I can't comment on the game in question, I've never heard of it before and know nothing about it. But I did spend nine years doing database development and network admin for a major police department.
A typical day: 10:45am: hit the roach coach, close the door, conference the speakerphones, and fire up Quake, Doom, Outlaw, etc. Of our little group of four people in the computer department, I was the only civilian: the other three were sworn officers. And we'd blow each other to bits for an hour.
But my argument is, and shall continue to be: Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnel fat. Parents are raising, well, actually not raising kids with respect for anything, including human life. (no, this is not a pro-life/anti-abortion statement) And I think that if the little shits kill someone when they're under 18, they should get a full sentence that's going to keep them in prison long after they're 18. If they kill a cop, give 'em an even longer sentence.
Let's say they force all games to change their content if it is possible to attack or kill law enforcement. I load up a level editor and put a police skin on all the bad guys. Field day!
Pratchett's book Strata is VERY heavily influenced by Ringworld. It's not an easy book to find in the US, I ordered mine off Half.com.
Personally, I'd go for Guards! Guards! as the first movie. Wee Free Men is a great book and definitely one of my favs, but I think it'd be better as perhaps a third book: do Guards!, then do Weird Sisters, then Wee Free.
You must have a good ear and good speakers if MP3 is barely tolerable to you. I have 6gig of music on my laptop, I use it in the school's darkroom & studio and in my car when driving long distances. In both cases, it's not possible for me to have better speakers (i,e. audiophile-grade), though we will be upgrading the car stereo so that we'll have a receiver with cabled MP3 input instead of FM transmitter. I'm not going to put $1000 worth of speakers in a Toyota Matrix, it ain't worth it.
I have a very nice audio system: B&W speakers, Marantz receiver. It sounds wonderful (though it's not hooked up right now since I moved last year). For me, running my Creative Nomad into it, the audio is just fine for lowish volume level party background music. If I'm working in the living room wirelessly with my laptop, I'll frequently kick on iTunes. It doesn't sound fantastic because of the laptop's speakers, but it is adequate.
Admittedly I'm now 44 and have a hearing loss in one ear. Still, MP3 is definitely good enough for me.
This thing costs as much as what I'll spend when I replace my Palm Pilot with my tax return. Were I to buy this, I'd have a mono-functional device, the bane of Alton Brown. I read ebooks with my Palm Vx, I read ebooks on my laptop. The price is just not reasonable, bring it down under $200 and much closer to $100 and I'd consider it. But since this is Sony, that ain't gonna happen.
If they're going to continue to class Pluto as a planet, they should also include Sedna, Quaoar, and the other planetoid that's as yet unnamed. And then there's UB313 which is larger than Pluto.
Problem is there's a lot of contention as to exactly what constitutes a planet. But I think it's very innacurate to say it's the only planet not visited by man. I guess it'd be accurate if you're using astrology textbooks and encyclopedias made before 2002.
Or maybe there's a vast misunderstanding of how planetary mechanics work and the Sun actually orbits the Earth.
Michael Brown has been discovering several objects out beyond Neptune and Pluto, more info on what he's found.
It was a tight launch window as the orbital movements of Earth and Pluto are making it a harder target to just reach, if it had been delayed substantially, it would have made no sense to launch as the orbital period of Pluto is 248 years. And no, New Horizon will not be able to get to Quaoar or Sedna, they won't be in the right location for the probe to get to them, ultimately I think the probe is just going to continue out beyond Pluto to see what it'll find.
Once upon a time there was a company that had an iPod rental business (I have no links or references). The iPod was filled with music from indie bands that weren't registered with RIAA or BMI/ASCAP, thus there was no public performance license issue. They rented the iPods to businesses, who would receive a fully stuffed unit every month or 60 days or something. You'd send your previous iPod back, they'd restuff it and send it to someone else.
I read about it on Slashdot quite a while back, so it must be true.;-) I have no idea if their business succeeded or not, but I thought it was a great idea.
I did film programming for science fiction conventions in the 80's. Everything was on 16mm film and from distributors where your rental came with a public performance license. They also rented some video with the appropriate license, but the selection (at the time) was somewhat limited and the video projector rentals (again, at that time) were also kind of expensive.
I was the first film programmer in our area to switch over to public performance video and that was pretty much the death of 16mm for most of the film programs. Two things prompted this. I could no longer find enough people who could operate 16mm projectors, a problem which resulted me in spending 10-14 hours a day in the film room and not seeing very much of the convention. And then someone, trying to be helpful, was moving a projector on top of its stand without packing it up. He dropped it and broke one of the arms off. It was just too much.
But I'll guarantee that a vast majority of science fiction/fantasy conventions that you go to are not paying for a public license for their film/video programs, they're taking it out of private libraries or renting them from Blockbuster (where all of the films are licensed for private, not public, performance). It is technically illegal, but it isn't going to stop as the licenses for that many films is pretty expensive.
I didn't put in a correct phone number (I usually use 555-9696), and I have received numerous (email and snail mail) spam from various registrars and hosting facilities, so the lists are being used for marketing services which is something that I don't want to be a part of.
Slowly I'm converting all my domains over to GoDaddy and their semi-anonymous registration. I like that, I don't like the ability of someone to pull up my street address with impunity.
They started with the engineering plans for a telescope already in operation and tweaked from there.
(IANA telescope engineer) The Texas telescope that they copied was already operational and probably largely debugged. So they used those engineering plans, adapted them for local requirements, found out what the problems were that the telescope operators had experienced, and engineered in the fixes. That, in and of itself, is not a cost-saving measure, but could account for their rapid ramp-up to First Light.
The fact that they're using adaptive optics and 91 "sub-mirrors" greatly simplifies things. The mirrors have to be re-aluminized on a regular basis (the 3.5 meter that my wife operates is redone every 4-7 years), the smaller size means that they can (and probably do) have a vacuum chamber on-site for this process.
My wife (PhD astronomy/astrophysics) operates a telescope at Apache Point Observatory (APO) and I've gotten to spend tons of time crawling around there taking pictures. It is a one-piece mirror, 3.5 meters and produces really good science.
The telescope itself has some problems. For example, there are only two limit switches to prevent the telescope from moving in an uncontrolled fashion and damaging itself. By comparison, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey 2.5 meter telescope at the same site has either 11 or 22, I don't recall. The 3.5 was designed by physicists who didn't think the telescope could ever go out of bounds, the Sloan by engineers who knew it would.
One MAJOR exception I must take with their announcement is their talking about their scope being the "information age" telescope. They brag about astronomers not having to come on site to operate the telescope and that they can do things aross the internet..
They ain't the first.
Apache Point Observatory (APO) has been doing this for years on the 3.5, I imagine most modern (less than 10-15 or so years old) do this. In APO's case, the astronomer running whatever science program is scheduled that night, has a control program that they run on their computer (Mac, PC, or *nix) that is almost identical to the control program being run by the on-site operator. The remote observer controls the telescope's pointing and controls the instrument for whatever exposures they want to make. The on-site observer monitors the weather in case they have to do a shutdown, changes instruments on the telescope, diagnosis software problems, corrects pointing models (fine-tunes where the telescope is pointing).
The observer can go to the observatory in New Mexico and do everything on site if they want, but most work is done across the internet. Should the link fail for whatever reason, the on-site operator can continue running the science package.
So SALT is not revolutionary in this aspect. In fact, it sounds to me like it's kind of primitive. From what the PDF says, observers submit their observance requests over the internet and the local staff carries them out. Hmmm, how would I implement that? Perhaps through sending an email message?
I hope it's more sophisticated than that, I know the control program for APO is pretty sophisticated and continuing to evolve.
(PhD astronomy/astrophysics, a practicing observatory operator):
"Bullshit. Supernovae involve way too much energy for that. Now, if you're talking about novae (which are really entirely different from supernovae), then I might at least be willing to read the article before saying it's bullshit."
Myself, I took Astronomy 101. I don't know nuthin' at this level.
I can't speak for every law enforcement agency in the country, but I worked for one of the top 10 largest for nine years. I did not personally do forensics, but I worked with the guys who did and offered occasional support.
The hard drive is never touched except to make a copy. That image is burned onto write-only media then analyzed with forensic software, annotation of what is found where is made in a seperate log to help you make your submission to the detectives or DA. The programs don't care what the file name is, or the extension, or the location. It pulls everything through (effectively) filters to see if ANYTHING is an image. Doesn't matter if it's jpeg, png, bmp, whatever. If it's binary, it's largely ignored but I think it is still searched for string data that might be suspicious.
As a rule no software from the suspect PC is ever executed, there are exceptions. Keep in mind that computer forensics isn't just about kiddie porn. There are lots of crimes that require the use of computer forensic examination.
Anyway, let's assume they found porn. It's not difficult to recognize porn, but it can be difficult to identify the ages of those in the images. They ignore the obvious adult porn (unless it depicts an act deemed illegal by the local criminal code) and flag ones that are obviously involving minors or those of ages that they think might be minors but aren't sure.
At this point a medical doctor is usually brought in. The Dr has been trained in specific skills to determine the approximate age of a person based on a variety of physical characteristics. For example (a non-explicit one), if you look at pictures of a naked woman who is 25, she usually looks quite different than a girl of 18. The 18 year old might be legal, but the physical characteristics might be close to that of a 16y/o.
So it takes some training to be able to determine this.
If they find a sufficient quantity of images that are obviously underage, say 10 year olds, and some that are borderline, they'll ignore the borderlines and base the case on the 10y/os.
It doesn't matter where the files or programs are stored. It could be on unformatted partitions, it will be found. Change the file extension, it will be found. Zip it, it will be found. Encrypt it, it might be found. Some of their software has no problem ripping through some of the conventional encryption or compression software. Now, if you Blowfish it, Triple DES it, then Zip it, they might have problems (assuming they don't find traces of your key in your cache or paging files), but that's an awful lot of work you'd have to go through.
Encrypted file systems? I don't know. I haven't worked there in over 4 years. I'm sure a lot of their software has kept pace with advances in OS software.
Don't assume that because your local cops might be idiots that there aren't smart people in law enforcement who can undo what you do. These forensic software companies spend a lot of money developing their programs and they have to hold up to court and user community scrutiny. Flawed software processes that cost prosecutors a case will quickly be reviled and that company will either come up to speed or die.
And I whole-heartedly agree, the article as posted is absolute crap. The ones who know their jobs already know where to find cache history and such.
Keep in mind that in Vegas, along the strip, you're basically seeing two companies. I don't know about the smaller off-strip casinos or Atlantic City, but property by property it's been consolidated into two corporations. Thus, the information sharing is almost automatic.
It would be interesting to know the exact mechanism of how the banned/black book information is shared, but I would think that is a very closely held corporate secret.
I almost sprayed Mountain Dew all over my monitor (no, I don't drink it regularly, it just struck me that it might go well with the pizza that I had for lunch, I was somewhat mistaken.)
It's not often that a post can produce a spit take on me.
Many moons ago, I took a class in Pascal. Our final project was to write a program that the instructor found interesting and challenging, and he had to approve it. I wrote a fairly simple program that took a file of a couple hundred movie titles, and if the first word of one matched the last word of another, it displayed the results.
My favorite was and still is "Blood Beach Blanket Bingo."
Best way to do Watchmen would be a mini-series on SciFi. You can't fit a 12 part series into two hours of screen time, you need the multi-episodic format, which also gives you good cliffhangers. Financing it would be a bitch, but this is one movie where I don't think I would mind the extensive use of CGI.
CGI used to enhance a good story: good. CGI used to prop up a weak story: bad.
I spent 9 years working in IT for one of the top 10 police departments in the USA. I mainly did database development and administration, network administration, user support.
There's really not enough information in the fine article to draw a lot of the conclusions being put forth.
In our shop there are, largely speaking, two sides to IT: the mainframe (now super mini) side that contained all the criminal information, and the micro side, used mainly for administrative support. The mobile data terminals and the computers used by most of the sworn population connected to the mainframe. They used pre-designed screens for storing and retrieving information. The support staff used various Office products to provide various services, up to and including reports summarizing criminal data.
But keep in mind that we were a gov't agency. We had to have file interop with the rest of the City, and County, and State, and Feds. We had more severe budget restrictions than most private sector had to deal with. Try not having a pool of money for training for the future year, it isn't fun. When I needed training for a new product, I had to wait for my department head to be out of town and the bureau manager asked me how a project was going. I told him I needed training, he got funds taken out of equipment maintenance to send me to Atlanta for a week. This is not a slush fund, this was money to be used for maintaining the mainframe, fortunately there was some unused funds.
As a rule, if money isn't allocated, it isn't spent. And that is a hard and fast rule.
For the criminal side, they had standards that were dictated by the FBI and the National Criminal Information System. Everything has to be coded in specific ways. Trust me, you DO NOT want to see the information schema! It is not correctly normalized and nothing can be done about it because THEY DON'T CONTROL IT. They had to work around those problems as best they could.
The basic problem is that you don't have a dozen Java programmers and a dozen C++ programmers sitting around just waiting to solve every little problem. We had three network administrators supporting 15+ sites. We had five developers (on the administrative side) for a total micro staff of maybe 15 or so when I left supporting over 2000 officers and another 1800 or so civilian, not including physical networking support (cabling, PC installation and hardware support).
Saying "all you need is a web applet to do X, Y, Z" is disingenuous. It will never be that simple. Until you've lived in police IT for more than 5 years, you won't have a clue what their overall requirements are and you're making assumptions that don't translate. Their data must ultimately fit legally-mandated forms. That's taken care of by tight data restrictions on the criminal side. On the administrative side, by using Office, you have a mobile work force of people who can move back and forth between various other City departments, assuming they can pass the background investigation.
You're talking an insanely complex system and set of requirements that have grown out of old technology over decades and decades of modification.
Yes, it's a MS shop. Started with 3Com 3+Share file servers, went to Lan Manager, now NT Server. Desktops went from Dos to Windows to Win2K and now probably XP. Apps went from Word, Multiplan, DataFlex to Office and SQL Server. There are non-MS technologies both in the server room and on the desktop, but the only place you'll see *nix is on specific apps, such as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System which started out on an RS/6000, I have no idea what it's on, it was not in my realm.
I like *nix, huge pluses over MS servers. But OO/SO just isn't there. The IT requirements for interoperability with so many other departments both in the City and at other layers of gov't are too vast to take a critical area and make it less than 100% compatible with the rest of the infrastructure is bad. I make no claim to have a clue how Scotl
I, for one, welcome our new Robbie Hammock-bot overlords. He's the guy who caught Randy Johnson's perfect game against the Atlanta Falcons in 2004, Hammock being on the receiving end of 98 MPH fastballs all night long.
It isn't just about copying bank notes and vital records documents. There's also whistleblower issues associated with this if you really want to get down to the tinfoil hat level.
Myself, if I were at the whistleblower stage and this was the sort of printer that I was dealing with, I'd go to a copy center and shoot a B&W copy of the docs in question. I don't know how effective that would be in terms of countering this system, but it would be better than nothing.
All radio transmissions are regulated. Certain modes of operation (frequency, modulation method, effective radiated power) do not require a license.
All 802.11 systems do not require a license, but are technically regulated. The FCC doesn't drive around with WAP sniffers looking for people running hot systems with kilowatt amplifiers, but if they learn of (i.e. receive complaints) an operator interfering with a licensed service, they may investigate and/or send a Notice Of Violation.
Just because it's easy to connect this stuff up with cool antennas doesn't mean you're not breaking FCC rules and regs. I have my WAP dialed down to its lowest power setting and it covers my condo just fine. The people two rows over aren't going to get in, they are not my concern.
So if your amateur radio neighbor is talking to China using 5 kilowatts and his signal is coming out your toaster, there's a violation. The radio operator is REQUIRED BY LAW to help fix the problem through making sure his rig isn't bleeding (bad grounds, loose connections) and by helping on your end (bad grounds, defective toaster, etc).
The normal rule of thumb is that you use the MINIMUM amount of power to maintain the contact. You use high power to establish the contact, but once you've made contact and started conversing, you're expected to dial down your output to a lower level.
For example, I'm calling CQ on 70cm with 50 watts and I make a contact. Their signal is strong, I find out that they are on the same highway about 10 miles ahead of me. I go to a 10 or even 5 watt mode.
(The benefits of a formal education: licensed ham for 15ish years, Cisco certified and formally classroom trained in wireless ).
This is why different WAPs have different threads for their antennas. The manufacturer gets THEIR accessory antennas certified for use with THEIR WAPs, and because the threads won't allow the antenna to be used on someone else's WAP without modification by the end user, they are within Part 15 as the entire system (WAP/antenna) is certified.
As the operator of that system, however, YOU are responsible to dial down the output power to make sure you are not exceeding ERP.
You're not accessing a non-restricted RF signal that is infiltrating your private room, you simply have the equipment to demonstrate a proof of concept of using directional antennas to create an RF data link.
It might help if you had a ham radio license and perhaps a CCNA so that you can document that you actually know something about what you're talking about.
Actually, my wife is working at an observatory where they are getting ready to shoot another laser at it. The observatory is Apache Point. They've gotten first light through the detector but have not yet fired the laser outside of the dome.
Click on the APOLLO Project link.
The principle is simple: shoot the laser into the secondary, it bounces off the primary and a 3.5 meter beam heads off at the speed of light. Half a million miles later, it's theoretically detected.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't comment on the game in question, I've never heard of it before and know nothing about it. But I did spend nine years doing database development and network admin for a major police department.
A typical day:
10:45am: hit the roach coach, close the door, conference the speakerphones, and fire up Quake, Doom, Outlaw, etc. Of our little group of four people in the computer department, I was the only civilian: the other three were sworn officers. And we'd blow each other to bits for an hour.
But my argument is, and shall continue to be: Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnel fat. Parents are raising, well, actually not raising kids with respect for anything, including human life. (no, this is not a pro-life/anti-abortion statement) And I think that if the little shits kill someone when they're under 18, they should get a full sentence that's going to keep them in prison long after they're 18. If they kill a cop, give 'em an even longer sentence.
Let's say they force all games to change their content if it is possible to attack or kill law enforcement. I load up a level editor and put a police skin on all the bad guys. Field day!
Pratchett's book Strata is VERY heavily influenced by Ringworld. It's not an easy book to find in the US, I ordered mine off Half.com.
Personally, I'd go for Guards! Guards! as the first movie. Wee Free Men is a great book and definitely one of my favs, but I think it'd be better as perhaps a third book: do Guards!, then do Weird Sisters, then Wee Free.
But what do I know.
You must have a good ear and good speakers if MP3 is barely tolerable to you. I have 6gig of music on my laptop, I use it in the school's darkroom & studio and in my car when driving long distances. In both cases, it's not possible for me to have better speakers (i,e. audiophile-grade), though we will be upgrading the car stereo so that we'll have a receiver with cabled MP3 input instead of FM transmitter. I'm not going to put $1000 worth of speakers in a Toyota Matrix, it ain't worth it.
I have a very nice audio system: B&W speakers, Marantz receiver. It sounds wonderful (though it's not hooked up right now since I moved last year). For me, running my Creative Nomad into it, the audio is just fine for lowish volume level party background music. If I'm working in the living room wirelessly with my laptop, I'll frequently kick on iTunes. It doesn't sound fantastic because of the laptop's speakers, but it is adequate.
Admittedly I'm now 44 and have a hearing loss in one ear. Still, MP3 is definitely good enough for me.
This thing costs as much as what I'll spend when I replace my Palm Pilot with my tax return. Were I to buy this, I'd have a mono-functional device, the bane of Alton Brown. I read ebooks with my Palm Vx, I read ebooks on my laptop. The price is just not reasonable, bring it down under $200 and much closer to $100 and I'd consider it. But since this is Sony, that ain't gonna happen.
If they're going to continue to class Pluto as a planet, they should also include Sedna, Quaoar, and the other planetoid that's as yet unnamed. And then there's UB313 which is larger than Pluto.
Problem is there's a lot of contention as to exactly what constitutes a planet. But I think it's very innacurate to say it's the only planet not visited by man. I guess it'd be accurate if you're using astrology textbooks and encyclopedias made before 2002.
Or maybe there's a vast misunderstanding of how planetary mechanics work and the Sun actually orbits the Earth.
Michael Brown has been discovering several objects out beyond Neptune and Pluto, more info on what he's found.
It was a tight launch window as the orbital movements of Earth and Pluto are making it a harder target to just reach, if it had been delayed substantially, it would have made no sense to launch as the orbital period of Pluto is 248 years. And no, New Horizon will not be able to get to Quaoar or Sedna, they won't be in the right location for the probe to get to them, ultimately I think the probe is just going to continue out beyond Pluto to see what it'll find.
Once upon a time there was a company that had an iPod rental business (I have no links or references). The iPod was filled with music from indie bands that weren't registered with RIAA or BMI/ASCAP, thus there was no public performance license issue. They rented the iPods to businesses, who would receive a fully stuffed unit every month or 60 days or something. You'd send your previous iPod back, they'd restuff it and send it to someone else.
;-) I have no idea if their business succeeded or not, but I thought it was a great idea.
I read about it on Slashdot quite a while back, so it must be true.
I did film programming for science fiction conventions in the 80's. Everything was on 16mm film and from distributors where your rental came with a public performance license. They also rented some video with the appropriate license, but the selection (at the time) was somewhat limited and the video projector rentals (again, at that time) were also kind of expensive.
I was the first film programmer in our area to switch over to public performance video and that was pretty much the death of 16mm for most of the film programs. Two things prompted this. I could no longer find enough people who could operate 16mm projectors, a problem which resulted me in spending 10-14 hours a day in the film room and not seeing very much of the convention. And then someone, trying to be helpful, was moving a projector on top of its stand without packing it up. He dropped it and broke one of the arms off. It was just too much.
But I'll guarantee that a vast majority of science fiction/fantasy conventions that you go to are not paying for a public license for their film/video programs, they're taking it out of private libraries or renting them from Blockbuster (where all of the films are licensed for private, not public, performance). It is technically illegal, but it isn't going to stop as the licenses for that many films is pretty expensive.
I didn't put in a correct phone number (I usually use 555-9696), and I have received numerous (email and snail mail) spam from various registrars and hosting facilities, so the lists are being used for marketing services which is something that I don't want to be a part of.
Slowly I'm converting all my domains over to GoDaddy and their semi-anonymous registration. I like that, I don't like the ability of someone to pull up my street address with impunity.
Yep. I was hoping that I'd misread and they were talking about a Dork Tower animated series.
They started with the engineering plans for a telescope already in operation and tweaked from there.
(IANA telescope engineer) The Texas telescope that they copied was already operational and probably largely debugged. So they used those engineering plans, adapted them for local requirements, found out what the problems were that the telescope operators had experienced, and engineered in the fixes. That, in and of itself, is not a cost-saving measure, but could account for their rapid ramp-up to First Light.
The fact that they're using adaptive optics and 91 "sub-mirrors" greatly simplifies things. The mirrors have to be re-aluminized on a regular basis (the 3.5 meter that my wife operates is redone every 4-7 years), the smaller size means that they can (and probably do) have a vacuum chamber on-site for this process.
My wife (PhD astronomy/astrophysics) operates a telescope at Apache Point Observatory (APO) and I've gotten to spend tons of time crawling around there taking pictures. It is a one-piece mirror, 3.5 meters and produces really good science.
The telescope itself has some problems. For example, there are only two limit switches to prevent the telescope from moving in an uncontrolled fashion and damaging itself. By comparison, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey 2.5 meter telescope at the same site has either 11 or 22, I don't recall. The 3.5 was designed by physicists who didn't think the telescope could ever go out of bounds, the Sloan by engineers who knew it would.
One MAJOR exception I must take with their announcement is their talking about their scope being the "information age" telescope. They brag about astronomers not having to come on site to operate the telescope and that they can do things aross the internet..
They ain't the first.
Apache Point Observatory (APO) has been doing this for years on the 3.5, I imagine most modern (less than 10-15 or so years old) do this. In APO's case, the astronomer running whatever science program is scheduled that night, has a control program that they run on their computer (Mac, PC, or *nix) that is almost identical to the control program being run by the on-site operator. The remote observer controls the telescope's pointing and controls the instrument for whatever exposures they want to make. The on-site observer monitors the weather in case they have to do a shutdown, changes instruments on the telescope, diagnosis software problems, corrects pointing models (fine-tunes where the telescope is pointing).
The observer can go to the observatory in New Mexico and do everything on site if they want, but most work is done across the internet. Should the link fail for whatever reason, the on-site operator can continue running the science package.
So SALT is not revolutionary in this aspect. In fact, it sounds to me like it's kind of primitive. From what the PDF says, observers submit their observance requests over the internet and the local staff carries them out. Hmmm, how would I implement that? Perhaps through sending an email message?
I hope it's more sophisticated than that, I know the control program for APO is pretty sophisticated and continuing to evolve.
(PhD astronomy/astrophysics, a practicing observatory operator):
"Bullshit. Supernovae involve way too much energy for that. Now, if you're talking about novae (which are really entirely different from supernovae), then I might at least be willing to read the article before saying it's bullshit."
Myself, I took Astronomy 101. I don't know nuthin' at this level.
I can't speak for every law enforcement agency in the country, but I worked for one of the top 10 largest for nine years. I did not personally do forensics, but I worked with the guys who did and offered occasional support.
The hard drive is never touched except to make a copy. That image is burned onto write-only media then analyzed with forensic software, annotation of what is found where is made in a seperate log to help you make your submission to the detectives or DA. The programs don't care what the file name is, or the extension, or the location. It pulls everything through (effectively) filters to see if ANYTHING is an image. Doesn't matter if it's jpeg, png, bmp, whatever. If it's binary, it's largely ignored but I think it is still searched for string data that might be suspicious.
As a rule no software from the suspect PC is ever executed, there are exceptions. Keep in mind that computer forensics isn't just about kiddie porn. There are lots of crimes that require the use of computer forensic examination.
Anyway, let's assume they found porn. It's not difficult to recognize porn, but it can be difficult to identify the ages of those in the images. They ignore the obvious adult porn (unless it depicts an act deemed illegal by the local criminal code) and flag ones that are obviously involving minors or those of ages that they think might be minors but aren't sure.
At this point a medical doctor is usually brought in. The Dr has been trained in specific skills to determine the approximate age of a person based on a variety of physical characteristics. For example (a non-explicit one), if you look at pictures of a naked woman who is 25, she usually looks quite different than a girl of 18. The 18 year old might be legal, but the physical characteristics might be close to that of a 16y/o.
So it takes some training to be able to determine this.
If they find a sufficient quantity of images that are obviously underage, say 10 year olds, and some that are borderline, they'll ignore the borderlines and base the case on the 10y/os.
It doesn't matter where the files or programs are stored. It could be on unformatted partitions, it will be found. Change the file extension, it will be found. Zip it, it will be found. Encrypt it, it might be found. Some of their software has no problem ripping through some of the conventional encryption or compression software. Now, if you Blowfish it, Triple DES it, then Zip it, they might have problems (assuming they don't find traces of your key in your cache or paging files), but that's an awful lot of work you'd have to go through.
Encrypted file systems? I don't know. I haven't worked there in over 4 years. I'm sure a lot of their software has kept pace with advances in OS software.
Don't assume that because your local cops might be idiots that there aren't smart people in law enforcement who can undo what you do. These forensic software companies spend a lot of money developing their programs and they have to hold up to court and user community scrutiny. Flawed software processes that cost prosecutors a case will quickly be reviled and that company will either come up to speed or die.
And I whole-heartedly agree, the article as posted is absolute crap. The ones who know their jobs already know where to find cache history and such.
Keep in mind that in Vegas, along the strip, you're basically seeing two companies. I don't know about the smaller off-strip casinos or Atlantic City, but property by property it's been consolidated into two corporations. Thus, the information sharing is almost automatic.
It would be interesting to know the exact mechanism of how the banned/black book information is shared, but I would think that is a very closely held corporate secret.
I almost sprayed Mountain Dew all over my monitor (no, I don't drink it regularly, it just struck me that it might go well with the pizza that I had for lunch, I was somewhat mistaken.)
It's not often that a post can produce a spit take on me.
Many moons ago, I took a class in Pascal. Our final project was to write a program that the instructor found interesting and challenging, and he had to approve it. I wrote a fairly simple program that took a file of a couple hundred movie titles, and if the first word of one matched the last word of another, it displayed the results.
My favorite was and still is "Blood Beach Blanket Bingo."
Best way to do Watchmen would be a mini-series on SciFi. You can't fit a 12 part series into two hours of screen time, you need the multi-episodic format, which also gives you good cliffhangers. Financing it would be a bitch, but this is one movie where I don't think I would mind the extensive use of CGI.
CGI used to enhance a good story: good.
CGI used to prop up a weak story: bad.
I spent 9 years working in IT for one of the top 10 police departments in the USA. I mainly did database development and administration, network administration, user support.
There's really not enough information in the fine article to draw a lot of the conclusions being put forth.
In our shop there are, largely speaking, two sides to IT: the mainframe (now super mini) side that contained all the criminal information, and the micro side, used mainly for administrative support. The mobile data terminals and the computers used by most of the sworn population connected to the mainframe. They used pre-designed screens for storing and retrieving information. The support staff used various Office products to provide various services, up to and including reports summarizing criminal data.
But keep in mind that we were a gov't agency. We had to have file interop with the rest of the City, and County, and State, and Feds. We had more severe budget restrictions than most private sector had to deal with. Try not having a pool of money for training for the future year, it isn't fun. When I needed training for a new product, I had to wait for my department head to be out of town and the bureau manager asked me how a project was going. I told him I needed training, he got funds taken out of equipment maintenance to send me to Atlanta for a week. This is not a slush fund, this was money to be used for maintaining the mainframe, fortunately there was some unused funds.
As a rule, if money isn't allocated, it isn't spent. And that is a hard and fast rule.
For the criminal side, they had standards that were dictated by the FBI and the National Criminal Information System. Everything has to be coded in specific ways. Trust me, you DO NOT want to see the information schema! It is not correctly normalized and nothing can be done about it because THEY DON'T CONTROL IT. They had to work around those problems as best they could.
The basic problem is that you don't have a dozen Java programmers and a dozen C++ programmers sitting around just waiting to solve every little problem. We had three network administrators supporting 15+ sites. We had five developers (on the administrative side) for a total micro staff of maybe 15 or so when I left supporting over 2000 officers and another 1800 or so civilian, not including physical networking support (cabling, PC installation and hardware support).
Saying "all you need is a web applet to do X, Y, Z" is disingenuous. It will never be that simple. Until you've lived in police IT for more than 5 years, you won't have a clue what their overall requirements are and you're making assumptions that don't translate. Their data must ultimately fit legally-mandated forms. That's taken care of by tight data restrictions on the criminal side. On the administrative side, by using Office, you have a mobile work force of people who can move back and forth between various other City departments, assuming they can pass the background investigation.
You're talking an insanely complex system and set of requirements that have grown out of old technology over decades and decades of modification.
Yes, it's a MS shop. Started with 3Com 3+Share file servers, went to Lan Manager, now NT Server. Desktops went from Dos to Windows to Win2K and now probably XP. Apps went from Word, Multiplan, DataFlex to Office and SQL Server. There are non-MS technologies both in the server room and on the desktop, but the only place you'll see *nix is on specific apps, such as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System which started out on an RS/6000, I have no idea what it's on, it was not in my realm.
I like *nix, huge pluses over MS servers. But OO/SO just isn't there. The IT requirements for interoperability with so many other departments both in the City and at other layers of gov't are too vast to take a critical area and make it less than 100% compatible with the rest of the infrastructure is bad. I make no claim to have a clue how Scotl
I'm curious how much computing power is required for it to identify the object, calculate the trajectory, and position itself to intercept.
Hmmm... maybe this could make the Star Wars Missile Defense Shield work!
I, for one, welcome our new Robbie Hammock-bot overlords. He's the guy who caught Randy Johnson's perfect game against the Atlanta Falcons in 2004, Hammock being on the receiving end of 98 MPH fastballs all night long.
What's infinitely worse is stories of people buying ex-gov't safes that were used for classified document storage that still have explosives in them.
Unfortunately I have no cites for such at hand.
It isn't just about copying bank notes and vital records documents. There's also whistleblower issues associated with this if you really want to get down to the tinfoil hat level.
Myself, if I were at the whistleblower stage and this was the sort of printer that I was dealing with, I'd go to a copy center and shoot a B&W copy of the docs in question. I don't know how effective that would be in terms of countering this system, but it would be better than nothing.
All radio transmissions are regulated. Certain modes of operation (frequency, modulation method, effective radiated power) do not require a license.
All 802.11 systems do not require a license, but are technically regulated. The FCC doesn't drive around with WAP sniffers looking for people running hot systems with kilowatt amplifiers, but if they learn of (i.e. receive complaints) an operator interfering with a licensed service, they may investigate and/or send a Notice Of Violation.
Just because it's easy to connect this stuff up with cool antennas doesn't mean you're not breaking FCC rules and regs. I have my WAP dialed down to its lowest power setting and it covers my condo just fine. The people two rows over aren't going to get in, they are not my concern.
So if your amateur radio neighbor is talking to China using 5 kilowatts and his signal is coming out your toaster, there's a violation. The radio operator is REQUIRED BY LAW to help fix the problem through making sure his rig isn't bleeding (bad grounds, loose connections) and by helping on your end (bad grounds, defective toaster, etc).
The normal rule of thumb is that you use the MINIMUM amount of power to maintain the contact. You use high power to establish the contact, but once you've made contact and started conversing, you're expected to dial down your output to a lower level.
For example, I'm calling CQ on 70cm with 50 watts and I make a contact. Their signal is strong, I find out that they are on the same highway about 10 miles ahead of me. I go to a 10 or even 5 watt mode.
(The benefits of a formal education: licensed ham for 15ish years, Cisco certified and formally classroom trained in wireless ).
This is why different WAPs have different threads for their antennas. The manufacturer gets THEIR accessory antennas certified for use with THEIR WAPs, and because the threads won't allow the antenna to be used on someone else's WAP without modification by the end user, they are within Part 15 as the entire system (WAP/antenna) is certified.
As the operator of that system, however, YOU are responsible to dial down the output power to make sure you are not exceeding ERP.
How about two sets of parts, two WAPs, two WAPs?
You're not accessing a non-restricted RF signal that is infiltrating your private room, you simply have the equipment to demonstrate a proof of concept of using directional antennas to create an RF data link.
It might help if you had a ham radio license and perhaps a CCNA so that you can document that you actually know something about what you're talking about.
My $0.002 worth.
Actually, my wife is working at an observatory where they are getting ready to shoot another laser at it. The observatory is Apache Point. They've gotten first light through the detector but have not yet fired the laser outside of the dome.
Click on the APOLLO Project link.
The principle is simple: shoot the laser into the secondary, it bounces off the primary and a 3.5 meter beam heads off at the speed of light. Half a million miles later, it's theoretically detected.
I'm looking forward to seeing it in action!
Not playing with a full set of oars in the belfry.