Running excessive current through a thin wire isn't too clever an idea. Put some wire wool between the terminals of a car battery if you want a nice demonstration. In a dorm this might apply if many kettles are run off the same ring main and a circuit breaker fails.
Note, I did say "some situations". 250V is much worse (due to increased spark risk) if you have lots of volatile petrochemicals around (for example..)
While they have to provide the source to the kernel if they are including it in hardware they are selling there is no compulsion to release their drivers - just like nVidia, they could quite easily provide a kernel module that is a wrapper around a binary. I think they might have to release the source code to the wrapper module, but they don't even have to release the binary file it uses at all (other than in the devices they supply). The kernel would report that it was tainted (P), but who will ever go running lsmod on a DVD player?
Having said that, I hope someone nails them for the infringements they are guilty of.
Dammit, I leave my screen unattended for a couple of minutes and get baggy pantsed.:-) It's the first time (and I hope the last) - though while the moderation is fair enough it could just as easily have been +1, funny if the moderators knew their jargon file...
What if the machine "trusted" the first subnet it ever appeared on, and required confirmation to trust all subsequent subnets it discovers? That way it's almost certain to do the right thing when you unpack it at home (or work, whatever) and will be less vulnerable to being attacked in Starbucks. After all, surely no-one boots up for the first time in a coffee shop?
I thought this at first, but then realised that he probably only wants to sell it so as to buy something else to mod.. Recognise the signs of addiction, people!:-)
Extra layers of protection aren't necessarily a good thing in crypto: I think it's best to have one very simple but very secure layer of protection. The more complicated a system gets, the harder it is to be confident that the algorithm or the implementation is secure.
"Old" in cryptography is generally good. It takes time for crypto systems to prove themselves in the wild (regardless of how wonderful they might be in practice). Witness the continued popularity of 3DES. I'd much rather use a well-understood 30-year-old algorithm than some young upstart algorithm that may well still have vulnerabilities.
Specifically, because the article claims the device runs off standard AA batteries and compares averagely with other headsets: lifetime 2-3 hours. Therefore its power consumption is similar and, given the efficiency of most electronic gadgets is much of a muchness, at least to an order of magnitude, the EM power it's putting out is roughly similar, and hence the field strength is roughly similar[0]. There is certainly nothing in the article that suggests it's anything out of the ordinary in EM power output density.
[0] Strictly, if you want to compare E-fields with B-fields chuck in a factor of \epsilon\sub{0}/\mu\sub{0}. But that just helps the "harmless" side of the argument; thefactor represents that magnetism is a second-order (dipole) effect in the first place, and its interactions are correspondingly weaker (than electrical interactions).
fermion, I think that may be because you haven't wsted your time learning to interpret shitty management diagrams. To those who have (PHBs) these are probably very understandable.... Good to know our top business minds can be so easily pleased, eh?
I can provide you and all your colleagues with such a seminar, at the very reasonable rate of 500($750) per day, plus expenses. I anticipate you will need to hire me for 3 days.
What, you mean Darl's head poorly cut-n-pasted onto the goatse image? Not on my desktop, mate:-)
It's good, but I prefer my current desktop, even though it is shamelessly hacked together from a gentoo desktop.
No... you're much better off wearing them as rings, to get eternal life. The scientific basis for that is about as great as it is for worrying about the effect of this strength of magnetic field. In case you hadn't noticed there are natural magnetic fields passing over, around and through you every second of your life, often considerably stronger than your typical consumer field-strength.
Er, if the Brits are off the internet then you're not going to be able to read AC even in the original Welsh. As far as I know (living 12 miles from the border) Wales is still a part of Britain (despite the best-laid plans of the English to cut it loose and float it off into the Irish Sea;-P)
So if google is drowning in crap, what search engines do the slashdot crowd prefer? I could use an engine that doesn't produce reams of mailing-list archives or spam redirectors...
it would be interesting to see what would happen if the straight party ticket block was eliminated and it was against the law to print party affiliations on the ballot itself.
Amen, brother! I've been saying for years that the entire "political party" notion is evil and should go. Once you have political parties you get corruption, pretty much universally. Politicians should all be forced to stand independently, and explain all their policies to the voters rather than just being lazy and saying "I'm a Tory" or "I'm Labour" (or Republican and Democrat or whatever) - a choice between only two or three parties means quite often a politically-convenient-but-actually-evil consensus arises and there is no-one to vote for who disagrees with it, with the possible exception of single-issue candidates who I wouldn't generally trust on anything but their single issue. While removing the political party doesn't prevent that automatically it does mean that politicians would be freer to vote as they see fit on each issue independently, without a party line to follow.
There is the old gag about American voting: "The same people get in every time, you just have two ways of voting for them." The same probably applies in the UK and elsewhere too - but without political parties each candidate would have to stand or fall on their own merits.
Lobbying would be harder, as interest groups couldn't just lobby a couple of centralized organisations - this would be an excellent thing, helping to reduce the stranglehold of a few small groups on our political landscape.
I could go on all day, but this post is getting over-long. Maybe I'll put something in my journal later.
Damn, I think that's the funniest anecdote I've ever read on slashdot - lucky I wasn't drinking coffee at the time or I'd be shopping for a new keyboard about now:-)
I agree. Surely the way forward is to have some kind of default feel (say the standard gnome UI) with an option in the Configurator called "Reveal Advanced Settings" or something. When you click it, as well as all the simple options you get all the complex ones plus the ability to implement more radical theming to suit your needs. The simple users get to keep a simple environment by default but anyone who needs to fiddle under the hood a bit more has the option to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Running excessive current through a thin wire isn't too clever an idea. Put some wire wool between the terminals of a car battery if you want a nice demonstration. In a dorm this might apply if many kettles are run off the same ring main and a circuit breaker fails.
Note, I did say "some situations". 250V is much worse (due to increased spark risk) if you have lots of volatile petrochemicals around (for example..)
While they have to provide the source to the kernel if they are including it in hardware they are selling there is no compulsion to release their drivers - just like nVidia, they could quite easily provide a kernel module that is a wrapper around a binary. I think they might have to release the source code to the wrapper module, but they don't even have to release the binary file it uses at all (other than in the devices they supply). The kernel would report that it was tainted (P), but who will ever go running lsmod on a DVD player?
Having said that, I hope someone nails them for the infringements they are guilty of.
thinner wire
Also potentially lower risk of fire in various situations.
Sounds like another good reason to use 250VAC to me. More power for your amp.
Dammit, I leave my screen unattended for a couple of minutes and get baggy pantsed. :-) It's the first time (and I hope the last) - though while the moderation is fair enough it could just as easily have been +1, funny if the moderators knew their jargon file...
What if the machine "trusted" the first subnet it ever appeared on, and required confirmation to trust all subsequent subnets it discovers?
That way it's almost certain to do the right thing when you unpack it at home (or work, whatever) and will be less vulnerable to being attacked in Starbucks. After all, surely no-one boots up for the first time in a coffee shop?
Tihs is a public service announcement.Adrian has incredibly baggy pants. Really - they're like tents!
What, with proper (open, if it's in X) 3D support? I'm quite impressed, maybe it's approaching time to ditch my nVidia after all.
Ouch.
Now maybe we can finally replace X with a modern graphical user interface!
I thought this at first, but then realised that he probably only wants to sell it so as to buy something else to mod.. Recognise the signs of addiction, people! :-)
Extra layers of protection aren't necessarily a good thing in crypto: I think it's best to have one very simple but very secure layer of protection. The more complicated a system gets, the harder it is to be confident that the algorithm or the implementation is secure.
"Old" in cryptography is generally good. It takes time for crypto systems to prove themselves in the wild (regardless of how wonderful they might be in practice). Witness the continued popularity of 3DES. I'd much rather use a well-understood 30-year-old algorithm than some young upstart algorithm that may well still have vulnerabilities.
Specifically, because the article claims the device runs off standard AA batteries and compares averagely with other headsets: lifetime 2-3 hours. Therefore its power consumption is similar and, given the efficiency of most electronic gadgets is much of a muchness, at least to an order of magnitude, the EM power it's putting out is roughly similar, and hence the field strength is roughly similar[0]. There is certainly nothing in the article that suggests it's anything out of the ordinary in EM power output density.
[0] Strictly, if you want to compare E-fields with B-fields chuck in a factor of \epsilon\sub{0}/\mu\sub{0}. But that just helps the "harmless" side of the argument; thefactor represents that magnetism is a second-order (dipole) effect in the first place, and its interactions are correspondingly weaker (than electrical interactions).
fermion, I think that may be because you haven't wsted your time learning to interpret shitty management diagrams. To those who have (PHBs) these are probably very understandable.... Good to know our top business minds can be so easily pleased, eh?
Ah, only now do we see Microsoft's no-expense-spared booby-traps in IE come out to bite us :-)
I can provide you and all your colleagues with such a seminar, at the very reasonable rate of 500($750) per day, plus expenses. I anticipate you will need to hire me for 3 days.
What, you mean Darl's head poorly cut-n-pasted onto the goatse image? Not on my desktop, mate :-)
It's good, but I prefer my current desktop, even though it is shamelessly hacked together from a gentoo desktop.
No... you're much better off wearing them as rings, to get eternal life.
The scientific basis for that is about as great as it is for worrying about the effect of this strength of magnetic field. In case you hadn't noticed there are natural magnetic fields passing over, around and through you every second of your life, often considerably stronger than your typical consumer field-strength.
Er, if the Brits are off the internet then you're not going to be able to read AC even in the original Welsh. As far as I know (living 12 miles from the border) Wales is still a part of Britain (despite the best-laid plans of the English to cut it loose and float it off into the Irish Sea ;-P)
So if google is drowning in crap, what search engines do the slashdot crowd prefer? I could use an engine that doesn't produce reams of mailing-list archives or spam redirectors...
it would be interesting to see what would happen if the straight party ticket block was eliminated and it was against the law to print party affiliations on the ballot itself.
Amen, brother! I've been saying for years that the entire "political party" notion is evil and should go. Once you have political parties you get corruption, pretty much universally. Politicians should all be forced to stand independently, and explain all their policies to the voters rather than just being lazy and saying "I'm a Tory" or "I'm Labour" (or Republican and Democrat or whatever) - a choice between only two or three parties means quite often a politically-convenient-but-actually-evil consensus arises and there is no-one to vote for who disagrees with it, with the possible exception of single-issue candidates who I wouldn't generally trust on anything but their single issue.
While removing the political party doesn't prevent that automatically it does mean that politicians would be freer to vote as they see fit on each issue independently, without a party line to follow.
There is the old gag about American voting: "The same people get in every time, you just have two ways of voting for them." The same probably applies in the UK and elsewhere too - but without political parties each candidate would have to stand or fall on their own merits.
Lobbying would be harder, as interest groups couldn't just lobby a couple of centralized organisations - this would be an excellent thing, helping to reduce the stranglehold of a few small groups on our political landscape.
I could go on all day, but this post is getting over-long. Maybe I'll put something in my journal later.
Lisa: "OK, Aaron A. Aaronson voted for...Bob. Aaron L. Aaronson voted for...Bob. Arthur B. Ablabab voted for...Bob."
some time later...
Bart: "Oh my God...the dead have risen and they're voting Republican."
Damn, I think that's the funniest anecdote I've ever read on slashdot - lucky I wasn't drinking coffee at the time or I'd be shopping for a new keyboard about now :-)
I agree. Surely the way forward is to have some kind of default feel (say the standard gnome UI) with an option in the Configurator called "Reveal Advanced Settings" or something. When you click it, as well as all the simple options you get all the complex ones plus the ability to implement more radical theming to suit your needs. The simple users get to keep a simple environment by default but anyone who needs to fiddle under the hood a bit more has the option to do so.