But I've found that most women can't go for more than 3 to 4 hours. They'll be exhausted, and usually unable to speak or see straight, but have a huge smile on their faces.
So, take care of the distraction, and then you can get back to work. Just remember though, that was on your own personal time, so you'll have to work late to make up for it.
I'm glad someone else is aware of that project. It was in the early 60's. Search for "Operation Plowshare" and "Sedan Crater"
They were experimenting with opening up mountain passes. The nuke exceeded their expectations, but the area is still too hot (radioactively) for people to hang around in for too long. They do tours of the site, but the exposure is short enough to not be a real problem. These days, it equates to something like getting an X-ray at the hospital. If you were to break down there, it would be a good place to be stuck all day waiting for a tow truck, or have a route that runs you through it on a regular basis.
I used them once. They were all fine and dandy until I moved, then they were pissy with me. It was DSL service though. We moved about a mile, and ended up about 0.1 miles from the CO. They wouldn't service our new address, even though they said they would before we moved.
I guess I should explain the location better.
The first place was in a distant corner of the city. Literally the last house. Off one side of the house was grass and hills.
We moved down the hill a little bit, closer to town (by like 1 mile). I liked the location, because the CO building was right there. How could we go wrong? Nope, they couldn't service us. Two weeks of "we're working on it", and finally "We can't service you, but you owe for the rest of your contract." I moved there because they said they could service us. I arranged for the service to be moved the day before moving day. I wanted basically uninterrupted service. The day before moving day, when they shut off the old location, I packed up the computers.
They said I could transfer the service to someone else. I started talking to friends who needed faster service. Every place I picked "Oh we don't service there." I finally got someone senior on the phone and said "If you can't service me after your company said you could, and you can't service anyone I know, there's no way I can use your service. Provide me service, and I'll pay for the rest of my contract. Otherwise, back off." The conversation went on a lot longer than that, but finally I got my way. I wasn't very happy, their service was nice and fast.
One of our providers at work is wireless. It's a 12 story building, and we have clear line of sight to their tower about 3 miles away. Ping times over it are fine. It's better than the DSL service we have, but the best is a 100Mb/s handoff from a GigE fiber circuit that another provider has run to the building. They provide wireless service to other customers from the roof, so we're not wireless (that would be silly), but we have great service.
Even cell providers are ok, if you're in the right place. I've had anywhere between 10ms to 3000ms to the first hop, depending on where I was with a Verizon Wireless card.
We got a business Verizon FiOS line at a residence. Then again, it's the listed address for the business, and there was already a business phone line. It's a web development company out of the house. 20Mb/s up and down that isn't throttled is pretty nice.:)
I ran it up to speed when we first got it, and a few times after that, and yes, the speed is really there. They weren't delighted that I took out their router, and put a Cisco switch in instead, but there was no way I was going to pass 128 IP's through their stupid box. Our own firewall is in place now, that handles our security concerns.
They're not throttling. Their network layout sucks. You suffer because 3 neighbor kids are downloading porn. Then again, you may be the cause of that, and everyone else hates you.:)
Most criminals are stupid. At least the ones you hear about getting caught. The smart ones do it where not only don't they get caught, but the victims frequently don't even know it happened for quite a while.:)
Daytime bank robbery must be one of the stupidest ones. Armed security guard. Customers in and out. Silent alarms. Video surveillance. Can you pick a worse target? Yet, people still do it.
Ahh, you hit it first try.:) I did like your other response though.:)
Most patrol cars that I've seen have not just a trunked radio, but they also have an onboard computer with a wireless network card. The one I had a chance to have a good look at years ago wasn't your regular cell network card. It used their own network on a frequency I hadn't seen used for anything else. Ahhh, your signal.
Have a good look at the back of a patrol car next time you're stopped behind one in traffic. They usually have several antennas.
So, isolate the frequencies used by your local law enforcement. More than likely the voice/trunk radio traffic will be bursty (only on when they're transmitting), but the data traffic will be constant. My guess would be, you'd be able to hear it even when they're out of range. I would suspect, just like cell phones, they broadcast trying to reconnect to the tower, even when the tower can't hear them.
Ok, I just went looking. Florida uses a SLERS system, for inter-departmental communication, so any agency can respond to any area in Florida and be able to communicate with each other. It works on an "Encrypted digital 800Mhz" frequency.
Apparently, DHS has gotten the FCC to reserve the 800Mhz band for "public safety". I was just skimming to see what parts of the band they're using. It appears there are 4 very definite ranges. I believe it's 2 for transmit from the towers, and two for transmit from the mobile units. I could be wrong though, and one pair could be car to base, and one pair for the microwave relays. In any case, if you can isolate the frequencies and warn when something is close, then you'd be notified. Like, have a HAM radio scanner with that frequency range locked in, and your squelch set to only hear things close by (say 1 mile). Any time a patrol got within 1 mile, you'd hear the encrypted traffic.
If you got really fancy with it, it would be an excellent tracking system. Two diverse antennas would give you two possible locations. If you're using omnidirectional antennas, you'll just know when one gets close, and have a vague idea of about where they are. It would be where the blobs intersect, and you can base distance on received signal strength. It would give you two most likely points, and a decent size area of potential location (where the circles cross at that transmit power)
With sweeping antennas, you could get two vectors. Now from each antenna, you could get a rough idea of distance, and the direction they're at. A car based one wouldn't be ideal, there isn't enough distance to put them off of. With two antennas, even 20 feet apart (assuming a land yacht), and a 4 degree beam width antenna, that still leaves plenty of room for error. If you could have three antennas at a good fixed distance (like say 0.5 miles apart), with a full sweep at 1 second, you'd get a good idea of where they are. the problem there then becomes altitude. You need your antennas to be fairly high to avoid physical obstacles (houses, trees, the neighbors SUV parked in front of your antenna), which means your beam width needs to be wider. Also, if you are in a hilly area, or want to pick up LEO aircraft (helicopters come to mind), looking at the ground at a distance doesn't work well. If you're a little too high, with a good shot at the distance, you may see them at a mile, but wouldn't know if they pulled up in front of your house, or 3 blocks over raiding your neighbors place growing pot (or a courtesy call. It happens).
Even with frequency hopping, which I'm sure they use, if you picked up a 3 second burst of traffic on a single frequency, you'd be able to hear that on all receiving points, and identify the location, direction o
When I was a kid, we joked about marking all the patrol cars with a beacon.:) If you were within say a mile or so, your receiver would start beeping. Say goodbye to speeding tickets.
I suspect if they get widely deployed, they'll just send GPS coordinates encoded over the in-car data networks, rather than just being an easily trackable beacon.
At least here in America (and I assume everywhere) they're suppose to call in for everything they do. It helps to track them, in case something happens.
If they're 10-6 McDonalds, either they're grabbing a bite to eat, or taking a shit.
If they're 10-7, they just went off-duty.
If they're 10-8, they just came back on duty.
There are some confusing ones. 10-9 may mean "please repeat", but 10-99 may mean "officer taken hostage".
Because of the inaccuracy of 10 codes (they mean different things in different places), they are suppose to be replaced by plain english phrases. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina made it difficult for different departments to work together. What may be shots fired, victim needs medical attention, may mean routine traffic stop in another. If you're involved in a shooting, it'd be nice to get backup, rather than assume you're doing a route traffic stop.
10 codes were great for short messages to avoid congestion of common frequencies (like from all cars to dispatch), but now most departments are trunked, and the radios are much clearer. Another reason is so the person you're standing in front of doesn't know what you're talking about. Say you were taken hostage in a bank robbery, where the silent alarm wasn't it. It'd be simple to tell the robber "I need to check in, so dispatch doesn't worry." "Dispatch, I'm 10-99 at First National Bank.", and make it sound like you're just cashing a check. Now you've not given away your real intent (HELP!) and the robber thinks all is clear for a while until the SWAT team shows up.
You know, I agree with you. They run the news, and a practical commentary, even if it has jokes in it.
Broadcast news is suppose to run unbiased news. They spew facts. Commentators have their own shows where they babble about the news, but their agendas are usually way off from reality.
The comedy news shows have no sense of "we have to...." They do what plays well for the audience. So, their audience likes hearing about current events, AND getting that person's opinion on them at the same time.
I'd love to see, but I know it wouldn't happen, for a major network nightly news anchor to say how they feel.
"North Korea launches communication satellite. Japan and the UN stand by cautiously.
What the fuck? The difference between a rocket with a satellite on top, and a rocket with a ICBM warhead targeting Europe, is just what they put on the top. My crazy ex changed her hair color from red to green. Just because she had green hair didn't make her any less dangerous. "
The major networks would give the first line. I'm sure many of their anchors want to say more, but it's a huge game, involving the government, advertisers, and viewers. Can they risk their viewership, or offend advertisers? Hell no. If the viewers leave, the ratings drop, and the advertisers go away. If the advertisers are offended, they go away. And, if the government is offended, the station or network can be fined to oblivion.
It's the old business calculated risk. They have a working format, that's worked for decades, they can't change it. So, they read nice, sanitized news that makes everyone happy and at least somewhat informed. The comedians get their news from anywhere they can, and say how they feel. In that, the comedians end up with the more informative news.
Of course, comedians also get to cherry pick their news. On my site, I get to pick what I write on (like, because it's mine), but the other staff fill in the blanks. The blanks are huge most of the time. The other editor cherry picks what he wants to comment on, but other than that, it's bland news. Watch your local nightly news, and really look at the anchors. Their minds are turned off, and they're just smiling and reading the teleprompter. You can spot it when they're reading, and smiling, and without change continue with "and in other news, 14 died, mostly women and children in a tragic explosion at an orphanage. And now sports with Bob..."
You shouldn't have posted anonymously. Thats reserved for annoyances.:)
You're actually right.
This was a stupid assumption. First, why do they have the power grid systems available via the public internet?! Do you want Homer Simpson surfing the net from the reactor monitoring systems? I've always felt more comfortable with him just drinking coffee and eating doughnuts.:)
Is every person who tries to get into a system from another country a spy? Hell, the spies are after my equipment too! Oh no! I see foreign IP's trying to connect to various access ports (like, telnet, SSH, FTP). Oh my gosh, the spys are after us. Oh wait, maybe they are people trying to get in, but I'm pretty sure none of my equipment is related to any critical infrastructure.:) They're just trying to get into anywhere they can. From what I've seen, they'll either try to deface websites, or run IRC bots, or stage to launch secondary attacks to do one of the previous two. Some will (oh my gosh) try to pull billing information, so they can use credit cards. Again, it's not an evil foreign nation doing it, it's someone trying to make (steal) a buck.
Really, if you don't have a good look at what they're doing, you can't just assume that their attacks are to control or disrupt the service that you run. That is unless you have the firm belief that the world rotates around you.
They only cite ONE incident where a power grid was taken control of, and extortion money was requested. Governments don't do extortion. Well, not blatantly. They could seize control preceding an attack. Has China or Russia staged for a ground attack on American soil? That's news to me. They could use it to destabilize a government or population. Who is to gain in China messes up America? They're well invested in America now, it's in their best interest to ensure America is a stable economic country so they can make their money selling us cheap imports. If the power grid becomes unstable, people are going to be concerned about that, not going to Walmart to buy more Chinese made crap.
I'm really surprised that they'd do anything over the public Internet. Why isn't it all run over private loops? Internet based, sure, but not actually accessible via the public Internet.
This is just scare tactics. Unfortunately, it's going to work for 99% of the American population. "Oh my gosh, the Communists are coming!" I know I'm preaching to the choir here though.
I know exactly what you mean about the withdrawal.
For me, with only drinking about 2 liters/day (I'm a thirsty boy), if I just stop, I get agonizing headaches. Like, I can't think straight. I can't see straight (eyes crossing). Any sound hurts my ears. Almost any light hurts my eyes. They start setting in with a light headache at 8 to 12 hours, and by about 16 hours I'm done for.
I stopped once. I refused to drink any caffeine. I was at a friends place when the worst symptoms came on. I was curled up on her couch, face into the back of it, with my ears covered. It barely helped, but at least I didn't have to see or hear anything. Apparently I was whining too, because my head felt like it was exploding. With the headache brought nausea, so I may as well have been dying. I felt like I was going to explode from inside. She actually brought me a glass of soda and politely said (drink this, or I'll start screaming and hitting you in the head. It took about 15 minutes, but that brought me back to normalish.
It's not impossible to quit though.:) I did quit once. I went on a fitness kick. I stopped drinking soda, fast food, and junk food. I brought my caloric intake way down, and was working out hard every day. I was in good shape. Then I was in a car accident, and my doctor specifically said "don't work out, you'll hurt yourself worse." But doc, I've worked hard to get into really good shape. Nope, nothing harder than sitting in an office chair for me for about 6 months. I got lazy and started drinking soda's again.
I really need to start eating right again, and working out. I haven't gained any weight, but I'm not buff any more. At least I'm still strong enough to hold my own in a fight with most folks.:) Good thing I look like I have that attitude too, so I don't actually have to fight.:)
Just because they are wrong doesn't mean they can't threaten you, and even drag you into court. If you can't afford to play it through in court, then you lose. It's a common legal tactic.
The unfortunate downside to that is, local news is usually boring. In traveling around the US and Canada, watching the local news is amazingly boring. The "best" parts are frequently the fluff pieces.
"Local firefighters saved 56 kitties from trees this month"
"Martha's Pancake house goes for world record flapjack"
With some luck, something exciting will have happened, and they always stretch it out. On broadcast news, they announce it at the beginning, repeat the fact that it's coming up throughout the broadcast, and finally do the 30 second spot just before the end.
For quite a few years now, local news that would be remotely interesting has made national news (via wire services, of course), so even when I've gone to a new city, I was already caught up. Sometimes I will have read it first online, so by the time it makes print or radio, it's already old news.
I have a story up in my office, clipped out of a local tabliod.
It's this photo (from AP, of course). At least our local headline was better than average. "Can't help but notice the cig still in his mouth":) The text on my print copy is the same as on the story with the link.
IMHO, it all started when the newspapers started to favor the wire services over their own reporting. They had to pay into it anyways, and paying the wire service fees could be cheaper than providing your reporter a desk, car, phone, etc, etc, etc. Oh ya, and their paycheck.
Most websites and even print papers, are full of wire stories that they didn't originate. Those stories did start somewhere, but.....
Then again, how many papers, TV stations, and web publications need to send their own reporters out to cover the same story? It's cheaper and easier to send one out and let everyone copy the story for a few bucks (going to AP/Reuters/UPI/or whoever)
AP wants to not only be paid, but paid well. They have base fees, plus in at least this story they would require at least $17.50. But, every time someone quotes the original article, that would add onto the fees. If there are more than 250 words, the fee is $10.
I'm pretty sure that Slashdot is not an AP affiliate, and not paying the AP dues. Even if you go as low as only quoting $5, they want their cut. That includes quoting the title. If you simply post "I found the story How to squeeze every penny out of a failing economy", that makes them $12.50.
Then again, I just made up that title, so hopefully it wouldn't count for much. But, if they then run a story titled that, and can predate it so it appears to have come before this posting, it's my word against their team of lawyers. When Slashdot gets the C&D, this post would be deleted.
The AP method doesn't necessarily reflect the gray area of "fair use", but can you afford the lawyers to fight it over with them?
Funny thing, if I stuck $100 under my mattress 10 years ago, I still have $100.
They had $100, that could have become $10,000, but is now worth $1.25.:)
I look at it kinda like Vegas. If you play, you get free drinks. If you're a high roller, you get your room comped, among other things.
I sat down, and played a few games. When you play, you get free drinks. Cards are high stress, where other players get very upset when they lose and I win. Slots are... well... just a waste of energy. All in all, while you're playing, you get free drinks, but you're losing more than the drinks are worth. I evaluated the situation carefully, and figured out the better option. If I sit down at the bar and pay for my drinks, I still see people coming through. I still get the atmosphere, without emptying my wallet. I can drink and it costs me the drinks. I can go to shows and have fun, and when I leave, I still have money in my pocket.
With the stock market, there are no drinks. There are no hot chicks serving the drinks. There are no shows. There aren't even prostitutes chatting you up between high roller moments.
Why the hell would someone play the stock market. It's higher stress in something that you can't really win at. Your money isn't even tied up in the odds that the casino gives. They're tied to emotions of every other stock trader and sometimes even the performance of the business that you gambled on. Screw that.
I started the day today with $200 in my pocket. I came home with $192. I bought my own lunch. There still isn't such a thing as a free lunch, no matter what people say. At the end of the day, I had nothing to do with the economic collapse of America. I worked. I got paid. I even spent $8 for lunch, which went to a small privately owned shop, not to big corporate America.
Actually, the first line you quoted, I had intended to imply that it's the large metro ISP that would have the problem with script kiddies, not your own.:) The ISP's nameservers are absolutely pounded on, while others aren't.
It's actually kind of funny, on my old network, with well over a million daily viewers on a slow day, and more attacks than I care to consider, and our nameservers were never amazing hardware. Fast enough to do the job. Slow enough to not be able to handle any other real jobs.:) And those nameservers were always blazing fast compared to any ISP's nameservers I used. Of course, just being authoritative for tens of thousands of domains is pretty easy compared to being the recursive resolver for several hundred thousand legitimate users and a few thousand script kiddie.:) Even though we had what I was told was an insanely short TTL (5 minutes) so we could make changes quickly, over 100 servers using them for resolution, and a few dozen real human users (like myself), they were still amazingly fast.
I never had an ISP hijack my DNS traffic, but I did have some with evil traffic shaping. Using a PPP over SSH tunnel to work (it was quick to do, and worked wonderfully) got around those pesky problems. I actually had a more reliable connection with that, with some well scripted monitoring, than any VPN I've used since.:) I had better transfer rates over that, than I did without it, even using the machine I was using for the tunnel as my endpoint for both tests. Oh ya, and I tested frequently.:)
But in the broken window theory, the money the shop owner had originally could have gone to other needs. Instead of purchasing a new window (and the trail it follows), he may have bought a goat to provide milk to his family, in turn using the money he saved on buying milk to buy other things. (blah, blah, blah).
The whole broken window theory just forces money from one place, (the shop owner), and puts it somewhere else. The idea is driven by the idea that someone who can afford to own a business has more money than they need, and the people of lower economic stature deserve it. It's just about as economically sound as Robin Hood.
If Manhattan was overcome with water (say a 2' MSL rise, a 5' high tide, and an 8' storm surge, rather than the evil 10' global warming MSL rise), over a million people could be without power, transportation, food deliveries, and their housing may not be safe for months or years. Sure, it's good for the economy, if someone can afford to fix it. Look at how well New Orleans has recovered. It's been almost 4 years, and they're still far from "recovered". Please reference my previously linked article for more information on what could happen to Manhattan.
But hey, who cares, I live on high ground, right?:)
Right now, I couldn't see rebuilding one major metro area, either in situ or elsewhere. Besides the financial "how do you pay for labor and supplies", the new problem becomes, how do you get the supplies to where they're needed? If trucks can't come over bridges that no longer exist, highways and railroad lines are closed, and the ports are under water... well... A tarp and a few sticks make a nice lean-to.
If every user ran their own nameservers at home, that would put a tremendous load on the root nameservers. It's probably something they can handle, but still not very nice. It also puts some load
Going through a common nameserver (like your ISP) lets them cache the responses, so even though you haven't resolved a name before, someone else may have, reducing the load.
Unfortunately, large ISP's don't necessarily put the budget they should into nameservers. Some of that fault lies with end users. How many script kiddies could possibly be on a large provider in a large metro area, sharing your nameservers?:) Think of the "what domain isn't registered" game, searching through every letter/number combination there is.
I prefer to have my own good ones at work. I lose a little from latency from home to work, but I make up a lot where those nameservers are rarely under much load. They do a lot of work, and answer a lot of queries, but nothing like the numbers a large metro ISP can do.:)
If a person had $10k in the account, and it's suddenly $1m, spend it. Even if they have to resell tomorrow, maybe (just maybe) they'll turn a quick profit. so, you only get 1$ on that $1m, now you've just doubled your real starting capital.
The big boys play this game all the time. They play with imaginary money, to make real money. It just burns them sometimes too.
Actually, I was thinking more like better designed population centers away from the coastline, with more of an aim towards self sufficiency. With encouragement for people to move to the better nicer places, which could operate cleaner than our existing cities, we'd not only have a chance to fix a lot of broken things, but we'd be able to reduce our pollution output, so the ocean side problem wouldn't be one. But once the coastal areas are properly cleaned, they'd be a beautiful place to visit.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, yes.
But I've found that most women can't go for more than 3 to 4 hours. They'll be exhausted, and usually unable to speak or see straight, but have a huge smile on their faces.
So, take care of the distraction, and then you can get back to work. Just remember though, that was on your own personal time, so you'll have to work late to make up for it.
I'm glad someone else is aware of that project. It was in the early 60's. Search for "Operation Plowshare" and "Sedan Crater"
They were experimenting with opening up mountain passes. The nuke exceeded their expectations, but the area is still too hot (radioactively) for people to hang around in for too long. They do tours of the site, but the exposure is short enough to not be a real problem. These days, it equates to something like getting an X-ray at the hospital. If you were to break down there, it would be a good place to be stuck all day waiting for a tow truck, or have a route that runs you through it on a regular basis.
I used them once. They were all fine and dandy until I moved, then they were pissy with me. It was DSL service though. We moved about a mile, and ended up about 0.1 miles from the CO. They wouldn't service our new address, even though they said they would before we moved.
I guess I should explain the location better.
The first place was in a distant corner of the city. Literally the last house. Off one side of the house was grass and hills.
We moved down the hill a little bit, closer to town (by like 1 mile). I liked the location, because the CO building was right there. How could we go wrong? Nope, they couldn't service us. Two weeks of "we're working on it", and finally "We can't service you, but you owe for the rest of your contract." I moved there because they said they could service us. I arranged for the service to be moved the day before moving day. I wanted basically uninterrupted service. The day before moving day, when they shut off the old location, I packed up the computers.
They said I could transfer the service to someone else. I started talking to friends who needed faster service. Every place I picked "Oh we don't service there." I finally got someone senior on the phone and said "If you can't service me after your company said you could, and you can't service anyone I know, there's no way I can use your service. Provide me service, and I'll pay for the rest of my contract. Otherwise, back off." The conversation went on a lot longer than that, but finally I got my way. I wasn't very happy, their service was nice and fast.
It depends on where you are, who you use, etc.
One of our providers at work is wireless. It's a 12 story building, and we have clear line of sight to their tower about 3 miles away. Ping times over it are fine. It's better than the DSL service we have, but the best is a 100Mb/s handoff from a GigE fiber circuit that another provider has run to the building. They provide wireless service to other customers from the roof, so we're not wireless (that would be silly), but we have great service.
Even cell providers are ok, if you're in the right place. I've had anywhere between 10ms to 3000ms to the first hop, depending on where I was with a Verizon Wireless card.
We got a business Verizon FiOS line at a residence. Then again, it's the listed address for the business, and there was already a business phone line. It's a web development company out of the house. 20Mb/s up and down that isn't throttled is pretty nice. :)
I ran it up to speed when we first got it, and a few times after that, and yes, the speed is really there. They weren't delighted that I took out their router, and put a Cisco switch in instead, but there was no way I was going to pass 128 IP's through their stupid box. Our own firewall is in place now, that handles our security concerns.
They're not throttling. Their network layout sucks. You suffer because 3 neighbor kids are downloading porn. Then again, you may be the cause of that, and everyone else hates you. :)
Most criminals are stupid. At least the ones you hear about getting caught. The smart ones do it where not only don't they get caught, but the victims frequently don't even know it happened for quite a while. :)
Daytime bank robbery must be one of the stupidest ones. Armed security guard. Customers in and out. Silent alarms. Video surveillance. Can you pick a worse target? Yet, people still do it.
Ahh, you hit it first try. :) I did like your other response though. :)
Most patrol cars that I've seen have not just a trunked radio, but they also have an onboard computer with a wireless network card. The one I had a chance to have a good look at years ago wasn't your regular cell network card. It used their own network on a frequency I hadn't seen used for anything else. Ahhh, your signal.
Have a good look at the back of a patrol car next time you're stopped behind one in traffic. They usually have several antennas.
So, isolate the frequencies used by your local law enforcement. More than likely the voice/trunk radio traffic will be bursty (only on when they're transmitting), but the data traffic will be constant. My guess would be, you'd be able to hear it even when they're out of range. I would suspect, just like cell phones, they broadcast trying to reconnect to the tower, even when the tower can't hear them.
Ok, I just went looking. Florida uses a SLERS system, for inter-departmental communication, so any agency can respond to any area in Florida and be able to communicate with each other. It works on an "Encrypted digital 800Mhz" frequency.
Apparently, DHS has gotten the FCC to reserve the 800Mhz band for "public safety". I was just skimming to see what parts of the band they're using. It appears there are 4 very definite ranges. I believe it's 2 for transmit from the towers, and two for transmit from the mobile units. I could be wrong though, and one pair could be car to base, and one pair for the microwave relays. In any case, if you can isolate the frequencies and warn when something is close, then you'd be notified. Like, have a HAM radio scanner with that frequency range locked in, and your squelch set to only hear things close by (say 1 mile). Any time a patrol got within 1 mile, you'd hear the encrypted traffic.
If you got really fancy with it, it would be an excellent tracking system. Two diverse antennas would give you two possible locations. If you're using omnidirectional antennas, you'll just know when one gets close, and have a vague idea of about where they are. It would be where the blobs intersect, and you can base distance on received signal strength. It would give you two most likely points, and a decent size area of potential location (where the circles cross at that transmit power)
With sweeping antennas, you could get two vectors. Now from each antenna, you could get a rough idea of distance, and the direction they're at. A car based one wouldn't be ideal, there isn't enough distance to put them off of. With two antennas, even 20 feet apart (assuming a land yacht), and a 4 degree beam width antenna, that still leaves plenty of room for error. If you could have three antennas at a good fixed distance (like say 0.5 miles apart), with a full sweep at 1 second, you'd get a good idea of where they are. the problem there then becomes altitude. You need your antennas to be fairly high to avoid physical obstacles (houses, trees, the neighbors SUV parked in front of your antenna), which means your beam width needs to be wider. Also, if you are in a hilly area, or want to pick up LEO aircraft (helicopters come to mind), looking at the ground at a distance doesn't work well. If you're a little too high, with a good shot at the distance, you may see them at a mile, but wouldn't know if they pulled up in front of your house, or 3 blocks over raiding your neighbors place growing pot (or a courtesy call. It happens).
Even with frequency hopping, which I'm sure they use, if you picked up a 3 second burst of traffic on a single frequency, you'd be able to hear that on all receiving points, and identify the location, direction o
When I was a kid, we joked about marking all the patrol cars with a beacon. :) If you were within say a mile or so, your receiver would start beeping. Say goodbye to speeding tickets.
I suspect if they get widely deployed, they'll just send GPS coordinates encoded over the in-car data networks, rather than just being an easily trackable beacon.
At least here in America (and I assume everywhere) they're suppose to call in for everything they do. It helps to track them, in case something happens.
If they're 10-6 McDonalds, either they're grabbing a bite to eat, or taking a shit.
If they're 10-7, they just went off-duty.
If they're 10-8, they just came back on duty.
There are some confusing ones. 10-9 may mean "please repeat", but 10-99 may mean "officer taken hostage".
Because of the inaccuracy of 10 codes (they mean different things in different places), they are suppose to be replaced by plain english phrases. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina made it difficult for different departments to work together. What may be shots fired, victim needs medical attention, may mean routine traffic stop in another. If you're involved in a shooting, it'd be nice to get backup, rather than assume you're doing a route traffic stop.
10 codes were great for short messages to avoid congestion of common frequencies (like from all cars to dispatch), but now most departments are trunked, and the radios are much clearer. Another reason is so the person you're standing in front of doesn't know what you're talking about. Say you were taken hostage in a bank robbery, where the silent alarm wasn't it. It'd be simple to tell the robber "I need to check in, so dispatch doesn't worry." "Dispatch, I'm 10-99 at First National Bank.", and make it sound like you're just cashing a check. Now you've not given away your real intent (HELP!) and the robber thinks all is clear for a while until the SWAT team shows up.
Oh, did I digress? Sorry.
You know, I agree with you. They run the news, and a practical commentary, even if it has jokes in it.
Broadcast news is suppose to run unbiased news. They spew facts. Commentators have their own shows where they babble about the news, but their agendas are usually way off from reality.
The comedy news shows have no sense of "we have to...." They do what plays well for the audience. So, their audience likes hearing about current events, AND getting that person's opinion on them at the same time.
I'd love to see, but I know it wouldn't happen, for a major network nightly news anchor to say how they feel.
"North Korea launches communication satellite. Japan and the UN stand by cautiously.
What the fuck? The difference between a rocket with a satellite on top, and a rocket with a ICBM warhead targeting Europe, is just what they put on the top. My crazy ex changed her hair color from red to green. Just because she had green hair didn't make her any less dangerous. "
The major networks would give the first line. I'm sure many of their anchors want to say more, but it's a huge game, involving the government, advertisers, and viewers. Can they risk their viewership, or offend advertisers? Hell no. If the viewers leave, the ratings drop, and the advertisers go away. If the advertisers are offended, they go away. And, if the government is offended, the station or network can be fined to oblivion.
It's the old business calculated risk. They have a working format, that's worked for decades, they can't change it. So, they read nice, sanitized news that makes everyone happy and at least somewhat informed. The comedians get their news from anywhere they can, and say how they feel. In that, the comedians end up with the more informative news.
Of course, comedians also get to cherry pick their news. On my site, I get to pick what I write on (like, because it's mine), but the other staff fill in the blanks. The blanks are huge most of the time. The other editor cherry picks what he wants to comment on, but other than that, it's bland news. Watch your local nightly news, and really look at the anchors. Their minds are turned off, and they're just smiling and reading the teleprompter. You can spot it when they're reading, and smiling, and without change continue with "and in other news, 14 died, mostly women and children in a tragic explosion at an orphanage. And now sports with Bob..."
You shouldn't have posted anonymously. Thats reserved for annoyances. :)
You're actually right.
This was a stupid assumption. First, why do they have the power grid systems available via the public internet?! Do you want Homer Simpson surfing the net from the reactor monitoring systems? I've always felt more comfortable with him just drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. :)
Is every person who tries to get into a system from another country a spy? Hell, the spies are after my equipment too! Oh no! I see foreign IP's trying to connect to various access ports (like, telnet, SSH, FTP). Oh my gosh, the spys are after us. Oh wait, maybe they are people trying to get in, but I'm pretty sure none of my equipment is related to any critical infrastructure. :) They're just trying to get into anywhere they can. From what I've seen, they'll either try to deface websites, or run IRC bots, or stage to launch secondary attacks to do one of the previous two. Some will (oh my gosh) try to pull billing information, so they can use credit cards. Again, it's not an evil foreign nation doing it, it's someone trying to make (steal) a buck.
Really, if you don't have a good look at what they're doing, you can't just assume that their attacks are to control or disrupt the service that you run. That is unless you have the firm belief that the world rotates around you.
They only cite ONE incident where a power grid was taken control of, and extortion money was requested. Governments don't do extortion. Well, not blatantly. They could seize control preceding an attack. Has China or Russia staged for a ground attack on American soil? That's news to me. They could use it to destabilize a government or population. Who is to gain in China messes up America? They're well invested in America now, it's in their best interest to ensure America is a stable economic country so they can make their money selling us cheap imports. If the power grid becomes unstable, people are going to be concerned about that, not going to Walmart to buy more Chinese made crap.
I'm really surprised that they'd do anything over the public Internet. Why isn't it all run over private loops? Internet based, sure, but not actually accessible via the public Internet.
This is just scare tactics. Unfortunately, it's going to work for 99% of the American population. "Oh my gosh, the Communists are coming!" I know I'm preaching to the choir here though.
I know exactly what you mean about the withdrawal.
For me, with only drinking about 2 liters/day (I'm a thirsty boy), if I just stop, I get agonizing headaches. Like, I can't think straight. I can't see straight (eyes crossing). Any sound hurts my ears. Almost any light hurts my eyes. They start setting in with a light headache at 8 to 12 hours, and by about 16 hours I'm done for.
I stopped once. I refused to drink any caffeine. I was at a friends place when the worst symptoms came on. I was curled up on her couch, face into the back of it, with my ears covered. It barely helped, but at least I didn't have to see or hear anything. Apparently I was whining too, because my head felt like it was exploding. With the headache brought nausea, so I may as well have been dying. I felt like I was going to explode from inside. She actually brought me a glass of soda and politely said (drink this, or I'll start screaming and hitting you in the head. It took about 15 minutes, but that brought me back to normalish.
It's not impossible to quit though. :) I did quit once. I went on a fitness kick. I stopped drinking soda, fast food, and junk food. I brought my caloric intake way down, and was working out hard every day. I was in good shape. Then I was in a car accident, and my doctor specifically said "don't work out, you'll hurt yourself worse." But doc, I've worked hard to get into really good shape. Nope, nothing harder than sitting in an office chair for me for about 6 months. I got lazy and started drinking soda's again.
I really need to start eating right again, and working out. I haven't gained any weight, but I'm not buff any more. At least I'm still strong enough to hold my own in a fight with most folks. :) Good thing I look like I have that attitude too, so I don't actually have to fight. :)
Just because they are wrong doesn't mean they can't threaten you, and even drag you into court. If you can't afford to play it through in court, then you lose. It's a common legal tactic.
The unfortunate downside to that is, local news is usually boring. In traveling around the US and Canada, watching the local news is amazingly boring. The "best" parts are frequently the fluff pieces.
"Local firefighters saved 56 kitties from trees this month"
"Martha's Pancake house goes for world record flapjack"
With some luck, something exciting will have happened, and they always stretch it out. On broadcast news, they announce it at the beginning, repeat the fact that it's coming up throughout the broadcast, and finally do the 30 second spot just before the end.
For quite a few years now, local news that would be remotely interesting has made national news (via wire services, of course), so even when I've gone to a new city, I was already caught up. Sometimes I will have read it first online, so by the time it makes print or radio, it's already old news.
I have a story up in my office, clipped out of a local tabliod.
It's this photo (from AP, of course). At least our local headline was better than average. "Can't help but notice the cig still in his mouth" :) The text on my print copy is the same as on the story with the link.
IMHO, it all started when the newspapers started to favor the wire services over their own reporting. They had to pay into it anyways, and paying the wire service fees could be cheaper than providing your reporter a desk, car, phone, etc, etc, etc. Oh ya, and their paycheck.
Most websites and even print papers, are full of wire stories that they didn't originate. Those stories did start somewhere, but.....
Then again, how many papers, TV stations, and web publications need to send their own reporters out to cover the same story? It's cheaper and easier to send one out and let everyone copy the story for a few bucks (going to AP/Reuters/UPI/or whoever)
I've done some reading on the matter.
AP wants to not only be paid, but paid well. They have base fees, plus in at least this story they would require at least $17.50. But, every time someone quotes the original article, that would add onto the fees. If there are more than 250 words, the fee is $10.
I'm pretty sure that Slashdot is not an AP affiliate, and not paying the AP dues. Even if you go as low as only quoting $5, they want their cut. That includes quoting the title. If you simply post "I found the story How to squeeze every penny out of a failing economy", that makes them $12.50.
Then again, I just made up that title, so hopefully it wouldn't count for much. But, if they then run a story titled that, and can predate it so it appears to have come before this posting, it's my word against their team of lawyers. When Slashdot gets the C&D, this post would be deleted.
The AP method doesn't necessarily reflect the gray area of "fair use", but can you afford the lawyers to fight it over with them?
Statistics are a fun think. 98.51% of all statistics are completely made up.
(including this one)
Exactly.
Funny thing, if I stuck $100 under my mattress 10 years ago, I still have $100.
They had $100, that could have become $10,000, but is now worth $1.25. :)
I look at it kinda like Vegas. If you play, you get free drinks. If you're a high roller, you get your room comped, among other things.
I sat down, and played a few games. When you play, you get free drinks. Cards are high stress, where other players get very upset when they lose and I win. Slots are ... well ... just a waste of energy. All in all, while you're playing, you get free drinks, but you're losing more than the drinks are worth. I evaluated the situation carefully, and figured out the better option. If I sit down at the bar and pay for my drinks, I still see people coming through. I still get the atmosphere, without emptying my wallet. I can drink and it costs me the drinks. I can go to shows and have fun, and when I leave, I still have money in my pocket.
With the stock market, there are no drinks. There are no hot chicks serving the drinks. There are no shows. There aren't even prostitutes chatting you up between high roller moments.
Why the hell would someone play the stock market. It's higher stress in something that you can't really win at. Your money isn't even tied up in the odds that the casino gives. They're tied to emotions of every other stock trader and sometimes even the performance of the business that you gambled on. Screw that.
I started the day today with $200 in my pocket. I came home with $192. I bought my own lunch. There still isn't such a thing as a free lunch, no matter what people say. At the end of the day, I had nothing to do with the economic collapse of America. I worked. I got paid. I even spent $8 for lunch, which went to a small privately owned shop, not to big corporate America.
Actually, the first line you quoted, I had intended to imply that it's the large metro ISP that would have the problem with script kiddies, not your own. :) The ISP's nameservers are absolutely pounded on, while others aren't.
It's actually kind of funny, on my old network, with well over a million daily viewers on a slow day, and more attacks than I care to consider, and our nameservers were never amazing hardware. Fast enough to do the job. Slow enough to not be able to handle any other real jobs. :) And those nameservers were always blazing fast compared to any ISP's nameservers I used. Of course, just being authoritative for tens of thousands of domains is pretty easy compared to being the recursive resolver for several hundred thousand legitimate users and a few thousand script kiddie. :) Even though we had what I was told was an insanely short TTL (5 minutes) so we could make changes quickly, over 100 servers using them for resolution, and a few dozen real human users (like myself), they were still amazingly fast.
I never had an ISP hijack my DNS traffic, but I did have some with evil traffic shaping. Using a PPP over SSH tunnel to work (it was quick to do, and worked wonderfully) got around those pesky problems. I actually had a more reliable connection with that, with some well scripted monitoring, than any VPN I've used since. :) I had better transfer rates over that, than I did without it, even using the machine I was using for the tunnel as my endpoint for both tests. Oh ya, and I tested frequently. :)
Good try.
But in the broken window theory, the money the shop owner had originally could have gone to other needs. Instead of purchasing a new window (and the trail it follows), he may have bought a goat to provide milk to his family, in turn using the money he saved on buying milk to buy other things. (blah, blah, blah).
The whole broken window theory just forces money from one place, (the shop owner), and puts it somewhere else. The idea is driven by the idea that someone who can afford to own a business has more money than they need, and the people of lower economic stature deserve it. It's just about as economically sound as Robin Hood.
If Manhattan was overcome with water (say a 2' MSL rise, a 5' high tide, and an 8' storm surge, rather than the evil 10' global warming MSL rise), over a million people could be without power, transportation, food deliveries, and their housing may not be safe for months or years. Sure, it's good for the economy, if someone can afford to fix it. Look at how well New Orleans has recovered. It's been almost 4 years, and they're still far from "recovered". Please reference my previously linked article for more information on what could happen to Manhattan.
But hey, who cares, I live on high ground, right? :)
Right now, I couldn't see rebuilding one major metro area, either in situ or elsewhere. Besides the financial "how do you pay for labor and supplies", the new problem becomes, how do you get the supplies to where they're needed? If trucks can't come over bridges that no longer exist, highways and railroad lines are closed, and the ports are under water ... well ... A tarp and a few sticks make a nice lean-to.
Well, it goes a little something like this.
If every user ran their own nameservers at home, that would put a tremendous load on the root nameservers. It's probably something they can handle, but still not very nice. It also puts some load
Going through a common nameserver (like your ISP) lets them cache the responses, so even though you haven't resolved a name before, someone else may have, reducing the load.
Unfortunately, large ISP's don't necessarily put the budget they should into nameservers. Some of that fault lies with end users. How many script kiddies could possibly be on a large provider in a large metro area, sharing your nameservers? :) Think of the "what domain isn't registered" game, searching through every letter/number combination there is.
I prefer to have my own good ones at work. I lose a little from latency from home to work, but I make up a lot where those nameservers are rarely under much load. They do a lot of work, and answer a lot of queries, but nothing like the numbers a large metro ISP can do. :)
I'd prefer to think Option C.
If a person had $10k in the account, and it's suddenly $1m, spend it. Even if they have to resell tomorrow, maybe (just maybe) they'll turn a quick profit. so, you only get 1$ on that $1m, now you've just doubled your real starting capital.
The big boys play this game all the time. They play with imaginary money, to make real money. It just burns them sometimes too.
Actually, I was thinking more like better designed population centers away from the coastline, with more of an aim towards self sufficiency. With encouragement for people to move to the better nicer places, which could operate cleaner than our existing cities, we'd not only have a chance to fix a lot of broken things, but we'd be able to reduce our pollution output, so the ocean side problem wouldn't be one. But once the coastal areas are properly cleaned, they'd be a beautiful place to visit. :)