If the building is properly shielded, then an insider cannot bypass the security by attaching an unencrypted WiFi device. The other important aspect is performance, not security. With a private airspace in a shielded facility, you don't lose bandwidth to traffic on the network next door (nor will they have to wait on your network traffic). You can even establish separate "subnet" airspaces in your building, to keep all the wireless traffic moving when you have a large number of users. All the WiFi hot-spots tie to a router, which direct traffic only to the recipient's zone. There's no need to have every data packet sent to every cubicle in the building.
Re:Great for paranoid nuts, useless for real peopl
on
RF-Blocking Wallpaper
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· Score: 1
RF blocking "wall paper" has been around for quite a while. It's one of the more esthetically acceptable methods for "architectural shielding", and is widely used by those who consider their data worth stealing (military, government, high-end financial, etc.). The unique feature of this material is its frequency selectivity. It will block the WiFi network from being intercepted or jammed from an adjacent building, but you still listen to the radio and use a wireless phone.
If that were the case, Google could simply register as "crawler12345@google.com" and enter the front door. It would be more work (they'd need to register upon visiting each new site), but it could be done. The difference to Google is that registration probably requires human intervention (registration scripts often use graphical cues and other bot-rejection tricks).
6. Find out what you are doing now that will be more difficult or impossible to do with the new system.
7. Figure out how you're going to transfer all the data from the old system to the new, how long it will take, and how you will handle the accounting through the transition. Even if you do a gradual, non-big-bang transition your auditor needs to know which of the two systems contains the official records on any given date.
I've survived two corporate MRP system change-outs, and while both were relatively smooth and successful (the customers were served on time), neither was a pleasant experience. These systems seem to last no more than ten years between major disruptive upgrades.
Lightning-induced current in the antenna is unlikely to damage a laptop WiFi card. Lightning has decreasing energy density at higher frequencies, being limited by the pulse width and rise time (both > 1usec). A quarter wavelength strip-line stub will effectively protect the equipment, and is inexpensive to fabricate (a PC board trace).
Microwave equipment has little trouble from the antenna itself. The culprits are mostly power cables and antenna feed lines, neither of which is a concern for a laptop running on batteries and using a built-in WiFi antenna. Anything close enough to hurt the laptop poses serious risks to you.
A few extra parameters here, a function call instead of inline code there, not using index registers efficiently anywhere...the next thing you know, it's running slower than Windows. Oh, wait, that was yesterday's topic...
It sounds like this guy actually knows what he's doing. The claims are plausible; he isn't promising the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. This design shows promise of being a practical, efficient compact antenna.
What I want to see is the results from the one of the "other standard tests" the article alludes to: field strength measurements. These can be compared to the known performance of a standard 1/4 wave monopole. That is what will convince me, and is what the FCC requires for broadcast stations.
Efficient short antennas have been made, but they aren't easy. In honor of the current Slashdot poll, see WWVB's antenna. This system attains 65% efficiency at less than 1/40 wavelength.
Think back to the Kramer (sp?) Prize for human powered flight. Many good teams and individuals put in years of effort to design and build clever human-powered aircraft. Some flew but didn't finish the full course; many never even achieved controlled flight. But shortly after Paul McCready's team finally won the prize, they improved the design so much that they crossed the English Channel with a human powered plane to claim the second Kramer prize.
The point is that the challenge looks impossible when you consider all the problems that know about and the many new ones that will become apparent only when you take on the task. But as you solve each piece of the puzzle, you find things you're doing right and other things you should do in a completely different way. When the last piece falls in place, the challenge is won--and you wonder why you didn't see such an "obvious" solution in the first place.
The Grand Challenge isn't a textbook exercise with a cut-and-dried answer. Each entrant learns from their own small sucesses and failures, as well as those of the competition. It may not be won this year, it may not be won ever. But by taking on the challenge, each entrant helps refine the baoundary of what is possible. That's the beauty of it!
Teams experienced problems with things such as shadows and wire fences. Sharp shadow lines were seen as real obstructions, while small (weathered, rusty) fence wires weren't recognized until it was too late to avoid them. You'll also experience extremes of contrast, glare, and dust raised by the wind and other competitor's vehicles (hopefully as you overtake them!). When you get past the hills and reach the dry lake beds near the state line, mirage conditions are likely. First hand experience in the desert will be very valuable; test early and test often. Of course, I'm assuming they don't change the course from the Barstow-Vegas run to, say, the Iditarod trail in Alaska...does anybody know how to make a good crevasse detector?
There's an article recapping the Grand Challenge in the latest IEEE Spectrum (sorry, hard-copy only). Among the interesting designs was a vehicle equipped with hydraulic "wings" to right itself if (when) it overturned. Another team found it better to disable their troublesome vision and radar systems, and just target the GPS waypoints.
As I too rapidly approach 25 years as a working engineer, I have found this to be invariant: If a company mismanages itself into one crisis, there will always be another. Management that repeatedly over-extends their development capabilities and habitually over-works their "exempt employees"(*) always encounters another "emergency", often before the current crisis ends. They consider this to be a sign of management prowess, rather than proof of ineptitude!
Experience shows that true emergencies are few and far between. Most problems were seen coming far in advance, but were swept under the rug to save money (or to avoid admitting schedule trouble). The cost and time to fix the festering problem mushrooms, causing new "emergencies" to erupt as resources are "temporarily" diverted to the crisis du jour. Exponential growth at its worst!
If you're working more than 10 hours in any day or more than five days a week, you're likely to be losing more time correcting mistakes than you gain in extra productivity. Mental and physical fatigue will do you in--not the first day, maybe not even in a month--but sooner or later overwork will eat you alive. It's not worth ruining your health and your family to slave over a product that nobody will care about ten years from now.
Your best bet is to do the best work you can, while keeping your eyes open for a (less in)sane employer. When the right opportunity comes, bail out (and don't feel guilty about it--guilt is the abuser's favorite tactic, both in the workplace and in personal life).
(*) For non-US readers, an "exempt" employee is one who is not legally entitled to additional pay for overtime work. Unethical employers commonly abuse this by assigning far more work than can be accomplished in the presumed 40 hour workweek. The really daft ones waste the entire 40 hours on useless meetings and other counter-productive nonsense, so that all the productive work must be done "off the clock"!
Microsoft arrived where they are today because of where they were before. They have a long history now, and compatibility with that history has a huge influence on design decisions. Hindsight is wonderful, but the reality of any "continuing engineering" design (software, hardware, or civil) is doing the best you can with what the previous team built. Making a "big bang" change is emotionally appealing to a developer who's frustrated with supporting legacy designs. But incremental change is less stress on the customer who pays the bills, and that's what makes an inferior technical choice the logical business decision.
IBM's move to linux is noteworthy not only for being an open-source effort, but also for being complete break from the OS/360 lineage. Some day Microsoft may take an equally dramatic change of direction. Who knows when, who knows if--but complacency and prosperity just don't go together in the world of business.
That's true for a series hybrid, but not for a parallel hybrid. Parallel hybrids have higher peak power output. Both the combustion engine and the electric motor deliver power to the wheels, rather than electric motor power only. That means smaller motors for the same performance, making the parallel concept attractive for passenger cars. The Toyota Prius is a parallel hybrid drive, using a continuously variable transmission for the combustion engine drive. .
The "Cantenna" I know was sold by Heathkit. The impedance match at 2.4GHz is poor, and the gain stinks--the signal is about what you'd expect from coax cable leakage. But it can handle 1KW if the duty cycle is reasonable, and it really reduces the likelihood that anybody will intercept your data.
It seems to me that point-and-click entry is even more vulnerable to visual compromise than a keyboard. A GUI keyboard requires a visual cue showing where the mouse is (cursor, highlight, reverse video, etc.), and that cue can be read from a distance. In some cases, it could be read remotely by decoding the monitor's EMI signature (TEMPEST). At least a keyboard can be obscured by hunching over it, or by placing it under cover while you log in (assuming you have good touch-typing skills!).
Whether or not you implement a point-and-click login screen, having a monitor facing a window or doorway is an amazingly common security vulnerability. A zoom lens is just as good as a keystroke logger if the screen is in sight.
Relax, the suit has only been filed. There is no judgement, and if the case actually goes to trial the resolution will be a long time coming. There's a good chance this will be settled out of court after Intel files their response and counter-claims, for far less than $500 million.
I notice that patent 5,506,981 refers to "accelerator boards" in the claims. A well-prepared patent has claims worded as broadly as possible, so the repeated use of "accelerator boards" in the claims suggests that the claims had to be limited in scope. Often, that's because prior art exists outside those particular claims. All Computers will have to convince the court that a Pentium CPU is the same (under patent law) as a "system board" combined with an "accelerator board", and that their patent filing date (1 Oct 1993) was before Intel's public release of infringing Pentium CPUs.
That's the catcher's job. The pitcher reads the signs, nods, scratches, spits, kicks the dirt, and eventually throws the ball. Sometimes the pitcher shakes off the sign, but it's the catcher's job to read the batter and order the right pitch and placement.
I wouldn't recommend typical indoor data cables for outdoor or underground use. You need cable rated to withstand direct burial or exposure to sun and rain. Otherwise, you will soon pay to replace cables damaged by UV exposure and moisture accumulation. You'll also need heavy duty surge supression where the cables enters any building. To make it last, the installation will resemble telephone company practices. That is expensive, but it is also the price of reliability.
Don't forget that the building authority will will be involved. When wiring 30 houses together, the installation will come to their attention. You need a local expert to advise you, based on your area's regulations.
"Binary keyboard"? I think that's called a "Morse code key". I'm afraid the exploit for that has been in the wild for 150 years (give or take).
Reading Morse by sound was a creative hack. The equipment was originally designed to print the dots and dashes on paper strips for later decoding, but the operators soon found they could decode in real time using the noise the pen made. So the pen point, ink, and paper tapes were soon dispensed with, and code read from the click-clacking sounder.
Anonymity has a weak link. If you're overdue and the Significant Other tells the ranger that you didn't come back from a hike, the search-and-rescue team needs to find you, not the other 10,000 people wandering around Rocky Mountain National Park that day. Without a link between your name and the ID device, there are too many trails to follow.
Relying on cell phones in the wilderness isn't funny at all. Cell phone coverage in mountainous areas becomes spotty as soon as you lose sight of the main highway. Fall into a ravine, and your chances for getting a call through are poor. That's assuming the phone didn't fall in the river or get smashed on a rock, and that the battery has some charge left. Cell phones in the wilderness provide a false sense of security. As with GPS it's nice to have one, but you must not rely on it. Nature is a tough mother, and when you go into her domain you must be prepared to play by her rules.
How would you sort out those who returned by another route? When hiking, I prefer a loop course to retracing the same path I used coming in. Anglers and hunters often travel off main trails, following creeks or game trails in search of their quarry. Some hikers only go out for day hikes, but others will be taking a week-long pack trip (also, these folks often arrange for a pick-up at another trailhead, far from where they enterred).
In all these cases, you have somebody who passed the waypoints on the way in but has not "checked out". Without a unique identifier tied to the genuinely lost party, you don't know which of the "open accounts" is the one you're looking for. Your scheme has merit for little-used areas, but likely would be overwhelmed in the more popular areas.
A better solution, imo, is the traditional sign-in/sign-out sheet at the trail head. You can say where you're going, when you expect to return, and what route you'll be taking (especially if you're going back a different way).
Only a year? You are too kind! The problems with junk fax, telemarketing, and spam has been widely and thoroughly covered by the press and by various legislatures. No legitimate business can claim they didn't know it was a nuisance. If they do it even once, they deserve no future business. Not next year. Not ever! And be sure to tell everyone you know about it, so they can avoid dealing with shady characters, too.
If one little mom-and-pop company tells them to take a hike, they write you off as a nut case and won't bug you no more. If two companies tell them to go pound sand--in harmony--they'll think you're subsidiaries and avoid the both of you. And if three companies--just three companies like IBM, GM, and WalMart--tell them "Call me again and we'll see you in court", they'll think its a movement. And that's what it is... (with apologies to Arlo Guthrie).
Yes, the battery storage needed for a full "off grid" installation is a significant ongoing expense. Here's a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the cost:
The system stores 24 KWHr, using two 120V strings of 100 A-Hr valve-regulated lead acid batteries.
If you limit the discharge to 50% (12 KWHr), the battery should deliver about 1000 charge-discharge cycles before replacement. (You'd get about 300 cycles at 100% discharge using a 12 KWHr battery, so the larger battery is less costly in the long run).
Thus total energy over battery life is 12000 KWHr.
The battery cost is about $100 for each 12V 100 Ahr "block" (retail cost, new batteries). Replacing the string will cost $2000.
The recurring cost for batteries alone is $2000/12000 KWHr = $0.167/KWHr, at 100% inverter efficiency. At 95% inverter efficiency (high, but achievable) it's $0.175/KWHr.
Thus, even if the solar panels, inverters, etc. were free and lasted forever, the cost of storing the power for later reuse is likely to exceed the cost of power from a public utility. That's why a utility-interactive system (where you sell surplus power back to PG&E, or whoever) makes for a more affordable system.
A plant patent is granted by the Government to an inventor (or the inventor's hiers or assigns) who has invented or discovered and asexually reproduced a distinct and new variety of plant, other than...a plant found in an uncultivated state. (emphasis moved)
The key is that traditional plant patents require the asexual reproduction, such as by grafting. Reproduction from seeds doesn't meet this test. Likewise, a plant found growing in an "uncultivated" (natural) state isn't eligible. Patents for roses of many colors growing on the same plant are legitimate under this standard. It's the patenting of existing species that is so annoying...unless they name "God" as the inventor.
NiMH batteries use potassium hydroxide (alkalai) electrolyte, not sulphuric acid. Treating a broken NiMH battery as an acid spill is exactly the wrong thing to do! This is yet another thing the rescue crews must be aware of.
Slashdot Mirror
If the building is properly shielded, then an insider cannot bypass the security by attaching an unencrypted WiFi device. The other important aspect is performance, not security. With a private airspace in a shielded facility, you don't lose bandwidth to traffic on the network next door (nor will they have to wait on your network traffic). You can even establish separate "subnet" airspaces in your building, to keep all the wireless traffic moving when you have a large number of users. All the WiFi hot-spots tie to a router, which direct traffic only to the recipient's zone. There's no need to have every data packet sent to every cubicle in the building.
RF blocking "wall paper" has been around for quite a while. It's one of the more esthetically acceptable methods for "architectural shielding", and is widely used by those who consider their data worth stealing (military, government, high-end financial, etc.). The unique feature of this material is its frequency selectivity. It will block the WiFi network from being intercepted or jammed from an adjacent building, but you still listen to the radio and use a wireless phone.
If that were the case, Google could simply register as "crawler12345@google.com" and enter the front door. It would be more work (they'd need to register upon visiting each new site), but it could be done. The difference to Google is that registration probably requires human intervention (registration scripts often use graphical cues and other bot-rejection tricks).
7. Figure out how you're going to transfer all the data from the old system to the new, how long it will take, and how you will handle the accounting through the transition. Even if you do a gradual, non-big-bang transition your auditor needs to know which of the two systems contains the official records on any given date.
I've survived two corporate MRP system change-outs, and while both were relatively smooth and successful (the customers were served on time), neither was a pleasant experience. These systems seem to last no more than ten years between major disruptive upgrades.
Microwave equipment has little trouble from the antenna itself. The culprits are mostly power cables and antenna feed lines, neither of which is a concern for a laptop running on batteries and using a built-in WiFi antenna. Anything close enough to hurt the laptop poses serious risks to you.
A few extra parameters here, a function call instead of inline code there, not using index registers efficiently anywhere...the next thing you know, it's running slower than Windows. Oh, wait, that was yesterday's topic...
What I want to see is the results from the one of the "other standard tests" the article alludes to: field strength measurements. These can be compared to the known performance of a standard 1/4 wave monopole. That is what will convince me, and is what the FCC requires for broadcast stations.
Efficient short antennas have been made, but they aren't easy. In honor of the current Slashdot poll, see WWVB's antenna. This system attains 65% efficiency at less than 1/40 wavelength.
The point is that the challenge looks impossible when you consider all the problems that know about and the many new ones that will become apparent only when you take on the task. But as you solve each piece of the puzzle, you find things you're doing right and other things you should do in a completely different way. When the last piece falls in place, the challenge is won--and you wonder why you didn't see such an "obvious" solution in the first place.
The Grand Challenge isn't a textbook exercise with a cut-and-dried answer. Each entrant learns from their own small sucesses and failures, as well as those of the competition. It may not be won this year, it may not be won ever. But by taking on the challenge, each entrant helps refine the baoundary of what is possible. That's the beauty of it!
There's an article recapping the Grand Challenge in the latest IEEE Spectrum (sorry, hard-copy only). Among the interesting designs was a vehicle equipped with hydraulic "wings" to right itself if (when) it overturned. Another team found it better to disable their troublesome vision and radar systems, and just target the GPS waypoints.
Experience shows that true emergencies are few and far between. Most problems were seen coming far in advance, but were swept under the rug to save money (or to avoid admitting schedule trouble). The cost and time to fix the festering problem mushrooms, causing new "emergencies" to erupt as resources are "temporarily" diverted to the crisis du jour. Exponential growth at its worst!
If you're working more than 10 hours in any day or more than five days a week, you're likely to be losing more time correcting mistakes than you gain in extra productivity. Mental and physical fatigue will do you in--not the first day, maybe not even in a month--but sooner or later overwork will eat you alive. It's not worth ruining your health and your family to slave over a product that nobody will care about ten years from now.
Your best bet is to do the best work you can, while keeping your eyes open for a (less in)sane employer. When the right opportunity comes, bail out (and don't feel guilty about it--guilt is the abuser's favorite tactic, both in the workplace and in personal life).
(*) For non-US readers, an "exempt" employee is one who is not legally entitled to additional pay for overtime work. Unethical employers commonly abuse this by assigning far more work than can be accomplished in the presumed 40 hour workweek. The really daft ones waste the entire 40 hours on useless meetings and other counter-productive nonsense, so that all the productive work must be done "off the clock"!
IBM's move to linux is noteworthy not only for being an open-source effort, but also for being complete break from the OS/360 lineage. Some day Microsoft may take an equally dramatic change of direction. Who knows when, who knows if--but complacency and prosperity just don't go together in the world of business.
That's true for a series hybrid, but not for a parallel hybrid. Parallel hybrids have higher peak power output. Both the combustion engine and the electric motor deliver power to the wheels, rather than electric motor power only. That means smaller motors for the same performance, making the parallel concept attractive for passenger cars. The Toyota Prius is a parallel hybrid drive, using a continuously variable transmission for the combustion engine drive. .
The "Cantenna" I know was sold by Heathkit. The impedance match at 2.4GHz is poor, and the gain stinks--the signal is about what you'd expect from coax cable leakage. But it can handle 1KW if the duty cycle is reasonable, and it really reduces the likelihood that anybody will intercept your data.
Whether or not you implement a point-and-click login screen, having a monitor facing a window or doorway is an amazingly common security vulnerability. A zoom lens is just as good as a keystroke logger if the screen is in sight.
I notice that patent 5,506,981 refers to "accelerator boards" in the claims. A well-prepared patent has claims worded as broadly as possible, so the repeated use of "accelerator boards" in the claims suggests that the claims had to be limited in scope. Often, that's because prior art exists outside those particular claims. All Computers will have to convince the court that a Pentium CPU is the same (under patent law) as a "system board" combined with an "accelerator board", and that their patent filing date (1 Oct 1993) was before Intel's public release of infringing Pentium CPUs.
IANAL. I only second-guess them on Slashdot.
That's the catcher's job. The pitcher reads the signs, nods, scratches, spits, kicks the dirt, and eventually throws the ball. Sometimes the pitcher shakes off the sign, but it's the catcher's job to read the batter and order the right pitch and placement.
Don't forget that the building authority will will be involved. When wiring 30 houses together, the installation will come to their attention. You need a local expert to advise you, based on your area's regulations.
Reading Morse by sound was a creative hack. The equipment was originally designed to print the dots and dashes on paper strips for later decoding, but the operators soon found they could decode in real time using the noise the pen made. So the pen point, ink, and paper tapes were soon dispensed with, and code read from the click-clacking sounder.
Anonymity has a weak link. If you're overdue and the Significant Other tells the ranger that you didn't come back from a hike, the search-and-rescue team needs to find you, not the other 10,000 people wandering around Rocky Mountain National Park that day. Without a link between your name and the ID device, there are too many trails to follow.
Relying on cell phones in the wilderness isn't funny at all. Cell phone coverage in mountainous areas becomes spotty as soon as you lose sight of the main highway. Fall into a ravine, and your chances for getting a call through are poor. That's assuming the phone didn't fall in the river or get smashed on a rock, and that the battery has some charge left. Cell phones in the wilderness provide a false sense of security. As with GPS it's nice to have one, but you must not rely on it. Nature is a tough mother, and when you go into her domain you must be prepared to play by her rules.
In all these cases, you have somebody who passed the waypoints on the way in but has not "checked out". Without a unique identifier tied to the genuinely lost party, you don't know which of the "open accounts" is the one you're looking for. Your scheme has merit for little-used areas, but likely would be overwhelmed in the more popular areas.
A better solution, imo, is the traditional sign-in/sign-out sheet at the trail head. You can say where you're going, when you expect to return, and what route you'll be taking (especially if you're going back a different way).
If one little mom-and-pop company tells them to take a hike, they write you off as a nut case and won't bug you no more. If two companies tell them to go pound sand--in harmony--they'll think you're subsidiaries and avoid the both of you. And if three companies--just three companies like IBM, GM, and WalMart--tell them "Call me again and we'll see you in court", they'll think its a movement. And that's what it is... (with apologies to Arlo Guthrie).
The system stores 24 KWHr, using two 120V strings of 100 A-Hr valve-regulated lead acid batteries.
If you limit the discharge to 50% (12 KWHr), the battery should deliver about 1000 charge-discharge cycles before replacement. (You'd get about 300 cycles at 100% discharge using a 12 KWHr battery, so the larger battery is less costly in the long run).
Thus total energy over battery life is 12000 KWHr.
The battery cost is about $100 for each 12V 100 Ahr "block" (retail cost, new batteries). Replacing the string will cost $2000.
The recurring cost for batteries alone is $2000/12000 KWHr = $0.167/KWHr, at 100% inverter efficiency. At 95% inverter efficiency (high, but achievable) it's $0.175/KWHr.
Thus, even if the solar panels, inverters, etc. were free and lasted forever, the cost of storing the power for later reuse is likely to exceed the cost of power from a public utility. That's why a utility-interactive system (where you sell surplus power back to PG&E, or whoever) makes for a more affordable system.
The key is that traditional plant patents require the asexual reproduction, such as by grafting. Reproduction from seeds doesn't meet this test. Likewise, a plant found growing in an "uncultivated" (natural) state isn't eligible. Patents for roses of many colors growing on the same plant are legitimate under this standard. It's the patenting of existing species that is so annoying...unless they name "God" as the inventor.
NiMH batteries use potassium hydroxide (alkalai) electrolyte, not sulphuric acid. Treating a broken NiMH battery as an acid spill is exactly the wrong thing to do! This is yet another thing the rescue crews must be aware of.