I used to hack (dark side) at the same time but in a more restricted manner than Mitnick (I was never on the run). People accuse him of selling out, of being fake, or exaggerated. To some extent, he has sold out - sold up, and made the best of his situation. He paid dearly for his misdeeds, and had prosecutors lie in order for him to wind up with incarceration a lot longer than he deserved. Don't you think he's entitled to a bit of slack? Shouldn't he be able to make a little money on the side? I haven't bought any of his books, though I have been tempted to. I understand why they bother people, but you have to put them and Mitnick's life in perspective: He spent his youth as a hacker, and then years as a prisoner, then released and not allowed to touch computers (for a while) - what else did have to do to support himself? He did the best he could. What else could he do, sink into obscurity and desperation (ala Bill Landreth)? It's not like he could just casually take a job as a SysOp somewhere; his name is too widely known.
How good of a hacker was he, during his heyday? I'd say he was pretty good, from what I could tell. He wasn't as social as many of the others, but he did trade information with other hackers (including myself). He wasn't as reckless as some others who also had great talent (Mark Tabas), even though he was eventually caught, so he must have made some mistakes. He wasn't a destructive bastard, a gangster, a spy, or any other of a myriad nasties. But, when someone has skills which make them a good black-hat, this influences their attainment of other skills. I've never seen any evidence to suggest that he is more than an average competent programmer (and I do not claim to be any better). He has a broad knowledge of systems and methods, but these systems are often twenty to thirty years old. Who knows what MIZAR is these days? I am in the same basket - lots of old knowledge, much of the technical stuff is irrelevant these days. There are others skills, hunches, and an intuition brought by years of experience which make Grand Old Hackers surprising in the ways go about things, and difficult to predict.
Kevin is doing what he does best, as a media figure and security consultant. I doubt any of you naysayers could do much better than if you were in his shoes, post-prison.
Maybe a couple of you might recognize my handle. But I am not famous. I paid for my crimes, but luckily did not have to pay nearly a high price as Kevin Mitnick did.
What utter useless crap. This is just a reboot of the Pringle's can antenna, which may have some use for war-driving but is not so great for actual communication. When you use such an antenna to narrow your signal's transmission pattern and to focus received transmissions, you need to have some sort of accuracy to match its precision, and that accuracy and precision have to be repeatable, and survive the environment they are installed it. This is not the days of old, where good antennas cost a few hundred dollars each. If you insist on extended range on the cheap, go get an old satellite dish and adapt it, or get an MMDS grid. Or build the old Guerrilla.Net colinear vertical antenna, if you're got a liking for intricate soldering.
Enjoy the beer, return the can, put that 5 cents towards a real antenna.
yes, it was good while it lasted. Well for some of it. LFTR is the future, but we need the present nuclear power. Too bad Germany won't have it. Slaves to Russia.
Kroah-Hartman says - "Consumer devices have a 1-2 year lifespan" -- this is a sign of our times. Just make junk that last a couple of years at best, and then chuck it. It would be far better to create devices that last twenty years and can be updated and repaired. This is why I like 'dumb phones'- cellphones that are less likely to be pwn3d, last longer, are cheaper, tougher, and easier to use. Ah, I am going to miss you, Nokia, and Motorola, and Siemens, and...
Yes, Germany seems to be going crazy, but here in Slashdot, there are pro-nuclear forces in number. This makes me happy. If you want to see better nuclear power, read up on LFTR (Liquid Thorium Fluoride Reactors).
I gave up and now order everything online, because they shack just doesn't have it. Sure, it might be listed online, but it's not in stock at any of my local stores. When I was a kid, I spent the majority of my money (lawn mowing & paper route earnings) at Radio Shack, not only on component, but books and I loved their bargain table. They sold really decent radios too -- Realistic scanners & ham gear were among the best. But there was also lots of cheap plastic crap that dragged them down, especially in the Christmas season. Radio Shack became Rat Shack or Radio Shlock.
My first "real" job was at Radio Shack, making minimum wage plus commission. The store was small and didn't do much business, and you had to make a minimum dollar amount of sales per hour or there was no commission. The boss always stole the big-ticket items, but eventually I was able to garner a few computer sales to make something about the $3.35/hr. I left after eight months because it was hardly worth the $100/week I was making. If they want to keep good people, they have to pay them a decent wage, and have decent working conditions. The inner city stores are staffed by people who barely speak English, never mind have any knowledge of the products or desire to help. Suburban stores tend to be a little better, but not always.
Radio Shack should reach out to hobbyists by creating a community of DIYers...not only electronics but other technical crafts as well. Tandy started out as a leather hobbyists store, and also at some point had sewing supply stores, and then bought the original Radio Shack chain (from Boston, not Texas) and eventually ditched the other businesses. If Radio Shack were to become Tandy (like they are in Europe), they could branch out to supply more than electronic stuff. Chemistry, metals, etc. But first, fix the electronics hobbyist reputation. Do this by keeping lots of stuff in stock. Yes, the stores pay half a cent for a pack of resistors (or did in the 80s) and sell them for $.39, a huge profit margin. But I don't mind this, because of the transaction cost and the immediate availability. But keep it reasonable, eh? I'll pay $.49 for a pack of five resistors, but not $.99. So what if it takes two years to sell that which is shipped in, because the cost of the item is low and so is storage.
yes, arduinos, sensors, and other things. Yes, the essentials for electronics work, such as soldering equipment and wire, plastic boxes and so forth.
There has been suggestions of offering PCB services. This is a good idea. Expand upon this, and provide things for maker bots and so forth. Keep us geeks coming in for the essentials and we might as well buy that other item while we're there, that thing that makes lots of money. Make us trust you, Tandy, and we'll show up. I am not asking for rock-bottom prices or electrical engineers as salesmen. I am not asking you to complete with digi-key in stocked items. Just be a good alternative to mail-order, be the places that saves our a$$ when we blow that diode and we need to fix it RIGHT NOW and now wait for mail-order. Bring back the ham radio stuff if you can, along with CB, FRS, shortwave. But keep us in components first...make us your electronics hardware store.
Remember their Battery Club cards? I still have one somewhere, from 1979 I think.
Yes, radium. No, they don't use it anymore, but there's still lots of such clocks and watches out there. As far as the cleanup, if you manage to get a few pounds of radium out of that, can you mail it to me? I have a science fair project I'd like to do. Actually, pretty much anything down to a few grams would be useful. thanks.
It depends on which isotope of Plutonium you use. PU-240 has a high spontaneous fission rate, making it dangerous because the bomb can go off ahead of when you want it it. This is why you have grades of plutonium, with relative amounts of PU-240. Reactor grade is above 7% PU-240, weapons grade is 4%-7% PU-240, and 1% and 'supergrade' with less than 4% PU-240. The good stuff is PU-239, which doesn't fission unless it's hit by another particle (it is fissile). PU-238 is used for RTGs, which are useful for space probes and those nuclear beacons that the Soviets sprinkled all over the place and then lost. This is because 2 grams of PU-238 will generate 1 Watt of thermal power via alpha radiation, and no other types of radiation, and alpha can be easily contained.
Regarding the trucker-bomb-maker, he may have some idea of how old-school bombs work but so what. As so many have pointed out, you need a critical mass of a fissile material such as certain isotopes of plutonium and uranium. There are tricks to lowering the critical mass, and if this trucker is clever and useful he'd publish those. You can get the critical mass down to a volume approximately the size of a baseball. But please don't do this, especially not today, because I have a headache and don't want to have to explain to people which radiation and fission particles are dangerous and why, in the midst of their panic. I've had enough of that these past few weeks.
Yes, you are correct. I am starting to believe that not is LFTR viable, it is ESSENTIAL. Without LFTR, we will gradually become poorer in many ways, while countries which embrace LFTR will become richer (China, perhaps India). Failure to adopt LFTR could be one of those points where future historians will mark as the final straw that broke the camels back, the camel being American-European society (yeah, those white guys that everyone seems to love to demonize). As it goes, so it will take with it the fundamental philosophies and perspectives on human rights and dignity that we have fought so hard to preserve and extend.
We need cheap electricity. In a global economy, the availability and price of electricity are very important.
News outlets seem to be trying to outdo each other in predictions of doom. In reality, the worst case scenario isn't so bad, and even that's not likely to happen. Additionally, the problems of Fukushima are not likely to occur in plants of a newer (4th generation) design.
Who benefits by bringing nuclear power into public disdain? The petro-energy companies, and the speculators of petroleum products. Wind, Solar, etc. do not have the capacity to replace gas, coal, and oil fired electric power plants. Only nuclear energy does. The possibilities of a previously obscure design, that of using thorium and molten salts, promises cheap, efficient, plentiful power. This threatens that Rockefeller legacy and the Sheiks of Saudi Arabia, and Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin. They're making their influence felt in the media and government.
If you really want to know what's going on at Fukushima, read http://www.energyfromthorium.com
The A.B.E. process has been around for a while, producing acetone, butanol and ethanol via bacteria. I seem to recall some improvements on the process which create an end product which is entirely butanol. Why is isobutanol better than butanol?
What did they really expect when they downloaded and used LOIC to DDOS? That somehow they would be protected because of the political nature of the attack, or that they'd be off the hook because someone else actually points that cannon? Talk about stupid.....
There's probably a bunch of people who installed the software on other people's computers, or maybe just ran it on other people's wifi nets. That is what is to be expected. Do we have to tell these people, so eager to don their Guy Fawkes masks and join Anonymous, that 'CAUTION: FILLING IS HOT'?
Seriously, this is important to me. I have my MC760 hooked up to Windows 7 (don't ask) running virtual-AP software (buggy as hell). I was considering going for a mifi but this story puts the kabosh on that idea. No more downloading 'criminal minds' episodes. More importantly, no more attending class online. Which means, for me, that virgin mobile has lost its value proposition. Oh well, I spend $50 on the device...good bye Virgin Mobile, it's back to Starbucks & McDonald's for me.
Yes, I've got it and it's completely legit. I am not going to reveal the IP space here because it will end up being attacked by jealous nerds. Yea $1/IP/mo, and you ISPs know you can charge twice that to your customers and they'll pay, because they have to. Around 66,500 addresses available, in a variety of sizes.
There's still plenty of space available if the various registries were proactive and found out what space was no longer used, never used, or used in networks which don't directly connect to the Internet (i.e. US military). I have more IP space than I can ever use ( class B and a bunch of class Cs) so I'd profit greatly if this space become a fungible commodity. But really, this is a solvable problem.
Yea, maybe it's just un Ubuntu problem, but on both my laptop (Inspiron 700m) and my desktop (with an Nvidia card) crash about 10% on the desktop and 40% on the laptop, when viewing videos and occasionally when listening to music. It's pretty sad, as I need this stuff for my classwork. I pulled an old celeron XP box out of the closet, tranplanted some ram into it, and everything works fine. Pretty sad.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to hack (dark side) at the same time but in a more restricted manner than Mitnick (I was never on the run). People accuse him of selling out, of being fake, or exaggerated. To some extent, he has sold out - sold up, and made the best of his situation. He paid dearly for his misdeeds, and had prosecutors lie in order for him to wind up with incarceration a lot longer than he deserved. Don't you think he's entitled to a bit of slack? Shouldn't he be able to make a little money on the side? I haven't bought any of his books, though I have been tempted to. I understand why they bother people, but you have to put them and Mitnick's life in perspective: He spent his youth as a hacker, and then years as a prisoner, then released and not allowed to touch computers (for a while) - what else did have to do to support himself? He did the best he could. What else could he do, sink into obscurity and desperation (ala Bill Landreth)? It's not like he could just casually take a job as a SysOp somewhere; his name is too widely known.
How good of a hacker was he, during his heyday? I'd say he was pretty good, from what I could tell. He wasn't as social as many of the others, but he did trade information with other hackers (including myself). He wasn't as reckless as some others who also had great talent (Mark Tabas), even though he was eventually caught, so he must have made some mistakes. He wasn't a destructive bastard, a gangster, a spy, or any other of a myriad nasties. But, when someone has skills which make them a good black-hat, this influences their attainment of other skills. I've never seen any evidence to suggest that he is more than an average competent programmer (and I do not claim to be any better). He has a broad knowledge of systems and methods, but these systems are often twenty to thirty years old. Who knows what MIZAR is these days? I am in the same basket - lots of old knowledge, much of the technical stuff is irrelevant these days. There are others skills, hunches, and an intuition brought by years of experience which make Grand Old Hackers surprising in the ways go about things, and difficult to predict.
Kevin is doing what he does best, as a media figure and security consultant. I doubt any of you naysayers could do much better than if you were in his shoes, post-prison.
Maybe a couple of you might recognize my handle. But I am not famous. I paid for my crimes, but luckily did not have to pay nearly a high price as Kevin Mitnick did.
What utter useless crap. This is just a reboot of the Pringle's can antenna, which may have some use for war-driving but is not so great for actual communication. When you use such an antenna to narrow your signal's transmission pattern and to focus received transmissions, you need to have some sort of accuracy to match its precision, and that accuracy and precision have to be repeatable, and survive the environment they are installed it. This is not the days of old, where good antennas cost a few hundred dollars each. If you insist on extended range on the cheap, go get an old satellite dish and adapt it, or get an MMDS grid. Or build the old Guerrilla.Net colinear vertical antenna, if you're got a liking for intricate soldering.
Enjoy the beer, return the can, put that 5 cents towards a real antenna.
yes, it was good while it lasted. Well for some of it. LFTR is the future, but we need the present nuclear power. Too bad Germany won't have it. Slaves to Russia.
You spelled it wrong, it is 'Schwanz'
Kroah-Hartman says - "Consumer devices have a 1-2 year lifespan" -- this is a sign of our times. Just make junk that last a couple of years at best, and then chuck it. It would be far better to create devices that last twenty years and can be updated and repaired. This is why I like 'dumb phones'- cellphones that are less likely to be pwn3d, last longer, are cheaper, tougher, and easier to use. Ah, I am going to miss you, Nokia, and Motorola, and Siemens, and...
A swarm of creatures with low intelligence? You mean, that Harvard manufactured the Canuks rioters/fans?
20-year mandate is a mistake. newer designs, and retrofits, can extend the life of plants. A simple 20-year expiration date leads to waste.
Yes, Germany seems to be going crazy, but here in Slashdot, there are pro-nuclear forces in number. This makes me happy. If you want to see better nuclear power, read up on LFTR (Liquid Thorium Fluoride Reactors).
Really? I thought it was in Austria-Hungary.
I gave up and now order everything online, because they shack just doesn't have it. Sure, it might be listed online, but it's not in stock at any of my local stores. When I was a kid, I spent the majority of my money (lawn mowing & paper route earnings) at Radio Shack, not only on component, but books and I loved their bargain table. They sold really decent radios too -- Realistic scanners & ham gear were among the best. But there was also lots of cheap plastic crap that dragged them down, especially in the Christmas season. Radio Shack became Rat Shack or Radio Shlock.
My first "real" job was at Radio Shack, making minimum wage plus commission. The store was small and didn't do much business, and you had to make a minimum dollar amount of sales per hour or there was no commission. The boss always stole the big-ticket items, but eventually I was able to garner a few computer sales to make something about the $3.35/hr. I left after eight months because it was hardly worth the $100/week I was making. If they want to keep good people, they have to pay them a decent wage, and have decent working conditions. The inner city stores are staffed by people who barely speak English, never mind have any knowledge of the products or desire to help. Suburban stores tend to be a little better, but not always.
Radio Shack should reach out to hobbyists by creating a community of DIYers...not only electronics but other technical crafts as well. Tandy started out as a leather hobbyists store, and also at some point had sewing supply stores, and then bought the original Radio Shack chain (from Boston, not Texas) and eventually ditched the other businesses. If Radio Shack were to become Tandy (like they are in Europe), they could branch out to supply more than electronic stuff. Chemistry, metals, etc. But first, fix the electronics hobbyist reputation. Do this by keeping lots of stuff in stock. Yes, the stores pay half a cent for a pack of resistors (or did in the 80s) and sell them for $.39, a huge profit margin. But I don't mind this, because of the transaction cost and the immediate availability. But keep it reasonable, eh? I'll pay $.49 for a pack of five resistors, but not $.99. So what if it takes two years to sell that which is shipped in, because the cost of the item is low and so is storage.
yes, arduinos, sensors, and other things. Yes, the essentials for electronics work, such as soldering equipment and wire, plastic boxes and so forth.
There has been suggestions of offering PCB services. This is a good idea. Expand upon this, and provide things for maker bots and so forth. Keep us geeks coming in for the essentials and we might as well buy that other item while we're there, that thing that makes lots of money. Make us trust you, Tandy, and we'll show up. I am not asking for rock-bottom prices or electrical engineers as salesmen. I am not asking you to complete with digi-key in stocked items. Just be a good alternative to mail-order, be the places that saves our a$$ when we blow that diode and we need to fix it RIGHT NOW and now wait for mail-order. Bring back the ham radio stuff if you can, along with CB, FRS, shortwave. But keep us in components first...make us your electronics hardware store.
Remember their Battery Club cards? I still have one somewhere, from 1979 I think.
Never used AIM much, never had an AOL account, and I was far from alone.
Yes, governments can monitor cellphones without having control of the switching facilities. In fact, they are, right now.
I can finally put my class C to use. Seriously, there's so much allocated by unused space that a free market is needed to make proper use of it.
Yes, radium. No, they don't use it anymore, but there's still lots of such clocks and watches out there. As far as the cleanup, if you manage to get a few pounds of radium out of that, can you mail it to me? I have a science fair project I'd like to do. Actually, pretty much anything down to a few grams would be useful. thanks.
It depends on which isotope of Plutonium you use. PU-240 has a high spontaneous fission rate, making it dangerous because the bomb can go off ahead of when you want it it. This is why you have grades of plutonium, with relative amounts of PU-240. Reactor grade is above 7% PU-240, weapons grade is 4%-7% PU-240, and 1% and 'supergrade' with less than 4% PU-240. The good stuff is PU-239, which doesn't fission unless it's hit by another particle (it is fissile). PU-238 is used for RTGs, which are useful for space probes and those nuclear beacons that the Soviets sprinkled all over the place and then lost. This is because 2 grams of PU-238 will generate 1 Watt of thermal power via alpha radiation, and no other types of radiation, and alpha can be easily contained.
Regarding the trucker-bomb-maker, he may have some idea of how old-school bombs work but so what. As so many have pointed out, you need a critical mass of a fissile material such as certain isotopes of plutonium and uranium. There are tricks to lowering the critical mass, and if this trucker is clever and useful he'd publish those. You can get the critical mass down to a volume approximately the size of a baseball. But please don't do this, especially not today, because I have a headache and don't want to have to explain to people which radiation and fission particles are dangerous and why, in the midst of their panic. I've had enough of that these past few weeks.
Yes, you are correct. I am starting to believe that not is LFTR viable, it is ESSENTIAL. Without LFTR, we will gradually become poorer in many ways, while countries which embrace LFTR will become richer (China, perhaps India). Failure to adopt LFTR could be one of those points where future historians will mark as the final straw that broke the camels back, the camel being American-European society (yeah, those white guys that everyone seems to love to demonize). As it goes, so it will take with it the fundamental philosophies and perspectives on human rights and dignity that we have fought so hard to preserve and extend.
We need cheap electricity. In a global economy, the availability and price of electricity are very important.
News outlets seem to be trying to outdo each other in predictions of doom. In reality, the worst case scenario isn't so bad, and even that's not likely to happen. Additionally, the problems of Fukushima are not likely to occur in plants of a newer (4th generation) design.
Who benefits by bringing nuclear power into public disdain? The petro-energy companies, and the speculators of petroleum products. Wind, Solar, etc. do not have the capacity to replace gas, coal, and oil fired electric power plants. Only nuclear energy does. The possibilities of a previously obscure design, that of using thorium and molten salts, promises cheap, efficient, plentiful power. This threatens that Rockefeller legacy and the Sheiks of Saudi Arabia, and Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin. They're making their influence felt in the media and government.
If you really want to know what's going on at Fukushima, read http://www.energyfromthorium.com
The A.B.E. process has been around for a while, producing acetone, butanol and ethanol via bacteria. I seem to recall some improvements on the process which create an end product which is entirely butanol. Why is isobutanol better than butanol?
What did they really expect when they downloaded and used LOIC to DDOS? That somehow they would be protected because of the political nature of the attack, or that they'd be off the hook because someone else actually points that cannon? Talk about stupid.....
There's probably a bunch of people who installed the software on other people's computers, or maybe just ran it on other people's wifi nets. That is what is to be expected. Do we have to tell these people, so eager to don their Guy Fawkes masks and join Anonymous, that 'CAUTION: FILLING IS HOT'?
Seriously, this is important to me. I have my MC760 hooked up to Windows 7 (don't ask) running virtual-AP software (buggy as hell). I was considering going for a mifi but this story puts the kabosh on that idea. No more downloading 'criminal minds' episodes. More importantly, no more attending class online. Which means, for me, that virgin mobile has lost its value proposition. Oh well, I spend $50 on the device...good bye Virgin Mobile, it's back to Starbucks & McDonald's for me.
You may be pink, but black and white are my favourite colours.
....By completely ignoring her.
Yes, I've got it and it's completely legit. I am not going to reveal the IP space here because it will end up being attacked by jealous nerds. Yea $1/IP/mo, and you ISPs know you can charge twice that to your customers and they'll pay, because they have to. Around 66,500 addresses available, in a variety of sizes.
Oh, yes, I should add, this is not a joke.
There's still plenty of space available if the various registries were proactive and found out what space was no longer used, never used, or used in networks which don't directly connect to the Internet (i.e. US military). I have more IP space than I can ever use ( class B and a bunch of class Cs) so I'd profit greatly if this space become a fungible commodity. But really, this is a solvable problem.
Yea, maybe it's just un Ubuntu problem, but on both my laptop (Inspiron 700m) and my desktop (with an Nvidia card) crash about 10% on the desktop and 40% on the laptop, when viewing videos and occasionally when listening to music. It's pretty sad, as I need this stuff for my classwork. I pulled an old celeron XP box out of the closet, tranplanted some ram into it, and everything works fine. Pretty sad.