Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, was interviewed by Tavis Smiley of PBS station KCET in Los Angeles in January. One of the things he spoke of was spending much of his time with customer service. In particular he mentioned problems with New York City housing advertisers doing bait and switch. Perhaps charging for housing ads will also help fund dealing with these problems.
Let's do what we can to push for community-based fiber and wireless projects.
It's critical that we are represented fairly when it comes to making use of the spectrum to be given up when analog tv broadcasting shuts down. Think of spectrum as our atmosphere to breathe and speak electronically. Don't let them sell our "air" to the monopolies.
White House statements have been pretty vague on reasons for avoiding use of available court authorizations. While they imply it only affects those on the end of overseas calls, court authorizations could have covered those. Court authorizations don't scale well. How big could this be? Phil Zimmermann showed considerable insight in his statement on why he wrote PGP. Here's a portion:
"The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) mandated that phone companies install remote wiretapping ports into their central office digital switches, creating a new technology infrastructure for "point-and-click" wiretapping, so that federal agents no longer have to go out and attach alligator clips to phone lines. Now they will be able to sit in their headquarters in Washington and listen in on your phone calls. Of course, the law still requires a court order for a wiretap. But while technology infrastructures can persist for generations, laws and policies can change overnight. Once a communications infrastructure optimized for surveillance becomes entrenched, a shift in political conditions may lead to abuse of this new-found power. Political conditions may shift with the election of a new government, or perhaps more abruptly from the bombing of a federal building.
A year after the CALEA passed, the FBI disclosed plans to require the phone companies to build into their infrastructure the capacity to simultaneously wiretap 1 percent of all phone calls in all major U.S. cities. This would represent more than a thousandfold increase over previous levels in the number of phones that could be wiretapped. In previous years, there were only about a thousand court-ordered wiretaps in the United States per year, at the federal, state, and local levels combined. It's hard to see how the government could even employ enough judges to sign enough wiretap orders to wiretap 1 percent of all our phone calls, much less hire enough federal agents to sit and listen to all that traffic in real time. The only plausible way of processing that amount of traffic is a massive Orwellian application of automated voice recognition technology to sift through it all, searching for interesting keywords or searching for a particular speaker's voice. If the government doesn't find the target in the first 1 percent sample, the wiretaps can be shifted over to a different 1 percent until the target is found, or until everyone's phone line has been checked for subversive traffic. The FBI said they need this capacity to plan for the future. This plan sparked such outrage that it was defeated in Congress. But the mere fact that the FBI even asked for these broad powers is revealing of their agenda.
Advances in technology will not permit the maintenance of the status quo, as far as privacy is concerned. The status quo is unstable. If we do nothing, new technologies will give the government new automatic surveillance capabilities that Stalin could never have dreamed of."
Of course mining of other types of data should be expected too. Even the average person can do some surprising things with public data.
Does anyone ever investigate the investment behavior of the people originating these rumors to see if they're attempting to manipulate stock prices? After seeing that recent article suggesting that Apple had a battery life problem because of a Windows driver issue with the Core Duo cpu, I really had to wonder.
I really doubt that Google wants anything to do with Microsoft DRM. They avoided it with video. Buying Napster for the name makes no sense since it's a joke at this point. And buying it to have access to an instant library with distribution agreements seems unlikely, since those agreements are no-doubt tied to MS DRM and would have to be renegotiated for something else. About all it would give them would be faster time to market since they would have the music industry contacts. I suspect Napster is way overpriced to buy just for that.
I doubt that very many people would be drawn to a service having an inferior store, inferior DRM, an inferior PC client, and generally inferior players - just to get cheaper music.
I think to succeed they'd need to do something really different. Provide national free (ad-supported) WiFi and gives us ad-supported VoIP phones that double as music players, THEN we'd have a reason to have something besides an iPod. I think the player should be free or very cheap too. Especially if the music is a subscription service. We don't pay a bunch for a cable or satellite box when subscribing to those services, why should music subscription be any different? A cheap/free Music GooPhone could always be distributed with a drive/flash slot so the user could pick up the cost when they wanted a decent amount of storage.
All the statistics are reported as percentages of the XP value, with higher = better. That means that if wine is "+ 90%", it's performing less than twice as fast as XP. But if it's "- 90%", XP is performing ten times faster!
That sort of confusion occurs whenever percentages are used. The solution would be to take that same data, and compare the log of the ratios. Or if we follow what's typical in audio and electronics, take ten times the log of the ratio. That's the sort of comparison that's going on when you see the term dB (decibels). Then if you switch which is compared to which only the sign of the result will change. For example if one is twice as fast as the other, instead of it being 200% of the speed or 100% more (or the other being 50% less) you'd get +3 or -3 decibel. When one is ten times the other, the difference is + or - 10 dB (depending which you used as reference, instead of having one 1000% of the other (900% more) or being 10% of the other 90% less.
no companies would screw their customers if they wanted to stay in business
If they can get away with it, some companies will have screwing their customers as part of their business model.
just keep in mind that there's already too much government regulation of business
There may be many regulations, but it still seems that many businesses are not treating customers ethically. For example the government seems to be doing a poor job of insuring truth in advertising. Perhaps the problem isn't too many regulations, but too much corruption in the legislative and regulatory processes.
Tigerdirect has had problems with rebates in the past has a unsatisfactory BBB record due to a pattern of customer complaints. Their new "rebate guarantee" is bullshit.
I agree with you 100% I bought a drive from them last fall. The drive was shown in stock, and with the rebate the price was attractive. The "rebate form download link" wasn't for a rebate form at all. It took me to another site where I was to fill out an online application to have the rebate form mailed to me. The form asked for all sorts of personal data. The terms were complex, with a relatively short time limit to get the materials returned to them. The terms also included a clause where the company processing the rebates (I'm sure it was another company tied to the Tigerdirect people - they were able to see data from my invoice number when I called) would get to keep the rebate if the check wasn't cashed on time, or anything else went wrong. The web site for applying for the rebate form to be mailed did not work with Firefox or Safari. I had to called them on the phone and only after being very persistent did they agree to enter the information manually. As you mentioned for any guarantee for the rebate to apply I would have had to use costly certified mailing. They also were pushing a faster response time and use of first class mail in exchange for an additional fee. I didn't opt to do either. After all of that, I go to check the status, and my in-stock order had changed to backordered. The projected time was such that I'd no longer be sure of getting the item soon enough to be able to turn around and submit the rebate materials in time. The "purchase date", which could not be changed, was based on when I made the online order. All of that info was submitted in advance and was to come back already entered on the rebate application to be mailed to me. I called up and raised hell with both the rebate people and Tigerdirect, saying I wanted to cancel the order. They acted like they couldn't make any changes once it was in the system. The order did ship a couple of days later however. I submitted the rebate materials and eventually got an email saying the rebate was being sent out first class mail. Several more weeks went by and it showed up. Total time must have been about two months. Although I did get my rebate, it was an exercise in frustration. It was clearly a process designed for me to fail. Had I not been so persistent I certain I wouldn't have received the rebate.
Oh, the day after I had phoned in the rebate info I started getting lots of scam spam on an email account I hadn't used for anything else. So either they were spamming me, or sold my info to a spammer. No doubt the other personal info I submitted is making the rounds somewhere too. These folks really are scum. Except for the basic contact info, I'd suggest always using random junk responses for field of work etc questions.
I had much better results with a rebate from a Staples purchase (info submitted online). I'm generally very careful about opting-out of default mailing requests when submitting info, but I was getting spammed from them afterwards (at least it was only from them). It took several calls to their customer service number before the spam stopped (the first two times they said it was handled, but it kept coming)
Do other portions of motherboard flash typically get used for any configuration data in addition to holding BIOS or similar functionality? If so, it'd be difficult to prevent writes without also preventing changes to the configuration data. Disabling writes would seem simple otherwise, even with no jumper provided. It shouldn't be hard to identify the write-enable pin and force the state of it (taking care not to run excessive current through whatever drives it).
I've wondered if similar potential security problems might be hidden in the flash memory present on many hard drives. It would seem simple in theory for a drive to lie about it's actual size leaving space for hidden code or data logging on disk. It also seems possible that a drive could allow hiding code or data inside of the "bad blocks" space. Perhaps data could be hidden between the end of a file and the end of the allocated block it resides in. Do disk drivers zero that space? There is also the issue of modifications to existing code or adding something in the free space of the drive flash.
I also don't understand what the potential is for hostile modifications to the disk driver.
If there aren't ways of insuring such things are clean code, are there at least simple ways of comparing critical code/files with some reference state?
For instance in OS X, is there a command line tool that could give an MD5 sum of drivers, other critical files, and contents of flash?
On Mac OS X, I haven't seen disk utilities that allow such things as picking from several drivers, or wiping/retesting bad-blocks etc. Are there Unix tools that can be run from the terminal to do such things?
To what extent are disk tools themselves a security threat? I vaguely recall reading about an OS X defragmenter called iDefrag that phoned home with a bunch of user data if it detected a known compromised serial number. While the author may have felt such behavior was justified, it seems like such a utility could be easily made to call somewhere else with user data instead.
If a vendor (like Sony) would hide a rootkit on an audio CD, what assurance do any of us have that there isn't something just as bad hidden in the firmware of an optical drive or motherboard when it ships? Talk about closed source... who gets to examine the code in the hardware?
By sidestepping court authorizations, abuses are far more difficult to spot since there is no external paper trail.
Publicly the talk seems to be almost all about international calls connected with the U.S. But there has been some mention of linked-downstream activity effectively extending monitoring without limits. If monitoring extends to everyone the U.S. contact has communicated with, then monitoring the people those people have communicated with...etc. etc... where does it end? In theory it could extend to everyone.
Hopefully I won't be in trouble for spilling critical information with this - Every terrorist has at some point eaten pickles or knows someone who has eaten pickles. Really.
It guess it's understandable that they don't want to reveal how far the technology goes, but isn't a real terrorist likely to expect that any imaginable technology is being used?
I expect that most of the Slashdot crowd differs from much of the public in terms of technological awareness and expectations. In spite of the current Google case about withholding search related data, how many here really believe that use of Google and other mapping services isn't watched for those checking out high-risk targets? I'd consider those protecting us incompetent if they didn't do that. It's almost humorous that the controversy over invasion of privacy mentioned in the media is talking about it at one level, when it's so obvious that the likely use of data mining technology goes far, far deeper.
I remember the story of a friend nearly 20 years ago who had not paid his phone bill and the phone company was trying to bug him about payment long after service was shut off. More than a year after he'd forwarded some calls to a nearby friends house, the phone company was calling THERE asking about payment. Clearly the data routinely retained went far beyond a list of phone long distance calls. And that was 20 years ago.
I'd heard stories of places being raid for growing marijuana based on heat leakage patterns picked up by satellite. Sounded like sci-fi to me. But a friend who was a caregiver for an elderly person told me of that persons home being raided based on unusually high electricity use. There was no closet full of grow-lights. The electricity was going for charging an electric wheelchair. I would have thought that energy usage data was a private matter between the utility company and a customer. Apparently not. And that was over 10 years ago.
It's ironic that so much technology seems to be in place to gather data on U.S. citizens, yet government acts as if it is incapable of controlling our borders and coming up with a sane policies for those wanting to work here.
If the oil industry can figure out what's in the ground by use of satellites and underground impulse reflections, it ought to be trivial for the government to find all of those hidden tunnels.
Whatever happened to "I swear to uphold the laws of the United States"?
I hope that those behind Google are really committed to doing no evil. Google has the potential to greatly impact our lives. It is up to them whether the influence is good or evil. Google appears to be acting inline with their "Do No Evil" behavior commitment in this case, but I have several other concerns.
1) Censorship - While they apparently have no choice but to cave into to the wishes of the Chinese government, I'm wondering if it goes beyond that. Could Google censorship be happening in the U.S. too? There's a wealth of info buried in Slashdot archives that I seem unable to find anymore when searching through Google. (try searching using our nicknames and keywords) Also, a story that I'd seen on the BBC website a while back seems to have been buried. The story was about something like 60 % of the Iraqi oil revenue, managed by the U.S. for reconstruction, being unaccounted for. I haven't been able to find the story again by searching the BBC site directly either. I never saw it covered in the U.S. media, which was preoccupied with Jury selection for Michael Jackson at the time.
2) Potential Target of Funds From Political Corruption - This one is a hot potato. The commercial media will barely mention it, because they are where the money is going. There is a great deal of attention right now over political corruption, with influence being bought. New laws won't stop illegal behavior, and politicians are generally not going to be very effective in making changes when it means cutting the funding that got many where they are. Media attention is focused on politicians getting dirty money, but doesn't address the issue of where it is being spent. Broadcast licensees in the U.S. are supposed to be acting as "trustees of the public interest", although that seems to be an old-school concept that is conveniently forgotten. If broadcasters would not accept ANY paid political advertising, instead only providing free and equal time for legally qualified candidates/measures, politicians would not have the huge incentive to sell their souls to finance campaign advertising.
Where does Google fit in? As advertising shifts from conventional media to the net, the potential for Google to become a primary destination of campaign funds is huge. I believe Google should "Do No Evil" and publiclly state they will never provide paid political advertising or boosted search ranking, and should make a public statement that it is also time for broadcasters to kill the incentive for corruption by also refusing paid political ads. Over time, advertising on Google could be even more insidious than television and radio broadcasting, because it is better able to selectively target tuned messages for different segments of the population. Essentially politicians would be able to tell each demographic only the things they want to hear.
Sometimes "Stuff That Matters" isn't new news. Like the toad swimming the the pot on the stove and not feeling the temperature rise, or the person looking through tinted glasses with eyes that have normalized for the color bias, issues that have developed over time often don't stand out. Some serious issues don't get nearly enough attention. Perhaps we can get Google to help with this one before they become part of the problem. It'll take all of us working to bring about change. The commercial media aren't likely to help when it means turning away cash cows. It is up to us pressure the media, our representatives, and the F.C.C. to eliminate paid political advertising.
My TRS-80 model I had both 5 1/4" and 8" floppies, but I was running a third-party OS called NEWDOS80 v2. It supported four floppy drives and worked with everything I tried, it just had to be told the drive parameters. The machine didn't ship with 8" drives, but that didn't stop us from using them. Ah those were the days... when a computer came with schematic diagrams!
I can't fault Apple for using current technology instead of ancient PC BIOS. People wanting to run Windows shouldn't complain about Apple using UDF instead of FAT32 or NTFS either. I think it's best that Windows be kept in a sandbox instead of dual-booted. The last thing Apple or users need is support issues arising from Windows malware loose with access to the whole filesystem.
I wonder if Apple has released the latest Darwin source? Examining that might reveal a few more things they're doing.
Well, desperate times call for desperate measures...
Well how about making up a cable to put the flash of a second iMac in parallel with the first, except for forcing the output enable pin on the first low to get the outputs to tri-state (float). If one really wants to live dangerously, do this while the good flash chip is still in another iMac.
I know it all sounds insane, but it reminds me of the days of stealing the grid drive for the horizontal output tube from one television and injecting it into a set under test.
There are tons of devices on standby right now. They just don't ever bother to tell you, so you THINK it's off.
That's for sure. And there are even more devices where it isn't even standby - they're wasting power when "off" while providing no added functionality at all.
Anything with an A.C. adaptor feeding it is generally wasting power all of the time it is off. Switching designs help, but most adaptors have transformer core losses being fed all the time. I've found the same thing internally in some devices. Looking around the house, I found that my soldering stations and a table radio had the power switches wired after the transformer. Some things that have transformers or whole power supplies live all the time include doorbells, thermostats, garage door openers, VCRs, CD/DVD players, cable/satellite boxes, printers, and cable/DSL/dialup modems. I remember the shock at discovering that my old electric toothbrush had a stand with a field coil powered all the time. The coil was the powered portion of a motor to wind a spring in the hand-held unit.
Contrary to what the article says, cable boxes could be designed in a way where they could be shut down. The boxes could designed to handle revalidation only when a box is on. Data when off could be retained by a small amount of CMOS memory and a capacitor, or by using flash memory. Switching on the main power supply could be done by passing power for devices it feeds signal to through the box, and sensing load current to trigger starting the power supply. I don't think we should be paying for energy just to make someone's DRM work.
Devices with timers could be designed to run from charged capacitors. Small half-Farad capacitors are available. Some devices use lithium batteries, but I prefer to avoid those since they're toxic waste later. I reduced the power consumption of an old L.E.D. digital alarm clock from 8 Watts to 1.2 Watts by replacing the transformer with a capacitive voltage divider, and eliminating the series-pass regulator by using S.C.R.s in place of two of the diodes in the bridge rectifier and controlling those. That savings was enough to power a bedroom color t.v. 2 hours a day.
I'd like to see someone design a cordless phone that was efficient enough to get by with powering the base unit from the phone line. They could at least use a switching supply for the base unit. Few people really need to have their microwave ovens programmed in advance to come on at a certain time. For years I kept my old microwave with a rotary knob mechanical timer. That oven didn't use any power when off. Most U.P.S.es could be designed to use less power once the battery is charged - they'd probably get better battery life too.
Devices that are powered all the time are at a greater risk of being fried by line surges.
On my old computer I wired an outlet box to the switched monitor power outlet. Then things like my modem and amplified speakers would have the power cut when the machine was off. If the machine had been designed to control that outlet in sleep mode, consumption could be cut even more. Having those items powered from the computers switching supply instead of transformers would save even more.
Sometimes when shopping I ask salespeople how many kilowatt hours per year a product uses when turned off. It's entertaining to see the weird looks I get. If a few more of us asked suppliers about these things it might speed design changes. Designers need to be educated about the need for reduced consumption also. Sometimes it seems like many don't worry about it except when too much heat is produced.
Consumers tend not to think of low power leeches as costing anything, but it adds up over the life of a product. Where I am it runs about $1 (U.S.) per month for every 10 Watts used continuously. In hot climates where air conditioning is used, waste costs are compounded with those to remove the waste heat from these devices.
I like their tutorials and information on 3rd party news servers, but their listing of software is lacking for OS X. The RAR client they list for Windows is only a "trial" version, and is only available in a command line version on Linux and Mac OS X. I sent them feedback a month ago to add MT-Newswatcher for Mac OS (9 & X) which is great and free, but they have not added it. Several demo/payware products are listed. Their listing includes "Votes" with the highest number for the Mac newsreaders being 2, and some zero! I wonder if they tested any of them. I also saw no info on.PAR support for the Mac.
With plenty of excellent free software out there for Linux and Mac OSes, it's a major omission to include so little.
Then Jones can look to Congress to rectify this problem by passing a law that forces all classes and professors to not discriminate against other political (i.e., right-wing) views
You got that right. It looks like they're already trying.
Using a DVM to monitor the line won't give you much beyond a short-term average voltage, and it may not even do that if you're using it incorrectly.
Having trouble with the Palm also makes a pretty strong case for it being the outlet or wiring to it. Try replacing the outlet and check for tight connections on it and all nearby outlets.
There are a number of local problems one can have with power, in addition to those coming in from the outside world.
1) low-voltage condition under load If there is a high-resistance or intermittently high resistance connection at the circuit breaker, in the wiring, or in the outlet, the voltage drop will generally be evident only under load. If you unplug the machine to make the measurement, you've removed the load. Even if the machine is plugged in, if it isn't on, you don't have a failure-condition load. And even if the machine is on, you don't have as heavy of a load as seen when a startup surge occurs. If you lack other test equipment, try loading the outlet with some other high current load (office coffee maker perhaps?) I once lived in an apartment where my computer had problems with crashing and rebooting on its own. It turned out to be the connections on the next outlet back towards the breaker from the one I was on. The best way to really see what's happening is to use a dual-channel storage oscilloscope showing what happens as you attempt to power up the computer. Have one channel showing the voltage (hot lead relative to neutral), and the other the current (via use of a current transformer or hall-effect device)
2) High-impedance ground line While it is much more likely to cause crashes/freezes than inability to boot up, erratic operation is possible with ground-circuit problems. Simple home-store testers can show the presence of a ground and confirm that the hot and neutral lines are not reversed. More tests can be run. First see that there isn't much voltage present between the neutral (wide pin) and ground terminals without and with load. An incandescent lamp (preferably large one, I use 60 Watts or more) is a good test load. Now try the same thing with the load connected between the hot and ground lines. The voltage between the ground and neutral lines should be small and about the same as in the previous step. Note- if you're on a ground-fault protected circuit (as is standard for bathrooms and outdoor outlets) this cause the fault-sensor to trip cutting off the power. Ground problems can exist from an outlet back to the breaker box, and also from the breaker box to earth ground. A bad building earth ground can cause many problems, including increased risk of fire under fault conditions.
3) High resistance path from utility transformer neutral This is one of the more dangerous local faults in single-phase installations. Typically the utility transformer has a 240 center tapped secondary. The center tap is neutral, half of the 120 Volt circuits go from neutral at the utility box to one side of the transformer winding, the other half go from neutral to the other side of the winding, and 240 Volt circuits go across the two ends of the winding (having a double-breaker because both sides are hot with respect to neutral. If the path from the breaker box neutral back to the actual transformer center tap is high resistance or open, the two groups of 120 Volt circuits are effectively in series across the 240 Volt coil. Any higher current load or startup surge on one side causes the voltage there to fall, while the voltage across the circuits on the other leg spikes upwards. If you ever see lights get brighter briefly when some high current load (like a fridge) starts up, there's a problem with neutral path resistance. Since this subjects equipment to above-normal voltages, it can very easily cause damage.
4) Noisy ground Noise on the ground line is always undersirable. It won't usually have much effect if your whole computer system floats at the same noise voltage, but if you have external
Did you check the inserts with your monthly utility bill to see that the energy content includes at least the specified minimum level of Microsoft-branded electricity for your Trusted Computing hardware?
I've noticed that since the AT&T/SBC merger, my prepaid cheapie long distance has been acting like a garbled PCS phone frequently. Maybe it's just the Windows malware of the week congesting the net, but it's an errie coincidence.
Given the nature of the security issues we've seen with images, various media files, and Flash, I think it is potentially dangerous to be installing a closed-source plugin. How can we know this isn't creating a new vulnerability?
Rather than use plugins to support closed formats on the Mac, it is better we constantly pressure sites carrying closed content to change. Clearly Real shouldn't be considered an acceptable alternative.
One organization that I really like, PBS, carries Real and Windows Media. I hope others also provide feedback encouraging change.
Along with many annoying things showing up as Flash content, having the plugin enabled gives us one more place for potential security problems.
Known or not, vulnerabilities relating to images and Flash existed for a very long time. Considering that offsite content greatly increased the potential exposure of even a selective surfer, perhaps it's worth reconsidering very aggressive blocking/filtering and disabling non-essential plugins.
I haven't looked closely enough at the control offered by Firefox plugins. Is it possible to enable Flash and Javascript on a site by site basis while still blocking it for imbedded offsite-content?
Knowing that Symantec will be working on finding open-source bugs should make everyone feel more secure.
I've been unsuccessful at finding a link to discussion of it, but I recall even Mac OS, 9.0 IIRC, having a crashing bug when a certain port was scanned. What puzzled me at the time was being unable to identify any services that were running. I wonder what it took to fix that bug? Not seeing any reports of a mass exploit of a vulnerability is not evidence that it isn't used by someone. If one needed access and couldn't plant a back door, I guess the next best thing is knowing about holes before the developers do. Not that there has ever been a bug-free system, but if there were isn't it nice knowing Symantec is there to keep one that way? It might be harder to trust a company that sells tools to get around a security component, or secretly collects user data.
Sometimes it seems a given level of security is just an illusion. I can't find a related link, but I vaguely recall reading some time ago about some 128-bit browser encryption actually using all zeros for the last 80 bits. I wonder what they ever did with the database of people that submitted personal info to be able to download the "more secure" version of the browser.
If he makes money, it'll more likely be from selling kits or plans on infomercials than from making electricity. After seeing L.E.D.s powered from small batteries sold as teeth whiteners and pain killers, its clear some people can be fooled into buying just about anything. But in the spirit of developing his idea...
No point wasting good nails and trees. Just find a place where there are copper water pipes buried, use that as one connection, then bury beer cans with wires attached nearby. Teach your dog (and maybe whoever drank the beer?) to pee there.
Free power, as in free beer?
When your friends are too drunk to go out and pee, have them sitting naked on metal plates, with peltier-junction arrays between the plates and massive solid iron cylinders going down into the ground as heatsinks. Get some electricity from the heat flow. Being overweight can be an ass-set. Maybe get enough power to run a non-backlit LCD tv!
Be original when stepping up the voltage... A DC-DC up converter with an inductor, power-F.E.T., schottky diode, capacitor and some control electronics is so high tech. I say let's bring back the dynamotor! It's more fun than putting trees in pots so they could be hooked in series.
Slashdot Mirror
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, was interviewed by Tavis Smiley of PBS station KCET in Los Angeles in January. One of the things he spoke of was spending much of his time with customer service. In particular he mentioned problems with New York City housing advertisers doing bait and switch. Perhaps charging for housing ads will also help fund dealing with these problems.
Let's do what we can to push for community-based fiber and wireless projects.
It's critical that we are represented fairly when it comes to making use of the spectrum to be given up when analog tv broadcasting shuts down. Think of spectrum as our atmosphere to breathe and speak electronically.
Don't let them sell our "air" to the monopolies.
From the Fine Synopsis, they zig-zag through, obviously... ;-)
Surely there must be a sizable group in the Slashdot masses skilled in the art of Zig Zag burning.
White House statements have been pretty vague on reasons for avoiding use of available court authorizations. While they imply it only affects those on the end of overseas calls, court authorizations could have covered those. Court authorizations don't scale well. How big could this be? Phil Zimmermann showed considerable insight in his statement on why he wrote PGP. Here's a portion:
"The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) mandated that phone companies install remote wiretapping ports into their central office digital switches, creating a new technology infrastructure for "point-and-click" wiretapping, so that federal agents no longer have to go out and attach alligator clips to phone lines. Now they will be able to sit in their headquarters in Washington and listen in on your phone calls. Of course, the law still requires a court order for a wiretap. But while technology infrastructures can persist for generations, laws and policies can change overnight. Once a communications infrastructure optimized for surveillance becomes entrenched, a shift in political conditions may lead to abuse of this new-found power. Political conditions may shift with the election of a new government, or perhaps more abruptly from the bombing of a federal building.
A year after the CALEA passed, the FBI disclosed plans to require the phone companies to build into their infrastructure the capacity to simultaneously wiretap 1 percent of all phone calls in all major U.S. cities. This would represent more than a thousandfold increase over previous levels in the number of phones that could be wiretapped. In previous years, there were only about a thousand court-ordered wiretaps in the United States per year, at the federal, state, and local levels combined. It's hard to see how the government could even employ enough judges to sign enough wiretap orders to wiretap 1 percent of all our phone calls, much less hire enough federal agents to sit and listen to all that traffic in real time. The only plausible way of processing that amount of traffic is a massive Orwellian application of automated voice recognition technology to sift through it all, searching for interesting keywords or searching for a particular speaker's voice. If the government doesn't find the target in the first 1 percent sample, the wiretaps can be shifted over to a different 1 percent until the target is found, or until everyone's phone line has been checked for subversive traffic. The FBI said they need this capacity to plan for the future. This plan sparked such outrage that it was defeated in Congress. But the mere fact that the FBI even asked for these broad powers is revealing of their agenda.
Advances in technology will not permit the maintenance of the status quo, as far as privacy is concerned. The status quo is unstable. If we do nothing, new technologies will give the government new automatic surveillance capabilities that Stalin could never have dreamed of."
Of course mining of other types of data should be expected too. Even the average person can do some surprising things with public data.
Does anyone ever investigate the investment behavior of the people originating these rumors to see if they're attempting to manipulate stock prices? After seeing that recent article suggesting that Apple had a battery life problem because of a Windows driver issue with the Core Duo cpu, I really had to wonder.
I really doubt that Google wants anything to do with Microsoft DRM. They avoided it with video. Buying Napster for the name makes no sense since it's a joke at this point. And buying it to have access to an instant library with distribution agreements seems unlikely, since those agreements are no-doubt tied to MS DRM and would have to be renegotiated for something else. About all it would give them would be faster time to market since they would have the music industry contacts. I suspect Napster is way overpriced to buy just for that.
I doubt that very many people would be drawn to a service having an inferior store, inferior DRM, an inferior PC client, and generally inferior players - just to get cheaper music.
I think to succeed they'd need to do something really different. Provide national free (ad-supported) WiFi and gives us ad-supported VoIP phones that double as music players, THEN we'd have a reason to have something besides an iPod. I think the player should be free or very cheap too. Especially if the music is a subscription service. We don't pay a bunch for a cable or satellite box when subscribing to those services, why should music subscription be any different? A cheap/free Music GooPhone could always be distributed with a drive/flash slot so the user could pick up the cost when they wanted a decent amount of storage.
All the statistics are reported as percentages of the XP value, with higher = better. That means that if wine is "+ 90%", it's performing less than twice as fast as XP. But if it's "- 90%", XP is performing ten times faster!
That sort of confusion occurs whenever percentages are used. The solution would be to take that same data, and compare the log of the ratios. Or if we follow what's typical in audio and electronics, take ten times the log of the ratio. That's the sort of comparison that's going on when you see the term dB (decibels). Then if you switch which is compared to which only the sign of the result will change. For example if one is twice as fast as the other, instead of it being 200% of the speed or 100% more (or the other being 50% less) you'd get +3 or -3 decibel. When one is ten times the other, the difference is + or - 10 dB (depending which you used as reference, instead of having one 1000% of the other (900% more) or being 10% of the other 90% less.
So I am wondering... how many seconds after Vista launch until we have first virus for it?
That's a leading question. I think it more likely it'll happen before the official launch.
There has already been a patch.
no companies would screw their customers if they wanted to stay in business
If they can get away with it, some companies will have screwing their customers as part of their business model.
just keep in mind that there's already too much government regulation of business
There may be many regulations, but it still seems that many businesses are not treating customers ethically.
For example the government seems to be doing a poor job of insuring truth in advertising.
Perhaps the problem isn't too many regulations, but too much corruption in the legislative and regulatory processes.
Tigerdirect has had problems with rebates in the past has a unsatisfactory BBB record due to a pattern of customer complaints. Their new "rebate guarantee" is bullshit.
I agree with you 100% I bought a drive from them last fall. The drive was shown in stock, and with the rebate the price was attractive. The "rebate form download link" wasn't for a rebate form at all. It took me to another site where I was to fill out an online application to have the rebate form mailed to me. The form asked for all sorts of personal data. The terms were complex, with a relatively short time limit to get the materials returned to them. The terms also included a clause where the company processing the rebates (I'm sure it was another company tied to the Tigerdirect people - they were able to see data from my invoice number when I called) would get to keep the rebate if the check wasn't cashed on time, or anything else went wrong. The web site for applying for the rebate form to be mailed did not work with Firefox or Safari. I had to called them on the phone and only after being very persistent did they agree to enter the information manually. As you mentioned for any guarantee for the rebate to apply I would have had to use costly certified mailing. They also were pushing a faster response time and use of first class mail in exchange for an additional fee. I didn't opt to do either. After all of that, I go to check the status, and my in-stock order had changed to backordered. The projected time was such that I'd no longer be sure of getting the item soon enough to be able to turn around and submit the rebate materials in time. The "purchase date", which could not be changed, was based on when I made the online order. All of that info was submitted in advance and was to come back already entered on the rebate application to be mailed to me. I called up and raised hell with both the rebate people and Tigerdirect, saying I wanted to cancel the order. They acted like they couldn't make any changes once it was in the system. The order did ship a couple of days later however. I submitted the rebate materials and eventually got an email saying the rebate was being sent out first class mail. Several more weeks went by and it showed up. Total time must have been about two months. Although I did get my rebate, it was an exercise in frustration. It was clearly a process designed for me to fail. Had I not been so persistent I certain I wouldn't have received the rebate.
Oh, the day after I had phoned in the rebate info I started getting lots of scam spam on an email account I hadn't used for anything else. So either they were spamming me, or sold my info to a spammer. No doubt the other personal info I submitted is making the rounds somewhere too. These folks really are scum. Except for the basic contact info, I'd suggest always using random junk responses for field of work etc questions.
I had much better results with a rebate from a Staples purchase (info submitted online). I'm generally very careful about opting-out of default mailing requests when submitting info, but I was getting spammed from them afterwards (at least it was only from them). It took several calls to their customer service number before the spam stopped (the first two times they said it was handled, but it kept coming)
Do other portions of motherboard flash typically get used for any configuration data in addition to holding BIOS or similar functionality? If so, it'd be difficult to prevent writes without also preventing changes to the configuration data. Disabling writes would seem simple otherwise, even with no jumper provided. It shouldn't be hard to identify the write-enable pin and force the state of it (taking care not to run excessive current through whatever drives it).
I've wondered if similar potential security problems might be hidden in the flash memory present on many hard drives. It would seem simple in theory for a drive to lie about it's actual size leaving space for hidden code or data logging on disk. It also seems possible that a drive could allow hiding code or data inside of the "bad blocks" space. Perhaps data could be hidden between the end of a file and the end of the allocated block it resides in. Do disk drivers zero that space? There is also the issue of modifications to existing code or adding something in the free space of the drive flash.
I also don't understand what the potential is for hostile modifications to the disk driver.
If there aren't ways of insuring such things are clean code, are there at least simple ways of comparing critical code/files with some reference state?
For instance in OS X, is there a command line tool that could give an MD5 sum of drivers, other critical files, and contents of flash?
On Mac OS X, I haven't seen disk utilities that allow such things as picking from several drivers, or wiping/retesting bad-blocks etc. Are there Unix tools that can be run from the terminal to do such things?
To what extent are disk tools themselves a security threat? I vaguely recall reading about an OS X defragmenter called iDefrag that phoned home with a bunch of user data if it detected a known compromised serial number. While the author may have felt such behavior was justified, it seems like such a utility could be easily made to call somewhere else with user data instead.
If a vendor (like Sony) would hide a rootkit on an audio CD, what assurance do any of us have that there isn't something just as bad hidden in the firmware of an optical drive or motherboard when it ships? Talk about closed source... who gets to examine the code in the hardware?
By sidestepping court authorizations, abuses are far more difficult to spot since there is no external paper trail.
Publicly the talk seems to be almost all about international calls connected with the U.S. But there has been some mention of linked-downstream activity effectively extending monitoring without limits. If monitoring extends to everyone the U.S. contact has communicated with, then monitoring the people those people have communicated with...etc. etc... where does it end? In theory it could extend to everyone.
Hopefully I won't be in trouble for spilling critical information with this - Every terrorist has at some point eaten pickles or knows someone who has eaten pickles. Really.
It guess it's understandable that they don't want to reveal how far the technology goes, but isn't a real terrorist likely to expect that any imaginable technology is being used?
I expect that most of the Slashdot crowd differs from much of the public in terms of technological awareness and expectations. In spite of the current Google case about withholding search related data, how many here really believe that use of Google and other mapping services isn't watched for those checking out high-risk targets?
I'd consider those protecting us incompetent if they didn't do that. It's almost humorous that the controversy over invasion of privacy mentioned in the media is talking about it at one level, when it's so obvious that the likely use of data mining technology goes far, far deeper.
I remember the story of a friend nearly 20 years ago who had not paid his phone bill and the phone company was trying to bug him about payment long after service was shut off. More than a year after he'd forwarded some calls to a nearby friends house, the phone company was calling THERE asking about payment. Clearly the data routinely retained went far beyond a list of phone long distance calls. And that was 20 years ago.
I'd heard stories of places being raid for growing marijuana based on heat leakage patterns picked up by satellite. Sounded like sci-fi to me. But a friend who was a caregiver for an elderly person told me of that persons home being raided based on unusually high electricity use. There was no closet full of grow-lights. The electricity was going for charging an electric wheelchair. I would have thought that energy usage data was a private matter between the utility company and a customer. Apparently not. And that was over 10 years ago.
It's ironic that so much technology seems to be in place to gather data on U.S. citizens, yet government acts as if it is incapable of controlling our borders and coming up with a sane policies for those wanting to work here.
If the oil industry can figure out what's in the ground by use of satellites and underground impulse reflections, it ought to be trivial for the government to find all of those hidden tunnels.
Whatever happened to "I swear to uphold the laws of the United States"?
I hope that those behind Google are really committed to doing no evil. Google has the potential to greatly impact our lives. It is up to them whether the influence is good or evil. Google appears to be acting inline with their "Do No Evil" behavior commitment in this case, but I have several other concerns.
1) Censorship - While they apparently have no choice but to cave into to the wishes of the Chinese government, I'm wondering if it goes beyond that. Could Google censorship be happening in the U.S. too? There's a wealth of info buried in Slashdot archives that I seem unable to find anymore when searching through Google. (try searching using our nicknames and keywords) Also, a story that I'd seen on the BBC website a while back seems to have been buried. The story was about something like 60 % of the Iraqi oil revenue, managed by the U.S. for reconstruction, being unaccounted for. I haven't been able to find the story again by searching the BBC site directly either. I never saw it covered in the U.S. media, which was preoccupied with Jury selection for Michael Jackson at the time.
2) Potential Target of Funds From Political Corruption - This one is a hot potato. The commercial media will barely mention it, because they are where the money is going. There is a great deal of attention right now over political corruption, with influence being bought. New laws won't stop illegal behavior, and politicians are generally not going to be very effective in making changes when it means cutting the funding that got many where they are. Media attention is focused on politicians getting dirty money, but doesn't address the issue of where it is being spent. Broadcast licensees in the U.S. are supposed to be acting as "trustees of the public interest", although that seems to be an old-school concept that is conveniently forgotten. If broadcasters would not accept ANY paid political advertising, instead only providing free and equal time for legally qualified candidates/measures, politicians would not have the huge incentive to sell their souls to finance campaign advertising.
Where does Google fit in? As advertising shifts from conventional media to the net, the potential for Google to become a primary destination of campaign funds is huge. I believe Google should "Do No Evil" and publiclly state they will never provide paid political advertising or boosted search ranking, and should make a public statement that it is also time for broadcasters to kill the incentive for corruption by also refusing paid political ads.
Over time, advertising on Google could be even more insidious than television and radio broadcasting, because it is better able to selectively target tuned messages for different segments of the population. Essentially politicians would be able to tell each demographic only the things they want to hear.
Sometimes "Stuff That Matters" isn't new news. Like the toad swimming the the pot on the stove and not feeling the temperature rise, or the person looking through tinted glasses with eyes that have normalized for the color bias, issues that have developed over time often don't stand out. Some serious issues don't get nearly enough attention. Perhaps we can get Google to help with this one before they become part of the problem.
It'll take all of us working to bring about change. The commercial media aren't likely to help when it means turning away cash cows. It is up to us pressure the media, our representatives, and the F.C.C. to eliminate paid political advertising.
My TRS-80 model I had both 5 1/4" and 8" floppies, but I was running a third-party OS called NEWDOS80 v2.
It supported four floppy drives and worked with everything I tried, it just had to be told the drive parameters.
The machine didn't ship with 8" drives, but that didn't stop us from using them.
Ah those were the days... when a computer came with schematic diagrams!
I can't fault Apple for using current technology instead of ancient PC BIOS.
People wanting to run Windows shouldn't complain about Apple using UDF instead of FAT32 or NTFS either.
I think it's best that Windows be kept in a sandbox instead of dual-booted. The last thing Apple or users need is support issues arising from Windows malware loose with access to the whole filesystem.
I wonder if Apple has released the latest Darwin source? Examining that might reveal a few more things they're doing.
Well, desperate times call for desperate measures...
Well how about making up a cable to put the flash of a second iMac in parallel with the first, except for forcing the output enable pin on the first low to get the outputs to tri-state (float). If one really wants to live dangerously, do this while the good flash chip is still in another iMac.
I know it all sounds insane, but it reminds me of the days of stealing the grid drive for the horizontal output tube from one television and injecting it into a set under test.
There are tons of devices on standby right now. They just don't ever bother to tell you, so you THINK it's off.
That's for sure. And there are even more devices where it isn't even standby - they're wasting power when "off" while providing no added functionality at all.
Anything with an A.C. adaptor feeding it is generally wasting power all of the time it is off. Switching designs help, but most adaptors have transformer core losses being fed all the time. I've found the same thing internally in some devices. Looking around the house, I found that my soldering stations and a table radio had the power switches wired after the transformer. Some things that have transformers or whole power supplies live all the time include doorbells, thermostats, garage door openers, VCRs, CD/DVD players, cable/satellite boxes, printers, and cable/DSL/dialup modems. I remember the shock at discovering that my old electric toothbrush had a stand with a field coil powered all the time. The coil was the powered portion of a motor to wind a spring in the hand-held unit.
Contrary to what the article says, cable boxes could be designed in a way where they could be shut down. The boxes could designed to handle revalidation only when a box is on. Data when off could be retained by a small amount of CMOS memory and a capacitor, or by using flash memory. Switching on the main power supply could be done by passing power for devices it feeds signal to through the box, and sensing load current to trigger starting the power supply. I don't think we should be paying for energy just to make someone's DRM work.
Devices with timers could be designed to run from charged capacitors. Small half-Farad capacitors are available. Some devices use lithium batteries, but I prefer to avoid those since they're toxic waste later.
I reduced the power consumption of an old L.E.D. digital alarm clock from 8 Watts to 1.2 Watts by replacing the transformer with a capacitive voltage divider, and eliminating the series-pass regulator by using S.C.R.s in place of two of the diodes in the bridge rectifier and controlling those. That savings was enough to power a bedroom color t.v. 2 hours a day.
I'd like to see someone design a cordless phone that was efficient enough to get by with powering the base unit from the phone line. They could at least use a switching supply for the base unit. Few people really need to have their microwave ovens programmed in advance to come on at a certain time. For years I kept my old microwave with a rotary knob mechanical timer. That oven didn't use any power when off. Most U.P.S.es could be designed to use less power once the battery is charged - they'd probably get better battery life too.
Devices that are powered all the time are at a greater risk of being fried by line surges.
On my old computer I wired an outlet box to the switched monitor power outlet. Then things like my modem and amplified speakers would have the power cut when the machine was off. If the machine had been designed to control that outlet in sleep mode, consumption could be cut even more. Having those items powered from the computers switching supply instead of transformers would save even more.
Sometimes when shopping I ask salespeople how many kilowatt hours per year a product uses when turned off. It's entertaining to see the weird looks I get. If a few more of us asked suppliers about these things it might speed design changes. Designers need to be educated about the need for reduced consumption also. Sometimes it seems like many don't worry about it except when too much heat is produced.
Consumers tend not to think of low power leeches as costing anything, but it adds up over the life of a product. Where I am it runs about $1 (U.S.) per month for every 10 Watts used continuously. In hot climates where air conditioning is used, waste costs are compounded with those to remove the waste heat from these devices.
I like their tutorials and information on 3rd party news servers, but their listing of software is lacking for OS X. .PAR support for the Mac.
The RAR client they list for Windows is only a "trial" version, and is only available in a command line version on Linux and Mac OS X. I sent them feedback a month ago to add MT-Newswatcher for Mac OS (9 & X) which is great and free, but they have not added it. Several demo/payware products are listed. Their listing includes "Votes" with the highest number for the Mac newsreaders being 2, and some zero! I wonder if they tested any of them.
I also saw no info on
With plenty of excellent free software out there for Linux and Mac OSes, it's a major omission to include so little.
Then Jones can look to Congress to rectify this problem by passing a law that forces all classes and professors to not discriminate against other political (i.e., right-wing) views
You got that right. It looks like they're already trying.
Using a DVM to monitor the line won't give you much beyond a short-term average voltage, and it may not even do that if you're using it incorrectly.
Having trouble with the Palm also makes a pretty strong case for it being the outlet or wiring to it. Try replacing the outlet and check for tight connections on it and all nearby outlets.
There are a number of local problems one can have with power, in addition to those coming in from the outside world.
1) low-voltage condition under load
If there is a high-resistance or intermittently high resistance connection at the circuit breaker, in the wiring, or in the outlet, the voltage drop will generally be evident only under load. If you unplug the machine to make the measurement, you've removed the load. Even if the machine is plugged in, if it isn't on, you don't have a failure-condition load. And even if the machine is on, you don't have as heavy of a load as seen when a startup surge occurs. If you lack other test equipment, try loading the outlet with some other high current load (office coffee maker perhaps?) I once lived in an apartment where my computer had problems with crashing and rebooting on its own. It turned out to be the connections on the next outlet back towards the breaker from the one I was on.
The best way to really see what's happening is to use a dual-channel storage oscilloscope showing what happens as you attempt to power up the computer. Have one channel showing the voltage (hot lead relative to neutral), and the other the current (via use of a current transformer or hall-effect device)
2) High-impedance ground line
While it is much more likely to cause crashes/freezes than inability to boot up, erratic operation is possible with ground-circuit problems. Simple home-store testers can show the presence of a ground and confirm that the hot and neutral lines are not reversed. More tests can be run. First see that there isn't much voltage present between the neutral (wide pin) and ground terminals without and with load. An incandescent lamp (preferably large one, I use 60 Watts or more) is a good test load. Now try the same thing with the load connected between the hot and ground lines. The voltage between the ground and neutral lines should be small and about the same as in the previous step. Note- if you're on a ground-fault protected circuit (as is standard for bathrooms and outdoor outlets) this cause the fault-sensor to trip cutting off the power.
Ground problems can exist from an outlet back to the breaker box, and also from the breaker box to earth ground. A bad building earth ground can cause many problems, including increased risk of fire under fault conditions.
3) High resistance path from utility transformer neutral
This is one of the more dangerous local faults in single-phase installations. Typically the utility transformer has a 240 center tapped secondary. The center tap is neutral, half of the 120 Volt circuits go from neutral at the utility box to one side of the transformer winding, the other half go from neutral to the other side of the winding, and 240 Volt circuits go across the two ends of the winding (having a double-breaker because both sides are hot with respect to neutral.
If the path from the breaker box neutral back to the actual transformer center tap is high resistance or open, the two groups of 120 Volt circuits are effectively in series across the 240 Volt coil. Any higher current load or startup surge on one side causes the voltage there to fall, while the voltage across the circuits on the other leg spikes upwards. If you ever see lights get brighter briefly when some high current load (like a fridge) starts up, there's a problem with neutral path resistance. Since this subjects equipment to above-normal voltages, it can very easily cause damage.
4) Noisy ground
Noise on the ground line is always undersirable. It won't usually have much effect if your whole computer system floats at the same noise voltage, but if you have external
Did you check the inserts with your monthly utility bill to see that the energy content includes at least the specified minimum level of Microsoft-branded electricity for your Trusted Computing hardware?
I've noticed that since the AT&T/SBC merger, my prepaid cheapie long distance has been acting like a garbled PCS phone frequently. Maybe it's just the Windows malware of the week congesting the net, but it's an errie coincidence.
This is certainly a new twist in dealing with all of those exploding meth labs.
Given the nature of the security issues we've seen with images, various media files, and Flash, I think it is potentially dangerous to be installing a closed-source plugin. How can we know this isn't creating a new vulnerability?
Rather than use plugins to support closed formats on the Mac, it is better we constantly pressure sites carrying closed content to change. Clearly Real shouldn't be considered an acceptable alternative.
One organization that I really like, PBS, carries Real and Windows Media. I hope others also provide feedback encouraging change.
Along with many annoying things showing up as Flash content, having the plugin enabled gives us one more place for potential security problems.
Known or not, vulnerabilities relating to images and Flash existed for a very long time. Considering that offsite content greatly increased the potential exposure of even a selective surfer, perhaps it's worth reconsidering very aggressive blocking/filtering and disabling non-essential plugins.
I haven't looked closely enough at the control offered by Firefox plugins. Is it possible to enable Flash and Javascript on a site by site basis while still blocking it for imbedded offsite-content?
Knowing that Symantec will be working on finding open-source bugs should make everyone feel more secure.
I've been unsuccessful at finding a link to discussion of it, but I recall even Mac OS, 9.0 IIRC, having a crashing bug when a certain port was scanned. What puzzled me at the time was being unable to identify any services that were running. I wonder what it took to fix that bug? Not seeing any reports of a mass exploit of a vulnerability is not evidence that it isn't used by someone. If one needed access and couldn't plant a back door, I guess the next best thing is knowing about holes before the developers do. Not that there has ever been a bug-free system, but if there were isn't it nice knowing Symantec is there to keep one that way? It might be harder to trust a company that sells tools to get around a security component, or secretly collects user data.
Sometimes it seems a given level of security is just an illusion. I can't find a related link, but I vaguely recall reading some time ago about some 128-bit browser encryption actually using all zeros for the last 80 bits. I wonder what they ever did with the database of people that submitted personal info to be able to download the "more secure" version of the browser.
Let's hope our overlords are acting responsibly.
If he makes money, it'll more likely be from selling kits or plans on infomercials than from making electricity. After seeing L.E.D.s powered from small batteries sold as teeth whiteners and pain killers, its clear some people can be fooled into buying just about anything. But in the spirit of developing his idea...
No point wasting good nails and trees. Just find a place where there are copper water pipes buried, use that as one connection, then bury beer cans with wires attached nearby. Teach your dog (and maybe whoever drank the beer?) to pee there.
Free power, as in free beer?
When your friends are too drunk to go out and pee, have them sitting naked on metal plates, with peltier-junction arrays between the plates and massive solid iron cylinders going down into the ground as heatsinks. Get some electricity from the heat flow. Being overweight can be an ass-set.
Maybe get enough power to run a non-backlit LCD tv!
Be original when stepping up the voltage...
A DC-DC up converter with an inductor, power-F.E.T., schottky diode, capacitor and some control electronics is so high tech. I say let's bring back the dynamotor!
It's more fun than putting trees in pots so they could be hooked in series.