It's the magic of supply chains. People buy from other people for almost everything.
Newegg may buy some items directly from Intel, and others from other vendors who get a better wholesale price.
I'd suspect one of their suppliers offered a slightly better price and/or earlier shipping date, so they bough X pallets of them. Who knows where they were injected into the supply chain. Products aren't opened (or even uncased) until the get to the destination.
There were some very interesting writeups on the same thing happening to the pharmaceutical supply chains. Almost no pharmacies buy directly from the manufacturers. It's more work than the manufacturer is interested in.
The chain can go something like this:
Level 1) Manufacturer, with a few plants. Level 2) A dozen (or a few dozen) major distributors. Level 3) Hundreds or thousands of other distributors. Level 4) Regional distribution companies. Level 5) Retail distribution centers (like, the DC for CVS/Rite Aid/Walgreens/Walmart/etc/etc/etc) Level 6) Your local store.
Level 3 may shop around between Level 2 distributors for better pricing. Level 4 definitely shops around between all the Level 3 distributors. Level 5 shops level 3 and 4 distributors, depending on the quantities they're ordering.
and Level 6... Well, that's the level Newegg is at. They're just a retail outlet.
If I, producing some counterfeit product, made a contact with a Level 3 distributor, and I could move 10,000 units of a $500 product that cost me $5 to product, it may be worth it to kick back $100k to the "purchaser" to get this in. What salesman wouldn't want to make their regular commission, plus get $100k in small unmarked bills? Sure, you could try to follow the supply chain back, but as the trails run all over the world it'll probably be a lost cause.
Someone's going to eat these losses, and it won't be the guy who injected the counterfeits into the supply chain.
Unfortunately, sales contacts are carefully guarded secrets as you work your way up the chain, so the counterfeiter will just move around without the word getting around too much. They'll change names, locations, and faces, so they won't get caught.
First, hire someone who knows what they're doing. You just posted to a pool of roughly 1 million technical folks, and at least a couple hundred thousand who know what they're doing. A good percentage of them are unemployed or underemployed right now.
Changing the SSH port is an excellent idea. Folks scan huge swaths of the Internet looking for ports with services that they expect. Leave SSH on port 22, they'll assume you haven't done much for security and have a chance of exploiting a buggy version or finding an easy password. I knew someone who allowed root logins, with the password of "password" with SSH on port 22. The box was compromised within days.
These folks generally go for low hanging fruit. Let that be someone else.
Make your machines invisible. Well, almost invisible. Make them so they won't ping, and won't respond to anything but an authorized request. Tools like nmap default to ICMP pings first, and then will follow up with a detailed port scan. If you have high visibility sites, you'll still get curious people who look hard to find something. Make it impossible for them to get to anything sensitive.
Set up iptables (or the firewall applicable for your platform) is essential for security. Here's a little script that I used for a long time. Networks and some ports have been modified to protect the guilty^H^H^H^H^H^H innocent. This script is for Linux. It may require modification for your platform. The general idea will apply to any *nix platform. Modify as necessary. I had an ipchains version, but that was retired long ago. You may want to add to your enemies list (in the code below) automatically based on some honeypot services. Maybe code up a little something as an inetd process that simply appends their IP to enemies.list (and distributes to your peers) if someone tries to SSH in on port 22. Use that with caution though. It's a shame when you lock out yourself accidentally.
You could either start DROP rules on the fly, or work up the list automagically and have this script rerun at an interval (every 5 minutes, ever hour, every week, whatever suits your tastes).
#!/usr/bin/perl # rc.firewall # secure yer webserver # (c) 2010 - JWSmythe # Free to reproduce and modify with attribution.
# Publicly accessible ports. These are any ports you want the general public to hit. @pub_ports = ( "80", # HTTP "443", # HTTPS "8080" # Streaming something );
# These are private ports. Only our private_net users. Any other ports will be completely inaccessible. @private_ports = ( "22222", # Our SSH port "33066" # Our DB port );
# Permitted Networks/Hosts. # Use / subnet notation # Use the smallest subnet possible.
@private_net = ( "192.168.1.0/24", # Where our servers are "198.81.129.0/24", # Another companion network "63.97.94.0/24", # Someone else that works with us. "216.34.181.45", # home );
# These are known enemies. You can collect these $enemy_list = "/etc/firewall/enemies.list";
You know, I'm a long time Linux SysAdmin. I like to have both a Windows and Linux machine around. Each has it's purposes. On Linux I can do real work. On Windows, I can play video games.;)
I ended up getting a nasty virus on WinXP a few months ago. I continued using Linux.
I got a copy of Win7, and was entertained by it. I actually kinda liked the pretty of it. ooohhh.. aaaahhhh. Glad it wasn't me spending the money. I ran into hardware compatibility issues. The video drive that worked for two months suddenly caused blue screens after about 5 minutes. Something else fatal happened, where it just blue screens during bootup. The only solutions I've found where to reinstall. But, I have games on there, that I don't want to reinstall. Oh well. Now it blue screens during the install. The only references to this one I found were that the install media has a fault. {sigh} I guess I have to go to the store and buy a new copy if I want it to work.
I threw another drive in there, and am running under Linux very happily. It installed quickly (like, way faster than XP, Vista, or Win7 do). All my devices worked right out of the box. The only real configuration I had to do was to set up Xorg (xorgsetup [enter][enter][enter]).
The people who whine about how bad Linux is, or how hard it is to work, are the folks who have never just sat down and tried it.
I've had a few people come by. They want to use my computer for something. I point at the Firefox link at the bottom and tell them to have at it.
Under Linux, I'll have Firefox or Chromium (or both) up, and several xterms.
Under Windows, I'll have Firefox or Chrome (or both) up, and several putty windows.
For average Joe User, there's no big difference between the two, except you can't play your video games. I know, some work under Wine, but for me I still consider that the only drawback. Since I spend about 3 hours a year playing video games, I can find that outlet elsewhere.
Now, for the topic at hand... who cares. So the guy in charge wants his shop MS. That's his problem. Maybe he likes his Windows. Maybe he's just annoyed because there's some subversive zealot changing the way his shop works. If he's in charge, those decisions are his to make. There may be good reasons those decisions were made. Maybe he uses AD to manage all his machines, and it automatically updates and continues to make sure things work right. Hey, sometimes that works. For some reason, he gets paid the big bucks there, so he can make the calls. If he wanted an all OpenBSD shop, with Links as the only browser, and Pine as the only mail client, so be it.
I know he considered his bosses incompetent to have any security information. Hell, most of us think the same way quite often.:)
At one place, there was a boss who would make direct changes to the servers. That's the way he had done things for quite a while. He wasn't an administrator though, and made some nasty mistakes a few times. It was his company though, so I had to give him the passwords. We came to an agreement. You don't mess with the production servers, and I'll keep making them work properly.:) That worked very well for years. Me and my staff had the passwords. His copy was locked away, should something happen to my entire staff (including me). Continuity was assured, and he didn't break things in production any more.:)
If you're working in a place that can't play by reasonable rules, then you have to either accept that they'll be breaking things, or go find another place to work.
Well, lets start with, you aren't 3 years old and you have lived in the same society that the rest of us do. You were taught the same social graces as the rest of us, which hopefully includes using the restroom and not messing your pants. Well, assuming you do remember to wear pants out of the house.
Well, I do hang around with a lot of foreigneese people.:) That and I have family on the East side of the pond.
Pretty much, if it says "Bar" on the sign, I know they have standard drinks. If it says "Pub" there tend to be better drinks and more atmosphere.
I spent a good bit of time in NYC doing work, but only a very little bit of that gave me the opportunity to visit any drinking establishments. I will say though that the ones I did stop in were good.
I went out camping with friends a while back, and they bought the beer. It was Busch or Miller Lite, I can't remember which. I just remember never feeling anything from it, and peeing an awful lot. I probably should have picked up a bottle of 190 proof Everclear (it's legal in that state).
Well, they are cheap shots where due, and it appears you agree.:)
I'm an American. The shot was at the "American" beers. In most places, you can get 2 to 4 selections of a pale something. For the most part, I could be given a cup of one, and wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
I do know there are great beers, and awful beers everywhere. It's just that the bad beers are so heavily marketed that makes it annoying. I've gone to places where the choices were a handful of American beers, or water. I've chosen water.:)
I can name quite a few places that you can go and either get shot at or arrested for being near.
You should realize by now, everyplace is private property of some sort. Even property that you own, you are only leasing from the government. If you don't pay your lease (taxes), they'll reclaim it.
It may have been nice to believe in such things years ago, but it's not the reality of today.
You've added a condition that was not previously stated. I only said the valet refused to allow you to have your vehicle. You may as well said that the driver had a freshly severed limb. Sure, someone bleeding out shouldn't drive either.
No, I'm saying you, with no additional modifiers such as drunkeness, mental, or physical state which would preclude your ability to operate a motor vehicle, and no financial burden (i.e., inability to pay the valet fee), and no outside circumstances or other acts of god, such as flood, blizzard, impending tornado or meteor strike, were refused your vehicle.
Damn, is this Slashdot, or am I preparing for the bar exam?
Ahhh, the good ol' days. I remember those parties. It's respectable-ish to start, and pretty much an orgy by the end of the night. What I wouldn't give to be a stupid teenager again.:) Maybe in the next life. Of course, we have to remember the "no fat chicks" rule on the party invitations. Well, unless one of your friends is a chubby chaser, and he'd better corral the cows out of sight.:)
[/me ducks from the "big boned" women in the audience]
The difference in your car analogy is that the Hummer doesn't belong to you. It's more like leaving the vehicle with a valet. When you go to pick up the vehicle, the valet refuses because he doesn't think you can handle driving it.
It was the cities network, not his personal playtoy, regardless of how he felt about it.
I worked at a company for 8 years. I had set a policy that passwords were given to management in case something happened to me and my IT group. When they laid me off, I was locked out of everything, according to my own plan. The plan stated that if any admin with substantial rights were to leave the company, all keys and passwords must be changed immediately, preferably between the time they were brought into the office to told they were gone, and the time they walked out.
Despite the fact that I was there for 8 years, and despite the fact that I felt all the servers were my electronic children, the moment I was laid off was the moment that it was no longer mine to say anything about. I was only a caretaker on behalf of the owners. If/when they choose that I am no longer the caretaker, I have no control nor responsibility to that network.
Another company I worked for improperly terminated me. The moment I was told to "fuck off" was the moment that I had no responsibility to anything they owned. I was contacted later by someone for assistance on a project I worked on. The guy contacting me was a nice guy, and he wasn't asking for much. My responses were.
1) I don't work there any more. Go away.
2) They fired me, and I wouldn't help them with anything. Go away.
3) You're a good guy, here's the answer.
Those answers were in sequence in one email. He admitted that he expected the first two answers, but was pleased to get the third. They could have gotten another developer in there to figure out what I did. It really wasn't hard, and a good developer could have done it in about 10 minutes. It's not advantageous for anyone to burn bridges. My contacts there may land me my dream job sometime in the future. Terry Childs will have an awful hard time convincing anyone that he isn't a threat to the continuity of their projects.
That sounds like a dangerous idea in a smoking bar.
I still drink in good ol' fashion pubs, where they serve more dark ales than pale American drink (it hurts to call it beer). Most of the customers smoke. About half the bar staff smoke when there is a lull in orders. It's not an ideal place to release a gaseous oxidizer.
I like that as much as Verizon and Brighthouse/Roadrunner's voice attendants. "Thank you for holding. You can also get help on the web by visiting our site com"
Every time I've been stuck on hold hearing that, it's been because the Internet connection was down. After hearing it every 30 seconds, for 45 minutes, I've been as polite as possible to the person who answers the phone and then asks
"Is your computer turned on?" "Are there any lights on the front of the modem?" "Are you sure?" "Reboot your computer, and call back in 15 minutes if there are more problems." "Well, reboot the modem and call back in 15 minutes if there are more problems." "Well, it seems we're having an outage in... where are you at?.. Yes, right there. It should be fixed soon. Give us a call back in a few hours if you're still having problems."
I'm pretty sure that's their full script, except for "Sir, please don't curse at us, we're doing our best.":)
Sometimes freedom must be fought for, it isn't just handed to you on a government owned silver platter.
I believe Thomas Jefferson had a good bit to say on the topic. It would be disrespectful to only include a few of his quotes, so I will leave it up to the readers to find one of our founding fathers had to say about it.
Works of art, no. Copyrighted? Very possibly. There's a reason Vendor X doesn't make an identical hook to Vendor Y. They've likely patented, copyrighted, and otherwise protected their IP, even if it's a hook. As manufacturer Y of said hook, it's advantageous for me to not want anyone else to make a hook that is like mine, or even confusingly similar.
I think you're confusing product placement with copyright and approved uses.
You see very obvious brand names in movies and TV because they are sponsoring the movie. It's advantageous for them to have their products shown.
Don't think every couch, lamp, and article of clothing had a royalty paid for it's use. You could extend that idea to "character A walks through a door. He hangs his jacket on a hook." Consider every element in that shot. The clothes, the door, the carpet he was standing on, the hook. None of those manufacturers made any money except for the retail cost of their product.
If you see an iPhone in a movie, it's because Apple paid for it to be there. Otherwise, it would be a nondescript phone, probably held to the actors off-camera ear, or not even shown in an obvious manner other than the fact you knew the actor was talking on a cell phone.
But, sure as hell, some lawyer will grab onto a case, and make some money at it (one way or another). That's part of the American dream though. Sue someone with money, and win a fortune. I'm just happy I'm not one of them.
If I recall correctly, this has been applied to other things, and the decisions have gone both ways.
Not to drag a cars into this, but...:) If I recall correctly, the "Black Mustang Club" (BMC) wanted to publish a calendar of their members vehicles. Ford objected, and stopped the printings, through legal muscle. It made the press, and Ford softened their stance to be "You can't use the Ford logo".
If there's a buck to be made, someone will try to make it.
A judgment like this is extremely dangerous. Pretty much it leaves us at the point of anything that has been produced cannot be used in any reproduction which can make money.
If I take a photo of say the city lights of New York, and I have it printed as a calendar, poster, or postcard, I would then be liable to the City of New York, the owners of every building included, the manufacturers of the lights used, and countless others. It may seem silly, but that's the case here. I know buildings, to some degree, are exempt from this, but I believe there was a story a few years ago of someone photographing the Sears Tower, and they were forbidden from doing it because they didn't have permission of the building owners for reproduction rights.
I have some very interesting photos of places I've been. Maybe someday after I kick the bucket, one of my descendants will arrange them into a nice book, "Life In The Eyes Of JWSmythe". With a decision like this, owners of anything I've taken pictures of could come back looking for their cut. Luckily, I'll be rolling over in my grave at that point.:)
I like your analogy. So if you find an animal off of the owners property, it's all fair to take them, eh?
I presume since you can apply this to subjugating the paid service of another person, I presume you can apply it to anything else left in the open. Bicycles... Cars... Empty houses... Yup, you have a real grand concept of reality. You'll have a wonderful time in court and prison.
Don't take legal advice from movies. Good Will Hunting was drama, not a documentary. Other than the movie citation, I was completely unable to find any mention of the way.
At least in 1798, horse thieves could be hung when they were caught, and the law looked the other way. Now, good luck getting away with either stealing the horse, carriage.
You have just as many rights stealing Internet, as you do randomly trespassing on private or federal property. If you think differently, you have a better chance seeing this than this.
They were called "Fu-Go Weapons". 9,000 were launched. 1,000 were believed to have made it to the US. 300 were observed or found. Only one found hanging in a tree caused 6 people to die.
Those were pretty well planned, and actually had the ability to stay in the air for days. That's something a little RC airplane isn't going to do. As your fuel requirements increase, your lift requirements increase. Those increase the drag, and therefore the need for more thrust. It's a vicious cycle. Lets not forget the pesky problem of having something onboard more than just the fuel, engine, and flight control. That's where the Japanese plan was beautiful, although a failure. Not to say that I agree with what they were attempting to do. Lots of very bad things happened during the war.
For those unaware of what he said, FOPA 86 has a "Safe Passage" provision on it, basically stating that if you're traveling from Point A to Point B, and somewhere along that route has a stricter gun law than the federal laws, you're safe as long as the weapon is unloaded and properly secured. Or more specifically, this. I used to keep a copy of this printed and locked away with my weapon(s) when transporting them, along with a copy of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Just because the law says it doesn't mean that they won't lock you up until you win in court. It's not worth a year or ten of your life, just to prove that you were right.
It's better to not get caught, and the best way to do that is to not do it in the first place.:)
Slashdot Mirror
It's the magic of supply chains. People buy from other people for almost everything.
Newegg may buy some items directly from Intel, and others from other vendors who get a better wholesale price.
I'd suspect one of their suppliers offered a slightly better price and/or earlier shipping date, so they bough X pallets of them. Who knows where they were injected into the supply chain. Products aren't opened (or even uncased) until the get to the destination.
There were some very interesting writeups on the same thing happening to the pharmaceutical supply chains. Almost no pharmacies buy directly from the manufacturers. It's more work than the manufacturer is interested in.
The chain can go something like this:
Level 1) Manufacturer, with a few plants.
Level 2) A dozen (or a few dozen) major distributors.
Level 3) Hundreds or thousands of other distributors.
Level 4) Regional distribution companies.
Level 5) Retail distribution centers (like, the DC for CVS/Rite Aid/Walgreens/Walmart/etc/etc/etc)
Level 6) Your local store.
Level 3 may shop around between Level 2 distributors for better pricing.
Level 4 definitely shops around between all the Level 3 distributors.
Level 5 shops level 3 and 4 distributors, depending on the quantities they're ordering.
and Level 6... Well, that's the level Newegg is at. They're just a retail outlet.
If I, producing some counterfeit product, made a contact with a Level 3 distributor, and I could move 10,000 units of a $500 product that cost me $5 to product, it may be worth it to kick back $100k to the "purchaser" to get this in. What salesman wouldn't want to make their regular commission, plus get $100k in small unmarked bills? Sure, you could try to follow the supply chain back, but as the trails run all over the world it'll probably be a lost cause.
Someone's going to eat these losses, and it won't be the guy who injected the counterfeits into the supply chain.
Unfortunately, sales contacts are carefully guarded secrets as you work your way up the chain, so the counterfeiter will just move around without the word getting around too much. They'll change names, locations, and faces, so they won't get caught.
First, hire someone who knows what they're doing. You just posted to a pool of roughly 1 million technical folks, and at least a couple hundred thousand who know what they're doing. A good percentage of them are unemployed or underemployed right now.
Changing the SSH port is an excellent idea. Folks scan huge swaths of the Internet looking for ports with services that they expect. Leave SSH on port 22, they'll assume you haven't done much for security and have a chance of exploiting a buggy version or finding an easy password. I knew someone who allowed root logins, with the password of "password" with SSH on port 22. The box was compromised within days.
These folks generally go for low hanging fruit. Let that be someone else.
Make your machines invisible. Well, almost invisible. Make them so they won't ping, and won't respond to anything but an authorized request. Tools like nmap default to ICMP pings first, and then will follow up with a detailed port scan. If you have high visibility sites, you'll still get curious people who look hard to find something. Make it impossible for them to get to anything sensitive.
Set up iptables (or the firewall applicable for your platform) is essential for security. Here's a little script that I used for a long time. Networks and some ports have been modified to protect the guilty^H^H^H^H^H^H innocent. This script is for Linux. It may require modification for your platform. The general idea will apply to any *nix platform. Modify as necessary. I had an ipchains version, but that was retired long ago. You may want to add to your enemies list (in the code below) automatically based on some honeypot services. Maybe code up a little something as an inetd process that simply appends their IP to enemies.list (and distributes to your peers) if someone tries to SSH in on port 22. Use that with caution though. It's a shame when you lock out yourself accidentally.
You could either start DROP rules on the fly, or work up the list automagically and have this script rerun at an interval (every 5 minutes, ever hour, every week, whatever suits your tastes).
#!/usr/bin/perl
# rc.firewall
# secure yer webserver
# (c) 2010 - JWSmythe
# Free to reproduce and modify with attribution.
# Publicly accessible ports. These are any ports you want the general public to hit.
@pub_ports = (
"80", # HTTP
"443", # HTTPS
"8080" # Streaming something
);
# These are private ports. Only our private_net users. Any other ports will be completely inaccessible.
@private_ports = (
"22222", # Our SSH port
"33066" # Our DB port
);
# Permitted Networks/Hosts.
# Use / subnet notation
# Use the smallest subnet possible.
@private_net = (
"192.168.1.0/24", # Where our servers are
"198.81.129.0/24", # Another companion network
"63.97.94.0/24", # Someone else that works with us.
"216.34.181.45", # home
);
# These are known enemies. You can collect these
$enemy_list = "/etc/firewall/enemies.list";
#
# Normally you won't modify beyond here.
#
Damned open source projects. They didn't like the carbon license, so they made their own.
Next thing they'll be telling us, humans are a fork of monkeys.
You know, I'm a long time Linux SysAdmin. I like to have both a Windows and Linux machine around. Each has it's purposes. On Linux I can do real work. On Windows, I can play video games. ;)
I ended up getting a nasty virus on WinXP a few months ago. I continued using Linux.
I got a copy of Win7, and was entertained by it. I actually kinda liked the pretty of it. ooohhh.. aaaahhhh. Glad it wasn't me spending the money. I ran into hardware compatibility issues. The video drive that worked for two months suddenly caused blue screens after about 5 minutes. Something else fatal happened, where it just blue screens during bootup. The only solutions I've found where to reinstall. But, I have games on there, that I don't want to reinstall. Oh well. Now it blue screens during the install. The only references to this one I found were that the install media has a fault. {sigh} I guess I have to go to the store and buy a new copy if I want it to work.
I threw another drive in there, and am running under Linux very happily. It installed quickly (like, way faster than XP, Vista, or Win7 do). All my devices worked right out of the box. The only real configuration I had to do was to set up Xorg (xorgsetup [enter][enter][enter]).
The people who whine about how bad Linux is, or how hard it is to work, are the folks who have never just sat down and tried it.
I've had a few people come by. They want to use my computer for something. I point at the Firefox link at the bottom and tell them to have at it.
Under Linux, I'll have Firefox or Chromium (or both) up, and several xterms.
Under Windows, I'll have Firefox or Chrome (or both) up, and several putty windows.
For average Joe User, there's no big difference between the two, except you can't play your video games. I know, some work under Wine, but for me I still consider that the only drawback. Since I spend about 3 hours a year playing video games, I can find that outlet elsewhere.
Now, for the topic at hand ... who cares. So the guy in charge wants his shop MS. That's his problem. Maybe he likes his Windows. Maybe he's just annoyed because there's some subversive zealot changing the way his shop works. If he's in charge, those decisions are his to make. There may be good reasons those decisions were made. Maybe he uses AD to manage all his machines, and it automatically updates and continues to make sure things work right. Hey, sometimes that works. For some reason, he gets paid the big bucks there, so he can make the calls. If he wanted an all OpenBSD shop, with Links as the only browser, and Pine as the only mail client, so be it.
I think you could just drop the drunk part.
I know he considered his bosses incompetent to have any security information. Hell, most of us think the same way quite often. :)
At one place, there was a boss who would make direct changes to the servers. That's the way he had done things for quite a while. He wasn't an administrator though, and made some nasty mistakes a few times. It was his company though, so I had to give him the passwords. We came to an agreement. You don't mess with the production servers, and I'll keep making them work properly. :) That worked very well for years. Me and my staff had the passwords. His copy was locked away, should something happen to my entire staff (including me). Continuity was assured, and he didn't break things in production any more. :)
If you're working in a place that can't play by reasonable rules, then you have to either accept that they'll be breaking things, or go find another place to work.
Well, lets start with, you aren't 3 years old and you have lived in the same society that the rest of us do. You were taught the same social graces as the rest of us, which hopefully includes using the restroom and not messing your pants. Well, assuming you do remember to wear pants out of the house.
Well, I do hang around with a lot of foreigneese people. :) That and I have family on the East side of the pond.
Pretty much, if it says "Bar" on the sign, I know they have standard drinks. If it says "Pub" there tend to be better drinks and more atmosphere.
I spent a good bit of time in NYC doing work, but only a very little bit of that gave me the opportunity to visit any drinking establishments. I will say though that the ones I did stop in were good.
I went out camping with friends a while back, and they bought the beer. It was Busch or Miller Lite, I can't remember which. I just remember never feeling anything from it, and peeing an awful lot. I probably should have picked up a bottle of 190 proof Everclear (it's legal in that state).
Well, they are cheap shots where due, and it appears you agree. :)
I'm an American. The shot was at the "American" beers. In most places, you can get 2 to 4 selections of a pale something. For the most part, I could be given a cup of one, and wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
I do know there are great beers, and awful beers everywhere. It's just that the bad beers are so heavily marketed that makes it annoying. I've gone to places where the choices were a handful of American beers, or water. I've chosen water. :)
Good luck with that.
I can name quite a few places that you can go and either get shot at or arrested for being near.
You should realize by now, everyplace is private property of some sort. Even property that you own, you are only leasing from the government. If you don't pay your lease (taxes), they'll reclaim it.
It may have been nice to believe in such things years ago, but it's not the reality of today.
You've added a condition that was not previously stated. I only said the valet refused to allow you to have your vehicle. You may as well said that the driver had a freshly severed limb. Sure, someone bleeding out shouldn't drive either.
No, I'm saying you, with no additional modifiers such as drunkeness, mental, or physical state which would preclude your ability to operate a motor vehicle, and no financial burden (i.e., inability to pay the valet fee), and no outside circumstances or other acts of god, such as flood, blizzard, impending tornado or meteor strike, were refused your vehicle.
Damn, is this Slashdot, or am I preparing for the bar exam?
Ahhh, the good ol' days. I remember those parties. It's respectable-ish to start, and pretty much an orgy by the end of the night. What I wouldn't give to be a stupid teenager again. :) Maybe in the next life. Of course, we have to remember the "no fat chicks" rule on the party invitations. Well, unless one of your friends is a chubby chaser, and he'd better corral the cows out of sight. :)
[/me ducks from the "big boned" women in the audience]
Since nitrogen isn't an oxidizer, I don't think we have a problem there.
Open the Guinness taps, I'm thirsty!
The difference in your car analogy is that the Hummer doesn't belong to you. It's more like leaving the vehicle with a valet. When you go to pick up the vehicle, the valet refuses because he doesn't think you can handle driving it.
It was the cities network, not his personal playtoy, regardless of how he felt about it.
I worked at a company for 8 years. I had set a policy that passwords were given to management in case something happened to me and my IT group. When they laid me off, I was locked out of everything, according to my own plan. The plan stated that if any admin with substantial rights were to leave the company, all keys and passwords must be changed immediately, preferably between the time they were brought into the office to told they were gone, and the time they walked out.
Despite the fact that I was there for 8 years, and despite the fact that I felt all the servers were my electronic children, the moment I was laid off was the moment that it was no longer mine to say anything about. I was only a caretaker on behalf of the owners. If/when they choose that I am no longer the caretaker, I have no control nor responsibility to that network.
Another company I worked for improperly terminated me. The moment I was told to "fuck off" was the moment that I had no responsibility to anything they owned. I was contacted later by someone for assistance on a project I worked on. The guy contacting me was a nice guy, and he wasn't asking for much. My responses were.
1) I don't work there any more. Go away.
2) They fired me, and I wouldn't help them with anything. Go away.
3) You're a good guy, here's the answer.
Those answers were in sequence in one email. He admitted that he expected the first two answers, but was pleased to get the third. They could have gotten another developer in there to figure out what I did. It really wasn't hard, and a good developer could have done it in about 10 minutes. It's not advantageous for anyone to burn bridges. My contacts there may land me my dream job sometime in the future. Terry Childs will have an awful hard time convincing anyone that he isn't a threat to the continuity of their projects.
I have to admit, shots of Everclear are a bit harsher than most drinks I've had. :)
So you're saying oxygen enriched Bacardi 151 or 190 proof Everclear could be hazardous? :)
That sounds like a dangerous idea in a smoking bar.
I still drink in good ol' fashion pubs, where they serve more dark ales than pale American drink (it hurts to call it beer). Most of the customers smoke. About half the bar staff smoke when there is a lull in orders. It's not an ideal place to release a gaseous oxidizer.
I like that as much as Verizon and Brighthouse/Roadrunner's voice attendants. "Thank you for holding. You can also get help on the web by visiting our site com"
Every time I've been stuck on hold hearing that, it's been because the Internet connection was down. After hearing it every 30 seconds, for 45 minutes, I've been as polite as possible to the person who answers the phone and then asks
"Is your computer turned on?" ... where are you at? .. Yes, right there. It should be fixed soon. Give us a call back in a few hours if you're still having problems."
"Are there any lights on the front of the modem?"
"Are you sure?"
"Reboot your computer, and call back in 15 minutes if there are more problems."
"Well, reboot the modem and call back in 15 minutes if there are more problems."
"Well, it seems we're having an outage in
I'm pretty sure that's their full script, except for "Sir, please don't curse at us, we're doing our best." :)
Sometimes freedom must be fought for, it isn't just handed to you on a government owned silver platter.
I believe Thomas Jefferson had a good bit to say on the topic. It would be disrespectful to only include a few of his quotes, so I will leave it up to the readers to find one of our founding fathers had to say about it.
Works of art, no. Copyrighted? Very possibly. There's a reason Vendor X doesn't make an identical hook to Vendor Y. They've likely patented, copyrighted, and otherwise protected their IP, even if it's a hook. As manufacturer Y of said hook, it's advantageous for me to not want anyone else to make a hook that is like mine, or even confusingly similar.
I think you're confusing product placement with copyright and approved uses.
You see very obvious brand names in movies and TV because they are sponsoring the movie. It's advantageous for them to have their products shown.
Don't think every couch, lamp, and article of clothing had a royalty paid for it's use. You could extend that idea to "character A walks through a door. He hangs his jacket on a hook." Consider every element in that shot. The clothes, the door, the carpet he was standing on, the hook. None of those manufacturers made any money except for the retail cost of their product.
If you see an iPhone in a movie, it's because Apple paid for it to be there. Otherwise, it would be a nondescript phone, probably held to the actors off-camera ear, or not even shown in an obvious manner other than the fact you knew the actor was talking on a cell phone.
But, sure as hell, some lawyer will grab onto a case, and make some money at it (one way or another). That's part of the American dream though. Sue someone with money, and win a fortune. I'm just happy I'm not one of them.
If I recall correctly, this has been applied to other things, and the decisions have gone both ways.
Not to drag a cars into this, but... :) If I recall correctly, the "Black Mustang Club" (BMC) wanted to publish a calendar of their members vehicles. Ford objected, and stopped the printings, through legal muscle. It made the press, and Ford softened their stance to be "You can't use the Ford logo".
If there's a buck to be made, someone will try to make it.
A judgment like this is extremely dangerous. Pretty much it leaves us at the point of anything that has been produced cannot be used in any reproduction which can make money.
If I take a photo of say the city lights of New York, and I have it printed as a calendar, poster, or postcard, I would then be liable to the City of New York, the owners of every building included, the manufacturers of the lights used, and countless others. It may seem silly, but that's the case here. I know buildings, to some degree, are exempt from this, but I believe there was a story a few years ago of someone photographing the Sears Tower, and they were forbidden from doing it because they didn't have permission of the building owners for reproduction rights.
I have some very interesting photos of places I've been. Maybe someday after I kick the bucket, one of my descendants will arrange them into a nice book, "Life In The Eyes Of JWSmythe". With a decision like this, owners of anything I've taken pictures of could come back looking for their cut. Luckily, I'll be rolling over in my grave at that point. :)
I like your analogy. So if you find an animal off of the owners property, it's all fair to take them, eh?
I presume since you can apply this to subjugating the paid service of another person, I presume you can apply it to anything else left in the open. Bicycles... Cars... Empty houses... Yup, you have a real grand concept of reality. You'll have a wonderful time in court and prison.
{sigh}
Don't take legal advice from movies. Good Will Hunting was drama, not a documentary. Other than the movie citation, I was completely unable to find any mention of the way.
At least in 1798, horse thieves could be hung when they were caught, and the law looked the other way. Now, good luck getting away with either stealing the horse, carriage.
You have just as many rights stealing Internet, as you do randomly trespassing on private or federal property. If you think differently, you have a better chance seeing this than this.
I'm glad someone posted this before me. :)
They were called "Fu-Go Weapons". 9,000 were launched. 1,000 were believed to have made it to the US. 300 were observed or found. Only one found hanging in a tree caused 6 people to die.
Those were pretty well planned, and actually had the ability to stay in the air for days. That's something a little RC airplane isn't going to do. As your fuel requirements increase, your lift requirements increase. Those increase the drag, and therefore the need for more thrust. It's a vicious cycle. Lets not forget the pesky problem of having something onboard more than just the fuel, engine, and flight control. That's where the Japanese plan was beautiful, although a failure. Not to say that I agree with what they were attempting to do. Lots of very bad things happened during the war.
That's about the way I heard it.
For those unaware of what he said, FOPA 86 has a "Safe Passage" provision on it, basically stating that if you're traveling from Point A to Point B, and somewhere along that route has a stricter gun law than the federal laws, you're safe as long as the weapon is unloaded and properly secured. Or more specifically, this. I used to keep a copy of this printed and locked away with my weapon(s) when transporting them, along with a copy of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Just because the law says it doesn't mean that they won't lock you up until you win in court. It's not worth a year or ten of your life, just to prove that you were right.
It's better to not get caught, and the best way to do that is to not do it in the first place. :)