We pay to get connected (DSL, ISP, etc...). And we also pay for the huge gov't supercomputers, backbones, etc. This is called tax.
Personally I liked the web better before it became super-commercialized. Which is probably a big reason there have been articles on Slashdot about the return of BBSes. People are tired of the X10 ads, spam, etc. That and the fact that every legislator, judge and corporate interest in the world is scrambling to stake out territory, screwing the people who made the web a success in the first place.
The guy(s) who "stole" the AT&T documents (E911 Document) was none other than Erik Bloodaxe and his fellow Legion of Doom members. Bloodaxe up until a couple years ago was also editor of Phrackmagazine.
The whole imbroglio surrounding the E911 document is mentioned in Bruce Sterlings book:The Hacker Crackdown: Law and disorder on the electronic frontier. Bruce Sterling placed this huge book on Project Gutenburg free for anyone to download. It is a good book and has a lot of info on the history of hacking, (pre script-kiddie days) as well as Operation Sundevil which was responsible for the confiscation of the computer systems of Steve Jackson Games, (GURPS RPGs) mainly because they had a BBS, and had Cyberpunk role playing game information on their boxes.
The phone number: (800) 935-9935 -- To skip recorded markettroid speak press 9 to speak to a human. Tell the person about the opt-out.
Also make sure that you specify that you do *not* want any chase marketing phone calls either. This is shown on their sample web page "form", but most people wouldn't notice it, and they don't mention it when you want to "opt-out" either. They aren't happy, but thats tough.:)
A friend and I checked out Star Office 5.2 today where I worked (on a linux box) and were <honestly surprised> pleased </honestly surprised> with how it handled things. Most impressive to us was how it saved documents in M$ Office 2K formats and was basically the same document on Office 2k. In fact I have went from different versions of M$ Office products and have experienced much worse in terms of layout corruption etc. (Ex: Word 6.0 to version >=6.0 spring to mind, Access 2.0 to 95)
I believe Sun should be given kudos for making it available to the community. Best of all they left out the notorious clippit and other marketing drivel.:)
If a good all around editor/spreadsheet without useless frills is what you need, look no further.
Sorry I disagree with this on the cell phone issue:
Why have the cellphone companies, esp on new models (in the US anyway) placed the antennas at a angle *more* tangent to the users head unless they wanted to limit user exposure? Especially since this makes holding the devices more awkward. Notice the older Nokia 51xx model phones, (there are a zillion of these) the antennas are not configured in this manner, which is a more comfortable position to the user.
However on the issue of power lines, I agree and disagree. I agree it has been accepted that at *most* that they have little to no effect on cancer rates. (The highest being childhood leukemia, which is itself negligible). However the issue which ticked off a lot of people was the industry cited studies which viewed the effect of the cell as a whole, not the *internal* DNA damage that could occur, so it looked like a cover up to many people. And like many people I no longer hold faith with gov't "studies" as these are the people who told us we could wash radioactive fallout off with soap and water and be *fine*, and that asbestos was *harmless*.
It boils down to this: People have been lied to so many times, can't believe the gov't and most industries (it been proven time and time again), so why not *play it safe* and get a cell phone shield?
The things I were most impressed with about this guy after reading the space.com article was that he was receptive to ideas not of his own origin. Which is something you *generally* don't see of someone who is of the mentally unstable, kook or crazy inventor type. Case in point: "Due to the advice of many real rocket scientists who have been in contact with Rocket Guy the design has gone through some major re-working." (IMHO NASA scientists frustrated with job politics are probably helping him.) Another is the fact that *this guy does not give up*. The tank-pressurizing people wanted $50,000 per tank. Walker rolls his eyes. "Military contractors. So I'm going to do my own tanks." Which, as a programmer, is an attitude I definitely dig.
And finally, if the US govt. gives him problems: The FAA says they'll ask to see both Walker's flight plan -- to make sure no other craft are heading into the same airspace -- and his plans for the rocket before issuing a permit. Walker doesn't care if they say no. "I'll just haul it down to Mexico." In other words, screw you, I *am* gonna do this like it or not!:)
Not to be a *complete* schlimmiel -- (The post was funny) but that coverted ASCII (6c61 6f6c 676e 7420 206f 7375 2820 6570 746e 206c 6874 7369 6220 7469 2073 6562 6761 6e6f 0a29) equals: "laolgnt osu( eptn lhtsib ti sebganoLF)" With the line feed character 0Ah being LF. Now this: "616C 6C20 7468 6973 2062 6974 7320 6265 6C6F 6E67 2074 6F20 7573 2028 7065 6E74 6167 6F6E 29" is ASCII for "all this bits belong to us (pentagon)" I couldn't help it --- I had to know!:)
Sorry this is not correct. The reason I know this
is that I used to work in a Secure Computer Information Facility or SCIF in military speak. Part of this meaning in English is that you work in a *lead lined building* and that every *square foot* of soil (for some odd reason) has been certified for said installation. It also means you cannot bring radios, programmable watches, calculators, (anything with memory) to work. If you think this is fanatical, any media which is taken out must be *stringently* degaussed, meaning you place a magnetic tape through a degausser at least three times, and as the article states (correctly) you *must* remove and degauss all disk platters muliple times. In fact, in my unit (a comm unit) before people pcs'ed (permanent change of station) they would give these platters mounted on wood with the unit insignia and your name on a brass plate. They actually look cool. (These were ancient VAX platters This was a rare exception as most items are destroyed, probably because the ancient aluminum platters kept cheesing the shredder.)
What you are referring to is the writing of info at least *5* times over the *whole platter* with I believe F8/F0 hex which is a standard (albeit used for *unclass* and unclass EFTO (Encrypt for transmission only) drives. And there is NO way you could have recovered that with PC Tools.
To sum it up: All classified media is destroyed, unclass could be saved, but a pain and generally destroyed as well.
Slashdot Mirror
We pay to get connected (DSL, ISP, etc...). And we also pay for the huge gov't supercomputers, backbones, etc. This is called tax.
Personally I liked the web better before it became super-commercialized. Which is probably a big reason there have been articles on Slashdot about the return of BBSes. People are tired of the X10 ads, spam, etc. That and the fact that every legislator, judge and corporate interest in the world is scrambling to stake out territory, screwing the people who made the web a success in the first place.
The whole AT&T farce you mentioned did happen.
The guy(s) who "stole" the AT&T documents (E911 Document) was none other than Erik Bloodaxe and his fellow Legion of Doom members. Bloodaxe up until a couple years ago was also editor of Phrackmagazine.
The whole imbroglio surrounding the E911 document is mentioned in Bruce Sterlings book: The Hacker Crackdown: Law and disorder on the electronic frontier. Bruce Sterling placed this huge book on Project Gutenburg free for anyone to download. It is a good book and has a lot of info on the history of hacking, (pre script-kiddie days) as well as Operation Sundevil which was responsible for the confiscation of the computer systems of Steve Jackson Games, (GURPS RPGs) mainly because they had a BBS, and had Cyberpunk role playing game information on their boxes.
And if i remember correctly, didn't Einstein get kicked out of the Luiptold Gymnasium?
Here is the URL: http://www.chase.com/pages/privacy/optout This is buried on chases web site.
The phone number: (800) 935-9935 -- To skip recorded markettroid speak press 9 to speak to a human. Tell the person about the opt-out.
Also make sure that you specify that you do *not* want any chase marketing phone calls either. This is shown on their sample web page "form", but most people wouldn't notice it, and they don't mention it when you want to "opt-out" either. They aren't happy, but thats tough. :)
Interesting this article should appear.
A friend and I checked out Star Office 5.2 today where I worked (on a linux box) and were <honestly surprised> pleased </honestly surprised> with how it handled things. Most impressive to us was how it saved documents in M$ Office 2K formats and was basically the same document on Office 2k. In fact I have went from different versions of M$ Office products and have experienced much worse in terms of layout corruption etc. (Ex: Word 6.0 to version >=6.0 spring to mind, Access 2.0 to 95)
I believe Sun should be given kudos for making it available to the community. Best of all they left out the notorious clippit and other marketing drivel. :)
If a good all around editor/spreadsheet without useless frills is what you need, look no further.
Sorry I disagree with this on the cell phone issue:
Why have the cellphone companies, esp on new models (in the US anyway) placed the antennas at a angle *more* tangent to the users head unless they wanted to limit user exposure? Especially since this makes holding the devices more awkward. Notice the older Nokia 51xx model phones, (there are a zillion of these) the antennas are not configured in this manner, which is a more comfortable position to the user.
However on the issue of power lines, I agree and disagree. I agree it has been accepted that at *most* that they have little to no effect on cancer rates. (The highest being childhood leukemia, which is itself negligible). However the issue which ticked off a lot of people was the industry cited studies which viewed the effect of the cell as a whole, not the *internal* DNA damage that could occur, so it looked like a cover up to many people. And like many people I no longer hold faith with gov't "studies" as these are the people who told us we could wash radioactive fallout off with soap and water and be *fine*, and that asbestos was *harmless*.
It boils down to this: People have been lied to so many times, can't believe the gov't and most industries (it been proven time and time again), so why not *play it safe* and get a cell phone shield?
The things I were most impressed with about this guy after reading the space.com article was that he was receptive to ideas not of his own origin. Which is something you *generally* don't see of someone who is of the mentally unstable, kook or crazy inventor type. Case in point: "Due to the advice of many real rocket scientists who have been in contact with Rocket Guy the design has gone through some major re-working." (IMHO NASA scientists frustrated with job politics are probably helping him.) Another is the fact that *this guy does not give up*. The tank-pressurizing people wanted $50,000 per tank. Walker rolls his eyes. "Military contractors. So I'm going to do my own tanks." Which, as a programmer, is an attitude I definitely dig. And finally, if the US govt. gives him problems: The FAA says they'll ask to see both Walker's flight plan -- to make sure no other craft are heading into the same airspace -- and his plans for the rocket before issuing a permit. Walker doesn't care if they say no. "I'll just haul it down to Mexico." In other words, screw you, I *am* gonna do this like it or not! :)
Not to be a *complete* schlimmiel -- (The post was funny) but that coverted ASCII (6c61 6f6c 676e 7420 206f 7375 2820 6570 746e 206c 6874 7369 6220 7469 2073 6562 6761 6e6f 0a29) equals: "laolgnt osu( eptn lhtsib ti sebganoLF)" With the line feed character 0Ah being LF. Now this: "616C 6C20 7468 6973 2062 6974 7320 6265 6C6F 6E67 2074 6F20 7573 2028 7065 6E74 6167 6F6E 29" is ASCII for "all this bits belong to us (pentagon)" I couldn't help it --- I had to know! :)
Sorry this is not correct. The reason I know this is that I used to work in a Secure Computer Information Facility or SCIF in military speak. Part of this meaning in English is that you work in a *lead lined building* and that every *square foot* of soil (for some odd reason) has been certified for said installation. It also means you cannot bring radios, programmable watches, calculators, (anything with memory) to work. If you think this is fanatical, any media which is taken out must be *stringently* degaussed, meaning you place a magnetic tape through a degausser at least three times, and as the article states (correctly) you *must* remove and degauss all disk platters muliple times. In fact, in my unit (a comm unit) before people pcs'ed (permanent change of station) they would give these platters mounted on wood with the unit insignia and your name on a brass plate. They actually look cool. (These were ancient VAX platters This was a rare exception as most items are destroyed, probably because the ancient aluminum platters kept cheesing the shredder.) What you are referring to is the writing of info at least *5* times over the *whole platter* with I believe F8/F0 hex which is a standard (albeit used for *unclass* and unclass EFTO (Encrypt for transmission only) drives. And there is NO way you could have recovered that with PC Tools. To sum it up: All classified media is destroyed, unclass could be saved, but a pain and generally destroyed as well.