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Dude, we used to do this all the time when I programmed for call centers. The ANI (telecom term for caller ID) was programmed at the Layer 2 level, and like a MAC address was easy to change. We usually used ANI via a software bridge to simultaneously launch a trouble ticket indexed via phone number, but there was always the issues with Pay Phones, Hotels, or companies that hid the originating ANI behind a PBX (i.e., for security).

So, sometimes, we changed the number enroute so that it would launch a new ticket window instead of a ticket with 20,000 IDs all indexed to the same phone number. We just marked it with a random number that let the techs know this was not their real home phone, and thus, had to ask for a callback number if needed.

We also had hackers that did this as well, like one guy in Vancouver who hacked the ANI so he could make illegal and harrassing long distance calls in the US using a US 800 number that would, in theory, make the call unbillable.

Then there's the mysterious 604 number that people get from time to time...

I have as of yet, found no way that you can make a wireless system secure. Sure, you could say the same with wired, but at least you can contain wired security. Someone has to break into the building, or use "social engineering." Some personal contact has to be made.

Wireless has no such limits. This is even skript kiddie level stuff.

This is my report on it.

In 1992, I was trying to find another job in the retail sector, and I called the number in an ad that was offering $33,000 for a manager of a Rental Storage Facility (you know, where people rent out storage areas to put all their stuff). This seemed a little high, back when managers in retail made about $20 - 25,000 at most. But I thought I'd give it a shot.

The guy who answered the phone said what he needed to manage a such a rental facility. I expected management experience, including accounting, hiring, and employee management. He expected a fully 10 years of computer programming experience, including C+, DB IV, plus extensive terminal installation, a college degree, and at least five year experience in software engineering. Uh... for a management job in a Rental Storage Facility? I didn't have near what he asked, but when I asked, "Why would you need that?" he said he only wanted smart managers, not the dumb ones he kept getting. I felt it ironic, thinking $33,000 was bit high for a manager, but now it seemed WAY too low for what he was asking. I told him so, and he got angry, saying I was insulting him. I told him that people who had those skills would probably ask for at least $50,000 a year, plus, they wouldn't look under "retail management" in the paper, nor would they consider running a Rental Storage Facility. He got mad, and told me to hang up. So I did.

I saw that ad for a year afterwards. I wonder if he is still looking?

More silly stories of my own here

I first saw some in my Slashdot journal, and then I noticed some in my main journal on my site.

On my main site, I use Greymatter, and I view my control panel log every few days. It gives me who has commented since I last cleared to log, and I have only had a few posts to some "porno4u.nu" stuff, and since I could trace the IP, I added it to my "blocked IP" sites.

Still, my journal does not get a lot of traffic, so my way of working with this is fine. But if I had hudreds of posts a day, then, no. I'd need "anti-spamming" of some kind.

I work for a very large company that uses thousands of MS machines, and when Microsoft said after Win2K, they would no longer let us site license, we started to look at alternatives. Microsoft said "there is no way to get Product activation disabled, you must account for every computer." They stood to make millions from us, they must have thought.

So we started a policy that banned XP for "security reasons" and made a sweet deal with Red Hat. Unless you had a valid reason to use an XP product, you used Win2K or Linux. Linux meant that we could use older machines on our server farms and pay virtually nothing because, funny enough, Red Hat gave us a site license for support. Not that we use it (or need to) very much.

Suddenly, Microsoft "produced" a disk with Product activation disabled (sort of, it's kind of complicated), but claimed all kinds of voodoo like it had a copy protection so complex, we couldn't burn a new one from the master... even sector-by-sector copying. Bollocks. You could use any XP disk, just as long as you followed the directions MS gave us for the "master CD." Now we have a lot of the CDs all over the place, with a site key (and no, I won't give it to you, use Linux and be free) and the "process" to make it work legally by our contract. It took them two years to backpedal that far.

It's weird, because for so long, Windows was essentially "free" (although, not legally) because until WinXP, more than half the people I knew had "borrowed" an OS CD from "somewhere." Microsoft knew that (I mean, come on), and like a drug pusher, made sure the buyer was hooked before they started charging (my proof is how they made MSIE a dominant browser over Netscape). But it's not that easy anymore. Linux desktops are getting better and better, and while Windows is easier to use for the most part, it's lack of flexibility, anti-customer anticompetitive stance, and their brazen arrogance in the field is really dulling their blade.

But in this case, I can't fault them for trying to give away freebies, I mean, trade shows do that all the time. But what we should really be wary of is when they get politics involved, and claim stuff like DeCSS is proof that Linux should be banned in the US or something equally as stupid to us techies, but is all greek to your average politician who could be $wayed by $ome other thing$...

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www. - where else can you get blogged to death?

When I first started on Usenet back in... 1991? 92? Something like that, I recall how excited I was to see so many newsgroups out there. Back then, if a group got over 100 posts in a day, that was BUSY!

Now I see Usenet like a button I have: "Reading Usenet is like drinking from a firehose, posting to Usenet is like shouting at people in a passing rollercoaster, and archiving Usenet is like saving used toilet paper." Usenet is like a philosophical particle accelerator which creates opinions of such energy and instability that they could not exist in nature, and a great way of being annoyed by people I otherwise never would have met.

Now a newsgroup that gets less than 100 posts a day are ones that haven't been harvested by spammers yet. I knew it was over when in a base about Nordic culture was innundated with binaries of jpegs which I am sure were not Viking artifacts or ethnologist and museum lore.

That's why I spent my time on e-mail lists and UBB/phpBB boards. Sure, we get jerks, but well-moderated forums with e-mail verification keep a lot of idiots away.

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"Internet is so huge and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life

Being tech support for family and friends is okay for those who ask nicely. I like a challenge. I even volunteer. A majority are like that.

Now, what I don't like? People who get rude about it. They ask your help, ask you a favor, and then get all mad and take out their frustrations on you. This is even moreso when they are at fault (e.g., forgot to plug monitor in). And my personal pet peeve: lies. "I never installed anything!" or "It was like that when I got it." They get all defensive, and I want to say, "Look, I don't care if you look at porn! Everyone's got a hobby. But don't try and BS me because that's a porn program in your systray launching your browser every five minutes! Someone had to install it!"

Or people who never listen or learn. "Didn't I tell you not to download that?" (nod) "Didn't I tell you that you can't trust files from people you don't know?" (nod) "So why did you do that?" (pause) "It said it was a greeting card!" These people would die within minutes on the street. "The nice man told me he would come back with my ATM card when he was done with it!"

I also agree when it's assumed you'll drop whatever you are doing to fix the problem, too. I like to help, but I don't like being taken for granted.

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Seeing the open source model, I wonder (not "predict," but wonder) if this is what will happen:

1. Government bans swapping
2. Sales still go down
3. M$, RIAA, and the like make some sort of anti-theft device in CDROMS like they did with DVDs (yes, you can bypass, but not easily for the average user)
4. Sales still go down
5. They raise album prices, because of "continued piracy" and renewed advertising cost.
6. Sales still go down
7. This model becomes "Hollywood Critical," meaning no innovation because industry people are afraid to take risks in a cutthroat environment. Sales falling through the floor as boy band after boy band thrusts their craft on Nickelodeon. "Latest polls" show 40% of the males aged 12-24 like new star "B*Bop Pinky-Poo," a girl who is genetically part of every race in her demographic target (not too white, not too tan, kind of Asian, kind of black, but not TOO black... and is that a hint of Hindu?), and all about gi--, er, unisex power! Sales are still dropping. B*Bop is forced to make dance remix of Hendrix's "Watchtower." She's found dead in a hotel room over a sleeping pill overdose when even her decrepit sellout morals collapse in on herself. A new artist, "Sharon Apple," who can't possibly offend anyone with her music, turns out to be a computer.
8. Independent artists begin to spring up everywhere, and thrive because everyone is so sick of the bland crap pumped into their face from countless car ads (thank you Mitsubishi), and there's only so much "classic" stuff you can listen to before it's not classic anymore but, in fact, "reruns." Cyndi Lauper's residual checks even start to dwindle.
9. Sales still go down. It must be piracy! Raise the price! CDs now going for $50, but now they have videos on them! Music industry desperately tries new format, but it's selling less than 8-tracks did. They start forcing new albums to be on this new "music memory stick" format. The albums only play if your fingerprint matches what they have on file, and can only play on a device that can call home to check and see if you're allowed to play it. Sales still go down. Piracy so rampant, it's like the black market in late 70s Russia.
10. Artists begin to compose music... not because they want to make money... but because they are artists. They start swapping in Vorbis format or something. Kind of like how people are working on Linux and stuff not for profit, but because they are programmers and wants stuff that works. P2P-like networks show REAL hits, in real-time, and new pop stars spring up from basements and garages around the world. Kind of like MTV when it started. And no money is changing hands.
11. Music industry collapses. Distributors flee to third-world overseas markets.
12. Years later, people reminisce that there's no "good live concerts" anymore, and that digital feed HDTV of "Seamus Chien and his New Durban Posse" isn't the same as "Aerosmith" or "Kid Rock." Kids born after 2010 wonder why anyone would expose themselves to all that pollution and crime in the outside world just to see someone sing and pay $30 for a tee-shirt. "Ticketmaster," is officially entered in the Oxford Dictionary as an old synonym for "ripoff."

Okay... maybe not...

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"A planet where walruses evolve from men?" - Get your flippers off me, you damn, dirty pinniped!

I used to work for a QA Lab. I have horror stories that I won't bore you with, but because some people weren't watched, we had:

- Systems repair because some jerk downloaded some pr0n4U.exe file that fucked up his machine
- Systems repair where people fill their hard drives with pr0n, mp3s, warez
- LAN slowdown because people are downloading pr0n, mp3s, warez

The list goes on and on! You know what *I* think of people who do this crap instead of work? Lazy bastards! So do you know what I think of spying on them?

Pointless.

I mean, you knew who did work and who didn't. I don't care what employee A's reason of lack of work was, he wasn't working! He could have been reading highly technical manuals, staring off into space, embracing co-ed frottage at the water cooler, whatever. He/she's a slacker! And not in the good "Bob" way, either. I could have told you that without any bandwidth-stealing monitoring software.

The fact is, if you can't tell how an employee is doing with proof of work... you got bigger problems.
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www.punkwalrus.com - a journal into the forays of living mysteries

One of the things that people go on about is "Save the Earth." Well, the Earth is fine, and will always be so until the sun swells up some 5 billion years down the road. What I think we mean to say is "Keep the global status quo for our lifesytle," meaning that we don't want the Earth to be an uncomfortable place for us humans, living en masse, on the crusty surface above the water.

I saw an article about how the ice ages were studied. Thanks to ice core drilling, we know the general weather back through 250,000 years. Because of a bug tree ring database, we have a more accurate reading for local areas back some 16,000 years (with some gaps). One thing they noticed is that just before a major ice age, the global temperature spikes sharply just before it plummets downwards and stays there. Now, this could be a lot of things, but some are starting to wonder if the Earth has some sort of Gaia effect, a self-regulating thermostat, via atmosphere and weather.

A "simplified until possibly incorrect" example would be when the earth heats up, the ice caps melt, and more heat is raidated out into space via water reflection, making the Earth cooler, making ice caps, which then reflect more heat, but trap a lot of water, exposing more land, which absorbs heat, and so we go around again. I am sure there are a lot of other debates that would shatter my example as "uneducated to the point of nausea," but I wanted to give everyone an idea what I mean by "self-regulating."

So back to us. Well, we are a hardy bunch, and we have our own self-regulation. First, we chop down trees and burn them, releasing heat-trapping gasses. We also plant crops, which reduce diversity, and increase the chance of global-sized plagues on our food sources. The ozone layer might also be thinning, and pollution is choking us in the growing urban sprawl. So... after a while, we go to far. We chop down one too many trees, or one too many cars puffs out the critical puff of CO2. Crops die. People die. Civilization collpases. The whole societal infrastructure is reduced to pre-Roman levels. Well, that means less people to pollute, chop down trees, and so on. Nature heals itself, the empty niches we made by wiping out 90% of the animals are filled by animals who specialize, the Earth goes on, or as Vonnegut said, "And so it goes..." Civilization now will be a legend (like Atlantis), supported only by oily ruins, mined for their scrap until they, too, are gone. We'll probably have two or three of those cycles before we finally learn.

"Tell my grandfather, of this oracle you used to conlsut called Slashdot? It is true angry Gods banished you, sending trolls to attack the commons with a plague called Spam? Or is Lord Cowboy Neal the IV drunk on fermented cabbage again?"

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"They said it couldn't be done. So we stopped. It was cheaper that way." - Punk Walrus

Have you ever noticed that all the worlds these games take place in our DARK, DANK, and DYSTOPIAN??

I have several responses:

Smartass: Are you saying it's more like real life in my windowless office pods, living under the marketing office?

Smarmy: How about Serious Sam? I almost got sun blindness looking at the Pyramids.

Patronizing (that's when someone talks down to you with simple words): It's just a game. Chill. Go outisde and play with your little neighborhood friends. No one ever died going, "I wish my games had been better..."

Serious: Okay, I do agree that a lot of FPRs are dark and depressing. So are a lot of sci-fi films. I was told it's a trick so you can use less pixels (or in films, work in a smaller studio).

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SAT grads to this party is like water is to fire... Mark Jackson, 1987 - www.punkwalrus.com

... ever have one of those nightmares that you are required to take a test back in college, and you realize, "Oh no! I haven't studied the subject in 20 years! And where are my pants?" Then you wake up, and you realize the silly and illogical nature of your dream. Ha ha... no one would ever bring back the PDP line. Ha ha ha... whew! Now I think I'll read Slashdot...

Doh! [check] Whew... got pants.

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I smell a Wumpus! Shoot or move? [S/M]

The sad thing, I have seen Trekkies who think this is a "funny skit." That's not sad in itself, not even when they show it over and over and over again on some blooper tape. But what gets me as sad, is the people who analyze it the same way an art professor might try and interpret some impressionism (that is, like they often interpret Trek episodes themselves).

"You can tell this is where Dan Carvey forgot his line, and was trying to ad lib because Shatner was late picking up the episode number response..."

"Ha ha ha! Yeoman Rand's cabin was NOT Y290! What *idiots!* Did anyone do, like, script research??? [nervous, frustrated laugh] Like, Hel-LO?"

Those people are truly sad, because they are so deep into the analysis, they don't see the irony *of* the analysis...

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Trekkiediskaphobia - The fear of 13 Trekkies quoting episode numbers

Slashdot less a place for geeks to gather and more of a voice for Rob's political views.

And this is bad how? Considering how much YOU have paid for this setup, maybe you should ask for your money back.

I fail to see how lack of security, public health, and education is a "political view." That's a political as you saying Rob is political.

Oh, man, now you made ME politcal! I am blaming you for this. Man, there I go again!

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All opinions expressed were compiled by a dozen drunken wombats

Okay, here's the definition of a planet from dictionary.com: 1. A nonluminous celestial body larger than an asteroid or comet, illuminated by light from a star, such as the sun, around which it revolves.

Non-luminous celestial body? Could we be any *more* vague? Using the same dictionary.com (which I am not blaming, I am sure Oxford has something similar), the defintions for:

Luminous: Emitting light, especially emitting self-generated light.
Celestial:Of or relating to the sky or the heavens; Of or relating to heaven; divine; Supremely good; sublime: celestial happiness. Body: A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses [see Cowboy Neal]

Okay... so, a planet is some form of matter in the sky that does not glow in the visible light spectrum. Hmmm... then, techincally, I could say a frisbee or other dog chew toy I threw up in the air was a planet.

Okay, all kidding aside, that doesn't answer the asteroid/planet debate. Now, in MY universe (which may or may not allow tourists), a planet was defined as a very large, round blob of matter that revolved around the sun in a fairly regular eliptical orbit, and was created from the original star stuff(tm - (c) Carl Sagan) that made our solar system. Why does it have to be round? I don't know! I just needed standards and was pressed for time! Round to what tolerance? Shut up! I determine round by eye. Eros is shaped like a peanut, thus is an asteroid. Earth is round, thus a planet. Pluto and Charon are double planets. Black is white. Oh, forget it.

Wake me up when we have a good definition for "moon" vs. "satellite."

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I tried to join the sexual revolution, but I flunked the physical

I thought that Kepler thought there was another planet outside of Neptune's orbit based on gravitational wobble, and when Pluto was discovered in 1938, a lot of scientists went, "Nahh... that's too small. There's got to be another, much larger one to create that kind of wobble." And the debate continues.

I had this theory that a much larger planet is further out, but is very dark in color, and thus it hasn't been seen by albedo, and no one was looking in the right place to see it eclipse out other stars.

Of course, I haven't taken a course in astronomy since the 1980s, and I may be totally missing something obvious ("If that were true then the Hubble's Heisenburg Compensator would have found it, duh!"), but I have always thought if I wanted the *correct* answer to something I should post something obviously wrong on Slashdot.

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I had a Heisenberg-mobile, but every time I looked at the speedometer, I got lost.