The "infected hospital PC" problem is one we've talked about before. It's worth going over again so people understand why sending a cleanup message is not the best idea.
The scenario is that a good Samaritan wants to send a "clean-out-the-infection" message through the botnet to all infected hosts, and a lifesaving machine in a hospital is infected. Some preliminary assumptions to make are that the good Samaritan has no way of contacting the machine's owner to determine if it's a mission critical or lifesaving machine, and has no way to advise them of the existence of the malware.
The lifesaving machine can be in one of three states: 1) fully operational as designed and desired (no infection) 2) partially operating (infected but usable) 3) bricked.
I would suggest that restoring the machine to state 1 is technically impossible. There is no way to determine how much the bot impacted configuration changes while it was active. Maybe it prevented a software patch that the machine owner thought was installed correctly. In any case we know it's not a guarantee -- many PC's never properly uninstall software even when the application is cooperative, let alone hostile malware designed to resist uninstallation.
Most of us would categorize the infected machine in state 2 - partially operating, but compromised in some way. In this case the attempt to remove the infection might leave it in a similar state, possibly worse, possibly better. For purpose of categorization, we can rank them by the probability that the machine can properly perform its lifesaving function. Let's say the manufacturer's spec is for it to perform 99.99% of the time. An infected machine might perform correctly 95% of the time. A post-infection cleaned up machine might perform correctly 99% of the time, or it might perform correctly 50% of the time, or even 0% of the time.
State 3 means that the good Samaritan intentionally created a Denial of Service situation. The potentially life-saving machine is discovered to be an unusable brick while the patient is in emergency need of treatment.
Finally, keep in mind that the good Samaritan doesn't personally know the outcome of any given machine's remote repair. He has no way of determining if the repaired machine ended up in state 1 or 2.
Since the good Samaritan cannot guarantee that the machine will end up better than it was, he should not risk making it worse. The ethics of the situation are such that the best outcome the good Samaritan can do is to kill the command and control network, and leave the individual machine owners responsible for their own cleanup.
This was a lot larger than taking down a rogue host. This is 1,500,000,000 fewer spams per day on the net.
Cut out two billion spams here and there and pretty soon you're talking about real effectiveness.
Sure, they could probably do more, but every journey begins with a single step. Shut down the easy ones first. Pick the low-hanging fruit. Then go back and take down another, and another. At this point it could be all they could get done in a short amount of time, and in any case it's still a good start.
Sorry, but you're factually wrong. Both my Motorola RAZR and my Motorola Z6 allowed me to tether over Bluetooth without difficulty. Even my turn-of-the-millennium Sony Ericsson T610 allowed me to tether via IR, as long as I didn't mind about 2400 baud and keeping both the computer and phone out of direct sunlight or flickering neon. AT&T has always wanted to add a surcharge $40/month for tethering, but I never asked them: I just set the data connections up properly and they always worked fine.
AT&T actually sold me both the RAZR and the T610; I bought the Z6 unlocked directly from Motorola.
So that's two different manufacturers who had no problem providing me with three different tether capable phones, and a phone company that was apparently powerless to turn off the feature even when given several chances.
So yes, Apple is sadly completely different. Apple has no problem boning their customers for the benefit of the phone company. But clearly, nothing is going to dissuade a fanboi like you from ignoring reality when it collides with your view of Saint Jobs and his Holy Apple Corp.
It's actually a poor media player. It has no USB transfer of music files, and is limited to using iTunes on a host computer. It doesn't allow alterations of playlists from the phone itself. It loses its place in the playlist with regularity. It has very poor controls for playback via Bluetooth's AVRCP protocol, where it supports only the play/pause button and the call button, and not the next/prev buttons or the volume control buttons which are found on every stereo Bluetooth playback device I have ever owned. The Bluetooth a2dp on the iPhone is also the most "fragile" connection I've ever dealt with, with dropouts being very common in my car when connected to the iPhone; I never had such severe difficulties with reception from my Motorola phones.
On the flip side, all the Motorola phone-based media players I've used are even worse in other respects. They either take forever to load, or crash frequently. They lose playlists when they crash. They have hard-to-navigate menus. And let's face it - they're uglier than the iPod app. A lot uglier.
I haven't found an ideal portable media player yet. I haven't tried a Zune (nothing appealing about it running Windows, and the babyshit brown color doesn't exactly exude "style".) I have a dirt cheap Sansa refurb that I immediately placed Rockbox on, and while it mostly works OK for music playback and can do what I want, it's got a downright hostile user interface.
Of course lack of tethering is Apple's fault. The machine is perfectly capable of tethering, and it does so in many markets. But Apple kowtowed to AT&T's request to block it in the U.S. They willingly provided AT&T with the kill-switch, even though I'm the paying customer.
I have a love/hate relationship with my iPhone. My preciousss. It's pretty and seductive, but it locks me out of stuff. For just about everything, there's an app for that, except for when Apple pulled it. It can do just about everything, but not when Apple or AT&T says it can't, like tethering. But for all it makes me crazy, I still can't seem to pause in the middle of the day without pulling it from its holster and stroking its sleek, responsive, beautiful face for a few minutes.
Damn this stupid phone. I really should throw it back into the depths of Cupertino from whence it came, but you'd probably have to gnaw my hand off to get me to drop it.
Furthermore, I doubt if PJ would have much problem getting pro bono attorneys to litigate this for her, just for the sheer fun of bitchslapping someone who is desperately asking for it.
What lawyer would voluntarily risk getting stuck to this tar baby? We've seen how SCO has been playing this for the last 7 years. I don't know that she'd get that kind of support.
It sounds like your core problem is time management, and not in finding music you love. If you can get to a live show even infrequently, buy all the CDs the artist will inevitably be hawking. Listen to them during veg time. Trade them with friends or coworkers who see different shows. And be honest: trade them without copying them; or if you do copy them be sure to hunt down the artist and pay them.
That (and DI.FM) is how I've come by most of my music in the last few years.
It's full of win: you get cool music on your own schedule, you support the artists directly without supporting big labels, and you don't have to hook speakers up to anything you don't want to.
A whistleblower reveals secret information to right a wrong. Perhaps there's a safety issue that is going uncorrected, or an unfair pay gap, or workplace racism, or where the bodies are buried. Those are kept secret to keep costs down at the expense of human health, or to protect the criminally negligent or guilty.
The GP said:
If I were him, I'd start spilling all the info I ever had on security for the state. No amount of money or threats would stop me. I mean any and every item.
There are plenty of legitimate secrets a CISO is expected to keep. Plans for upgrades that reveal current deficiencies but can't be implemented yet due to budget constraints. Ongoing operational security tasks. Or command and control structures: a list of the three key people without whom an emergency response would fail would provide a juicy target list for a serious attack. The identities of sting or honeypot operations. Those are all perfectly legitimate security items that should be kept secret.
A whistleblower is trying to correct an inequity. A traitor provides secret information only to damage an organization. See the difference?
They may not get the government they need, but they'll always get the government they deserve. The citizens always have the option to "t'row da bums out!"
Not that the bums on the other side of the fence are somehow better bums, but at least they're not the same bums.
Compromising your own ethics for revenge is a net loss. A vengeful, spiteful CISO would have about 0.00% chance of a new job that paid anything above "volunteer" wages.
Remember, CIO already jokingly stands for "Career Is Over." I don't think he needs to pile on "Career Is So Over" limiting moves by acting like a 13-year-old dumped by his first girlfriend.
So instead of paying people to fix our security holes, we're just not allowed to talk about them?
It's a hell of a lot cheaper that way. (Except for the parts where the bad guys break-in and steal your stuff; yeah, those are kind of expensive, but fixing them doesn't come out of the CIO's paycheck.)
Therefore this is all your fault for complaining about your taxes. You said to your lawmakers "we want less state services and lower quality workers" and there you go! You got exactly what you voted for.
Do you really want the taxpayers having the root password?
I'll give them to you. There are actually two root passwords to the Constitution: "terrorism" and "child pornography". By using either password, you can bypass any of the security protections or protocols built into the document, and you can invalidate its signatures.
There is a distinction between "acknowledgment" of an already known problem and the "announcement" of a brand new one. Hackers know about the problem already, and apparently it was widely known how to game the system, so this was only an acknowledgment. The CISO didn't reveal anything new, although it was apparently new to this particular audience.
By making future CISOs afraid for their job, the governor has poisoned the CISO's ability to actually perform their duties.
Yes, it's his own fault. He attempted to mess around with their data. And for that, he will deserve whatever punishment they give him.
But it all could have been avoided if his boss had the stones to do what we all know he should have done. Not following this procedure is like handing car keys and a bottle of whiskey to an alcoholic, and then wondering why he got a DUI.
If you can't afford to keep them due to the bad economy, you can bet that they're still full of irrational emotions about being let go. It really doesn't matter what the real true reasons are or how well they're documented, a laid-off person will still take it personally. It may be professional pride, or shame, or some other feelings like "if only I had done more, they would have kept me instead of Joe," or a mix of all of the above. It hurts, it's confusing, and it's very very personal.
Being laid off can be seen by the employee as a strike at the very core of their ego. Even a well-balanced person can respond irrationally. So you never, ever, let them back near sensitive data or systems after the layoff. It's heartless and cold, and you're a total shit for doing it, but you have to do it anyway. Or this happens, and it's completely his boss' fault for not escorting him to his desk and out the door immediately. Think about it: this guy is going to prison because his boss didn't have the balls to walk him out when he had the chance. Nice.
If he goes the camera route, longer prime focus lenses are likely to be his best choice. Zoom lenses may have a specific focal length that minimizes distortion, but almost all zoom lenses have more distortion than their fixed length counterparts.
But I still think the best answer is a large flatbed scanner at a place that specializes in scanning old documents. Further down in the comments people have recommended that some local or state government agencies might have the equipment and the people to scan the maps for free if they can keep copies that have historical relevance.
Mr Praline walks into a datacenter. He walks to a desk where a sysadmin tries to hide below a tape rack.
PRALINE: Hello, I wish to register a complaint... Hello? Miss?
SYSADMIN: What do you mean, miss?
PRALINE: Oh, I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint.
SYSADMIN: Sorry, we're closing for patch Tuesday.
PRALINE: Never mind that my lad, I wish to make a complain about this hosting service what I leased not half an hour ago from this very datacenter.
SYSADMIN: Oh yes, the Kazakhstan Big Blue Blade Server package. What's wrong with it?
PRALINE: I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's offline, that's what wrong with it.
SYSADMIN: No, no it's connecting, look!
PRALINE: Look my lad, I know a dead host when I ping one and I'm pingin' one right now.
SYSADMIN: No, no sir, it's not dead. It's syncing.
PRALINE: Syncing?
SYSADMIN: Yeah, remarkable host the Kazakhstan Big Blue, beautiful rackmounting job, innit?
PRALINE: The rackmountin' don't enter into it - it's stone dead.
SYSADMIN: No, no - it's just syncing.
PRALINE: All right then, if it's syncing I'll sync with it. (shouts into cabinet) Hello Khaki! I've got a nice piece of Cat 6 for you when you wake up, Khaki!
SYSADMIN: (jogging rack) There it blinked.
PRALINE: No it didn't. That was you yankin' the wire.
SYSADMIN: I did not.
PRALINE: Yes, you did. (unplugs wire from cabinet, shouts into the end of the ethernet cable) Hello Khaki, Khaki (whips it against counter) Khaki host, wake up. Khaki. (throws it in the air and lets it fall to the floor) Now that's what I call a dead host.
SYSADMIN: No, no it's stunned.
PRALINE: Look my lad, I've had just about enough of this. That host is definitely depeered. And when I leased it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its lack of connectivity wad due to it being tired and shagged out after delisting a porn site.
SYSADMIN: It's probably pining for the fjords.
PRALINE: Pining for the fjords, what kind of talk is that? Look, why did it refuse to connect the moment I got home?
SYSADMIN: The Kazakhstan Big Blue prefers connecting via SSL. Beautiful host, lovely rackmounting.
PRALINE: Look, I took the liberty of examining that host, and I discovered that the only reason that its lights were blinking in the first place was that there was a flashlight taped inside the case.
SYSADMIN: Well of course it was taped there. Otherwise it would roll out the back and voom.
PRALINE: Look matey (picks up cable) this host wouldn't voom if I put four thousand volts through it. It's bleeding offline.
SYSADMIN: It's not, it's pining.
PRALINE: It's not pining, it's unplugged. This host is no more. It has ceased to be. Its license has expired. This is a late host. It's a brick. Bereft of electrons, it rests in peace. And if you hadn't taped a flashlight inside the case, the only cycles it would ever see from here on out are re-cyclers. It's dropped out of DNS and unjoined the internet invisible. This is an ex-host.
SYSADMIN: Well, I'd better replace it then.
PRALINE: (to camera) If you want to get anything done in this country you've got to complain till you're blue in the mouth.
SYSADMIN: Sorry guv, we're right out of blade servers.
PRALINE: I see. I see. I get the picture.
SYSADMIN: I've got a PC running Windows.
PRALINE: Does it scale?
SYSADMIN: Not really, no.
PRALINE: Well, it's scarcely a replacement, then is it?
The original poster stated the fixed position that he was not satirizing his trade, offering no rationale or reasoning. Like you, I thought that was a very black and white position to take, and I saw plenty of room to question it. Whether it was intentional or subconscious, at one level the tale seems to parallel his antipathy towards his contemporaries.
Is that speculative on my part? Sure. Was that his original intent? Based on the evidence of multiple chapters appearing to parody the ridiculousness of several of his peers' arguments, it sure seems to be the case. Could I be wrong? I could, but it seems more likely that I am not. Is speculation one way or the other easier? Either way, it's much easier than the homework I'm currently on/. avoiding.:-)
So I'm not sure why you seem to be arguing against me, when we're both saying the same thing.
he was writing a mind bending kids story, not "satirizing" his trade.
Why not? Did you even RTFA? The arguments are sound, the evidence is there.
It isn't an unusual literary device to write allegorically about other topics. For example, the Wizard of Oz was a play on the politics of a silver based economy and westward expansion.
If I had such a gifted imagination, perhaps I could write a children's story based on floppy discs and CDs, of filesharers and industry groups, but all dressed up like trading kittens and bunnies eating cabbages and milk. (If that sounds awful, well, I'm not very good at writing children's stories now, am I?)
Sorry, dimwit, you guessed wrong. I don't have a preference. I don't care what your handle is. You can call yourself FlamingQueer69 and it doesn't matter to me. Fire or be fired upon.
It seems to bother the people running the XBox Live network, however. The whole point is they're afraid if someone tags themselves "lesbian" then the people in game will say stupid things like "you just got blown by a dyke" and that will make children cry. I figure if you tag yourself with labels that identify what you are, you are actively inviting the discussion, which includes bringing in evil people with slurs. And my whole point is "that discussion doesn't belong in the video game."
What belongs in the video game is game context chat: "I think he's hiding behind the west tower" or "watch out, FQ69 picked up the rocket launcher." If you want to discuss what or who you are, go buy a copy of "Sexual Orientation Discussion 2010", and for all you who are so very very interested in what other people do in their bedroom time, go there and chat.
"Don't ask, don't tell" is a great way to deal with it, mostly because the whole damn thing is irrelevant to anything outside the bedroom.
In real life, I barely care about you as human. I don't want you to tell me what you do, or who you do it with. I'm simply not that interested.
On a video game network, I'm even less interested. Don't tell me you're gay, or straight, or white, or black, or a hairdresser or a hobbit fetishist. I don't care. Either pull out the BFG and start fragging some bad guys, or stick your head in the way of my shots.
I got enough crap in my own life to worry about. Their gender issues rank about 0.1% on my care-o-meter. The only people I care less about are the ones who hate other people based on stupid crap like this, and them I actively hate.
I found an article detailing this daily regiment of his.
Is that the 1st Regiment of the Imperial Guard? Because I'm pretty sure they dissolved the Emperor's Guard after WWII, or at least made it a part of the civilian police force.
Not sure why he'd eat members of the regiment on a daily basis, though. Even ground into a powder, that'd still be like eating soylent green. Nasty.
Slashdot Mirror
The "infected hospital PC" problem is one we've talked about before. It's worth going over again so people understand why sending a cleanup message is not the best idea.
The scenario is that a good Samaritan wants to send a "clean-out-the-infection" message through the botnet to all infected hosts, and a lifesaving machine in a hospital is infected. Some preliminary assumptions to make are that the good Samaritan has no way of contacting the machine's owner to determine if it's a mission critical or lifesaving machine, and has no way to advise them of the existence of the malware.
The lifesaving machine can be in one of three states: 1) fully operational as designed and desired (no infection) 2) partially operating (infected but usable) 3) bricked.
I would suggest that restoring the machine to state 1 is technically impossible. There is no way to determine how much the bot impacted configuration changes while it was active. Maybe it prevented a software patch that the machine owner thought was installed correctly. In any case we know it's not a guarantee -- many PC's never properly uninstall software even when the application is cooperative, let alone hostile malware designed to resist uninstallation.
Most of us would categorize the infected machine in state 2 - partially operating, but compromised in some way. In this case the attempt to remove the infection might leave it in a similar state, possibly worse, possibly better. For purpose of categorization, we can rank them by the probability that the machine can properly perform its lifesaving function. Let's say the manufacturer's spec is for it to perform 99.99% of the time. An infected machine might perform correctly 95% of the time. A post-infection cleaned up machine might perform correctly 99% of the time, or it might perform correctly 50% of the time, or even 0% of the time.
State 3 means that the good Samaritan intentionally created a Denial of Service situation. The potentially life-saving machine is discovered to be an unusable brick while the patient is in emergency need of treatment.
Finally, keep in mind that the good Samaritan doesn't personally know the outcome of any given machine's remote repair. He has no way of determining if the repaired machine ended up in state 1 or 2.
Since the good Samaritan cannot guarantee that the machine will end up better than it was, he should not risk making it worse. The ethics of the situation are such that the best outcome the good Samaritan can do is to kill the command and control network, and leave the individual machine owners responsible for their own cleanup.
This was a lot larger than taking down a rogue host. This is 1,500,000,000 fewer spams per day on the net.
Cut out two billion spams here and there and pretty soon you're talking about real effectiveness.
Sure, they could probably do more, but every journey begins with a single step. Shut down the easy ones first. Pick the low-hanging fruit. Then go back and take down another, and another. At this point it could be all they could get done in a short amount of time, and in any case it's still a good start.
Sorry, but you're factually wrong. Both my Motorola RAZR and my Motorola Z6 allowed me to tether over Bluetooth without difficulty. Even my turn-of-the-millennium Sony Ericsson T610 allowed me to tether via IR, as long as I didn't mind about 2400 baud and keeping both the computer and phone out of direct sunlight or flickering neon. AT&T has always wanted to add a surcharge $40/month for tethering, but I never asked them: I just set the data connections up properly and they always worked fine.
AT&T actually sold me both the RAZR and the T610; I bought the Z6 unlocked directly from Motorola.
So that's two different manufacturers who had no problem providing me with three different tether capable phones, and a phone company that was apparently powerless to turn off the feature even when given several chances.
So yes, Apple is sadly completely different. Apple has no problem boning their customers for the benefit of the phone company. But clearly, nothing is going to dissuade a fanboi like you from ignoring reality when it collides with your view of Saint Jobs and his Holy Apple Corp.
plus a decent media player
It's actually a poor media player. It has no USB transfer of music files, and is limited to using iTunes on a host computer. It doesn't allow alterations of playlists from the phone itself. It loses its place in the playlist with regularity. It has very poor controls for playback via Bluetooth's AVRCP protocol, where it supports only the play/pause button and the call button, and not the next/prev buttons or the volume control buttons which are found on every stereo Bluetooth playback device I have ever owned. The Bluetooth a2dp on the iPhone is also the most "fragile" connection I've ever dealt with, with dropouts being very common in my car when connected to the iPhone; I never had such severe difficulties with reception from my Motorola phones.
On the flip side, all the Motorola phone-based media players I've used are even worse in other respects. They either take forever to load, or crash frequently. They lose playlists when they crash. They have hard-to-navigate menus. And let's face it - they're uglier than the iPod app. A lot uglier.
I haven't found an ideal portable media player yet. I haven't tried a Zune (nothing appealing about it running Windows, and the babyshit brown color doesn't exactly exude "style".) I have a dirt cheap Sansa refurb that I immediately placed Rockbox on, and while it mostly works OK for music playback and can do what I want, it's got a downright hostile user interface.
Of course lack of tethering is Apple's fault. The machine is perfectly capable of tethering, and it does so in many markets. But Apple kowtowed to AT&T's request to block it in the U.S. They willingly provided AT&T with the kill-switch, even though I'm the paying customer.
I have a love/hate relationship with my iPhone. My preciousss. It's pretty and seductive, but it locks me out of stuff. For just about everything, there's an app for that, except for when Apple pulled it. It can do just about everything, but not when Apple or AT&T says it can't, like tethering. But for all it makes me crazy, I still can't seem to pause in the middle of the day without pulling it from its holster and stroking its sleek, responsive, beautiful face for a few minutes.
Damn this stupid phone. I really should throw it back into the depths of Cupertino from whence it came, but you'd probably have to gnaw my hand off to get me to drop it.
Furthermore, I doubt if PJ would have much problem getting pro bono attorneys to litigate this for her, just for the sheer fun of bitchslapping someone who is desperately asking for it.
What lawyer would voluntarily risk getting stuck to this tar baby? We've seen how SCO has been playing this for the last 7 years. I don't know that she'd get that kind of support.
Worthless?
That data reflects our culture!
Nobody said it couldn't be both at the same time.
It sounds like your core problem is time management, and not in finding music you love. If you can get to a live show even infrequently, buy all the CDs the artist will inevitably be hawking. Listen to them during veg time. Trade them with friends or coworkers who see different shows. And be honest: trade them without copying them; or if you do copy them be sure to hunt down the artist and pay them.
That (and DI.FM) is how I've come by most of my music in the last few years.
It's full of win: you get cool music on your own schedule, you support the artists directly without supporting big labels, and you don't have to hook speakers up to anything you don't want to.
A whistleblower reveals secret information to right a wrong. Perhaps there's a safety issue that is going uncorrected, or an unfair pay gap, or workplace racism, or where the bodies are buried. Those are kept secret to keep costs down at the expense of human health, or to protect the criminally negligent or guilty.
The GP said:
If I were him, I'd start spilling all the info I ever had on security for the state. No amount of money or threats would stop me. I mean any and every item.
There are plenty of legitimate secrets a CISO is expected to keep. Plans for upgrades that reveal current deficiencies but can't be implemented yet due to budget constraints. Ongoing operational security tasks. Or command and control structures: a list of the three key people without whom an emergency response would fail would provide a juicy target list for a serious attack. The identities of sting or honeypot operations. Those are all perfectly legitimate security items that should be kept secret.
A whistleblower is trying to correct an inequity. A traitor provides secret information only to damage an organization. See the difference?
They may not get the government they need, but they'll always get the government they deserve. The citizens always have the option to "t'row da bums out!"
Not that the bums on the other side of the fence are somehow better bums, but at least they're not the same bums.
Compromising your own ethics for revenge is a net loss. A vengeful, spiteful CISO would have about 0.00% chance of a new job that paid anything above "volunteer" wages.
Remember, CIO already jokingly stands for "Career Is Over." I don't think he needs to pile on "Career Is So Over" limiting moves by acting like a 13-year-old dumped by his first girlfriend.
So instead of paying people to fix our security holes, we're just not allowed to talk about them?
It's a hell of a lot cheaper that way. (Except for the parts where the bad guys break-in and steal your stuff; yeah, those are kind of expensive, but fixing them doesn't come out of the CIO's paycheck.)
Therefore this is all your fault for complaining about your taxes. You said to your lawmakers "we want less state services and lower quality workers" and there you go! You got exactly what you voted for.
Do you really want the taxpayers having the root password?
I'll give them to you. There are actually two root passwords to the Constitution: "terrorism" and "child pornography". By using either password, you can bypass any of the security protections or protocols built into the document, and you can invalidate its signatures.
There is a distinction between "acknowledgment" of an already known problem and the "announcement" of a brand new one. Hackers know about the problem already, and apparently it was widely known how to game the system, so this was only an acknowledgment. The CISO didn't reveal anything new, although it was apparently new to this particular audience.
By making future CISOs afraid for their job, the governor has poisoned the CISO's ability to actually perform their duties.
Yes, it's his own fault. He attempted to mess around with their data. And for that, he will deserve whatever punishment they give him.
But it all could have been avoided if his boss had the stones to do what we all know he should have done. Not following this procedure is like handing car keys and a bottle of whiskey to an alcoholic, and then wondering why he got a DUI.
If you can't afford to keep them due to the bad economy, you can bet that they're still full of irrational emotions about being let go. It really doesn't matter what the real true reasons are or how well they're documented, a laid-off person will still take it personally. It may be professional pride, or shame, or some other feelings like "if only I had done more, they would have kept me instead of Joe," or a mix of all of the above. It hurts, it's confusing, and it's very very personal.
Being laid off can be seen by the employee as a strike at the very core of their ego. Even a well-balanced person can respond irrationally. So you never, ever, let them back near sensitive data or systems after the layoff. It's heartless and cold, and you're a total shit for doing it, but you have to do it anyway. Or this happens, and it's completely his boss' fault for not escorting him to his desk and out the door immediately. Think about it: this guy is going to prison because his boss didn't have the balls to walk him out when he had the chance. Nice.
If he goes the camera route, longer prime focus lenses are likely to be his best choice. Zoom lenses may have a specific focal length that minimizes distortion, but almost all zoom lenses have more distortion than their fixed length counterparts.
But I still think the best answer is a large flatbed scanner at a place that specializes in scanning old documents. Further down in the comments people have recommended that some local or state government agencies might have the equipment and the people to scan the maps for free if they can keep copies that have historical relevance.
Mr Praline walks into a datacenter.
He walks to a desk where a sysadmin tries to hide below a tape rack.
PRALINE: Hello, I wish to register a complaint... Hello? Miss?
SYSADMIN: What do you mean, miss?
PRALINE: Oh, I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint.
SYSADMIN: Sorry, we're closing for patch Tuesday.
PRALINE: Never mind that my lad, I wish to make a complain about this hosting service what I leased not half an hour ago from this very datacenter.
SYSADMIN: Oh yes, the Kazakhstan Big Blue Blade Server package. What's wrong with it?
PRALINE: I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's offline, that's what wrong with it.
SYSADMIN: No, no it's connecting, look!
PRALINE: Look my lad, I know a dead host when I ping one and I'm pingin' one right now.
SYSADMIN: No, no sir, it's not dead. It's syncing.
PRALINE: Syncing?
SYSADMIN: Yeah, remarkable host the Kazakhstan Big Blue, beautiful rackmounting job, innit?
PRALINE: The rackmountin' don't enter into it - it's stone dead.
SYSADMIN: No, no - it's just syncing.
PRALINE: All right then, if it's syncing I'll sync with it. (shouts into cabinet) Hello Khaki! I've got a nice piece of Cat 6 for you when you wake up, Khaki!
SYSADMIN: (jogging rack) There it blinked.
PRALINE: No it didn't. That was you yankin' the wire.
SYSADMIN: I did not.
PRALINE: Yes, you did. (unplugs wire from cabinet, shouts into the end of the ethernet cable) Hello Khaki, Khaki (whips it against counter) Khaki host, wake up. Khaki. (throws it in the air and lets it fall to the floor) Now that's what I call a dead host.
SYSADMIN: No, no it's stunned.
PRALINE: Look my lad, I've had just about enough of this. That host is definitely depeered. And when I leased it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its lack of connectivity wad due to it being tired and shagged out after delisting a porn site.
SYSADMIN: It's probably pining for the fjords.
PRALINE: Pining for the fjords, what kind of talk is that? Look, why did it refuse to connect the moment I got home?
SYSADMIN: The Kazakhstan Big Blue prefers connecting via SSL. Beautiful host, lovely rackmounting.
PRALINE: Look, I took the liberty of examining that host, and I discovered that the only reason that its lights were blinking in the first place was that there was a flashlight taped inside the case.
SYSADMIN: Well of course it was taped there. Otherwise it would roll out the back and voom.
PRALINE: Look matey (picks up cable) this host wouldn't voom if I put four thousand volts through it. It's bleeding offline.
SYSADMIN: It's not, it's pining.
PRALINE: It's not pining, it's unplugged. This host is no more. It has ceased to be. Its license has expired. This is a late host. It's a brick. Bereft of electrons, it rests in peace. And if you hadn't taped a flashlight inside the case, the only cycles it would ever see from here on out are re-cyclers. It's dropped out of DNS and unjoined the internet invisible. This is an ex-host.
SYSADMIN: Well, I'd better replace it then.
PRALINE: (to camera) If you want to get anything done in this country you've got to complain till you're blue in the mouth.
SYSADMIN: Sorry guv, we're right out of blade servers.
PRALINE: I see. I see. I get the picture.
SYSADMIN: I've got a PC running Windows.
PRALINE: Does it scale?
SYSADMIN: Not really, no.
PRALINE: Well, it's scarcely a replacement, then is it?
The original poster stated the fixed position that he was not satirizing his trade, offering no rationale or reasoning. Like you, I thought that was a very black and white position to take, and I saw plenty of room to question it. Whether it was intentional or subconscious, at one level the tale seems to parallel his antipathy towards his contemporaries.
Is that speculative on my part? Sure. Was that his original intent? Based on the evidence of multiple chapters appearing to parody the ridiculousness of several of his peers' arguments, it sure seems to be the case. Could I be wrong? I could, but it seems more likely that I am not. Is speculation one way or the other easier? Either way, it's much easier than the homework I'm currently on /. avoiding. :-)
So I'm not sure why you seem to be arguing against me, when we're both saying the same thing.
he was writing a mind bending kids story, not "satirizing" his trade.
Why not? Did you even RTFA? The arguments are sound, the evidence is there.
It isn't an unusual literary device to write allegorically about other topics. For example, the Wizard of Oz was a play on the politics of a silver based economy and westward expansion.
If I had such a gifted imagination, perhaps I could write a children's story based on floppy discs and CDs, of filesharers and industry groups, but all dressed up like trading kittens and bunnies eating cabbages and milk. (If that sounds awful, well, I'm not very good at writing children's stories now, am I?)
Sorry, dimwit, you guessed wrong. I don't have a preference. I don't care what your handle is. You can call yourself FlamingQueer69 and it doesn't matter to me. Fire or be fired upon.
It seems to bother the people running the XBox Live network, however. The whole point is they're afraid if someone tags themselves "lesbian" then the people in game will say stupid things like "you just got blown by a dyke" and that will make children cry. I figure if you tag yourself with labels that identify what you are, you are actively inviting the discussion, which includes bringing in evil people with slurs. And my whole point is "that discussion doesn't belong in the video game."
What belongs in the video game is game context chat: "I think he's hiding behind the west tower" or "watch out, FQ69 picked up the rocket launcher." If you want to discuss what or who you are, go buy a copy of "Sexual Orientation Discussion 2010", and for all you who are so very very interested in what other people do in their bedroom time, go there and chat.
"Don't ask, don't tell" is a great way to deal with it, mostly because the whole damn thing is irrelevant to anything outside the bedroom.
Bull crap. They're struggling for nothing then.
In real life, I barely care about you as human. I don't want you to tell me what you do, or who you do it with. I'm simply not that interested.
On a video game network, I'm even less interested. Don't tell me you're gay, or straight, or white, or black, or a hairdresser or a hobbit fetishist. I don't care. Either pull out the BFG and start fragging some bad guys, or stick your head in the way of my shots.
I got enough crap in my own life to worry about. Their gender issues rank about 0.1% on my care-o-meter. The only people I care less about are the ones who hate other people based on stupid crap like this, and them I actively hate.
I found an article detailing this daily regiment of his.
Is that the 1st Regiment of the Imperial Guard? Because I'm pretty sure they dissolved the Emperor's Guard after WWII, or at least made it a part of the civilian police force.
Not sure why he'd eat members of the regiment on a daily basis, though. Even ground into a powder, that'd still be like eating soylent green. Nasty.
Wouldn't it be grand if the guys who hacked Ubisoft's latest game took on this challenge instead?
And it would be covered in extra-special awesomesauce to see the code posted to SourceForge.