Is it true that the Slashdot crowd is complaing about the X10 adds with hot young scantily clad women? I kinda miss seeing the adds showing how I can catch the babysitter "exercising" or 18 year old model burgler breaking in to use my hot tub!
Re:Where the hell were the anti-malware vendors?
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
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· Score: 1
"I'm in infosec...personally; I use a Mac"
How can you be in infosec and use a Mac? Isn't the majority of your work dealing with MS products? Don't you know how to make XP secure? It is possible and would think you would be capable.
I can email pictures to nearly Walgreens and pick them up in an hour. There are no minimum purchases and I can get 4x6 prints for $.19. I can also get a variety of other sizes. You can't beat that. I'd likely spend more than that in ink for a high quality photo printer and would have it dry out quicker than I would use it.
'Some of the best printers offer 9600 x 2400 DPI and over 50 levels of gradation.' If this were true, then people could use their printer as a data backup system. 9600x2400 gives 23M dots per square inch. On a legal sized 8.5 x 14 you have 119 square inches. That gives you about 2.7GB of storage per sheet. Throw in some error correction and borders and perhaps you get 2GB per sheet. Add in the ability to print in gradiation or multiple colors and 10GB per sheet doesn't sound too far fetched.
Wouldn't it be nice to print off 10 pages each afternoon to back up 100GB of info? You could shread it when it gets old. To retrieve, you simply need to scan it with a high res scanner and interpret the bits.
Re:what about the xbox rsa-2048
on
RSA-640 Factored
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· Score: 1
I've got $1000 that says you are wrong. RSA-2048 will be solved in the next 25 years. It hasen't even been proven yet that factoring is a hard problem!
Re:Cost of "one day breaker" system
on
RSA-640 Factored
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Here you go. 80 PCs at $1000/PC churning for 5 months to crack a 640 bit #.
Assuming it was truly distributive, then 12000 PCs could crack it in a day. Assume each use 500Watts, then each has a power cost of about $.25/day if 1kW/h is a dime. That totals to $12 million for the PCs and another $3000 for power. The power cost is negligable but the infrastructure to distribute that power likely wouldn't be. We'll pretend that we already have a nice building with a 13000 socket power strip for our PCs. Let's say it cost $1 million to be easy.
That would total $13 million to crack a 640 bit number in a day. Since each added bit doubles the complexity, then to solve for numbers with bits > 640 we could say N= # of bits - 640. From there the cost to crack a number would be $13M * 2^N.
If you think about it, this is well within the reach of most corporations and could likely be achieved by someone using a virus to steal computing power. The virus could break up the problem and whenever someone hit on the answer it could phone home with it and they could collect the $20k!
My biggest complaint is that I don't like having to pay for smoker's medical costs. When people smoke 2 packs a day there is a huge risk that activity will affect their health as they age. Many of those people will require medical treatment. Many will also not have medical insurance and go to hospitals that are paid via Medicare or Medicaid. That money comes from tax dollars I worked to create. Even if they have insurance, that risk taking causes my insuance to be higher. Perhaps if they jacked up the taxes on cigarettes to cover those future costs I would be happier. That would really drive up the costs though.
Assume someone ends up causing $500k of medical care due to lung cancer, emphazima, or other ailments. If they smoked 2 packs a day for 25 years, that totals about 20000 packs of cigarettes. That tax alone would be $25/pack. Since its not hard to spend $5/pack now, I wonder how many people would smoke if cigarettes were $30/pack or $1.5 a cigarette?
It is true that some people who smoke don't have major medical issues caused by smoking. I suspect that is a minority though. Many also don't have $500k in medical bills also, but it is not unheard of to have over $1M. Again, they can feel free to hurt themselves. I just don't want to be the one to pay for it!
Here is how the public can put an end to this type of scheme. As someone earlier noted, this is software that is installed without warning or the user's knowlege or permission. That qualifies it as a trojan. That alone is bad. Now if someone were to determine a way that it has or can potentially damage data on a system, then it seems Sony could/would be liable for such damage. Most software has lots of disclaimers in their EULA, but since there is no EULA, Sony can't say they warned you.
Another tactic would be to make a game/application that detects the rootkit was installed and then it causes some minor harm. Again, Sony would bear some of that responsibility since they installed software without a user's permission or knowlege that caused damage due to its presence.
If one of those scenerios were to take place, it would likely scare Sony and other music suppliers from covertly pulling future schemes of this nature. They will still likely continue to use DRM, which is their right, but only overtly with lots of warnings and possible explanations of how they work so as to minimize their liability from future complications like the ones mentioned above.
"IANAP (I am not a physicist) but it seems to me that the detection of an event is *relatively* pedestrian."
Wow. Perhaps you could work on this over a weekend or 2 and figure it out. I'm sure a university or 2 would give you a PhD for your work and the Nobel commitee may even give you a call. You'd probably have a huge supply of grant money from then on to solve such pedestrian problems. Not bad for a weekend's work.
"You'll care too the first time your three year old is still crying at 1 am because Dora or Peep is to scratched to play"
What's your 3 year old doing up at 1am? She may be crying because she is tired! I don't know about you, but if you are implying that you can't get a Dora DVD at 1 am, you are in the minority. I am within 30 minutes of 10 Wal-Marts and 5 24 hour WalGreens. I'm sure all have Dora DVDs.
"The head of the software giant told the BBC that its ambition is to be bigger than Google in search"
Why is this news. Would it be news if someone at Yahoo said their goal was to be bigger than Google in search? Was it news when someone at Google likely said "We want to be bigger than Yahoo in search" ?
Sometimes it seems like the folk around here are divorcing MS and feel a need to critisize and complaing about every move MS makes.
"What about the source? Ad hominem attacks are a logical fallacy."
I see you're taking philosophy 101 this semester. Be sure to be on the lookout for other strawman, red herring, and ad hominem arguments. No go back to class.
I've placed service calls on printer purchased directly from the manufacturer(HP) that were still on warrenty and they didn't even show that we owned it, that it was still on warrenty, or where it was located. These were $4000 printers that were purchased 100 at a time. If they can't keep track of that I'm not sure how reliable you can track someone down who bought a Color LaserJet at Best Buy 3 years ago with a credit card.
If you registered it that may be a different story. Still, those same printers were supposedly registered and I continually have to provide contract numbers to have any work done. While that may be on file somewhere, it is unlikely that HP or the govt could locate that info.
For the price of this add-on and a PSP you can nearly get a brand new laptop. Talk about homebrew apps! Think of all the things you could do with a laptop! Play DVDs, games, view porn, and more!
do you always have to get paid?
on
IMDb Turns 15
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· Score: 1
If you ever contribute to anything and it ever makes money, are the moneymakers obligated to pay you?
Sometimes it seems like its just a bunch of whiners around here.
"When Windows first shipped, 20 years ago this month, it was considered nothing more than a slow operating environment that had arrived late to the party, well behind the industry leaders, Apple and Xerox PARC"
Behind the industry leaders, Apple and Xerox PARC? Apple has not have a significient market share since back in the days of the Apple IIC. Even then the PC clones were available and dominated the business sector. 10 Years ago when Win95 arrived, most PC users were already using MS-DOS and Windows 3.0/3.1. I sold software and 95% of the retail/business market were running DOS based applicaitons. We sold more software for the Amiga than Apple/Mac.
I like DIR. It tells me what files are in a directory. That frees me from having to memorize where are the files are on my computer. That used to make me real tired and my head hurt.
This looks like a good techniques. Or you could covertly go through the airport and contaminate lots of people's luggage. Once the machines started going off way above average the agents would likely believe it to be malfunctioning and discontinue its use until it is serviced.
The list of things you are concerned about puzzles me.
What exactly are you going to do with credit card numbers after a disaster? Do you plan on charging food with a number? Who exactly is going to give you goods with just a #? If you have time to get a backpack, then you should have time to get your wallet.
I'm not sure what the value of a marrige license is either after such a disaster. Do you think you will have to prove to someone that you are married?
What value will a scan of your social security card be? Birth certificate?
Like others have said, if you are leaving "never to return to NYC" with 2 minutes warning, documents would be the last concern you should have. Compact calorie/nutrient rich food, water, appropaite clothing, and other survival supplies should be what you take.
I saw someone talking about an English/Spanish program on that USB drive. How exactly are you going to use in it your travels? A small portable book would be more useful.
"I've never checked luggage on an airline. Everything I need goes carryon."
Is checking luggage a bad thing? I don't check luggage because I can't survive without my stuff. I check it because I often travel for work and need more than a couple days of clothes.
"climbed Mt. Washington in a minor gale (by Mt. Washington standards) when I was only 6"
While that makes you sound cool and tough, what kind of parent takes their 6 year old up a mountain in a gale?
"it won't just magically happen because of any particular invention"
If someone were to make an iRobot style humanoid robot for under $100k, then those jobs would disappear. Those robots could make roads, cook/serve food in McDonalds, build widgets, give haricuts, collect trash, and do most of the other jobs that most people don't want to do.
That would be a true singularity that could change the world and mankind's future.
I understand that noone wants to pay $500 for a piece of software for most hobbies. I don't understand why people are always looking exclusively for free software. Often there are packages for $20-50 that exactly fill the needs of what people are asking. I have seen several packages that fill this need in that price range. While it is true that he won't be able to modify them, they meet the needs of what he is asking.
Don't get me wrong. OSS is cool and is changing the way people think about software. I just don't think that it should always be a crucial factor when looking for software to solve a problem.
"and looking to work on really interesting problems.... Bonus points if you're a hacker (in the traditional sense). "
Do you have any projects involving boring problems? That's what I'm looking for. Also, I have a non-traditional hacker friend who wonders if you are flexible?
Slashdot Mirror
Is it true that the Slashdot crowd is complaing about the X10 adds with hot young scantily clad women? I kinda miss seeing the adds showing how I can catch the babysitter "exercising" or 18 year old model burgler breaking in to use my hot tub!
"I'm in infosec...personally; I use a Mac"
How can you be in infosec and use a Mac? Isn't the majority of your work dealing with MS products? Don't you know how to make XP secure? It is possible and would think you would be capable.
I can email pictures to nearly Walgreens and pick them up in an hour. There are no minimum purchases and I can get 4x6 prints for $.19. I can also get a variety of other sizes. You can't beat that. I'd likely spend more than that in ink for a high quality photo printer and would have it dry out quicker than I would use it.
'Some of the best printers offer 9600 x 2400 DPI and over 50 levels of gradation.'
If this were true, then people could use their printer as a data backup system. 9600x2400 gives 23M dots per square inch. On a legal sized 8.5 x 14 you have 119 square inches. That gives you about 2.7GB of storage per sheet. Throw in some error correction and borders and perhaps you get 2GB per sheet. Add in the ability to print in gradiation or multiple colors and 10GB per sheet doesn't sound too far fetched.
Wouldn't it be nice to print off 10 pages each afternoon to back up 100GB of info? You could shread it when it gets old. To retrieve, you simply need to scan it with a high res scanner and interpret the bits.
I've got $1000 that says you are wrong. RSA-2048 will be solved in the next 25 years.
It hasen't even been proven yet that factoring is a hard problem!
Here you go. 80 PCs at $1000/PC churning for 5 months to crack a 640 bit #.
Assuming it was truly distributive, then 12000 PCs could crack it in a day. Assume each use 500Watts, then each has a power cost of about $.25/day if 1kW/h is a dime. That totals to $12 million for the PCs and another $3000 for power. The power cost is negligable but the infrastructure to distribute that power likely wouldn't be. We'll pretend that we already have a nice building with a 13000 socket power strip for our PCs. Let's say it cost $1 million to be easy.
That would total $13 million to crack a 640 bit number in a day. Since each added bit doubles the complexity, then to solve for numbers with bits > 640 we could say N= # of bits - 640. From there the cost to crack a number would be $13M * 2^N.
If you think about it, this is well within the reach of most corporations and could likely be achieved by someone using a virus to steal computing power. The virus could break up the problem and whenever someone hit on the answer it could phone home with it and they could collect the $20k!
My biggest complaint is that I don't like having to pay for smoker's medical costs. When people smoke 2 packs a day there is a huge risk that activity will affect their health as they age. Many of those people will require medical treatment. Many will also not have medical insurance and go to hospitals that are paid via Medicare or Medicaid. That money comes from tax dollars I worked to create. Even if they have insurance, that risk taking causes my insuance to be higher. Perhaps if they jacked up the taxes on cigarettes to cover those future costs I would be happier. That would really drive up the costs though.
Assume someone ends up causing $500k of medical care due to lung cancer, emphazima, or other ailments. If they smoked 2 packs a day for 25 years, that totals about 20000 packs of cigarettes. That tax alone would be $25/pack. Since its not hard to spend $5/pack now, I wonder how many people would smoke if cigarettes were $30/pack or $1.5 a cigarette?
It is true that some people who smoke don't have major medical issues caused by smoking. I suspect that is a minority though. Many also don't have $500k in medical bills also, but it is not unheard of to have over $1M. Again, they can feel free to hurt themselves. I just don't want to be the one to pay for it!
Here is how the public can put an end to this type of scheme. As someone earlier noted, this is software that is installed without warning or the user's knowlege or permission. That qualifies it as a trojan. That alone is bad. Now if someone were to determine a way that it has or can potentially damage data on a system, then it seems Sony could/would be liable for such damage. Most software has lots of disclaimers in their EULA, but since there is no EULA, Sony can't say they warned you.
Another tactic would be to make a game/application that detects the rootkit was installed and then it causes some minor harm. Again, Sony would bear some of that responsibility since they installed software without a user's permission or knowlege that caused damage due to its presence.
If one of those scenerios were to take place, it would likely scare Sony and other music suppliers from covertly pulling future schemes of this nature. They will still likely continue to use DRM, which is their right, but only overtly with lots of warnings and possible explanations of how they work so as to minimize their liability from future complications like the ones mentioned above.
"IANAP (I am not a physicist) but it seems to me that the detection of an event is *relatively* pedestrian."
Wow. Perhaps you could work on this over a weekend or 2 and figure it out. I'm sure a university or 2 would give you a PhD for your work and the Nobel commitee may even give you a call. You'd probably have a huge supply of grant money from then on to solve such pedestrian problems. Not bad for a weekend's work.
"You'll care too the first time your three year old is still crying at 1 am because Dora or Peep is to scratched to play"
What's your 3 year old doing up at 1am? She may be crying because she is tired! I don't know about you, but if you are implying that you can't get a Dora DVD at 1 am, you are in the minority. I am within 30 minutes of 10 Wal-Marts and 5 24 hour WalGreens. I'm sure all have Dora DVDs.
"The head of the software giant told the BBC that its ambition is to be bigger than Google in search"
Why is this news. Would it be news if someone at Yahoo said their goal was to be bigger than Google in search? Was it news when someone at Google likely said "We want to be bigger than Yahoo in search" ?
Sometimes it seems like the folk around here are divorcing MS and feel a need to critisize and complaing about every move MS makes.
"What about the source? Ad hominem attacks are a logical fallacy."
I see you're taking philosophy 101 this semester. Be sure to be on the lookout for other strawman, red herring, and ad hominem arguments. No go back to class.
I've placed service calls on printer purchased directly from the manufacturer(HP) that were still on warrenty and they didn't even show that we owned it, that it was still on warrenty, or where it was located. These were $4000 printers that were purchased 100 at a time. If they can't keep track of that I'm not sure how reliable you can track someone down who bought a Color LaserJet at Best Buy 3 years ago with a credit card.
If you registered it that may be a different story. Still, those same printers were supposedly registered and I continually have to provide contract numbers to have any work done. While that may be on file somewhere, it is unlikely that HP or the govt could locate that info.
For the price of this add-on and a PSP you can nearly get a brand new laptop. Talk about homebrew apps! Think of all the things you could do with a laptop! Play DVDs, games, view porn, and more!
If you ever contribute to anything and it ever makes money, are the moneymakers obligated to pay you?
Sometimes it seems like its just a bunch of whiners around here.
"Since Chrichton isn't a scientist I don't think we should mix his opinion piece with the work of scientists...
"
If I'm not mistaken, Chrichton went to Harvard and is a M.D. That seems to give him a little bit of scientific credibility.
"When Windows first shipped, 20 years ago this month, it was considered nothing more than a slow operating environment that had arrived late to the party, well behind the industry leaders, Apple and Xerox PARC"
Behind the industry leaders, Apple and Xerox PARC? Apple has not have a significient market share since back in the days of the Apple IIC. Even then the PC clones were available and dominated the business sector. 10 Years ago when Win95 arrived, most PC users were already using MS-DOS and Windows 3.0/3.1. I sold software and 95% of the retail/business market were running DOS based applicaitons. We sold more software for the Amiga than Apple/Mac.
"Clearly Google's interest in AOL is their huge CD distribution system"
You actually believe Google will pay $5B for a CD distribution system?
Do people actually think before they post?
I like DIR. It tells me what files are in a directory. That frees me from having to memorize where are the files are on my computer. That used to make me real tired and my head hurt.
"First, we have the sonic toothbrush, and now we have the optical frequency comb!"
I thought Sonic was a hedgehog
This looks like a good techniques. Or you could covertly go through the airport and contaminate lots of people's luggage. Once the machines started going off way above average the agents would likely believe it to be malfunctioning and discontinue its use until it is serviced.
The list of things you are concerned about puzzles me.
What exactly are you going to do with credit card numbers after a disaster? Do you plan on charging food with a number? Who exactly is going to give you goods with just a #? If you have time to get a backpack, then you should have time to get your wallet.
I'm not sure what the value of a marrige license is either after such a disaster. Do you think you will have to prove to someone that you are married?
What value will a scan of your social security card be? Birth certificate?
Like others have said, if you are leaving "never to return to NYC" with 2 minutes warning, documents would be the last concern you should have. Compact calorie/nutrient rich food, water, appropaite clothing, and other survival supplies should be what you take.
I saw someone talking about an English/Spanish program on that USB drive. How exactly are you going to use in it your travels? A small portable book would be more useful.
"I've never checked luggage on an airline. Everything I need goes carryon."
Is checking luggage a bad thing? I don't check luggage because I can't survive without my stuff. I check it because I often travel for work and need more than a couple days of clothes.
"climbed Mt. Washington in a minor gale (by Mt. Washington standards) when I was only 6"
While that makes you sound cool and tough, what kind of parent takes their 6 year old up a mountain in a gale?
"it won't just magically happen because of any particular invention"
If someone were to make an iRobot style humanoid robot for under $100k, then those jobs would disappear. Those robots could make roads, cook/serve food in McDonalds, build widgets, give haricuts, collect trash, and do most of the other jobs that most people don't want to do.
That would be a true singularity that could change the world and mankind's future.
I understand that noone wants to pay $500 for a piece of software for most hobbies. I don't understand why people are always looking exclusively for free software. Often there are packages for $20-50 that exactly fill the needs of what people are asking. I have seen several packages that fill this need in that price range. While it is true that he won't be able to modify them, they meet the needs of what he is asking.
Don't get me wrong. OSS is cool and is changing the way people think about software. I just don't think that it should always be a crucial factor when looking for software to solve a problem.
"and looking to work on really interesting problems. ... Bonus points if you're a hacker (in the traditional sense). "
Do you have any projects involving boring problems? That's what I'm looking for. Also, I have a non-traditional hacker friend who wonders if you are flexible?