I haven't gotten a call from a telemarketer for years.
I don't have a home phone.
I give the number to my cell phone
Doesn't work here in the Bay Area, and we have the same law. I get incoming marketing on my cell all the time. The real annoyance is repeat-dial fax SPAM, coming in at 3am, when I've left the phone on because I'm call... now there's a use for the disconnect tone!!! though I'd really like something that mucked up their fax system.
most potential employers, landlords and utility companies DEMAND a local, home number be on
file.
Hmm. Haven't had a local phone # for several years. I always provide one of my cell #s or a business line. I don't know how they'd know the difference, as only telemarketers are likely to do a search, and have never had the problem above.
In most jurisdictions, neither landlords or utilities are going to have a right to demand a 'local' phone number. They provide 'public utilities,' and are going to have to provide those Utilities to all comers, regardless of what kind of phone numbers their customers may be able to provide.
I also know several security/privacy phreaks who would not provide a phone # as a matter of policy, don't know that they've had a problem getting service. Personally, I just give out 555-1212 to anyone I have a problem with:)
the reports are that fighter planes were scrambled but were still 70 miles away when the airliners hit.
Do you have a source for this? I haven't seen it reported... FBI had reported that it knew the planes had been hijacked, but "since these sorts of events normally end peacefully" it hadn't taken any action.
Probably the fighters had been
sent up to investigate after air traffic controllers had figured out that something was wrong, but at that point the real purpose of the hijackings
probably wasn't known or suspected.
Probably not suspected... flights had been off course and not hailing for 30 minutes, so were assumed hijacked, but it's hard to believe anything was responding. An in-flight F-16 would probably be cruising at 5-600mph, and could reach 1400mph within 15-20 seconds, meaning that "70 miles away" would have been 3 1/2 minutes away. At that distance, air-to-air missles would have been possible, and after the first tower had been hit, there would have been some discussion of this option. Recent reports from Cheney indicate that it wasn't discussed until after the Pentagon was hit.
However, there were nearly 16 minutes between the WTC impacts. It is plausible that an already airborne military craft would have made it to the vicinity in time for the second attact, but nothing off the ground would have been able to get there... it takes 10-15 minutes to scramble a plane up from strip alert, and we didn't have any sitting on alert at the time...
an opinion as to whether a fight over the controls of the plane that
crashed in Pennsylvania or some deliberate sabotage by the airline's pilot or other aircrew member could have resulted in damage of some sort
to the wing that would have sent it plummeting to the ground
Flight 93 hit the ground at over 500mph, indicating that it was under power and, likely, undamaged. While the flight crew was likely to know how to cause enought damage -- even from outside the cabin -- to down the plane, this suggests that there was a stuggle for the cabin. As well, keep in mind that there were calls from the plane -- including Barbara Olson's call to her husband -- within five minutes of the downing. None of these calls to my knowledge reported damage to the craft.
What's the status of privacy protection in Australia? In the U.S., at least, a telco can't drop "we can listen in on your conversations at any time to see if you're using the lines to illegally play your grandson exchange tapes of Johnny Carson" into a AUP, and then get away with "occasionally sampling" communications. Violation of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act of 1990, among other things -- and clearly criminal.
Does Australia have similar protections? Is this a bunch of arrogant sysadmins thinking they own anything on their machines? I'd love if this were a case where someone like the EFF could go after Excite@home with guns blazing...
I wonder what kind of cyber brains are looking for child porn. Loosing email is one thing, having your house raided and all your stuff
broken/confiscated is another.
To: Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms
From: Nigam Enforcement Software Company
Re: Child Pornography Notice #87420
Dear Agent,
A recent probe by our Ranger III pornography detection software has determined that the individual below is distributing child pornography from a web server at the address listed below.
Ranger III has automatically forwarded this case to the Ninth Circuit Court and received an online warrant for search of this address, #CR4789022.
The offender's address is:
Commander Taco
Andover.Net
50 Nagog Park
Acton, MA 01720
Offending IP: 64.28.67.150
Ranger III has also electronically pre-authorized two M-71 tanks, three cases of assault rifles, two hundred incendiary bombs, and five BGM-109 "TOMAHAWK" Cruise Missles for your assault.
Bruce Perens, Linus Torvalds, Bill Joy and Alan Cox could probably code in one weekend what it would take a team of coders
a week to do, yet they at best are not even making twice what an intern at a Fortuen 500 makes.
Bill Joy?
Bill Joy is Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, as well as a Sun founder. His personal fortune is within a standard deviation of Bill Gates'. Given Sun's long-range plans under Joy, it would not be surprising to see it surpass Gates in twenty years or so.
This is somewhat more than what a average Fortune 500 intern makes.
Europe has neither DMCA nor UCITA. The world is bigger than US.
And if you believe that I have some Nazi memerobelia to sell you on eBay.
It was France, not the US, which stopped memorabilia on eBay. Not being former fascist supporters, the US would have no problem with such 'freedom of expression.'
Re:Sick of hearing about "such a great design"
on
Apple Dumps the Cube
·
· Score: 2
They were unreliable and defect prone exactly because they were unorthodox.
Never attribute to intention what can sufficiently be explained by stupidity. They were unreliable and defect-prone exactly because they were poorly engineered and pushed out the door without sufficient quality control. Equipment unreliabily is quite simple to acheive without going to the trouble of being unorthodox, and it's quite possible to be unorthodox while remaining careful about your engineering. The two NeXT cubes running in my basement, while based on different principles, testify that this unorthodox design can be implemented well.
Quite frankly, people who seriously factor the appearance of a computer into their buying choices are idiots.
I myself thought this until the day I borrowed a friend's VAIO and went to a cafe, and a woman sat next to me and said "that's a really sexy machine."
I just took a packet-by-packet look at what the new Napster client is doing (included below).
Summary comments:
It looks like they may be doing some low-level authentication in TCP headers, but not clear. Other than that, the client identifies its version number. All of this is simple enough to fake, perhaps by putting a proxy in between your client and the server. No "scan of your hard drive" is necessary to let you download files.
Will follow-up as I try to get an old client to connect.
-- SESSION ANALYSIS ----------
1st - negotition w/server.napster.com (MTU, etc) [new]
2nd - handoff to server
3rd - awk, negotiation with server
(some serious packet exchange here, looks like data maybe being passed in TCP headers, 'other options')
packet 16: data from client, non-human-readable
packet 17: six 00 bytes from server
packet 18: login and client IDentification (will this alone work???)
packet 19: six 00 bytes " "
packet 20: 'anon@napster.com 993776103' from server
packet 21: no data, from client
packet 22: "intro message" from server -- esp. interesting is "we'll soon be disabling future versions"
packet 23: tcp only packet from client
packet 24: first request from client, ie, "...+FILENAME CONTAINS \"doors"..." (standard Napster protocol)
packet 25: tcp-only from server
packet 26: first part of response stream from server (looks to be standard from here on out, except that the client keeps sending tcp-only packets... pings?... not much place for data in what they're using...)
[I then proceeded to download a file without any other monkey business occurring]
and thinking how all this definitely looked like the ultimate vaporare [sic] story.
The ultimate vaporware story was and is, in fact, Xanadu (see Udanax). Ten brownie points to anyone who can measure the difference of success between them and CYCorp!
Enough said, this is the simple solution to the problem.
I don't know if his "debit card" would do it (and since when does a rental agency accept a debit card??), but any credit card I've had would do a chargeback on any charge not explicitly authorized. Then ACME would have to sue him... and good luck to them, in front of a small claims court:)
It's more than a little annoying to hear people here saying "if you had real skills, you could get a job..."
I know more than a few really good people who can no longer find work. Two people who were at Apple in the first Mac years, for instance; a programmer and manager who once was President of a division of a Fortune-100 company; and so forth. It's a terrible time to be looking in the Valley, and everyone is running scarred; a bunch of clueless MBAs hold all the money and, despite the fact that they're the idiots who created the mess, still act like they know what's going on and can determine salaries (see the post someone made above).
About a month ago, I sat around the table one Friday night with five sysadmins, all recently out of work. Some had been downsized from places like Schwab, with generous packages; others had shown up at work and been told "you can keep on working, but we're not going to pay you... for the last month, even, by the way."
Each of these people had at least five years solid experience, and could PERL themselves out of a box if necessary. Some had a lot of C and Java. None has a job now, or particularly any prospects thereof. I myself have been a sysadmin or programmer for the last ten years, including two years at BBN Planet. I've led two multi-programmer projects to completion. I've only had a handful of interviews since my startup tanked -- due to an embezzling CEO, among other problems -- and each simply led to a lack of a concrete match, for one reason or another -- some places could have used me, yes, if the interviewer had a clue; others really didn't need or want someone like me -- an aggressive, type-A starter -- in their corporate or even geek culture.
A friend recently summarized the situation here well: "The sky is falling, the sysadmins can't even find jobs." Sure, this is due to the "irrational exhuberance" that led everyone who had heard of a for loop and his brother to Cali -- and there are some advantages, such as an 8% drop in average rents in San Fran alone last month. Yay that some people are getting out of here, and perhaps the traffic will ease!
But the comments about "people not having skills" and "don't you have savings?" and etc. that are getting modded up to 5 are neither warranted, appreciated, or useful. There's ignorant and low blows from people who have no idea what it's like here. Sure, a bunch of MBAs made some money, and some tech people made it on the boat -- but there are a lot of skilled people here who lost their shirts, myself included, working for 35K+ equity and not getting paid. I know one CTO of a startup that was funded to the tune of $22M, for instance, who (like me) is essentially bankrupt. He recently showed up to pick a check from a ('till then evidently solid) company he was doing Cisco installs for. He had $12K in equipment and travel expenses outstanding, and $8K or so in salary owed. The door was chain-locked and it took him two weeks to find anyone who would return his call. Result: essentially bankrupt, no source of income and a nice debt... some of it still there from the top-rated CS program that he got all As in...
I won't even go into the level of pure fraud and greed that inspired this whole mess, and how good people put in 90-hour weeks for nothing while execs walked away with silver linings -- let's save that, and how much the lawyers are going to make off the whole mess, for another thread, shall we?
OK, others have made a similar point, but this bears saying with some emphasis, since the original poster has a 5:
They had damn well better announce any orbital flight, manned or manned, beforehand. Any projectile with orbital capacity will immediately be detected by NORAD, and its path projected to potential impact sites. It's pretty difficult to do an orbital from China that can't hit the US or NATO. Last I had a peek at the relevant sections of the US SIOP (Single Integrated Operation Plan), this means that an unannounced Chinese orbital shot would bring NORAD to DEFCON 2 within about 30 seconds.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, this means that the US would have launched strategic bombing forces and be bringing ICBM and submarine forces to launch-ready.
The President, if available, would then have about a five-minute window to make a launch decision. The Joint Chiefs, and probably some people over at NORAD, have a window of authority to authorize a launch as well, assuming there's no one else available to make the decision.
The Russians, Ukrainians,..., and probably the damn Israelis would probably be taking note and making similar decisions. In short, the Chinese are highly unlikely to make an unannounced launch.
Finally, a historical footnote: the US has managed to reach DEFCON 2 a number of times by mistake, including an incident in which some idiot dropped a training tape in the NORAD computers and managed to hit "play." Fortunately, Reagan wasn't awake at the time, and NORAD no longer conducts training at the Springs:).
Where, O where did you get YOUR info???
129 warplanes is about 25% of the US invading force[...] and somehow, the media MISSED THAT?
I wish I could say that S was near N on the keyboard... in any case, the best summary of NATO warplane losses that I can find in 5 minutes on Google is at NATO Warplanes used & lost. Note that the figures there are planes downed on Yugoslav territory... more were lost over non-YS territory...
There's better stuff out there (and in my bookmarks elsewhere)... the Canadian NATO commander, particularly, noted how incredible the YS pilots were... MiG-29s are nothing to sneeze at:)
Here's the real stats:
1. Cruise missiles with 30 percent hit ratios -- this is true
The point is that they were reported to the US public at over 90%; and that the Tomahawk development team had been given that as a goal. 30%, the publicity figure that the Pentagon pulled back to, was in fact the overall hit percent for Tomahawk targets -- meaning it doesn't reflect that it may have taken multiple Tomahawks to hit the target.
Untrue. It was local Somalians... and we actually had a 20:1 kill ratio...
There were a great number of Afganistanis there... and 20:1, if true, is pretty sucky against Somalis, compared to 200:1 in Iraq, no? Not that I'd believe Pentagon figures any more than I believe General Westmoreland's body counts...
only one manned plane was shot down.
See above. You were reading the US media, as it did its very poor job of serving the US people. The F-16 downs just didn't make the big papers.
I think one of the most revealing -- and relevant -- quotes about Bin-Laden's goals is from his Esquire/Frontline interview. (The quote is below my comment, please scroll; more excerpts are at Bin-Laden Interview).
I think it's important to put Bin-Laden's quote in context:
----> The US conducts Operation Desert Storm. The US media reports it is an enormous success -- highlighting the role of Patriot missles and other high-tech systems -- when in fact, MIT researchers later show that none of the Patriots hit their intended targets, cruise missle performance was dismal (30% ish), etc.
----> In 1992, a bunch of Bin-Laden trained hicks kick the US's butt in Somalia. Boy, we don't hear much about US military effectiveness in the media.
----> In Spring 2000, 129 US warplanes are downed in the Yugoslav/Kosovo conflict. The NY Times reports only one of these.
As an advocate of a truly strong military -- as opposed to a bloated, bureaucratic, budget-and-career-path grabbing mess -- I think we ought to be listening pretty strongly when Bin-Laden says America is run by "devils."
Why? Because what Bin-Laden is saying is that America is much weaker than is says it is. That it is run by a bunch of cowards who lie about just about everything -- including our military capacity. And that sort of lying has everything to do with the current case.
Instead of going out there and building a strong, honorable military that can defend Americans along with the ideal of freedom, the FBI and etc. are going out there and building a totalitarian state that prevents the flow of information and the development of ideas. It's saying that people can't have encryption, because we're too cowardly and lazy to defend against it, and playing to the weakness and fear of the public. This is the essence of unfreedom. This is what destroys republics.
It is also the direct opposite of the democratic ideal which protects our society. The idea of freedom of information is that we become strongest when ideas can flow without government restriction -- that we solve problems, build economies, develop new technologies, and learn to protect ourselves better in a free society. And it is for this reason that totalitarian societies are doomed to freedom.
Is Mr. Bin-Laden using encryption? Is he building a military force to fight the U.S. government? Is he hurting the U.S.? If so, then I say, as an American, thank you Mr. Bin-Laden. Thank you for pointing out how weak we have become, under the direction of Mr. Freeh, and Messrs. Bush, and Mr. Clinton. Thank you for showing us that our society is so weak, and so unfree, that it cannot defend itself from you. Thank you for pointing out the devils among us, and how unfree they have made us, and that they are liars.
And that the lie is, that it is good to restrict technology, restrict information, restrict DeCSS, restrict encryption. That it is good to not let Americans see when their planes are shot down, or when their soldier die because they are unprepared for real war, because it "maintains morale" and public support for the military. The lie is, that restrictions and lying and totalitarianism makes us stronger, when it weakens us, weakens our military, and weakens our democracy. The lie is, that this benefits anyone, other than the bastards telling the lie. And by that, I mean Louis Freeh, among others, in this case.
All I have left to say, is that it is time to get the bastards out of office.
When the Marines landed in the last days of 1992, bin Laden sent in his own
soldiers, armed with AK-47's and rocket launchers. Soon, using the techniques
they had perfected against the Russians, they were shooting down American
helicopters. The gruesome pictures of the body of a young army ranger being
dragged naked through the streets by cheering crowds flashed around the world.
The yearlong American rescue mission for starving Somalians went from
humanitarian effort to quagmire in just three weeks. Another superpower
humiliated. Another bin Laden victory.
"After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and
prepared for a long battle, thinking that the Americans were like the
Russians," bin Laden said. "The youth were surprised at the low morale of the
American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a
paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the
hoopla and media propaganda... about being the world leader and the leader of
the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and
left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat."
Would you hire an architect to design a house for you without formal training?
This is the second time you've said this. It makes me wonder if you've ever hired a "software engineer."
I agree there's an incredible lack of professionalism in the software industry and, especially, a lack of the kind of advance planning and structure that others have mentioned here. This is a topic that's been talked to death on Slashdot, and all I have to say is, software is not bridge building. Not at all. More like scientific experimentation.
But: have you ever personally hired a 'trained software engineer,' say, one out of Berkeley or MIT or Georgia Tech? Was it your experience that they could program in a structured way, as a part of a team? My experience in the past five years has been the exact opposite. University trained software engineers, versus 'off the street' people with logical minds and the ability to work in a team, have often lost out -- mainly, because they write code that is intensely poor in style, and (frankly) often lack the communication skills to work and collaborate with others. As someone else put it: programmers often can't deal; in my experience, universities are hiding places for the programmers who are least able to deal.
Oh, and can we stop calling them "software engineers?" They're not engineers, they're programmers!, which is a fine but quite different thing.
"I figure most of the problem comes from their dial-up service." Spammers will subscribe to a dial-up service expecting to be booted off within a few hours or days. Then they simply sign up again after service is terminated, he said.
Of course, this would not be much of a problem if the credit card # used to sign up for one account was not allowed for another account; or if the name and address used (and necessary to authorize the credit card) were logged as unavailable. It wouldn't be hard to do this on a multi-ISP level, making it much harder for the typical spammer to do business...
Suspect there's not much motivation over at UUNet to take that kind of leadership, however, as they get paid $20-40 for each cancelled-and-renewed account...
Researches in Silicon Valley today announced that, within five years, they would be able to produce any number of quantum dot-coms in a small laboratory, at little or no cost. "This redefines the nature of cool," say John Q. Hoper, director of product developement at XOREX, "solving the urgent need for new, turnkey business solutions developed at the quantum pace."
Copyright does not give you ownership over anything (except the copy-right). Copy-right means that you have the "right" to "copy" a work.
Others, too, may have the right to copy the work. This is called fair use.
Except under the DMCA -- which has not held up in court -- copyright violation is not a crime. It is a civil offense, and commercial loss of the value of the work has to be shown.
@Home's docs have no commercial value, which is why they are invoking trade secrets and some DCMA (which has nothing to do with it) bullshit. It's all scare tactics.
Time has commercial value, and is readily available. @Home's docs are neither. That makes copying them fair use.
>If @home wants to have their documents be private, that is their right. Corporations have no obligation to make all of their information public
Fine. They have no such obligation, (though serving your customers is a good business practice). But if I get a copy of that document, I have the right to publish it if it is information which interests the public. Which this is. Free speech. Wake up.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have a home phone.
I give the number to my cell phone
Doesn't work here in the Bay Area, and we have the same law. I get incoming marketing on my cell all the time. The real annoyance is repeat-dial fax SPAM, coming in at 3am, when I've left the phone on because I'm call... now there's a use for the disconnect tone!!! though I'd really like something that mucked up their fax system.
Hmm. Haven't had a local phone # for several years. I always provide one of my cell #s or a business line. I don't know how they'd know the difference, as only telemarketers are likely to do a search, and have never had the problem above.
In most jurisdictions, neither landlords or utilities are going to have a right to demand a 'local' phone number. They provide 'public utilities,' and are going to have to provide those Utilities to all comers, regardless of what kind of phone numbers their customers may be able to provide.
I also know several security/privacy phreaks who would not provide a phone # as a matter of policy, don't know that they've had a problem getting service. Personally, I just give out 555-1212 to anyone I have a problem with :)
Do you have a source for this? I haven't seen it reported... FBI had reported that it knew the planes had been hijacked, but "since these sorts of events normally end peacefully" it hadn't taken any action.
Probably the fighters had been sent up to investigate after air traffic controllers had figured out that something was wrong, but at that point the real purpose of the hijackings probably wasn't known or suspected.
Probably not suspected... flights had been off course and not hailing for 30 minutes, so were assumed hijacked, but it's hard to believe anything was responding. An in-flight F-16 would probably be cruising at 5-600mph, and could reach 1400mph within 15-20 seconds, meaning that "70 miles away" would have been 3 1/2 minutes away. At that distance, air-to-air missles would have been possible, and after the first tower had been hit, there would have been some discussion of this option. Recent reports from Cheney indicate that it wasn't discussed until after the Pentagon was hit.
However, there were nearly 16 minutes between the WTC impacts. It is plausible that an already airborne military craft would have made it to the vicinity in time for the second attact, but nothing off the ground would have been able to get there... it takes 10-15 minutes to scramble a plane up from strip alert, and we didn't have any sitting on alert at the time...
an opinion as to whether a fight over the controls of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania or some deliberate sabotage by the airline's pilot or other aircrew member could have resulted in damage of some sort to the wing that would have sent it plummeting to the ground
Flight 93 hit the ground at over 500mph, indicating that it was under power and, likely, undamaged. While the flight crew was likely to know how to cause enought damage -- even from outside the cabin -- to down the plane, this suggests that there was a stuggle for the cabin. As well, keep in mind that there were calls from the plane -- including Barbara Olson's call to her husband -- within five minutes of the downing. None of these calls to my knowledge reported damage to the craft.
What's the status of privacy protection in Australia? In the U.S., at least, a telco can't drop "we can listen in on your conversations at any time to see if you're using the lines to illegally play your grandson exchange tapes of Johnny Carson" into a AUP, and then get away with "occasionally sampling" communications. Violation of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act of 1990, among other things -- and clearly criminal.
Does Australia have similar protections? Is this a bunch of arrogant sysadmins thinking they own anything on their machines? I'd love if this were a case where someone like the EFF could go after Excite@home with guns blazing...
To: Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms
From: Nigam Enforcement Software Company
Re: Child Pornography Notice #87420
Dear Agent,
A recent probe by our Ranger III pornography detection software has determined that the individual below is distributing child pornography from a web server at the address listed below.
Ranger III has automatically forwarded this case to the Ninth Circuit Court and received an online warrant for search of this address, #CR4789022.
The offender's address is:
Commander Taco
Andover.Net
50 Nagog Park
Acton, MA 01720
Offending IP: 64.28.67.150
Ranger III has also electronically pre-authorized two M-71 tanks, three cases of assault rifles, two hundred incendiary bombs, and five BGM-109 "TOMAHAWK" Cruise Missles for your assault.
Yours cordially,
Nigam Software
The week has been full of signs of the media giants' ascendance, looming over
Bill Joy?
Bill Joy is Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, as well as a Sun founder. His personal fortune is within a standard deviation of Bill Gates'. Given Sun's long-range plans under Joy, it would not be surprising to see it surpass Gates in twenty years or so.
This is somewhat more than what a average Fortune 500 intern makes.
And if you believe that I have some Nazi memerobelia to sell you on eBay.
It was France, not the US, which stopped memorabilia on eBay. Not being former fascist supporters, the US would have no problem with such 'freedom of expression.'
Never attribute to intention what can sufficiently be explained by stupidity. They were unreliable and defect-prone exactly because they were poorly engineered and pushed out the door without sufficient quality control. Equipment unreliabily is quite simple to acheive without going to the trouble of being unorthodox, and it's quite possible to be unorthodox while remaining careful about your engineering. The two NeXT cubes running in my basement, while based on different principles, testify that this unorthodox design can be implemented well.
Quite frankly, people who seriously factor the appearance of a computer into their buying choices are idiots.
I myself thought this until the day I borrowed a friend's VAIO and went to a cafe, and a woman sat next to me and said "that's a really sexy machine."
Dell doesn't get you laid :)
I just took a packet-by-packet look at what the new Napster client is doing (included below).
Summary comments:
It looks like they may be doing some low-level authentication in TCP headers, but not clear. Other than that, the client identifies its version number. All of this is simple enough to fake, perhaps by putting a proxy in between your client and the server. No "scan of your hard drive" is necessary to let you download files.
Will follow-up as I try to get an old client to connect.
-- SESSION ANALYSIS ----------
1st - negotition w/server.napster.com (MTU, etc) [new]
2nd - handoff to server
3rd - awk, negotiation with server
(some serious packet exchange here, looks like data maybe being passed in TCP headers, 'other options')
packet 16: data from client, non-human-readable
packet 17: six 00 bytes from server
packet 18: login and client IDentification (will this alone work???)
packet 19: six 00 bytes " "
packet 20: 'anon@napster.com 993776103' from server
packet 21: no data, from client
packet 22: "intro message" from server -- esp. interesting is "we'll soon be disabling future versions"
packet 23: tcp only packet from client
packet 24: first request from client, ie, "...+FILENAME CONTAINS \"doors"..." (standard Napster protocol)
packet 25: tcp-only from server
packet 26: first part of response stream from server (looks to be standard from here on out, except that the client keeps sending tcp-only packets... pings?... not much place for data in what they're using...)
[I then proceeded to download a file without any other monkey business occurring]
As of 6:01 P.M. PST:
3,602 users sharing 7,693 files, totalling 30 gigabytes.
CLEAR! (Pzzt-thump). CLEAR! "I can't get a pulse anymore, doctor..."
The ultimate vaporware story was and is, in fact, Xanadu (see Udanax). Ten brownie points to anyone who can measure the difference of success between them and CYCorp!
I don't know if his "debit card" would do it (and since when does a rental agency accept a debit card??), but any credit card I've had would do a chargeback on any charge not explicitly authorized. Then ACME would have to sue him... and good luck to them, in front of a small claims court :)
A few spores, carefully laid in the XP press...
I know more than a few really good people who can no longer find work. Two people who were at Apple in the first Mac years, for instance; a programmer and manager who once was President of a division of a Fortune-100 company; and so forth. It's a terrible time to be looking in the Valley, and everyone is running scarred; a bunch of clueless MBAs hold all the money and, despite the fact that they're the idiots who created the mess, still act like they know what's going on and can determine salaries (see the post someone made above).
About a month ago, I sat around the table one Friday night with five sysadmins, all recently out of work. Some had been downsized from places like Schwab, with generous packages; others had shown up at work and been told "you can keep on working, but we're not going to pay you... for the last month, even, by the way."
Each of these people had at least five years solid experience, and could PERL themselves out of a box if necessary. Some had a lot of C and Java. None has a job now, or particularly any prospects thereof. I myself have been a sysadmin or programmer for the last ten years, including two years at BBN Planet. I've led two multi-programmer projects to completion. I've only had a handful of interviews since my startup tanked -- due to an embezzling CEO, among other problems -- and each simply led to a lack of a concrete match, for one reason or another -- some places could have used me, yes, if the interviewer had a clue; others really didn't need or want someone like me -- an aggressive, type-A starter -- in their corporate or even geek culture.
A friend recently summarized the situation here well: "The sky is falling, the sysadmins can't even find jobs." Sure, this is due to the "irrational exhuberance" that led everyone who had heard of a for loop and his brother to Cali -- and there are some advantages, such as an 8% drop in average rents in San Fran alone last month. Yay that some people are getting out of here, and perhaps the traffic will ease!
But the comments about "people not having skills" and "don't you have savings?" and etc. that are getting modded up to 5 are neither warranted, appreciated, or useful. There's ignorant and low blows from people who have no idea what it's like here. Sure, a bunch of MBAs made some money, and some tech people made it on the boat -- but there are a lot of skilled people here who lost their shirts, myself included, working for 35K+ equity and not getting paid. I know one CTO of a startup that was funded to the tune of $22M, for instance, who (like me) is essentially bankrupt. He recently showed up to pick a check from a ('till then evidently solid) company he was doing Cisco installs for. He had $12K in equipment and travel expenses outstanding, and $8K or so in salary owed. The door was chain-locked and it took him two weeks to find anyone who would return his call. Result: essentially bankrupt, no source of income and a nice debt... some of it still there from the top-rated CS program that he got all As in...
I won't even go into the level of pure fraud and greed that inspired this whole mess, and how good people put in 90-hour weeks for nothing while execs walked away with silver linings -- let's save that, and how much the lawyers are going to make off the whole mess, for another thread, shall we?
OK, others have made a similar point, but this bears saying with some emphasis, since the original poster has a 5:
They had damn well better announce any orbital flight, manned or manned, beforehand. Any projectile with orbital capacity will immediately be detected by NORAD, and its path projected to potential impact sites. It's pretty difficult to do an orbital from China that can't hit the US or NATO. Last I had a peek at the relevant sections of the US SIOP (Single Integrated Operation Plan), this means that an unannounced Chinese orbital shot would bring NORAD to DEFCON 2 within about 30 seconds.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, this means that the US would have launched strategic bombing forces and be bringing ICBM and submarine forces to launch-ready.
The President, if available, would then have about a five-minute window to make a launch decision. The Joint Chiefs, and probably some people over at NORAD, have a window of authority to authorize a launch as well, assuming there's no one else available to make the decision.
The Russians, Ukrainians, ..., and probably the damn Israelis would probably be taking note and making similar decisions. In short, the Chinese are highly unlikely to make an unannounced launch.
Finally, a historical footnote: the US has managed to reach DEFCON 2 a number of times by mistake, including an incident in which some idiot dropped a training tape in the NORAD computers and managed to hit "play." Fortunately, Reagan wasn't awake at the time, and NORAD no longer conducts training at the Springs :).
Where'd you get the stuff in bold? I'm curious to read the rest of it.
That's at Bin-Laden Interview.
Where, O where did you get YOUR info???
129 warplanes is about 25% of the US invading force[...] and somehow, the media MISSED THAT?
I wish I could say that S was near N on the keyboard... in any case, the best summary of NATO warplane losses that I can find in 5 minutes on Google is at NATO Warplanes used & lost. Note that the figures there are planes downed on Yugoslav territory... more were lost over non-YS territory...
There's better stuff out there (and in my bookmarks elsewhere)... the Canadian NATO commander, particularly, noted how incredible the YS pilots were... MiG-29s are nothing to sneeze at :)
Here's the real stats:
1. Cruise missiles with 30 percent hit ratios -- this is true
The point is that they were reported to the US public at over 90%; and that the Tomahawk development team had been given that as a goal. 30%, the publicity figure that the Pentagon pulled back to, was in fact the overall hit percent for Tomahawk targets -- meaning it doesn't reflect that it may have taken multiple Tomahawks to hit the target.
Untrue. It was local Somalians... and we actually had a 20:1 kill ratio...
There were a great number of Afganistanis there... and 20:1, if true, is pretty sucky against Somalis, compared to 200:1 in Iraq, no? Not that I'd believe Pentagon figures any more than I believe General Westmoreland's body counts...
only one manned plane was shot down.
See above. You were reading the US media, as it did its very poor job of serving the US people. The F-16 downs just didn't make the big papers.
I think it's important to put Bin-Laden's quote in context:
----> The US conducts Operation Desert Storm. The US media reports it is an enormous success -- highlighting the role of Patriot missles and other high-tech systems -- when in fact, MIT researchers later show that none of the Patriots hit their intended targets, cruise missle performance was dismal (30% ish), etc.
----> In 1992, a bunch of Bin-Laden trained hicks kick the US's butt in Somalia. Boy, we don't hear much about US military effectiveness in the media.
----> In Spring 2000, 129 US warplanes are downed in the Yugoslav/Kosovo conflict. The NY Times reports only one of these.
As an advocate of a truly strong military -- as opposed to a bloated, bureaucratic, budget-and-career-path grabbing mess -- I think we ought to be listening pretty strongly when Bin-Laden says America is run by "devils."
Why? Because what Bin-Laden is saying is that America is much weaker than is says it is. That it is run by a bunch of cowards who lie about just about everything -- including our military capacity. And that sort of lying has everything to do with the current case.
Instead of going out there and building a strong, honorable military that can defend Americans along with the ideal of freedom, the FBI and etc. are going out there and building a totalitarian state that prevents the flow of information and the development of ideas. It's saying that people can't have encryption, because we're too cowardly and lazy to defend against it, and playing to the weakness and fear of the public. This is the essence of unfreedom. This is what destroys republics.
It is also the direct opposite of the democratic ideal which protects our society. The idea of freedom of information is that we become strongest when ideas can flow without government restriction -- that we solve problems, build economies, develop new technologies, and learn to protect ourselves better in a free society. And it is for this reason that totalitarian societies are doomed to freedom.
Is Mr. Bin-Laden using encryption? Is he building a military force to fight the U.S. government? Is he hurting the U.S.? If so, then I say, as an American, thank you Mr. Bin-Laden. Thank you for pointing out how weak we have become, under the direction of Mr. Freeh, and Messrs. Bush, and Mr. Clinton. Thank you for showing us that our society is so weak, and so unfree, that it cannot defend itself from you. Thank you for pointing out the devils among us, and how unfree they have made us, and that they are liars.
And that the lie is, that it is good to restrict technology, restrict information, restrict DeCSS, restrict encryption. That it is good to not let Americans see when their planes are shot down, or when their soldier die because they are unprepared for real war, because it "maintains morale" and public support for the military. The lie is, that restrictions and lying and totalitarianism makes us stronger, when it weakens us, weakens our military, and weakens our democracy. The lie is, that this benefits anyone, other than the bastards telling the lie. And by that, I mean Louis Freeh, among others, in this case.
All I have left to say, is that it is time to get the bastards out of office.
When the Marines landed in the last days of 1992, bin Laden sent in his own soldiers, armed with AK-47's and rocket launchers. Soon, using the techniques they had perfected against the Russians, they were shooting down American helicopters. The gruesome pictures of the body of a young army ranger being dragged naked through the streets by cheering crowds flashed around the world. The yearlong American rescue mission for starving Somalians went from humanitarian effort to quagmire in just three weeks. Another superpower humiliated. Another bin Laden victory.
"After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle, thinking that the Americans were like the Russians," bin Laden said. "The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda ... about being the world leader and the leader of
the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and
left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat."
This is the second time you've said this. It makes me wonder if you've ever hired a "software engineer."
I agree there's an incredible lack of professionalism in the software industry and, especially, a lack of the kind of advance planning and structure that others have mentioned here. This is a topic that's been talked to death on Slashdot, and all I have to say is, software is not bridge building. Not at all. More like scientific experimentation.
But: have you ever personally hired a 'trained software engineer,' say, one out of Berkeley or MIT or Georgia Tech? Was it your experience that they could program in a structured way, as a part of a team? My experience in the past five years has been the exact opposite. University trained software engineers, versus 'off the street' people with logical minds and the ability to work in a team, have often lost out -- mainly, because they write code that is intensely poor in style, and (frankly) often lack the communication skills to work and collaborate with others. As someone else put it: programmers often can't deal; in my experience, universities are hiding places for the programmers who are least able to deal.
Oh, and can we stop calling them "software engineers?" They're not engineers, they're programmers!, which is a fine but quite different thing.
Jeez, if I only had a nickel for every time I found out I had been hired, from checking the /etc/passwd file...
Of course, this would not be much of a problem if the credit card # used to sign up for one account was not allowed for another account; or if the name and address used (and necessary to authorize the credit card) were logged as unavailable. It wouldn't be hard to do this on a multi-ISP level, making it much harder for the typical spammer to do business...
Suspect there's not much motivation over at UUNet to take that kind of leadership, however, as they get paid $20-40 for each cancelled-and-renewed account...
Researches in Silicon Valley today announced that, within five years, they would be able to produce any number of quantum dot-coms in a small laboratory, at little or no cost. "This redefines the nature of cool," say John Q. Hoper, director of product developement at XOREX, "solving the urgent need for new, turnkey business solutions developed at the quantum pace."
OK, class, one more time.
Copyright does not give you ownership over anything (except the copy-right). Copy-right means that you have the "right" to "copy" a work.
Others, too, may have the right to copy the work. This is called fair use.
Except under the DMCA -- which has not held up in court -- copyright violation is not a crime. It is a civil offense, and commercial loss of the value of the work has to be shown.
@Home's docs have no commercial value, which is why they are invoking trade secrets and some DCMA (which has nothing to do with it) bullshit. It's all scare tactics.
Time has commercial value, and is readily available. @Home's docs are neither. That makes copying them fair use.
>If @home wants to have their documents be private, that is their right. Corporations have no obligation to make all of their information public Fine. They have no such obligation, (though serving your customers is a good business practice). But if I get a copy of that document, I have the right to publish it if it is information which interests the public. Which this is. Free speech. Wake up.
Didn't China come on to the test ban treaty? Wouldn't that prevent this, as it prevented US/Project Orion, etc.?