Agreed. Actually, I blame Hollywood, for making "viruses" a sexy thing to write, and capable of doing insanely-great things to either attack the protagonists or to attack the villan (e.g. Star Trek is very bad at writing inconcievable "nanoprobe viruses" that do really wierd things to aliens or their ship's systems).
It's the same with drugs, guns, sex and even rock-and-roll, though the last seems to be backfiring, at least from the RIAA, ARIA, MPAA viewpoint.
I also blame Hollywood for the mis-use of "hacker", although many crackers are still doing it. Then again, this is a BBC article, so what can one expect?
I was asked to corroborate records found in an IE disc cache on a suspect's PC against logs in our system, but could not. Probably suspect's date or time are wrong, as I did later find records from same IP address. But these were useless.
Oh well, we had enough other details to get them, as the crim was pretty dumb and transferred money in identical amounts from different accounts into his own account.
Anyway, I am sure the "different formats" of the alternative browsers that are OpenSource can be pretty easily reverse-engineered, and those that aren't OpenSource would co-operate with police if asked. The article seems to be a shill: if it's not Microsoft, then it's helping criminals.
Sorry, shouldn't reply to my own post I know, but I just re-read this and thought "Duh!"
Focal length
I think that because the images are on both on a big screen which is fairly far away, and you also have no trouble driving without the need for corrective lenses, then you will be fine, since it seems the difference in focus for your eyes is only going to be an issue for something close to them (as in, something you are holding like a 3D commic). In the IMAX theater, some things can appear close, but they are still focused at the screen by the projectors, so it should be fine.
Anyway, your eyes each get their own image, so it's not like you need to do anything unusual to see like a random-dot stereogramme.
I have a sister with the same problems, but she has no trouble with the 3D IMAX movies as screened here in Sydney, so maybe you'll be in luck.
The Sydney IMAX theater uses special glasses that are a combination of Polaroid filters and high-speed shutters. I'll try to explain my simplistic understanding of them in the next few paras to convince you why I think it'll work for you, but do have a go in your city anyway! If it works, it's way-out, and if it doesn't, I've got a trick that will let you enjoy it in 2D anyway.
In the Sydney theatre (which I assume is pretty much the same elsewhere), the glasses have polarised lenses, each off-set 90 degrees to the other. The theater's twin projectors send their images to the screen through polarised filters with the same offsets.
(My Optics theory is a bit rusty to figure out the relationship here, but basically, the left-eye projector's image is polarised so it can be seen clearly through the left-eye lense of the glasses, and not clearly through the right-eye. And vice-versa of course).
This means you get full-colour stereo 3D.
I wear specs and the glasses fit comfortably over these (the theater glasses are more like some high-tech VR headset really).
Polarised lenses aren't perfect of course, since some of the wrong image will get through. To minimise this cross-talk in your brain, the glasses are also covered with an LCD film that is switched to clear/opaque in sync with the projectors. A radio signal is sent from the top of the theater and picked up by the audince's glasses to maintain sync. Because cross-talk is eliminated in this way, I believe this should cancel out any processing difficulty your optic system seems have had with the old red/blue trick.
Anyway, it's worth a try, because here's my 2D trick: The theater technicians advise you to try closing one eye if you feel sick during the movie. But keeping one eye closed for a long time is difficult. So, take an eye-patch with you (or a handkerchief or something) to cover your eye underneath the glasses. This way, you'll still be able to enjoy the movie in 2D through your open eye. But don't take the glasses off. If you take the glasses off, everything looks blurred because your naked eyes will see both images.
Not all CD's are DRM-free -- look at EMI. In fact Phillips nearly sued because they "broke" their CDs to impliment, so they aren't really CDs anymore (and I have an EMI CD which will not play in my car).
I am not sure what to do to protest (beyond what seems to be happening already -- consumers aren't buying today's crap, and RIAA/ARIA/MPAA etc are just blaming it on the Net anyway). I am considering what would happen if lots of fans started writing directly to their favourite artists and asking them these questions:
* why do you have this deal with your distributor EMI? I can't play your music, so I will not buy from them, even though I love your group.
* why don't you consider putting sample tracks on your web site? For that matter, why don't you deal directly with Apple, or start your own pay-per-download site for your songs? I'm sure heaps of fans like me will buy them, and you could get a much larger cut per track than Warner Bros is giving you
Of course, there are costs to running a web site also. But I wonder if what may happen eventually is a return to music guilds, where a guild runs the site, member groups contribute content and all proffit goes to the members. It would probably be a good business to start, atracting new groups like the "Idol" TV shows do now. Shame I have hopeless business sense though.
I find code-signing to be almost useless. The only real value it has is that it tells me that the code I have is not corrupted or switched for something else.
Once you get into the whole "web of trust" mess it really becomes a case of diminishing returns. But it's one of those "check-box" security "features" that PHBs insist upon. Maybe there is where the percieved "value" is...
Next para is sorta OT...
My favourite rant about message signing is that stupids are using externally-verified SSL in internal links (!). That is, we are using external-signed SSL for links between our app servers and our database! Huh? Appart from shelling out a lot of wasted money to VeriSign, what does this get you? So your DB is certian that the transaction request came from your app server, yes. But why external signatures? It beets me too, but there you go: it was on some PHB's check-list...
You may be interested in the Apostrophe Protection Society. But really, who cares about English? It's such a mongrel language. Then again, it's great fun playing with its faults...;-)
It is an interesting question, "how did it get there?". I feel confident that I could not be framed convincingly, merely by somebody placing contraband on my PC and making it look like I did it, because if the judge/jury don't ask this question, my defence lawyer would. I fail to see how I could be convicted unless there were additional evidence (such as a trail showing how I got the file, or money transfers showing my purchase, or survailance showing me collecting CD's of kiddie porn from some supplier who they are staking out).
Do you have documented cases where someone was convicted solely on the evidence of files found on a computer? Show Us! This would definately have me worried. But I doubt there could ever be a case.
In order for a forensic investigator to even begin searching your computer, they have to have a good cause to sieze it. They won't get a good cause without other evidence that suggests you might have something to hide there.
Even if Mr.Enemy places such evidence on your PC (using info like in this book to make it look convincing) and then goes to the police claiming your are harbouring kiddie porn and he's worried you might be a distributor, they are going to ask how he knows (he saw it / you showed him it on your computer) and if you then say "but Mr.Enemy framed me" it becomes a he-said/she-said and they are going to need more evidence to convict. They won't neglect the posibility that Mr.Enemy placed it there, especially if Mr.Enemy had the access needed (long hours alone with your PC).
It's easy to be paranoid, but I really feel forensics like this to be much more helpful in leading to evidence that can convict, rather than to being the basis of a conviction itself. And for that I am grateful it's there as a tool.
I will be testifying in a court as an expert witness for a financial company, so I think I can answer this concern with a little bit of authority, though I'm not a law expert.
Generally, I don't see how this would happen -- can you imagine convinsing a jury to convict beyond reasonable doubt based on this evidence alone?
My statement explaining multiple audit trails across three systems is much simpler than filesystem forensics, and it still runs to more than 3 pages of simplified, detailed, step-by-step stuff, took me 3 re-writes with assistance from the feds to make it so a 70-year-old judge could understand it. So proving and then explaining the forensics is going to be much harder.
There's no way you could cook the books to frame someone, unless you had other evidence. Definately not like "CSI". But this filesystem forensic evidence would definately be used (and usefull) to corroborate your other evidence.
We bring people to court based on people's analysis of systems and software all the time, especially for electronic banking fraud. The key to good evidence is demonstrating that it is real, and not cooked-up to suit the plaintif.
? How is this better than a 2 sec timeout? One still has to hit a key (in these cases, the right key) within a timeframe to avoid loading the default, or wait for 2 secs...
Oh, I see. You want no-wait for unattended boot? Or shorter waits for attended reboots to the default OS?:-)
Does reboot time matter that much? I suppose it does for Windows users, but even then, 2 seconds is too much? Or 1 second? How about 0 seconds and rely on the keyboard controller's type-ahead buffer? (not sure if that is cleared by the boot loader though, so maybe not...)
The machine in my house is shared with pro-Windows people, so GRUB defaults to Win with a 5 sec timeout, which works out fine because from a cold start, by the time POST is completed and the screen's tube has warmed up (yeah, I'll get a panel one day...) the timer's down to about 2 secs remaining.
I would like to see more web sites adopt meta-data labelling standards and their presence be a factor in the ranking of the page. If more sensible pages had been indexed, Library-Of-Congress style (or whichever standard is adopted) then we would get many more relevant hits.
We would also get many people hacking the index by putting popular but irelevant meta-data into their pages... I haven't figured this one out yet. Perhaps if the meta-data is combined with some sort of AI that can read the page and judge if the tags are for-real, or just to seed the search engine... no this is far-out-future inovation stuff.
They should legislate against these parasite companies that on-sell your personal contact data to other companies. How dare the magazine company I (used to) subscribe to sell my details to a company pushing drugs? I didn't authorise it, I'm not interested. How many other companies have my details been sold to and how much money did the magazine proffit from this activity? I want a slice of it to pay for my time in cleaning up the SPAM I've recieved (both electronic and snail-spam, which is worse because it fills my letter box and lets local burgalars know when I'm not at home -- therefore it has arguably had an impact on my insurance premiums too...)
I say, go NZ, and I hope more countries follow suit!
Yick!
Thank goodness Patents weren't passed in Europe (yet) -- just imagine: you wouldn't be able to put your couch/sofa in front of your TV because that idea has been Patented by the Netherland Interior Designer's Guild....
COM is a watered-down hack of CORBA without the distributed-ness (which I think DCOM adds), and is not so bad, since at least it isn't so heavy-weight as an entire ORB stack. I think COM/DCOM are actually pretty good tech, which is why you see it copiedd into *nix now (KDE's KOM/KDOM).
What makes shared objects on Unix somehow better?
Versioning, for one. There is no "DLL hell" with shared objects: "oops, I've installed Winblows Xterminator SP7 and it replaced GOBSMAK.DLL with a new version, so now BackOrifice won't start..." does not happen in *nix.
Unix being around longer doesn't mean much either, I agree, though I think the assumption is that this somehow makes it "more stable" -- I don't think that's true. It means there was more time to experiment and find out what works well, is all.
But that won't stop Business looking for both... rather like Alchemists and the Philosopher's Stone. Maybe, one day, Corporate CTO's will go the same way as the Alchemists, hopefully by blowing themselves up... one can but hope.
Hmm, I agree with the sentiments of this, but any comment that the stability of OS X depends on fewer hardware vaguaries with Apple hardware seems to me to be a little shallow. After all, Linux is miles more stable on off-the-shelf hardware than Windows on the same hardware. I would assert therefore that a lot of the OS X stability would stem from better software development practices (or results at least) from Apple and the GNU/OSS gang than what comes out of Redmond.
However the average Joe doesn't see that, I agree. And probably it would be difficult to argue to Joe that his reasoning "The only difference between this PC running OS X that breaks, and this other PC running Windows that doesn't break, is OS X, therefore it must be OS X" is flawed. The OS X is really breaking because it was pirated and then cracked to run on the PC, but that is too fine a point.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Actually, I blame Hollywood, for making "viruses" a sexy thing to write, and capable of doing insanely-great things to either attack the protagonists or to attack the villan (e.g. Star Trek is very bad at writing inconcievable "nanoprobe viruses" that do really wierd things to aliens or their ship's systems).
It's the same with drugs, guns, sex and even rock-and-roll, though the last seems to be backfiring, at least from the RIAA, ARIA, MPAA viewpoint.
I also blame Hollywood for the mis-use of "hacker", although many crackers are still doing it. Then again, this is a BBC article, so what can one expect?
I agree (I'm about to be a parent too).
I have no tollerance for "zero tollerance". Of any sort.
Seriously,
I was asked to corroborate records found in an IE disc cache on a suspect's PC against logs in our system, but could not. Probably suspect's date or time are wrong, as I did later find records from same IP address. But these were useless.
Oh well, we had enough other details to get them, as the crim was pretty dumb and transferred money in identical amounts from different accounts into his own account.
Anyway, I am sure the "different formats" of the alternative browsers that are OpenSource can be pretty easily reverse-engineered, and those that aren't OpenSource would co-operate with police if asked. The article seems to be a shill: if it's not Microsoft, then it's helping criminals.
Sorry, shouldn't reply to my own post I know, but I just re-read this and thought "Duh!"
Focal length
I think that because the images are on both on a big screen which is fairly far away, and you also have no trouble driving without the need for corrective lenses, then you will be fine, since it seems the difference in focus for your eyes is only going to be an issue for something close to them (as in, something you are holding like a 3D commic). In the IMAX theater, some things can appear close, but they are still focused at the screen by the projectors, so it should be fine.
Anyway, your eyes each get their own image, so it's not like you need to do anything unusual to see like a random-dot stereogramme.
I have a sister with the same problems, but she has no trouble with the 3D IMAX movies as screened here in Sydney, so maybe you'll be in luck.
The Sydney IMAX theater uses special glasses that are a combination of Polaroid filters and high-speed shutters. I'll try to explain my simplistic understanding of them in the next few paras to convince you why I think it'll work for you, but do have a go in your city anyway! If it works, it's way-out, and if it doesn't, I've got a trick that will let you enjoy it in 2D anyway.
In the Sydney theatre (which I assume is pretty much the same elsewhere), the glasses have polarised lenses, each off-set 90 degrees to the other. The theater's twin projectors send their images to the screen through polarised filters with the same offsets.
(My Optics theory is a bit rusty to figure out the relationship here, but basically, the left-eye projector's image is polarised so it can be seen clearly through the left-eye lense of the glasses, and not clearly through the right-eye. And vice-versa of course).
This means you get full-colour stereo 3D.
I wear specs and the glasses fit comfortably over these (the theater glasses are more like some high-tech VR headset really).
Polarised lenses aren't perfect of course, since some of the wrong image will get through. To minimise this cross-talk in your brain, the glasses are also covered with an LCD film that is switched to clear/opaque in sync with the projectors. A radio signal is sent from the top of the theater and picked up by the audince's glasses to maintain sync. Because cross-talk is eliminated in this way, I believe this should cancel out any processing difficulty your optic system seems have had with the old red/blue trick.
Anyway, it's worth a try, because here's my 2D trick: The theater technicians advise you to try closing one eye if you feel sick during the movie. But keeping one eye closed for a long time is difficult. So, take an eye-patch with you (or a handkerchief or something) to cover your eye underneath the glasses. This way, you'll still be able to enjoy the movie in 2D through your open eye. But don't take the glasses off. If you take the glasses off, everything looks blurred because your naked eyes will see both images.
Good luck!
Not all CD's are DRM-free -- look at EMI. In fact Phillips nearly sued because they "broke" their CDs to impliment, so they aren't really CDs anymore (and I have an EMI CD which will not play in my car).
I am not sure what to do to protest (beyond what seems to be happening already -- consumers aren't buying today's crap, and RIAA/ARIA/MPAA etc are just blaming it on the Net anyway). I am considering what would happen if lots of fans started writing directly to their favourite artists and asking them these questions:
* why do you have this deal with your distributor EMI? I can't play your music, so I will not buy from them, even though I love your group.
* why don't you consider putting sample tracks on your web site? For that matter, why don't you deal directly with Apple, or start your own pay-per-download site for your songs? I'm sure heaps of fans like me will buy them, and you could get a much larger cut per track than Warner Bros is giving you
Of course, there are costs to running a web site also. But I wonder if what may happen eventually is a return to music guilds, where a guild runs the site, member groups contribute content and all proffit goes to the members. It would probably be a good business to start, atracting new groups like the "Idol" TV shows do now. Shame I have hopeless business sense though.
I find code-signing to be almost useless. The only real value it has is that it tells me that the code I have is not corrupted or switched for something else.
Once you get into the whole "web of trust" mess it really becomes a case of diminishing returns. But it's one of those "check-box" security "features" that PHBs insist upon. Maybe there is where the percieved "value" is...
Next para is sorta OT...
My favourite rant about message signing is that stupids are using externally-verified SSL in internal links (!). That is, we are using external-signed SSL for links between our app servers and our database! Huh? Appart from shelling out a lot of wasted money to VeriSign, what does this get you? So your DB is certian that the transaction request came from your app server, yes. But why external signatures? It beets me too, but there you go: it was on some PHB's check-list...
hell, yeah! With one of those boards from Pirate Planet. I have so got to rig a sim together somehow...
yes, using a space probe....
Defeated in battle and buried under a mountain. Talk about a serious bitch-fight! That'd definately make Enceladus hot under her collar...
You may be interested in the Apostrophe Protection Society. But really, who cares about English? It's such a mongrel language. Then again, it's great fun playing with its faults... ;-)
It is an interesting question, "how did it get there?". I feel confident that I could not be framed convincingly, merely by somebody placing contraband on my PC and making it look like I did it, because if the judge/jury don't ask this question, my defence lawyer would. I fail to see how I could be convicted unless there were additional evidence (such as a trail showing how I got the file, or money transfers showing my purchase, or survailance showing me collecting CD's of kiddie porn from some supplier who they are staking out).
Do you have documented cases where someone was convicted solely on the evidence of files found on a computer? Show Us! This would definately have me worried. But I doubt there could ever be a case.
In order for a forensic investigator to even begin searching your computer, they have to have a good cause to sieze it. They won't get a good cause without other evidence that suggests you might have something to hide there.
Even if Mr.Enemy places such evidence on your PC (using info like in this book to make it look convincing) and then goes to the police claiming your are harbouring kiddie porn and he's worried you might be a distributor, they are going to ask how he knows (he saw it / you showed him it on your computer) and if you then say "but Mr.Enemy framed me" it becomes a he-said/she-said and they are going to need more evidence to convict. They won't neglect the posibility that Mr.Enemy placed it there, especially if Mr.Enemy had the access needed (long hours alone with your PC).
It's easy to be paranoid, but I really feel forensics like this to be much more helpful in leading to evidence that can convict, rather than to being the basis of a conviction itself. And for that I am grateful it's there as a tool.
you could probably start with this one reviewed, taken in that light it would definately be an exciting read...!
I will be testifying in a court as an expert witness for a financial company, so I think I can answer this concern with a little bit of authority, though I'm not a law expert.
Generally, I don't see how this would happen -- can you imagine convinsing a jury to convict beyond reasonable doubt based on this evidence alone?
My statement explaining multiple audit trails across three systems is much simpler than filesystem forensics, and it still runs to more than 3 pages of simplified, detailed, step-by-step stuff, took me 3 re-writes with assistance from the feds to make it so a 70-year-old judge could understand it. So proving and then explaining the forensics is going to be much harder.
There's no way you could cook the books to frame someone, unless you had other evidence. Definately not like "CSI". But this filesystem forensic evidence would definately be used (and usefull) to corroborate your other evidence.
We bring people to court based on people's analysis of systems and software all the time, especially for electronic banking fraud. The key to good evidence is demonstrating that it is real, and not cooked-up to suit the plaintif.
I am becomming increasingly aware that patents are supposed to be non-obvious to the USPTO... hmmm, makes more sense to me that way.
Yup!
Then I guessed (correctly) who the poster might be.
Somebody shoot Zonk for me, please?
? How is this better than a 2 sec timeout? One still has to hit a key (in these cases, the right key) within a timeframe to avoid loading the default, or wait for 2 secs...
:-)
Oh, I see. You want no-wait for unattended boot? Or shorter waits for attended reboots to the default OS?
Does reboot time matter that much? I suppose it does for Windows users, but even then, 2 seconds is too much? Or 1 second? How about 0 seconds and rely on the keyboard controller's type-ahead buffer? (not sure if that is cleared by the boot loader though, so maybe not...)
The machine in my house is shared with pro-Windows people, so GRUB defaults to Win with a 5 sec timeout, which works out fine because from a cold start, by the time POST is completed and the screen's tube has warmed up (yeah, I'll get a panel one day...) the timer's down to about 2 secs remaining.
I am curious how this could work without a timeout? What do you mean? Seriously, not trying to flame, just confused...
No, don't explain it like that -- reportes will get confused, so, um, the next news headline reads -- "Number of apples in barrel is in decline"...
I would like to see more web sites adopt meta-data labelling standards and their presence be a factor in the ranking of the page. If more sensible pages had been indexed, Library-Of-Congress style (or whichever standard is adopted) then we would get many more relevant hits.
We would also get many people hacking the index by putting popular but irelevant meta-data into their pages... I haven't figured this one out yet. Perhaps if the meta-data is combined with some sort of AI that can read the page and judge if the tags are for-real, or just to seed the search engine... no this is far-out-future inovation stuff.
They should legislate against these parasite companies that on-sell your personal contact data to other companies. How dare the magazine company I (used to) subscribe to sell my details to a company pushing drugs? I didn't authorise it, I'm not interested. How many other companies have my details been sold to and how much money did the magazine proffit from this activity? I want a slice of it to pay for my time in cleaning up the SPAM I've recieved (both electronic and snail-spam, which is worse because it fills my letter box and lets local burgalars know when I'm not at home -- therefore it has arguably had an impact on my insurance premiums too...)
I say, go NZ, and I hope more countries follow suit!
Yick! Thank goodness Patents weren't passed in Europe (yet) -- just imagine: you wouldn't be able to put your couch/sofa in front of your TV because that idea has been Patented by the Netherland Interior Designer's Guild....
Versioning, for one. There is no "DLL hell" with shared objects: "oops, I've installed Winblows Xterminator SP7 and it replaced GOBSMAK.DLL with a new version, so now BackOrifice won't start..." does not happen in *nix.
Unix being around longer doesn't mean much either, I agree, though I think the assumption is that this somehow makes it "more stable" -- I don't think that's true. It means there was more time to experiment and find out what works well, is all.
TANSTAAFL
TANSTAASB (silver bullet)
But that won't stop Business looking for both... rather like Alchemists and the Philosopher's Stone. Maybe, one day, Corporate CTO's will go the same way as the Alchemists, hopefully by blowing themselves up... one can but hope.
However the average Joe doesn't see that, I agree. And probably it would be difficult to argue to Joe that his reasoning "The only difference between this PC running OS X that breaks, and this other PC running Windows that doesn't break, is OS X, therefore it must be OS X" is flawed. The OS X is really breaking because it was pirated and then cracked to run on the PC, but that is too fine a point.