Analysis of propogation loss of RF energy in free space, multiplied by effective radiated power, with some guesses about how weak a signal you can reasonably pull out of the noise before quantum effects step all over it.
The whole point of the 64 bit encryption is that 64 bit is used for all the millary and govenment encryption,
I don't think you can support this statement. Skipjack is 128 bits. Triple-DES is 112, and easier to implement. I seriously doubt that you have access to classified information to show otherwise.
when we crack the 64 bit encryption
In 5 years? wooo.
it is going to get all the governments and companys in the world extremely worried.
Not likely. As I said, I don't think you'll find many governments using 64 bit encryption. The governments would do better to be worried about the NSA inserting backdoors in the encryption they do have (take a look here).
Like I said, any political statement distributed.net could make has been made. Time to move on.
I'm indifferent on this myself, but there are alot of other things that should come before that. Kosovo, medical research, etc.
If somebody could come up with a way whereby my spare CPU cycles would solve the Kosovo crisis, I'd have the entire company switched over tomorrow.
As for medical research, there probably is some distributed analysis that could be run in this environment, probably some genetic research. But, unless you could convince me that the results would not be snapped up by some private corporation, then used to generate huge profits, then I'll donate my CPU cycles somewhere. That's an advantage to SETI - hard to determine a profit motive.
Distributed.net set out to prove something, and it succeeded. Since then, it's been proved again and again, most recently with EEF's dedicated cracker. Working on RC64 is now just flogging an expired equine. It's just not going to make the kind of political statement that RC56 made.
As far as a tool set, d.net had a chance to get their distributed engine out, but they seem to have missed their window. Now, we've got several dedicated distributed efforts going, and d.net is rapidly turning into a fading blip.
My only question is to figure out which machines to switch over from doing primes. Find a new prime, get your name in the history books (well, the math history books). Find a new civilization, get your name in the real history books forever.
...phil
We don't need this, but it would be nice...
on
SETI@Home For Linux
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· Score: 1
There is no chance that people are going to find alien life this way - so why bother.
And your basis for this statement is...??
If there was alien life don't you think they'd alreay have tried to contact us??
And what makes you think they haven't? Perhaps we just have not been listening?
The laws of physics apply to the entire universe, not just here. If there's no such thing as faster-than-light space transport, then that applies to civilizations on other planets. That would leave something like radio as the only practical alternative for communicating (even if the communications turned out to be something as simple as a beacon - "Hello out there!"). So, perhaps there's a universe full of beacons, but we have not been listening for them. In that case, Seti@home could turn out to have a pretty dramatic payback.
The argument that it was really Microsoft's fault because their software was the victim of the virus does not hold water.
The message earlier suggested that Microsoft be held partially responsible, since their software could have had security mechanisms built in, and Microsoft refused to do it (in some cases, suggesting that macro viruses were the responsibility of the user - "You should be aware of what you're running" or words to that effect).
Mainframe environments have had security built in for ages, and it's impossible for a virus to even exist. Microsoft wants to play in that same market, but they don't want to be held to those same standards. Well, I for one disagree. (In fact, I find it amusing that the Melissa virus apparently ran through Microsoft's internal mail system like a hot knife through butter. Hoist by their own petard.)
Take a look at Swatch, for a totally commercialized possibility.
...phil
Nightmares of Bloom County and Donald Trump
on
Web Sites Shut Down
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· Score: 1
Only problem I can see with your analysis is that Bloom County had far wider distribution than User Friendly. UF is only really known by people who already don't like MS, so it's not like UF is doing much to influence public opinion.
What is it, I mean, really?
on
Saving MST3K
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· Score: 1
Basically, it's a few guys sitting watching a bad movie and making an incredible stream of wisecracks, almost stream of conscienceness, about the movie or whatever thoughts the movie might inspire. Topical political or social comments, references to other movies, bad jokes or puns, whatever. When it's good, it's hysterical.
The show got wrapped around a strange context (evil scientists on the ground isolating a poor schmuck in space and beaming the movies up as mind-control experiments), but that was secondary to the actual movie.
Evlyn Wood was reputed to be a good speed-reading course, but I couldn't come up with the dough when I saw it last and I don't know if they are still in business.
Speed-reading technical stuff generally doesn't work as well as you'd like, and the Wood people admitted that when I asked (years ago). Your speed was supposed to go up for technical reading, but not as fast as it would for general reading.
Clicked on "Edit your Preferences" and got a screen with a lot of white space in the middle, and usual banners at the top and bottom. Not a lot to edit there.
This effect was written about by Larry Niven in a series of stories regarding the effect that teleportation (ala Star Trek) would have on society. A "flash crowd" formed when everybody heard on the news about an interesting event and used their teleporters to hop in and see it. The police had to develop some interesting coping mechanisms.
The "slashdot" effect is the same thing in the web universe. (Similar stuff happens when interesting sites appear on CNN and other sources.)
The product is the product. I personally don't really care about (or even pay attention to, or could tell) a $150 suit from a $500 suit. If the product is good, that's all I care about. I don't mark the product up or down based on how well the salesman dresses.
Very few satellites "move on their own" (outside of their normal orbital motion), due to limited fuel on board. Once in orbit, they pretty much stay in the same orbits they start in.
And, there are published orbits for nearly every satellite, not just the geosynchronous ones. Take a look here and click on the OIG Main Page link at the bottom of the page.
Yes, it's reasonable to expect that secret satellites would not have their orbits published, certainly by the launching government and those friendly to them. However, there are other governments capable of figuring out the orbits and publishing them.
1) Where is the high-powered uplink facility? and 3) How did you afford your own high-powered uplink facility?
It's not that hard to do. There's a ham in Texas who has an amazingly high-powered system in his back yard, used primarily for moon-bounce communications. NASA occasionally comes over to hook up to it to communicate with satellites if the satellite's antenna has lost track (the system is so high-powered that the satellite can receive it even if the antenna is not pointed at the earth). This ham built his rig entirely privately. If he can do it, others can. And, it wouldn't have to be as big.
4) With your fancy new high-powered uplink facility, how did you break the encryption and the access codes required to repurpose the satellite? How did you find the coordinates of is current location?
The coordinates are easy - the vast majority are published. The encryption is tougher - thus my note relatively early on in this topic.
The rest of your note is ad hominem attack, and not worthy of response.
There has been some documented examples of people who "hacked" sattelites since the 80s, but usually they were folks who figured out how to use them to retransmit their signals - kind of an over-the-top ham radio operator. These guys would tune to the edge of an uplink channel and send morse code, which would then get retransmitted back down. That sort of thing wouldn't obviously involve taking control of the satellite, but just using it's intended operation to their advantage.
I was under the impression that the control channels for satellites was heavily encrypted, and the gvmnt/military satellites would be the most heavily encrypted of all. If it turns out that some independent individual did take control of a gvmnt satellite, without inside knowledge, then this speaks very poorly to the designers and the gvmnt officals who let this design go through.
Note: I presume that since Great Britain and the US are such great good friends, Britain would have access to at least mid-level U.S. encryption technology, possibly with a back door for the US spy agencies.
There was a short piece on ABC sometime in the last week about a project to give a single cell phone to each village in Bangladesh. In these villages, this is the first and only phone. The piece discussed the major changes having a phone would bring.
From information I've seen, the original suggestion (75% of the world's population having never touched a phone) is probably not far off.
Slashdot Mirror
Analysis of propogation loss of RF energy in free space, multiplied by effective radiated power, with some guesses about how weak a signal you can reasonably pull out of the noise before quantum effects step all over it.
...phil
You can find a list here.
...phil
The whole point of the 64 bit encryption is that 64 bit is used for all the millary and govenment encryption,
I don't think you can support this statement. Skipjack is 128 bits. Triple-DES is 112, and easier to implement. I seriously doubt that you have access to classified information to show otherwise.
when we crack the 64 bit encryption
In 5 years? wooo.
it is going to get all the governments and companys in the world extremely worried.
Not likely. As I said, I don't think you'll find many governments using 64 bit encryption. The governments would do better to be worried about the NSA inserting backdoors in the encryption they do have (take a look here).
Like I said, any political statement distributed.net could make has been made. Time to move on.
...phil
I'm indifferent on this myself, but there are alot of other things that should come before that. Kosovo, medical research, etc.
If somebody could come up with a way whereby my spare CPU cycles would solve the Kosovo crisis, I'd have the entire company switched over tomorrow.
As for medical research, there probably is some distributed analysis that could be run in this environment, probably some genetic research. But, unless you could convince me that the results would not be snapped up by some private corporation, then used to generate huge profits, then I'll donate my CPU cycles somewhere. That's an advantage to SETI - hard to determine a profit motive.
...phil
Distributed.net set out to prove something, and it succeeded. Since then, it's been proved again and again, most recently with EEF's dedicated cracker. Working on RC64 is now just flogging an expired equine. It's just not going to make the kind of political statement that RC56 made.
As far as a tool set, d.net had a chance to get their distributed engine out, but they seem to have missed their window. Now, we've got several dedicated distributed efforts going, and d.net is rapidly turning into a fading blip.
My only question is to figure out which machines to switch over from doing primes. Find a new prime, get your name in the history books (well, the math history books). Find a new civilization, get your name in the real history books forever.
...phil
There is no chance that people are going to find alien life this way - so why bother.
And your basis for this statement is...??
If there was alien life don't you think they'd alreay have tried to contact us??
And what makes you think they haven't? Perhaps we just have not been listening?
The laws of physics apply to the entire universe, not just here. If there's no such thing as faster-than-light space transport, then that applies to civilizations on other planets. That would leave something like radio as the only practical alternative for communicating (even if the communications turned out to be something as simple as a beacon - "Hello out there!"). So, perhaps there's a universe full of beacons, but we have not been listening for them. In that case, Seti@home could turn out to have a pretty dramatic payback.
...phil
The argument that it was really Microsoft's fault because their software was the victim of the virus does not hold water.
The message earlier suggested that Microsoft be held partially responsible, since their software could have had security mechanisms built in, and Microsoft refused to do it (in some cases, suggesting that macro viruses were the responsibility of the user - "You should be aware of what you're running" or words to that effect).
Mainframe environments have had security built in for ages, and it's impossible for a virus to even exist. Microsoft wants to play in that same market, but they don't want to be held to those same standards. Well, I for one disagree. (In fact, I find it amusing that the Melissa virus apparently ran through Microsoft's internal mail system like a hot knife through butter. Hoist by their own petard.)
...phil
there will be tents to discuss and hack and a lake along the field invites you to relax.
I'm sorry, but how does one hack a tent?
(Sorry, I had to do that.)
...phil
Take a look at Swatch, for a totally commercialized possibility.
...phil
Only problem I can see with your analysis is that Bloom County had far wider distribution than User Friendly. UF is only really known by people who already don't like MS, so it's not like UF is doing much to influence public opinion.
...phil
The 'as-yet-unnamed' complainant is Microsoft's legal department.
And your evidence for this is...? As far as I know, the unnamed entity is remained unnamed all along.
...phil
then somebody notify the media ASAP.
...phil
Basically, it's a few guys sitting watching a bad movie and making an incredible stream of wisecracks, almost stream of conscienceness, about the movie or whatever thoughts the movie might inspire. Topical political or social comments, references to other movies, bad jokes or puns, whatever. When it's good, it's hysterical.
The show got wrapped around a strange context (evil scientists on the ground isolating a poor schmuck in space and beaming the movies up as mind-control experiments), but that was secondary to the actual movie.
...phil
Evlyn Wood was reputed to be a good speed-reading course, but I couldn't come up with the dough when I saw it last and I don't know if they are still in business.
Speed-reading technical stuff generally doesn't work as well as you'd like, and the Wood people admitted that when I asked (years ago). Your speed was supposed to go up for technical reading, but not as fast as it would for general reading.
Well, it said I was logged in but apparently I wasn't logged in. When I logged in again, it all magically appeared.
...phil
Clicked on "Edit your Preferences" and got a screen with a lot of white space in the middle, and usual banners at the top and bottom. Not a lot to edit there.
...phil
Not even close.
This effect was written about by Larry Niven in a series of stories regarding the effect that teleportation (ala Star Trek) would have on society. A "flash crowd" formed when everybody heard on the news about an interesting event and used their teleporters to hop in and see it. The police had to develop some interesting coping mechanisms.
The "slashdot" effect is the same thing in the web universe. (Similar stuff happens when interesting sites appear on CNN and other sources.)
Take the 7000, 4 processor, 100 gig raid 5, 2 gig RAM. Don't forget the tape drive. That'll make /. hom.
The product is the product. I personally don't really care about (or even pay attention to, or could tell) a $150 suit from a $500 suit. If the product is good, that's all I care about. I don't mark the product up or down based on how well the salesman dresses.
since the glass would be vibrating both ways, using a window as a speaker means you'd be sending sound out as well as in. Half your power wasted.
Think I'll stick with traditional technology.
Very few satellites "move on their own" (outside of their normal orbital motion), due to limited fuel on board. Once in orbit, they pretty much stay in the same orbits they start in.
And, there are published orbits for nearly every satellite, not just the geosynchronous ones. Take a look here and click on the OIG Main Page link at the bottom of the page.
Yes, it's reasonable to expect that secret satellites would not have their orbits published, certainly by the launching government and those friendly to them. However, there are other governments capable of figuring out the orbits and publishing them.
1) Where is the high-powered uplink facility?
and
3) How did you afford your own high-powered uplink facility?
It's not that hard to do. There's a ham in Texas who has an amazingly high-powered system in his back yard, used primarily for moon-bounce communications. NASA occasionally comes over to hook up to it to communicate with satellites if the satellite's antenna has lost track (the system is so high-powered that the satellite can receive it even if the antenna is not pointed at the earth). This ham built his rig entirely privately. If he can do it, others can. And, it wouldn't have to be as big.
4) With your fancy new high-powered uplink facility, how did you break the encryption and the access codes required to repurpose the satellite? How did you find the coordinates of is current location?
The coordinates are easy - the vast majority are published. The encryption is tougher - thus my note relatively early on in this topic.
The rest of your note is ad hominem attack, and not worthy of response.
There has been some documented examples of people who "hacked" sattelites since the 80s, but usually they were folks who figured out how to use them to retransmit their signals - kind of an over-the-top ham radio operator. These guys would tune to the edge of an uplink channel and send morse code, which would then get retransmitted back down. That sort of thing wouldn't obviously involve taking control of the satellite, but just using it's intended operation to their advantage.
I was under the impression that the control channels for satellites was heavily encrypted, and the gvmnt/military satellites would be the most heavily encrypted of all. If it turns out that some independent individual did take control of a gvmnt satellite, without inside knowledge, then this speaks very poorly to the designers and the gvmnt officals who let this design go through.
Note: I presume that since Great Britain and the US are such great good friends, Britain would have access to at least mid-level U.S. encryption technology, possibly with a back door for the US spy agencies.
There was a short piece on ABC sometime in the last week about a project to give a single cell phone to each village in Bangladesh. In these villages, this is the first and only phone. The piece discussed the major changes having a phone would bring.
From information I've seen, the original suggestion (75% of the world's population having never touched a phone) is probably not far off.