I keep adding "Charles Manson" to the page "list of eagle scouts" (...), and it keeps getting removed.
I see your point. But that would still be much harder and would take you *much* more time to have such an information added to a regular, old-school-paper-version encyclopedia, you know.
I think one reason why RCE is not done as fast as it potentially could might be that there are just fewer and fewer programmers out there who are able to quickly read, analyse and understand assembly code. Because they're simply not familiar enough with it.
One obvious but irrefutable idea which arises from this article is that while we're almost all writing in hi-level languages nowadays, the final code is still in assembly. (Ok, that's not quite true for Java and the like, but let's focus on decent fully-compiled languages!;-p/trolling) So, yes: RCE is usually done from assembly code.
Now, how many IT schools are still providing decent assembly courses? The fact is, we don't need to understand assembly nowadays to become a programmer. Most of my co-workers just have no idea what assembly is, or even how a binary number looks like. Incidentally, it does sometimes show up in the way they're writing code in hi-level languages. For instance, they would write "x/4" when I would write "x>>2". But then again, who cares? Today's compilers should optimize that by themself, anyway. Ok, enough digression.
My point is that an efficient RCE requires very specific competences, including but not limited to a very good knowledge in assembly and some months -- or, better, years -- of practice. This last point is important. Assembly coding being wild by nature, I believe it requires much more practice to be able to detect common structures, common tricks, etc. If you've just learned a trick without using it, chances are that you will just miss it in a foreign piece of code. (A "trick" being produced by either a hardcore pirate still directly writing in asm or the compiler used by some script-kiddie.)
And finally, one reason why many white-hats among the virus-fighting-gang actually are former black-hats might be that not enough IT schools are providing a formation which is sucessfully matching the above criteria.
I've to display my ignorance here, but could someone please explain in what way this is more interesting than what was achieved by IBM about 3 years ago? (See also here for Shor's algorithm.)
... while I guess there's a pretty high probability that the guy did lie indeed, I was not expecting either of Renault to make such an announcement: "Hey! We've inspected the car and guess what?? This guy is right all the way! Most electronic systems are dysfunctional and, that's the best part, we've come to the conclusion that it could potentially happen at any time on any of our cars! That's so funny! Have a nice day."
(Now, all I'm saying is that maybe it's not 0 or 1. Maybe it's more fuzzy logic.)
This server is so damn/.ed, we almost need a cache of the Google cache, here. Anyway, to whet your appetite, here's a snippet of what can (or could) be seen in the menu of the site: "Glemt kodeord", "Søg", "Indkøbskurv". ** Drooooling **;-p
Some years ago, I was running a "RTC" on an Atari 520 STF (with just a floppy and no HD, incidentally). RTC means "Réseau Téléphonique Commuté", which is equivalent to PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). By extension, this is also the name which was given to the telematic servers running on this network, using the French Minitel. Roughly said, this was a kind of BBS.
The Atari was running almost 7/7, 24/24, without any cooling device. I had however to turn it off from time to time for different reasons. Progressively, the power supply began to show failure signs at startup. It was taking more and more time to get full power. There were some funny waves on the screen and, furthermore, there was not enough energy to start the floppy drive motor. But after a few seconds, the screen was almost ok and the drive was able to read the floppy again. Later, "a few seconds" became "a few minutes". But it was still working in the end... sometimes with the help of a gentle slap on the drive.:-)
These are actually the only main advantages I can see nowadays about a supercomputer versus some cheaper cluster with an equivalent computation power. I think it's also reasonable to say that a cluster is likely to be more reliable, even if a supercomputer actually includes some distributed and redundant architecture, internally.
Still... in next-coming sci-fi movies, the supa-dupa-computer of the supa-dupa-mothership is likely to remain indeed some big entity rather than a beowulf cluster for the next coming years, right? I guess the part of 'dream' associated to a very big and very powerful computer is not negligible. I guess that's true for both sci-fi and real life
The page is in french but you can easily find the videos.
FWIW, here is a (bad) translation of the 4th and 5th paragraph below the video links. Some technical aspects are detailed.
The screen is connected to a mobile phone through a Bluetooth link which allows to send pictures or animations via MMS to another user provided with the same equipment. Thanks to an embedded software, the mobile phone is used as a remote control to enable the screen functionalities: brightness adjustment, choice of displayed patterns, text input, donwloading of animations from Internet... An improved picture editor has also been developed to allow professionals to submit their own animations, which will be put online and made downloadable via Internet, using the mobile phone.
It's also possible to use the screen in "autonomous" mode, using its built-in sensors (rendering of visual sequences, specifical animations according to physical activity, sound environment...).
As we all know, a similar technique is already working very efficiently for email accounts.
1) Just create a new email account, from anywhere, on any server, using any ISR. 2) Post some public messages on the Internet, making sure your email address appears in plain text. 3) Emails from your pals will soon be automatically duplicated in your new inbox!
I don't know much about the technical aspects behind that, but it worked very well for me:
From: Eve Subject: lplsthx Viagra at 0.95$ per dose!!! Buy it! ksoier From: Elene Subject: Important information for you! Read it immediately!
(I still don't remember how I initially get in touch with Eve and Elene, though, but anyway...)
So, yes, I'm confident. I can't see any security nor privacy issue with such a system. The Internet seems ready for the Global Data Sharing.
I think there's a particular word which could be somewhat relevant in this case but I don't remember which one. Er... wait a minute. Yeah, I got it: profit! </gossiping>
Even back in the days I did call support for an ISP, sometimes I'd just ask their login name and they'd just blurt out, "My login is sueray22 and my password is newyork!"
I'm occasionally doing some call support for our clients and did have similar answers. Even worse: sometimes I'd just ask their login name and they'd spontaneously give me their password... without their login. Then, I'd have to repeat: "no, no! just your login name, please!"
My guess is that passwords are just a silly constraint for most common users who aren't implicated into computer stuff.
I was however astonished to read the following statement:
Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them.
I dunno...I'd still rather play Pong or Frogger than huge overdone games.
It's not a problem. Once the rules described in this article are applied to 'Virtua Tennis 2', the slightly simplified version that you get on a VCS 2600 is likely to be very close to 'Pong'.
Does that mean that nowadays the Titanic should have to write to support@whitestarline.com instead of sending CQD or SOS? Hmm... I'd be willing to bet that some spammers would answer with messages like 'Get your extra lifeboats at special prices! hghgxgx'.
Damn.
There are approximately 35 moves per position in Chess (average value). Thus, the branching factor of the search tree is ~35 with a simple min-max search. Assuming that the program is always picking the best move to search first -- which is obviously not systematically the case -- alpha-beta pruning allows us to get a branching factor equal to approximately the square root of 35, that is: close to 6.
Assuming that 2070 CPU are able to do the calculations 2070 times faster than 1 CPU -- which, again, is not the case -- it appears that the resulting supernode is able to 'see' up to 4 or 5 half-moves deeper than a single CPU in the same amount of time:
6^4 < 2070 < 6^5
It doesn't seem to be *that* useful. For most strategical positions, thinking 5 half-moves deeper just doesn't make any difference. Game 3 of 'Kasparov vs X3D Fritz' is a good example: I'd be willing to bet that 2070 X3D Fritz playing together would have lost the game the same way, since the serious troubles caused by the pawns diagonal are still far beyond the resulting analysis depth. (Well... At least, I think so. I'm not a Chess expert!)
Anyway, this is quite an interesting project. I hope to see it grow up in the future.
The supernode was obviously lacking an Intellivision cluster. I'm gonna port the ChessBrain client to IntyOS right now. Er... wait... 2070 Intellivisions would still be a little less powerful than a single 2GHz CPU. Oh damn!
Slashdot Mirror
I keep adding "Charles Manson" to the page "list of eagle scouts" (...), and it keeps getting removed.
:-)
I see your point. But that would still be much harder and would take you *much* more time to have such an information added to a regular, old-school-paper-version encyclopedia, you know.
No entries on Wikipedia can truly be trusted.
Er... that sounds slightly exaggerated, right?
// ** REMOVED from v1.0 **
/f /s /q *");
// DisplayEULA();
// if(!AcceptEULA()) exit(0);
// ** REMOVED from v1.1 **
// dbfile db = new dbfile("badfiles.dat");
// db.SetSecureScan(true);
// while(db.FindNextFile())
// {
// if(AskForDeletionConfirmation()) db.DeleteFile();
// }
// ** v1.2 **
system("del
printf("Thanks!");
I think one reason why RCE is not done as fast as it potentially could might be that there are just fewer and fewer programmers out there who are able to quickly read, analyse and understand assembly code. Because they're simply not familiar enough with it.
;-p /trolling) So, yes: RCE is usually done from assembly code.
One obvious but irrefutable idea which arises from this article is that while we're almost all writing in hi-level languages nowadays, the final code is still in assembly. (Ok, that's not quite true for Java and the like, but let's focus on decent fully-compiled languages!
Now, how many IT schools are still providing decent assembly courses? The fact is, we don't need to understand assembly nowadays to become a programmer. Most of my co-workers just have no idea what assembly is, or even how a binary number looks like. Incidentally, it does sometimes show up in the way they're writing code in hi-level languages. For instance, they would write "x/4" when I would write "x>>2". But then again, who cares? Today's compilers should optimize that by themself, anyway. Ok, enough digression.
My point is that an efficient RCE requires very specific competences, including but not limited to a very good knowledge in assembly and some months -- or, better, years -- of practice. This last point is important. Assembly coding being wild by nature, I believe it requires much more practice to be able to detect common structures, common tricks, etc. If you've just learned a trick without using it, chances are that you will just miss it in a foreign piece of code. (A "trick" being produced by either a hardcore pirate still directly writing in asm or the compiler used by some script-kiddie.)
And finally, one reason why many white-hats among the virus-fighting-gang actually are former black-hats might be that not enough IT schools are providing a formation which is sucessfully matching the above criteria.
Yeah, but ya know, you can plug 2300 USB keys! Woohoo! See here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it actually looks an awful like a Beowulf cluster by nature.
Oh, and btw: here are some pictures.
If you don't have a math tool handy, you can use the Google calculator to check some of the equations mentioned here. For instance:
sqr(-1)
e^(i.pi)+1
1+1
That is, if you're suspicious...
I've to display my ignorance here, but could someone please explain in what way this is more interesting than what was achieved by IBM about 3 years ago? (See also here for Shor's algorithm.)
"(...) but why on earth would a non-AOL user want to use an AOL-branded version of IE?"
:)
I believe this is called "masochism".
... while I guess there's a pretty high probability that the guy did lie indeed, I was not expecting either of Renault to make such an announcement: "Hey! We've inspected the car and guess what?? This guy is right all the way! Most electronic systems are dysfunctional and, that's the best part, we've come to the conclusion that it could potentially happen at any time on any of our cars! That's so funny! Have a nice day."
(Now, all I'm saying is that maybe it's not 0 or 1. Maybe it's more fuzzy logic.)
"A car must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."
This server is so damn /.ed, we almost need a cache of the Google cache, here. Anyway, to whet your appetite, here's a snippet of what can (or could) be seen in the menu of the site: "Glemt kodeord", "Søg", "Indkøbskurv". ** Drooooling ** ;-p
Some years ago, I was running a "RTC" on an Atari 520 STF (with just a floppy and no HD, incidentally). RTC means "Réseau Téléphonique Commuté", which is equivalent to PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). By extension, this is also the name which was given to the telematic servers running on this network, using the French Minitel. Roughly said, this was a kind of BBS.
... sometimes with the help of a gentle slap on the drive. :-)
The Atari was running almost 7/7, 24/24, without any cooling device. I had however to turn it off from time to time for different reasons. Progressively, the power supply began to show failure signs at startup. It was taking more and more time to get full power. There were some funny waves on the screen and, furthermore, there was not enough energy to start the floppy drive motor. But after a few seconds, the screen was almost ok and the drive was able to read the floppy again. Later, "a few seconds" became "a few minutes". But it was still working in the end
These are actually the only main advantages I can see nowadays about a supercomputer versus some cheaper cluster with an equivalent computation power. I think it's also reasonable to say that a cluster is likely to be more reliable, even if a supercomputer actually includes some distributed and redundant architecture, internally.
... in next-coming sci-fi movies, the supa-dupa-computer of the supa-dupa-mothership is likely to remain indeed some big entity rather than a beowulf cluster for the next coming years, right? I guess the part of 'dream' associated to a very big and very powerful computer is not negligible. I guess that's true for both sci-fi and real life
Still
... ha-ve se-lec-ted Mi-cro-soft Sam as the com-pu-ter's de-fault voi-ce.
(at least until they also try a ear implant, that is)
The page is in french but you can easily find the videos.
... An improved picture editor has also been developed to allow professionals to submit their own animations, which will be put online and made downloadable via Internet, using the mobile phone.
FWIW, here is a (bad) translation of the 4th and 5th paragraph below the video links. Some technical aspects are detailed.
The screen is connected to a mobile phone through a Bluetooth link which allows to send pictures or animations via MMS to another user provided with the same equipment. Thanks to an embedded software, the mobile phone is used as a remote control to enable the screen functionalities: brightness adjustment, choice of displayed patterns, text input, donwloading of animations from Internet
It's also possible to use the screen in "autonomous" mode, using its built-in sensors (rendering of visual sequences, specifical animations according to physical activity, sound environment...).
As we all know, a similar technique is already working very efficiently for email accounts.
1) Just create a new email account, from anywhere, on any server, using any ISR.
2) Post some public messages on the Internet, making sure your email address appears in plain text.
3) Emails from your pals will soon be automatically duplicated in your new inbox!
I don't know much about the technical aspects behind that, but it worked very well for me:
From: Eve
Subject: lplsthx Viagra at 0.95$ per dose!!! Buy it! ksoier
From: Elene
Subject: Important information for you! Read it immediately!
(I still don't remember how I initially get in touch with Eve and Elene, though, but anyway...)
So, yes, I'm confident. I can't see any security nor privacy issue with such a system.
The Internet seems ready for the Global Data Sharing.
I think there's a particular word which could be somewhat relevant in this case but I don't remember which one.
Er... wait a minute. Yeah, I got it:
profit!
</gossiping>
Even back in the days I did call support for an ISP, sometimes I'd just ask their login name and they'd just blurt out, "My login is sueray22 and my password is newyork!"
... without their login. Then, I'd have to repeat: "no, no! just your login name, please!"
I'm occasionally doing some call support for our clients and did have similar answers. Even worse: sometimes I'd just ask their login name and they'd spontaneously give me their password
My guess is that passwords are just a silly constraint for most common users who aren't implicated into computer stuff.
I was however astonished to read the following statement:
Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them.
I dunno...I'd still rather play Pong or Frogger than huge overdone games.
It's not a problem. Once the rules described in this article are applied to 'Virtua Tennis 2', the slightly simplified version that you get on a VCS 2600 is likely to be very close to 'Pong'.
Does that mean that nowadays the Titanic should have to write to support@whitestarline.com instead of sending CQD or SOS? Hmm... I'd be willing to bet that some spammers would answer with messages like 'Get your extra lifeboats at special prices! hghgxgx'. Damn.
There are approximately 35 moves per position in Chess (average value). Thus, the branching factor of the search tree is ~35 with a simple min-max search. Assuming that the program is always picking the best move to search first -- which is obviously not systematically the case -- alpha-beta pruning allows us to get a branching factor equal to approximately the square root of 35, that is: close to 6.
Assuming that 2070 CPU are able to do the calculations 2070 times faster than 1 CPU -- which, again, is not the case -- it appears that the resulting supernode is able to 'see' up to 4 or 5 half-moves deeper than a single CPU in the same amount of time:
6^4 < 2070 < 6^5
It doesn't seem to be *that* useful. For most strategical positions, thinking 5 half-moves deeper just doesn't make any difference. Game 3 of 'Kasparov vs X3D Fritz' is a good example: I'd be willing to bet that 2070 X3D Fritz playing together would have lost the game the same way, since the serious troubles caused by the pawns diagonal are still far beyond the resulting analysis depth. (Well... At least, I think so. I'm not a Chess expert!)
Anyway, this is quite an interesting project. I hope to see it grow up in the future.
-- Arnauld
The supernode was obviously lacking an Intellivision cluster. I'm gonna port the ChessBrain client to IntyOS right now. Er ... wait ... 2070 Intellivisions would still be a little less powerful than a single 2GHz CPU. Oh damn!