Sure, it may be pseudo-random 20-character passwords, but there are some real issues that make brute-force attacks work better:
Even characters are the last letter of the second word, so this is likely to be an 's' for plural-looking blots, and not so likely to be a, i, o, u, and almost definitely not q.
The length of the password is known.
There are no capital letters. In fact, they're all lowercase letters.
A normal dictionary attack on twenty characters would have 94^20, 2.90e39 permutations. The passwords with the restrictions listed above would be at MOST 26^10*25^10 (assuming no q's in the even positions), or 2.37e14, possibilities. Using some "probably's" listed above, you could save some of the less likely combinations for the end of the list.
OTOH, an eight-character max, mixed-case password that could have special characters will have (i=1..8)94^i (sorry, I can't do sigma notation) possibilities, which is 6.16e15. That's 26x as many as the method listed above, and given that the human mind can easily remember between five and nine characters, it seems we're better off memorizing some sequence from/dev/random.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a mathematician. I may be talking out of my ass. Please correct me if I am.
Yep, that's some fine work on FrontPage. Lemme just tell you what's wrong with this, in case any of you aspiring young web designers need to know.
Put up a nicer message. This page is typically only going to be seen for a few seconds, if at all, but when the destination is down, would you want your visitors to be looking at that?
A link would have been nice, to accomodate those who have turned off javascript. Yeah, I know this doesn't apply to many, but it's not difficult to do. In addition, instead of making users refresh (thereby burdening this server), users can just keep clicking the link if the destination page doesn't load.
PERSdata??? What the hell is up with that? First, use all lowercase. Second, don't give your directories scary names like that. It scares the children.
I think we're beyond the 8.3 filename conventions now. mv intro.htm index.html
If this is my first impression of a site, you can be sure I won't be trusting it to deal with my personal information.
No, I'm sorry, I most certainly do not have to respect those that choose differently.
OK, instead of "have to" respect others, I meant "should." If you don't want to respect the opinions and priorities of other people, then that's your choice. The rest of your post is just ridiculous; comparing 18th-century America with a satellite tv supplier? Do you look at every facet of your life like this? If somebody cuts you off while driving, do you chase them down and fight for your rights because of how hard life was for people who used to live here a few hundred years ago?
I don't think he "rolled over to some bully" just because it's "easier." He chose the path which would cause the least amount of harm to himself and his family. He accepted that life isn't fair, and he understood that it is beyond his abilities to right every wrong. Anybody who is as set as you are to stand up against everything that stands in your way is sure to waste your life fighting battles, rather than enjoying life.
If you're not willing to fight for what's right, then anything else you want to do is worthless.
Unfortunately, we have to choose our battles, and respect those who don't choose the same as we might. And frankly, I think the guy made the right choice by not fighting this battle. How much would it cost to fight this in court? A lot more than $3500, I'm sure. And that doesn't even guarantee he'd win in court. Better to focus on winning in life, and that means doing what makes you happy, while minimizing what doesn't.
I'm not saying it's right for Hughes to do this, since there are clearly legitimate uses for smartcard readers. I'm also not saying that everybody should fold when the company threatens people like this. But if you expect everybody affected to fight for this, then you have to be prepared to fight for everything yourself. If you did, then you wouldn't have any time left to live your life, and then what are you fighting for? The fact is, this sort of treatment will always happen, and it's just a part of life you have to accept. Choose your battles wisely, and remember that life just isn't fair. Go do something that makes you happy.
I think that it's not illegal, but that doesn't mean they have to build a machine to let you do it. It's common practice these days for them to leave out desirable features and make you think it would be illegal to have them. But there's nothing illegal about recording a show on one machine and watching it on another.
I remember a few years (2 maybe?) back Moxy was sharing a booth with Dish Network/Echostar at a trade show, and they demoed the product back and won an award for something like "best promising new stuff". Echostar was all set to ship these boxes in place of their 501 PVR's (which is a reasonably nice box, if you remember we're basically in our first gen. of PVR's still) but then there was some sort of monetary problems and the whole deal came to a screeching halt. I was disappointed, as the box promised lots of nice things (basically all the same stuff they're promising now, only the programming is at Dish Network's prices, and picture quality is still better than cable).
But I went along and did my own thing. ATI All-in-wonder, Dish 501 PVR, 5-disc DVD/MP3 player, and a set of rabbit ears (gotta get my syndicated Simpsons episodes). Frankly, I think I've got a better solution with my setup than I could get from a single box like this, and I think the same holds true for many slashdotters. These all-in-one boxes are nice if you are satisfied with the choices your cable company makes, and for most non-technical consumers, that is fine. But if you have the know-how, a bag of RCA cables (and shielded coax and a few opticals), an extra computer, some disposable income, a PS2, a hub, and a broadband connection, it's much more satisfying to set up your own custom system. And it looks cooler.
microsoft doesn't want you copying Halo to your PC for an xbox rom any more than sony wants you burning a hacked SOCOM and running that to jack with network games. none of them want you copying zelda and passing it around. so they build in encryption measures.
Ah, but the difference is when you buy SOCOM for your PS2, you don't have to keep paying for it every month. And they won't take your game away if you stop giving them money. And if you call me up and say you just bought a PS2, I can come over with my Vice City disc and let you borrow it. Hypothetically.
I look at what will happen when the service provider stops providing the service. This is the same problem that the RIAA-blessed online music services have been facing, aside from the whole rip-off-your-customers thing. People don't want to lose all the stuff they bought if the vendor goes under, or if they decide they don't want to buy from the vendor anymore. If Atari did this way back when, I wouldn't be able to fire up Galaga on my 7800:) and I'm not being sarcastic, I really do play old video games sometimes. Even Pong. Think of the lack of historical records 200 years from now! They'll probably be able to see what Pac-Man was like, but they'll have a hard time playing games on a vintage Phantom machine.
Oh, what am I saying? They'll just hop in the time machine. 179 Space Credits for the first 500 years back, 2 SC/decade after that. Now there's a good business model.
I have bought seasons of TV shows, partly because they're higher quality, partly for the extra content, and partly to skip commercials. Well scratch that last one for the Sopranos, but I have no problem buying Simpsons seasons on DVD.
I doubt that selling seasons on DVD is a feasable business model if that were the only way they were released, but when you figure the shows were already produced, the cost of producing a DVD is significantly lower, which means they don't need to sell as many copies, and they'll still make a profit. It's called a blended offering. I think. Maybe not.
This system is in almost the same boat, just reversed a bit. If game developers have a product you can buy at EB, it's not going to cost them much to make it available through this system (aside from porting, if they don't have a PC version). Will they? It depends on the price model. The developers won't bother if the subscription model isn't attractive enough to consumers, and they won't bother if they think the cost of participation is higher than they can expect to get back, figuring in the fact that if somebody subscribes to a game on the Phantom system, they quite likely won't be buying the box at retail. Phanotm profits will have to be predominantly new customers, so as to not cut down on profits. I honestly don't know what will happen, but I'm going to be pessimistic and guess that they will fail before they can make a noticeable entry into the market.
Oh yea, there happens to be these guys called Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. Beethoven -- some 200 pieces. Mozart -- some 600. Bach -- some 1,200 pieces. That's a hell of alot of very popular non-infringing music (all of which is better than the best of the modern crap that you can get now).
Excellent point. I want to add to that a little, too - RIAA types keep telling us that if artists can't make music, then they won't create. Have you ever met a real artist who felt this way? Those artists you mentioned didn't create their art so that they could be rich - in their times, music was not a real career. They created because they were driven to create, and they were never promised huge sacks of gold coins. Yet they created hundreds of works.
Fast forward to today, and go to an open-mic night at a jazz club. Do these people make money? No. Are they artists who love to create? Absolutely. I firmly believe that the lack of financial incentive is what keeps music good - those who are driven by their own desire to create typically create better music than a professional songwriter who spends the work week writing what he/she thinks will appeal to the largest demographic. And while the former explores and provokes, the latter strives to spit out exactly what Joe Consumer, aged 21-34, is used to listening to on his favorite ClearChannel radio station.
I happen to be one of the musicians who is driven to create. I've spent far more than I've made, and it will probably stay that way for the rest of my life, but it hasn't stopped me yet. I made about $100 in royalties from a song recorded in 1995. My current band has mp3's freely available on our website (see the sig) and we would rather play a low-paying/free gig than not play at all. The art is the incentive, not the $0.14/album royalties that the RIAA pays its "recording artists." But the RIAA is only thinking about the executives and the Pop Star Factories that are only in it for the paychecks.
Actually, an MSN search on "microsoft google slashdot" is pretty piss-poor.
The first result is in Italian.
The second is a blog entry about Google buying a company that makes blogging software (a link to slashdot is mentioned at the bottom, and there's a passing reference to Microsoft)
The third result is a blog entry, discussing way back when, when MS made a fake testimonial about a Mac-to-PC "switcher," and there's a link to a google cache of the site.
Result 4 is in Spanish (come on MS, how about some language tools?)
Result 5 is related, although not in this context. It compares the FUD that sometimes comes from slashdot, referencing when slashdot said Google owns all usenet posts. Not a bad result, if it wasn't two years old.
Result 6 is the same as result five, but an archive version of the blog entry (with a bunch of other), rather than a standalone page.
Result seven is a Techdirt article, and it happens to be the story we're looking for. The only mention of slashdot is "This site was built on the slashdot code," at the very bottom of the page.
Number 8 is a blog that is currently not responding. Google cache, perhaps?
Then there's a Russian page for number 9. Spasibo!
Number 10 is a list of search results for the phrase "microsoft buys slashdot" on a scientific literature search engine.
And number eleven goes to the Goatse.cx site.
I know this isn't MS's own engine, but holy crap, these are bad results. If they pay Inktomi for this, they don't seem to care how good the product is (insert obligatory MS-writes-bad-software-too comment here). I really doubt they will put something together that is leaps and bounds above their current search engine, let alone google's.
I don't care about Karma.:) Maybe tomorrow I'll post something informative or genuinely funny. Then the universe will be back in order. Of course, now I'll have to make two good posts.
Germans and DRM? Reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons....
Horst: [threatingly] We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine.
Burns: [recoils in mock horror] Oooh, the Germans are mad at me. I'm so scared! Oooh, the Germans! [hiding behind Smithers] Uh oh, the Germans are going to get me!
Horst: Stop it!
Man 2: Stop, sir.
Burns: Don't let the Germans come after me. Oh no, the Germans are coming after me.
Man 2: Please stop the `pretending you are scared' game, please.
Horst: Stop it! Stop it!
Burns: [brief pause, then resumes] No! They're so big and strong!
Man 2: Stop it.
Horst: Stop it, Mr. Burns.
Man 2: Please stop pretending you are scared of us, please, now.
Burns: Oh, protect me from the Germans! The Germans...
Horst: Burns, STOP IT!
-- ``Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk''
I don't know if this is significant but the statement says nothing about Linux except that SCO has made statements about it.
My impression was that it wasn't significant. IBM's release was intentionally short, and focused on one thing only. Opinions about Linux are beyond the scope of it.
Now, had they said that Linux is also ok, it would have been significant.
Oddly enough, this isn't the typical message for slashdotted servers. Usually it's some sort of timeout, either on behalf of the server itself, or otherwise in the form of an asp ("Site owner has not paid enough money to MS to allow this many connections') or php ("30 second request time exceeded") timeout message.
The "Forbidden" message usually means that either the directory is symlinked from the http document directory, or a file doesn't have read access for everybody (or the httpd process owner). To me, it looks like somebody ran "chmod 700" on this file because they didn't want to pay for that much bandwidth. In other words, they commited suicide before the slashdot army could knock them offline.
I think he means: "Included in the price of the room", not "free".
No, it's free! Like "Free printer when you buy this computer," or "Free CD player in this car," or "H/HW included in rental price of apartment," etc.
I can't believe people fall for that sort of crap. Do you think the business is just going to give you stuff at a loss just because they're nice folk? No! It's as transparent a marketing gimmick as charging $19.99. It's twenty freakin' dollars!
Spyware frequently lies to you about its intentions, or installs without telling you. This is where the invasion of privacy comes in, because you don't know that "they" are spying on you. I can't speak for others, but my concerns with spyware are that people who don't know as much about computers are filling their machines up with cometcursors and gator and the like, and me, being the good friend that I am, have to go clean up their systems for them. I don't mind them trying to install on my system so much, because I know how to find them and get rid of them (and I use linux on my home machine, which also helps a lot).
Tivo, on the other hand, is collecting market research data, and letting you know about it. They aren't hiding their intentions, and for that reason it's easier to trust that they are keeping to their word and not collecting information that can be used to track you individually. When the company tells you what it is up to, the privacy issue is not such a big deal.
If my understanding of ssh is correct, then it's already possible to transfer files back and forth via ssh. In fact, I believe that any kind of internet connection can be tunneled through ssh, as long as both the client and server support ssh. I use sftp to transfer files all the time, and I frequently open x sessions remotely by tunneling through ssh. So these issues that you bring up, while certainly interesting, have probably already been addressed by those who are concerned/knowledgeable.
If a company's policy is to not allow ftp but they don't block sftp, this is likely due to one of three reasons: a) the IT folk don't know about ssh/sftp, b) the ftp block is due to the easy snoopability of ftp and this doesn't apply to ssh, or c) they'd love to block sftp, but then they'd have to block ssh too, and it's needed for some important business functions.
I am just surprised that she lives that close to me! (Cohoes is a town just north of RPI, and about ten minutes down the road from Albany) I feel a bit too old for an 18-year-old geek model, though.
Is it suddenly not acceptable for slashdotters to joke about the stereotypical single-34-year-old-living-in-mom's-basement image? Seems like I see a lot of posts on here along the lines of "hey, she's not so hot, I can do better than that!" No, you can't. That's why you're posting to slashdot. If you could, you'd be doing something else on a saturday night.:)
I get the feeling that a lot of the people here complaining that she isn't so good looking have a hidden agenda - trash-talk the attractive girl, so the other geeks think you're fighting off women with a stick. It didn't work for me, I just assumed you took a break from the pr0n to read some slashdot. I for one think she's attractive, maybe not supermodel attractive, but if I saw her on the street I'd take notice. And she lives nearby so I might just see her on the street! Then I can be all like, hey, you're that girl from Aimster, and she'd be all like yeah, that's me baby, what's up, and I'd be all like nothin, what's up with you, wanna go out for a beer, and she'd be all like I can't, I'm only 18, and I'd be like hey, how about if I bought you some beer and we drank it over at my place, and stuff. (Sorry, I'm in the middle of moving, so I'm exhausted and all I have set up is my computer)
Sorry, he was too fast, hence the finnish language. What he ment to say is that he has a 30 years of experience in similar cases and none of them have led to any actual results, so it's just a waste of time talkin' about this issue, he thinks.
Wow, all that from that small blurb? I would have thought he said something like, "Frist Porst!" or "In soviet russia, prison users go to honeypot!"
Slashdot Mirror
- Even characters are the last letter of the second word, so this is likely to be an 's' for plural-looking blots, and not so likely to be a, i, o, u, and almost definitely not q.
- The length of the password is known.
- There are no capital letters. In fact, they're all lowercase letters.
A normal dictionary attack on twenty characters would have 94^20, 2.90e39 permutations. The passwords with the restrictions listed above would be at MOST 26^10*25^10 (assuming no q's in the even positions), or 2.37e14, possibilities. Using some "probably's" listed above, you could save some of the less likely combinations for the end of the list.OTOH, an eight-character max, mixed-case password that could have special characters will have (i=1..8)94^i (sorry, I can't do sigma notation) possibilities, which is 6.16e15. That's 26x as many as the method listed above, and given that the human mind can easily remember between five and nine characters, it seems we're better off memorizing some sequence from
DISCLAIMER: I am not a mathematician. I may be talking out of my ass. Please correct me if I am.
Looks like they need to research themselves up some better gear!
"Because Goldmine is a steaming piece of crap," I'd say, sometimes in my head, and sometimes aloud. "Guess I'll be drinking again tonight."
- Put up a nicer message. This page is typically only going to be seen for a few seconds, if at all, but when the destination is down, would you want your visitors to be looking at that?
- A link would have been nice, to accomodate those who have turned off javascript. Yeah, I know this doesn't apply to many, but it's not difficult to do. In addition, instead of making users refresh (thereby burdening this server), users can just keep clicking the link if the destination page doesn't load.
- PERSdata??? What the hell is up with that? First, use all lowercase. Second, don't give your directories scary names like that. It scares the children.
- I think we're beyond the 8.3 filename conventions now. mv intro.htm index.html
If this is my first impression of a site, you can be sure I won't be trusting it to deal with my personal information.I don't think he "rolled over to some bully" just because it's "easier." He chose the path which would cause the least amount of harm to himself and his family. He accepted that life isn't fair, and he understood that it is beyond his abilities to right every wrong. Anybody who is as set as you are to stand up against everything that stands in your way is sure to waste your life fighting battles, rather than enjoying life.
I'm not saying it's right for Hughes to do this, since there are clearly legitimate uses for smartcard readers. I'm also not saying that everybody should fold when the company threatens people like this. But if you expect everybody affected to fight for this, then you have to be prepared to fight for everything yourself. If you did, then you wouldn't have any time left to live your life, and then what are you fighting for? The fact is, this sort of treatment will always happen, and it's just a part of life you have to accept. Choose your battles wisely, and remember that life just isn't fair. Go do something that makes you happy.
I think that it's not illegal, but that doesn't mean they have to build a machine to let you do it. It's common practice these days for them to leave out desirable features and make you think it would be illegal to have them. But there's nothing illegal about recording a show on one machine and watching it on another.
Better spelling-nazi myself before somebody else does.
/opt/slash/comments/ $ cat 6460244 | sed s/Moxy/Moxi/g > 6460244;
:)
[joe@joe]
I'm sure that sed usage is wrong, but you get the idea.
I remember a few years (2 maybe?) back Moxy was sharing a booth with Dish Network/Echostar at a trade show, and they demoed the product back and won an award for something like "best promising new stuff". Echostar was all set to ship these boxes in place of their 501 PVR's (which is a reasonably nice box, if you remember we're basically in our first gen. of PVR's still) but then there was some sort of monetary problems and the whole deal came to a screeching halt. I was disappointed, as the box promised lots of nice things (basically all the same stuff they're promising now, only the programming is at Dish Network's prices, and picture quality is still better than cable).
But I went along and did my own thing. ATI All-in-wonder, Dish 501 PVR, 5-disc DVD/MP3 player, and a set of rabbit ears (gotta get my syndicated Simpsons episodes). Frankly, I think I've got a better solution with my setup than I could get from a single box like this, and I think the same holds true for many slashdotters. These all-in-one boxes are nice if you are satisfied with the choices your cable company makes, and for most non-technical consumers, that is fine. But if you have the know-how, a bag of RCA cables (and shielded coax and a few opticals), an extra computer, some disposable income, a PS2, a hub, and a broadband connection, it's much more satisfying to set up your own custom system. And it looks cooler.
I look at what will happen when the service provider stops providing the service. This is the same problem that the RIAA-blessed online music services have been facing, aside from the whole rip-off-your-customers thing. People don't want to lose all the stuff they bought if the vendor goes under, or if they decide they don't want to buy from the vendor anymore. If Atari did this way back when, I wouldn't be able to fire up Galaga on my 7800
Oh, what am I saying? They'll just hop in the time machine. 179 Space Credits for the first 500 years back, 2 SC/decade after that. Now there's a good business model.
I have bought seasons of TV shows, partly because they're higher quality, partly for the extra content, and partly to skip commercials. Well scratch that last one for the Sopranos, but I have no problem buying Simpsons seasons on DVD.
I doubt that selling seasons on DVD is a feasable business model if that were the only way they were released, but when you figure the shows were already produced, the cost of producing a DVD is significantly lower, which means they don't need to sell as many copies, and they'll still make a profit. It's called a blended offering. I think. Maybe not.
This system is in almost the same boat, just reversed a bit. If game developers have a product you can buy at EB, it's not going to cost them much to make it available through this system (aside from porting, if they don't have a PC version). Will they? It depends on the price model. The developers won't bother if the subscription model isn't attractive enough to consumers, and they won't bother if they think the cost of participation is higher than they can expect to get back, figuring in the fact that if somebody subscribes to a game on the Phantom system, they quite likely won't be buying the box at retail. Phanotm profits will have to be predominantly new customers, so as to not cut down on profits. I honestly don't know what will happen, but I'm going to be pessimistic and guess that they will fail before they can make a noticeable entry into the market.
Fast forward to today, and go to an open-mic night at a jazz club. Do these people make money? No. Are they artists who love to create? Absolutely. I firmly believe that the lack of financial incentive is what keeps music good - those who are driven by their own desire to create typically create better music than a professional songwriter who spends the work week writing what he/she thinks will appeal to the largest demographic. And while the former explores and provokes, the latter strives to spit out exactly what Joe Consumer, aged 21-34, is used to listening to on his favorite ClearChannel radio station.
I happen to be one of the musicians who is driven to create. I've spent far more than I've made, and it will probably stay that way for the rest of my life, but it hasn't stopped me yet. I made about $100 in royalties from a song recorded in 1995. My current band has mp3's freely available on our website (see the sig) and we would rather play a low-paying/free gig than not play at all. The art is the incentive, not the $0.14/album royalties that the RIAA pays its "recording artists." But the RIAA is only thinking about the executives and the Pop Star Factories that are only in it for the paychecks.
Number six rules me out. I guess that's the price you pay for having a last name like Stoner. But the good outweighs the bad, still.
- The first result is in Italian.
- The second is a blog entry about Google buying a company that makes blogging software (a link to slashdot is mentioned at the bottom, and there's a passing reference to Microsoft)
- The third result is a blog entry, discussing way back when, when MS made a fake testimonial about a Mac-to-PC "switcher," and there's a link to a google cache of the site.
- Result 4 is in Spanish (come on MS, how about some language tools?)
- Result 5 is related, although not in this context. It compares the FUD that sometimes comes from slashdot, referencing when slashdot said Google owns all usenet posts. Not a bad result, if it wasn't two years old.
- Result 6 is the same as result five, but an archive version of the blog entry (with a bunch of other), rather than a standalone page.
- Result seven is a Techdirt article, and it happens to be the story we're looking for. The only mention of slashdot is "This site was built on the slashdot code," at the very bottom of the page.
- Number 8 is a blog that is currently not responding. Google cache, perhaps?
- Then there's a Russian page for number 9. Spasibo!
- Number 10 is a list of search results for the phrase "microsoft buys slashdot" on a scientific literature search engine.
- And number eleven goes to the Goatse.cx site.
I know this isn't MS's own engine, but holy crap, these are bad results. If they pay Inktomi for this, they don't seem to care how good the product is (insert obligatory MS-writes-bad-software-too comment here). I really doubt they will put something together that is leaps and bounds above their current search engine, let alone google's.Karma PROTIP:
:) Maybe tomorrow I'll post something informative or genuinely funny. Then the universe will be back in order. Of course, now I'll have to make two good posts.
I don't care about Karma.
You took my comment! I was so just about to post that. Oh well, mod me redundant :)
Now, had they said that Linux is also ok, it would have been significant.
Oddly enough, this isn't the typical message for slashdotted servers. Usually it's some sort of timeout, either on behalf of the server itself, or otherwise in the form of an asp ("Site owner has not paid enough money to MS to allow this many connections') or php ("30 second request time exceeded") timeout message.
:)
The "Forbidden" message usually means that either the directory is symlinked from the http document directory, or a file doesn't have read access for everybody (or the httpd process owner). To me, it looks like somebody ran "chmod 700" on this file because they didn't want to pay for that much bandwidth. In other words, they commited suicide before the slashdot army could knock them offline.
Perhaps we should try to slashdot port 81.
I can't believe people fall for that sort of crap. Do you think the business is just going to give you stuff at a loss just because they're nice folk? No! It's as transparent a marketing gimmick as charging $19.99. It's twenty freakin' dollars!
Spyware frequently lies to you about its intentions, or installs without telling you. This is where the invasion of privacy comes in, because you don't know that "they" are spying on you. I can't speak for others, but my concerns with spyware are that people who don't know as much about computers are filling their machines up with cometcursors and gator and the like, and me, being the good friend that I am, have to go clean up their systems for them. I don't mind them trying to install on my system so much, because I know how to find them and get rid of them (and I use linux on my home machine, which also helps a lot).
Tivo, on the other hand, is collecting market research data, and letting you know about it. They aren't hiding their intentions, and for that reason it's easier to trust that they are keeping to their word and not collecting information that can be used to track you individually. When the company tells you what it is up to, the privacy issue is not such a big deal.
If my understanding of ssh is correct, then it's already possible to transfer files back and forth via ssh. In fact, I believe that any kind of internet connection can be tunneled through ssh, as long as both the client and server support ssh. I use sftp to transfer files all the time, and I frequently open x sessions remotely by tunneling through ssh. So these issues that you bring up, while certainly interesting, have probably already been addressed by those who are concerned/knowledgeable.
If a company's policy is to not allow ftp but they don't block sftp, this is likely due to one of three reasons: a) the IT folk don't know about ssh/sftp, b) the ftp block is due to the easy snoopability of ftp and this doesn't apply to ssh, or c) they'd love to block sftp, but then they'd have to block ssh too, and it's needed for some important business functions.
I am just surprised that she lives that close to me! (Cohoes is a town just north of RPI, and about ten minutes down the road from Albany) I feel a bit too old for an 18-year-old geek model, though.
:)
Is it suddenly not acceptable for slashdotters to joke about the stereotypical single-34-year-old-living-in-mom's-basement image? Seems like I see a lot of posts on here along the lines of "hey, she's not so hot, I can do better than that!" No, you can't. That's why you're posting to slashdot. If you could, you'd be doing something else on a saturday night.
I get the feeling that a lot of the people here complaining that she isn't so good looking have a hidden agenda - trash-talk the attractive girl, so the other geeks think you're fighting off women with a stick. It didn't work for me, I just assumed you took a break from the pr0n to read some slashdot. I for one think she's attractive, maybe not supermodel attractive, but if I saw her on the street I'd take notice. And she lives nearby so I might just see her on the street! Then I can be all like, hey, you're that girl from Aimster, and she'd be all like yeah, that's me baby, what's up, and I'd be all like nothin, what's up with you, wanna go out for a beer, and she'd be all like I can't, I'm only 18, and I'd be like hey, how about if I bought you some beer and we drank it over at my place, and stuff. (Sorry, I'm in the middle of moving, so I'm exhausted and all I have set up is my computer)