For some of my passwords I do something similar. I take a line from a song I like and use the first letters of that to create a password. Like one old one I used to use was from a Collin Raye song:
"What if Jesus comes back like that?"
Which became: "WiJcblt?"
Pick a song you like or will remember, and it's almost impossible to forget your password./Yes I like that song//and yet I'm agnostic///go figure
actually once you request your own file they will start an investigation into you to see why you think you should have a file...
I briefly considered filing an FOIA request on myself, but then was worried that if they didn't have any info on me, they'd then be prompted to start looking. I haven't committed any crimes and don't think I've done anything that might trigger their interest but I figured I won't bother for now...
And your C64 is quite a bit less complex than todays machines.
Look, I'm not saying that XBox360s are lasting as long as they should. Of course I want them to last longer. But you have to realize that the Wal-mart mentality is taking over everything.
The consumers want a console that will do everything! But most of them refuse to spend more than $200-300 for it. So what are the console makers to do? The three makers each went different routes.
1. Nintendo - Kept within the low end of the pricing but sacrificed features [graphics]. Attempted to make up for it by adding creative controls and family friendly gaming. I'd say it's pretty obvious that they've been successful.
2. Sony - Decided to give consumers all the features they clamored for, but used decent parts. As a result, they've had to stay well above the sweet spot of pricing thus far. They've still sold quite a few consoles at that higher price, and have had fewer failures due to the higher quality components [and engineering decisions], but they are still trailing the sales of the other two options.
3. Microsoft - Decided to give the consumers everything they wanted, while still meeting the better pricing. I actually don't think they used poor components so much as they made some poor engineering choices. They've been highly successful. They've outsold Sony. While they aren't selling as well as the Wii, based on my own anecdotal evidence, and that of the people I know, the Xbox gets WAY more usage in a particular household than the other two. I paid $299 for my Xbox. Though I had a failure, it was quickly replaced and has otherwise been trouble free, while having more usable [to me] features than the PS3 or the Wii.
I suspect that a given PS3 is likely to last much longer than an XBox360. This is in no way a failure for Microsoft. They've catered to the "give me everything cheap" masses and the result has been highly successful. Though I doubt the PS3 even will last as long as the C64...
Yeah but servers that run unfailingly for years cost more than $300, and have higher quality parts. In addition, they are most frequenly kept in temperature controlled server rooms.
The Xbox's on the other hand, are often crammed in dusty cabinets with no ventilation. I'm sure if they were to charge $1000 for a game console, they could make one that would run for years in such an environment. But people aren't going to buy it.
My Xbox360 sits on top of an open glass stereo rack, so ventilation is not a problem. The Xbox is running probably 2-6 hrs a day [weedkays]. It is our game console [The Wii doesn't get played much], it is our DVD/HDDVD player, and it is our media center front-end; playing recorded HD television, locally streamed videos [Xvid ripped DVDs], and Hulu/Netflix streaming .
One of my friends has a PS3. It gets maybe 1-2 hours per week of usage when they play some games on the weekend. Of course it is going to last longer, they never use it!:)
The Xbox360 did get a RROD. Microsoft replaced it quickly and with no hassle, and the refurb unit we got back has been running like a champ, in spite of the heavy work-load.
I can't get dsl where I am without subbing to a landline as well. A cable modem isn't really an option either since we have Directv and wouldn't qualify for any bundling deals from the cable company. If I could do dry line dsl I would in an instant, but I get to pay an extra $13/mo for my internet access instead.
Honestly, don't feel too bad. Most ISPs I've come across charge an additional $10-15/month for a DSL line that isn't attached to a phone line anyway. So at least this way you're getting some amount of service for that extra money, and it will work when your power is out [assuming you keep a non-cordless phone around]
[sigh] That wasn't the point I was trying to make.
Guide to successful public education: 1. Treat students with respect [while not letting them get away with murder] 2. Have high expectations for students 3. Give students the tools needed to succeed and reach those expectations. 4. Don't teach them facts, teach them to learn 5.... 6. Profit
Yes but then you have some folks who have the correct attitude about these things:
4) Why are birds not electrocuted when they land on electricity wires?
"My daughter, then six, threw me when she asked me this. I had no idea," says Jo from, North Yorkshire. But I Googled it and got back to her. It is important not to just say, 'I don't know, shh,' like I see some parents do. Feed their inquisitive minds, and you may learn something yourself too."
This guy has ALMOST the right answer. If you don't know, look it up dumbass! But better yet, take the kid who asked the question, and help THEM look it up! Teach them how to find the answers to the questions they have and that it is a fun/good thing to do. This will serve your child more in the course of their life than just about anything else you can teach them.
The best teachers I had, both in school and college, didn't teach by stuffing pre-digested knowledge down the student's throats. What they did was questioning things that people take for granted, and make the students learn by themselves. Having classes with them was fun, and we could really learn the stuff because we weren't being spoon fed the facts but reaching the conclusions using our own brains.
Almost every student hated them.
That's interesting that every student hated them. My wife teaches science at an alternative school [not the real BAD alternative school, but the one for kids who have fallen behind for one reason or another, ie pregnancy]. Anyway, these kids mostly hate school, even though they've specifically applied to go to this school to catch up. Half of them are mommies/daddies, or on parole, or on drugs or some combination of all three. These are not your typical model students.
My wife is also the kind of teacher that won't just give answers, or spoon feed facts. She forces them to think about everything and come up with their own answers and solutions. She expects significantly more out of her students than any other teacher at that school, yet her kids universally love her.
Often students dislike teachers not because of the level of work that's expected of them, but because of they way they are treated. Without fail my wife treats her kids with respect and interacts with them as adults [within reason]. She acts as if they are real people with real thoughts and feelings [crazy, I know!:) ]. She expects them to treat her, and their classmates with the same respect she shows them. The result is that most of the kids realize that she would do anything to help them succeed. She won't just give answers, but she will spend all the time in the world helping them with any issues they may have, whether it be science, any other subject, or life itself. The kids respond by working harder for her than they ever have for any other teacher, and they love her for it.
Personally, I'd kill the little shits, but she somehow manages to get the best out of them without them hating her. I don't know how to make it happen, but if more teachers worked that way, the kids coming out of our public school systems wouldn't be the laughing stock they seem to be these days.
In Vista each application has a separate volume control. So you can mute your browser and turn up the volume on your media player.
And how does this help people using XP, or Linux or OSX? And even if I'm using Vista, I'm often listening to the music through my browser anyway [Pandora, Rhapsody], so this still doesn't help me.
It was so awesome it pegged a whole core on my E8400. I expect to web to fuel larger hard drives, but faster CPUs? That's gettinga little out of hand.
There's got to be something else going on. The site loads and runs great on my netbook and looks to only be using about 60% of the Atom's CPU [Windows XP w/Firefox 3.5]
This is great, but it really needs a way to mute the audio. Or better yet, make the audio optional [opt-in] from the start.
And no, I don't want to just turn off my speakers. Maybe I'm listening to some music, now all of a sudden I've got some cheezy web-site music blaring in my headphones or out my speakers. Not cool...
You're not kidding there's a huge base of CentOS servers out there. Everyone assumes that Oracle Enterprise Linux [aka unbreakable] is a clone of Redhat. But I've been told that they actually clone CentOS.
You can also look into Zabbix. It's open source, and has Enterprise support available. I haven't used it yet, but as soon as I have a spare moment to breath I intend to test it out for use in my environment.
Then call your cable company and your phone company and set up service.
Thereby proving that it's not worth paying $X for the game if it can't be played without also paying $40-100/month for internet service. If that's something Blizzard wants to make as a requirement then they'd better not be surprised when sales are not as high as they should be. Especially as they're already fighting against the effects of an economic recession as well.
Especially since I bet it won't take long for cracked copies of the game to be available that allow local LAN gaming without requiring bnet.
Not that I'm condoning pirating, but it's hard for people to make the decision to pay money for a game when the free version has more functionality.
Myself, I'll just choose not to play SC2 in this case, and will spend my money with a game company that understands its players better.
How will your friends play at your house if their PCs are back at their houses?
Wow, talk about short-sighted. Lets see, how about: 1. Invite friends over on a Saturday afternoon for a LAN game 2. Saturday afternoon, ISP connection is hosed/having trouble 3. Crap we can't play:(
Heck we sometimes meet on weekends at an office supply warehouse that a friend works at for LAN gaming. No access to internet, only LAN games. Guess we'll have to buy something other than SC2 to play... Sucks for Blizzard.
Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that, apparently, a foreign government identified an American Citizen and had operatives attack that individual? On US Soil? I wonder if there will be hit squads next, or teams of operatives attempting to sabotage servers where proxies are being hosted...
This is exactly why free speech is so critical - so that I can, for example, post a comment on Slashdot without worrying about thugs attacking me for it. Flames and trolls are one thing, angry guys throwing rocks at my car? Quite another.
Seriously? Do you really think that the Iranian Govt/Hezbollah tracked down a Twitter user just to have a couple goons throw rocks at him? I find that hard to believe.
If they really felt threatened enough to track him down and send people out to him, he'd be dead.
At worst, this was the act of a couple mentally challenged Iranian/Lebanese ex-patriots who have bought into the BS that the Supreme Leader and his cronies have been spouting and decided to try to go scare this guy. And I'd be more likely to believe that these guys don't really even care about what's going on but stumbled on his real identity and drunkenly though it'd be "cool to go throw rocks at him and make him thing he's in big danger".
Do they have a way to securely and anonymously subscribe and connect to them? Can you send them cash, use a nym server for email contacts...and maybe somehow route your transactions with the server through something like TOR?
Why? Do you think the Usenet server AT&T was providing was somehow any more anonymous than signing up for a Giganews account?
If you wanted a "super-sekrit", anonymous usenet access to download your kiddie-porn, I fervently hope you *were* using AT&Ts servers. It'll be easier to find you that way.
I'm not sure where you think the problem lies. You say old PowerPC hardware is still running OS 8. That's great. But it's not like that old HW is supported on OS 9. Or OSX. It's been several years since Apple has started selling Intel hardware. You can't realistically expect them to continue supporting ever-aging hardware with new releases.
In 10 years, I'm sure you'll see places happily running OS X Leopard on G4/G5 Macs. There's no difference with what you're seeing now. Frankly I think it's pretty impressive that Apple has continued to support your hardware for 3 years after switching to a completely different HW platform.
If you want to run the same HW for a decade and expect new OS compatibility, you're never going to find it from a commercial desktop OS vendor.
I know he's trying to get Random Dice rolls but there are easier and more practical methods to produce random numbers. If he really needs randomized numbers then grab an advanced Math lib or even better use a atomic or molecular random event. Either way this isn't very practice.
Posts like this make me wish there were a "Didn't RTFA" moderation...
It was chock full of cliche and fanservice. And physics and geometry errors that put "Fringe" to shame.
Yeah cuz Star Trek has always been known for its scientifically accurate representation of space-travel.
Ask me to believe in faster than light warp-drive or transporters, but don't ask me to believe that a life-supporting planet who's binary twin is a life-supporting planet with a population of billions which has had space-travel for centuries, will not be covered in colonies.
Man, chill out, it's just a movie. Maybe they kept that planet as a nature reserve. To protect the sweet, delicate, endangered little critters that inhabit that world.:) Or maybe the Vulcans just don't like to freeze their asses off.
Also, don't ask me to believe that the "star fleet" is ridiculously irresponsible in putting experienced personnel on new ships, and capricious and irresponsible with regard to field promotions.
Thank you for posting that. It seems like a valid, workable solution, that still for the most part takes advantage of the cost-savings by using modern products. There's definitely secure ways to handle their computing needs without it opening the network up to every script kiddie that comes along. Yes, it will cost a bit more than just buying a bunch of computer and networking gear off the shelf, but it can be every bit as secure as the previous setup, while being much cheaper to implement and maintain.
I haven't read the articles, just the summary but I have to say, using non-proprietary hardware/software doesn't make it any less secure than the proprietary stuff that was used in the past. What makes it less secure is that it wasn't properly designed. Those proprietary systems were designed to be secure, not just slapped together and thrown up. Only 11 sites were using IDS? Did they hire a bunch of mafia-connected eastern European hackers to design their system?
Slashdot Mirror
For some of my passwords I do something similar. I take a line from a song I like and use the first letters of that to create a password. Like one old one I used to use was from a Collin Raye song:
"What if Jesus comes back like that?"
Which became: "WiJcblt?"
Pick a song you like or will remember, and it's almost impossible to forget your password. /Yes I like that song //and yet I'm agnostic ///go figure
actually once you request your own file they will start an investigation into you to see why you think you should have a file...
I briefly considered filing an FOIA request on myself, but then was worried that if they didn't have any info on me, they'd then be prompted to start looking. I haven't committed any crimes and don't think I've done anything that might trigger their interest but I figured I won't bother for now...
And your C64 is quite a bit less complex than todays machines.
Look, I'm not saying that XBox360s are lasting as long as they should. Of course I want them to last longer. But you have to realize that the Wal-mart mentality is taking over everything.
The consumers want a console that will do everything! But most of them refuse to spend more than $200-300 for it. So what are the console makers to do? The three makers each went different routes.
1. Nintendo - Kept within the low end of the pricing but sacrificed features [graphics]. Attempted to make up for it by adding creative controls and family friendly gaming. I'd say it's pretty obvious that they've been successful.
2. Sony - Decided to give consumers all the features they clamored for, but used decent parts. As a result, they've had to stay well above the sweet spot of pricing thus far. They've still sold quite a few consoles at that higher price, and have had fewer failures due to the higher quality components [and engineering decisions], but they are still trailing the sales of the other two options.
3. Microsoft - Decided to give the consumers everything they wanted, while still meeting the better pricing. I actually don't think they used poor components so much as they made some poor engineering choices. They've been highly successful. They've outsold Sony. While they aren't selling as well as the Wii, based on my own anecdotal evidence, and that of the people I know, the Xbox gets WAY more usage in a particular household than the other two. I paid $299 for my Xbox. Though I had a failure, it was quickly replaced and has otherwise been trouble free, while having more usable [to me] features than the PS3 or the Wii.
I suspect that a given PS3 is likely to last much longer than an XBox360. This is in no way a failure for Microsoft. They've catered to the "give me everything cheap" masses and the result has been highly successful.
Though I doubt the PS3 even will last as long as the C64...
Yeah but servers that run unfailingly for years cost more than $300, and have higher quality parts. In addition, they are most frequenly kept in temperature controlled server rooms.
The Xbox's on the other hand, are often crammed in dusty cabinets with no ventilation. I'm sure if they were to charge $1000 for a game console, they could make one that would run for years in such an environment. But people aren't going to buy it.
My Xbox360 sits on top of an open glass stereo rack, so ventilation is not a problem. The Xbox is running probably 2-6 hrs a day [weedkays]. It is our game console [The Wii doesn't get played much], it is our DVD/HDDVD player, and it is our media center front-end; playing recorded HD television, locally streamed videos [Xvid ripped DVDs], and Hulu/Netflix streaming .
One of my friends has a PS3. It gets maybe 1-2 hours per week of usage when they play some games on the weekend. Of course it is going to last longer, they never use it! :)
The Xbox360 did get a RROD. Microsoft replaced it quickly and with no hassle, and the refurb unit we got back has been running like a champ, in spite of the heavy work-load.
I can't get dsl where I am without subbing to a landline as well. A cable modem isn't really an option either since we have Directv and wouldn't qualify for any bundling deals from the cable company. If I could do dry line dsl I would in an instant, but I get to pay an extra $13/mo for my internet access instead.
Honestly, don't feel too bad. Most ISPs I've come across charge an additional $10-15/month for a DSL line that isn't attached to a phone line anyway. So at least this way you're getting some amount of service for that extra money, and it will work when your power is out [assuming you keep a non-cordless phone around]
An erudite individual will have a better grasp of language.
And pretty soon nobody else will know what he's saying :p
And he'll sound pompous and faggy.
Congratulations. Your wife is really gifted.
[sigh] That wasn't the point I was trying to make.
Guide to successful public education: ...
1. Treat students with respect [while not letting them get away with murder]
2. Have high expectations for students
3. Give students the tools needed to succeed and reach those expectations.
4. Don't teach them facts, teach them to learn
5.
6. Profit
Yes but then you have some folks who have the correct attitude about these things:
4) Why are birds not electrocuted when they land on electricity wires?
"My daughter, then six, threw me when she asked me this. I had no idea," says Jo from, North Yorkshire. But I Googled it and got back to her. It is important not to just say, 'I don't know, shh,' like I see some parents do. Feed their inquisitive minds, and you may learn something yourself too."
This guy has ALMOST the right answer. If you don't know, look it up dumbass! But better yet, take the kid who asked the question, and help THEM look it up! Teach them how to find the answers to the questions they have and that it is a fun/good thing to do. This will serve your child more in the course of their life than just about anything else you can teach them.
The best teachers I had, both in school and college, didn't teach by stuffing pre-digested knowledge down the student's throats. What they did was questioning things that people take for granted, and make the students learn by themselves. Having classes with them was fun, and we could really learn the stuff because we weren't being spoon fed the facts but reaching the conclusions using our own brains.
Almost every student hated them.
That's interesting that every student hated them. My wife teaches science at an alternative school [not the real BAD alternative school, but the one for kids who have fallen behind for one reason or another, ie pregnancy]. Anyway, these kids mostly hate school, even though they've specifically applied to go to this school to catch up. Half of them are mommies/daddies, or on parole, or on drugs or some combination of all three. These are not your typical model students.
My wife is also the kind of teacher that won't just give answers, or spoon feed facts. She forces them to think about everything and come up with their own answers and solutions. She expects significantly more out of her students than any other teacher at that school, yet her kids universally love her.
Often students dislike teachers not because of the level of work that's expected of them, but because of they way they are treated. Without fail my wife treats her kids with respect and interacts with them as adults [within reason]. She acts as if they are real people with real thoughts and feelings [crazy, I know! :) ]. She expects them to treat her, and their classmates with the same respect she shows them. The result is that most of the kids realize that she would do anything to help them succeed. She won't just give answers, but she will spend all the time in the world helping them with any issues they may have, whether it be science, any other subject, or life itself. The kids respond by working harder for her than they ever have for any other teacher, and they love her for it.
Personally, I'd kill the little shits, but she somehow manages to get the best out of them without them hating her. I don't know how to make it happen, but if more teachers worked that way, the kids coming out of our public school systems wouldn't be the laughing stock they seem to be these days.
In Vista each application has a separate volume control. So you can mute your browser and turn up the volume on your media player.
And how does this help people using XP, or Linux or OSX?
And even if I'm using Vista, I'm often listening to the music through my browser anyway [Pandora, Rhapsody], so this still doesn't help me.
It was so awesome it pegged a whole core on my E8400. I expect to web to fuel larger hard drives, but faster CPUs? That's gettinga little out of hand.
There's got to be something else going on. The site loads and runs great on my netbook and looks to only be using about 60% of the Atom's CPU [Windows XP w/Firefox 3.5]
This is great, but it really needs a way to mute the audio. Or better yet, make the audio optional [opt-in] from the start.
And no, I don't want to just turn off my speakers. Maybe I'm listening to some music, now all of a sudden I've got some cheezy web-site music blaring in my headphones or out my speakers. Not cool...
You're not kidding there's a huge base of CentOS servers out there. Everyone assumes that Oracle Enterprise Linux [aka unbreakable] is a clone of Redhat. But I've been told that they actually clone CentOS.
Slackware is hardly alone in this:
/etc/debian_version
/etc/lsb-release
/etc/redhat-release
Debian:
/etc$ cat
5.0.1
Ubuntu:
~$ cat
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=8.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=hardy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS"
Redhat/Oracle [I assume Fedora/CentOS too?]:
~]$ cat
Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Server release 5.2 (Carthage)
I'm not the subby, but you guys are certainly giving me some good ammo to bring to management when I do get around to testing Zabbix. :) Thanks!
You can also look into Zabbix. It's open source, and has Enterprise support available. I haven't used it yet, but as soon as I have a spare moment to breath I intend to test it out for use in my environment.
Then call your cable company and your phone company and set up service.
Thereby proving that it's not worth paying $X for the game if it can't be played without also paying $40-100/month for internet service. If that's something Blizzard wants to make as a requirement then they'd better not be surprised when sales are not as high as they should be. Especially as they're already fighting against the effects of an economic recession as well.
Especially since I bet it won't take long for cracked copies of the game to be available that allow local LAN gaming without requiring bnet.
Not that I'm condoning pirating, but it's hard for people to make the decision to pay money for a game when the free version has more functionality.
Myself, I'll just choose not to play SC2 in this case, and will spend my money with a game company that understands its players better.
How will your friends play at your house if their PCs are back at their houses?
Wow, talk about short-sighted. Lets see, how about: :(
1. Invite friends over on a Saturday afternoon for a LAN game
2. Saturday afternoon, ISP connection is hosed/having trouble
3. Crap we can't play
Heck we sometimes meet on weekends at an office supply warehouse that a friend works at for LAN gaming. No access to internet, only LAN games. Guess we'll have to buy something other than SC2 to play... Sucks for Blizzard.
Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that, apparently, a foreign government identified an American Citizen and had operatives attack that individual? On US Soil? I wonder if there will be hit squads next, or teams of operatives attempting to sabotage servers where proxies are being hosted... This is exactly why free speech is so critical - so that I can, for example, post a comment on Slashdot without worrying about thugs attacking me for it. Flames and trolls are one thing, angry guys throwing rocks at my car? Quite another.
Seriously? Do you really think that the Iranian Govt/Hezbollah tracked down a Twitter user just to have a couple goons throw rocks at him? I find that hard to believe. If they really felt threatened enough to track him down and send people out to him, he'd be dead. At worst, this was the act of a couple mentally challenged Iranian/Lebanese ex-patriots who have bought into the BS that the Supreme Leader and his cronies have been spouting and decided to try to go scare this guy. And I'd be more likely to believe that these guys don't really even care about what's going on but stumbled on his real identity and drunkenly though it'd be "cool to go throw rocks at him and make him thing he's in big danger".
Do they have a way to securely and anonymously subscribe and connect to them? Can you send them cash, use a nym server for email contacts...and maybe somehow route your transactions with the server through something like TOR?
Why? Do you think the Usenet server AT&T was providing was somehow any more anonymous than signing up for a Giganews account? If you wanted a "super-sekrit", anonymous usenet access to download your kiddie-porn, I fervently hope you *were* using AT&Ts servers. It'll be easier to find you that way.
In 10 years, I'm sure you'll see places happily running OS X Leopard on G4/G5 Macs. There's no difference with what you're seeing now. Frankly I think it's pretty impressive that Apple has continued to support your hardware for 3 years after switching to a completely different HW platform.
If you want to run the same HW for a decade and expect new OS compatibility, you're never going to find it from a commercial desktop OS vendor.
I know he's trying to get Random Dice rolls but there are easier and more practical methods to produce random numbers. If he really needs randomized numbers then grab an advanced Math lib or even better use a atomic or molecular random event. Either way this isn't very practice.
Posts like this make me wish there were a "Didn't RTFA" moderation...
At one telco-hotel that I worked at (Westin Bld, Seattle) someone in the parking garage had the plate of UID 0.
Got root?
I worked [briefly] with a guy in San Jose, CA that had "GOT ROOT" for his plates.
It was chock full of cliche and fanservice. And physics and geometry errors that put "Fringe" to shame.
Yeah cuz Star Trek has always been known for its scientifically accurate representation of space-travel.
Ask me to believe in faster than light warp-drive or transporters, but don't ask me to believe that a life-supporting planet who's binary twin is a life-supporting planet with a population of billions which has had space-travel for centuries, will not be covered in colonies.
Man, chill out, it's just a movie. Maybe they kept that planet as a nature reserve. To protect the sweet, delicate, endangered little critters that inhabit that world. :) Or maybe the Vulcans just don't like to freeze their asses off.
Also, don't ask me to believe that the "star fleet" is ridiculously irresponsible in putting experienced personnel on new ships, and capricious and irresponsible with regard to field promotions.
Thank you for posting that. It seems like a valid, workable solution, that still for the most part takes advantage of the cost-savings by using modern products. There's definitely secure ways to handle their computing needs without it opening the network up to every script kiddie that comes along. Yes, it will cost a bit more than just buying a bunch of computer and networking gear off the shelf, but it can be every bit as secure as the previous setup, while being much cheaper to implement and maintain.
I haven't read the articles, just the summary but I have to say, using non-proprietary hardware/software doesn't make it any less secure than the proprietary stuff that was used in the past. What makes it less secure is that it wasn't properly designed. Those proprietary systems were designed to be secure, not just slapped together and thrown up.
Only 11 sites were using IDS? Did they hire a bunch of mafia-connected eastern European hackers to design their system?