The thing that's missing from this story is any sort of indication that T-Mobile has made even the smallest attempt to fix the vulnerabilities that allowed this guy to access all of T-Mo's customers' account information (mine included).
T-Mobile has known that they've been compromised for at least SIX MONTHS. My name, Social Secruity number, date of birth are probably all still sitting there OUT IN THE OPEN just waiting for another 21-year-old hacker to come along and ruin my credit rating. Secret Service investigation or no, that's negligent and inexcusable.
is any law planned for canada or us where i regularly see people doing such idiotic things as using cell and reversing round a corner at the same time?!
In the US at least, several states and/or cities have passed laws which makes it illegal to use a cellphone while driving. Some allow for the use of handsfree headsets.
I can't imagine there's anywhere in the US where driving in reverse around a corner WOULDN'T be illegal. Pretty much the only time it's legal to operate a car in reverse gear is when maneuvering into or out of a parking space.
After all, electronic storage media is infinite, and bandwidth is free!
Maybe not free, but we're fast approaching the day when they'll be too cheap to meter.
A bargain hunter can now get a 50-pack of 4.7GB DVD-R's for $20. That's less than 0.0001 cent per megabyte. With prices like that, who cares if a JPEG is 0.2MB or 0.5MB?
Joe American pays maybe $45 a month to get a high-speed line capable of reaching 3Mbps, and that's even expensive compared to what people in other parts of the world pay. It could easily take longer to re-compress those files than to transfer them as-is across the continent.
Correct me if I'm wrong as I'm no expert on the subject but I believe males are generaly more adapt in these area's.
If you believe this, you probably also believe that blacks are naturally superior athletes and/or dancers due to "a larger proportion of fast-twitch muscle fiber."
You know, they say masturbation doesn't really make you go blind, but the lack of decent spelling, punctuation, and perspective in your comment has to make me wonder.
Big breasted women are used to push everything from cars to toothpaste in the US.
That makes for a nice soundbite, but is it true? Can you cite any recent advertising for cars or toothpaste that actually use large breasts as a sales tactic?
What I want to know is, how come I can hardly ever find a store that stocks any RAM faster than PC2700, when the PC I bought over a year ago uses PC3200.
And when I do find a rare supplier of 3200, why does it still cost $250 per gigabyte, the same price it was in 2003? Are we facing another chip shortage? Have we hit a wall in terms of fabrication capability and efficiency? Is that why RAM manufacturers are turning to case-mod gimmickry to maintain sales instead of real technological advances?
You're making a distinction in media ownership that doesn't exist.
The owners of the broadcast TV networks don't fear cable and satellite programming, because they own those content networks too (and in some cases, the delivery infrastructure as well). General Electric, for example, doesn't just own NBC; they also own CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Mun2TV, SciFi, Trio, USA, and many Telemundo stations.
These companies SHOULD have pioneered the way in Internet video delivery, but they didn't, and there's a couple of reasons why. One is that until recently, few people had an interest in watching TV on their computers, even if it didn't take hours to download a single show.
Even now, broadcast companies are afraid to set up official Internet delivery channels, in part because they haven't developed an infrastructure to deliver targeted advertising that matches traditional broadcasting's effectiveness (this is laziness on their part, the technology exists to match or exceed broadcast advertising today), and a fear of unauthorized redistribution if they don't wrap it all up in some kind of invasive DRM scheme (newsflash -- there's already widespreaed unauthorized redistribution, you have nothing to lose).
Whenever the government "picks winners" rather than letting nature pick winners, the technologists and therefore technology loses.
But isn't the government part of the "nature" system that you believe should pick winners?
It's not like they passed a law outlawing the development of alternate technologies. They just assumed the role of a large technology customer, and invested in the "winner" they had picked. Not unlike any other company that invests in technology.
To play video reliably on a recent-generation Archos, you need to make sure all of the following are true about your AVI file:
1. The video is encoded in a DivX-compatible dialect of MPEG-4 2. The video must not be encoded using bi-directional filtering 3. The video resolution is no more than 702x480 (for AV400 series) or 640x400 (for Gmini 400) 4. The video framerate is no more than 30fps 5. The audio is encoded in IMA ADPCM or MP3 format 6. MP3 audio must not be encoded at 320kbps or less 7. CBR audio is preferred; VBR can cause sync problems
They include a awkward front-end for VirtualDub with the device that will take care of some of these for you, as long as your content was an AVI file or MPEG-1 file to begin with. Those of you who want to convert DVD's, Quicktime files, OGM files, or older AVI files using VFW codes will have to find other methods.
If the quality is anything like previous Archos products,
I bought an Archos Gmini 400 last fall, just about as soon as it was available in the US. For the first few months, it worked great. Then it started having problems where during music playback, the controls would go unresponsive and the hard disk would seek for a minute or more before I could do anything again. Ultimately, the drive click-of-death'ed on me and the device won't even completely boot up any more.
I suspect it's just a faulty hard drive and swapping in a working one will solve the problem, but Archos customer service has yet to respond to my inquiries. And after reading horror stories about warranty service from other Archos users, I'm beginning to think I'm better off just cracking the case open and doing it myself.
Maybe they've changed their ways with this device -- but I doubt it. It looks like they've just kitbashed some new stuff into an existing AV400 design.
(See, Archos? This is what happens when you spend all your time trying to cram useless features into your device and neglect QA and customer service. I used to recommend your Gmini400 to everyone who was considering an iPod, and now I'm advising them all to stay away.)
Sounds a lot like "audio CD-R media" to me, which cost at least twice as much as general-purpose data CD-R's, due to the piracy levy, and are flagged so that you can't record them with the $30 CD-RW drive in your PC, you have to buy a separate $200 CD deck.
That idea never caught on outside of a small niche, and neither will this one.
I bought this Gameboy game cartridge, which I can play at home either on my Gameboy player for Gamecube, or my Super Gameboy for SNES. But now Nintendo is telling me that if I want to take my games with me, I have to buy a portable system that's compatible with Gameboy cartridges -- and NINTENDO IS THE ONLY COMPANY THAT MAKES THEM!
It's headless for a start, so users are going to need to spend $100 for a half decent CRT, probably more.
Assuming they don't already have one sitting around from a previous desktop computer. Although, even then they'd probably still need to get a DVI-to-VGA dongle...
Rising competition from OS/2 caused Microsoft to release a very cut down version of Cairo
This doesn't make any sense. OS/2 never even hinted at making gains in the home desktop market, which was the market Win95 was undoubtably aimed at.
OS/2 was making gains on the business workstation front for a while, yes, but MS already had a product, WinNT3, in that area. If MS were to rush a new OS to market due to competition from IBM's product, it would have been an enhanced NT-based system, not a Win3/DOS replacement intended to make computing "fun".
I defy you to find any instance, especially in contemporary times, that such a scenario has actually happened.
Many states will not subject a single parent to the death penalty, because it would end up making the criminal's children into orphans. The same applies to the corporate death penalty, except on a larger scale -- if the company dies, thousands of people could become unemployed, unable to spend enough to maintain the state of the economy or even take care of their families. Welfare spending balloons, the economy tanks. Is it worth punishing ALL the employees for the criminal actions of just a few of the corporation's agents?
You're a first-person shooter player, I take it. Mouse/keyboard is hard to beat for those (unless you have a crappy keyboard controller that doesn't register many simultaneous keypresses), but I wouldn't want to build for instance a MAME cabinet that used them as the primary interface.
Arcade games were originally designed with joysticks, buttons, and knobs, so the gaming experience there is best with those kinds of input devices. Home consoles came with handheld control pads, so the experience there is usually best with those devices. FPS's were born on the desktop computer, so it makes sense that keyboard/mouse input gives the best experience.
I hope that LiveJournal gets bought, sold, transformed, hacked to death, and turned into something useful.
Download the source and do it already, then. Isn't that the Slashdotter's Creed? Why wait for some corporation to create the product you want?
And besides, is some kid's diary post about a strange odor in his kitchen any more trivial than the endless "Windows sucks" flames and GNAA trolls in the comments here on Slashdot?
So what makes LiveJournal the pile of crap that it is?
The vast majority of LiveJournal users use it as a sort of melodrama aggregator
The "vast majority" of any group of people are idiots. But that doesn't discount the hundreds of LJers whose daily writings I find entertaining and thought-provoking.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing that's missing from this story is any sort of indication that T-Mobile has made even the smallest attempt to fix the vulnerabilities that allowed this guy to access all of T-Mo's customers' account information (mine included).
T-Mobile has known that they've been compromised for at least SIX MONTHS. My name, Social Secruity number, date of birth are probably all still sitting there OUT IN THE OPEN just waiting for another 21-year-old hacker to come along and ruin my credit rating. Secret Service investigation or no, that's negligent and inexcusable.
is any law planned for canada or us where i regularly see people doing such idiotic things as using cell and reversing round a corner at the same time?!
In the US at least, several states and/or cities have passed laws which makes it illegal to use a cellphone while driving. Some allow for the use of handsfree headsets.
I can't imagine there's anywhere in the US where driving in reverse around a corner WOULDN'T be illegal. Pretty much the only time it's legal to operate a car in reverse gear is when maneuvering into or out of a parking space.
After all, electronic storage media is infinite, and bandwidth is free!
Maybe not free, but we're fast approaching the day when they'll be too cheap to meter.
A bargain hunter can now get a 50-pack of 4.7GB DVD-R's for $20. That's less than 0.0001 cent per megabyte. With prices like that, who cares if a JPEG is 0.2MB or 0.5MB?
Joe American pays maybe $45 a month to get a high-speed line capable of reaching 3Mbps, and that's even expensive compared to what people in other parts of the world pay. It could easily take longer to re-compress those files than to transfer them as-is across the continent.
Correct me if I'm wrong as I'm no expert on the subject but I believe males are generaly more adapt in these area's.
If you believe this, you probably also believe that blacks are naturally superior athletes and/or dancers due to "a larger proportion of fast-twitch muscle fiber."
You know, they say masturbation doesn't really make you go blind, but the lack of decent spelling, punctuation, and perspective in your comment has to make me wonder.
Lay off the wacking for a few hours, junior.
Big breasted women are used to push everything from cars to toothpaste in the US.
That makes for a nice soundbite, but is it true? Can you cite any recent advertising for cars or toothpaste that actually use large breasts as a sales tactic?
What makes Ms. Flower's opinion about what characters in video games should look like, "more" valid than anyone else's?
No one has said it's "more" valid. But it is equally valid. Thus you have the choice of either listening to her opinion, or ignoring it.
You have chosen neither. You have chosen to try to make her opinion invalid in everyone else's mind, simply because it differs from yours.
The difference is that guys don't get their panties in a bunch because all of the male video game characters have cartoonishly large muscles.
DO you realize how foolish you sound, cavalierly using expressions like "get their panties in a bunch" in a discussion of gender politics?
*sigh* Maybe it's naive of me to expect any enlightened discourse on this subject on Slashdot.
What I want to know is, how come I can hardly ever find a store that stocks any RAM faster than PC2700, when the PC I bought over a year ago uses PC3200.
And when I do find a rare supplier of 3200, why does it still cost $250 per gigabyte, the same price it was in 2003? Are we facing another chip shortage? Have we hit a wall in terms of fabrication capability and efficiency? Is that why RAM manufacturers are turning to case-mod gimmickry to maintain sales instead of real technological advances?
You're making a distinction in media ownership that doesn't exist.
The owners of the broadcast TV networks don't fear cable and satellite programming, because they own those content networks too (and in some cases, the delivery infrastructure as well). General Electric, for example, doesn't just own NBC; they also own CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Mun2TV, SciFi, Trio, USA, and many Telemundo stations.
These companies SHOULD have pioneered the way in Internet video delivery, but they didn't, and there's a couple of reasons why. One is that until recently, few people had an interest in watching TV on their computers, even if it didn't take hours to download a single show.
Even now, broadcast companies are afraid to set up official Internet delivery channels, in part because they haven't developed an infrastructure to deliver targeted advertising that matches traditional broadcasting's effectiveness (this is laziness on their part, the technology exists to match or exceed broadcast advertising today), and a fear of unauthorized redistribution if they don't wrap it all up in some kind of invasive DRM scheme (newsflash -- there's already widespreaed unauthorized redistribution, you have nothing to lose).
Whenever the government "picks winners" rather than letting nature pick winners, the technologists and therefore technology loses.
But isn't the government part of the "nature" system that you believe should pick winners?
It's not like they passed a law outlawing the development of alternate technologies. They just assumed the role of a large technology customer, and invested in the "winner" they had picked. Not unlike any other company that invests in technology.
[recent models] handle AVI just fine
AVI is a container format, not a media format.
To play video reliably on a recent-generation Archos, you need to make sure all of the following are true about your AVI file:
1. The video is encoded in a DivX-compatible dialect of MPEG-4
2. The video must not be encoded using bi-directional filtering
3. The video resolution is no more than 702x480 (for AV400 series) or 640x400 (for Gmini 400)
4. The video framerate is no more than 30fps
5. The audio is encoded in IMA ADPCM or MP3 format
6. MP3 audio must not be encoded at 320kbps or less
7. CBR audio is preferred; VBR can cause sync problems
They include a awkward front-end for VirtualDub with the device that will take care of some of these for you, as long as your content was an AVI file or MPEG-1 file to begin with. Those of you who want to convert DVD's, Quicktime files, OGM files, or older AVI files using VFW codes will have to find other methods.
If the quality is anything like previous Archos products,
I bought an Archos Gmini 400 last fall, just about as soon as it was available in the US. For the first few months, it worked great. Then it started having problems where during music playback, the controls would go unresponsive and the hard disk would seek for a minute or more before I could do anything again. Ultimately, the drive click-of-death'ed on me and the device won't even completely boot up any more.
I suspect it's just a faulty hard drive and swapping in a working one will solve the problem, but Archos customer service has yet to respond to my inquiries. And after reading horror stories about warranty service from other Archos users, I'm beginning to think I'm better off just cracking the case open and doing it myself.
Maybe they've changed their ways with this device -- but I doubt it. It looks like they've just kitbashed some new stuff into an existing AV400 design.
(See, Archos? This is what happens when you spend all your time trying to cram useless features into your device and neglect QA and customer service. I used to recommend your Gmini400 to everyone who was considering an iPod, and now I'm advising them all to stay away.)
How much music can one listen to, and how many movies can one possibly watch?
Assumptions:
an MP3 album is 1 hour long and takes up 100MB
a DVD movie is 2 hours long and takes up 8GB
a human life expectancy is 80 years
Thus:
80 years = 29,219 days = 701,260 hours
701,260 MP3 albums = 70,126,000MB = 66.8 terabytes
350,630 DVDs = 2,805,040GB = 2.7 petabytes
So if hard drives are only reaching the 0.5TB range now, we've got a way to go yet.
I wouldn't expect failure rates to increase linearly as rotation speed increases, but yeah.
The 1.8"-platter mini-hard drives used in iPods and many other handheld devices spin at a meager 4200rpm, but that's more than enough for the job.
Sounds a lot like "audio CD-R media" to me, which cost at least twice as much as general-purpose data CD-R's, due to the piracy levy, and are flagged so that you can't record them with the $30 CD-RW drive in your PC, you have to buy a separate $200 CD deck.
That idea never caught on outside of a small niche, and neither will this one.
I bought this Gameboy game cartridge, which I can play at home either on my Gameboy player for Gamecube, or my Super Gameboy for SNES. But now Nintendo is telling me that if I want to take my games with me, I have to buy a portable system that's compatible with Gameboy cartridges -- and NINTENDO IS THE ONLY COMPANY THAT MAKES THEM!
Waaaaah! Unfair!
It's headless for a start, so users are going to need to spend $100 for a half decent CRT, probably more.
Assuming they don't already have one sitting around from a previous desktop computer. Although, even then they'd probably still need to get a DVI-to-VGA dongle...
To think that millions of £££ venture capital will be spent over which system publishes what 14 year old Lisa's dog ate last night.
To think that maybe venture capitalists have a better understanding of the potential of these self-publishing tools than people like us do.
Hey, it could happen. First time for everything, even VCs having a clue.
Rising competition from OS/2 caused Microsoft to release a very cut down version of Cairo
This doesn't make any sense. OS/2 never even hinted at making gains in the home desktop market, which was the market Win95 was undoubtably aimed at.
OS/2 was making gains on the business workstation front for a while, yes, but MS already had a product, WinNT3, in that area. If MS were to rush a new OS to market due to competition from IBM's product, it would have been an enhanced NT-based system, not a Win3/DOS replacement intended to make computing "fun".
Hmm, I wonder what derogatory term we can find to refer to Microsoft's new Windows command-line shell.
What rhymes with Monad...?
a large enough fine will "kill" the corporation
I defy you to find any instance, especially in contemporary times, that such a scenario has actually happened.
Many states will not subject a single parent to the death penalty, because it would end up making the criminal's children into orphans. The same applies to the corporate death penalty, except on a larger scale -- if the company dies, thousands of people could become unemployed, unable to spend enough to maintain the state of the economy or even take care of their families. Welfare spending balloons, the economy tanks. Is it worth punishing ALL the employees for the criminal actions of just a few of the corporation's agents?
You're a first-person shooter player, I take it. Mouse/keyboard is hard to beat for those (unless you have a crappy keyboard controller that doesn't register many simultaneous keypresses), but I wouldn't want to build for instance a MAME cabinet that used them as the primary interface.
Arcade games were originally designed with joysticks, buttons, and knobs, so the gaming experience there is best with those kinds of input devices. Home consoles came with handheld control pads, so the experience there is usually best with those devices. FPS's were born on the desktop computer, so it makes sense that keyboard/mouse input gives the best experience.
Any money [a startup] can get their hands on, they'll want to put into marketing and development.
Or at least pinball machines and free soda for the office. At least, that's what twentysomething CEO's with no business experience do.
God I miss the late '90s.
I hope that LiveJournal gets bought, sold, transformed, hacked to death, and turned into something useful.
Download the source and do it already, then. Isn't that the Slashdotter's Creed? Why wait for some corporation to create the product you want?
And besides, is some kid's diary post about a strange odor in his kitchen any more trivial than the endless "Windows sucks" flames and GNAA trolls in the comments here on Slashdot?
So what makes LiveJournal the pile of crap that it is?
You tell me -- it's in YOUR mind.
The vast majority of LiveJournal users use it as a sort of melodrama aggregator
The "vast majority" of any group of people are idiots. But that doesn't discount the hundreds of LJers whose daily writings I find entertaining and thought-provoking.