Metal lined passport covers! Seriously, Someone could get onto a bus (or whatever) in some foreign city and be able to tell that there are American citizens on it by using a RFID scanner with an antenna on it. There was an old NY Times article on this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/politics/26passp ort.html The State Department will soon begin issuing passports that carry information about the traveler in a computer chip embedded in the cardboard cover as well as on its printed pages.
Privacy advocates say the new format - developed in response to security concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks - will be vulnerable to electronic snooping by anyone within several feet, a practice called skimming. Internal State Department documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Canada, Germany and Britain have raised the same concern.
"This is like putting an invisible bull's-eye on Americans that can be seen only by the terrorists," said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the A.C.L.U. Technology and Liberty Program. "If there's any nation in the world at the moment that could do without such a device, it is the United States....."
ok, there are so many more reasons to dual boot than just the few you came up with.
i used macs in college (studying digital photography & multimedia along with my regular CS major). i still love playing in photoshop & painter (yes, i know & love GIMP, but it's not the same as drawing in painter yet). at the same time, i have a job as a unix perl programmer & i like working from home. the easiest solution for me is a machine that i can do both my work stuff & fun stuff on- for now, that's OS 9 & linuxppc. i've tried other linux distros (suse & mklinux) and they don't even come close to how great linuxppc is.
get a M$ intellimouse explorer. i hooked one up to my powerbook (which dual boots linux/mac) & it's great.
the thing that always annoyed me about hooking up mice to laptops was that if you were curled up on a sofa, it was a pain to carry over a mousepad & find a flat enough surface to use a normal mouse. the intellimouse (and probably another mice using optical tracking instead of wheels) totally gets rid of that problem- i just mouse on the sofa/bed spread/floor/whereever i am.
of course, i still can't believe that M$ managed to make a mouse that's good enough that i like- if only their software people would learn something from their hardware division. sigh.
i've worked in lots of rooms where the idea was "let's get everyone who's working on this project into 1 room so they can all work together easily" -it was nice when you had a question, you could just shout it out. but you're interrupted so often by other people's phones ringing or their conversations that i think i ended up less productive. if you're put into one of those big offices, you'd better be able to tune out background noise easily. then again, that's probably pretty much the same w/ a floor full of cubicles.
it's a nice way to create a feeling of working as a team, but i think that instant messaging & lunches together or something like that works just as well.
Apple's airport base station internals are Lucent, too. here's an article about how to upgrade the encryption it uses:
http://www.msrl.com/airport-gold/
One cool thing is that you can also use the newer Apple computers as base stations. So if you have a desktop & a laptop, you can use the desktop as a base station & then get wireless web surfing around your house with the laptop sharing the desktop's connection.
I am amazed but not surprised at the 1950s-throwback nature of the vast majority of posters here. "Have wifey stay at home" seems to be the solution everyone is proposing.
i think i'd have to agree with this. c'mon- i know that women programmers are few & far between (i've rarely ever worked in groups that have more than 2 of us) but we are around.
i love my job, and i'm not about to give it up to stay home with children. at the same time, if i wanted children, i don't see how i could possibly make it work- i stay late every evening, when we're launching something i'm there every weekend. i think that issues like this are at least partially responsible for the small number of women in technical jobs. having onsite daycare isn't going to change that radically, but it would help.
Slashdot Mirror
Metal lined passport covers! Seriously, Someone could get onto a bus (or whatever) in some foreign city and be able to tell that there are American citizens on it by using a RFID scanner with an antenna on it. There was an old NY Times article on this:
p ort.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/politics/26pass
The State Department will soon begin issuing passports that carry information about the traveler in a computer chip embedded in the cardboard cover as well as on its printed pages.
Privacy advocates say the new format - developed in response to security concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks - will be vulnerable to electronic snooping by anyone within several feet, a practice called skimming. Internal State Department documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Canada, Germany and Britain have raised the same concern.
"This is like putting an invisible bull's-eye on Americans that can be seen only by the terrorists," said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the A.C.L.U. Technology and Liberty Program. "If there's any nation in the world at the moment that could do without such a device, it is the United States....."
ok, there are so many more reasons to dual boot than just the few you came up with.
i used macs in college (studying digital photography & multimedia along with my regular CS major). i still love playing in photoshop & painter (yes, i know & love GIMP, but it's not the same as drawing in painter yet). at the same time, i have a job as a unix perl programmer & i like working from home. the easiest solution for me is a machine that i can do both my work stuff & fun stuff on- for now, that's OS 9 & linuxppc. i've tried other linux distros (suse & mklinux) and they don't even come close to how great linuxppc is.
get a M$ intellimouse explorer. i hooked one up to my powerbook (which dual boots linux/mac) & it's great.
the thing that always annoyed me about hooking up mice to laptops was that if you were curled up on a sofa, it was a pain to carry over a mousepad & find a flat enough surface to use a normal mouse. the intellimouse (and probably another mice using optical tracking instead of wheels) totally gets rid of that problem- i just mouse on the sofa/bed spread/floor/whereever i am.
of course, i still can't believe that M$ managed to make a mouse that's good enough that i like- if only their software people would learn something from their hardware division. sigh.
has a pseudo mac dialog box & says
Warning! Application programmer could not be
opened because of error of type AM!
it was advertising mactech magazine & you got it when you purchased a copy of code warrior...
i've worked in lots of rooms where the idea was "let's get everyone who's working on this project into 1 room so they can all work together easily" -it was nice when you had a question, you could just shout it out. but you're interrupted so often by other people's phones ringing or their conversations that i think i ended up less productive. if you're put into one of those big offices, you'd better be able to tune out background noise easily. then again, that's probably pretty much the same w/ a floor full of cubicles.
it's a nice way to create a feeling of working as a team, but i think that instant messaging & lunches together or something like that works just as well.
Apple's airport base station internals are Lucent, too. here's an article about how to upgrade the encryption it uses:
http://www.msrl.com/airport-gold/
One cool thing is that you can also use the newer Apple computers as base stations. So if you have a desktop & a laptop, you can use the desktop as a base station & then get wireless web surfing around your house with the laptop sharing the desktop's connection.