The average cop doesn't have the faintest clue about legitimate security testing as opposed to malicious hacking. Same tools, same methods, same general sort of people - Only the motivation differs, which the "target" can only discern after-the fact (and since the article mentions he failed to gain access, he can't even establish that much in his own defense).
I'd expect that one of the major differences would be an attempt to hide your identity. If this guy used his own computer and actually gave them his credit card info then it's hard to imagine he had hostile intent.
Consider "theft of services", which, according to Wikipedia, is a legal term. Theft of services does not deprive the victim of property. And yet, like more common forms of theft, it is typically prosecuted as larceny.
Did you actually read the Wikipedia article you linked to? All of the examples given either involve the theft of a product (gas, electricity, food from a restaurant) or causing the victim to expend additional time/money without paying (hospital services). In all of these cases the victim now has less of something (ultimately money) than they would if the theft hadn't happened. None of this applies at all to copyright infringment. When someone copies a CD they are not causing the publisher to do any additional work or expend any money, the publisher still has exactly the same money that they would have if the CD hadn't been copied. Calling copyright infringment "theft" simply adds confusion to the debate.
It makes you wonder if that for the states that don't want any involvement in the SST Project, whether they care that they are losing tax money for purchases in their state (regardless of how its collected).
As far as I can tell, the only states that "win" by joining in are those with high sales taxes and very little in the way of sales to out of state customers. Remember, it works both ways, if you can collect from other states then they can collect from you.
I have NO problem paying sales tax. I think that if I buy something shipped from California, for example, California's sales tax should be added to the order.
I agree that this makes by far the most sense but the reality is that in most (but not all) states sales taxes are technically taxes on the consumer rather than the business and California cannot directly tax New Jersy residents who stay put in New Jersy. The business is just acting as an agent in collecting those taxes.
There are no arguments about the CONSTITUTIONALITY of the taxes.
How about the idea that one state has no right to impose laws on the citizens of another state? I only see 2 ways for these states to get around this and neither is going to be good for anyone in the long term.
1. They get the federal courts to accept that whenever a transaction happens across state lines then it's the location of the customer that determines jurisdiction. Forget taxes for a minute, who would put anything on line if they had to abide by the laws of every city/county/state/nation on the planet?
2. What they actually appear to be trying. Have states A and B agree to each force thier own citizens to collect taxes for their partner states. The problem is that while you'll increase the revenue coming in from outside the state you'll also increase the amount of money leaving the state by more or less the same amount. The net result is that all you've done is increase the friction involved in every transaction and that's never good for the economy. Eventually many business will simply move out of any state that is part of this stupid scheme.
The problem is: sunlight exists everywhere, wind exists everywhere. RE power technologies are reliable and low-maintenance.
The problem is that neither sunlight or wind are available 24/7/365 so until someone comes up with much more effecient methods of storage and conversion these technologies are not going to be effecient for base loads. If you ever price out a solar system for your home (assuming you're planning to be completely off grid) you'll quickly find out that it's need to overproduce when possible and store for later that really drives the costs up.
Hook up power strips to the UPS outputs but beware about powerstrips not playing nicely with the generated square wave coming from the UPS when the AC line drops.
In general, a plain power strip is fine but anything that claims to be a surge protector can be a problem.
FWIW the answer is no. The external USB drives are seperate from the raid array. Also although you can read fat32 formatted external drives you cannot write to them in that or any other format a Win machine will know how to read.
Yes, we did train them. Specifically, I trained them as part of my job in the project as a whole. Their work didn't require Linux training specifically (they never touch a command line), just familiarization with the KDE desktop and OpenOffice. They caught on remarkably well at first, but after the new manager came on board and started her anti-Linux tirade, the employees followed suit and started calling us up for every trivial little question that they could have figured out by reading the docs, Googling, or just hunting around the application menus for a few seconds.
Honestly this sounds more like a social issue than a technical one. If the $$$ allows for it maybe you should consider spending a week or so out there on site both to deal with technical/training issues and more importantly to build (rebuild?) a rapore with the employees.
The thing is, even with Windows many users don't have any clue what they're doing. When something goes wrong they just chalk it up to "Windows just does that sometimes" or "these computers are too old" or even "I'm not good with computers". Basically any excuse that seems to fly with the bos is OK even if the real problem is that the Recycle Bin is not a good place for long term storage. With Linux or any other obvious alternative they have a ready made excuse for anything that doesn't work exactly as they expected, especially if their supervisor encourages it.
If you don't get in there and make these people comfortable (especially the boss) then even a conversion to Windows is going to be a problem because they've already decided that the problem is you.
I guess I'm just being dense but if your goal is technology integration then it seems that you'd be better off encoding whatever content you want on a local server using the pvr software of your choice and re-transmitting it via videolan or whatever. Dealing with content providers sounds a lot more like a job for a business major or lawyer (and a lot of $$$$). In any event (and IANAL) time and format shifting fall under fair use so many (but not all) uses of this sort of system seem to be perfectly legal.
First, many diesel cars get considerably better than 35mpg. If most of your driving is on the highway you'll get similar milage out of a hybrid as a diesel but in stop & go traffic the hybrid will win.
Second, diesels tend to be cleaner than gasoline engines in terms of greenhouse gasses but dirtier in terms of particulates.
Unfortunately much of our electricity comes from natural gas which is likely to become more expensive for basically the same reasons as gasoline so expect electricity prices to go up as well.
I have several machines with older 2.6 kernels and more than a year of uptime so for me it's been stable. I also have a few that I just upgraded to 2.6.12.4 recently that seem to be working fine. You really do need to make sure your modutils and maybe other user land tools (does anyone have a list?) is up to date and be cautious about enabling some of the new features but I havn't run into any unresolvable problems since switching. One annoyance is that you cannot just slap a kernel on a floppy and boot from that anymore.
"That was a very interesting phone call to the computer shop that day:)."
No doubt but can you imagine trying to explain something like that to a modern computer reseller like Dell? You'd never in a million years get them to understand something like that.
Typical Slashdot answer. You understand that most people do NOT want to check their server every once in a while to check if the bloody NIC is still working?
Typical "I've never managed a server before" answer.
If you're running a server that matters at all then you're also running some sort of monitoring program to make sure that your various services are up and running. Furthermore, how often does your switch just "lose power"? If you have an UPS for your server then why isn't your switch plugged into it as well?
And use a hell of a complicated solution to solve the problem?
Whart happens if you like using stokc diso kernel for some reason and there the NIC is not modularized?
I don't know what a "stokc diso" is but most distributions do ship with modularized kernels because it'd be nuts to compile in drivers for every piece of hardware known to man when you don't have to.
What happens if you want to use a specialized kernel for you machine with ALL the drivers built in because it is, well, faster??
What on earth makes you think that would be faster?
Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication mean that a great deal of the electricity that goes into your computer is given off as heat.
Actually virtually all of the electricity used by a computer is given off as heat. That's true of most other electronic devices as well and it doesn't have anything to do with "Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication".
All that being said, it is still not likely that the tech "accidently" stumbled across these files.
What makes you think that? The majority of computer repairs these days involve removing malware and much of that malware comes in through programs and web sites offering porn. Although I've never run into kiddy porn I've run into lots of normal porn and every one of those machines was infested to the point of uslessness with malware.
The EFF is defending the right of the person to not have his hard disk go through an unauthorized search.
Your right but I think the EFF is dead wrong here. It's one thing for the police to come into your house and search your computer (or anything else) without a warrent but when you invite someone in (and especially a private citizen) then you clearly don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy. If you ask someone to repair a computer then you KNOW that they are likely to stumble upon pretty much anything you have stored on there unless it's encrypted.
Slashdot Mirror
The average cop doesn't have the faintest clue about legitimate security testing as opposed to malicious hacking. Same tools, same methods, same general sort of people - Only the motivation differs, which the "target" can only discern after-the fact (and since the article mentions he failed to gain access, he can't even establish that much in his own defense).
I'd expect that one of the major differences would be an attempt to hide your identity. If this guy used his own computer and actually gave them his credit card info then it's hard to imagine he had hostile intent.
Consider "theft of services", which, according to Wikipedia, is a legal term. Theft of services does not deprive the victim of property. And yet, like more common forms of theft, it is typically prosecuted as larceny.
Did you actually read the Wikipedia article you linked to? All of the examples given either involve the theft of a product (gas, electricity, food from a restaurant) or causing the victim to expend additional time/money without paying (hospital services). In all of these cases the victim now has less of something (ultimately money) than they would if the theft hadn't happened. None of this applies at all to copyright infringment. When someone copies a CD they are not causing the publisher to do any additional work or expend any money, the publisher still has exactly the same money that they would have if the CD hadn't been copied. Calling copyright infringment "theft" simply adds confusion to the debate.
Were these State legislatures to actually do some creative thinking, they'd redefine the tax as a usage tax instead of a sales tax.
Err that's exactly how it already works in most states. Have you been living under a rock or something?
It makes you wonder if that for the states that don't want any involvement in the SST Project, whether they care that they are losing tax money for purchases in their state (regardless of how its collected).
As far as I can tell, the only states that "win" by joining in are those with high sales taxes and very little in the way of sales to out of state customers. Remember, it works both ways, if you can collect from other states then they can collect from you.
I have NO problem paying sales tax. I think that if I buy something shipped from California, for example, California's sales tax should be added to the order.
I agree that this makes by far the most sense but the reality is that in most (but not all) states sales taxes are technically taxes on the consumer rather than the business and California cannot directly tax New Jersy residents who stay put in New Jersy. The business is just acting as an agent in collecting those taxes.
There are no arguments about the CONSTITUTIONALITY of the taxes.
How about the idea that one state has no right to impose laws on the citizens of another state? I only see 2 ways for these states to get around this and neither is going to be good for anyone in the long term.
1. They get the federal courts to accept that whenever a transaction happens across state lines then it's the location of the customer that determines jurisdiction. Forget taxes for a minute, who would put anything on line if they had to abide by the laws of every city/county/state/nation on the planet?
2. What they actually appear to be trying. Have states A and B agree to each force thier own citizens to collect taxes for their partner states. The problem is that while you'll increase the revenue coming in from outside the state you'll also increase the amount of money leaving the state by more or less the same amount. The net result is that all you've done is increase the friction involved in every transaction and that's never good for the economy. Eventually many business will simply move out of any state that is part of this stupid scheme.
The problem is: sunlight exists everywhere, wind exists everywhere. RE power technologies are reliable and low-maintenance.
The problem is that neither sunlight or wind are available 24/7/365 so until someone comes up with much more effecient methods of storage and conversion these technologies are not going to be effecient for base loads. If you ever price out a solar system for your home (assuming you're planning to be completely off grid) you'll quickly find out that it's need to overproduce when possible and store for later that really drives the costs up.
Hook up power strips to the UPS outputs but beware about powerstrips not playing nicely with the generated square wave coming from the UPS when the AC line drops.
In general, a plain power strip is fine but anything that claims to be a surge protector can be a problem.
It looks to me like the only ones they're marketing to are investors/bagholders.
FWIW the answer is no. The external USB drives are seperate from the raid array. Also although you can read fat32 formatted external drives you cannot write to them in that or any other format a Win machine will know how to read.
Stop insisting that global warming is happening until you stop arguing it based on the fact that the earth is getting warmer.
??????
How is this going to affect the whole Sender ID mess?
Is this an example of two wrongs not making a right?
Yes but three lefts does and that's why we have the BSDs.
Already done http://news.com.com/2100-1032-1011296.html/
Yes, we did train them. Specifically, I trained them as part of my job in the project as a whole. Their work didn't require Linux training specifically (they never touch a command line), just familiarization with the KDE desktop and OpenOffice. They caught on remarkably well at first, but after the new manager came on board and started her anti-Linux tirade, the employees followed suit and started calling us up for every trivial little question that they could have figured out by reading the docs, Googling, or just hunting around the application menus for a few seconds.
Honestly this sounds more like a social issue than a technical one. If the $$$ allows for it maybe you should consider spending a week or so out there on site both to deal with technical/training issues and more importantly to build (rebuild?) a rapore with the employees.
The thing is, even with Windows many users don't have any clue what they're doing. When something goes wrong they just chalk it up to "Windows just does that sometimes" or "these computers are too old" or even "I'm not good with computers". Basically any excuse that seems to fly with the bos is OK even if the real problem is that the Recycle Bin is not a good place for long term storage. With Linux or any other obvious alternative they have a ready made excuse for anything that doesn't work exactly as they expected, especially if their supervisor encourages it.
If you don't get in there and make these people comfortable (especially the boss) then even a conversion to Windows is going to be a problem because they've already decided that the problem is you.
I guess I'm just being dense but if your goal is technology integration then it seems that you'd be better off encoding whatever content you want on a local server using the pvr software of your choice and re-transmitting it via videolan or whatever. Dealing with content providers sounds a lot more like a job for a business major or lawyer (and a lot of $$$$). In any event (and IANAL) time and format shifting fall under fair use so many (but not all) uses of this sort of system seem to be perfectly legal.
" Actually most of the electricity in the US comes from Coal."
True but over the last few years almost noone has been building new coal powered generating stations due to the perceived polution issues.
First, many diesel cars get considerably better than 35mpg. If most of your driving is on the highway you'll get similar milage out of a hybrid as a diesel but in stop & go traffic the hybrid will win.
Second, diesels tend to be cleaner than gasoline engines in terms of greenhouse gasses but dirtier in terms of particulates.
Unfortunately much of our electricity comes from natural gas which is likely to become more expensive for basically the same reasons as gasoline so expect electricity prices to go up as well.
I have several machines with older 2.6 kernels and more than a year of uptime so for me it's been stable. I also have a few that I just upgraded to 2.6.12.4 recently that seem to be working fine. You really do need to make sure your modutils and maybe other user land tools (does anyone have a list?) is up to date and be cautious about enabling some of the new features but I havn't run into any unresolvable problems since switching. One annoyance is that you cannot just slap a kernel on a floppy and boot from that anymore.
"That was a very interesting phone call to the computer shop that day :)."
No doubt but can you imagine trying to explain something like that to a modern computer reseller like Dell? You'd never in a million years get them to understand something like that.
Typical Slashdot answer. You understand that most people do NOT want to check their server every once in a while to check if the bloody NIC is still working?
Typical "I've never managed a server before" answer.
If you're running a server that matters at all then you're also running some sort of monitoring program to make sure that your various services are up and running. Furthermore, how often does your switch just "lose power"? If you have an UPS for your server then why isn't your switch plugged into it as well?
And use a hell of a complicated solution to solve the problem?
#ifdown eth0 && modprobe -r viarhine
#modprobe viarhine && ifup eth0
Yeah that was hard.
Whart happens if you like using stokc diso kernel for some reason and there the NIC is not modularized?
I don't know what a "stokc diso" is but most distributions do ship with modularized kernels because it'd be nuts to compile in drivers for every piece of hardware known to man when you don't have to.
What happens if you want to use a specialized kernel for you machine with ALL the drivers built in because it is, well, faster??
What on earth makes you think that would be faster?
Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication mean that a great deal of the electricity that goes into your computer is given off as heat.
Actually virtually all of the electricity used by a computer is given off as heat. That's true of most other electronic devices as well and it doesn't have anything to do with "Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication".
All that being said, it is still not likely that the tech "accidently" stumbled across these files.
What makes you think that? The majority of computer repairs these days involve removing malware and much of that malware comes in through programs and web sites offering porn. Although I've never run into kiddy porn I've run into lots of normal porn and every one of those machines was infested to the point of uslessness with malware.
The EFF is defending the right of the person to not have his hard disk go through an unauthorized search.
Your right but I think the EFF is dead wrong here. It's one thing for the police to come into your house and search your computer (or anything else) without a warrent but when you invite someone in (and especially a private citizen) then you clearly don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy. If you ask someone to repair a computer then you KNOW that they are likely to stumble upon pretty much anything you have stored on there unless it's encrypted.