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Comment thanks Hemos, just replace 'pirate' with 'copy' (Score 2) 113

by Lukano (#41529175) Attached to: Jeff Bates On Niche Communities and Why Partisan News Is Normal

... in the article.

Seriously. You speak the truth, and most of us know it - but you're obviously appealing to the un-informed with your editorial, and the obtuse use of 'pirate' in place of 'share' makes it hard to swallow.

I get you, I've been in the scene since the early 80's, and I absolutely understand where/how/why/from it started. That said, you let your 'corporate overlords' (for lack of better euphemism) dictate the tone of the article. And that ruined it for me.

Just sayin'. :(

Comment Re:Naming conventions (Score 1) 722

by Lukano (#36546618) Attached to: I Name My Servers After:

I take a similar tack, but with Sith Lord names instead of locations/ship names. With SW:TOR on the horizon, and the ever expanding EU novel universe - I'll not run out of naming options anytime soon.

Plus, naming a machine Vader, Bane, or Caedus is pretty cool in a horribly nerdy way.
Open Source

Submission + - Open Space Movement (openspacemovement.org) 2

Submitted by IronDragon
IronDragon writes: After a few delays, the Open Space Movement site is nearing release status. This is a non-profit organization that aims to provide educational resources, social networking, and a collaborative development environment to support open-source style aerospace engineering. These tools and services are offered freely to individuals of any country, as well as existing space-related organizations and engineering teams. In short, a mashup of Sourceforge, Kickstarter, and Wikipedia to allow community driven development of a public space venture, and as a means of providing support to existing non-profit and commercial space ventures.

The basic premise of the OSM is that space needs people. As such, the OSM exists to encourage public interest through direct involvement. While we maintain an overarching goal of "manned colonization of space in a matter of years rather than decades", we really have to start from the ground up to make that happen. Through our process of user-submitted project development, we hope to accelerate the progress of manned spaceflight in the same manner that "open source" model has given rise to an entire ecosystem of free and useful software. In addition, we recognize that open source development has profoundly influenced many people to become software developers themselves. With that, we hope that our project development environment may passively teach, and actively encourage people to learn more about practical space science and engineering.

If this sounds a bit outlandish, that's perfectly understandable. However, having talked at length with Mr Gary Barnhard, executive director of the National Space Society, we feel that this is a rather good, comprehensive, and feasible idea. We are currently in preliminary talks with the NSS to discuss partnership as an independent affiliated organization. (The R&D wing of the NSS seems like an apt description)

I'm starting a space program. Ask me anything!* **

*(If it's about ITAR, we currently have a meeting scheduled on the 11th with an ITAR specialist to review our compliance plans. Initial review looks pretty solid)
**(If it's about the site, the developers believe it may be ready in a day or two. After that, we will need to start beta testing and performing some initial data population. Testers are welcome to contact us)
Space

Submission + - Space needs people. (openspacemovement.org) 4

Submitted by IronDragon
IronDragon writes: Hello, I am starting a space program.

First off, this is a non-profit organization that aims to provide a collaborative development environment, and educational resource for aerospace engineering. If you would use the analogy; sourceforge.net for space access. This is a gross oversimplification, but lets run with it for now. Regardless of the specifics of our operation, the Open Space Movement seeks to solve the fundamental problem with the current status of space development, and that is people.

We focus on public involvement, as that is the lynch pin to developing space. 'People' are the difference between "a global market for maybe 5 computers", and the billions of PC's, smartphones, and servers that make up the Internet. We bought the Internet. We are personally responsible for driving the demand for the state of the art, and paying for it simultaneously. We can do the same for space access. If you consider that we are currently spending more on cell phones in one year, than the Apollo program did in a decade, it stands to reason that an organized public-funded space venture could amass more financial backing and creative input than all existing space agencies and private space enterprises combined. As a more recent example of the publics' spending capacity, the three day period between December 17th through December 19th saw retail sales of approximately 18.84 billion dollars. This compares very closely with NASA's 2010 budget of 18.7 billion dollars. Space may be expensive, but we can certainly afford it.

The OSM will operate as a web-based collaborative development environment, educational resource, and social network — aimed at providing the public with direct participation in the planning and execution of a public space venture. On the premise that public support is the keystone of future space development, the OSM seeks to engage, educate, and provide organization to the public, on a scale that has not been duplicated since the call to action by former President John F Kennedy, in his 1962 address to Rice University.

Project development will be a cornerstone of our operations. The OSM does not implicitly support or favor any particular project, as our role is to simply provide the framework and ecosystem to support the development of all submitted projects. Democratic controls available to site users will allow for the OSM community to determine which projects are supported based on merit and cost effectiveness, by prioritizing and approving project funding requests.

The development environment, and other resources offered by the OSM are also available to existing space organizations, large and small, to provide collaborative tools for their member bases, and help to promote and provide visibility for their efforts. These resources are available free of charge to individuals, organizations, schools, and for-profit ventures.

This offers several beneficial side effects, as participation in the development environment will be a strong incentive for people to get involved. By doing so, users will be exposed to a wide variety of concepts in the fields of science and engineering, which not only provides passive education — but gives them a reason to study further, on the grounds that what they learn will have practical applications, and can be immediately applied. Finally, the operation of this project ecosystem is expected to steadily grow a portfolio of open-source style designs, innovations, and research into areas not covered by the scope of current conventional spaceflight. As this portfolio of ideas grows, it also provides the OSM with a steady stream of publishable material that may be useful in attracting an ever-growing audience.

General principles of the OSM:

1. Offer collaborative development environment and educational references to support user-submitted project development. Essentially "sourceforge.net" for aerospace engineering. (Not all projects have to be about rockets. That's like saying that every programmer out there has to build their own operating system. The scope and scale of something like colonization will require input from virtually every field. Even if you're not a "rocket scientist", you probably do have something you can contribute. If you want to become a rocket scientist — this might be a good place to start learning.)

2. Offer support and services to existing space organizations.

3. Leverage project development as an incentive for people to actually learn more about space science and engineering.

4. Community driven funding of project development. Funding requests for project development are prioritized by the OSM community, thus allowing democratic control over how donations are spent. This makes it possible to see exactly how financial support from the community helps build the OSM's portfolio of designs, educational projects, and research experiments. This in turn gives the OSM plenty of publishable material to demonstrate the efficiency of the system. Money goes in, cool stuff comes out.

5. Accessibility and direct participation. This is not for spectators. This is designed to be open to anybody — and easy enough to encourage peoples' creative contributions. This is a key factor in growing and educating a large OSM community. Additionally, we aim to support internationalization and translation of our site's content, and be open to citizens of any nation.

6. By becoming a significantly large community, the OSM itself can become a public market to drive demand in space access. Large enough to influence the direction of existing companies in the space business.

7. There exists an ideal path to the colonization of space that involves the greatest number of people in the shortest amount of time. The OSM is essentially a human computer to figure out this path, and make it happen.

8. We currently spend more money on cell phones in one year, than the Apollo program spent in a decade. Space may be expensive, but the discretionary spending of the public is overwhelming in comparison. We bought the Internet, we paid for the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle missions, and we can organize together to drive space access in a matter of years, rather than decades.

9. No single government or private corporation has the resources to tackle the scope of space colonization. The only entity capable of this would be the public itself. The OSM is here only to organize and direct that effort. We seek to challenge the preconceived notions of space travel being too expensive and too exclusive. The future of space development depends upon many things, but the foremost factor will not be availability of funding or advancements in technology. It will be our influence, whether we decide to be citizens of space, or spectators and tourists.

According to our developers, the site is pretty close to release-candidate status. As soon as that happens, we will be opening registration for beta testing to track down any last-minute bugs, and help populate our initial site content. This is entirely free to use, and we will be looking at implementing any beneficial changes to our site as suggested and voted upon by our community.

The goals, capabilities, and actions of the OSM are entirely community driven. We simply provide the tools and organization. If you want to do something about space travel, then we are here to help you participate.

Is anyone interested?
Sony

Submission + - Sony's PS3 Jailbroken Forever (psgroove.com) 1

Submitted by ReportedlyWorking
ReportedlyWorking writes: It appears that Sony's PS3 has been fatally compromised. At the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, a team named "fail0verflow" revealed that they had calculated the Private Keys, which would let them or anyone else, generate signed software for the PS3. Additionally, they also claim to have a method of jailbreaking the PS3 without the use of a Dongle, which is the current method. If all these statements are true, this opens the door to custom firmware, homebrew software, and OtherOS! Assuming that Sony doesn't take radical action and invalidate their private keys, this could mean that Jailbreaking is viable on all PS3, regardless of their firmware!

"Approximately a half hour in, the team revealed their new PS3 secrets, the moment we all were waiting for. One of the major highlights here was, dongle-less jailbreaking by overflowing the bootup NOR flash, giving complete control over the system. The other major feat, was calculating the public private keys (due to botched security), giving users the ability to sign their own SELFs Following this, the team declared Sony's security to be EPIC FAIL!"

Comment Re:Why are people even interested in this matter?? (Score 1) 728

by Lukano (#34144368) Attached to: Considering a Fair Penalty For Illegal File-sharing

You can't claim 'there is going to be no RIAA in less than 5 years' without proof here dude.

They've been railroading mothers, grandmothers, children, and politicians for the better part of a decade without pause.... Other than wishful thinking, what makes you think they'll suddenly curl up and die the horrible painful death they deserve - within the next 5 years?

Comment late to the thread ; but Jammie is a Shill! (Score 3, Interesting) 728

by Lukano (#34144342) Attached to: Considering a Fair Penalty For Illegal File-sharing

I am likely late to the game/thread, but this whole situation stinks of big-money shilling. There's no way that this could have continued past 3 appeals and still have come up with 7+ digits in settlement. As far as I'm concerned, this smacks of the Jammie case being a corporate shill in order to further the RIAA/MPAA agenda. Using such an example they can prove that a relatively innocent individual can be found guilty of 5-digit-per-track-$ infringeemnt, while still appearing to have undergone 'due process'.

It stinks, it's rotten, and it smells.

I'm not sure why anyone is buying this?!

(well, outside of corporate US funded media / astroturfing / shills that is....)

Comment i'm a Canadian, and I still think this stinks; (Score 4, Interesting) 280

by Lukano (#33693682) Attached to: US ISP Adopts Three-Strikes Policy

I've been reading the TF thread for about an hour now, and I still can't help but think this is a horrible and stinky decision;

I've written Suddenlink to communicate my dissatisfaction :

@SuddenLink : "I've contacted Suddenlink in order to communicate my dissatisfaction. I was given the opportunity to move to an area for a job, that was serviced by Suddenlink. Their policy was the deciding factor in me choosing to reject the job opportunity.

Way to go Suddenlink, not only have you cost yourselves a reliable customer - your policy is affecting immigration to your country."

Their response was to play dumb ;

"I apologize, sir! But I'm not quite sure as to what disconnect policy you're referring to. We do not have any cancellation fees or contracts, and you're free to leave our company without any charge or penalty. "

To which I replied and pointed them in the direction of the TorrentFreak article ;

"The disconnect policy in which I refer to, can be found here;
http://torrentfreak.com/us-isp-disconnects-alleged-pirates-for-6-months-100924/"

And their reply was ;

@SuddenLink : "Thank you for your email in regards to the DMCA Violation. I appreciate the opportunity to assist you today.

I apologize that you do not approve of this, sir.'

wow... I'm glad that they 'apologize' that I don't approve of their policy. Great customer service skills - both on a CSR level and Company-Wide, that this is the best response they can come up with.

Comment Re:Wiki Documentation (Score 1) 401

by Lukano (#26918403) Attached to: How Do You Document Technical Procedures?

This is pretty much my suggestion in a nutshell as well.

A wiki lets you build a knowledge base quickly and easily, that can be ammended and edited by any user. If they screw something up, you can revert the changes and/or isolate who made the error and have them correct it.
Earth

How To Build a Short Foucault Pendulum 79

Posted by kdawson from the watching-the-earth-rotate dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Set a pendulum in motion and you'll inevitably give it an ellipsoidal motion, which naturally tends to precess. That's bad news if you want to build a Foucault Pendulum, a bob attached to a long wire swinging in a vertical plane that appears to rotate as the Earth spins beneath it. The natural precession always tends to swamp the rotation due to the Earth's motion. There is a solution, however: the behavior of the ellipsoidal motion is inversely proportional to the pendulum's length. So the traditional answer has been to use a very long pendulum (Foucalt's original in Paris is 67 meters long). Now scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have another solution (abstract). They've created a motor that drives a pendulum in a way that always cancels out the precession. That means the effect of Earth's rotation can be seen on much shorter pendulums such as the 3-meter pendulum on which they've tested their motor. That's just the start though. They say there is no limit to how short the new generation of Foucault Pendulums can be, and even talk about the possibility of tabletop devices."
The Internet

Researchers Warn of Possible BitTorrent Meltdown 294

Posted by kdawson from the domino-effect dept.
secmartin writes "Researchers at Delft University warn that large parts of the BitTorrent network might collapse if The Pirate Bay is forced to shut down. A large part of the available torrents use The Pirate Bay as tracker, and other available trackers will probably be overloaded if all traffic is shifted there. TPB is currently using eight servers for their trackers. According to the researchers, even trackerless torrents using the DHT protocol will face problems: 'One bug in a DHT sorting routine ensures that it can only "stumble upon success", meaning torrent downloads will not start in seconds or minutes if Pirate Bay goes down in flames.'"

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