Forensic investigators tend to decode encrypted data on a hard drive examination using one of two methods:
1. Find an encrypted file and compel the suspect to disclose the key 2. Find old plaintext of the file
When you encrypt something, it's often stored on disk in a plaintext format before encryption. After deleting that file, the bits in it can be recovered in many cases using forensic techniques. Also the encryption program or other programs you use on the file may store the bits in memory that ends up being written to swap space.
IOW encryption is useless unless you're very careful about where the plaintext goes. I would assume that steganography follows the same rules.
IANAD, but my wife's currently on her third bout with lymphoma (NHL once, Hodgkin's twice) so I have researched this pretty heavily.
Biopsied tissue is not subjected to a pass/fail test for cancer. Often the excised tissue is tested against different combinations of chemotherapy drugs to see which the tumor(s) will respond to best. In addition, a biopsy can help determine what specific type of cancer cells are present; knowing that a patient has lymphoma says very little about rate of growth, type of treatment indicated, etc. There are several types of lymphomas, both Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkins. Even knowing the difference between those two categories is helpful as non-Hodgkin's can be treated with monoclonal antibodies whereas Hodgkin's cannot.
This device, if it lives up to the hype, can still help.
First of all, we've had a lot of failed biopsies because they took tissue from areas that were benign and had to go back for more tissue in different areas. If the device could determine *where* the cancer is, it would make a biopsy more effective the first time around and prevent a lot of needless suffering and expense.
Secondly, many patients go through a staging surgery to determine the progression of the disease after the initial diagnosis. In lymphomas, the stages are ranked as I-IV, with an additional A or B tag. Simply knowing the cancer is both above and below the diaphragm in multiple sites will tell you that the patient is stage IV. The A/B tags represent whether there is organ involvement (B) or none (A).
Additionally, remission is often diagnosed through the results of CT and PET scans, which are not entirely conclusive but much less traumatic than surgery for additional biopsies, especially considering the effects of chemotherapy on the immune system and the healing ability of the body.
Hope this helps clear it up; anyone in the know please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this...
I've DONE tech support for an ISP, and there have been plenty of times that people have called me up claiming to be in all kinds of computer jobs way more skilled than my job was at the time. Yes, I've seen a few of them fail to do simple troubleshooting and was able to catch those pretty well by going over the list. In that sense I agree.
However, when I call up a certain cable modem provider trying to talk to one of their techs about how their IPs don't have reverse resolution and it's causing me to wait for a 60-second timeout everytime I send mail to certain places, I don't need to be walked through a reset of the CM and the computer connected to it.
My point is the checkboxes are ALL most of these people have. The problem isn't just computer tech support; my cell phone provider has walked me through some completely irrelevant troubleshooting procedures as well.
Experienced CSRs - ones that actually work for the company and know their field - should know when a call is outside their ken and be given the ability to pass it on to those who can best handle it.
I've seen a lot of companies going back to live people on the phone - and most of them have nothing more than a trouble call flowchart and the same information you can find on the website. At least when I send an email a responsive company will let me know ONCE that they've received it and then AGAIN when it gets to the appropriate person.
Nothing like calling with an unusual problem and getting a HS student (sorry to present company in this category) in some outsourced call center who doesn't understand the problem and can't escalate the call until s/he has checked off all the little boxes on their form.
value of your skills: Many years ago, being extremely computer literate was an unusual skill. Now it is not. Depends on whether your definition of computer literacy requires something more than click-and-drool. Programmers are going that way now, for crying out loud.
simple economics: How many 18 year olds can they hire for the salary you require >30? I'm 26, and still liking the cash I'm getting. And I'm the breadwinner in my household. According to the salary surveys I've read, I'm at about 1/2 of my income potential after I hit a specialty - see below
lifestyle: At 18 I was happy to spend my nights and weekends configuring and testing systems. (Good administrators do not take the systems down during business hours.) As I get older, this gets less appealing.
This is one of the big drawbacks, but the more you script and automate, and the better you set up the systems in general, the more infrequent the night calls become.
upgrade path: What is the "step-up" from sysadmin? Do you still want to be a sysadmin when you are >50? Hmmm... Security administrator, network administrator, and any other specialty job could be considered an upgrade. Sysadmin==50K, Security Admin==Sysadmin + a few years and some study==75-100K
the job: Sysadmins are associated with their failures rather than their successes. You may perform the most amazing technical feats, but you only get noticed when something fails. This is a common problem of many people when they stay out of sight. I try to keep in the sight, and thus the minds, of my bosses. Sometimes that means helping across departmental lines by, for example, sniffing the network for the developers when they're debugging their protocols. It helps more than you could ever guess.
My story: 1. 3 months tech support and web design at an ISP (hated it) 2. System operator for the local newspaper (combination helpdesk/sysadmin type job, work under the guidance of real sysadmins) for 2 years. Ran my own colo web host box during that time to build up experience. Worked for a UN*X-based consulting firm part-time as well 3. Went to work for a dotcom for the nine months they were around as a full senior sysadmin. 4. Now I'm back with the UN*X consulting firm full-time.
I've never done contract or freelance or consultant. It's been a hard road at times (steps 1-3) but now the results are paying off handsomely.
One problem with a honeypot. If you allow crackers to telnet (or otherwise network) to the outside world through the system, you may be liable for aiding a breakin if they use the box for a "jumping-off point" to mount attacks on other systems. This is especially true if you set up a honeypot and watch the people, knowing perfectly well what their intentions are and that they are using your computer resources to work towards that goal.
If you don't allow access outside, it makes the system look kind of suspicious. And if they find out you've set them up, they will be determined to return.
As it stands we are highly paid compared to the majority of people but collectively we are worth peanuts compared to our bosses
...and I suppose women, gays, african-americans and others were so much more financially in line with their political opponents at the time that their voices started showing up in Congress?
I'm not a programmer, or else I'd take a crack at it myself, but if the community's against blocking software why not create a GPLd free version and set up a site where people can submit URLs to be added to the blocklist (via automatic update) subject to vote or some other type of approval process?
You could even use more realistic content types to choose from when configuring the software.
If there's already a package like this out there, please someone let me know.
In my little circle, Bithlo is referred to as "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I have to admit, though, that I have never regretted my decision to move from the Pacific Northwest down to Orlando. The people, the city, everything about this place is - well, not *perfect*, but who'd want a perfect place? Let's just say it's a nice fit.:) Hmm... I wonder if O-Town will be "slashdotted" with visitors after all this talk...
Sure, it has to be exciting and interesting for the audience. Although I didn't like the portrayal of computers in Hackers overall, it did have one thing going for it... There were sequences where the characters would be staring at a boring display, or a stack of printouts, and you would see what was going on in their heads, "flying" through a landscape of neon-type displays, seeing mathematical symbols floating and flying around, coalescing into patterns, etc... If you want to make it interesting, show daydream sequences. Show the imagination of the character.
If all the pages you put up through the interface should have the same basic format, you might want to look at what/. itself is doing. I've been working with database driven perl code and HTML pages for a few months now and find this approach to be the easiest. All the editing can be done right from your browser, and you can use the file upload feature to upload graphic files (See the CGI.pm documentation to find out about support ing this).
Slashdot Mirror
Forensic investigators tend to decode encrypted data on a hard drive examination using one of two methods:
1. Find an encrypted file and compel the suspect to disclose the key
2. Find old plaintext of the file
When you encrypt something, it's often stored on disk in a plaintext format before encryption. After deleting that file, the bits in it can be recovered in many cases using forensic techniques. Also the encryption program or other programs you use on the file may store the bits in memory that ends up being written to swap space.
IOW encryption is useless unless you're very careful about where the plaintext goes. I would assume that steganography follows the same rules.
IANAD, but my wife's currently on her third bout with lymphoma (NHL once, Hodgkin's twice) so I have researched this pretty heavily.
Biopsied tissue is not subjected to a pass/fail test for cancer. Often the excised tissue is tested against different combinations of chemotherapy drugs to see which the tumor(s) will respond to best. In addition, a biopsy can help determine what specific type of cancer cells are present; knowing that a patient has lymphoma says very little about rate of growth, type of treatment indicated, etc. There are several types of lymphomas, both Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkins. Even knowing the difference between those two categories is helpful as non-Hodgkin's can be treated with monoclonal antibodies whereas Hodgkin's cannot.
This device, if it lives up to the hype, can still help.
First of all, we've had a lot of failed biopsies because they took tissue from areas that were benign and had to go back for more tissue in different areas. If the device could determine *where* the cancer is, it would make a biopsy more effective the first time around and prevent a lot of needless suffering and expense.
Secondly, many patients go through a staging surgery to determine the progression of the disease after the initial diagnosis. In lymphomas, the stages are ranked as I-IV, with an additional A or B tag. Simply knowing the cancer is both above and below the diaphragm in multiple sites will tell you that the patient is stage IV. The A/B tags represent whether there is organ involvement (B) or none (A).
Additionally, remission is often diagnosed through the results of CT and PET scans, which are not entirely conclusive but much less traumatic than surgery for additional biopsies, especially considering the effects of chemotherapy on the immune system and the healing ability of the body.
Hope this helps clear it up; anyone in the know please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this...
I've DONE tech support for an ISP, and there have been plenty of times that people have called me up claiming to be in all kinds of computer jobs way more skilled than my job was at the time. Yes, I've seen a few of them fail to do simple troubleshooting and was able to catch those pretty well by going over the list. In that sense I agree.
However, when I call up a certain cable modem provider trying to talk to one of their techs about how their IPs don't have reverse resolution and it's causing me to wait for a 60-second timeout everytime I send mail to certain places, I don't need to be walked through a reset of the CM and the computer connected to it.
My point is the checkboxes are ALL most of these people have. The problem isn't just computer tech support; my cell phone provider has walked me through some completely irrelevant troubleshooting procedures as well.
Experienced CSRs - ones that actually work for the company and know their field - should know when a call is outside their ken and be given the ability to pass it on to those who can best handle it.
I've seen a lot of companies going back to live people on the phone - and most of them have nothing more than a trouble call flowchart and the same information you can find on the website. At least when I send an email a responsive company will let me know ONCE that they've received it and then AGAIN when it gets to the appropriate person.
Nothing like calling with an unusual problem and getting a HS student (sorry to present company in this category) in some outsourced call center who doesn't understand the problem and can't escalate the call until s/he has checked off all the little boxes on their form.
test This is a test.
It's meant to be a test. big space precedes this.
value of your skills: Many years ago, being extremely computer literate was an unusual skill. Now it is not.
Depends on whether your definition of computer literacy requires something more than click-and-drool. Programmers are going that way now, for crying out loud.
simple economics: How many 18 year olds can they hire for the salary you require >30?
I'm 26, and still liking the cash I'm getting. And I'm the breadwinner in my household. According to the salary surveys I've read, I'm at about 1/2 of my income potential after I hit a specialty - see below
lifestyle: At 18 I was happy to spend my nights and weekends configuring and testing systems. (Good administrators do not take the systems down during business hours.) As I get older, this gets less appealing.
This is one of the big drawbacks, but the more you script and automate, and the better you set up the systems in general, the more infrequent the night calls become.
upgrade path: What is the "step-up" from sysadmin? Do you still want to be a sysadmin when you are >50?
Hmmm... Security administrator, network administrator, and any other specialty job could be considered an upgrade.
Sysadmin==50K,
Security Admin==Sysadmin + a few years and some study==75-100K
the job: Sysadmins are associated with their failures rather than their successes. You may perform the most amazing technical feats, but you only get noticed when something fails.
This is a common problem of many people when they stay out of sight. I try to keep in the sight, and thus the minds, of my bosses. Sometimes that means helping across departmental lines by, for example, sniffing the network for the developers when they're debugging their protocols. It helps more than you could ever guess.
My story:
1. 3 months tech support and web design at an ISP (hated it)
2. System operator for the local newspaper (combination helpdesk/sysadmin type job, work under the guidance of real sysadmins) for 2 years. Ran my own colo web host box during that time to build up experience. Worked for a UN*X-based consulting firm part-time as well
3. Went to work for a dotcom for the nine months they were around as a full senior sysadmin.
4. Now I'm back with the UN*X consulting firm full-time.
I've never done contract or freelance or consultant. It's been a hard road at times (steps 1-3) but now the results are paying off handsomely.
One problem with a honeypot. If you allow crackers to telnet (or otherwise network) to the outside world through the system, you may be liable for aiding a breakin if they use the box for a "jumping-off point" to mount attacks on other systems. This is especially true if you set up a honeypot and watch the people, knowing perfectly well what their intentions are and that they are using your computer resources to work towards that goal.
If you don't allow access outside, it makes the system look kind of suspicious. And if they find out you've set them up, they will be determined to return.
As it stands we are highly paid compared to the majority of people but collectively we are worth peanuts compared to our bosses
...and I suppose women, gays, african-americans and others were so much more financially in line with their political opponents at the time that their voices started showing up in Congress?
I'm not a programmer, or else I'd take a crack at it myself, but if the community's against blocking software why not create a GPLd free version and set up a site where people can submit URLs to be added to the blocklist (via automatic update) subject to vote or some other type of approval process?
You could even use more realistic content types to choose from when configuring the software.
If there's already a package like this out there, please someone let me know.
Any registrar can't be worse than ol' NSI. That is not, of course, saying that the others are any good....
In my little circle, Bithlo is referred to as "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I have to admit, though, that I have never regretted my decision to move from the Pacific Northwest down to Orlando. The people, the city, everything about this place is - well, not *perfect*, but who'd want a perfect place? Let's just say it's a nice fit. :) Hmm... I wonder if O-Town will be "slashdotted" with visitors after all this talk...
Sure, it has to be exciting and interesting for the audience. Although I didn't like the portrayal of computers in Hackers overall, it did have one thing going for it... There were sequences where the characters would be staring at a boring display, or a stack of printouts, and you would see what was going on in their heads, "flying" through a landscape of neon-type displays, seeing mathematical symbols floating and flying around, coalescing into patterns, etc... If you want to make it interesting, show daydream sequences. Show the imagination of the character.
So Bill Gates thinks that he is here to serve humanity...
I'm fairly sure I'm not the only one who saw a certain Twilight Zone episode.
If all the pages you put up through the interface should have the same basic format, you might want to look at what /. itself is doing. I've been working with database driven perl code and HTML pages for a few months now and find this approach to be the easiest. All the editing can be done right from your browser, and you can use the file upload feature to upload graphic files (See the CGI.pm documentation to find out about support ing this).