'Terroist' seems to have replaced 'Commie', 'Russian' &c in the language of US politics. Compare the speeches of President Bush Jr with those of Vice-President Bush Sr in the 1980s. SSDD (Same shit, different decade).
Yes, I was originally refering to the free version. That is why I said:
it is true that the basic package does not detect viruses,
I mentioned the Pro version to indicate that if people want virus protection in their firewall product then it is available. I was upfront about it and stated that I was talking about a different version of the product.
Adressing your 'secondly'. Viruses are spread by a number of methods: email, disk (or other storage medium), RPC and other port exploits &c. Obviously any product that blocks the exploited ports will block that sort of attack, a worm is an example of this sort of virus. It would be trivial to construct a virus that was spread by both the disk/download vector and the worm vector, ISTR reading about such viruses being written by researchers but not released to the wild. You stated, as part of your arguement in favour of XP Firewall, explicitly that Zonealarm is not Antivirus but did not qualify that with the additional statement that XP firewall is not either. That implies that XP firewall does prevent viruses, or maybe I'm just so used to having to analyse reports and such statements that I see what is left unsaid with greater clarity than others.
As part of my job I design and build systems to provide secure services. In doing this I have to be aware of potential security holes and so have to test for them. We did test XP firewall, as a possible second line of defense in case of a failure of our hardware firewalls or if an internal person attempted some cracking, and found that it left a number of ports open (RPC is the only one that comes to mind but I do recall there were others) which were potentially exploitable. As I recall it also lacked the 'Stealth Mode' that Zonealarm has so is open to port scanning.
XP firewall still leaves a large number of exploitable ports open, like much of Microsoft's product range it operates on the basis of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted (i.e. fix the problem after it has already caused a problem rather than trying to anticipate problems and fix them before they go wild). ZoneAlarm Pro (the payed for version) does have an antivirus function but it is true that the basic package does not detect viruses, neither will XP firewall. It will however block those that propagate through RPC and similar processes rather than email.
Combining Zonealarm with a decent antivirus package (I use Sophos because I can get it for free through work, we have an enterprise license which basically says that every employee who has a licensed copy on their work PC is entitled to also have it on their home PC) and switching from IE and Outlook Express to Mozilla gives probably about as secure an XP system as you can get and still have it connected to the internet.
Running a dedicated hardware firewall might be more secure but I suspect that is beyond most non-techie home users and harder for their techie friends to sell them on than just setting up their PC with Zonealarm and Mozilla then giving them a quick intro to the internet.
Not sure about other distros but, if you tell SuSE 8.1 or above (possibly lower versions as well) that you're going to be running as a Home/Desktop then it will turn off most of the services and setup a firewall by default. The only downside of this is that if you then want to turn FTPd on so you can copy files off you Windows box onto the Linux box over the internal network then it can be a bit of a swine to set up until you work out the exact combination of settings you have to set.
Not sure about Blaster but, that will still leave you open to a whole host of worms, viruses and exploits; many of which don't have patches/fixes available. ZoneAlarm (free as in beer) seems to consistently come out as the best firewall for Home Windows PCs in labs/test/reviews. I've been running it (on a number of different PCs) for quite a while now (over a year) and the only problem I've ever had with it was because one of the services it blocked was an RPC service (pretty sensible thing to block from the Internet really) which if you block the Microsoft DNS client in XP fails intermittantly. NB that's Microsoft's shitty systems design and not Zonealarm that is at fault.
Another good step is to install Mozilla as a replacement for MSIE and Outlook Express (or another mail client and browser if you prefer, I like Mozilla).
It must have changed a lot since the last time I watched then. Cos there used to be loads of ads between shows for tie-in magazines, videos &c. As for product placement, there was loads of that; soaps like Eastenders were particularly heavy with it. Heck, in the childrens slot entire shows were based around toy product lines or other merchandise.
Do you work for the BBC by any chance? You're very...emphatic in your comment.
I've never seen a tunerless set, you might be able to get them here, I don't know. It's unlikely to help though as the cable box counts as a tuner as the broadcast channels are pushed down the cable as well as the sattelite/cable ones. It's a no-win situation, just stump up the hundred and odd quid a year (I pay by monthly direct debit so I get a discount, I don't know what the full fee is) and get on with life.
The TV licensing when I phoned them about 3 weeks ago to see if we needed a TV license for a TV that was only used for displaying prerecorded DVDs (In-House promotional/informational material). I was told that if it had a tuner and so could have an ariel plugged into it and recieve a broadcast signal then it needed a license even if we had no intention of doing so. They said that the purpose of that was because of the example I gave in my earlier comment. So, I guess one of us has been lied to by the TV Licensing people.
I recall some years back reading a case where a crew member on a Cruise ship had rented a TV and video in Portsmouth and put it in his cabin on the ship. Despite the fact that it was never attached to an ariel and that for 9 months of the year he couldn't have picked up BBC even if he had had an ariel he was sucessfuly prosecuted for having a TV and no license.
True and it annoys me as well. I have to pay about 20 quid a month for SkyOne (it's not even in the basic package from my local cable company (Telewest Blueyonder), I have to upgrade to the premium package) and then have to put up with ads and the fact that most of the shows are either repeats or increasingly fake 'Reality' shows. The only show I used to watch on it with any degree of regularity was 'Buffy', now that's over I'm considering switching to a cheaper package. I'll have to see what other channels I'd lose. I don't want to lose Hallmark ('JAG', 'The Agency', 'Judging Amy'), E4 ('The West Wing', 'Dawson's Creek') or a lot of the History/Discovery type channels (real reality TV, I'm a total documentary addict).
If your TV has a tuner (or is capable of being connected to a tuner device, e.g. Digital TV box, cable box, video with a tuner &c) then it is deemed capable of recieving a broadcast signal and you have to buy a TV license, unless the law has changed in the last 3 weeks. So watching DVDs on your PC via a DVD drive doesn't require a license (unless the PC has a tuner card, in which case you should have a license) but buying a TV and plugging a DVD player into it will require a TV license. Otherwise people could just not get a license and when the enforcement agents paid a visit unplug the ariel from the back of the TV and put a DVD or video on then claim they only use it to watch prerecorded DVDs.
Under the law as it currently stands if you buy a TV from a store they are supposed to collect the address of where it is to be used and send that to the TV licensing authority so that they can check that that address has a valid license. Very few places do collect the information consistently and prosecutions are rare but stores have been prosecuted for failing to do that. Argos got done a few years back because a number of their shops failed to collect addresses.
I find it annoying to have to have a license as I don't watch terrestial channels at all and pay for cable TV (much of which has adverts).
If the demographic group has little disposable income, advertising time with that demographic just isnt worth very much.
If your principle product is something that forms part of many people's non-disposable income spend (e.g. soap powder, basic food stuffs &c) then getting them to spend that part of their income on your products rather than on you competitor's can be worth quite a bit. Also I wouldn't be suprised if the adverts turned out to include ads for products which are restricted in the sort of advertising they can use (e.g. cigarettes).
On the lenders front, I take it that you're in the US. Here in the UK bankruptcy is a lot harder to file, doesn't give you as much protection from your creditors and has much more far reaching effects; hence you're less likely to get people taking out loans then filing for bankruptcy when the first payment is due. Also, as I understand it, the level of owner-occupier property ownership is much higher here in the UK so loans secured on property are much more common. The lenders I'm refering to typically offer long repayment periods at high interest rates to people who are struggling with their exisitng credit commitments, so people go from paying 600 pounds a month over 5 years to 200 pounds a month over 25 years. Of course the lender only really talks about the lower monthly repayments. Another common package is to lend small amounts over short periods at very high interest rates. There's one lender who specialise in small loans in the run up to Christmas paid back weekly over 6 months at rates of 40%+ where the repayments are collected by someone physically coming to your door. Miss a couple of payments and the next visit they come with bailiffs to clear your house out.
The TV license only pays for BBC programmes, hence no 'in show' ad breaks on the BBC (just ads between the shows and product placement). ITV, Channel4 and Five are supported by ads. You might have paid for your TV and related hardware but the revenue steam for the shows on it is unrelated to the initial purchase. You could buy a TV and only use it for watching videos and DVDs (although under British law you'd still have to buy a TV license).
Would you spend your advertising budget trying to sell your products to people who cant spend $200 on a PC
Depends on what you're advertising. If you're selling luxury cars or high end home cinema systems then probably not. If you're selling soap powder, high interest loans for people with debt problems or tins of baked beans then probably you would. Also bear in mind that there will probably be some sort of spyware either in the PCs or in the adverts themselves that will allow the people sending the ads out to target the ads. If they see someone searching the web for bridging loans then their next ad break will probably contain at least one ad for a finance comapny or a debt councelling service, if they spend at lot of time on the Autotrader web site then their next ad break will have an advert for "Yes! Car Credit". A targeted and well defined audience for your ads, being able to get your ad infront of people who you already know are interested in your product, is a total dream for advertisers.
A big part of the f64 club was that whatever was infront of the lens and therefore captured on the film was what was printed, no cropping or other fiddling. Incidentally, very small aperatures mean big depths of field (handy in landscapes) but does not improve sharpness. An out of focus or camera-shake blurred picture will be out of focus or blurred no matter how small your aperature. Sharpness is also a function of film speed, low speed means small grain and therefore sharp whereas high speed means large grain and not so sharp. That's why commercial photography tends to be on ISO64 or slower film.
THE CAR IS NOT KEEPING RECORDS OF YOUR DRIVING HABITS. Sorry to shout but I thought that message really needed emphasising. The air bag system only keeps records for literally seconds, only freezes them if there's a crash, someone else listed the things it stores so I won't bother here (and I can't remember them all any how). Unless you're in the habit of driving in a way that would invalidate our insurance then you should have nothing to worry about on that front. If you're planning on racing then you probably won't drive in a way that would invalidate your insurance (i.e. stupidly) else you're likely to end up dead, racing drivers tend to be safe drivers as they know how far they can push things and how to deal with dangerous situations if they arise (I used to know a number of people who worked with the Ford rallying team, only people I know who consistently stick to the speed limit).
The diagnostic information stored in the engine management system (if it stores any thing) is more likely to be of the sort: "When braking hard pressure rises to full 0.2 seconds faster in right front than in left front." Using this information an engineer would know that there might be a problem with the left front braking system and fix it before you brake hard one day and the car suddenly pulls hard to the right because the left wheel is still turning as the brakes on that side have failed. Not the sort fo thng you want to find out only when you're doing 60 in a 60 zone and some idiot swerves in front of you missing your fender by about 3cm then decelerates so you have to do an emergency stop; that's what happened to me during a driving lesson in 1992, we all walked away unharmed but both cars were written off, the other guy lost his license (that wasn't the first time he'd been done for dangerous driving) and my instructor came very close to losing his accreditation to teach driving for failing to ensure his car was in 100% mechanical condition. It doesn't record that you tend to drive too fast whilst chatting on your cellphone, smoking a cigarette and steering with your knees (I've seen it done).
Not that I'm aware of, and as they're an intregral part of the airbag deployment and engine management systems I suspect that it wouldn't be a good idea to try. The fault diagnosis systems tend to only be on luxury cars, high end SUV and commercial vehicles and can only be accessed by engineers at dealer service units (i.e. if it's in a Lexus then only Lexus garages have the equipment to access it;I just picked Lexus as an example, I don't know if Lexus cars have that feature). Also they only store anomalous things, basically "Under these conditions something wierd happened". The airbag systems only store 5 to 10 seconds worth of information (frozen when the airbag deploys) so so long as you don't have a crash then you just have to wait 10 seconds and the data is gone. Only the manufacturers have the equipment required to extract the data and then only at their research/QA labs. These systems contain the intellectual property of these companies and as such they go to great lengths to protect the content. Those lawyers who have used the information have had to call engineers from the manufacturers as expert witnesses to testify as to the speed of the vehicle, they haven't had access to the raw information or the systems themselves.
Neither system records your position or transmits in anyway. Unless you're planning on saying that you were only doing 20mph (rather than the 120 you were actually doing) when you jumped the curb and took out a bus queue of nuns, mothers and children, then I don't see any sane reason to want to disable the systems. They're there for your safety and to ensure that minor problems get fixed before they become a major problem. If you really don't want them then start looking in classic/vintage car magazines for the auction announcements and sales adverts. Buy an old car and maintain it yourself then there won't be an air bag or engine management system, actually if you're at all mechanically minded it's a really fun hobby. I've restored some Triumph Heralds, a Truiumph Vitesse and a Morris Minor van myself; great fun.
You mean the boxes that record the speed of the car and forces involved when you crash so the manufacturer can see how well the air bag performed so they can make improvements so the next person has a better chance of survival? These only store a very limited amount of data, the data relates only to a few seconds before and after the impact and can only be retrieved by physically removing the storage from the car and download the data, it's not transmitting and you can't download the data remotely. Some car engine management systems also contain memory where they store anomalous sensor readings along with what was happening at the time so when you take the car in for it's service the engineer can download the data and diagnose problems that aren't apparent now but might cause problems before the next service. The reson for these stores is that it is simply not possible to anticipate all possible combinations of factors and test them before a car goes into production. It might be that an airbag is slightly slower to deploy if the impact is at a certain angle or that a particular braking problem only appears when the ambient temperature is below -2 degrees C and your back tires are slightly over inflated whilst the front are slightly under inflated (I'm just pulling random factors here). With data from real situations the manufacturers can pick up on problems they didn't find in their tests and improve the safety and efficiency of their cars.
It's true that data from these boxes has been used in court cases but only to disprove statements made by drivers, e.g. claiming they were going at 30mph at the time of the crash when they were actually going at 70mph. They are being used by insurance companies to avoid paying out claims which breach the terms and conditions of the policy. In theory this should decrease the premiums for drivers and/or, if you are a stock holder in insurance companies, increase the value of your portfolio and dividends. In practice the board probably take most of the saving from not paying unreasonable claims for themselves as a 'Performance Bonus', but that is nothing to do with the technology.
This is why I believe that/. should have a moderation and metamoderation (that is available where the initial moderation was "Informative") of "WRONG".
The author, clearly, was asleep during their Civics and American History classes (or too busy with other activities to pay attention). The founders of the US, the writers of the constitution and bill of rights in particular, were concerned about the possibility of a plutocratic federal government becoming a virtual monarchy and subjugating the states, that much is true. Their response to this was the second ammendment. Contrary to popular belief this ammendment does not guarantee your right to own a weapon for the purpose of blowing away your neighbour, the slow driver in front or someone you just don't like the look of. If you read the whole ammendment (not just the bit where it says "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.") then you see it talks about the security of the states and guarentees their right to raise a militia for the defense of the state against enemies both domestic and foriegn. Their solution to a government that acrued control was not peaceful debate and protest but the threat of bloody revolution. Talking has it's part, but diplomacy is the art of speaking softly whilst wielding a big stick in readiness. No stick, no reason to comply.
If you'd like to read the constitution before you start refering to it, there's a copy here. It is largely a limitation on the federal government but it does have something to say about the duties of the citizen.
This is why unions are just misuse of power, they extort companies and get more money than actual work worth.
I've heard some unions in the US are pretty bad for that but I don't think it's true of all unions, and certainly not many in the UK. I'm a union shop steward and I spend most of my Union time protecting members basic rights and pointing out when managers are breaking the law or going against their own written procedures. Sometimes you do have to do things and represent people that you'd rather not but when it comes down to it if you let management get away with an abuse against someone you don't like or has done something wrong then it weakens your case when they try the same thing against someone who is innocent. It's like if the Federal Government breach an ammendment to secure a conviction against a paedophile then the ACLU has to defend the paedophile, not because they want to defend paedophiles but because they have to defend the bill of rights. If the ACLU let them get away with it once then it weakens their arguement in all other cases.
Unionisation can work well for both employers and the employed as it gives a forum for the raising of grievences and for negotiation. It also means that individual managers often have someone around who is knowedgable about the procedures and can advise them (most of the queries about procedures I get are from managers as they individually probably only have to apply many of them once every few years but I am constantly involved in them so can tell the managers (many of whom are also union members) how those procedures work).
As a shop steward I will campaign for fair pay, people doing the same job to the same level should be paid the same; equiable treatment, no one should be refused promotion or subject to harsher disapline simply becuase of their race, gender, faith or simply because their manager doesn't like them; safe working practices, we have laws about health and safety in the workplace thsat managers should follow. What I will oppose is people being paid for more than their labour or worth. Having said that I do support minimum time payments for 'call out staff'. I've sure that any of us who have done 'call out' work will have at least once had a call where we've had to go into the office/data centre or whatever and the time it took to actually do the job was so short that it would cost us more in gas to go in than we would get paid. But I think one to two hours would be reasonable, four hours (unless there's a good reason) seems a bit excessive to me.
On the subject of the story the way I figure it is that if I'm at work then my employer has a right to know what I'm doing and where I am. As soon as I clock out that right ceases.
I have my own domain which is well spidered by Google and other search engines. I frequently get masses of spam addressed to a variety of common names at that domain advertising kiddie porn, beastiality porn &c. On top of that I have a variety of other addresses that I've used over the years, e.g. on USENET when it was thought to be safe to do so, and get similar mails to those addresses. Fortunately Spamcop blocks most of them. I've recently run into problems where the sheer volume of spam and bounces from spammers putting my address in theri From: field I've been recieving (one day I got 400,000 spam messages, approximately 399,950 of which were legitmately blocked by Spamcop) have caused Spamcop to threaten my account as their systems were basically being DOSed!
I agree that testing a vest on a human is probably pretty dumb (testing implies an expectation that there is a significant probability of it failing). The operative term, however, was demonstrate. Were I buying a bulletproof vest then I would certainly be more confident in my purchase if I at least saw some film/video of one on a sales person taking a bullet and the person coming out of the experience reasonably undamaged. There's an old saying about 'Eating the dog food', basically if you make a product then you should use it yourself (if applicable). Would you buy a product from a sales person who used a competing product themselves?
I totally agree with the 'reasons for rejection' suggestion. I believe I've suggested something similar myself in the past. I've submitted stories which have been rejected and been honestly confused as to why they were rejected. Having some indication would be useful, if it's something I'm doing wrong then I can fix that.
Try firing up Konqueror, and typing:
info:
and see how info was really meant to be used.
Try doing that when your Xserver is fried and you need to check the syntax for the commands to get it back up and running. Or for that matter try that when the only access you have to the box is via the textmode only terminal server plugged into the seriel port; and just for fun you're dialed in over a 33kbps, at 2am Sunday local time, the box you're connected to is on a different continent (it's 5am Sunday there) and the only help you've got on site is an op who needs written instructions to open a door and doesn't speak any of the same languages as you.
I get very worried when I see adminstrators who have only been trained in the point-and-click GUI tools, or training courses that only cover the GUI tools. There's a lot of times where I've been called out to solve a problem where a GUI interface hasn't been available to me (e.g. slow dial up, X11 blocked by a firewall, dialing into a seriel interface terminal server device &c).
Another reason why man is useful over info is that it can be found on pretty much any version of *NIX you'll ever come accross, info isn't all that wide spread. When you work in a hetrogenous environment it's nice to know there's something that will work on any of the boxes you need to manage.
Given the choice between control by the UN or control by any one nation, which is what I suspect the choice (if it could be called a choice) will actually come down to, then I'll take the UN (unless of course that one nation is the UK and I am the person appointed as supreme overlord of the Internet). The UN is too slow and beurocratic to have any effect (negative or positive) on the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
'Terroist' seems to have replaced 'Commie', 'Russian' &c in the language of US politics. Compare the speeches of President Bush Jr with those of Vice-President Bush Sr in the 1980s. SSDD (Same shit, different decade).
Stephen
Yes, I was originally refering to the free version. That is why I said:
I mentioned the Pro version to indicate that if people want virus protection in their firewall product then it is available. I was upfront about it and stated that I was talking about a different version of the product.
Adressing your 'secondly'. Viruses are spread by a number of methods: email, disk (or other storage medium), RPC and other port exploits &c. Obviously any product that blocks the exploited ports will block that sort of attack, a worm is an example of this sort of virus. It would be trivial to construct a virus that was spread by both the disk/download vector and the worm vector, ISTR reading about such viruses being written by researchers but not released to the wild. You stated, as part of your arguement in favour of XP Firewall, explicitly that Zonealarm is not Antivirus but did not qualify that with the additional statement that XP firewall is not either. That implies that XP firewall does prevent viruses, or maybe I'm just so used to having to analyse reports and such statements that I see what is left unsaid with greater clarity than others.
As part of my job I design and build systems to provide secure services. In doing this I have to be aware of potential security holes and so have to test for them. We did test XP firewall, as a possible second line of defense in case of a failure of our hardware firewalls or if an internal person attempted some cracking, and found that it left a number of ports open (RPC is the only one that comes to mind but I do recall there were others) which were potentially exploitable. As I recall it also lacked the 'Stealth Mode' that Zonealarm has so is open to port scanning.
Stephen
XP firewall still leaves a large number of exploitable ports open, like much of Microsoft's product range it operates on the basis of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted (i.e. fix the problem after it has already caused a problem rather than trying to anticipate problems and fix them before they go wild). ZoneAlarm Pro (the payed for version) does have an antivirus function but it is true that the basic package does not detect viruses, neither will XP firewall. It will however block those that propagate through RPC and similar processes rather than email.
Combining Zonealarm with a decent antivirus package (I use Sophos because I can get it for free through work, we have an enterprise license which basically says that every employee who has a licensed copy on their work PC is entitled to also have it on their home PC) and switching from IE and Outlook Express to Mozilla gives probably about as secure an XP system as you can get and still have it connected to the internet.
Running a dedicated hardware firewall might be more secure but I suspect that is beyond most non-techie home users and harder for their techie friends to sell them on than just setting up their PC with Zonealarm and Mozilla then giving them a quick intro to the internet.
Stephen
Not sure about other distros but, if you tell SuSE 8.1 or above (possibly lower versions as well) that you're going to be running as a Home/Desktop then it will turn off most of the services and setup a firewall by default. The only downside of this is that if you then want to turn FTPd on so you can copy files off you Windows box onto the Linux box over the internal network then it can be a bit of a swine to set up until you work out the exact combination of settings you have to set.
Stephen
Not sure about Blaster but, that will still leave you open to a whole host of worms, viruses and exploits; many of which don't have patches/fixes available. ZoneAlarm (free as in beer) seems to consistently come out as the best firewall for Home Windows PCs in labs/test/reviews. I've been running it (on a number of different PCs) for quite a while now (over a year) and the only problem I've ever had with it was because one of the services it blocked was an RPC service (pretty sensible thing to block from the Internet really) which if you block the Microsoft DNS client in XP fails intermittantly. NB that's Microsoft's shitty systems design and not Zonealarm that is at fault.
Another good step is to install Mozilla as a replacement for MSIE and Outlook Express (or another mail client and browser if you prefer, I like Mozilla).
Stephen
It must have changed a lot since the last time I watched then. Cos there used to be loads of ads between shows for tie-in magazines, videos &c. As for product placement, there was loads of that; soaps like Eastenders were particularly heavy with it. Heck, in the childrens slot entire shows were based around toy product lines or other merchandise.
Do you work for the BBC by any chance? You're very...emphatic in your comment.
Stephen
I've never seen a tunerless set, you might be able to get them here, I don't know. It's unlikely to help though as the cable box counts as a tuner as the broadcast channels are pushed down the cable as well as the sattelite/cable ones. It's a no-win situation, just stump up the hundred and odd quid a year (I pay by monthly direct debit so I get a discount, I don't know what the full fee is) and get on with life.
Stephen
The TV licensing when I phoned them about 3 weeks ago to see if we needed a TV license for a TV that was only used for displaying prerecorded DVDs (In-House promotional/informational material). I was told that if it had a tuner and so could have an ariel plugged into it and recieve a broadcast signal then it needed a license even if we had no intention of doing so. They said that the purpose of that was because of the example I gave in my earlier comment. So, I guess one of us has been lied to by the TV Licensing people.
I recall some years back reading a case where a crew member on a Cruise ship had rented a TV and video in Portsmouth and put it in his cabin on the ship. Despite the fact that it was never attached to an ariel and that for 9 months of the year he couldn't have picked up BBC even if he had had an ariel he was sucessfuly prosecuted for having a TV and no license.
Stephen
True and it annoys me as well. I have to pay about 20 quid a month for SkyOne (it's not even in the basic package from my local cable company (Telewest Blueyonder), I have to upgrade to the premium package) and then have to put up with ads and the fact that most of the shows are either repeats or increasingly fake 'Reality' shows. The only show I used to watch on it with any degree of regularity was 'Buffy', now that's over I'm considering switching to a cheaper package. I'll have to see what other channels I'd lose. I don't want to lose Hallmark ('JAG', 'The Agency', 'Judging Amy'), E4 ('The West Wing', 'Dawson's Creek') or a lot of the History/Discovery type channels (real reality TV, I'm a total documentary addict).
Stephen
If your TV has a tuner (or is capable of being connected to a tuner device, e.g. Digital TV box, cable box, video with a tuner &c) then it is deemed capable of recieving a broadcast signal and you have to buy a TV license, unless the law has changed in the last 3 weeks. So watching DVDs on your PC via a DVD drive doesn't require a license (unless the PC has a tuner card, in which case you should have a license) but buying a TV and plugging a DVD player into it will require a TV license. Otherwise people could just not get a license and when the enforcement agents paid a visit unplug the ariel from the back of the TV and put a DVD or video on then claim they only use it to watch prerecorded DVDs.
Under the law as it currently stands if you buy a TV from a store they are supposed to collect the address of where it is to be used and send that to the TV licensing authority so that they can check that that address has a valid license. Very few places do collect the information consistently and prosecutions are rare but stores have been prosecuted for failing to do that. Argos got done a few years back because a number of their shops failed to collect addresses.
I find it annoying to have to have a license as I don't watch terrestial channels at all and pay for cable TV (much of which has adverts).
Stephen
If your principle product is something that forms part of many people's non-disposable income spend (e.g. soap powder, basic food stuffs &c) then getting them to spend that part of their income on your products rather than on you competitor's can be worth quite a bit. Also I wouldn't be suprised if the adverts turned out to include ads for products which are restricted in the sort of advertising they can use (e.g. cigarettes).
On the lenders front, I take it that you're in the US. Here in the UK bankruptcy is a lot harder to file, doesn't give you as much protection from your creditors and has much more far reaching effects; hence you're less likely to get people taking out loans then filing for bankruptcy when the first payment is due. Also, as I understand it, the level of owner-occupier property ownership is much higher here in the UK so loans secured on property are much more common. The lenders I'm refering to typically offer long repayment periods at high interest rates to people who are struggling with their exisitng credit commitments, so people go from paying 600 pounds a month over 5 years to 200 pounds a month over 25 years. Of course the lender only really talks about the lower monthly repayments. Another common package is to lend small amounts over short periods at very high interest rates. There's one lender who specialise in small loans in the run up to Christmas paid back weekly over 6 months at rates of 40%+ where the repayments are collected by someone physically coming to your door. Miss a couple of payments and the next visit they come with bailiffs to clear your house out.
Stephen
The TV license only pays for BBC programmes, hence no 'in show' ad breaks on the BBC (just ads between the shows and product placement). ITV, Channel4 and Five are supported by ads. You might have paid for your TV and related hardware but the revenue steam for the shows on it is unrelated to the initial purchase. You could buy a TV and only use it for watching videos and DVDs (although under British law you'd still have to buy a TV license).
Stephen
Depends on what you're advertising. If you're selling luxury cars or high end home cinema systems then probably not. If you're selling soap powder, high interest loans for people with debt problems or tins of baked beans then probably you would. Also bear in mind that there will probably be some sort of spyware either in the PCs or in the adverts themselves that will allow the people sending the ads out to target the ads. If they see someone searching the web for bridging loans then their next ad break will probably contain at least one ad for a finance comapny or a debt councelling service, if they spend at lot of time on the Autotrader web site then their next ad break will have an advert for "Yes! Car Credit". A targeted and well defined audience for your ads, being able to get your ad infront of people who you already know are interested in your product, is a total dream for advertisers.
Stephen
In much the same way that they get TV shows in return for those shows being periodically interrupted by advertisements.
Stephen
A big part of the f64 club was that whatever was infront of the lens and therefore captured on the film was what was printed, no cropping or other fiddling. Incidentally, very small aperatures mean big depths of field (handy in landscapes) but does not improve sharpness. An out of focus or camera-shake blurred picture will be out of focus or blurred no matter how small your aperature. Sharpness is also a function of film speed, low speed means small grain and therefore sharp whereas high speed means large grain and not so sharp. That's why commercial photography tends to be on ISO64 or slower film.
Stephen
THE CAR IS NOT KEEPING RECORDS OF YOUR DRIVING HABITS. Sorry to shout but I thought that message really needed emphasising. The air bag system only keeps records for literally seconds, only freezes them if there's a crash, someone else listed the things it stores so I won't bother here (and I can't remember them all any how). Unless you're in the habit of driving in a way that would invalidate our insurance then you should have nothing to worry about on that front. If you're planning on racing then you probably won't drive in a way that would invalidate your insurance (i.e. stupidly) else you're likely to end up dead, racing drivers tend to be safe drivers as they know how far they can push things and how to deal with dangerous situations if they arise (I used to know a number of people who worked with the Ford rallying team, only people I know who consistently stick to the speed limit).
The diagnostic information stored in the engine management system (if it stores any thing) is more likely to be of the sort: "When braking hard pressure rises to full 0.2 seconds faster in right front than in left front." Using this information an engineer would know that there might be a problem with the left front braking system and fix it before you brake hard one day and the car suddenly pulls hard to the right because the left wheel is still turning as the brakes on that side have failed. Not the sort fo thng you want to find out only when you're doing 60 in a 60 zone and some idiot swerves in front of you missing your fender by about 3cm then decelerates so you have to do an emergency stop; that's what happened to me during a driving lesson in 1992, we all walked away unharmed but both cars were written off, the other guy lost his license (that wasn't the first time he'd been done for dangerous driving) and my instructor came very close to losing his accreditation to teach driving for failing to ensure his car was in 100% mechanical condition. It doesn't record that you tend to drive too fast whilst chatting on your cellphone, smoking a cigarette and steering with your knees (I've seen it done).
Stephen
Not that I'm aware of, and as they're an intregral part of the airbag deployment and engine management systems I suspect that it wouldn't be a good idea to try. The fault diagnosis systems tend to only be on luxury cars, high end SUV and commercial vehicles and can only be accessed by engineers at dealer service units (i.e. if it's in a Lexus then only Lexus garages have the equipment to access it;I just picked Lexus as an example, I don't know if Lexus cars have that feature). Also they only store anomalous things, basically "Under these conditions something wierd happened". The airbag systems only store 5 to 10 seconds worth of information (frozen when the airbag deploys) so so long as you don't have a crash then you just have to wait 10 seconds and the data is gone. Only the manufacturers have the equipment required to extract the data and then only at their research/QA labs. These systems contain the intellectual property of these companies and as such they go to great lengths to protect the content. Those lawyers who have used the information have had to call engineers from the manufacturers as expert witnesses to testify as to the speed of the vehicle, they haven't had access to the raw information or the systems themselves.
Neither system records your position or transmits in anyway. Unless you're planning on saying that you were only doing 20mph (rather than the 120 you were actually doing) when you jumped the curb and took out a bus queue of nuns, mothers and children, then I don't see any sane reason to want to disable the systems. They're there for your safety and to ensure that minor problems get fixed before they become a major problem. If you really don't want them then start looking in classic/vintage car magazines for the auction announcements and sales adverts. Buy an old car and maintain it yourself then there won't be an air bag or engine management system, actually if you're at all mechanically minded it's a really fun hobby. I've restored some Triumph Heralds, a Truiumph Vitesse and a Morris Minor van myself; great fun.
Stephen
You mean the boxes that record the speed of the car and forces involved when you crash so the manufacturer can see how well the air bag performed so they can make improvements so the next person has a better chance of survival? These only store a very limited amount of data, the data relates only to a few seconds before and after the impact and can only be retrieved by physically removing the storage from the car and download the data, it's not transmitting and you can't download the data remotely. Some car engine management systems also contain memory where they store anomalous sensor readings along with what was happening at the time so when you take the car in for it's service the engineer can download the data and diagnose problems that aren't apparent now but might cause problems before the next service. The reson for these stores is that it is simply not possible to anticipate all possible combinations of factors and test them before a car goes into production. It might be that an airbag is slightly slower to deploy if the impact is at a certain angle or that a particular braking problem only appears when the ambient temperature is below -2 degrees C and your back tires are slightly over inflated whilst the front are slightly under inflated (I'm just pulling random factors here). With data from real situations the manufacturers can pick up on problems they didn't find in their tests and improve the safety and efficiency of their cars.
It's true that data from these boxes has been used in court cases but only to disprove statements made by drivers, e.g. claiming they were going at 30mph at the time of the crash when they were actually going at 70mph. They are being used by insurance companies to avoid paying out claims which breach the terms and conditions of the policy. In theory this should decrease the premiums for drivers and/or, if you are a stock holder in insurance companies, increase the value of your portfolio and dividends. In practice the board probably take most of the saving from not paying unreasonable claims for themselves as a 'Performance Bonus', but that is nothing to do with the technology.
Stephen
This is why I believe that /. should have a moderation and metamoderation (that is available where the initial moderation was "Informative") of "WRONG".
The author, clearly, was asleep during their Civics and American History classes (or too busy with other activities to pay attention). The founders of the US, the writers of the constitution and bill of rights in particular, were concerned about the possibility of a plutocratic federal government becoming a virtual monarchy and subjugating the states, that much is true. Their response to this was the second ammendment. Contrary to popular belief this ammendment does not guarantee your right to own a weapon for the purpose of blowing away your neighbour, the slow driver in front or someone you just don't like the look of. If you read the whole ammendment (not just the bit where it says "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.") then you see it talks about the security of the states and guarentees their right to raise a militia for the defense of the state against enemies both domestic and foriegn. Their solution to a government that acrued control was not peaceful debate and protest but the threat of bloody revolution. Talking has it's part, but diplomacy is the art of speaking softly whilst wielding a big stick in readiness. No stick, no reason to comply.
If you'd like to read the constitution before you start refering to it, there's a copy here. It is largely a limitation on the federal government but it does have something to say about the duties of the citizen.
Stephen
I've heard some unions in the US are pretty bad for that but I don't think it's true of all unions, and certainly not many in the UK. I'm a union shop steward and I spend most of my Union time protecting members basic rights and pointing out when managers are breaking the law or going against their own written procedures. Sometimes you do have to do things and represent people that you'd rather not but when it comes down to it if you let management get away with an abuse against someone you don't like or has done something wrong then it weakens your case when they try the same thing against someone who is innocent. It's like if the Federal Government breach an ammendment to secure a conviction against a paedophile then the ACLU has to defend the paedophile, not because they want to defend paedophiles but because they have to defend the bill of rights. If the ACLU let them get away with it once then it weakens their arguement in all other cases.
Unionisation can work well for both employers and the employed as it gives a forum for the raising of grievences and for negotiation. It also means that individual managers often have someone around who is knowedgable about the procedures and can advise them (most of the queries about procedures I get are from managers as they individually probably only have to apply many of them once every few years but I am constantly involved in them so can tell the managers (many of whom are also union members) how those procedures work).
As a shop steward I will campaign for fair pay, people doing the same job to the same level should be paid the same; equiable treatment, no one should be refused promotion or subject to harsher disapline simply becuase of their race, gender, faith or simply because their manager doesn't like them; safe working practices, we have laws about health and safety in the workplace thsat managers should follow. What I will oppose is people being paid for more than their labour or worth. Having said that I do support minimum time payments for 'call out staff'. I've sure that any of us who have done 'call out' work will have at least once had a call where we've had to go into the office/data centre or whatever and the time it took to actually do the job was so short that it would cost us more in gas to go in than we would get paid. But I think one to two hours would be reasonable, four hours (unless there's a good reason) seems a bit excessive to me.
On the subject of the story the way I figure it is that if I'm at work then my employer has a right to know what I'm doing and where I am. As soon as I clock out that right ceases.
Stephen
I have my own domain which is well spidered by Google and other search engines. I frequently get masses of spam addressed to a variety of common names at that domain advertising kiddie porn, beastiality porn &c. On top of that I have a variety of other addresses that I've used over the years, e.g. on USENET when it was thought to be safe to do so, and get similar mails to those addresses. Fortunately Spamcop blocks most of them. I've recently run into problems where the sheer volume of spam and bounces from spammers putting my address in theri From: field I've been recieving (one day I got 400,000 spam messages, approximately 399,950 of which were legitmately blocked by Spamcop) have caused Spamcop to threaten my account as their systems were basically being DOSed!
Stephen
I agree that testing a vest on a human is probably pretty dumb (testing implies an expectation that there is a significant probability of it failing). The operative term, however, was demonstrate. Were I buying a bulletproof vest then I would certainly be more confident in my purchase if I at least saw some film/video of one on a sales person taking a bullet and the person coming out of the experience reasonably undamaged. There's an old saying about 'Eating the dog food', basically if you make a product then you should use it yourself (if applicable). Would you buy a product from a sales person who used a competing product themselves?
Stephen
I totally agree with the 'reasons for rejection' suggestion. I believe I've suggested something similar myself in the past. I've submitted stories which have been rejected and been honestly confused as to why they were rejected. Having some indication would be useful, if it's something I'm doing wrong then I can fix that.
Stephen
Try doing that when your Xserver is fried and you need to check the syntax for the commands to get it back up and running. Or for that matter try that when the only access you have to the box is via the textmode only terminal server plugged into the seriel port; and just for fun you're dialed in over a 33kbps, at 2am Sunday local time, the box you're connected to is on a different continent (it's 5am Sunday there) and the only help you've got on site is an op who needs written instructions to open a door and doesn't speak any of the same languages as you.
I get very worried when I see adminstrators who have only been trained in the point-and-click GUI tools, or training courses that only cover the GUI tools. There's a lot of times where I've been called out to solve a problem where a GUI interface hasn't been available to me (e.g. slow dial up, X11 blocked by a firewall, dialing into a seriel interface terminal server device &c).
Another reason why man is useful over info is that it can be found on pretty much any version of *NIX you'll ever come accross, info isn't all that wide spread. When you work in a hetrogenous environment it's nice to know there's something that will work on any of the boxes you need to manage.
Stephen
Given the choice between control by the UN or control by any one nation, which is what I suspect the choice (if it could be called a choice) will actually come down to, then I'll take the UN (unless of course that one nation is the UK and I am the person appointed as supreme overlord of the Internet). The UN is too slow and beurocratic to have any effect (negative or positive) on the Internet.
Stephen