Take another small slurp and leave it sitting on the tip of your tongue.
I have no idea what causes the brain-freeze effect, nor why the solution works, but I've passed this technique on to many people and it does seem to defrost the brain near instantly.
True, most of us long suspected that the WMD claims were all lies. Of course what we couldnt have expected is for the dangerous materials that we did know about to go missing also!
Anyone remember these stories: Missing Iraqi nuke equipment worries IAEA The senior adviser to Iraq's Interior Ministry blamed U.S. forces Tuesday for not securing facilities where the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency says equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons has vanished.
High explosives 'missing in Iraq'. The UN's nuclear watchdog has told the Security Council of the theft of nearly 350 metric tons of high explosives from a military complex in Iraq.
Even if we had found WMD in Iraq. How the hell were we going to control them when we couldnt even control the material that we DID know about. Still seems absurd to me.
When I was in NYC using the free wi-fi access in Bryant Park (my favourite place in NYC incidentaly), I was extremely concious of sitting in a public place with over $1000 of tablet PC sat on my lap. A pizza box would help disuise the laptop from any casual observer.
But at the end of the day, I would probably buy a pizza and keep the box rather than pay around $20 for a cardbox box.
Tablet PCs are ideal for this project. Its already compacted to just a screen, plus it has the added bonus of pen enabled screen. You could use it as a digital noteboard if you so desired.
The pricetag may be a little high, but you end up with a device that is still useable as a laptop/tablet PC. When you want to use it you can just unhang it and go.
Im by no means a l33t hax0r but I know my way around icing/dumping procedures and messed around with SF3 a bit.
First of all, whenever someone writes SF3 uses physical fingerprints, STOP READING - it DOES NOT, and yes a lot of wannabe experts will say that. If you wanna know how the SF3 discs are produced I can write another post here, but for now I'll tell you about the protection itself;
The Devil (=StarForce3) is INSANELY coded to avoid debugging, and by INSANELY I mean NOTHING COMES CLOSE : you can find over 200 RDTSCs on a SINGLE procedure. WTF is a RDTSC? Its an instruction to read the time stamp on the CPU, that is, they use it to MEASURE the amount of time some routine takes to complete: if you debug+trace the operations, stopping them before they are complete, the reply from the CPU will tell the app they are taking a long time to finish - and you get rebooted while the SF3 creators laugh at you.
The most low-level interrupts cant be traced as well since the SF3 driver replaces them with their own evil, custom, devilish, encrypted drivers - and thats where the problems for LEGIT buyers start, drivers messing around with system resources = always dangerous. Theres even a INT 2E routine used into SF3, thats an undocumented but widely known backdoor to run COMMAND.COM-based programs!!... Also kind of a cheap trick, it leaves me no doubt the creators themselves were/are hella good crackers.
What happens then is, one would actually need to recreate the drivers removing all those ( hundreds of ) evil anti-debugging checks - that would take a *LOT* of time/work already, considering the drivers are encrypted as and when executing - to ONLY THEN start working on breaking the games' protection itself. And for every new SF3 version/update/whatever ( = another game) , you would have to do everything again. Of course after ending up with a working crack, you can remove the "custom driver" thing and just emulate everything with an.exe file - but that would take more work again.
Truth is, it becomes much more of a challenge than a way to play the game for free, since its much (much much) easier - even cheaper considering the hours a cracker would spend starforcing - to simply buy the damn original.
This is where you show that you've been misled by the US media no doubt.
Al-Sadr and infact most Shia Iraqis were happy to see Saddam go. However they are not happy that the US is still occupying their country. Al-Sadr was vocally anti-American in his newspaper al-hawzi, and it was only when the US shut down his newspaper that he formed a militia group and took to attacking the US militarily rather than vocally. Their only aim is to remove the US from Iraq. They have made no attacks on Iraqis or any other people.
Also, this nonsense about Saddam killing 'far more people'. It now appears that the reports that Saddam killed 'hundreds of thousands' were wildly overestimated. We've been digging up mass graves for sure, but the numbers we're finding are way way lower than the figures that the Iraqis claimed. We've not even found 10,000 in mass graves yet, so we've still got plenty of dead people to find before we can make the claim that Saddam killed more.
I found that trying to write notes and any of my own key words to accompany the information were crucial to triggering memories when it came time to remember the information later on.
Thats why you need a Tablet PC! Seriously, stop laughing. I use a tablet pc at my nightschool classes, it has the benefits you mention of embedding notes to your memory as you summarise the key points, plus it allows me to draw diagrams etc (which are impossible to do on-the-fly with a regular laptop). Plus it has all the benefits of digital storage; I can quickly scan through all my notes for specific keywords, or re-arrange the notes at a later date...
Good post, the whole explosion (its coming) of WiFi has had me thinking the same thing for the last few months.
What we're eventually heading towards is the ability of wifi nodes to link up to each other so that entire regions are connected. Once this has happened we've created our own version of 'the internet'. One that is connected without any phsical wires, but has the same resilience to nodes dropping off at any time.
It means that any attempt at regulation becomes impossible. Filesharers can have a field day without fearing repercussion from RIAA/MPAA et.all, mainly because there is no need for ISP's anymore, thus no-one able to locate a MAC/IP address to an individual.
Interesting possibilities lie ahead which, as you say, may introduce some legal/moral problems.
In all seriousness though, how useful is a stolen laptop? My Windows XP based Tablet has a logon, without that you cant get into windows. There are no floppy/etc drives to boot from as alternatives, even the USB isnt initialised until Windows starts. In short then, how would a thief even begin to make use of my laptop?
How feasible is it to make a 'boot from USB' option to a PC BIOS?
I know its not an option currently, but with all the advances in personal storage recently it would make sense for motherboard manufacturers to consider adding some kind of ASIC that allows the USB to be used as a boot device.
The next step is to move all device driver software from the operating system to a dedicated flash ROM embeded on the motherboard.
These two advancements would then enable people to carry around an entire OS on a flashcard/portable USB disk. You could simply slot in your flashcard and boot up your own OS (be it windows or linux) on any PC, at home/work/hotel. You dont need to carry a bulky laptop, all your data (and applications) can be on portable storage.
I imagine making the device driver software update a motherboard embeded flash chip is the most awkward part, but it makes much more sense to me to have the hardware drivers linked firmly to the hardware they drive (and not part of the OS as they are currently)
Just something I've been thinking about for years, but with all the recent advances recently I think its slowly becoming more possible?
The first thing I thought of when I saw the mice/space thing was HHGTTG. And I had to scroll all the way down to find a comment linking the two, AND ITS MODDED OFFTOPIC??
Surely the only reason this news hit slashdot is the obvious H2G2 reference?
But I/know/ I'm in the wrong field. I've been in software development for the last 5 years;)
As most posters have already said, my rudimentary knowledge of networking (plus maybe a good book) would be enough for me/most people to pass an exam, but it wouldnt give me any hands on experience. The 4 semester course gives me the chance to play about with 'x' thousand dollars worth of cisco gear in the student lab. I value the learning experience much more than the certification that it will lead to.
I'm currently studying for the CCNA. I'm taking it in 1 night per week evening classes. The whole course (4 semesters) takes just about a year.
I found that the 'old' chapter test exams were just multiple choice questions, and I beleive the final CCNA exam was also a multiple choice exam. Everyone knows just how easy multiple choice exams are, and I was happily getting 90-100% throughout the semester.
This semester we've been put onto version 3.0 of the CCNA. It's now a multiple choice multiple answer style test. ie, "pick the correct 2 statments from the choice of 6". You can still get lucky, but its much more difficult unless you really know your stuff.
I think people taking the version 3.0 CCNA exams will find it harder, and it will re-establish some credibility to the certification. Having said that its important to remember the CCNA is only the first step to the 'real' certs such as CCNP/CCIE.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid. But isnt it entirely possible that 'professional spammers' could set up mail relays under a subnet of highly regarded anti-spam sites?
This would mean that the spammers would get blacklisted, but much to the spammers glee the anti-spam sites (in this case DSL Reports) also gets blacklisted. It has a double effect of the anti-spam site being blacklisted, plus the anti-spam site (DSL Reports et al) owners arguing for the blacklist hosts (SPEWS) to be more lenient.
It wouldnt suprise me if 'professional spammers' were acting this way to protect their own interests.
I would say it was a hugely bad idea to leave such a complex piece of machinery outside in the elements, unprotected.
It should be restored to all its glory and made into a prominent display. I went to the Saturn V center at Kennedy just a few months ago, and you can almost hear people's jaws drop when they step into the Saturn V display. It's possibly one of the most historically important machines man has ever built, it should not be allowed to rot and decay outside.
You have completely misunderstood the term 'topsite' in the context it was intended.
A topsite is literally the 'top' site, where pirate releases are released first. And by first I mean literally first. Every copy you see on Kazaa/IRC/Newsgroups and yes indeed Bit Torrent and the other services you mention, has originated from one of the 'topsites'
Its a fair misunderstanding. Lots of people still think the word 'topsite' has something to do with Web Warez/
To summarise then; the article is actually very well written. Without the services of core group members going to the trouble of obtaining telesyncs/ripping dvd's, the majority of filesharing services would be empty. Or at best filled with amateurish self made copies.
The real problem here is not the Segway. Its that damn gravity stuff. I swear, Newton has got a lot to answer for. Just think how much stuff you have broken all because of Newtons Gravity gizmo.
Gravity sucks
Slashdot Mirror
Here's my cure for brain-freeze.
Take another small slurp and leave it sitting on the tip of your tongue.
I have no idea what causes the brain-freeze effect, nor why the solution works, but I've passed this technique on to many people and it does seem to defrost the brain near instantly.
Can't believe Lucas didnt consider releasing this on the 4th of May.
May the fourth be with you would have made a great promo trailer line
True, most of us long suspected that the WMD claims were all lies. Of course what we couldnt have expected is for the dangerous materials that we did know about to go missing also!
.
Anyone remember these stories:
Missing Iraqi nuke equipment worries IAEA
The senior adviser to Iraq's Interior Ministry blamed U.S. forces Tuesday for not securing facilities where the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency says equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons has vanished.
High explosives 'missing in Iraq'
The UN's nuclear watchdog has told the Security Council of the theft of nearly 350 metric tons of high explosives from a military complex in Iraq.
Even if we had found WMD in Iraq. How the hell were we going to control them when we couldnt even control the material that we DID know about. Still seems absurd to me.
Of course, I wouldnt want to suggest an ulterior motive, but it seems odd that the Oil Ministry was well protected.
Just very overpriced
When I was in NYC using the free wi-fi access in Bryant Park (my favourite place in NYC incidentaly), I was extremely concious of sitting in a public place with over $1000 of tablet PC sat on my lap. A pizza box would help disuise the laptop from any casual observer.
But at the end of the day, I would probably buy a pizza and keep the box rather than pay around $20 for a cardbox box.
Tablet PCs are ideal for this project. Its already compacted to just a screen, plus it has the added bonus of pen enabled screen. You could use it as a digital noteboard if you so desired.
The pricetag may be a little high, but you end up with a device that is still useable as a laptop/tablet PC. When you want to use it you can just unhang it and go.
Copy/paste from www.theisonews.com
... Also kind of a cheap trick, it leaves me no doubt the creators themselves were/are hella good crackers.
.exe file - but that would take more work again.
Im by no means a l33t hax0r but I know my way around icing/dumping procedures and messed around with SF3 a bit.
First of all, whenever someone writes SF3 uses physical fingerprints, STOP READING - it DOES NOT, and yes a lot of wannabe experts will say that. If you wanna know how the SF3 discs are produced I can write another post here, but for now I'll tell you about the protection itself;
The Devil (=StarForce3) is INSANELY coded to avoid debugging, and by INSANELY I mean NOTHING COMES CLOSE : you can find over 200 RDTSCs on a SINGLE procedure. WTF is a RDTSC? Its an instruction to read the time stamp on the CPU, that is, they use it to MEASURE the amount of time some routine takes to complete: if you debug+trace the operations, stopping them before they are complete, the reply from the CPU will tell the app they are taking a long time to finish - and you get rebooted while the SF3 creators laugh at you.
The most low-level interrupts cant be traced as well since the SF3 driver replaces them with their own evil, custom, devilish, encrypted drivers - and thats where the problems for LEGIT buyers start, drivers messing around with system resources = always dangerous. Theres even a INT 2E routine used into SF3, thats an undocumented but widely known backdoor to run COMMAND.COM-based programs!!
What happens then is, one would actually need to recreate the drivers removing all those ( hundreds of ) evil anti-debugging checks - that would take a *LOT* of time/work already, considering the drivers are encrypted as and when executing - to ONLY THEN start working on breaking the games' protection itself. And for every new SF3 version/update/whatever ( = another game) , you would have to do everything again. Of course after ending up with a working crack, you can remove the "custom driver" thing and just emulate everything with an
Truth is, it becomes much more of a challenge than a way to play the game for free, since its much (much much) easier - even cheaper considering the hours a cracker would spend starforcing - to simply buy the damn original.
Here's the one about mass graves in Iraq:
PM admits graves claim 'untrue'
This is where you show that you've been misled by the US media no doubt.
Al-Sadr and infact most Shia Iraqis were happy to see Saddam go. However they are not happy that the US is still occupying their country. Al-Sadr was vocally anti-American in his newspaper al-hawzi, and it was only when the US shut down his newspaper that he formed a militia group and took to attacking the US militarily rather than vocally. Their only aim is to remove the US from Iraq. They have made no attacks on Iraqis or any other people.
Also, this nonsense about Saddam killing 'far more people'. It now appears that the reports that Saddam killed 'hundreds of thousands' were wildly overestimated. We've been digging up mass graves for sure, but the numbers we're finding are way way lower than the figures that the Iraqis claimed. We've not even found 10,000 in mass graves yet, so we've still got plenty of dead people to find before we can make the claim that Saddam killed more.
Perhaps its just a coincidence, but the ticker board in Times Square is now scrolling: 'Error 404 Page not found' ?
I found that trying to write notes and any of my own key words to accompany the information were crucial to triggering memories when it came time to remember the information later on.
Thats why you need a Tablet PC! Seriously, stop laughing. I use a tablet pc at my nightschool classes, it has the benefits you mention of embedding notes to your memory as you summarise the key points, plus it allows me to draw diagrams etc (which are impossible to do on-the-fly with a regular laptop). Plus it has all the benefits of digital storage; I can quickly scan through all my notes for specific keywords, or re-arrange the notes at a later date...
This will never work for total immersion cooling. Every single computer case I've ever seen has been FULL of holes, it will just leak out.
Plus, every time you take a CD out you'll need to towel it dry before putting it back in the case
It would be cool for bathing in though. I could take a bath without bothering to get undressed first. That would be a real timesaver.
Good post, the whole explosion (its coming) of WiFi has had me thinking the same thing for the last few months.
What we're eventually heading towards is the ability of wifi nodes to link up to each other so that entire regions are connected. Once this has happened we've created our own version of 'the internet'. One that is connected without any phsical wires, but has the same resilience to nodes dropping off at any time.
It means that any attempt at regulation becomes impossible. Filesharers can have a field day without fearing repercussion from RIAA/MPAA et.all, mainly because there is no need for ISP's anymore, thus no-one able to locate a MAC/IP address to an individual.
Interesting possibilities lie ahead which, as you say, may introduce some legal/moral problems.
Yeah, me too. I got a Tablet PC.
In all seriousness though, how useful is a stolen laptop? My Windows XP based Tablet has a logon, without that you cant get into windows. There are no floppy/etc drives to boot from as alternatives, even the USB isnt initialised until Windows starts. In short then, how would a thief even begin to make use of my laptop?
That does it, I'm never shopping at Prada again!!
oh, wait...
How feasible is it to make a 'boot from USB' option to a PC BIOS?
I know its not an option currently, but with all the advances in personal storage recently it would make sense for motherboard manufacturers to consider adding some kind of ASIC that allows the USB to be used as a boot device.
The next step is to move all device driver software from the operating system to a dedicated flash ROM embeded on the motherboard.
These two advancements would then enable people to carry around an entire OS on a flashcard/portable USB disk. You could simply slot in your flashcard and boot up your own OS (be it windows or linux) on any PC, at home/work/hotel. You dont need to carry a bulky laptop, all your data (and applications) can be on portable storage.
I imagine making the device driver software update a motherboard embeded flash chip is the most awkward part, but it makes much more sense to me to have the hardware drivers linked firmly to the hardware they drive (and not part of the OS as they are currently)
Just something I've been thinking about for years, but with all the recent advances recently I think its slowly becoming more possible?
You seem to be implying that us 'real' programmers curse more than is strictly necessary. I think thats a fucking libelous statement.
The first thing I thought of when I saw the mice/space thing was HHGTTG. And I had to scroll all the way down to find a comment linking the two, AND ITS MODDED OFFTOPIC??
Surely the only reason this news hit slashdot is the obvious H2G2 reference?
But I /know/ I'm in the wrong field. I've been in software development for the last 5 years ;)
As most posters have already said, my rudimentary knowledge of networking (plus maybe a good book) would be enough for me/most people to pass an exam, but it wouldnt give me any hands on experience. The 4 semester course gives me the chance to play about with 'x' thousand dollars worth of cisco gear in the student lab. I value the learning experience much more than the certification that it will lead to.
I'm currently studying for the CCNA. I'm taking it in 1 night per week evening classes. The whole course (4 semesters) takes just about a year.
I found that the 'old' chapter test exams were just multiple choice questions, and I beleive the final CCNA exam was also a multiple choice exam. Everyone knows just how easy multiple choice exams are, and I was happily getting 90-100% throughout the semester.
This semester we've been put onto version 3.0 of the CCNA. It's now a multiple choice multiple answer style test. ie, "pick the correct 2 statments from the choice of 6". You can still get lucky, but its much more difficult unless you really know your stuff.
I think people taking the version 3.0 CCNA exams will find it harder, and it will re-establish some credibility to the certification. Having said that its important to remember the CCNA is only the first step to the 'real' certs such as CCNP/CCIE.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid. But isnt it entirely possible that 'professional spammers' could set up mail relays under a subnet of highly regarded anti-spam sites?
This would mean that the spammers would get blacklisted, but much to the spammers glee the anti-spam sites (in this case DSL Reports) also gets blacklisted. It has a double effect of the anti-spam site being blacklisted, plus the anti-spam site (DSL Reports et al) owners arguing for the blacklist hosts (SPEWS) to be more lenient.
It wouldnt suprise me if 'professional spammers' were acting this way to protect their own interests.
I would say it was a hugely bad idea to leave such a complex piece of machinery outside in the elements, unprotected.
It should be restored to all its glory and made into a prominent display. I went to the Saturn V center at Kennedy just a few months ago, and you can almost hear people's jaws drop when they step into the Saturn V display. It's possibly one of the most historically important machines man has ever built, it should not be allowed to rot and decay outside.
You have completely misunderstood the term 'topsite' in the context it was intended.
A topsite is literally the 'top' site, where pirate releases are released first. And by first I mean literally first. Every copy you see on Kazaa/IRC/Newsgroups and yes indeed Bit Torrent and the other services you mention, has originated from one of the 'topsites'
Its a fair misunderstanding. Lots of people still think the word 'topsite' has something to do with Web Warez/
To summarise then; the article is actually very well written. Without the services of core group members going to the trouble of obtaining telesyncs/ripping dvd's, the majority of filesharing services would be empty. Or at best filled with amateurish self made copies.
Who can afford that? iCant. iWont, its not what iWant! Think I'll wait 3 months for Jobs to come to his senses and reduce the price.
The real problem here is not the Segway. Its that damn gravity stuff. I swear, Newton has got a lot to answer for. Just think how much stuff you have broken all because of Newtons Gravity gizmo. Gravity sucks