. In "small" crimes, both the victim and the bad guy are better off without guns.
What in the heck is a "small" crime? So they don't bring a gun, they bring a knife and who's still at the disadvantage? The poor unarmed pheasant who can only call the police and hope they arrive in time to keep him from bodily harm or death. Personally I don't care if the "bad guy" is at more risk or not, but I do care about the victim.
Violent crime is not less prevalent where guns are banned, people still get robbed, murdered and such. It may be harder to get a gun, but that didn't stop the IRA in England from having them. Criminals don't care what the law is, if they want a gun to help commit a crime, they can still get them.
What you are suggesting is that we should simply disarm and hope that the criminal does too. Problem is that the law abiding victims are then the ones who will pay the largest price because they will be the first to be disarmed. This does not sound like a good idea to me.
I know of no gun being built for the public that is designed to kill on its own. I've heard of no cases where a gun loaded itself and discharged, much less killed on its own. Every gun I've seen requires somebody to load it, point it and pull the trigger before it would have the potential to kill anything or anybody.
Guns don't kill, People kill.
Guns are simply man made devices that can be used for good or evil. When properly used for the right purpose, they do much good. When improperly handled or used for evil, they can do much harm. But saying they kill people is inaccurate. Somebody has to load a gun, point it and pull the trigger in order for somebody to be killed by a gun. The person using the gun is responsible for killing, not the gun which was just the tool used to kill.
Now if you are trying to say that giving folks guns encourages them to kill, I will argue that folks have been killing each other since Genesis Chapter 4, which was long before the invention of firearms and they'll be doing it long after firearms go the way of 8 track tapes (if they ever do). Thus I'm not buying your argument. Guns are but tools.
Statistics show that if the victim has a firearm, there's a greater chance of either he/she or the people near the victim being wounded. Homicides should drop in this context.
You've heard the saying before... Figures never lie, but lairs figure.... Statistics and the visual graphs they are used to create are opportunities to do a lot of figuring so it's easy to make some issue to look any way you like. All it takes is a willingness to misdirect and some fairly simple techniques and just about ANY statistic can be twisted.
... everybody and his dog will think malware is a thing of the past.
I hold no such illusion. Malware is here to stay and the only thing anybody can do is try to make it difficult to produce Malware. There will be no lasting solutions to this problem as long as the PC platform continues with multiple vendors producing hardware.
So who in their right mind is suggesting that we even need to do such a stupid thing as adding more sulfates to the atmosphere on purpose? To grow more food? Not likely. Reduce solar heating and counteract Global Warming? Seriously?
Pumping sulfates into the atmosphere is basically what causes acid rain and purposely pumping tones of this stuff into the air is not a good idea for the environment. Besides the quickest way to do this would be to return to burning high sulfur coal for power...
This is clearly just another scientist trying to secure or justify funding for investigating some crazy hair brained "Global Warming" snake oil fix. It is like funding the "free energy" science schemes or searching for the fountain of youth.
This is nothing but a huge waste of money and time..
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they do have a large market share in the PC world and thus have most of the control. One can debate if Microsoft should be allowed to continue its domination of the desktop market, but that's not what this is all about. This is a plain and simple security issue, and Microsoft should be commended for making the effort to deal with it. Where I share your concern about Microsoft literally "holding the keys" in this case, I don't see them acting in bad faith (at least at this point). I also commend Fedora for their thoughtful approach and willingness to cough up the nominal fee on behalf of their user base. Other distributions would do well to emulate Fedora's approach and maintain the security throughout the whole system by requiring the use of digital signatures for kernels, modules and the like.
The concern here is that with Microsoft holding the keys, they further strengthen their domination of the desktop world. I'm not stupid enough to think Microsoft won't ever leverage this new power for profit, but what are the options at this point? Perhaps we could get Microsoft to agree to creating an independent third party to hold the keys and sign the code? Many folks might feel better, but I don't think it would fix the real issues in play here.
(assuming, of course that no one breaks the scheme)
I think that is a bad assumption. Eventually somebody will crack this scheme and be able to sign code without paying Micro$oft to sign it and then the whole gig will be over, at least until everybody can get their hardware upgraded. Given that the Linux community along with all the Black Hat Hackers out there will be looking for the key, I don't think it will take that long.
Personally, I figure that this is a good thing, assuming you can continue to disable "secure boot" and run what you want, because it means that life is harder for malware writers in general.
Simple solution to this problem is to first get NTP running on a Linux that is tied to a local GPS receiver and make sure it's running long enough to be stable (a few days). Start probing port 80 by opening TCP connections and record response times. Average the times. Divide by two and subtract that from the appointed time. You might want to subtract a bit more to account for the internal server delays. Write a small program that can hit the virtual "login" button at the calculated time. You should be able to get your "login" request to arrive at the destination very close to the right time if you are careful to get the TCP port opened and stable, then do the HTTP post/Get or what have you at the calculated time.
Want to be even more accurate? Find a server to do this on that is the least number of hops between you and the server, opting for the lowest latency links you can manage. But this just makes the calculations more sure, the problem remains the same.
Anybody trying to hit the "submit" button manually is going to loose..
You are correct! They don't pay enough but they are also unwilling to spend money developing the talent they need.
Hire someone who has 80% of the skills you need and a solid work history and pay for training in the 20% of the skills they lack. It may be costly in the short run, but you will get what you want/need and a likely gain a loyal employee. If you are worried that folks may take advantage of you and take the skills you paid them to learn elsewhere, then you are not PAYING enough in the first place.
Personally, I'd be willing to take significantly less money if the employer is willing to help shoulder the costs and help facilitate training by flexing work schedules so I can develop the skills they want and I need. A regular refreshing of certifications and formal training in new skills is worth a LOT to folks like me. It makes us more valuable, more productive and if the employer is supporting it, a lot happier with my work.
I thought it was just a side effect of drinking the stuff.... Like the floor smacking me in the face... Hey, bar-keep! Keep'm coming until the bubbles start sinking...
I think a dialer would have no way to know that the called party was trying to hang up until the local switch processed the "on hook" (hang up) event. Looking at the SS7 ISUP signaling, there is nothing that would carry that information back to the caller that indicated a hook flash once the call was Answered.
As I recall the one commercial dialer I worked on years ago, we did listen for modem tones, but would pass any answered calls to the operators for processing. We could also hear the "Beep" from most answering machines and deal with that by calling back later, but it was hit/miss at best. We could also listen for silence, and only transfer calls that somebody said "hello" (actually anything else) to operators, but we would hang up on silence after a few seconds, not on a called party hook flash. All this was done to reduce the Long Distance charges and not pass bad calls to operators that where paid by the hour. The motive was $$ not because the called party might need to make a 911 call.
Right, like the script kitties could tell they where dealing with a Mac much less have a workable scam for Mac they could talk the hapless Apple user though over the phone. If it ain't windows, they ain't getting anywhere cause they usually only know windows.
Before my ISP started blocking port 80,I ran an Apache web server on a stand alone Linux box in my DMZ that had nothing but a single HTML page on it. 99.99% of the access logs where exploits that only worked on Windows products and multiple break in attempts where from the same IP over and over. If they where too ignorant to look at the server type before they tried to break in, or if they somehow figured that what didn't work 15 seconds ago might work this time then it sure fits the view that they are pretty unsophisticated in their approaches when they are trying to break in.
Just running an OS other than Windows offers significant protection from the bulk of web based attacks. Not that it makes breaking in any harder mind you, it's just that most of the "hackers" out there don't know the difference between Red Hat, Ubuntu or Windows and usually cannot even understand what an IP address is much less a TCP port because they just run the tool somebody else wrote for them. These folks don't scare me.
Of course there are a FEW folks who don't fall into what I call "Script Kitties" class, and they are really the dangerous ones because they understand that it is not the breaking in, but the exploitation of getting access that matters. Most of these guys/gals are not going to call you on your phone unless they have reason to target you, and you can bet they won't resort to such low tech methods described in this article.
Well... There used to be a slight delay (like 10 seconds) between the "on hook" (current stops flowing in the loop) and the processing of the "on Hook" condition by the switch. This was to avoid disconnecting calls for momentary current breaks such as when you where dialing a rotary phone or if the user was doing a hook "flash" to switch between parties in a 3-way call. In some cases this delay has been emulated by recent phone system designs for compatibility reasons or simply because that's the way things used to work and the spec still calls for it. These days, I don't think there are many land line phones doing rotary dial and processing flash hook signals, at least in the industrialized world.
This feature was what caused the "Telemarketers have total control of my phone when they call and I can't hang up on them!" rumor from yesteryear. I'm betting that this was the reason you couldn't hang up on them. Next time hang up and wait about 20 seconds and I'll bet you will get a dial tone when you pick up.
I think you are incorrect for most cases. As I understand "insider" trading, it doesn't matter if there is profit or not and disclosing inside information, even by mistake, to a non-insider (as defined by the SEC) makes one subject to criminal prosecution. Further, the use of "inside" information from non-public sources (phone taps, bugs, hacking, over hearing, finding paperwork on the street etc.), even if legally obtained, is not allowed to be used for trading. I'm guessing that a jury might not convict if you lost money on the trades and a prosecutor may simply choose not to press charges, but for most of us it is illegal.
The only exception to this rule is for members of congress, who ARE specifically allowed to trade on inside information any time they wish without fear of getting charged.. But I'm not in this select group and it's not that they are not breaking the law, but that they can't be prosecuted for it.
Micro$oft just needs to pay up as the judge ruled to get their consoles out of customs or wait for the appeal and not have them in the market. If they don't want to pay in the future, simply remove the offending IP from any new consoles. It may not be profitable for Micro$oft's game console business, but it is what it is.
My Guess is that Micro$soft will eventually pay up, but right now they are hoping to reduce the supply of units in the pipeline by slowing production. The game console business is not very profitable, so this may just hasten the end, but it will surely be cheaper to pay up and sell already built hardware than to just dump it into the trash.
You are correct. IF inside information was tipped and not properly released then there is a serious legal problem for some folks here. One cannot trade on inside (not public) information no matter what the source, no matter what the company.
My guess here is some green horn insider at Facebook spilled the beans by passing improperly vetted inside information to a select few. This tipped off the underwriters, who then traded the stock to their advantage. There will be two issues for the legal system to sort out. First, if anybody broke the insider trading laws (like Martha Stewart did) by tipping or receiving inside information and trading. Both the tipper and the one being tipped are subject to criminal prosecution for violating SEC rules so there could be a bunch of folks at risk here. Second there will be the civil case of the investors who traded without having the same access to information as others. They will claim that Facebook improperly handled inside information and should pay their losses.
It's really not modulation technique here. You could simply put a plain carrier with no modulation on the air and swamp the front end of the GPS receivers in the area which are trying to receive the small signals available from the satellites. Unless you can keep the power at or below the level that de-senses the GPS receivers operating in the adjacent band (i.e. following the FCC's established rules for the spectrum) you are interfering with GPS. So what kind of modulation technique are you suggesting here? Seems to me you are trying to violate the laws of physics too.
It's not about modulation, it's about power levels required to make their receivers work at usable data speeds totally swamping the front ends of the adjacent GPS receivers.
They could lower power levels, but you have to obey Physics by giving up your data rate and wiz bang modulation techniques are not going to fix the problem for you. I suppose one could get a some pretty low data rate stuff (like under 300 baud) to work at some really low powers. But it's going to be very expensive for the data rate you can expect and you are still going to be causing GPS issues. But for only low data rates, there are other spectrum spaces that would be cheaper and easier that are not near GPS or anything else that would be an issue.
The problem here is that they simply could not hope to transmit at high enough data rates without jamming GPS in the process on the spectrum they purchased on the cheap.
Who really cares? This reactor was extremely small and designed to be a neutron source. These kind of things exist in LOTS of places. I knew of two research reactors on campus when I was in college. One was being jack hammered apart and the other was being used for research (the first one's replacement). One time I got to look down into the reactor pool when it was critical, cool blue glow and all.
These things are NOT dangerous beyond their obvious use as a source of material for a dirty bomb so as long as they have enough security, they can build one in my back yard...
Did you miss the part in TFA where it explained that "LightSquared invested $4 billion in airwaves"? 4 Billion is still a lot of money, at least where I come from. I suppose for a nationwide network it probably pales in comparison to what AT&T or Verizon hold, but it is still a substantial investment. I wonder if the FCC will give them a refund on all those unused EM rays?
Oh sure, 4$ billion is a lot of money. Problem here is Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc spent even more for spectrum space allotted for high power use and Light Squared was trying to buy cheap spectrum and then get the rules changed. There was no way they could afford spectrum allotted for this kind of use and make their business model work. The licenses they have purchased can be sold to pay their creditors, but I don't think the FCC is going to give them a refund.
And if they did, why not move it somewhere else to some radio spectrum where it will not interfere
The answer to this question is simple they went cheap. They couldn't afford the spectrum they needed to make their business work so they purchased the cheap space next to GPS and they tried to use politics to get the FCC to let them re-purpose the cheap space for their use. They don't have any huge technology advance, they where just betting on the FCC changing its rules so they could get spectrum on the cheap. Without cheap spectrum, their business model wasn't going to work.
The really sad thing here (apart from the senseless waste of money and time trying to argue contrary to physics) is they *almost* got away with it. Most engineers fully understand that what they where trying to do was not going to work, but apparently this message didn't make it to the investors and creditors who will now loose.
It is scary to think the FCC darn near fell for this. We shouldn't be surprised though, they fell for the Broadband over Power Lines hype, so even though it was a risky bet, it wasn't totally without a chance. Glad physics and common sense carried the day, sorry folks are loosing money and jobs. RIP Light Squared, nice try.
It is likely that the primary cause of this was pilot error and what we have is controlled flight into fixed terrain. Demonstration flights are designed to wow the prospective customers and it seems likely that they where attempting to do a bit of sightseeing. After all, commercial aviation is usually boring because you are spending hours and hours going straight and level with only takeoff and landing being somewhat interesting. They where taking the local sightseeing tour to spice things up a bit, which is why they requested the lower altitude. You don't go lower without an emergency, unless you intend to land or look at something, and by all the accounts I've heard there was no emergency declared and there are few places to land around there.
The pilot may have been a great test pilot with lots of time in the aircraft he was flying, but I seriously doubt he has a lot of experience with the local terrain and weather conditions. Flying 500' from the tops of mountains can be a difficult thing on a clear day, but you add the tropical rains, possible winds driving air over the mountains and the risks go up. Bush pilots avoid these situations in much slower aircraft because it is too easy to run out of room faster than you can turn around or climb, this was a much faster less maneuverable aircraft than a C208 or Caravan. Further you have the issue of turbulence, up and down drafts that are common issues with mountain flying. These things can make maintaining altitude unexpectedly difficult when trying to maneuver. Smart pilots avoid unnecessary risks, this guy didn't because he was trying to sell airplanes. His requested altitude was ONLY 500' above the existing terrain in limited visibility, I'm pretty much going to call this pilot irresponsible for taking such risks.
It is possible a mechanical problem may have contributed to this, but unless we are talking about a MAJOR mechanical issue that made the aircraft totally un-flyable (an extremely rare situation), the primary cause of this accident is surely going to be pilot error. Even in the face of a major mechanical failure they are going to fault him for 1. flying too low , 2. Choosing to fly around dangerous terrain, 3. Choosing to fly in limited visibility where he had to maintain visual orientation to remain safe.
Chances are we have yet again another case of human error, stemming from lack of wise judgement. But that is no surprise because this is the most common killer in aviation with mechanical failure being order of magnitudes less likely.
Personally I don't see the point of social media beyond saying "hi" and "how are you" so I participate, but I DON'T post the kind of stuff I've seen some post. (I'm just guessing, but some of them are going to be sorry they posted some of the photos I've seen, but that's beside the point.) It might be a good idea to not post stuff online that might make a future employer think twice about you, just in case it slips out or your account gets hacked or something.
My point was that anything you post, can and some will likely outlive you online, even if you "delete" it or think you are posting it privately. I don't think I'd willingly give up my passwords to an employer either, but I try not to have anything to hide in the first place so it's not a huge issue for me. I'm just guessing here, but if an employer wanted to bad enough, they have enough information to obtain just about anything they want on you, including having somebody impersonate you to get any passwords, account numbers and access to just about all available information on you. All it takes is a lack of scruples, $$ and enough starting information and they are going to have everything anyway.
About my personal laptop? Well... Nothing to hide there, but if they asked the answer would be no.
Problem with all this is that they have to be careful anyway. There are a whole host of questions they simply cannot ask and if their attempts to obtain information like this borders on getting answers to questions they are not allowed to ask. I think the courts would take a very dim view if they somehow seemed to be not hiring folks because of their marital status or some other protected area so I don't think this law is necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
. In "small" crimes, both the victim and the bad guy are better off without guns.
What in the heck is a "small" crime? So they don't bring a gun, they bring a knife and who's still at the disadvantage? The poor unarmed pheasant who can only call the police and hope they arrive in time to keep him from bodily harm or death. Personally I don't care if the "bad guy" is at more risk or not, but I do care about the victim.
Violent crime is not less prevalent where guns are banned, people still get robbed, murdered and such. It may be harder to get a gun, but that didn't stop the IRA in England from having them. Criminals don't care what the law is, if they want a gun to help commit a crime, they can still get them.
What you are suggesting is that we should simply disarm and hope that the criminal does too. Problem is that the law abiding victims are then the ones who will pay the largest price because they will be the first to be disarmed. This does not sound like a good idea to me.
Guns kill people no matter how you look at it.
I know of no gun being built for the public that is designed to kill on its own. I've heard of no cases where a gun loaded itself and discharged, much less killed on its own. Every gun I've seen requires somebody to load it, point it and pull the trigger before it would have the potential to kill anything or anybody.
Guns don't kill, People kill.
Guns are simply man made devices that can be used for good or evil. When properly used for the right purpose, they do much good. When improperly handled or used for evil, they can do much harm. But saying they kill people is inaccurate. Somebody has to load a gun, point it and pull the trigger in order for somebody to be killed by a gun. The person using the gun is responsible for killing, not the gun which was just the tool used to kill.
Now if you are trying to say that giving folks guns encourages them to kill, I will argue that folks have been killing each other since Genesis Chapter 4, which was long before the invention of firearms and they'll be doing it long after firearms go the way of 8 track tapes (if they ever do). Thus I'm not buying your argument. Guns are but tools.
Statistics show that if the victim has a firearm, there's a greater chance of either he/she or the people near the victim being wounded. Homicides should drop in this context.
You've heard the saying before... Figures never lie, but lairs figure.... Statistics and the visual graphs they are used to create are opportunities to do a lot of figuring so it's easy to make some issue to look any way you like. All it takes is a willingness to misdirect and some fairly simple techniques and just about ANY statistic can be twisted.
... everybody and his dog will think malware is a thing of the past.
I hold no such illusion. Malware is here to stay and the only thing anybody can do is try to make it difficult to produce Malware. There will be no lasting solutions to this problem as long as the PC platform continues with multiple vendors producing hardware.
So who in their right mind is suggesting that we even need to do such a stupid thing as adding more sulfates to the atmosphere on purpose? To grow more food? Not likely. Reduce solar heating and counteract Global Warming? Seriously?
Pumping sulfates into the atmosphere is basically what causes acid rain and purposely pumping tones of this stuff into the air is not a good idea for the environment. Besides the quickest way to do this would be to return to burning high sulfur coal for power...
This is clearly just another scientist trying to secure or justify funding for investigating some crazy hair brained "Global Warming" snake oil fix. It is like funding the "free energy" science schemes or searching for the fountain of youth.
This is nothing but a huge waste of money and time..
Reality rules here.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they do have a large market share in the PC world and thus have most of the control. One can debate if Microsoft should be allowed to continue its domination of the desktop market, but that's not what this is all about. This is a plain and simple security issue, and Microsoft should be commended for making the effort to deal with it. Where I share your concern about Microsoft literally "holding the keys" in this case, I don't see them acting in bad faith (at least at this point). I also commend Fedora for their thoughtful approach and willingness to cough up the nominal fee on behalf of their user base. Other distributions would do well to emulate Fedora's approach and maintain the security throughout the whole system by requiring the use of digital signatures for kernels, modules and the like.
The concern here is that with Microsoft holding the keys, they further strengthen their domination of the desktop world. I'm not stupid enough to think Microsoft won't ever leverage this new power for profit, but what are the options at this point? Perhaps we could get Microsoft to agree to creating an independent third party to hold the keys and sign the code? Many folks might feel better, but I don't think it would fix the real issues in play here.
(assuming, of course that no one breaks the scheme)
I think that is a bad assumption. Eventually somebody will crack this scheme and be able to sign code without paying Micro$oft to sign it and then the whole gig will be over, at least until everybody can get their hardware upgraded. Given that the Linux community along with all the Black Hat Hackers out there will be looking for the key, I don't think it will take that long.
Personally, I figure that this is a good thing, assuming you can continue to disable "secure boot" and run what you want, because it means that life is harder for malware writers in general.
Wouldn't slashslashslash.dotdotdot.slashslashslash be more of a cry for help?
oops... That's dotdotdot.slashslashslash.dotdotdot.. My bad..
Or even worse: slashdot.dotslashdotdot.dotdotdot.dotslashdotdot.slashslashdot That URL would just be a cry for help.
Wouldn't slashslashslash.dotdotdot.slashslashslash be more of a cry for help?
73s
Simple solution to this problem is to first get NTP running on a Linux that is tied to a local GPS receiver and make sure it's running long enough to be stable (a few days). Start probing port 80 by opening TCP connections and record response times. Average the times. Divide by two and subtract that from the appointed time. You might want to subtract a bit more to account for the internal server delays. Write a small program that can hit the virtual "login" button at the calculated time. You should be able to get your "login" request to arrive at the destination very close to the right time if you are careful to get the TCP port opened and stable, then do the HTTP post/Get or what have you at the calculated time.
Want to be even more accurate? Find a server to do this on that is the least number of hops between you and the server, opting for the lowest latency links you can manage. But this just makes the calculations more sure, the problem remains the same.
Anybody trying to hit the "submit" button manually is going to loose..
You are correct! They don't pay enough but they are also unwilling to spend money developing the talent they need.
Hire someone who has 80% of the skills you need and a solid work history and pay for training in the 20% of the skills they lack. It may be costly in the short run, but you will get what you want/need and a likely gain a loyal employee. If you are worried that folks may take advantage of you and take the skills you paid them to learn elsewhere, then you are not PAYING enough in the first place.
Personally, I'd be willing to take significantly less money if the employer is willing to help shoulder the costs and help facilitate training by flexing work schedules so I can develop the skills they want and I need. A regular refreshing of certifications and formal training in new skills is worth a LOT to folks like me. It makes us more valuable, more productive and if the employer is supporting it, a lot happier with my work.
I thought it was just a side effect of drinking the stuff.... Like the floor smacking me in the face... Hey, bar-keep! Keep'm coming until the bubbles start sinking...
I think a dialer would have no way to know that the called party was trying to hang up until the local switch processed the "on hook" (hang up) event. Looking at the SS7 ISUP signaling, there is nothing that would carry that information back to the caller that indicated a hook flash once the call was Answered.
As I recall the one commercial dialer I worked on years ago, we did listen for modem tones, but would pass any answered calls to the operators for processing. We could also hear the "Beep" from most answering machines and deal with that by calling back later, but it was hit/miss at best. We could also listen for silence, and only transfer calls that somebody said "hello" (actually anything else) to operators, but we would hang up on silence after a few seconds, not on a called party hook flash. All this was done to reduce the Long Distance charges and not pass bad calls to operators that where paid by the hour. The motive was $$ not because the called party might need to make a 911 call.
Right, like the script kitties could tell they where dealing with a Mac much less have a workable scam for Mac they could talk the hapless Apple user though over the phone. If it ain't windows, they ain't getting anywhere cause they usually only know windows.
Before my ISP started blocking port 80,I ran an Apache web server on a stand alone Linux box in my DMZ that had nothing but a single HTML page on it. 99.99% of the access logs where exploits that only worked on Windows products and multiple break in attempts where from the same IP over and over. If they where too ignorant to look at the server type before they tried to break in, or if they somehow figured that what didn't work 15 seconds ago might work this time then it sure fits the view that they are pretty unsophisticated in their approaches when they are trying to break in.
Just running an OS other than Windows offers significant protection from the bulk of web based attacks. Not that it makes breaking in any harder mind you, it's just that most of the "hackers" out there don't know the difference between Red Hat, Ubuntu or Windows and usually cannot even understand what an IP address is much less a TCP port because they just run the tool somebody else wrote for them. These folks don't scare me.
Of course there are a FEW folks who don't fall into what I call "Script Kitties" class, and they are really the dangerous ones because they understand that it is not the breaking in, but the exploitation of getting access that matters. Most of these guys/gals are not going to call you on your phone unless they have reason to target you, and you can bet they won't resort to such low tech methods described in this article.
Well... There used to be a slight delay (like 10 seconds) between the "on hook" (current stops flowing in the loop) and the processing of the "on Hook" condition by the switch. This was to avoid disconnecting calls for momentary current breaks such as when you where dialing a rotary phone or if the user was doing a hook "flash" to switch between parties in a 3-way call. In some cases this delay has been emulated by recent phone system designs for compatibility reasons or simply because that's the way things used to work and the spec still calls for it. These days, I don't think there are many land line phones doing rotary dial and processing flash hook signals, at least in the industrialized world.
This feature was what caused the "Telemarketers have total control of my phone when they call and I can't hang up on them!" rumor from yesteryear. I'm betting that this was the reason you couldn't hang up on them. Next time hang up and wait about 20 seconds and I'll bet you will get a dial tone when you pick up.
I think you are incorrect for most cases. As I understand "insider" trading, it doesn't matter if there is profit or not and disclosing inside information, even by mistake, to a non-insider (as defined by the SEC) makes one subject to criminal prosecution. Further, the use of "inside" information from non-public sources (phone taps, bugs, hacking, over hearing, finding paperwork on the street etc.), even if legally obtained, is not allowed to be used for trading. I'm guessing that a jury might not convict if you lost money on the trades and a prosecutor may simply choose not to press charges, but for most of us it is illegal.
The only exception to this rule is for members of congress, who ARE specifically allowed to trade on inside information any time they wish without fear of getting charged.. But I'm not in this select group and it's not that they are not breaking the law, but that they can't be prosecuted for it.
Micro$oft just needs to pay up as the judge ruled to get their consoles out of customs or wait for the appeal and not have them in the market. If they don't want to pay in the future, simply remove the offending IP from any new consoles. It may not be profitable for Micro$oft's game console business, but it is what it is.
My Guess is that Micro$soft will eventually pay up, but right now they are hoping to reduce the supply of units in the pipeline by slowing production. The game console business is not very profitable, so this may just hasten the end, but it will surely be cheaper to pay up and sell already built hardware than to just dump it into the trash.
You are correct. IF inside information was tipped and not properly released then there is a serious legal problem for some folks here. One cannot trade on inside (not public) information no matter what the source, no matter what the company.
My guess here is some green horn insider at Facebook spilled the beans by passing improperly vetted inside information to a select few. This tipped off the underwriters, who then traded the stock to their advantage. There will be two issues for the legal system to sort out. First, if anybody broke the insider trading laws (like Martha Stewart did) by tipping or receiving inside information and trading. Both the tipper and the one being tipped are subject to criminal prosecution for violating SEC rules so there could be a bunch of folks at risk here. Second there will be the civil case of the investors who traded without having the same access to information as others. They will claim that Facebook improperly handled inside information and should pay their losses.
Both cases seem to have merit.
It's really not modulation technique here. You could simply put a plain carrier with no modulation on the air and swamp the front end of the GPS receivers in the area which are trying to receive the small signals available from the satellites. Unless you can keep the power at or below the level that de-senses the GPS receivers operating in the adjacent band (i.e. following the FCC's established rules for the spectrum) you are interfering with GPS. So what kind of modulation technique are you suggesting here? Seems to me you are trying to violate the laws of physics too.
It's not about modulation, it's about power levels required to make their receivers work at usable data speeds totally swamping the front ends of the adjacent GPS receivers.
They could lower power levels, but you have to obey Physics by giving up your data rate and wiz bang modulation techniques are not going to fix the problem for you. I suppose one could get a some pretty low data rate stuff (like under 300 baud) to work at some really low powers. But it's going to be very expensive for the data rate you can expect and you are still going to be causing GPS issues. But for only low data rates, there are other spectrum spaces that would be cheaper and easier that are not near GPS or anything else that would be an issue.
The problem here is that they simply could not hope to transmit at high enough data rates without jamming GPS in the process on the spectrum they purchased on the cheap.
Who really cares? This reactor was extremely small and designed to be a neutron source. These kind of things exist in LOTS of places. I knew of two research reactors on campus when I was in college. One was being jack hammered apart and the other was being used for research (the first one's replacement). One time I got to look down into the reactor pool when it was critical, cool blue glow and all.
These things are NOT dangerous beyond their obvious use as a source of material for a dirty bomb so as long as they have enough security, they can build one in my back yard...
Did you miss the part in TFA where it explained that "LightSquared invested $4 billion in airwaves"? 4 Billion is still a lot of money, at least where I come from. I suppose for a nationwide network it probably pales in comparison to what AT&T or Verizon hold, but it is still a substantial investment. I wonder if the FCC will give them a refund on all those unused EM rays?
Oh sure, 4$ billion is a lot of money. Problem here is Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc spent even more for spectrum space allotted for high power use and Light Squared was trying to buy cheap spectrum and then get the rules changed. There was no way they could afford spectrum allotted for this kind of use and make their business model work. The licenses they have purchased can be sold to pay their creditors, but I don't think the FCC is going to give them a refund.
Bye Bye Light Squared...
And if they did, why not move it somewhere else to some radio spectrum where it will not interfere
The answer to this question is simple they went cheap. They couldn't afford the spectrum they needed to make their business work so they purchased the cheap space next to GPS and they tried to use politics to get the FCC to let them re-purpose the cheap space for their use. They don't have any huge technology advance, they where just betting on the FCC changing its rules so they could get spectrum on the cheap. Without cheap spectrum, their business model wasn't going to work.
The really sad thing here (apart from the senseless waste of money and time trying to argue contrary to physics) is they *almost* got away with it. Most engineers fully understand that what they where trying to do was not going to work, but apparently this message didn't make it to the investors and creditors who will now loose.
It is scary to think the FCC darn near fell for this. We shouldn't be surprised though, they fell for the Broadband over Power Lines hype, so even though it was a risky bet, it wasn't totally without a chance. Glad physics and common sense carried the day, sorry folks are loosing money and jobs. RIP Light Squared, nice try.
It is likely that the primary cause of this was pilot error and what we have is controlled flight into fixed terrain. Demonstration flights are designed to wow the prospective customers and it seems likely that they where attempting to do a bit of sightseeing. After all, commercial aviation is usually boring because you are spending hours and hours going straight and level with only takeoff and landing being somewhat interesting. They where taking the local sightseeing tour to spice things up a bit, which is why they requested the lower altitude. You don't go lower without an emergency, unless you intend to land or look at something, and by all the accounts I've heard there was no emergency declared and there are few places to land around there.
The pilot may have been a great test pilot with lots of time in the aircraft he was flying, but I seriously doubt he has a lot of experience with the local terrain and weather conditions. Flying 500' from the tops of mountains can be a difficult thing on a clear day, but you add the tropical rains, possible winds driving air over the mountains and the risks go up. Bush pilots avoid these situations in much slower aircraft because it is too easy to run out of room faster than you can turn around or climb, this was a much faster less maneuverable aircraft than a C208 or Caravan. Further you have the issue of turbulence, up and down drafts that are common issues with mountain flying. These things can make maintaining altitude unexpectedly difficult when trying to maneuver. Smart pilots avoid unnecessary risks, this guy didn't because he was trying to sell airplanes. His requested altitude was ONLY 500' above the existing terrain in limited visibility, I'm pretty much going to call this pilot irresponsible for taking such risks.
It is possible a mechanical problem may have contributed to this, but unless we are talking about a MAJOR mechanical issue that made the aircraft totally un-flyable (an extremely rare situation), the primary cause of this accident is surely going to be pilot error. Even in the face of a major mechanical failure they are going to fault him for 1. flying too low , 2. Choosing to fly around dangerous terrain, 3. Choosing to fly in limited visibility where he had to maintain visual orientation to remain safe.
Chances are we have yet again another case of human error, stemming from lack of wise judgement. But that is no surprise because this is the most common killer in aviation with mechanical failure being order of magnitudes less likely.
Personally I don't see the point of social media beyond saying "hi" and "how are you" so I participate, but I DON'T post the kind of stuff I've seen some post. (I'm just guessing, but some of them are going to be sorry they posted some of the photos I've seen, but that's beside the point.) It might be a good idea to not post stuff online that might make a future employer think twice about you, just in case it slips out or your account gets hacked or something.
My point was that anything you post, can and some will likely outlive you online, even if you "delete" it or think you are posting it privately. I don't think I'd willingly give up my passwords to an employer either, but I try not to have anything to hide in the first place so it's not a huge issue for me. I'm just guessing here, but if an employer wanted to bad enough, they have enough information to obtain just about anything they want on you, including having somebody impersonate you to get any passwords, account numbers and access to just about all available information on you. All it takes is a lack of scruples, $$ and enough starting information and they are going to have everything anyway.
About my personal laptop? Well... Nothing to hide there, but if they asked the answer would be no.
Problem with all this is that they have to be careful anyway. There are a whole host of questions they simply cannot ask and if their attempts to obtain information like this borders on getting answers to questions they are not allowed to ask. I think the courts would take a very dim view if they somehow seemed to be not hiring folks because of their marital status or some other protected area so I don't think this law is necessary.