When I think about how far the Space Shuttle has set us back it make my head hurt. Billions of dollars for a launch vehicle to replace one that costs millions of dollars.
And until Challenger, NASA had a policy of putting the Kabosh on any launches save those from the space shuttle. At any point someone could have smelled the roses, cut their losses, and moved onto something better.
The Republicans can claim anything they want, but the I don't call "Big Brother" smaller government.
Now there is a method to the madness of the Federal Government. The Feds had to step in to keep states from cannibalizing each other. I live in Pennsylvania. We are downwind from Ohio, we get all their "industrial success" raining down on our cities as acid rain. We are next door to "tax free" Delaware, so strangely enough when you cross the border into Delaware you have retail outlets every exit.
Without the Fed's policing Ohio's pollution emissions, and ensuring that the proceeds from Delaware make it back into circulation.
I have an 8 month old daughter too, btw. Aren't they just adorable at this age.
I wouldn't mind Government Bold Visions (tm) if they were from the Government, Bold, and Visionary. Most of what I've seen in my 28 years are whimpy, short-sighted, industry handouts.
Let's face it, the problem is the old MIC. You have a billion dollar industry whose sole source of revenue is fleecing the government. You want to talk about accountability, how about stop using the same jokers who charge a fortune to not deliver year after year after year.
For what we are paying "private industry" we could have hired 5 times as many civil servants to do the same job better. (We are already paying the Goverment's overhead. Why should we pay industry's too?)
what blows my mind is that someone like you, in what is relatively a low pressure situation (no offense)
None taken. I've worked in high-demand production settings too. Note I didn't say "high-pressure". When you are interfacing to a steel finishing line that produces $50,000 worth of material an hour, you take things at a relaxed and methodical pace.
They also have a burn-in stage where you test the snot of out of the complete line before you start making product. And god help the sorry son of a bitch who touches a thing without a workorder.
On my first programming job I was cleaning up my hard drive. We were useing CVS, so I regularly when it, and napalmed my copy of the code to start fresh from the repository.
One day I didn't realize I was on the "N" drive, instead of the "D" drive. I trashed the files, went out to lunch. When I got back the entire department was ashen faced. They thought I had gone out and committed suicide or something.
Fortunately someone had a copy of the full repository, and most of the guys were able to check back in their work. The incident was a running joke in the department for years.
I work at a science museum. While we do have a budget for IT, it's not extravigent.
Having worked here for 5 years, I've had my fair share of server upgrades and hardware swap-outs. The first thing I learned (the hard way) was managing expectations. If you lay it out that if something goes wrong in the process of X, W,Y and Z can't happen people plan around it. For instance, servicing our donor database service is not scheduled to happen the week before a major fundraiser. I try to avoid doing ANYTHING to the servers before a board meeting. (Another lesson learned the hard way.)
As far as hardware goes, we probably spend more on backup systems than production systems. For our 10K 3 terabyte RAID we bought a 12K robotic tape system. The strorage medium is cheap. It's the data that is expensive to replace. On word file could be a grant proposal for more money than was spent on our entire datacenter.
When people are alerted to exactly what will happen, or more importantly WON'T happen, it's amazing how they always find the budget to do things the Right Way.
A network is more akin to a large ranch. If you want to make sure no one gets on your property you put in an expensive secure fence around the property. If you don't put up a fence or any thing like that you can't really bitch if people start snowmobiling on your property.
Sure you can't bitch, but a few shotgun blasts in their general direction does wonders for getting the message across. That does reinforce your point though. Property is only yours to the extent which you are willing to defend it.
It just so happens we have a property defense system called "the police".
These were no Woodward and Bernstein. They were Oxford students, who busted Oxford's network, and then wrote about how they 03#ED it. True crackers would consider them mental masturbators.
I would also like to point out that the subject of this "investigation" was a computer network. There are no public health issues involved here. There are no abuses of our fellow man. It's a bunch of computer that happily compute 1's and 0's.
Finally, I would also like to point out the abuse of trust on the part of these "journalists." As a user of said network you have an obligation to report potential soft points to the admin staff. No where does it say they attempted to do this before blowing the whistle. Having used and worked on University networks before, I find that most folk who operate them are more than happy to hear about a problem.
As a professional admin, I should also note that one man's "problem" is another's every day practice. Some places don't have the budget or manpower to lock everything down. Some places there are cultural issues that prevent more robust security from being implemented. And in some places you do have admin staff asleep at the switch.
Many places still use POP for email, despite the fact is sends you password in plain text. Is it safe? No. Why do you still use it? Because people are accostumed to antiquated email clients, and refuse to change. Until ssh is included with windows, many places will continue to use telnet, again despite the fact that every command and response is sent in plaintext.
Journalist like to think that we live in a perfect world, and that any imperfection is somehow a flaw. The real world is much more like a compromise between the lesser of 2 evils.
I might add that in the case of these students, all of their actions leave log entries than can be corroborated with their statements. Thus they built their own gallow, tied their own noose, and hired their own hangman.
Actually, no. There is not such exemption. There never was such an exemption. A journalist reporting the event might try to claim the 5th admendment (right to not testify against oneself). If he got the gun past security, and was the sole witness to his crime, he would get off on a technicality. There was no crime since he would be the only person to testify for the prosecution (and anyone who read the account in the news would be insumbisable as heresay.)
If the airport screeners actually found the gun, he would be breaking rocks in a federal pen.
Say, you could also throw in Claymores and other booby traps. Once set, when someone strays in front of a proximity sensor it sets of a "death strobe". An led mounted in a ping-pong ball could be a grenade, with a countdown timer. Maybe combine the two into an all-around booby-trap devices with multiple modes.
Heck, why make the medic have a "weak" weapon. They can be any other player. You just don't want the other side finding out which one(s) on your side have the medpack device. If the medic is taken out, it would be an interesting battle for the survivors in the squad to attempt to recapture it.
One item I'd like to add is different classes of weapons. Have a shotgun, a pistol, and a sniper rifle. Each has it's place in the battlefield. (Assuming that you have a wide open battlefield. One of my beefs with most Lasertag outfits is how cramped the fighting room is.)
Sean Woods
How about introducing multiple "hit" encodings. Have 3 basic firing modes, Shotgun, Carbine, and Sniper. For each firing mode, the damage inflicted is weighted by the intensity of the beam recieved. A shotgun signal at a barely detectable range would count for a few hitpoints, while a sniper shot at the same range would count as a full kill.
Sure, you would have to throw in a little extra hardware. In addition to the signal decoder, you would have to improvise an ampletude detector. (Not hard really. You are pulling a voltage right off the sensor.)
The Army already has done the legwork on this. They call it the "MILES" system. Several sensors on your body detect Laser fire from an enemy rifle, and communicates via a CMDA network with a central facility.
CMDA is also used in many US digital phones. With a little tinkering you could probably design one yourself with a phone prototyping kit and a surplus cell tower.
Nah. Do it like the Army. Use lasers for target resolution, but have the weapon fire blanks to get the real muzzle flash, explosive sound, and kickback.
I should add that if you run out of blanks or the gun james, the Laser won't fire. Now that's realism.
Slashdot Mirror
When I think about how far the Space Shuttle has set us back it make my head hurt. Billions of dollars for a launch vehicle to replace one that costs millions of dollars.
And until Challenger, NASA had a policy of putting the Kabosh on any launches save those from the space shuttle. At any point someone could have smelled the roses, cut their losses, and moved onto something better.
Instead they had to keep burning billions.
Now there is a method to the madness of the Federal Government. The Feds had to step in to keep states from cannibalizing each other. I live in Pennsylvania. We are downwind from Ohio, we get all their "industrial success" raining down on our cities as acid rain. We are next door to "tax free" Delaware, so strangely enough when you cross the border into Delaware you have retail outlets every exit.
Without the Fed's policing Ohio's pollution emissions, and ensuring that the proceeds from Delaware make it back into circulation.
I have an 8 month old daughter too, btw. Aren't they just adorable at this age.
Let's face it, the problem is the old MIC. You have a billion dollar industry whose sole source of revenue is fleecing the government. You want to talk about accountability, how about stop using the same jokers who charge a fortune to not deliver year after year after year.
For what we are paying "private industry" we could have hired 5 times as many civil servants to do the same job better. (We are already paying the Goverment's overhead. Why should we pay industry's too?)
No, it's a "rightsized" step.
None taken. I've worked in high-demand production settings too. Note I didn't say "high-pressure". When you are interfacing to a steel finishing line that produces $50,000 worth of material an hour, you take things at a relaxed and methodical pace.
They also have a burn-in stage where you test the snot of out of the complete line before you start making product. And god help the sorry son of a bitch who touches a thing without a workorder.
IBM: Their legal department have been the Nazgul since the times when only geeks would have read the LOTR.
On my first programming job I was cleaning up my hard drive. We were useing CVS, so I regularly when it, and napalmed my copy of the code to start fresh from the repository.
One day I didn't realize I was on the "N" drive, instead of the "D" drive. I trashed the files, went out to lunch. When I got back the entire department was ashen faced. They thought I had gone out and committed suicide or something.
Fortunately someone had a copy of the full repository, and most of the guys were able to check back in their work. The incident was a running joke in the department for years.
You weren't trying to collect the rounded off pennies, like in Superman III where you?
I regularly keep a Gentoo LiveCD in my repair kit, along with a firewire/USB2.0 external hard disk. Partimage is a beautiful tool.
Having worked here for 5 years, I've had my fair share of server upgrades and hardware swap-outs. The first thing I learned (the hard way) was managing expectations. If you lay it out that if something goes wrong in the process of X, W,Y and Z can't happen people plan around it. For instance, servicing our donor database service is not scheduled to happen the week before a major fundraiser. I try to avoid doing ANYTHING to the servers before a board meeting. (Another lesson learned the hard way.)
As far as hardware goes, we probably spend more on backup systems than production systems. For our 10K 3 terabyte RAID we bought a 12K robotic tape system. The strorage medium is cheap. It's the data that is expensive to replace. On word file could be a grant proposal for more money than was spent on our entire datacenter.
When people are alerted to exactly what will happen, or more importantly WON'T happen, it's amazing how they always find the budget to do things the Right Way.
This is slashdot. He/She is probably both.
It's used by marketing-types who don't understand that 24/7 already means every day of the year.
The same marketdriods that need to be reminded that free is always 100%.
BTW, it's 365.2462
Up until recently I would have said the same thing about Doom 3.
Sure you can't bitch, but a few shotgun blasts in their general direction does wonders for getting the message across. That does reinforce your point though. Property is only yours to the extent which you are willing to defend it.
It just so happens we have a property defense system called "the police".
I would also like to point out that the subject of this "investigation" was a computer network. There are no public health issues involved here. There are no abuses of our fellow man. It's a bunch of computer that happily compute 1's and 0's.
Finally, I would also like to point out the abuse of trust on the part of these "journalists." As a user of said network you have an obligation to report potential soft points to the admin staff. No where does it say they attempted to do this before blowing the whistle. Having used and worked on University networks before, I find that most folk who operate them are more than happy to hear about a problem.
As a professional admin, I should also note that one man's "problem" is another's every day practice. Some places don't have the budget or manpower to lock everything down. Some places there are cultural issues that prevent more robust security from being implemented. And in some places you do have admin staff asleep at the switch.
Many places still use POP for email, despite the fact is sends you password in plain text. Is it safe? No. Why do you still use it? Because people are accostumed to antiquated email clients, and refuse to change. Until ssh is included with windows, many places will continue to use telnet, again despite the fact that every command and response is sent in plaintext.
Journalist like to think that we live in a perfect world, and that any imperfection is somehow a flaw. The real world is much more like a compromise between the lesser of 2 evils.
I might add that in the case of these students, all of their actions leave log entries than can be corroborated with their statements. Thus they built their own gallow, tied their own noose, and hired their own hangman.
If the airport screeners actually found the gun, he would be breaking rocks in a federal pen.
I for one wouldn't rely on it. You only really need one scanner to fail to read properly out of 1000 to kill or maim you.
Well, when someone REALLY wants access to the system, all they'll need is a saw.
Say, you could also throw in Claymores and other booby traps. Once set, when someone strays in front of a proximity sensor it sets of a "death strobe". An led mounted in a ping-pong ball could be a grenade, with a countdown timer. Maybe combine the two into an all-around booby-trap devices with multiple modes. Heck, why make the medic have a "weak" weapon. They can be any other player. You just don't want the other side finding out which one(s) on your side have the medpack device. If the medic is taken out, it would be an interesting battle for the survivors in the squad to attempt to recapture it. One item I'd like to add is different classes of weapons. Have a shotgun, a pistol, and a sniper rifle. Each has it's place in the battlefield. (Assuming that you have a wide open battlefield. One of my beefs with most Lasertag outfits is how cramped the fighting room is.) Sean Woods
Sure, you would have to throw in a little extra hardware. In addition to the signal decoder, you would have to improvise an ampletude detector. (Not hard really. You are pulling a voltage right off the sensor.)
The Army already has done the legwork on this. They call it the "MILES" system. Several sensors on your body detect Laser fire from an enemy rifle, and communicates via a CMDA network with a central facility. CMDA is also used in many US digital phones. With a little tinkering you could probably design one yourself with a phone prototyping kit and a surplus cell tower.
I should add that if you run out of blanks or the gun james, the Laser won't fire. Now that's realism.
I have my dummy addresses point to a particular mailbox that is periodically dumped over to spam-assassin's auto-learn script.
Muhhahaha.