I am not a sociologist nor statistician, and I was not advised that the question would arise. If I had been given the opportunity, I would have taken the time to find how I statistically fit into the knowledge base of the general population.
Being that I know less than seasoned law enforcement and lawyers, but more than some others, I would have to assume that my knowledge falls into the norm for the population at large.
It was not a bad faith answer. It was an improper question. Are YOU smarter than the common person? Yes, huh? How was "common person" defined? Average for the room? For the community? For the state? For the country?
What if the case was being heard in Cambridge, MA, and the jury pool of locals coincidentally were all higher level law students? The case itself was between two law professors. Not only would I not consider myself qualified to sit on the jury, but I would be probably the dumbest person in the room.:)
It's good to know that you are aware of the knowledge level of the common person though, and you can evaluate yourself in comparison to any other group of people at will.
You are indicating that the appropriate answer is "yes", since you're saying that my answer of "no" was done in bad faith, correct?
There's a big difference there. Back in the day, the policy used to be that surplus was sold to the people, since it was there's to start with. For example, after WWII, my dad bought a surplus 03A3 in perfect condition. Now, 66 years after it's manufacture date, it's still in perfect condition, only being fired occasionally to prove it still works.
Civilians had no problem buying surplus weapons, demilitarized aircraft, etc. The more modern approach to the advanced systems are to destroy them when they're retired. modern aircraft don't enjoy the same fate. There are still various things that can be purchased, but it's not like the "good old days", where you could buy some decent stuff.
I've been watching government auctions, and a lot of the stuff cannot leave base until it's destroyed. For example, there was a lot of copper wire and pipe. I believe it was several tons. A provision on that sale was that it had to be destroyed on site. We're not talking about anything that could of been of any intelligence value. Just wire and pipe. There are some vehicles that are sold in somewhat serviceable condition, but most of those are civilian vehicles used in a government capacity. Specialty government vehicles are usually in such poor shape that they're only good to tow from the auction to the scrap yard for their metal value.
There are plenty of provisions tied to almost everything now. Consider something like the Sea Shadow (IX-529). Sure, they're giving it away for free, but that's only once the Navy considers who it's going to, and knows that it's going to be on static display in a museum of their choosing. That means you can have this cool boat for free, but you can't take it out for a cruise, and they're not going to let just anyone have it. I'd pretty much guarantee that there are no engines, or electronics on board anyways, so what you get is the shell.
He wasn't convicted in criminal court because it wasn't a trial, it was a circus. He was a celebrity, with high powered lawyers spewing enough crap to make most people confused to their own names by the end of it.
But hey, that's our legal system. Which ever side can dazzle the jury best wins. The jury isn't an arbitrary pool of people, it's an arbitrary pool that's then sanitized of people who may see through the BS. It's not about right or wrong. It's what can the lawyers convince them of.
I have a time portal from 1826 to your current 2009, that can sustain a wireless ethernet connection. What do you think?
BTW, do you know hard it is to hide a DC power room and solar panels in 1826? If only you had let Tesla's work be taken full advantage of, I could use his wireless energy system through the time portal, and no one would notice. Well, except for your damned pollution coming through. Really, that stuff stinks. Can't all of you smell it?
That wouldn't work so well, if it were time to update from Wikipedia. I would assume they'd update frequently from Wikipedia (say once every month or so), but is it really necessary to suck down their whole database, when in reality if it's a small network (say less than 10,000 users), there will only be a handful of pages read.
Ah, what happened to the good ol' days, when the whole Internet fit on that one AOL disk.:)
Unfortunately, you're probably right. He'll get off without paying, even though it incurred expenses by the person who did prove it for him. Maybe the final judgment will be for expenses plus damages for the implied but not reasonable offer.
As for the Pepsi Harrier case, I thought there was a slightly happier ending, but I can't find anything online about that part. I could swear that for the sake of PR, they give him something nice. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrong.
Welcome to the modern legal system, and widespread tainting of the jury pool. If your case is big enough, everyone will know about it and have an opinion before it ever makes it to jury selection.
Look at the O.J. Simpson cases. He didn't have a prayer for an impartial jury. I'm not arguing the merits of the case, or innocence or guilt. It was splattered all over the news, so by the time it made it to court, it was virtually impossible to find someone who hadn't heard of the case at least to some degree.
Potential jurors aren't eliminated only on if they have heard information on the case. I was rejected as a juror once because I had gone through law enforcement school, even though I had not worked in the field yet. The defense tossed me immediately, even though he asked "Do you think your training has given you a better understanding of the law than a common person?" I answered "no sir.", because I don't know what the common person knows.:) I probably understand the law better than the average schmuck on the street, but I know much less than professionals in that field. I only said "no", since they were just looking for yes/no answers. Now I'm an information whore, so if I were asked, I'd probably already know something about the case in question, which one or both sides would want me rejected.
That really was the justification of not needing to give away a Harrier. It was an unreasonable belief that Pepsi would give away a military aircraft, which made it a parody.
On the other hand, a lawyer requesting an expert witness prove something, and making an open offer is not. If a lawyer said "I'll give a million dollars to the first person who can do X" is requesting that someone do that. The actual quote was "I challenge anybody to show me, I'll pay them a million dollars if they can do it,". It is reasonable to believe cash can be given by a lawyer. A million dollars is a lot, but still not an unreasonable sum. A military aircraft on the other hand doesn't usually fall into civilian hands, which made it an unreasonable assertion.:) Likewise, if someone says they'd part with a body part for something, more than likely that is an unreasonable assertion. I've heard people say it, but I have yet to see someone pay with a body part.:)
What the lawyer did is right along the lines of an open monetary reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of particular criminals, or finding someone's lost [something], regardless if the something could be a dog, cat, watch, or child. I don't know too many people who would, on the safe return of a kidnapping victim, would really push for the reward money, but it's likely some people would. Personally, if I had information on a crime, and a reward was being given, I'd tell them to keep their money. A "thank you" and even a handshake would be nice, but that's all the reward I'd ever expect.
That's what the article was reinforcing anyways. It was a reasonable assertion. Now he just knows he's really on the losing side of the battle.
In doing more reading on it, the 10 hour window is really possible. As it seems to have played out, he flew from ATL to ORL, took the rental car, killed the victims, drove to TPA, and flew from TPA to ATL, so he could be in his hotel. Two false names, and the car was rented by a 3rd party to cover things up. He obviously wouldn't have driven the entire route (ATL to ORL and back), as that would be over 16 hours on the road, or only possibly 12 if he drove fast. That would run him into other problems, as a single traffic ticket would be his doom. He could have picked other airports, or even chartered a plane, but those would have been more suspicious. The three airports used are well traveled, so a couple odd tickets wouldn't really be noticed. Well, he hoped. The lawyer was just being stupid, and trying to reaffirm in the public's mind that his client couldn't possibly be guilty. He just really screwed up by doing it in such a way.
Gold is a questionable unit. Have you ever tried to go to a store and buy something with gold rather than the local currency? In most places, it simply isn't going to happen.
An effective bartering system not only has a currency that you can carry around (like gold), but more happens with the implied or agreed upon value of items you are wishing to barter. For example, if civilization should collapse tomorrow, in a year weapons and ammunition will be worth a whole lot more than say a cell phone. You may be able to trade a case full of spam for a good weapon. Several years after that, the weapons would only be good for their metal value to be reformed into other tools. Sure, I'll trade you 10 M-16's for a pick-axe and shovel. How about a wagon for that M1 Abrams tank. Either of the given items wouldn't be much good without fuel and/or ammunition, but the resulting product would mean the difference between life and death.
A wagon full of gold is only worth anything as long as the person you're willing to trade with believes it's worth something. Consider Gilligan's Island. Mr. Howell, the millionaire, had a trunk full of cash, which would still have been legitimate currency back in civilization, but it was worthless on the island because it was not a necessity to have. Two coconuts and a machete would be worth more to most of the folks there. The exception would be the professor who could use the gold, a vine, a couple bird feathers, some chewing gum, and a bit of sea water to build a satellite uplink. Too bad Gilligan swallowed the last piece of gum already.:)
I'm sure after they made it back, the Professor had a kid named Angus MacGyver. But, now I'm wandering too far off topic.
Haven't you outlawed clothing by 2009? That, and mandatory genetic screening to disallow ugly people? That would not only keep the population at a manageable level, but would keep people from getting nauseous seeing the ugly people naked. You're going to have a huge problem by 2012, where the population will be unsustainable, and stupid people will be in charge of everything. Be careful.
Morning is all relative. I woke up at 2pm local time, realized how early it was, and went back to bed until 4:30pm local. So now that 3am local has come by, I'm still working (and reading a little Slashdot).
Keepass will work fine and dandy until enough people are using it where it's worth exploiting. The targets of most of this stuff aren't individual users. They're the broad audience, which a percentage will do a compromising activity.
I'll admit, I once worked for a company who sent spam. This was before the days of it's evilness, and laws, and... well, what it's become.
The general thought at the time was, for every 100 emails sent out, there would be approximately 3 paying customers. Those were targeted towards previous account holders, which still is in the gray areas of legal. Even though the customer base continued to grow through this method, but more of affiliate marketing, the returns on sending the notices dwindled as spam became a bigger problem. 3% became 1%. We never sent any more mailings after the conversion rate dropped to something like 0.02%. I spoke with someone later (probably about 7 years ago) who was still in that business. He said no matter what the product was, the conversion rate was down to 0.0003%. That business folded from ISP pressures, and they went into the business of handling mailing list transfers. They acted as the neutral intermediary, to ensure both parties would be satisfied with the transaction. That dried up as the conversion rates dropped down below 0.0001%. Who wants to send 1 million emails, to make a single $29.95 sale? Well, they still try, or our spam boxes would be empty.
The same will happen with this market. As users become smarter or have better technology protecting them, the market will dry up. But in our current state, key loggers grabbing passwords, bank info, etc, is a lucrative business. I am very happy to say that I have never, nor ever will, be involved in that line of work. It's one thing to market and sell something. It's another to blatantly steal from an oblivious user.
How will this market dry up? It won't be better antivirus/antispyware applications. Those are just chasing the problem. How was a big dent put into the spam industry? Innovation and education. You can ask even the barely computer literate "Should you buy something from an email that someone you don't know sent you?". The majority of answers will be "No".
Such malware isn't quite as in your face, and masquerades itself quite gracefully. If it's a well written piece, you'd never know it was there. Fortunately, most of them aren't as well written as they should be.
Re:Amusingly..
on
R.I.P. FTP
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, what I saw in the summary, for that which I read before I gave up, was that he suspected malware had intercepted his password. It's kinda silly having a packet sniffer listening to all passing traffic, when all they really needed to do was look in common places for stored passwords, and have a keystroke logger intercept interesting things. The later two I've seen quite a bit. The first, not so often.
In working in a few hosting environments, from the admin side, I will say brute force attacks are anything but uncommon. Unfortunately, some people don't believe in upgrading anything ever. Yes, they do exist. So, they'll have 10+ year old unpatched machines without firewalls up on the Internet because "oh, who would find us?" On the same machines, you can see the FTP and SSH logs where people are attempting to brute force their way in.
On machines that I personally have full admin control over, there are limitations to everything, even though it doesn't reflect back to the user. Sure, you can try to brute force your way in. It won't do you much good. But as far as you know, the failure notice from attempt #1 is just as legitimate as #10 and #100,000,000. Little does the aggressive hacker know, nothing beyond #5 was accepted, and his attempt on a live server was propagated to other machines under my control so they can protect themselves.
Back to the original story. It was likely some malware that found auth files, found where the auth information is stored in their Windows registry, or captured the keystrokes. It may have been described in more detail somewhere in that novel that they called a summary, but I failed to read it all before my eyes started to bleed.
Budgets are a wonderful thing. If you've ever known anyone who works with the government, you'll have heard of it in action. Say a department is budgeted $1,000,000 USD (a low number by gov't standards). Now say that they've spent $750,000 USD by the end of the month, quarter, or fiscal year depending on the period of that budget. They have two choices. Either they can say "Oh, our job only really requires $750,000", and that's what will be budgeted for the next period, or they can spend the money on something (within guidelines, of course). They'll have "the following 20 people will be off at training for the next 3 weeks", which of course not only covers the outrageously priced training, but air fare, and per diem. They may have a new round of desktop and network upgrades. They may find it is time to retire several vehicles from the motor pool. Maybe they came in under budget because they are actually behind on the projects. Time to hire 20 new people.
I thought it was a joke when I heard about contracts for road construction. Over the years, it has become abundantly obvious that it is no joke. The way many road construction contracts go is like this. The companies bid at a rather high rate, to get it done in at least 2x the time required. The companies don't undercut each other by much. They all want the lucrative contract. Of course, there's enough included to help out with kickbacks and other assorted favors. Oh, did I say that last part? No, that never happens in the gov't at any level. So, back to the story. The job will read that it must start by Jan 1 of 2010, and be completed by Jan 1 of 2015. They get paid $15,385 for every day during the construction period, and get a $100,000 incentive if they complete it by Jan 1 2014.
The company who won the contract looks at it and realized:
$15,385 * 1300 days = $20,000,500
($15,385 * 1040 days) + $100,000 = 16,100,400
or
$15,385 * (1300 days + 260 days overrun) = $24,000,600
They already know this is only a 6 month job. On Jan 1 2010 and dig up a section of road, to indicate that they are actually working. They park equipment on it (which necessitates the fees, since that equipment cannot be used elsewhere), place cones, etc, etc. They spend a few weeks accomplishing this. Traffic backs up. People get mad. Stuff doesn't happen. Every few months, you'll see a little bit of work being done, but you never see any notable progress. Then comes April 30, 2015. An amazing flurry of construction begins. If they're lucky, they don't have any unexpected problems (weather, increases in costs, etc), and by Dec 20, 2015 they've completed the job. Everyone goes home and has a nice holiday with their families.
What really came of that? A contracted paid on a day basis should have run for approx 150 days of continued work. Still, that was a $2,307,750 job. Yet, the taxpayers still paid the $20,000,000 for the work to be accomplished.
That, my son, is where your tax dollars go. It's not a mistake, or any sort of laziness by anyone in the system. It's simply the way it works.
And why didn't they go for the $24,000,600 goal? There may be something in the contract which would limit them from participating in future contracts if x% of previous contracts were overruns. It's a short term gain, but a long term loss. Sure, an extra $4 million in my company sounds good, but why not take another $20 million contract that only really costs about $2.3 million. That $17.7 million profit sounds really nice.
I serious oversimplified this. There are some factors like surveying; procurement of materials; re-engineering various aspects; finding Indian burial grounds along the proposed route; special interest groups tying things up with lawsuits and petitions (oh god, who gives a heck about the spotted red-headed cocksucker?); or a billion other things that can go wrong.
Some people get bent out of shape when they realize that their "free" license is being used by people other than their low paid peers. Oh my gosh, it's a big money rich group using it. They should pay! {sigh} If I give something away (which I do occasionally), it's free to reproduce at will. I do ask that I'm told if/when it's used in something.
I have a little proof of concept encryption thing online. I look through the Apache logs once in a while to see who's visiting. Quite a few research labs and somewhat secret gov't organizations have viewed it and downloaded the package. I'd like to know that it's being used in something practical, but I know they can't tell me. My best hope is that someday I'll have something interesting enough out there where they'll not only want to use my little bits of code that I make available, but be hired on to work with them. A little "hmmm, this guy seems to know a little something" would hopefully go a long way.:)
Am I going to cry if I find out that it's being used in the latest-greatest government initiative, or even as the new secure messing platform that Microsoft puts out with Windows 13? Nope. But if they do snag it and use it, I'll be more than happy to brag that up. Since mine is so simple, I seriously doubt anything beyond someone seeing it, thinking "that's a good idea", and writing their own code for it. But hey, if my functions show up in something big eventually, I'll be impressed.:)
None of that matters, until you find the hard part, down at the bottom of your volume. It's the whole secret of flying. Throw yourself at the ground and miss. As long as you're still doing the miss part, you don't have to worry about too much (except a stray bird or 747). Now, when you do fail at the miss part, things can get messy. Usually it's done in a pretty controlled manner, so it doesn't hurt too much. Just remember next time you take a flight somewhere, any landing is just a controlled crash. If you can walk away from it, it was a good one. Always thank your fight crew as you egress the aircraft.
The implication of "when in Egypt...." would mean someone there. Obviously, at a hotel or resort, you would expect to find more people from out of town than locals.
This whole thing can be taken as absolute BS though. The oldest publication I could find carrying this story was a polish paper, and they were citing thesun.co.uk. If anyone can make up their own news and publish it, it's them. They rank just up from the now defunct "Weekly World News", where the WWN stories usually included Bigfoot, Bat Boy, and various aliens.:)
At least they could have done more with the story. They must have just had a little space to fill, and were uninspired to make up a decent fictional story.
Which evidence? I've seen a few items, and although they weren't addressed as such, the facts were all there. They can't exactly have a list of rumors at the end and a snopes style dispute for each.
In searching for Fossett, they found numerous unreported or otherwise undocumented crashed planes. More than likely, any aviator who said that they "knew" it could happen were witnesses to another plane crashing, helped with the search and rescue of a fellow aviator, or simply accounted for the forces and the strength of small aircraft.
I had discussed this with some people who are very experienced aviators, and they all came to the same conclusion. It was most likely wind that brought him down. The second guess would be a mechanical failure and attempted crash landing. They ranked the second one way behind the first.
If I read the NTSB review correctly, his altimeter was reading above the mountain peaks, but adjusted for current temp and pressure that would put him a bit lower than them, which should have been ok. They lost radar contact with him approx 1km from the crash site. In that time, he went about 1km (obviously) and a dropped a few thousand feet.
The report does state that the entire plane was present at the accident site. Well, except for the burnt off parts. They indicate the wingtip lights were present, which would imply the wing came down with the plane. If they had broken off, they would have likely been found at a different location.
I'm sure he did everything he could. Sometimes that's just not enough, even for people who are really good.:(
I went to their site, and followed the intro text as a line of conversation. The first answer was vague, and it couldn't give me any intelligent answers after that. Since it was a demo, and didn't have a clear business application, I didn't know what questions I should ask to get a real response back.
The best it did was told me to log in, so I could create my own bot, and start programming it with what to say today. (oohh, wow.)
Well, if you went to their web site, you'd find that it's another absolutely stupid scripted assistance program, that uses keywords to return specific answers. {sigh}
Yup, a press release that snuck in as a tech story. Slashdot used to be so much better than this.
Well, ya, 50% more than it had been handling before. I see.
My concern was the percentage of totals. That was divided up by the available servers, and then each server was calculated to know it could handle. We had generally 3 classes of servers. They could be considered "old", "not so old", and "new".:) We didn't quite class them like that, but it would be a decent evaluation. If "old" could handle 1x, "not so old" could handle x2, and "new" could handle 3x. It wasn't uncommon for us to run a "new" server as 2x, and the lower two as 1x, but the capacity was there for the top two classes, should we need it.
It gets complicated until you see it working. I don't know if they're still using my methodology. I know things have changed since I left, and they aren't asking me any questions. Either I documented it well enough, it was intuitive enough, or they just gutted it and started over.
It would depend on the specific events surrounding said resurrection. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn't. It's not exactly like we can go to the scene and look for forensic evidence. "Oh look, there are fresh boot prints going in, and the same prints coming back out but deeper. That person was carrying something approximately 175 pounds, and the body is gone."
If you read up on it a little more, the whole pesky resurrection story doesn't show up in the older manuscripts. They're a roughly post 1600 addition. Sure, a few years and many hand made (and errored) and translated copies later. Who am I to question the word of it.
Whip me out a first edition bible, and I'll be more than happy to listen to the story.
Be quiet! They're going to hear you! Do you want to be killed for your heresy? Don't forget, you're mocking the same religion that invented the crusades. "Believe in our way, or we'll kill you!", do you remember that?
If you're telling the truth, you'll follow it to any end.
If you're lying, you'll say it so many times that even you will believe it, and follow it to any end.
If you're lying and don't believe it, your choices are to follow it, or be killed by your followers when they find out that you lied to them, so you follow it to any end.
You can't use a document as proof that the document is correct. Just because it says it in the bible doesn't mean that what it says in the bible is true. Before you come back with "there is plenty of proof.", provide the citations. Anything that predates the original book in question. We're still discussing a book where the oldest copy available was an nth generation hand copied version made at least a few hundred years after the events took place. This copy shows that the "modern" copy being used is wrong, and has been edited countless times to fit particular agendas.
If I were to write a book on the happenings of King Charles the VIII of France (arbitrary real person from history) now, based on what I may have found pieced together from other papers that were hand copied versions over hundreds of years, and stories passed down verbally through generations, do you think that account is going to be accurate? Hell, there are written witness accounts of a UFO battle over Germany in 1561, a 1680 French coin showing a UFO flying over the city, and... well, others too.. There's more corroboration for those events that were recorded at least at a time close to the original event, and not hand copied over n-generations. Not that I believe most of the crap I read on the Internet, but you have to look at what is written and decide if the author knew what he was talking about. I provided those citations for a specific reason, which hopefully you'll understand.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not a sociologist nor statistician, and I was not advised that the question would arise. If I had been given the opportunity, I would have taken the time to find how I statistically fit into the knowledge base of the general population.
Being that I know less than seasoned law enforcement and lawyers, but more than some others, I would have to assume that my knowledge falls into the norm for the population at large.
It was not a bad faith answer. It was an improper question. Are YOU smarter than the common person? Yes, huh? How was "common person" defined? Average for the room? For the community? For the state? For the country?
What if the case was being heard in Cambridge, MA, and the jury pool of locals coincidentally were all higher level law students? The case itself was between two law professors. Not only would I not consider myself qualified to sit on the jury, but I would be probably the dumbest person in the room. :)
It's good to know that you are aware of the knowledge level of the common person though, and you can evaluate yourself in comparison to any other group of people at will.
You are indicating that the appropriate answer is "yes", since you're saying that my answer of "no" was done in bad faith, correct?
There's a big difference there. Back in the day, the policy used to be that surplus was sold to the people, since it was there's to start with. For example, after WWII, my dad bought a surplus 03A3 in perfect condition. Now, 66 years after it's manufacture date, it's still in perfect condition, only being fired occasionally to prove it still works.
Civilians had no problem buying surplus weapons, demilitarized aircraft, etc. The more modern approach to the advanced systems are to destroy them when they're retired. modern aircraft don't enjoy the same fate. There are still various things that can be purchased, but it's not like the "good old days", where you could buy some decent stuff.
I've been watching government auctions, and a lot of the stuff cannot leave base until it's destroyed. For example, there was a lot of copper wire and pipe. I believe it was several tons. A provision on that sale was that it had to be destroyed on site. We're not talking about anything that could of been of any intelligence value. Just wire and pipe. There are some vehicles that are sold in somewhat serviceable condition, but most of those are civilian vehicles used in a government capacity. Specialty government vehicles are usually in such poor shape that they're only good to tow from the auction to the scrap yard for their metal value.
There are plenty of provisions tied to almost everything now. Consider something like the Sea Shadow (IX-529). Sure, they're giving it away for free, but that's only once the Navy considers who it's going to, and knows that it's going to be on static display in a museum of their choosing. That means you can have this cool boat for free, but you can't take it out for a cruise, and they're not going to let just anyone have it. I'd pretty much guarantee that there are no engines, or electronics on board anyways, so what you get is the shell.
He wasn't convicted in criminal court because it wasn't a trial, it was a circus. He was a celebrity, with high powered lawyers spewing enough crap to make most people confused to their own names by the end of it.
But hey, that's our legal system. Which ever side can dazzle the jury best wins. The jury isn't an arbitrary pool of people, it's an arbitrary pool that's then sanitized of people who may see through the BS. It's not about right or wrong. It's what can the lawyers convince them of.
I have a time portal from 1826 to your current 2009, that can sustain a wireless ethernet connection. What do you think?
BTW, do you know hard it is to hide a DC power room and solar panels in 1826? If only you had let Tesla's work be taken full advantage of, I could use his wireless energy system through the time portal, and no one would notice. Well, except for your damned pollution coming through. Really, that stuff stinks. Can't all of you smell it?
That wouldn't work so well, if it were time to update from Wikipedia. I would assume they'd update frequently from Wikipedia (say once every month or so), but is it really necessary to suck down their whole database, when in reality if it's a small network (say less than 10,000 users), there will only be a handful of pages read.
Ah, what happened to the good ol' days, when the whole Internet fit on that one AOL disk. :)
Unfortunately, you're probably right. He'll get off without paying, even though it incurred expenses by the person who did prove it for him. Maybe the final judgment will be for expenses plus damages for the implied but not reasonable offer.
As for the Pepsi Harrier case, I thought there was a slightly happier ending, but I can't find anything online about that part. I could swear that for the sake of PR, they give him something nice. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrong.
Welcome to the modern legal system, and widespread tainting of the jury pool. If your case is big enough, everyone will know about it and have an opinion before it ever makes it to jury selection.
Look at the O.J. Simpson cases. He didn't have a prayer for an impartial jury. I'm not arguing the merits of the case, or innocence or guilt. It was splattered all over the news, so by the time it made it to court, it was virtually impossible to find someone who hadn't heard of the case at least to some degree.
Potential jurors aren't eliminated only on if they have heard information on the case. I was rejected as a juror once because I had gone through law enforcement school, even though I had not worked in the field yet. The defense tossed me immediately, even though he asked "Do you think your training has given you a better understanding of the law than a common person?" I answered "no sir.", because I don't know what the common person knows. :) I probably understand the law better than the average schmuck on the street, but I know much less than professionals in that field. I only said "no", since they were just looking for yes/no answers. Now I'm an information whore, so if I were asked, I'd probably already know something about the case in question, which one or both sides would want me rejected.
That really was the justification of not needing to give away a Harrier. It was an unreasonable belief that Pepsi would give away a military aircraft, which made it a parody.
On the other hand, a lawyer requesting an expert witness prove something, and making an open offer is not. If a lawyer said "I'll give a million dollars to the first person who can do X" is requesting that someone do that. The actual quote was "I challenge anybody to show me, I'll pay them a million dollars if they can do it,". It is reasonable to believe cash can be given by a lawyer. A million dollars is a lot, but still not an unreasonable sum. A military aircraft on the other hand doesn't usually fall into civilian hands, which made it an unreasonable assertion. :) Likewise, if someone says they'd part with a body part for something, more than likely that is an unreasonable assertion. I've heard people say it, but I have yet to see someone pay with a body part. :)
What the lawyer did is right along the lines of an open monetary reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of particular criminals, or finding someone's lost [something], regardless if the something could be a dog, cat, watch, or child. I don't know too many people who would, on the safe return of a kidnapping victim, would really push for the reward money, but it's likely some people would. Personally, if I had information on a crime, and a reward was being given, I'd tell them to keep their money. A "thank you" and even a handshake would be nice, but that's all the reward I'd ever expect.
That's what the article was reinforcing anyways. It was a reasonable assertion. Now he just knows he's really on the losing side of the battle.
In doing more reading on it, the 10 hour window is really possible. As it seems to have played out, he flew from ATL to ORL, took the rental car, killed the victims, drove to TPA, and flew from TPA to ATL, so he could be in his hotel. Two false names, and the car was rented by a 3rd party to cover things up. He obviously wouldn't have driven the entire route (ATL to ORL and back), as that would be over 16 hours on the road, or only possibly 12 if he drove fast. That would run him into other problems, as a single traffic ticket would be his doom. He could have picked other airports, or even chartered a plane, but those would have been more suspicious. The three airports used are well traveled, so a couple odd tickets wouldn't really be noticed. Well, he hoped. The lawyer was just being stupid, and trying to reaffirm in the public's mind that his client couldn't possibly be guilty. He just really screwed up by doing it in such a way.
Gold is a questionable unit. Have you ever tried to go to a store and buy something with gold rather than the local currency? In most places, it simply isn't going to happen.
An effective bartering system not only has a currency that you can carry around (like gold), but more happens with the implied or agreed upon value of items you are wishing to barter. For example, if civilization should collapse tomorrow, in a year weapons and ammunition will be worth a whole lot more than say a cell phone. You may be able to trade a case full of spam for a good weapon. Several years after that, the weapons would only be good for their metal value to be reformed into other tools. Sure, I'll trade you 10 M-16's for a pick-axe and shovel. How about a wagon for that M1 Abrams tank. Either of the given items wouldn't be much good without fuel and/or ammunition, but the resulting product would mean the difference between life and death.
A wagon full of gold is only worth anything as long as the person you're willing to trade with believes it's worth something. Consider Gilligan's Island. Mr. Howell, the millionaire, had a trunk full of cash, which would still have been legitimate currency back in civilization, but it was worthless on the island because it was not a necessity to have. Two coconuts and a machete would be worth more to most of the folks there. The exception would be the professor who could use the gold, a vine, a couple bird feathers, some chewing gum, and a bit of sea water to build a satellite uplink. Too bad Gilligan swallowed the last piece of gum already. :)
I'm sure after they made it back, the Professor had a kid named Angus MacGyver. But, now I'm wandering too far off topic.
Haven't you outlawed clothing by 2009? That, and mandatory genetic screening to disallow ugly people? That would not only keep the population at a manageable level, but would keep people from getting nauseous seeing the ugly people naked. You're going to have a huge problem by 2012, where the population will be unsustainable, and stupid people will be in charge of everything. Be careful.
- Voice from the past
Morning is all relative. I woke up at 2pm local time, realized how early it was, and went back to bed until 4:30pm local. So now that 3am local has come by, I'm still working (and reading a little Slashdot).
Keepass will work fine and dandy until enough people are using it where it's worth exploiting. The targets of most of this stuff aren't individual users. They're the broad audience, which a percentage will do a compromising activity.
I'll admit, I once worked for a company who sent spam. This was before the days of it's evilness, and laws, and ... well, what it's become.
The general thought at the time was, for every 100 emails sent out, there would be approximately 3 paying customers. Those were targeted towards previous account holders, which still is in the gray areas of legal. Even though the customer base continued to grow through this method, but more of affiliate marketing, the returns on sending the notices dwindled as spam became a bigger problem. 3% became 1%. We never sent any more mailings after the conversion rate dropped to something like 0.02%. I spoke with someone later (probably about 7 years ago) who was still in that business. He said no matter what the product was, the conversion rate was down to 0.0003%. That business folded from ISP pressures, and they went into the business of handling mailing list transfers. They acted as the neutral intermediary, to ensure both parties would be satisfied with the transaction. That dried up as the conversion rates dropped down below 0.0001%. Who wants to send 1 million emails, to make a single $29.95 sale? Well, they still try, or our spam boxes would be empty.
The same will happen with this market. As users become smarter or have better technology protecting them, the market will dry up. But in our current state, key loggers grabbing passwords, bank info, etc, is a lucrative business. I am very happy to say that I have never, nor ever will, be involved in that line of work. It's one thing to market and sell something. It's another to blatantly steal from an oblivious user.
How will this market dry up? It won't be better antivirus/antispyware applications. Those are just chasing the problem. How was a big dent put into the spam industry? Innovation and education. You can ask even the barely computer literate "Should you buy something from an email that someone you don't know sent you?". The majority of answers will be "No".
Such malware isn't quite as in your face, and masquerades itself quite gracefully. If it's a well written piece, you'd never know it was there. Fortunately, most of them aren't as well written as they should be.
Actually, what I saw in the summary, for that which I read before I gave up, was that he suspected malware had intercepted his password. It's kinda silly having a packet sniffer listening to all passing traffic, when all they really needed to do was look in common places for stored passwords, and have a keystroke logger intercept interesting things. The later two I've seen quite a bit. The first, not so often.
In working in a few hosting environments, from the admin side, I will say brute force attacks are anything but uncommon. Unfortunately, some people don't believe in upgrading anything ever. Yes, they do exist. So, they'll have 10+ year old unpatched machines without firewalls up on the Internet because "oh, who would find us?" On the same machines, you can see the FTP and SSH logs where people are attempting to brute force their way in.
On machines that I personally have full admin control over, there are limitations to everything, even though it doesn't reflect back to the user. Sure, you can try to brute force your way in. It won't do you much good. But as far as you know, the failure notice from attempt #1 is just as legitimate as #10 and #100,000,000. Little does the aggressive hacker know, nothing beyond #5 was accepted, and his attempt on a live server was propagated to other machines under my control so they can protect themselves.
Back to the original story. It was likely some malware that found auth files, found where the auth information is stored in their Windows registry, or captured the keystrokes. It may have been described in more detail somewhere in that novel that they called a summary, but I failed to read it all before my eyes started to bleed.
Budgets are a wonderful thing. If you've ever known anyone who works with the government, you'll have heard of it in action. Say a department is budgeted $1,000,000 USD (a low number by gov't standards). Now say that they've spent $750,000 USD by the end of the month, quarter, or fiscal year depending on the period of that budget. They have two choices. Either they can say "Oh, our job only really requires $750,000", and that's what will be budgeted for the next period, or they can spend the money on something (within guidelines, of course). They'll have "the following 20 people will be off at training for the next 3 weeks", which of course not only covers the outrageously priced training, but air fare, and per diem. They may have a new round of desktop and network upgrades. They may find it is time to retire several vehicles from the motor pool. Maybe they came in under budget because they are actually behind on the projects. Time to hire 20 new people.
I thought it was a joke when I heard about contracts for road construction. Over the years, it has become abundantly obvious that it is no joke. The way many road construction contracts go is like this. The companies bid at a rather high rate, to get it done in at least 2x the time required. The companies don't undercut each other by much. They all want the lucrative contract. Of course, there's enough included to help out with kickbacks and other assorted favors. Oh, did I say that last part? No, that never happens in the gov't at any level. So, back to the story. The job will read that it must start by Jan 1 of 2010, and be completed by Jan 1 of 2015. They get paid $15,385 for every day during the construction period, and get a $100,000 incentive if they complete it by Jan 1 2014.
The company who won the contract looks at it and realized:
$15,385 * 1300 days = $20,000,500
($15,385 * 1040 days) + $100,000 = 16,100,400
or
$15,385 * (1300 days + 260 days overrun) = $24,000,600
They already know this is only a 6 month job. On Jan 1 2010 and dig up a section of road, to indicate that they are actually working. They park equipment on it (which necessitates the fees, since that equipment cannot be used elsewhere), place cones, etc, etc. They spend a few weeks accomplishing this. Traffic backs up. People get mad. Stuff doesn't happen. Every few months, you'll see a little bit of work being done, but you never see any notable progress. Then comes April 30, 2015. An amazing flurry of construction begins. If they're lucky, they don't have any unexpected problems (weather, increases in costs, etc), and by Dec 20, 2015 they've completed the job. Everyone goes home and has a nice holiday with their families.
What really came of that? A contracted paid on a day basis should have run for approx 150 days of continued work. Still, that was a $2,307,750 job. Yet, the taxpayers still paid the $20,000,000 for the work to be accomplished.
That, my son, is where your tax dollars go. It's not a mistake, or any sort of laziness by anyone in the system. It's simply the way it works.
And why didn't they go for the $24,000,600 goal? There may be something in the contract which would limit them from participating in future contracts if x% of previous contracts were overruns. It's a short term gain, but a long term loss. Sure, an extra $4 million in my company sounds good, but why not take another $20 million contract that only really costs about $2.3 million. That $17.7 million profit sounds really nice.
I serious oversimplified this. There are some factors like surveying; procurement of materials; re-engineering various aspects; finding Indian burial grounds along the proposed route; special interest groups tying things up with lawsuits and petitions (oh god, who gives a heck about the spotted red-headed cocksucker?); or a billion other things that can go wrong.
Some people get bent out of shape when they realize that their "free" license is being used by people other than their low paid peers. Oh my gosh, it's a big money rich group using it. They should pay! {sigh} If I give something away (which I do occasionally), it's free to reproduce at will. I do ask that I'm told if/when it's used in something.
I have a little proof of concept encryption thing online. I look through the Apache logs once in a while to see who's visiting. Quite a few research labs and somewhat secret gov't organizations have viewed it and downloaded the package. I'd like to know that it's being used in something practical, but I know they can't tell me. My best hope is that someday I'll have something interesting enough out there where they'll not only want to use my little bits of code that I make available, but be hired on to work with them. A little "hmmm, this guy seems to know a little something" would hopefully go a long way. :)
Am I going to cry if I find out that it's being used in the latest-greatest government initiative, or even as the new secure messing platform that Microsoft puts out with Windows 13? Nope. But if they do snag it and use it, I'll be more than happy to brag that up. Since mine is so simple, I seriously doubt anything beyond someone seeing it, thinking "that's a good idea", and writing their own code for it. But hey, if my functions show up in something big eventually, I'll be impressed. :)
None of that matters, until you find the hard part, down at the bottom of your volume. It's the whole secret of flying. Throw yourself at the ground and miss. As long as you're still doing the miss part, you don't have to worry about too much (except a stray bird or 747). Now, when you do fail at the miss part, things can get messy. Usually it's done in a pretty controlled manner, so it doesn't hurt too much. Just remember next time you take a flight somewhere, any landing is just a controlled crash. If you can walk away from it, it was a good one. Always thank your fight crew as you egress the aircraft.
The implication of "when in Egypt...." would mean someone there. Obviously, at a hotel or resort, you would expect to find more people from out of town than locals.
This whole thing can be taken as absolute BS though. The oldest publication I could find carrying this story was a polish paper, and they were citing thesun.co.uk. If anyone can make up their own news and publish it, it's them. They rank just up from the now defunct "Weekly World News", where the WWN stories usually included Bigfoot, Bat Boy, and various aliens. :)
At least they could have done more with the story. They must have just had a little space to fill, and were uninspired to make up a decent fictional story.
Which evidence? I've seen a few items, and although they weren't addressed as such, the facts were all there. They can't exactly have a list of rumors at the end and a snopes style dispute for each.
In searching for Fossett, they found numerous unreported or otherwise undocumented crashed planes. More than likely, any aviator who said that they "knew" it could happen were witnesses to another plane crashing, helped with the search and rescue of a fellow aviator, or simply accounted for the forces and the strength of small aircraft.
I had discussed this with some people who are very experienced aviators, and they all came to the same conclusion. It was most likely wind that brought him down. The second guess would be a mechanical failure and attempted crash landing. They ranked the second one way behind the first.
If I read the NTSB review correctly, his altimeter was reading above the mountain peaks, but adjusted for current temp and pressure that would put him a bit lower than them, which should have been ok. They lost radar contact with him approx 1km from the crash site. In that time, he went about 1km (obviously) and a dropped a few thousand feet.
The report does state that the entire plane was present at the accident site. Well, except for the burnt off parts. They indicate the wingtip lights were present, which would imply the wing came down with the plane. If they had broken off, they would have likely been found at a different location.
I'm sure he did everything he could. Sometimes that's just not enough, even for people who are really good. :(
I went to their site, and followed the intro text as a line of conversation. The first answer was vague, and it couldn't give me any intelligent answers after that. Since it was a demo, and didn't have a clear business application, I didn't know what questions I should ask to get a real response back.
The best it did was told me to log in, so I could create my own bot, and start programming it with what to say today. (oohh, wow.)
Well, if you went to their web site, you'd find that it's another absolutely stupid scripted assistance program, that uses keywords to return specific answers. {sigh}
Yup, a press release that snuck in as a tech story. Slashdot used to be so much better than this.
Well, ya, 50% more than it had been handling before. I see.
My concern was the percentage of totals. That was divided up by the available servers, and then each server was calculated to know it could handle. We had generally 3 classes of servers. They could be considered "old", "not so old", and "new". :) We didn't quite class them like that, but it would be a decent evaluation. If "old" could handle 1x, "not so old" could handle x2, and "new" could handle 3x. It wasn't uncommon for us to run a "new" server as 2x, and the lower two as 1x, but the capacity was there for the top two classes, should we need it.
It gets complicated until you see it working. I don't know if they're still using my methodology. I know things have changed since I left, and they aren't asking me any questions. Either I documented it well enough, it was intuitive enough, or they just gutted it and started over.
It would depend on the specific events surrounding said resurrection. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn't. It's not exactly like we can go to the scene and look for forensic evidence. "Oh look, there are fresh boot prints going in, and the same prints coming back out but deeper. That person was carrying something approximately 175 pounds, and the body is gone."
If you read up on it a little more, the whole pesky resurrection story doesn't show up in the older manuscripts. They're a roughly post 1600 addition. Sure, a few years and many hand made (and errored) and translated copies later. Who am I to question the word of it.
Whip me out a first edition bible, and I'll be more than happy to listen to the story.
Be quiet! They're going to hear you! Do you want to be killed for your heresy? Don't forget, you're mocking the same religion that invented the crusades. "Believe in our way, or we'll kill you!", do you remember that?
It's the wonders of leading a cult.
If you're telling the truth, you'll follow it to any end.
If you're lying, you'll say it so many times that even you will believe it, and follow it to any end.
If you're lying and don't believe it, your choices are to follow it, or be killed by your followers when they find out that you lied to them, so you follow it to any end.
You can't use a document as proof that the document is correct. Just because it says it in the bible doesn't mean that what it says in the bible is true. Before you come back with "there is plenty of proof.", provide the citations. Anything that predates the original book in question. We're still discussing a book where the oldest copy available was an nth generation hand copied version made at least a few hundred years after the events took place. This copy shows that the "modern" copy being used is wrong, and has been edited countless times to fit particular agendas.
If I were to write a book on the happenings of King Charles the VIII of France (arbitrary real person from history) now, based on what I may have found pieced together from other papers that were hand copied versions over hundreds of years, and stories passed down verbally through generations, do you think that account is going to be accurate? Hell, there are written witness accounts of a UFO battle over Germany in 1561, a 1680 French coin showing a UFO flying over the city, and ... well, others too.. There's more corroboration for those events that were recorded at least at a time close to the original event, and not hand copied over n-generations. Not that I believe most of the crap I read on the Internet, but you have to look at what is written and decide if the author knew what he was talking about. I provided those citations for a specific reason, which hopefully you'll understand.