If you don't mind me asking, what happened to 'Cephus'? you speak of her in the past tense.
She died of old age. When I got her, I had found her on my SCUBA tank after we had returned home. She was soooo tiny (about the size of my thumbnail), and we were miles away from the ocean by that time. I did not want her to die, so we mixed up some artificial sea water and I carried her home to place her in a 100gal aquarium I had. Fed her with feeder goldfish, but clams and crabs purchased from the local pet store was what she really enjoyed. She lived about two years (which is very good for an octopus), grew to about 13 inches and finally died from old age.
Octopuses have intrigued scientists for years, because they have both long- and short-term memory, they remember solutions to problems, and they can go on to solve the same or similar problems. They have been known to climb aboard fishing boats and open holds in search of crabs. They can figure out mazes, open jars, and break out of their aquariums in search of food.
This part of the linked article rang very true for me.
True story:
Octopus are underrated. Seriously. I used to have an (Octopus bimaculoides) as a pet (her name was Cephus, short for Cephalopod) and I was always amazed at the intelligence and problem solving abilities she exhibited. One day I was returning from working all night at the sleep lab followed by a day of class. I had a new bag of goldfish to feed her and placed them in the "goldfish tank" across the table from her 100gal aquarium. She always got excited at that and would hang on the side of her tank and look at the goldfish. At any rate, I got a couple hours of sleep and then ran back to work for another all night shift. Upon stumbling back home the next day, I was stunned to find no goldfish in the goldfish tank! I did not know if I was just seriously sleep deprived or what, but closer inspection revealed goldfish scales floating around in Cephus's tank........and a trail of dried salt water on the table top from her tank to the goldfish tank. She had opened the top of her tank, navigated across the table to the goldfish tank, helped herself to every last goldfish in the goldfish tank and then crawled back home, closing the top of her tank! All I could do was stare in dumbfounded amazement.
She also exhibited curiosity with new objects placed into her tank, exploring them extensively, and I must admit, it is most interesting in that unlike other aquatic non mammalians.....when you looked into an octopus eye, they look back at you. There is something absolutely intelligent behind those eyes.
HP calculators were well thought out, and engineered tools that simply did the job well and I have purchased a series of calculators, culminating with my 48sx (replaced with a gx when the sx died). From the early ability of HP calculators to be programmed with everything from sophisticated algorithms to the first "computer" game I ever played (Moon lander anyone?), HP has been the company to purchase calculators from. RPN notation and the concept of the Stack in a calculator truly made them a workhorse allowing one to be productive.
When HP decided to let their calculator business wither, everybody was stunned. We wanted to see the calculators continue to expand with new methodologies for connectivity (USB, 802.11, Bluetooth etc....), storage (CF), etc....etc....etc.... and could have easily become a growth market playing off the early success of the PDA market. Who knows? Perhaps an HP calculator/PDA would have helped prop up the PDA market to make them more useful? Embracing more open standards for communication and storage could have helped. Also, the understanding that "virtualizing" the calculator functions into an embedded OS that would allow other expansion options and ease of programmability with modern graphics (OpenGL) would have been great roads to take.
Well, let's see..... I at one time did have shares of HP, but sold them after a series of decisions HP made under Fiorina including:
1) Less focus on the printing division so they could make "me too" Wintel boxes and purchasing Compaq for an unbelievable amount of cash. 2) Canceling then reinstating the HP calculator line. 3) Getting out of and then back into the storage business. 4) Failing to capitalize on technologies invented at HP. 5) Being way too late to capitalize on the imaging expansion. Although the current imaging campaign (The Kinks Picturebook) is a well run ad campaign focusing on the consumer, they are still missing the Pro level stuff.
If a company is going through significant expansion, one could excuse a series of screw-ups, but HP has not significantly expanded. Rather they have given marketshare to companies like Dell, Epson, Apple and others to the tune of about $10 Billion.
My investment money went from HP to Apple. Fiorina was brought on to HP to bring the company into the Internet era, but seemed to miss that original goal entirely. Companies like Apple got it.
Granted, running a company the size of HP is not easy, but Fiorina's hubris and arrogance have proven dangerous. Unfortunately, this pathological perspective is a model that American corporate (and political) figures seem to be embracing to their shareholders (and citizens) detriment.
Mars, on the other hand, offers us the opportunity to do scientific research that simply isn't possible any way other than landing on another planet,
Like what? And what can we not do remotely? Why send astronauts there is what I am asking.
It's worth going there.
What I am saying is not that we should not go to Mars. I am saying that sending people to Mars right now would not have the scientific payoff that other investments in our space program might.
As for measurable, immediate scientific benefits, you have to look further than the end of your own nose if you're going to learn anything,
Yes, and your point is?
and you have to look further than the end of this week if you want to help humanity.
OK....... I cannot see what the near term scientific benefit is of sending folks to Mars. Hubble? Hell yeah. The moon? Absolutely,.......but Mars? Look, Hubble has generated more scientific data per dollar than just about any other NASA program as well as helped out more than one project in the defense department and fed data to scientists and scientific organizations world wide. A return to the moon, could certainly function as a refueling point for unmanned missions to other planetary and stellar objects, as well as functioning as a potential resource for mining (with a space elevator which would facilitate this), and a remote optical and radio telescope on the moon could be an extraordinary scientific resource, but I am not sure the payoff of killing Hubble in favor of manned missions to Mars are currently worth it. I would much rather see more investment in sophisticated ground and space based "scopes".
Given current technology, I see a manned mission to mars as a financial boondogle.
Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn't improved much over the past 15 years. Peter looks at where all the processor time and memory are going.
Ummmmm..... No.
A number of years ago, I had a project that required three days for each calculation. Just for kicks, when I got my dual G5, I ran the same calculation with the same parameters and it was complete almost instantaneously. Yes, yes....I know..memory bound performance versus disk swapping of memory space, but at the time, the memory on that system was maxed out (128 MB for $5000).
I also know that one of the games I helped work through beta (Halo) would absolutely not run on much hardware older than a few years ago.
For those who want a little background on Altivec, of course Wiki has a description here. Apple, who now ships Altivec in every system they make has a pretty good page here and Motorola nee Freescale has one here.
The benefits of Altivec can be truly astounding for those processes that can be "vectorized". After all putting these kinds of calculations in hardware has got it all over software computation. It kind of reminds me of when I got one of those Photoshop accelerator hardware cards (Radius Photoengine with 4 DSPs on a daughter card linked to the Thunder series video card) for my IIci. Photoshop filter functions ran faster on that IIci than they did on much later PowerPC systems simply because you now had four hardware DSPs running your image math.
Why, yes. I am the formidable BWJones! Slashdot Illuminati, scientist extraordinaire, and all around nice guy. But don't make me angry, or I will kick you ass.:-)
I am sure someone else will mention it, but I use iTunes exclusively for music throughout our home. A central server with our entire 10k song plus collection ripped onto it resides in the study with an old Powerbook connected up to the main stereo system in the house that spins out the tunes for most to hear (A Mac Mini would be perfect for this task). Others who want to listen to something else in differing parts of the house (or outside) can also tie into iTunes and listen simultaneously to completely independent streams, all wirelessly. In fact, before they moved, my next door neighbors used to stream from our server as well.
I don't know if PIII laptops can run iTunes or not, but my six year old Powerbook spins tunes with no problem whatsoever. For those truly particular about their music ( or those with high end home stereo systems possessing digital audio connectors ), Powermac G5's and the new 17in Powerbook also have digital audio out. Combine that with Apple's lossless audio format and you have some kick ass tunage available without ever again having to search through your CD collection for that particular song. A cheaper option is to purchase Airport Express units for differing parts of your house that each have an audio out and can plug into any available power socket.
Personally I think the main reason is the malpractice insurance that docs have to pay.
This is certainly part of the problem. Let me give you an example: My mother (a physician), used to love delivering her patients babies. It was one of the high points of her practice. Then one day, we were going over her budget for the practice and we discovered to our horror that every baby she delivered was costing her $200 because of insurance and other costs. Note: she has never been sued either. So, we made the business decision to stop delivering babies. But here is the real galling thing: She has to maintain an insurance trailer that goes down a little every year, until the last baby she delivered turns 21!. Is it any wonder they tried to discourage me from going into medicine? Is it any wonder that physicians are abandoning medical practices left and right in this country? There are also other regulatory issues physicians have to deal with that would boggle the mind. No other business in the US has to deal with these issues to the degree that physicians do.
I hear they put phosphorus blocks......essentially vaporized.
I would find that highly unlikely for a number of reasons from strategy to accident planning to source redundancy to chemistry and collateral risk assessment. I cannot comment further on that matter, but I can tell you the strategy of chemical (or photic) destruction of sensitive code and hardware is common. Everything from EPROMS that can be instantly wiped through chemical bath to ultraviolet radiation are used in embassies and observation platforms to defined lifetime inks for recordable media and such. Most of these devices are not however, used for data archiving.
To be fair though, using windows on the internet is a bit like running around a warzone in a tutu...
I've actually seen this....... In Liberia, many of the "troops" during the uprisings went walking around in wigs, wedding dresses, little purses and believe it or not, feather boas. One group would even go into various neighborhoods completely naked believing they were invisible and could thus, not be killed. Of course most groups did it for pure intimidation, and at first you watch this with some degree of amusement, but then realize that everybody is still carrying automatic rifles and rocket launchers and many are also quite unstable........
The place was a living hell on earth where the ultraviolence made a Clockwork Orange pale in comparison.
Excellent points. However, I might add to this......the very same organizations you cite as being evil, are responsible for the genesis and development of the very technologies that you are wanting. We would not have the degree of technological advancement in cryptography if not for the British and American governments starting in the 1930's and progressing to the current day. It is true that cryptography has its origins back in ancient times with simple ciphers and such, but current technologies are only possible because of those three letter acronyms.
Geolocation by IP address is a commonly accepted technique of determining ones geographic latitude and longitude through estimates of location in a region by comparing the the IP address with known locations of other electronically neighboring servers and routers. It's been used for quite some time now.
Ok, how many admins out there who take backup tapes home as your offsite solution?
This may be modded as funny, but is actually quite interesting. I know of a number (at least I know they used to) of sysadmins whose offsite backup was at home. This included some organizations with fairly substantial interests in limiting the access to their information. It should be company policy to properly pay for and establish a secure off site location for backups that are not in insecure locations like peoples homes. This should include any company that backs up information related to personnel information like SS#'s and such. For lots of companies or research institutions with just research info that is not sensitive, backups at home can be wholy appropriate.
Oh, yeah......and I DO pay attention to my logs, so that dude at 67.13X.XXX.XX in Vancouver Washington who linked to my machine from Slashdot just now and is trying to get access, I am watching you as we speak . A little more work and I can have your GPS coordinates too.:-)
The most critical item any computer security professional will tell you to take care of: Physical access. If you have a concern, this is your first line of defense and in fact, most top secret installations have considerable resources dedicated to physical access. Next down the line in terms of security risk will be issues related to physical access that again most top secret installations have resolved by disallowing any removable media in or around secured systems. After that comes any issues of network security because your greatest security risk is internal access.
You should not be carrying any sensitive work related items or data home, but if you have personal stuff (or a home business with IT critical information) you wish to secure, short of establishing a computer "vault" with limited access in your home (actually had one once for a project I was working on), you need to start with a secure OS. This does not mean Windows, unless you can afford a "hardened" version and are skilled at management. In fact, I would say from your question that all of the things you are already doing are the absolute minimum if you are using Windows. If you are truly this paranoid and keep sensitive info on your personal computer, and you obviously have a connection to the Internet, it should also mean, physically removing the Internet connection from your computer at times when you do not need it. Multi-casting OS capable machines like certain flavors *NIX are helpful here, so you dont have to deal with Windows network wizard every time you connect back up (if you use certain settings for your network). Wireless should be a no-no as well. IF you are really (read pathologically or are doing something quite illegal) paranoid, you could also build a Faraday cage around your room and charge it to reduce risk of TEMPEST related probes, but again if this is a concern, someone simply breaking in (again access) is often easier and cheaper.
When you are actually connected to the Internet, a hardware firewall is an absolute necessity. Network address translation will help limit some attacks. And aside from all the other things you are doing (strong passwords, encryption etc....), I would strongly urge you to constantly pay attention to your logs. Your most important data will be gleaned from the logs in terms of who is attacking, their strategies for attacking, when and where.
Hey, Chris and David! It better have aliens in it! None of this funny bait and switch nonsense where Mulder sees them and Scully does not and then Scully sees them but does not believe what she saw. I want to believe. {GRIN}
Oh, P.S., get some more science advisors for the show. I might consider volunteering to help with, ahem.... a reality check on what alien eyes would look like or something.
Unless you buy an online subscription, the news on the web is just headlines with little in depth material.
Yeah, so buy a subscription! People do need to realize that it does cost money to report news. From paying the reporter to outfitting them with camera equipment etc..., to paying news distribution costs (even Internet distribution has significant costs), it all is not free and if you find a news source that provides you with information you value, support them. Thus my admonition to support NPR. I send money to NPR, the WSJ and the NYTimes and Slashdot because I value their information. As to the others, their models make one view advertisements to pay for the delivery costs, and that is OK by me as long as they are not overly obtrusive and block the actual news.
I should also have included some relevant links to Internet based news sources bookmarked in Safari:
Slashdot of course. CNN of course. NYTimes for the writing and quality of reporting. BBC for the big mainstream non American news perspective. Kevin Sites for on the ground reporting in Iraq. Dan Gillmor for news grassroots news. CBS for financial info. CNET for tech news. Global Security for political defense news. Google for a good news accumulator. Cryptome because John manages to pull some pretty damned interesting articles out. NPR of course. Don't forget to donate. Reuters because they have the news. Washington Post for beltway news. Wall St. Journal for more financial news. NPR Marketplace for more financial news. CBS for mainstream US news. Technocrat for real science oriented geek news, like Slashdot only with less noise. Oh, yeah and Macsurfer for a Macintosh community oriented news accumulator.
Well, I have made the transition to obtaining almost all of my news via the Internet. It started back with the first news item I saw first on the Internet, the Oklahoma City Federal building bombing and has accelerated ever since. Certainly the future of news gathering will be via dissemination on the Internet whether that news is contained in Internet feeds of video from traditional news sources like CNN, CBS, ABC, etc.... but the growing numbers of blog reporting sites will become an even greater force in refining information delivered via traditional outlets and through the creation and reporting of novel news items. Of course 99% of bloggers do not have the resources individually that major news organizations have, but this is changing with group blogs and communities of bloggers.
The article later goes on to blame Microsoft and Apple for 'dumbing down' the product descriptions in order to appeal to non-tech-savvy audiences. 'High-tech companies don't release products anymore, they provide solutions. And those solutions don't simply run a program or play a song. Instead, they enable experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive'
It's about flexibility. Well, I started by using OS X simply because it was a more productive OS environment than IRIX, Solaris, Windows or yes, Linux. I could use one environment to run specific scientific code, run Office and Photoshop along with serving up webpages and other high end tasks including cluster computing all in one environment that allowed me to replace an SGI, and a Windows machine with one OS X box. The fact that I could also use iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD etc....etc....etc....allows me to also use them at home and suggest OS X running Macintosh systems for my family who knows very little about computers. If Apple can do that and market to both the high end and the low end with one solution, more power to them.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't mind me asking, what happened to 'Cephus'? you speak of her in the past tense.
She died of old age. When I got her, I had found her on my SCUBA tank after we had returned home. She was soooo tiny (about the size of my thumbnail), and we were miles away from the ocean by that time. I did not want her to die, so we mixed up some artificial sea water and I carried her home to place her in a 100gal aquarium I had. Fed her with feeder goldfish, but clams and crabs purchased from the local pet store was what she really enjoyed. She lived about two years (which is very good for an octopus), grew to about 13 inches and finally died from old age.
Octopuses have intrigued scientists for years, because they have both long- and short-term memory, they remember solutions to problems, and they can go on to solve the same or similar problems. They have been known to climb aboard fishing boats and open holds in search of crabs. They can figure out mazes, open jars, and break out of their aquariums in search of food.
This part of the linked article rang very true for me.
True story:
Octopus are underrated. Seriously. I used to have an (Octopus bimaculoides) as a pet (her name was Cephus, short for Cephalopod) and I was always amazed at the intelligence and problem solving abilities she exhibited. One day I was returning from working all night at the sleep lab followed by a day of class. I had a new bag of goldfish to feed her and placed them in the "goldfish tank" across the table from her 100gal aquarium. She always got excited at that and would hang on the side of her tank and look at the goldfish. At any rate, I got a couple hours of sleep and then ran back to work for another all night shift. Upon stumbling back home the next day, I was stunned to find no goldfish in the goldfish tank! I did not know if I was just seriously sleep deprived or what, but closer inspection revealed goldfish scales floating around in Cephus's tank........and a trail of dried salt water on the table top from her tank to the goldfish tank. She had opened the top of her tank, navigated across the table to the goldfish tank, helped herself to every last goldfish in the goldfish tank and then crawled back home, closing the top of her tank! All I could do was stare in dumbfounded amazement.
She also exhibited curiosity with new objects placed into her tank, exploring them extensively, and I must admit, it is most interesting in that unlike other aquatic non mammalians.....when you looked into an octopus eye, they look back at you. There is something absolutely intelligent behind those eyes.
HP calculators were well thought out, and engineered tools that simply did the job well and I have purchased a series of calculators, culminating with my 48sx (replaced with a gx when the sx died). From the early ability of HP calculators to be programmed with everything from sophisticated algorithms to the first "computer" game I ever played (Moon lander anyone?), HP has been the company to purchase calculators from. RPN notation and the concept of the Stack in a calculator truly made them a workhorse allowing one to be productive.
When HP decided to let their calculator business wither, everybody was stunned. We wanted to see the calculators continue to expand with new methodologies for connectivity (USB, 802.11, Bluetooth etc....), storage (CF), etc....etc....etc.... and could have easily become a growth market playing off the early success of the PDA market. Who knows? Perhaps an HP calculator/PDA would have helped prop up the PDA market to make them more useful? Embracing more open standards for communication and storage could have helped. Also, the understanding that "virtualizing" the calculator functions into an embedded OS that would allow other expansion options and ease of programmability with modern graphics (OpenGL) would have been great roads to take.
Well, let's see..... I at one time did have shares of HP, but sold them after a series of decisions HP made under Fiorina including:
1) Less focus on the printing division so they could make "me too" Wintel boxes and purchasing Compaq for an unbelievable amount of cash.
2) Canceling then reinstating the HP calculator line.
3) Getting out of and then back into the storage business.
4) Failing to capitalize on technologies invented at HP.
5) Being way too late to capitalize on the imaging expansion. Although the current imaging campaign (The Kinks Picturebook) is a well run ad campaign focusing on the consumer, they are still missing the Pro level stuff.
If a company is going through significant expansion, one could excuse a series of screw-ups, but HP has not significantly expanded. Rather they have given marketshare to companies like Dell, Epson, Apple and others to the tune of about $10 Billion.
My investment money went from HP to Apple. Fiorina was brought on to HP to bring the company into the Internet era, but seemed to miss that original goal entirely. Companies like Apple got it.
Granted, running a company the size of HP is not easy, but Fiorina's hubris and arrogance have proven dangerous. Unfortunately, this pathological perspective is a model that American corporate (and political) figures seem to be embracing to their shareholders (and citizens) detriment.
Mars, on the other hand, offers us the opportunity to do scientific research that simply isn't possible any way other than landing on another planet,
Like what? And what can we not do remotely? Why send astronauts there is what I am asking.
It's worth going there.
What I am saying is not that we should not go to Mars. I am saying that sending people to Mars right now would not have the scientific payoff that other investments in our space program might.
As for measurable, immediate scientific benefits, you have to look further than the end of your own nose if you're going to learn anything,
Yes, and your point is?
and you have to look further than the end of this week if you want to help humanity.
See my above comments on best bang for the buck.
OK....... I cannot see what the near term scientific benefit is of sending folks to Mars. Hubble? Hell yeah. The moon? Absolutely, .......but Mars? Look, Hubble has generated more scientific data per dollar than just about any other NASA program as well as helped out more than one project in the defense department and fed data to scientists and scientific organizations world wide. A return to the moon, could certainly function as a refueling point for unmanned missions to other planetary and stellar objects, as well as functioning as a potential resource for mining (with a space elevator which would facilitate this), and a remote optical and radio telescope on the moon could be an extraordinary scientific resource, but I am not sure the payoff of killing Hubble in favor of manned missions to Mars are currently worth it. I would much rather see more investment in sophisticated ground and space based "scopes".
Given current technology, I see a manned mission to mars as a financial boondogle.
Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn't improved much over the past 15 years. Peter looks at where all the processor time and memory are going.
Ummmmm..... No.
A number of years ago, I had a project that required three days for each calculation. Just for kicks, when I got my dual G5, I ran the same calculation with the same parameters and it was complete almost instantaneously. Yes, yes....I know..memory bound performance versus disk swapping of memory space, but at the time, the memory on that system was maxed out (128 MB for $5000).
I also know that one of the games I helped work through beta (Halo) would absolutely not run on much hardware older than a few years ago.
For those who want a little background on Altivec, of course Wiki has a description here. Apple, who now ships Altivec in every system they make has a pretty good page here and Motorola nee Freescale has one here.
The benefits of Altivec can be truly astounding for those processes that can be "vectorized". After all putting these kinds of calculations in hardware has got it all over software computation. It kind of reminds me of when I got one of those Photoshop accelerator hardware cards (Radius Photoengine with 4 DSPs on a daughter card linked to the Thunder series video card) for my IIci. Photoshop filter functions ran faster on that IIci than they did on much later PowerPC systems simply because you now had four hardware DSPs running your image math.
What, are you famous or something?
:-)
Why, yes. I am the formidable BWJones! Slashdot Illuminati, scientist extraordinaire, and all around nice guy. But don't make me angry, or I will kick you ass.
And BTW, who the hell are you anyway?
Google "BWJones" and find out for yourself.
I am sure someone else will mention it, but I use iTunes exclusively for music throughout our home. A central server with our entire 10k song plus collection ripped onto it resides in the study with an old Powerbook connected up to the main stereo system in the house that spins out the tunes for most to hear (A Mac Mini would be perfect for this task). Others who want to listen to something else in differing parts of the house (or outside) can also tie into iTunes and listen simultaneously to completely independent streams, all wirelessly. In fact, before they moved, my next door neighbors used to stream from our server as well.
I don't know if PIII laptops can run iTunes or not, but my six year old Powerbook spins tunes with no problem whatsoever. For those truly particular about their music ( or those with high end home stereo systems possessing digital audio connectors ), Powermac G5's and the new 17in Powerbook also have digital audio out. Combine that with Apple's lossless audio format and you have some kick ass tunage available without ever again having to search through your CD collection for that particular song. A cheaper option is to purchase Airport Express units for differing parts of your house that each have an audio out and can plug into any available power socket.
Personally I think the main reason is the malpractice insurance that docs have to pay.
This is certainly part of the problem. Let me give you an example: My mother (a physician), used to love delivering her patients babies. It was one of the high points of her practice. Then one day, we were going over her budget for the practice and we discovered to our horror that every baby she delivered was costing her $200 because of insurance and other costs. Note: she has never been sued either. So, we made the business decision to stop delivering babies. But here is the real galling thing: She has to maintain an insurance trailer that goes down a little every year, until the last baby she delivered turns 21!. Is it any wonder they tried to discourage me from going into medicine? Is it any wonder that physicians are abandoning medical practices left and right in this country? There are also other regulatory issues physicians have to deal with that would boggle the mind. No other business in the US has to deal with these issues to the degree that physicians do.
LOL! That's pretty damn cool. How do you script it?
I hear they put phosphorus blocks......essentially vaporized.
I would find that highly unlikely for a number of reasons from strategy to accident planning to source redundancy to chemistry and collateral risk assessment. I cannot comment further on that matter, but I can tell you the strategy of chemical (or photic) destruction of sensitive code and hardware is common. Everything from EPROMS that can be instantly wiped through chemical bath to ultraviolet radiation are used in embassies and observation platforms to defined lifetime inks for recordable media and such. Most of these devices are not however, used for data archiving.
To be fair though, using windows on the internet is a bit like running around a warzone in a tutu...
I've actually seen this....... In Liberia, many of the "troops" during the uprisings went walking around in wigs, wedding dresses, little purses and believe it or not, feather boas. One group would even go into various neighborhoods completely naked believing they were invisible and could thus, not be killed. Of course most groups did it for pure intimidation, and at first you watch this with some degree of amusement, but then realize that everybody is still carrying automatic rifles and rocket launchers and many are also quite unstable........
The place was a living hell on earth where the ultraviolence made a Clockwork Orange pale in comparison.
Any ideas for operating under those assumptions?
Excellent points. However, I might add to this......the very same organizations you cite as being evil, are responsible for the genesis and development of the very technologies that you are wanting. We would not have the degree of technological advancement in cryptography if not for the British and American governments starting in the 1930's and progressing to the current day. It is true that cryptography has its origins back in ancient times with simple ciphers and such, but current technologies are only possible because of those three letter acronyms.
OK..... I call your bluff.
Geolocation by IP address is a commonly accepted technique of determining ones geographic latitude and longitude through estimates of location in a region by comparing the the IP address with known locations of other electronically neighboring servers and routers. It's been used for quite some time now.
Ok, how many admins out there who take backup tapes home as your offsite solution?
This may be modded as funny, but is actually quite interesting. I know of a number (at least I know they used to) of sysadmins whose offsite backup was at home. This included some organizations with fairly substantial interests in limiting the access to their information. It should be company policy to properly pay for and establish a secure off site location for backups that are not in insecure locations like peoples homes. This should include any company that backs up information related to personnel information like SS#'s and such. For lots of companies or research institutions with just research info that is not sensitive, backups at home can be wholy appropriate.
Oh, yeah......and I DO pay attention to my logs, so that dude at 67.13X.XXX.XX in Vancouver Washington who linked to my machine from Slashdot just now and is trying to get access, I am watching you as we speak . A little more work and I can have your GPS coordinates too. :-)
The most critical item any computer security professional will tell you to take care of: Physical access. If you have a concern, this is your first line of defense and in fact, most top secret installations have considerable resources dedicated to physical access. Next down the line in terms of security risk will be issues related to physical access that again most top secret installations have resolved by disallowing any removable media in or around secured systems. After that comes any issues of network security because your greatest security risk is internal access.
You should not be carrying any sensitive work related items or data home, but if you have personal stuff (or a home business with IT critical information) you wish to secure, short of establishing a computer "vault" with limited access in your home (actually had one once for a project I was working on), you need to start with a secure OS. This does not mean Windows, unless you can afford a "hardened" version and are skilled at management. In fact, I would say from your question that all of the things you are already doing are the absolute minimum if you are using Windows. If you are truly this paranoid and keep sensitive info on your personal computer, and you obviously have a connection to the Internet, it should also mean, physically removing the Internet connection from your computer at times when you do not need it. Multi-casting OS capable machines like certain flavors *NIX are helpful here, so you dont have to deal with Windows network wizard every time you connect back up (if you use certain settings for your network). Wireless should be a no-no as well. IF you are really (read pathologically or are doing something quite illegal) paranoid, you could also build a Faraday cage around your room and charge it to reduce risk of TEMPEST related probes, but again if this is a concern, someone simply breaking in (again access) is often easier and cheaper.
When you are actually connected to the Internet, a hardware firewall is an absolute necessity. Network address translation will help limit some attacks. And aside from all the other things you are doing (strong passwords, encryption etc....), I would strongly urge you to constantly pay attention to your logs. Your most important data will be gleaned from the logs in terms of who is attacking, their strategies for attacking, when and where.
Hey, Chris and David! It better have aliens in it! None of this funny bait and switch nonsense where Mulder sees them and Scully does not and then Scully sees them but does not believe what she saw. I want to believe. {GRIN}
Oh, P.S., get some more science advisors for the show. I might consider volunteering to help with, ahem.... a reality check on what alien eyes would look like or something.
Unless you buy an online subscription, the news on the web is just headlines with little in depth material.
Yeah, so buy a subscription! People do need to realize that it does cost money to report news. From paying the reporter to outfitting them with camera equipment etc..., to paying news distribution costs (even Internet distribution has significant costs), it all is not free and if you find a news source that provides you with information you value, support them. Thus my admonition to support NPR. I send money to NPR, the WSJ and the NYTimes and Slashdot because I value their information. As to the others, their models make one view advertisements to pay for the delivery costs, and that is OK by me as long as they are not overly obtrusive and block the actual news.
I should also have included some relevant links to Internet based news sources bookmarked in Safari:
Slashdot of course.
CNN of course.
NYTimes for the writing and quality of reporting.
BBC for the big mainstream non American news perspective.
Kevin Sites for on the ground reporting in Iraq.
Dan Gillmor for news grassroots news.
CBS for financial info.
CNET for tech news.
Global Security for political defense news.
Google for a good news accumulator.
Cryptome because John manages to pull some pretty damned interesting articles out.
NPR of course. Don't forget to donate.
Reuters because they have the news.
Washington Post for beltway news.
Wall St. Journal for more financial news.
NPR Marketplace for more financial news.
CBS for mainstream US news.
Technocrat for real science oriented geek news, like Slashdot only with less noise.
Oh, yeah and
Macsurfer for a Macintosh community oriented news accumulator.
Well, I have made the transition to obtaining almost all of my news via the Internet. It started back with the first news item I saw first on the Internet, the Oklahoma City Federal building bombing and has accelerated ever since. Certainly the future of news gathering will be via dissemination on the Internet whether that news is contained in Internet feeds of video from traditional news sources like CNN, CBS, ABC, etc.... but the growing numbers of blog reporting sites will become an even greater force in refining information delivered via traditional outlets and through the creation and reporting of novel news items. Of course 99% of bloggers do not have the resources individually that major news organizations have, but this is changing with group blogs and communities of bloggers.
The article later goes on to blame Microsoft and Apple for 'dumbing down' the product descriptions in order to appeal to non-tech-savvy audiences. 'High-tech companies don't release products anymore, they provide solutions. And those solutions don't simply run a program or play a song. Instead, they enable experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive'
It's about flexibility. Well, I started by using OS X simply because it was a more productive OS environment than IRIX, Solaris, Windows or yes, Linux. I could use one environment to run specific scientific code, run Office and Photoshop along with serving up webpages and other high end tasks including cluster computing all in one environment that allowed me to replace an SGI, and a Windows machine with one OS X box. The fact that I could also use iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD etc....etc....etc....allows me to also use them at home and suggest OS X running Macintosh systems for my family who knows very little about computers. If Apple can do that and market to both the high end and the low end with one solution, more power to them.
Daringfireball also has a nice little article covering this lawsuit and Nicks identity.