This will cost a LOT more than $75 per launch. That is just the cost of the electricty to operate the Maglev. There will still be rockets in use, and the fuel requirements will still run into the multi-million dollar range, this will just reduce that figure somewhat.
Most of the costs related to space travel is related to the amount of fuel needed to get out of Earth's gravity well. Any small increase in weight requires a large amount of extra fuel, which in turn requires a larger rocket, adding to the weight. ANY reduction in fuel requirements reduces the cost at an exponential rate.
Other options include using fuel which applies more thrust per mass. Chemical propulsion is very inefficient, but many of the alternatives take advantage of politically unfriendly qualities. Its hard enough to get a nuclear power source into space without half the world complaining about it. If a rocket was propelled by a nuclear reaction, you could bet the complaints would be much louder.
There are many different theories about it. The simple fact of the matter is that all the matter in the universe may eventually be concentrated within a single black hole, but it will take a few more years. The universe is still young. VERY young. The universe will be something along the lines of 10^70 years old before it gets swallowed up like this.
Another thing to realize, since empty space is more or less a sideeffect of the matter within it, if all matter is concentrated within a single singularity, there won't BE any space, and the universe will effectively disappear, at least back to the point it started at, a single point of high energy and mass, but no volume. BANG!
This, of course, relies on the theory that the universe is closed.
I think you seriously underestimate the amount of prOn on the internet. At 5 gigs per movie, you can hold 30 movies. I take it you haven't watched the oscars ceremony recently if you think that there have only been 30 "winners" in the last 10 years.
Rumors, depending on their source, are as credible as urban legends. There might be some slight truth to them, but the automotive industry is highly competitive. The automotive industry has NO concern about the mpg rating on their cars, they only respond to (in this order) 1-government regulations (which encourage fuel conservation), and 2- customer demands. If customers want 100mpg cars, they will get them. They might have to make other sacrifices tho, which may be why we don't have them today. I've heard NOTHING about this pill of yours.
Its not mostly BS.. Its mostly cinematics and sound files. They just put all the data into one file. When you install it, it extracts all the necessary game files, but the music and cinematics and most of the voices are kept on the CD. Why they chose to keep it all archived into one EXE file is beyond me, but I seriously doubt its padded with unused data.
What part of child supervision do you find unreasonable?
As far as I'm concerned, you have 2 options. You can either supervise what your children do if you consider what they're doing might be harmful in some way, or you don't let them do it. If you can't physically keep your children from getting on the computer without your supervision, then you need to incorporate some other method, such as a bios password or a keyboard lock, or even, god forbid, NO COMPUTER. Because, if you're going to leave your children alone with the computer you either need to trust that they can appropriately deal with what they might come across (or intentionally search for), or you need to take approprate precautions as you would in any situation where you can't trust them.
I keep up to date on known exploits, and so far as I know, I have no holes, so I'm pretty safe from the script kiddies. But what this test has shown is that someone who is intellegent and meticulous.
However, there were multiple holes involved here, any of which could have prevented the crack if they had been patched. The first allowed the cracker to determine the directory structure. The second allowed him to write an executable file with contents of his choice, allowing him to run any program as a local user, and the third was the crontab exploit, which required a local user to exploit.
The only one that is even remotely linux related is the contrab exploit, and it was a KNOWN exploit, so it should have been patched if this was going to be a valid test of the operating system.
I feel confident (as confident as I can anyways) that my suid programs are all known exploit free. I host MANY users on my system, and occasional use of crack shows that many of their passwords are frequently all to easy to guess. The possibility of someone accessing AN account on my system is somewhat likely, so I have to be sure that there are no open holes that a local user could exploit.
However, I plan to take a long hard look at all cgi scripts on my system to look for any obvoius holes.
As much of a PR stunt as these cracking contests might be, I personally don't see a big problem with them. I feel I've learned something from it, especially with that detailed explaination. I know a few more potential holes I have to watch out for. And you can be sure that every redhat user who read slashdot today will be making sure that crontab is patched. I see no losses. I hope they do it again.:)
-Restil
Re:Trillions of pennies
on
CNN On IPv6
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Not to mention that this layout is in a 2 dimensional environment. If it was in a 3 dimensional environment, then the time delay problem would be a moot point.
Talk about a man with no vision. The simple notion that the computer industry will topple over in a few years because everything will completed has to be the most absurd commentary, and the one that has been disproven so many times in the past.
Why doesn't linux run on all these high end massive servers right now? I have a theory. Because 3-4 years ago when all these systems were put in place, linux wasn't a viable option. It was still in its infancy and wasn't yet ready for it. So these servers were designed and built with other operating systems and as they were updated, they maintained their current OS because frankly it would be easier to upgrade to another compatible operating system than porting to another. Far from impossible, but it would require a significant amount of work. So these servers tend to stay with their current system until they have a substantial reason to change.
In the last couple of years with added support for SMP and with linux gaining ground on a wide variety of different architectures, linux is quickly becoming the OS of choice for new servers today. These little servers today will be the big servers tomorrow. It might just take a couple years before linux has a prominent place amongst the other big boys, but it won't be all that long.
As for IRC, I found it rather interesting that he first states that NO IRC servers are run on linux, then he later revises his statement to imply only the big networks. In many cases, the same reasons apply. The big networks have enough problems as it is right now. The major operators probably figure, right or wrong, that keeping a standard platform set will help to minimize these problems. And since the other servers are running BSD/Solaris or whatnot, thats what they continue to support.
I'm getting errors now when I try to reload, but I got a few choice responses so far:
http://www.IneradicableOnline.com/ A perfect replacement for AOL in case they ever get bored with the name.
http://www.FetusStreet.com/ I'm not sure I even WANT to know about the possibilities of this one.
Doesn't look like the site was slashdotted as there was practically no load time, I'll bet that whoever was admining the server took the script offline due to excessive load.
I live in Texas, and what I say applies to Texas. I'm not a lawyer.
There is no state income tax in Texas (not yet anyways), but we have a 8.25% (varies slightly from city to city) sales tax on consumer goods (except food which is tax exempt).
If I, as a retailler, want to sell someone something, I get a tax license, NOT so I can collect and file sales taxes, I can do this without a license. What I need the license for is so I can purchase my inventory tax free. I just need to actually SELL my inventory or pay the taxes on it later.
If I sell my products to a customer out of state, and ship the product there, I am not obligated to collect sales tax, and I therefore don't need to file any. Any product I purchase from out of state that I purchase for PERSONAL use I am not required to pay taxes on. However, if the product I purchase is for business use then I am required to pay a "use tax" on the product at the same sales tax rate. Its a business product mainly if I deduct it from income tax as a business expense.
Where things get tricker is where services are involved. Certain services are tax exempt, such as educational services or legal services, but for the most part, a service must be taxed at the same rate as consumer products. If I sell my services to a customer out of state, but I PERFORM the service IN Texas, then I am obligated to file taxes on that service.
There's no harm done in collecting sales tax from EVERYONE, even if they would otherwise be exempt and filing all of it. Trust me, the state won't care. You can also hike all of your prices to include the tax, and simply file the appropriate percentage, then just not charge any additional tax to anyone.
The current maps are awesome, but now what needs to be done is to color code them not according to geographical location, but by ip address. Include a color key and specifically identify several routes on the internet. Then all someone would have to do is run a traceroute to that location, then use the color keys to find his/her individual network on the map. Of course, with the dynamic nature of the internet, this would probably not be useful for long, but its still a cool idea.:)
Ok. Personal email on the company network is not private. You will now be required to scan all email boxes to ensure that pornography isn't present. So the first thing you should do is to send a general notice to EVERYONE in the company informing them of the scanning policy so nobody gets caught offguard. That way, if there IS any porn to be found, it can be eliminated before anyone gets around to finding it.
This solves 2 problems. 1 - nobody will be "wasting time" by looking at porn and 2 - you won't have to come across as the bad guy. The witch hunt will prove to be unsuccessful and a waste of YOUR time which could be better spent elsewhere.
For $110 you can get a 2.4 ghz video/stereo audio transmitter/receiver kit and all you need there is RCA input on the transmitter from your soundcard, which is easy. No plugins or any other OS specific requirements. Its an itch more expensive, but not too bad.
This article just seems like the editors were out of ideas and needed SOMETHING to come up with, so they decided to complain about the keyboard layout and "redundant" keys.
I use all those "redundant" keys, except for maybe the scroll lock. Yes, I know there are two sets of arrow keys, and two Insert/delete/home/end/etc keys. That provides flexibility. Its an advantage, not a curse.
I personally like to use the keypad for arrows and use the regular typewriter keyboard number's for typing in numbers. My Numlock key is always off for this reason. Pause still works in those programs that take advantage of it.
And besides. There ARE keyboards that either compress or remove those useless keys. They're on laptops. Now, do you REALLY want to type on a laptop keyboard when you're sitting at your desk? Those keyboards are cramped and for me a pain in the ass. I'll take my 101 keyboard anyday (although I REALLY could do without those 3 windows keys)
Come on people. We don't NEED to complain about keyboards just because its a standard that nobody ever saw the need to change.
The only TRUE injustice is that Kevin Mitnick does not have competant legal council. Its his own legal team, and their recommendations, that he give up his right to a free trial. They are the ones who continuously postpone the trial in order to review evidence. They are the ones who failed to do any significant research into the prosecution's claims to the effect that Mitnick had stolen, therefore caused a significant monetary loss to the corporations mentioned, which is the grounds the prosecution used to keep him locked up without bail.
It may be an unfortunate set of circumstances, but the issue was compounded for other reasons. First, he has SEVERAL felony convictions already. Secondly, he has been known to flee to avoid prosecution in the past. This is a BIG No-no when you're trying to get bail in the future.
Federal trials tend to take a long time. While 4 and a half years might seem like an excessively long time, it really isn't. Its only long while you're rotting in jail. For this reason, it is in the defendant's best interest to TAKE the speedy trail because it doesn't give the prosection a lot of time to prepare and its a lot easier to have a competant defense attorney find gaping holes in their investigation, which give plenty of opportunities for reasonable doubt.
Since most of these "injustices" lead down to the issue of his defense, that leads to another issue. 2600 has been pleading for its reader's to donate to Kevin's legal defense fund. However, as of about a year ago, the most they were able to raise was $3000. While its better than nothing, it barely pays the daily salary for a good lawyer. It also happens to be less than 20 cents per reader of the magazine. Pretty pathetic when that's considered to be Kevin's major centre of support.
Instead, he has 2 court appointed annorney's (the 40,000 a year variety) who's typical defense is to plea bargain every case. However, if Kevin was able to fight it, and in the chance that he could have won the case, it would have set valuable precedent for any of the state trials he was facing. Since LA dropped the case against him (probably since they don't really see the point of it anymore), this is less of a concern. But being aquitted for the same crimes in one court makes it a LOT easier to win the same battle in another court and the case would have probably gotten dropped anyways.
Yes, in many cases he IS a political prisoner. And while slapping Free Kevin stickers on your bumper might bring awareness to an issue that most American's have probably never heard a word of, but in the long run, it really does nothing to help him. And if he wanted to go down as a martyr, the last thing in the world he should have done was plead guilty. Yes, I realize it might have meant more prison time, but until the trial, nobody really has a chance to embarrass the government with their shoddy excuse for evidence. Now that day will never come and they are free to carry out this sequence of events again in the future.
Its a stock linux install, so I doubt this is in place, but it can also be set up so su doesn't work for certain (or for that matter ANY users). If this IS set up, then there would be no way to log in as root unless you were at the console or you find an exploit.
But, being a stock install, this is probably not the case and therefore getting access to any shell account would be sufficient.
At first I didn't see any problems. Even vendors having the right to disable products by remote seemed like a possible bonus for some of us. Users pissed at proprietary vendors who disable their software because of a mistake might look at an open source solution where this would never happen.
But then I got to the point about making reverse engineering illegal, and that my friends is a serious issue. This could, and very likely would, make future products such as samba illegal. Now, that being said, a program like samba COULD be created and distributed anonymously. Its unlikely that anyone could be sued because they're using a product that was concieved of illegally, and being open sourced, nobody would be able to prevent anyone from picking up the project at any time. In fact, if the reverse enginner published the specs anonymously, than another coder could take over the project without (technically) breaking any laws.
Still, I don't like it.
I don't like any of it.
Even the idea that a vendor would be forced to remote disable a product is sickening. I know its to prevent piracy, but its very nature is an invasion of privacy. However, there are adaquate workarounds to prevent this possibility. First of all, in order to disable the software, that software needs to be accessible from the internet. If that computer never actually ACCESSES the internet, then there's no way to disable it. Also, sitting behind a firewall or a masq.'ed network would also prevent this.
Furthermore, assuming this is a method to reduce piracy, consider the fact that most commercial software products don't require any software keys to use the software, except maybe during installation. The reason they don't require you to enter your original diskette every time you run the program is they realize that its worth the risk of piracy to make it hassle free for the customer than to piss off half your customer base by making it difficult. Just a few mistakes on the part of the software vendor and they'll get some VERY bad press, along with some possible lawsuits. And you can be damn sure that they'll also lose those customers.
Still, I'd rather see the government stay out of the software industry. Let microsoft have their monopoly. I think I'd be happier letting linux or some other product topple them on their own merit rather than having "help" by the government who will likely create dangerous precedent in the process that will give microsoft a card to play in the future when the tables are turned.
And I don't mean Cyber Patrol. I mean the user who runs it. This is a voluntary product. Nobody is being FORCED to use it (except maybe the kids that it supposively tries to protect). However, regardless of flaws, I'd rather that citizens voluntarily use it rather than the government step in and force the same thing on all of us, no doubt with the same set of flaws.
I don't think that ISP's are obligated to disclose that they happen to be censored by software. It can be an excessive amount of trouble to keep up with all the software, along with how they work. Some use network or domain blocks, other use word matches, and most use a combination of the two. This causes a variety of problems. You have fly by night porn sites that exist in one place only long enough to alert the censors and get the service banned, then leave. And then you get whitehouse.gov banned because the word "couples" appears somewhere on the page.
However, Cyber Patrol is a voluntary product. I may use a 4 letter word on my page somewhere and it could therefore show up. I can't control that. And if someone else on my service uses a 4 letter word and they censor the entire site, I can't control that either. I don't necessarily like it, but if someone can't access my site, I'll tell them to remove the software and try again.
You might miss some hits as a result. In this case, you have a choice. You can choose not to worry about it, or you can switch ISP's to someplace where the the networks aren't censored. But I doubt looking for compensation is going to be a fruitful venture. You can certainly try, but I wouldn't count on it.
Set up a bunch of P60-P100's, one for each camera, put in a capture card and select a camera of your choice (parallel port cameras are decent if the lighting is ok, but get grainy otherwise). In either case tho, run an OS that can support the capture card you choose. These systems can then be networked to the primary server and the server can then handle the other issues.
OR... if you want the server to do ALL the work, you could get 6 capture cards (which can get difficult), or use 1 capture card and build a switch that will toggle between the inputs for the 6 cameras. As long as you have adaquate control over the software, and you should have, you can switch, capture, switch, capture, etc etc etc. You said the camera didn't have to be absolutely realtime, and a custom relay based switch can easily toggle between 6 cameras in 3 seconds. Building the switching unit takes a LITTLE electronics experience, along with some work hooking it up to the parallel port, but nothing too extravagant. In any event, its cheaper than multiple computers.
This is so true. The difference between a trojan running on a Unix/Linux system is that to be truely effective, root needs to execute/install it. MOST of the time, anyone with root access is a competant administrator and would know better to trust an unconfirmed program under root.
Your average windows user, however, is not nearly as experienced in this area, as well as having full control of their system. This gives trojans on a windows platform a better chance.
Secondly, viruses have always been open sourced. Most of them were coded directly in assembly language to keep them small. While macro viruses and the such are much more complex than the old style viruses. Back in the day, viruses were rarely more than about 50-100 bytes in size, yet they were just as dangerous. There never existed any commented C++ code, and the assembly code could easily be displayed on a page of paper.
The article basically just complains about the motives of cDc and the fact that the open source nature of the program will make it difficult for antivirus software to detect different strains and will allow other "malicious" coders a head start. However, the article doesn't really discuss anything about dangers to the open source movement itself, and I don't really see these dangers either.
Ok, so somebody writes their own copy of, lets say, telnetd with a built in trojan horse. Well, this has already been done before, just download a rootkit from rootshell.org if you want it. nothing new.
Of course, if this trojan was to make it into an official distribution it would have to get by several pairs of eyes first. Say I found some clever way to insert a trojan horse into the kernel itself. In order for it to make it into the official kernel release, Linus himself would have to approve the code (or some other competant coder would). Since not just ANY code is blindly inserted into the kernel, I seriously doubt this would work.
Most other open source is handled in the same way. There's always someone who reviews changes before it gets into the primary release, and even if that person was sleeping that day, eventually someone would discover it, and the coder would be exposed. I just don't see it as a problem.
Black and white pinhole cameras sell for about $50 apiece. All you need to supply then is an RCA cable, a microphone, and a power supply, then take ANY smoke alarm (they're not very expensive), remove the cover, then secure the camera inside of it and VOILA, instant spy camera. Now, if you want to get more fancy, for an extra $100, I can integrate a video/audio transmitter into the case as well, then have a reciever anywhere within 300 meters. So for about $180 this could be assembled by anyone with enough electronics knowledge to successfully hook up your average stereo system.
Of course, this is Walmart we're talking about. This is a CONSUMER product, and of course, there is a high consumer demand for surveillence equipment in the home. After all, this is about the extent that it could be used legally. Nobody will likely use these in a commercial environment when there are better choices available and its illegal to use them in almost any other circumstance. So if you're going to break the law anyways, why rely on a consumer product that would probably be easy to identify.
I hope I'm not the only one who thinks the article was a bit whiny with respect to the people who live and work in Silicon Valley. There are places in this country, and this world, that cost a LOT to live in. Nobody should be surprised by this. Nobody would be shocked to discover that a 1 bedroom apartment which is twice the size of my closet could cost $1200 in New York City, but people still flock there in droves, or they flock AWAY from there in droves, but they don't whine about it, because its unlikely to change.
Silicon Valley is a land of new innovations, technology at the bleeding edge, full of rags to riches stories. People flock there for a reason. But if you can't afford to live there, then don't. If you can't afford to live there, then don't do that either. There are jobs all over the US, many of them very close to affordable housing. But they're not Silicon Valley. If that makes the difference, then you may be "forced" to live out your startup years in a homeless shelter. But thats a decision that YOU have to make.
Slashdot Mirror
This will cost a LOT more than $75 per launch. That is just the cost of the electricty to operate the Maglev. There will still be rockets in use, and the fuel requirements will still run into the multi-million dollar range, this will just reduce that figure somewhat.
-Restil
Most of the costs related to space travel is related to the amount of fuel needed to get out of Earth's gravity well. Any small increase in weight requires a large amount of extra fuel, which in turn requires a larger rocket, adding to the weight. ANY reduction in fuel requirements reduces the cost at an exponential rate.
Other options include using fuel which applies more thrust per mass. Chemical propulsion is very inefficient, but many of the alternatives take advantage of politically unfriendly qualities. Its hard enough to get a nuclear power source into space without half the world complaining about it. If a rocket was propelled by a nuclear reaction, you could bet the complaints would be much louder.
-Restil
There are many different theories about it. The simple fact of the matter is that all the matter in the universe may eventually be concentrated within a single black hole, but it will take a few more years. The universe is still young. VERY young. The universe will be something along the lines of 10^70 years old before it gets swallowed up like this.
Another thing to realize, since empty space is more or less a sideeffect of the matter within it, if all matter is concentrated within a single singularity, there won't BE any space, and the universe will effectively disappear, at least back to the point it started at, a single point of high energy and mass, but no volume. BANG!
This, of course, relies on the theory that the universe is closed.
-Restil
I think you seriously underestimate the amount of prOn on the internet. At 5 gigs per movie, you can hold 30 movies. I take it you haven't watched the oscars ceremony recently if you think that there have only been 30 "winners" in the last 10 years.
Rumors, depending on their source, are as credible as urban legends. There might be some slight truth to them, but the automotive industry is highly competitive. The automotive industry has NO concern about the mpg rating on their cars, they only respond to (in this order) 1-government regulations (which encourage fuel conservation), and 2- customer demands. If customers want 100mpg cars, they will get them. They might have to make other sacrifices tho, which may be why we don't have them today. I've heard NOTHING about this pill of yours.
-Restil
Its not mostly BS.. Its mostly cinematics and sound files. They just put all the data into one file. When you install it, it extracts all the necessary game files, but the music and cinematics and most of the voices are kept on the CD. Why they chose to keep it all archived into one EXE file is beyond me, but I seriously doubt its padded with unused data.
-Restil
What part of child supervision do you find unreasonable?
As far as I'm concerned, you have 2 options. You can either supervise what your children do if you consider what they're doing might be harmful in some way, or you don't let them do it. If you can't physically keep your children from getting on the computer without your supervision, then you need to incorporate some other method, such as a bios password or a keyboard lock, or even, god forbid, NO COMPUTER. Because, if you're going to leave your children alone with the computer you either need to trust that they can appropriately deal with what they might come across (or intentionally search for), or you need to take approprate precautions as you would in any situation where you can't trust them.
-Restil
I keep up to date on known exploits, and so far as I know, I have no holes, so I'm pretty safe from the script kiddies. But what this test has shown is that someone who is intellegent and meticulous.
:)
However, there were multiple holes involved here, any of which could have prevented the crack if they had been patched. The first allowed the cracker to determine the directory structure. The second allowed him to write an executable file with contents of his choice, allowing him to run any program as a local user, and the third was the crontab exploit, which required a local user to exploit.
The only one that is even remotely linux related is the contrab exploit, and it was a KNOWN exploit, so it should have been patched if this was going to be a valid test of the operating system.
I feel confident (as confident as I can anyways) that my suid programs are all known exploit free. I host MANY users on my system, and occasional use of crack shows that many of their passwords are frequently all to easy to guess. The possibility of someone accessing AN account on my system is somewhat likely, so I have to be sure that there are no open holes that a local user could exploit.
However, I plan to take a long hard look at all cgi scripts on my system to look for any obvoius holes.
As much of a PR stunt as these cracking contests might be, I personally don't see a big problem with them. I feel I've learned something from it, especially with that detailed explaination. I know a few more potential holes I have to watch out for. And you can be sure that every redhat user who read slashdot today will be making sure that crontab is patched. I see no losses. I hope they do it again.
-Restil
Not to mention that this layout is in a 2 dimensional environment. If it was in a 3 dimensional environment, then the time delay problem would be a moot point.
-Restil
Talk about a man with no vision. The simple notion that the computer industry will topple over in a few years because everything will completed has to be the most absurd commentary, and the one that has been disproven so many times in the past.
Why doesn't linux run on all these high end massive servers right now? I have a theory. Because 3-4 years ago when all these systems were put in place, linux wasn't a viable option. It was still in its infancy and wasn't yet ready for it. So these servers were designed and built with other operating systems and as they were updated, they maintained their current OS because frankly it would be easier to upgrade to another compatible operating system than porting to another. Far from impossible, but it would require a significant amount of work. So these servers tend to stay with their current system until they have a substantial reason to change.
In the last couple of years with added support for
SMP and with linux gaining ground on a wide variety of different architectures, linux is quickly becoming the OS of choice for new servers today. These little servers today will be the big servers tomorrow. It might just take a couple years before linux has a prominent place amongst the other big boys, but it won't be all that long.
As for IRC, I found it rather interesting that he first states that NO IRC servers are run on linux, then he later revises his statement to imply only the big networks. In many cases, the same reasons apply. The big networks have enough problems as it is right now. The major operators probably figure, right or wrong, that keeping a standard platform set will help to minimize these problems. And since the other servers are running BSD/Solaris or whatnot, thats what they continue to support.
-Restil
I'm getting errors now when I try to reload, but
I got a few choice responses so far:
http://www.IneradicableOnline.com/ A perfect replacement for AOL in case they ever get bored with the name.
http://www.FetusStreet.com/ I'm not sure I even WANT to know about the possibilities of this one.
Doesn't look like the site was slashdotted as there was practically no load time, I'll bet that whoever was admining the server took the script offline due to excessive load.
Maybe it will be back.
-Restil
I live in Texas, and what I say applies to Texas. I'm not a lawyer.
There is no state income tax in Texas (not yet anyways), but we have a 8.25% (varies slightly from city to city) sales tax on consumer goods (except food which is tax exempt).
If I, as a retailler, want to sell someone something, I get a tax license, NOT so I can collect and file sales taxes, I can do this without a license. What I need the license for is so I can purchase my inventory tax free. I just need to actually SELL my inventory or pay the taxes on it later.
If I sell my products to a customer out of state, and ship the product there, I am not obligated to collect sales tax, and I therefore don't need to file any. Any product I purchase from out of state that I purchase for PERSONAL use I am not required to pay taxes on. However, if the product I purchase is for business use then I am required to pay a "use tax" on the product at the same sales tax rate. Its a business product mainly if I deduct it from income tax as a business expense.
Where things get tricker is where services are involved. Certain services are tax exempt, such as educational services or legal services, but for the most part, a service must be taxed at the same rate as consumer products. If I sell my services to a customer out of state, but I PERFORM the service IN Texas, then I am obligated to file taxes on that service.
There's no harm done in collecting sales tax from EVERYONE, even if they would otherwise be exempt and filing all of it. Trust me, the state won't care. You can also hike all of your prices to include the tax, and simply file the appropriate percentage, then just not charge any additional tax to anyone.
-Restil
The current maps are awesome, but now what needs to be done is to color code them not according to geographical location, but by ip address. Include a color key and specifically identify several routes on the internet. Then all someone would have to do is run a traceroute to that location, then use the color keys to find his/her individual network on the map. Of course, with the dynamic nature of the internet, this would probably not be useful for long, but its still a cool idea. :)
-Restil
Ok. Personal email on the company network is not private. You will now be required to scan all email boxes to ensure that pornography isn't present. So the first thing you should do is to send a general notice to EVERYONE in the company informing them of the scanning policy so nobody gets caught offguard. That way, if there IS any porn to be found, it can be eliminated before anyone gets around to finding it.
This solves 2 problems. 1 - nobody will be "wasting time" by looking at porn and 2 - you won't have to come across as the bad guy.
The witch hunt will prove to be unsuccessful and a waste of YOUR time which could be better spent elsewhere.
Just a thought.
-Restil
For $110 you can get a 2.4 ghz video/stereo audio transmitter/receiver kit and all you need there is RCA input on the transmitter from your soundcard, which is easy. No plugins or any other OS specific requirements. Its an itch more expensive, but not too bad.
-Restil
This article just seems like the editors were out of ideas and needed SOMETHING to come up with, so they decided to complain about the keyboard layout and "redundant" keys.
I use all those "redundant" keys, except for maybe the scroll lock. Yes, I know there are two sets of arrow keys, and two Insert/delete/home/end/etc keys. That provides flexibility. Its an advantage, not a curse.
I personally like to use the keypad for arrows and use the regular typewriter keyboard number's for typing in numbers. My Numlock key is always off for this reason. Pause still works in those programs that take advantage of it.
And besides. There ARE keyboards that either compress or remove those useless keys. They're on laptops. Now, do you REALLY want to type on a laptop keyboard when you're sitting at your desk? Those keyboards are cramped and for me a pain in the ass. I'll take my 101 keyboard anyday (although I REALLY could do without those 3 windows keys)
Come on people. We don't NEED to complain about keyboards just because its a standard that nobody ever saw the need to change.
The only TRUE injustice is that Kevin Mitnick does not have competant legal council. Its his own legal team, and their recommendations, that he give up his right to a free trial. They are the ones who continuously postpone the trial in order to review evidence. They are the ones who failed to do any significant research into the prosecution's claims to the effect that Mitnick had stolen, therefore caused a significant monetary loss to the corporations mentioned, which is the grounds the prosecution used to keep him locked up without bail.
It may be an unfortunate set of circumstances, but the issue was compounded for other reasons. First, he has SEVERAL felony convictions already. Secondly, he has been known to flee to avoid
prosecution in the past. This is a BIG No-no when you're trying to get bail in the future.
Federal trials tend to take a long time. While 4 and a half years might seem like an excessively long time, it really isn't. Its only long while you're rotting in jail. For this reason, it is in the defendant's best interest to TAKE the speedy trail because it doesn't give the prosection a lot of time to prepare and its a lot easier to have a competant defense attorney find gaping holes in their investigation, which give plenty of opportunities for reasonable doubt.
Since most of these "injustices" lead down to the issue of his defense, that leads to another issue. 2600 has been pleading for its reader's to donate to Kevin's legal defense fund. However, as of about a year ago, the most they were able to raise was $3000. While its better than nothing, it barely pays the daily salary for a good lawyer. It also happens to be less than 20 cents per reader of the magazine. Pretty pathetic when that's considered to be Kevin's major centre of support.
Instead, he has 2 court appointed annorney's (the 40,000 a year variety) who's typical defense is to plea bargain every case. However, if Kevin was able to fight it, and in the chance that he could have won the case, it would have set valuable precedent for any of the state trials he was facing. Since LA dropped the case against him (probably since they don't really see the point of it anymore), this is less of a concern. But being aquitted for the same crimes in one court makes it a LOT easier to win the same battle in another court and the case would have probably gotten dropped anyways.
Yes, in many cases he IS a political prisoner. And while slapping Free Kevin stickers on your bumper might bring awareness to an issue that most American's have probably never heard a word of, but in the long run, it really does nothing to help him. And if he wanted to go down as a martyr, the last thing in the world he should have done was plead guilty. Yes, I realize it might have meant more prison time, but until the trial, nobody really has a chance to embarrass the government with their shoddy excuse for evidence. Now that day will never come and they are free to carry out this sequence of events again in the future.
-Restil
Its a stock linux install, so I doubt this is in place, but it can also be set up so su doesn't work for certain (or for that matter ANY users). If this IS set up, then there would be no way to log in as root unless you were at the console or you find an exploit.
But, being a stock install, this is probably not the case and therefore getting access to any shell account would be sufficient.
-Restil
At first I didn't see any problems. Even vendors having the right to disable products by remote seemed like a possible bonus for some of us. Users pissed at proprietary vendors who disable their software because of a mistake might look at an open source solution where this would never happen.
But then I got to the point about making reverse engineering illegal, and that my friends is a serious issue. This could, and very likely would, make future products such as samba illegal. Now, that being said, a program like samba COULD be created and distributed anonymously. Its unlikely that anyone could be sued because they're using a product that was concieved of illegally, and being open sourced, nobody would be able to prevent anyone from picking up the project at any time.
In fact, if the reverse enginner published the specs anonymously, than another coder could take over the project without (technically) breaking any laws.
Still, I don't like it.
I don't like any of it.
Even the idea that a vendor would be forced to remote disable a product is sickening. I know its to prevent piracy, but its very nature is an invasion of privacy. However, there are adaquate workarounds to prevent this possibility. First of all, in order to disable the software, that software needs to be accessible from the internet. If that computer never actually ACCESSES the internet, then there's no way to disable it. Also, sitting behind a firewall or a masq.'ed network would also prevent this.
Furthermore, assuming this is a method to reduce piracy, consider the fact that most commercial software products don't require any software keys to use the software, except maybe during installation. The reason they don't require you to enter your original diskette every time you run the program is they realize that its worth the risk of piracy to make it hassle free for the customer than to piss off half your customer base by making it difficult. Just a few mistakes on the part of the software vendor and they'll get some VERY bad press, along with some possible lawsuits. And you can be damn sure that they'll also lose those customers.
Still, I'd rather see the government stay out of the software industry. Let microsoft have their monopoly. I think I'd be happier letting linux or some other product topple them on their own merit rather than having "help" by the government who will likely create dangerous precedent in the process that will give microsoft a card to play in the future when the tables are turned.
-Restil
And I don't mean Cyber Patrol. I mean the user who runs it. This is a voluntary product. Nobody is being FORCED to use it (except maybe the kids that it supposively tries to protect). However, regardless of flaws, I'd rather that citizens voluntarily use it rather than the government step in and force the same thing on all of us, no doubt with the same set of flaws.
I don't think that ISP's are obligated to disclose that they happen to be censored by software. It can be an excessive amount of trouble to keep up with all the software, along with how they work. Some use network or domain blocks, other use word matches, and most use a combination of the two. This causes a variety of problems. You have fly by night porn sites that exist in one place only long enough to alert the censors and get the service banned, then leave. And then you get whitehouse.gov banned because the word "couples" appears somewhere on the page.
However, Cyber Patrol is a voluntary product. I may use a 4 letter word on my page somewhere and it could therefore show up. I can't control that. And if someone else on my service uses a 4 letter
word and they censor the entire site, I can't control that either. I don't necessarily like it, but if someone can't access my site, I'll tell them to remove the software and try again.
You might miss some hits as a result. In this case, you have a choice. You can choose not to worry about it, or you can switch ISP's to someplace where the the networks aren't censored. But I doubt looking for compensation is going to be a fruitful venture. You can certainly try, but I wouldn't count on it.
-Restil
Set up a bunch of P60-P100's, one for each camera, put in a capture card and select a camera of your choice (parallel port cameras are decent if the lighting is ok, but get grainy otherwise). In either case tho, run an OS that can support the capture card you choose. These systems can then be networked to the primary server and the server can then handle the other issues.
OR... if you want the server to do ALL the work, you could get 6 capture cards (which can get difficult), or use 1 capture card and build a switch that will toggle between the inputs for the 6 cameras. As long as you have adaquate control over the software, and you should have, you can switch, capture, switch, capture, etc etc etc.
You said the camera didn't have to be absolutely realtime, and a custom relay based switch can easily toggle between 6 cameras in 3 seconds.
Building the switching unit takes a LITTLE electronics experience, along with some work hooking it up to the parallel port, but nothing too extravagant. In any event, its cheaper than multiple computers.
-Restil
This is so true. The difference between a trojan running on a Unix/Linux system is that to be truely effective, root needs to execute/install it. MOST of the time, anyone with root access is a competant administrator and would know better to trust an unconfirmed program under root.
Your average windows user, however, is not nearly as experienced in this area, as well as having full control of their system. This gives trojans on a windows platform a better chance.
-Restil
First, BO2K isn't a virus.
Secondly, viruses have always been open sourced.
Most of them were coded directly in assembly language to keep them small. While macro viruses
and the such are much more complex than the old
style viruses. Back in the day, viruses were rarely more than about 50-100 bytes in size, yet
they were just as dangerous. There never existed any commented C++ code, and the assembly code could easily be displayed on a page of paper.
-Restil
The article basically just complains about the motives of cDc and the fact that the open source nature of the program will make it difficult for antivirus software to detect different strains and will allow other "malicious" coders a head start.
However, the article doesn't really discuss anything about dangers to the open source movement itself, and I don't really see these dangers either.
Ok, so somebody writes their own copy of, lets say, telnetd with a built in trojan horse. Well, this has already been done before, just download a rootkit from rootshell.org if you want it. nothing new.
Of course, if this trojan was to make it into an official distribution it would have to get by several pairs of eyes first. Say I found some clever way to insert a trojan horse into the kernel itself. In order for it to make it into the official kernel release, Linus himself would have to approve the code (or some other competant coder would). Since not just ANY code is blindly inserted into the kernel, I seriously doubt this would work.
Most other open source is handled in the same way. There's always someone who reviews changes before it gets into the primary release, and even if that person was sleeping that day, eventually someone would discover it, and the coder would be exposed. I just don't see it as a problem.
-Restil
Black and white pinhole cameras sell for about $50 apiece. All you need to supply then is an RCA cable, a microphone, and a power supply, then take ANY smoke alarm (they're not very expensive), remove the cover, then secure the camera inside of it and VOILA, instant spy camera. Now, if you want to get more fancy, for an extra $100, I can integrate a video/audio transmitter into the case as well, then have a reciever anywhere within 300 meters. So for about $180 this could be assembled by anyone with enough electronics knowledge to successfully hook up your average stereo system.
Of course, this is Walmart we're talking about. This is a CONSUMER product, and of course, there is a high consumer demand for surveillence equipment in the home. After all, this is about the extent that it could be used legally. Nobody will likely use these in a commercial environment when there are better choices available and its illegal to use them in almost any other circumstance. So if you're going to break the law anyways, why rely on a consumer product that would probably be easy to identify.
-Restil
I hope I'm not the only one who thinks the article was a bit whiny with respect to the people who live and work in Silicon Valley. There are places in this country, and this world, that cost a LOT to live in. Nobody should be surprised by this. Nobody would be shocked to discover that a 1 bedroom apartment which is twice the size of my closet could cost $1200 in New York City, but people still flock there in droves, or they flock AWAY from there in droves, but they don't whine about it, because its unlikely to change.
Silicon Valley is a land of new innovations, technology at the bleeding edge, full of rags to riches stories. People flock there for a reason. But if you can't afford to live there, then don't.
If you can't afford to live there, then don't do that either. There are jobs all over the US, many of them very close to affordable housing. But they're not Silicon Valley. If that makes the difference, then you may be "forced" to live out your startup years in a homeless shelter. But thats a decision that YOU have to make.
-Restil