I have a 2.0 Megapixel Visioneer camera and I need to install an LED over the photosensor so I can control exposure (light off == long exposure, light on for fastest exposure) since the flash kills the battery after very few shots but when used in the proper lighting (or low lighting and proper care) the pictures are quite excellent.
During a vacation to DC I took over 1000 pictures with the camera. After I realized what it was doing in low light with excessive exposure times I compensated by holding it very steady and pulled off some really nice (not blurry) shots in the National Cathedral and other darker locations.
It had no problem with outdoor shots. And yes, all the pictures are archived in a family web-site which uses a custom PHP script for an easy to browse photo album.
I have a bunch of digital shots from Colorado and I actually think they look crisper than the film shots.
If you're doing professional work and need top notch prints then you aren't going to be using a cheap 35mm camera or a cheap digital camera. For the casual user a 1, 2, or 3 megapixel camera is good enough. They're just looking to capture memories, not art.
When it comes to photography what you're taking a picture of and how you set up the shot can really compensate for the film or mp count you're using. It really doesn't matter what camera or film you're using if you have nothing interesting to take a picture of or no clue how to properly frame it.
Eventually I'll pick up a better camera since I go nuts taking pictures and have some outstanding shots and would like better quality images to go with my ability to setup and take pictures.
since I run an on-line business in AZ, telling me to report any internet purchases I had made. I thought about it for a minute and then realized of the two known internet purchases one had been refunded entirely by the company (NewEgg, which resulted in me getting a server case for free after they jerked me around for several months) and the other was less than $100 and had just taken place a couple days prior. It's actually pretty rare that I buy things on-line and I don't keep records unless it's a purchase for the business since it's a tax write-off. The only purchase I could report was a business expense.
The tax only applies if you purchase tangible goods and import them into your state of residence. It falls under a "Use Tax."
If you're not running a business you most likely will not be bothered. I was probably sent a letter not only because I run a business but also because I don't pay any taxes on sales since they're all internet based and out of state. Every month I have sales to report but no tax. It also may have raised a flag.
George Washington (yes, that one) actually painted "wood grain" on his walls to make the wood look more expensive that it was.
And his house looks like it's made of stone. But actually it's made of wood, beveled to look like stone and painted with white paint mixed with sand to give it a stone like finish.
Despite his apparent cheapness, Mt Vernon is quite the sight to see.
I dunno though. I have a case that has plastic colored to look like wood going up one side which looks alright but it's technology. Unless you're trying to blend in with the furniture trying to give a natural look I think is a bit over the top.
Especially when the "natural look" is just a sticker. It's a bit tacky. Cases made out of real wood with real carvings and other woodwork, now that would be something. If it didn't burst into flames.
I have my own custom software that rips through all the e-mails and yanks out the links along with the subject, from and to. I then manually update the filter.
I'd say he's been immortalized by the internet. I used to have a huge collection of bizzare, funny, disturbing, etc things collected from around the net. It was the most accessed section of the web-site. Whenever I'd forget to All Access Pass it, I'd do several gigs of transfer in a single day. I pulled it because it conflicted with my other interests. Like running a nice clean site. If you want to build a very popular site very fast, collecting internet pulp culture is the way to do it. If you can stomach it.
The mom should counter by posting embarressing pictures of her son so he's not remembered as that guy who blew his brains out. Perhaps as that guy who burned his eyebrows off when he was 12.
Aside from from the bandwidth (which who knows what kind of bulk rates they get on that) the most expensive part of spamming is buying domains.
And the kicker is that HTML doesn't allow you to obfuscate an URL. The best you can do is character codes but that's one to one so not effective.
What I do is harvest URLs from spams and then add them to the rule file for my mail server. It's a mostly automated process to avoid accidently filtering out non spam domains like w3c.org or yahoo or whatever that occasionally end up in spam e-mails along with real spam domains.
You can click the link on my sig and then there's a link from there to see the current rule file my server uses. Since I added in web-mail with spam reporting, this is going to be even easier since spams will have a unique subject line and a to address that has no legitimate uses.
Instead of trying to sort out which e-mails to my real addresses were spam or not, I just log in, report them and then it's a simple sort by to address to find all the spam to filter links out of. There's probably around a thousand filtered domains which equals several thousand dollars worth of domains.
If you're worried about people snooping around on your connection, OpenSSL is comming soon for web-access.
If you have a fully TLS enabled e-mail client you can do secure POP3 and SMTP already. Thunderbird has TLS capabilities for SMTP but not POP3 for some reason. Pegasus Mail is fully compatible. Apparently there's no clear standard as to whether the client should just use the standard 110,25 ports with encyption (what my server supports) or use alternate ports. Thunderbird is quite convinced you absolutely must use a fixed alternate port for POP3.
For most people, it'll probably end up that the web access is the most secure way to use Indie-Mail.
if the return addresses were actually valid and the person who's e-mail address you just blasted had any possible means to prevent someone from "spoofing" their e-mail address.
surely it can only benefit anyone else who uses it.
I can believe it helps solve problems. Ask anyone; if you act crazy enough, you'll freak out whoever was trying to take you on enough to make them leave you alone.
Act nuts or stand your ground. Both are viable options.
A quality capture card that doesn't suck is the Winfast TV which runs about $60. It has no problem capturing 640x480 30fps DVD or higher compression video on a decent system.
No point "saving" $35 to buy a piece of junk that has virtually no uses except for one application.
I buy a movie or two every couple weeks. Usually for $15 or less unless it's something I know is really good. Kill Bill will get whatever they charge for it when it comes out. Depending on what they're charging I may pick up Matrix 3 just so I can complete the set or wait until I can get it used for $10.
Music on the other hand is meh. I bought nearly all the music I own during the period the lawsuit covered. I was constantly hearing music I liked and nearly all of my CDs are not one hit wonders.
Since then I've not really felt any compelling reason to buy a CD. I'm not hearing anything decent on the radio although one of these days I'll probably check to see if any of the bands I currently own CDs for, have any new ones or ones I missed.
is that these robots can move like humans. That's the first step in the big picture. The brain is being developed independently but in conjunction.
With wireless high speed network connections the fact that these robots can move so well is sufficient. A high power computer system could take up an entire closet and feed commands to the robot that doesn't actually have to think itself. It just needs to relay sensory information to the big giant brain in the closet and it can relay back motion/speech commands.
The final step is then to get that big giant brain down to a size that can fit into the robot itself.
The advantage to seperating the brain from the body as far as robots go is that you can independently upgrade either without breaking compatibility and you can maximize the major functions. You can focus on human like speech and movement for the robot and AI with the seperate "brain" system.
Imagine one of these robots being able to log into Deep Blue or whatever and being able to sit at a table and play chess. Instead of just printing out commands that a human then has to process, the robot can move the pieces itself. Or log into a home system and be able to do chores. And you don't have to worry about cramming the AI into a small package. Size doesn't matter since you can just shove the system anywhere.
By seperating the brain from the machine you can make a common robot "drone" that can be used for any number of tasks.
I'd be surprised if Google ever offered an IPO. It brings all kinds of headaches to the few people running the company and really doesn't give them anything they didn't already have.
The net result is just gobs of free money for early investors. The stock would probably be out of the price range of the casual investor within the first week. And then they'd have a bunch of fat cats breathing down their neck looking for the stock to go up a penny. Instead of comming up with neat little toys like they do now, they'd be comming up with neat little toys as long as they favorably affect the bottom line.
Look how many people already bitch whenever Google doesn't give them a favorable ranking. And they're not even paying anything.
As it is, they rake in piles of cash and can still have fun because it's not really that much of a business. They really don't answer to anybody. They find things that suck and then release their own version that doesn't if they feel like it. As soon as they go public, they've got lots of people to answer to.
If you want to make some money off of Google, set up a good web-site and use AdSense.
I initially went to subscriptions a little over a year ago because I had used Commission Junction for a year prior and after 70,000+ impressions I hadn't made a penny and my bandwidth was being saturated.
Then a little less than a month ago I decided to look into AdWords. I made quite a few pennies the first day. And the next and so on. My site isn't even that big or popular since I successfully hosed it with the subscriptions. I also completely overhauled the site shortly before trying AdSense which isn't helping as everything is waiting to be reindexed so people can find it again. However only one bandwidth intensive section of the site requires a subcription anymore.
I'm unrolling free (no existing e-mail account required) web/pop3 e-mail next week. We'll see how everything is working out in the comming months. I was debating whether or not to require a payment for accounts or just use AdSense. I decided on AdSense and we'll see what happens.
"Plus, I think Slashdotters ignore that people have Windows software and won't magically dump it all and switch to Linux simply because the next version of Windows is due out in 2006 instead of 2005."
I've been using 2000 for a few years now. I have XP installed only because it was free from the Uni and I just have it running the home web-server.
XP didn't blow me away. I consider 2000 the best thing ever. 2003 is pretty impressive too but I don't have the money to spend on it and I don't need it.
If Linux manages to blow me away between now and Longhorn coming out I may very well switch. I tried the latest Red Hat not too long ago and wasn't blown away so the system with it on it is up in the closet.
The Linux community needs to realize that they don't just have to catch up to Windows in a number of areas, they need to go far and above.
is that instead of firing everybody and going out of business they fire part of the domestic workforce and hire cheap labor out of country to take their place.
It's called damage control.
If a company is in danger of going out of business because they can't afford to keep all the people to keep their product moving then yes, the "right" thing to do would be to fire a minimum of the people locally and hire a minimum of people out of country.
Better to lose a few domestic jobs than all of them.
It's really not that difficult to understand the reasoning. Some companies may be unholy bastards just looking to improve the bottom line but some companies are in a dilema and need to find a way to stay afloat and not fire everyone.
"There is NO benefit for the average american worker."
How exactly is attempting to retain jobs not a benefit to the American worker?
If they were letting you go because they were shutting down operations they would have told you. The reason they gave you was the real reason. If they didn't give you any reason then they probably know something you think they don't know but don't want to start a major issue by confronting the specific issue. And this isn't it. In Arizona it's a right to work state so if the company suspects something about you but can't prove it they can simply fire you without giving a reason.
"If their decision to fire me"
The key word is "fired." They may have been trying to avoid paying you a severence package by not laying you off. But they'd be firing more people than you if that was the case. And the fact it was so long prior to the closing of the doors would indicate you were fired because of you. Instead of trying to look for alterior motives you'd be better off addressing the real issues that resulted in you being fired so you can work on those areas for future jobs.
I worked as a tech for HP and we had the heads up that our call center was getting shut down. There were people who decided to "go out blazing" and were promptly escorted to the door. They assured us for weeks they'd be nice and not just shut the doors on us. A few weeks later we all showed up to find the doors locked and the security guards telling us we'd get our checks in the mail.
The point is, they let us all work until the last day despite most of us playing games the whole time since the call volume was so low.
The odds are very high that you screwed up. Companies know that companies don't like to hire people who have a history of being fired. If they fired you because the store was closing they needlessly hurt your work record. And it's very doubtful that a big company like Gateway would do something like that to one of their employees. Companies don't fire people unless they have a real good reason because it can bite them in the ass. And firing someone because the shop is closing down isn't a good reason.
So yeah, I'm going to say it had nothing to do with the store closing.
and assume they limit the maximum amount you can attach per e-mail. And using it as filestorage would require giving people your login and password.
Unless you can anonymously browse other people's e-mail it's really not going to work. At best there would just be people advertising their accounts and people would have to manually (or submit a form) e-mail them a request.
At any rate, any system that attempts to whore out Google will be public and no doubt Google will squish such accounts pretty quickly and have no trouble getting the authorities to act on it. I had free anonymous FTP for awhile but since I have an obscure IP (more warez people fish popular IP ranges and don't bother to go to a web-site to see the big giant ad) I only had to report a couple people to their ISP for attempting to store warez on it.
I offer POP3 accounts with no storage limits but with a 15MB attachment limit and I expect e-mails to be pulled from the server. The idea of no storage limits is so that you don't go on vacation only to lose e-mails because your inbox got too full and so you can get large files back and forth easily. Not so you can use it as your own personal harddrive.
I think Google is really overselling this service and once it's all debugged they'll most likely offer something a bit more sane.
Or maybe their next goal is the best spam fighting engine on the planet and offering people insane amounts of space they'll never use is just a way to get people to drop everything else so they can start collecting more spam than AOL for analysis.
Until MyDoom came out and Cox blocked incomming port 25 on top of the already blocked outgoing port 25 I was running a spam can for that very purpose: get all the spam you can where you don't care and then use the info to preemptively block spam from your real inboxes.
You are in many cases responsible for any harm that results from information you make publically available.
This information was posted with the intent to allow or cause harm to the software owner. And that is why he's in deep shit. He didn't have to sense to just let it go.
If the company is being retarded, that doesn't give you the right to sabatoge them and their clients. It's called the legal system. If he actually had a case he could have taken the company to court over it.
He didn't. He took the law into his own hands and now he's screwed.
"not because of some intrinsic right of a company to produce shitty products."
They're not liable for both reasons. The reason companies have to put it in writting is the same reason we have stupid warning labels. Too many lawyers and too many stupid people.
You cannot force Microsoft to make a 100% secure product. They do it from market pressures and their own volition on their own time table. Exposing holes in their software that can lead to crimes makes you an accessory to those crimes if they are committed using information you provided. If MS provides that information and doesn't offer a patch to go with it and that information leads to the committing of a crime, MS is responsible. Well would be if you didn't agree not to hold them responsible by using their products. It would just make them stupid to supply exploit explainations without fixes.
Linux is under these same rules.
If a product is insecure the only right you have is to not use it and warn people it's not secure. Posting how to exploit a flaw is not the same as claiming it's insecure and describing the consequences. The latter is legally safe, the former could make you an accessory.
A black hat who discovers an exploit on their own and commits a crime is solely responsible. Just like a bank robber who scopes out the bank himself and plans the act and carries it out.
A white hat who discovers and exploit and posts it publically is the same as a person who goes into a bank, finds all it's flaws and then posts the information publically. Anybody who uses that information to rob the bank and points the finger back at you for telling them how will get themselves a partner in crime.
Windows and Linux et al don't have exploits on purpose which is why they're aren't liable. You willfully expose the exploits for the intent to allow or cause harm. This is why you are responsible if you post them.
and publishing how to rob it on the internet. When someone does and fingers you as the guy they got the info on how to rob the bank you've just become the accessory to a felony. He hasn't done anything illegal that wasn't illegal before the DMCA.
"And do you argue that companies that make claims like "catches 100% of known and unknown viruses" don't deserve to be punished for blatantly lying to the public?"
You should try reading a post before responding. I stated exlicity a couple of times to give a copy of your findings to the authorities or to sue the company yourself for false advertising. The authorities can then determine whether or not you have a case worth pursuing. This guy made himself prosecutor, jury and judge. And not shockingly he's going to jail for it.
What this guy did was scope out a bank and then published how to rob it publically. He was an idiot that made himself an accessory to crime because he couldn't keep his big mouth shut and go through the proper channels to resolve the issue.
Watch "Sneakers" for how to legally handle security issues if common sense isn't your thing. You get hired by the bank, you get permission from the authorities in case something goes wrong and then rob the bank and then you take the money to the manager and explain to him how to fix the holes. You do not call a press conference at any time, before, during or after the security check unless given express written permission to do so. Doing so makes any problems the bank has your sole legal responsibility.
It's really going to hurt his case if the company already had experts working internally to resolve the issues.
Black hats are the people who commit computer crimes. If White Hats are stupid, they make themselves accessories to those crimes. This is what happened to this guy. And now he's screwed. Admitting his crimes on Slashdot isn't going to help his case either. The best he's going to do is a plea bargain.
"So their customers have no right to status updates on problems with a product that they have purchased?"
Nope. Microsoft never offers anybody any notice that new patches are available. You have to subscribe to newletters for any update notices from any company (even Linux) and none of them are legally responsible for such notices. You are not legally obligated to know anything about what's going on with a company unless you work there and even then it's at the manager's discretion what they tell you.
stop going through the wrong chain of command with these issues.
First you take it to the company. And if they won't listen you take it to the authorities and they can decide if the company is defrauding their clients with false promises and whatnot. And if they won't listen you throw your hands up in the air and unless you know a company personally who uses the software you just let it go.
Making it public information just makes the danger to the companies very real and very much now which in fact punishes them by not giving them time to deal with the issue.
Unless you have a feasible immidiate solution to go with your findings all you're doing is sabatosing a lot of innocent companies who had no way to know and you've just tied their hands behind their backs and made them sitting ducks. Companies cannot just shut down software at a moments notice.
And here's a nutty idea, if you're really obsessed with finding holes in a certain company's software seek a job. The obvious problem is that you're a problem person. You find problems and that's it. That doesn't help anybody. And when you then blackmail people with this information by going public if they don't deal with it, no duh you're going to get in trouble.
If you're sincere about helping the company you find the problems, find the best solutions you can with the information you have and then go to the company and explain the situation and tell them you'd like to help and know how to fix the problems but need access to the source to do so. You then request a job as a programmer and get to work if they hire you. If they don't hire you, you leave them with your findings and move on.
If you ever, in the process of these discussions, even hint at going public it's called blackmail and you'll rightfully be thrown in jail. Give one copy of your findings to the company and one copy to the proper authorities. That's it.
By pressing the issue you assume you have some kind of right to tell the company what to do. You also assume that the company isn't working on the issue. And you also assume that the company owes you some kind of update on the status of the issue. Which are all three very wrong assumptions unless you actually work for the company and are in an upper position. By going public you've basically forced the company into a bad position because they didn't act in a time frame you thought was fast enough. You don't have a right to do that. DMCA or not.
If you don't have a feasible immediate solution to go with the problems you've found going public is just hurting everyone and helping no one.
If this is something you like to do, you should have gotten a job so that you'd be recognized as a legitimate software security expert that companies can hire for testing their software. But now you've kinda screwed yourself because nobody can trust you to work within the system. Your mouth is too big for the job.
You've made yourself singularly responsible for anything bad that happens because of your findings. Instead of an "I told you so" you would have earned by going through the proper channels you earned an "it's your fault." Because you assumed anyone could have found and exploited the problem and now they can.
Let the bad guys go public. If you have no solution and you go public without permission, you are the bad guy. With Open Source you have all the permission in the world to report hacks without posting solutions. Work on Open Source if you can't stand keeping secrets.
The same people who will debug the visual designer are the same people who debug the compilers of today.
Currently most people work with code. The idea is that eventually most people will work with pictures and a few people will work with code to make that possible. Compare how many people work with C++ compared to ASM now than did decades ago. Same deal. Those who know ASM get paid much more than those who only do C++.
I designed a piece of software in C++ and then used a custom tool created by a bunch of other people to create the same program in a visual compiler. I got the exact same functionality while only dealing with the logic of the code and not the details.
Very nifty. It just takes some getting used to. I prefer to stop at the C/C++ type level. Eventually I'll try to learn ASM and do some fancy pants low level graphics stuff. How low you want to do will determine your value. In the future, people who code with pictures will be relativly cheap labor while as you know more and more of the details your pay goes up.
Same as it is now. It's just a new paradigm and new level of abstraction that's easier to jump in on.
on the internet? That money you're wasting on yourself could be better spent feeding the hungry. I bet you have the nerve to drive a car, too.
Starvation isn't a money problem. It doesn't take money to plant a garden and grow food. The problem is the assholes in charge who prevent the food from going to people who need it that need to be overthrown.
There's plenty of food. And buying more of it isn't going to make the situation better for anyone but the assholes in charge who hoard it for themselves.
The poor will always be with you. If you feel so compelled, help the poor in far away places. I'd rather help those around me. And that involves buying crap that helps pay their wages so that they don't starve.
I don't suppose you stopped to think that if nobody bought anything they didn't need, 90%+ of the population would be out of work and unable to afford to eat. Our society functions based on the buying and selling of crap. Just like every other country.
If you go to the Mexican border at least, everybody is selling something. Buying a pot or a flower you don't need really equates to feeding the seller and his family.
Buying a stupid little icon helps keep this guy fed and with the extra money he buys more crap which puts money in a lot of people's pockets so they can eat and so on down the line.
To claim that we shouldn't buy anything frivilous is incredibly short sighted. I don't think you realize how many poor people survive selling frivilous crap working at fast food joints, restaurants and what not. You think corporations should just give people money? Where do you think their money comes from?
Slashdot Mirror
I have a 2.0 Megapixel Visioneer camera and I need to install an LED over the photosensor so I can control exposure (light off == long exposure, light on for fastest exposure) since the flash kills the battery after very few shots but when used in the proper lighting (or low lighting and proper care) the pictures are quite excellent.
During a vacation to DC I took over 1000 pictures with the camera. After I realized what it was doing in low light with excessive exposure times I compensated by holding it very steady and pulled off some really nice (not blurry) shots in the National Cathedral and other darker locations.
It had no problem with outdoor shots. And yes, all the pictures are archived in a family web-site which uses a custom PHP script for an easy to browse photo album.
I have a bunch of digital shots from Colorado and I actually think they look crisper than the film shots.
If you're doing professional work and need top notch prints then you aren't going to be using a cheap 35mm camera or a cheap digital camera. For the casual user a 1, 2, or 3 megapixel camera is good enough. They're just looking to capture memories, not art.
When it comes to photography what you're taking a picture of and how you set up the shot can really compensate for the film or mp count you're using. It really doesn't matter what camera or film you're using if you have nothing interesting to take a picture of or no clue how to properly frame it.
Eventually I'll pick up a better camera since I go nuts taking pictures and have some outstanding shots and would like better quality images to go with my ability to setup and take pictures.
Ben
since I run an on-line business in AZ, telling me to report any internet purchases I had made. I thought about it for a minute and then realized of the two known internet purchases one had been refunded entirely by the company (NewEgg, which resulted in me getting a server case for free after they jerked me around for several months) and the other was less than $100 and had just taken place a couple days prior. It's actually pretty rare that I buy things on-line and I don't keep records unless it's a purchase for the business since it's a tax write-off. The only purchase I could report was a business expense.
The tax only applies if you purchase tangible goods and import them into your state of residence. It falls under a "Use Tax."
If you're not running a business you most likely will not be bothered. I was probably sent a letter not only because I run a business but also because I don't pay any taxes on sales since they're all internet based and out of state. Every month I have sales to report but no tax. It also may have raised a flag.
Ben
George Washington (yes, that one) actually painted "wood grain" on his walls to make the wood look more expensive that it was.
And his house looks like it's made of stone. But actually it's made of wood, beveled to look like stone and painted with white paint mixed with sand to give it a stone like finish.
Despite his apparent cheapness, Mt Vernon is quite the sight to see.
I dunno though. I have a case that has plastic colored to look like wood going up one side which looks alright but it's technology. Unless you're trying to blend in with the furniture trying to give a natural look I think is a bit over the top.
Especially when the "natural look" is just a sticker. It's a bit tacky. Cases made out of real wood with real carvings and other woodwork, now that would be something. If it didn't burst into flames.
Ben
using Mercury Mail.
I have my own custom software that rips through all the e-mails and yanks out the links along with the subject, from and to. I then manually update the filter.
Ben
I'd say he's been immortalized by the internet. I used to have a huge collection of bizzare, funny, disturbing, etc things collected from around the net. It was the most accessed section of the web-site. Whenever I'd forget to All Access Pass it, I'd do several gigs of transfer in a single day. I pulled it because it conflicted with my other interests. Like running a nice clean site. If you want to build a very popular site very fast, collecting internet pulp culture is the way to do it. If you can stomach it.
The mom should counter by posting embarressing pictures of her son so he's not remembered as that guy who blew his brains out. Perhaps as that guy who burned his eyebrows off when he was 12.
But somehow I don't think that will work as well.
Ben
Aside from from the bandwidth (which who knows what kind of bulk rates they get on that) the most expensive part of spamming is buying domains.
And the kicker is that HTML doesn't allow you to obfuscate an URL. The best you can do is character codes but that's one to one so not effective.
What I do is harvest URLs from spams and then add them to the rule file for my mail server. It's a mostly automated process to avoid accidently filtering out non spam domains like w3c.org or yahoo or whatever that occasionally end up in spam e-mails along with real spam domains.
You can click the link on my sig and then there's a link from there to see the current rule file my server uses. Since I added in web-mail with spam reporting, this is going to be even easier since spams will have a unique subject line and a to address that has no legitimate uses.
Instead of trying to sort out which e-mails to my real addresses were spam or not, I just log in, report them and then it's a simple sort by to address to find all the spam to filter links out of. There's probably around a thousand filtered domains which equals several thousand dollars worth of domains.
If you're worried about people snooping around on your connection, OpenSSL is comming soon for web-access.
If you have a fully TLS enabled e-mail client you can do secure POP3 and SMTP already. Thunderbird has TLS capabilities for SMTP but not POP3 for some reason. Pegasus Mail is fully compatible. Apparently there's no clear standard as to whether the client should just use the standard 110,25 ports with encyption (what my server supports) or use alternate ports. Thunderbird is quite convinced you absolutely must use a fixed alternate port for POP3.
For most people, it'll probably end up that the web access is the most secure way to use Indie-Mail.
Ben
if the return addresses were actually valid and the person who's e-mail address you just blasted had any possible means to prevent someone from "spoofing" their e-mail address.
Ben
surely it can only benefit anyone else who uses it.
I can believe it helps solve problems. Ask anyone; if you act crazy enough, you'll freak out whoever was trying to take you on enough to make them leave you alone.
Act nuts or stand your ground. Both are viable options.
Ben
A quality capture card that doesn't suck is the Winfast TV which runs about $60. It has no problem capturing 640x480 30fps DVD or higher compression video on a decent system.
No point "saving" $35 to buy a piece of junk that has virtually no uses except for one application.
Ben
I buy a movie or two every couple weeks. Usually for $15 or less unless it's something I know is really good. Kill Bill will get whatever they charge for it when it comes out. Depending on what they're charging I may pick up Matrix 3 just so I can complete the set or wait until I can get it used for $10.
Music on the other hand is meh. I bought nearly all the music I own during the period the lawsuit covered. I was constantly hearing music I liked and nearly all of my CDs are not one hit wonders.
Since then I've not really felt any compelling reason to buy a CD. I'm not hearing anything decent on the radio although one of these days I'll probably check to see if any of the bands I currently own CDs for, have any new ones or ones I missed.
Ben
is that these robots can move like humans. That's the first step in the big picture. The brain is being developed independently but in conjunction.
With wireless high speed network connections the fact that these robots can move so well is sufficient. A high power computer system could take up an entire closet and feed commands to the robot that doesn't actually have to think itself. It just needs to relay sensory information to the big giant brain in the closet and it can relay back motion/speech commands.
The final step is then to get that big giant brain down to a size that can fit into the robot itself.
The advantage to seperating the brain from the body as far as robots go is that you can independently upgrade either without breaking compatibility and you can maximize the major functions. You can focus on human like speech and movement for the robot and AI with the seperate "brain" system.
Imagine one of these robots being able to log into Deep Blue or whatever and being able to sit at a table and play chess. Instead of just printing out commands that a human then has to process, the robot can move the pieces itself. Or log into a home system and be able to do chores. And you don't have to worry about cramming the AI into a small package. Size doesn't matter since you can just shove the system anywhere.
By seperating the brain from the machine you can make a common robot "drone" that can be used for any number of tasks.
Ben
I'd be surprised if Google ever offered an IPO. It brings all kinds of headaches to the few people running the company and really doesn't give them anything they didn't already have.
The net result is just gobs of free money for early investors. The stock would probably be out of the price range of the casual investor within the first week. And then they'd have a bunch of fat cats breathing down their neck looking for the stock to go up a penny. Instead of comming up with neat little toys like they do now, they'd be comming up with neat little toys as long as they favorably affect the bottom line.
Look how many people already bitch whenever Google doesn't give them a favorable ranking. And they're not even paying anything.
As it is, they rake in piles of cash and can still have fun because it's not really that much of a business. They really don't answer to anybody. They find things that suck and then release their own version that doesn't if they feel like it. As soon as they go public, they've got lots of people to answer to.
If you want to make some money off of Google, set up a good web-site and use AdSense.
Ben
I initially went to subscriptions a little over a year ago because I had used Commission Junction for a year prior and after 70,000+ impressions I hadn't made a penny and my bandwidth was being saturated.
Then a little less than a month ago I decided to look into AdWords. I made quite a few pennies the first day. And the next and so on. My site isn't even that big or popular since I successfully hosed it with the subscriptions. I also completely overhauled the site shortly before trying AdSense which isn't helping as everything is waiting to be reindexed so people can find it again. However only one bandwidth intensive section of the site requires a subcription anymore.
I'm unrolling free (no existing e-mail account required) web/pop3 e-mail next week. We'll see how everything is working out in the comming months. I was debating whether or not to require a payment for accounts or just use AdSense. I decided on AdSense and we'll see what happens.
Ben
"Plus, I think Slashdotters ignore that people have Windows software and won't magically dump it all and switch to Linux simply because the next version of Windows is due out in 2006 instead of 2005."
I've been using 2000 for a few years now. I have XP installed only because it was free from the Uni and I just have it running the home web-server.
XP didn't blow me away. I consider 2000 the best thing ever. 2003 is pretty impressive too but I don't have the money to spend on it and I don't need it.
If Linux manages to blow me away between now and Longhorn coming out I may very well switch. I tried the latest Red Hat not too long ago and wasn't blown away so the system with it on it is up in the closet.
The Linux community needs to realize that they don't just have to catch up to Windows in a number of areas, they need to go far and above.
Ben
is that instead of firing everybody and going out of business they fire part of the domestic workforce and hire cheap labor out of country to take their place.
It's called damage control.
If a company is in danger of going out of business because they can't afford to keep all the people to keep their product moving then yes, the "right" thing to do would be to fire a minimum of the people locally and hire a minimum of people out of country.
Better to lose a few domestic jobs than all of them.
It's really not that difficult to understand the reasoning. Some companies may be unholy bastards just looking to improve the bottom line but some companies are in a dilema and need to find a way to stay afloat and not fire everyone.
"There is NO benefit for the average american worker."
How exactly is attempting to retain jobs not a benefit to the American worker?
Ben
If they were letting you go because they were shutting down operations they would have told you. The reason they gave you was the real reason. If they didn't give you any reason then they probably know something you think they don't know but don't want to start a major issue by confronting the specific issue. And this isn't it. In Arizona it's a right to work state so if the company suspects something about you but can't prove it they can simply fire you without giving a reason.
"If their decision to fire me"
The key word is "fired." They may have been trying to avoid paying you a severence package by not laying you off. But they'd be firing more people than you if that was the case. And the fact it was so long prior to the closing of the doors would indicate you were fired because of you. Instead of trying to look for alterior motives you'd be better off addressing the real issues that resulted in you being fired so you can work on those areas for future jobs.
I worked as a tech for HP and we had the heads up that our call center was getting shut down. There were people who decided to "go out blazing" and were promptly escorted to the door. They assured us for weeks they'd be nice and not just shut the doors on us. A few weeks later we all showed up to find the doors locked and the security guards telling us we'd get our checks in the mail.
The point is, they let us all work until the last day despite most of us playing games the whole time since the call volume was so low.
The odds are very high that you screwed up. Companies know that companies don't like to hire people who have a history of being fired. If they fired you because the store was closing they needlessly hurt your work record. And it's very doubtful that a big company like Gateway would do something like that to one of their employees. Companies don't fire people unless they have a real good reason because it can bite them in the ass. And firing someone because the shop is closing down isn't a good reason.
So yeah, I'm going to say it had nothing to do with the store closing.
Ben
and assume they limit the maximum amount you can attach per e-mail. And using it as filestorage would require giving people your login and password.
Unless you can anonymously browse other people's e-mail it's really not going to work. At best there would just be people advertising their accounts and people would have to manually (or submit a form) e-mail them a request.
At any rate, any system that attempts to whore out Google will be public and no doubt Google will squish such accounts pretty quickly and have no trouble getting the authorities to act on it. I had free anonymous FTP for awhile but since I have an obscure IP (more warez people fish popular IP ranges and don't bother to go to a web-site to see the big giant ad) I only had to report a couple people to their ISP for attempting to store warez on it.
I offer POP3 accounts with no storage limits but with a 15MB attachment limit and I expect e-mails to be pulled from the server. The idea of no storage limits is so that you don't go on vacation only to lose e-mails because your inbox got too full and so you can get large files back and forth easily. Not so you can use it as your own personal harddrive.
I think Google is really overselling this service and once it's all debugged they'll most likely offer something a bit more sane.
Or maybe their next goal is the best spam fighting engine on the planet and offering people insane amounts of space they'll never use is just a way to get people to drop everything else so they can start collecting more spam than AOL for analysis.
Until MyDoom came out and Cox blocked incomming port 25 on top of the already blocked outgoing port 25 I was running a spam can for that very purpose: get all the spam you can where you don't care and then use the info to preemptively block spam from your real inboxes.
Ben
You are in many cases responsible for any harm that results from information you make publically available.
This information was posted with the intent to allow or cause harm to the software owner. And that is why he's in deep shit. He didn't have to sense to just let it go.
If the company is being retarded, that doesn't give you the right to sabatoge them and their clients. It's called the legal system. If he actually had a case he could have taken the company to court over it.
He didn't. He took the law into his own hands and now he's screwed.
"not because of some intrinsic right of a company to produce shitty products."
They're not liable for both reasons. The reason companies have to put it in writting is the same reason we have stupid warning labels. Too many lawyers and too many stupid people.
Ben
to force a company to do anything.
You cannot force Microsoft to make a 100% secure product. They do it from market pressures and their own volition on their own time table. Exposing holes in their software that can lead to crimes makes you an accessory to those crimes if they are committed using information you provided. If MS provides that information and doesn't offer a patch to go with it and that information leads to the committing of a crime, MS is responsible. Well would be if you didn't agree not to hold them responsible by using their products. It would just make them stupid to supply exploit explainations without fixes.
Linux is under these same rules.
If a product is insecure the only right you have is to not use it and warn people it's not secure. Posting how to exploit a flaw is not the same as claiming it's insecure and describing the consequences. The latter is legally safe, the former could make you an accessory.
A black hat who discovers an exploit on their own and commits a crime is solely responsible. Just like a bank robber who scopes out the bank himself and plans the act and carries it out.
A white hat who discovers and exploit and posts it publically is the same as a person who goes into a bank, finds all it's flaws and then posts the information publically. Anybody who uses that information to rob the bank and points the finger back at you for telling them how will get themselves a partner in crime.
Windows and Linux et al don't have exploits on purpose which is why they're aren't liable. You willfully expose the exploits for the intent to allow or cause harm. This is why you are responsible if you post them.
Ben
and publishing how to rob it on the internet. When someone does and fingers you as the guy they got the info on how to rob the bank you've just become the accessory to a felony. He hasn't done anything illegal that wasn't illegal before the DMCA.
"And do you argue that companies that make claims like "catches 100% of known and unknown viruses" don't deserve to be punished for blatantly lying to the public?"
You should try reading a post before responding. I stated exlicity a couple of times to give a copy of your findings to the authorities or to sue the company yourself for false advertising. The authorities can then determine whether or not you have a case worth pursuing. This guy made himself prosecutor, jury and judge. And not shockingly he's going to jail for it.
What this guy did was scope out a bank and then published how to rob it publically. He was an idiot that made himself an accessory to crime because he couldn't keep his big mouth shut and go through the proper channels to resolve the issue.
Watch "Sneakers" for how to legally handle security issues if common sense isn't your thing. You get hired by the bank, you get permission from the authorities in case something goes wrong and then rob the bank and then you take the money to the manager and explain to him how to fix the holes. You do not call a press conference at any time, before, during or after the security check unless given express written permission to do so. Doing so makes any problems the bank has your sole legal responsibility.
It's really going to hurt his case if the company already had experts working internally to resolve the issues.
Black hats are the people who commit computer crimes. If White Hats are stupid, they make themselves accessories to those crimes. This is what happened to this guy. And now he's screwed. Admitting his crimes on Slashdot isn't going to help his case either. The best he's going to do is a plea bargain.
"So their customers have no right to status updates on problems with a product that they have purchased?"
Nope. Microsoft never offers anybody any notice that new patches are available. You have to subscribe to newletters for any update notices from any company (even Linux) and none of them are legally responsible for such notices. You are not legally obligated to know anything about what's going on with a company unless you work there and even then it's at the manager's discretion what they tell you.
"Go home and read a book"
Go home and get a clue.
Ben
stop going through the wrong chain of command with these issues.
First you take it to the company. And if they won't listen you take it to the authorities and they can decide if the company is defrauding their clients with false promises and whatnot. And if they won't listen you throw your hands up in the air and unless you know a company personally who uses the software you just let it go.
Making it public information just makes the danger to the companies very real and very much now which in fact punishes them by not giving them time to deal with the issue.
Unless you have a feasible immidiate solution to go with your findings all you're doing is sabatosing a lot of innocent companies who had no way to know and you've just tied their hands behind their backs and made them sitting ducks. Companies cannot just shut down software at a moments notice.
And here's a nutty idea, if you're really obsessed with finding holes in a certain company's software seek a job. The obvious problem is that you're a problem person. You find problems and that's it. That doesn't help anybody. And when you then blackmail people with this information by going public if they don't deal with it, no duh you're going to get in trouble.
If you're sincere about helping the company you find the problems, find the best solutions you can with the information you have and then go to the company and explain the situation and tell them you'd like to help and know how to fix the problems but need access to the source to do so. You then request a job as a programmer and get to work if they hire you. If they don't hire you, you leave them with your findings and move on.
If you ever, in the process of these discussions, even hint at going public it's called blackmail and you'll rightfully be thrown in jail. Give one copy of your findings to the company and one copy to the proper authorities. That's it.
By pressing the issue you assume you have some kind of right to tell the company what to do. You also assume that the company isn't working on the issue. And you also assume that the company owes you some kind of update on the status of the issue. Which are all three very wrong assumptions unless you actually work for the company and are in an upper position. By going public you've basically forced the company into a bad position because they didn't act in a time frame you thought was fast enough. You don't have a right to do that. DMCA or not.
If you don't have a feasible immediate solution to go with the problems you've found going public is just hurting everyone and helping no one.
If this is something you like to do, you should have gotten a job so that you'd be recognized as a legitimate software security expert that companies can hire for testing their software. But now you've kinda screwed yourself because nobody can trust you to work within the system. Your mouth is too big for the job.
You've made yourself singularly responsible for anything bad that happens because of your findings. Instead of an "I told you so" you would have earned by going through the proper channels you earned an "it's your fault." Because you assumed anyone could have found and exploited the problem and now they can.
Let the bad guys go public. If you have no solution and you go public without permission, you are the bad guy. With Open Source you have all the permission in the world to report hacks without posting solutions. Work on Open Source if you can't stand keeping secrets.
Ben
with all this genetic engineering go on, I want my flying monkey.
I don't care if it's a european or african flying monkey. As long as it can hold the weight and get me to work.
Ben
The same people who will debug the visual designer are the same people who debug the compilers of today.
Currently most people work with code. The idea is that eventually most people will work with pictures and a few people will work with code to make that possible. Compare how many people work with C++ compared to ASM now than did decades ago. Same deal. Those who know ASM get paid much more than those who only do C++.
I designed a piece of software in C++ and then used a custom tool created by a bunch of other people to create the same program in a visual compiler. I got the exact same functionality while only dealing with the logic of the code and not the details.
Very nifty. It just takes some getting used to. I prefer to stop at the C/C++ type level. Eventually I'll try to learn ASM and do some fancy pants low level graphics stuff. How low you want to do will determine your value. In the future, people who code with pictures will be relativly cheap labor while as you know more and more of the details your pay goes up.
Same as it is now. It's just a new paradigm and new level of abstraction that's easier to jump in on.
Ben
on the internet? That money you're wasting on yourself could be better spent feeding the hungry. I bet you have the nerve to drive a car, too.
Starvation isn't a money problem. It doesn't take money to plant a garden and grow food. The problem is the assholes in charge who prevent the food from going to people who need it that need to be overthrown.
There's plenty of food. And buying more of it isn't going to make the situation better for anyone but the assholes in charge who hoard it for themselves.
The poor will always be with you. If you feel so compelled, help the poor in far away places. I'd rather help those around me. And that involves buying crap that helps pay their wages so that they don't starve.
I don't suppose you stopped to think that if nobody bought anything they didn't need, 90%+ of the population would be out of work and unable to afford to eat. Our society functions based on the buying and selling of crap. Just like every other country.
If you go to the Mexican border at least, everybody is selling something. Buying a pot or a flower you don't need really equates to feeding the seller and his family.
Buying a stupid little icon helps keep this guy fed and with the extra money he buys more crap which puts money in a lot of people's pockets so they can eat and so on down the line.
To claim that we shouldn't buy anything frivilous is incredibly short sighted. I don't think you realize how many poor people survive selling frivilous crap working at fast food joints, restaurants and what not. You think corporations should just give people money? Where do you think their money comes from?
Ben
with that man's ass in the bathroom?
I don't think it's a lawsuit that's in order.
Ben