately, those numbers rarely express the real points you mentioned above. Programmable systems are really only half a product, and the software/firmware you run on top of it is essential to make it complete.
Well, I don't want DRM to be circumvented if this is my document. Openoffice could support DRM as well.
Uh ? I'm confused .. so DRM would allow Microsoft to restrict the document types that go with their tools ? Like there would be a restriction on the brand of fuel you can put into a car ?
Actually I would expect that a DRM scheme allows me, as a user, to control who is doing what to my documents.
Your taxdollars are *really* at work now.
Probably this is too trivial - but since you have not turned it on for a long time, some electronic component has aged and now chokes. Typically capacitors grow old easily. Can you open it up and locate the source of the noise more precisely ? (Guess I shouldn't even have asked this ..)
The MIPI spec that is developed by this consortium is also mentioned here. They mention ST as a fourth player as well.
From the comments it seems people think a 'crash' requires a hard reboot or so. But from what I know it does not mean that the machine hangs (how would you send an error message to MS in that case ?). Rather, it is some sort of 'critical application error' for which you get these little popup windows.
/. seems sooo sensitive when it comes to Windows. Coexist and be happy !
The 5% statistic is a probably a little bit low as well. First, when this 'critical application error' window comes, it asks if you want to submit a report to Microsoft (Personally I never click 'send'. It's an obvious privacy flaw). Secondly, the '5% of machines' is also restricted to machines that are continously networked. So the actual number must be bigger.
In any case, people on
Well .. might be a little late now.
But how would these computers rank in FLOPS (or whatever relevant OPS) per Watt ? How many Operations per Joule ? In the age of portability and embeddedness, I am also interested in getting a maximum amount of computing power in any place I choose.
A classic for cryptographers is Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Menzenes, Van Oorschot and Vanstone. Very accessible imho. You can even download it and read it completely before you buy it.
I have no horror story ready. But, the post made me wonder. What is currently the most sensitive part in a PC (in terms of MTBF)? A logical answer would be 'the mechanics': hard drives, keyboards, etc. But is this still true with submicron-technology processors clocked at GHz speeds and consuming 50 Watts (as much as a good soldering iron ..) ? In other words, are aging effects in silicon chips worse than PC mechanics or not ?
I agree that designers in general (both embedded software developers as well as hardware developeres) tend to confine themselves in their own level of abstraction. The black box model here helps as a divide-and-conquer mechanism. If for exmaple you are writing device drivers, you would abstract hardware to memory locations and registers. And at the same time, you hope that the device API - the abstraction you are building for the layer above you - is general enough to cover all applications.
That by itself is a good thing. However, it assumes that there is some intelligent being that has outlined the layers of abstraction and black-boxes upfront. This is hard, and relies on extensive experience. How would one go about and select an OS for an embedded system, for example? How much knowledge about the application or device is used in making this selection ? (And how much of this choice is 'just guessing') ?
Thus people use black-box models (like OS'es) because they are known to yield some results, not necessarily the best one.
A quote from page 48 out of The Ultimate History of Video Games:
Years later, Baer ran into Nolan Bushnell and Gene Lipkin, Atari director of marketing, on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show. According to Baer, Bushnell introduced him as 'the father of video games'. Baer smiled and said: 'I wish you would have said that to the press'.
Storing books online is one thing. Gutenberg also needs readers to be successful. How many readers are willing to read .txt or .pdf files instead of printed material ?
Several times I downloaded Gutenberg books, with the intention to read them from laptop or screen lateron. Turns out this is too inconvenient, when compared to paper print. ...
If only electronic paper would be at 1c a page
It's a pity so many /.ers think posting old schematics is not relevant. /. forum finds out anyhow.
I think it actually is. For example, the ATARI 2600 console has chip schematics here. And I would love to find designs for the early Space Invaders, or Galaga systems. Why ? Because the average multimedia PC today is maybe a 1000X more powerful than those older systems, yet playability of all those new games has not increased by the same amount. Video Game Archeology can teach me.
By the way - even if those scans are fake, the
The Internet was shown to be a scale-free network by U. Notre Dame physicist Barabasi. It means that the majority of the Web Page Requests is only for a fraction of the total Web Pages (the 'hubs').
Thus the 98% DNS Queries might be needed for only a minority of connections (I am assuming that Web Traffic is the bulk of Internet Traffic here).
- collect data that will improve the software code.
...
- rework the code.
- work on multiple things/ problems at the same time and apply a multi-threading development style.
- go out and interact with others to decide the next logical 'do what you have to do' step.
- relax and wait until stress level is high enough.
This list looks quite useful to me. For my own project (hardware simulation), it seems that the logical thing to do would be to go out and ask either a beta user or a fellow developer for early feedback.This includes reading books, surfing the web,
For example writing documentation, throw away/rewrite, use shorter development cycles and early releases.