Posts by Simon Crowe 15 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2009
You know why this is doomed to failure, because they have not automated train driving.
If you think about the problem of automating a train should be a lot simpler
1. You have a sodding great big hint with the tracks for the automation to work with
2. You generally(?) are going in one direction (i.e. where the tracks take you)
Until they have automated trains there is little hope for trucks and cars
When they did this the first time I added FTDI to my list of devices to avoid, as they completely messed up a class i was running, as some devices had a 'fake' FTDI.
Interestingly the 'fake' FTDI was a better engineered bit of silicon ...
We really need someone with a little time to produce an open driver for all platforms ...
If i understand it, there are BIOS functions to access your BIOS, so whats to stop your bad bios giving you a good bios when you request to download it (AKA Stuxnet when validating the motor control software).
Once, the bad guys are in the BIOS (or Disk, or baseboard controller, or NIC) you are probably never going to get rid of them ...
As others have alluded to, having a SD card with the firmware downloaded directly from the manufacturer may help, but that really will not stop the three letter agencies forcing manufacturers putting their code into the device firmware from the get go ...
Don't even get me started on the concept of management engine ...
But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
The question is why was the directory concept introduced, i think it was for us humans as we couldn't comprehend thousands of names scrolling by us as we tried to navigate through the data.
There is still a need for having a simplistic view of the data for persons to traverse and understand, but for large scale object stores accessed by your software directories are somewhat obsolete.
I also think that the point with these drives is that the device does not operate in blocks anymore, i seem to remember seeing that for modern high capacity shingled drives maintaining a block mapping is expensive.
So instead of having a block mapping table you have an object mapping table. The concept of blocks for a kinetic type drive does not exist
So let me guess in a few years there will be an upgrade to the Home Office Identity card to be NFC capable, so then you have to have a working Identity card to use your phone.
Also would be very useful tool if the cellular phone recording the NFC card used to authenticate the phone call ...
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