"It looks like this email account only has a month of history. Please follow me into this private discussion room."
Sir, I did create this account just before coming to your wonderful country. It was created *specifically* so that I can use it here. After I'm back home it will be deleted. I always do that when I travel. Only my family knows this email account, and I don't plan to use it for anything except daily emails about my health and my plans. Nobody else needs to know it; I'm on vacation, and the work doesn't exist for me now. But if you are curious, my work email is stored in my permanent email account, that is on a server that is physically located at my office.
If you want, I can tell you the password to my permanent email account. But it will not do you any good because the IMAP server is accessible only from my office and from my home. I don't have the USB token with me anyway, and it's required to connect.
IANAL, but according to the all-wise Internet, card skimming is a part of card fraud, and is prosecuted accordingly - as an element of a larger crime (if the info was used) or a conspiracy to commit crime (if not.)
There is no legal reason why would one covertly copy the c/c information of someone else. Every use of that information would be illegal.
we're coming into your house NOW, consent or we're pulling you out anyway and we've got automatic weapons, so consent NOW!
I wonder who they got consent from to search an empty residence?
If there is no response then the searchers have to operate on a theory that (a) there is nobody there, or (b) there are terrorists inside. If the police is thinking logically, all [suposedly] empty houses must be entered as hostile places - with doors blown out, and with a flashbang grenade thrown into each room before entering.
The antenna in a van will certainly work if you only focus on reading cards of people who walk on your side of the street - not on the other one. That kit won't be too expensive; 13.56 MHz is a convenient frequency that is easy to work with. You only need a small loop antenna and an accurate, digital recording device. You park the van at a busy street, walk away; come back, go home; then you take the recording and your computer searches the field for signs of modulation. Those are the cards.
you might be better off doing it the old-fashioned way and just mugging someone.
You lose stealth this way. A c/c thief can steal tens of thousands of cards; a gang with several vans can eventually gather c/c numbers of the whole city, and nobody would know. Did you hear how they define the perfect crime? As something that nobody even recognizes as a crime. A van with a long distance c/c reader fits that definition.
In most fast food places the c/c terminal is either built into the till, or is placed right next to the cashier, or is on a counter that the customer can see. There is no danger of illicit copying of the card if you can observe it constantly.
If the waiter at a large restaurant wants to take your c/c, they cannot refuse you to tag along. The terminal will be not too far anyway.
I know. I bought a bunch of them from different stores/makers. They all flicker when powered in their listed range
I have two dimmable 120V AC LED light bulbs. They do flicker at most levels. If you want a steady light, and not what one sees in horror movies, you have to set that dimmer to 100%.
Are you implying that unmarried people are more likely to be dbags
There is something in this question. A married person is usually less volatile because s|he had been trained to observe at least some social norms. You will get fewer antisocial types among the married set. On the other hand, the unmarried set contains most of the weirdos, most of the professionally unlucky, most of the maniacs, and most of the geniuses. The latter may be helpful, but watch for all the others.
OLE - perhaps, if everything works fast enough. But there are limitations, and the interface is complex. The control itself should be complex enough to be worth of embedding. Just a rich text box is not it. In most cases, *especially* in commercial software, a better solution is to just license a library of.NET controls that you need. You will get support this way, and your software will not be a patchwork of dissimilar pieces of software, all versioned differently, and most not under your control. (Oh, you don't know if the calendar control from Office 2014 will work with your software that you wrote and tested in 2012? Too bad. You will be answering the phone.)
MS Access - there is no reason to use it anymore. Target MS SQL Server Express instead if you want to stay with MS wares. It is upward compatible, and it is infinitely more advanced than Access.
The digital X-ray machine outputs jpegs. Pretty sure you don't need customize software for that.
Maybe the industry had a chance to go insane while I wasn't looking, but when I did look any lossy compression would be thrown out without debate. Do you want the doctor to miss a problem in your X-ray just because JPEG decided to save a few bytes and encoded a certain small group of very dark pixels as an invisible, fuzzy, light-gray blob that has no meaning to the specialist? Broken tools will generate such an image, for example, and you want to know *exactly* where they are, not plus or minus an inch.
Note also that those X-rays are versioned, and they allow accurate measurements on them, and comments. As you say, none of that *alone* is a problem. However take it all together, and you will quickly discover that you are mired just in forms and data validation rules and controls. Those icons of teeth, for example, they are (a) visually correct for each tooth in question, and (b) clickable, and (c) have multiple GUI representations (healthy, suspect, need filling, need crown, need removal, removed, implant, etc.) and (d) may have individual rich text comment fields.
The rest is just you whining.
I only speak from experience. I wrote database front ends like that from my early consulting days, and even today now and then I do something of the sort (won't provide a link, but my software is out there on the Internet.) Technically you will find very few difficulties in such a design. But labor-wise, each form - if it is any good - will cost you a man-week, if you are lucky. Complex, dynamic forms, like tables or reports, will make you wish you were never born:-)
A lot of "professional" users of computers (doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc) seem to think that they gotta have really special software to handle everything they do, because everything they do is so special. Much of this is due to people who think they're smart being duped by people who are smarter into thinking they need special software.
Next time you are at your dentist's office, have a look at the software they are using - and then please advise me how one (especially a doctor!) can put together something like that. Note that you will need an interface to the digital X-ray machine; the thing should be distributed or centralized, but it must allow operation from any terminal, and often concurrently (a doctor writes up her notes, and the receptionist is scheduling your next appointment.) The software must be also operable by minimally trained personnel, and that goes for everyone in the doctor's office (they are trained in other, and more complex, things.)
Admittedly, there is certainly some software that has to be written for very narrow and specialized needs, but a lot of these needs can be met by pretty much off-the-shelf solutions implemented by people who know what they're doing.
As opposed to such software being written using only brand new code, and by people who have no clue what their customers need?
No, I don't think that a housekeeping database that doesn't ever touch the patient needs an FDA approval. Not any more than MS Windows or MS Office do, at least.
A $10K price is a common sight in niche markets. Even in non-niche markets specialty s/w, especially with lock-in, command prices of $20K and above. Have this here CNC milling center? Then you need SolidWorks and MasterCAM (or whatever CAM you pick.) That may easily cost you about half the price of the machine.
The price is driven by the need and the opportunity. The need lies in fact that a very complex piece of software has to be designed for sale to a handful of customers. A smaller ISV may see tens of sales per YEAR, and each of those customers will bitch and moan about economic downturn, trolling for a discount. The ISV needs the high price to stay afloat, and to survive periods between orders.
The opportunity lies in fact that the customer has to have this software - if not yours then one from your two competitors; and you know how to play that game. The prices will be set to the maximum that the customer can afford.
Hello, I'm looking for my long lost brother. I'm 80 years old and we were together in Auschwitz
Language of what tribe will you use? Are you good with it? What would *you* do if someone calls you, purportedly from China, and in broken English starts asking you who in China you talked to on Skype a week ago and what is her address, using an excuse that is an obvious lie. Most people would respond in just two simple English words (that are pretty well understood worldwide) and block the contact forever.
Your example with a long lost relative works only if you come from the same culture. If you are a non-Jewish American, you will have a serious problem explaining yourself in Yiddish, as it was a common language of European Jews at the time. You'd better sound like you are 80 years old too. Social engineering is not that easy across cultures. You can be sure that Sue, Anne and Jenny used Henry's Skype services because they couldn't afford their own - and that means they are dirt poor, and probably they are recent immigrants from Somalia, Syria, Libya, or whatever other hellhole is out there.
Sue called Jim, Anne called Bill, Jenny called Fred; Sue, Anne and Jenny all know Henry.... so if you have Jim and Bill and Fred's numbers, and don't even know whether Henry exists or not, how do you find Henry?
It's pretty much impossible; not mathematically but practically. First, Jim, Bill and Fred live in different foreign countries. They have no obligation to tell you anything, even if you are a police officer in your own country. But if for some reason they choose to endanger their relatives, they may not know where Sue, Anne and Jenny live. But if you manage to find them, those three are not required to tell you anything (if they are in the USA, at least.) But if you manage to make them talk and they point at Henry, Henry can always say that he used his own Skype account, but the OP "hacked" it to "frame him" because he is "raysis." (Well, that story is being tried by the Boston bomber's mother.) The OP may find himself on the receiving end of a counter-suit, if not of a criminal complaint (doesn't matter if it has merit or not - justice is not based on such trivial things.)
The OP should pick better passwords, write the loss off, and take this experience as a valuable lesson.
That is indeed ridiculous. I would easily accept a $40M deal. A $400M deal would be already very hard to imagine; many *companies* aren't worth that much. Normally a CEO can work with 20-30 million USD with relative ease - such as acquire small companies or making deals of this sort; but anything beyond that triggers a completely different set of procedures.
You could say that about using Tor or FreeNet. However search engines are a commodity, and anyone can use StartPage without a complicated setup; it's just a Web site. It's even in the list of search engines that IE asks you to select from, right out of the box. Install fresh Windows, select the search engine, and you are done. If that is suspicious, you are in a good company.
You could search Slashdot using its own search engine (if it works) and get the same result. My posts are public. But can you correlate my/. posts with my posts on PriusChat, for example? You cannot. I never reuse aliases:-)
It's probably possible to use analysis of style of my writing to come up with a match or two. But it's pretty hard, and it's far less convincing. It's much harder still if you don't have a short list of texts for comparison. You can't grep the whole Internet. Selection of a common, short abbreviation as an alias ensures that you cannot trivially reduce the list of possible writings by me down to a manageable size. Just compare what Google returns for your own alias and for my alias.
Honest question: when did Apple sell anything related to their customers to the highest bidder? I can't find any information about anything along those lines
As if you would normally find information about such transactions plastered all over the town? As if you'd normally find any business contract between corporations published for everyone to see?
These deals are signed in boardrooms, by VPs and above, and they stay among that crowd. Even if an IT worker at some point sets up a link between databases, or sends tapes over, he does not necessarily know what those databases contain. Even if he knows that "some data" is sent to "strategic partners," what can he do about that?
Pixar has nothing to do with it; they make cartoons, not Linux distributions. If they thought the name is cool, good for them - because if they are wrong then they will be hit in the wallet.
But a cartoon has a chance to explore the character, not just name it. A viewer will associate the appearance, the name, the style, the habits all together. This may be enough to justify the name, or to negate its unwanted connotations. One thing you can be certain, if you are exposed to a name of a cartoon character you are probably watching the cartoon. A Linux distribution does not come with this assurance, and a name would just sit out there, without an explanation of its character. Then people fall back to the dictionary - and they don't like what they read there.
Debian people should pick names that have positive, bright associations among most people - not just among the aging fan base of an ancient cartoon for young chidren. A good name would be also translatable into foreign languages without loss of associations. If that's not possible, it should be capable of transliteration - hopefully without major semantic conflicts. You cannot name a major piece of software after an inner joke among you and your three buddies - triply so if that joke sounds distasteful, if not outright revolting, to uninitiated.
I do not necessarily approve what Ubuntu people do; but at least they have a consistent theme, and their choice of words is not negative. Might be funny sometimes (Precise Pangolin? They aren't known for any particular precision:-) but at least they are translatable with no harm.
You can bet the NSA has a database with every bitcoin transaction made starting at some recent point, and in the future will be able to unwind the entire history of any bitcoins in your wallet.
Leave NSA alone. Every BTC user has an entire copy of the blockchain, and there are Web tools to explore the blockchain, searching for transactions, addresses, and stuff.
Your only protection is in the fact that nobody can easily associate an address with your real world identity. If you only trade in BTC this will stay true. However as soon as you start buying or selling non-BTC assets (currencies, goods, etc.) your expense address becomes known and can be matched to you.
Slashdot Mirror
"It looks like this email account only has a month of history. Please follow me into this private discussion room."
Sir, I did create this account just before coming to your wonderful country. It was created *specifically* so that I can use it here. After I'm back home it will be deleted. I always do that when I travel. Only my family knows this email account, and I don't plan to use it for anything except daily emails about my health and my plans. Nobody else needs to know it; I'm on vacation, and the work doesn't exist for me now. But if you are curious, my work email is stored in my permanent email account, that is on a server that is physically located at my office.
If you want, I can tell you the password to my permanent email account. But it will not do you any good because the IMAP server is accessible only from my office and from my home. I don't have the USB token with me anyway, and it's required to connect.
IANAL, but according to the all-wise Internet, card skimming is a part of card fraud, and is prosecuted accordingly - as an element of a larger crime (if the info was used) or a conspiracy to commit crime (if not.)
There is no legal reason why would one covertly copy the c/c information of someone else. Every use of that information would be illegal.
we're coming into your house NOW, consent or we're pulling you out anyway and we've got automatic weapons, so consent NOW!
I wonder who they got consent from to search an empty residence?
If there is no response then the searchers have to operate on a theory that (a) there is nobody there, or (b) there are terrorists inside. If the police is thinking logically, all [suposedly] empty houses must be entered as hostile places - with doors blown out, and with a flashbang grenade thrown into each room before entering.
The antenna in a van will certainly work if you only focus on reading cards of people who walk on your side of the street - not on the other one. That kit won't be too expensive; 13.56 MHz is a convenient frequency that is easy to work with. You only need a small loop antenna and an accurate, digital recording device. You park the van at a busy street, walk away; come back, go home; then you take the recording and your computer searches the field for signs of modulation. Those are the cards.
you might be better off doing it the old-fashioned way and just mugging someone.
You lose stealth this way. A c/c thief can steal tens of thousands of cards; a gang with several vans can eventually gather c/c numbers of the whole city, and nobody would know. Did you hear how they define the perfect crime? As something that nobody even recognizes as a crime. A van with a long distance c/c reader fits that definition.
In most fast food places the c/c terminal is either built into the till, or is placed right next to the cashier, or is on a counter that the customer can see. There is no danger of illicit copying of the card if you can observe it constantly.
If the waiter at a large restaurant wants to take your c/c, they cannot refuse you to tag along. The terminal will be not too far anyway.
I know. I bought a bunch of them from different stores/makers. They all flicker when powered in their listed range
I have two dimmable 120V AC LED light bulbs. They do flicker at most levels. If you want a steady light, and not what one sees in horror movies, you have to set that dimmer to 100%.
Are you implying that unmarried people are more likely to be dbags
There is something in this question. A married person is usually less volatile because s|he had been trained to observe at least some social norms. You will get fewer antisocial types among the married set. On the other hand, the unmarried set contains most of the weirdos, most of the professionally unlucky, most of the maniacs, and most of the geniuses. The latter may be helpful, but watch for all the others.
MS access with OLE embedding.
OLE - perhaps, if everything works fast enough. But there are limitations, and the interface is complex. The control itself should be complex enough to be worth of embedding. Just a rich text box is not it. In most cases, *especially* in commercial software, a better solution is to just license a library of .NET controls that you need. You will get support this way, and your software will not be a patchwork of dissimilar pieces of software, all versioned differently, and most not under your control. (Oh, you don't know if the calendar control from Office 2014 will work with your software that you wrote and tested in 2012? Too bad. You will be answering the phone.)
MS Access - there is no reason to use it anymore. Target MS SQL Server Express instead if you want to stay with MS wares. It is upward compatible, and it is infinitely more advanced than Access.
The digital X-ray machine outputs jpegs. Pretty sure you don't need customize software for that.
Maybe the industry had a chance to go insane while I wasn't looking, but when I did look any lossy compression would be thrown out without debate. Do you want the doctor to miss a problem in your X-ray just because JPEG decided to save a few bytes and encoded a certain small group of very dark pixels as an invisible, fuzzy, light-gray blob that has no meaning to the specialist? Broken tools will generate such an image, for example, and you want to know *exactly* where they are, not plus or minus an inch.
Note also that those X-rays are versioned, and they allow accurate measurements on them, and comments. As you say, none of that *alone* is a problem. However take it all together, and you will quickly discover that you are mired just in forms and data validation rules and controls. Those icons of teeth, for example, they are (a) visually correct for each tooth in question, and (b) clickable, and (c) have multiple GUI representations (healthy, suspect, need filling, need crown, need removal, removed, implant, etc.) and (d) may have individual rich text comment fields.
The rest is just you whining.
I only speak from experience. I wrote database front ends like that from my early consulting days, and even today now and then I do something of the sort (won't provide a link, but my software is out there on the Internet.) Technically you will find very few difficulties in such a design. But labor-wise, each form - if it is any good - will cost you a man-week, if you are lucky. Complex, dynamic forms, like tables or reports, will make you wish you were never born :-)
A lot of "professional" users of computers (doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc) seem to think that they gotta have really special software to handle everything they do, because everything they do is so special. Much of this is due to people who think they're smart being duped by people who are smarter into thinking they need special software.
Next time you are at your dentist's office, have a look at the software they are using - and then please advise me how one (especially a doctor!) can put together something like that. Note that you will need an interface to the digital X-ray machine; the thing should be distributed or centralized, but it must allow operation from any terminal, and often concurrently (a doctor writes up her notes, and the receptionist is scheduling your next appointment.) The software must be also operable by minimally trained personnel, and that goes for everyone in the doctor's office (they are trained in other, and more complex, things.)
Admittedly, there is certainly some software that has to be written for very narrow and specialized needs, but a lot of these needs can be met by pretty much off-the-shelf solutions implemented by people who know what they're doing.
As opposed to such software being written using only brand new code, and by people who have no clue what their customers need?
No, I don't think that a housekeeping database that doesn't ever touch the patient needs an FDA approval. Not any more than MS Windows or MS Office do, at least.
A $10K price is a common sight in niche markets. Even in non-niche markets specialty s/w, especially with lock-in, command prices of $20K and above. Have this here CNC milling center? Then you need SolidWorks and MasterCAM (or whatever CAM you pick.) That may easily cost you about half the price of the machine.
The price is driven by the need and the opportunity. The need lies in fact that a very complex piece of software has to be designed for sale to a handful of customers. A smaller ISV may see tens of sales per YEAR, and each of those customers will bitch and moan about economic downturn, trolling for a discount. The ISV needs the high price to stay afloat, and to survive periods between orders.
The opportunity lies in fact that the customer has to have this software - if not yours then one from your two competitors; and you know how to play that game. The prices will be set to the maximum that the customer can afford.
Hello, I'm looking for my long lost brother. I'm 80 years old and we were together in Auschwitz
Language of what tribe will you use? Are you good with it? What would *you* do if someone calls you, purportedly from China, and in broken English starts asking you who in China you talked to on Skype a week ago and what is her address, using an excuse that is an obvious lie. Most people would respond in just two simple English words (that are pretty well understood worldwide) and block the contact forever.
Your example with a long lost relative works only if you come from the same culture. If you are a non-Jewish American, you will have a serious problem explaining yourself in Yiddish, as it was a common language of European Jews at the time. You'd better sound like you are 80 years old too. Social engineering is not that easy across cultures. You can be sure that Sue, Anne and Jenny used Henry's Skype services because they couldn't afford their own - and that means they are dirt poor, and probably they are recent immigrants from Somalia, Syria, Libya, or whatever other hellhole is out there.
Sue called Jim, Anne called Bill, Jenny called Fred; Sue, Anne and Jenny all know Henry .... so if you have Jim and Bill and Fred's numbers, and don't even know whether Henry exists or not, how do you find Henry?
It's pretty much impossible; not mathematically but practically. First, Jim, Bill and Fred live in different foreign countries. They have no obligation to tell you anything, even if you are a police officer in your own country. But if for some reason they choose to endanger their relatives, they may not know where Sue, Anne and Jenny live. But if you manage to find them, those three are not required to tell you anything (if they are in the USA, at least.) But if you manage to make them talk and they point at Henry, Henry can always say that he used his own Skype account, but the OP "hacked" it to "frame him" because he is "raysis." (Well, that story is being tried by the Boston bomber's mother.) The OP may find himself on the receiving end of a counter-suit, if not of a criminal complaint (doesn't matter if it has merit or not - justice is not based on such trivial things.)
The OP should pick better passwords, write the loss off, and take this experience as a valuable lesson.
He's claiming elsewhere that it was a $400B deal.
That is indeed ridiculous. I would easily accept a $40M deal. A $400M deal would be already very hard to imagine; many *companies* aren't worth that much. Normally a CEO can work with 20-30 million USD with relative ease - such as acquire small companies or making deals of this sort; but anything beyond that triggers a completely different set of procedures.
Your guilty just because you used startpage.
You could say that about using Tor or FreeNet. However search engines are a commodity, and anyone can use StartPage without a complicated setup; it's just a Web site. It's even in the list of search engines that IE asks you to select from, right out of the box. Install fresh Windows, select the search engine, and you are done. If that is suspicious, you are in a good company.
You could search Slashdot using its own search engine (if it works) and get the same result. My posts are public. But can you correlate my /. posts with my posts on PriusChat, for example? You cannot. I never reuse aliases :-)
It's probably possible to use analysis of style of my writing to come up with a match or two. But it's pretty hard, and it's far less convincing. It's much harder still if you don't have a short list of texts for comparison. You can't grep the whole Internet. Selection of a common, short abbreviation as an alias ensures that you cannot trivially reduce the list of possible writings by me down to a manageable size. Just compare what Google returns for your own alias and for my alias.
Your ISP will rat you out.
Pray tell how, unless the ISP is capable of a MITM attack on an SSL connection.
Honest question: when did Apple sell anything related to their customers to the highest bidder? I can't find any information about anything along those lines
As if you would normally find information about such transactions plastered all over the town? As if you'd normally find any business contract between corporations published for everyone to see?
These deals are signed in boardrooms, by VPs and above, and they stay among that crowd. Even if an IT worker at some point sets up a link between databases, or sends tapes over, he does not necessarily know what those databases contain. Even if he knows that "some data" is sent to "strategic partners," what can he do about that?
StartPage
In my case, the name was chosen intentionally to be impossible to find on Google among millions of other references to the protocol.
Why not here and now? It's a proper thread for that... Or perhaps the Gods of $distribution always know best?
Pixar has nothing to do with it; they make cartoons, not Linux distributions. If they thought the name is cool, good for them - because if they are wrong then they will be hit in the wallet.
But a cartoon has a chance to explore the character, not just name it. A viewer will associate the appearance, the name, the style, the habits all together. This may be enough to justify the name, or to negate its unwanted connotations. One thing you can be certain, if you are exposed to a name of a cartoon character you are probably watching the cartoon. A Linux distribution does not come with this assurance, and a name would just sit out there, without an explanation of its character. Then people fall back to the dictionary - and they don't like what they read there.
Debian people should pick names that have positive, bright associations among most people - not just among the aging fan base of an ancient cartoon for young chidren. A good name would be also translatable into foreign languages without loss of associations. If that's not possible, it should be capable of transliteration - hopefully without major semantic conflicts. You cannot name a major piece of software after an inner joke among you and your three buddies - triply so if that joke sounds distasteful, if not outright revolting, to uninitiated.
I do not necessarily approve what Ubuntu people do; but at least they have a consistent theme, and their choice of words is not negative. Might be funny sometimes (Precise Pangolin? They aren't known for any particular precision :-) but at least they are translatable with no harm.
Toy Story.
Never watched it. Wheezy == sickly to me - and I'm sure to millions, if not billions, of other people in the world.
You do realize that $90/BTC is still over twice what it was before the bubble, right?
I'm sure this statement will make things right for those who bought at $200.
You can bet the NSA has a database with every bitcoin transaction made starting at some recent point, and in the future will be able to unwind the entire history of any bitcoins in your wallet.
Leave NSA alone. Every BTC user has an entire copy of the blockchain, and there are Web tools to explore the blockchain, searching for transactions, addresses, and stuff.
Your only protection is in the fact that nobody can easily associate an address with your real world identity. If you only trade in BTC this will stay true. However as soon as you start buying or selling non-BTC assets (currencies, goods, etc.) your expense address becomes known and can be matched to you.