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101
Living Room / Re: R.I.P. Robin Williams
« on: August 13, 2014, 12:54 PM »
Disney posted this on the subject matter.



For those who don't recognize what this is, it is the lamp from Aladdin, where Robin Williams had played the genie.

When that movie came out I actually hated it. At the time I didn't understand the genie's humor at all.

It wasn't till years later I finally began to appreciate Robin Williams humor, going back to rewatch movies he had been in now that I finally understood his role.

Flubber as well. If I had to pick a movie he was in that was my favorite, that would be it. I've yet to see Bicentennial man, though I read a fair amount of Asimov and probably would get the connections from it.

102
Living Room / Re: Blackhat thread
« on: August 11, 2014, 09:25 AM »
You can create bad blocks then store data there (NAND memory). Bad blocks are ignored, so you are effectively invisible.

Utterly. Terrifying.
-Renegade (August 10, 2014, 09:08 AM)

And in use for more than a decade too! Its not just applicable to NAND memory. You can do this to CDs and DVDs as well.

In the old days when they were first getting pissy about copyrights and sharing games and software, I found that they had been using a rather clever antipiracy mechanism.

What they would do is create the CD to intentionally contain a couple of bad blocks.

In normal usage the drive would never attempt to access these blocks, as the software would elegantly skip around them. But when you tried to copy the CD it would get about 70% complete and then hang, taking so long to try and salvage data from the bad blocks that it would buffer underrun the burner and ruin the copy being made.

RFID is another scary can of worms in and of itself. If you even get close to being able to manipulate it without all kinds of licensing red tape, they are really quick to lawsuit you to death. Its inherently flawed in a very serious way, one that enables anyone with the right kind of equipment to read it at will. And its only a matter of time until viable designs for that equipment become well known to the public, rendering RFID a completely worthless concept.


103
Living Room / Re: Wikimedia refuses to remove animal selfie because monkey ‘owns’ the photo
« on: August 09, 2014, 09:43 PM »
Now perhaps the ape could file suit...but he'd need representation since (again as a non-human) he couldn't file on his own behalf - and it would be interesting to see how they could establish that he gave his informed consent for an attorney to represent him...hmmm

I suppose a judge could make him a ward of the state and appoint legal counsel on his behalf. But that would be such a career limiting move that I don't think many US judges (and certainly not any residing outside the State of California) would even consider doing such a thing.

-40hz (August 08, 2014, 05:28 PM)

Apes have been successfully educated in the use of standardized sign language, and can hold conversations in it.

You could train this ape in the use of sign language and then designate an interpreter to translate it on his behalf to whatever courts or attorneys wanted to hear the case.

Of course that is assuming the ape doesn't simply tell everyone that he has no idea what we are talking about, and just wants people to see him- which would mean the image has been placed in public domain by the photographer and the case is closed.

104
Living Room / Re: Godmode
« on: July 29, 2014, 04:03 PM »
This just seems redundant to me, unless it gives you access to things not normally accessible even through administrative interfaces.

winkey+r, type compmgmt.msc

I personally like msconfig and compmgmt, but you can access just about any builtin utility the system has through the run command.

105
Living Room / Re: Moore's Law Dead by 2022, Expert Says
« on: July 28, 2014, 03:58 PM »
Servers will always benefit from faster CPUs and more RAM.

Improvements in CPU and RAM for servers translates to either more clients served, or a smaller server in general because the growth of the technology has exceeded the growth rate of the transactions being processed.

For desktops though, the resource usage has indeed slowed down considerably, due in no small part to the 32/64 bit changeover holding back a lot of software.

Considering that my 3.4GHz Pentium 4 HT from 2005 is still able to reliably perform all of the basic computing tasks- internet, email, media playing, and storing personal data, I believe technology has reached a plateau where simply increasing the performance is no longer enough to bring about another radial change in how people use this type of equipment.

Now its just a game of making it cheaper and more energy efficient, while the market is saturating because there is far less of an incentive to upgrade all the time than there used to be.

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