PhoneSecure
On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk
I'm not generally an insecure person. I'm perfectly happy with carrying in excess of ?1000 in electronics on my person... well, maybe I should get some protection after all, and I've found it, in the form of PhoneSecure.
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Phraselator
On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk
One step closer to the babelfish from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
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Epson fabricates 20-layer PCB using InkJet tec
On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought
Epson has fabricated a 200micron thick 20 layer using their own InkJet technology with a conductive ink containing silver micro-particles measuring from several nanometers to several tens of nanometers in diameter, and a newly developed insulator ink.
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PetaPixel displays, 100TB storage and more...
On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought
Colossal Storage is developing 14M dpi or 200Tpixels per square inch of near-non-volatile display. It is based on a ferroelectric material which gives each pixel a state retension of up to 12 hours. Display resolutions of up to 4Petapixel will be possible with this technology.
Colossal Storage is also developing a holographic media which can store 10TB on a single 3?" disc. The theory behind it can go up to 1.5Exabytes (1.5x10^1
.
They are currently looking for companies who are interresting in licensing the products.
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Makin Copies!
article written by : killdashnine released on : 26 February, 2004 | send killdashnine a private message! killdashnine's rating : ***** |
3D copiers
For the most part we can only copy data these days ... we don't have allas like in Rudy Rucker's Realware; CDs, DVDs, and paper goods have been the reach of Xerox for the present time. Sooner or later though, we're going to get around to copying bigger things.
I think everyone at ZZZ has heard about 3D Copiers -- connect your machine up to a CAD system of some sort and render nice renditions of whatever object you're trying to create. Companies like Z Corporation have some righteous equipment for making 3D copies ...
Umm, Nobody's looking ... What are you making copies of now, Bill?
As a chemist, I find the possibilities even more astounding when I could take a large protein structure or some other complicated enzyme or protein and just "print" the thing out ...
How far off are we from getting transporter tech ? ... well, still a long way
"Backup" Tech
3D copiers aside, you'd think with all the lawsuits pending with the RIAA and other corporations over IP, that we'd begin to see fewer "backup" technologies on the market. Well thanks to intelligent people, there's a lot of "sticking it to the man" going on these days ... the digital community is revolting against what they feel is their god-given right:
"While copyright law grants authors the exclusive right to reproduce and profit from their works, the law recognizes an exception called fair use. Fair use permits consumers' limited personal, non-commercial use of lawfully obtained copyrighted material without prior consent of the copyright owner. It allows you to photocopy parts of books you own and make back-up tapes of movies or music you own onto VHS or cassette tapes. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that fair use is necessary to avoid an irreconcilable conflict between copyright law and the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech."
- - www.protectfairuse.org
Surely this makes sense, right? As we know that the lifespan of various media varies, but isn't forever, we should have some appropriate way to bring copies of things that are important to us along for our bumpy ride through time. Things get lost or broken and disasters do happen.
Nooooooo! Some things should not be backed up anymore ...
3-2-1 Studios, hailing from the suburban areas of St. Louis, Missouri, has capitalized on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act over the past year or so ... literally exploding with technologies that help you and I to back up our investment of DVDs (and CDs too). I don't know about you, but I have scores of these little aluminum and plastic platters lying about.
Recently, MGM Studios has won a suit against them. There are lots of thoughts on where this is going, but 3-2-1 Studios is going to appeal the ruling saying ...
"There is no difference between making a copy of a music CD for personal use and making a backup of a DVD movie for personal use. We are so firm in our belief in the principle of fair use that we will appeal this ruling immediately. And we will take our fight all the way to the Supreme Court, if that's what it takes to win."
Who knows what'll ultimately come of this. Between you and me, there seems to be about 100 hackers out there for each and every person that some security company has working on locking things down.
Games X Copy and Daemon Tools
To me, what's commonly more important than having my MP3 collection with me is carting around all my game CDs. A year or so ago, I bought a high-end laptop so I could work from virtually anywhere (and, of course, play games). The disappointment is that I still have a huge CD case I have to lug around as most games require you to have the original CD.
It didn't take long for someone to shoot me a copy of Daemon Tools ... a handy little tool whereby you can mount virtual CDs or DVDs as "images" on your hard disk. Rip a copy of your CDs and leave them at home ... the only drawback of course is that you lose tons of space (and that's why LaCie makes a Terabyte External Hard Drive!
Hmmm, movie server anyone? TiVo replacement drive, perhaps?
Now, 3-2-1 Studios has gotten into the act with official and easy-to-use software of their own ...
I don't need no stinkin' CD-ROMs!
... the only drawback? DaemonTools is free.
How it all works ...
Obviously, companies like Macrovision aren't happy at all about this technology. There are many levels of security with regards to licensing software. The most common that we end-users have to experience comes in the form of various anti-piracy protection measures.
One such measure is SafeDisc ... SafeDisc works quite simply by placing special sectors at the start of the CD that's protected. These tracks can't be burned on most CD-Rs and are used to verify or validate the CD.
There's a lot of interesting information on the various copy protections at the Daemon Tools website.
Other tools like Alcohol 120 or most of the XCopy titles allow copying directly to an image or another media form.
FlexLM and Macrovision
It seems to me that they whole industry will ultimately shift to a model that's more like Macrovision's FlexLM licensing scheme where you have a license server with "keys" that are all intricately tied into your individual machine's hardware. Surely someone's gotten around this too though.
It's all chaos right now, but viruses, hacks, and other things are directly analogous to biology. Without any stressors in the environment (in our case the debate over fair-use rights, there would be no reason for evolution. For the world of computing, hacks and cracks only serve to improve the evolving digital landscape.
Issue Image!
your standard non-standard two headed turtle
-Rild