I increasingly lost interest in console game as the game pad evolved. I seriously dislike game pads. The PC interface isn't a joystick, but it is so much more versatile than a game pad.
This is why I was determined to buy a Wii even if it sucked (which it doesn't). I want to promote the death of the game pad.
Don't know about more recent consoles, but my PS2 has a USB port on the front. I've plugged a USB keyboard in and you'd be surprised how many games JFW work it.
The thing about SSL is that it depends on one particular piece of information - the private key - not being available to the general public because it's stored on the server that you're connecting to and (provided the server is properly secured, backups notwithstanding) never leaves it.
However, with the RFID chip you're distributing the private key along with the public key. All you can do is hope that no enterprising hacker ever finds a way of getting at the private key.
Of course, we're assuming that this is how the chip actually works. But it seems most logical.
Most obvious mechanism is that the chip has sufficient intelligence to be able to cryptographically identify itself using public key cryptography, and the keypair is embedded on the chip at the manufacturing stage.
Would work beautifully, but it's completely broken the day someone manages to get the private key out of it.
The BBC Panorama scientology programme was pretty interesting.
The thing I found most curious was that the celebrities they interviewed seemed genuinely unaware of the science-fiction-Xenu stuff. Some of those celebrities were certainly high enough that you'd expect them to know if that was in there.
I was wondering - but of course, there's no way to prove it without gaining access at the highest echelons - if there is more than one version of Scientology. The "trashy science fiction" version (everything beyond a certain point in the theology) is drip-fed to people who've paid up enough money. The "no scifi rubbish" version (basically, everything except the story of Xenu) is the version that celebrities hear - and they're told "that's all there is to it".
(Incidentally, the law is perfectly clear and was obviously not relevant in this situation - it's just been used as an excuse to be stupid by countless organisations)
And this would also be the law which despite numerous high-profile data loss cases has resulted in only one reasonably high-profile fine (which the organisation concerned publicly announced would come out of customer's pockets because they "didn't think it fair" to take it from the Chairman's bonus).
an over-zealous-yet-strangely-ineffective police state (introduced by our country's socialists, I hasten to add, before people start trying to blame the right).
It should be pointed out here for those who are not from the UK, that while the Labour party has historically been broadly socialist, their policies have been drifting to the right for some time and they haven't really been socialists for at least 15 years.
Windows Mobile, however, is, and that's only supported on ARM processors AFAIK.
There are other embedded versions of Windows which probably do support MIPS, however, and I'm sure someone in Redmond can figure out the concept of developing code on some architecture other than x86.
Here's an interesting bit too. Looks like they try simple password protection breaking, but...
The team does not attempt to crack high-grade encryption, relying instead on the threat of a prison sentence for individuals refusing to hand over passwords or decrypted files.
Yep, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act gives them that power. If they believe you know how to get access to something that they can't (eg. you know a password), you are obliged to tell them or you face 3 years in prison.
You'll note that the wording of the above paragraph turns "innocent until proven guilty" on its head. Furthermore, how on Earth can anyone prove that they have forgotten (or indeed never knew) a password?
There was another clause to the effect "tell anyone that you've been coerced under this act and 3 year in prison becomes 5 years in prison" - I'm not sure what the exact wording was or even if that clause got passed though.
Of course, if you're facing 3 years inside but giving the password would reveal evidence of crime which would get you 10 years inside, it's fairly obvious what the sensible course of action is.
I skimmed the terms of use when I started my Verizon DSL account several years ago, and I'm quite certain it said something about downloading pornography being prohibited. Um, yeah, sure -- click "agree" to continue...
They'd never enforce something like that - they'd lose 40% of their subscribers overnight.
The whole point of a standard is that it's a document you can point at and say "We want your product to do this".
The whole point of ISO is that they're a respected international organisation which publishes these standards so there's no confusion when you say "We want your product to follow ISO standard 1234567890" - and you can be reasonably confident that even if the standard isn't fantastic, it's at least something you can all agree on.
Once ISO start publishing "standards" which for whatever reason you can't usefully point to and say "We want your product to do this", the point in their existence evaporates.
Don't use OOXML. A standard is not a law and ISO/IEC not an enforcement agency. They are an authority which you can judge on its worth.
Since they are arguing that they spent money on using ODF then why care about OOXML?
I RTFA (I know, I know) and that is basically what they're talking about doing.
However, the whole point of the article is that this has deeper implications. From TFA:
Given the organisation's inability to follow its own rules we are no longer confident that ISO/IEC will be capable of transforming itself into the open and vendor-neutral standards setting organisation which is such an urgent requirement. What is now clear is that we will have to, albeit reluctantly, re-evaluate our assessment of ISO/IEC, particularly in its relevance to our various national government interoperability frameworks. Whereas in the past it has been assumed that an ISO/IEC standard should automatically be considered for use within government, clearly this position no longer stands.
On the other hand, you could stop the payments and refuse to talk to anyone regarding it because you're under court order not to. Bet you it'd be cancelled quickly then.
it's fairly amazing that international SMS works at all. Although it's a simple protocol, there are a lot of moving parts in between it would seem.
I'll tell you why international SMS (and, for that matter, international telephony in any form) works - both in terms of roaming and in terms of making calls to international numbers.
Money.
There is nothing intrinsic involved in roaming which costs a lot of money - it costs the operators fractions of a penny to support a single call or transmit a single message.
This is why roaming is so commonly available. The prices that are charged (both by the network you're roaming in to your own operator and by your operator to you) are so absurd and bear so little resemblance to the actual costs involved that it's basically a license to print money.
Where we have probably more surveillance than anywhere else in the world, let me shed a little light on how CCTV winds up working in the real world.
There are always blind spots where no camera can see.
You can't expect particularly high quality images. I can't count the number of times I've seen CCTV footage on television where it appears that the police are seeking an amorphous grey blob. The cameras appear to be improving slightly but don't bet on it.
If the cameras are controllable from a central control room, then getting a decent shot of someone breaking the law is dependant on there being no attractive women walking past in the opposite direction at the time.
Those who think that this could ultimately be a good thing from a civil liberties perspective - I know of no CCTV camera which has caught evidence of police misconduct, even when there is strong reason to believe that they should have done so. (Why this should be the case I leave as an exercise to the reader)
Those who think this is a bad thing from a civil liberties perspective - this depends entirely on how law enforcement uses the tool. There's a temptation there, but to be honest there are so many cameras relative to the number of people looking at them that I can't see mass suppression being an issue unless/until we have computer software which can reliably analyse the video feed of every camera and react in real time. Which is not to say that such software won't exist, but I don't think it does yet.
Reports quoting local police said Yevloyev had tried to seize a policeman's gun when he was being led to a vehicle. A shot was fired and Yevloyev was injured in the head.
The police officer, being an upstanding member of Russian society and absolutely horrified at what had happened er.... dumped his body on the side of the road?!
Trust me, banks hit you hard for unauthorised overdrafts in the UK. It's not unknown for a £10 overdraft to become a £100 overdraft purely with bank charges.
See, they charge you a fee because you've gone overdrawn without authorisation - generally anything up to about £25.
Then they have to write to you to notify you of this. So they charge you for the letter - probably another £25.
Then they apply charges for every week/fortnight/month (delete as applicable) your account is in an unauthorised overdraft.
Then they charge you a swingeing rate of interest on this.
Then they write to you again two weeks later to say "Were you planning on paying off this unauthorised overdraft? Oh, BTW, this letter's costing you another £25".
Slashdot Mirror
I increasingly lost interest in console game as the game pad evolved. I seriously dislike game pads. The PC interface isn't a joystick, but it is so much more versatile than a game pad.
This is why I was determined to buy a Wii even if it sucked (which it doesn't). I want to promote the death of the game pad.
Don't know about more recent consoles, but my PS2 has a USB port on the front. I've plugged a USB keyboard in and you'd be surprised how many games JFW work it.
The thing about SSL is that it depends on one particular piece of information - the private key - not being available to the general public because it's stored on the server that you're connecting to and (provided the server is properly secured, backups notwithstanding) never leaves it.
However, with the RFID chip you're distributing the private key along with the public key. All you can do is hope that no enterprising hacker ever finds a way of getting at the private key.
Of course, we're assuming that this is how the chip actually works. But it seems most logical.
Most obvious mechanism is that the chip has sufficient intelligence to be able to cryptographically identify itself using public key cryptography, and the keypair is embedded on the chip at the manufacturing stage.
Would work beautifully, but it's completely broken the day someone manages to get the private key out of it.
The BBC Panorama scientology programme was pretty interesting.
The thing I found most curious was that the celebrities they interviewed seemed genuinely unaware of the science-fiction-Xenu stuff. Some of those celebrities were certainly high enough that you'd expect them to know if that was in there.
I was wondering - but of course, there's no way to prove it without gaining access at the highest echelons - if there is more than one version of Scientology. The "trashy science fiction" version (everything beyond a certain point in the theology) is drip-fed to people who've paid up enough money. The "no scifi rubbish" version (basically, everything except the story of Xenu) is the version that celebrities hear - and they're told "that's all there is to it".
in case ISPs are worried about little things like the Data Protection Act.
Ah yes, the Data Protection Act.
That would be the law which is misinterpreted to mean that a mother can't complain about a present purchased for her 7 year old until said 7 year old has agreed that she can discuss it?
(Incidentally, the law is perfectly clear and was obviously not relevant in this situation - it's just been used as an excuse to be stupid by countless organisations)
And this would also be the law which despite numerous high-profile data loss cases has resulted in only one reasonably high-profile fine (which the organisation concerned publicly announced would come out of customer's pockets because they "didn't think it fair" to take it from the Chairman's bonus).
an over-zealous-yet-strangely-ineffective police state (introduced by our country's socialists, I hasten to add, before people start trying to blame the right).
It should be pointed out here for those who are not from the UK, that while the Labour party has historically been broadly socialist, their policies have been drifting to the right for some time and they haven't really been socialists for at least 15 years.
Gentoo will probably also sort-of work
That's the whole point of Gentoo, isn't it?
Windows CE hasn't been supported for years.
Windows Mobile, however, is, and that's only supported on ARM processors AFAIK.
There are other embedded versions of Windows which probably do support MIPS, however, and I'm sure someone in Redmond can figure out the concept of developing code on some architecture other than x86.
What would you be if you are atheist and not an evolutionist?
Given the body of scientific data to backup evolution theory, I believe the correct term would be "idiot".
The Black Death spread across Europe and the Mideast in less than 4 years -- individual diseases can move very quickly.
Very true, however it is a little known fact that very few dinosaurs were building boats and travelling the world.
Who do you suppose writes those codes?
This is akin to saying "a bank manager would never be able to work as a loan officer because of the bank's constantly changing interest rates".
A small group of electrical engineers of which your particular engineer may or may not be a member.
Joe Bob's job, OTOH, is to keep up with what that small group write.
They'd never enforce something like that - they'd lose 40% of their subscribers overnight.
Hmmm... OK so how exactly do those other 60% get around the ban and download their porn? Please share!
Porn sites offering HTTPS across the entire site rather than just the credit card processing bit.
Here's an interesting bit too. Looks like they try simple password protection breaking, but...
The team does not attempt to crack high-grade encryption, relying instead on the threat of a prison sentence for individuals refusing to hand over passwords or decrypted files.
Yep, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act gives them that power. If they believe you know how to get access to something that they can't (eg. you know a password), you are obliged to tell them or you face 3 years in prison.
You'll note that the wording of the above paragraph turns "innocent until proven guilty" on its head. Furthermore, how on Earth can anyone prove that they have forgotten (or indeed never knew) a password?
There was another clause to the effect "tell anyone that you've been coerced under this act and 3 year in prison becomes 5 years in prison" - I'm not sure what the exact wording was or even if that clause got passed though.
Of course, if you're facing 3 years inside but giving the password would reveal evidence of crime which would get you 10 years inside, it's fairly obvious what the sensible course of action is.
I skimmed the terms of use when I started my Verizon DSL account several years ago, and I'm quite certain it said something about downloading pornography being prohibited. Um, yeah, sure -- click "agree" to continue...
They'd never enforce something like that - they'd lose 40% of their subscribers overnight.
Well apparently it works on Linux as well (As long as it has the right KERNAL)
From Argos.co.uk.
2GB storage.
Plug and play.
Compatible with Windows ME, 2008, XP, Mac OS, 8.6 and Higher, Linux, Kernal 2.4X and any operating system with a USB port.
Bet you anything you like that compatibility guide refers to the USB mass storage functionality and not the data on it.
The whole point of a standard is that it's a document you can point at and say "We want your product to do this".
The whole point of ISO is that they're a respected international organisation which publishes these standards so there's no confusion when you say "We want your product to follow ISO standard 1234567890" - and you can be reasonably confident that even if the standard isn't fantastic, it's at least something you can all agree on.
Once ISO start publishing "standards" which for whatever reason you can't usefully point to and say "We want your product to do this", the point in their existence evaporates.
What a good idea. They could call it something like Open Document Format.
Except I doubt Microsoft would be prepared to be involved in such a discussion.
Don't use OOXML. A standard is not a law and ISO/IEC not an enforcement agency. They are an authority which you can judge on its worth.
Since they are arguing that they spent money on using ODF then why care about OOXML?
I RTFA (I know, I know) and that is basically what they're talking about doing.
However, the whole point of the article is that this has deeper implications. From TFA:
I don't think I need to clarify that any further.
On the other hand, you could stop the payments and refuse to talk to anyone regarding it because you're under court order not to. Bet you it'd be cancelled quickly then.
it's fairly amazing that international SMS works at all. Although it's a simple protocol, there are a lot of moving parts in between it would seem.
I'll tell you why international SMS (and, for that matter, international telephony in any form) works - both in terms of roaming and in terms of making calls to international numbers.
Money.
There is nothing intrinsic involved in roaming which costs a lot of money - it costs the operators fractions of a penny to support a single call or transmit a single message.
This is why roaming is so commonly available. The prices that are charged (both by the network you're roaming in to your own operator and by your operator to you) are so absurd and bear so little resemblance to the actual costs involved that it's basically a license to print money.
Back to Reality was season 5.
Where we have probably more surveillance than anywhere else in the world, let me shed a little light on how CCTV winds up working in the real world.
Reports quoting local police said Yevloyev had tried to seize a policeman's gun when he was being led to a vehicle. A shot was fired and Yevloyev was injured in the head.
The police officer, being an upstanding member of Russian society and absolutely horrified at what had happened er.... dumped his body on the side of the road?!
But I thought all meat has the country of origin stated on the packaging anyway in the EU.. maybe it was purely a marketing gimmick?
It does now. Most of the mad cow stuff kicked off 10-20 years ago in Europe.
Trust me, banks hit you hard for unauthorised overdrafts in the UK. It's not unknown for a £10 overdraft to become a £100 overdraft purely with bank charges.
See, they charge you a fee because you've gone overdrawn without authorisation - generally anything up to about £25.
Then they have to write to you to notify you of this. So they charge you for the letter - probably another £25.
Then they apply charges for every week/fortnight/month (delete as applicable) your account is in an unauthorised overdraft.
Then they charge you a swingeing rate of interest on this.
Then they write to you again two weeks later to say "Were you planning on paying off this unauthorised overdraft? Oh, BTW, this letter's costing you another £25".