Comment Re:Sounds like a standard system to me (Score 1) 863
Most cities here in Australia have them now. A lot of them are solar-powered, too.
Comment Re:Local DNS problem? (Score 1) 142
China's filtering capabilities include screwing with DNS.
Comment Re:directly to a google.com IP address (Score 1) 142
China transparently redirects/alters DNS requests to non-Chinese DNS servers.
Comment Re:If the IP works, it's not a block (Score 1) 142
China's blocking system also includes manipulating DNS. Chinese DNS servers currently return toally random IP addresses for www.youtube.com; and queries to non-Chinese DNS servers are transparently proxied and altered with the same effect. I haven't seen a case of DNS being blocked without a corresponding IP block, but it's certainly do-able. I don't think just saying "but the IPs aren't blocked, it's only a DNS problem!" doesn't mean it's not the gov't doing it.
Comment Re:my experiences... (Score 1) 142
My personal opinion is that the randomness is a tool to coax people into changing their behaviour. If you find that some foreign site is frequently unreliable, you'll change to another one (possibly domestic) that is more reliable.
Comment Re:calm down chinaphiles... (Score 1) 142
Part of what China's blocking/filtering systems do is to transparently filter all DNS requests. e.g. to block YouTube at the moment, not only do they do IP filtering, but they screw with the DNS. If I try to look up www.youtube.com, I get a totally random, totally different IP address each time. This happens EVEN if point dig/nslookup/resolv.conf to a DNS server outside China... they just transparently filter it and give me a bugus response.
So a "failure of DNS", as you put it, doesn't necessarily absolve China of anything. The "failure" could well have been deliberately caused.
Comment Re:calm down chinaphiles... (Score 1) 142
Hell, the article itself said service came back for some before others... That in itself says that it's probably the net and not China.
In my experience (I'm in China), that's not really an indication. The "great firewall" seems to be constructed in various parts, and they don't always do the same things at the same times.
Comment Re:Please come to the local station (Score 1) 142
Republic of China is Taiwan, not mainland China.
There, fixed that for you.
There, fixed that for you.
Comment Re:Please come to the local station (Score 1) 142
"The Nationalists" usually refers to the KMT - the party that were defeated in the civil war by the communists, and fled to Taiwan.
To be fair, I think you should refer to the "deranged Chinese Nationalists" AS WELL AS the "deranged Chinese Communists". Please be a little more inclusive. Thank you.
Comment Re:ROEI, Return on Energy Invested (Score 1) 867
Do you mean NIMBYs?
Comment Re:Submitter Quality Control (Score 1) 283
Agreed, I've seen my fellow Aussies type/write the same thing.
Comment Re:Not exactly pretty (Score 1) 337
He *does* use the word "gorgeous" a lot (but that's as close as he gets to saying anything is "sexy").
Comment Re:Good luck with that. (Score 1) 743
Well, horns are no longer effective. It's time for everyone to replace their horns with loud, digital recordings of screeching tyres.
Submission + - CAPTCHA broken - thanks to a virtual stripper (bbc.co.uk) 3
Dynamoo writes: "A few months ago there was some speculation that spammers had managed to break the security CAPTCHA for many webmail systems and were using them to spread viruses and junk email. The problem was that no-one could actually demonstrate a mechanism to defeat the security code.
However, an novel approach has been documented by the BBC, suggesting that a virtual stripper application may be partly to blame. The woman in the application progressively undresses if the user types in the correct CAPTCHA code.. a code that is actually being generated by the Yahoo! mail security check. The application itself is a trojan, dubbed TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A by Trend."
However, an novel approach has been documented by the BBC, suggesting that a virtual stripper application may be partly to blame. The woman in the application progressively undresses if the user types in the correct CAPTCHA code.. a code that is actually being generated by the Yahoo! mail security check. The application itself is a trojan, dubbed TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A by Trend."
Submission + - To find DMCA violations you must violate the DMCA (ucsd.edu)
meese writes: staple is a tool that cryptographically binds data using an All-or-nothing transform. Why might that be interesting? Because it might allow for this scenario: to check for DMCA violations, a content owner would have to violate the DMCA themselves.
The basic transformation is keyless, but all the data is required to reverse it. The tool can also throw away part of its internal key, making the data decipherable only with the key or via brute force attack. If a content publisher, Alice, wants to check for copyright violations by another party, Bob, she could be thwarted: Bob could staple Alice's file with one of his own and discard part of the key. To check for copyright violation, Alice must brute force the stapled file (possibly violating the DMCA), which protects Bob's file. The FAQ has some more detail.
The basic transformation is keyless, but all the data is required to reverse it. The tool can also throw away part of its internal key, making the data decipherable only with the key or via brute force attack. If a content publisher, Alice, wants to check for copyright violations by another party, Bob, she could be thwarted: Bob could staple Alice's file with one of his own and discard part of the key. To check for copyright violation, Alice must brute force the stapled file (possibly violating the DMCA), which protects Bob's file. The FAQ has some more detail.
