Posts by M. Burns

You'd have thought they'd be more imaginative

Like tweet pictures of Mullah Omar having sex with his favorite goat. Or more realistically, favorite little boy.

The bottom line

Is he was caught on private property connected to a private network using equipment he hid on that private property. Yes, even on State owned Colleges & Universities in the US, you can be arrested for trespassing if you are on the premises without authorization even if you are a student, staff or faculty member of that institution. (i.e. If I enter my Dean's office without his permission, the fact that I'm a Faculty member does not make it "OK". Doing so surreptitiously only highlights that I know that doing so is wrong.) At a minimum Mr. Schwartz could be charged with wire tapping, a very serious Federal Offense. Second, he was downloading huge volumes of data that he had no legal right to access. Whether you like JSTOR or not is irrelevant. Third, he admitted that he was downloading this materiel in order to violate the rights of the copyright holders.

Although this is irrelevant in Court, I'm sure we'll hear a defense that he was really only surreptitiously downloading all of this data in order perform some type of statistical analysis on it. Unfortunately for him, that does not wash. JSTOR itself, in it's press release of this incident, points out there is a legitimate "front door" for that type of data mining scholarship, which Mr. Schwartz clearly did not use:

"It is important to note that we support and encourage the legitimate use of large sets of content from JSTOR for research purposes. We regularly provide scholars with access to content for this purpose. Our Data for Research site (http://dfr.jstor.org) was established expressly to support text mining and other projects, and our Advanced Technologies Group is an eager collaborator with researchers in the academic community."

(http://about.jstor.org/news-events/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-and-criminal-case)

The bottom line is the hubris of Mr. Schwartz is astounding, and his actions make it clear that he believes The Law does not apply to him.

I'd pay $100 Trillion for Facebook!

Here's my payment: http://tinyurl.com/100TFacebook

Hughes Glomar Explorer

So what's the problem? Just use the Hughes Glomar Explorer. The thing was built in 1973-74 to do exactly this, except at the time, they were going after extract manganese nodules from the ocean floor.

Oh, wait! That was just the cover....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSF_Explorer

A solution looking for a problem

Fuel cells that can directly run on coal without even the gasification step have been around for at least a decade. They are called Liquid Tin Anode Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (LTA-SOFC).

http://www.celltechpower.com/technology.htm

This is a disaster for T-Mobile customers

AT&T is quite open that the motivation on their side is that their present infrastructure is saturated in cities like New York and San Fransisco. AT&T said that even if they get the approval to build more towers, it would take them about 5 years to get to where they'd be overnight with a T-Mobile acquisition. So for AT&T customers, they will see an improvement in service as AT&T starts piping service over the T-Mobile infrastructure. But the T-Mobile customers will only see a degradation, as the AT&T infrastructure will add nothing to their service as its already saturated. Add to the fact that AT&T charges higher rates for all services than T-Mobile does, this merger is just a giant screw of all existing T-Mobile customers on both price and service.

We already know how to communicate with the future.

Just leave a note.

But sending a message to the past completes the two-way communication channel need for a conversation.

Now that's the basis of a bad movie plot.

Soylent Green Energy

It's People!

These clowns need a history lesson

"be little different from the first white settlers of the North American continent, who left Europe with little expectation of return."

First of all, by the early 1600's when the first white settlers tried to establish permanent colonies (Jamestown & Plymouth), European fishermen and traders had been going back and forth between New England and Europe for nearly a hundred years. By the time these colonies were started, the native populations had already been greatly reduced by European diseases. These colonies were underwritten by investors back in England who continually sent ships with supplies and goods to sell the colonists, and expected the colonists to repay their investments. The "isolation" these scientists describe never existed.

Another example of egos out of proportion.

Invisible Installations

It will be quite the game to see how many Chinese facilities are deemed too sensitive and are made invisible via CGI in this "service". Could become quite a game.

Patents

It's described in WIPO patents:

WO/2010/047960A2 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/WO2010047960A2.html

WO/2010/047962A2 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/WO2010047962A2.html

WO/2010/047961A2 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/WO2010047961A2.html

WO/2010/042693A2 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/WO2010042693A2.html

WO/2010/042692A2 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/WO2010042692A2.html

Quaint, but that's all

It would be a fun project to build, but that would be the extent of it. Babbage Analytical "Engine" would not even be the computational equivalent of an old 1970's programmable calculator (e.g. SR-52, HP-65).

But it would be cool, in an H.G. Wells sort of way.

Only 1,000lb of passengers and payload?

Why bother? That's not even 4 soldiers in full gear.

How did the key get "leaked"?

I'd find that story more interesting than all the rest of the noise published/blogged/commented about this.

Bravo!

Declaring a blanket license to all NGO's for Microsoft software in their possession regardless of the source as Microsoft had done shows characteristically good judgment on the part of Microsoft.

You should be aware that...

Folks should be aware that installing the Microsoft software tool mentioned in the article that changes the way Windows searches for DLL files will screw up a lot of 3rd party software, at least on Win XP systems. For example, on both of the Win XP Pro systems I experimented with the tool, Adobe Flash could not update itself once the way Windows searches for DLL files had been changed. I am sure many other 3rd party software packages will have the same issue.

Nothing New Here, Move Along

This type of acoustic eavesdropping was used decades ago to determine what was being typed on IBM "ball" typewriters. The delay between the key press and the type strike is unique for each position on the type ball. Spy agencies would try to stick a "bug" in the typewriters they wanted to monitor.

It's done acoustically

And it isn't a secret. It is described in patents:

WIPO Patent Application WO/2008/075092

WIPO Patent Application WO/2008/075092

Condoms

The fix is not for Apple to give its customers bumpers. People should start calling the bumpers "Condoms", as they protect you when Apple screws you.

obscurity is to security

Obscurity is to security what camouflage is to armor.

Hawkings True Biggest Fear

Is summed up in Terry Bissom's classic short story:

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

What is amazing about US patent 5,515,369

Is how the heck if ever got granted, given US patent 2,292,387.

Obviously it was the Chinese government

No one else would care about Indian secrets. Well, except Pakistan.

Book banning

So is Apple banning books as well that might have some sexual content? Obviously, they will have to ban books like "Whinnie the Pooh" because neither Whinnie nor any of his friends wear any pants.

What is amazing about Carly Fiorina

Is that she actually towts her dismal track record running HP as if it was something great.

Probably the most rational iPad review

Is Samuel Axon review "The Anti-Hype: Why Apple’s iPad Disappoints" on mashup.com

http://mashable.com/2010/01/27/apple-ipad-downsides/

This is not the first time this has happened

Basically, in August 1995 those wacky Dutch security officials (same ones who let the Nigerian bomber through with exploding underpants) planted a bomb in the luggage of a passenger as part of a security exercise, and failed to retrieve it. The explosives got onto a real flight, crossed the Atlantic, and actually only were discovered because the Prof (Paul Holloway) complained to the airline about his luggage being damaged.

See for example, "Dutch Authorities Plant Explosives on UF Professor"

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1347&dat=19950821&id=WuASAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5vwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6652,66695

Chaff

Everyone should go here and buy a red 8-foot weather balloon & fly it on that day.

http://www.scientificsales.com/Meteorological-Balloons-Weather-Balloons-Sounding-Balloon-s/25.htm

At last! A reason to use rootkits!

To suppress such nasty OS behavior.

What the drive industry needs

Is to start offering drives that internally are some form of high level RAID but so that the drive "looks just like a standard drive" to the OS. I'd pay a premium for that type of almost bullet proof drive in my laptop.

You raise capital to expand

Not to live on. (Living on your raised capital is what failing start-ups do.) So if they are really seeing all that growth, they need cash to expand.

I'll bet the air cargo guys would love this.

No reason for air cargo planes to have live crews aboard even now. That application would be the lowest barrier for UAV entry to commercial aviation.

If I had a nickel...

If I had a nickel for every spent stage that has hit the moon over the last 40 years, I'd be rich.

You know its Web 2.0

When trivial is touted as innovation.

The Recon Scout

Does have a web page:

http://www.recon-scout.com/products/index.cfm

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Pretty much means "Who watches the watchmen?" Apple needs to get its <apple banned word> together in its App Store approval process.

Given how Google has sued others for Trademark Infringement

It's ironic how they respond to their making money off of assisting others to infringe on non-Google trademarks.

Does everyone remember "Google sues Froogles.com" ??????

http://news.cnet.com/Google-sues-Froogles.com/2100-1030_3-5676955.html

What they forget

Is that operationally, intelligence is indistinguishable from prescience. Anyone who's written a life simulation quickly runs into this issue.

@Anonymous Coward Posted Saturday 16th May 2009 18:47 GMT

The issue has been brought up on the D-Link forums (http://forums.dlink.com) in a number of topic areas. The only one I've noticed a response from a moderator is this thread:

http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=5492.0

The SourceSec article on the flawed implementation is here:

http://www.sourcesec.com/2009/05/12/d-link-captcha-partially-broken/#more-159

@Paul Kinsler

The efficiency is irrelevant. It's the total system scalability & cost that matters, and for that, plants beat any conceivable man-made thing on both counts. Efficiency in general is an academic concern, not a practical one. In industrial PV installations for example, solar cell efficiency in 99% of applications is irrelevant, and only cost-per-watt matters.

When is the Sports Version coming out?

Lockheed track record indicates it is too stupid to pursue the commercial Sports Market with this thing, but that's where the real money is to be made. The major issue with this for military use is that its probably too easy to get damaged by bullets & shrapnel, and probably ridiculously expensive to attempt to harden it against those things. The Sports market (e.g. back packing) just requires it be immune to dirt & mud, and the market is larger.

Improper Data Handling - FAIL!

In order to evaluate any of your graphs, you needed to also show the number of respondents submitting opinions for each brand. That way the reader could see if, for example, the HP data was based on only 5 respondents but the Sony on 50. And even better graphical presentation of the data would have been to simply plot the individual respondent points. That would not only provide the sample size information discussed above, but would also show the sampling distribution. Both the sample size and the distribution are critical for evaluating this poll result. As presented, the graphs are useless. The author needs to learn about the proper handling of statistical data. Given the improper presentation of the poll data, the entire article's discussion is just an demonstration of intellectual masterbation - a lot of useless motion whose purpose is to make the person doing it feel good.

@Tom

It's not the calculations. The major reason is that angular momentum conservation in the Earth-Moon system causes the Earth's rotation to slow down as tidal forces transfer angular momentum from the Earth's rotation to the moons orbit. In other words, the Earth's rotation slows and the Earth-Moon distance increases over time.

@rfrovarp & @Mel

Not just for hunters. I own a pair of cold weather gloves/mitts that allow the finger ends on all fingers (& thumb separately) to be peeled back for dexterity.

Like these: http://tinyurl.com/7l7238

A fair offer to buy Yahoo!

Would be about $5 per share. Yang should be so proud if such a deal were to go through.

@Mark

"But when they take you to court over it, the government steps in and FORCES you to accede to the demands. Or face criminal charges.

So how come this doesn't count as the government abridging free speech?"

I presume you mean accede to the demands of the Court. It's called Rule of Law. If you slander or libel someone, in other words, say or print stuff that is damaging to someone and is untrue, and they sue you in Court and win damages, the Court can order you to pay those damages. If you don't pay, then the Court can go after you for Contempt of Court which is a separate legal matter. At no point has the Government abridged your right to Free Speech. It simply is enforcing the other party's right to get compensation from you if you tell lies about that other party and those lies damage them. Seems kind of hard to come up with a logical defense for allowing people to damage others by any means and not allow the damaged party to ask the Courts to grant them compensation paid for by the party who committed the damage.

Hey Goodin, when Gpcode first made the rounds two years ago...

Did anyone track down the crooks? Having antivirus software stop the malware from being installed is great, but catching the bad guys is an even greater deterrent. The biggest weakness in ransom crimes is the bad guy has to get his payment in order to be successful. Even with dead drops, the bad guy does have to expose himself (or a cutout) electronically or in person in order to collect that payment.

@Kyle

If a mere compatibility layer like WINE works for you, fine. But remember, WINE stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator"; it's also Not an Operating System.