TechEye |  |
- Stallman warns about Bitcoin peril
- Iron Maiden rocks music business
- Nuclear weapons passwords were 00000000
- Get a supercomputer for $99
- Facebook can out serial killers
| Stallman warns about Bitcoin peril Posted: 02 Dec 2013 02:00 AM PST Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation warned that there needs to be a new form of electronic currency which is protected from NSA spy agency data mining. According to RT Stallman told a London gathering of Bit coin fans that while Bitcoin has its benefits, it is not up to the standard of a safe digital currency that would shield a payer from being tracked by companies and, ultimately, by intelligence agencies. He said that an anonymous payment system is also required for us to start "taking control of our digital lives". He said that Bitcoin's problem is that it might get used for tax evasion. But he said that some of the biggest problems of tax dodging are legal and if governments want to put an end to tax dodging, tax laws need to be changed so that businesses can't offshore their profits. But he said that the biggest problem with Bitcoin is that it is not anonymous. People do not necessarily give their names when they do Bitcoin transactions, but the government can probably figure it out. You can only get Bitcoins if you set up a Bitcoin money computer, which is how Bitcoins are made, you are going to get them by buying them from someone. If you are an ordinary person, the way you could do it is by paying with a credit card to a company that will exchange government currency for Bitcoins. The credit card identifies you, so when you get Bitcoins in return, the government can see who you are. He said that there is only going to be real democracy when a government cannot see who is doing what. |
| Iron Maiden rocks music business Posted: 02 Dec 2013 01:58 AM PST Heavy metal popular beat combo Iron Maiden is living proof that the music industry has the whole concept of music piracy wrong. The band is one of the most pirated outfits in history and yet it managed to make £10-20 million for 2012. Death metal reports that the reason is that Iron Maiden has worked out a new business model which makes cash, rather than suing fans for ignoring the old one. Greg Mead, CEO and co-founder of Musicmetric pointed out that Iron Maiden did really well in Brazil which is one of the biggest file sharing nations. He thinks that with its constant touring, Maiden has been successful in turning free file sharing into fee-paying fans. If your fans see you and love you they are more likely to want to pay for your music. What is vital is to get a fan base, a core of people who feel that they have an interest in supporting your work. Social media seems to be helping rather than hurting the band's bottom line because it organised fans and build a fiercely loyal fanbase with a clear brand and identity. This does mean that for a band to work, it needs to have a good solid fanbase from which it can grow. It also means that the fly-by-night artists which were the main stay of the music industry are less likely to succeed unless they get a core from which they can make a living. |
| Nuclear weapons passwords were 00000000 Posted: 02 Dec 2013 01:50 AM PST At the height of the cold war, US nuclear weapons were protected by an eight-figure password which was supposed to be difficult to crack. In 1962 JFK signed the National Security Action Memorandum 160 which ordered nukes to have a Permissive Action Link (PAL) installed. This was a small device that ensured that the missile could only be launched with the right code and with the right authority. But according to todayifoundout the US military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American soil, that to minimise any delay in launching a nuclear missile, it set the launch codes at every silo in the US to 8 zeroes. This solved the problem that some of the US nukes were stored in silos which had an unstable leadership. The US was worried that the nukes could be seized by those governments and launched. Kennedy reasoned that PAL would stop this sort of thing because they might get the warhead but they could not crack the code. However, the military was worried that if the Russians did launch a strike, then its personnel would be running around trying to remember the number. Even with the daft password, the US military dragged its feet on PAL, and it took 20 years before all US nukes had the technology. Robert McNamara, JFK's Secretary of Defence personally tried to install tricky codes in the machine, but the Strategic Air Command hated him so much that almost as soon as he left, the code to launch the missiles was set to 00000000. Firing crews were actually told to double-check the locking panel in underground launch bunkers to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialled into the panel. This means that all those movies where everyone is waiting for the President to give his order to launch were pure fantasy. If the Russians had launched a strike, then the US would respond long before the President knew about it. |
| Posted: 02 Dec 2013 01:48 AM PST Adapteva is selling a $99 parallel-processing board that can build a Linux supercomputer for less than $100. Cheap underpowered computers are the new black since the $25 and $35 Raspberry Pi models appeared so Adapteva is trying to flog a more expensive gizmo in a crowded market. However, Adapteva is the first super-cheap supercomputer. Dubbed Parallela, Adapteva's board the size of a Raspberry Pi, but packs a significantly more powerful punch. It has 1GB of RAM, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a microSD slot, an HDMI connection, and a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port – all pretty standard. But Parallela has an ARM A9 processor with a 64-core Epiphany Multicore Accelerator, which helps the board achieve around 90 gigaflops. The boards can't replace standard desktops or gaming rigs but it will create a more efficient number cruncher. This board will use Ubuntu Linux 12.04 for its operating system. Adapteva CEO Andreas Olofsson said that conventional computing improved so quickly that in most applications, there was no need for massively parallel processing. "Unfortunately, serial processing performance has now hit a brick wall, and the only practical path to scaling performance in the future is through parallel processing. To make parallel software applications ubiquitous, we will need to make parallel hardware accessible to all programmers, create much more productive parallel programming methods, and convert all serial programmers to parallel programmers," he said. |
| Facebook can out serial killers Posted: 02 Dec 2013 01:47 AM PST Facebook could be used to discover if people are serial killers. Researchers from Sahlgrenska Academy and Lund University in Sweden found that status updates which could indicate that a person is a psychopath or shows some neurotic or narcissistic tendencies. In a report in the scientific journal Personality And Individual Differences with the catchy title The dark Side Of Facebook, the researchers say that if you do not want to be outed as the next Ted Bundy, do not put any status update which mentions prostitutes, decapitation, pornography or butchers. Not having a Facebook profile could also be a bad sign. Theatre shooter James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik did not have any Facebook profiles. Some bosses have gone on record as thinking that a lack of Facebook could mean the applicant's account could be so full of red flags that it had to be deleted. Other personality traits which can be found in a Facebook sweep are those with narcissistic personality traits could emphasise their own good characteristics. These people are self-absorbed, self-glorifying and have an exaggerated confidence in their own abilities. Neurotic personality traits can be found by looking at status updates and by how many friends you have on Facebook and how often you update your status. Facebook users with extrovert and open personalities generally have many friends on Facebook and update their status more often than others. Machiavellian types are cynical, emotionally distant and unaffected by morals. They deceive and manipulate people in their surroundings to gain advantages, the report said. The report tested Facebook users with a scientific questionnaire with questions that test extrovert, neurotic, psychopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian personality traits. They were also asked to send in their last 15 status updates. The contents of the status updates were then studied with algorithms for latent semantic analysis, which is a method for measuring the significance of words. |
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