The STK500 is massive overkill for most people nowadays, ESPECIALLY beginners.
It does very little that an Arduino or Boarduino can't do... The trick, if you want to skip the Arduino IDE (Learning with all of those abstraction layers is unhealthy for you in the long run IMO), is to buy an ISP programmer since nearly every Arduino-compatible board I've seen has a 6-pin ISP header.
An Adafruit Boarduino ($20) plus an Adafruit USBTinyISP ($23-25 or so I think) is more than most experimenters need.
Here's how I see it going: 1) First ISP finally "Takes the plunge" and puts their money where their mouth is and blocks Google until they pay 2) ISP's tech support is flooded in angry calls from customers, many of whom leave for any alternative possible (sadly, many in the USA don't have alternatives) 3) ISP returns access to YouTube to their now smaller customer base 4) Other ISPs look at what happend to ISP 1 and forget about this idiotic idea
Neither will most firewalling solutions, since they'll have physical access to the firewalls.
Doesn't HAVE to be a locked room, as an earlier poster said, corner of the living room would work. You don't need to prevent access outside of those hours, you just have to have a way to know about access outside of those hours. (Such as the classic "lights out" enforcement...)
Preventing access to the machines isn't nearly as important as preventing UNSUPERVISED access. Placing the machines in a place you spend a decent amount of time prevents the latter but not the former.
Hams have turned "operating off the grid" into a nationwide contest, that serves multiple purposes: 1) Fun 2) A contest 3) Practicing offgrid operation and rapid deployment of antennas/gear
Ham emergency response organizations have standardized power connections to a greater degree than industry (Anderson PowerPoles rock!)
I wasn't involved in it myself, but I believe the Cornell Amateur Radio Club (and/or one of the other local ham organizations) received a commendation from the local emergency services when a nasty ice storm in the mid-90s took out the cellular system's infrastructure for a few days. Local hams filled in the hole left when the cell network collapsed under all the ice.
(This is hearsay by the way, and based on a story I heard years ago, so I could be wrong.)
N2YPH
Also, the summary makes a comment about removing the morse code requirement - for VHF and above, it's been gone since at least the early to mid 1990s. I've had a Technician class license since middle school. Morse for HF was removed MUCH more recently, but equipment-wise it's a lot easier to get started on VHF, especially nowadays, handheld radios have dropped a LOT in price. You can now get decent Chinese imports (such as Puxing PX-777) for less than $90.
The idea is to enforce encryption. It's for those users who can't be trusted to always use TrueCrypt properly. (Or for companies where 90% of the employees have a clue but you have to treat everyone equally, so the remaining 10% ruin it for everyone else.)
If you stick TrueCrypt on any old drive, it's still possible for a user to accidentally (or intentionally, "I'll never lose my stick!") write unencrypted data to the drive.
Plus they still haven't figured out how to get TrueCrypt to work without admin rights at runtime or installation of a driver, while most of the "hardware flash drive" vendors have figured out how to get their stuff working without any permanent installation or admin rights required.
"It'd help if the spyrus site acknowledge the crack: THIS MODEL IS NOT VULNERABLE or something with an explanation." Um, did you RTFL at all? As of today, exactly what you are asking for is still in Spyrus' front page.
The DT5000 is the replacement for the Kingston "fail sticks", I'm fairly certain Kingston partnered with Spyrus in response to the failstick fiasco.
Does he know exactly when the tower was switched on? (See the South Africa fiasco, where residents were complaining about effects from a tower that was NOT RADIATING because it wasn't yet operational.)
There's also, in the OP's case - did you move in before the tower was built? Or has it always been there? Maybe you're blaming the tower for a problem with your building. Or the mere act of building the tower changed the environment due to the construction work and not the transmitters themselves.
Another possibility, if in close range to a high power facility, is that a partially malfunctioning switching power supply may be emitting a "squeal" just outside of human hearing range. It IS a known fact that sound just outside the human hearing range can cause discomfort, in fact people sell products that take advantage of this fact!
http://www.spyrus.com/ - Right now, about the only people I would trust are IronKey and these guys. IronKey has the benefit of working under Linux though.
If I recall correctly, there were a few classic arcade games that were copy protected by a battery-backed encryption key. Mess with the device the wrong way and the key would be lost.
See, for example, the Kingston DataTraveler BlackBox scenario. It and two drives (one from Verbatim, one from... I forget who...) that used the same crypto chip had FIPS 140-2 validated AES implementations, but they completely screwed up key management. All of the drives apparently used the same AES key...
If new, you would have failed your attempt, regardless of this firmware update. As one of the cost-reduction measures for the Slims (Remember, back in the PS3's early days, far more people bashed it for cost than praised it for Linux), "Other OS" support was never available for Slims in the first place. (Apparently too expensive to update the hypervisor drivers in the firmware.)
HOWEVER: If you're looking for a cheap MythTV frontend, the PS3 actually does a better job for playback with its built-in firmware than MythTV on PS3 Linux did (thanks to not being hardware-crippled like it always was for "Other OS" options.) Any recent MythTV backend will export recordings using UPnP, and the PS3 firmware does a better job (video quality wise) of playing back interlaced content than mythfrontend + VDPAU does IMO.
Small caveat: Depending on your cable provider, you'll need to use Myth's "lossless transcode" option for HD recordings prior to playback on the PS3. I had to do this to fix audio sync issues anyway ever since my cable provider refreshed their channel lineup in early 2008 anyway. (Silicon Dust HDHomeRun + Time Warner cable)
Another small issue is that if a recording starts with 2-channel AC3, the PS3 will go into "decode" mode instead of "passthrough" mode, even if the audio becomes 5.1 later (for example after transitioning from commercials to a show) - this is a problem for Fox recordings in my area. CBS is always 5.1 so never a problem (although they nearly always had other audio problems in mythfrontend), and NBC/ABC are 2-channel sound in my area at all times.:(
The PS3 also kicks ass for playing back Hulu content. (However, thanks to Hulu anti set-top-box policies, it requires a a very indirect approach - rtmpdump 2.2 + ffmpeg for remuxing from FLV to MP4 + MediaTomb on a backend PC to serve up UPnP goodness.)
Electric motors are pretty powerful at low speeds. If the regenerative portion of the braking system is instead in acceleration mode, it's going to have a decent chance of overwhelming the undersized mechanical brakes. (The brakes are undersized because of the assumption that the regenerative system does the bulk of the work.)
Flipping dozens or thousand could be caused by EMI on an unshielded improperly designed control line.
However, this would require someone ripping the magnetron out of a microwave oven, attaching it to a horn antenna, and pointing it at your car. Leakage and "normal" emissions from cell phones and radios is NOTHING compared to the typical electrical environment of a vehicle. Vehicles are known for having VERY noisy electrical systems with lots of spikes and dropouts, and let's not forget that the ignition system is a close relative of the spark gap transmitter. Vehicle manufacturers are VERY familiar with EMI.
It's just a bunch of idiots fearmongering and trying to drum up ad impressions, when there are already incredibly simple explanations that DO have evidence linking them to the problem - THE FUCKING MECHANICAL GAS PEDAL STICKS. (As to claims that this problem appeared after going to drive-by-wire, people forgot that to support drive-by-wire, the gas pedal had to be pretty much redesigned - "classic" pedal systems had quite a bit of friction that would damp pedal movement without sticking, new pedal systems had to add a friction component - apparently some such methods are prone to sticking when they wear.)
Slashdot Mirror
An Attiny25 in a DIP8 package will do far more than that in a smaller package.
Temperature-controlled soldering irons with stands are so cheap nowadays that there is little to no excuse to buy a non-temp-controlled unit.
Aoyue 937+ is only $50 - http://www.amazon.com/Aoyue-937-Digital-Soldering-Station/dp/B000I30QBW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=industrial&qid=1271188419&sr=8-1
I have one of these and it is great. It includes a pretty nice stand/solder spool holder.
A lot of Adafruit's Arduino-related kits come with VERY good soldering tutorials.
The STK500 is massive overkill for most people nowadays, ESPECIALLY beginners.
It does very little that an Arduino or Boarduino can't do... The trick, if you want to skip the Arduino IDE (Learning with all of those abstraction layers is unhealthy for you in the long run IMO), is to buy an ISP programmer since nearly every Arduino-compatible board I've seen has a 6-pin ISP header.
An Adafruit Boarduino ($20) plus an Adafruit USBTinyISP ($23-25 or so I think) is more than most experimenters need.
Some of the Arduino kits Adafruit sells have a lot of "getting started" tutorials included with them. For example, the Arduino Experimenter's Kit:
http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=17&products_id=170
Here's how I see it going:
1) First ISP finally "Takes the plunge" and puts their money where their mouth is and blocks Google until they pay
2) ISP's tech support is flooded in angry calls from customers, many of whom leave for any alternative possible (sadly, many in the USA don't have alternatives)
3) ISP returns access to YouTube to their now smaller customer base
4) Other ISPs look at what happend to ISP 1 and forget about this idiotic idea
Neither will most firewalling solutions, since they'll have physical access to the firewalls.
Doesn't HAVE to be a locked room, as an earlier poster said, corner of the living room would work. You don't need to prevent access outside of those hours, you just have to have a way to know about access outside of those hours. (Such as the classic "lights out" enforcement...)
Preventing access to the machines isn't nearly as important as preventing UNSUPERVISED access. Placing the machines in a place you spend a decent amount of time prevents the latter but not the former.
Depends on if "decrypted" means "figured out the key" or just "we took a provided key and used it".
Space suit refers to the equipment needed to operate in vacuum.
This is just a set of "work clothes" for one particular astronaut.
It appears that you only lose the ability to play games (Online ones) and Blu-Rays if you DON'T install the upgrade.
The article doesn't indicate that anyone has lost this functionality as a result of the upgrade.
Google "Field Day"...
Hams have turned "operating off the grid" into a nationwide contest, that serves multiple purposes:
1) Fun
2) A contest
3) Practicing offgrid operation and rapid deployment of antennas/gear
Ham emergency response organizations have standardized power connections to a greater degree than industry (Anderson PowerPoles rock!)
Still, when the shit hits the fan, it IS important to have a backup.
I wasn't involved in it myself, but I believe the Cornell Amateur Radio Club (and/or one of the other local ham organizations) received a commendation from the local emergency services when a nasty ice storm in the mid-90s took out the cellular system's infrastructure for a few days. Local hams filled in the hole left when the cell network collapsed under all the ice.
(This is hearsay by the way, and based on a story I heard years ago, so I could be wrong.)
N2YPH
Also, the summary makes a comment about removing the morse code requirement - for VHF and above, it's been gone since at least the early to mid 1990s. I've had a Technician class license since middle school. Morse for HF was removed MUCH more recently, but equipment-wise it's a lot easier to get started on VHF, especially nowadays, handheld radios have dropped a LOT in price. You can now get decent Chinese imports (such as Puxing PX-777) for less than $90.
Does anyone remember all of the advertising that branded it as "ID4" (July 4...)
So we're going back... Back in time!
The idea is to enforce encryption. It's for those users who can't be trusted to always use TrueCrypt properly. (Or for companies where 90% of the employees have a clue but you have to treat everyone equally, so the remaining 10% ruin it for everyone else.)
If you stick TrueCrypt on any old drive, it's still possible for a user to accidentally (or intentionally, "I'll never lose my stick!") write unencrypted data to the drive.
Plus they still haven't figured out how to get TrueCrypt to work without admin rights at runtime or installation of a driver, while most of the "hardware flash drive" vendors have figured out how to get their stuff working without any permanent installation or admin rights required.
"It'd help if the spyrus site acknowledge the crack: THIS MODEL IS NOT VULNERABLE or something with an explanation." Um, did you RTFL at all? As of today, exactly what you are asking for is still in Spyrus' front page.
The DT5000 is the replacement for the Kingston "fail sticks", I'm fairly certain Kingston partnered with Spyrus in response to the failstick fiasco.
That's exactly the incident I was referring to.
It probably was.
Does he know exactly when the tower was switched on? (See the South Africa fiasco, where residents were complaining about effects from a tower that was NOT RADIATING because it wasn't yet operational.)
There's also, in the OP's case - did you move in before the tower was built? Or has it always been there? Maybe you're blaming the tower for a problem with your building. Or the mere act of building the tower changed the environment due to the construction work and not the transmitters themselves.
Another possibility, if in close range to a high power facility, is that a partially malfunctioning switching power supply may be emitting a "squeal" just outside of human hearing range. It IS a known fact that sound just outside the human hearing range can cause discomfort, in fact people sell products that take advantage of this fact!
http://www.spyrus.com/ - Right now, about the only people I would trust are IronKey and these guys. IronKey has the benefit of working under Linux though.
If I recall correctly, there were a few classic arcade games that were copy protected by a battery-backed encryption key. Mess with the device the wrong way and the key would be lost.
No logic analyzers? Scopes? Only two hours?
Without a doubt, a stupid press stunt.
See, for example, the Kingston DataTraveler BlackBox scenario. It and two drives (one from Verbatim, one from... I forget who...) that used the same crypto chip had FIPS 140-2 validated AES implementations, but they completely screwed up key management. All of the drives apparently used the same AES key...
That won't work for anything that does RTMP/RTMPE streaming.
Good thing rtmpdump-2.x will, however that's a pain in the ass compared to what the article poster wants.
Used or new?
If new, you would have failed your attempt, regardless of this firmware update. As one of the cost-reduction measures for the Slims (Remember, back in the PS3's early days, far more people bashed it for cost than praised it for Linux), "Other OS" support was never available for Slims in the first place. (Apparently too expensive to update the hypervisor drivers in the firmware.)
HOWEVER: If you're looking for a cheap MythTV frontend, the PS3 actually does a better job for playback with its built-in firmware than MythTV on PS3 Linux did (thanks to not being hardware-crippled like it always was for "Other OS" options.) Any recent MythTV backend will export recordings using UPnP, and the PS3 firmware does a better job (video quality wise) of playing back interlaced content than mythfrontend + VDPAU does IMO.
Small caveat: Depending on your cable provider, you'll need to use Myth's "lossless transcode" option for HD recordings prior to playback on the PS3. I had to do this to fix audio sync issues anyway ever since my cable provider refreshed their channel lineup in early 2008 anyway. (Silicon Dust HDHomeRun + Time Warner cable)
Another small issue is that if a recording starts with 2-channel AC3, the PS3 will go into "decode" mode instead of "passthrough" mode, even if the audio becomes 5.1 later (for example after transitioning from commercials to a show) - this is a problem for Fox recordings in my area. CBS is always 5.1 so never a problem (although they nearly always had other audio problems in mythfrontend), and NBC/ABC are 2-channel sound in my area at all times. :(
The PS3 also kicks ass for playing back Hulu content. (However, thanks to Hulu anti set-top-box policies, it requires a a very indirect approach - rtmpdump 2.2 + ffmpeg for remuxing from FLV to MP4 + MediaTomb on a backend PC to serve up UPnP goodness.)
There is one flaw with your logic here:
Electric motors are pretty powerful at low speeds. If the regenerative portion of the braking system is instead in acceleration mode, it's going to have a decent chance of overwhelming the undersized mechanical brakes. (The brakes are undersized because of the assumption that the regenerative system does the bulk of the work.)
Flipping dozens or thousand could be caused by EMI on an unshielded improperly designed control line.
However, this would require someone ripping the magnetron out of a microwave oven, attaching it to a horn antenna, and pointing it at your car. Leakage and "normal" emissions from cell phones and radios is NOTHING compared to the typical electrical environment of a vehicle. Vehicles are known for having VERY noisy electrical systems with lots of spikes and dropouts, and let's not forget that the ignition system is a close relative of the spark gap transmitter. Vehicle manufacturers are VERY familiar with EMI.
It's just a bunch of idiots fearmongering and trying to drum up ad impressions, when there are already incredibly simple explanations that DO have evidence linking them to the problem - THE FUCKING MECHANICAL GAS PEDAL STICKS. (As to claims that this problem appeared after going to drive-by-wire, people forgot that to support drive-by-wire, the gas pedal had to be pretty much redesigned - "classic" pedal systems had quite a bit of friction that would damp pedal movement without sticking, new pedal systems had to add a friction component - apparently some such methods are prone to sticking when they wear.)