Laws are different from state to state, but several years ago I won a case against someone (~$5000). I immediately put a lean on his real property (which was tied up because he was in the middle of a divorce).
Granted, not everyone HAS property, but it doesn't cost a lot to find out.
Took a number of years, but I finally got my money when he sold his house +10% a year interest. What was funny were the calls 5 or 6 months before I got my money -- him wanting to "settle" with me for a few hundred, then a thousand, then a few thousand, then the original amount... Bah. He never did found out how all his creditors knew he had title on some real property in my state... They got all their money, too... (heh)
A Business degree. After your 40th birthday, you may find it difficult to find new employment if the need arrises. If you've got a business degree and have moved in to managment, you'll probably find it easier. The pay will be better, too.
A Mathematics degree "plays" nicely with a CS degree, too.
That's LA (Los Angeles). It's not uncommon for people living in Lancaster to commute to work in Downtown LA -- between a 60 min and 75 min drive -- ONE WAY. It's also not uncommon to see 2 or 3 year old "used cars" with over 150k-200k miles on the OD.
I currently work about 60/40 (60% at work, 40% at home). I also live about 5 minutes away from my work. My current employer also allows me to get up and leave in a moments notice (barring anything nasty or important going on at the time).
I've been offered (by another lab) up to twice what I currently make to move out of state and I've also been offered significantly more by other local businesses -- but would require more 'face time' and more than an hour commute. (Yeah, one hour drives (or more) are LOCAL in LA).
Frankly, I'm not in it for the money. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm in it to be able to comfortably be able to take care of my family and myself. I earn enough to pay for a home, put my kids in a private school, buy myself or my wife the occational "toy" or "trinket" and save for our retirement.
Between my wife and myself, my kids have never been picked up from school by ANYONE other than us. Other than medzmama (grandmother), they've never had a baby-sitter. I CAN work crazy hours, but I also get to spend a lot of time with my children. I actually get to RAISE my kids! You can't pay me enough to lose that.
An extra benefit has been the ability to aid my sister (who recently had a stroke) in her recovery. I'm able to take a half-day off once a week and help her read her mail, fill out her bills and make what ever calls she needs to make. So, would I give up a raise for this ability? In a New York minute.
Since the donations were requested to help fight a legal battle on the grounds that the **PA were misusing copyright law, or the law itself was flawed, I think the argument would be different than you lampoon.
Many people believe that the law is wrong, or poorly written or poorly executed -- and noone has followed a legal battle from beginning to end -- except maybe napster. Even they settled in the end, no? They didn't go 'all they way'.
I believe copyrights are being abused -- by those downloading copyrighted materials, but also the copyright holders, too. There is NO logical reason why Mickey Mouse isn't in the public domain now. The 'bittorrents' and p2p in general are just a symptom of a much larger problem...
Thats 2000 ATACHMENTS a week that are blocked. Not 2000 different extensions. In those 2000 are mostly password protected zips, exe, bat, cpl, and com. And most of those are some varient of netsky -- mostly P. We block about 50 or 60 extensions.
At our lab, with the exception of banned sites (porn, warez, etc), those with internet access aren't 'policed' unless requested by a department manager. A report is generated for that manager who then decides how they will proceed.
Audits of all managers are manditory (including me) and pass on to the GM. for monthly review -- and he's NOT IT, he's lab.
For the most part, clearly stated access and security policies with clearly defined consequences are usually good enough to keep people on the 'straight and narrow', but not 100% of the users and not 100% of the time.
Hell, close to all the workstations have all the default "games" included with MS unless a manager requests those be removed. Our general policy is that the PC isn't a 'toy', but there isn't a problem if an employee wants to read the news or play freecell on their break.
We have had a few problem users who would play freecell all day long. Their manager would request the game removed and we would comply.
For select sites, (hhs.gov, for instance, or our insurance clearing houses site) there's no filtering at all.
I don't block things like.RTF or.XLS or.DOC or.MDB
Neither do we -- with the exception of RTF. We blocked about 50 or 60 extensions...
Pasted from another msg from me: Frankly, if you don't USE or NEED a particular filetype that has been exploited in the past, why take the chance of a future exploit on the same filetype sneaking in between the time it's released in the wild and the defs get update?
Blanket blocking long lists of extensions is a DoS on yourself.
Not blocking long lists of extensions that are never used within your orginization and DO have a history of being exploited flies in the face of common sense. It takes far less effort and resources to block a never-used extension than it does to clean up after an exploit.
I hightly doubt I lost my dollars... Either that or you just don't get the volume of viruses larger orginizations get or are inflating your experience (now I know why the AC -- the MCSE doesn't mean jack to me and the CCNA doesn't mean much more -- get a CCNP and we'll talk about networking, NOT email servers). We have several users with front-facing email addresses (on our website), including a number of our users on our CEOs pet non-profit org that sees a LOT of traffic. The webmaster@ address gets over 80-90 viruses a day alone with spikes near a thousand.
Simply because we never received them. (Well, once -- I got a valid one sent to me directly). We get about 2 or 3 'bogus' ones a month that are really some type of macro virus. Sometime's it's IDd, sometimes it's not. It was easier to just block it and worry less about zero-day viruses.
Frankly, if you don't USE or NEED a particular filetype that has been exploited in the past, why take the chance of a future exploit on the same filetype sneaking in between the time it's released in the wild and the defs get update?
I'd bet dollars to donuts you are a user, not an admin.
Attack against users? What user needs to receive.SCR files via email? Seriously. How about.CPL files? How about.exe files? or.com files? Or.bat? or.vbs?
All the typical vectors of viruses/worms. Who in billing, or sales/marketing, or whatever NEEDS those files?
When you weigh the cost between the constant drain on IT resources broken OSs (from viruses, unapproved 3rd party apps, etc) would cost, you can't SERIOUSLY hold your position as someone in charge of security.
Our email server blocks up to 2000 (sometimes more) of the above extentions. Most are IDd viruses (netsky, bagle, etc). The RARE occation it blocks something not IDd is due to a NEW virus that hasn't made it to the virus-def file on the scanners.
I'm constantly amazed by the number of people..
And I'm constantly amazed by the number of ACs who pretend to know things and act indignant.
I was refering to the SENDING of said material via email. Perhaps I should have said: "How often do you send 40GB emails?" Great, you can compress and break up a 40 gb database down to 10 or 15 2GB files... Bully for you! Now, why would those files need to be sent either by email or http(s)?
You're right that it's basically 'habit' that zip is used, but there has been abosolutely no reason to expect/need our users to download, send or receive RAR files. Because, as you said, that "habit".
When our clients start wanting to send us stuff in RAR, we'll deal with it. Until then, there is no reason and I suspect that this is true for most (not all) corporations...
I doubt eweek's demographic is strong in the 'warez' crowd. And if your in charge of a corporate firewall and your users are downloading 'warez', you've got serious problems..rar have been blocked at our proxy (both extension and mimetype) and email scanner for years. Along with rtf, password protected zip files, exe files, cpl files, etc. It's a long list.
I'm waiting for the email attachments without extension that include 'instructions' on how to 'save as' to add the extenion, then execute the code. The password protected zip file worms were close...
Aside from your cute "offshoring" slam, there are other ways to save...
Keep overtime to a minimum. Do a cost analysis of overtime paid vs. off-hour staffing and consider the addition of rotating on-call time for your employees.
Keep your hardware CLEAN and read your logs! You can ID many hardware problems well before they cause downtime. Remember, when an office of 100 cant work, every hour of downtime translates to 100 hours of lost productivity.
Change from Cells to Pagers.
Don't let inkjet printers in the office AT ALL. They are a constant headache and steal more in support costs than ink.
Need new workstations? Most software packages will run fine on older (say -- 5 year old) hardware. Buy off-lease Compaq, Dell, Gateway, etc... You can get 5x the hardware for the same money with win2k licences included. It will cost you in setup time -- but if you can manage identical hardware profiles (not that difficult), set up a single machine and clone it.
The HP1100 had a problem with the "pickup mechinism" (the paper seperator). As HP just sells a replacement part, the problem will recur -- they never acknowledged or corrected this problem. There are a few 3rd party replacement parts that are EASY to install and work like a dream once changed out.
I 'fixed' mine with the rubber from an old fax machine's paper separator... Haven't had a problem since.
For non-business related tech support (family, friends, etc) I charge nothing.
Why? Simple. I do not want to be held responsible or FEEL responsible to take care of every little issue that goes wrong after I work on a given machine.
My 'support rules' are simple. Bring me your machine (the box only and no house calls). Leave it with me. It will be returned the following Monday with an assessment (what I think is wrong, what needs to be done to fix it, estimate of cost, etc). The caveat is that I will only spend 2 hours total on ANY machines in me 'care'. If I run out of time, it gets pushed to the following week.
This type of support usually aids a non tech-savy user in not getting overcharged when taking it to a 'professional' after my assessment.
Besides, MOST problems are 'solved' simply by updating their virus scanner and/or installing spybot or something similar. It's actually fairly rare that it's a real hardware problem.
You say that as a joke... but that's not a bad answer. Get a service like SBCs Privacy Manager. Yes I shouldn't NEED to spend extra money to fight this annoyance, but I'm willing to until (or IF) legislation kicks in and starts to actually WORK.
No. Just stop TALKING to pasangers with your head stiff and tilted to one side, hand off the steering wheel cupped to your ear or trying to "read" their 'display'.
Some communication" is pretty meaningless without something concrete.
Something concrete? Like Chad Clanton (Kerry campaign official) contradicting what Mapes told the panel in that he states she talked to him a number of times -- including discussing the piece she was working on for CBS?
Where's the investigation into the ties between SBVFT and the Bush campaign, eh?
You obviously haven't read the complaints filed to the FEC regarding the SBVFTs. Either that, or you just choose to ignore them to help obfuscate the real issue here.
This shouldn't be a news flash, but SBVFTs is NOT CBS NEWS -- nor are they evening TRYING to display no political BIAS. NOR is John O'Niell TRYING to act like Dan Rather. And O'Niell makes no bones about his political affiliation. The SBVFTs at least have the Cavett interview to harp on, as silly as it is, where Kerry ADMITS to committing war crimes. VETS have a right to criticise Kerry based on his actions AS a VET.
at least when CBS used a questionable memo
Questionable? Are you SERIOUS? Even the 'independent' panel's own document expert stated they were created on a modern computer. The panel STATES that Mapes misrepresented the 'chain of custody' with regards to the documents, that NO document expert 'authenticated' the documents regardless of what the original news piece and subsequent 'we stand by our original report' pieces stated. Let's call them what they are. FORGERIES. FAKES.
My original statement stands. I believe that Mapes had an agenda -- to 'get' Bush and it blinded her. I believe those around her WANTED the story to be true and didn't spend enough time researching it.
I'll close by stating that you really hurt your aguement by even attempting to compare CBS NEWS with SBVFT -- and draw some twisted equivications. I would suggest rethinking that.
... but little attention has been paid to the communications between CBS news and the Kerry campaign.
Let me back up a bit.
When the entire 'memogate' deal started, I held out. I kept saying, "I trust Rather. I trust CBS". Sure Rather is biased. It's fairly obvious to anyone to takes a look. But he has a great history behind him. That history was hard to ignore. It took me a few days to see the memos for what they really were. And when I did, I was upset. And when Rather continued to defend them, in spite of CBS's own document experts coming forward saying they NEVER validated the documents, I got pissed.
When it came out that there was at least SOME communication between CBS and the Kerry campaign and the story aired the same flippin' time the "Fortunate Son" BS started from the Kerry camp, I became livid.
Mapes claimed at the time that the only communication she had with the Kerry camp was when she put Burkett in touch with them. That, it turns out, was a lie. It appears Chad Clanton tells a story a bit different than Mapes.
As the report states, there is no evidence that the CBS piece was politically biased. Yet there is certainly quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that the driving force of this piece, Mapes, WAS politically motivated. No. Obsessed would be a better word. The apparent collusion between CBS news and the Kerry campaign was not addressed to my satisfaction. Her outright lies that the documents had a clear chain of custody, came from an 'unimpeachable' source and continued insistence of their accuracy -- it's just appalling. Add to this the links to the Kerry campaign and coincedental "Fortunate Son" ads, any reasonable person should suspect Mapes of being out to "get" Bush.
And that is what I suspect. I believe Rather stuck with story so long out of trust of Mapes. And I believe Mapes had an agenda that those around her refused to see. I'm glad Mapes was fired. I don't think she'll ever have a name in her field again. I have little doubt she'll write a book, make a bundle and retire. But she will no longer be working.
It looks like the ebay trolls are going to kill his auction, though. I think this is more of a 'stunt' by someone desperately seeking attention. Kinda funny... but still a 'stunt'.
On my block, the local 'mini-mall' consisted of a liquor store, a TV repair shop, a beauty salon, and a hobby shop (back in the infancy of D&D and Avalon Hill games ruled). I cant remember it's name, but Le Maison de Gier comes to mind (not that I speak french).
At this hobby store was a dime operated apple computer. One dime got you a few games. I managed (at age 9 or 10) to break in to the code (after watching one of the owners working on it), find where the "dime" counter was, change it, and play for free.
I did similar things to the 'lives' in many of the games. I still remember my first intro to computer RPGs... BENEATH APPLE MANOR. Loved that game...
What other higher order specie that has multi planet colonization did he do his evaluation against? What was the success rate of the multi planet effort - would it have been better to spend those resources maintaining quality on one planet?
I don't think he needs to. There have been several events in our worlds past that would have wiped us out were we around -- and ended up wiping out most everything alive at the time.
I question the "1:455" chance for us to get wiped out in the next 100 years, but what is being suggested *IS* sound -- "don't keep all your eggs in one basket".
Slashdot Mirror
Laws are different from state to state, but several years ago I won a case against someone (~$5000). I immediately put a lean on his real property (which was tied up because he was in the middle of a divorce).
Granted, not everyone HAS property, but it doesn't cost a lot to find out.
Took a number of years, but I finally got my money when he sold his house +10% a year interest. What was funny were the calls 5 or 6 months before I got my money -- him wanting to "settle" with me for a few hundred, then a thousand, then a few thousand, then the original amount... Bah. He never did found out how all his creditors knew he had title on some real property in my state... They got all their money, too... (heh)
A Business degree. After your 40th birthday, you may find it difficult to find new employment if the need arrises. If you've got a business degree and have moved in to managment, you'll probably find it easier. The pay will be better, too.
A Mathematics degree "plays" nicely with a CS degree, too.
That's LA (Los Angeles). It's not uncommon for people living in Lancaster to commute to work in Downtown LA -- between a 60 min and 75 min drive -- ONE WAY. It's also not uncommon to see 2 or 3 year old "used cars" with over 150k-200k miles on the OD.
Not only would I, I have.
I currently work about 60/40 (60% at work, 40% at home). I also live about 5 minutes away from my work. My current employer also allows me to get up and leave in a moments notice (barring anything nasty or important going on at the time).
I've been offered (by another lab) up to twice what I currently make to move out of state and I've also been offered significantly more by other local businesses -- but would require more 'face time' and more than an hour commute. (Yeah, one hour drives (or more) are LOCAL in LA).
Frankly, I'm not in it for the money. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm in it to be able to comfortably be able to take care of my family and myself. I earn enough to pay for a home, put my kids in a private school, buy myself or my wife the occational "toy" or "trinket" and save for our retirement.
Between my wife and myself, my kids have never been picked up from school by ANYONE other than us. Other than medzmama (grandmother), they've never had a baby-sitter. I CAN work crazy hours, but I also get to spend a lot of time with my children. I actually get to RAISE my kids! You can't pay me enough to lose that.
An extra benefit has been the ability to aid my sister (who recently had a stroke) in her recovery. I'm able to take a half-day off once a week and help her read her mail, fill out her bills and make what ever calls she needs to make. So, would I give up a raise for this ability? In a New York minute.
Since the donations were requested to help fight a legal battle on the grounds that the **PA were misusing copyright law, or the law itself was flawed, I think the argument would be different than you lampoon.
Many people believe that the law is wrong, or poorly written or poorly executed -- and noone has followed a legal battle from beginning to end -- except maybe napster. Even they settled in the end, no? They didn't go 'all they way'.
I believe copyrights are being abused -- by those downloading copyrighted materials, but also the copyright holders, too. There is NO logical reason why Mickey Mouse isn't in the public domain now. The 'bittorrents' and p2p in general are just a symptom of a much larger problem...
Gotta go with you on this one. Some where "up there" someone suggested the use of cable trays. Those are fantastic. I can't recommend them enough.
But seriously, if we're talking about a basement, conduit should be more than enough.
Thats 2000 ATACHMENTS a week that are blocked. Not 2000 different extensions. In those 2000 are mostly password protected zips, exe, bat, cpl, and com. And most of those are some varient of netsky -- mostly P. We block about 50 or 60 extensions.
At our lab, with the exception of banned sites (porn, warez, etc), those with internet access aren't 'policed' unless requested by a department manager. A report is generated for that manager who then decides how they will proceed.
Audits of all managers are manditory (including me) and pass on to the GM. for monthly review -- and he's NOT IT, he's lab.
For the most part, clearly stated access and security policies with clearly defined consequences are usually good enough to keep people on the 'straight and narrow', but not 100% of the users and not 100% of the time.
Hell, close to all the workstations have all the default "games" included with MS unless a manager requests those be removed. Our general policy is that the PC isn't a 'toy', but there isn't a problem if an employee wants to read the news or play freecell on their break.
We have had a few problem users who would play freecell all day long. Their manager would request the game removed and we would comply.
For select sites, (hhs.gov, for instance, or our insurance clearing houses site) there's no filtering at all.
Pasted from another msg from me: Frankly, if you don't USE or NEED a particular filetype that has been exploited in the past, why take the chance of a future exploit on the same filetype sneaking in between the time it's released in the wild and the defs get update? Not blocking long lists of extensions that are never used within your orginization and DO have a history of being exploited flies in the face of common sense. It takes far less effort and resources to block a never-used extension than it does to clean up after an exploit.
I hightly doubt I lost my dollars... Either that or you just don't get the volume of viruses larger orginizations get or are inflating your experience (now I know why the AC -- the MCSE doesn't mean jack to me and the CCNA doesn't mean much more -- get a CCNP and we'll talk about networking, NOT email servers). We have several users with front-facing email addresses (on our website), including a number of our users on our CEOs pet non-profit org that sees a LOT of traffic. The webmaster@ address gets over 80-90 viruses a day alone with spikes near a thousand.
Simply because we never received them. (Well, once -- I got a valid one sent to me directly). We get about 2 or 3 'bogus' ones a month that are really some type of macro virus. Sometime's it's IDd, sometimes it's not. It was easier to just block it and worry less about zero-day viruses.
Frankly, if you don't USE or NEED a particular filetype that has been exploited in the past, why take the chance of a future exploit on the same filetype sneaking in between the time it's released in the wild and the defs get update?
Attack against users? What user needs to receive
All the typical vectors of viruses/worms. Who in billing, or sales/marketing, or whatever NEEDS those files?
When you weigh the cost between the constant drain on IT resources broken OSs (from viruses, unapproved 3rd party apps, etc) would cost, you can't SERIOUSLY hold your position as someone in charge of security.
Our email server blocks up to 2000 (sometimes more) of the above extentions. Most are IDd viruses (netsky, bagle, etc). The RARE occation it blocks something not IDd is due to a NEW virus that hasn't made it to the virus-def file on the scanners.And I'm constantly amazed by the number of ACs who pretend to know things and act indignant.
I was refering to the SENDING of said material via email. Perhaps I should have said: "How often do you send 40GB emails?" Great, you can compress and break up a 40 gb database down to 10 or 15 2GB files... Bully for you! Now, why would those files need to be sent either by email or http(s)?
Just how often do you email 40GB files?
You're right that it's basically 'habit' that zip is used, but there has been abosolutely no reason to expect/need our users to download, send or receive RAR files. Because, as you said, that "habit".
When our clients start wanting to send us stuff in RAR, we'll deal with it. Until then, there is no reason and I suspect that this is true for most (not all) corporations...
I doubt eweek's demographic is strong in the 'warez' crowd. And if your in charge of a corporate firewall and your users are downloading 'warez', you've got serious problems. .rar have been blocked at our proxy (both extension and mimetype) and email scanner for years. Along with rtf, password protected zip files, exe files, cpl files, etc. It's a long list.
I'm waiting for the email attachments without extension that include 'instructions' on how to 'save as' to add the extenion, then execute the code. The password protected zip file worms were close...
Aside from your cute "offshoring" slam, there are other ways to save...
Keep overtime to a minimum. Do a cost analysis of overtime paid vs. off-hour staffing and consider the addition of rotating on-call time for your employees.
Keep your hardware CLEAN and read your logs! You can ID many hardware problems well before they cause downtime. Remember, when an office of 100 cant work, every hour of downtime translates to 100 hours of lost productivity.
Change from Cells to Pagers.
Don't let inkjet printers in the office AT ALL. They are a constant headache and steal more in support costs than ink.
Need new workstations? Most software packages will run fine on older (say -- 5 year old) hardware. Buy off-lease Compaq, Dell, Gateway, etc... You can get 5x the hardware for the same money with win2k licences included. It will cost you in setup time -- but if you can manage identical hardware profiles (not that difficult), set up a single machine and clone it.
The HP1100 had a problem with the "pickup mechinism" (the paper seperator). As HP just sells a replacement part, the problem will recur -- they never acknowledged or corrected this problem. There are a few 3rd party replacement parts that are EASY to install and work like a dream once changed out.
I 'fixed' mine with the rubber from an old fax machine's paper separator... Haven't had a problem since.
For non-business related tech support (family, friends, etc) I charge nothing.
Why? Simple. I do not want to be held responsible or FEEL responsible to take care of every little issue that goes wrong after I work on a given machine.
My 'support rules' are simple. Bring me your machine (the box only and no house calls). Leave it with me. It will be returned the following Monday with an assessment (what I think is wrong, what needs to be done to fix it, estimate of cost, etc). The caveat is that I will only spend 2 hours total on ANY machines in me 'care'. If I run out of time, it gets pushed to the following week.
This type of support usually aids a non tech-savy user in not getting overcharged when taking it to a 'professional' after my assessment.
Besides, MOST problems are 'solved' simply by updating their virus scanner and/or installing spybot or something similar. It's actually fairly rare that it's a real hardware problem.
You say that as a joke... but that's not a bad answer. Get a service like SBCs Privacy Manager. Yes I shouldn't NEED to spend extra money to fight this annoyance, but I'm willing to until (or IF) legislation kicks in and starts to actually WORK.
No. Just stop TALKING to pasangers with your head stiff and tilted to one side, hand off the steering wheel cupped to your ear or trying to "read" their 'display'.
Never heard of a fusion bomb? Like where you use a fission bomb to initiate fusion? Kind of like a hydrogen bomb?
The guy had it right.
This shouldn't be a news flash, but SBVFTs is NOT CBS NEWS -- nor are they evening TRYING to display no political BIAS. NOR is John O'Niell TRYING to act like Dan Rather. And O'Niell makes no bones about his political affiliation. The SBVFTs at least have the Cavett interview to harp on, as silly as it is, where Kerry ADMITS to committing war crimes. VETS have a right to criticise Kerry based on his actions AS a VET. Questionable? Are you SERIOUS? Even the 'independent' panel's own document expert stated they were created on a modern computer. The panel STATES that Mapes misrepresented the 'chain of custody' with regards to the documents, that NO document expert 'authenticated' the documents regardless of what the original news piece and subsequent 'we stand by our original report' pieces stated. Let's call them what they are. FORGERIES. FAKES.
My original statement stands. I believe that Mapes had an agenda -- to 'get' Bush and it blinded her. I believe those around her WANTED the story to be true and didn't spend enough time researching it.
I'll close by stating that you really hurt your aguement by even attempting to compare CBS NEWS with SBVFT -- and draw some twisted equivications. I would suggest rethinking that.
... but little attention has been paid to the communications between CBS news and the Kerry campaign.
Let me back up a bit.
When the entire 'memogate' deal started, I held out. I kept saying, "I trust Rather. I trust CBS". Sure Rather is biased. It's fairly obvious to anyone to takes a look. But he has a great history behind him. That history was hard to ignore. It took me a few days to see the memos for what they really were. And when I did, I was upset. And when Rather continued to defend them, in spite of CBS's own document experts coming forward saying they NEVER validated the documents, I got pissed.
When it came out that there was at least SOME communication between CBS and the Kerry campaign and the story aired the same flippin' time the "Fortunate Son" BS started from the Kerry camp, I became livid.
Mapes claimed at the time that the only communication she had with the Kerry camp was when she put Burkett in touch with them. That, it turns out, was a lie. It appears Chad Clanton tells a story a bit different than Mapes.
As the report states, there is no evidence that the CBS piece was politically biased. Yet there is certainly quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that the driving force of this piece, Mapes, WAS politically motivated. No. Obsessed would be a better word. The apparent collusion between CBS news and the Kerry campaign was not addressed to my satisfaction. Her outright lies that the documents had a clear chain of custody, came from an 'unimpeachable' source and continued insistence of their accuracy -- it's just appalling. Add to this the links to the Kerry campaign and coincedental "Fortunate Son" ads, any reasonable person should suspect Mapes of being out to "get" Bush.
And that is what I suspect. I believe Rather stuck with story so long out of trust of Mapes. And I believe Mapes had an agenda that those around her refused to see. I'm glad Mapes was fired. I don't think she'll ever have a name in her field again. I have little doubt she'll write a book, make a bundle and retire. But she will no longer be working.
His auction.
It looks like the ebay trolls are going to kill his auction, though. I think this is more of a 'stunt' by someone desperately seeking attention. Kinda funny... but still a 'stunt'.
On my block, the local 'mini-mall' consisted of a liquor store, a TV repair shop, a beauty salon, and a hobby shop (back in the infancy of D&D and Avalon Hill games ruled). I cant remember it's name, but Le Maison de Gier comes to mind (not that I speak french).
At this hobby store was a dime operated apple computer. One dime got you a few games. I managed (at age 9 or 10) to break in to the code (after watching one of the owners working on it), find where the "dime" counter was, change it, and play for free.
I did similar things to the 'lives' in many of the games. I still remember my first intro to computer RPGs... BENEATH APPLE MANOR. Loved that game...
I question the "1:455" chance for us to get wiped out in the next 100 years, but what is being suggested *IS* sound -- "don't keep all your eggs in one basket".