This hack was for transmission, not for reading
on
Piezo-Acoustic iPod Hack
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· Score: 2, Informative
That's amazing! Does that mean that any ROM on any device can be read this way?
This was not a hack for reading data from the ROM. Apparently, he already had the code for that, so this was not a problem.
What he was missing was a way of transmitting the data to another device. The piezo hack solved this problem.
This hack will consequently only be useful for other devices if you:
- have already found a way of reading the data from the ROM.
- have not found an easier way of transmitting these data to another device.
- have an option of creating a sound output from the device through software.
I don't know how frequently this scenario will occur. My guess is "very rarely".
Am I the only one who is a little annoyed by the phrasing in the Slashdot summary?
a student whose Napster.no homepage [...] had links to free Internet music files must compensate the music industry
After reading the summary, I really thought this was a case where someone provided links to free music as in "music which can be freely copied with the copyright holder's consent" and still got prosecuted.
Instead, I found a ruling concerning someone who provided links to illegally copied music. I guess you could technically call this "free music", but I would certainly never use that wording.
(I would never use the wording "stolen music" either, but I just couldn't come up with a better Subject line for this posting.)
I've had problems in the past getting.mp4 files to play out of the box on both Linux and Windows systems. Certainly it can be done with the addition of some codecs or whatnot
I don't know if this does also apply to mp4-streaming, but I have encoded some MPEG4-based AVI-files using mencoder (the encoder which is packed together with mplayer).
If I use MPEG4 as the output codec, the movies cannot be played on a vanilla Windows XP without additional codecs. If I use MSMPEG4, they can - and they can still be played under Linux without problems.
According to the documentation of mencoder, the files will be 10% larger using MSMPEG4 instead of MPEG4, but I guess this is still much smaller than the same quality in WMV.
So the overly-simple answer of "there is not enough popularity/market share" to target them is more or less accurate?
Mostly less accurate.
Such a statement would mean that if there were as many Linux/Unix systems as Windows systems, they would be as spyware infested as Windows. If one states that, one ignores two facts:
1. Much of the automatically installed malware depends on Windows mail clients' and web browsers' tendency to do too much too easily or even fully automatically without asking the user.
One of the classic examples is the Mime type exploit where you could send someone a mail containing an.exe file and use Mime types to declare it as a sound file. Many mail clients (including Netscape and perhaps even Mozilla) would think "Great! A mail with music. I will play this for my user without asking. She will be thrilled!". And then the mail client would ask the OS to play the file. The OS would think "Hm, I have been told to start this file. It seems to be a program file, so I will just run it."
This exploit type would be difficult to recreate under Linux. A mail program can't just hand the OS a music file and let the OS chose how to open it. The mail program would have to ask a music player to play the music file. The music player would hopefully say "Uhh, no. This is not a valid music file".
However, other exploit types would be just as likely under Linux, given the "right" client software. For example, nothing prevents someone from writing a mail client which can execute program files if the user doubleclicks them. The typical claim is "This is impossible under Linux, since the 'executable' bit must be set in the file's permissions.". This claim is void, since anyone purposely writing a Linux mail client with the ability to execute attached program files would of course have to include the functionality of setting the 'executable' bit.
2. On a default installed Linux system, a regular user do not have the priviledges to infect other accounts than his own with spyware. On a default installed Windows system, all users have admin rights, meaning that one user can infect all other user's accounts. As it is becoming quite common to create individual logins for each family member on a typical household PC, this difference is important.
Microsoft could do something to even out this difference. They would just have to change the default user account type to an unpriviledged account. However, that would create a lot of problems in everyday use, since many everyday programs for Windows (including some written by MS) are so badly written that running them without admin rights is difficult or impossible.
I know this from my own experience, because in our household we run as unpriviledged users on both Windows and Linux PCs. There are almost no problems under Linux, since all everyday programs are designed to be run without admin rights. The Windows PCs are a nightmare.
Response time does not say everything about ghosting on an LCD screen.
The panel type is much more important. If you look a little around on the net, you will see that a 25 mS S-IPS will beat the shit out of any 16 mS panel of other types. Your Dell has a 16 mS S-IPS panel which is even better.
One of the reasons is that S-IPS can show 24 bit color. Some other panel types can only show approx. 18 bit colors and emulates 24 bit by rapidly changing forth and back between two colors. These panels can have good response times when switching from black to white (which are both within their native 18 bit colors), but when they have to switch from one 24 bit color to another, they are much slower than their response time would indicate.
Secondly, look outside your slashdot bubble and you'll see people who share computers. Not everyone has three or four boxes laying about. One person (or the admin) may put a VNC server on there and then another person may remove it because they trust the MS app and don't know any better.
A spyware catcher is an administrative tool. It should only be run by administrators, not by any user accessing the computer without knowing how it is setup.
This is what unpriviledged accounts are for.
A lot of attached devices have replaceble firmware. Modems, routers, graphics cards, DVD burners, cameras etc.
Sometimes the firmware download functionality is built into the firmware, meaning that a failed firmware update may prevent a new update attempt.
I know one such example were a camera went tits up after a failed firmware update. It had to be sent in for repair which turned out to be quite expensive.
Also I have heard of graphics cards which was rendered useless by a firmware update.
Another not so scary example is some SpeedStream routers which will have to be reset on a physical button after a failed firmware update.
I once did that. My car battery went out of power while doing some shopping. But I did have a battery charger and a 10 m cable in the car. Unfortunately, the only building within 10 meters was a bank (which I did not have any relations to). So I walked into the bank and asked if I could have some power for my car. No problem.
I guess you could say I was being charged without being charged...
I don't know if the Danish IC3 train was the first train to have power outlets at passenger seats. But even the first units delivered in 1989 did have those, both on business and monkey class.
I have seen very few HP calculators in my life, most of the calculators were in fact Texas Instruments.
When I was young, Texas Instruments made cheap, inferior scientific calculators. The keys vere shitty - you pressed and nothing happened, you pressed a little more and suddenly the display was filled with 8 occurences of the same digit.
At the same time, HP made expensive calculators which could be thrown against a wall without taking any damage, which had very precise and everlasting keys, and which had OPN (a reverse, but very intuitive way of entering a calculation).
During most of my education (I am a mechanical engineer), HP calculators were the norm. We could buy Texas if we wanted, but we would then be on our own without any help during lessons.
Today I still use a HP calculator though it is not the same quality as my old mid-eighties HP-15C which was stolen. My wife still has and uses her HP-15C as do several of my colleagues. I have never ever seen or heard of a broken HP calculator from that time.
He didn't end up owning anything anyway
on
Time Sharing Cars
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· Score: 1
So basically, what you are saying is that you are spending the same amount of money, but this way you don't actually end up owning anything?
Looks like he didn't end up owning anything in any of the two cases:
Then one day, my beast of burden sat down on the side of the road and died. There was no cure.
I have an old P200MMX with 96MB RAM. It has had W95, W98 and now XP installed. Both times I upgraded, I got better performance.
In my experience, newer Windows versions are not that demanding if only they have enough RAM and a fast hard drive (I am actually surprised that XP is faster than W98 with only 96 MB of RAM).
Yes, and all the traction and most of the braking happens through the front wheels of my car. So let us just use the term "front wheels" for all wheels since the front wheels are doing most of the work anyway.
I really do not understand why people use the term "TCP/IP".
TCP is just one of the protocols running under IP on a normal computer. The others are UDP and ICMP. So if you want to include that protocal layer in the name, "TCP+UDP+ICMP/IP" would be better. Or you could just say "IP".
To me, this is like calling all four wheels on a car "front wheels".
I often find myself using keyboard for everything else than clicking "next page" when I read a long article split across multiple pages. Having to use the mouse for navigation to next page is really an annoyance.
Around version 0.5, I saw a plugin to solve this somewhat. I have been searching for it ever since without any luck.
This plugin was able to recognize typical variations of links leading to "next page", and then you could go to that page with a keyboard shortcut.
... and tomorrow I will crash one of our Audis.
After that, I will compare body injuries."
Yes, this is probably the thoughts of the guy who runs the safety testing facility.
When I see some of the giant sculptures they have at Legoland, it makes me wonder whether building something half life size might get just a tad repetitive. Or maybe the master builder does the initial plan and supervises while his minions get on with placing 10,000 red bricks?
My mother is one of the minions you are referring to, and have been so for some decades. She is employed at the main plant in Billund, Denmark and have built some of the sculptures you see in the Legolands in Billund, Windsor and Carlsbad.
In the old days, a model designer would first build a prototype, and then my mother and her colleagues would build the final version(s) based on this prototype.
Nowadays, the designer creates a model in 3D Studio Max. The internal steel structures (yes, they are cheating) are created in AutoCAD.
The models from 3DSMAX and ACAD are then imported into some LEGO-developed 3D CAD software called LEGO Brick Builder (earlier versions were called LEGOizer) which converts the 3DSMAX model into a model of LEGO bricks with the steel structure inserted.
Then my mother and her colleagues loads the LEGO Brick Builder model on their own workstations and use it as a huge real time assembly instruction while building the real brick model. It is actually a quite good assembly instruction, since it has the normal 3D CAD tools like zooming and freespace rotation, while at the same time being able to act as an old-fashioned printed build manual showing the build steps by adding one layer of bricks after another.
So actually, the master builder may not even be involved in the creation of those sculptures you have seen. However, I haven't heard of master builders before I read this thread, so I could be wrong.
Sorry, if this destroyed the magic behind the sculptures for anyone.
Several messages here have covered the topic of persons/authorities beeing able to spot your current location.
Actually, it goes much farther. I dont' know about other countries, but here in Denmark, your location can not only be found but is actually continuously logged by the phone companys "for accounting purposes".
I know at least two criminal trials were these logs have been used by the prosecutor to prove that the accused was at a given location several months or even a year earlier.
Slashdot Mirror
That's amazing! Does that mean that any ROM on any device can be read this way?
This was not a hack for reading data from the ROM. Apparently, he already had the code for that, so this was not a problem.
What he was missing was a way of transmitting the data to another device. The piezo hack solved this problem.
This hack will consequently only be useful for other devices if you:
- have already found a way of reading the data from the ROM.
- have not found an easier way of transmitting these data to another device.
- have an option of creating a sound output from the device through software.
I don't know how frequently this scenario will occur. My guess is "very rarely".
Am I the only one who is a little annoyed by the phrasing in the Slashdot summary?
a student whose Napster.no homepage [...] had links to free Internet music files must compensate the music industry
After reading the summary, I really thought this was a case where someone provided links to free music as in "music which can be freely copied with the copyright holder's consent" and still got prosecuted.
Instead, I found a ruling concerning someone who provided links to illegally copied music. I guess you could technically call this "free music", but I would certainly never use that wording.
(I would never use the wording "stolen music" either, but I just couldn't come up with a better Subject line for this posting.)
I've had problems in the past getting .mp4 files to play out of the box on both Linux and Windows systems. Certainly it can be done with the addition of some codecs or whatnot
I don't know if this does also apply to mp4-streaming, but I have encoded some MPEG4-based AVI-files using mencoder (the encoder which is packed together with mplayer).
If I use MPEG4 as the output codec, the movies cannot be played on a vanilla Windows XP without additional codecs. If I use MSMPEG4, they can - and they can still be played under Linux without problems.
According to the documentation of mencoder, the files will be 10% larger using MSMPEG4 instead of MPEG4, but I guess this is still much smaller than the same quality in WMV.
So the overly-simple answer of "there is not enough popularity/market share" to target them is more or less accurate?
.exe file and use Mime types to declare it as a sound file. Many mail clients (including Netscape and perhaps even Mozilla) would think "Great! A mail with music. I will play this for my user without asking. She will be thrilled!". And then the mail client would ask the OS to play the file. The OS would think "Hm, I have been told to start this file. It seems to be a program file, so I will just run it."
Mostly less accurate.
Such a statement would mean that if there were as many Linux/Unix systems as Windows systems, they would be as spyware infested as Windows. If one states that, one ignores two facts:
1. Much of the automatically installed malware depends on Windows mail clients' and web browsers' tendency to do too much too easily or even fully automatically without asking the user.
One of the classic examples is the Mime type exploit where you could send someone a mail containing an
This exploit type would be difficult to recreate under Linux. A mail program can't just hand the OS a music file and let the OS chose how to open it. The mail program would have to ask a music player to play the music file. The music player would hopefully say "Uhh, no. This is not a valid music file".
However, other exploit types would be just as likely under Linux, given the "right" client software. For example, nothing prevents someone from writing a mail client which can execute program files if the user doubleclicks them. The typical claim is "This is impossible under Linux, since the 'executable' bit must be set in the file's permissions.". This claim is void, since anyone purposely writing a Linux mail client with the ability to execute attached program files would of course have to include the functionality of setting the 'executable' bit.
2. On a default installed Linux system, a regular user do not have the priviledges to infect other accounts than his own with spyware. On a default installed Windows system, all users have admin rights, meaning that one user can infect all other user's accounts. As it is becoming quite common to create individual logins for each family member on a typical household PC, this difference is important.
Microsoft could do something to even out this difference. They would just have to change the default user account type to an unpriviledged account. However, that would create a lot of problems in everyday use, since many everyday programs for Windows (including some written by MS) are so badly written that running them without admin rights is difficult or impossible. I know this from my own experience, because in our household we run as unpriviledged users on both Windows and Linux PCs. There are almost no problems under Linux, since all everyday programs are designed to be run without admin rights. The Windows PCs are a nightmare.
Yes, as soon as I had posted it, I sat here wondering why I had written millisiemens all over the place.
Response time does not say everything about ghosting on an LCD screen.
The panel type is much more important. If you look a little around on the net, you will see that a 25 mS S-IPS will beat the shit out of any 16 mS panel of other types. Your Dell has a 16 mS S-IPS panel which is even better.
One of the reasons is that S-IPS can show 24 bit color. Some other panel types can only show approx. 18 bit colors and emulates 24 bit by rapidly changing forth and back between two colors. These panels can have good response times when switching from black to white (which are both within their native 18 bit colors), but when they have to switch from one 24 bit color to another, they are much slower than their response time would indicate.
The biggest hd you can buy now is 400GB. 250GB hds have been availabe more than 2 years ago. Thats A LOT slower than doubling every year...
The time span between 32 MB and 30-40 GB being typical mainstream drives was almost exactly 10 years. That is a doubling every year.
But since then, the size increase has slowed considerably down.
Secondly, look outside your slashdot bubble and you'll see people who share computers. Not everyone has three or four boxes laying about. One person (or the admin) may put a VNC server on there and then another person may remove it because they trust the MS app and don't know any better. A spyware catcher is an administrative tool. It should only be run by administrators, not by any user accessing the computer without knowing how it is setup. This is what unpriviledged accounts are for.
A lot of attached devices have replaceble firmware. Modems, routers, graphics cards, DVD burners, cameras etc. Sometimes the firmware download functionality is built into the firmware, meaning that a failed firmware update may prevent a new update attempt. I know one such example were a camera went tits up after a failed firmware update. It had to be sent in for repair which turned out to be quite expensive. Also I have heard of graphics cards which was rendered useless by a firmware update. Another not so scary example is some SpeedStream routers which will have to be reset on a physical button after a failed firmware update.
I once did that. My car battery went out of power while doing some shopping. But I did have a battery charger and a 10 m cable in the car. Unfortunately, the only building within 10 meters was a bank (which I did not have any relations to). So I walked into the bank and asked if I could have some power for my car. No problem. I guess you could say I was being charged without being charged...
I don't know if the Danish IC3 train was the first train to have power outlets at passenger seats. But even the first units delivered in 1989 did have those, both on business and monkey class.
I have seen very few HP calculators in my life, most of the calculators were in fact Texas Instruments.
When I was young, Texas Instruments made cheap, inferior scientific calculators. The keys vere shitty - you pressed and nothing happened, you pressed a little more and suddenly the display was filled with 8 occurences of the same digit.
At the same time, HP made expensive calculators which could be thrown against a wall without taking any damage, which had very precise and everlasting keys, and which had OPN (a reverse, but very intuitive way of entering a calculation).
During most of my education (I am a mechanical engineer), HP calculators were the norm. We could buy Texas if we wanted, but we would then be on our own without any help during lessons.
Today I still use a HP calculator though it is not the same quality as my old mid-eighties HP-15C which was stolen. My wife still has and uses her HP-15C as do several of my colleagues. I have never ever seen or heard of a broken HP calculator from that time.
So basically, what you are saying is that you are spending the same amount of money, but this way you don't actually end up owning anything?
Looks like he didn't end up owning anything in any of the two cases:
Then one day, my beast of burden sat down on the side of the road and died. There was no cure.
I have an old P200MMX with 96MB RAM. It has had W95, W98 and now XP installed. Both times I upgraded, I got better performance.
In my experience, newer Windows versions are not that demanding if only they have enough RAM and a fast hard drive (I am actually surprised that XP is faster than W98 with only 96 MB of RAM).
Well, you surely ment over.
Perhaps. English is not my first language.
Anyway, I would regard TCP, UDP and ICMP as sub-protocols of IP. And to me, "sub" means "under".
Yes, and all the traction and most of the braking happens through the front wheels of my car. So let us just use the term "front wheels" for all wheels since the front wheels are doing most of the work anyway.
I really do not understand why people use the term "TCP/IP".
TCP is just one of the protocols running under IP on a normal computer. The others are UDP and ICMP. So if you want to include that protocal layer in the name, "TCP+UDP+ICMP/IP" would be better. Or you could just say "IP".
To me, this is like calling all four wheels on a car "front wheels".
I often find myself using keyboard for everything else than clicking "next page" when I read a long article split across multiple pages. Having to use the mouse for navigation to next page is really an annoyance.
Around version 0.5, I saw a plugin to solve this somewhat. I have been searching for it ever since without any luck.
This plugin was able to recognize typical variations of links leading to "next page", and then you could go to that page with a keyboard shortcut.
Anyone who knows what happened to that plugin?
Good thing the database has a problem so we can visit a working site.
You must have a lot of courage. Making a gynecologist believe that you are a woman sounds scary.
"Hey, what is that?"
"Dunno. Never saw one on any of my patients before. Remove it."
... and tomorrow I will crash one of our Audis. After that, I will compare body injuries." Yes, this is probably the thoughts of the guy who runs the safety testing facility.
Instead of filing your nails, you could nail some files with this device.
When I see some of the giant sculptures they have at Legoland, it makes me wonder whether building something half life size might get just a tad repetitive. Or maybe the master builder does the initial plan and supervises while his minions get on with placing 10,000 red bricks?
My mother is one of the minions you are referring to, and have been so for some decades. She is employed at the main plant in Billund, Denmark and have built some of the sculptures you see in the Legolands in Billund, Windsor and Carlsbad.
In the old days, a model designer would first build a prototype, and then my mother and her colleagues would build the final version(s) based on this prototype.
Nowadays, the designer creates a model in 3D Studio Max. The internal steel structures (yes, they are cheating) are created in AutoCAD.
The models from 3DSMAX and ACAD are then imported into some LEGO-developed 3D CAD software called LEGO Brick Builder (earlier versions were called LEGOizer) which converts the 3DSMAX model into a model of LEGO bricks with the steel structure inserted.
Then my mother and her colleagues loads the LEGO Brick Builder model on their own workstations and use it as a huge real time assembly instruction while building the real brick model. It is actually a quite good assembly instruction, since it has the normal 3D CAD tools like zooming and freespace rotation, while at the same time being able to act as an old-fashioned printed build manual showing the build steps by adding one layer of bricks after another.
So actually, the master builder may not even be involved in the creation of those sculptures you have seen. However, I haven't heard of master builders before I read this thread, so I could be wrong.
Sorry, if this destroyed the magic behind the sculptures for anyone.
Several messages here have covered the topic of persons/authorities beeing able to spot your current location.
Actually, it goes much farther. I dont' know about other countries, but here in Denmark, your location can not only be found but is actually continuously logged by the phone companys "for accounting purposes".
I know at least two criminal trials were these logs have been used by the prosecutor to prove that the accused was at a given location several months or even a year earlier.
If you really want to compare ./-ing to DoS-ing, I think DDos (distributed denial of service) would be the correct term.