I know someone who lives in a Central American country who bought a PS2 at a local electronics dealer. The PS2 came with five free games. He got the console home and tried to play the games, but none would play. He went back to the store and complained. The dealer told him he needed to get a mod chip installed.
Sure enough all five of the "free" games were blue, not silver.
So friend got all irate and demanded original disks. The store owner explained things up to him: "This ain't the U.S., amigo. Look around town. If you find anyone selling original disks, let me know."
Surprise! Even the local discount mart chain carried only burned copies. So friend got a mod chip installed, but now it seems that the PS2 heats up and then starts acting erratically. Take out the chip and it runs cool but won't play the games. What's a poor Yankee to do?
Can't do that with UTP. The link pulse travels over the same wire, so the hub or switch will deactivate the port and you won't see any traffic at all.
It's true that you can't just cut the tx wire, but you _can_ rig it so a hub can see it but no xmit will occur.
Search google for "sniffer +stealth". There is a site with plans to build a non-transmitting cable. It also discusses the theory of how it works. (I can't verify a link because those kinds of sites are blocked here at work.) It involves cutting _one_ of the TX wires and inserting a capacitor in series to form a hi-pass (or is it low-pass?) filter. This causes the hub to see all "1" bits (and out of parity) from the NIC. The hub will turn on the link light even though it never gets good data, so then the NIC can receive just fine.
I've built one of these into an inline RJ-45 coupler and it works great. As explained on the site, the value of the capacitor depends in the ethernet speed, so it's different for 10mb or 100mb.
People won't boycott stores that use RFID tags, they'll just complan here on slashdot.
My elderly mother won't boycott Wal-Mart because it's the only discount mart in her little town. Instead, she has asked me to complain here on Slashdot for her.
"Wal-Mart can take their darn RFIDs and 23-skidoo!"
There.
She would have posted that herself, but she finds the epithet "Anonymous Coward" demeaning and she was afraid Cmdr Taco might misuse her Slashdot ID number if she signed up.
What is your take on the premise that "in a new legal area where there are few precedents, cases tend to be decided based on the debating skills of the opposing attorneys"?
Is this a reasonable assertion? Has this been the case when new technology has appeared in the past?
If so, then most importantly: in your opinion, is this a "Good Thing"?
Thanks,
Rick.C
Ain't it funny how people chose to chose what they want to believe about what the government tells them? I can't figure it out.
For those who haven't seen "Bowling For Columbine", the last part delves into this subject. It posits that the government and news media like to keep the US populace living in fear. Fear of anything - just as long as there is fear. The movie doesn't really answer the question of whether it's a conspiracy, or maybe that the populace likes to be fearful and the government/media are just "selling what sells." I sort of came away with the feeling the movie was saying the government realizes that if people are afraid they'll turn to the government to protect them, and they're milking that for all it's worth.
Anyway, it's an interesting take on the national psyche.
Can't say much for the rest of the movie, but I'd mod the "fear" part +1 insightful.
I once toured a wafer plant and this is how it was done there. When a die mask is made, there may be small imperfections in it. Say the mask contains a 10x10 grid of supposedly identical circuits, but there were a couple of flaws when the mask was made that messed up the copies at grid locations A1 and A2. Every wafer that gets made with that mask will automatically have the A1 and A2 circuits marked for rejection before testing because they are "known defects".
After a wafer is made a robotic tester probes each circuit before the wafer is cut up. If a circuit fails the basic tests, the probe squirts a little dot of red paint on that circuit. The "known defects" get a red dot without even being tested. After this initial probe test, the circuits are cut apart, the ones with red dots are discarded and the rest are mounted on carriers.
It is possible that a slight mask defect or wafer imperfection might cause a performance problem rather than a total functional failure. This could also be caused by a slightly out-of-spec doping or wafer heating. These are sorted out by further testing as mentioned by other posters.
If all of the circuits on a wafer get the same doping and same heating, then you can sample one or two and assume that the rest of the circuits from that wafer will have similar performance. If you have a mask problem that causes degraded performance, you can automatically flag that die location as a "known slow" or a "known bad" depending on your criteria.
I would say that it is proof positive that too many laws are written in a way that allows far too much leeway for interpretation by the police.
There are two sides to this story, of course, but let's presume that the defendant is innocent (since that's what we're supposed to do in the U.S.).
One could counter that the accused will have his day in court and be able to sort it out before a judge. True, but the accused has lost his time, legal expenses and reputation, not to mention his computer gear which the police are not required to return.
I've heard of a DA charging a robber with kidnapping because he forced the homeowner (at gunpoint) to walk to another room in the house. That action technically fit the wording of the kidnapping law. The robber was convicted of robbery, but the kidnapping charge was modded -1 Stupid.
If you get mugged or robbed, rape or such you have a picture of your attacker.
You mean your attacker has a record of where you've been that day, including a picture of your car and your house.
Why would an attacker let you keep the camera that just took his picture? In order to function, it must have a clear view of your surroundings. Hiding it in your pocket sort of defeats the purpose. Hiding it in your purse (with a peep hole) means it gets stolen along with the purse.
At least with paperless voting you need something more sofisticated and educated that a horde of gorillas that can barely read and write their names
So whom do you fear most: someone who is evil and stupid, or someone who is evil and smart?
It's not a pack of commie-terrorist-hacker anarchists hijacking the vote that I fear. It's corruption from within the system that rigs the vote to keep itself in office. E-voting allows for a more centralized point of attack that can be manipulated by insiders.
In the article there was no mention of how the local election officials could know whether the machines were tallying accurately. Maybe every third vote for Edwards was credited to Kerry. How would they know?
If the group in power were to conspire with the machine manufacturer to rig the next election, how would anyone know? Especially if they didn't screw up as they did in Watergate.
you should see the list of restrictions that most city libraries impose if you want a taste of whats to come.
Exactly.
If the network is built with public funds, there will be those who wish to impose their ideas of what is right upon the network.
We can expect to hear, "My tax dollars are not going to be used to support viewing pornography!" and "The city did not build this here network thingy so pirates could swap their stolen music files on it." What city council representative could or would argue against these people? (A: an EX-city council representative.)
There will be rules and there will be monitoring. They may come after the fact, but they will come.
I don't see a very bright future for a publicly funded network, especially not here in the Bible-belt.
When my son was in high school he got a job at a local windows company (no, the other kind - with glass). After the glazing had been applied, his job was to clean them up with a solvent and make them pretty for shipping. The company issued rubber gloves, but as with IBM, the solvent went right through the gloves.
At quitting time the first day, he told them he was quitting and wouldn't be back. They were surprized - that he had lasted the whole day. Most of the ten new recruits had quit at lunchtime.
He had blisters on his fingers for a week.
No worry for the company though - they had a new batch of recruits signed up to start the next day.
Fortunately my son was in a position where he didn't need the job. Other workers with families to feed can't just walk away.
If you choose to believe the Biblical history, God nuked Soddam and Gamorrah and He flooded the whole planet. What effect did that have? S&G's neighbors snickered and pointed and laughed, "S&G got a smackdown!" China failed to notice either event, apparently, and went right on with their Kung-Fu-Fighting ways (hey, I watch the movies so I know what I'm talking about here).
Yeah, if L00667 had hit Washington DC, the rest of the world would point and snicker that America got a smackdown. The rest of the US would point and snicker as well because there would be no Congress left to appropriate eighty ba-zillion dollars to rebuild itself.
But would anyone really, fundamentally change their ways?
Slashdot Mirror
That's Phase-2 of NEC's evil marketing plan.
Sell the batteries at a loss and make up for it in sales of UCCDFMs.I'll take two, please.
"Well you see, Your Honor, I have a prescription for the Jaguar. My shrink says I'm a poor Prozac risk, and the car keeps me from feeling depressed."
You already do... or do you consider your soul to have no value?
The Stars? How primitive! Wasn't that the original Windows screensaver?
Maybe, but why would you want France???
Sure enough all five of the "free" games were blue, not silver.
So friend got all irate and demanded original disks. The store owner explained things up to him: "This ain't the U.S., amigo. Look around town. If you find anyone selling original disks, let me know."Surprise! Even the local discount mart chain carried only burned copies. So friend got a mod chip installed, but now it seems that the PS2 heats up and then starts acting erratically. Take out the chip and it runs cool but won't play the games. What's a poor Yankee to do?
Gee, life sure is simpler back home in Ohio.Well yeah, but that's with overclocking.
It's true that you can't just cut the tx wire, but you _can_ rig it so a hub can see it but no xmit will occur.
Search google for "sniffer +stealth". There is a site with plans to build a non-transmitting cable. It also discusses the theory of how it works. (I can't verify a link because those kinds of sites are blocked here at work.) It involves cutting _one_ of the TX wires and inserting a capacitor in series to form a hi-pass (or is it low-pass?) filter. This causes the hub to see all "1" bits (and out of parity) from the NIC. The hub will turn on the link light even though it never gets good data, so then the NIC can receive just fine.
I've built one of these into an inline RJ-45 coupler and it works great. As explained on the site, the value of the capacitor depends in the ethernet speed, so it's different for 10mb or 100mb.My elderly mother won't boycott Wal-Mart because it's the only discount mart in her little town. Instead, she has asked me to complain here on Slashdot for her.
"Wal-Mart can take their darn RFIDs and 23-skidoo!"There.
She would have posted that herself, but she finds the epithet "Anonymous Coward" demeaning and she was afraid Cmdr Taco might misuse her Slashdot ID number if she signed up.The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.
Hey now.. You're hitting a nerve here. Win2.86 was DOS with a mouse. Win 3.1 had True Type Fonts and was therefore a Truly Blessed Thing.
If my wife had been on the design team, it would sound like a Harley hog. Warming up. Printing. Ejecting paper. Wouldn't matter.
Harley-Harley-Harley-Harley-Harley...That one's easy: I'm free-as-in-beer!
Is this a reasonable assertion? Has this been the case when new technology has appeared in the past?
If so, then most importantly: in your opinion, is this a "Good Thing"?Thanks, Rick.C
For those who haven't seen "Bowling For Columbine", the last part delves into this subject. It posits that the government and news media like to keep the US populace living in fear. Fear of anything - just as long as there is fear. The movie doesn't really answer the question of whether it's a conspiracy, or maybe that the populace likes to be fearful and the government/media are just "selling what sells." I sort of came away with the feeling the movie was saying the government realizes that if people are afraid they'll turn to the government to protect them, and they're milking that for all it's worth.
Anyway, it's an interesting take on the national psyche.Can't say much for the rest of the movie, but I'd mod the "fear" part +1 insightful.
Wouldn't that make it "turbeaux"?
"If God wanted mice to be smart, He'd allow us mess with their DNA." - me
"What God wants, God gets. God help us all." - Roger Waters
Frankly.After a wafer is made a robotic tester probes each circuit before the wafer is cut up. If a circuit fails the basic tests, the probe squirts a little dot of red paint on that circuit. The "known defects" get a red dot without even being tested. After this initial probe test, the circuits are cut apart, the ones with red dots are discarded and the rest are mounted on carriers.
It is possible that a slight mask defect or wafer imperfection might cause a performance problem rather than a total functional failure. This could also be caused by a slightly out-of-spec doping or wafer heating. These are sorted out by further testing as mentioned by other posters.If all of the circuits on a wafer get the same doping and same heating, then you can sample one or two and assume that the rest of the circuits from that wafer will have similar performance. If you have a mask problem that causes degraded performance, you can automatically flag that die location as a "known slow" or a "known bad" depending on your criteria.
There are two sides to this story, of course, but let's presume that the defendant is innocent (since that's what we're supposed to do in the U.S.).
One could counter that the accused will have his day in court and be able to sort it out before a judge. True, but the accused has lost his time, legal expenses and reputation, not to mention his computer gear which the police are not required to return.I've heard of a DA charging a robber with kidnapping because he forced the homeowner (at gunpoint) to walk to another room in the house. That action technically fit the wording of the kidnapping law. The robber was convicted of robbery, but the kidnapping charge was modded -1 Stupid.
You mean your attacker has a record of where you've been that day, including a picture of your car and your house.
Why would an attacker let you keep the camera that just took his picture? In order to function, it must have a clear view of your surroundings. Hiding it in your pocket sort of defeats the purpose. Hiding it in your purse (with a peep hole) means it gets stolen along with the purse.Two questions, one answer: "C"
So whom do you fear most: someone who is evil and stupid, or someone who is evil and smart?
It's not a pack of commie-terrorist-hacker anarchists hijacking the vote that I fear. It's corruption from within the system that rigs the vote to keep itself in office. E-voting allows for a more centralized point of attack that can be manipulated by insiders.In the article there was no mention of how the local election officials could know whether the machines were tallying accurately. Maybe every third vote for Edwards was credited to Kerry. How would they know?
If the group in power were to conspire with the machine manufacturer to rig the next election, how would anyone know? Especially if they didn't screw up as they did in Watergate.Exactly.
If the network is built with public funds, there will be those who wish to impose their ideas of what is right upon the network.We can expect to hear, "My tax dollars are not going to be used to support viewing pornography!" and "The city did not build this here network thingy so pirates could swap their stolen music files on it." What city council representative could or would argue against these people? (A: an EX-city council representative.)
There will be rules and there will be monitoring. They may come after the fact, but they will come.I don't see a very bright future for a publicly funded network, especially not here in the Bible-belt.
At quitting time the first day, he told them he was quitting and wouldn't be back. They were surprized - that he had lasted the whole day. Most of the ten new recruits had quit at lunchtime.
He had blisters on his fingers for a week.No worry for the company though - they had a new batch of recruits signed up to start the next day.
Fortunately my son was in a position where he didn't need the job. Other workers with families to feed can't just walk away.Yeah, if L00667 had hit Washington DC, the rest of the world would point and snicker that America got a smackdown. The rest of the US would point and snicker as well because there would be no Congress left to appropriate eighty ba-zillion dollars to rebuild itself.
But would anyone really, fundamentally change their ways?