It is funny if we remember that the internet first goal was to be used by the military as a highly redundant/reliable network.
Cmdr Taco: General McNeil, it seems that we lost the Abidjan balloon.
General McNeil: I know, it must be the hurricane or maybe the North-Koreans shot it down, well TCP-IP should take care of re-routing traffic to the Brazaville balloon anyway...
Good idea although, best bang for the buck to make internet available I would assume...
Agreed, they used to try to teach us that at the University.
The example was an early fly-by-wire plane that failed to apply brakes while landing because the tarmac was flooded with water.
Specs said that the brakes couldn't be applied until the airplane touches the ground which it never did because it was only touching the water and the programmers implemented the specs as is.
They tried to teach us that programmers have a responsibility to review the specs and mention anything that did not make sense !;-)
Just by looking at it, one could still stab somebody with it by putting a little more pressure on it. Maybe it will keep a 2 years old from stabbing his little sister but that's about it.
Somebody can get stabbed with a piece of still armature designed to reinforce concrete although its got a flat tip. Somebody mad enough to stab someone should find enough force to make this thing penetrate into a body which is mostly soft. Pointed tips don't go through bone anyway. Also, the sharp edge will help once the tool is in a bit.
Who knows, maybe it's got a psychological effect that would cause somebody mad enough to do it to control its temper but I doubt it;-)
Further question: my understanding is that this wouldn't work with high voltage DC lines. In my understanding DC lines loose less energy because they do not have to ionize/de-ionize the air around the wire at a rate of (usually in America) 60 times by second. Then you loose by having to transform AC->DC->AC but you save in total on long distances.
Naked servers have been running for ages, motherboard disk etc. plugged together without any sort of case. Do not forget to correctly ground every component although.
Google even had their first stacks of hard drives running naked, they kept them in rack build of Lego blocks to allow air circulation I would presume. Motherboards were probably naked too although I can't tell for sure.
If we take for granted that women then keep their cell at 6 inches from their body and that men keep theirs at 1/4 of an inch from theirs, it means that women get square 6/1*4 = 576 less exposure !!!
There is indeed quite a bit of power available at close range since the strength varies at 1/square of the distance.
The local TV station had a desperate guy jumping the fences and climbing on top of the transmitter tower with the intention of jumping. They immediately shutdown the transmitter while police were dealing with him. They finally got him down after 4 or 5 hours although he was exposed for a brief period of time.
Apparently, the guy would have cooked in a microwave like fashion had they left the transmitter on.
"They also reduce the power of the signal for everyone else further away from the transmitter" seems impossible to achieve specifically.
Signal strength varies at 1/square of the distance of the transmitter, there is no possible border defined by "for everyone else further further away from the transmitter" where the signal strength could suddenly drop compared to everyone on the other side of that theoretical border.
I might have missed something although. If so, please clarify how they "reduce the power of the signal for everyone else further away from the transmitter" I suspect this could be possible with a dedicated frequency for each user and the transmitter varying the strength for each frequency depending on distance which would be found by sending echo packets between the transmitter and the user (which has to transmit too) although it seems at first counter-intuitive to do something like that. Is that what you were saying ?
I for one did not know before today that his last name was Kern and some other details about uncle Jimbo but I forgot everybody else on/. knew absolutely everything about him.
Humidity is calculated in relative terms, 100% humidity at 0C in less than 100% humidity at 38C in term of the absolute amount of water contained in the air.
How could you have come up with the exact answer while missing the "average temperature in Colorado" parameter ?;-))
An older co-worker once told me that most Administration, Sales, Marketing etc. people still see people working in IT in a role similar to a person that shovels coal in a steam boat.
This made me modify my attitude towards work. Don't expect to get respect, people only expect you to keep shoveling fast enough so that the boat keeps running. If problems arise, it is because you are not shoveling fast enough in their understanding of your role.
As you gain experience, you will find how to diminish stress by focusing on your user perception. Just give them the impression that you shovel fast enough, that's all they expect. Retain yourself from doing all modifications that you know are good for the company unless it is asked by your users if you want to last long. Similarly, don't expect to be proud of your company configuration, do not be perfectionist unless you fulfill a specific customer Ticket.
Just keep giving your users the impression that you shovel fast enough, that's all they expect. This way you will conserve your energy and diminish your stress level so, you will last longer. In short, do like them, do your shift then go home not thinking about your work, do not try to achieve perfection, you will burn yourself out, guaranteed.
In the old days, had an employee that sometime forgot to increment the "serial" in the SOA part of DNS zone files in bind after he made changes to them. When he forgot it, slave DNS servers wouldn't update themselves from the master with the new information.
So I would ask him : Did you think about changing the serial ?
He would reply; Sure ! I even upgraded from Corn Flakes to Captain Crunch...
Security wise, anything they learn about your PIN is bad.
As for typing, I hide as best as I can with my other hand and I fake typing some digits when I do, so PIN looks longer that it is actually and a watcher may think my PIN repeats digits while in fact it *may* not. Then again. I can also do the inverse; double a digit but make it look like I type only one digit when I in fact hit the key twice in a row. Again, that would make repeating digits more secure in this case.
So how could someone know my PIN repeats digits unless I post about it on slashdot?
And no, my PIN is not 7117, did you look at my signature?;-)
I agree with you that more digits is better. Banks that force you to have a 4 number PIN are silly.
More digits/characters or more possibilities is always better. In fact, my passwords look more like passphrases than passwords for just that reason.
My original post was merely noting that reversing your PIN to signal an emergency would constitute a weak standard: Crooks who know this scheme could just reverse the PIN in order to get your real PIN. I would vouch for 2 different PINs if banks went ahead with this idea.
I also have other tricks that I use that may help against keyboard sniffers.
Finally, I never heard of a password validator that doesn't allow you to repeat digit/characters so that would be new to me. Not allowing to repeat digits is telling something about your PIN, which is always a bad thing.
Well, not allowing repetition of digits actually diminish the number of possibilities for a PIN, one could argue that it makes the system less secure...
For a five digit PIN instead of :
10*10*10*10*10 (100,000) you get: 10*9*8*7*6 you get ( 30240 ) more than 3 times less possibilities. !
Also, the bank not allowing digit repetition would have to be quite public !
Not using digit repetition when it is allowed *might possibly* make the PIN harder to guess but not allowing digit repetition would make the system easier to crack in my humble opinion especially since digit based PIN have already few possibilities.
What about alpha-numeric PIN ?
21 = A 22 = B 23 = C 31 = D 32 = E
You could get away with it by using the same convention used to enter letter on a phone keypad so no need to upgrade keypads.
Slashdot Mirror
It is funny if we remember that the internet first goal was to be used by the military as a highly redundant/reliable network.
Cmdr Taco: General McNeil, it seems that we lost the Abidjan balloon.
General McNeil: I know, it must be the hurricane or maybe the North-Koreans shot it down, well TCP-IP should take care of re-routing traffic to the Brazaville balloon anyway...
Good idea although, best bang for the buck to make internet available I would assume...
Agreed, they used to try to teach us that at the University.
The example was an early fly-by-wire plane that failed to apply brakes while landing because the tarmac was flooded with water.
Specs said that the brakes couldn't be applied until the airplane touches the ground which it never did because it was only touching the water and the programmers implemented the specs as is.
They tried to teach us that programmers have a responsibility to review the specs and mention anything that did not make sense ! ;-)
Could this "GPS" error be similar to some bombings of the wrong spots in military conflicts ?
Well that's the coordinates I had on my mission papers and that's where my GPS told me to drop the bomb... ;-)
Nothing, we have no prejudice against anybody: ;-)
http://www.myoutspirit.com/ did you already come out or you are planning to do so ?
Also don't forget that easy to guess user names (or resource names for that matter) is bad practice security wise.
Just by looking at it, one could still stab somebody with it by putting a little more pressure on it. Maybe it will keep a 2 years old from stabbing his little sister but that's about it.
Somebody can get stabbed with a piece of still armature designed to reinforce concrete although its got a flat tip. Somebody mad enough to stab someone should find enough force to make this thing penetrate into a body which is mostly soft. Pointed tips don't go through bone anyway. Also, the sharp edge will help once the tool is in a bit.
Who knows, maybe it's got a psychological effect that would cause somebody mad enough to do it to control its temper but I doubt it ;-)
mod parent up ;-)
+1 very informative
Further question: my understanding is that this wouldn't work with high voltage DC lines. In my understanding DC lines loose less energy because they do not have to ionize/de-ionize the air around the wire at a rate of (usually in America) 60 times by second. Then you loose by having to transform AC->DC->AC but you save in total on long distances.
Naked servers have been running for ages, motherboard disk etc. plugged together without any sort of case. Do not forget to correctly ground every component although.
Google even had their first stacks of hard drives running naked, they kept them in rack build of Lego blocks to allow air circulation I would presume. Motherboards were probably naked too although I can't tell for sure.
This would be plain crazy, they usually shut down the transmitter during maintenance. Are they still doing it today ?
I wouldn't like being kept warm in a microwave oven, would you?
In Africa, we are used to carry things on our heads on a daily basis, other places do it too ;-)
If we take for granted that women then keep their cell at 6 inches from their body and that men keep theirs at 1/4 of an inch from theirs, it means that women get square 6/1*4 = 576 less exposure !!!
Hmmm.. Not sure those people were actually steeling, I open the question for debate.
Can a device like the ones we are discussing actually "pull" more power from the source if present ?
Or would a device like this impact be limited to depraving downstream users from the energy they catch ?
Thanks in advance for answers ! ;-)
There is indeed quite a bit of power available at close range since the strength varies at 1/square of the distance.
The local TV station had a desperate guy jumping the fences and climbing on top of the transmitter tower with the intention of jumping. They immediately shutdown the transmitter while police were dealing with him. They finally got him down after 4 or 5 hours although he was exposed for a brief period of time.
Apparently, the guy would have cooked in a microwave like fashion had they left the transmitter on.
"They also reduce the power of the signal for everyone else further away from the transmitter" seems impossible to achieve specifically.
Signal strength varies at 1/square of the distance of the transmitter, there is no possible border defined by "for everyone else further further away from the transmitter" where the signal strength could suddenly drop compared to everyone on the other side of that theoretical border.
I might have missed something although. If so, please clarify how they "reduce the power of the signal for everyone else further away from the transmitter" I suspect this could be possible with a dedicated frequency for each user and the transmitter varying the strength for each frequency depending on distance which would be found by sending echo packets between the transmitter and the user (which has to transmit too) although it seems at first counter-intuitive to do something like that. Is that what you were saying ?
I for one did not know before today that his last name was Kern and some other details about uncle Jimbo but I forgot everybody else on /. knew absolutely everything about him.
Hmm.. season open for uncle Jimbo ?
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimbo_Kern
You mean just like the Crysis suit ? ;-)
Hmm... I suspect that has been said about technologies that after a while ended up being used on a large enough scale to affect the environment.
Note that I am not saying that this specific technology would end up being used on a large enough scale. I am just reminding history.
Humidity is calculated in relative terms, 100% humidity at 0C in less than 100% humidity at 38C in term of the absolute amount of water contained in the air.
How could you have come up with the exact answer while missing the "average temperature in Colorado" parameter ? ;-))
An older co-worker once told me that most Administration, Sales, Marketing etc. people still see people working in IT in a role similar to a person that shovels coal in a steam boat.
This made me modify my attitude towards work. Don't expect to get respect, people only expect you to keep shoveling fast enough so that the boat keeps running. If problems arise, it is because you are not shoveling fast enough in their understanding of your role.
As you gain experience, you will find how to diminish stress by focusing on your user perception. Just give them the impression that you shovel fast enough, that's all they expect. Retain yourself from doing all modifications that you know are good for the company unless it is asked by your users if you want to last long. Similarly, don't expect to be proud of your company configuration, do not be perfectionist unless you fulfill a specific customer Ticket.
Just keep giving your users the impression that you shovel fast enough, that's all they expect. This way you will conserve your energy and diminish your stress level so, you will last longer. In short, do like them, do your shift then go home not thinking about your work, do not try to achieve perfection, you will burn yourself out, guaranteed.
It is strange that your Sales and Administration users have the ability to run Windows update by themselves...
I prefer Debain.
This reminds me something ;-)
In the old days, had an employee that sometime forgot to increment the "serial" in the SOA part of DNS zone files in bind after he made changes to them. When he forgot it, slave DNS servers wouldn't update themselves from the master with the new information.
So I would ask him : Did you think about changing the serial ?
He would reply; Sure ! I even upgraded from Corn Flakes to Captain Crunch...
Security wise, anything they learn about your PIN is bad.
As for typing, I hide as best as I can with my other hand and I fake typing some digits when I do, so PIN looks longer that it is actually and a watcher may think my PIN repeats digits while in fact it *may* not. Then again. I can also do the inverse; double a digit but make it look like I type only one digit when I in fact hit the key twice in a row. Again, that would make repeating digits more secure in this case.
So how could someone know my PIN repeats digits unless I post about it on slashdot?
And no, my PIN is not 7117, did you look at my signature? ;-)
I agree with you that more digits is better. Banks that force you to have a 4 number PIN are silly.
More digits/characters or more possibilities is always better. In fact, my passwords look more like passphrases than passwords for just that reason.
My original post was merely noting that reversing your PIN to signal an emergency would constitute a weak standard: Crooks who know this scheme could just reverse the PIN in order to get your real PIN. I would vouch for 2 different PINs if banks went ahead with this idea.
I also have other tricks that I use that may help against keyboard sniffers.
Finally, I never heard of a password validator that doesn't allow you to repeat digit/characters so that would be new to me. Not allowing to repeat digits is telling something about your PIN, which is always a bad thing.
Well, not allowing repetition of digits actually diminish the number of possibilities for a PIN, one could argue that it makes the system less secure ...
For a five digit PIN instead of :
10*10*10*10*10 (100,000)
you get:
10*9*8*7*6 you get ( 30240 ) more than 3 times less possibilities. !
Also, the bank not allowing digit repetition would have to be quite public !
Not using digit repetition when it is allowed *might possibly* make the PIN harder to guess but not allowing digit repetition would make the system easier to crack in my humble opinion especially since digit based PIN have already few possibilities.
What about alpha-numeric PIN ?
21 = A
22 = B
23 = C
31 = D
32 = E
You could get away with it by using the same convention used to enter letter on a phone keypad so no need to upgrade keypads.