I own a house. For those of you not fortunate enough to understand what that means, consider your average junkmail that you receive now in your rental house, apartment, whatever. Multiply that by roughly 15.
This letter may be somewhat deceptive. So is every other friggin' piece of mail in my mailbox right now. Most people do the same thing with all such letters--they throw them out. But, like always, there is a sucker born every minute who will just plop down the credit card number and send the thing in. That's the ropes, folks.
When I looked at the letter, I saw Verisign's name immediately. I also noticed that you are signing for "renewal and transfer authorization", not just renewal. Sure, this might not say explicitly that you're going to change registrars... but there's a heck of a lot of fine print near the bottom that I can't read. My guess is that everything is spelled out there very clearly--to the person who cares to read it anyways.
Sorry folks, that's life. There's enough stupid people in the world who fall for things like this to make it economically worthwhile. Maybe next time get mad at the people dumb enough to sign things without reading--cause it's really their fault in the end.
What's the stupidest thing a person can do when placed under arrest? Not demand to talk to your lawyer or have one appointed. What's the stupidest thing you can do after that? Not allow your attorney to do his or her job.
What is the very first thing that a rich, savy lawyer would do if he were arrested? Get the best darned attorney to represent him that he can afford. But why not represent himself, I mean--the accused is a lawyer, too. Well, when you're a defendant, your job is to help your attorney and keep yourself from doing stupid things like this kid has. It's your attorney's job to handle all the legal matters.
Future note to all/.ers--if you get arrested, keep your mouth shut unless you have your attorney beside you. Let them take care of everything. And no matter what, don't ever think that you can properly defend yourself in court--it's called being railroaded for a reason. This guy's about to get the maximum sentence possible when he really could have gotten off with a slap on the wrist. Dumb.
Judging by people's posts thus far, most just don't get it. What's the point to this--it's just a switch in a teddy bear? Heck--I could do this on my own. It's not that interesting. Oh wait, since it was students at MIT, it must be really neat.
Frankly, I doubt most people here could ever get it. This teddy bear is so cool only because it makes a much nicer UI than a cheezy box with a few blinken lights and ports. It's soft and fuzzy. It's not beige and scary. If I had a daughter, I'd love the idea of giving her a laptop and a switch like this. All of a sudden, the idea of a "sleepover computer party" wouldn't be so gosh darn nerdy. They could stay up all night playing with Virtual Barbie or whatever is the software of the year.
Plus, what's so special about these MIT guys is that they have documented the heck out of this little endeavour. I'd gladly hire one of these guys to work with me. Sure, it's not the best idea every conceived--but at least it's documented. I could now go and reproduce their efforts without much thought.
In all, it seems rather impressive to me. It's a neat new UI that's not typical. It's documented to all heck. That beats half of everything I've ever done.
Screw donating money to his opponent. I'm seriously considering moving to California next week to be one of the many voters who are against this guy. I'll happily use my own money in a campaign of my own to get voters to vote "Anyone But Jones".
Anyone know of a good-looking 22-year-old brunette looking for a prositution job? I'd also love to pay to have her an affair and thus slander the guy even more. Maybe we can even make it look like she's come up missing, ala Condit? Sure, it might be unethical... but then what's the lesser of the evils?
I still am in awe of what our CIS department has done at Ohio State. They handle something like 200 thin clients, plus all the remote sessions.
Basically, you sit down at an old, stripped down HP-UX machine or a thin client that allows you to log into one of their servers. NT and Solaris are the typical flavors--I can't remember what the other option was. Plus, if you log into the Solaris box, you can open a Citrix client and use that to be logged into an NT server. This is really nice for writing code in UNIX land, but using MS Office for the documentation.
I would just love it if the EE department could get a clue and do something similar. It really would give us the best of all worlds. Oh, and you can read more about the CIS setup here.
I actually used to volunteer with my county's sheriff's office. It was way out in the sticks, and crime wasn't a huge thing. But still, we had murders and all that evilness. Most of it was domestic violence.
So one day, I do exactly what you purposed. I had sorta known the detectives, and shoot--it seemed perfectly reasonable to ask about how they go about collecting evidence and coming up with models, etc. That was a mistake. The very first statement out of the guy's mouth was that he wouldn't ever share HIS methods with anyone unless by court order (testifying, etc.). Too much fear that if you knew his personal methods, you could then commit a crime that would never be solved. Plus, he (possibly correctly) assumed that maybe I would use this to my advantage in the future.
You might be able to find out general information about the practices, though. Heck--watch TLC and Discovery. But if you notice carefully, you'll find that you never do get to see any particular detective's methods. You only get bits and pieces that may or may not be relevant. It's very much a predator-prey lifestyle. You may also be able to ask professors at a college or university that teaches forensic science.
Just be careful never to ask in such a way that makes you look guilty before you start.
I can't think of a list off hand--but as another poster pointed out, a great place to start is pricewatch. I have purchased my OS-free computers from IBuyPower.com and I have to say that I am very impressed with the hardware. They do excellent work--and no, I don't get a discount or anything.
I love to order new computers without an operating system. I used to build them from components, but now I've found that for about the same cost (plus a lot less time) I can have a brand new computer sent to my door via my favorite on-line retailer. And since I don't want an operating system installed, I'm not going to be forced into buying it. And that's all well and good since I generally nuke the hard drive as my first order of business anyway.
Most consumers, on the other hand, are morons. I know this. If I get one more phone call at 1:00am because of some jack#$$ tried to upgrade to WinXP and somehow lost all of his data, I'm going to scream. I don't even like Windows.
Back a few years ago (it's been a while), Microsoft sent out a memo to all its OEM vendors about how it's bad for the customer to receive a computer without an operating system. The basic reason for this was Microsoft's fear of piracy, which I believe is legitimate. Far too many people who will purchase this type of computer from Wal-Mart will either pirate a copy of Windows or will buy a copy and then have a very difficult time getting it installed. All the various questions it asks always has people calling me at all hours.
So, give the thing an operating system. Bundle RedHat, Suse, Mandrake, etc into the thing without any cost--and give the end-user a "coupon" to use if they want to activate RedHat's (or whomever's) support. Sure, that will be for extra money--but the end user might be happy to pay for that support if it's needed. And it keeps him/her from having to run back to the store for a copy of XP.
Nothing annoys a non-computer person more than when they turn a brand-new computer on and all it says is "Not Bootable Devices Found" or whatever. At least give them a Linux distro with all of X's prettiness. Besides--they might actually like it.
I didn't bother searching for the other two opinions for the settlement. Here's hoping that the judge can read between the lines here. Lord knows I can't figure out just who is the main contributer to these organizations.
You are certainly correct about our founders being terrorists. It's all about your perspective. Bin Laden is a "liberator" to those who follow him. Our founders liberated us from British oppression. Sounds rather familiar, and you're competely correct in that.
I take issue with the idea of the Bush family being a type of monarchy. The Kennedy's have a much longer history, and at their height had much more power than the Bush family. I suppose since they are all Democrates, it's an okay thing. I won't attempt to pretend that George HW Bush didn't have anything to do with his son getting elected. Personally--it meant a lot to me as a voter because I actually liked GHWB (one of the few, probably). Besides, Gore never appealed to me as a voter--and I think that was a lot of other people's opinion as well. Gore could have easily won--but he didn't because he did a bad job on the campaign trail.
But I digress. I would say that the founders did have in mind a state that could monitor its citizens at all times. Why else would the 4th Ammendment exist? Why build in so many checks and balances to power? It is the executive branch that historically wields the most power to be exerted over the citezenry. It was always believed that a President could simply assign his "secret police" to monitor an individual and potentially cause harm or havok. But, Congress can make it so that those secret police can't get funding. The Supreme Court can throw out any cases in which evidence was obtained illegally and thus set an innocent (or guilty) man free.
The idea of revolution was built into the Constitution. At any point, we (the citizens) can ammend the basic laws. Sure, it has to go through Congress--but if 75% of the population supports the measure you can be certain that it will pass Congress. The problem is that most citizens don't have a real problem with what's going on right now. Most citizens don't want to worry about such matters right now.
Now, once the main threat of terror passes (and it will), things will return to a more "normal" state. And if the government won't shed it's new found powers, the citizens will revolt by way of their votes. It's the way it's always been.
And before someone replies to me saying that maybe Bush will hold onto this power and it will result in a tyrannical rule... go hang yourself. Our country has been through times much worse than this in the past, and we've always come out stronger in the end. Never have we had a time when the government wouldn't volunrarily limit its own power when that's what the people desire.
Alright, I'm not fond of security cameras all over the friggin' place. It's pretty annoying at the post office now when at any given moment you're being monitored on no less than three cameras. It sorta feels like you can't go anywhere without being monitored.
Then again, we all learn to cope. Sure, I've been recorded all over town and guess how many times the police have come to my door? Never. How many times have they investigated me? Never. We all know that the NSA and CIA collect all kinds of information--but the real problem is in interpretation. I may be on a lot of magnetic tape; but my guess is that few (if any) people have actually reviewed that or done anything about it.
People go to DC to see the museums, monuments, etc. They may also go to case out a future terrorist act. That's all fine and legal. When you go into buildings in DC, they already make you go through metal detectors and some even ask for your ID. Yes, that information can be tracked just like everything else. But so long as you're not doing anything that provokes attention, you're fine.
I actually would like to know that if someone places a bomb near the Washington Monument we could review the tapes of past and potentially catch any of the main suspect's helpers. I wouldn't mind a police officer monitoring what's going on in the Navy Square (or whatever it's called) and so when I get mugged and thrown in the fountain there's a police car on it's way to pick up my attacker and help me out. In London, this sort of thing has just become a way of life. People there actually prefer having the cameras.
You're in trouble if you are graduating soon. I won't bother trying to raise your spirits. We had an Engineering Career Fair here last week and it was truly pathetic. Few companies bothered showing up (though they registered months ago), and the ones that did were only hiring a few people (if any). And no, this isn't a small school out of the way--this is a Big Ten University, with good rankings in engineering.
So, if you are graduating soon, you should really try to find yourself in grad school. When all this blows over, you're going to be much better off coming out with your Master's (if not your PhD). In EE, a BS just may not be enough to get you doing whatever it is you want to do. Many big companies hire BSEEs just for marketing and uncreative tech work. If you want to actually design things or lead others, you need an MS--though an MBA works, too.
Just make sure that you get a support offer from a professor before you apply to a school. If you've already got a job, you are nearly guaranteed to get accepted (even with a low GPA, okay test scores, etc). The main limiter to how many grad students there can be in a given department is the funding. If funding has been found for you, you're golden.
Good luck, though, with all your studies. Also, if you're interested in the material aspects of EE, there will be more jobs for you as they are still in reasonably high demand. Same with the analog design jobs. And microwave design. If you can, transition yourself into these types of specialties. There aren't nearly enough people who can do well at it, and they aren't quite as sensitive as the IT, programming, or even digital logic careers.
I've decided that I'm giving out these. Maybe I'll get lucky and won't have to worry about spending a load of money for an ounce of sex. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
I like your car metaphor--and I think it can be applied here.
Generally, manufacturers can get around licensing issues with regard to automobiles because their items are general purpose, and have nothing to do with copyright, patents, or other property of the auto manufacturer.
Chilton's and Haynes pay a licensing cost to auto makers. This isn't a huge affair, but it does exist. You can say it's wrong and evil, but the fact is that these publishers make their money from reproducing information that for the most part belongs to the manufacturer. This doesn't stop any citizen from taking apart his brand new Mustang GT and measuring every component--it simply means that said individual can't just go out and sell that information to others without first consulting the proper owner of the designs.
Now, if a company began to produce modified EEPROMS for a particular car's computer, that could very well land that company in a court of law to answer charges. Yes, I know that there are people who do this--especially to Honda Civics. Obviously, Honda doesn't support this type of thing, and it voids your warranty. If this company takes open data from Honda (either through public information, published information, or licensing) and then uses that to produce a new EEPROM--all is fine. There isn't anything wrong with that.
What isn't okay is when a company reverse-engineers the existing EEPROM without any permission from the manufacturer, and then modifies that information for resale. That is the equivelent to reverse-compiling a company's software and then selling a modified version for profit, which is illegal in most every nation. In most cases, auto manufacturers have ways to publish or otherwise license most every detail about a car so that people can do as they please. It's like the GPL. But you can't get mad at a company if they don't feel the GPL is right for them--and you can't get mad about Sony not publishing this particular information.
No company has any right to go after citizens for reverse-engineering their products. That includes Sony, GM, Microsoft, and Aunt Millie's Pretzels. That has never been an issue, and my guess is that it never will become one. A company does have the right to protect their work and their product's design details from competitors, though. If Ford reverse-engineered a GM EEPROM, modified it, and then used that code on their new cars; there would be hell to pay. GM put time and money into that program and it can't be used without GM's permission. Similarly, you can't go trolling around for one of Betty Crocker's recipes and expect to sell either the recipe itself or products you made directly as a result of having that recipe.
Sony never made any information public regarding their PS2 hardware that would allow for a mod chip to be designed. They also never licensed anyone that information for such a use. It seems fair to say that any information regarding the hardware design came from either reverse-engineering or from individuals working for Sony who gave those secrets up. The companies who are producing these mod chips are using "fruit of the poisonous tree", so to speak. They can't show a legal means for them to have the information to produce the mod chips--such as a public document showing the internal schematics of the PS2 or some license with Sony that allows them to use that information as they please.
I suppose that I have difficulty seeing why it's unfair for Sony to attempt to control piracy, maybe even restrict use of some games because of their own internal marketting strategies. It's their system, for gosh sakes. They own it, they own the design, the name, the commericals, and they even own the right to say how much it will cost a company in licenses to develop software for their console. It isn't like there aren't two other competitors--Nintendo and Xbox. If Sony's tactics are so foul and evil; feel free to sell your hardware on Ebay and purchase something from someone else. You can speak louder by your purchasing habits than any other way. Don't think for a minute that Sony wouldn't find a way to allow for mod chips if their customers really desired them. Most people really don't care, though. They feel mod chips are only used for piracy and thus are immoral.
Generally speaking, yes. You can take it completely apart, poke and prod all the bits, and otherwise reverse-engineer to your heart's content. The DMCA wasn't really intended to limit this type of behaviour. You won't find agents at your door because you took apart your PlayStation 2 or Xbox, or whatever. If you own it, you can do as you like.
The sticky part comes when you publish (via the internet or otherwise) a direct method to circumvent any copy protections. It also gets more hairy when you offer to sell bits and pieces for what can circumvent those protections. If I produce a piece of equipment (with patents, copyrights, etc. over that), I should also have the expressed right over how I want to license 3rd party manufacturer's.
You can buy a PS2 controller from other companies besides Sony. But Sony gets a piece of that product, because they own the machine that it is intended for. When we start to talk about mod chips, Sony doesn't see any of that. They haven't licensed these products, and it's quite likely that these manufacturers are using Sony's registered names and trademarks (I mean, they are called PS2 mod chips...). Also, mod chips allow for Sony to further lose control over their licensing by way of "3rd party" games in the form of piracy.
Personally, I think Sony is stuck in a position where they can't win. If they don't go after these companies who sell mod chips, they risk losing their licenses, trademarks, etc. These things have to be protected. On the other hand, if they go after mod chip vendors, it looks like they are just being bullies.
Of course, you still can do whatever you want to your own hardware in your own home. Sony doesn't really care to break down the doors of even those people who purchased a mod chip. It isn't in their interest--and the government doesn't give a darn (cause the burden of proof is high to get a search warrant). Heck, I have a DVD player in pieces in my basement because I'm curious how it works--but under no circumstance will that allow the manufacturer to come into my house to see if I've broken a copyright protection mechanism. Once I start selling chips, though.... all bets are off.
Re:something tells me this idea is half-baked
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Clear Hard Drive Mods
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Agreed. Hard drives are manufactured in a cleanroom environment for a reason. My guess is that these guys either got extremely lucky, or more likely they have hundreds of bad sectors that got re-mapped to the outside of the platters by the drive's circuitry. That drive is going to fail before long--mark my words.
If someone really wants to do this, the drive should be taken apart in a cleanroom and the platters kept there. The dremel work must be done outside for obvious reasons.
I suppose if anyone is in the Columbus, OH area and has a harddrive to waste--I'll help you out since I have access to a class 100 cleanroom. I won't do anything except take the thing apart and protect the platters. Someone else can be responsible for modding the case. Send me an e-mail.
Hang on a second. Granted, Palm hasn't done anything here that should shock the majority of people into getting one of these "new" handhelds. I, for one, won't be buy it. Neither will the vast majority of people.
My boss, on the other hand, won't come anywhere near a handheld that isn't a Palm. He loves the software that loads on his desktop. He loves the fact that he and his... assistant can synchronize their schedules or that she can make the schedule for him--and all he needs to do is put the Palm in the cradle.
Trust me, when my boss finds out that he'll be able to check his e-mail from anywhere on this new Palm; he's gonna want one. He's already seen the devices from someone else (not sure who) that do this; but he wasn't willing to go with a company he doesn't know. He wants to stay with Palm. And now he's going to get this and all the extra bells and whistles, too.
Personally, I don't want to check my e-mail from the potty. My boss would, though. He also would want to have the "I'm so cool" factor. It's people like this that Palm is going for; and there are a lot more people like that than you think. Check with your company's Execs and marketing department for starters. Vanity runs rampant around there.
I hear a lot of people happy about the idea of going after M$ because they are the Evil Empire. I also hear a lot of people that are afraid of us open sourcers being attacked. Obviously, more secure and better written code should be standard.
I'm not so sure that liability isn't a good thing. I'm not saying that a programmer should be completely responsible for his/her code and any results that occur. I can instead think of a different situation. Imagine I produce a piece of software and sell it/give it away. I don't think it's a bad idea for me to be required to:
Openly reveil any and all known bugs/hacks/vulnerabilities (available from a website or whatever).
If the product was PURCHASED, I should be required to give freely downloadable patches that will fix known (serious) bugs within a specified amount of time.
If the product was given free of charge, then the product has no obligation other than to report the bugs (though giving away the source would be nice so others could fix it).
If I fail to fix a serious, known bug within that specified time, I should be first not allowed to sell the product. It's buggy, and has a flaw that's very bad. Selling more broken copies just looks like I don't care. I would call it malicious.
If I still don't fix the issue, then I SHOULD be culpable for damages. By this point, I would have ignored many warnings and I have negligently continued on a dangerous course. If a bug in my code (which I retain the rights to) causes loss of data, property, or life, I have contributed to that loss.
Now, of course end users will be responsible for installing patches, monitoring CERT advisories, etc. The end users are also responsible for attempting to avoid known bugs while waiting for a patch to become available. But, sometimes this isn't avoidable (think power generation system). If this particular bug is the cause, then by all means I think the users should be able to go after the company they PAID for damages. It's not like the software company didn't charge the end users to use the software. With those software rights, there really should be some sort of software liability (just like if I made a defective car, and then had to do a recall).
Since there's a sucker born every minute, that gives plenty of "new" customers for the spammers. That's 1,440 potential suckers every single day--or 525,600 per year. And if you can get the typical $19.99 out of each of them, you can get a whopping $10,506,744 of revenue. When you look at numbers like that, you can easily see how spammers (and TV commercials) can continue to annoy the rest of the population.
The problem with having a "sucker list" is that no one ever thinks he/she is one; and would do everything possible to stay off it. It's very similar to how most people believe they have an above average IQ. Nevermind the fact that most people can't be above average. A lot of people simply don't think of themselves as suckers.
Anyways, I need to go buy that new Igia ElectoSage 8. Have you seen it? It looks absolutely amazing! I'm gonna lose lots of weight with this thing--all without getting off my butt. Schweet!
Please. Most of the threads here are just (forgive me for saying) moronic. "All this for just 5 deaths", "This is the last nail being hammered into our coffin", "Oh dear me... my rights have been violated". Please.
How many people buy a hard drive and expect it to be shipped in an envelope without padding or an anti-static bag? None. You ship me a drive like that, I'll send it right back without testing it. Sure, it might work; but that's not the point. It may or may not work very long. Not worth the risk.
Similarly, now when you ship a compact flash card, you'll have to protect it properly. Duh. A hard drive isn't susceptible to this beam because it is surrounded by the plastic case... which is covered on both sides with about 2 or maybe 3 mil of aluminum. So, from now on, ship compact flash cards wrapped in aluminum foil or, once "professional" baggies are available, use those.
An electron beam needn't be harmful, folks. I can't remember the exact equation of how far the electrons will penetrate, but in my work with Auger Electron Spectroscopy, a 3keV beam only gets me about a nanometer into the surface of a material. Going to higher energy proportionally increases the depth--but really this isn't something that's difficult to shield against. This isn't nearly as big a deal as people are making it out to be.
Perhaps you will want to re-read Road Runner's Acceptable Use Policy. Nothing in there states that you can't use a router. Heck, I have a router and about 10 machines behind it. Time Warner doesn't care. Road Runner doesn't care. My neighbor's don't care.
Now, on the other hand, Time Warner does care if you're picking up extra IP addresses without the use of their DHCP server. That's a given. They also don't "support" routers. So if you call in for tech support, you had better know your own hardware well. In my case, I've got a Linux box (soon to be BSD, I think). The guys in support tiers 1 and 2 won't be able to help. The guys in tier 3, though, understand Linux quite well.
That said, I don't care if Time Warner "supports" my hardware. I only had to call them because of my outage and it started something like this: "Hi, my name is Ryan Clark. My phone number is XXX-XXXX. How can you help me? Well, it seems that I can't connect to the DHCP server in my area." Sometimes there's some info on their screens that states what the problem is, and that helps. In my case, I was the first one calling in--and so I had to go to tier 3 support. At no time, though, did any representative say that I was violating the terms of service by running a Linux router. In fact, the tier 3 guys seemed quite fine with it--like that's what they do at home themselves.
Same is true in the Columbus area. Heck, Time Warner is actually expanding their Road Runner service area by HUGE amounts. They have expanded roughly a full hour's driving distance north and west of my home (about 50 miles altogether). Around here, 50 miles in ANY direction puts you really far into the sticks.
On the other hand, DSL is dying around here. I don't know anyone actually using it; whereas everyone and his/her brother has a good RR connection and loves it. Granted, cable modems used to take heat for their perceived lack of service; but I can say that in over a year and a half I've only had an outage of about 6 hours (all at one time, for an unknown reason). That's pretty reliable service in my opinion, at least for a residential ISP.
Now, businesses around here all seem to have ISP service through Ameritech one way or another. A full or fractional T-1 seems to be the defacto standard, and whoever the provider is, it's going through Ma Bell. No way around that (yet).
I just can't see how broadband isn't taking off around here. If DSL is your only classification of what broadband is... then well, okay... I can see that being the case. It's just too gosh darn expensive and it's no faster than cable. Now, if only Time Warner could only put my phone service on cable, too....
...I can just see the day when I walk by Starbucks and my pants will analyse the last time I urinated and determines what size of latte would be perfect for me.
Hopefully it's no worse than that. Imagine going to the grocery store and having your pants go wild near the adult diapers because they are sick of getting leaked on.
One thing the submitter failed to say was which type of orbit the satellite in question has obtained. This can make a huge difference. If it's a geosynchronous orbit, you know exactly where your satellite is at all times and (hopefully) you can also point it's dish right back at you. You would want to prevent people from snooping your signal in the first place. People can't reverse engineer a signal that can't be perceived from a convenient location.
My guess, though, is that this particular satellite isn't in such an easy orbit. That's fine, but extra measures should be considered. One neat trick if you're designing a satellite is have the longest wavelength as possible. That makes it very hard to intercept communications (even though they go everywhere, even deep in the ocean). The U.S. Naval command sends messages to submerged submarines using a wavelength on the order of 2 meters. If a really large dish is required just to talk to the satellite in orbit, someone is gonna notice when a guy builds a replica in his back yard.
Okay, that's all for initial designs. Here's what I suggest as something you can change now, without much fuss. Forget about encryption nearly entirely. I'm guessing that the satellite does have a clock (and ideally it sets itself to the GPS signals). Now, the satellite should only obey signals that arrive between pre-set times (though it can behave as though it's really going to act, as a foil attempt). Second, the ground station should send commands followed by a signature--like PGP signatures. The satellite's software should easily be able to confirm that the message is authentic. No need to encrypt--since no one else can reproduce the signature. If the signature is valid, the orders are carried out. If the signature is bogus, the command is logged and relayed back to ground later for inspection.
DOS attacks are more difficult to deal with. My personal feeling, though, is that if this particular satellite must have updates every day or so, you're in trouble anyways. Perhaps you can find a way to ensure about 3 days worth of commands can be in queue, in the event that the satellite is unreachable. That will keep it roughly in its orbit. Then, if a DOS attack does come, you'll have those three days to track the source. That should be plenty of time. Also, and I could be wrong, but most "hackers" or whatever prefer a much more immediate result. They would want to do the DOS attack, see the satellite go down in flames or whatever. Waiting 3 days for something to happen... all the while being searched out... is likely to make the hackers very, very scared. I would be shocked if they transmit more than a day, personally.
The congresswoman I wrote to was Deborah Pryce, a Republican from the 15th district of Ohio. It's just to the west of Columbus, Ohio (I live in the suburbs). She's a very nice lady, and really does a remarkable job in my opinion. She's also the highest-ranking Republican woman in the House currently, too. I'm not sure that gives her a huge amount of power... but she does seem to carry more weight than some of the other congresspersons.
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I own a house. For those of you not fortunate enough to understand what that means, consider your average junkmail that you receive now in your rental house, apartment, whatever. Multiply that by roughly 15.
This letter may be somewhat deceptive. So is every other friggin' piece of mail in my mailbox right now. Most people do the same thing with all such letters--they throw them out. But, like always, there is a sucker born every minute who will just plop down the credit card number and send the thing in. That's the ropes, folks.
When I looked at the letter, I saw Verisign's name immediately. I also noticed that you are signing for "renewal and transfer authorization", not just renewal. Sure, this might not say explicitly that you're going to change registrars... but there's a heck of a lot of fine print near the bottom that I can't read. My guess is that everything is spelled out there very clearly--to the person who cares to read it anyways.
Sorry folks, that's life. There's enough stupid people in the world who fall for things like this to make it economically worthwhile. Maybe next time get mad at the people dumb enough to sign things without reading--cause it's really their fault in the end.
What's the stupidest thing a person can do when placed under arrest? Not demand to talk to your lawyer or have one appointed. What's the stupidest thing you can do after that? Not allow your attorney to do his or her job.
/.ers--if you get arrested, keep your mouth shut unless you have your attorney beside you. Let them take care of everything. And no matter what, don't ever think that you can properly defend yourself in court--it's called being railroaded for a reason. This guy's about to get the maximum sentence possible when he really could have gotten off with a slap on the wrist. Dumb.
What is the very first thing that a rich, savy lawyer would do if he were arrested? Get the best darned attorney to represent him that he can afford. But why not represent himself, I mean--the accused is a lawyer, too. Well, when you're a defendant, your job is to help your attorney and keep yourself from doing stupid things like this kid has. It's your attorney's job to handle all the legal matters.
Future note to all
Judging by people's posts thus far, most just don't get it. What's the point to this--it's just a switch in a teddy bear? Heck--I could do this on my own. It's not that interesting. Oh wait, since it was students at MIT, it must be really neat.
Frankly, I doubt most people here could ever get it. This teddy bear is so cool only because it makes a much nicer UI than a cheezy box with a few blinken lights and ports. It's soft and fuzzy. It's not beige and scary. If I had a daughter, I'd love the idea of giving her a laptop and a switch like this. All of a sudden, the idea of a "sleepover computer party" wouldn't be so gosh darn nerdy. They could stay up all night playing with Virtual Barbie or whatever is the software of the year.
Plus, what's so special about these MIT guys is that they have documented the heck out of this little endeavour. I'd gladly hire one of these guys to work with me. Sure, it's not the best idea every conceived--but at least it's documented. I could now go and reproduce their efforts without much thought.
In all, it seems rather impressive to me. It's a neat new UI that's not typical. It's documented to all heck. That beats half of everything I've ever done.
Screw donating money to his opponent. I'm seriously considering moving to California next week to be one of the many voters who are against this guy. I'll happily use my own money in a campaign of my own to get voters to vote "Anyone But Jones".
Anyone know of a good-looking 22-year-old brunette looking for a prositution job? I'd also love to pay to have her an affair and thus slander the guy even more. Maybe we can even make it look like she's come up missing, ala Condit? Sure, it might be unethical... but then what's the lesser of the evils?
I still am in awe of what our CIS department has done at Ohio State. They handle something like 200 thin clients, plus all the remote sessions.
Basically, you sit down at an old, stripped down HP-UX machine or a thin client that allows you to log into one of their servers. NT and Solaris are the typical flavors--I can't remember what the other option was. Plus, if you log into the Solaris box, you can open a Citrix client and use that to be logged into an NT server. This is really nice for writing code in UNIX land, but using MS Office for the documentation.
I would just love it if the EE department could get a clue and do something similar. It really would give us the best of all worlds. Oh, and you can read more about the CIS setup here.
I actually used to volunteer with my county's sheriff's office. It was way out in the sticks, and crime wasn't a huge thing. But still, we had murders and all that evilness. Most of it was domestic violence.
So one day, I do exactly what you purposed. I had sorta known the detectives, and shoot--it seemed perfectly reasonable to ask about how they go about collecting evidence and coming up with models, etc. That was a mistake. The very first statement out of the guy's mouth was that he wouldn't ever share HIS methods with anyone unless by court order (testifying, etc.). Too much fear that if you knew his personal methods, you could then commit a crime that would never be solved. Plus, he (possibly correctly) assumed that maybe I would use this to my advantage in the future.
You might be able to find out general information about the practices, though. Heck--watch TLC and Discovery. But if you notice carefully, you'll find that you never do get to see any particular detective's methods. You only get bits and pieces that may or may not be relevant. It's very much a predator-prey lifestyle. You may also be able to ask professors at a college or university that teaches forensic science.
Just be careful never to ask in such a way that makes you look guilty before you start.
I can't think of a list off hand--but as another poster pointed out, a great place to start is pricewatch. I have purchased my OS-free computers from IBuyPower.com and I have to say that I am very impressed with the hardware. They do excellent work--and no, I don't get a discount or anything.
I love to order new computers without an operating system. I used to build them from components, but now I've found that for about the same cost (plus a lot less time) I can have a brand new computer sent to my door via my favorite on-line retailer. And since I don't want an operating system installed, I'm not going to be forced into buying it. And that's all well and good since I generally nuke the hard drive as my first order of business anyway.
Most consumers, on the other hand, are morons. I know this. If I get one more phone call at 1:00am because of some jack#$$ tried to upgrade to WinXP and somehow lost all of his data, I'm going to scream. I don't even like Windows.
Back a few years ago (it's been a while), Microsoft sent out a memo to all its OEM vendors about how it's bad for the customer to receive a computer without an operating system. The basic reason for this was Microsoft's fear of piracy, which I believe is legitimate. Far too many people who will purchase this type of computer from Wal-Mart will either pirate a copy of Windows or will buy a copy and then have a very difficult time getting it installed. All the various questions it asks always has people calling me at all hours.
So, give the thing an operating system. Bundle RedHat, Suse, Mandrake, etc into the thing without any cost--and give the end-user a "coupon" to use if they want to activate RedHat's (or whomever's) support. Sure, that will be for extra money--but the end user might be happy to pay for that support if it's needed. And it keeps him/her from having to run back to the store for a copy of XP.
Nothing annoys a non-computer person more than when they turn a brand-new computer on and all it says is "Not Bootable Devices Found" or whatever. At least give them a Linux distro with all of X's prettiness. Besides--they might actually like it.
That's just my $0.02
Anyone else find it rather odd that supporting opinions from the Associate for Competative Technology and the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism? Maybe not. But then they also were both formed in 1998. Call that a coincidence. Also, the Computing Technology Industry Association was formed in 2000 (as far as I can tell).
I didn't bother searching for the other two opinions for the settlement. Here's hoping that the judge can read between the lines here. Lord knows I can't figure out just who is the main contributer to these organizations.
You are certainly correct about our founders being terrorists. It's all about your perspective. Bin Laden is a "liberator" to those who follow him. Our founders liberated us from British oppression. Sounds rather familiar, and you're competely correct in that.
I take issue with the idea of the Bush family being a type of monarchy. The Kennedy's have a much longer history, and at their height had much more power than the Bush family. I suppose since they are all Democrates, it's an okay thing. I won't attempt to pretend that George HW Bush didn't have anything to do with his son getting elected. Personally--it meant a lot to me as a voter because I actually liked GHWB (one of the few, probably). Besides, Gore never appealed to me as a voter--and I think that was a lot of other people's opinion as well. Gore could have easily won--but he didn't because he did a bad job on the campaign trail.
But I digress. I would say that the founders did have in mind a state that could monitor its citizens at all times. Why else would the 4th Ammendment exist? Why build in so many checks and balances to power? It is the executive branch that historically wields the most power to be exerted over the citezenry. It was always believed that a President could simply assign his "secret police" to monitor an individual and potentially cause harm or havok. But, Congress can make it so that those secret police can't get funding. The Supreme Court can throw out any cases in which evidence was obtained illegally and thus set an innocent (or guilty) man free.
The idea of revolution was built into the Constitution. At any point, we (the citizens) can ammend the basic laws. Sure, it has to go through Congress--but if 75% of the population supports the measure you can be certain that it will pass Congress. The problem is that most citizens don't have a real problem with what's going on right now. Most citizens don't want to worry about such matters right now.
Now, once the main threat of terror passes (and it will), things will return to a more "normal" state. And if the government won't shed it's new found powers, the citizens will revolt by way of their votes. It's the way it's always been.
And before someone replies to me saying that maybe Bush will hold onto this power and it will result in a tyrannical rule... go hang yourself. Our country has been through times much worse than this in the past, and we've always come out stronger in the end. Never have we had a time when the government wouldn't volunrarily limit its own power when that's what the people desire.
Alright, I'm not fond of security cameras all over the friggin' place. It's pretty annoying at the post office now when at any given moment you're being monitored on no less than three cameras. It sorta feels like you can't go anywhere without being monitored.
Then again, we all learn to cope. Sure, I've been recorded all over town and guess how many times the police have come to my door? Never. How many times have they investigated me? Never. We all know that the NSA and CIA collect all kinds of information--but the real problem is in interpretation. I may be on a lot of magnetic tape; but my guess is that few (if any) people have actually reviewed that or done anything about it.
People go to DC to see the museums, monuments, etc. They may also go to case out a future terrorist act. That's all fine and legal. When you go into buildings in DC, they already make you go through metal detectors and some even ask for your ID. Yes, that information can be tracked just like everything else. But so long as you're not doing anything that provokes attention, you're fine.
I actually would like to know that if someone places a bomb near the Washington Monument we could review the tapes of past and potentially catch any of the main suspect's helpers. I wouldn't mind a police officer monitoring what's going on in the Navy Square (or whatever it's called) and so when I get mugged and thrown in the fountain there's a police car on it's way to pick up my attacker and help me out. In London, this sort of thing has just become a way of life. People there actually prefer having the cameras.
You're in trouble if you are graduating soon. I won't bother trying to raise your spirits. We had an Engineering Career Fair here last week and it was truly pathetic. Few companies bothered showing up (though they registered months ago), and the ones that did were only hiring a few people (if any). And no, this isn't a small school out of the way--this is a Big Ten University, with good rankings in engineering.
So, if you are graduating soon, you should really try to find yourself in grad school. When all this blows over, you're going to be much better off coming out with your Master's (if not your PhD). In EE, a BS just may not be enough to get you doing whatever it is you want to do. Many big companies hire BSEEs just for marketing and uncreative tech work. If you want to actually design things or lead others, you need an MS--though an MBA works, too.
Just make sure that you get a support offer from a professor before you apply to a school. If you've already got a job, you are nearly guaranteed to get accepted (even with a low GPA, okay test scores, etc). The main limiter to how many grad students there can be in a given department is the funding. If funding has been found for you, you're golden.
Good luck, though, with all your studies. Also, if you're interested in the material aspects of EE, there will be more jobs for you as they are still in reasonably high demand. Same with the analog design jobs. And microwave design. If you can, transition yourself into these types of specialties. There aren't nearly enough people who can do well at it, and they aren't quite as sensitive as the IT, programming, or even digital logic careers.
I've decided that I'm giving out these. Maybe I'll get lucky and won't have to worry about spending a load of money for an ounce of sex. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
I like your car metaphor--and I think it can be applied here.
Generally, manufacturers can get around licensing issues with regard to automobiles because their items are general purpose, and have nothing to do with copyright, patents, or other property of the auto manufacturer.
Chilton's and Haynes pay a licensing cost to auto makers. This isn't a huge affair, but it does exist. You can say it's wrong and evil, but the fact is that these publishers make their money from reproducing information that for the most part belongs to the manufacturer. This doesn't stop any citizen from taking apart his brand new Mustang GT and measuring every component--it simply means that said individual can't just go out and sell that information to others without first consulting the proper owner of the designs.
Now, if a company began to produce modified EEPROMS for a particular car's computer, that could very well land that company in a court of law to answer charges. Yes, I know that there are people who do this--especially to Honda Civics. Obviously, Honda doesn't support this type of thing, and it voids your warranty. If this company takes open data from Honda (either through public information, published information, or licensing) and then uses that to produce a new EEPROM--all is fine. There isn't anything wrong with that.
What isn't okay is when a company reverse-engineers the existing EEPROM without any permission from the manufacturer, and then modifies that information for resale. That is the equivelent to reverse-compiling a company's software and then selling a modified version for profit, which is illegal in most every nation. In most cases, auto manufacturers have ways to publish or otherwise license most every detail about a car so that people can do as they please. It's like the GPL. But you can't get mad at a company if they don't feel the GPL is right for them--and you can't get mad about Sony not publishing this particular information.
No company has any right to go after citizens for reverse-engineering their products. That includes Sony, GM, Microsoft, and Aunt Millie's Pretzels. That has never been an issue, and my guess is that it never will become one. A company does have the right to protect their work and their product's design details from competitors, though. If Ford reverse-engineered a GM EEPROM, modified it, and then used that code on their new cars; there would be hell to pay. GM put time and money into that program and it can't be used without GM's permission. Similarly, you can't go trolling around for one of Betty Crocker's recipes and expect to sell either the recipe itself or products you made directly as a result of having that recipe.
Sony never made any information public regarding their PS2 hardware that would allow for a mod chip to be designed. They also never licensed anyone that information for such a use. It seems fair to say that any information regarding the hardware design came from either reverse-engineering or from individuals working for Sony who gave those secrets up. The companies who are producing these mod chips are using "fruit of the poisonous tree", so to speak. They can't show a legal means for them to have the information to produce the mod chips--such as a public document showing the internal schematics of the PS2 or some license with Sony that allows them to use that information as they please.
I suppose that I have difficulty seeing why it's unfair for Sony to attempt to control piracy, maybe even restrict use of some games because of their own internal marketting strategies. It's their system, for gosh sakes. They own it, they own the design, the name, the commericals, and they even own the right to say how much it will cost a company in licenses to develop software for their console. It isn't like there aren't two other competitors--Nintendo and Xbox. If Sony's tactics are so foul and evil; feel free to sell your hardware on Ebay and purchase something from someone else. You can speak louder by your purchasing habits than any other way. Don't think for a minute that Sony wouldn't find a way to allow for mod chips if their customers really desired them. Most people really don't care, though. They feel mod chips are only used for piracy and thus are immoral.
Generally speaking, yes. You can take it completely apart, poke and prod all the bits, and otherwise reverse-engineer to your heart's content. The DMCA wasn't really intended to limit this type of behaviour. You won't find agents at your door because you took apart your PlayStation 2 or Xbox, or whatever. If you own it, you can do as you like.
The sticky part comes when you publish (via the internet or otherwise) a direct method to circumvent any copy protections. It also gets more hairy when you offer to sell bits and pieces for what can circumvent those protections. If I produce a piece of equipment (with patents, copyrights, etc. over that), I should also have the expressed right over how I want to license 3rd party manufacturer's.
You can buy a PS2 controller from other companies besides Sony. But Sony gets a piece of that product, because they own the machine that it is intended for. When we start to talk about mod chips, Sony doesn't see any of that. They haven't licensed these products, and it's quite likely that these manufacturers are using Sony's registered names and trademarks (I mean, they are called PS2 mod chips...). Also, mod chips allow for Sony to further lose control over their licensing by way of "3rd party" games in the form of piracy.
Personally, I think Sony is stuck in a position where they can't win. If they don't go after these companies who sell mod chips, they risk losing their licenses, trademarks, etc. These things have to be protected. On the other hand, if they go after mod chip vendors, it looks like they are just being bullies.
Of course, you still can do whatever you want to your own hardware in your own home. Sony doesn't really care to break down the doors of even those people who purchased a mod chip. It isn't in their interest--and the government doesn't give a darn (cause the burden of proof is high to get a search warrant). Heck, I have a DVD player in pieces in my basement because I'm curious how it works--but under no circumstance will that allow the manufacturer to come into my house to see if I've broken a copyright protection mechanism. Once I start selling chips, though.... all bets are off.
Agreed. Hard drives are manufactured in a cleanroom environment for a reason. My guess is that these guys either got extremely lucky, or more likely they have hundreds of bad sectors that got re-mapped to the outside of the platters by the drive's circuitry. That drive is going to fail before long--mark my words.
If someone really wants to do this, the drive should be taken apart in a cleanroom and the platters kept there. The dremel work must be done outside for obvious reasons.
I suppose if anyone is in the Columbus, OH area and has a harddrive to waste--I'll help you out since I have access to a class 100 cleanroom. I won't do anything except take the thing apart and protect the platters. Someone else can be responsible for modding the case. Send me an e-mail.
Hang on a second. Granted, Palm hasn't done anything here that should shock the majority of people into getting one of these "new" handhelds. I, for one, won't be buy it. Neither will the vast majority of people.
My boss, on the other hand, won't come anywhere near a handheld that isn't a Palm. He loves the software that loads on his desktop. He loves the fact that he and his... assistant can synchronize their schedules or that she can make the schedule for him--and all he needs to do is put the Palm in the cradle.
Trust me, when my boss finds out that he'll be able to check his e-mail from anywhere on this new Palm; he's gonna want one. He's already seen the devices from someone else (not sure who) that do this; but he wasn't willing to go with a company he doesn't know. He wants to stay with Palm. And now he's going to get this and all the extra bells and whistles, too.
Personally, I don't want to check my e-mail from the potty. My boss would, though. He also would want to have the "I'm so cool" factor. It's people like this that Palm is going for; and there are a lot more people like that than you think. Check with your company's Execs and marketing department for starters. Vanity runs rampant around there.
I hear a lot of people happy about the idea of going after M$ because they are the Evil Empire. I also hear a lot of people that are afraid of us open sourcers being attacked. Obviously, more secure and better written code should be standard.
I'm not so sure that liability isn't a good thing. I'm not saying that a programmer should be completely responsible for his/her code and any results that occur. I can instead think of a different situation. Imagine I produce a piece of software and sell it/give it away. I don't think it's a bad idea for me to be required to:
Now, of course end users will be responsible for installing patches, monitoring CERT advisories, etc. The end users are also responsible for attempting to avoid known bugs while waiting for a patch to become available. But, sometimes this isn't avoidable (think power generation system). If this particular bug is the cause, then by all means I think the users should be able to go after the company they PAID for damages. It's not like the software company didn't charge the end users to use the software. With those software rights, there really should be some sort of software liability (just like if I made a defective car, and then had to do a recall).
Since there's a sucker born every minute, that gives plenty of "new" customers for the spammers. That's 1,440 potential suckers every single day--or 525,600 per year. And if you can get the typical $19.99 out of each of them, you can get a whopping $10,506,744 of revenue. When you look at numbers like that, you can easily see how spammers (and TV commercials) can continue to annoy the rest of the population.
The problem with having a "sucker list" is that no one ever thinks he/she is one; and would do everything possible to stay off it. It's very similar to how most people believe they have an above average IQ. Nevermind the fact that most people can't be above average. A lot of people simply don't think of themselves as suckers.
Anyways, I need to go buy that new Igia ElectoSage 8. Have you seen it? It looks absolutely amazing! I'm gonna lose lots of weight with this thing--all without getting off my butt. Schweet!
Please. Most of the threads here are just (forgive me for saying) moronic. "All this for just 5 deaths", "This is the last nail being hammered into our coffin", "Oh dear me... my rights have been violated". Please.
How many people buy a hard drive and expect it to be shipped in an envelope without padding or an anti-static bag? None. You ship me a drive like that, I'll send it right back without testing it. Sure, it might work; but that's not the point. It may or may not work very long. Not worth the risk.
Similarly, now when you ship a compact flash card, you'll have to protect it properly. Duh. A hard drive isn't susceptible to this beam because it is surrounded by the plastic case... which is covered on both sides with about 2 or maybe 3 mil of aluminum. So, from now on, ship compact flash cards wrapped in aluminum foil or, once "professional" baggies are available, use those.
An electron beam needn't be harmful, folks. I can't remember the exact equation of how far the electrons will penetrate, but in my work with Auger Electron Spectroscopy, a 3keV beam only gets me about a nanometer into the surface of a material. Going to higher energy proportionally increases the depth--but really this isn't something that's difficult to shield against. This isn't nearly as big a deal as people are making it out to be.
Perhaps you will want to re-read Road Runner's Acceptable Use Policy. Nothing in there states that you can't use a router. Heck, I have a router and about 10 machines behind it. Time Warner doesn't care. Road Runner doesn't care. My neighbor's don't care.
Now, on the other hand, Time Warner does care if you're picking up extra IP addresses without the use of their DHCP server. That's a given. They also don't "support" routers. So if you call in for tech support, you had better know your own hardware well. In my case, I've got a Linux box (soon to be BSD, I think). The guys in support tiers 1 and 2 won't be able to help. The guys in tier 3, though, understand Linux quite well.
That said, I don't care if Time Warner "supports" my hardware. I only had to call them because of my outage and it started something like this: "Hi, my name is Ryan Clark. My phone number is XXX-XXXX. How can you help me? Well, it seems that I can't connect to the DHCP server in my area." Sometimes there's some info on their screens that states what the problem is, and that helps. In my case, I was the first one calling in--and so I had to go to tier 3 support. At no time, though, did any representative say that I was violating the terms of service by running a Linux router. In fact, the tier 3 guys seemed quite fine with it--like that's what they do at home themselves.
Same is true in the Columbus area. Heck, Time Warner is actually expanding their Road Runner service area by HUGE amounts. They have expanded roughly a full hour's driving distance north and west of my home (about 50 miles altogether). Around here, 50 miles in ANY direction puts you really far into the sticks.
On the other hand, DSL is dying around here. I don't know anyone actually using it; whereas everyone and his/her brother has a good RR connection and loves it. Granted, cable modems used to take heat for their perceived lack of service; but I can say that in over a year and a half I've only had an outage of about 6 hours (all at one time, for an unknown reason). That's pretty reliable service in my opinion, at least for a residential ISP.
Now, businesses around here all seem to have ISP service through Ameritech one way or another. A full or fractional T-1 seems to be the defacto standard, and whoever the provider is, it's going through Ma Bell. No way around that (yet).
I just can't see how broadband isn't taking off around here. If DSL is your only classification of what broadband is... then well, okay... I can see that being the case. It's just too gosh darn expensive and it's no faster than cable. Now, if only Time Warner could only put my phone service on cable, too....
Hopefully it's no worse than that. Imagine going to the grocery store and having your pants go wild near the adult diapers because they are sick of getting leaked on.
One thing the submitter failed to say was which type of orbit the satellite in question has obtained. This can make a huge difference. If it's a geosynchronous orbit, you know exactly where your satellite is at all times and (hopefully) you can also point it's dish right back at you. You would want to prevent people from snooping your signal in the first place. People can't reverse engineer a signal that can't be perceived from a convenient location.
My guess, though, is that this particular satellite isn't in such an easy orbit. That's fine, but extra measures should be considered. One neat trick if you're designing a satellite is have the longest wavelength as possible. That makes it very hard to intercept communications (even though they go everywhere, even deep in the ocean). The U.S. Naval command sends messages to submerged submarines using a wavelength on the order of 2 meters. If a really large dish is required just to talk to the satellite in orbit, someone is gonna notice when a guy builds a replica in his back yard.
Okay, that's all for initial designs. Here's what I suggest as something you can change now, without much fuss. Forget about encryption nearly entirely. I'm guessing that the satellite does have a clock (and ideally it sets itself to the GPS signals). Now, the satellite should only obey signals that arrive between pre-set times (though it can behave as though it's really going to act, as a foil attempt). Second, the ground station should send commands followed by a signature--like PGP signatures. The satellite's software should easily be able to confirm that the message is authentic. No need to encrypt--since no one else can reproduce the signature. If the signature is valid, the orders are carried out. If the signature is bogus, the command is logged and relayed back to ground later for inspection.
DOS attacks are more difficult to deal with. My personal feeling, though, is that if this particular satellite must have updates every day or so, you're in trouble anyways. Perhaps you can find a way to ensure about 3 days worth of commands can be in queue, in the event that the satellite is unreachable. That will keep it roughly in its orbit. Then, if a DOS attack does come, you'll have those three days to track the source. That should be plenty of time. Also, and I could be wrong, but most "hackers" or whatever prefer a much more immediate result. They would want to do the DOS attack, see the satellite go down in flames or whatever. Waiting 3 days for something to happen... all the while being searched out... is likely to make the hackers very, very scared. I would be shocked if they transmit more than a day, personally.
The congresswoman I wrote to was Deborah Pryce, a Republican from the 15th district of Ohio. It's just to the west of Columbus, Ohio (I live in the suburbs). She's a very nice lady, and really does a remarkable job in my opinion. She's also the highest-ranking Republican woman in the House currently, too. I'm not sure that gives her a huge amount of power... but she does seem to carry more weight than some of the other congresspersons.