If someone hacks your computer, the worst thing that could happen is you'd lose some data and have to do a fresh install of everything. If you put fucking thermite in a PC, you're out $2000 worth of hardware.
If we look at the original post (emphasis mine):
about a year ago I suggested wiring the embedded device we were working on with thermite so that if one of those wise-ass kids in Sweden tried to hack our hardware, it'd quitely fry the motherboard and hard drive.
An embedded device isn't a desktop computer or a server. It's a proessor that's 'embedded' in another device. Take a TiVo for instance. It is an embedded device. The original poster's usage of the term 'hack' was not as in crack but as in 'classic' hacking.
The definition is important. If I was to crack a server, I would be breaking in and acessing data without authorisation. If I were to hack an embedded device, I could for example add more recording time to my TiVo.
Some companies are annoyed by peope hacking thier embedded hardware, since they can but low-spec versions and make them into high-spec versions.
The original poster was likely making a joke. He proposed a device that if you opened the case to upgrade it, would destroy itself.
We have cameras covering every square inch of Britain so that every individual can be tracked.
Actually, no. Cameras are rarely placed anywhere that doesn't have a fairly high risk of crime. In the center of the shopping district in a city yes, there may be cameras. But not in suburban housing areas, et cetera. That would be stupid.
But we can't tell you where Agent 69 was last Tuesday when he lost his laptop.
Unfortunately, most cameras are on the street, i.e. where a lot of street crime is committed, not in the back of taxis, or behind bars. In any case, the resources required to track any person using security cameras would be massive. Whenever they entered a covered area, there would be a risk of them not being picked up again. Have you ever tried to identify someone from a fuzzy, black-and-white security camera? It is sometimes difficult.
And it's a good thing we've got these cameras to keep track of the IRA, or they'd set up us the bomb.
Can't live with them, can't legally torture them to death...
So we'll give each agent a small thermite bomb in a briefcase instead, and give 'em free roam of the city.
If we look at the article:
the Defense Ministry plans to outfit their absent-minded workers with secret-agent-style briefcases that protect national secrets by automatically destroying the contents of lost laptops' hard drives.
I very much doubt Thermite would be involved. Why not just make a thin iron lining for the briefcase, then take it out and wrap a thin wire around it, say, 10,000 times, then connect it to some capacitors and a battery inside? If you open the case without entering the code, the (ready-charged, of course) capacitors burst-discharge, like a camera flash, into the wire coil with the iron center, and the laptop in it. As those of you who were awake in first year high school physics may have guessed, you have a big electromagnet, with your computer inside is, recieving a big burst of voltage. This would generate a substantial magnetic field. Since hard disks are written to magnetically, Bang! All the data is erased.
That would be far safer and similarly effective.
But why they don't just encrypt the hard disks is beyond me.
In a corner removed from the rest of the group, Watson and another man were huddled together discussing what annoys them the most about the modern Internet--the banner ads. They were trying to come up with a way to "solve" that problem. They talk about whether it would be possible to intercept the ads and replace them with the words "Free the Net!" Or maybe the easiest way to make them disappear would be would be just to bring down the server computers for DoubleClick, the company that manages much of the Internet's advertising.
"If we could find a way to get rid of those ads for a week we'd be the heroes of the Internet," Watson said.
Just go to your client's (or better still, proxy server's) hosts file (C:\Windows\hosts on Windows,/etc/hosts on Linux, I think).
Add entries for every server you don't want to connect to, i.e. ad1.doubleclick.com, etc. and point them to 127.0.0.1 (localhost). That'll time out extra-fast. Example here.
Alterately, you could block *doubleclick.com at a proxy server. Or you could put a proxy on your local machine (Like a content-checking porn filter), that checked all files with *.gif extension for banner proportions, then replaced them.
Blocking banner ads is easy. The question is: Would the benefit (whatever that may be) outway the problem of sites not being funded by advertising, and maybe changing to subscription, or closing. This is the real issue.
Is it just me, or is this just another company getting hacked? So it happened to be an advertising company. Big deal. This hardly seems slashdot-worthy; web servers are compromised all the time. Most of DoubleClick's data is just IPs and lists of websites.
It isn't automatically a big conspiracy, spying on you. Do you really think that, if hackers compromised doubleclick's servers they'd be looking for your information? Well, let me tell you this: They won't. To think that they are is paranoia taken to it's extremes.
So a website has a security bug or two.Why not just inform the site owners, and give them a chance to fix it, instead of proclaiming it loud and clear to the world? It seems helpful to no-one.
Screw that person the last round, you win 32 skittles, other person has 28
Aha! You're making the assumption that the number of rounds will be predictable, i.e. you know you will only be arrested ten times. This would not be true in real life. You don't know if you will be arrested again with the same person, and hence cannot say 'This is the final time I will be arrested. I will inform.'
Simply make the number of rounds unpredictable. At the end of every round, throw a dice. If it comes up with a six, you end the game. Any other number, and you play for another round.
If you have a class of thirty pupils, that's twenty-nine permutations of people. Easily long enough for the skittles not won due to a game ending early to pan out, due to the obvious effect of random data's averages.
But maybe thte game is getting a little complicated now...
You could choose a selection of different genres of game, then you could check for correlation between genres of game. I suggest you try a selection of the following:
Shoot 'em up - Half-life (It's just cool!)
Stratergy - Alpha Centuri
Financial - SimCity 3000
etc...
This would make it easy to bulk out your essay if you found you didn't have much to say. You could also, for instance, have them play Counterstrike. You could have a team of non-academics versus a team of academics. Better still, you could have two groups, one where all the academics' computers were in the same room (so they can communicate easily) and the non-academics are divided up, and the other group doing this in reverse, so you can see if academics communicate more effectively and other such things.
Simply call the # and report every student in all of your classrooms.
Why stop at the students? You could phone in about the teachers too:
"This guy at my school... John Maplebury... I think he might be mentally unstable or something. He's always wearing a long black gown and talking about punishing people."
Put in a couple of those about different teachers every week, and watch the fun...
When it comes to the workplace, where do loyalties end and responsibilities to oneself begin?
Exactly the same place as their loyalty to you. If they were a large multinational company that would sack 1,000 programmers in an instant, if it could 'Increase shareholder value' then you should quit in an instant, if you have an oppertunity to increase your own value.
If they aer a small company, you might want to give them a bit longer. Would the director take a pay cut in a hard month to make sure you get paid? If so, you don't want to jump ship to another company that might go down just as quickly.
If, as you say, the current difficulties are due to "near-incompetent management decisions", I would guess it as something like a big purchace without consulting you tech people? If so, they don't trust you to make the right decisions; why should you trust them to not fold?
If you don't want to offend your co-workers, you could say you are re-locating to a different area to be with your significant other. Or something.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"One of the best of the year."
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 1
Hey,
One of the best of the year.
Don't you mean "Better than most of the films out last year", or maybe "One of the best movies of the year, unless any better movies come out in the next twelve months"?
I'm pretty sure that most pacemakers are highly insulated and shielded against radio, electrical, and magnetic interference. Although I just looked around and it said a high level of EMP could disable a pacemaker ( Radio-Frequency Radiation ) I don't know how high of a level the EMP would have to be.
Well, in most hospitals they ask you to deactivate your cell phone because the location-tracking signal could interfere with equiptment. I would expect a powerful EMP field to produce several times as much magnetic radiation as my mobile telephone.
Pacemakers may well be shielded, but I sure-as-hell wouldn't like to be on life support in hospital when an EMP-based weapon is used.
...could you also see if you can find anthing on those cell phone blockers?
I have! There's a UK (where I am) company called SESP, website here. "All cellular telephones within the specified range of active SESP jammers are unable to make or receive calls, and calls in progress are immediately cut off when the unit is activated. 'No service' appears on the phone's LCD display. As soon as the jammer is switched off, the cellular service is immediately restored."
For GB£125 (less than $125), you can get thier Wave-Shield cellular jammer. 50m range and less that 75g, ideal to put in your pocket at a concert, if you can hack together a battery power source. They also have products up to a range of several kilometers, some rack-mounted. Cool!
Cguard also make a jammer-type product, but they don't have much in the line of priging details.
If your definition of a "successful adult" means "used car salesman/politician", then maybe. However, I've met a number of extremely successful scientists and none of them gave a damn about being charasmatic.
Yes, but an amazing scientific knowledge won't get you laid easily, but social skills will. It might not seem that important to you at the moment, but believe me: it will seem important to the child when they're teenaged.
Nace also said that when pressed by one of Nace's co-workers, the UUNet staffer told the co-worker that he was "stupid for not using cloaking software," to hide the IP address of his outgoing mail.
Well, nace was stupid for not constructing fake packets, but any URL has to point to his website in any case, and the URL kinda identifies the account.
Some send a reply, with the subject "remove" in the header, looking to escape from future mailings. Some add death threats, Nace said... Nace takes exception to being called a spammer, a term he associates with pornographers. UUNet's reaction, he said, was unwarranted. "This is a clear-cut case of the big corporations telling the small operator, 'screw you.' "
As oppoosed to, say, a clear-cut case of the big corporations enforcing thier terms of service, whilst people who have been sent spam say 'screw you', or maybe 'I will personally hunt you down and gouge out your eyes with my Leatherman'.
On a more seroius note, why don't UUNet say 'After ten complaints from demonstratably different parties, your connection will be suspended whilst we investigate'? That would allow near-instant shutdown with big UCE incidents.
Here is a short guide on how to turn computers off at night.
Method one: Advanced Power Management computer
Restart your computer. Right now. Press or whatever to enter the BIOS setup utility. Now look around for an option called 'Wake on Real-time clock' or suchlike. Set this to 10 minutes before you normally arrive. Now get your choice programming language and write a program to shut down your computer. I use Visual DialogScript. Here is the program:
:Start
Exitwin force
Stop
Compile to an executable, then use the task scheduler to run it at an appropriate time. 6:00 PM would be a good example, running every day.
This will turn your computer off, and turn it on again.
Method two: Old computer
Go to your local radio shack (You've got questions. We've got batteries.) and get a security timeswitch. Plug the computer into it (Or just the monitor, if you like) and set the times. If you want, you can write a power-off utility above to turn off your computer.
"Moreover, EULAs play an important role in curbing software piracy"... "EULAs inform end users that making extra copies is not permitted (except for backup purposes) and that the software publisher is serious enough about enforcing this point to provide a written notice."
Ooh, a pages-long written notice written in such meaningless legal-ese that most people couldn't understand it if they even bothered to read it! Ph33r!!!
That'll be almost as good a deterrent as writing 'Do not make illigal copies of this disk' on Microsoft Windows CDs!
If companies want to clarify thier point, they should do it in a way people can actually understand and will see and read. Example:
This program can only legally be installed on one computer.
Ten words. Make it, say, 18-point and show it in the background as files copy. This will 'inform' people.
And for Silicon Valley's ultimate party animal, Green engineered a "one-button party mode" that instantly sets the right mood for entertaining -- no matter who shows up. When Ellison calls from his car announcing his impending arrival with a celebrity or business executive, the staff opens a drawer in the catering kitchen that hides a special touch pad.
Man, that's old-tech. I can call my linux-based cd-quality answering machine from my GSM mobile, it Call-IDs me, then I can just use the touch-tone functions to identify my settings to the computer, which deploys my settings over 100Mbps Ethernet to each device's inbuilt Transmeta Crusoe processors, then calls the GSM telephone built into my car's onboard computer, which interrogates the car's GPS system and online traffic reports to project my time of arrival, and schedules my house systems to power-on just before I arrive.
Also, I don't have one of these old-fashioned 'door-knobs'. I have a webcam on my drive, and another on my porch. It detects image changes, and uses OCR to identify car registration plates and face-recognition technology to identify people, and then searches my address book to identify whether to greet them with the door opening automatically, the lights coming on and a videophone connection to the room I'm in, or a Comprehensive Armed Response incorperating camoflaged minigun turrets and model helicopters armed with air-to-ground missiles and guided dropped ordinance.
I put an ADSL-like line into each ISP going to my bunker, and simply store it as a datastream.
I wouldn't go with ADSL... that won't be fast enough once we get to the frighteningly high-tech stage where normal people can actually *buy* ADSL. I'd go for a maximum-speed leased line. They go up to 512MBps - half a gigabyte per second. Two or three to every major ISP POP, and you're ready to go.
Suddenly, my program that generates random data, pgp-encrypts it by a (random) private key and e-mails it to a network of friends when I don't have my dial-up connection saturated doesn't seem very paranoid at all...
No, the point is that if the citizens have the ability to overthrow the government, then the government rightly has to fear the citizens.
Only in the same way that companies like Microsoft, Nike and suchlike have to make good products at reasonable prices and treat thier workers ethically. After all, Consumers have the *power* to go to different companies if they don't like the way a company acts. Large companies MUST do what consumers want, otherwist they won't buy the company's products.
Oh, wait: that isn't the case at all. People will go to whatever company produces what they want.
The government doesn't fear the people overthrowing it, because revolutions need a massive force of strong, fit people with weapons experience. There just aren't as many of these people around as there used to be.
If reality-TV amounts only to a second-rate step toward turning off the set and walking outdoors, that's a good thing.
A cynical person would say reality TV is simply a way of producing TV cheaply, without the expense of skilled script writers / good actors / witty comics / knowledgable researchers that other shows require. All you need to get your show off the ground is a TV camera, a guy with a microphone and a bunch of loosers who will tell millions of pepople how they can't get a grip on thier own life simply for five minutes on TV.
Cable TV with a thousand chanels is said to be in the pipeline. There isn't enough quality TV/filmage to fill that much throughput for a week, let alone several years, so I expect we'll see more low-quality TV like Jerry Springer in the future. That and the 'Friends 24-hour repeat channel'.
Sorting, transporting and handling several kinds of wastes instead of just one results in higher fuel and manufacturing consumption and thereby pollution.
Sure! Them recycling lorrys use up far more fuel than normal refuse collection vechicles!
Many of the more expensive phones have built-in infra-red modems; these are 'data enabled' phones. You often have to call the mobile provider to get it activated. In the UK, I'm on an 'Orange' plan with 180 minutes a month and a Motorola L7089 phone. I called the provider, Orange, and got the data features enabled (Details are probably in the manual) and now can point it at my laptop and get on the internet, like a normal modem.
If you have a pre-pay plan, or one of the cheaper ones (or a bastard provider), you might not be able to get the data features enabled on your phone, but if you are on a contract and have a data-enabled phone, you probably can; Phone them and ask about it.
If your PDA has infra-red stuff on it, and has software availiable for web browsing and internet access, it should just be a case of enabling infra-red, pointing the two together and doing some settings. Psion has a nice site at mobile.psion.com; you'd be interested in This page I expect.
Check with your palmtop's manufacturer and phone manufacturer. Actually, don't: I've done it for you. Look here for handspring-related details:
Q. Can my Visor communicate with IR-equipped phones or other IrDA devices?
A. Yes. Visor Platinum and Visor Prism have built-in support for establishing IR communication with IrDA devices. For Visor and Visor Deluxe, there are two simple steps to take. [snip]
Short story, you need a (free) update, and you need a program. There are links on the page.
The Samsung site seems very unclear. this page says
Both SCH-3500 and SCH-850 are internet access available and have no speaker phone.
Aha, manuals online... You can get one for the SCH-3500 on Sprint here and for STA here.
I only have a dial-up connection, so I won't bother downloading either, but I'd have a look if I were you.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone hacks your computer, the worst thing that could happen is you'd lose some data and have to do a fresh install of everything. If you put fucking thermite in a PC, you're out $2000 worth of hardware.
If we look at the original post (emphasis mine):
about a year ago I suggested wiring the embedded device we were working on with thermite so that if one of those wise-ass kids in Sweden tried to hack our hardware, it'd quitely fry the motherboard and hard drive.
An embedded device isn't a desktop computer or a server. It's a proessor that's 'embedded' in another device. Take a TiVo for instance. It is an embedded device. The original poster's usage of the term 'hack' was not as in crack but as in 'classic' hacking.
The definition is important. If I was to crack a server, I would be breaking in and acessing data without authorisation. If I were to hack an embedded device, I could for example add more recording time to my TiVo.
Some companies are annoyed by peope hacking thier embedded hardware, since they can but low-spec versions and make them into high-spec versions.
The original poster was likely making a joke. He proposed a device that if you opened the case to upgrade it, would destroy itself.
It's funny. Laugh.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
We have cameras covering every square inch of Britain so that every individual can be tracked.
Actually, no. Cameras are rarely placed anywhere that doesn't have a fairly high risk of crime. In the center of the shopping district in a city yes, there may be cameras. But not in suburban housing areas, et cetera. That would be stupid.
But we can't tell you where Agent 69 was last Tuesday when he lost his laptop.
Unfortunately, most cameras are on the street, i.e. where a lot of street crime is committed, not in the back of taxis, or behind bars. In any case, the resources required to track any person using security cameras would be massive. Whenever they entered a covered area, there would be a risk of them not being picked up again. Have you ever tried to identify someone from a fuzzy, black-and-white security camera? It is sometimes difficult.
And it's a good thing we've got these cameras to keep track of the IRA, or they'd set up us the bomb.
Can't live with them, can't legally torture them to death...
So we'll give each agent a small thermite bomb in a briefcase instead, and give 'em free roam of the city.
If we look at the article:
the Defense Ministry plans to outfit their absent-minded workers with secret-agent-style briefcases that protect national secrets by automatically destroying the contents of lost laptops' hard drives.
I very much doubt Thermite would be involved. Why not just make a thin iron lining for the briefcase, then take it out and wrap a thin wire around it, say, 10,000 times, then connect it to some capacitors and a battery inside? If you open the case without entering the code, the (ready-charged, of course) capacitors burst-discharge, like a camera flash, into the wire coil with the iron center, and the laptop in it. As those of you who were awake in first year high school physics may have guessed, you have a big electromagnet, with your computer inside is, recieving a big burst of voltage. This would generate a substantial magnetic field. Since hard disks are written to magnetically, Bang! All the data is erased.
That would be far safer and similarly effective.
But why they don't just encrypt the hard disks is beyond me.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
In a corner removed from the rest of the group, Watson and another man were huddled together discussing what annoys them the most about the modern Internet--the banner ads. They were trying to come up with a way to "solve" that problem. They talk about whether it would be possible to intercept the ads and replace them with the words "Free the Net!" Or maybe the easiest way to make them disappear would be would be just to bring down the server computers for DoubleClick, the company that manages much of the Internet's advertising.
"If we could find a way to get rid of those ads for a week we'd be the heroes of the Internet," Watson said.
Just go to your client's (or better still, proxy server's) hosts file (C:\Windows\hosts on Windows,
Add entries for every server you don't want to connect to, i.e. ad1.doubleclick.com, etc. and point them to 127.0.0.1 (localhost). That'll time out extra-fast. Example here.
Alterately, you could block *doubleclick.com at a proxy server. Or you could put a proxy on your local machine (Like a content-checking porn filter), that checked all files with *.gif extension for banner proportions, then replaced them.
Blocking banner ads is easy. The question is: Would the benefit (whatever that may be) outway the problem of sites not being funded by advertising, and maybe changing to subscription, or closing. This is the real issue.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Is it just me, or is this just another company getting hacked? So it happened to be an advertising company. Big deal. This hardly seems slashdot-worthy; web servers are compromised all the time. Most of DoubleClick's data is just IPs and lists of websites.
It isn't automatically a big conspiracy, spying on you. Do you really think that, if hackers compromised doubleclick's servers they'd be looking for your information? Well, let me tell you this: They won't. To think that they are is paranoia taken to it's extremes.
So a website has a security bug or two.Why not just inform the site owners, and give them a chance to fix it, instead of proclaiming it loud and clear to the world? It seems helpful to no-one.
Just my $0.02
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Screw that person the last round, you win 32 skittles, other person has 28
Aha! You're making the assumption that the number of rounds will be predictable, i.e. you know you will only be arrested ten times. This would not be true in real life. You don't know if you will be arrested again with the same person, and hence cannot say 'This is the final time I will be arrested. I will inform.'
Simply make the number of rounds unpredictable. At the end of every round, throw a dice. If it comes up with a six, you end the game. Any other number, and you play for another round.
If you have a class of thirty pupils, that's twenty-nine permutations of people. Easily long enough for the skittles not won due to a game ending early to pan out, due to the obvious effect of random data's averages.
But maybe thte game is getting a little complicated now...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Why only one game?
You could choose a selection of different genres of game, then you could check for correlation between genres of game. I suggest you try a selection of the following:
This would make it easy to bulk out your essay if you found you didn't have much to say. You could also, for instance, have them play Counterstrike. You could have a team of non-academics versus a team of academics. Better still, you could have two groups, one where all the academics' computers were in the same room (so they can communicate easily) and the non-academics are divided up, and the other group doing this in reverse, so you can see if academics communicate more effectively and other such things.
Or maybe I have no idea what you want.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Simply call the # and report every student in all of your classrooms.
Why stop at the students? You could phone in about the teachers too:
"This guy at my school... John Maplebury... I think he might be mentally unstable or something. He's always wearing a long black gown and talking about punishing people."
Put in a couple of those about different teachers every week, and watch the fun...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
You can see this guy's website at http://www.oshealtd.com/. The server seems slow already, so you might have more luck at the Google cache.
His hit-counter is at 86,473 at the moment. I wonder what it'll be at this time tomorrow...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
When it comes to the workplace, where do loyalties end and responsibilities to oneself begin?
Exactly the same place as their loyalty to you. If they were a large multinational company that would sack 1,000 programmers in an instant, if it could 'Increase shareholder value' then you should quit in an instant, if you have an oppertunity to increase your own value.
If they aer a small company, you might want to give them a bit longer. Would the director take a pay cut in a hard month to make sure you get paid? If so, you don't want to jump ship to another company that might go down just as quickly.
If, as you say, the current difficulties are due to "near-incompetent management decisions", I would guess it as something like a big purchace without consulting you tech people? If so, they don't trust you to make the right decisions; why should you trust them to not fold?
If you don't want to offend your co-workers, you could say you are re-locating to a different area to be with your significant other. Or something.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
One of the best of the year.
Don't you mean "Better than most of the films out last year", or maybe "One of the best movies of the year, unless any better movies come out in the next twelve months"?
That was a joke, by the way.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I'm pretty sure that most pacemakers are highly insulated and shielded against radio, electrical, and magnetic interference. Although I just looked around and it said a high level of EMP could disable a pacemaker ( Radio-Frequency Radiation ) I don't know how high of a level the EMP would have to be.
Well, in most hospitals they ask you to deactivate your cell phone because the location-tracking signal could interfere with equiptment. I would expect a powerful EMP field to produce several times as much magnetic radiation as my mobile telephone.
Pacemakers may well be shielded, but I sure-as-hell wouldn't like to be on life support in hospital when an EMP-based weapon is used.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Individuals doing things like "fixing" their own hardware will always be far and few between, wont even show up on the radar.
They might. Pleanty of people have thier Playstaions chipped.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I have! There's a UK (where I am) company called SESP, website here. "All cellular telephones within the specified range of active SESP jammers are unable to make or receive calls, and calls in progress are immediately cut off when the unit is activated. 'No service' appears on the phone's LCD display. As soon as the jammer is switched off, the cellular service is immediately restored."
For GB£125 (less than $125), you can get thier Wave-Shield cellular jammer. 50m range and less that 75g, ideal to put in your pocket at a concert, if you can hack together a battery power source. They also have products up to a range of several kilometers, some rack-mounted. Cool!
Cguard also make a jammer-type product, but they don't have much in the line of priging details.
Interesting, eh?
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
If your definition of a "successful adult" means "used car salesman/politician", then maybe. However, I've met a number of extremely successful scientists and none of them gave a damn about being charasmatic.
Yes, but an amazing scientific knowledge won't get you laid easily, but social skills will. It might not seem that important to you at the moment, but believe me: it will seem important to the child when they're teenaged.
Michael.
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Nace also said that when pressed by one of Nace's co-workers, the UUNet staffer told the co-worker that he was "stupid for not using cloaking software," to hide the IP address of his outgoing mail.
Well, nace was stupid for not constructing fake packets, but any URL has to point to his website in any case, and the URL kinda identifies the account.
Some send a reply, with the subject "remove" in the header, looking to escape from future mailings. Some add death threats, Nace said... Nace takes exception to being called a spammer, a term he associates with pornographers. UUNet's reaction, he said, was unwarranted. "This is a clear-cut case of the big corporations telling the small operator, 'screw you.' "
As oppoosed to, say, a clear-cut case of the big corporations enforcing thier terms of service, whilst people who have been sent spam say 'screw you', or maybe 'I will personally hunt you down and gouge out your eyes with my Leatherman'.
On a more seroius note, why don't UUNet say 'After ten complaints from demonstratably different parties, your connection will be suspended whilst we investigate'? That would allow near-instant shutdown with big UCE incidents.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Here is a short guide on how to turn computers off at night.
Method one: Advanced Power Management computer
Restart your computer. Right now. Press or whatever to enter the BIOS setup utility. Now look around for an option called 'Wake on Real-time clock' or suchlike. Set this to 10 minutes before you normally arrive. Now get your choice programming language and write a program to shut down your computer. I use Visual DialogScript. Here is the program:
:Start
Exitwin force
Stop
Compile to an executable, then use the task scheduler to run it at an appropriate time. 6:00 PM would be a good example, running every day.
This will turn your computer off, and turn it on again.
Method two: Old computer
Go to your local radio shack (You've got questions. We've got batteries.) and get a security timeswitch. Plug the computer into it (Or just the monitor, if you like) and set the times. If you want, you can write a power-off utility above to turn off your computer.
You too can try this at home!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Moreover, EULAs play an important role in curbing software piracy"... "EULAs inform end users that making extra copies is not permitted (except for backup purposes) and that the software publisher is serious enough about enforcing this point to provide a written notice."
Ooh, a pages-long written notice written in such meaningless legal-ese that most people couldn't understand it if they even bothered to read it! Ph33r!!!
That'll be almost as good a deterrent as writing 'Do not make illigal copies of this disk' on Microsoft Windows CDs!
If companies want to clarify thier point, they should do it in a way people can actually understand and will see and read. Example:
This program can only legally be installed on one computer.
Ten words. Make it, say, 18-point and show it in the background as files copy. This will 'inform' people.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
And for Silicon Valley's ultimate party animal, Green engineered a "one-button party mode" that instantly sets the right mood for entertaining -- no matter who shows up. When Ellison calls from his car announcing his impending arrival with a celebrity or business executive, the staff opens a drawer in the catering kitchen that hides a special touch pad.
Man, that's old-tech. I can call my linux-based cd-quality answering machine from my GSM mobile, it Call-IDs me, then I can just use the touch-tone functions to identify my settings to the computer, which deploys my settings over 100Mbps Ethernet to each device's inbuilt Transmeta Crusoe processors, then calls the GSM telephone built into my car's onboard computer, which interrogates the car's GPS system and online traffic reports to project my time of arrival, and schedules my house systems to power-on just before I arrive.
Also, I don't have one of these old-fashioned 'door-knobs'. I have a webcam on my drive, and another on my porch. It detects image changes, and uses OCR to identify car registration plates and face-recognition technology to identify people, and then searches my address book to identify whether to greet them with the door opening automatically, the lights coming on and a videophone connection to the room I'm in, or a Comprehensive Armed Response incorperating camoflaged minigun turrets and model helicopters armed with air-to-ground missiles and guided dropped ordinance.
(This message has been psted in jest)
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I put an ADSL-like line into each ISP going to my bunker, and simply store it as a datastream.
I wouldn't go with ADSL... that won't be fast enough once we get to the frighteningly high-tech stage where normal people can actually *buy* ADSL. I'd go for a maximum-speed leased line. They go up to 512MBps - half a gigabyte per second. Two or three to every major ISP POP, and you're ready to go.
Suddenly, my program that generates random data, pgp-encrypts it by a (random) private key and e-mails it to a network of friends when I don't have my dial-up connection saturated doesn't seem very paranoid at all...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
No, the point is that if the citizens have the ability to overthrow the government, then the government rightly has to fear the citizens.
Only in the same way that companies like Microsoft, Nike and suchlike have to make good products at reasonable prices and treat thier workers ethically. After all, Consumers have the *power* to go to different companies if they don't like the way a company acts. Large companies MUST do what consumers want, otherwist they won't buy the company's products.
Oh, wait: that isn't the case at all. People will go to whatever company produces what they want.
The government doesn't fear the people overthrowing it, because revolutions need a massive force of strong, fit people with weapons experience. There just aren't as many of these people around as there used to be.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
There are plenty of innocent words that are offensive in other languages.
You mean like french company Sodem??
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
If reality-TV amounts only to a second-rate step toward turning off the set and walking outdoors, that's a good thing.
A cynical person would say reality TV is simply a way of producing TV cheaply, without the expense of skilled script writers / good actors / witty comics / knowledgable researchers that other shows require. All you need to get your show off the ground is a TV camera, a guy with a microphone and a bunch of loosers who will tell millions of pepople how they can't get a grip on thier own life simply for five minutes on TV.
Cable TV with a thousand chanels is said to be in the pipeline. There isn't enough quality TV/filmage to fill that much throughput for a week, let alone several years, so I expect we'll see more low-quality TV like Jerry Springer in the future. That and the 'Friends 24-hour repeat channel'.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Sorting, transporting and handling several kinds of wastes instead of just one results in higher fuel and manufacturing consumption and thereby pollution.
Sure! Them recycling lorrys use up far more fuel than normal refuse collection vechicles!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Many of the more expensive phones have built-in infra-red modems; these are 'data enabled' phones. You often have to call the mobile provider to get it activated. In the UK, I'm on an 'Orange' plan with 180 minutes a month and a Motorola L7089 phone. I called the provider, Orange, and got the data features enabled (Details are probably in the manual) and now can point it at my laptop and get on the internet, like a normal modem.
If you have a pre-pay plan, or one of the cheaper ones (or a bastard provider), you might not be able to get the data features enabled on your phone, but if you are on a contract and have a data-enabled phone, you probably can; Phone them and ask about it.
If your PDA has infra-red stuff on it, and has software availiable for web browsing and internet access, it should just be a case of enabling infra-red, pointing the two together and doing some settings. Psion has a nice site at mobile.psion.com; you'd be interested in This page I expect.
Check with your palmtop's manufacturer and phone manufacturer. Actually, don't: I've done it for you. Look here for handspring-related details:
Q. Can my Visor communicate with IR-equipped phones or other IrDA devices?
A. Yes. Visor Platinum and Visor Prism have built-in support for establishing IR communication with IrDA devices. For Visor and Visor Deluxe, there are two simple steps to take. [snip]
Short story, you need a (free) update, and you need a program. There are links on the page.
The Samsung site seems very unclear. this page says
Both SCH-3500 and SCH-850 are internet access available and have no speaker phone.
Aha, manuals online... You can get one for the SCH-3500 on Sprint here and for STA here.
I only have a dial-up connection, so I won't bother downloading either, but I'd have a look if I were you.
Just helpin' things along.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
OK, I wouldn't have seen it in the theater (and didn't, in fact) but it was OK on video.
I might not have paid for it, but it was funny on public TV, for free.
I have no such excuses for Battlefield Earth
Ah, but there is one good review here.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.