Hey, noone's *perfect.* Especially the government.
But you'll notice that debates for and against, studies, polls, and think tanks have gone on for years before this action was taken.
So yes, they did think this through before taking action. An American reaction would be swift (at least, once they actually *notice* there's a problem, which is usually well after it has gotten out of hand), ham-handed, overreaching, blundering, ignorant of the real issue at hand, and more often than not, pandering exclusively to the rich and powerful.
See also: DMCA. CDA. PATRIOT. Not to mention historical acts of stupidity like the enforcement of law and order (or lack thereof) in the Frontier days, Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s, prohibition of narcotics in the 1930s and 1940s, and the continual festering of the inner cities ever since the 1960s.
We want to put something out there that makes sense, that's balanced, that accomplishes the same goals, without it being this headlong rush to prove that we're doing something
Our government has this weird tendency towards actually thinking before it acts. And doing it the first time, rather than blundering around with large blunt instruments RIGHT AWAY because people are screaming for the government to protect them RIGHT AWAY.
But I guess someone has to blunder around stupidly to serve as an example to the rest of the world for What Not To Do.:)
I *was* the prototypical nerd in high school - awkward, underweight, and everyone's bitch.
The difference between you and me I guess is that I grew up in the backwoods, and as such my Dad sometimes kept us fed with big game that stumbled onto the business end of a hunting rifle. The sort of high-powered rifle that you can use to pierce kevlar body armour at 800 yards is the same sort of weapon necessary to kill a moose.
The only thing that kept me from using it was the fact that I probably couldn't get away with it, and I knew it. But trust me, there were some people who certainly asked for a bullet with their name on it, and I had a few ideas about how to deliver it.
Older and wiser however, it's worth noting that I now believe that a better way would have been greivous but certainly non-lethal bodily harm delivered with a baseball bat and a self-defence legal defence. You can get away with breaking someone's legs if they threatened to kill you the day before, especially if they have a criminal record and a history of violent behaviour and you do not.
This is a last resort kids. Make a point of reminding him beforehand that the legal system exists not to protect the public from the criminals, but the criminals from the public. Turn him in to the authorities repeatedly (not that it ever does any good in high school... they just throw the wolves back into the cage with all the other sheep after a while) before making it completely clear what you mean by that with lots of neutral witnesses.
Admittedly though, standing up for yourself over little things and Not Putting Up with Bullshit in general makes bullies look for an easier target, much like how barely adequate security measures make hackers look elsewhere for easier targets. As such, this softer preemptive approach works wonders.
You want the most helpless victims possible. Kindergarden is when children are first congregated in large numbers, so try for that.
I have news for you dude.
Unarmed civilians *are* the most helpless victims possible. Including but not limited to full grown adults.
I have no respect for anyone who shoots and wounds unarmed civilians. When you shoot, you do so with the full intention of killing the target. If you can't keep your aim when your target isn't even shooting back at you, that means you're the worst kind of coward. Managing to kill unarmed civilians is only slightly more respectable, but still. Please. They're like sheep. There's no sport in it.
An Uzi, or something similar but more reliable. Look at what the police carry in US airports today.
Ah. The MP5-SD. 9-mm submachine gun based on the MP5 Navy. That is indeed a highly accurate submachine gun, and much better at close (less than 50 yards) range against unarmoured soft targets than an Uzi, which is more of a spray 'n pray kind of weapon with its very high rate of fire and poorly placed center of gravity. (really, it's a pistol)
The silencer on this thing does indeed make shots quieter than the action, but that's not saying much, as the action makes a hell of a clatter by itself. It's still more likely to make someone say "What the fuck is that?" rather than knowing full well that they're under attack. I'd have to question the validity of police officers using this in airports though. A terrorist attack would likely involve a surreptitious bomb or a group of well-armed and well-prepared men who have been trained as soldiers. Police officers are woefully unprepared for an attack like this, and as such are more likely to get themselves killed than anything else.
Alternatively, you could argue that, growing up with blood and gore would be an excellent way to make someone into a paramedic or a surgeon.
Because you're desensitized to blood and violence does not necessarily make you eager to deal out death and destruction. It means that you're desensitized to blood and violence. You don't find it a big deal. For paramedics, it means that it doesn't squick them to use their bare hands to stop the bleeding caused by a gunshot to a major artery. Because it doesn't squick them, the victim lives.
The thing of it is that in the first world for our generation, most people don't grow up getting blood, guts, and "viscera" on their hands. Most people now grow up in the city, living in a clean, comfortable envrionment where the dirtiest thing they ever do is clean the bathroom. A hundred years ago in America, half the people had grown up on a farm - feeding, cleaning, and killing animals for food. Others clubbed baby seals to death for a living. Many of them would watch Counter-strike and call it a "fancy version of playin' soldiers." For us however, it's a bloody, gory experience and the closest thing we'll ever get to real life blood.
Some of us will be horrified by this, and start thinking that this will become a habit for the people doing it, and maybe want to start doing it to REAL people. This is just an extension of the fact that the dirtiest thing they ever do is clean the bathroom.
Essentially, to desensitize someone with something, they have to be sensitized to it in the first place. "Sheltered" would also be a good desciptive word, because most of us don't have the first clue about how our food gets on our tables, nor how much hard work it takes.
A good question for anyone who ever complains about violence in video games is to ask them exactly where T-bone steaks come from. I guarantee they wouldn't know, beyond "from a cow."
In other news, a poll shows fewer than 5% of the public knows what "Dual Overhead Cam" means. Or could correctly define horsepower other than "what engines are measured in." Neither could they tell you what fuel injection was, what a transmission did or where it was situated in their car.
This news stunned advertisers that have been using these terms to sell cars for the past hundred years. Ford motor company has recently launched a campaign to educate the public as a result of these figures. Experts remain skeptical about the effectiveness of such a campaign, citing the fact that this is 100 year old technology, and saying "if the public doesn't get it now, they never will."
If Skynet is destroyed and never comes into being, then the war would never happen, the humans would never beat skynet, and there would be no reason to send Kyle Reese back in time, and thus conceive John Connor. John Connor would never have been born. He would blink out of existence at the end of Terminator 2 or something.
John Connor's existence and the future existence of Skynet are intertwined.
You're right though. T3 is a silly idea to make a few bucks and isn't that great a movie.
It sounds to me like Tom never got into using PCs until Doom came out.
Because PCs have traditionally not been a gaming platform, and in fact, the majority of PC users don't use them solely for this purpose, and a good percentage don't use them for this purpose at all.
Pre-Doom, sure, there were games for the PC. Some were okay, but the best games, you had to buy a console for that, or go to an arcade. Super Mario Brothers. Zelda. Hell, even Q-bert. Using a PC to play games in those days was the funniest joke ever, since they were either too slow to play anything worth playing, or you had to shell out $3000 or more for a machine that would play them. The arcade boxes running games like Galaga had three times the processor power of any PC, right up until the 386 was produced, and that's a game that was made in 1981.
Since the 486 of course, PCs have vastly outpowered consoles, and although they've been catching up in leaps and bounds, it was still some time before you could even run Bubble Bobble on your PC without wishing that you had the real thing.
So when Tom complains that the X box is going to kill the PC gaming market, I ask "Who cares?"
What does the PC market need gaming for? It's thrived without it this entire time because PCs are general-purpose tools so flexible that you can even use them as toys, rather than gaming platforms that also support e-mail and web browsing (like the dreamcast was, which was a huge joke).
And these days, you can buy an X-box for $299 and the games for the same price as any PC games. You can also buy a fast computer for $599 and have it do everything else. Or you can spend $799 and get Gateway's cheapest laptop (running at 2 Ghz no less). So you can have a computer and a console for less than what a computer alone would have cost 5 years ago.
That this press release serves only to do three things:
1) panic the general public - half of whom hardly know what a web page is anyway - in order to justify the existence of the Department of Homeland Security.
2) promotes the hacker web page in question beyond the wildest wet dreams of the 16 year old cyberpunks that run it.
3) pretends that a bunch of 16 year old punks armed with what essentially amount to spraycans and lockpicks have anything at all to do with national security.
They're called "F-16's" and they escort hijacked aircraft back to the airport, or they suddenly "break up" in midair because the passengers "bravely fought off the hijackers."
You know, kind of like the 4th 767 that curiously landed in a rock quarry on 9/11/2001 after pieces of the aircraft landed in farmers' fields 20 miles away.
These hijackers have done more to prevent future hijackings than metal detectors and armed security guards in airports ever could have. I would daresay that this is already a dead art.
Hopefully this will make companies realize that the Internet isn't comprised of just IE users.
Well, not quite, but the lasttimeIlooked, (which was about 9 days ago) about 95% of internet users used Internet Explorer for their web browser. While that doesn't comprise all internet users, it's close enough to make no odds.
a) we're geeks. We pick apart things. Especially wild claims like "99% of geeks use Acme Rockets" that are patently untrue anyway.
b) You asked what we standardized on. Who really cares? Your standards are yours. They apply to noone outside your organization.
c) You probably should have asked a more intelligent question (or the slashdot editors should have junked yours or requested something more coherent) like "We've got 3000+ computers here and we'd like to know which e-mail client requires the least amount of technical support and is easiest to use." In which case you'd probably get an answer you'd rather not hear, like "Outlook Express" or "Eudora" or "Hotmail.";)
d) You could have just as easily done a search on google if you were looking for opinions on the answer to the question I posed in c).
e) You could have actually sat down with YOUR users (which are the ones that matter), or set up a focus group and timed the length of your tech support calls and the e-mail clients they use.
f) You could have actually relied on your own experience. That *is* what an organization that has 3000+ computers in it, pays the person who rolls out a new product to do after all, right?
In general, we criticize you because you appear to not have the first clue about anything at all, even what 99% of geeks use for their e-mail client. (answer: 100% of us use a wide variety of different programs)
By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated.
Especially in places like the Caribbean where there has been a History of Piracy(tm).
However, this is down significantly from 100% last year, all thanks to police brutality and new rat-out-your-neighbour legislation. We clearly need to focus our efforts in this area to improve the situation. This year, we have tabled plans to create a special new police task force that will read your mail, spy on your bedroom, and turn your children against you. This terrible scourge must be stopped at all cost.
It's not so much as a result of being an asshole and violating the privacy of their customers in such a maniacal way. It's more a function of the fact that he has so much time on his hands that he *can* do things like this.
If the sysadmin at an ISP has nothing to do, it's because he's either lazy, incompetent, or new. The reasons for this have to do with the fact that when all the regular work of server upgrades, efficiency improvements, office automation, server programming and network additions are finished (if they ever actually are), you still have to improve the service to your customers or your competition will do it first and put an end to your job. This in itself is a never ending task. If your sysadmin is wanking on the job like this guy is, he's two steps away from a pink slip one way or another.
Excuse me, but this "High Temperature" stuff scares me. Especially knowing full well that when nuclear reactors get too hot, they have this nasty tendency towards melting through the reactor, through the floor, into the ground, and finally becoming one mass of critcal mass somewhere where we'd all really wish it wouldn't.
Also, it's worth noting that gas doesn't make nearly as much of a great coolant as any number of liquids do. It would make me sleep quite a lot better at night if you would please not make this kind of reactor. Thank you.
"Humans define their existence through misery and suffering."
What better way to define this than a war they can't win? In a world in which resources are scarce, where everything is second-hand and used up? A post-apocalyptic nightmare world where you have to eat single-celled proteins that taste like a big bowl o'snot? It feels so much more real than a world where we're more or less comfortable all the time, where all you have to do to survuve is be on time for work, go to church, and pay your taxes. So real, in fact, that it would make no sense to try to escape. After all, we all want something to fight for. A cause to live for and to die protecting. Something to be truly passionate about.
However, Neo now realizes that he's being lied to about his very existence. Again. It won't come as nearly as much of a shock to him now. But it means that although he was able to make the irrational decision of saving the girl he loves over the entire rest of humanity, and his love for that girl is supposed to keep him from destroying the last layer of the matrix, the knowledge that it's all bullshit (again) will drive him to be truly free.
By the way, I don't think Morpheus et al are computer programs, Neo would notice that when they were in the matrix. The 21st century one that is.
check the IP number (10.x.x.x, private IANA), it was not on the public internet...
Heh. So?
So that means that the guys who were doing the hacking previous to Trinity's arrival broke into the public network (or, perhaps they don't have one, but instead the building they were in was appropriately inside their private network) and she was working from a unix box inside the private network that the power station was on. It's like how a lot of crackers these days say that networks tend to be like porcupines: hard and secure on the outside, but nice and soft underneath. They probably never bothered to secure their old SSH1 daemons because they were secure in the belief that noone would get far enough to exploit it.:)
Although I would have to admit that going above the boss' head is a dumb move in this particular case, quite honestly if you know the company is doing something wrong - for instance if this guy didn't get fired for the child porn on his computer, or if the company as a whole is doing something illegal, like laundering money - if you don't blow the whistle, you are an accomplice under the law.
I seem to recall that people have been protected for reporting corporate crime before, and as such the company in question here may be in trouble for firing their sysadmin.
build an "undo" function (similar to those in word-processing programs) for large computing systems
This is called "the sysadmin thinks ahead."
Essentially, when any sysadmin worth a pile of beans makes any changes whatsoever, he makes sure there's a backup plan before making his changes live. Whether it means running the service on a non-standard port to test, running it on the development server to test, making backups of the configuration and/or the binaries in question, or making backups of the entire system every night. She is thinking "what happens if this doesn't work?" before making any changes. It doesn't matter if it's a web server running on a lowly Pentium 2 or Google - the sysadmin is paid to think about actions before making them. Having things like this won't replace the sysadmin, although I can imagine a good many PHBs trying before realizing that just because you can back out of stupid mistakes, doesn't mean you can keep them from happening in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, noone's *perfect.* Especially the government.
But you'll notice that debates for and against, studies, polls, and think tanks have gone on for years before this action was taken.
So yes, they did think this through before taking action. An American reaction would be swift (at least, once they actually *notice* there's a problem, which is usually well after it has gotten out of hand), ham-handed, overreaching, blundering, ignorant of the real issue at hand, and more often than not, pandering exclusively to the rich and powerful.
See also: DMCA. CDA. PATRIOT. Not to mention historical acts of stupidity like the enforcement of law and order (or lack thereof) in the Frontier days, Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s, prohibition of narcotics in the 1930s and 1940s, and the continual festering of the inner cities ever since the 1960s.
We want to put something out there that makes sense, that's balanced, that accomplishes the same goals, without it being this headlong rush to prove that we're doing something
:)
Our government has this weird tendency towards actually thinking before it acts. And doing it the first time, rather than blundering around with large blunt instruments RIGHT AWAY because people are screaming for the government to protect them RIGHT AWAY.
But I guess someone has to blunder around stupidly to serve as an example to the rest of the world for What Not To Do.
Heh.
Me: 110 pound weakling.
Him: 180 pounds of psychopath with a criminal record longer than his knuckle-dragging arms and a history of violent behaviour.
Who do *you* think would be the one whose life is in danger here?
I *was* the prototypical nerd in high school - awkward, underweight, and everyone's bitch.
The difference between you and me I guess is that I grew up in the backwoods, and as such my Dad sometimes kept us fed with big game that stumbled onto the business end of a hunting rifle. The sort of high-powered rifle that you can use to pierce kevlar body armour at 800 yards is the same sort of weapon necessary to kill a moose.
The only thing that kept me from using it was the fact that I probably couldn't get away with it, and I knew it. But trust me, there were some people who certainly asked for a bullet with their name on it, and I had a few ideas about how to deliver it.
Older and wiser however, it's worth noting that I now believe that a better way would have been greivous but certainly non-lethal bodily harm delivered with a baseball bat and a self-defence legal defence. You can get away with breaking someone's legs if they threatened to kill you the day before, especially if they have a criminal record and a history of violent behaviour and you do not.
This is a last resort kids. Make a point of reminding him beforehand that the legal system exists not to protect the public from the criminals, but the criminals from the public. Turn him in to the authorities repeatedly (not that it ever does any good in high school... they just throw the wolves back into the cage with all the other sheep after a while) before making it completely clear what you mean by that with lots of neutral witnesses.
Admittedly though, standing up for yourself over little things and Not Putting Up with Bullshit in general makes bullies look for an easier target, much like how barely adequate security measures make hackers look elsewhere for easier targets. As such, this softer preemptive approach works wonders.
You want the most helpless victims possible. Kindergarden is when children are first congregated in large numbers, so try for that.
I have news for you dude.
Unarmed civilians *are* the most helpless victims possible. Including but not limited to full grown adults.
I have no respect for anyone who shoots and wounds unarmed civilians. When you shoot, you do so with the full intention of killing the target. If you can't keep your aim when your target isn't even shooting back at you, that means you're the worst kind of coward. Managing to kill unarmed civilians is only slightly more respectable, but still. Please. They're like sheep. There's no sport in it.
An Uzi, or something similar but more reliable. Look at what the police carry in US airports today.
Ah. The MP5-SD. 9-mm submachine gun based on the MP5 Navy. That is indeed a highly accurate submachine gun, and much better at close (less than 50 yards) range against unarmoured soft targets than an Uzi, which is more of a spray 'n pray kind of weapon with its very high rate of fire and poorly placed center of gravity. (really, it's a pistol)
The silencer on this thing does indeed make shots quieter than the action, but that's not saying much, as the action makes a hell of a clatter by itself. It's still more likely to make someone say "What the fuck is that?" rather than knowing full well that they're under attack. I'd have to question the validity of police officers using this in airports though. A terrorist attack would likely involve a surreptitious bomb or a group of well-armed and well-prepared men who have been trained as soldiers. Police officers are woefully unprepared for an attack like this, and as such are more likely to get themselves killed than anything else.
Alternatively, you could argue that, growing up with blood and gore would be an excellent way to make someone into a paramedic or a surgeon.
Because you're desensitized to blood and violence does not necessarily make you eager to deal out death and destruction. It means that you're desensitized to blood and violence. You don't find it a big deal. For paramedics, it means that it doesn't squick them to use their bare hands to stop the bleeding caused by a gunshot to a major artery. Because it doesn't squick them, the victim lives.
The thing of it is that in the first world for our generation, most people don't grow up getting blood, guts, and "viscera" on their hands. Most people now grow up in the city, living in a clean, comfortable envrionment where the dirtiest thing they ever do is clean the bathroom. A hundred years ago in America, half the people had grown up on a farm - feeding, cleaning, and killing animals for food. Others clubbed baby seals to death for a living. Many of them would watch Counter-strike and call it a "fancy version of playin' soldiers." For us however, it's a bloody, gory experience and the closest thing we'll ever get to real life blood.
Some of us will be horrified by this, and start thinking that this will become a habit for the people doing it, and maybe want to start doing it to REAL people. This is just an extension of the fact that the dirtiest thing they ever do is clean the bathroom.
Essentially, to desensitize someone with something, they have to be sensitized to it in the first place. "Sheltered" would also be a good desciptive word, because most of us don't have the first clue about how our food gets on our tables, nor how much hard work it takes.
A good question for anyone who ever complains about violence in video games is to ask them exactly where T-bone steaks come from. I guarantee they wouldn't know, beyond "from a cow."
In other news, a poll shows fewer than 5% of the public knows what "Dual Overhead Cam" means. Or could correctly define horsepower other than "what engines are measured in." Neither could they tell you what fuel injection was, what a transmission did or where it was situated in their car.
This news stunned advertisers that have been using these terms to sell cars for the past hundred years. Ford motor company has recently launched a campaign to educate the public as a result of these figures. Experts remain skeptical about the effectiveness of such a campaign, citing the fact that this is 100 year old technology, and saying "if the public doesn't get it now, they never will."
T2 closed all holes.
There's a problem with that though: the paradox.
If Skynet is destroyed and never comes into being, then the war would never happen, the humans would never beat skynet, and there would be no reason to send Kyle Reese back in time, and thus conceive John Connor. John Connor would never have been born. He would blink out of existence at the end of Terminator 2 or something.
John Connor's existence and the future existence of Skynet are intertwined.
You're right though. T3 is a silly idea to make a few bucks and isn't that great a movie.
Jon Katz doesn't still write for Slashdot does he? The last time I saw a story written by him was...
Oh wait. That's my filter.
Nevermind.
It sounds to me like Tom never got into using PCs until Doom came out.
Because PCs have traditionally not been a gaming platform, and in fact, the majority of PC users don't use them solely for this purpose, and a good percentage don't use them for this purpose at all.
Pre-Doom, sure, there were games for the PC. Some were okay, but the best games, you had to buy a console for that, or go to an arcade. Super Mario Brothers. Zelda. Hell, even Q-bert. Using a PC to play games in those days was the funniest joke ever, since they were either too slow to play anything worth playing, or you had to shell out $3000 or more for a machine that would play them. The arcade boxes running games like Galaga had three times the processor power of any PC, right up until the 386 was produced, and that's a game that was made in 1981.
Since the 486 of course, PCs have vastly outpowered consoles, and although they've been catching up in leaps and bounds, it was still some time before you could even run Bubble Bobble on your PC without wishing that you had the real thing.
So when Tom complains that the X box is going to kill the PC gaming market, I ask "Who cares?"
What does the PC market need gaming for? It's thrived without it this entire time because PCs are general-purpose tools so flexible that you can even use them as toys, rather than gaming platforms that also support e-mail and web browsing (like the dreamcast was, which was a huge joke).
And these days, you can buy an X-box for $299 and the games for the same price as any PC games. You can also buy a fast computer for $599 and have it do everything else. Or you can spend $799 and get Gateway's cheapest laptop (running at 2 Ghz no less). So you can have a computer and a console for less than what a computer alone would have cost 5 years ago.
That this press release serves only to do three things:
1) panic the general public - half of whom hardly know what a web page is anyway - in order to justify the existence of the Department of Homeland Security.
2) promotes the hacker web page in question beyond the wildest wet dreams of the 16 year old cyberpunks that run it.
3) pretends that a bunch of 16 year old punks armed with what essentially amount to spraycans and lockpicks have anything at all to do with national security.
They're called "F-16's" and they escort hijacked aircraft back to the airport, or they suddenly "break up" in midair because the passengers "bravely fought off the hijackers."
You know, kind of like the 4th 767 that curiously landed in a rock quarry on 9/11/2001 after pieces of the aircraft landed in farmers' fields 20 miles away.
These hijackers have done more to prevent future hijackings than metal detectors and armed security guards in airports ever could have. I would daresay that this is already a dead art.
Hopefully this will make companies realize that the Internet isn't comprised of just IE users.
Well, not quite, but the last time I looked, (which was about 9 days ago) about 95% of internet users used Internet Explorer for their web browser. While that doesn't comprise all internet users, it's close enough to make no odds.
because of the following:
;)
a) we're geeks. We pick apart things. Especially wild claims like "99% of geeks use Acme Rockets" that are patently untrue anyway.
b) You asked what we standardized on. Who really cares? Your standards are yours. They apply to noone outside your organization.
c) You probably should have asked a more intelligent question (or the slashdot editors should have junked yours or requested something more coherent) like "We've got 3000+ computers here and we'd like to know which e-mail client requires the least amount of technical support and is easiest to use." In which case you'd probably get an answer you'd rather not hear, like "Outlook Express" or "Eudora" or "Hotmail."
d) You could have just as easily done a search on google if you were looking for opinions on the answer to the question I posed in c).
e) You could have actually sat down with YOUR users (which are the ones that matter), or set up a focus group and timed the length of your tech support calls and the e-mail clients they use.
f) You could have actually relied on your own experience. That *is* what an organization that has 3000+ computers in it, pays the person who rolls out a new product to do after all, right?
In general, we criticize you because you appear to not have the first clue about anything at all, even what 99% of geeks use for their e-mail client. (answer: 100% of us use a wide variety of different programs)
I bet you were the one that moved the never-out door to the other side when the toilet paper wasn't even half finished too!
bloatware. my company standardized on "more /var/spool/mail/$USER" for reading mail.
:)
Ewwww. You still use sendmail?
You're looking for bloat in the wrong place my friend.
For the law to punish Bob for breaking his own cryptography, Bob would have to press charges against himself.
Kind of like how breaking into your house is illegal. Since you don't report the crime, it goes unpunished.
Remember, the only thing needed for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. So get cracking and report yourself right away!
By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated.
Especially in places like the Caribbean where there has been a History of Piracy(tm).
However, this is down significantly from 100% last year, all thanks to police brutality and new rat-out-your-neighbour legislation. We clearly need to focus our efforts in this area to improve the situation. This year, we have tabled plans to create a special new police task force that will read your mail, spy on your bedroom, and turn your children against you. This terrible scourge must be stopped at all cost.
The sooner you're exposed for what you are, and thrown off the Internet permanently, the better.
:)
You misspelled "have the contents of an entire clip of AK-47 ammunition emptied into you at point blank range."
HTH, HAND.
It's not so much as a result of being an asshole and violating the privacy of their customers in such a maniacal way. It's more a function of the fact that he has so much time on his hands that he *can* do things like this.
If the sysadmin at an ISP has nothing to do, it's because he's either lazy, incompetent, or new. The reasons for this have to do with the fact that when all the regular work of server upgrades, efficiency improvements, office automation, server programming and network additions are finished (if they ever actually are), you still have to improve the service to your customers or your competition will do it first and put an end to your job. This in itself is a never ending task. If your sysadmin is wanking on the job like this guy is, he's two steps away from a pink slip one way or another.
Excuse me, but this "High Temperature" stuff scares me. Especially knowing full well that when nuclear reactors get too hot, they have this nasty tendency towards melting through the reactor, through the floor, into the ground, and finally becoming one mass of critcal mass somewhere where we'd all really wish it wouldn't.
Also, it's worth noting that gas doesn't make nearly as much of a great coolant as any number of liquids do. It would make me sleep quite a lot better at night if you would please not make this kind of reactor. Thank you.
"Humans define their existence through misery and suffering."
What better way to define this than a war they can't win? In a world in which resources are scarce, where everything is second-hand and used up? A post-apocalyptic nightmare world where you have to eat single-celled proteins that taste like a big bowl o'snot? It feels so much more real than a world where we're more or less comfortable all the time, where all you have to do to survuve is be on time for work, go to church, and pay your taxes. So real, in fact, that it would make no sense to try to escape. After all, we all want something to fight for. A cause to live for and to die protecting. Something to be truly passionate about.
However, Neo now realizes that he's being lied to about his very existence. Again. It won't come as nearly as much of a shock to him now. But it means that although he was able to make the irrational decision of saving the girl he loves over the entire rest of humanity, and his love for that girl is supposed to keep him from destroying the last layer of the matrix, the knowledge that it's all bullshit (again) will drive him to be truly free.
By the way, I don't think Morpheus et al are computer programs, Neo would notice that when they were in the matrix. The 21st century one that is.
check the IP number (10.x.x.x, private IANA), it was not on the public internet...
:)
Heh. So?
So that means that the guys who were doing the hacking previous to Trinity's arrival broke into the public network (or, perhaps they don't have one, but instead the building they were in was appropriately inside their private network) and she was working from a unix box inside the private network that the power station was on. It's like how a lot of crackers these days say that networks tend to be like porcupines: hard and secure on the outside, but nice and soft underneath. They probably never bothered to secure their old SSH1 daemons because they were secure in the belief that noone would get far enough to exploit it.
Although I would have to admit that going above the boss' head is a dumb move in this particular case, quite honestly if you know the company is doing something wrong - for instance if this guy didn't get fired for the child porn on his computer, or if the company as a whole is doing something illegal, like laundering money - if you don't blow the whistle, you are an accomplice under the law.
I seem to recall that people have been protected for reporting corporate crime before, and as such the company in question here may be in trouble for firing their sysadmin.
build an "undo" function (similar to those in word-processing programs) for large computing systems
This is called "the sysadmin thinks ahead."
Essentially, when any sysadmin worth a pile of
beans makes any changes whatsoever, he makes sure there's a backup plan before making his changes live. Whether it means running the service on a non-standard port to test, running it on the development server to test, making backups of the configuration and/or the binaries in question, or making backups of the entire system every night. She is thinking "what happens if this doesn't work?" before making any changes. It doesn't matter if it's a web server running on a lowly Pentium 2 or Google - the sysadmin is paid to think about actions before making them. Having things like this won't replace the sysadmin, although I can imagine a good many PHBs trying before realizing that just because you can back out of stupid mistakes, doesn't mean you can keep them from happening in the first place.