this reminds me... I was 3rd lvl technical support for a law firm and a lawyer calls me and asks me if we have a socks4 or socks5 proxy.
being of suspicious nature I had to inquire, why a lawyer who usually wants to know how to make a word bold in word perfect needs to know about our proxy config. Well, he says, I just installed personal web server and....
couldn't get it to load (even in safe mode) on my TNT2/Athlon 500 (asus KVM mobo) but on my 1.4 athlon with a -=16 meg rage 128 pro (all-in-wonder)=- heh, phear me -- I'm getting great play at 1024x768 (16 bit only though). I've seen screenshots from a Gforce3 and they are purty...
Thing is, the game is pretty boring so far. Run, shoot, get more ammo, shoot more, run, hide die die die die die shoot. save. it's *not* Deus Ex or System Shock - it reminds me, for some reason, of Hexen.
You can guess why: Search engine developers buy copies of the same software, learn how to recognize its output, and then demote your site or block it altogether when they spot that pattern in your pages.
no hard "this site was banned" but it seems there are some who do demote/block if they catch you putting garbage in your keyword list.
PS if any porn site puts 'alan turing' in their keywords I would actually want to go there - shows some imagination to say the least, gotta give them props for that...
why SEND them a money-order? A...friend... used to do this when...she... needed to transer money anonymously. Go to western union. Give them cash. Say your name is Joe Smith. Set up the pickup to have a user name and password (user SAFE password WEB?) Leave western union. Now anyone anywhere in the world there is a western union can go in, say SAFE WEB and get the money.
This was relied upon quite heavily. Not sure if it still works the same way but....
I just couldn't resist. OK, seriously, if you run an anon. proxy from your home PC and it's available to anyone on the internet (say, who knows the password just to keep your bandwidth under control) then if someone accesses XFILES.mil from your computer they can't say it was you who did it. Not sure if you're still in trouble for providing the proxy but at least you couldn't be in trouble for doing the deed.
This is *not* a legal opinion, just an amateur guesswork.
"I can use just about anything for a keyboard"...
...belly of my girlfriend, head of the annoying guy in the next cubicle, top of a conga drum...
but really, what happens if you have an itch on your nose? with my luck scratching my neck would type rm -rf
1) spyware is sneaky - you can't just kill it / uninstall it unless you know... about as much as your average 1st year tech support guy.
2) as The Register recently reminded me outbound filtering is useless against any program that has executed on your computer (because it's easy to piggyback your information on another service that already has outbound permissions) - I'm not sure any spyware does this but...
3) it's fine if someone want to try to track me from somewhere else but my computer in my home is... well, it's mine, and in my home, it's my private home thing and it's a castle or something (under american law, after all, I can shoot someone if they break into my home so if a spyware sneaks into my computer and stealthily steals (?) from me can't I shoot the CEO of Disney who buys the information to see if I'm a good candidate for the re-release of Snow White?) so THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE UNLESS I INVITE THEM IN (kinda like a vampire, no?)
4) have I mentioned spyware is sneaky? real sneaky - it won't tell you it's installed, it won't (always) register w/ uninstall, it runs all sneaky like and sneaks and stuff.
Poor limewire - they should make money but why can't they do it like NPR, just bug all the limewire users for a week a year for donations?
This made me think --- I want to get out of computers and into teaching English - I have a 3rd level tech support/management job that lets me build lots of boxes and play with all sorts of things - I'll trade you jobs!
For the record I went Office 97 trainer, floor support / trainer, second level tech support (support for the techs), manager of second level, third level...
That line caught my eye too - I thought the common wisdom was, except for certain specific scenarios (say, applying pshop filters which utilize SMP very well) a dual machine with slower processors will always underperform a single processor machine which is at least, what, 15% faster than the each of the duals (i.e. a 1ghz dual will be slower than a 1.2ghz single in most cases).
Has this age-worn wisdom been thrown out the window? Is a 1.5 PIV slower, or simply just as fast as, a 1.0 PIII? Will Ray reunite with Joanne? Stay tuned.... OK, really, I give build advice all the time where I tell people not to bother with SMP unless they are doing heavy graphics/video/animation work - should I change this advice?
At first this reminded me of the happy doors and helpful elevators in Hitchiker's Guide (and I was sharing Marvin's loathing of them) but the more I thought about it, the more I found myself channeling a 22 year old Japanese girl (I'm neither) and thinking, awww, how cute. I want my motorcycle to change colors like a mood ring, can they do that too?
so not true
situation a) a developer/third lvl help desk (help for techs) - they stay by the phone, answer whatever they need to, and they do some development (on deadlines... ). Set up some kind of terminal services so they can access work-like computers (nice if you have remote access to *all* company computers...) and they're set.
situation b) I've done work from home and when as a manager I was responsible for task completion, not hours in the office. So, say, I had to roll out I.E. in Tokyo. I work at home, get it done, what's the big deal?
so long as the work is structured and you have motivated, excited geeks you can totally do telecommuting (you have to be in the office at least once a week or the interpersonal things get weird).
If you don't understand where things come from you can't possibly deal with them effectively. Bombing/attacking/controlling/intervening has gotten us where we are and Ben Ladin whoever-he-is was *made* by us.
This hatred for the U.S. did not spontaneously arise, it's not based on some 1,500 year old text or 2,000 year old vendetta. It comes from the very recent very real actions of our country. We supported him when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan and I imagine he might have even been fond of us then. He later saw us support the Israelis committing crimes against the Palestinians (regardless of what you think about that conflict you can't deny the actions of Israel have been at times nothing short of criminal and we've (US) whitewashed over these 'little indiscretions') and saw us meddling in the affairs of Middle Eastern states (which we feel compelled to do a) because we're the big kid on the block and b) because our insane need for oil makes the mid-east essential to our... lifestyle) and was turned against us.
If he was behind this, certainly he deserves no better fate than he's given to others. HOWEVER if we want to stop this cycle I guarantee that committing further violence in our typical manner will only outrage more people and ultimately give him more followers in death than he ever had living. He could become a martyr.
Think about every conflict where a larger force squares off against a determined resistance. The resistance doesn't always win but it *always* grows in proportion to the force applied against it.
Poverty and other indirect forms of violence create instability. We need to change our policies, not blow shit up, if we want to live in a secure world. Well, ok, we still have to blow some things up (it's kinda fun anyway) but... mostly we need to change our actions.
On this line of R&D -- part of the 'coctail' was developed by US national labs (NIH) and *given* to Eli (if I remember correctly) to distribute - the US govt. paid the full cost of development then gave the patent away. I'm sorry I can't find the link on this right now but I've been following this story for a while... Eli bitched to high heaven when Brazil threatened to break their patent but eventually came to their senses. Huge props to Brazil who has reduced their AIDs population by HALF of the WHO estimates from a half decade ago. What a beautiful country... If only parts of Africa could follow their example.
Yea but, I mean, 20/20 hindsight is great but I probably would have done the same thing this kid did. Think about it, bored at work, poking around, find big hole. You're a geek. What's the first thing you want to do? Look around, feel the edges, learn, explore. This is what has gotten you to where you are today, you've been rewarded for this (natural?) prediliction so you (naturally?) continue. You're not Evil. You don't do anything bad but you also don't immediately shut down everything and call the ISP. You play first. Then you do what seems like the right thing (again sans 20/20 hindsight) and call the person affected. It's a little dig against your competitor that you tell thier client and not them. Fine.
I would have probably done the same thing and never even concidered that I could get in trouble. My intenstions and actions were all good.
Now as mentioned Joe-6-pack will not understand this if the facts are spun a different way by a skilled and, IMHO, malicious prosecutor (who should know better but since 5-oh can't catch any *real* criminals they have to royally fark the innocent ones). I can see the courtroom now. This kid is screwed.
This is an important reminder, maybe our foresight will be a little sharper through his hindsight.
Absolutely. After a hard 5 minutes puruval of the Cygwin (albiet with sleep-rocks still in the corners of my eyes) I have no idea what exactly it does, or, really, what it could do for me. When I do web programming I usually have 3 or 4 sources of information (O'Reilly book(s), webmonkey, irt.org, ms dev lib, etc.) and when I don't get the kind of info I need from one I can always count on another to provide it. It's all the *same* information, it's just sometimes I understand it better the way, say, the MS Dev. Lib. puts it, sometimes O'Reilly makes it more clear. So more documentation in different styles is always welcome.
The funny thing is I usually find myself argueing postions similar to yours, only in this case I think you're wrong. In the olden times (say, Rome) they lacked the ability to raise living standards for a majority of the people to a decent level. Technology, etc. (maybe even capitalism...), has provided this ability to our age for what is probably the first time in history (sure,you could create small utopias in the past but nothing large scale). Therefore since we have the ability to achieve this, we might also have a moral obligation to pursue this end. This addresses your next point, that the 'wheels of progress' will pull these people out of thier current state. This is the typical arguement for global capitalization (vs. the anti-WTO crew) and it has some merrit. Just extend it logically - take a sweat shop making Nikes. If you pay the workers $.50 a day and this is twice as much as they'd make otherwise and applaud yourself for it, why not continue and give 'em a dollar or two? See, the wheels of progress tend to weigh human suffering and profit margins rather peculiarly, giving *way* too much weight to profit margins. They're important, but maybe, say, equally important as alleviating (sp?) suffering.
Now your point about how farked up the place is before 'we' got there and how 'we're' a stabalizing influence, well taken. It's true that many places would be content to screw themselves for eternity and capi-colonialism stepping in simply changes the dynamic somewhat but doesn't nesc. create any *more* suffering (different, sure, but not more). People like killing other people. Still, the point is we *could* do better so maybe we *should*. Not just leave, but intervene more positviely....
Fark. I modded this as troll and it came out modded as funny. "Troll" isn't even near "funny" on the dropdown, I don't think I flob'd it. Anyway, um, metamod me *stands like a sacrifice* but know that, um, i don't think it was actually funny. *sigh*
I wish Dell & Co. wouldn't react to market movements on a daily basis. Every damn shipment of Dells we got, even if they were a couple weeks apart, had different hardware (yea, they were all the same 'make'). New drivers. New Issues. Don't even think about using ghost with a windoz platform and these things, you'll need a dozen ghost images for each damn box type (ok so I haven't played with the newest ghost, I hear it's better across hardware...). I used to go 'bwahahah apple' and, well, I still do, sometimes, but really, don't make market-whim surfing a point for the Big x86 Types b/c it actually blows for anything other than home users. At least mac controls thier hardware, making it more expensive, but also ensuring it works really really well with thier OS. If M$ made hardware I guarantee a big chunk of Corp. America would jump on it in a second. Hell I might recommend buying M$ hardware if it meant thier tech support would support it and thier OS would work even marginally better. OK, End of rant.
OK for once I want a federal bail-out. Farmer-subsidy style. Working with local PacBell DSL is the most horrendous experience of my life (well, you know, with a company). Seriously down for over 2 months. I had to show *thier* tech how to make DSL work on HIS laptop. That's right, I set up his own, work, laptop so it would work.
Can I write my senator? Say what? Please pass laws to help people like Covad? If anyone knows what can be done pro-actively to avoid comeing back under the really ugly, warty, fungus-fingernailed thumb of PacBell (San Francisco) please respond...
NO way. The first season of Farscape was *amazing* as in 'I can't believe this is on television' but not in a Fox special when pidgeons attack kinda way. Seriously, the story lines weren't as fragmented and complex as they are now (you can't get through an episode without 3 different expositions on 4 different story threads - bad episodic form, unless you're making a telenovela). The take on traditional TV values was refreshing (and _very_ adult I might add). For example, I don't know, honestly, if this was the first or second season but it's a good example of the first season regardless, the cave of youthful surfer-stoners. OK not only does the show portray drugs as less-than-total-evil(think Beverly Hills 902blahblah exctacy episode) but in the end the snake-girl (who even my most died-in-the-wool-homosexual friends think is insanely sexy) decides she want to do the suicide jump all the kids do, and they let her, because they know it's just something she has to work out on her own, and will, eventually, if not now, next opportunity. This kind of anti-stereotypical-morality is more than refreshing, it's downright... well, as I said, amazing. Check the first season again, you might be surprised if you just pay attention to the subtext a little more....
UNspeakably annoying site that link is on, froze my browser twice, then finally played 1/2 way through, then went smash. And that's not even mentioning the interface...
I did see enough to notice the guy saying "we filled the room with smoke, then shut off the lights and filmed this man trying to find the exit door" (or something I can't go back to get the quote perfect) then showed 'infared' film footage of a guy blindly looking for a door. with no mask (you can see his facial features). Then the Noise man comes back saying it took over 3 minutes without the Miracle Noyz (tm) to help guide him.
Come on. I know right now this whole thing is a hoax, erm, scam, total 'look at us' seeing how much they can sell before people realize it's bogus. High pitch noise is more directional than low pitch noise. wow. really? ok.
no, really, they can be funny. I think virii (I insist that's the plural...) have a couple useful and worthwhile reasons for being. First, a friend in UChicago law school was in a large lecture with the 9th fed circuit judge as prof., big, somber lecture hall. One person on their legal-eagle laptop had apparently been checking email... in the middle of class their laptop volume was turned up full blast and a recording started looping
'hey everybody, I'm looking at porn!'
I think that kind of virus is a high form of human pathos and should be encouraged, always.
Now I've had to deal with weeks and weeks worth of anti virus and anti anti virus (yea, McAfee is worse than the virii sometimes) crap but virii remind all of us that computers are, well computers and we're, well, the people. Do you understand? They reinforce the roles so often blurred or ignored, we must be the responsible, semi-cognizant ones in the relationship, we can't rely on them to think for us, etc. Basic hacker ethos. Virii are like big snow storms (or rolling blackouts), they shut things down, disrupt the normal clean flow of days and power and make people look around their momentarily decontextualized surroundings and maybe, think with some perspective.
Besides, with out the Anna virus we'd never know how many top executives are *eager* to look at tennis porn. Right?
I'm actually serious. Yes, they suck and yes they're mostly written my morons and yes PE infectors at least require a modicum of computer knowledge and yes destructive and yes. But I'd rather have them, at this stage in the game.
I use enom, personally, who I love, great service and spiffy front-end, but who charges over twice as much per. I know you're trying to not use slashdot to promote other companies (erm, but, well, ok, maybe) but do tell...
You know, the *basic* whitepaper on securing IIS recommends removing the MIME mappings for.ida and.idq. (it's towards the end of the paper if you're looking...).
I knew this b/c my IIS server (I know, don't give me any shit...) was the focus of some kiddies a few months ago and I had to do a bit of tweaking. IIS out of the box is awful security-wise (OK no new news here...) What's funny is how hard I had to look to find that security white paper.
Anyway, the point is if people had done a proper install of IIS to begin with the patch wouldn't even be nescessary (well, unless they're actually using the index server... I don't even remember what that thing does anyway, I thought it was something to do w/ the file system but...).
Noted that I was one of those idiots who didn't set it up right the first time...
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being of suspicious nature I had to inquire, why a lawyer who usually wants to know how to make a word bold in word perfect needs to know about our proxy config. Well, he says, I just installed personal web server and....
couldn't get it to load (even in safe mode) on my TNT2/Athlon 500 (asus KVM mobo) but on my 1.4 athlon with a -=16 meg rage 128 pro (all-in-wonder)=- heh, phear me -- I'm getting great play at 1024x768 (16 bit only though). I've seen screenshots from a Gforce3 and they are purty...
Thing is, the game is pretty boring so far. Run, shoot, get more ammo, shoot more, run, hide die die die die die shoot. save. it's *not* Deus Ex or System Shock - it reminds me, for some reason, of Hexen.
I liked Hexen, but, you know, it's just Hexen.
You can guess why: Search engine developers buy copies of the same software, learn how to recognize its output, and then demote your site or block it altogether when they spot that pattern in your pages.
no hard "this site was banned" but it seems there are some who do demote/block if they catch you putting garbage in your keyword list.
PS if any porn site puts 'alan turing' in their keywords I would actually want to go there - shows some imagination to say the least, gotta give them props for that...
This was relied upon quite heavily. Not sure if it still works the same way but
I just couldn't resist. OK, seriously, if you run an anon. proxy from your home PC and it's available to anyone on the internet (say, who knows the password just to keep your bandwidth under control) then if someone accesses XFILES.mil from your computer they can't say it was you who did it. Not sure if you're still in trouble for providing the proxy but at least you couldn't be in trouble for doing the deed.
This is *not* a legal opinion, just an amateur guesswork.
"I can use just about anything for a keyboard"... ...
...belly of my girlfriend, head of the annoying guy in the next cubicle, top of a conga drum
but really, what happens if you have an itch on your nose? with my luck scratching my neck would type rm -rf
2) as The Register recently reminded me outbound filtering is useless against any program that has executed on your computer (because it's easy to piggyback your information on another service that already has outbound permissions) - I'm not sure any spyware does this but...
3) it's fine if someone want to try to track me from somewhere else but my computer in my home is
4) have I mentioned spyware is sneaky? real sneaky - it won't tell you it's installed, it won't (always) register w/ uninstall, it runs all sneaky like and sneaks and stuff.
Poor limewire - they should make money but why can't they do it like NPR, just bug all the limewire users for a week a year for donations?
This made me think --- I want to get out of computers and into teaching English - I have a 3rd level tech support/management job that lets me build lots of boxes and play with all sorts of things - I'll trade you jobs!
For the record I went Office 97 trainer, floor support / trainer, second level tech support (support for the techs), manager of second level, third level...
Has this age-worn wisdom been thrown out the window? Is a 1.5 PIV slower, or simply just as fast as, a 1.0 PIII? Will Ray reunite with Joanne? Stay tuned
At first this reminded me of the happy doors and helpful elevators in Hitchiker's Guide (and I was sharing Marvin's loathing of them) but the more I thought about it, the more I found myself channeling a 22 year old Japanese girl (I'm neither) and thinking, awww, how cute.
I want my motorcycle to change colors like a mood ring, can they do that too?
so not true ... ). Set up some kind of terminal services so they can access work-like computers (nice if you have remote access to *all* company computers...) and they're set.
situation a) a developer/third lvl help desk (help for techs) - they stay by the phone, answer whatever they need to, and they do some development (on deadlines
situation b) I've done work from home and when as a manager I was responsible for task completion, not hours in the office. So, say, I had to roll out I.E. in Tokyo. I work at home, get it done, what's the big deal?
so long as the work is structured and you have motivated, excited geeks you can totally do telecommuting (you have to be in the office at least once a week or the interpersonal things get weird).
If you don't understand where things come from you can't possibly deal with them effectively. Bombing/attacking/controlling/intervening has gotten us where we are and Ben Ladin whoever-he-is was *made* by us.
... lifestyle) and was turned against us.
... mostly we need to change our actions.
This hatred for the U.S. did not spontaneously arise, it's not based on some 1,500 year old text or 2,000 year old vendetta. It comes from the very recent very real actions of our country. We supported him when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan and I imagine he might have even been fond of us then. He later saw us support the Israelis committing crimes against the Palestinians (regardless of what you think about that conflict you can't deny the actions of Israel have been at times nothing short of criminal and we've (US) whitewashed over these 'little indiscretions') and saw us meddling in the affairs of Middle Eastern states (which we feel compelled to do a) because we're the big kid on the block and b) because our insane need for oil makes the mid-east essential to our
If he was behind this, certainly he deserves no better fate than he's given to others. HOWEVER if we want to stop this cycle I guarantee that committing further violence in our typical manner will only outrage more people and ultimately give him more followers in death than he ever had living. He could become a martyr.
Think about every conflict where a larger force squares off against a determined resistance. The resistance doesn't always win but it *always* grows in proportion to the force applied against it.
Poverty and other indirect forms of violence create instability. We need to change our policies, not blow shit up, if we want to live in a secure world. Well, ok, we still have to blow some things up (it's kinda fun anyway) but
You'd have known this is you read your Civ. manual.
-irony intended-
I would have probably done the same thing and never even concidered that I could get in trouble. My intenstions and actions were all good.
Now as mentioned Joe-6-pack will not understand this if the facts are spun a different way by a skilled and, IMHO, malicious prosecutor (who should know better but since 5-oh can't catch any *real* criminals they have to royally fark the innocent ones). I can see the courtroom now. This kid is screwed.
This is an important reminder, maybe our foresight will be a little sharper through his hindsight.
Absolutely. After a hard 5 minutes puruval of the Cygwin (albiet with sleep-rocks still in the corners of my eyes) I have no idea what exactly it does, or, really, what it could do for me. When I do web programming I usually have 3 or 4 sources of information (O'Reilly book(s), webmonkey, irt.org, ms dev lib, etc.) and when I don't get the kind of info I need from one I can always count on another to provide it. It's all the *same* information, it's just sometimes I understand it better the way, say, the MS Dev. Lib. puts it, sometimes O'Reilly makes it more clear. So more documentation in different styles is always welcome.
Now your point about how farked up the place is before 'we' got there and how 'we're' a stabalizing influence, well taken. It's true that many places would be content to screw themselves for eternity and capi-colonialism stepping in simply changes the dynamic somewhat but doesn't nesc. create any *more* suffering (different, sure, but not more). People like killing other people. Still, the point is we *could* do better so maybe we *should*. Not just leave, but intervene more positviely. ...
Fark. I modded this as troll and it came out modded as funny. "Troll" isn't even near "funny" on the dropdown, I don't think I flob'd it. Anyway, um, metamod me *stands like a sacrifice* but know that, um, i don't think it was actually funny. *sigh*
Can I write my senator? Say what? Please pass laws to help people like Covad? If anyone knows what can be done pro-actively to avoid comeing back under the really ugly, warty, fungus-fingernailed thumb of PacBell (San Francisco) please respond...
As always, IMHO
I did see enough to notice the guy saying "we filled the room with smoke, then shut off the lights and filmed this man trying to find the exit door" (or something I can't go back to get the quote perfect) then showed 'infared' film footage of a guy blindly looking for a door. with no mask (you can see his facial features). Then the Noise man comes back saying it took over 3 minutes without the Miracle Noyz (tm) to help guide him.
Come on. I know right now this whole thing is a hoax, erm, scam, total 'look at us' seeing how much they can sell before people realize it's bogus. High pitch noise is more directional than low pitch noise. wow. really? ok.
'hey everybody, I'm looking at porn!'
I think that kind of virus is a high form of human pathos and should be encouraged, always.
Now I've had to deal with weeks and weeks worth of anti virus and anti anti virus (yea, McAfee is worse than the virii sometimes) crap but virii remind all of us that computers are, well computers and we're, well, the people. Do you understand? They reinforce the roles so often blurred or ignored, we must be the responsible, semi-cognizant ones in the relationship, we can't rely on them to think for us, etc. Basic hacker ethos. Virii are like big snow storms (or rolling blackouts), they shut things down, disrupt the normal clean flow of days and power and make people look around their momentarily decontextualized surroundings and maybe, think with some perspective.
Besides, with out the Anna virus we'd never know how many top executives are *eager* to look at tennis porn. Right?
I'm actually serious. Yes, they suck and yes they're mostly written my morons and yes PE infectors at least require a modicum of computer knowledge and yes destructive and yes. But I'd rather have them, at this stage in the game.
I use enom, personally, who I love, great service and spiffy front-end, but who charges over twice as much per. I know you're trying to not use slashdot to promote other companies (erm, but, well, ok, maybe) but do tell...
I knew this b/c my IIS server (I know, don't give me any shit...) was the focus of some kiddies a few months ago and I had to do a bit of tweaking. IIS out of the box is awful security-wise (OK no new news here ...) What's funny is how hard I had to look to find that security white paper.
Anyway, the point is if people had done a proper install of IIS to begin with the patch wouldn't even be nescessary (well, unless they're actually using the index server ... I don't even remember what that thing does anyway, I thought it was something to do w/ the file system but...).
Noted that I was one of those idiots who didn't set it up right the first time...