Shhh, keep it down. I'm surrounded by them right now. They're best kept pacified, and my supply of Chlorpromazine is running low. Send the Messiah with more.
Hey, being "Messiah" to even a small cult isn't all that bad of a thing. He's trying to be honest, and tell them "nope, not me, go away."
He doesn't actually have to embrace their lunacy, but he can direct them. "Go do [something good]". Like it or not, he has their attention and their obedience. Many strive for years to achieve that, and few ever get it. It's a powerful tool though, and as with power, as you approach absolute, so does your corruption.
Or he could just send them all down to Antarctica to meet the mother ship which will be picking them all up at -90S on July 31, 2010. Don't worry, there will be a second ship arriving at +90N on Dec 21, 2012. I wouldn't expect too many people returning from either trip, which would solve his problems.:)
My car is still in excellent condition. A few simple cosmetics would bring it to show car quality, but I enjoy driving it more than polishing it for people to judge.:) It sold for something like $38k new. I bought it about 2 years old at about 18k miles for about $25k. 10 years later, it's market value is somewhere around $12k to $15k depending on the market and buyer.
I've only done a little tweaking to it. I love cars, but I don't love the idea of dropping all my money into it.
Over the years, I've had almost everyone want to race me. Sometimes I will, sometimes I won't. It's all in what mood I'm in, and where I am. Crowded residential streets are not a good place to flex my car-muscle, no matter what the other driver thinks. For those that I have run with, ya, it doesn't matter how much you spent on your car, it matters to what it is. I've beaten or matched just about everyone who's tried to play with me (beaten more often than not). I don't care if your car cost $1k or $100k, the more important part is what the vehicle really is.
I upset an instructor at a closed road course once. Technically, I had to be in the "Beginner" class, because I had never run at that track before. One instructor had an unmodified Z06, and we had a lot of fun, and he had some good advice to give me (like, your car has ABS, use it! Come in hot, stand on the brakes until just before you turn, and then power out of the turns). The upset instructor had dropped something like $100k a BMW. He was outfitted with twin turbos, roll cage, racing seats, and... well, I didn't really care to remember.:) He made comments about my car braking better than his. Then about how I had so much more torque that I could pull out of turns so much faster than him. Then about how my handling was better than his. His only comment was that his car was lighter, so it should go faster, but even on the fastest part of the course I'd blow through at over 100mph, where he was just peaking up to about 90mph. At the time, mine was still stock. Why would you drop so much money into something to have it still not quite as good as the car you want it to be like, when you could have just bought the better car for cheaper.
When I was a kid, I started racing on a 1/4 mile paved oval, in the "spectator" class. That was basically anyone with a street legal car and helmet could run while the serious racers were taking a break. It was close by, and my mechanic raced there too, so it was a lot of socializing, with some racing involved. There was a guy with a sand rail/dune buggy, with a slightly modified v6 in it, geared for torque, but not a lot of top end speed. He'd kick everyone's butts from the start because he had so little weight. I should mention, I was driving an '82 Firebird that started life with a v6 and I swapped in a Chevy 350 that I modified as I went.:)
(rolling back around to the topic)
Why buy a $1k bottle of wine, when you can get a $20 bottle of better quality? Oh, it doesn't have the name, and you can't show the bottle to other wine snobs and say "Oh, we'll be drinking [the $1k bottle] tonight."
I'm not going to be the one that says a little girl was hot.:)
Ok, when the first movie came out that she was in, she vaguely age appropriate for me. I liked the darkness of her character, even if she was 11. Now, saying it about her in that movie would make me a pervert. Funny how society works. The same could be said for Lydia Deetz, or Queen Amidala.
I've found it looks best when I order for 3 people, and then take the drinks to the table as if I were expecting them. They catch on when all the drinks are gone within a minute or two, and I come back for the next round. Maybe they think I'm just a little crazy. It's usually two shots and a strong mixed drink. Bourbon, Scotch, Whiskey, Rum or Vodka. Whatever they may happen to have that's a decent brand (decent flavor, not necessarily expensive, for the sake of this thread)
Of course, I have a high tolerance. The drinks on the plane are just a tease. Sometimes I order for everyone in my row, if they aren't drinking.:) "Stewardess, another found for my row-mates":) I really prefer first class upgrades though. It makes it so much easier, and cheaper. At least I'm a quiet happy drunk. I'll drink enough, and take a nap until we land. I don't see how anyone can take a long flight sober.:)
I agree totally. For a while, I was around a cigar smoking crowd. The smoked Cubans. I'd smoke them occasionally, but found some really great cigars just as good for $6/ea. While I won't say every one was a winner, it's a lot more satisfying to experience what's out there, rather than be told "You must do this, because it's the best, because it's the most expensive."
If I drank my alcohol, dated women, wore clothes, and drove cars strictly on that basis, I'd not only be in debt up to my ears, but really, I wouldn't be all that happy knowing there's an excellent world of variety out there that doesn't cost $1,000/bottle.
I do remember watching some show, where they spent an absolute fortune on a bottle of wine. It was handled by the [blah, blah] and sold at auction. In the end, they each took a sip and realized they'd just spent a fortune on vinegar. It's a lot better when you can sommelier, "That was terrible, bring me something that doesn't taste like a dog pissed on grapes and then it was bottled.":)
I'm fairly sure (and have watched auctions that show it) that expensive wine isn't for drinking. It's an investment in a commodity that can be sold later for a profit. It seems they're best intended to never be tasted, and the real loser is the person who finally opens it to find out that they just bought a $1,000 bottle of crap that they can't even sell now.
Wow, I musta struck a nerve with that one, huh? Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.
I don't try to SSH from my blackberry. I did try from my PDA, because as it was being marketed, it could do anything, and there were (are?) even RDC and VNC clients for it, which would imply that it would be intended to remotely access your machines. I went as far as installing Familiar Linux. I guess if you have a look at their release timeline, that'll give a hint to how long it's been.
The idea of going to my servers, was for the "oh shit, I have to do this now". Back in the day, I would frequently get calls 10 minutes before boarding a plane, where I could resolve in 5 minutes myself, or dictate what to do in about 15. It was a nice idea that I could have a PDA on, and do what needed to be done, rather than unpacking my laptop and doing it, especially with such a short timespan to do it in. Most of those problems got phone dictation on what to do, and when the announcement was made to turn off electronic devices before flight, I'd end the conversation with "Work on it yourself. I'll check my voicemail when we land for my connecting flight. Good luck." Usually they were good enough to figure it out, but it may take them 30 minutes, where again, I would have done it in 5 minutes. Sometimes I had to do cleanup work while waiting for the connecting flight, if they did it "good enough", but not perfectly. There are always edge cases, and I've always been the "go to guy" for IT problems.
The one that was being a problem was in their suite. I walked the floor listening, and found the strongest signal to be a few feet from their front door. I had also done the same thing on adjoining floors, and it was weaker, but still lead towards the same location.
Ya, we can get some tremendous range, with the appropriate equipment. I asked a HAM guy, who was also very knowledgable in IT stuff including wireless networking, about my theoretical range, assuming line of site wasn't a problem (i.e., on a tall building). If I recall correctly, he said about 30 miles. Not a record breaker, but impressive enough to make me happy.:) The reason I asked him was, at 1/2 mile with the antennas focused on each other, I had 100% signal strength. With the same AP's with their included omnidirectional antennas, you could get 75% sitting 5 feet away from it
I saw some of the DefCon stuff from a few years ago on their long range shots. It was very entertaining. At the time, I was living in a mountanious area, but I didn't really think it practical to bring an old C/KU antenna in my sports car up a mountain to try to prove anything.:) I'm sure that would have been entertaining for anyone else to see. Now I'm a flatlander. My practical line of site drops off at 15 miles, if all those damned buildings and trees weren't in the way.:) We don't have any natural high points, so it makes it harder to play with longer shots, if I were so inclined.
That's what it came with? I guess they're doing better practices since word got out that their encryption was amazingly weak. Too bad they can't go back and fix up all the existing installs.
I'll use an example one.
SSID: YVFS1 (just made it up, don't get your hopes up)
Could have the WEP key of:
18012DE06E or 1F902DE06E
That only depends on which series it was. There are two known groupings, and a third that the generator I have doesn't do, but it'd be easy enough to code into it.
For people I know, I've gone in and changed both their SSID and key, so they're stronger than average.:)
Oh, I definitely broadcast my SSID. I've run into the stomping into each other problem before. It's a pain to do a site survey of who's around, pick a channel, just to find out that there's other traffic interfering.
I know mine is receivable for a longer distance than others in the neighborhood. When they installed it, I wasn't here, and they put the AP under a desk, with a metal file cabinet beside it. {sigh}. I moved it up on top of the file cabinet, and that (amazingly enough) fixed a lot of my problems. I'd guess the neighbors got theirs installed somewhere, and they left it exactly where it was placed.
I've had to change my channel twice where I am now, because the defaults for whatever a neighbor installed were on my channel and ruined my throughput. I may look like a lunatic walking around the house with the laptop listening, but it tells me what channels are being used, and what are free. It's kinda funny, there are three near the house that are all on the same channel. I bet they wonder why their connection is terrible, but it's not mine to fix. That, and I'm not ambitious enough to go find their house and offer to fix it. I did that once in an office building. Someone turned on an AP and stomped on my traffic. I wandered around, found them, went to the receptionist for the company and asked to see whoever was in charge of IT. They were completely oblivious to what I was asking.
"Who takes care of problems with your computers?" "I don't know" "Can you please find someone who does know?" "Why?" "Because your access point is broadcasting over the legal limits for power, and is disrupting service for other occupants of the building." "What's an access point?" "It's the device that handles wireless network traffic." "I don't think we're on a network." "Can you go to web sites?" "yes" "Then you're on a network. Can you find the person who runs it" "No one here knows." (without asking or even picking up the phone)
The conversation went on for a few more minutes, before I just gave up.
I didn't know positively that they were over the legal limits, but since I had a good signal from their office several floors below, and even a good distance from the building, I figured they were doing something they shouldn't be. At least when I've put high gain antennas on, I look around, make sure I won't interfere with anyone, and use a very narrow beam antenna (i.e., a good parabolic), that doesn't come close to any other buildings. When I went hunting for my own signal in that circumstance, I couldn't even pick it up at ground level standing under the receiving antenna, 20' below it. I've only done that on long point-to-point connections, not as a general AP in an office building.
That's boring though. I was hoping to get more than the casual intruder. Maybe I could learn something from them.:) We don't just put honeypots out there to detect who's doing bad things, do we? I thought it was to learn from their methods and protect against them.
Look around online a little bit. The 5 character SSID is generated from the MAC, and so is the key. You can extrapolate enough for the SSID and the known parts of the MAC to generate the key.
I used to leave mine unencrypted, and change the name occasionally, calling it "BankOfAmerica", "FirstBankOf[mycity]", "FBI", "NSA", "CovertOps4", etc. I was very disappointed that I didn't have people trying to do nefarious things.
Now I just call it "unreachable", and encrypted, which seems to have the same result. Ok, that's a lie, but I'm not going to post my real SSID here.:)
I really appreciate all the folks with the Verizon DSL/FiOS routers with the 5 character SSID's, since those are easily crackable. They're nicer than the unencrypted ones, since I'm not competing with other users for the line.:)
My last drive got over 2,000 in about 20 miles. Most were totally boring, and like 25% were unencrypted.
I agree with the article. Their reasons are pretty good.
I've owned a couple of tablets (bought from friends who grew tired of them), and worked on a few more. Generally, they do suck. Like it or not, you'll get to a point where you need to type something out, and voila, you wish you had a laptop. Most of the tablets could switch to laptop mode, but who wants to keep flipping their computer around just to be able to type. Eventually, the stylus is stuck in it's holder, and you now have a very expensive, and usually slower, laptop.
I'm working on a piece of embedded equipment right now, with a touch screen. The interface is absolutely perfect, as long as you're giving a selection of large buttons to push. We even have provisions in our interface for a full QWERTY keyboard for the portions that require that kind of input.
800x600 on a 8" screen is cute, and wonderful for a 10-key (0-9), but those fun and games go away if I switch away from the specific application. We have a keyboard and mouse attached too. The touch screen is all fun and games, unless you want to do something serious.
I tried out the PDA fad once upon a time too. You don't realize how much typing is required until you try to send a real email, or ssh to a server. No number of aliased commands made up it. Even from my crackberry, I may send a few paragraphs, since it has a qwerty keyboard, but writing something like this, I wait until I'm at a real computer.
I think I've seen this one. At one point, there's a time travel coffin in a storage unit, right?
The one I was referencing was out in the desert somewhere in the Southwest US. If I remember right, the time travel machine was somewhere in a cave, and there was at least a good guy (the protagonist), bad girl who was helping the good guy, a bad guy (antagonist) who was also either a serial killer or just had a rather angry streak and would kill anyone for any reason. The good guy may have been a scientist involved, but I don't exactly remember. There was a also a cop, and I believe he was killed off quite a few times. It really was a B movie. Like one of the made for scifi channel (err, syfy), that should have never seen the light of day and they probably only ever played once.:).. and for some reason, I'm feeling a little masochistic and want to see "Hot Tub Time Machine". I already know it's going to be awful. Well, John Cusack is in it, so it may not the worst I've ever seen.
Ahh, that's a show I've been meaning to watch, but haven't successfully caught yet. Too much happens in real life, so I usually don't get to the TV until it's all infomercials. They're not quite as entertaining, unless you're looking for a flowbee, snuggle, shamwow, the exercise equipment of the week, a variety of diet aids to make you look like a model, and want to watch college girls getting drunk and naked.:)
It took me a little bit to get your Lost reference.:) Once I got it though....
There is a wealth of fictional material that relates to infinite time loops. I think the story line has been going on for just about as long as we've had the concept of time travel being a valid plot element. Most of them involve the traveler as being the focus and the only one (or ones) aware of the loop. Here are a few that I can think off, off the top of my head, that are loops. I dug around, and found plenty of other shows and movies with loops, but I couldn't find one to be particularly old.
12:01 (1990 & 1993)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Stargate SG1 - Window of Hope (August 2000)
There was some mid-90's B movie that did it too. It wasn't half bad, except for the terrible acting. That one was different in that every step of the loop pushed them a little closer to their goal, but if another person was close to the machine that caused it, they started looping too.
As far as I know, beyond the loops in Lost, the parallel existence is new(ish). I only just caught up with it a few weeks ago. I was like 2 seasons behind, so had to do a marathon watch of it.:) Since me and my ex watched the first 3 seasons in just a couple weeks, it felt appropriate (and much more satisfying) to watch it that way.:)
In this loop, your domain still doesn't work. You should fix your domain, or your tagline. And remember to keep changing it until we do finally go forward.... why is your nose bleeding?
Like I told you before, there haven't been Pterodactyls in this or any parallel universe for over 65 million years. This has already been proven through examining the far side of Einstein-Rosen bridges and exchanging information with our peers on on the other sides that we've discussed the matter.
Don't you remember the loop where the operations at Area 51 were made public. It did shut up the alien conspiracy folks, at least until the LHC got up to speed again at....
A long time ago, I decided to start making copies of my floppies onto hard drives, so I'd have images of them before the deteriorated. I made that decision because I had a never opened boxed version of Novell UnixWare (from around 1994). It had sat in a professional air conditioned office until sometime around 2000. It was given to me, and it sat in my computer room for a long time. I finally decided to unbox it and give it a try. It came on floppy disks (3 of them, if I remember right). I went out and bought a floppy drive for this adventure, since all mine had either gathered such an accumulation of dust that I couldn't find the opening, or I had simply thrown them away.
I put the first disk in, and half way through reading it, there were errors. The disk, although in the original unopened envelope, in the original unopened shrinkwrapped box, had deteriorated. {sigh}
I tried several other disks that I had been carrying around with me for years, "just in case" I needed them for something. As it turned out, about 2/3 of them were unreadable, just from age.
So, I tossed them all, and gave the drive away to someone else who wanted to use it. He had a better success rate, something like 75% were readable.
I was talking to some kids not too long ago, about disks. I kept asking them, to see if they even had a clue what a floppy disk is. One correctly described a 3.5" floppy, but none had seen a 5.25" floppy.:) It's probably all for the better, they really sucked.
I'd explain it all to you, but we don't have time! Well, time is very relative. When it reaches 3.6 TeV, it will open a rift in time that will launch the entire planet back in time. Most likely none of us will ever remember it, so we'll let it happen over and over until...
[LHC reaches 3.6 TeV, and the loop begins again....]
I don't know where you live, but in the approximately 20 US states that I've driven in over the last few years (Generally along I-5, I-10, I-75, I-95) I can't say that I've seen more than the occasional locations with sound barriers, and with the exception of the lower supports of overpasses, none were 20 feet tall. 8 to 12 feet are about as tall as I've seen for sound barriers, and those are usually in limited locations, such as where a highway passes by a residential community that bitched too much about the highway noise (good planning, put your community by an established highway). I can't imagine anyone in the community complaining about noise wouldn't complain about a 2 story tall wall along their community. It's overkill anyways. The idea of a sound barrier is only to put something between the noise source (tires, engines, exhaust) and the listener (generally not more than about 6' tall)
The majority of barriers I've seen are guard rails, approx 2.5' high, and "K-Rail" or "Jersey Barrier" which are also 3 feet tall. The tallest reference I could find is the "Ontario Tall-Wall barrier" at 3.5 feet tall.
Where do you live, where the highways are lined with 20' tall walls?
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Shhh, keep it down. I'm surrounded by them right now. They're best kept pacified, and my supply of Chlorpromazine is running low. Send the Messiah with more.
Hey, being "Messiah" to even a small cult isn't all that bad of a thing. He's trying to be honest, and tell them "nope, not me, go away."
He doesn't actually have to embrace their lunacy, but he can direct them. "Go do [something good]". Like it or not, he has their attention and their obedience. Many strive for years to achieve that, and few ever get it. It's a powerful tool though, and as with power, as you approach absolute, so does your corruption.
Or he could just send them all down to Antarctica to meet the mother ship which will be picking them all up at -90S on July 31, 2010. Don't worry, there will be a second ship arriving at +90N on Dec 21, 2012. I wouldn't expect too many people returning from either trip, which would solve his problems. :)
Oh, I totally agree with your car analogy.
My car is still in excellent condition. A few simple cosmetics would bring it to show car quality, but I enjoy driving it more than polishing it for people to judge. :) It sold for something like $38k new. I bought it about 2 years old at about 18k miles for about $25k. 10 years later, it's market value is somewhere around $12k to $15k depending on the market and buyer.
I've only done a little tweaking to it. I love cars, but I don't love the idea of dropping all my money into it.
Over the years, I've had almost everyone want to race me. Sometimes I will, sometimes I won't. It's all in what mood I'm in, and where I am. Crowded residential streets are not a good place to flex my car-muscle, no matter what the other driver thinks. For those that I have run with, ya, it doesn't matter how much you spent on your car, it matters to what it is. I've beaten or matched just about everyone who's tried to play with me (beaten more often than not). I don't care if your car cost $1k or $100k, the more important part is what the vehicle really is.
I upset an instructor at a closed road course once. Technically, I had to be in the "Beginner" class, because I had never run at that track before. One instructor had an unmodified Z06, and we had a lot of fun, and he had some good advice to give me (like, your car has ABS, use it! Come in hot, stand on the brakes until just before you turn, and then power out of the turns). The upset instructor had dropped something like $100k a BMW. He was outfitted with twin turbos, roll cage, racing seats, and ... well, I didn't really care to remember. :) He made comments about my car braking better than his. Then about how I had so much more torque that I could pull out of turns so much faster than him. Then about how my handling was better than his. His only comment was that his car was lighter, so it should go faster, but even on the fastest part of the course I'd blow through at over 100mph, where he was just peaking up to about 90mph. At the time, mine was still stock. Why would you drop so much money into something to have it still not quite as good as the car you want it to be like, when you could have just bought the better car for cheaper.
When I was a kid, I started racing on a 1/4 mile paved oval, in the "spectator" class. That was basically anyone with a street legal car and helmet could run while the serious racers were taking a break. It was close by, and my mechanic raced there too, so it was a lot of socializing, with some racing involved. There was a guy with a sand rail/dune buggy, with a slightly modified v6 in it, geared for torque, but not a lot of top end speed. He'd kick everyone's butts from the start because he had so little weight. I should mention, I was driving an '82 Firebird that started life with a v6 and I swapped in a Chevy 350 that I modified as I went. :)
(rolling back around to the topic)
Why buy a $1k bottle of wine, when you can get a $20 bottle of better quality? Oh, it doesn't have the name, and you can't show the bottle to other wine snobs and say "Oh, we'll be drinking [the $1k bottle] tonight."
I'm not going to be the one that says a little girl was hot. :)
Ok, when the first movie came out that she was in, she vaguely age appropriate for me. I liked the darkness of her character, even if she was 11. Now, saying it about her in that movie would make me a pervert. Funny how society works. The same could be said for Lydia Deetz, or Queen Amidala.
But to that end, sometimes you just can't argue. :)
I've found it looks best when I order for 3 people, and then take the drinks to the table as if I were expecting them. They catch on when all the drinks are gone within a minute or two, and I come back for the next round. Maybe they think I'm just a little crazy. It's usually two shots and a strong mixed drink. Bourbon, Scotch, Whiskey, Rum or Vodka. Whatever they may happen to have that's a decent brand (decent flavor, not necessarily expensive, for the sake of this thread)
Of course, I have a high tolerance. The drinks on the plane are just a tease. Sometimes I order for everyone in my row, if they aren't drinking. :) "Stewardess, another found for my row-mates" :) I really prefer first class upgrades though. It makes it so much easier, and cheaper. At least I'm a quiet happy drunk. I'll drink enough, and take a nap until we land. I don't see how anyone can take a long flight sober. :)
You sir, need to be modded up. :)
I agree totally. For a while, I was around a cigar smoking crowd. The smoked Cubans. I'd smoke them occasionally, but found some really great cigars just as good for $6/ea. While I won't say every one was a winner, it's a lot more satisfying to experience what's out there, rather than be told "You must do this, because it's the best, because it's the most expensive."
If I drank my alcohol, dated women, wore clothes, and drove cars strictly on that basis, I'd not only be in debt up to my ears, but really, I wouldn't be all that happy knowing there's an excellent world of variety out there that doesn't cost $1,000/bottle.
I do remember watching some show, where they spent an absolute fortune on a bottle of wine. It was handled by the [blah, blah] and sold at auction. In the end, they each took a sip and realized they'd just spent a fortune on vinegar. It's a lot better when you can sommelier, "That was terrible, bring me something that doesn't taste like a dog pissed on grapes and then it was bottled." :)
I'm fairly sure (and have watched auctions that show it) that expensive wine isn't for drinking. It's an investment in a commodity that can be sold later for a profit. It seems they're best intended to never be tasted, and the real loser is the person who finally opens it to find out that they just bought a $1,000 bottle of crap that they can't even sell now.
That's because every time you've seen me in a bar at 10am, I'm still drinking from the night before, and it's a whole lot stronger than wine. :)
Thank god for airport bars, or I'd never survive a trip sane.
It was in reruns, at least when I was a kid. I can't say that I remember any of it though. :)
some shows stick with us though, but some more my speed and still haunt my dreams. :)
Wow, I musta struck a nerve with that one, huh? Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.
I don't try to SSH from my blackberry. I did try from my PDA, because as it was being marketed, it could do anything, and there were (are?) even RDC and VNC clients for it, which would imply that it would be intended to remotely access your machines. I went as far as installing Familiar Linux. I guess if you have a look at their release timeline, that'll give a hint to how long it's been.
The idea of going to my servers, was for the "oh shit, I have to do this now". Back in the day, I would frequently get calls 10 minutes before boarding a plane, where I could resolve in 5 minutes myself, or dictate what to do in about 15. It was a nice idea that I could have a PDA on, and do what needed to be done, rather than unpacking my laptop and doing it, especially with such a short timespan to do it in. Most of those problems got phone dictation on what to do, and when the announcement was made to turn off electronic devices before flight, I'd end the conversation with "Work on it yourself. I'll check my voicemail when we land for my connecting flight. Good luck." Usually they were good enough to figure it out, but it may take them 30 minutes, where again, I would have done it in 5 minutes. Sometimes I had to do cleanup work while waiting for the connecting flight, if they did it "good enough", but not perfectly. There are always edge cases, and I've always been the "go to guy" for IT problems.
The one that was being a problem was in their suite. I walked the floor listening, and found the strongest signal to be a few feet from their front door. I had also done the same thing on adjoining floors, and it was weaker, but still lead towards the same location.
Ya, we can get some tremendous range, with the appropriate equipment. I asked a HAM guy, who was also very knowledgable in IT stuff including wireless networking, about my theoretical range, assuming line of site wasn't a problem (i.e., on a tall building). If I recall correctly, he said about 30 miles. Not a record breaker, but impressive enough to make me happy. :) The reason I asked him was, at 1/2 mile with the antennas focused on each other, I had 100% signal strength. With the same AP's with their included omnidirectional antennas, you could get 75% sitting 5 feet away from it
I saw some of the DefCon stuff from a few years ago on their long range shots. It was very entertaining. At the time, I was living in a mountanious area, but I didn't really think it practical to bring an old C/KU antenna in my sports car up a mountain to try to prove anything. :) I'm sure that would have been entertaining for anyone else to see. Now I'm a flatlander. My practical line of site drops off at 15 miles, if all those damned buildings and trees weren't in the way. :) We don't have any natural high points, so it makes it harder to play with longer shots, if I were so inclined.
That's what it came with? I guess they're doing better practices since word got out that their encryption was amazingly weak. Too bad they can't go back and fix up all the existing installs.
I'll use an example one.
SSID: YVFS1 (just made it up, don't get your hopes up)
Could have the WEP key of:
18012DE06E
or
1F902DE06E
That only depends on which series it was. There are two known groupings, and a third that the generator I have doesn't do, but it'd be easy enough to code into it.
For people I know, I've gone in and changed both their SSID and key, so they're stronger than average. :)
Oh, I definitely broadcast my SSID. I've run into the stomping into each other problem before. It's a pain to do a site survey of who's around, pick a channel, just to find out that there's other traffic interfering.
I know mine is receivable for a longer distance than others in the neighborhood. When they installed it, I wasn't here, and they put the AP under a desk, with a metal file cabinet beside it. {sigh}. I moved it up on top of the file cabinet, and that (amazingly enough) fixed a lot of my problems. I'd guess the neighbors got theirs installed somewhere, and they left it exactly where it was placed.
I've had to change my channel twice where I am now, because the defaults for whatever a neighbor installed were on my channel and ruined my throughput. I may look like a lunatic walking around the house with the laptop listening, but it tells me what channels are being used, and what are free. It's kinda funny, there are three near the house that are all on the same channel. I bet they wonder why their connection is terrible, but it's not mine to fix. That, and I'm not ambitious enough to go find their house and offer to fix it. I did that once in an office building. Someone turned on an AP and stomped on my traffic. I wandered around, found them, went to the receptionist for the company and asked to see whoever was in charge of IT. They were completely oblivious to what I was asking.
"Who takes care of problems with your computers?"
"I don't know"
"Can you please find someone who does know?"
"Why?"
"Because your access point is broadcasting over the legal limits for power, and is disrupting service for other occupants of the building."
"What's an access point?"
"It's the device that handles wireless network traffic."
"I don't think we're on a network."
"Can you go to web sites?"
"yes"
"Then you're on a network. Can you find the person who runs it"
"No one here knows." (without asking or even picking up the phone)
The conversation went on for a few more minutes, before I just gave up.
I didn't know positively that they were over the legal limits, but since I had a good signal from their office several floors below, and even a good distance from the building, I figured they were doing something they shouldn't be. At least when I've put high gain antennas on, I look around, make sure I won't interfere with anyone, and use a very narrow beam antenna (i.e., a good parabolic), that doesn't come close to any other buildings. When I went hunting for my own signal in that circumstance, I couldn't even pick it up at ground level standing under the receiving antenna, 20' below it. I've only done that on long point-to-point connections, not as a general AP in an office building.
That's boring though. I was hoping to get more than the casual intruder. Maybe I could learn something from them. :) We don't just put honeypots out there to detect who's doing bad things, do we? I thought it was to learn from their methods and protect against them.
Look around online a little bit. The 5 character SSID is generated from the MAC, and so is the key. You can extrapolate enough for the SSID and the known parts of the MAC to generate the key.
I used to leave mine unencrypted, and change the name occasionally, calling it "BankOfAmerica", "FirstBankOf[mycity]", "FBI", "NSA", "CovertOps4", etc. I was very disappointed that I didn't have people trying to do nefarious things.
Now I just call it "unreachable", and encrypted, which seems to have the same result. Ok, that's a lie, but I'm not going to post my real SSID here. :)
I really appreciate all the folks with the Verizon DSL/FiOS routers with the 5 character SSID's, since those are easily crackable. They're nicer than the unencrypted ones, since I'm not competing with other users for the line. :)
My last drive got over 2,000 in about 20 miles. Most were totally boring, and like 25% were unencrypted.
I agree with the article. Their reasons are pretty good.
I've owned a couple of tablets (bought from friends who grew tired of them), and worked on a few more. Generally, they do suck. Like it or not, you'll get to a point where you need to type something out, and voila, you wish you had a laptop. Most of the tablets could switch to laptop mode, but who wants to keep flipping their computer around just to be able to type. Eventually, the stylus is stuck in it's holder, and you now have a very expensive, and usually slower, laptop.
I'm working on a piece of embedded equipment right now, with a touch screen. The interface is absolutely perfect, as long as you're giving a selection of large buttons to push. We even have provisions in our interface for a full QWERTY keyboard for the portions that require that kind of input.
800x600 on a 8" screen is cute, and wonderful for a 10-key (0-9), but those fun and games go away if I switch away from the specific application. We have a keyboard and mouse attached too. The touch screen is all fun and games, unless you want to do something serious.
I tried out the PDA fad once upon a time too. You don't realize how much typing is required until you try to send a real email, or ssh to a server. No number of aliased commands made up it. Even from my crackberry, I may send a few paragraphs, since it has a qwerty keyboard, but writing something like this, I wait until I'm at a real computer.
I think I've seen this one. At one point, there's a time travel coffin in a storage unit, right?
The one I was referencing was out in the desert somewhere in the Southwest US. If I remember right, the time travel machine was somewhere in a cave, and there was at least a good guy (the protagonist), bad girl who was helping the good guy, a bad guy (antagonist) who was also either a serial killer or just had a rather angry streak and would kill anyone for any reason. The good guy may have been a scientist involved, but I don't exactly remember. There was a also a cop, and I believe he was killed off quite a few times. It really was a B movie. Like one of the made for scifi channel (err, syfy), that should have never seen the light of day and they probably only ever played once. :) .. and for some reason, I'm feeling a little masochistic and want to see "Hot Tub Time Machine". I already know it's going to be awful. Well, John Cusack is in it, so it may not the worst I've ever seen.
Ahh, that's a show I've been meaning to watch, but haven't successfully caught yet. Too much happens in real life, so I usually don't get to the TV until it's all infomercials. They're not quite as entertaining, unless you're looking for a flowbee, snuggle, shamwow, the exercise equipment of the week, a variety of diet aids to make you look like a model, and want to watch college girls getting drunk and naked. :)
It took me a little bit to get your Lost reference. :) Once I got it though....
There is a wealth of fictional material that relates to infinite time loops. I think the story line has been going on for just about as long as we've had the concept of time travel being a valid plot element. Most of them involve the traveler as being the focus and the only one (or ones) aware of the loop. Here are a few that I can think off, off the top of my head, that are loops. I dug around, and found plenty of other shows and movies with loops, but I couldn't find one to be particularly old.
12:01 (1990 & 1993)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Stargate SG1 - Window of Hope (August 2000)
There was some mid-90's B movie that did it too. It wasn't half bad, except for the terrible acting. That one was different in that every step of the loop pushed them a little closer to their goal, but if another person was close to the machine that caused it, they started looping too.
As far as I know, beyond the loops in Lost, the parallel existence is new(ish). I only just caught up with it a few weeks ago. I was like 2 seasons behind, so had to do a marathon watch of it. :) Since me and my ex watched the first 3 seasons in just a couple weeks, it felt appropriate (and much more satisfying) to watch it that way. :)
In this loop, your domain still doesn't work. You should fix your domain, or your tagline. And remember to keep changing it until we do finally go forward. ... why is your nose bleeding?
Like I told you before, there haven't been Pterodactyls in this or any parallel universe for over 65 million years. This has already been proven through examining the far side of Einstein-Rosen bridges and exchanging information with our peers on on the other sides that we've discussed the matter.
Don't you remember the loop where the operations at Area 51 were made public. It did shut up the alien conspiracy folks, at least until the LHC got up to speed again at ....
Oh...
You don't remember...
Shit.
A long time ago, I decided to start making copies of my floppies onto hard drives, so I'd have images of them before the deteriorated. I made that decision because I had a never opened boxed version of Novell UnixWare (from around 1994). It had sat in a professional air conditioned office until sometime around 2000. It was given to me, and it sat in my computer room for a long time. I finally decided to unbox it and give it a try. It came on floppy disks (3 of them, if I remember right). I went out and bought a floppy drive for this adventure, since all mine had either gathered such an accumulation of dust that I couldn't find the opening, or I had simply thrown them away.
I put the first disk in, and half way through reading it, there were errors. The disk, although in the original unopened envelope, in the original unopened shrinkwrapped box, had deteriorated. {sigh}
I tried several other disks that I had been carrying around with me for years, "just in case" I needed them for something. As it turned out, about 2/3 of them were unreadable, just from age.
So, I tossed them all, and gave the drive away to someone else who wanted to use it. He had a better success rate, something like 75% were readable.
I was talking to some kids not too long ago, about disks. I kept asking them, to see if they even had a clue what a floppy disk is. One correctly described a 3.5" floppy, but none had seen a 5.25" floppy. :) It's probably all for the better, they really sucked.
I wish you'd stop saying that. I don't know how many times I've read that comment.
oh...
shit...
I'd explain it all to you, but we don't have time! Well, time is very relative. When it reaches 3.6 TeV, it will open a rift in time that will launch the entire planet back in time. Most likely none of us will ever remember it, so we'll let it happen over and over until ...
[LHC reaches 3.6 TeV, and the loop begins again....]
I don't know where you live, but in the approximately 20 US states that I've driven in over the last few years (Generally along I-5, I-10, I-75, I-95) I can't say that I've seen more than the occasional locations with sound barriers, and with the exception of the lower supports of overpasses, none were 20 feet tall. 8 to 12 feet are about as tall as I've seen for sound barriers, and those are usually in limited locations, such as where a highway passes by a residential community that bitched too much about the highway noise (good planning, put your community by an established highway). I can't imagine anyone in the community complaining about noise wouldn't complain about a 2 story tall wall along their community. It's overkill anyways. The idea of a sound barrier is only to put something between the noise source (tires, engines, exhaust) and the listener (generally not more than about 6' tall)
The majority of barriers I've seen are guard rails, approx 2.5' high, and "K-Rail" or "Jersey Barrier" which are also 3 feet tall. The tallest reference I could find is the "Ontario Tall-Wall barrier" at 3.5 feet tall.
Where do you live, where the highways are lined with 20' tall walls?