Posts by Charles 9
2055 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 16:31 GMT
Page:
Why use Google Wallet?
Apple could take the enemy-of-my-enemy approach and puts its weight behind PayPal and Isis instead.
SOME were private...
...but the most important expeditions were almost-always state-sponsored. Expeditions were expensive, especially if it fails, so you needed a backer with enough cash to be able to take a gamble...and still be around if he lost, and you can't get much richer than a state treasury. Europe in the 15th century was in a "sea race", if you will: trying to colonize territories holding valuable resources to exploit. The Portuguese expeditions down Africa and eventually around the Horn were all motivated by people like Prince Henry (stood to reason, too; no Mediterranean access, so the only way to go was south). Christopher Columbus's expedition to find the far east via the back door was 2/3rd funded by Spain, who gambled on him because by then Portugal had already secured the Africa route. And once the Spanish realized they had virgin territory, they sent ships galore there: practically all state-sponsored.
All good things end eventually...
...even exploration. Once you've been to a place a hundred times and back, it becomes rather dull and dreary. Those first trips to the moon and such were exciting because they were novel. But now near-earh-orbit's just part of the neighborhood, and if you want to go much beyond that, you're gonna need some SERIOUS boodle. Plus, it's hostile territory out there, so the risks are higher than before.
Privilege Escalation
Don't those two words kinda make the whole point moot? Given a Privilege Escalation exploit, all they have to do is run at any level and you're pwned. Just one more hurdle for the malware writer to clear. It's the big hurdle with Windows Vista/Windows 7 now--getting past their version of the Admin guard: the Universal Access Control. AFAIK, no one's been able to get past UAC directly from userland on 64-bit Win7 yet.
Posted in Amazon staff toiled in 100°F+ warehouse
Not anymore.
Because in terms of population and global reach we've likely already passed the event horizon. A large chunk of human society is basically being reduced to crap. Now all that awaits is the inevitable kiss of the fan blades.
What man can use for good...
...man can use for ill. Picture your scenario. Guaranteed, a malware will come along, able to hijack the keyboard and USB bus on low-level, and make out like it's you monkeying with the key registry. Purpose? To add a malware's signing key to the registry. Now it can safely take over the boot sector. Next time the machine boots, it sees the malware boot sector...but it signed and the key's known. KABOOM! Remember, SIGNED malware already exists. It can happen again.
Posted in Amazon staff toiled in 100°F+ warehouse
Welcome to Capitalism...
...or as I call it, "Winner Economics". If they can use the money to bulk the business rather than pay the workers (as labor is considered a COST by any business), then they'll jump on it...because if they don't, someone else will and will undercut them as a result. Why are so many businesses running to China and other such nations? Simple; China's overpopulated, and people are EXPENDABLE there (Don't believe me? Check out how they handle mining accidents). When the labor's expendable or, they can't dictate terms. A similar situation occurred in the Middle Ages until the Black Death hit (drastically trimming the labor supply). And the skilled labor gets sent to places like India where $10/day is a living wage (and that's if you play fair). And Asia has enough of a population BY ITSELF to support businesses, so if you tell businesses to stop hiring abroad, there's a real risk they'll pack up and swear allegiance to China instead, since cutting the West out of your life cuts customers but also cuts red tape--the latter may be worth the former when you can get more customers in Asia.
You missed the boat there...
...by about 200 years. Unless the creationists are willing to bet that Satan was as omniscient as God to be able to put forth ALL the fake geologic clues scatted all throughout the world (showing the various strata that record the eras), not to mention the fact that some strata are known to go UNDER mountains that evidence points to have been formed over MILLIONS of years. Plus, our space-borne knowledge showing pretty good evidence that God didn't create the universe (seeing as the Earth isn't at the center of it--and Satan would certainly have no abilities beyond God's), poking some more holes in the creationist hypothesis. Basically, creationists have some explaining to do. At least the scientists are doing just that: providing an explanation. Sure, they made a wrong turn here, but not concerning the theory: just one facet of it. There are still other candidates to consider.
Posted in Amazon staff toiled in 100°F+ warehouse
Yes, you're allowed to leave...
...only in doing so you immediately jeopardize your prospects of being allowed back the following day. In an era where job security is rapidly dwindling to zero, and where global competition is basically drawing the worker's norm down to "slavery or starvation--your choice", most workers (especially temps, as the article notes) have to weigh their actions carefully.
But...
...there have already been cited instances of signed malware (indeed, malware signed with keys too ubiquitous to revoke--Realtek makes most of the mobo sound chips on the market; bye-bye sound?). What's to say some malware group enlists or worms a mole into Microsoft such that they can get at Microsoft's private keys? Or employ GPU-augmented botnets to find weaknesses in the signing algorithms? Either way, the end result would be a SIGNED malware bootloader. THEN what?
But then...
...won't they assume from the lack of signal that the car has been stolen without your knowledge and put out a report to the police about it? Plus they may rig the car so that a lack of OnStar hampers certain nonessential-but-useful features--like navigation for some cars.
Posted in NASA: Beam me up some power, Scotty
Point taken.
The thunder, of course, is the result of the static electric arc that is the actual lightning bolt (think of lightning as a close encounter with a doorknob on a dry day--magnified millions-fold) rapidly superheating the surrounding air, resulting in a pressure wave that reaches us as high-amplitude, low-frequency sound much like a big drum hit really hard.
The firing of a high-energy laser beam in atmosphere has the potential to produce a similar effect: depending on the circumstances of the beam and atmosphere.
Permissions Piggybacking?
Just curious. Has any Android malware been found that exploits the fact that the app it's disguised as actually has a legitimate use for whatever service(s) it happens to need to do its nefarious business? What about bait-and-switches where apps that begin legitimate (and have the appropriate permissions for valid reasons) are later updated into malware but with no permissions change?
Geometric complexity.
The problem is that the number of possible permutations balloons with just one additional byte. Each one multiplies the total possible combinations by 2^8, or 256. Put in perspective, to actually store the two-byte words of every single 16-bit possibility from 0 to 65535 would require 2 x 65536B, or 128KiB (this from just 16 bits--double it and you leapfrog Mebibyte into Gibibyte territory).
Then I suggest you look up...
...hydroelectric dam incidents (think Banqiao Dam), power pool inundation (think Aswan Dam), radioactive coal exhausts, acid rain, and tailings and other coal waste dams, for starters. To be honest, I strongly suspect NO source of power is a free lunch. I'll bet even fusion, should it come in our generation, will have strings attached.
But then you hit a wall...
The fewer people you need for work, the fewer people you can employ. It's like having a 100,000 eligible workers (which is growing due to lack of population controls) and only 80,000 practical jobs available (which is shrinking due to increased efficiencies). With all other markets already balanced, and barring a market disruptor, where do you reach the point where you realize you have a grossly imbalanced labor system?
It also leads to Simulation Sickness
Unless the VR visor is VERY accurate in following the movements of your head on all three axes, your eyes will start to conflict with the rest of your senses because the information fed by your eyes won't match up with, say, your ears. The end result is the dreaded "simulation sickness": motion sickness while standing/sitting still. That's a big reason most VR visors don't completely obscure your outside view; with at least a reference to reality visible, the eyes have a chance to recognize the VR image for what it really is (a simulation) and ignore it, keeping your eqilibrium intact.
Because the console isn't the real money.
It's the games that make the money for console makers. But homebew environments disrupt this model by making it less likely you actually BUY games for the console (that is, OFFICIAL games that earn the console maker the big licensing bucks).
What about the blind?
Blind people can't use randomized keypads and instead must rely on the bump on the 5 to help them figure out the layout of the keypad (and yes, ATMs have to accommodate the blind--by law; that's why they have Braille instructions). Blind people MUST type by touch.
Wanna bet?
Thousands of computers in a Botnet means thousands of potential Bitcoin wallets. If the 50BTC goes to a different Bot each time, which is then forwarded to the Botherder (and BTW, pure Bitcoin transactions are DESIGNED to be damn near impossible to block if both parties are willing), then how will Bitcoin be able to tell the difference? Plus, a Botnet minig pool with enough power becomes ahead of the curve if the POW puzzle gets inevitably harder.
Almost every time.
Since I don't usually withdraw money in convenient amounts like $20, $40, or $100. It's a multiple of $20, sure, but one of the usual ones, so I'm forced to tell the ATM by keypad (and the keypad is mandatory for security reasons).
No good.
Card PIN numbers can be up to six digits normally and even up to 12 digits in specific circumstances. As for using the same digit twice, that might be picked up by a thermal signature that's hotter than a single press would allow, so the crooks would know (along with the fact less than the required digits were used). Given that knowledge, finding the right one can be done quickly even by trial and error.
Why don't I go past the first page?
Because I take a "tight" approach to searching. I try to be as specific as possible in my search terms, using mandatory words and phrase quotes. This usually brings about one of three scenarios:
1. I find what I was seeking near the top of the list, and don't have to go further.
2. Nothing is returned, so I loosen up the search bit by bit until I hit something.
3. Rarely, the page is full of material that has everything I typed but is irrelevant to what I seek. This is probably the only time I may look in subsequent pages, in case the result got smothered. But sometimes, I turn to revising my search criteria and starting from scratch.
Two reasons why it doesn't matter.
First, a botnet can build strength in numbers. Even 100,000 weak machines will get you something productive, and if a few of them happen to have decent to great video cards, all the better. Thanks to known pooled mining techniques, you can easily put everyone to use not matter what they have available.
Second, do note that even cards like the nVidia 8800/ATI 4700 series, which are two generations old and practically obsolete, turn out some good numbers. And the numbers only climb with each generation. Even if you don't go top-end, a decent upgrade card available at a brick & mortar store for just $100 or so will still spank any CPU-based miner that isn't multi-socket. And you get better-looking games to boot.
And don't count out gamer machines. Dedicated video cards are still a big business for both AMD and nVidia; thus why they keep improving on them. There is a demand out there; the botnet's simply trying to tap it. As for slipping under the gamer's nose, that will probably be dealt with in a future version of the bot: intelligent load management to try and sneak past gamers who might otherwise notice FPS drops.
Posted in HTC hurls more patent spew on Apple
Patents expired?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the first portable computers appear come 25 years ago or so? And is not the maximum length of a US Design Patent some 25 years? IOW, why are we talking about patents on portable computers when the patents relative to their design should've already expired by now?
Irrelevant.
Sure, they did that to exaggerate the scale, but the kind of computing demanded in Bitcoin mining (and the correct term is MINING, not MINTING), not to mention protein folding and so on, heavily favors repetitive parallel processing: IOW, the GPU holds an inherent edge. Take a look at this chart:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_Hardware_Comparison
(Sure, it's a Wiki page, but it's full of entries contributed by actual Bitcoin miners.)
As you can see in the chart, even GPUs from the early days of the GPGPU craze (like the nVidia 8800/9800 series) can pump out a decent 30+MHash/sec. It took the most-advanced consumer CPU on the market: the Intel Core i7 990x, a hexacore with HyperThreading, overclocking all the way up to 4.5GHz (Stock speed: 3.46GHz) to match that level of performance. Practically all the other CPU miners can't even crack 10MHash/sec.
So there you have it: a top-end CPU can't even keep up with a close-to-obsolete GPU--and nVidia cards are handicapped in mining; comparable ATI/AMD cards tend to work twice as well (architectural differences to blame--the roles are switched in Folding@home).
The iPad's reached the cliche level.
Like when people don't talk about photocopying but rather Xeroxing, and in the 80's when people didn't play videogames but played Nintendo. The iPad has reached that domination of penetration where the name iPad has become synonymous with tablets. It's hard to beat a product with THAT level of meme.
You may feel that way.
But then you have people who would respond to "Hello, sir" with a finger and a bad word. People who, no matter what you do, just plain hate you (practically out of instinct). People who don't just feel they can't contribute to society but rather feel society is flat-out wrong (and wronging them). People who are willing to kill others and/or themselves to make a point. People who DON'T WANT to contribute to society (and indeed, feel ready, willing, and even EAGER to tear it all down). Somewhere along the line, someone comes along that no amount of persuasion will "correct" as long as he/she is alive. What do you do with him/her?
Those wouldn't be rejects.
The "disenfranchised" would probably not be considered rejects: rather as having some issue that needs to be corrected. When I speak of rejects, I speak of those who you have to realize simply cannot fit in: serial killers (which you mentioned), revolutionary idealists, and other people who, as I've put it before, give society the finger, Bras d'honneur, whatever; people too bent to set straight. How do you deal with people like that? And on a touchier note, what about the tragic people whose circumstance (think retardation or disability) makes their likelihood of being able to contribute productively very remote. I picked the icon because many would seem I am that way, but would be willing to call the hard life of the animal kingdom the spawn of Satan as well? And there's still the question itself to answer: "What does society do with the rejects?"
This goes to a bigger question.
And it's a question no one in society seems to have even dared to ask:
"What does society do with the rejects?"
The problem with any form of test, evaluation, or even comparison is that you're going to--INEVITABLY--have people who don't measure up. So what do you do when you have people who have been (due to lack of intelligence, physical skill, moral character, or something else, or they're simply anti-social and gave society the finger) essentially judged not fit to contribute to society? Now, nature has an answer to that of course. So did Sparta. Unfortunately, most of western civilization seems leery of that kind of approach, but then the question rears itself again. If not left to the wolves, what do you do with them?
Not the first controller, though.
Someone pulled the same trick with the Wiimote some time back. Looks like they've managed to figure out what makes a Sixaxis tick as well and applied the same trick (in both cases, you need Bluetooth on).
Absolute Truth In Advertising.
"There Oughta Be A Law" specifying that any advertising must be completely and wholly true. Nothing can be said to be free unless you can just take one and walk out the door with it with nothing else to do (and no, filling out a survey involves a time and information cost, so it doesn't count!). Nothing should be listed as unlimited if providers intend to put in a cap, throttle, or any form of "limitation". I've since given up on most TV ads since they're trying to spear you with lies, damned lies, and statistics. Meanwhile, the print flyers I never read without my magnified (for the fine print) sceptic glasses on.
Another issue.
The denser a medium, the easier it is for sound to travel. That's why sound travels better in water...and even better still through solid rock. Even more so with low-frequency sound (infrasound, for lack of a better term). Elephants and whales have actually been recorded using infrasound for communication through earth/water precisely because it carries so far. Funny thing about wind turbines: they're fixed to the ground, so any infrasound they make will likely travel through the shaft and into the ground very easily. Perhaps that's what all the row's about: not sound from the air but sound from the ground.
Exactly.
Stop the false advertising. Don't advertise something as unlimited when it's impossible to do so. That's like trying to pass off a Pinto as a Porsche. That's why I think Sprint will follow suit; physics , human nature, and the law will force them to do it.
But that's still a limit...
...and therefore against the very definition of "unlimited" (as in no limits whatsoever). Whether it's by cap or throttle, they're basically trying to hand you off a limited unlimited plan (which makes no logical sense).
Posted in Ubisoft insists DRM 'a success'
There are exceptions.
"Oh yes, none of your games were designed for single person off-line gaming. No sir."
Valve in fact has at least THREE games that insist on a network connection all the time: Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, and Team Fortress 2. Why doesn't anyone complain? All three are designed from the start to be online multiplayer games. They have no real single-player components. You need a net connection to play the games PERIOD. Does anyone happen to know if this new Driver game will also be Online-ONLY?
Posted in Ubisoft insists DRM 'a success'
How about this approach?
Custom game executables compiled and sent online during installation? That way, each copy is unique and signed using strong algorithms (that have implications beyond the software sector if they were broken). You won't be able to run it unsigned, no unsigned copies exist in the wild, and the executable is verified via Internet occasionally when you start it (using an encrypted channel). The game EXE thus has both copy verification and copy identification. Any pirate copy could be found out quickly by its signature, and that particular copy blacklisted without affecting the other copies (which are all different). How would a pirate beat that approach?
Posted in Google gobbles Big Blue IP stash
Remember, IBM has a long history.
It could well be that some of IBM's patents cover LTE in other areas, or could even directly undercut some of the core LTE patents on account of being granted earlier but not actively pursued by IBM because the business wasn't there for them. Google could have looked and realized, "Hey! We could use this!" and then gone to IBM with a classic back-scratcher deal.
But hold the phone, so to speak.
Sprint just became LightSquared's best friend, meaning for the sake of this argument that Sprint now has a roadmap to LTE as well (through LightSquared's infrastructure). And of course AT&T is in the middle of an LTE transition, so it now looks like LTE is turning into a three-horse race.
That said, I don't expect the totally-unlimited plans to stick around. Sprint may not have iPhones, but they have an increasing Android presence, and and LTE rollout will only encourage more data usage.
Other way around.
The point is that the bank NEVER needs a form like this to backtrack a bad transaction. They ALREADY have legal authority to backtrack the account THEMSELVES (via wire fraud laws), with no intervention from you, provided they can provide the legal basis for the backtrack. The mere existence of an authorization to backtrack form should be considered a red flag.
Black servers.
All the pirates would need to do would be to figure out what parts of the game are online, obtain them (perhaps through traffic sniffing) and duplicate them on a localhost server that would run alongside the pirated game (with the game itself patched to look at localhost instead). Game sends request to localhost server, gets response from black server, game goes on.
That said, another possibility could be a custom-constructed game executable, delivered online and just for that user when the game is installed. Since each executable copy would be unique and have a distinct and hidden signature, pirated copies would be dead-easy to detect and blacklist while not affecting anyone else (since their programs are different).
That would still mean they're clean...
...because Microsoft holds a proper agreement (in Ink) to use PrimeSense's tech, and Impulse are going after the wrong guys (they should be going after PrimeSense in this case).
And THOSE are for a reason.
They're ONLINE-ONLY (none of these are designed with single-player in mind unlike Portal 2, which is only online-required for Co-Op, for obvious reasons). Therefore, it makes sense to have them require an Internet connection at all times--you need them just to play the game ANYWAY.
Hate to ask...
...but perhaps the reason this game will require Internet at all times is because the game will be online-ONLY? If so, then it makes perfect sense to piggyback the DRM requirement to the game requirement. Will the new Driver game have a single-player component, or will it ALL be online?
If you're talking to an American...
...then Farenheit IS standard and Celsius the outlier. Plus, we're talking temperature, which leaves usually those two and the absolute (Kelvin) scale. And the numbers only make sense under Degrees Farenheit.
Call me crazy...
But wouldn't a properly-in-the-know nuke maker simply contain the bomb in lead or other material which blocks the radiation? Or is the tech supposed to be able to detect radiation-blocking materials as well?
What about Trade Secrets?
When it comes to military tech, you ALWAYS have an enemy: namely another country's military. Military tech is one of the most-recognized forms of Trade Secrets around. Trade secrets MUST be protected; they're what differentiate you from the competition and essentially help to keep you in business.
If Identical Twins don't have the same fingerprints...
..then the farmed finger probably won't match, either. Fingerprints have a chaos factor in their production: they're as much a product of environment as they are the DNA. And since physics as we know it prevents two people from being in the exact same place at the exact same time, the end result are two distinct sets of prints. That's one reason why fingerprints are still kept even in an era of DNA testing.
My patents against your patents.
I hope they know the story of Kinect. The tech came from another company who had developed (and patented) the two-camera system. Microsoft acquired the company outright (including its patent portfolio) and developed the tech into the Kinect. And IINM the patents and tech date back a few years. El Reg itself covered the stories. So unless Impulse can prove its tech dates back to sometime before 2007 (I think), Microsoft may be willing to come back and say, "You got patents? News Flash: So do we. What say we head to court and see which ones will hold out."
And in truth...
Wealth is a finite resource. It's never CREATED--it's only FOUND.
