Author Archives: Robin

Centralised databases used to track dissidents

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Terrorism tracking databases are now being used in the US to track people with political leanings that the police, well, just don’t like. Such as opposing the death penalty, for example. 53 nonviolent dissidents have been found to have been inserted deliberately into the terrorist tracking databases. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

And where is your ‘if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear’ argument now?

router firmwares

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If you have a crappy old router there are open source ways to upgrade them using alternative firmwares:

There’s Tomato for Linksys’ WRT54G/GL/GS, Buffalo WHR-G54S/WHR-HP-G54 and other Broadcom-based routers.

It features a new easy to use GUI, a new bandwidth usage monitor, more advanced QOS and access restrictions, enables new wireless features such as WDS and wireless client modes, raises the limits on maximum connections for P2P, allows you to run your custom scripts or telnet/ssh in and do all sorts of things like re-program the SES/AOSS button, adds wireless site survey to see your wifi neighbors, and more.

Then there’s dd-wrt based on the Linksys software but since completely rebuilt.

Among other features not found in the original Linksys firmware, DD-WRT adds the Kai Daemon for the Kai Console Gaming network, WDS wireless bridging/repeating protocol, Radius Authentication for more secure wireless communication, advanced Quality of Service controls for bandwidth allocation, and software support for the SD-Card hardware modification.

JSF doesn’t do too well

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The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) staged an excercise pitting the JSF against the 4th generation russian fighters and it got it’s arse handed to it in the turning game. Link goes to the movie. Memorable quotes are:

“The report says the JSF is: “‘Double inferior’ relative to modern Russian/Chinese fighter designs in visual range combat.” And has “Inferior acceleration, inferior climb, inferior sustained turn capability.”

It concludes that the JSF: “Can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run.”

and dogfighting it is:

“like clubbing baby seals”

I’ve been saying it enough – JSF is a dud!

Poker sites ripping off

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Online poker sites Absolute Poker and UltimateBet have had a security flaw in them, which allowed certain players to see the hole cards of all the other players. An Australian, Michael Josem, used statistical analysis to prove that certain accounts were winning around 100 times more often than other accounts. Now there’s a whole suing clusterfuck, where the state is suing the owners of the sites, who are suing the makers of the sites. Employees are being fired and even the World Series of Poker winner Russ Hamilton has been implicated as being a cheater.

Wal-Mart shows us why Spore’s DRM is fubar

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Spore has been getting loads of flak for publishing a game using a copy protection method that only allows you to install it on 3 user accounts. They’ve since raised the amount to 5, and say that you should be able to install it on more PCs if you give them a call.

Wall Mart is taking down their DRM servers. This means all music purchased legally from Wall Mart can no longer be played. Wall Mart is now reccomending people break their DRM if they want to keep their music!

This is why copy protection schemes such as Electronic Arts’ Spore are unnaceptable. Servers do go down. And then suddenly you can’t play your game any more at all!

Emdrive

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Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR Ltd) a small UK based company, has demonstrated a remarkable new space propulsion technology. The company has sucessfully tested both an experimental thruster and a demonstrator engine which use patented microwave technology to convert electrical energy directly into thrust. No propellant is used in the conversion process. Thrust is produced by the amplification of the radiation pressure of an electromagnetic wave propagated through a resonant waveguide assembly.

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