A Police State needs for everyone to be a criminal on paper, to have that potential,to be able to use that against them.
You have hit the nail quite precisely. It's a fairly intelligent land grab, you have to admit. They waited until NAT and such were widely deployed and accepted parts of the infrastructure before dropping the other shoe. I wonder if there's a terrorism modifier in the sentencing chain?
What is really scary to me is that, even though these bills were introduced by the ignorant, the fact that lots of legislators had the mind to introduce them in the first place is shocking. Particularly on the note of encryption, this is largely unconstitutional and hopefully, if ever passed, these bills will be challenged by (financially) enabled individuals.
Don't look now, but that pesky Constitution is on its way out. As soon as we see a few retaliatory terrorist actions inside our borders, the threat level will go to Red and the Feds will punch the panic buttons. All of them. By the time the dust settles on that little imbroglio, you're going to wish that encryption and NAT were all that were illegal.
Hard drives can be made to withstand a lot of punishment. 10 years ago, I saw a demo at a trade show where a 2.5" HP hard drive was attached to the end of a 30" bar. A motor and crank lifted the end of the bar 18" above a steel plate and then dropped it. There was an O-scope hooked up to the read channel, and it barely fluctuated at impact.
Granted, I don't expect consumer-channel equipment to be that strong.
Re:"Bush's War" at ends with "The War On Terror"
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I want to know how attacking Iraq is going to do anything whatsoever to reduce terrorism.
It won't. That's not the real agenda, anyway. Aside from the grudge over threats to his father and the obvious Big Oil Man mentality, this action is tailor-made to provoke some kind of response within our country. And once that's done, once the threat level goes red, our Friends In Government will finally be able to rid themselves of that pesky Constitution that's been so restrictive against their proliferation of power.
No PXE server on my network. Just a Netgear RM356 and a SMC Barricade WAP router that the new card was plugged into. And yes, the boot sector was actually changed. I had to reinstall GRUB to get the machine to boot again, and this box has never had NT installed. (it's dual-boot, but Win98 is the other OS)
I still have another NIC, so I could repeat the experiment. I might, too, just to try to dissect the mechanism at work.
Believe it or not, a good deal of people still don't use HTML in their emails.
I have three words for you: malicious active content.
From web bugs to attempts to exploit Outlook holes to embedded annoying noises to explicit porn photos to... whew, I'm out of breath already!
I go out of my way to disable HTML in email. It's an abomination, resulting in bloated messages and untoward exposure to mail-borne attacks.
If your message is truly important and meaningful to its recipient, it will not suffer from the lack of bright red 48 pt. bold Chancery Imprimateur headline text, describing the 761KB JPEG photo of your newest widget (or whatever you may be writing about). The net is not all about eye candy.
Back in 1994, a friend had a fully original Model 1550 PC/XT with a HardCard in it. The HardCard had failed (wouldn't boot or recognize), so he brought it to my place. Upon inspection, I saw that the drive was a Seagate. I grabbed the card at the center of the drive platter, gave it a quick air-twist to break the stiction loose and replaced it in the backplane. The machine booted without problem, to which my friend remarked "I hate you!". The box ran from that day until he retired it.
Performance note: that box ran a Waffle node, which had about 38 MB of newsfeed backed up from the drive's downtime. After downloading the backlog at 2400 BPS, it took 3 days to unpack and toss the contents. 16-bit uncompress didn't run very fast on a 4.77 MHz CPU, I guess.
You may jest, but back in 1996, I dropped a ThinkPad (can't remember the model, but it was a 386 with about 40MB of HD) 3.6 feet to a concrete floor when it slipped from its case. I'd forgotten to fasten the Velcro strap.
The 'puter landed on the top surface, hitting nearly flat. About 9 keys, including the spacebar, popped off. But the LCD was undamaged, and after replacing the keys (that spacebar was a bitch to get back on!), it booted up and ran fine for another year.
I changed jobs, but heard from a friend that they finally retired that 'Pad in 1998.
I have 3 domains registered with Dotster. One was originally a NetSol, and transferred without hassle. (caveat: that was about 3 years ago) The others were initially registered with Dotster. Service is good, and management is through a smooth web interface. They don't PGP-sign their email notifications, but that's the only point above that they miss, I think. $14.95 a year, and they always have a deal for transfers (currently $8.95 with a year extension included).
Some BBS's begat great Internet dynasties
on
Blizzard Births BBS
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Northwest Nexus, the major ISP headquartered in Bellevue, WA, began as halcyon.com. And halcyon.com was originally a 386, 8 MB of memory, DESQview 386 and the MS-DOS version of Waffle, all running in Ralph Sims' bedroom. With that kit, Ralph was running very close to a full newsfeed to over 100 leaf nodes back in the early 90's. When someone made a DEC Unix box available (it might have been an Alpha, come to think of it), he migrated and I ported BBStevie to big iron for the first time. Soon afterward, halcyon stepped into the ISP business and Ralph got to quit his day job. I recall that Tom Dell was pretty impressed with what Ralph achieved with Waffle. And I think I had a shell account on halcyon until halfway through the decade.
Those were the days...
Re:Footage and footageheads...the meme...
on
Pattern Recognition
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· Score: 1
...I further understand that most technologically-oriented people who have looked at Gibson's work have said that his initial Neuromancer world was fantastical, and not really extrapolative, whereas his later works seem to be zeroing in on actual emerging trends and technology.
That initial world really came to being in the short stories, such as 'New Rose Hotel' and 'Johnny Mnemonic'. I started reading Gibson when 'Burning Chrome' was first published in Omni.
Yes, Gibson's universe was fantastical, but really only through 'Count Zero'. I ascribe the change to his actual introduction to computers. He's said to have written 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' on an Apple II, and to have remarked that he hadn't expected computers to make any noise.
In the world of 'Neuromancer' and CZ, the computer wasn't really literal. It was a talisman, channeling the magic of advancing technology and its effects on the human condition. But if you read MLO carefully, you see that, while computers start out with the same talismanic properties, by the end of the book their magic is largely gone and they have descended into applianceness (to coin a term). Then remember that while writing MLO, Gibson was learning the mundane, everyday usage of a real computer. He formatted disks and saved files and typed on a screen. And as he became familiar with how things really were going, his fictional computers began to lose their luster until, as MLO closed, even in his world they were mere appliances. Exposure to reality stole the fire of his vision.
It reminds me of a distantly remembered sci-fi short story about a boy who was kept isolated from the whole world while learning to play his musical instrument. Someone came along and slipped him recordings of Beethoven and Bach, and he reveled in them and began to emulate them. And then the cultural authorities busted him for being influenced and maimed him, that he may never play the instrument again. Not that I'm suggesting that fate for Gibson, but I see a parallel in his exposure to computer reality and the change in his creative output.
If the mid west or Alaska felt like the government just didn't represent their needs why wouldn't they try to leave the union and form a government that better met their needs.
I tend to carry a small collection of bootable media with me such as tomsrtbt on a floppy, LNX-BBC, White Glove, PLAC and a few others. (yes, even a DOS boot disk) They can be very helpful in cases such as upgrading a mobo for a Win98 machine, where the mobo can't see the CD-ROM until you install a driver... from a CD-ROM.
I'll go you one better. I went into a RS to get a battery for my calculator. They didn't have the exact one, so I asked the omnipresent sales droid where his battery cross-ref book was.
What ensued was a 10-minute argument, wherein he insisted that there was "no such thing as a battery cross-reference book", and that all the batteries were marked as to function, so anything labeled "calculator" would fulfill my requirements.
99% of the spam I still get claims that at some point in time I signed up for this list.
I second that. I've had two autoresponder addresses out there for years (neither of which autoresponds anymore, as I got tired of deleting the bounces). In the past 5 years, I've seen exactly one legitimate message to one of them. They draw 5-20 spams a day, and almost all of them claim that 'file-request' had signed up with "us or one of our affiliates."
Of course, it's entertaining to see some of the semi-personalized attempts. "More income for file-request's household!" "Hi, file-request! Want to make your penis bigger?"
Yep, used to be disgusted... now I try to stay amused.
Re:Old but good light bulb jokes
on
Science Askew
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· Score: 1
Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Two. One holds the giraffe, while the other one fills the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.
(For the skeptical, it was either Monty Python's Matching Tie and Hankerchief, or New World Record. One side had two different starting points, so you would hear one or the other at random. They converged somewhere in the middle of that side, so the second half was the same.)
I remember Matching Tie and Handkerchief well, and still own a copy. The 2-groove side had two independent grooves, but they didn't converge. Completely different audio on each, and one would play more often than the other on my copy (probably an artifact of the starting section's physical layout). It wasn't until about the 4th or 5th listening that I heard the second track.
Calls made within the same area code are local, but calling between area codes would involve paying additional toll charges.
Here in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, the local calling area for wireline and cell phones comprises 4 different area codes. I don't think I'd be much inclined to buy a phone that only works in one of them without draining extra minutes. I'd guess other major metro areas have the same situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting times, indeed.
Granted, I don't expect consumer-channel equipment to be that strong.
</cynicism>
I still have another NIC, so I could repeat the experiment. I might, too, just to try to dissect the mechanism at work.
From web bugs to attempts to exploit Outlook holes to embedded annoying noises to explicit porn photos to... whew, I'm out of breath already!
I go out of my way to disable HTML in email. It's an abomination, resulting in bloated messages and untoward exposure to mail-borne attacks.
If your message is truly important and meaningful to its recipient, it will not suffer from the lack of bright red 48 pt. bold Chancery Imprimateur headline text, describing the 761KB JPEG photo of your newest widget (or whatever you may be writing about). The net is not all about eye candy.
It tries passwords? What, the lanman trick doesn't work anymore?
Performance note: that box ran a Waffle node, which had about 38 MB of newsfeed backed up from the drive's downtime. After downloading the backlog at 2400 BPS, it took 3 days to unpack and toss the contents. 16-bit uncompress didn't run very fast on a 4.77 MHz CPU, I guess.
The 'puter landed on the top surface, hitting nearly flat. About 9 keys, including the spacebar, popped off. But the LCD was undamaged, and after replacing the keys (that spacebar was a bitch to get back on!), it booted up and ran fine for another year.
I changed jobs, but heard from a friend that they finally retired that 'Pad in 1998.
I have 3 domains registered with Dotster. One was originally a NetSol, and transferred without hassle. (caveat: that was about 3 years ago) The others were initially registered with Dotster. Service is good, and management is through a smooth web interface. They don't PGP-sign their email notifications, but that's the only point above that they miss, I think. $14.95 a year, and they always have a deal for transfers (currently $8.95 with a year extension included).
Those were the days...
Yes, Gibson's universe was fantastical, but really only through 'Count Zero'. I ascribe the change to his actual introduction to computers. He's said to have written 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' on an Apple II, and to have remarked that he hadn't expected computers to make any noise.
In the world of 'Neuromancer' and CZ, the computer wasn't really literal. It was a talisman, channeling the magic of advancing technology and its effects on the human condition. But if you read MLO carefully, you see that, while computers start out with the same talismanic properties, by the end of the book their magic is largely gone and they have descended into applianceness (to coin a term). Then remember that while writing MLO, Gibson was learning the mundane, everyday usage of a real computer. He formatted disks and saved files and typed on a screen. And as he became familiar with how things really were going, his fictional computers began to lose their luster until, as MLO closed, even in his world they were mere appliances. Exposure to reality stole the fire of his vision.
It reminds me of a distantly remembered sci-fi short story about a boy who was kept isolated from the whole world while learning to play his musical instrument. Someone came along and slipped him recordings of Beethoven and Bach, and he reveled in them and began to emulate them. And then the cultural authorities busted him for being influenced and maimed him, that he may never play the instrument again. Not that I'm suggesting that fate for Gibson, but I see a parallel in his exposure to computer reality and the change in his creative output.
I tend to carry a small collection of bootable media with me such as tomsrtbt on a floppy, LNX-BBC, White Glove, PLAC and a few others. (yes, even a DOS boot disk) They can be very helpful in cases such as upgrading a mobo for a Win98 machine, where the mobo can't see the CD-ROM until you install a driver... from a CD-ROM.
Too late...
What ensued was a 10-minute argument, wherein he insisted that there was "no such thing as a battery cross-reference book", and that all the batteries were marked as to function, so anything labeled "calculator" would fulfill my requirements.
Of course, it's entertaining to see some of the semi-personalized attempts. "More income for file-request's household!" "Hi, file-request! Want to make your penis bigger?"
Yep, used to be disgusted... now I try to stay amused.
That Stargate looks pretty damn cool. But the website doesn't mention pricing. How much?
Oh, and both sides of the label said "Side 2".
According to their website, Server-Workstation Expert has ceased publication.