I listen, read, watch a variety of sources. Each source will have its own bias etc.
I like to use shortwave radio for this when I have the time. You can listen to French broadcasts for one take and the VOA for another (just stay away from the Special English version). I havn't had much time recently but you might even hear iraqi broadcasts (they may be having technical difficulties tho).
While the technology has gotten better I don't think its realy that big of a deal. I've worked a number of car thefts and auto burglary (I'm a cop) and have never seen a car stolen in this manner. Most of the time people leave them unlocked or someone smashes the window. Apartments are bad for this since there are always people about and there is nothing to prevent people from walking up and checking out your vehicle. Even if I was to drive by and see someone in the area I have nothing to base a stop on - I can't tell a resident of the apartment complex coming home from work at 2am from a burglar as I go driving by. Compare this to a house: If someone is standing next to the car in the driveway at 2am and all the lights in the house are off I start to have something to go up and talk to this person about.
As for vehicle BOLOs - they don't do much. A few months ago we had a murder in an adjecent town and they put out a BOLO for a blue Nissan P/U. The next day we stopped blue Nissan P/U's all day long, and had dozens of 911 calls about them but didn't find the murder suspects that way.
On an complete side note: better than ripping the codes off a lot of electronics are poorly shielded these days. I used know of a particular 1998 car model that could be unlocked by my 6m rig (52.525 MHz, 60W narrow band FM) from about 25-30 feet away. More often car alarms go off when I transmit near them.
Unless you have a Ham license -- there are frequencies allocated in the 6m (50-54MHz) amateur band for remote control. You must have at least a technician class license and follow some rules about having your callsign on the transmitter. You'd have to retune the transmitter and receiver but that is most likely just a new crystal since there isn't much of a front end on those things anyway and 47MHz is pretty close to 50MHz as far as the basic circuit design is considered.
While this specific questions seems to have been answered by Digikey in the more general case I would suggest keeping an eye out for Hamfests. Many amateur radio clubs sponsor these events and there should be one near you at some time in the year. Most are good places to stock up on misc electronics.
Just last week here in Melbourne FL we had one. Some of the goodies I saw were a 1949 RCA TV set and a Motorola repeater with a 1958 in service date on it (both items working). There were tubes galore, antennas, coax, radios, etc.
This can be a bigger issue than just the 911 lines/dispatcher being busy. I am a police officer and by department policy if the dispatcher can't talk to a human being on the line and determine it was a prank/accident we end up responding. So now you tie up cops (realy 2 since this is an unknown situation) and real calls start holding until we can clear the open line/911 hangup by talking to someone.
Offtopic: Ummm I do arrest people who might get in a car accident 10 years from now... most people refer to this as "getting a ticket" many of you may have experienced it first hand... I turn on the blue lights, you pull over, I inform you wich of the rules of the road you just violated and about 50% of the time I issue a citation. Why? because the areas I go to write citations in are the same places I work a lot of wrecks in and the more agressive we get in one area the number of wrecks go down for a while.
Back on topic: The same is true with Blizzard to an extent - they want to get a ruling in their favor now. Its a bit of a slippery sloap argument - if they let Bnet operate for free they could have a hard time in the future going after someone who is trying to make a profit.
While I personally think clean room reverse eng. is a good thing (and leagal) I understand their desire to act against what they see as a violation.
"Frankly, I think this airport security frenzy is a great illustration of closing the barn door after the horse has run off."
I don't even think its doing that - the door is still open we've just put up a big sign that says its closed... my point is that there is no way to eliminate all potentialy deadly weapons from a given place. I remember clearly that during our instruction in "Officer Survival" in the police academy the instuctor repeatedly pointed out items that can be effectively used as improvised weapons. I can think of a number of items I saw just 2 months ago on an airplane that would have worked very well (most of them part of the plane's equipment, not carried by passengers).
What we should do is allow appropriatly credentialed and trained police officers to carry their weapons. I'd even be willing to take the training on my own time. If its safe for the FBI to carry a firearm its safe for a state/local officer to do the same.
I like the idea of using a RAID set as a intermediate step here. You need to sustain an average transfer rate of about 28 MB/sec the entire 60 minutes. Most jukeboxes I have looked at take 30sec or so to swap out a tape and set up the new one for writing and tape drives take a few seconds to ramp up to their full data rate and drop off from time to time to position etc. This is going to cost you some time and up the peak rate of that transfer number so it can average out to 28MB/sec.
I have used drives from AMPEX corp that sustain 15MB/sec and store 300GB per tape. That was 2 years ago and they have a newer product out now that was supposed to double that rate but I have no first hand experience with those in the real world.
Since we are talking about an Oracle database here I would also look at the plug-in modules for some of the backup software products. I know Legato NetWorker has such a module and will also allow disk storage to be used. I use NetWorker here to backup about 1TB/Wk. and it gets the job done. It should (if the module works as advertised) be able to quickly backup the database to RAID, then clone those backups to tape.
In the example I gave above if the level of requirement was Probable Cause and I was spotted at stage #3 (as he gets out the crowbar) what are my options? I do not have PC here - carrying a crowbar at 3am is not a crime. I think I should be able to at least stop and investigate this person to get a good ID on them. The Supreme Ct. set the requirement for this at Reasonable Suspicion (Terry vs Ohio) and I think that is an appropriate level.
So what it the difference between PC and Reasonable Suspicion I hear you ask... in simple terms:
PC: Facts and circumstances that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime has been committed by the individual in question.
Reasonable Suspicion: Facts and circumstances that lead a reasonable police officer based on training and experience to believe that a crime has, is being, or is going to be committed by the individual in question.
In theory this sounds good, but in reality I don't think it would work all that well. I think the logging is a good idea but a PC requirement and then 6hrs for a search warrant is excessive (this is the fastest I have ever seen it done). Here is a scenerio:
1. Its 3:15 am I am sitting in my patrol car and a person walks up to the pawn store across the street.
2. He walks back and forth for 10 minutes looking up and down the street.
3. He walks into the alley and pulls a crowbar from under his coat.4. I hear breaking glass.
5. I run over and observe the same person with a stereo in his hands and a crowbar is on the floor inside the store.
I don't have Probable Cause until #5 - that is when I could get a search warrant (and here in FL that is also where I put the chrome bracelets on him). At #3 I have the athority to conduct and investigatory stop. That is to briefly detain this person to determine who they are and what they are doing (under the loitering and prowling statute). I most definitly have enough facts and circumstances at this point to justify finding out who this person is, where they live,and birthday so I can check them out via FCIC/NCIC. I don't think it would be reasonable to detain the person (and me - how many calls are holding now?) at stage #3 for 6 hours while I get a search warrant to find out his address. The level of intrusion here is minimal and in fact the quicker I can get this done the quicker he is on his way.
There are rules and department policy in place already for FCIC/NCIC use to prevent abuse. I am forbidden from trolling for tag's while I drive (ie running every plate I see until I get a hit) - I have to have a reason for running a tag. I can get in big trouble (loose my police certification) for trying to use it to check out my new girlfriend.
Since I'm both an engineer and a cop I may have a bit of insight here:
1. Don't believe everything you see on TV.
I have a group of friends I hang out with from work or the radio club. I also have a number of friends from the PD that I hang out with. It is different with police officers - I can sit with my back to the door in a restaurant when I'm with other cops but it drives me nuts to do so when I'm not as one example. With the officers I work with we can be in a car for 10-16 hrs at a time... you spend that much time crammed in a car with someone you will get to know them. We also tend to make jokes or say things to break the stress - we don't want to offend people but its a common way of dealing with a bad situation. I can say those things to another officer without fear that it will get me in trouble because the victim or suspect hears my private thoughts.
I find that its harder to get to know a non-law enforcement person now. There are a lot of reasons including safety - my phone number is unlisted, my land records are sealed, all my licenses etc use the police dept address. I deal with some not too nice people on a frequent basis and I don't want them showing up at my house.
Do we have weekly BBQ's? no, but we do have dinner a few nights a week, go hunting or fishing every few months and we don't talk about work all that much (well except for the realy good car wrecks*).
* A Ford explorer vs a Fire truck a few weeks ago - that was cool.... parts all over the place....I'll leave out the gory details....
I have found keeping some non work related hobbies helps me stay at least a little less stressed. I work in a sysadmin/integration role which has its good days, but other times I miss playing with RF or the other things that made me get an EE degree. In order to get to play with that stuff I stay active in ham radio mainly working on some of the local repeaters. I am also a part time police officer so I get to go deal with people instead of electronics and I think it helps the community a bit (the customers at my radar trap last Friday might disagree). Bottom line is the perfect job/major/class does not exist, get other things in your life that make it OK for work to be less than perfect. I would finish the degree as quickly as you can - you have too big of an investment in it to give up now and almost all of the people I have seen take a semester off never come back to finish it. Even if you don't like CS having the degree makes you worth more money even in unrelated fields (example: The state of FL pays bonus money to police officers with a degree, this is on top of the salery your agency pays).
We don't use laptops per say in the patrol car - there is a touch screen bolted to the dash (in the middle over the a/c vents) and the CPU is bolted inside the glove box. The keyboard is velcroed to the floor unless in use. These systems are called "data911" or at least that's all I can see stamped on the case. Other departments (Brevard County Sheriff) in the county do use laptops on mounting stands but they are ruggedized laptops that seem to cost more and be older technology. You can find ads for these systems in marine publications or police/fire catalogs. Personally I like the method we use because the laptop stand tends get in the way of anyone in the passenger seat (its hard enough to get in and out of the car with the collection of stuff on the belt). With the screen right in the middle of the dash its easy to glance at when your at a stop light or on a call without having to turn sideways.
After hearts gets old they can graduate to bridge... bridge baron is non-violent, has a tutor mode, they'll learn some math, also some odds (finess or drop?), strategy, and teamwork. Turn off the conventions and play at first with natural bidding, then they can read some books and use the built in tutor to learn the common conventions.
We have a fairly regular game here at work dring luchtime and its a great way to relax for 45min or so during the day.
I'd be carefull with putting the real root into a wrappered shell - too much can go wrong early in the boot process and a wrappered root account might not be functional depending on what pieces parts are borken. I'd create a seperate account for these people and then wrapper that one. The sudu spproach still sounds better to me as more secure in the long run but I don't think the logging was geared towards a malicious root user who would delete the logs, rather it was directed at an incompetent one that would screw the system up then hide to avoid the resulting chaos. In the latter case the wrappered shell would be less work to set up/maintain.
Most hamfests have a large flea market area that is electronics of all types. The last time I went to a Baltimore area hamfest they were at least 50% computer stuff as apposed to radio stuff. In the Baltimore area I know that there are 2 such events at the fairgrounds every summer that are large, there is one in Gathersburg in Sept. http://www.qrz.com or http://www.arrl.org are good places to look for event listings.
For those on the Space coast the PCARS Melbourne Hamfest is coming up this Sept 8th in Melbourne, FL. Most events like thses charge around $6 for admission and the money goes to the radio club for use in maintaining repeaters and other stuff that might come in handy during an emergency.
I would suggest an equipment belt - check out galls under the police supplies www.galls.com just don't get a holster and get the appropriate pouches for your equipment. I know they have them made for cell phones and pagers, some of the more generic stuff should hold a palm OK. I would recommend nylon as its lighter than leather and cleans easier.
I have a storage problem even with the equipment belt - Today's police officer carries a gun, 2 spare mags, small flashlight, expandable baton, cuffs, pepper spray, radio, gloves, knife, and now they are adding a tazer to this list. I like to have my cell phone handy for when the radio is busy or broken, then we have the notepad, pens, 2nd gun on the ankle (3rd on the vest). I have a 32" waist.. there isn't any room left on my belt for more junk. I tend to cary my phone on my shoulder (radio mike on the other) but that makes for long falls sometimes. Oh an by the way go chase that guy in the nylon running shorts (and if he gets away someone will make a snide doughnut comment).
I run several repeaters and have a good deal of protection on them, but I don't expect it to take a direct hit. In the event of a direct hit I expect to change frequency to something that hasn't taken a direct hit and replace/repair the equipment later. In the event of a hit you should be more concerned with the house not burning to the ground than the computer. What you want to protect against is the electrical currents flying around in the atmosphere that don't show up as lightning. I have watched hardline coax sit on the floor and arc when the cloud to ground action was several miles away.
I did something similar - I was ready to purchase a home but was in school M-F 1800-2200 hrs and Sat from 0600-1800 on top of my regular job. My realtor was able to give me a list of houses to drive by and look at within a few days of my initial inquiry. I used the basic elements of these first 5 or so to give her better requirements and refine the search. I spent 2 Sundays looking at 12 similar places in the area. I ended up with a house that I like a good deal (in retrospect its just a tad small with guests that seem to always show up when you live in FL). Once I found my house she was able to do a lot of the necessary pre-closing stuff from price negotiations to inspections etc. She was able advise me on what to make my first offer at and what my max offer should be before I looked some more.
I need to change my contract - I am not going to be moving these beasts around the office. If they get anything bigger and heavier than a 21" they need to hire a mover to work on it not a sysadmin... that's why I like the TFT flat screens - management feels the need to move people's offices every few days (the seating layout is served in streaming videa) and the flat screens are much easier to move.
1. Persue criminal charges if there was any physical contact (battery). The laws of the state apply in schools just as they do on the public street.
2. File a civil action - the courts have applied sexual harrasment laws to schools as well as other workplace style laws about creating and fostering a hostile environment so the school system could have liability. A more clear cut case would be to sue the bullies themselves for the tort of battery.
3. Challange the school's enforcemnt of its policy - if the school dosn't follow its own proceedures and can be shown to apply them in an arbitrary way they get into trouble in the courts. Since the bullys were not punished it would seem that this could be the case here.
An iteresting thought - here in FL the defendant in a criminal case is barred from contact with the victim before the trial, except for deposition or other legal related activities. Therefore just filing charges would seem to provide a temporary solution since the defendant would not be able to be in the same classes, hallways, etc.
The school can deal with diciplinary problems through administrative means independently of any civil or criminal action either of the parties wants to persue. I don't advocate every little spat ending up in the courts, but if administrative dicipline isn't working then I'd rather go to your house and take a battery report and work that case than have to handle a shooting call at the school.
I gave up on my lab area - the temperature control is nowhere near linear and the best isothermic chamber in the world seems to be the little plastic box around the thermostat. No matter what I do in order to get the servers in the back to be under 80 or so the room out at the front is about 60 and the thermostat always says 71. I once made it 2 deg warmer on the control and the overall temperature went up about 18. I then turned it down 1 and it plunged the demo room to 57 (the vip's getting the demo were not happy) but that thermostat still read 71 the whole time.....
Even in a large city the police are not going to always respond quickly enough. As a matter of fact the traffic, call volume, and number of officers on the street are widely varriable from day to day. I live in an incoprorated city but its not urban, there are mostly vacant lots around me and as a law enforcement officer I listen to my police radio and know that most evenings there are calls holding for availble officers for 30, 40, 50 minutes sometimes longer. Last night there was an attempted kindnapping about 1 mile from my home - officers were availalbe and responded within 3-4 minutes. There were K9 units in 10 or so and a helicopter from the Sheriff in about 25. The suspect escaped - the police never saw him but a neighbor heard one of the girls scream and confronted the suspect who let them go and fled. The bottom line is the police can't be everywhere (and we don't want them everywhere) and it is well settled case law that they have no duty to protect any citizen.
I feel that we are becoming a society of victims - everything is someone else's fault. I prefer to take responsibility for my actions and for my own safety and well being. Every one of our personal freedoms comes with a responsibility. We see more and more government involvemnet in our daily lives becasue of the people that refuse to take care of themselves.
As for your shotgun comment: 1. If its not loaded it dosn't do the officer any good. 2. I have never seen a gun go off in the rack/holster on its own accord they incorporate safety devices to prevent that from happening.
For the resturant: LA has some of the most restrictive carry rules around. An ordinary person cannot get a permit to carry there. Why were you scared? Obviously since there are strict laws nobody in there had a gun because the laws are so restrictive - if you disagree with that then you agree that the laws don't make a difference and the criminals will still have the guns.
There is a priciple in law called "Mens Rea" meaning "guilty mind" that is a element of a number of crimes. This means that if an act is done without intent to harm there is not (or less of)a criminal violation. An example is the charge of 1st deg. murder in many jurisdictions- the accused must be shown beyond and to the exclusion of all reasonable doubt to have intentionaly caused the death of another human being, otherwise the appropriate charge is 2nd deg murder, manslaughter or felony murder depending on the situation.
On a more personal note the publication of my address is protected by Florida Statute 843.17 - if you read the law it says that the publication must be done "maliciously, with intent to obstruct the due execution of the law or with the intent to intimidate, hinder, or interrupt any law enforcement officer in the legal performance of his or her duties" again there is an intent elment to the crime.
My personal take on this particular matter is that a civil case was probably a better way to go. I personaly don't believe that the case was strong enough for a criminal prosecution but probably would have supported a wrongfull death suit but IANAL so I could be wrong...
The only way to be sure you won't loose your data some day under a bizzare set of circumstances is to have infinite coppies of it - unfortionatly this costs infinite money and takes infinte time to acomplish, just a small implementation problem.
I currently work for a DoD contractor on the east coast of Florida and we tend to worry about hurricanes and brush fires and aircraft that might miss the runway and land on the building. We use DLT and other mature media that has a 30+ year life. The general idea is each quarter we make an offsite copy that goes to another facility and sits in a vault. Whenever there is a threat (fire hurricane etc) we pull the most recent full backups and fly them out of town on a plane that goes to some other location to be stored just in case. I am dealing with backups on the order of 1TB per week of fulls +40GB of incrementals on top of that or I would make a second copy more often, however management has made a cost/risk decision that quarterly is often enough to make the offsite coppy.
At my last job (across the street so same concerns) we had a rotation that sent a copy of last weekend's tapes to another building 5 miles away, the tapes at that location went to Orlando, the tapes in Orlando went to Harrisburg, PA, and the tapes in PA came back home and were recycled the next week. This gave us 5 weeks of tapes in multiple locations around the country at any given time.
The bottom line is this aint cheap and you need to make a determination what the data is worth vs how much you are willing to spend ($ and time) to protect it and arrive at an acceptable level of protection.
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I listen, read, watch a variety of sources. Each source will have its own bias etc.
I like to use shortwave radio for this when I have the time. You can listen to French broadcasts for one take and the VOA for another (just stay away from the Special English version). I havn't had much time recently but you might even hear iraqi broadcasts (they may be having technical difficulties tho).
While the technology has gotten better I don't think its realy that big of a deal. I've worked a number of car thefts and auto burglary (I'm a cop) and have never seen a car stolen in this manner. Most of the time people leave them unlocked or someone smashes the window. Apartments are bad for this since there are always people about and there is nothing to prevent people from walking up and checking out your vehicle. Even if I was to drive by and see someone in the area I have nothing to base a stop on - I can't tell a resident of the apartment complex coming home from work at 2am from a burglar as I go driving by. Compare this to a house: If someone is standing next to the car in the driveway at 2am and all the lights in the house are off I start to have something to go up and talk to this person about.
As for vehicle BOLOs - they don't do much. A few months ago we had a murder in an adjecent town and they put out a BOLO for a blue Nissan P/U. The next day we stopped blue Nissan P/U's all day long, and had dozens of 911 calls about them but didn't find the murder suspects that way.
On an complete side note: better than ripping the codes off a lot of electronics are poorly shielded these days. I used know of a particular 1998 car model that could be unlocked by my 6m rig (52.525 MHz, 60W narrow band FM) from about 25-30 feet away. More often car alarms go off when I transmit near them.
Unless you have a Ham license -- there are frequencies allocated in the 6m (50-54MHz) amateur band for remote control. You must have at least a technician class license and follow some rules about having your callsign on the transmitter. You'd have to retune the transmitter and receiver but that is most likely just a new crystal since there isn't much of a front end on those things anyway and 47MHz is pretty close to 50MHz as far as the basic circuit design is considered.
While this specific questions seems to have been answered by Digikey in the more general case I would suggest keeping an eye out for Hamfests. Many amateur radio clubs sponsor these events and there should be one near you at some time in the year. Most are good places to stock up on misc electronics.
Just last week here in Melbourne FL we had one. Some of the goodies I saw were a 1949 RCA TV set and a Motorola repeater with a 1958 in service date on it (both items working). There were tubes galore, antennas, coax, radios, etc.
This can be a bigger issue than just the 911 lines/dispatcher being busy. I am a police officer and by department policy if the dispatcher can't talk to a human being on the line and determine it was a prank/accident we end up responding. So now you tie up cops (realy 2 since this is an unknown situation) and real calls start holding until we can clear the open line/911 hangup by talking to someone.
Offtopic: Ummm I do arrest people who might get in a car accident 10 years from now... most people refer to this as "getting a ticket" many of you may have experienced it first hand... I turn on the blue lights, you pull over, I inform you wich of the rules of the road you just violated and about 50% of the time I issue a citation. Why? because the areas I go to write citations in are the same places I work a lot of wrecks in and the more agressive we get in one area the number of wrecks go down for a while.
Back on topic: The same is true with Blizzard to an extent - they want to get a ruling in their favor now. Its a bit of a slippery sloap argument - if they let Bnet operate for free they could have a hard time in the future going after someone who is trying to make a profit.
While I personally think clean room reverse eng. is a good thing (and leagal) I understand their desire to act against what they see as a violation.
"Frankly, I think this airport security frenzy is a great illustration of closing the barn door after the horse has run off."
I don't even think its doing that - the door is still open we've just put up a big sign that says its closed... my point is that there is no way to eliminate all potentialy deadly weapons from a given place. I remember clearly that during our instruction in "Officer Survival" in the police academy the instuctor repeatedly pointed out items that can be effectively used as improvised weapons. I can think of a number of items I saw just 2 months ago on an airplane that would have worked very well (most of them part of the plane's equipment, not carried by passengers).
What we should do is allow appropriatly credentialed and trained police officers to carry their weapons. I'd even be willing to take the training on my own time. If its safe for the FBI to carry a firearm its safe for a state/local officer to do the same.
I like the idea of using a RAID set as a intermediate step here. You need to sustain an average transfer rate of about 28 MB/sec the entire 60 minutes. Most jukeboxes I have looked at take 30sec or so to swap out a tape and set up the new one for writing and tape drives take a few seconds to ramp up to their full data rate and drop off from time to time to position etc. This is going to cost you some time and up the peak rate of that transfer number so it can average out to 28MB/sec.
I have used drives from AMPEX corp that sustain 15MB/sec and store 300GB per tape. That was 2 years ago and they have a newer product out now that was supposed to double that rate but I have no first hand experience with those in the real world.
Since we are talking about an Oracle database here I would also look at the plug-in modules for some of the backup software products. I know Legato NetWorker has such a module and will also allow disk storage to be used. I use NetWorker here to backup about 1TB/Wk. and it gets the job done. It should (if the module works as advertised) be able to quickly backup the database to RAID, then clone those backups to tape.
In the example I gave above if the level of requirement was Probable Cause and I was spotted at stage #3 (as he gets out the crowbar) what are my options? I do not have PC here - carrying a crowbar at 3am is not a crime. I think I should be able to at least stop and investigate this person to get a good ID on them. The Supreme Ct. set the requirement for this at Reasonable Suspicion (Terry vs Ohio) and I think that is an appropriate level.
So what it the difference between PC and Reasonable Suspicion I hear you ask... in simple terms:
PC: Facts and circumstances that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime has been committed by the individual in question.
Reasonable Suspicion: Facts and circumstances that lead a reasonable police officer based on training and experience to believe that a crime has, is being, or is going to be committed by the individual in question.
In theory this sounds good, but in reality I don't think it would work all that well. I think the logging is a good idea but a PC requirement and then 6hrs for a search warrant is excessive (this is the fastest I have ever seen it done). Here is a scenerio:
1. Its 3:15 am I am sitting in my patrol car and a person walks up to the pawn store across the street.
2. He walks back and forth for 10 minutes looking up and down the street.
3. He walks into the alley and pulls a crowbar from under his coat.4. I hear breaking glass.
5. I run over and observe the same person with a stereo in his hands and a crowbar is on the floor inside the store.
I don't have Probable Cause until #5 - that is when I could get a search warrant (and here in FL that is also where I put the chrome bracelets on him). At #3 I have the athority to conduct and investigatory stop. That is to briefly detain this person to determine who they are and what they are doing (under the loitering and prowling statute). I most definitly have enough facts and circumstances at this point to justify finding out who this person is, where they live,and birthday so I can check them out via FCIC/NCIC. I don't think it would be reasonable to detain the person (and me - how many calls are holding now?) at stage #3 for 6 hours while I get a search warrant to find out his address. The level of intrusion here is minimal and in fact the quicker I can get this done the quicker he is on his way.
There are rules and department policy in place already for FCIC/NCIC use to prevent abuse. I am forbidden from trolling for tag's while I drive (ie running every plate I see until I get a hit) - I have to have a reason for running a tag. I can get in big trouble (loose my police certification) for trying to use it to check out my new girlfriend.
Since I'm both an engineer and a cop I may have a bit of insight here:
... you spend that much time crammed in a car with someone you will get to know them. We also tend to make jokes or say things to break the stress - we don't want to offend people but its a common way of dealing with a bad situation. I can say those things to another officer without fear that it will get me in trouble because the victim or suspect hears my private thoughts.
1. Don't believe everything you see on TV.
I have a group of friends I hang out with from work or the radio club. I also have a number of friends from the PD that I hang out with. It is different with police officers - I can sit with my back to the door in a restaurant when I'm with other cops but it drives me nuts to do so when I'm not as one example. With the officers I work with we can be in a car for 10-16 hrs at a time
I find that its harder to get to know a non-law enforcement person now. There are a lot of reasons including safety - my phone number is unlisted, my land records are sealed, all my licenses etc use the police dept address. I deal with some not too nice people on a frequent basis and I don't want them showing up at my house.
Do we have weekly BBQ's? no, but we do have dinner a few nights a week, go hunting or fishing every few months and we don't talk about work all that much (well except for the realy good car wrecks*).
* A Ford explorer vs a Fire truck a few weeks ago - that was cool.... parts all over the place....I'll leave out the gory details....
I have found keeping some non work related hobbies helps me stay at least a little less stressed. I work in a sysadmin/integration role which has its good days, but other times I miss playing with RF or the other things that made me get an EE degree. In order to get to play with that stuff I stay active in ham radio mainly working on some of the local repeaters. I am also a part time police officer so I get to go deal with people instead of electronics and I think it helps the community a bit (the customers at my radar trap last Friday might disagree). Bottom line is the perfect job/major/class does not exist, get other things in your life that make it OK for work to be less than perfect. I would finish the degree as quickly as you can - you have too big of an investment in it to give up now and almost all of the people I have seen take a semester off never come back to finish it. Even if you don't like CS having the degree makes you worth more money even in unrelated fields (example: The state of FL pays bonus money to police officers with a degree, this is on top of the salery your agency pays).
We don't use laptops per say in the patrol car - there is a touch screen bolted to the dash (in the middle over the a/c vents) and the CPU is bolted inside the glove box. The keyboard is velcroed to the floor unless in use. These systems are called "data911" or at least that's all I can see stamped on the case. Other departments (Brevard County Sheriff) in the county do use laptops on mounting stands but they are ruggedized laptops that seem to cost more and be older technology. You can find ads for these systems in marine publications or police/fire catalogs. Personally I like the method we use because the laptop stand tends get in the way of anyone in the passenger seat (its hard enough to get in and out of the car with the collection of stuff on the belt). With the screen right in the middle of the dash its easy to glance at when your at a stop light or on a call without having to turn sideways.
After hearts gets old they can graduate to bridge... bridge baron is non-violent, has a tutor mode, they'll learn some math, also some odds (finess or drop?), strategy, and teamwork. Turn off the conventions and play at first with natural bidding, then they can read some books and use the built in tutor to learn the common conventions.
We have a fairly regular game here at work dring luchtime and its a great way to relax for 45min or so during the day.
I'd be carefull with putting the real root into a wrappered shell - too much can go wrong early in the boot process and a wrappered root account might not be functional depending on what pieces parts are borken. I'd create a seperate account for these people and then wrapper that one. The sudu spproach still sounds better to me as more secure in the long run but I don't think the logging was geared towards a malicious root user who would delete the logs, rather it was directed at an incompetent one that would screw the system up then hide to avoid the resulting chaos. In the latter case the wrappered shell would be less work to set up/maintain.
Most hamfests have a large flea market area that is electronics of all types. The last time I went to a Baltimore area hamfest they were at least 50% computer stuff as apposed to radio stuff. In the Baltimore area I know that there are 2 such events at the fairgrounds every summer that are large, there is one in Gathersburg in Sept. http://www.qrz.com or http://www.arrl.org are good places to look for event listings.
For those on the Space coast the PCARS Melbourne Hamfest is coming up this Sept 8th in Melbourne, FL. Most events like thses charge around $6 for admission and the money goes to the radio club for use in maintaining repeaters and other stuff that might come in handy during an emergency.
I would suggest an equipment belt - check out galls under the police supplies www.galls.com just don't get a holster and get the appropriate pouches for your equipment. I know they have them made for cell phones and pagers, some of the more generic stuff should hold a palm OK. I would recommend nylon as its lighter than leather and cleans easier.
I have a storage problem even with the equipment belt - Today's police officer carries a gun, 2 spare mags, small flashlight, expandable baton, cuffs, pepper spray, radio, gloves, knife, and now they are adding a tazer to this list. I like to have my cell phone handy for when the radio is busy or broken, then we have the notepad, pens, 2nd gun on the ankle (3rd on the vest). I have a 32" waist.. there isn't any room left on my belt for more junk. I tend to cary my phone on my shoulder (radio mike on the other) but that makes for long falls sometimes. Oh an by the way go chase that guy in the nylon running shorts (and if he gets away someone will make a snide doughnut comment).
I run several repeaters and have a good deal of protection on them, but I don't expect it to take a direct hit. In the event of a direct hit I expect to change frequency to something that hasn't taken a direct hit and replace/repair the equipment later. In the event of a hit you should be more concerned with the house not burning to the ground than the computer. What you want to protect against is the electrical currents flying around in the atmosphere that don't show up as lightning. I have watched hardline coax sit on the floor and arc when the cloud to ground action was several miles away.
I did something similar - I was ready to purchase a home but was in school M-F 1800-2200 hrs and Sat from 0600-1800 on top of my regular job. My realtor was able to give me a list of houses to drive by and look at within a few days of my initial inquiry. I used the basic elements of these first 5 or so to give her better requirements and refine the search. I spent 2 Sundays looking at 12 similar places in the area. I ended up with a house that I like a good deal (in retrospect its just a tad small with guests that seem to always show up when you live in FL). Once I found my house she was able to do a lot of the necessary pre-closing stuff from price negotiations to inspections etc. She was able advise me on what to make my first offer at and what my max offer should be before I looked some more.
I need to change my contract - I am not going to be moving these beasts around the office. If they get anything bigger and heavier than a 21" they need to hire a mover to work on it not a sysadmin... that's why I like the TFT flat screens - management feels the need to move people's offices every few days (the seating layout is served in streaming videa) and the flat screens are much easier to move.
Several options seem viable to me:
1. Persue criminal charges if there was any physical contact (battery). The laws of the state apply in schools just as they do on the public street.
2. File a civil action - the courts have applied sexual harrasment laws to schools as well as other workplace style laws about creating and fostering a hostile environment so the school system could have liability. A more clear cut case would be to sue the bullies themselves for the tort of battery.
3. Challange the school's enforcemnt of its policy - if the school dosn't follow its own proceedures and can be shown to apply them in an arbitrary way they get into trouble in the courts. Since the bullys were not punished it would seem that this could be the case here.
An iteresting thought - here in FL the defendant in a criminal case is barred from contact with the victim before the trial, except for deposition or other legal related activities. Therefore just filing charges would seem to provide a temporary solution since the defendant would not be able to be in the same classes, hallways, etc.
The school can deal with diciplinary problems through administrative means independently of any civil or criminal action either of the parties wants to persue. I don't advocate every little spat ending up in the courts, but if administrative dicipline isn't working then I'd rather go to your house and take a battery report and work that case than have to handle a shooting call at the school.
I gave up on my lab area - the temperature control is nowhere near linear and the best isothermic chamber in the world seems to be the little plastic box around the thermostat. No matter what I do in order to get the servers in the back to be under 80 or so the room out at the front is about 60 and the thermostat always says 71. I once made it 2 deg warmer on the control and the overall temperature went up about 18. I then turned it down 1 and it plunged the demo room to 57 (the vip's getting the demo were not happy) but that thermostat still read 71 the whole time.....
Even in a large city the police are not going to always respond quickly enough. As a matter of fact the traffic, call volume, and number of officers on the street are widely varriable from day to day. I live in an incoprorated city but its not urban, there are mostly vacant lots around me and as a law enforcement officer I listen to my police radio and know that most evenings there are calls holding for availble officers for 30, 40, 50 minutes sometimes longer. Last night there was an attempted kindnapping about 1 mile from my home - officers were availalbe and responded within 3-4 minutes. There were K9 units in 10 or so and a helicopter from the Sheriff in about 25. The suspect escaped - the police never saw him but a neighbor heard one of the girls scream and confronted the suspect who let them go and fled. The bottom line is the police can't be everywhere (and we don't want them everywhere) and it is well settled case law that they have no duty to protect any citizen.
I feel that we are becoming a society of victims - everything is someone else's fault. I prefer to take responsibility for my actions and for my own safety and well being. Every one of our personal freedoms comes with a responsibility. We see more and more government involvemnet in our daily lives becasue of the people that refuse to take care of themselves.
As for your shotgun comment: 1. If its not loaded it dosn't do the officer any good. 2. I have never seen a gun go off in the rack/holster on its own accord they incorporate safety devices to prevent that from happening.
For the resturant: LA has some of the most restrictive carry rules around. An ordinary person cannot get a permit to carry there. Why were you scared? Obviously since there are strict laws nobody in there had a gun because the laws are so restrictive - if you disagree with that then you agree that the laws don't make a difference and the criminals will still have the guns.
On a more personal note the publication of my address is protected by Florida Statute 843.17 - if you read the law it says that the publication must be done "maliciously, with intent to obstruct the due execution of the law or with the intent to intimidate, hinder, or interrupt any law enforcement officer in the legal performance of his or her duties" again there is an intent elment to the crime.
My personal take on this particular matter is that a civil case was probably a better way to go. I personaly don't believe that the case was strong enough for a criminal prosecution but probably would have supported a wrongfull death suit but IANAL so I could be wrong...
The only way to be sure you won't loose your data some day under a bizzare set of circumstances is to have infinite coppies of it - unfortionatly this costs infinite money and takes infinte time to acomplish, just a small implementation problem.
I currently work for a DoD contractor on the east coast of Florida and we tend to worry about hurricanes and brush fires and aircraft that might miss the runway and land on the building. We use DLT and other mature media that has a 30+ year life. The general idea is each quarter we make an offsite copy that goes to another facility and sits in a vault. Whenever there is a threat (fire hurricane etc) we pull the most recent full backups and fly them out of town on a plane that goes to some other location to be stored just in case. I am dealing with backups on the order of 1TB per week of fulls +40GB of incrementals on top of that or I would make a second copy more often, however management has made a cost/risk decision that quarterly is often enough to make the offsite coppy.
At my last job (across the street so same concerns) we had a rotation that sent a copy of last weekend's tapes to another building 5 miles away, the tapes at that location went to Orlando, the tapes in Orlando went to Harrisburg, PA, and the tapes in PA came back home and were recycled the next week. This gave us 5 weeks of tapes in multiple locations around the country at any given time.
The bottom line is this aint cheap and you need to make a determination what the data is worth vs how much you are willing to spend ($ and time) to protect it and arrive at an acceptable level of protection.