When this guy does his dive, I really hope whatever hits the air first is well insulated. The air density may be low, and the temperature won't be terribly high at M1.4, but any part of his body generating a shock wave is going to heat up to some extent. I'm sure that's been taken care of, but it could be rather uncomfortable for, say, fingertips..
I know how to prevent it - block PUT method access in your httpd.conf file. BIG DEAL.
Yeah, it's not easy to fix, but how many "webmasters" out there are that competent? If it's not a checkbox option in FP2K, a lot of them don't think to look at it..
I have to say I have seen few things easier to set up than Apache's httpd.conf, so it doesn't hurt to go take a look at the file. Oh, you're not using Apache, you're using IIS? Maybe this article *was* for you after all..;-)
In a position paper released in November, the Mobile and Personnel Communications Committee of the RABC said, in part, "Denial of service of (especially emergency service) may have legal repercussions on the service providers, Industry Canada, the jammed provider and the public venue operator (concert hall etc.) where some perceived harm or loss has occurred, particularly in situations where lives could have been or were lost."
As much as I would enjoy seeing the obnoxious guy in the cinema get an earful of +20dB static, this could have some extremely bad spinoffs.
Say someone's having a heart attack or an anaphylactic shock episode in the theater, and their SO is trying to call 911 to get EMS to save their life. Oops -- can't do that, sorry..
Or, say someone with a (gasp) *illegal* jammer decides to block cellphone calls, say, to facilitate a robbery. Robbery victim dials 911 and continues to hit SND-END-RCL-SND- until knocked unconscious or shot.
I could go on.
Here's a better idea: If you want to control cellphone use in your venue, don't indiscriminately block all cellphone access. Make the arena reasonably RF tight and set up microcell transceivers on the ceiling that accept emergency calls and reject all others. (Design of these things is left up to enterprising developers, but it is possible..) Presto -- no lawsuits, no interference with other services, and the best part is, when someone *does* call 911, they don't have to backtrace to the nearest tower, they know exactly where you are and can find you RFN.;-)
Are other giant theme park operators really free to create new versions of Disney World, whose synergistic marketing "tie-ins" would seem to a non-tech layperson to dwarf the alleged linkage between IE and Windows?
Um.. may not be a good idea to go there.;-) Disney is not easy to wake up, but when they wake up, they do make MS look pretty tame by comparison. Draco dormiens non titillandum..
Just imagine the possibilities for "deliberate* file trapping though. Set up a honeypot machine that looks like it's being run by a clueless user who doesn't know a share is set up on it.
But the share copies to a non-public directory and logs the transfer including source IP address, resolved rDNS address, and timestamp. Present that to the hapless cracker's ISP as evidence they've violated their TOS and watch their account evaporate.. not only that, but you get to keep the files. Hey, if a burglar breaks in and gets chased off by your dog, you get to keep his tools, right?;-)
.. you deserve whatever you get. Sorry, but I agree that leaving the door unlocked is an open invitation to this behavior.
Yes, I know, it's unethical, rude, thoughtless, and selfish of people to use your open public share as a cache for things they don't want to store on their own drives, but allowing public write access to *any* directory on a machine you own and/or "administer" is about as smart as running your HTTP server as root and passing URL text to the shell. If you don't understand why either of these are bad.. well, you shouldn't be setting up any public shares. Sorry, but the presence of ethically challenged k1dd13s out there is a known issue with Internet connected machines. No sympathy here.
1) Nazi Germany (the Hitlerjugend and BDM).
2) Cambodia under Pol Pot.
Neither one is a form of government I would want to see here, in any way, shape, or form..
It boils down to what you NEED. Computers are nothing more than tools that do a job. If you current computer does everything that you bought it for, then use it. If it doesn't, maybe you should use a different OS until your current OS supports the features that fit YOUR NEEDS. Personally, I've been using Macs since about 92. I have NEVER thought to myself, "Crap, I need to use Windows to do this" MacOS fits my needs. It may or may not fit yours.
Same here, though I've been using Macs since 83, and have used every model and OS version since System 1.0 on a 128K Classic.;-) Personally, Mac OS 7.6.1 and ClarisWorks 2.0 are all I've ever really needed to do what I need to to with a computer. I'd like a dual G4 running OS X in a dual boot with its own 9.0.4 for Classic and 9.1 on the OS 9 partition, but I don't need that much power to do word processing or the simple graphics I need to do. WinXX is not enough of the right kinds of functionality to be a serious system for me, and too much of the stuff I don't want to be worth hassling with.. there are a few ham radio apps like DigiPan that won't run on a Mac, but I'm not heartbroken that I can't use them..
While it will probably never be used to actually move the earth, the same techniques could be used to move things (spacecraft, asteroids for raw materials, etc..) without vast expendature of fuel as is currently done, where much of what we do is the brute force method. I read a paper that described how to get a spacecraft to the moon using less energy than a homan transfer (the most efficient way we currently change orbits). The method used the fact the earth, sun, moon system is a chaotic 3 body system. The drawback was that it took years to get the spacecraft to the moon.
I think a more useful trick would be to exploit a cislunar trajectory to get a boost out of the moon's mass and kinetic energy. The moon has no atmosphere, so you can get away with a very close approach that would add a significant amount of energy to a spacecraft passing it from down-orbit.
Apollo used a translunar trajectory to get the exact opposite effect -- extracting just enough energy to produce a free return to earth -- but a cislunar pass would probably kick the spacecraft into a solar orbit. If you tune the approach just right, you can get an almost free interplanetary boost and maybe even make a Mars transfer.. something to think about..
Another interesting little tidbit:
Microsoft ran into a similar spam-related problem three years ago when it tried to block unwanted e-mails by filtering out incoming messages from Outlock 98 that contained certain phrases or grammar, such as a string of exclamation points or the words "for free." As a result, many people found that they never received messages from friends who were fond of multiple punctuation marks.
Could have told them that wasn't going to work.. almost wish I could have gotten paid for a consulting report on that one.;-) I have friends who when they get pissed off enough tend to string together lots of exclamation points, and other friends who would probably hit on keywords pretty frequently. Then again, we know from the ongoing censorware saga that filtering by content is worse than useless..
This does explain a lot, though, about why a certain listserver a guy up in Dallas administers had to migrate its whole list to eGroups because Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL were almost always IP blocking, or rejecting messages over a certain recipient per hour quota, or any number of other forms of useless bullshit. Before he gave up in disgust, he was getting complaints about 2-3x/day about posts either not getting to list members or not appearing on the list at all, and guess which providers *all* these members were from? Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL. Sigh..
OK, so now we *know* they're deliberately dropping stuff in the bit bucket because they don't like where it's going. What's next, filtering to/dev/null because of content they don't like?
Too bad this honest CEO must be ruined by his obsession with one-button mice./sarcasm>
Ah, but you misunderstand, grasshopper. The Mac mouse only has one *physical* mouse button, but the mouse button can be modified with the keyboard modifier keys, of which there are four (shift, control, option, and command), which means the Mac mouse has 16 *logical* mouse buttons, each with its own function. (Confusing, and not many developers use it much, but the functionality is there.;-)
You doubt? Try command+option+drag sometime in the Finder and see what happens.;-)
Too bad this honest CEO must be ruined by his obession with one-button mice./sarcasm>
Ah, you misunderstand, grasshopper. The Mac's mouse button can be modified by the keyboard modifier keys -- Control, Option, Command, and Shift. (Not many developers use this functionality, but I promise you it's there.) These keys can be used in all 16 possible binary combinations (2**4, including all off) which means the Mac mouse, logically, has *16* buttons.;-)
Now, making use of all 16 combinations could make the UI a bit confusing, of course, but the capability is still there..
But it's damn hard, cause people are like: "But it won't run Windows" and you suddenly realise you could just unload a PC on these people and sell two more in the time it takes to get over the sales resistance on the Mac and actually make a living.
Well, it may be fine for you as a salesperson, but what does the customer do about the typical "taillight warranty" on PC's? At least with a Mac, Apple makes the OS and hardware, and you get reasonable support for both.
Oh, and by the way, with a little third party software, Macs *will* run Windows. Well enough to do anything I need to do, at least..
That buying a Mac at CompUSA and Sears et al. is an exercise in futility and frustration. If you go to a car dealership, they don't steer you away from the model you ask for to show you another brand and try to bullshit you while they do it.
Hey, that's half the fun of shopping at Sears.;-) I hardly let a trip to the store go by where I don't get some hapless sales person to try and sell me a computer. It's fun watching them try to steer me away from their iMacs and iBooks over to the PC aisle, especially when they realize I'm not going there. Then again, I'm cruel and heartless in large department stores, and I'm more clueful than the average customer. The best enjoyment of all comes when they finally wake up and realize that..
2000 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Total National Aeronautics and Space Administration
13,602,000,000
Mind you, this is not as bad as it gets. This 13,602,000,000 is the annual allocation; it costs NASA something like 270,000,000 to launch one STS mission, and that's for a typical mission. Now that ISS (or at least some of it) is in orbit, a lot of that budget is going to go toward keeping it in orbit, maintained, fueled, powered, and populated, and they have to seriously stretch the capabilities of the STS spacecraft for some of these construction flights.
We are definitely losing out on some missions that should really be looked at seriously at this point, one of which (manned Mars mission) was promised by the elder George Bush in a pale imitation of JFK's "land a man on the moon" speech. We haven't landed humans on Mars yet. We haven't even landed humans on the Moon in the last 28 years, thanks to a major funding cut by Congress in 1971 -- if NASA had a budget of 279,924,000,000, we could do both. Come on, folks, it's time.
I can't say I was a prodigy or even gifted when I was that age, but I was definitely drawn to some exotic interests and was pretty far ahead of most kids my age (how far ahead, and how they reacted to it, is another story..) and I can tell you one thing for sure: There is nothing more irritating to a child that's ahead of the curve than adults trying to steer your development.
I know, I know, we all want what's best for the child, and we want the child to have the best possible opportunities and so and so forth. Fact is, the best thing is to hold off on trying to cram information you think is important into the kid. Odds are he/she is *already* better equipped to figure out what to explore than you are, and will be attracted to the things he/she has an aptitude for. I know this was true in spades for me, and if I had had the chance to break into the bleeding edge stuff on my own back when I originally had the desire, which was around the time I was 9-10 years old.. well, I'd probably have been a.com and be traded on Nasdaq about now. I let the grownups talk me out of it and convince me to stay on the class's level, and ended up where I am today. Suffice it to say you haven't heard of me.
Moral? Don't try to lead -- follow the child and hang on for the ride..;-)
Actually, that's kind of the way that it's supposed to work now. You know, the listener supported thing.... You send them some money then they don't have to advertise for used cars everybody wins?
Well, yeah, there's that, but I don't mind that so much.;-) I was thinking more of having to swipe my Visa card in my own car to listen to *anything* on the radio.. something about that just seems wrong..
I know, about as likely as getting struck by lightning for most people, but if there's some danger, what's to keep you from swapping out keyboards every once in a while, or cleaning out all your drivers and reinstalling only the ones you know you need, or putting a device in between the computer and keyboard that only allows certain types of communication between them?
I guess there's a question of level of sophistication involved. I know on both the Macs I use I would be very suspicious if strange new extensions just appeared in my system folder, or random bits of innocuous looking hardware just appeared at my ADB or USB port connection -- I'm certain anyone who's familiar with their Registry contents would be equally concerned if new keys started showing up in there. So maybe we should all just get very familiar with our machines and keep an eye out for stuff we didn't install?
Obviously, if anyone notices anything like this, it would be worth it to make a trip to a randomly selected library to drop a quick message here..;-)
So take advantage of it. While nothing but your OS is open, take the opportunity to type out messages to the FBI detailing how you feel about their bugging your keyboard. If they are, they will log that along with everything else, and if it all ends up in court, it will get read from the log.;-)
Did anyone else notice the comment about paying for the programming that slipped out near the end of the article? They didn't say much about it, but it seems like that's their goal. If I have to pay to listen to NPR while I drive, heck with it, I'm keeping the CD player, forget about the satellite..
Not like we'll have much choice after the technology is rolled out, though. If they are planning to make it a revenue business, we can probably count on the satellite radio being built into every new car to hit the road, and I can hear the showroom sales pitch already.. just TRY to get them to put in an ordinary FM stereo or (gasp) let you install your own..
The fact remains though that amateur radio operators do not need all of these frequency ranges that have been "allocated" for their use.
What else would you do with the bandwidth amateurs are currently using? (Which, contrary to the impression you make, isn't much, especially during the busiest times of day.) Add a few more cellphone station channels? Set up a few more wireless T1 equivalents? Cram one more LEO satellite into the system so a few more people can chatter on mobile phones out in the country?
I'm not going to argue with you about monetary value, because it's beside the point. The whole idea behind having amateur allocations in the RF spectrum is that amateurs are constantly developing new equipment and techniques, spinoffs from which are constantly finding commercial applications. Cut that off and you bring most radio-based development to a halt sooner or later, like it or not.
Look, these spectrum allocations are YOURS. You may need an FCC license to use them, but stop complaining and go out and pay the 6 bucks and get licensed, at least as a Technician, and start getting some benefit out of public resources that BELONG TO YOU, at least until you give them away. Don't wait until they're gone to complain about how much you wish you'd gotten involved, just jump in and do it and enjoy it now -- if enough people do, guess what? Ham radio usage won't drop, it will rise, and you'll be part of a noble enterprise in the bargain. Consider the gauntlet thrown.. this goes for everybody here..
That said, if you can find the ham, he/she would probably be very happy to lend you a hand in helping stamp out the worst of the problem. As a favour, not because it's required.
Absolutely! Go knock on his door and let him know -- NICELY -- what issues you're having and see if he can help you get them resolved. The people to complain to are the manufacturers of your equipment, which is not supposed to be susceptible to these signals..
One readers comments stated that he was convicted by a randomly chosen jury of morons? How many jury summons have we, as geeks, tried to avoid?
I actually served on a jury about a month ago, and for once didn't get kicked out on one of the peremptory challenges.;-) Not only did I serve, but all but one of the other jurors were either tech support or computer hardware engineers (yeah, this is Austin..) and I'd have to say we made about the best jury they could have hoped for.
Why? Well, consider what skills tech support requires -- the ability to get past witnesses' perceptions and look analytically at the issues behind them, the ability to absorb, analyze, and synthesize an understanding of the situation, and lots of patience in dealing with people who are more or less clueless. What better kind of juror could you possibly want? The deliberations did get a little animated (both counsels said they could hear us through the wall..;-) but I have to say they probably got the most fair judgment they could have asked for.
Besides, it was fun, and a judge was really nice to me for once.
So next time you get a summons, think of it as an opportunity -- and let the personal injury trial lawyers quiver in their boots..
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When this guy does his dive, I really hope whatever hits the air first is well insulated. The air density may be low, and the temperature won't be terribly high at M1.4, but any part of his body generating a shock wave is going to heat up to some extent. I'm sure that's been taken care of, but it could be rather uncomfortable for, say, fingertips ..
I know how to prevent it - block PUT method access in your httpd.conf file. BIG DEAL.
..
.. ;-)
Yeah, it's not easy to fix, but how many "webmasters" out there are that competent? If it's not a checkbox option in FP2K, a lot of them don't think to look at it
I have to say I have seen few things easier to set up than Apache's httpd.conf, so it doesn't hurt to go take a look at the file. Oh, you're not using Apache, you're using IIS? Maybe this article *was* for you after all
In a position paper released in November, the Mobile and Personnel Communications Committee of the RABC said, in part, "Denial of service of (especially emergency service) may have legal repercussions on the service providers, Industry Canada, the jammed provider and the public venue operator (concert hall etc.) where some perceived harm or loss has occurred, particularly in situations where lives could have been or were lost."
..
;-)
As much as I would enjoy seeing the obnoxious guy in the cinema get an earful of +20dB static, this could have some extremely bad spinoffs.
Say someone's having a heart attack or an anaphylactic shock episode in the theater, and their SO is trying to call 911 to get EMS to save their life. Oops -- can't do that, sorry
Or, say someone with a (gasp) *illegal* jammer decides to block cellphone calls, say, to facilitate a robbery. Robbery victim dials 911 and continues to hit SND-END-RCL-SND- until knocked unconscious or shot.
I could go on.
Here's a better idea: If you want to control cellphone use in your venue, don't indiscriminately block all cellphone access. Make the arena reasonably RF tight and set up microcell transceivers on the ceiling that accept emergency calls and reject all others. (Design of these things is left up to enterprising developers, but it is possible..) Presto -- no lawsuits, no interference with other services, and the best part is, when someone *does* call 911, they don't have to backtrace to the nearest tower, they know exactly where you are and can find you RFN.
Any takers?
Are other giant theme park operators really free to create new versions of Disney World, whose synergistic marketing "tie-ins" would seem to a non-tech layperson to dwarf the alleged linkage between IE and Windows?
.. may not be a good idea to go there. ;-) Disney is not easy to wake up, but when they wake up, they do make MS look pretty tame by comparison. Draco dormiens non titillandum ..
Um
Just imagine the possibilities for "deliberate* file trapping though. Set up a honeypot machine that looks like it's being run by a clueless user who doesn't know a share is set up on it.
.. not only that, but you get to keep the files. Hey, if a burglar breaks in and gets chased off by your dog, you get to keep his tools, right? ;-)
But the share copies to a non-public directory and logs the transfer including source IP address, resolved rDNS address, and timestamp. Present that to the hapless cracker's ISP as evidence they've violated their TOS and watch their account evaporate
.. you deserve whatever you get. Sorry, but I agree that leaving the door unlocked is an open invitation to this behavior.
.. well, you shouldn't be setting up any public shares. Sorry, but the presence of ethically challenged k1dd13s out there is a known issue with Internet connected machines. No sympathy here.
Yes, I know, it's unethical, rude, thoughtless, and selfish of people to use your open public share as a cache for things they don't want to store on their own drives, but allowing public write access to *any* directory on a machine you own and/or "administer" is about as smart as running your HTTP server as root and passing URL text to the shell. If you don't understand why either of these are bad
1) Nazi Germany (the Hitlerjugend and BDM). 2) Cambodia under Pol Pot. Neither one is a form of government I would want to see here, in any way, shape, or form ..
It boils down to what you NEED. Computers are nothing more than tools that do a job. If you current computer does everything that you bought it for, then use it. If it doesn't, maybe you should use a different OS until your current OS supports the features that fit YOUR NEEDS. Personally, I've been using Macs since about 92. I have NEVER thought to myself, "Crap, I need to use Windows to do this" MacOS fits my needs. It may or may not fit yours.
;-) Personally, Mac OS 7.6.1 and ClarisWorks 2.0 are all I've ever really needed to do what I need to to with a computer. I'd like a dual G4 running OS X in a dual boot with its own 9.0.4 for Classic and 9.1 on the OS 9 partition, but I don't need that much power to do word processing or the simple graphics I need to do. WinXX is not enough of the right kinds of functionality to be a serious system for me, and too much of the stuff I don't want to be worth hassling with .. there are a few ham radio apps like DigiPan that won't run on a Mac, but I'm not heartbroken that I can't use them ..
Same here, though I've been using Macs since 83, and have used every model and OS version since System 1.0 on a 128K Classic.
While it will probably never be used to actually move the earth, the same techniques could be used to move things (spacecraft, asteroids for raw materials, etc..) without vast expendature of fuel as is currently done, where much of what we do is the brute force method. I read a paper that described how to get a spacecraft to the moon using less energy than a homan transfer (the most efficient way we currently change orbits). The method used the fact the earth, sun, moon system is a chaotic 3 body system. The drawback was that it took years to get the spacecraft to the moon.
.. something to think about ..
I think a more useful trick would be to exploit a cislunar trajectory to get a boost out of the moon's mass and kinetic energy. The moon has no atmosphere, so you can get away with a very close approach that would add a significant amount of energy to a spacecraft passing it from down-orbit.
Apollo used a translunar trajectory to get the exact opposite effect -- extracting just enough energy to produce a free return to earth -- but a cislunar pass would probably kick the spacecraft into a solar orbit. If you tune the approach just right, you can get an almost free interplanetary boost and maybe even make a Mars transfer
Another interesting little tidbit: Microsoft ran into a similar spam-related problem three years ago when it tried to block unwanted e-mails by filtering out incoming messages from Outlock 98 that contained certain phrases or grammar, such as a string of exclamation points or the words "for free." As a result, many people found that they never received messages from friends who were fond of multiple punctuation marks. Could have told them that wasn't going to work .. almost wish I could have gotten paid for a consulting report on that one. ;-) I have friends who when they get pissed off enough tend to string together lots of exclamation points, and other friends who would probably hit on keywords pretty frequently. Then again, we know from the ongoing censorware saga that filtering by content is worse than useless ..
..
/dev/null because of content they don't like?
This does explain a lot, though, about why a certain listserver a guy up in Dallas administers had to migrate its whole list to eGroups because Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL were almost always IP blocking, or rejecting messages over a certain recipient per hour quota, or any number of other forms of useless bullshit. Before he gave up in disgust, he was getting complaints about 2-3x/day about posts either not getting to list members or not appearing on the list at all, and guess which providers *all* these members were from? Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL. Sigh
OK, so now we *know* they're deliberately dropping stuff in the bit bucket because they don't like where it's going. What's next, filtering to
Too bad this honest CEO must be ruined by his obsession with one-button mice. /sarcasm>
;-)
;-)
Ah, but you misunderstand, grasshopper. The Mac mouse only has one *physical* mouse button, but the mouse button can be modified with the keyboard modifier keys, of which there are four (shift, control, option, and command), which means the Mac mouse has 16 *logical* mouse buttons, each with its own function. (Confusing, and not many developers use it much, but the functionality is there.
You doubt? Try command+option+drag sometime in the Finder and see what happens.
Too bad this honest CEO must be ruined by his obession with one-button mice. /sarcasm>
;-)
..
Ah, you misunderstand, grasshopper. The Mac's mouse button can be modified by the keyboard modifier keys -- Control, Option, Command, and Shift. (Not many developers use this functionality, but I promise you it's there.) These keys can be used in all 16 possible binary combinations (2**4, including all off) which means the Mac mouse, logically, has *16* buttons.
Now, making use of all 16 combinations could make the UI a bit confusing, of course, but the capability is still there
But it's damn hard, cause people are like: "But it won't run Windows" and you suddenly realise you could just unload a PC on these people and sell two more in the time it takes to get over the sales resistance on the Mac and actually make a living.
..
Well, it may be fine for you as a salesperson, but what does the customer do about the typical "taillight warranty" on PC's? At least with a Mac, Apple makes the OS and hardware, and you get reasonable support for both.
Oh, and by the way, with a little third party software, Macs *will* run Windows. Well enough to do anything I need to do, at least
That buying a Mac at CompUSA and Sears et al. is an exercise in futility and frustration. If you go to a car dealership, they don't steer you away from the model you ask for to show you another brand and try to bullshit you while they do it.
;-) I hardly let a trip to the store go by where I don't get some hapless sales person to try and sell me a computer. It's fun watching them try to steer me away from their iMacs and iBooks over to the PC aisle, especially when they realize I'm not going there. Then again, I'm cruel and heartless in large department stores, and I'm more clueful than the average customer. The best enjoyment of all comes when they finally wake up and realize that ..
Hey, that's half the fun of shopping at Sears.
2000 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Total National Aeronautics and Space Administration
13,602,000,000
Mind you, this is not as bad as it gets. This 13,602,000,000 is the annual allocation; it costs NASA something like 270,000,000 to launch one STS mission, and that's for a typical mission. Now that ISS (or at least some of it) is in orbit, a lot of that budget is going to go toward keeping it in orbit, maintained, fueled, powered, and populated, and they have to seriously stretch the capabilities of the STS spacecraft for some of these construction flights.
We are definitely losing out on some missions that should really be looked at seriously at this point, one of which (manned Mars mission) was promised by the elder George Bush in a pale imitation of JFK's "land a man on the moon" speech. We haven't landed humans on Mars yet. We haven't even landed humans on the Moon in the last 28 years, thanks to a major funding cut by Congress in 1971 -- if NASA had a budget of 279,924,000,000, we could do both. Come on, folks, it's time.
I can't say I was a prodigy or even gifted when I was that age, but I was definitely drawn to some exotic interests and was pretty far ahead of most kids my age (how far ahead, and how they reacted to it, is another story..) and I can tell you one thing for sure: There is nothing more irritating to a child that's ahead of the curve than adults trying to steer your development.
.. well, I'd probably have been a .com and be traded on Nasdaq about now. I let the grownups talk me out of it and convince me to stay on the class's level, and ended up where I am today. Suffice it to say you haven't heard of me.
.. ;-)
I know, I know, we all want what's best for the child, and we want the child to have the best possible opportunities and so and so forth. Fact is, the best thing is to hold off on trying to cram information you think is important into the kid. Odds are he/she is *already* better equipped to figure out what to explore than you are, and will be attracted to the things he/she has an aptitude for. I know this was true in spades for me, and if I had had the chance to break into the bleeding edge stuff on my own back when I originally had the desire, which was around the time I was 9-10 years old
Moral? Don't try to lead -- follow the child and hang on for the ride
.. if only it was a USB mouse. This one even appears to have the old DB-9 connector -- they couldn't even make it a mini-DIN ..
I know, about as likely as getting struck by lightning for most people, but if there's some danger, what's to keep you from swapping out keyboards every once in a while, or cleaning out all your drivers and reinstalling only the ones you know you need, or putting a device in between the computer and keyboard that only allows certain types of communication between them?
.. ;-)
I guess there's a question of level of sophistication involved. I know on both the Macs I use I would be very suspicious if strange new extensions just appeared in my system folder, or random bits of innocuous looking hardware just appeared at my ADB or USB port connection -- I'm certain anyone who's familiar with their Registry contents would be equally concerned if new keys started showing up in there. So maybe we should all just get very familiar with our machines and keep an eye out for stuff we didn't install?
Obviously, if anyone notices anything like this, it would be worth it to make a trip to a randomly selected library to drop a quick message here
So take advantage of it. While nothing but your OS is open, take the opportunity to type out messages to the FBI detailing how you feel about their bugging your keyboard. If they are, they will log that along with everything else, and if it all ends up in court, it will get read from the log. ;-)
..
This works in Windows or Mac OS
HER: No, that's burgundy. Forget it. Just give me my cream sweater instead.
;-) At least it isn't titanium white ..
She doesn't want ecru, or eggshell, or putty?
Did anyone else notice the comment about paying for the programming that slipped out near the end of the article? They didn't say much about it, but it seems like that's their goal. If I have to pay to listen to NPR while I drive, heck with it, I'm keeping the CD player, forget about the satellite ..
.. just TRY to get them to put in an ordinary FM stereo or (gasp) let you install your own ..
Not like we'll have much choice after the technology is rolled out, though. If they are planning to make it a revenue business, we can probably count on the satellite radio being built into every new car to hit the road, and I can hear the showroom sales pitch already
I'm not going to argue with you about monetary value, because it's beside the point. The whole idea behind having amateur allocations in the RF spectrum is that amateurs are constantly developing new equipment and techniques, spinoffs from which are constantly finding commercial applications. Cut that off and you bring most radio-based development to a halt sooner or later, like it or not.
Look, these spectrum allocations are YOURS. You may need an FCC license to use them, but stop complaining and go out and pay the 6 bucks and get licensed, at least as a Technician, and start getting some benefit out of public resources that BELONG TO YOU, at least until you give them away. Don't wait until they're gone to complain about how much you wish you'd gotten involved, just jump in and do it and enjoy it now -- if enough people do, guess what? Ham radio usage won't drop, it will rise, and you'll be part of a noble enterprise in the bargain. Consider the gauntlet thrown
Why? Well, consider what skills tech support requires -- the ability to get past witnesses' perceptions and look analytically at the issues behind them, the ability to absorb, analyze, and synthesize an understanding of the situation, and lots of patience in dealing with people who are more or less clueless. What better kind of juror could you possibly want? The deliberations did get a little animated (both counsels said they could hear us through the wall..
Besides, it was fun, and a judge was really nice to me for once.
So next time you get a summons, think of it as an opportunity -- and let the personal injury trial lawyers quiver in their boots