The patch for this was out 2 years ago. No excuse.
Uh... Patch for what? I was unaware I could apply a "patch" that would prevent me from getting viruses. It exploits a user vulnerability (stupidity), not an OS one. And McAfee seems to disagree with you about when this was discovered. See here
This hit MIT starting this morning. It's quite clever about where it gets the addresses and e-mails from. It knows how to scan the mailbox formats of many common e-mail clients, not just Outlook. It sends itself as an attachment to actual messages from the infected user's inbox. So the body is not something obvious ("I send you this file to have your advice"). I actually thought several of the messages I received were real, since they pertained to recent business around campus. (I didn't open the attachments, of course seeing the.scr extension - not that it does much to an OS X box). It's backdoor runs on a fairly standard port (1080) that's used for plenty of legitimate apps (proxy servers) so scanning your network for open ports won't necessarily find it for you. (as opposed to scanning and seeing that port 31337 is open, or something like that, which obviously "wrong"). The keylogger component is quite scary too. It's one of the more advanced viruses I've seen recently...
On a related note, anti-virus programs is one place where I can actually see a potential useful application of "trusted computing" (no, not necessarily Palladium). If there could be some way to to tell the OS "Look, I don't care if you're the administrator or not: the only programs that are allowed to terminate the anti-virus scanner process are the scanner itself, and, say, Task Manager". By using keys to prove their identity, it _might_ make it a lot harder for virii to terminate anti-virus programs. (Note to slashbots: I'm not saying Palladium is good because it will do this (I don't even know if it does). I'm saying this is one potential application of some as-yet-undeveloped implemenation of "trusted computing".
Most college IT departments have recommendations for what their students should bring or need to bring. While you certainly don't have to purchase the model they recommend, you can get a general idea. Some colleges do offer substantial discounts on equipment if you purchase it through them, due to partner agreements with vendors like IBM, Dell, or Apple.
You'll also want to get information about your college's computing environment. Essential questions to ask:
How many net drops per student in the dorms? (aka ports per pillow)
For dorm networking, are switches/hubs/NAT boxes allowed?
Are there available drops in classrooms? In common areas or lounges?
Is there 802.11b wireless in classrooms? In the dorms? In common areas?
Are there public clusters? How many? How full are they on average?
Are there "quickstations" or "e-mail terminals" around campus that allow you to quickly check your mail or browse the web between classes?
Are there any specialized applications you'll need for your major? What platforms do they run on?
Does your department have any specific computing requirements?
How much desk space will you have in your room?
There are many more questions, of course, but those are the essential ones. A splufty Dell desktop with a 19" CRT is not too useful if you've got a tiny 36x24 desk in your room. Buying an iBook and then finding one of your classes wants you to code in VB to do your work is going to suck. Getting both a desktop and a laptop is useless if you can't connect them to the network simultaneously in your room. Paying extra for an Airport-enabled G4 PowerBook is stupid if your campus doesn't have an 802.11b infrastructure. You definitely want to do your research beforehand - it'll be worth it.
I mean, sure, I know why they exist, and why they were created. (And yes, we'd probably be worse off without them, but still, I don't think I'm the only one frustrated with their recent behavior) They were created to regulate and designate the airwaves in the public interest. Except lately they seem to have forgotten those last two words. Cable deregulation was not in the public interest (unless people are interested in paying higher prices). Massive media conglomerates are not really in the public interest.
Seems the FCC is more concerned with helping the big Telcos and special interest groups, instead of caring about what the people have to say.
But I guess that's par for the course in today's government.
Um, no, you're not. At least not in this country. With a _Debit_ Card, you might be, but, that's a different issue entirely. With a Credit Card, you are liable for at MOST $50, and most reputable companies will waive that. If you report the theft as soon as possible, and the charges occur after your card was stolen, you're often not even liable for the $50. I had my card stolen, and a guy rang up about $500 worth of stuff. I didn't pay for any of it.
Now, with a debit card (that has a MC/VISA logo on it), on the other hand, you can lose lots of money. Generally, if you report the theft, your bank can put a hold on the account immediately, but you may still end up losing quite a bit. Which is why you should never use the credit card feature of a debit card if you can avoid it. It can also take longer to work out things like duplicate charges and the like.
Except more and more merchants are refusing cards that say "SEE ID". Technically, it's in violation of their agreement, and they're not supposed to accept it. Call VISA or Mastercard - they'll tell you the same thing. My last credit card came with a little note that said special interest pieces on the news dealing with fraud tell people to write "SEE ID', but that it's not allowed by the credit card company.
I like the convenience idea of it. The magnetic strip in my credit cards are usually destroyed/useless before the card even expires. Between rubbing
against other credit cards, contact with the leather, and/or body sweat highly used cards are usually replaced before they ?expire?.
The mag stripe isn't actually necessary for making the purchase. (If a store salesdroid tells you it is, demand to see the manager or take your business elsewhere). Only the card itself is required.
Back in the day, credit cards didn't have mag stripes. They were called charger plates, and they were placed in a machine along with a carbon sales slip, and when a roller was moved back and forth across the paper, an imprint of the card was made on the sales slip. And you signed it to charge something to your MasterCharge or BankAmericard.
The security was in actually having the card present at the checkout. That is still the case - you swipe it to prove that its there, or if the stripe doesn't work, they take an imprint of it (all places that take cards are supposed to have an imprint machine). That, combined with the signature, is in theory enough security. I'd wager a large portion of credit card fraud could be stopped if places would stop hiring illiterate 12 year olds at registers who can't even read, let alone compare signatures.
All I need is your number, name and expiry and I can charge your account all I want.
Actually, that's less and less the case. With the exception of the "big" vendors who have enough fraud insurance (amazon, etc), more and more vendors are instituting stiff requirements on your card purchases such as: a) shipping only to the credit card billing address (or another address listed on your credit card), b) requiring that you enter the CCV (the three digit number printed on the signature stripe of the card), c) requiring that you enter your credit card's customer service number so they can contact your bank.
And almost all online vendors (except the really sketchy ones) require that you provide the credit card billing address when placing an order. If they don't match, the order won't go through. I have had several vendors call me when this happened because I typo'd the name of my street.
On a related note, I wish more and more brick and mortar stores would check your signature. To prove a point, my friend and I were making a purchase at a large national chain store, and he signed "Homer J Simpson" to the credit card receipt, and the cashier didn't care.
Um, no it's not. Sure, the songs are $0.20 less than Apple's store, but it's still $10/month for membership. So you have to download 50 songs a month to break even compared to Apple's service. That's about 5 CDs worth of songs. I don't know that many people who buy 5 CDs per month.
And, 2/3 of their songs are not available for burning to CD. Which means if Real goes belly-up, those files are useless. Apple allows you to burn EVERY song to CD.
Once Apple Music Store comes out for windows later this year, the Real service will no longer seem that attractive.
nope -- I don't see any of them anymore thanks to the userContent.css style sheet.
Well, that's all well and good, but your computer is broadcasting an IP address which can be used by hackers, and now you can't even be warned of this fact. Thanks to Bonzi, I found out about this years ago, and my net experience has been much safer since I installed their software. *phew*
This is not the best idea. First of all, parents and students are going to be upset at yet another hidden fee. Especially those who don't want to take advantage of this service - making it mandatory (by including it in housing or tuition fees) is pretty stupid.
Many colleges also won't have the resources (technical, human, financial, and temporal) to pull this off. It takes a lot of time and effort to negotiate the licenses - more than you'd think. So it'll suck for the students if their college has a poor selection but they have to pay anyway, since it's in tuition.
Also, the idea of charging extra to burn onto CD (read the article) is going to be a big turn off, especially when Apple lets you do it at no extra charge.
Really, the best idea would be for universities to partner with Apple and maybe offer discount rates for Apple Music Store. Like, maybe a student rate that instead of $0.99/song is $10 for 20 songs. Or perhaps offer a 5 day free trial of the Apple Music Store during Orientation week. Or something like that. Out of all the legal music services, Apple is (at the moment) by far the cheapest, and the most permissive when it comes to what you can do with the music (unlimited CD burning). Unless the colleges can offer something of comparable or better quality, no one is going to use it. Given Apple's history of being an educational "partner", I'd say maybe Penn State wants to work something out with Steve Jobs...
...Ford is being blamed by families of pedestrians who got hit by cars. 3M is being blamed by the RIAA for producing CD-Rs which pirates can used to store music on. Oh, and Sony is being blamed by parents whose kids are dumb because they watch TV all the time.
*yawn*. All things can be used for good or evil. Duh. What would be ideal would be for the BitTorrent folks to publicly denounce this. Or add a little disclaimer to their page (like Apple did with Rip Mix Burn) saying "We do not endorse or support the use of BitTorrent for illegal activities".
Now, here come the cries of "waaah, censorship, you're a fascist, etc". But think about it for just a second. All BitTorrent would be saying is "look, we created this to solve the problem of distributing things like ISO images to hundreds of people. We didn't create this to help you download the matrix. We stronly encourage you not to use it for that". That's not censorship, nor is it selling out. (Unless, of course, they really did create BitTorrent specifically for downloading movies.) They can't actively prevent you from downloading illegal files, but they can tell you that they think it's not such a bright idea.
Napster, Kazaa, and all the others really couldn't pull the "people can download anything from our networks, not just music" without the entire world laughing. Seeing as how BitTorrent has been used by RedHat and others to distribute ISOs, they actually can pull that argument and have it stick. And I really hope the BitTorrent folks don't pass on this opporuntity. Because then the RIAA has two choices: 1) accuse RedHat and others of supporting piracy by encouarging BitTorrent (which, while it would have MSFT dancing with glee, just isn't going to stick in this day and age); 2) suck it up and realize that tools can be used for both good and evil
You mean the Kerberos version. Where you can control AIBO and not worry about exposing your POP or IMAP password to the world. Good thinking!
And before anyone says "It's Cerberus, not Kerberos, there's no such dog as Kerberos.", Kerberos is the Greek spelling of the dog's name, and Cerberus is the Latin spelling. And, of course, Fluffy is the British spelling.
The next day, Perry gave the PC to Gross to back up,
fearing it might crash and lose valuable data.
In the process, according to the suit, Gross opened a folder titled "my music,"
within which was another folder, named "nime," then another, "nime2." It was
here, Gross said in an interview, that he encountered the illicit content. "I didn't
have to click on any files when I went into the folder," says Gross. "There were
thumbnail images, so I was pretty much instantly exposed to that."
If Gross hadn't opened those folders, he wouldn't have come across the offensive
images in the first place. But Perry and Gross say it wasn't unusual for them to
check the content of folders when troubleshooting; a large file, for example, can be
an indication that a virus is at work.
I don't buy this. Are they claiming that standard procedure for these folks, when looking for a virus, is not to boot with a known-good disk and run an up-to-date virus scanner, but rather to go through folders looking for large files which might "be an indication that a virus is at work"? If so, that's pretty crappy. Well, I have this huge file called PAGEFILE.SYS on my C:\ drive, I guess I have a virus (it's Windows' swap file, for those who use other OSes), right? Sigh.
I also don't buy the "they were looking in the folder for files to backup" argument, either. That's not the way you do it. You use Windows backup, or a 3rd party utility, or a disk-imaging program (like Ghost for windows or DiskCopy for Mac) or you drag everything to a server for later restoration, or you use an external firewire/USB drive. You don't poke around for files and copy them one by one. Apart from being horribly inefficient, that would also kill the client's directory structure. For example, within my documents folders, I have subfolders for different classes, and for things like correspondance, and receipts, and the like. If some tech support company had to back up my stuff, and had copied the files one by one, instead of copying the entire tree, I'd be real pissed off.
So I don't think that they quite came across the porn in the line of duty. I think they were looking around without any good reason. (Not that this makes child porn any less wrong, but it does cloud the issue of discovery and reporting)
There is, of course, the other issue, which is that by default, newer versions of Windows use thumbnail view, which is unfortunate. If the prof had been using regular list view, and the techs had double-clicked the files, they wouldn't stand a chance of defending themselves. This raises the issue of just what exactly is "invading someone's privacy"? Even filenames can say a lot about someone. For example, if you see someone's desktop, and they have a bunch of files named "naked_teens_1.jpg" through "naked_teens_50.jpg", what are you going to think about them? What if the files were named "12_year_old_naked.jpg"? Does that change things? Suppose you wrote an editorial to your newspaper about how much you though Al Qaeda sucked. You named this file "al_qaeda_letter.txt". You take your PC in for service, and some tech sees it, and decides to report you to the FBI. (Not too far-fetched in this day and age). Are filenames public or private information? Sure, you can't prevent people from seeing filenames, but do they have the right to act upon them? (This applies to other issues, like when the RIAA found files with the name "usher" and "mp3" and assumed they were songs when they actually were some prof's lectures.)
I work in tech support, and I find myself in lots of situations when I have access to users PCs. The general guideline where I work is to see as little as possible. For example, If I'm working on a PC, I try to stay at the root level as much as possible. When we need to backup a PC, we drag the entire directory tree to a USB drive (if its PC) or a FireWire drive (if it's a Mac), or a server if nei
Note that in the case of London, England, the Underground subway system got there first before motor vehicle traffic because London
HAD to build something to alleviate the horrible street-level traffic of horse-drawn carriages of various types in the late 19th Century
immediately.
True, however it's important to note that the London Underground started with simply putting trains (regular huge trains with steam locomotives) underground. The main reason for this was the fumes and soot caused by the steam locomotives, and also the fact that there were so many lines coming into the city, they needed to go somewhere, and underground was the best place to put them. It did not start off as an urban transit line or a subway system.
That's why the Underground travels all over the London metro area--in fact, the Underground helped develop a number of
London suburbs!
The concept of mass transit creating suburbs is not unique to London. The concept of a "streetcar suburb" is known in nearly every large U.S. city, and others around the world. (It's important to note that the word "suburb" became corrupted somewhere along the line. With the advent of Levittown and the postwar boom, "suburb" became synonymous with "suburbia" - the land of tract housing, large yards, a car in every driveway, and the split-level ranch. That is not, however, what it meant at the turn of the century)
Streetcar companies would buy cheap land at what was then the city limits, built streetcar (or elevated) lines out to the land, parcel it up, and sell it off. Many families bought it, since it was away from the noise of the city, they could have a small yard and such, and yet getting to the city was still easy. The land sales paid for the initial investment of the line, and made a tidy profit for the companies, too.
So to relate this to the article, I'd say that a letter from the FTC that doesn't threaten *legal* action will provide no more incentive to these system administrators to close the relays; thus the letters become little more than a waste of paper...
I agree, it's a terrible waste of paper. I think instead the FTC should send out mass e-mails about this and... uh.... wait a minute...
Don't people check the links before moderating? It's not an SMTP protocol discussion. It's a troll about Iraq. -1, Offtopic.
Re:The quarter is hard enough
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
Here is a true story about someone who almost got arrested for trying to buy a burrito with a $2 bill. A mall security guard actually helped out.
A similar thing happened to me in a McDonalds in Orlando Airport. Outside of the Northeast, few people have seen $2 bills. They're even considered bad luck in some places, despite the fact that they've been legal tender for quite some time. They're quite prevalent in RI and MA, however, where you even get them in change.
Thus, any plates, etc a counterfeiter has for the old note are useless once the old note has been removed from general circulation. This also applies to all the counterfeit notes out there too.
And this happens how often? Prior to 1996, the notes had not changed significantly for many years, and still remained legal tender, whether or not they were in active circulation. Heck, I've even seen silver certificates in circulation. When they get to the bank, of course, they remove them, but well, by that time the damage is done.
Music from the Apple Music store can only be played on Apple computers, on Apple's MP3 software and on Apple's handheld device.
Actually, you can burn Apple Music Store songs to CD. But you conveniently left that out, didn't you?
And once they're on CD, you can give them to whoever you want. Because iTunes will burn to a standards-compliant CD, with no DRM, or any crap, and no identifying information except for what you choose to write on the label.
The files have your name embedded in them and won't play if you want to let a friend listen to a copy.
Forgot about that feature where you can share music with up to 3 friends (provided they also have iTunes), didn't you?
If your hard drive dies, you can't re-download it.
And if my dog eats my CD, Tower Records or Sam Goody won't replace it for me for free. And if my hard drive dies, my prof won't re-write that term paper for me. And if I lose my Office CD, and my hard drive dies, MS won't buy me a new copy. What's your point?
From what I understand they haven't really been renovated since World War II.
Not exactly. They have been renovated over the past few years, and repained with the orange MTA paint scheme. Some remodeling has occurred, and the electric system has been rebuilt. The cars that are there now were in use on the mainline Green Line for the most part (mainly the E line before they closed it in '85). Most were rebuilt in the '60s and '70s, but their outside apperance was kept the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh... Patch for what? I was unaware I could apply a "patch" that would prevent me from getting viruses. It exploits a user vulnerability (stupidity), not an OS one. And McAfee seems to disagree with you about when this was discovered. See here
On a related note, anti-virus programs is one place where I can actually see a potential useful application of "trusted computing" (no, not necessarily Palladium). If there could be some way to to tell the OS "Look, I don't care if you're the administrator or not: the only programs that are allowed to terminate the anti-virus scanner process are the scanner itself, and, say, Task Manager". By using keys to prove their identity, it _might_ make it a lot harder for virii to terminate anti-virus programs. (Note to slashbots: I'm not saying Palladium is good because it will do this (I don't even know if it does). I'm saying this is one potential application of some as-yet-undeveloped implemenation of "trusted computing".
You'll also want to get information about your college's computing environment. Essential questions to ask:
There are many more questions, of course, but those are the essential ones. A splufty Dell desktop with a 19" CRT is not too useful if you've got a tiny 36x24 desk in your room. Buying an iBook and then finding one of your classes wants you to code in VB to do your work is going to suck. Getting both a desktop and a laptop is useless if you can't connect them to the network simultaneously in your room. Paying extra for an Airport-enabled G4 PowerBook is stupid if your campus doesn't have an 802.11b infrastructure. You definitely want to do your research beforehand - it'll be worth it.
I mean, sure, I know why they exist, and why they were created. (And yes, we'd probably be worse off without them, but still, I don't think I'm the only one frustrated with their recent behavior) They were created to regulate and designate the airwaves in the public interest. Except lately they seem to have forgotten those last two words. Cable deregulation was not in the public interest (unless people are interested in paying higher prices). Massive media conglomerates are not really in the public interest.
Seems the FCC is more concerned with helping the big Telcos and special interest groups, instead of caring about what the people have to say.
But I guess that's par for the course in today's government.
Um, no, you're not. At least not in this country. With a _Debit_ Card, you might be, but, that's a different issue entirely. With a Credit Card, you are liable for at MOST $50, and most reputable companies will waive that. If you report the theft as soon as possible, and the charges occur after your card was stolen, you're often not even liable for the $50. I had my card stolen, and a guy rang up about $500 worth of stuff. I didn't pay for any of it.
Now, with a debit card (that has a MC/VISA logo on it), on the other hand, you can lose lots of money. Generally, if you report the theft, your bank can put a hold on the account immediately, but you may still end up losing quite a bit. Which is why you should never use the credit card feature of a debit card if you can avoid it. It can also take longer to work out things like duplicate charges and the like.
Except more and more merchants are refusing cards that say "SEE ID". Technically, it's in violation of their agreement, and they're not supposed to accept it. Call VISA or Mastercard - they'll tell you the same thing. My last credit card came with a little note that said special interest pieces on the news dealing with fraud tell people to write "SEE ID', but that it's not allowed by the credit card company.
The mag stripe isn't actually necessary for making the purchase. (If a store salesdroid tells you it is, demand to see the manager or take your business elsewhere). Only the card itself is required.
Back in the day, credit cards didn't have mag stripes. They were called charger plates, and they were placed in a machine along with a carbon sales slip, and when a roller was moved back and forth across the paper, an imprint of the card was made on the sales slip. And you signed it to charge something to your MasterCharge or BankAmericard.
The security was in actually having the card present at the checkout. That is still the case - you swipe it to prove that its there, or if the stripe doesn't work, they take an imprint of it (all places that take cards are supposed to have an imprint machine). That, combined with the signature, is in theory enough security. I'd wager a large portion of credit card fraud could be stopped if places would stop hiring illiterate 12 year olds at registers who can't even read, let alone compare signatures.
Actually, that's less and less the case. With the exception of the "big" vendors who have enough fraud insurance (amazon, etc), more and more vendors are instituting stiff requirements on your card purchases such as: a) shipping only to the credit card billing address (or another address listed on your credit card), b) requiring that you enter the CCV (the three digit number printed on the signature stripe of the card), c) requiring that you enter your credit card's customer service number so they can contact your bank.
And almost all online vendors (except the really sketchy ones) require that you provide the credit card billing address when placing an order. If they don't match, the order won't go through. I have had several vendors call me when this happened because I typo'd the name of my street.
On a related note, I wish more and more brick and mortar stores would check your signature. To prove a point, my friend and I were making a purchase at a large national chain store, and he signed "Homer J Simpson" to the credit card receipt, and the cashier didn't care.
Um, no it's not. Sure, the songs are $0.20 less than Apple's store, but it's still $10/month for membership. So you have to download 50 songs a month to break even compared to Apple's service. That's about 5 CDs worth of songs. I don't know that many people who buy 5 CDs per month.
And, 2/3 of their songs are not available for burning to CD. Which means if Real goes belly-up, those files are useless. Apple allows you to burn EVERY song to CD.
Once Apple Music Store comes out for windows later this year, the Real service will no longer seem that attractive.
Well, that's all well and good, but your computer is broadcasting an IP address which can be used by hackers, and now you can't even be warned of this fact. Thanks to Bonzi, I found out about this years ago, and my net experience has been much safer since I installed their software. *phew*
Right, because people care about streaming a LOT more than burning non-DRM CD-Rs....
OK, maybe 5 days is excessive. Maybe a 30 song free trial? Same concept, though.
Many colleges also won't have the resources (technical, human, financial, and temporal) to pull this off. It takes a lot of time and effort to negotiate the licenses - more than you'd think. So it'll suck for the students if their college has a poor selection but they have to pay anyway, since it's in tuition.
Also, the idea of charging extra to burn onto CD (read the article) is going to be a big turn off, especially when Apple lets you do it at no extra charge.
Really, the best idea would be for universities to partner with Apple and maybe offer discount rates for Apple Music Store. Like, maybe a student rate that instead of $0.99/song is $10 for 20 songs. Or perhaps offer a 5 day free trial of the Apple Music Store during Orientation week. Or something like that. Out of all the legal music services, Apple is (at the moment) by far the cheapest, and the most permissive when it comes to what you can do with the music (unlimited CD burning). Unless the colleges can offer something of comparable or better quality, no one is going to use it. Given Apple's history of being an educational "partner", I'd say maybe Penn State wants to work something out with Steve Jobs...
*yawn*. All things can be used for good or evil. Duh. What would be ideal would be for the BitTorrent folks to publicly denounce this. Or add a little disclaimer to their page (like Apple did with Rip Mix Burn) saying "We do not endorse or support the use of BitTorrent for illegal activities".
Now, here come the cries of "waaah, censorship, you're a fascist, etc". But think about it for just a second. All BitTorrent would be saying is "look, we created this to solve the problem of distributing things like ISO images to hundreds of people. We didn't create this to help you download the matrix. We stronly encourage you not to use it for that". That's not censorship, nor is it selling out. (Unless, of course, they really did create BitTorrent specifically for downloading movies.) They can't actively prevent you from downloading illegal files, but they can tell you that they think it's not such a bright idea.
Napster, Kazaa, and all the others really couldn't pull the "people can download anything from our networks, not just music" without the entire world laughing. Seeing as how BitTorrent has been used by RedHat and others to distribute ISOs, they actually can pull that argument and have it stick. And I really hope the BitTorrent folks don't pass on this opporuntity. Because then the RIAA has two choices: 1) accuse RedHat and others of supporting piracy by encouarging BitTorrent (which, while it would have MSFT dancing with glee, just isn't going to stick in this day and age); 2) suck it up and realize that tools can be used for both good and evil
See? Challenge-response. Worked perfectly.
You mean the Kerberos version. Where you can control AIBO and not worry about exposing your POP or IMAP password to the world. Good thinking!
And before anyone says "It's Cerberus, not Kerberos, there's no such dog as Kerberos.", Kerberos is the Greek spelling of the dog's name, and Cerberus is the Latin spelling. And, of course, Fluffy is the British spelling.
The next day, Perry gave the PC to Gross to back up, fearing it might crash and lose valuable data.
In the process, according to the suit, Gross opened a folder titled "my music," within which was another folder, named "nime," then another, "nime2." It was here, Gross said in an interview, that he encountered the illicit content. "I didn't have to click on any files when I went into the folder," says Gross. "There were thumbnail images, so I was pretty much instantly exposed to that."
If Gross hadn't opened those folders, he wouldn't have come across the offensive images in the first place. But Perry and Gross say it wasn't unusual for them to check the content of folders when troubleshooting; a large file, for example, can be an indication that a virus is at work.
I don't buy this. Are they claiming that standard procedure for these folks, when looking for a virus, is not to boot with a known-good disk and run an up-to-date virus scanner, but rather to go through folders looking for large files which might "be an indication that a virus is at work"? If so, that's pretty crappy. Well, I have this huge file called PAGEFILE.SYS on my C:\ drive, I guess I have a virus (it's Windows' swap file, for those who use other OSes), right? Sigh.
I also don't buy the "they were looking in the folder for files to backup" argument, either. That's not the way you do it. You use Windows backup, or a 3rd party utility, or a disk-imaging program (like Ghost for windows or DiskCopy for Mac) or you drag everything to a server for later restoration, or you use an external firewire/USB drive. You don't poke around for files and copy them one by one. Apart from being horribly inefficient, that would also kill the client's directory structure. For example, within my documents folders, I have subfolders for different classes, and for things like correspondance, and receipts, and the like. If some tech support company had to back up my stuff, and had copied the files one by one, instead of copying the entire tree, I'd be real pissed off.
So I don't think that they quite came across the porn in the line of duty. I think they were looking around without any good reason. (Not that this makes child porn any less wrong, but it does cloud the issue of discovery and reporting)
There is, of course, the other issue, which is that by default, newer versions of Windows use thumbnail view, which is unfortunate. If the prof had been using regular list view, and the techs had double-clicked the files, they wouldn't stand a chance of defending themselves. This raises the issue of just what exactly is "invading someone's privacy"? Even filenames can say a lot about someone. For example, if you see someone's desktop, and they have a bunch of files named "naked_teens_1.jpg" through "naked_teens_50.jpg", what are you going to think about them? What if the files were named "12_year_old_naked.jpg"? Does that change things? Suppose you wrote an editorial to your newspaper about how much you though Al Qaeda sucked. You named this file "al_qaeda_letter.txt". You take your PC in for service, and some tech sees it, and decides to report you to the FBI. (Not too far-fetched in this day and age). Are filenames public or private information? Sure, you can't prevent people from seeing filenames, but do they have the right to act upon them? (This applies to other issues, like when the RIAA found files with the name "usher" and "mp3" and assumed they were songs when they actually were some prof's lectures.)
I work in tech support, and I find myself in lots of situations when I have access to users PCs. The general guideline where I work is to see as little as possible. For example, If I'm working on a PC, I try to stay at the root level as much as possible. When we need to backup a PC, we drag the entire directory tree to a USB drive (if its PC) or a FireWire drive (if it's a Mac), or a server if nei
True, however it's important to note that the London Underground started with simply putting trains (regular huge trains with steam locomotives) underground. The main reason for this was the fumes and soot caused by the steam locomotives, and also the fact that there were so many lines coming into the city, they needed to go somewhere, and underground was the best place to put them. It did not start off as an urban transit line or a subway system.
That's why the Underground travels all over the London metro area--in fact, the Underground helped develop a number of London suburbs!
The concept of mass transit creating suburbs is not unique to London. The concept of a "streetcar suburb" is known in nearly every large U.S. city, and others around the world. (It's important to note that the word "suburb" became corrupted somewhere along the line. With the advent of Levittown and the postwar boom, "suburb" became synonymous with "suburbia" - the land of tract housing, large yards, a car in every driveway, and the split-level ranch. That is not, however, what it meant at the turn of the century)
Streetcar companies would buy cheap land at what was then the city limits, built streetcar (or elevated) lines out to the land, parcel it up, and sell it off. Many families bought it, since it was away from the noise of the city, they could have a small yard and such, and yet getting to the city was still easy. The land sales paid for the initial investment of the line, and made a tidy profit for the companies, too.
Heh. Clever.
I agree, it's a terrible waste of paper. I think instead the FTC should send out mass e-mails about this and... uh.... wait a minute...
Don't people check the links before moderating? It's not an SMTP protocol discussion. It's a troll about Iraq. -1, Offtopic.
A similar thing happened to me in a McDonalds in Orlando Airport. Outside of the Northeast, few people have seen $2 bills. They're even considered bad luck in some places, despite the fact that they've been legal tender for quite some time. They're quite prevalent in RI and MA, however, where you even get them in change.
And this happens how often? Prior to 1996, the notes had not changed significantly for many years, and still remained legal tender, whether or not they were in active circulation. Heck, I've even seen silver certificates in circulation. When they get to the bank, of course, they remove them, but well, by that time the damage is done.
Actually, you can burn Apple Music Store songs to CD. But you conveniently left that out, didn't you? And once they're on CD, you can give them to whoever you want. Because iTunes will burn to a standards-compliant CD, with no DRM, or any crap, and no identifying information except for what you choose to write on the label.
The files have your name embedded in them and won't play if you want to let a friend listen to a copy. Forgot about that feature where you can share music with up to 3 friends (provided they also have iTunes), didn't you?
If your hard drive dies, you can't re-download it.
And if my dog eats my CD, Tower Records or Sam Goody won't replace it for me for free. And if my hard drive dies, my prof won't re-write that term paper for me. And if I lose my Office CD, and my hard drive dies, MS won't buy me a new copy. What's your point?
Not exactly. They have been renovated over the past few years, and repained with the orange MTA paint scheme. Some remodeling has occurred, and the electric system has been rebuilt. The cars that are there now were in use on the mainline Green Line for the most part (mainly the E line before they closed it in '85). Most were rebuilt in the '60s and '70s, but their outside apperance was kept the same.