As long as they have less than you have and you have less than the person you stole it from.. then yes it's okay with me. Give til you bleed. Of course it makes more sense to ask people to help you give than to take it by trickery or force. Our society is very corrupt but not so much yet that I think you couldn't lead by your own example in giving. You'll probably be able to give more by example than by force.
But I do think there is a point in society where it becomes right to redistribute wealth by force. The classic Robin Hood tales give us a good idea when that point is.. and we're not there.
I forgot my e-gold logon information anyway and have moved half a dozen times since I used it, changed my email address, etc.. so I doubt I could even get into my own account.;)
I guess how scary you find it is if your on the giving or receiving end of the problem. I wouldn't have an issue with people doing this sort of thing in a Robin Hood manner but I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. More likely that theifs will get rich and not give the money to the poor and more likely their victims will be the poor or middle class and not the rich.
Just as much a problem is how easy it's become for people to counterfiet money from their home computer. It's a widespread problem amoung young people and with there being fewer legit ways to earn money, with fewer jobs available, I can see it only getting worse. Sure trained people can notice these counterfiets but it's getting harder. Smart counterfieters also print smaller donominations which are unlikely to be checked. Even if all they do is bleach out dollar bills and reprint them as 10's then they are still making money easier than they could just about any other way.
I've worked at quite a few companies that handle important customer data and to be honest not one of them made any effort to protect that data either from employees or crackers. Management doesn't care and if an employee raises an alert (even internally) they are likely to get fired. 300,000 people is nothing. I've had access to millions of people's data. Actually I still do since I know for a fact these companies haven't made any effort to protect the data since I left and I was the one who put what security that does exist into place. I bet most even still use the passwords I placed on the servers.
Even worse is that they would fire, without fair cause, a person that was already underpaid (thus broke) without taking care to finally fix their security. If I was a thief I could be very well off. I'm sure a lot of other IT/programmer types have similar experiences. I'm sure that not all of us are behaving ourselves with the economy the way it is.
I still shop with vendors I know are storing my data but I'm careful with how much I give them. I don't use checks. I don't use credit cards. I do use a debit card but I was careful to get one that couldn't spend more than was actually in my account and I'm careful not to put more into the account than I'm expecting to use right away. That still leaves me open to damage but at least it controls the damage. I buy with cash or COD when it's possible (my last computer came from iDot.com because they allow purchase by COD).
What I read was that it had to be a land vehicle. It specified that there was no size or weight limit. I had the feeling they were saying you could make it really big.. but as they didn't say you couldn't make it small.. then it's allowed. Unless you see a rule I missed (always possible).
So? The lighter something is the less energy it needs to move itself. The only real issues are the minimal weight of things such as sensors and the brains that control the unit. That and basic physics of how light weight you can make it while leaving it strong enough to handle the conditions of crossing the terrain.
Being big doesn't always mean your faster but it might make you tougher.. which may be useful in something such as this.
Who cares if anyone wins? It's the experience points that count.:)
Could cheat like I sometimes do. Check to see if they are accessing your site using a proxy server and/or through a known proxy network. If not, and demand is high, just print a error with links to information on using caching proxy servers to anyone not already using one. That way everything stays online but your bandwidth doesn't get used nearly as much.:)
To a degree I agree with you. It'd be nice if there was some prize for anybody that finished the course. It's probably to late to design a machine and enter this year but if nobody wins and they do it again maybe I'll try to enter. I was thinking of trying to make the most affordable solution that could really compete (even if not win) and try that. They seem to be thinking of offroad pickup trucks with a few brains thrown in. I'd be more interested in robots that had to weigh under 100lbs and be able to do the same course in the same amount of time. I'm tempted to build some concept machines and try them out. Maybe see if I could get one to cross Zion (in Utah) as that place would be one hell of a test. I don't have a lot of money to spend on such things but it'd still be fun to compete.
So make tools that work best for defense instead of offense. That's actually easier in many ways because you don't have to deal with storing enough power (gasoline, electricity, whatever) for the job and you can worry about specializing to known areas rather than having to deal with a wide varity of possible areas.
Perhaps make an anti-terrorism robot that patrols cities intelligently on it's own with the ability to record and detain suspicious people while calling for human assistance. Given that it's a machine it could use a lot of senses humans don't have, go places humans couldn't, and if it was damaged it'd not be such a big deal.
There are lots of potential uses to the technology. Just because some might be bad is no reason not to improve the technology. Like any tool there will be both good and bad uses. I can walk around killing people by hitting them in the head with hammers - that doesn't mean it's a bad thing to have developed hammers.:)
I was tempted at times. Especially since the job of locating and removing non-offical files on the lab computers fell to me. I had a program I wrote and installed that would scrub the systems and send me any unknown files in case someone requested them (say if someone was dumb enough to save their term paper only on a lab computer).. the interesting side effect was the large number of interesting pictures and stories I collected. ICQ users were no doubt the best as students would evidently trade pics with people they knew online. That job didn't pay well and was hard work but it had the best benefits of any job I've ever had.:)
Unfortunately having the key was required for the job as I was constantly roaming the campus installing and fixing computers. They had no other system in place to handle such a need.
They actually had me run ethernet into the showers. I always wondered who was setting up the webcam. It's very distracting to be trying to work when you have naked wet college girls all around you. I think I was the only one embarassed by the situation. Now THAT proves I'm a geek.;)
Yeah, I mostly meant fairly large companies should use their own graphics. Those links all seemed to point to companies that should have the resources for a camera, some lighting equipment, and at least a student/hobbyist photographer.
Most likely you won't buy a new camera and equipment for every photo you take. Most likely you need the equipment anyway as it's not to weird to need to take staff photos, pics of your offices, etc. Besides people do notice if you use sucky stock artwork to much and that can give people the impression your company is being ran out of a locker at a bus terminal. Not that stock art isn't useful.. just don't use it for everything.;)
For photos that would be pretty hard to duplicate on the fly (the Earth from the Moon, a closeup of a huricane hitting Miami) I can see using stock photos but it annoys me when companies are to lazy to snap a photo of a guy standing in front of computers for themselves. How hard would it be to personalize these things just a little? Get a decent camera equipment and somebody who has some idea which end is which and go for it. Even if the photos aren't quite so professional they'd still suck less just because they seem more genuine. For godsakes take a picture of somebody actually using your own product.:)
I usda be a computer tech at a girls school (nice job for a geekboy if you can get it) and they not only gave many of their staff (myself included) a copy of the master key the very first day they began working there.. they also had spares that they'd just leave out for any repair people that came in to fix something. These keys would open anything on campus. Classrooms, server rooms, shower rooms, girls dorms, etc. I can't imagine being that trusting. If the wrong person got ahold of that key they could not only damage or steal property but could rape, kidnap, or kill students. Brilliant security.
Just use a more portable language for scripting? A Lisp dialect would seem appropiate for Spreadsheets but most likely you could use any language you wanted. GNU would push Scheme but Python or Perl would probably be the most popular choices. Hell, this is opensource.. software for geeks by geeks. I'd be surprised if there aren't half a dozen ways to add scripts to spreadsheets in OpenOffice or Gnumeric. If not then request it.. it sounds like just the kind of feature someone would love to add.;)
The easiest solution would probably be to make a worm that enters into each machine, decrypts the files that are accessible, and posts them to say Usenet.;)
Seriously, I wouldn't even let a Windows box access anything on my network that is important. It's so easy to penetrate Windows that most script kiddies can do it easily. From there you can grab any documents, passwords, etc used from that machine. I've proved how easy that is to do to employers before but so far none of them have been willing to change their desktop. Not to bright IMO.. risking their entire business because of a love for Microsoft products. Of course the same people don't understand why they should shell out money for firewalls and such either.
Nope, I'd be happy just to keep our own government from slowly following that same path. I have no problem with people fighting facist countries but it isn't likely to be me doing it. Let the people uprise and do it themselves. Maybe if we weren't supplying weapons and such to their military leaders then those people would have a chance at succeeding. Before you go cleaning other peoples houses it's best to clean your own house first.
On the other hand I'm all for enabling the downtrodden to fight back. Educate them, provide them with food, medicine, shelter, technology, etc. Make them strong and then let them sort it out for themselves. Doing it for them won't leave them with the needed backbone to maintain their new freedoms.
I've used both CodeWeavers's CrossOver and CrossOver Office products and Transgaming's WineX and I have to say that WineX just sucks in usability compared to CrossOver. CrossOver works very well and is easy enough to use that most average users could figure it out. WineX is troublesome to use and seldom lives up to the promises of Transgaming. It does play some games but not enough to be worth hassling with unless your desperate not to use Windows and desperate to play your games. Last time I tried WineX had very bad support for applications - many things that run with normal Wine or CrossOver just didn't work.
So overall I have to say I'd suggest going with CrossOver instead of WineX for anything but games. For games I suggest getting a Playstation.
Sounds like a possible route. I've been considering walking from my current home in the midwest out to the west coast (rather than flying or taking a bus) but am a little unsure if I'd survive walking across the desert and mountains. A day or two I could do easily enough but I'm not sure about carrying enough water and gear to make the entire crossing. I'm sure people have done it often enough but the risk is a bit of a worry. I can walk about 50 miles a day but I'm sure it'd still take me several days to cross that region. Even by car it takes a long time. Last time I went that route it took something like 24 hours to go from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas even.
Myself, I'd suggest building this all into the tax system. Anyone under the median income is garenteed to get some money (a reverse tax) while anyone over the median is garenteed to pay a tax to fund this and other government needs. The poorer you are the more money you get and the richer you are the more you're taxed.. but not so much as to negate the benefit of making more money to begin with. There should be a benefit to working harder, working smarter, etc. The idea is to pull the bottom and the top back towards the middle.. not to put everything back to equality. I'd also consider a trust system by which people could vote for or against each other (using a short circuited approach to minimize sudden leaps/falls) and use the trust level of people to effect what they pay into or get from the program. People who are well trusted will be taxed less (if rich) and given more money to work with (if poor).. with the untrusted of course having the inverse done to them. That way wealthy people that already treat their employees well, give to charity, etc might be taxed less than say those who ran Enron. On the flip side poor people who were seen as beneficial to society.. programmers, artists, people that help in their church, etc might be given more money to help them continue doing such works. Obviosuly it'd need tweaking as real life experience on the matter was gained but that'd be far more sensible than fixed taxes and such because it'd make it useless to inflate prices. Inflating prices would just mean the taxes would scale to match the inflation and it'd annoy consumers making them lower your trust ratings making the taxes higher yet.
Of course to keep the rich from just running to an offshore tax shelter you'd need to create some sort of tax on offshore businesses that don't document their assets in the approved manner of the program. Anyone who doesn't play fair has to pay the highest tax the system offers.
How many immigrants have you known? They do help each other quite often. It's something that many of the rest of us could learn from. I didn't say it wasn't a painful or hard experience to migrate but it's because it is a painful and hard experience that they pull together. Possibly they were closer in their native lands also.. I wouldn't know.. but when they get here they tend to stand together. Of course they are networked.. how else do you explain them having their own sub-cities, their own businneses, etc that are largely by and for people that have immigrated from the same areas.
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Probably. I expect to alternate between that and foodstamps for most of my life. Eventually I'll get smart and move my money out of hightech so I'll stay rich.. become the world leader in pet rock sales I think.
I doubt everybody at MIT is an uberhacker. They're smart but not always geek Gods as portrayed on tv.;)
May as well make them work for it, it's educational. Seriously though, I've known a lot of geeks that were very talented but were horrible at security. They did a poor job securing their own code and even worse at securing servers. I once worked for a company that had a high security vault for their server room but they were so proud of it that they'd take just about anyone on a tour. I kept telling them that it'd only take the right person a few seconds on such a tour to totally defeat the security but they never did listen. That's exactly the sort of thing that can make a strong system fail. Of course as I was saying a lot of geeks just couldn't see it as a risk.. because their minds didn't work that way.
A friend of mine had a nice thing like that happen. The school wouldn't let her in because they said the loan hadn't came through but she couldn't get the loan to go through because the govt agency that gave her the loan said it'd already gone through. So they wouldn't let her in school anymore but still expect her to pay for that loan. A load of bullshit if you ask me. Is no way I'd pay that. I'd let the school and the agency work it out between themselves.
I've cut back my new computers to mini-itx systems which are much smaller and more energy effecient than most computers. I also ripped most my dvd's to these systems so I don't need to carry around the colection of dvd's, a dvd player, or a tv. I'm interested in alternative power so I play some with using solar panels and such to power my computer and lighting etc. I've considered living in a car but am not to keen on paying insurance, upkeep, and gas money. I've considered either resorting to backpacking or maybe getting a good bicycle. I was looking at one of those bikes with electronic boost for hills or when your tired. Maybe strap a lil bike-cart behind that could carry my gear and maybe popup into something like a lil camper to sleep in. I'm still trying to figure out how to get food. Obviouly, I could probably beg for it or steal it but that lacks flare. However, I can't think of anything much I could grow that I could haul with me that way. I've considered next time I get a job I can do offsite that maybe I'll go nomad for a while. I could use my earnings for food and such while cutting down my cost of living a lot.. I'd also get to travel which is one of my favorite things do to.. especially travel by manual means.
I've slept in parks, cars, etc before and never been bothered. I think the key is to not seem like a bum. If you tell everyone your on a field research project they'll treat you much better than if you say your a homeless drifter. It's all in the presentation even if it boils down to the same thing.
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As long as they have less than you have and you have less than the person you stole it from.. then yes it's okay with me. Give til you bleed. Of course it makes more sense to ask people to help you give than to take it by trickery or force. Our society is very corrupt but not so much yet that I think you couldn't lead by your own example in giving. You'll probably be able to give more by example than by force.
But I do think there is a point in society where it becomes right to redistribute wealth by force. The classic Robin Hood tales give us a good idea when that point is.. and we're not there.
I forgot my e-gold logon information anyway and have moved half a dozen times since I used it, changed my email address, etc.. so I doubt I could even get into my own account. ;)
I guess how scary you find it is if your on the giving or receiving end of the problem. I wouldn't have an issue with people doing this sort of thing in a Robin Hood manner but I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. More likely that theifs will get rich and not give the money to the poor and more likely their victims will be the poor or middle class and not the rich.
Just as much a problem is how easy it's become for people to counterfiet money from their home computer. It's a widespread problem amoung young people and with there being fewer legit ways to earn money, with fewer jobs available, I can see it only getting worse. Sure trained people can notice these counterfiets but it's getting harder. Smart counterfieters also print smaller donominations which are unlikely to be checked. Even if all they do is bleach out dollar bills and reprint them as 10's then they are still making money easier than they could just about any other way.
I've worked at quite a few companies that handle important customer data and to be honest not one of them made any effort to protect that data either from employees or crackers. Management doesn't care and if an employee raises an alert (even internally) they are likely to get fired. 300,000 people is nothing. I've had access to millions of people's data. Actually I still do since I know for a fact these companies haven't made any effort to protect the data since I left and I was the one who put what security that does exist into place. I bet most even still use the passwords I placed on the servers.
Even worse is that they would fire, without fair cause, a person that was already underpaid (thus broke) without taking care to finally fix their security. If I was a thief I could be very well off. I'm sure a lot of other IT/programmer types have similar experiences. I'm sure that not all of us are behaving ourselves with the economy the way it is.
I still shop with vendors I know are storing my data but I'm careful with how much I give them. I don't use checks. I don't use credit cards. I do use a debit card but I was careful to get one that couldn't spend more than was actually in my account and I'm careful not to put more into the account than I'm expecting to use right away. That still leaves me open to damage but at least it controls the damage. I buy with cash or COD when it's possible (my last computer came from iDot.com because they allow purchase by COD).
What I read was that it had to be a land vehicle. It specified that there was no size or weight limit. I had the feeling they were saying you could make it really big.. but as they didn't say you couldn't make it small.. then it's allowed. Unless you see a rule I missed (always possible).
So? The lighter something is the less energy it needs to move itself. The only real issues are the minimal weight of things such as sensors and the brains that control the unit. That and basic physics of how light weight you can make it while leaving it strong enough to handle the conditions of crossing the terrain.
:)
Being big doesn't always mean your faster but it might make you tougher.. which may be useful in something such as this.
Who cares if anyone wins? It's the experience points that count.
Could cheat like I sometimes do. Check to see if they are accessing your site using a proxy server and/or through a known proxy network. If not, and demand is high, just print a error with links to information on using caching proxy servers to anyone not already using one. That way everything stays online but your bandwidth doesn't get used nearly as much. :)
To a degree I agree with you. It'd be nice if there was some prize for anybody that finished the course. It's probably to late to design a machine and enter this year but if nobody wins and they do it again maybe I'll try to enter. I was thinking of trying to make the most affordable solution that could really compete (even if not win) and try that. They seem to be thinking of offroad pickup trucks with a few brains thrown in. I'd be more interested in robots that had to weigh under 100lbs and be able to do the same course in the same amount of time. I'm tempted to build some concept machines and try them out. Maybe see if I could get one to cross Zion (in Utah) as that place would be one hell of a test. I don't have a lot of money to spend on such things but it'd still be fun to compete.
So make tools that work best for defense instead of offense. That's actually easier in many ways because you don't have to deal with storing enough power (gasoline, electricity, whatever) for the job and you can worry about specializing to known areas rather than having to deal with a wide varity of possible areas.
:)
Perhaps make an anti-terrorism robot that patrols cities intelligently on it's own with the ability to record and detain suspicious people while calling for human assistance. Given that it's a machine it could use a lot of senses humans don't have, go places humans couldn't, and if it was damaged it'd not be such a big deal.
There are lots of potential uses to the technology. Just because some might be bad is no reason not to improve the technology. Like any tool there will be both good and bad uses. I can walk around killing people by hitting them in the head with hammers - that doesn't mean it's a bad thing to have developed hammers.
I was tempted at times. Especially since the job of locating and removing non-offical files on the lab computers fell to me. I had a program I wrote and installed that would scrub the systems and send me any unknown files in case someone requested them (say if someone was dumb enough to save their term paper only on a lab computer).. the interesting side effect was the large number of interesting pictures and stories I collected. ICQ users were no doubt the best as students would evidently trade pics with people they knew online. That job didn't pay well and was hard work but it had the best benefits of any job I've ever had. :)
Unfortunately having the key was required for the job as I was constantly roaming the campus installing and fixing computers. They had no other system in place to handle such a need.
;)
They actually had me run ethernet into the showers. I always wondered who was setting up the webcam. It's very distracting to be trying to work when you have naked wet college girls all around you. I think I was the only one embarassed by the situation. Now THAT proves I'm a geek.
Yeah, I mostly meant fairly large companies should use their own graphics. Those links all seemed to point to companies that should have the resources for a camera, some lighting equipment, and at least a student/hobbyist photographer.
Most likely you won't buy a new camera and equipment for every photo you take. Most likely you need the equipment anyway as it's not to weird to need to take staff photos, pics of your offices, etc. Besides people do notice if you use sucky stock artwork to much and that can give people the impression your company is being ran out of a locker at a bus terminal. Not that stock art isn't useful.. just don't use it for everything. ;)
For photos that would be pretty hard to duplicate on the fly (the Earth from the Moon, a closeup of a huricane hitting Miami) I can see using stock photos but it annoys me when companies are to lazy to snap a photo of a guy standing in front of computers for themselves. How hard would it be to personalize these things just a little? Get a decent camera equipment and somebody who has some idea which end is which and go for it. Even if the photos aren't quite so professional they'd still suck less just because they seem more genuine. For godsakes take a picture of somebody actually using your own product. :)
I usda be a computer tech at a girls school (nice job for a geekboy if you can get it) and they not only gave many of their staff (myself included) a copy of the master key the very first day they began working there.. they also had spares that they'd just leave out for any repair people that came in to fix something. These keys would open anything on campus. Classrooms, server rooms, shower rooms, girls dorms, etc. I can't imagine being that trusting. If the wrong person got ahold of that key they could not only damage or steal property but could rape, kidnap, or kill students. Brilliant security.
Just use a more portable language for scripting? A Lisp dialect would seem appropiate for Spreadsheets but most likely you could use any language you wanted. GNU would push Scheme but Python or Perl would probably be the most popular choices. Hell, this is opensource.. software for geeks by geeks. I'd be surprised if there aren't half a dozen ways to add scripts to spreadsheets in OpenOffice or Gnumeric. If not then request it.. it sounds like just the kind of feature someone would love to add. ;)
The easiest solution would probably be to make a worm that enters into each machine, decrypts the files that are accessible, and posts them to say Usenet. ;)
Seriously, I wouldn't even let a Windows box access anything on my network that is important. It's so easy to penetrate Windows that most script kiddies can do it easily. From there you can grab any documents, passwords, etc used from that machine. I've proved how easy that is to do to employers before but so far none of them have been willing to change their desktop. Not to bright IMO.. risking their entire business because of a love for Microsoft products. Of course the same people don't understand why they should shell out money for firewalls and such either.
Nope, I'd be happy just to keep our own government from slowly following that same path. I have no problem with people fighting facist countries but it isn't likely to be me doing it. Let the people uprise and do it themselves. Maybe if we weren't supplying weapons and such to their military leaders then those people would have a chance at succeeding. Before you go cleaning other peoples houses it's best to clean your own house first.
On the other hand I'm all for enabling the downtrodden to fight back. Educate them, provide them with food, medicine, shelter, technology, etc. Make them strong and then let them sort it out for themselves. Doing it for them won't leave them with the needed backbone to maintain their new freedoms.
I've used both CodeWeavers's CrossOver and CrossOver Office products and Transgaming's WineX and I have to say that WineX just sucks in usability compared to CrossOver. CrossOver works very well and is easy enough to use that most average users could figure it out. WineX is troublesome to use and seldom lives up to the promises of Transgaming. It does play some games but not enough to be worth hassling with unless your desperate not to use Windows and desperate to play your games. Last time I tried WineX had very bad support for applications - many things that run with normal Wine or CrossOver just didn't work.
So overall I have to say I'd suggest going with CrossOver instead of WineX for anything but games. For games I suggest getting a Playstation.
Sounds like a possible route. I've been considering walking from my current home in the midwest out to the west coast (rather than flying or taking a bus) but am a little unsure if I'd survive walking across the desert and mountains. A day or two I could do easily enough but I'm not sure about carrying enough water and gear to make the entire crossing. I'm sure people have done it often enough but the risk is a bit of a worry. I can walk about 50 miles a day but I'm sure it'd still take me several days to cross that region. Even by car it takes a long time. Last time I went that route it took something like 24 hours to go from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas even.
Myself, I'd suggest building this all into the tax system. Anyone under the median income is garenteed to get some money (a reverse tax) while anyone over the median is garenteed to pay a tax to fund this and other government needs. The poorer you are the more money you get and the richer you are the more you're taxed.. but not so much as to negate the benefit of making more money to begin with. There should be a benefit to working harder, working smarter, etc. The idea is to pull the bottom and the top back towards the middle.. not to put everything back to equality. I'd also consider a trust system by which people could vote for or against each other (using a short circuited approach to minimize sudden leaps/falls) and use the trust level of people to effect what they pay into or get from the program. People who are well trusted will be taxed less (if rich) and given more money to work with (if poor).. with the untrusted of course having the inverse done to them. That way wealthy people that already treat their employees well, give to charity, etc might be taxed less than say those who ran Enron. On the flip side poor people who were seen as beneficial to society.. programmers, artists, people that help in their church, etc might be given more money to help them continue doing such works. Obviosuly it'd need tweaking as real life experience on the matter was gained but that'd be far more sensible than fixed taxes and such because it'd make it useless to inflate prices. Inflating prices would just mean the taxes would scale to match the inflation and it'd annoy consumers making them lower your trust ratings making the taxes higher yet.
Of course to keep the rich from just running to an offshore tax shelter you'd need to create some sort of tax on offshore businesses that don't document their assets in the approved manner of the program. Anyone who doesn't play fair has to pay the highest tax the system offers.
How many immigrants have you known? They do help each other quite often. It's something that many of the rest of us could learn from. I didn't say it wasn't a painful or hard experience to migrate but it's because it is a painful and hard experience that they pull together. Possibly they were closer in their native lands also.. I wouldn't know.. but when they get here they tend to stand together. Of course they are networked.. how else do you explain them having their own sub-cities, their own businneses, etc that are largely by and for people that have immigrated from the same areas.
Probably. I expect to alternate between that and foodstamps for most of my life. Eventually I'll get smart and move my money out of hightech so I'll stay rich.. become the world leader in pet rock sales I think.
I doubt everybody at MIT is an uberhacker. They're smart but not always geek Gods as portrayed on tv. ;)
May as well make them work for it, it's educational. Seriously though, I've known a lot of geeks that were very talented but were horrible at security. They did a poor job securing their own code and even worse at securing servers. I once worked for a company that had a high security vault for their server room but they were so proud of it that they'd take just about anyone on a tour. I kept telling them that it'd only take the right person a few seconds on such a tour to totally defeat the security but they never did listen. That's exactly the sort of thing that can make a strong system fail. Of course as I was saying a lot of geeks just couldn't see it as a risk.. because their minds didn't work that way.
A friend of mine had a nice thing like that happen. The school wouldn't let her in because they said the loan hadn't came through but she couldn't get the loan to go through because the govt agency that gave her the loan said it'd already gone through. So they wouldn't let her in school anymore but still expect her to pay for that loan. A load of bullshit if you ask me. Is no way I'd pay that. I'd let the school and the agency work it out between themselves.
I've cut back my new computers to mini-itx systems which are much smaller and more energy effecient than most computers. I also ripped most my dvd's to these systems so I don't need to carry around the colection of dvd's, a dvd player, or a tv. I'm interested in alternative power so I play some with using solar panels and such to power my computer and lighting etc. I've considered living in a car but am not to keen on paying insurance, upkeep, and gas money. I've considered either resorting to backpacking or maybe getting a good bicycle. I was looking at one of those bikes with electronic boost for hills or when your tired. Maybe strap a lil bike-cart behind that could carry my gear and maybe popup into something like a lil camper to sleep in. I'm still trying to figure out how to get food. Obviouly, I could probably beg for it or steal it but that lacks flare. However, I can't think of anything much I could grow that I could haul with me that way. I've considered next time I get a job I can do offsite that maybe I'll go nomad for a while. I could use my earnings for food and such while cutting down my cost of living a lot.. I'd also get to travel which is one of my favorite things do to.. especially travel by manual means.
I've slept in parks, cars, etc before and never been bothered. I think the key is to not seem like a bum. If you tell everyone your on a field research project they'll treat you much better than if you say your a homeless drifter. It's all in the presentation even if it boils down to the same thing.