Did you know that, before the actual deployment of radar, the localisation of flying planes was done by listening to them?
With a good sound mirror, you could hear the motor of a plane from very far. And a sound mirror is essentially a wall able to reflect sound (like in a subway station or the underground cathedral of Brazilia). As you can see, some have tried to apply the idea to a portable device (don’t you like the way the listener looks?)
But, the larger the reflection device, the more amplification power and the more frequencies you can catch.
In front of the Channel, in United Kingdom, the Royal Air Force installed such devices of increasing sizes. The largest one (see below) was more a wall than anything else. (more…)
If you want to do discreet (if not completely anonymous) P2P, Bittorrent and Gnutella or Kazaa are not your friends. With the advent of more attention from authorities, it is difficult to consider them as good opportunities.
I have been looking quickly at some of the possible solutions to protect your privacy while exchanging files over the Internet. I found the following ideas:
Omemo is a recent Spanish development. I tried it and it is very obvious that the program is still in beta. Essentially, I was unable to download a file if it was not very small in size or to upload any. Let’s wait until it works.
GigaTribe seems a good solution if you are willing to pay for the Premium package. It builds a closed network with your friends, but the standard (free) software is not able to grab files from multiple computers at the same time. So performance is very limited for the free version. GigaTribe3 is said to correct a number of issues some time later in 2008.
Freenet is rather difficult to use at first, but if you run Thaw, one of the applications provided at installation, you will get a large choice of file downloads and performance while limited is not ridiculous: A few days for 2GB of video, it could be much worse. However, some may be troubled by the kind of data found there: While the common P2P data can be observed, you will also find conspiracy-related information and a quite significant load of pornography and child pornography (normally not found on the more open Internet).
I don’t know where the future of P2P lies, but it is certainly around some of these darknets (networks that are protected from external Peeping Toms). Freenet is supposed to be the best and most secured one, even if it is not perfect (it seems clear that some powerful agencies have setup some Freenet nodes in order to be able to spy the traffic).
The stars of show business and other stars are chased all around the world by paparazzis. Sometimes even catch them in X-ray photos. Here are the evidences:
The TSA (or Transportation Security Administration) is in charge in the US of the organization the safe transportation of people in planes and through airports. Unfortunately, either they have a lot of other responsabilities (which is true) and fail at this one (which is also true), or they utterly incompetent at insuring the security of the passengers (true again).
I have been amazed at the number of horror stories that I could find lately about their abysmal track record, so here is a short compilation I made just for your your laughs (or cries).
TSA has a no-fly list of people who should not board airplanes for fear of terrorism. This list is a shame since it contains tens of thousands of names remotely linked to terrorists (if they are dead, like Mohamed Atta known for dying on 911, they do not even get removed from the list) and even very common names are included making the life of thousands of innocent people impossible in airports. Like Sam Adams, 5, probably very dangerous despite his nice smiling little face.
Speaking of faces, TSA started to train its screeners with some facial expressions that are considered ground for additional screening and interrogation (in a program called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) probably only a thin veil on “let’s stop this guy because I don’t like his face“). Unfortunately, they would not say if you should avoid smiling or making faces to the TSA personel. After that, you immediately think about George Orwell’s 1984 (”facecrime”) and Kafka’s Trial (not to speak of stalinist behavioral crimes). And when you see how untrained the screeners are…
Speaking about training, should I mention the cases where the agents are so unable to handle your belongings that they drop them on the floor. Don’t mention dropping a T-shirt. Think about pro-photo equipment like here or here.
TSA and some English goons decided that transporting liquids was a major terrorist danger. Even if it is the milk bottle of Junior, the Coke for Dad or the Perrier for Mom. So, now, liquids in more than 100ml are prohibited from your carry-on luggage (even though it is more or less admitted that the threat was exagerated). Except if they are in a clear plastic bag. What has this to do with security? Does it make a difference between the following two eye mascara sticks?
Even pilots are annoyed at bullshit “security” procedures that the TSA has put into place. [The linked article has interesting references to British Security officials admitting that the "liquid bomb plot" public statements were overcooked, inaccurate and “unfortunate.”
The TSA web site supposed to help people request their removal from the no-fly list has been demonstrated as a major Internet security risk, it looks more like a scam with all the security errors/snafus than an important US national asset handling personal data.
Even, according to a story [...] in the London Daily Mail newspaper, the British government has had enough with the “War on Terror” hype. [from Spurgeon Blog]
I am in no hurry to test the US borders by taking a plane to go and see my American friends. Sorry Veronica, Renata, Bing, Michael, and others.
For most of us, IPv6 has been a little more than vaporware. But in order to fight the upcoming lack of Internet addresses (as IPv4 addresses are more easily known), there is this new protocol, IPv6. It is steadily progressing and tomorrow, February 4th, several of the major international routers of the Internet backbone will start routing IPv6 packets.
It means that IPv6 will become a reality in most regions of the world, even if a lot more is to be done to make it overwhelmingly present.
everybody told you about it, Boeing is preparing a new medium range jet airplane that will do everything but coffee: It is nice, it is light, it eats 25% less fuel, it is less noisy.
But it has two problems:
Boeing was forced to announce a dealy for the first deliveries (EADS-Airbus is not the only one to have such difficulties here)
The FAA, US Federal Aviation Authority, is troubled by the sight of this airpline having a computer network open to the passengers. Here, I would say it’s rather good news bringing plenty of in-flight computer fun (email, web, IM, network games, etc.) but Boeing had a bad idea: The public network seems not to be isolated enough from the on-board network. So, the FAA is afraid of the possibility that some passengers may break havoc (voluntarily or not) on the plane’s instruments.
This was a test flight to meet the most extreme take off conditions, not the usual day-to-day routine of the airplane. But, you have to admit that being a test pilot is not always fully safe.
It’s even more complex than I thought initially. It’s not that you cannot put Lithium batteries in your hand luggage if you fly by plane starting 1st of January, 2008. It’s quite the opposite: They don’t want your spare batteries in checked luggage. “Spare batteries” means batteries that are not attached to a device (camera, computer or else). Spare batteries are prefered in hand-luggage.
It makes even less sense to me. And it will be awfully difficult to enforce. But try and make things clear at check-in to decide what to do with your spare batteries when traveling by air.
Here we are! Transport regulation authorities added the Lithium batteries to the list of banned objects in carry-on luggage in planes.
Of course, Lithium batteries can explode. But they took the additional step of prohibiting them when they are out of the device and contain more than 2g of Lithium…
Photographers leaving for a long trip: Put them in the checked luggage if you do not want to see them ending with fire-arms, knifes, cutters and mineral water bottles (in the junk bin).
We learned this week that Warner Music and AMazon are going to gang in in order to sell DRM-free MP3 files. This is the third music major to stop and listen to its customers who did not want to suffer the indignity and incovenience of this kind of digital rights protection.
EMI and Universal had already gone this way. The only big one missing is still Sony BMG (Do you remember? They were the authors of the famous rootkit installed on some of their CD to protect them and that breaking havoc on their customers’ PC machine).
Complementary information: With this annoncement, Amazon will reach nearly 3 million DRM-free MP3 files (up to now, the record was held by iTunes with -only- 2 millions).
Visibly, in 2008, scammers and spammers start early: The sheer number of emailed wish cards seems to have increased to very high levels. Only one advice: If you receive a “best wishes” electronic card from somebody that you don’t know, don’t even spend time (and computer security) checking it. It’s most probably a mean to insert a worm, a Trojan horse or a virus in your computer.
Previous Entries
Did you know that, before the actual deployment of radar, the localisation of flying planes was done by listening to them?
The TSA (or Transportation Security Administration) is in charge in the US of the organization the safe transportation of people in planes and through airports. Unfortunately, either they have a lot of other responsabilities (which is true) and fail at this one (which is also true), or they utterly incompetent at insuring the security of the passengers (true again).
