>> there is not a single thing that REQUIRES paper in todays age. > A paper aeroplane? Try that with your laptop you'll have to get a new one.
Actually, when I got it I did:) I ran the 1996 64k intro Paper which features LOTS of digital paper aeroplanes! I can confirm that due to Statix's excellent programming skills that my laptop is still working fine but thanks for your concern!:) Note: Paper works best now days under DOSBox or you can watch it online here.
Good to see Japheth getting public recognition for a subset of his fantastic regular output. I would highly recommend to any serious PC programmer or folks interested in low level stuff to have a look at Japheth's website as he has written many great tools which will be of interest. Secondly I would also recommend BTTR software's forums for useful/informative discussions concerning Japheth's work together with other useful information/links to projects by others.
You forgot to jump around your message, or put it at the end, or use segments to tell the assembler to do that automatically.
FRARS still has some of the leading experts in communications - including M0EYT / Paul J. Marsh who is currently just out in the middle of a field working 10Ghz.... Paul's probably on IRC as well right now so I will see what I can do to highlight this discussion to him in a minute.
CP/M was more likely derived from a DEC OS. RSX? RSTS? Or something else like that?
It certainly wasn't Unix.
Yup! As someone else rightly pointed out DOS gained Unix bits in version 2 (which is the first version I was familiar with myself). Gary Kildall based CPM on DEC OS / History of DOS. That's the good thing about Slashdot is you can be completely wrong about something and there is usually someone else around with more knowledge than yourself in that area who can set the record straight. Sorry for any confusion caused due to my lack of knowledge on the history of CP/M!
I implemented pre-emptive multi-tasking in '92 on x86 hardware, and it wasn't bloody well rocket science
maybe not rocket science, but still impressive as many people at the time were only aware of pre-emptive multi-tasking on the Amiga.
Quite frankly I think implementing Minix from scratch is a hell of a lot more interesting than anything DOS ever did.
True. (Dirty)DOS of course being originally based on CPM which in turn was based on Unix!
However what I and it appears many others like about DOS is the fact it is just so simple, it really is nothing fancy, nothing clever, it just works. Note how active the FreeDOS homepage is. The simplicity of early DOS versions has also allowed them to be supported on a wide range of hardware including non x86 hardware. It still turns up in the most unlikely of places for single dedicated tasks. There are now many other OS's that are used for embedded tasks but the fact that DOS is still implemented for such tasks says a lot.
For a personal project I recently decided to run it under DOS for reliability and simplicity, security. Security??!?!?!! Yes, DOS programs run as root but with the right admin you can lock a DOS sytem down to the point where it is virtually impossible to hack. When I look at Linux it has become complicated by features, to the point that keeping it simple or securely looking it down is getting more and more difficult. Note: I use Linux and have played with numerous simplified Linux distros, the problem is so many distros come with too many features installed and services enabled. I like DOS for those tasks where you want nothing more than a well known supported file system, a simple bit of networking (inc. IP) and just your app.
Still I have also played with Minix and am personally interested in seeing it evolve more. However like someone else said "what's the point", from a techi point I am very much with the "because crowd" however on the practical side I think if this project had started up several years ago it would be more active. I really wish this new Minix project well however currently I fail to see the demand. Still early days....
I replaced the command.com with some other shell, that gave you all sorts of colors, as well as a nicer 'dir' command.
Hmmm sounds like 4DOS. Personally I was never a huge fan. I did write a couple of real and joke shells. Ahh those were the days when you could fake an entire DOS application in a few minutes in front of a compiler. I remember one of our programming teachers used to suddendly appear and start scrolling up and down to read our code as we were busy typing away (very annoying) so one day I wrote the program we were asked to write and another program which displayed the first program and looked just like the programming editor. Imagine his surprise when he hit the down arrow to be greated with a personal message being typed up on the screen....;-)
I wonder if there are any explorer.exe replacements?
Yes. How to is documented in both official and unofficial programmers guides. Miles's useful site TinyApps links to a few (as well as some other useful OS distributions and other OS tools of interest). However at a really simple level:
I always wanted to mess around the code on a simple, yet an operating system you could DO something with.
Have you looked at FreeDOS? Under the hood DOS is simple, heavily documented, reliable and capable of doing many tasks, it can also be very well secured with the right tools or modifications. For example many people forget that COMMAND.COM can be replaced with other programs and there are many tools around designed to block actions or commands from being executed (hint for security look at BBS SYSOP security tools that many people like myself used to write).
As your informed posting points out it is indeed possible to tap fibre. My post was simply pointing out the fact that government/military establishments have now all switched over to using fibre for ultra secure requirements in preference to copper which is easier to tap than fibre.
You may or may not be aware that technology exists which allows the light paths in a fibre to be continuously altered in much the same way that band switching (rapidly switching transmissions across multiple frequencies) is already used by the military to evade listening. A military installation is not only likely to make use of this technology but would implement it across multiple fibres. Yes, band switching technology exists on copper networks (e.g. fast etherchannel) however throw in the complexities of dust free fusion splicing (in a battlefield environment...!), the time required to implement a fibre tap clearly highlight the obvious fact that fibre more suited for secure networks than copper.
(a) If you are so worried about interception... then you won't be using a wireless network anyways. see my earlier post here. Government offices tend to now use fibre to the desk.
(b) WEP is not secure enough for any application. I just used WEP an Wi-Fi example that people would easily relate to.
claiming that commercial encryption systems can't be used for military applications I didn't say that! I said for very serious military applications, i.e. stealth.
AES and RSA and even TLS are as secure as you can get today Exactly... as secure as you or I as the average person in the street can get their hands on which is a million miles away from government usage.
The modern crypto algorithms are NOT crackable today Maybe not by joe public using standard computing hardware.... governments are several steps ahead!
I suspect that many of the rooms this has been designed for are unlikely to even have Windows. However quoting the article:
The panels are 50 to100 microns thick and can be applied to most surfaces including glass.
Believe me, I'm literally right across the hall from a "RF-Secure" room at times, and that has EVERYTHING covered in every direction, windows, doors, floor and ceiling.
Oh I believe you!! The military have been known to paint entire rooms 100% black (including light bulbs, meters, control panels!) when establishments have been left dormant for long periods but there is still a slim chance that they may require quickly bringing back on-line at a later stage. So the idea of someone using this to wallpaper everything in a room (e.g cabinets, desks) isn't as far fetched as some people may think!
Re:Nice and all, but who's going to use it?
on
RF-Blocking Wallpaper
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I mean, if you have such sensitive data that you need to install this, why not simply use copper cables
Copper cables are far too easy to detect and physically tap. For really sensitive applications fibre-optic cables are used. A classic text book example being the use of fibre optics to link up scud missiles launchers in Iraq.
The answer to your question is right at the start of the text you quoted:
UK **defence** contractor
For some applications encryption isn't enough. Note also that WEP is a commercial encryption system this means it is NOT secure enough for very serious military applications which is where technologies like this play a role by preventing leakage or blocking interference.
Correct and initally until it was patched it could took just 13 assembler bytes to disable the AV software!!!
I know because at one point the details for the CP's API appeared in Ralph Brown's interrupt list (interestingly later removed...) and when I was bored one day I wrote some asm code to test it. It always surprised me that there weren't any well known viruses (to my knowledge) that made use of the API calls.
Still anti-virus software is a bit more complex now days...
Is a virus that spreads via phone to computer or vice versa possible?
Yes, I firmly believe that this is technically possible. Now (maybe...) just around the corner undoubtably....
I occasionally study virus/worm source code (or hex!) when AV cleanup guides seem unclear. Technically I'm often impressed by the talent and intelligence demostrated by some of these guys (and girls, sorry Gigabyte:) but feel sad at what I see as misguided output of some amazing coding talent. More than anything I feel sad because I remember people that have been hurt by their creations, e.g:
I once had to tell someone working as an admin in a hospital that she had just lost 3 years of her hard work on 5 1/4's floppies (this is before harddisks/AV were common!) due to stoned virus. Believe me she cried a lot. Experiences like that stay with you and that's just one of what has now been too many experiences. So I offer no proof because I have no wish to help give ideas or speed the progression of something I don't want to see, even though VXrs and many other people know it will be evitable:(
Jokes aside. I thought the use of capital letters like that in the actual advert in relation to paying for posting (and the way you quoted them here) makes this bit read like a 419 scam. I don't honestly believe that this is a 419 but even for us geeks I guess it's easy for us to lose your guard when going:
"...ooh a limited first edition boxed Biohazard LE (dark blue)...".
Anyway must go back to drooling at that list. Ohhhhh lovely! 419 whatever... I want that stuff:)
"I see you are trying to think, would you like to know how Microsoft software can help you?" Sorry, too easy!
No as it happens, I didn't even want to even bring the subject of computers into this particular discussion. When I started using computers I didn't even have/use a single Microsoft's product. My first experience of a GUI was GEM. Hence when I think of a paperclip I DO think of a paperclip. I am also by no means fixed on one particular platform or technology. I wanted to make a serious point and actually wanted to refer to the original concept of a paperclip. However I added my last sentance because I knew that if I didn't someone would make a joke about it.... clearly someone still did anyway;)
I fully agree with you that he should learn to focus on one thing. Or to put it another way it is easier to normally go with the flow than to try to swim up river (well initially anyway). However I do NOT agree with this statement:
I'd say that most of the "obvious" or "easy" discoveries have been made, and much of the research out there is fine-tuning what we know.
There are still many obvious discovers stil to be made for the simple reason that so many people these days are busy working complex ideas that people have forgotten that very simple ideas often make a big difference, e.g. wheel, axe, chalk, paperclip.... Hmmm, paperclip maybe I should have left that one out;-)
Slashdot Mirror
>> there is not a single thing that REQUIRES paper in todays age.
> A paper aeroplane? Try that with your laptop you'll have to get a new one.
Actually, when I got it I did :) I ran the 1996 64k intro Paper which features LOTS of digital paper aeroplanes! I can confirm that due to Statix's excellent programming skills that my laptop is still working fine but thanks for your concern! :) Note: Paper works best now days under DOSBox or you can watch it online here.
3C 48 74 6D 4C 3E 3C 48 45 41 44 3E 3C 54 49 74 4C 45 3E BA 30 01 B4 09 CD 21 C3 3C 2F 74 69 74 6C 65 3E 3C 2F 48 45 41 44 3E 3C 42 4F 44 59 3E 0D 75 20 73 68 6F 75 6C 64 20 72 65 67 69 73 74 65 72 20 6F 6E 20 42 54 54 52 21 24 3C 2F 42 4F 44 59 3E 3C 2F 48 54 4D 4C 3E 1A 41 72 6A 61 79
You forgot to jump around your message, or put it at the end, or use segments to tell the assembler to do that automatically.
Whoops....
50 53 20 FF 41 43 41 44 41 4D 59 21 FF 24 FF 0D 52 4A 1A C0 18 E4 53 5A 5B 33 ED 8E D5 C1 E2 08 0D 00 52 80 EC 49 BC FD FF 9C FF 9E 84 00 E9 CF FE 47 52 45 45 54 49 4E 47 53 20 32 4D 41 52 4B
Group photo of the 1st HAMS to do Moon Bounce - The dish used came off British Telecom's "Post Office" tower in London. If you wish to see it yourself then come along to FRARS's HAMFEST on Sunday 8th August 2004. More moonbounce photos here.
FRARS still has some of the leading experts in communications - including M0EYT / Paul J. Marsh who is currently just out in the middle of a field working 10Ghz.... Paul's probably on IRC as well right now so I will see what I can do to highlight this discussion to him in a minute.
Believe me sniffing is the last thing you want to be doing in a British public toilet....!
Oh NO they are NOT!
A Brit would know that Bangers & Mash are infact 2 naughty Chimpanzee brothers who live at number 3 Tree Street. You can see some of their videos here or download one of their games here :-)
It certainly wasn't Unix.
Yup! As someone else rightly pointed out DOS gained Unix bits in version 2 (which is the first version I was familiar with myself). Gary Kildall based CPM on DEC OS / History of DOS. That's the good thing about Slashdot is you can be completely wrong about something and there is usually someone else around with more knowledge than yourself in that area who can set the record straight. Sorry for any confusion caused due to my lack of knowledge on the history of CP/M!
maybe not rocket science, but still impressive as many people at the time were only aware of pre-emptive multi-tasking on the Amiga.
Quite frankly I think implementing Minix from scratch is a hell of a lot more interesting than anything DOS ever did.
True. (Dirty)DOS of course being originally based on CPM which in turn was based on Unix!
However what I and it appears many others like about DOS is the fact it is just so simple, it really is nothing fancy, nothing clever, it just works. Note how active the FreeDOS homepage is. The simplicity of early DOS versions has also allowed them to be supported on a wide range of hardware including non x86 hardware. It still turns up in the most unlikely of places for single dedicated tasks. There are now many other OS's that are used for embedded tasks but the fact that DOS is still implemented for such tasks says a lot.
For a personal project I recently decided to run it under DOS for reliability and simplicity, security. Security??!?!?!! Yes, DOS programs run as root but with the right admin you can lock a DOS sytem down to the point where it is virtually impossible to hack. When I look at Linux it has become complicated by features, to the point that keeping it simple or securely looking it down is getting more and more difficult. Note: I use Linux and have played with numerous simplified Linux distros, the problem is so many distros come with too many features installed and services enabled. I like DOS for those tasks where you want nothing more than a well known supported file system, a simple bit of networking (inc. IP) and just your app.
Still I have also played with Minix and am personally interested in seeing it evolve more. However like someone else said "what's the point", from a techi point I am very much with the "because crowd" however on the practical side I think if this project had started up several years ago it would be more active. I really wish this new Minix project well however currently I fail to see the demand. Still early days....
Hmmm sounds like 4DOS. Personally I was never a huge fan. I did write a couple of real and joke shells. Ahh those were the days when you could fake an entire DOS application in a few minutes in front of a compiler. I remember one of our programming teachers used to suddendly appear and start scrolling up and down to read our code as we were busy typing away (very annoying) so one day I wrote the program we were asked to write and another program which displayed the first program and looked just like the programming editor. Imagine his surprise when he hit the down arrow to be greated with a personal message being typed up on the screen.... ;-)
I wonder if there are any explorer.exe replacements?
Yes. How to is documented in both official and unofficial programmers guides. Miles's useful site TinyApps links to a few (as well as some other useful OS distributions and other OS tools of interest). However at a really simple level:
SYSTEM.INI
[boot]
shell=explorer.exe / progman.exe / taskman.exe / myprog.exe
Even possible to start DOS.... better stop there :)
We'll all contribute and call it SlashDoS...
Have you looked at FreeDOS? Under the hood DOS is simple, heavily documented, reliable and capable of doing many tasks, it can also be very well secured with the right tools or modifications. For example many people forget that COMMAND.COM can be replaced with other programs and there are many tools around designed to block actions or commands from being executed (hint for security look at BBS SYSOP security tools that many people like myself used to write).
You may or may not be aware that technology exists which allows the light paths in a fibre to be continuously altered in much the same way that band switching (rapidly switching transmissions across multiple frequencies) is already used by the military to evade listening. A military installation is not only likely to make use of this technology but would implement it across multiple fibres. Yes, band switching technology exists on copper networks (e.g. fast etherchannel) however throw in the complexities of dust free fusion splicing (in a battlefield environment...!), the time required to implement a fibre tap clearly highlight the obvious fact that fibre more suited for secure networks than copper.
see my earlier post here. Government offices tend to now use fibre to the desk.
(b) WEP is not secure enough for any application.
I just used WEP an Wi-Fi example that people would easily relate to.
claiming that commercial encryption systems can't be used for military applications
I didn't say that! I said for very serious military applications, i.e. stealth.
AES and RSA and even TLS are as secure as you can get today
Exactly... as secure as you or I as the average person in the street can get their hands on which is a million miles away from government usage.
The modern crypto algorithms are NOT crackable today
Maybe not by joe public using standard computing hardware.... governments are several steps ahead!
I suspect that many of the rooms this has been designed for are unlikely to even have Windows. However quoting the article: The panels are 50 to100 microns thick and can be applied to most surfaces including glass.
Believe me, I'm literally right across the hall from a "RF-Secure" room at times, and that has EVERYTHING covered in every direction, windows, doors, floor and ceiling.
Oh I believe you!! The military have been known to paint entire rooms 100% black (including light bulbs, meters, control panels!) when establishments have been left dormant for long periods but there is still a slim chance that they may require quickly bringing back on-line at a later stage. So the idea of someone using this to wallpaper everything in a room (e.g cabinets, desks) isn't as far fetched as some people may think!
Copper cables are far too easy to detect and physically tap. For really sensitive applications fibre-optic cables are used. A classic text book example being the use of fibre optics to link up scud missiles launchers in Iraq.
UK **defence** contractor
For some applications encryption isn't enough. Note also that WEP is a commercial encryption system this means it is NOT secure enough for very serious military applications which is where technologies like this play a role by preventing leakage or blocking interference.
Agreed as this was the very point I made in this posting Hardly a big surprise.... back in February in relation to this slashdot story - Microsoft Beta Includes Built-in Virus Scanner
I know because at one point the details for the CP's API appeared in Ralph Brown's interrupt list (interestingly later removed...) and when I was bored one day I wrote some asm code to test it. It always surprised me that there weren't any well known viruses (to my knowledge) that made use of the API calls.
Still anti-virus software is a bit more complex now days...
Yes, I firmly believe that this is technically possible. Now (maybe...) just around the corner undoubtably....
I occasionally study virus/worm source code (or hex!) when AV cleanup guides seem unclear. Technically I'm often impressed by the talent and intelligence demostrated by some of these guys (and girls, sorry Gigabyte :) but feel sad at what I see as misguided output of some amazing coding talent. More than anything I feel sad because I remember people that have been hurt by their creations, e.g:
I once had to tell someone working as an admin in a hospital that she had just lost 3 years of her hard work on 5 1/4's floppies (this is before harddisks/AV were common!) due to stoned virus. Believe me she cried a lot. Experiences like that stay with you and that's just one of what has now been too many experiences. So I offer no proof because I have no wish to help give ideas or speed the progression of something I don't want to see, even though VXrs and many other people know it will be evitable :(
"...ooh a limited first edition boxed Biohazard LE (dark blue)...".
Anyway must go back to drooling at that list. Ohhhhh lovely! 419 whatever... I want that stuff :)
No as it happens, I didn't even want to even bring the subject of computers into this particular discussion. When I started using computers I didn't even have/use a single Microsoft's product. My first experience of a GUI was GEM. Hence when I think of a paperclip I DO think of a paperclip. I am also by no means fixed on one particular platform or technology. I wanted to make a serious point and actually wanted to refer to the original concept of a paperclip. However I added my last sentance because I knew that if I didn't someone would make a joke about it.... clearly someone still did anyway ;)
- 1) Meteorites
- 2) Anomalous plant growth
Hhhmmmmm....Looks like Beagle2 has been rediscovered ;)
I'd say that most of the "obvious" or "easy" discoveries have been made, and much of the research out there is fine-tuning what we know.
There are still many obvious discovers stil to be made for the simple reason that so many people these days are busy working complex ideas that people have forgotten that very simple ideas often make a big difference, e.g. wheel, axe, chalk, paperclip.... Hmmm, paperclip maybe I should have left that one out ;-)