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Comment Telecine transform (Score 1) 599

This is done by way of a process which duplicates every 6th frame.

Not exactly. The telecine 2:3 pulldown conversion is from 24 full frames per second to ~60 interlaced fields (half-frames) per second, which means 4 input frames get converted to 10 output fields. In a straight 2:3 pulldown, film frames ABCD are output as interlaced fields AABBBCCDDD. This transform interacts badly with naïve deinterlacing though: if you just pair off the fields, you get AA BB BC CD DD, leaving you with two mixed-up frames and no intact C frame. Some other pulldown patterns are better behaved when naïvely deinterlaced, such as 2:3:3:2 which produces AA BB BC CC DD.

Many nonlinear editing toolkits, and maybe even a few viewing sets, can recognize when pulldown has been applied and remove it, reconstructing video at the original frame rate.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 320

I think you have value, transactions, and blocks a bit confused.

A typical transaction redeems the output of one or more prior transactions as its inputs, and generates one or more new outputs. Each output specifies the conditions required to redeem it; usually this condition is to sign the new transaction with a specific key. Any excess value from the inputs that is not directed to an output is deemed a transaction fee. Executing a transaction consists simply of specifying inputs and outputs, signing it, and sending it out to some Bitcoin peers.

A block is a data structure that contains a header including a proof of work, a reference to the preceding block it was based on (forming the block chain), a special "coinbase" transaction specified by the miner that disburses collected transaction fees and subsidies, and a collection of whatever additional transactions the miner sees fit to include in the block (subject to a few limits intended to prevent denial of service attacks).

While I agree that economic majority is a rather nebulous concept, it ultimately boils down to whether nodes agree on the validity of a transaction, and in this context, as Lessig so eloquently put it, code is law.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 320

I think this wiki page says it best.

Normally, however, a change proposal is floated with the community, and if adoption seems likely but not certain, the course of action may be to take a poll by specifying a voting period in which miners are asked to include a vote in any blocks they find if they support the proposal. In this context, it is quite literally 'one block, one vote'. In the case of pooled mining, it's up to pool participants to work out how they want to vote with their combined power, with the default being to acquiesce to the pool operator's preference.

Comment Notice != nag (Score 1) 451

The Free Software Foundation recommendation for GPL-licensed Free software that runs interactively is to display a notice when started interactively.

If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:

<program> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License.

Comment Re:CRC Errors (Score 1) 510

You'd think they'd learn from others' gaffes. Western Digital had a problem with Velociraptor firmware where an unsigned 32-bit count of milliseconds since power on, combined with poorly written read timeout ("TLER") logic, caused all read requests submitted within TLER-timeout of counter rollover to fail. Imagine the confusion that ensues when a RAID controller (or Linux md) sees all its drives vanish for a few seconds then come back ...

Comment Only during trust establishment! (Score 2) 121

Protocols can be devised in such systems which are completely eavesdrop tolerant, such that even if eavesdropping did occur, it would be indecipherable, even if one were to try to listen to the entire communication, including the protocol setup itself, it would sound like undecipherable gibberish right from the moment that the encryption began.

Such protocols can be vulnerable to MitM attacks, but that is why they are really only reliable as encryption when the communication is not subjected to any routing.

The criteria you give are accurate for key agreement in the absence of a preexisting trust anchor, such as the classic Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol. However, once a trust anchor is established — for example, by meeting and agreeing on a shared secret or verifying one another's public keys in person — that shared secret or known-good public key can be used for authenticating or verifying digital signatures on messages that arrive over an untrusted communication path.

Security

'Madi' Cyber Espionage Malware Hits Middle East Targets 45

DavidGilbert99 writes "Following the discovery of the highly-complex Flame virus in May, two security companies (Seculert and Kaspersky Lab) have uncovered a new cyber-espionage threat against the Middle East. Madi, or Madhi, is an information-stealing trojan which is technically a lot simpler than Flame or Stuxnet but is specifically targeting people in critical infrastructure companies, financial services and government embassies, which are mainly located in Iran, Israel and Afghanistan. The Madi creators use social engineering techniques to spread, embedding the malware in various documents including text files and PowerPoint presentations. It is unclear if the malware is state-sponsored or not, but it has already stolen several gigabytes of information and is still active."

Comment Nice bit of industrial design. (Score 2) 306

It's unusual to see /. mention a company that has a lick of design sense unless it's either Apple or someone on the defending end of a patent infringement claim from Apple. So when can we expect to see a lawsuit over the rear doors having too clean of a profile? (To the humor-impaired: the second sentence is a joke.)

Comment Re:Why would we? (Score 1) 601

Communication security is a combination of integrity, authentication, and optionally privacy. You also trust the postman not to modify what you write or forge your signature on your postcards, even though there is no privacy provided by a postcard.
Censorship

Malaysia Mulls Compulsory Registration of Tech Workers 187

Viceice writes "Hot on the heels of recently passed legislation further restricting Freedom of Assembly, the National Front-led Malaysian Government is now working to make the registration of all tech workers mandatory, making it an offence punishable by a stiff fine and jail for anyone to plan, deploy, service and maintain any computing system without a license. A leaked draft of the legislation has ignited a backlash among the IT community, which fear the law, when passed, will be devastating to the tech industry in Malaysia."
Privacy

Ask Slashdot: To Hack Or Not To Hack? 517

seeread writes "I discovered how to hack into and secure user accounts of a rising mobile payment start-up. Account info includes credit card details and usage. The company has big name financial backing and an IRL presence, but very few in-house developers, and they don't seem terribly concerned about security. Good samaritan that I am for now, I sent them an e-mail explaining the lapse on their part, but the responses I have received thus far are confused, aloof and unconvinced. So, I am wondering: what is the appropriate next step? Should I do a proof of concept? Should I go to the investors, or should I post about it somewhere? The representatives haven't been too receptive, despite the fact that their brand seems to be at risk, not to mention all of those users' credit cards. I almost feel like it's my responsibility to blow them out of the water if they have made it this far while compromising such trusted data. And although I would love to be in the paper, this hack is just too easy for it to be respectable, though I am sure the FBI could still be interested in all those credit card numbers."

Comment H5 and highly contagious? Yikes! (Score 1) 754

If I recall correctly, at least in humans, influenza hemagglutinin 5 tends to attach very well down deep in the lungs but not so well higher in the airway. Therefore H5 flus are particularly nasty if you get one, but they haven't historically been very contagious. I have to wonder if that's where the difference lies: something improving on H5's ability to attach higher in the airway, without compromising its existing affinity too much.

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