Just as a silly question, how would showing an ID be a good way to ensure security in lieu of a full body cavity search?
He's not talking about "extra search" in terms of having to take off shoes (which is nonsensical anyway), or turn on your laptop, whatnot--some of these measures are inherently good ideas. As long as the TSA screeners aren't able to thieve shit from my checked luggage
Don't forget that one of the central tenets of most terrorist training is to maintain a low profile prior to making something go boom--if someone with a lily-white record shows ID and subsequently blows up a plane, you've just not accomplished a thing.
Rather, requiring ID allows airlines to impose arbitrary restrictions on things like the sale or transfer of tickets between individuals (I'm sorry sir, but there's a $300 transfer fee) and it allows a federal government which, in the US is NOT supposed to have this sort of power, to track you when you travel.
You may be a guest in the US, but that does not mean you have to submit to this sort of thing, even if it is acceptable elsewhere, especially when it involves secret laws and refusal by an agency of an elected government to follow proper judicial procedure.
There is a very simple solution for this: work from home 1-2 days a week. It is awesome, I've done it.
I agree with you, if you're alone, you go nuts from lack of company. And to be honest, if you dislike your job so much that you can't stand to ever be at work, you're in the wrong job...
I "created" this list originally by sticking a world-writeable file in my account on soda.csua.berkeley.edu and telling people to write their suggestions in it. Here's the original
A lot of university professors these days are borderline socialists so of course they wouldn't care.
That's silly.
Many university professors write their own textbooks, and use them as mandatory reading material for their classes (as very often, nobody else will.)
They guarantee themselves a secondary revenue stream by periodically releasing "editions", which may or may not change important information from previous versions. You will never know, and it makes it near-impossible to re-sell used textbooks from one semester to the next (yes, you're catching on, that's the idea.)
These professors, socialist or not, will very much care if you're denying them their revenue stream.
I'd approach it from a different perspective--while I am not a communist/collectivist/whatever, I think a phenomenon like this is best left to the individual conscience of the student. Personally I think the textbook racket is just that--a major rip-off by already well-paid professors.
When I was in college, I actually appreciated my courses that drew primarily on "external" literature--many smaller but "authoritative" works by well-known authors in their fields. These are the books I kept after graduating. The 500 page, $60 econometrics textbooks, which were the sole book for the class (next to the readers)? Burn, baby, burn, or sell for $5 to some poor bastard who can't afford to buy edition 10.9.1.2.5 and who is willing to risk missing out on some minor spelling corrections from last year.
Assumptions about IT staff
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
So:
An official at Oblix concurs. "[IT personnel] like the leverage that they have by keeping it a heterogeneous environment," says Ken Sims, vice president of marketing and business development at Oblix.
The VP of Marketing and business development thinks this. An engineer who obviously knows what he's talking about.
What a complete load of crap. We saw this a year or more ago in an Economist article about IT staff wanting nothing more than to save their own jobs in the face of inevitable automation.
Repeat after me, it's nonsense. Hooey. Claptrap. Most IT personnel I know are too busy keeping things running. And yes, all big shops I know _are_ multiplatform. VMS, Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, proprietary mainframe crap, etc etc etc. You've all seen it.
I'm sorry, but this is just one example of how this article discredits itself. I hate this kind of shit--it just gives managers dangerous and wrong ideas about how the IT world works.
Nope. Mauritania, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and a number of other countries around from NW Africa, through the Gulf of Suez/Red Sea and around the Arabian peninsula have areas considered "desert" adjoining the sea.
Ranging a bit further afield, parts of the Namibian coast are equally arid.
Don't underestimate what a motivated terrorist can do with a baggage locker key, my friend.
Hijacker: (brandishing a locker key) "Everybody be cool, this is a robber...err..hijacking! I'm taking this statue to Cuba!" Security Guard: "Err, sir..." (whispers something in hijacker's ear) Hijacker: "Ah, erm, nevermind..." (is taken away by machine gun-armed national guardsmen)
I can understand how there is no "white culture" or god forbid, "Asian culture", seeing as how they all come from the same place, so I think it's kind of neat that there is a single cultural definition for people who very recently (I mean, what's 150+ years?) were forcibly relocated to the US from that tiny ethnically and societally homogenous place called Africa. I'm sure our Italian friends with ancestors from such closely connected communities as Sicily and Piemonte would agree with you that such a definition of a pretty arbitrarily delineated group's "culture" deserves of recognition.
Honestly. I'm not calling into question the existence of the UNCF. I think it's great that a group which statistically is not so prosperous builds an organization to change the status quo on its own. However, your incredibly broad generalization of "culture" as such is pretty uninformed, and I'd venture so far as to say insulting towards people with ancestors in Smorgasbjord, Sweden or Bulubumbu, Congo, whom you so simplistically lump into "white" and "black".
As for your logic regarding "the standing of white people in society", I think it's a pretty fucking sad statement on society today that you have to differentiate between poor bastards who can't afford college on their own, based solely on race.
That's actually pretty cool, and speaks for your manager.
I'm not a big Starbucks fan--their coffee is overpriced, and I can't have a cigarette in there while working (no, I'm not in the US or Ireland.) However, ever since they figured out not to ask customers who just wanted "a cup of coffee" whether it was to be mocchalattefrappuccinojuanvaldezmonkeymilkshake with a "shot" (whatever the fuck that is), it's become a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon working.
The Starbucks I like over here are usually reasonably empty (except for the whiny American tourists, go figure--I get to say that, being American:) so grabbing a couch for two hours with a colleague, having a cup or two, and having a meeting or working on some papers is just a real nice idea.
Also, nobody's ever hassled me about plugging my laptop into an outlet in any of the coffee places here. If it gets to that point, they've lost a customer, as well as my statistically shown ~10 friends, whom I'll tell to not go there because they're too tightassed to realize that half a cent of electricity is less important to their bottom line than a returning customer who drinks copious amounts of coffee.
I seem to recall that Holland "recently" implemented speed measurements over distance. I've driven from A'dam to Rotterdam several times while my girlfriend was working in the latter (Hotel New York is really nice, btw); people followed the speed limits fairly meticulously, but the moment a tiny wet patch appeared on the road, drivers had an ugly tendency to slam on the brakes in waves. Italy has the same system on various highways (at least between tollgates from time to time.) I've seen it lead to people careening down the motorway, and then slamming on the brakes and waiting in big groups by the roadside before passing the toll gate.
My claim to be a good driver is not, I admit, relevant. I believe I am, you may not, it has no bearing on the discussion (no accidents in 15 years is kind of an indicator though, I think.). My point was that there's breaking the law, and there's being a dangerous fucking idiot. Look at Germany, and consider what's more dangerous: someone in a decent car going 180, or some asshole in a souped-up Fiat tailgating on an 80 stretch? I've seen too many police checks in completely harmless areas, looking for minor infractions to hit with crazy fines, while ignoring dangerous infractions, to believe that it's not just a money-maker for traffic police from time to time.
Nobody's asking anyone to police themselves. As I stated, speed cameras fine, police fine (no pun intended.) What people are objecting to is handing the gub'mint a fairly powerful amount of data that they may or may not use responsibly.
As for the trams, yes, I live in Zurich and we have excellent public transportation (except for the goddamm 13 tram which never comes.) I buy tickets, not because they have spot checks (they do) but because I think it's fair. I think people should. But I don't think your comparison is fair; they're thinking of installing cameras on commute trains to catch idiot football fans lighting seats on fire and mugging old ladies, not fare jumpers.
really, so you make sure you drive safely and the posted limit in construction zones, in school zones and in areas with homes where kids might be ready to come around that parked car?
Yes, in fact, I do. I even drive 30 in the marked areas in the city (or less) as I live in such a neighborhood, and I know that kids jump out from behind cars. So do adults.
maybe. but my point is that you have no self control, you admitted it yourself.
Where? Feel free to quote me. Speeding on open highways is not "failing to control yourself". you are the person that I do not want in my neighborhood, and that I will do everyon in my power to harass you uintil you move or start driving like a mature adult instead of a spoild child.
Great, vigilanteism? And you are the person that I do not want making decisions for me.
are you being lazy and speeding 45 in that 30 See above. No accidents in 15 years of driving sort of speaks for itself.
I have a fast car. I like driving fast. I regularly break the speed limit. I have no excuse; I am a good driver, but if I'm caught it's my fault, period. I pay the fine and probably watch out a bit more in the future.
But, you know what? I live in a small, central European country that is regularly used by large truck convoys to get from A to B. A lot of the drivers, despite mandated rest stops and trip recorders are tired, doped up on speed, bored, inattentive, whatever.
A few days back, I was tootling along on the highway, actually doing the speed limit for once, looking for my exit, with big fricken heavy transports ahead of and behind me. Out of nowhere, don't ask me, I didn't see him approach, this monster freighter passes the guy behind me and, not seeing my little Audi, decides he wants to be where I am. What do I do? I punch it. Real fast. 200 km/h ensured that I was not where that truck was going to be. 80 klicks over the limit is one hell of a ticket here, and you try talking your way out of that one, especially with an overzealous cop.
Same thing last week--an over-tired old guy in a sedan (must have fallen asleep at the wheel) veers out next to me. Once again, punch it and get away. Yes, there are legitimate grounds, however thin and contrived they may seem, to break traffic rules. An unfortunate side effect of playing big brother to casual speeders (like me) is that you also, inevitably nail the innocent. And frankly, I do not trust police bureaucracy to adequately differentiate between the two.
As for No more need for speed camera or police resources wasted on policing the roads. -- well guess what? Who nails tailgaters? Drunk drivers? People who recklessly endanger others in various ways? I _like_ having cops knocking about my roads. One helped me when we broke down in the middle of nowhere once.
Speed cameras? Go ahead. Put them by tunnels, construction sites, schools, blind curves, anywhere a speeder can _really_ endanger others. But don't start with this blanket surveillance horseshit--it's not going to make anyone safer, and will inevitably be misused as a revenue generator for cash-strapped PDs. No, I don't think this reasoning is an excuse so I can go on speeding--I am not a dangerous criminal, but I DON'T WANT TO BE WATCHED 24/7 OUT OF BASIC PRINCIPLE.
As for the rest of your post, well thought-out and written. Look up "Hollerith machines" for more info--link here.
And I wholeheartedly agree with you about the SUVs.
COWBOY: Tough break for Hand Job. He was all set to get shipped out on a medical. JOKER: What was the matter with him? COWBOY: He was jerkin' off ten times a day. EIGHTBALL: It's no shit. At least ten times a day. COWBOY: Last week he was sent down to Da Nang to see the Navy head shrinker, and the crazy fucker starts jerking off in the waiting room. Instant Section Eight. He was just waiting for his papers to clear division.
So, I guess the "net addiction" excuse isn't bad, comparatively, considering it cost me about 400 bucks in shrink's fees to get out of the Swiss army (like about 30% of their recruits every year, incidentally.)
One word: Philcompress. finger phillip@csua.berkeley.edu for more details on its multitalented author Phillip "Edward" Nunez, creator of such versatile tools as PhilSpell, PhilBiff, and, of course, skiplists.
"But", you may object, "skiplists can't have been invented by Phillip!" Well, once you have appreciated the subtle beauti (sic) of PhilSpell, or the (subsequently posted) simple elegance of PhilCompress, you may change your mind.
Here is PhilCompress: (Note for you non-CSUA alumni or Netrek players, "doosh" is the 'dynamically object-oriented shell')
#!/usr/local/bin/doosh -f # # philcompress 2.1 # # * This file is Copyright (c) 2000 Phillip "Edward" Nunez. Phillip grants # * you full permission to copy and distribute this code provided you do not # * interfere with any of the copyrights (c)s installed therein. # # * Phillip grants permission to extract portions of this code for use in # * other code provided you give full credit to him in all documentation # * pertaining to your program, preserve copyrights in files from which code # * is extracted, and put his name in your program's output. # # * This header automatically generated by the UNIX program philcopyright, # * Copyright (c) 1991 Phillip "Edward" Nunez. For information regarding # * philcopyright, mail phillip@soda.berkeley.edu.
if ( ! -e/tmp/philstuff ) then
mkdir/tmp/philstuff
chmod 333/tmp/philstuff endif
# This used to just use gzip -S.P, but that fails if $philfile already
# ends in ".gz". Philcompress 3.0 (currently in development for PhilOS
# only; other ports will be made as time permits) doesn't have this
# problem, because it uses philzip instead of gzip./usr/bin/gzip -n -1 $philfile.P
rm $philfile
endif end
GALILEO--Get Awfully Lucky If it Leaves Low Earth Orbit VOYAGER--Vogons Observing Your Area; Get 'Em Running! (Ah, its true purpose is revealed) MARINER--Meet Alien Robots In Near Earth Rendez-vous
Fair idea, but what about the corners? I understand that some digital projectors have issues with color balance or warping at the very outsides of an image.
I highly recommend something called 'etherape'. Look it up. What it does is snarf and display all image files seen on a network (via tcpdump or snoop or whatever) completely out of context. No text, descriptions, nothing, just pics scrolling by.
It's a great toy for an overhead projector at an internet cafe, or, who knows, at a demonstration of a 140" monitor on a university network...
Gen. Buck Turgidson: Ahh, am I to understand the Russian Ambassador is to be admitted entrance to the War Room?
President Muffley: That is correct. He is here on my orders.
Turgidson: I... I don't know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean... begins closing his notebooks he'll see everything. He'll see the big board!
Fair enough, didn't occur to me at the time, never got that far.
I've NEVER had problems with...
I did. Loads of undefined symbols. I never found out why despite a shitload of searching.
I'm not saying you are whining beca...
It's not a reason I'm not using OpenBSD. I'm not using it because it ate up too much of my time to try and get working correctly, and I couldn't find solutions to my issues. The bad attitude (of more than one person) is a reason I wouldn't recommend OpenBSD to someone as a production OS, especially if I don't know their level of technical prowess.
As for not using slashdot, feh, this is a form of recreation for me. I don't need it for work--wading through scads of idiotic posts doesn't bother me, as I don't _have_ to get something out of it.
Security settings? What would that be...
kern.securelevel was part of it (as in mysteriously dropping from one into another.) Ignoring and overwriting my own pf.conf after running seemingly without issues for a few days was another. Ceasing to accept connections from given groups of hosts, with no sensible syslog info anywhere was a third.
I'm not saying there wasn't a perfectly rational reason for this behavior, and that I couldn't have found it eventually, but I simply got tired of dealing with the shit and moved on. I'm using pf without complaints on my FreeBSD firewall--in fact, Dani Hartmeier lives a few miles from here, and is a fun guy to go for beers with.
you could simply have reverted back to a previous version..
"These things happen" is absolutely true, but unacceptable for me on a box I need to do work on. As for reverting, tried that, no joy there. I have a working environment now, and will probably go back to fiddling with OpenBSD in a while (when I have time and spare boxes) to try and find out once and for all what the problem was, but for now it's not one of my priorities.
..and look at what happened to hundreds, if not thousands of Popes, Roman Emperors, Kings, Queens, Presidents, Captains of Industry, Generals, Chieftains and other Potentates throughout history.
If someone tries to whack you, I mean really really really wants to do you in, they're going to, walls and barbed wire and guards or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Just as a silly question, how would showing an ID be a good way to ensure security in lieu of a full body cavity search?
He's not talking about "extra search" in terms of having to take off shoes (which is nonsensical anyway), or turn on your laptop, whatnot--some of these measures are inherently good ideas. As long as the TSA screeners aren't able to thieve shit from my checked luggage
Don't forget that one of the central tenets of most terrorist training is to maintain a low profile prior to making something go boom--if someone with a lily-white record shows ID and subsequently blows up a plane, you've just not accomplished a thing.
Rather, requiring ID allows airlines to impose arbitrary restrictions on things like the sale or transfer of tickets between individuals (I'm sorry sir, but there's a $300 transfer fee) and it allows a federal government which, in the US is NOT supposed to have this sort of power, to track you when you travel.
You may be a guest in the US, but that does not mean you have to submit to this sort of thing, even if it is acceptable elsewhere, especially when it involves secret laws and refusal by an agency of an elected government to follow proper judicial procedure.
There is a very simple solution for this: work from home 1-2 days a week. It is awesome, I've done it.
I agree with you, if you're alone, you go nuts from lack of company. And to be honest, if you dislike your job so much that you can't stand to ever be at work, you're in the wrong job...
Awesome! How nice to see this still around.
I "created" this list originally by sticking a world-writeable file in my account on soda.csua.berkeley.edu and telling people to write their suggestions in it. Here's the original
A lot of university professors these days are borderline socialists so of course they wouldn't care.
That's silly.
Many university professors write their own textbooks, and use them as mandatory reading material for their classes (as very often, nobody else will.)
They guarantee themselves a secondary revenue stream by periodically releasing "editions", which may or may not change important information from previous versions. You will never know, and it makes it near-impossible to re-sell used textbooks from one semester to the next (yes, you're catching on, that's the idea.)
These professors, socialist or not, will very much care if you're denying them their revenue stream.
I'd approach it from a different perspective--while I am not a communist/collectivist/whatever, I think a phenomenon like this is best left to the individual conscience of the student. Personally I think the textbook racket is just that--a major rip-off by already well-paid professors.
When I was in college, I actually appreciated my courses that drew primarily on "external" literature--many smaller but "authoritative" works by well-known authors in their fields. These are the books I kept after graduating. The 500 page, $60 econometrics textbooks, which were the sole book for the class (next to the readers)? Burn, baby, burn, or sell for $5 to some poor bastard who can't afford to buy edition 10.9.1.2.5 and who is willing to risk missing out on some minor spelling corrections from last year.
So:
An official at Oblix concurs. "[IT personnel] like the leverage that they have by keeping it a heterogeneous environment," says Ken Sims, vice president of marketing and business development at Oblix.
The VP of Marketing and business development thinks this. An engineer who obviously knows what he's talking about.
What a complete load of crap. We saw this a year or more ago in an Economist article about IT staff wanting nothing more than to save their own jobs in the face of inevitable automation.
Repeat after me, it's nonsense. Hooey. Claptrap. Most IT personnel I know are too busy keeping things running. And yes, all big shops I know _are_ multiplatform. VMS, Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, proprietary mainframe crap, etc etc etc. You've all seen it.
I'm sorry, but this is just one example of how this article discredits itself. I hate this kind of shit--it just gives managers dangerous and wrong ideas about how the IT world works.
Nope. Mauritania, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and a number of other countries around from NW Africa, through the Gulf of Suez/Red Sea and around the Arabian peninsula have areas considered "desert" adjoining the sea.
Ranging a bit further afield, parts of the Namibian coast are equally arid.
Don't underestimate what a motivated terrorist can do with a baggage locker key, my friend.
Hijacker: (brandishing a locker key) "Everybody be cool, this is a robber...err..hijacking! I'm taking this statue to Cuba!"
Security Guard: "Err, sir..." (whispers something in hijacker's ear)
Hijacker: "Ah, erm, nevermind..." (is taken away by machine gun-armed national guardsmen)
So tell me, what's "black culture"?
I can understand how there is no "white culture" or god forbid, "Asian culture", seeing as how they all come from the same place, so I think it's kind of neat that there is a single cultural definition for people who very recently (I mean, what's 150+ years?) were forcibly relocated to the US from that tiny ethnically and societally homogenous place called Africa. I'm sure our Italian friends with ancestors from such closely connected communities as Sicily and Piemonte would agree with you that such a definition of a pretty arbitrarily delineated group's "culture" deserves of recognition.
Honestly. I'm not calling into question the existence of the UNCF. I think it's great that a group which statistically is not so prosperous builds an organization to change the status quo on its own. However, your incredibly broad generalization of "culture" as such is pretty uninformed, and I'd venture so far as to say insulting towards people with ancestors in Smorgasbjord, Sweden or Bulubumbu, Congo, whom you so simplistically lump into "white" and "black".
As for your logic regarding "the standing of white people in society", I think it's a pretty fucking sad statement on society today that you have to differentiate between poor bastards who can't afford college on their own, based solely on race.
But you really ought to pay better attention in English class :-)
*ducks*
That's actually pretty cool, and speaks for your manager.
:) so grabbing a couch for two hours with a colleague, having a cup or two, and having a meeting or working on some papers is just a real nice idea.
I'm not a big Starbucks fan--their coffee is overpriced, and I can't have a cigarette in there while working (no, I'm not in the US or Ireland.) However, ever since they figured out not to ask customers who just wanted "a cup of coffee" whether it was to be mocchalattefrappuccinojuanvaldezmonkeymilkshake with a "shot" (whatever the fuck that is), it's become a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon working.
The Starbucks I like over here are usually reasonably empty (except for the whiny American tourists, go figure--I get to say that, being American
Also, nobody's ever hassled me about plugging my laptop into an outlet in any of the coffee places here. If it gets to that point, they've lost a customer, as well as my statistically shown ~10 friends, whom I'll tell to not go there because they're too tightassed to realize that half a cent of electricity is less important to their bottom line than a returning customer who drinks copious amounts of coffee.
...if you actually need the physical computer bits.
Maybe you can run a virtual machine on a Linux box that lets you have a little software VAX on your PC, but try keeping your beers cold in it
I seem to recall that Holland "recently" implemented speed measurements over distance. I've driven from A'dam to Rotterdam several times while my girlfriend was working in the latter (Hotel New York is really nice, btw); people followed the speed limits fairly meticulously, but the moment a tiny wet patch appeared on the road, drivers had an ugly tendency to slam on the brakes in waves. Italy has the same system on various highways (at least between tollgates from time to time.) I've seen it lead to people careening down the motorway, and then slamming on the brakes and waiting in big groups by the roadside before passing the toll gate.
My claim to be a good driver is not, I admit, relevant. I believe I am, you may not, it has no bearing on the discussion (no accidents in 15 years is kind of an indicator though, I think.). My point was that there's breaking the law, and there's being a dangerous fucking idiot. Look at Germany, and consider what's more dangerous: someone in a decent car going 180, or some asshole in a souped-up Fiat tailgating on an 80 stretch? I've seen too many police checks in completely harmless areas, looking for minor infractions to hit with crazy fines, while ignoring dangerous infractions, to believe that it's not just a money-maker for traffic police from time to time.
Nobody's asking anyone to police themselves. As I stated, speed cameras fine, police fine (no pun intended.) What people are objecting to is handing the gub'mint a fairly powerful amount of data that they may or may not use responsibly.
As for the trams, yes, I live in Zurich and we have excellent public transportation (except for the goddamm 13 tram which never comes.) I buy tickets, not because they have spot checks (they do) but because I think it's fair. I think people should. But I don't think your comparison is fair; they're thinking of installing cameras on commute trains to catch idiot football fans lighting seats on fire and mugging old ladies, not fare jumpers.
really, so you make sure you drive safely and the posted limit in construction zones, in school zones and in areas with homes where kids might be ready to come around that parked car?
Yes, in fact, I do. I even drive 30 in the marked areas in the city (or less) as I live in such a neighborhood, and I know that kids jump out from behind cars. So do adults.
maybe. but my point is that you have no self control, you admitted it yourself.
Where? Feel free to quote me. Speeding on open highways is not "failing to control yourself".
you are the person that I do not want in my neighborhood, and that I will do everyon in my power to harass you uintil you move or start driving like a mature adult instead of a spoild child.
Great, vigilanteism? And you are the person that I do not want making decisions for me.
are you being lazy and speeding 45 in that 30
See above. No accidents in 15 years of driving sort of speaks for itself.
The 40 ton truck behind me with the 250-foot braking distance--source here is what's wrong with the brakes.
I have a fast car. I like driving fast. I regularly break the speed limit. I have no excuse; I am a good driver, but if I'm caught it's my fault, period. I pay the fine and probably watch out a bit more in the future.
But, you know what? I live in a small, central European country that is regularly used by large truck convoys to get from A to B. A lot of the drivers, despite mandated rest stops and trip recorders are tired, doped up on speed, bored, inattentive, whatever.
A few days back, I was tootling along on the highway, actually doing the speed limit for once, looking for my exit, with big fricken heavy transports ahead of and behind me. Out of nowhere, don't ask me, I didn't see him approach, this monster freighter passes the guy behind me and, not seeing my little Audi, decides he wants to be where I am. What do I do? I punch it. Real fast. 200 km/h ensured that I was not where that truck was going to be. 80 klicks over the limit is one hell of a ticket here, and you try talking your way out of that one, especially with an overzealous cop.
Same thing last week--an over-tired old guy in a sedan (must have fallen asleep at the wheel) veers out next to me. Once again, punch it and get away. Yes, there are legitimate grounds, however thin and contrived they may seem, to break traffic rules. An unfortunate side effect of playing big brother to casual speeders (like me) is that you also, inevitably nail the innocent. And frankly, I do not trust police bureaucracy to adequately differentiate between the two.
As for No more need for speed camera or police resources wasted on policing the roads. -- well guess what? Who nails tailgaters? Drunk drivers? People who recklessly endanger others in various ways? I _like_ having cops knocking about my roads. One helped me when we broke down in the middle of nowhere once.
Speed cameras? Go ahead. Put them by tunnels, construction sites, schools, blind curves, anywhere a speeder can _really_ endanger others. But don't start with this blanket surveillance horseshit--it's not going to make anyone safer, and will inevitably be misused as a revenue generator for cash-strapped PDs. No, I don't think this reasoning is an excuse so I can go on speeding--I am not a dangerous criminal, but I DON'T WANT TO BE WATCHED 24/7 OUT OF BASIC PRINCIPLE.
As for the rest of your post, well thought-out and written. Look up "Hollerith machines" for more info--link here.
And I wholeheartedly agree with you about the SUVs.
COWBOY: Tough break for Hand Job. He was all set to get shipped out on a medical.
JOKER: What was the matter with him?
COWBOY: He was jerkin' off ten times a day.
EIGHTBALL: It's no shit. At least ten times a day.
COWBOY: Last week he was sent down to Da Nang to see the Navy head shrinker, and the crazy fucker starts jerking off in the waiting room. Instant Section Eight. He was just waiting for his papers to clear division.
So, I guess the "net addiction" excuse isn't bad, comparatively, considering it cost me about 400 bucks in shrink's fees to get out of the Swiss army (like about 30% of their recruits every year, incidentally.)
One word: Philcompress. finger phillip@csua.berkeley.edu for more details on its multitalented author Phillip "Edward" Nunez, creator of such versatile tools as PhilSpell, PhilBiff, and, of course, skiplists.
/tmp/philstuff ) then /tmp/philstuff /tmp/philstuff
/tmp/philstuff
/usr/bin/gzip -n -1 $philfile.P
"But", you may object, "skiplists can't have been invented by Phillip!" Well, once you have appreciated the subtle beauti (sic) of PhilSpell, or the (subsequently posted) simple elegance of PhilCompress, you may change your mind.
Here is PhilCompress:
(Note for you non-CSUA alumni or Netrek players, "doosh" is the 'dynamically object-oriented shell')
#!/usr/local/bin/doosh -f
#
# philcompress 2.1
#
# * This file is Copyright (c) 2000 Phillip "Edward" Nunez. Phillip grants
# * you full permission to copy and distribute this code provided you do not
# * interfere with any of the copyrights (c)s installed therein.
#
# * Phillip grants permission to extract portions of this code for use in
# * other code provided you give full credit to him in all documentation
# * pertaining to your program, preserve copyrights in files from which code
# * is extracted, and put his name in your program's output.
#
# * This header automatically generated by the UNIX program philcopyright,
# * Copyright (c) 1991 Phillip "Edward" Nunez. For information regarding
# * philcopyright, mail phillip@soda.berkeley.edu.
if ( ! -e
mkdir
chmod 333
endif
foreach philfile ( $* )
if ( -e $philfile.P ) then
echo -n $philfile
echo ".P: File exists."
else
mv -f $philfile
echo $philfile > $philfile
# This used to just use gzip -S.P, but that fails if $philfile already
# ends in ".gz". Philcompress 3.0 (currently in development for PhilOS
# only; other ports will be made as time permits) doesn't have this
# problem, because it uses philzip instead of gzip.
rm $philfile
endif
end
they could apply service packs to Mercury and give it an atmosphere.
Except that it'd install an atmosphere which purported to keep out all future Mercury exploration missions.
GALILEO--Get Awfully Lucky If it Leaves Low Earth Orbit
VOYAGER--Vogons Observing Your Area; Get 'Em Running! (Ah, its true purpose is revealed)
MARINER--Meet Alien Robots In Near Earth Rendez-vous
Fair idea, but what about the corners? I understand that some digital projectors have issues with color balance or warping at the very outsides of an image.
Sorry--meant to say Driftnet. EtherApe is something completely different altogether (although still pretty spiffy.)
I highly recommend something called 'etherape'. Look it up. What it does is snarf and display all image files seen on a network (via tcpdump or snoop or whatever) completely out of context. No text, descriptions, nothing, just pics scrolling by.
It's a great toy for an overhead projector at an internet cafe, or, who knows, at a demonstration of a 140" monitor on a university network...
Gen. Buck Turgidson: Ahh, am I to understand the Russian Ambassador is to be admitted entrance to the War Room?
...all 140 inches of it.
President Muffley: That is correct. He is here on my orders.
Turgidson: I... I don't know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean... begins closing his notebooks he'll see everything. He'll see the big board!
You don't need the physical medium,
Fair enough, didn't occur to me at the time, never got that far.
I've NEVER had problems with...
I did. Loads of undefined symbols. I never found out why despite a shitload of searching.
I'm not saying you are whining beca...
It's not a reason I'm not using OpenBSD. I'm not using it because it ate up too much of my time to try and get working correctly, and I couldn't find solutions to my issues. The bad attitude (of more than one person) is a reason I wouldn't recommend OpenBSD to someone as a production OS, especially if I don't know their level of technical prowess.
As for not using slashdot, feh, this is a form of recreation for me. I don't need it for work--wading through scads of idiotic posts doesn't bother me, as I don't _have_ to get something out of it.
Security settings? What would that be...
kern.securelevel was part of it (as in mysteriously dropping from one into another.) Ignoring and overwriting my own pf.conf after running seemingly without issues for a few days was another. Ceasing to accept connections from given groups of hosts, with no sensible syslog info anywhere was a third.
I'm not saying there wasn't a perfectly rational reason for this behavior, and that I couldn't have found it eventually, but I simply got tired of dealing with the shit and moved on. I'm using pf without complaints on my FreeBSD firewall--in fact, Dani Hartmeier lives a few miles from here, and is a fun guy to go for beers with.
you could simply have reverted back to a previous version..
"These things happen" is absolutely true, but unacceptable for me on a box I need to do work on. As for reverting, tried that, no joy there. I have a working environment now, and will probably go back to fiddling with OpenBSD in a while (when I have time and spare boxes) to try and find out once and for all what the problem was, but for now it's not one of my priorities.
..and look at what happened to hundreds, if not thousands of Popes, Roman Emperors, Kings, Queens, Presidents, Captains of Industry, Generals, Chieftains and other Potentates throughout history.
If someone tries to whack you, I mean really really really wants to do you in, they're going to, walls and barbed wire and guards or not.