As someone who worked on a CALEA system for 18 months, implementing, testing and helping design, I can tell you one thing.
The specs of all the systems are such that they DO NOT BUFFER the actual voice, only the data. I mean the numbers punched, busy signals, etc. Buffered voice would rapidly overwhelm the system, so it is just dropped if the link from the CO (central office) to the LE (law enforcement) goes down.
Call data can be buffered for days, so that isn't dropped.
This isn't a flaw, it was a design decision. Good luck DDoSing a major telco switching office.
How about being vulnerable to a random bird dropping a baguette on a junction and overheating the system? Not like that would ever happen, but I'd hate to think of something as complex as the electric grid being THAT vulnerable.
As a die-hard White Sox fan in Chicago, he would watch Cubs games to root for whomever they were playing. Unless it was a New York team, then he would root for someone to get injured.
Feel free to simply root for all of the Skype parties to strain or break something important.
The Americans with Disabilities Act states that, "No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation."
This has kept a generation of lawyers employed by arguing over the definition of "public accommodation". The strict interpretation limits it to only physical places, which would rule out games. There have been many court battles over expanding the definition. This particular suit, if I read the various summaries correctly (IANAL), would be one of the more far reaching stretches of the definition and could have a significant impact on how much the ADA covers.
In short, it could fund an entire new generation of lawyers by expanding the ADA to an almost unlimited scope. Blind or not, I hope this guy goes down in flames.
Try something that works WITH you as a SECURITY appliance, as opposed to yet another sales opportunity. There is lots of competition that easily beats MARS in functionality, ease of use and comprehensive support. TriGeo, for one.
It popped up a dialog box saying there was a new version, and asked if I'd like to upgrade. I clicked "yes".
After it politely failed and told me I needed to make room, I did and rebooted. The box popped up again. This happened a few times until I cleaned out enough stuff for it to be happy.
When it froze, it froze good. The GUI was locked and CTRL-ALT-BS wouldn't reset X, nor would CTRL-ALT-DEL shut down the system. I had to push & hold the power button to force it off. This was after 20 minutes sitting on the same setting and no HD activity.
I don't know what to say. I've never had any luck upgrading Slackware. Every time (4 of them) it borked out and left me in an unusable, unbootable state. Just bad luck, I guess.
Interesting. Wi-Fi works for me, using WPA2-PSK. So does wired networking and bluetooth (mouse). I haven't gotten around to trying the built-in webcam, yet.
Whenever I hear a story about some new type of "super" computer, I think of an old Road Runner cartoon. Wile E Coyote, Genius, is mixing chemical explosives in his little shack, which he doesn't know was moved onto the train tracks.
He says to himself, "Wile E. Coyote SUPER genius. I like the sound of that." He then gets hit by the train.
Some of these companies remind me a LOT of good, old Wile E. Coyote. The one in this article just found the train.
I needed to make room to upgrade, because the 4 Gb SSD in the EEE was close to full. I have my/home partition on the 12 Gb SSD, so I needed to clean out things like the apt cache. Eventually, I had to remove some bigger packages like Picasa (with Wine) and Open Office to free up enough space on/.
With 50 Mb more than it claims it wanted, it finally started.
Halfway thru the upgrade, it froze and I had to reboot. Packages had been downloaded, but not all installed.
I had to reboot using a rescue USB stick and chroot over to the main disk. I tried an apt-get dist-upgrade and it said the system was hosed, and suggested a dpkg -a something rescue command. I did that and it finished processing the files it had. I then rebooted into "recovery mode" on that version, and did the dist-upgrade again and it finished. Another reboot and it was successfully in a normal login.
I logged in and immediately did and apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, apt-get autoremove to get the half-dozen updates and clean things up. I then added back in Open Office and a few other missing packages that I cleaned out to make space.
The only thing I can say is in the end, it worked. I've had upgrade horrors like this before with Slackware -- which I have *NEVER* successfully upgraded. They *ALL* had to be re-installs, which is one of the big reasons why I no longer use Slackware. In the past, upgrades have gone smoothly with (K)Ubuntu, as well as my CentOS, Fedora and Red Hat systems. This one was one of the worst.
It is nice, one running. Very slick, and I am mostly quite happy with the way it operates. The only bug I've bumped into that is new is if I'm running on battery, and the battery gets low enough for the system to issue a warning, kicker dies. No, I haven't reported it, yet. Probably later tonight I'll see if I can get a backtrace and send it over.
My experience would have really stumped a Linux noob. There needs to be a bit more Q&A. I got the feeling there was a bit of "let's push out on the Windows 7 day, no matter what" going on.
You'd be AMAZED at how far you could over-subscribe data connections if there were no multi-media files flying around. Funnel the music & video thru "approved" delivery channels and edge cache them at the mega-ISPs and you'll find that the rest of the Internet hums along nicely at 20-50:1 oversubscribed endpoints.
Look at hard drive usage. Take your average PC, remove any music, video and installed games and they'll probably have less than 2 Gb of total data. Probably FAR less. The same thing goes for network bandwidth. Get rid of a lot of the media flying around and EVERYONE can have a 100 Mbps link. Mostly because no one ever honestly USES a 100 Mbps link for more than a few seconds of burst.
Yes, there are exceptions. Think of the Bell Curve model. The vast bulk are in the middle, not on the far ends.
Many of them get re-elected based on the fact that they have seniority, so bring home the bacon. Get rid of Nancy Pelosi, top dog in the House, and her district has to start all over with a freshman with no real pull. Ditto for every other incumbent. The game is heavily rigged towards those who are entrenched.
With Congress' approval rating hovering near 30%, the only explanation other than "hold my nose because they bring it home" is "they all suck by MINE", which is sheer stupidity but that is what makes it so believable.
When push comes to shove, most people ask the question "what is in it for ME" as opposed to "what is in it for the NATION". Seniority means more for them.
We can set the copyright lawyers, representing the authors and publishers, against the patent lawyers representing Amazon. With any luck, they'll sue each other into the poor house and leave the rest of us alone!
Alternatively, we could establish a special court that handles these copyright vs patent cases. When all the lawyers arrive, wall the area up, cut the bridges and toss in a few spiked baseball bats to let 'em fight it out with. Maybe in New York...
Well, the entered data isn't going around the world. The data entry consoles are restricted as well, though nowhere near as tightly as the actual hardware. The data is usually entered by a law enforcement officer on a terminal in their station. Connections for everything are IPSec tunnels, so no snooping.
Still, it would be about as secure as the criminal record check or license plate check computers. That is to say, only officers, friends, friends of friends, connected PIs and lawyers, family, friends of family and politicians can arrange for a peek.
Last time I worked on it, Verint only made the front-end software. That is, the software that you entered the warrant and details on. It then passed the tap information on to the actual telecom system, which in the case I was dealing with was developed by Chinese and Indian programmers.
Telecom software is usually run by code from companies like Ericson, Siemens, Nortel, Motorola or Alcatel-Lucent. The Verint stuff is just the GUI and passes the instructions on to the actual system that does the work. Call recordings are stored by the telecom system, not Verint. Yes, the delete command is in the Verint software somewhere. They customize for each vendor.
In the case of Alcatel-Lucent stuff, you can force the issue by just doing an rm -rf on the data directory -- assuming you have access to the system in question, which is heavily restricted.
Part of the research I've read recently claims we have no solid definition of the mortality rate of the "flu". The problem is unless you take a culture and analyze it in a lab, you can't tell if the disease is really influenza or one of a hundred or so others that cause similar symptoms. But people who report to their doctor about symptoms aren't always lab tested to see exactly what they have. It'll get noted as "the flu", when it may not be influenza at all, skewing all the statistics.
The article I was reading in Atlantic Monthly makes the claim that people who die from flu-like symptoms aren't always lab tested, either. Thus, the mortality rates for "the flu" may have little to do with influenza.
While we as a society have had great success with vaccination campaigns against diseases like the measles, mumps, rubella, polio and small pox, the same can't convincingly be said about influenza.
With a military contractor, the gov't and Microsoft doing the development? I'm thinking it'll heavily tilt towards bondage, S&M, forced anal sex and some bestiality thrown in for good measure.
Uh, what? Are you a lawyer? More specifically, have you argued cases in front of juries? I'll bet that class of lawyers would have a difference of opinion on the use of passion, rhetoric and emotional appeal.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who worked on a CALEA system for 18 months, implementing, testing and helping design, I can tell you one thing.
The specs of all the systems are such that they DO NOT BUFFER the actual voice, only the data. I mean the numbers punched, busy signals, etc. Buffered voice would rapidly overwhelm the system, so it is just dropped if the link from the CO (central office) to the LE (law enforcement) goes down.
Call data can be buffered for days, so that isn't dropped.
This isn't a flaw, it was a design decision. Good luck DDoSing a major telco switching office.
How about being vulnerable to a random bird dropping a baguette on a junction and overheating the system? Not like that would ever happen, but I'd hate to think of something as complex as the electric grid being THAT vulnerable.
My grandfather used this tactic.
As a die-hard White Sox fan in Chicago, he would watch Cubs games to root for whomever they were playing. Unless it was a New York team, then he would root for someone to get injured.
Feel free to simply root for all of the Skype parties to strain or break something important.
The Americans with Disabilities Act states that, "No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation."
This has kept a generation of lawyers employed by arguing over the definition of "public accommodation". The strict interpretation limits it to only physical places, which would rule out games. There have been many court battles over expanding the definition. This particular suit, if I read the various summaries correctly (IANAL), would be one of the more far reaching stretches of the definition and could have a significant impact on how much the ADA covers.
In short, it could fund an entire new generation of lawyers by expanding the ADA to an almost unlimited scope. Blind or not, I hope this guy goes down in flames.
For reference: http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?50+Duke+L.+J.+297
Try something that works WITH you as a SECURITY appliance, as opposed to yet another sales opportunity. There is lots of competition that easily beats MARS in functionality, ease of use and comprehensive support. TriGeo, for one.
It popped up a dialog box saying there was a new version, and asked if I'd like to upgrade. I clicked "yes".
After it politely failed and told me I needed to make room, I did and rebooted. The box popped up again. This happened a few times until I cleaned out enough stuff for it to be happy.
When it froze, it froze good. The GUI was locked and CTRL-ALT-BS wouldn't reset X, nor would CTRL-ALT-DEL shut down the system. I had to push & hold the power button to force it off. This was after 20 minutes sitting on the same setting and no HD activity.
I don't know what to say. I've never had any luck upgrading Slackware. Every time (4 of them) it borked out and left me in an unusable, unbootable state. Just bad luck, I guess.
Interesting. Wi-Fi works for me, using WPA2-PSK. So does wired networking and bluetooth (mouse). I haven't gotten around to trying the built-in webcam, yet.
Whenever I hear a story about some new type of "super" computer, I think of an old Road Runner cartoon. Wile E Coyote, Genius, is mixing chemical explosives in his little shack, which he doesn't know was moved onto the train tracks.
He says to himself, "Wile E. Coyote SUPER genius. I like the sound of that." He then gets hit by the train.
Some of these companies remind me a LOT of good, old Wile E. Coyote. The one in this article just found the train.
My experience upgrading 9.04 to 9.10 Kubuntu:
I needed to make room to upgrade, because the 4 Gb SSD in the EEE was close to full. I have my /home partition on the 12 Gb SSD, so I needed to clean out things like the apt cache. Eventually, I had to remove some bigger packages like Picasa (with Wine) and Open Office to free up enough space on /.
With 50 Mb more than it claims it wanted, it finally started.
Halfway thru the upgrade, it froze and I had to reboot. Packages had been downloaded, but not all installed.
I had to reboot using a rescue USB stick and chroot over to the main disk. I tried an apt-get dist-upgrade and it said the system was hosed, and suggested a dpkg -a something rescue command. I did that and it finished processing the files it had. I then rebooted into "recovery mode" on that version, and did the dist-upgrade again and it finished. Another reboot and it was successfully in a normal login.
I logged in and immediately did and apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, apt-get autoremove to get the half-dozen updates and clean things up. I then added back in Open Office and a few other missing packages that I cleaned out to make space.
The only thing I can say is in the end, it worked. I've had upgrade horrors like this before with Slackware -- which I have *NEVER* successfully upgraded. They *ALL* had to be re-installs, which is one of the big reasons why I no longer use Slackware. In the past, upgrades have gone smoothly with (K)Ubuntu, as well as my CentOS, Fedora and Red Hat systems. This one was one of the worst.
It is nice, one running. Very slick, and I am mostly quite happy with the way it operates. The only bug I've bumped into that is new is if I'm running on battery, and the battery gets low enough for the system to issue a warning, kicker dies. No, I haven't reported it, yet. Probably later tonight I'll see if I can get a backtrace and send it over.
My experience would have really stumped a Linux noob. There needs to be a bit more Q&A. I got the feeling there was a bit of "let's push out on the Windows 7 day, no matter what" going on.
You'd be AMAZED at how far you could over-subscribe data connections if there were no multi-media files flying around. Funnel the music & video thru "approved" delivery channels and edge cache them at the mega-ISPs and you'll find that the rest of the Internet hums along nicely at 20-50:1 oversubscribed endpoints.
Look at hard drive usage. Take your average PC, remove any music, video and installed games and they'll probably have less than 2 Gb of total data. Probably FAR less. The same thing goes for network bandwidth. Get rid of a lot of the media flying around and EVERYONE can have a 100 Mbps link. Mostly because no one ever honestly USES a 100 Mbps link for more than a few seconds of burst.
Yes, there are exceptions. Think of the Bell Curve model. The vast bulk are in the middle, not on the far ends.
http://classes.kumc.edu/sah/resources/sensory_processing/learning_opportunities/sensory_profile/bell_curve.htm
Sapient?
I think you mean "sentient".
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Sapient
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient
Not necessarily.
Many of them get re-elected based on the fact that they have seniority, so bring home the bacon. Get rid of Nancy Pelosi, top dog in the House, and her district has to start all over with a freshman with no real pull. Ditto for every other incumbent. The game is heavily rigged towards those who are entrenched.
With Congress' approval rating hovering near 30%, the only explanation other than "hold my nose because they bring it home" is "they all suck by MINE", which is sheer stupidity but that is what makes it so believable.
When push comes to shove, most people ask the question "what is in it for ME" as opposed to "what is in it for the NATION". Seniority means more for them.
...the sub-zero temperatures of the bay area are what caused the problem in the first place.
The what where? I'm not sure the phrase "sub-zero temperatures" and "bay area", meaning SF Bay, go together.
We can set the copyright lawyers, representing the authors and publishers, against the patent lawyers representing Amazon. With any luck, they'll sue each other into the poor house and leave the rest of us alone!
Alternatively, we could establish a special court that handles these copyright vs patent cases. When all the lawyers arrive, wall the area up, cut the bridges and toss in a few spiked baseball bats to let 'em fight it out with. Maybe in New York...
Well, the entered data isn't going around the world. The data entry consoles are restricted as well, though nowhere near as tightly as the actual hardware. The data is usually entered by a law enforcement officer on a terminal in their station. Connections for everything are IPSec tunnels, so no snooping.
Still, it would be about as secure as the criminal record check or license plate check computers. That is to say, only officers, friends, friends of friends, connected PIs and lawyers, family, friends of family and politicians can arrange for a peek.
Last time I worked on it, Verint only made the front-end software. That is, the software that you entered the warrant and details on. It then passed the tap information on to the actual telecom system, which in the case I was dealing with was developed by Chinese and Indian programmers.
Telecom software is usually run by code from companies like Ericson, Siemens, Nortel, Motorola or Alcatel-Lucent. The Verint stuff is just the GUI and passes the instructions on to the actual system that does the work. Call recordings are stored by the telecom system, not Verint. Yes, the delete command is in the Verint software somewhere. They customize for each vendor.
In the case of Alcatel-Lucent stuff, you can force the issue by just doing an rm -rf on the data directory -- assuming you have access to the system in question, which is heavily restricted.
Part of the research I've read recently claims we have no solid definition of the mortality rate of the "flu". The problem is unless you take a culture and analyze it in a lab, you can't tell if the disease is really influenza or one of a hundred or so others that cause similar symptoms. But people who report to their doctor about symptoms aren't always lab tested to see exactly what they have. It'll get noted as "the flu", when it may not be influenza at all, skewing all the statistics.
The article I was reading in Atlantic Monthly makes the claim that people who die from flu-like symptoms aren't always lab tested, either. Thus, the mortality rates for "the flu" may have little to do with influenza.
While we as a society have had great success with vaccination campaigns against diseases like the measles, mumps, rubella, polio and small pox, the same can't convincingly be said about influenza.
With a military contractor, the gov't and Microsoft doing the development? I'm thinking it'll heavily tilt towards bondage, S&M, forced anal sex and some bestiality thrown in for good measure.
You can have my overpriced, traffic-shaped, capped DSL when you wrest it from my cold, dead hands.
Without heathcare reform, that's scheduled for when? Next Tuesday?
Now THAT is a book I'd like to see made into a movie. Put some of the "science" back in Science Fiction.
Uh, what? Are you a lawyer? More specifically, have you argued cases in front of juries? I'll bet that class of lawyers would have a difference of opinion on the use of passion, rhetoric and emotional appeal.
Damn straight! How else would most Slashdotters get laid, if not for the morons and alcohol?
Oh....NETGEAR, not Linksys. Duh.
It is funny how things settled out quickly once WARF threatened to whip out the bat'leth and get all mupwI' yI'uchtaH on their ass!