On my 2K system, right clicking on a file type for which I've previously done "Open With" gets me the normal popup menu with an "Open With >" item. If I select that, I get a submenu listing every application that I've "Open With"ed for that file type.
This is visible in the Registry as well - take a look at "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ex plorer\FileExts\.txt\OpenWithList". You should see a list of every application you've selected from the Open With dialog for.txt files, along with a MRUList used to order them (presumably most recently used first).
For that matter, it's very easy for programs to add additional items to the top-level popup menu for their file types. As an example, I just went to Folder Options, File Types, TXT, Advanced, New, and added "Open with SciTE" as another top-level popup item for text files. Want to see where this goes in the Registry? Check out "HKCR\txtfile\shell". Don't complain that it's only on Win2K either - I have the same thing on NT4.
There are other ways to achieve similar results, some of which affect multiple (or all) file types if you want to do something like always have "Open with Hex Editor" available.
Until applications start associating themselves with extensions in this way, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the columnist's viewpoint. Poor planning on Company X's part does not constitute unfair competition by Microsoft.
It's probably out of date because processors that speed are either already unavailable or will be shortly. They could presumably underclock, but it makes more sense to just tweak the model number slightly.
Heck, the best way to get good information is to post something just a little bit questionable and wait for the corrections to flow....
In any case, my assumption was that the cell itself was pretty much running on straight hydrogen - I just hadn't realized that it was that much easier to split the hydrogen out of methane with reasonable conditions (temperature, materials cost, etc.).
I think it's safe to assume that even pen-refill-sized cartridges of compressed hydrogen aren't going to be considered a widely acceptable option since they'd probably hold as much hydrogen as a balloon. Reportedly a hydrogen-filled balloon will explode nicely if flame is applied.
The first paragraph of the article [...] clearly says "methane gas-powered", not "gasoline powered".
While this is true, it's not really all that important - the key item is that it's a fuel cell. Odds are that it could run pretty well on gasoline, natural gas, propane, or a variety of other volatiles with a lot of hydrogen with fairly minor modifications.
I want to rename these type of patents the "Jules Vernes" or the "Leonardo DaVinci" patents. Can you imagine how rich either of those mens ancestors would be today if they had patented their ideas.
Not very.
Even though they were the "inventors" of such concepts the machines themselves were not feasable during their lifetime.
Assuming a 17-year span for patents, then by the time anyone could actually create anything that would infringe on them the patents would've expired.
Heck, I just paid $53 for a 256MB SODIMM for my laptop from Crucial. For most PCs not using SIMMs you should be able to do better than that. Heck, Crucial's featuring a 256MB PC2100 DDR DIMM for a whopping US$33, with free second-day shipping.
If your system can handle it and isn't still using SIMMs, there's no excuse for not getting at least 128MB in your system these days.
If you're a Citrix shop in the area, consider finding out whether any of your people would be willing to spend a few days, a week, maybe a couple of weeks helping them get everything set up, working smoothly, supported and torn down.
Expertise is probably going to be in more demand than hardware or software - vendors and large companies will tend to provide HW & SW, but they may have a lack of people to get it set up and support it.
As always, check with them first before throwing someone in a car to go over there. There are normally some training requirements for volunteers, and I don't know how that changes in a situation like this.
Keep in mind that the Red Cross does not accept donations of used items for distribution - they aren't set up to deal with it, if you have items like used clothing, blankets, etc. that you want to donate consider the Salvation Army or another organization.
Red Cross Disaster Services only deals with new items and money, and new items are generally donated in bulk from manufacturers or retailers. Even there items are generally things that are needed for immediate care - sweatsuits, blankets, toiletries. The main exception to this is cleanup kits, which generally consist of a mop and cleaning supplies.
The preferred way to distribute assistance is money (in a way) when possible, particularly for major disasters. By providing Disbursement Orders (DOs) that local merchants have agreed to accept, the Red Cross is able to get money flowing back through affected areas. For the merchants, the DO is treated pretty much like a check, except they send it to the Red Cross instead of depositing it at their bank.
In general, Disaster Services is geared to provide support only during the disaster itself (Mass Care/shelters) and for a few days afterward while people get back on their feet (Family Services). In addition, it regularly provides other services such as canteening for disaster workers and others affected.
I suspect that the need for computers is so they can get more people set up for access to some of the existing systems they have for dealing with disasters. A lot of the software is client-server and even terminal-based, but without enough computers for the staff to use it doesn't do much good.
For one specific reason: it supports an external modem that can be used as a backup connection.
This is less of an issue now since most of the DSL providers that were going to fail have done so, but for people using Covad who aren't confident that the company is going to live this is a good solution - you can set it up and use it as a NAT box and firewall, and when your DSL provider goes bankrupt and shuts down you can switch to a dialup or ISDN connection with minor configuration changes on the box itself.
This is also useful if it's important that you be able to get access anytime, even if the service is temporarily down.
When it's not being used as a dialup (or ISDN) connection, the serial port can also act as a single-port RAS box, supporting PPP connections into the network.
As far as having boxes outside the firewall I believe it has some support for that but it's not perfect. Specific outside ports can be mapped to particular internal machines and ports, but I don't know if it supports port ranges - I haven't kept completely up to date on the firmware updates.
There's lots of talk about robots.txt, but that's not a viable option for people who don't control the web server but just have control over a subdirectory.
From using assorted mirroring software in the past and from what I recall of the robots.txt documentation I've seen, it needs to be at the root of the domain, not in a subdirectory. So, does that mean that only people with a domain of their own get to protect photos or artwork that they've created?
Apparently information on the Word file formats either is or was available on MSDN. I pulled up a 560K HTML file spec from Wotsit's Format, a file format information site.
Also of interest may be LAOLA, which is "a collection of documentations and perl programs dealing with binary file formats of Windows program documents." The link to that came from Wotsit's as well.
I suspect that much of the problem with creating filters for Word and the other MS Office products is that Word documents aren't flat files - they're OLE documents. What that means in practical terms is that each.DOC,.XLS, etc. can be considered its own filesystem in a way with the core drivers for that filesystem included with Windows.
I'm sure a lot of Word docs are very simple internally, but a filter that can't deal with the more complex ones is likely to have acceptance problems.
Finally, is there any possiblility of the StarOffice/OpenOffice filters being used as the basis for more widely available filters? I wasn't all that impressed with them a couple years ago when I tried StarOffice, but if nothing else they might serve as a starting point.
the Web is basically shit for any reasonably detailed material.
That may be the case, but it's a wonderful resource for getting started and finding out where else to look for information.
As an example: in an internal newsgroup at my ISP someone mentioned a relatively recent surgery in India that got a bit of press, in which a woman had some horns removed from her head. There was enough information in the article for a google search on "sebaceous horn", which immediately gave me a list of sites with information on the wide variety of conditions that can cause the problem, as well as some photos that just prove that the kid next door's multiple piercings are far from the wierdest thing that can happen to a body.
Sure I could have gone to the library and spent a while digging through medical references for detailed information, but with a few keystrokes I instead had summaries and articles with bibliographies that would give me a much better chance of finding that extra detail if I really wanted it.
For the folks saying that he hasn't been charged, that's true.
However, he has the text of a letter received from the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Oklahoma stating that
[...]
1. The grand jury for the Easter District of Oklahoma is conducting an investigation of possible violations of Federal Criminal Law involving a
violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1030, and other violations. You are the target of this investigation.
[...]
So, they're presumably slightly beyond the "fishing for an admission" stage. I suspect that having an attorney really would be a good idea for him.
Minimal config (Celeron 700, 128MB, 10GB, CD) runs around $1000; better config (PIII-866, 256MB, 30GB, DVD) runs around $1600. Both of these are with no OS.
In contrast, I can get a Dell Inspiron 8100 with not-quite-comparable specs for $1700-1800 (Dell's improvement prices are steep) or a WinBook with very similar specs for about the same. Oh, and those include a built-in UPS, a keyboard, and a monitor.
Overall an interesting toy, but I can't really see what advantages it has. With all the ports on the sides and back there'll be cables sticking out all over (besides, it needs airflow) and the fourth side has to be kept clear for the CD/DVD drive. I can see it as a prototype for a gaming or set-top box, but that's about it.
over a years time 5-10 people could spread hundres-of-thousands false positive images onto the net. now.. you send a message, a real one. there is no way to detect if it is a decoy or the real thing
First, anyone (especially high school students) who actually has the skills to productively participate in this should:
Present their credentials to the county commission and convince the commission that they do indeed want this person examining the system
Tell the commission that they'll be unable to assist unless they have written assurances of immunity from prosecution for their participation in the test from the relevant local, county, state and federal officials (DAs & AGs).
While I don't expect that anyone would actually be prosecuted for participating unless they really pissed someone off (it'd be a PR nightmare - "County solicits hacker assistance, State prosecutes helpers!"), I kind of regard it as a "principle of the matter" thing and a way to get the point about silly laws across.
For high school students, the risk of participating is being branded a "hacker" by your school - they're not interested in what you're doing (e.g. helping the county election board), they're going to screw you over because of the skill set you have.
Second, I'd be relatively unconcerned about the danger of someone hacking an individual voting machine - anyone wanting to significantly bias an election would be better off arranging some changes to the new tallying systems that will have to go along with the new voting machines.
For the individual voting machines, it'd be possible to do things like record votes both to disk and to a continuous paper tape (perhaps in a sealed unit). By putting timestamps on the tape every X minutes (15? 30?) and comparing those to the number of people who voted during each time period (as recorded by the elections staff) it would be possible to identify statistically anomalous patterns of extra or dropped votes.
One problem with paper tape in particular is that there's at least a potential for abusing anonymity with anything that records votes sequentially, particularly if the local election staff has access to the recording media/paper tape. "Hmm, Bob was the third to last person to use that booth. I wonder who he voted for?"
I haven't actually done any digging on this, but I suspect that for almost any graphic image there are detectable patterns in the ordering of the lowest bits. There will of course be some files (particularly small ones) where there isn't enough information to identify patterns, and there will be others where the distribution truly is random, but that just means that identifying files with steganographically-encoded information won't be a 100% accurate process.
That lack of certainty really isn't that big an issue, because with a good idea of what percentage of images are false positives it would be fairly simple to look for image sources where the percentage was well outside the norm.
All of this would of course be very resource intensive and would require access to large amounts of data (Omnivore, anyone?) but it's far from outside the capabilities of most governments.
Possibly also of interest to people is Benford's Law, which relates to the distribution of numbers - turns out that in many areas it's very simple to identify real data vs random data, because real data has some definite non-random properties.
The way I figure it, the St. Pete Times really had to give this story good coverage for practical reasons.
In particular, they took a photo of this guy, published it and sold it without getting a model release. As a direct result of their actions, he ended up if not in trouble with the police at least in the appearance of trouble.
In the USA these days, odds are good that if he sues them (if nothing else, the model release issue gives him legal grounds) he'll get either a significant settlement or a significant award in a trial. In publishing this, I'm sure the SPTimes is hoping to a) keep him from pursuing them and/or b) reduce the amount of sympathy he could get from a jury. It's not a retraction of the earlier story because there's really nothing to retract, but given the nature of the previous story this is about as close as they could get.
Maybe the above marks me as cynical, and I'm sure that's not the only motivation (and it may well not even be a key one - if it was would it be admitted by anyone?), but I'm sure that editorial staff there are aware of it.
in a recent case of a Cult of Scientology critic who was prosecuted for humorously threatening their religion with a Tomahawk cruise missile and fled to Canada to seek religious asylum
Actually, he made a joke about a "Tom Cruise missile" (Tom Cruise is one of the more visible members of Scientology, as is John Travolta). The "Church" worked very hard to keep all but very carefully selected phrases of Henson's out of court, removing all context from his comments.
Those who've lived or worked in places with "quote boards" should be well aware of how phrases can sound when taken out of context.
What three things would you need if you were stranded on a desert island?
For a more serious answer: a Leatherman Wave (or other knife), a big heavy-duty plastic dropcloth, and one of a spool of good cord, a magnifying glass or a decent bottle.
Does it actually include hardcoded addresses? The SARC description doesn't include any mention of that in the list of ways it gets addresses, and I haven't saved a copy to scan for strings. Perhaps you're confusing it with CodeRed?
For someone who wanted to do non-discriminating bulk corporate espionage like this (even using a better-designed worm), there'd be a high likelihood that nothing important would be uncovered anyway. Given the huge number of documents that companies produce, only a very small percentage of them would be of use to a competitor.
I'm not questioning whether viruses are legal or not (I don't actually know what the law is on this, but I also don't think it matters). While I think your typical virus writer should be kept away from computers until he grows up, I don't think that he gives up copyright to his works any more than people posting to Usenet do.
Anyway, I feel fairly confident that the DMCA doesn't say anything about whether the encrypted materials are legal or not - it's breaking the encryption and using (having? disseminating?) the tools to do so that's made illegal. Is there anyone here who doesn't think the antivirus vendors have developers building their own tools and sharing within their teams?
Slashdot Mirror
This is visible in the Registry as well - take a look at "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ex plorer\FileExts\.txt\OpenWithList". You should see a list of every application you've selected from the Open With dialog for .txt files, along with a MRUList used to order them (presumably most recently used first).
For that matter, it's very easy for programs to add additional items to the top-level popup menu for their file types. As an example, I just went to Folder Options, File Types, TXT, Advanced, New, and added "Open with SciTE" as another top-level popup item for text files. Want to see where this goes in the Registry? Check out "HKCR\txtfile\shell". Don't complain that it's only on Win2K either - I have the same thing on NT4.
There are other ways to achieve similar results, some of which affect multiple (or all) file types if you want to do something like always have "Open with Hex Editor" available.
Until applications start associating themselves with extensions in this way, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the columnist's viewpoint. Poor planning on Company X's part does not constitute unfair competition by Microsoft.
It's probably out of date because processors that speed are either already unavailable or will be shortly. They could presumably underclock, but it makes more sense to just tweak the model number slightly.
In any case, my assumption was that the cell itself was pretty much running on straight hydrogen - I just hadn't realized that it was that much easier to split the hydrogen out of methane with reasonable conditions (temperature, materials cost, etc.).
I think it's safe to assume that even pen-refill-sized cartridges of compressed hydrogen aren't going to be considered a widely acceptable option since they'd probably hold as much hydrogen as a balloon. Reportedly a hydrogen-filled balloon will explode nicely if flame is applied.
While this is true, it's not really all that important - the key item is that it's a fuel cell. Odds are that it could run pretty well on gasoline, natural gas, propane, or a variety of other volatiles with a lot of hydrogen with fairly minor modifications.
Not very.
Even though they were the "inventors" of such concepts the machines themselves were not feasable during their lifetime.
Assuming a 17-year span for patents, then by the time anyone could actually create anything that would infringe on them the patents would've expired.
Heck, I just paid $53 for a 256MB SODIMM for my laptop from Crucial. For most PCs not using SIMMs you should be able to do better than that. Heck, Crucial's featuring a 256MB PC2100 DDR DIMM for a whopping US$33, with free second-day shipping.
If your system can handle it and isn't still using SIMMs, there's no excuse for not getting at least 128MB in your system these days.
Expertise is probably going to be in more demand than hardware or software - vendors and large companies will tend to provide HW & SW, but they may have a lack of people to get it set up and support it.
As always, check with them first before throwing someone in a car to go over there. There are normally some training requirements for volunteers, and I don't know how that changes in a situation like this.
Red Cross Disaster Services only deals with new items and money, and new items are generally donated in bulk from manufacturers or retailers. Even there items are generally things that are needed for immediate care - sweatsuits, blankets, toiletries. The main exception to this is cleanup kits, which generally consist of a mop and cleaning supplies.
The preferred way to distribute assistance is money (in a way) when possible, particularly for major disasters. By providing Disbursement Orders (DOs) that local merchants have agreed to accept, the Red Cross is able to get money flowing back through affected areas. For the merchants, the DO is treated pretty much like a check, except they send it to the Red Cross instead of depositing it at their bank.
In general, Disaster Services is geared to provide support only during the disaster itself (Mass Care/shelters) and for a few days afterward while people get back on their feet (Family Services). In addition, it regularly provides other services such as canteening for disaster workers and others affected.
I suspect that the need for computers is so they can get more people set up for access to some of the existing systems they have for dealing with disasters. A lot of the software is client-server and even terminal-based, but without enough computers for the staff to use it doesn't do much good.
For one specific reason: it supports an external modem that can be used as a backup connection.
This is less of an issue now since most of the DSL providers that were going to fail have done so, but for people using Covad who aren't confident that the company is going to live this is a good solution - you can set it up and use it as a NAT box and firewall, and when your DSL provider goes bankrupt and shuts down you can switch to a dialup or ISDN connection with minor configuration changes on the box itself.
This is also useful if it's important that you be able to get access anytime, even if the service is temporarily down.
When it's not being used as a dialup (or ISDN) connection, the serial port can also act as a single-port RAS box, supporting PPP connections into the network.
As far as having boxes outside the firewall I believe it has some support for that but it's not perfect. Specific outside ports can be mapped to particular internal machines and ports, but I don't know if it supports port ranges - I haven't kept completely up to date on the firmware updates.
For the manuals, see http://www.multitech.com/DOCUMENTS/RouteFinder/man uals.asp
From using assorted mirroring software in the past and from what I recall of the robots.txt documentation I've seen, it needs to be at the root of the domain, not in a subdirectory. So, does that mean that only people with a domain of their own get to protect photos or artwork that they've created?
Also of interest may be LAOLA, which is "a collection of documentations and perl programs dealing with binary file formats of Windows program documents." The link to that came from Wotsit's as well.
I'm sure a lot of Word docs are very simple internally, but a filter that can't deal with the more complex ones is likely to have acceptance problems.
Finally, is there any possiblility of the StarOffice/OpenOffice filters being used as the basis for more widely available filters? I wasn't all that impressed with them a couple years ago when I tried StarOffice, but if nothing else they might serve as a starting point.
That may be the case, but it's a wonderful resource for getting started and finding out where else to look for information.
As an example: in an internal newsgroup at my ISP someone mentioned a relatively recent surgery in India that got a bit of press, in which a woman had some horns removed from her head. There was enough information in the article for a google search on "sebaceous horn", which immediately gave me a list of sites with information on the wide variety of conditions that can cause the problem, as well as some photos that just prove that the kid next door's multiple piercings are far from the wierdest thing that can happen to a body.
Sure I could have gone to the library and spent a while digging through medical references for detailed information, but with a few keystrokes I instead had summaries and articles with bibliographies that would give me a much better chance of finding that extra detail if I really wanted it.
The web site for it is at http://www.p-o-x.com. A summary is at http://www.fordads.com/toys.html and undoubtedly at other sites as well.
No, you go after the person in charge of the monitoring for disseminating a circumvention device by distributing it to employees.
However, he has the text of a letter received from the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Oklahoma stating that
So, they're presumably slightly beyond the "fishing for an admission" stage. I suspect that having an attorney really would be a good idea for him.In contrast, I can get a Dell Inspiron 8100 with not-quite-comparable specs for $1700-1800 (Dell's improvement prices are steep) or a WinBook with very similar specs for about the same. Oh, and those include a built-in UPS, a keyboard, and a monitor.
Overall an interesting toy, but I can't really see what advantages it has. With all the ports on the sides and back there'll be cables sticking out all over (besides, it needs airflow) and the fourth side has to be kept clear for the CD/DVD drive. I can see it as a prototype for a gaming or set-top box, but that's about it.
Something along the line of Ron Rivest's Chaffing and Winnowing technique? http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt
- Present their credentials to the county commission and convince the commission that they do indeed want this person examining the system
- Tell the commission that they'll be unable to assist unless they have written assurances of immunity from prosecution for their participation in the test from the relevant local, county, state and federal officials (DAs & AGs).
While I don't expect that anyone would actually be prosecuted for participating unless they really pissed someone off (it'd be a PR nightmare - "County solicits hacker assistance, State prosecutes helpers!"), I kind of regard it as a "principle of the matter" thing and a way to get the point about silly laws across.For high school students, the risk of participating is being branded a "hacker" by your school - they're not interested in what you're doing (e.g. helping the county election board), they're going to screw you over because of the skill set you have.
Second, I'd be relatively unconcerned about the danger of someone hacking an individual voting machine - anyone wanting to significantly bias an election would be better off arranging some changes to the new tallying systems that will have to go along with the new voting machines.
For the individual voting machines, it'd be possible to do things like record votes both to disk and to a continuous paper tape (perhaps in a sealed unit). By putting timestamps on the tape every X minutes (15? 30?) and comparing those to the number of people who voted during each time period (as recorded by the elections staff) it would be possible to identify statistically anomalous patterns of extra or dropped votes.
One problem with paper tape in particular is that there's at least a potential for abusing anonymity with anything that records votes sequentially, particularly if the local election staff has access to the recording media/paper tape. "Hmm, Bob was the third to last person to use that booth. I wonder who he voted for?"
That lack of certainty really isn't that big an issue, because with a good idea of what percentage of images are false positives it would be fairly simple to look for image sources where the percentage was well outside the norm.
All of this would of course be very resource intensive and would require access to large amounts of data (Omnivore, anyone?) but it's far from outside the capabilities of most governments.
Possibly also of interest to people is Benford's Law, which relates to the distribution of numbers - turns out that in many areas it's very simple to identify real data vs random data, because real data has some definite non-random properties.
In particular, they took a photo of this guy, published it and sold it without getting a model release. As a direct result of their actions, he ended up if not in trouble with the police at least in the appearance of trouble.
In the USA these days, odds are good that if he sues them (if nothing else, the model release issue gives him legal grounds) he'll get either a significant settlement or a significant award in a trial. In publishing this, I'm sure the SPTimes is hoping to a) keep him from pursuing them and/or b) reduce the amount of sympathy he could get from a jury. It's not a retraction of the earlier story because there's really nothing to retract, but given the nature of the previous story this is about as close as they could get.
Maybe the above marks me as cynical, and I'm sure that's not the only motivation (and it may well not even be a key one - if it was would it be admitted by anyone?), but I'm sure that editorial staff there are aware of it.
Actually, he made a joke about a "Tom Cruise missile" (Tom Cruise is one of the more visible members of Scientology, as is John Travolta). The "Church" worked very hard to keep all but very carefully selected phrases of Henson's out of court, removing all context from his comments.
Those who've lived or worked in places with "quote boards" should be well aware of how phrases can sound when taken out of context.
For a more serious answer: a Leatherman Wave (or other knife), a big heavy-duty plastic dropcloth, and one of a spool of good cord, a magnifying glass or a decent bottle.
For someone who wanted to do non-discriminating bulk corporate espionage like this (even using a better-designed worm), there'd be a high likelihood that nothing important would be uncovered anyway. Given the huge number of documents that companies produce, only a very small percentage of them would be of use to a competitor.
-- fencepost
Anyway, I feel fairly confident that the DMCA doesn't say anything about whether the encrypted materials are legal or not - it's breaking the encryption and using (having? disseminating?) the tools to do so that's made illegal. Is there anyone here who doesn't think the antivirus vendors have developers building their own tools and sharing within their teams?
-- fencepost