Slashback: Retail, Preparedness, Games

Tonight in Slashback: More on TransGaming's approach to the world (and licenses), another sweet box of French Linux goodness, another piece of the stolen-Enigma puzzle is pressed firmly into place, and a small piece of travel advice.

"Getting off easy" defined. dgroskind writes: "This AP story might be interesting as a slashback followup to an item about the theft of the Enigma machine from Bletchly Park. The accused got 10 months with the charge of blackmail left open for possible later prosecution. Also, this story today says a U.S. spy tipped off the Germans that the Enigma code had been broken but they didn't believe it."

Of course, you could tell your boss it got blown up. You may have already written your congressional representatives (especially if you live in South Carolina) about Fritz Holling's proposed SSSCA, but for air-traveling technical types, there's another post-bomb consideration. cloudscout writes: "In the past, I've always been nervous before travelling... am I remembering my toothpaste? Razor? Shoes? Now I've learned there is something else to remember. Charge my batteries. The current state of air travel security means more random searches and since I tend to travel with lots of electronic gadgets, these searches take a while and they test every device. I was chosen for a random search. Notebook, PDA, Digital Camera, Camcorder, Cellphone... the MiniDisc player had a dead battery. I was stuck. I didn't know what to do. They demanded that I prove the devices functionality. I dug around in my bag and, luckily, was able to take a battery from another device in order to power up the MD but it could have been a much worse situation if I didn't have a spare battery. The lesson here? If you're going to fly, be prepared."

Last week, flying between several supposedly very security-conscious airports (Dulles, Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt), I never had to turn my laptop on, probably because I had carefully charged the battery beforehand.

I'll believe it when I record my 2nd sample FMD disk. Perhaps unimpressed with the perpetually promised quarter-sized CDs mentioned the other day, an Anonymous Coward writes: "What optical medium has 8 layers, stores 24 GBs, and plays at 22Mbits/sec? And it's just the first age, with plans to reach 140 GB soon afterwards. Constellation 3D are developing FMD-ROM format that will change the capacity of data storage we use today, furtheir information can be obtained from FMD insider which is a news site that reports the progress and general information about this product. Constellation 3D seem to have lowered their expectations of their first line of products, to something more realistic and affordable, and they expect to make the technology available to some markets by the end of 2002.
Are you ready?"

Street performances need to beware Sturgeon's Law. joestar writes "As said on Slashdot this week-end, Transgaming is about to release - with Electronic Arts and MandrakeSoft - a special Linux distro aimed at games called Mandrake Linux Gaming Edition. Their technology - WineX - is actually a DirectX to Mesa translator that allows to port most recent Windows games to Linux apparently very efficiently compared to a simple Wine port. A great article with lots of details about that project GameSpyDaily has just been released. By the way, WineX is released under the Alladin License."

Picking your poison gets more complicated. Red Hat 7.2 is out, but as you might expect, MandrakeSoft isn't sitting still: The newest Mandrake, 8.1, is also available in stores. (But when will 8.1 PPC be ready? ;))

The value of an Enigma

[joel.neely]

I just found it interesting that one of two surviving Enigma boxen is "valued at" $144,000. How would such a figure be determined? (I assume that standard "what it would bring at auction" concepts don't apply, there being only two instances, neither of which is -- any more -- on the open market.)

Re:Am I the only one who doesn't get this?

[czardonic]

What's the point of making people turn these devices on?

Their aim is to squander your valuable time on creating a false sense of security. They know that it would take real money and effort to provide security measures that might actully prevent a person from bringing a weapon on board a plane. So, in order to maximise shareholder value, they gamble on these illusory measures. Terrorism is still quite rare, so they take the chance.

How often do you hear about some local investigative reporter sneaking a gun through security. How often do you hear about an ACTUAL criminal being foiled by these measures. (And what's with the National Guard. Are they afraid that terrorists are going to storm the gates?

More than anything, these are publicity stunts. By harassing the general public, they create the false sense that security is strict.

Re:Airport security

[compwizrd]

I've walked through the metal detectors at Detroit Metro, with two sets of keyrings, my sunglasses, and about 10-15 dollars of loonies and toonies(bigger than your US dollar coins), and not set the alarm off. There were 10 keys total on the keyring, and the change is a fair mass, along with the sunglasses.

I'm sure a knife or something has a lot less mass in it.

I walked through security at Philadelphia doing similar, and the detector beeped. I had been standing in the arch for a few seconds, waiting for the person in front of me. So what did they do? Told me to walk through it again, and when it didn't beep, that was it.

White Plains(New york) and Dulles are more competent though, they're doing scans with the hand batons, and pat down searches as well. Random bag checks too. National Guard with M16's waiting too. Neither DTW or PHL seemed to be doing bag checks when i was there. Unarmed guards at DTW and IAD, from what i saw.

Then again HPN didn't check the end pocket of my duffle bag when they searched it, where I had all my stuff like toothbrushes, shaving stuff, etc.