Using my companies bandwidth (1.5Mb/s through 1Gb/s), it's usually a quick matter to just use our bandwidth to move data around.. We'll sync up 100GB of data rather frequently.. But, for the home consumers it's pathethic.. On Charter Cable, with their "Platinum" package (768k down, 128k up) if you come close to 128K up, your suddenly throttled down to about 100K down and up.. If you are downloading, it'll cap off at 768Kb/s during low-usage times (like 4am), but it'll slow down to about 128Kb/s to 256Kb/s during the day.
Time Warner cable is worse, but I don't have statistics to back it up.. I just know if you try doing anything during home peak time (after work, but before midnight), expect most pages to crawl and don't try to download big files. I forgot how bad it was, til I went to a friends place with Time Warner and was in pain trying to download files...:(
Maybe if the cable companies loosen up on their throttles, it won't feel like your on a 56k modem during peak times. Or maybe their infrastructure just sucks that bad.
I live close to my office, so if I work on a big project, I'll either copy it onto my laptop or burn it to CD to bring to work. It can take hours to upload 20Mb of data. Don't even think about uploading a 660Mb file.. I do big files, like images of server OS installs (Linux, of course), on a regular basis.. Their logic is that users don't upload, unless their using P2P software, so who needs upload bandwidth. {sigh}
With a disease as wild as depicted in the movie, I doubt the CDC would take long in identifying that it was something. In the movie, they hadn't even identified what it was, nor how to stop it.. I believe the only mention of the "Rage Virus" was by the original researcher, who was one of the first infected.
More than likely, local law enforcement would be initiating quarantine before the CDC even had a chance to say a word about it. Think of it like a riot.. You have any number of people going around killing people, they're not going to wait for the CDC to call saying "Ok, it's a virus, stop them". Local law enforcement would probably be stopping them on a reactionary basis. Just like if I was to go outside of my office and start killing people, I'd be swarmed by police in 5 minutes.
---- Spoiler ---- ---- Don't read me if you haven't seen the movie. ----
It's a thrill flick, dude. You're not going to find the logical reason for everything.
That, I definately have to agree with.
The beginning was interesting.. The agenda of the movie seemed to be to show that researchers are evil, playing with things they don't understand, and animal rights activists are evil or stupid, disturbing things they have absolutely no clue about, and no respect for (i.e., when the researcher tries to explain what the rage virus is to them).
The post apoclypse London looked cool.. When he's wandering around town is probably the best part of the movie.
After the movie, all I could think was that this was a bad rewrite of "12 Monkeys" mixed with "Night of the Living Dead".. The whole "We're going to rape the little girl and chick" thing was way too drawn out.
There were some pretty serious holes in the movie.. Ya, the supermarket lights were one, but that could have been generators.. I know, 28 days running on generator power?? But it kept the beer cold.:)
If the guy was slick enough to hook up all the christmas lights to the batteries, it must have been with a power inverter. 110v/220v lights won't be very bright at 12v, right? So, why was he using a hand-crank radio?
There is satellite TV available in the UK. Sky is at least one provider. It doesn't take a very creative mind to find an apartment with a satellite dish in front of it, and hook up the battery and inverter to the TV and receiver. At least they could see what the rest of the world was saying.
What about secure installations? Particular federal offices, like the FBI, you have to go through man traps before you can even consider getting physical contact with anyone. Jails, and even office buildings, are rather secure. Most buildings I've worked in, even if the lobby is compromised, without elevators, the upper floors are unaccessable.. Well, the infected weren't exactly using tools to break down firedoors.
I'm sure, with them knowing the extend of how bad this virus was, even after only the first day, something would have been done.. How long does it take a bunch of infecteds to walk the length of England? At least days.. At best, I would expect the outbreak wouldn't travel at more than 5mph. By the end of the first day, after loosing all of London, there would be a substantial military force killing anything that came close. It wouldn't just be guys with guns at roadblocks either. How long would it take the remainder of the gov't to ask the US to send bombers to lay a wall of napalm across the island? Maybe not that simple, but something would be done quickly.
Even after the second 28 days, the area wouldn't be safe. It's a bloodborne virus that survives beyond death of the host. Remember the infection of the dad.
Too many holes and logical errors in the movie made it just an action/blood/gore movie, rather than something I could really get into..
And then you find out someone in the call-center saw you type in your password yesterday, and SSH's in from your desk with your password, after hours and appends "R00T3d bY 3733t CrU!" to every HTML page on the site.
If your a hosting company, that'll be a quick job to get the 6,000 sites done. Since it was your password, coming from your desk, it'll be you that hears some unsettling words from the boss in the morning, and that PIX firewall didn't help at all.
Who would have thought that cute quiet girl in the call center was really a little hardcore hacker chick? Probably the pigtails and "hello kitty" dolls on her desk threw you. You didn't notice she was watching the keyboard while you were typing on her console. Shouldn't have been trying to look down her shirt, huh?
That's ok, you'll blame the hacker wanna-be pimply faced, shit talking kid, who's always on 'bout how he breaks into this, that and whatever, but actually couldn't do it to save his life (i.e.: script-kiddie).
The moral, it never comes from where you expect it. That's too easy.
1) Lay down plastic sheeting behind where target will be standing. Cover floors, walls, and any furnature that may be splattered.
2) Invite "target" in to talk. Get target to stand or sit on plastic (as convinent).
3) Shoot target. Wrap him up in plastic, Secure him with duct tape.
4) lose the body somewhere forgetable. Jersey is beautiful this time of year.
Oh wait, what am I saying? Ya, I bought all that plastic and duct tape to protect myself against the terrorists..:) But, if ever asked to stand on the plastic when in a potentially dangerous position, find a fast way out.
We make fun of the script kiddies, but you're right, if there are perfectly good exploits out there and you aren't prepared, then you're just being stupid and egotistical. "They'll never get me." will suddenly become "damn, they got my site."
Why do those sound like well prepared "last" words.. The next words out of his mouth will be "We were terribly unprepared for this act, and it shows us how simply unprepared the Internet infrastructure is for terrorists attacks"..
That would, of course, be followed by hackers (real and wanna-be's alike) being arrested and thrown in prison on non-specific charges. As long as you throw in a "cyber-terrorism" somewhere in the charges, you can jail them indefinately.
Good luck on the battle kids. Do something worth while, while you're in there. Copy the real WMD documents to the front of whitehouse.gov. Grab the Area51 documents and let the UFO knows know so they're nuts. (everyone knows aliens really drive Cadillac's)
And, if you do nothing else, show your phone phreakin' roots. Make the whitehouse red phone ring the Kremlin, just like in the old days.:)
Well, logically, ya, you should be able to listen to anything being broadcast at you.. But, look at what they do if you descramble satellite feeds without paying..
But, I don't think they accidently picked up the signal. They said they were sitting just outside of the school's office, with the proper equipment (ya, laptop and wifi card, big deal), but that's intent. Not only that, but sitting outside that office ("Using a laptop with a wireless card outside the district's main office") they sent data to retrieve data ("the Weekly gained access to such data as...") . They were trespassing, just as much as if they reached in the window to pick up files sitting there. It could be arguable if they happened to walk past with their laptop in hand, and made a connection but did nothing on it, that they were simply receiving passive communications, but the reporters went as far as to connect, and dig through the confidential files of the students. Being that they were students, and not only were there contained school records, but medical records ("emergency medical information complete with full-color photos of students and a psychological evaluation")
Ahhhh, and here we go with the law (I've been busy with work, not much time to play). The summary of this is, yes, they broke the law, and it's punishable by $2,500 and/or 1 year in jail on the first offense, and $10,000 and/or 1 year in jail on the second offense.
PENAL CODE SECTION 630-637.9
631. (a) Any person who, by means of any machine, instrument, or contrivance, or in any other manner, intentionally taps, or makes any unauthorized connection, whether physically, electrically, acoustically, inductively, or otherwise, with any telegraph or telephone wire, line, cable, or instrument, including the wire, line, cable, or instrument of any internal telephonic communication system, or who willfully and without the consent of all parties to the communication, or in any unauthorized manner, reads, or attempts to read, or to learn the contents or meaning of any message, report, or communication while the same is in transit or passing over any wire, line, or cable, or is being sent from, or received at any place within this state; or who uses, or attempts to use, in any manner, or for any purpose, or to communicate in any way, any information so obtained, or who aids, agrees with, employs, or conspires with any person or persons to unlawfully do, or permit, or cause to be done any of the acts or things mentioned above in this section, is punishable by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison, or by both a fine and imprisonment in the county jail or in the state prison. If the person has previously been convicted of a violation of this section or Section 632, 632.5, 632.6, 632.7, or 636, he or she is punishable by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison, or by both a fine and imprisonment in the county jail or in the state prison.
I won't say that the school didn't fuck up, because honestly they did.. But, as any stumbler/wardriver knows, they're not the only ones. It doesn't take a computer expert to get into most networks. They should have done a better job, but failed. This is barely news, it's just a reporter bragging how they broke the law, invaded the privacy of thousands, criminally trespassed, and are flaunting it as news. It's as criminal as if they broke into a bank and took out cash, even if handing it back in the morning, to prove that it could be done.
With that said, ya, my laptop is set up for stumbling too.:)
Hmmm, IANAL, but in most areas, isn't doesn't this fall somewhere under electronic tresspass, or electronic wiretap. Like, accessing a computer system that isn't yours and that you weren't authorized to access? Sounds like not only an admission of guilt, but them bragging about it..
Of course, press like this is rarely very good. It's enough to scare lots of people away from new technologies.. I'd be surprised if someone doesn't make a push to bring them back down to paper files for everything.
What's funny is, we get this same occasional complaint.. Joe user will mail to us, his provider, and some authority (like the FBI or whatever) saying a very secure web server is attaching him.. By very secure, I mean that the particular web server has no CGI's on it, and the firewall rules block everything but port 80.. But, I always do check out the machine (verify all binaries, make sure there's nothing wierd going on, etc, etc), and then respond to him and all letting him know it's probably just his firewall being wierd, since it's reporting port 80 traffic as a hack attempt.
It's understandable that they may get confused.. They'll start browsing to one server, but eventually requests go to other servers, or come from the wrong IP. Our big site has 16 IP's on just over half as many machines. Some of the machines use teql to manage their load across two ethernet cards, so they hit one IP, but the traffic comes back from another. I've let a few newbie abuse people know that port 80 is the web server (they had no clue), but most of them look at the reports and let the user know straight off that it's their firewall.
I'm very happy with Level3's abuse department. They're careful to forward every real abuse complaint to me quickly. There was a hosted machine broken into once that was port scanning machines, which I did unplug then fix. The hosting customer wasn't very happy that I unplugged his machine, but hey, he didn't take care of security on it, dammit. Most of the time, I think I'm being wierd that I actually reply to every abuse report, no matter how they come in.. It's wierd how many abuse reports end up going to the billing department first..
It's cool that you take care of all your abuse cases too.. We're a rare bunch out on the Internet, but we're making sure at least our chunk of the net is secure.
I agree, it's frequently older people. The worst complaints I get are from older folks who say they've been programming on the Internet for 40+ years (ummm, the 1960 Internet?). I haven't gotten many of those lately. Most of those came in back in the.com boom, when everyone thought they were experts, and were throwing crap at us most of the time. Some of them had half a clue, but it was when they first discovered netstat, and would see ports open to our web servers, they'd completely freak out.. I'd have to talk them down, and explain to them, "if you want to see pictures from our porn site, you're going to have to have a connection open to us in some way."
Our biggest problem isn't breakins, it's posting web site passwords on the net.. Hey, it's still someone using an illegal means to access materials (yada, yada, yada).
We do our own defenses, but I always see the users or proxies attempting crap.. I tried calling a few providers, but they're completely dense when you say "someone on your network is attacking one of my servers." Somehow they manage to get the stupidest people handling their support desk, who can't even comprehend what a server is. If you do manage to get to an abuse department, they'll rarely do much.
A few years ago, I got tired of fucking with the help-desk people to complain to, so I called the FBI. They took my information, and had an agent call me back.. It took a couple weeks to get the return call, but I did. He was actually well informed, and seemed to know at least the basics of how the Internet worked. He also said that I'd have to prove a monetary loss. The mininum amount was $5,000, if I recall correctly. It isn't enough that someone can abuse the shit out of your system, you have to prove that you were loosing money in the process.. So I have to make the decision, do I set up the system poorly enough so we do loose sales/members over fairly simple attacks, or do I just forget trying to get anyone to help.
Recently, a friend of mine rewrote a site for selling calling cards on the net.. The company is an established real-world business, they just wanted to expand... So, she spent a few months putting together a kick-ass site, with all the bells and whistles that the owner asked for.. About a month after it went live, someone started hitting it with fraudlent transactions. Even with all her normal precautions (and a few of mine), and using a 3rd party billing company with their own precautions, they still got hammered for about $10,000 worth of fraud.. The FBI was willing to take a report on this one, but never investigated, and never did anything about it.. She (the programmer) had got the IP's of the users, found out who owned the blocks. We actually knew where they physically were and told the FBI. If they were interested, they'd only need to send one agent where we told them, and close the case. They didn't. It's still an open case with no leads. {sigh}
There were IP's in two different/24's doing the fraud.. They were coming back about once per day and doing the same scam. Each one was a Internet cafe thing, so fairly obviously it's someone sitting on a public machine trying not to get caught. But, they were both at least 1000 miles from where we were, so it was pretty useless for us to catch them. It would have just been so easy for the FBI to send one agent out. $10,000 fraud on one site is nothing. I'd be more than willing to bet that they were hammering a whole bunch of sites with those same transactions.
We called the cafe owners and told them what was happening. Their suggestion was to call the police, they weren't going to stop anything. {sigh}
Knowing how bad they are to stop things, I wonder if I'm doing the wrong thing, staying on the legitimate side of things. If we can literally say "They guy sitting in this cafe is running tens of thousands of dollars in fraudelent transactions per day, and stole from us" with proof, and they won't touch it, how much evidence do they really need against someone to do something?
Ya, we see the big "some hacker caught" stories occasionally, but honestly with all the crime going on (yes, there's lots), it's only rarely that you hear about someone getting caught.
I found the thread that they're citing. In the mlist.linux.kernel From 02-Aug-2002 to 12-Aug-2002
The conversation isn't about SCO at all. The conversation started about virtual memory, and some SGI patents.
Linus' comment was to the effect that it's a waste of time for programmers ("technical people"). It's very likely someone has patented any idea you can come up with. Even if we see the patent, we aren't qualified to judge if it effects us. That's the legal department(s) problem (or your lawyer, or whoever). IANAL. LINAL (Linus is not a lawyer), but a lawyer would be more than happy to tell you that they understand the law better than us technical people.:)
Think of the recent stories on here about tabbed browsing, hyperlinks, and the one-click purchase. Read the full thread to get it in context, rather than a couple lines thrown in a news story. I doubt that I've written anything that hasn't been patented before, even though I stick (c) on all my code.:)
BTW, the filters on here really suck. I've been trying to post this message, but have been hitting filters all over the place. The current one I'm hitting is "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 33.3).", so I'm just filling in some space here to get it to post, without changing any of the quoted material. {sigh}
Now for the real messages (quoted directly from dejanews).
On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Daniel Phillips wrote: > > It goes on in this vein. I suggest all vm hackers have a close look at > this. Yes, it's stupid, but we can't just ignore it.
Actually, we can, and I will.
I do not look up any patents on _principle_, because (a) it's a horrible waste of time and (b) I don't want to know.
The fact is, technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git.
This sounds scary. But it does have legal precedence, of sorts.
I was recently warned that in Los Angeles county, if you're caught racing (by the judgement of the arresting officer), your vehicle is forfeit to the county.
In Florida, any vehicle involved in any drug violation may be forfeit to the state. Of course, the state is in it for the money, so they'll be nice enough to sell you your own vehicle back. A friend of mine paid over $5,000 to get her own car back over a minor violation. It took over a month to get things arranged, and several trips to that city. She had only been passing through the town, she wasn't a resident.
One particular sheriff's department has some of my handguns still, which I'm particuarly upset about. My ex-wife was getting violent, so I gave a friend everything dangerous from the house. She locked them all away in the trunk of her car. A couple days later, she was pulled over on suspicion of DUI. She wasn't arrested for DUI, but because she was pulled over on suspicion, they seized the weapons. It did absolutely no good to try to explain it to anyone. And yes, they were all perfectly legal. The begging to get my stuff back ended when they finally came up with the standpoint of "we don't know where they are." They just disappeared out of the system. {cough}{cough}. Ya into someone's personal collection, I'm sure.
The gov't is already seizing property without due processes or reasonable cause. I doubt they'll get the law through saying you can hack, but I'd bet they'll pass laws saying any equipment used in the act of the crime (the crime being music piracy) can be seized. I'm sure it'll be broad enough to include just about anything in house/apartment.
As for just killing machines on demand, I'd bet Microsoft will include that in future releases of Windows very willingly. It would terrify me to know that they could just pick and choose machines to zap.
If I was Joe-ISP hosting on Windows machines (ok, that would never happen), and one site had MP3's on it, they could not only destroy that site, but every site hosted there? They could cause damage to the machine itself (i.e., wipe the BIOS, drop the partition table, etc). I'd be afraid to think what would happen with a single BIOS change to bump the voltage up to the CPU and watch it fry. What would 12v do to a low voltage CPU line? Now what if that hosting machine happened to be a big expensive hosting machine? I've seen pricetags over $40k come by. It wouldn't be very good to see one of those go up in smoke.
I'd be just as upset if my kid had friends over, and they were downloading files and got *MY* machine destroyed. I'm not exactly going to be satisfied with "The RIAA destroyed your computer because someone was downloading Enimen's new album. They're legally protected in this action." Well, I'd probably be more upset as this would be my own machine. Customers can live with a server down for a day or two (but they won't like it). My personal property is *MINE*.
I agree completely. It seems someone will always get a wild hair up their ass about some particular animal/species, and go completely nuts about it.
"Save the whales" with particularly gruesome pictures was always lovely. I've lived a small farm, and seen various animals slaughtered, so it just didn't have the same effect on me as it does to high school "I have to change the world today" kids..
High school kids are great. They're inspired to make a change, and can be manipulated to work for or against almost any cause. There are always lots of then, and next year there will be even more.
I'm worried about lizards, squirrels, and small song birds.. Those are what my cats have brought home, usually dead. How many small creatures are killed by the dreaded Felis Domesticus! Forget what the humans are doing to 1,000 sea creatures per day (or the millions of tons of intended catch that they kill), imagine how many birds are killed every year!
How do those rank up with bird road-kills? How about human road-kills (err, pedestrian accidents)?
But, if they're the violation of the SCO license, they're already freely available in the Linux kernel, so they're not giving out new code, simply identifying the code which has been stolen.
As a Linux user (and occasional kernel reader), I'm curious to what code that I'm reading that SCO thinks is theirs.
The only news stories I've read so far haven't identified the code, but simply said "lines". One said "from one to x", where x was 20 to 80 (I can't remember right now).. I'm curious to see if they're trying to claim something like:
Not to knock your opinion, but your desert wasn't always desert, and may not always be desert. The world changes around us naturally. Are you even aware of the huge waterways that used to pass through the deserts of the US? Have you flown over, and seen the obvious marks from huge oceans what is now the land?
Even your flora and fauna require water to live. They survive with very little, but they thrive with more.. What's there now isn't what was there 10k years ago, and won't be there in another 10k years. Well, as long as you have the wonders of the rest of the populated world destroying your environment. Yes, pollution from the rest of the world changes *YOUR* climate too, even though you don't see the dirt in the air. Rain pulls pollutants out of the air, and lets them be filterd naturally.
The best illustration I ever saw of dust pollution in a city was staying in Las Vegas. We went up to a higher floor in one of the casino's, and just stared down at the bubble of dust over the entire city. I can't exactly say it was beautiful, but I can say I was coughing up dirt for days after I left.
You don't have to even look at just the Americans for the cause of this.. America has plenty of industry, but there's bad pollution coming from the rest of the world. Search around for the Asian Brown Cloud. Interesting stuff. I won't try to teach it, you can read on your own.
I guess luckly for you, the people working on your local ecology are the peace-nics with big signs saying "don't kill this bush", or "don't move this tortose". I watched a few of these protests first-hand.. One group (who was formed by a developer with other interests) was protesting a high-school's expansion. They needed 5 acres for the school. There was one tortose on the property, so protesters showed up to stop the development. The school had already agreed that no widlife would be killed. Simply moved to the other empty land (absolutely huge tracts of woodland). Turned out the organizer of the protesters just wanted to sell the school other land at a higher price.
Flame as you wish. Since you already called me a moron, I guess it wouldn't take much to stop you now. I'll just call you a NIMBY. You're a "do as you'd like, but don't fuck with my status quo." type of person.
They just miscalculated the available bandwidth. They had numbers in MegaBytes per second, but the line measurements are in Megabits per second, so they died when their utilization hit 12.5MB/s.:)
The conspiracy theorists say that it's actually so we wouldn't see the alien face on their router, but we all know they really crashed.:)
I learned about "NIMBY" when I was young.. I grew up in a rural area of Florida. It was fairly isolated, but had enough people for it to require some development..
The first thing I remember was a proposed highway. Everyone were happy to hear that they'd have a decent way to get to the nearest big city. But every time a plan came out of where to put the highway there would always be groups screaming "NO!". This began in 1984. The state decided where to put two more sections of the road, and have already completed them, but the third section is still in the planning stages. The same group will scream "I want highways!" and "You can't put it there!"
The next, from the same area, was a proposed jail. The county jail was simply insufficent for the new size of the county. The population had been growing over the years, but nothing else had. The Sheriff's department was fairly clear about it. They said that they had nowhere to put criminals. So, everyone agreed "Yes, we need a new jail." But then the same people wouldn't allow it in their area.
A new water desalination plant was finished in Tampa Florida last year.. Environmentlaists have been bitching about pumping water from all over the state to support the Tampa/St. Pete area, so this is a good solution. But the same people who are against pumping water are also against the desalination plant. I read one report (by them) that said it had raised the salt levels to a toxic level and would kill all wildlife in the area (yada, yada, yada). The *REAL* reports cite less than a 0.01% change, which is within the naturally occuring variance.
I drove along I-10 a couple times last year, and saw the windmill farms.. Those were absolutely amazing. I honestly believe they should be showing up more often. We should be learning to harness what's around us with no biproducts. Too bad you can't satisfy everyone.
We were brainstorming the other day, and came up with a system to make the Western US more habitable, as well as reduce global warming and air polution. It's an amazingly simple system, but people would get pissed off.. Imagine making even 10% of the Wester US more like usable farm land, rather than dry desert. There used to be a sea running through the middle of the US, known as the "Western Interior Seaway". Bringing that up to even 1% of what it used to be would bring serious life to the a rather sparsely inhabited part of the country..
But, the first person that looses his house because he built on the bottom of a dry river bottom would stop the whole thing. There goes his back yard.
I mentioned the ideas to a few people, and the biggest response I got was, "What if the waterlevel of the oceans drops. Like, if you manage to make the deserts not completely dry, the water comes from somewhere. People get pissy if the sealevel moves 1/4" from their beautiful ocean-side houses.. It may lower property values. (property values? {sigh}). So, I returned the question of, "What if by doing this, you solve the water shortages in dry countries, and give starving countries the ability to feed themselves?" They still worried about the value of their own houses.
{sigh}
One person I talked to gave me positive feedback. The rest were negative for personal reasons. One actually said it would suck because it would raise the humidity in LA.. Ya, it rains 2 days per year out here, and all around you is dirt.. A good regular rain-storm cycle would clean up the air, and give your grass something to grow with, rather than pumping out the available drinking water to your grass.
"NIMBY.. I don't want the humidity to be any higher, that would make me uncomfortable in the summer.."
He couldn't comprehend, clouds and rain would reverse the theoretical global warming thing.
MSI K8D Master
Two Opteron 240
two 512Mb PC2100 (1Gb total)
Enlight EN-8950
3 180Gb Western Digital Special Edition IDE
The price wasn't bad for the whole thing. Getting most of the parts from wholesalers, it came to about $2300.
The motherboard, memory, and drives have already arrived. I'm just waiting on the CPU's and case before I can start playing.
The machine it's replacing doesn't use a lot of memory, so 1Gb will be fine to start. The plan is, we'll swap out CPU's later for faster ones when they come down in price, and add memory as necessary.
I didn't want to go really nuts with it on the first attempt. I needed something the boss wouldn't freak out about the price, but still be impressed with the performance.. If this one works out well, there's a database server that needs to be upgraded, and we'll blow lots of money on that.:)
The guy who handles purchasing (like, hunting down vendors, and placing the orders) found a place selling the 240's for just under $300/ea. The 242's are just over $700/ea from the same place. He didn't get prices on 244's yet. Since they didn't mention it to him, I'd have to assume they aren't carrying them yet.
Slashdot Mirror
This story is so sad, but true..
:(
Using my companies bandwidth (1.5Mb/s through 1Gb/s), it's usually a quick matter to just use our bandwidth to move data around.. We'll sync up 100GB of data rather frequently.. But, for the home consumers it's pathethic.. On Charter Cable, with their "Platinum" package (768k down, 128k up) if you come close to 128K up, your suddenly throttled down to about 100K down and up.. If you are downloading, it'll cap off at 768Kb/s during low-usage times (like 4am), but it'll slow down to about 128Kb/s to 256Kb/s during the day.
Time Warner cable is worse, but I don't have statistics to back it up.. I just know if you try doing anything during home peak time (after work, but before midnight), expect most pages to crawl and don't try to download big files. I forgot how bad it was, til I went to a friends place with Time Warner and was in pain trying to download files...
Maybe if the cable companies loosen up on their throttles, it won't feel like your on a 56k modem during peak times. Or maybe their infrastructure just sucks that bad.
I live close to my office, so if I work on a big project, I'll either copy it onto my laptop or burn it to CD to bring to work. It can take hours to upload 20Mb of data. Don't even think about uploading a 660Mb file.. I do big files, like images of server OS installs (Linux, of course), on a regular basis.. Their logic is that users don't upload, unless their using P2P software, so who needs upload bandwidth. {sigh}
With a disease as wild as depicted in the movie, I doubt the CDC would take long in identifying that it was something. In the movie, they hadn't even identified what it was, nor how to stop it.. I believe the only mention of the "Rage Virus" was by the original researcher, who was one of the first infected.
More than likely, local law enforcement would be initiating quarantine before the CDC even had a chance to say a word about it. Think of it like a riot.. You have any number of people going around killing people, they're not going to wait for the CDC to call saying "Ok, it's a virus, stop them". Local law enforcement would probably be stopping them on a reactionary basis. Just like if I was to go outside of my office and start killing people, I'd be swarmed by police in 5 minutes.
But you'd still need the 120v, right? If you took the same string and hooked it up to a 12v battery, you'd still be sitting in the dark.
---- Spoiler ----
:)
---- Don't read me if you haven't seen the movie. ----
It's a thrill flick, dude. You're not going to find the logical reason for everything.
That, I definately have to agree with.
The beginning was interesting.. The agenda of the movie seemed to be to show that researchers are evil, playing with things they don't understand, and animal rights activists are evil or stupid, disturbing things they have absolutely no clue about, and no respect for (i.e., when the researcher tries to explain what the rage virus is to them).
The post apoclypse London looked cool.. When he's wandering around town is probably the best part of the movie.
After the movie, all I could think was that this was a bad rewrite of "12 Monkeys" mixed with "Night of the Living Dead".. The whole "We're going to rape the little girl and chick" thing was way too drawn out.
There were some pretty serious holes in the movie.. Ya, the supermarket lights were one, but that could have been generators.. I know, 28 days running on generator power?? But it kept the beer cold.
If the guy was slick enough to hook up all the christmas lights to the batteries, it must have been with a power inverter. 110v/220v lights won't be very bright at 12v, right? So, why was he using a hand-crank radio?
There is satellite TV available in the UK. Sky is at least one provider. It doesn't take a very creative mind to find an apartment with a satellite dish in front of it, and hook up the battery and inverter to the TV and receiver. At least they could see what the rest of the world was saying.
What about secure installations? Particular federal offices, like the FBI, you have to go through man traps before you can even consider getting physical contact with anyone. Jails, and even office buildings, are rather secure. Most buildings I've worked in, even if the lobby is compromised, without elevators, the upper floors are unaccessable.. Well, the infected weren't exactly using tools to break down firedoors.
I'm sure, with them knowing the extend of how bad this virus was, even after only the first day, something would have been done.. How long does it take a bunch of infecteds to walk the length of England? At least days.. At best, I would expect the outbreak wouldn't travel at more than 5mph. By the end of the first day, after loosing all of London, there would be a substantial military force killing anything that came close. It wouldn't just be guys with guns at roadblocks either. How long would it take the remainder of the gov't to ask the US to send bombers to lay a wall of napalm across the island? Maybe not that simple, but something would be done quickly.
Even after the second 28 days, the area wouldn't be safe. It's a bloodborne virus that survives beyond death of the host. Remember the infection of the dad.
Too many holes and logical errors in the movie made it just an action/blood/gore movie, rather than something I could really get into..
And then you find out someone in the call-center saw you type in your password yesterday, and SSH's in from your desk with your password, after hours and appends "R00T3d bY 3733t CrU!" to every HTML page on the site.
If your a hosting company, that'll be a quick job to get the 6,000 sites done. Since it was your password, coming from your desk, it'll be you that hears some unsettling words from the boss in the morning, and that PIX firewall didn't help at all.
Who would have thought that cute quiet girl in the call center was really a little hardcore hacker chick? Probably the pigtails and "hello kitty" dolls on her desk threw you. You didn't notice she was watching the keyboard while you were typing on her console. Shouldn't have been trying to look down her shirt, huh?
That's ok, you'll blame the hacker wanna-be pimply faced, shit talking kid, who's always on 'bout how he breaks into this, that and whatever, but actually couldn't do it to save his life (i.e.: script-kiddie).
The moral, it never comes from where you expect it. That's too easy.
I thought that came from the hit man's play book.
:) But, if ever asked to stand on the plastic when in a potentially dangerous position, find a fast way out.
1) Lay down plastic sheeting behind where target will be standing. Cover floors, walls, and any furnature that may be splattered.
2) Invite "target" in to talk. Get target to stand or sit on plastic (as convinent).
3) Shoot target. Wrap him up in plastic, Secure him with duct tape.
4) lose the body somewhere forgetable. Jersey is beautiful this time of year.
Oh wait, what am I saying? Ya, I bought all that plastic and duct tape to protect myself against the terrorists..
"What's the plastic for Vinnie?"
"We don't want to make a mess now, do we?"
We make fun of the script kiddies, but you're right, if there are perfectly good exploits out there and you aren't prepared, then you're just being stupid and egotistical. "They'll never get me." will suddenly become "damn, they got my site."
Why do those sound like well prepared "last" words.. The next words out of his mouth will be "We were terribly unprepared for this act, and it shows us how simply unprepared the Internet infrastructure is for terrorists attacks"..
:)
That would, of course, be followed by hackers (real and wanna-be's alike) being arrested and thrown in prison on non-specific charges. As long as you throw in a "cyber-terrorism" somewhere in the charges, you can jail them indefinately.
Good luck on the battle kids. Do something worth while, while you're in there. Copy the real WMD documents to the front of whitehouse.gov. Grab the Area51 documents and let the UFO knows know so they're nuts. (everyone knows aliens really drive Cadillac's)
And, if you do nothing else, show your phone phreakin' roots. Make the whitehouse red phone ring the Kremlin, just like in the old days.
BTW, here's a nice little list of some of the state laws, just regarding the wiretap portion.
. htm
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/CIP/surveillance
Well, logically, ya, you should be able to listen to anything being broadcast at you.. But, look at what they do if you descramble satellite feeds without paying..
But, I don't think they accidently picked up the signal. They said they were sitting just outside of the school's office, with the proper equipment (ya, laptop and wifi card, big deal), but that's intent. Not only that, but sitting outside that office ("Using a laptop with a wireless card outside the district's main office") they sent data to retrieve data ("the Weekly gained access to such data as
Ahhhh, and here we go with the law (I've been busy with work, not much time to play). The summary of this is, yes, they broke the law, and it's punishable by $2,500 and/or 1 year in jail on the first offense, and $10,000 and/or 1 year in jail on the second offense.
PENAL CODE
SECTION 630-637.9
631. (a) Any person who, by means of any machine, instrument, or
contrivance, or in any other manner, intentionally taps, or makes any
unauthorized connection, whether physically, electrically,
acoustically, inductively, or otherwise, with any telegraph or
telephone wire, line, cable, or instrument, including the wire, line,
cable, or instrument of any internal telephonic communication
system, or who willfully and without the consent of all parties to
the communication, or in any unauthorized manner, reads, or attempts
to read, or to learn the contents or meaning of any message, report,
or communication while the same is in transit or passing over any
wire, line, or cable, or is being sent from, or received at any place
within this state; or who uses, or attempts to use, in any manner,
or for any purpose, or to communicate in any way, any information so
obtained, or who aids, agrees with, employs, or conspires with any
person or persons to unlawfully do, or permit, or cause to be done
any of the acts or things mentioned above in this section, is
punishable by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars
($2,500), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one
year, or by imprisonment in the state prison, or by both a fine and
imprisonment in the county jail or in the state prison. If the
person has previously been convicted of a violation of this section
or Section 632, 632.5, 632.6, 632.7, or 636, he or she is punishable
by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by
imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or by
imprisonment in the state prison, or by both a fine and imprisonment
in the county jail or in the state prison.
I won't say that the school didn't fuck up, because honestly they did.. But, as any stumbler/wardriver knows, they're not the only ones. It doesn't take a computer expert to get into most networks. They should have done a better job, but failed. This is barely news, it's just a reporter bragging how they broke the law, invaded the privacy of thousands, criminally trespassed, and are flaunting it as news. It's as criminal as if they broke into a bank and took out cash, even if handing it back in the morning, to prove that it could be done.
With that said, ya, my laptop is set up for stumbling too.
Hmmm, IANAL, but in most areas, isn't doesn't this fall somewhere under electronic tresspass, or electronic wiretap. Like, accessing a computer system that isn't yours and that you weren't authorized to access? Sounds like not only an admission of guilt, but them bragging about it..
Of course, press like this is rarely very good. It's enough to scare lots of people away from new technologies.. I'd be surprised if someone doesn't make a push to bring them back down to paper files for everything.
I knew the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated!
:(
I laugh at people that say Elvis is still alive, but no, I can't believe Douglas Adams is really gone.
What's funny is, we get this same occasional complaint.. Joe user will mail to us, his provider, and some authority (like the FBI or whatever) saying a very secure web server is attaching him.. By very secure, I mean that the particular web server has no CGI's on it, and the firewall rules block everything but port 80.. But, I always do check out the machine (verify all binaries, make sure there's nothing wierd going on, etc, etc), and then respond to him and all letting him know it's probably just his firewall being wierd, since it's reporting port 80 traffic as a hack attempt.
.com boom, when everyone thought they were experts, and were throwing crap at us most of the time. Some of them had half a clue, but it was when they first discovered netstat, and would see ports open to our web servers, they'd completely freak out.. I'd have to talk them down, and explain to them, "if you want to see pictures from our porn site, you're going to have to have a connection open to us in some way."
It's understandable that they may get confused.. They'll start browsing to one server, but eventually requests go to other servers, or come from the wrong IP. Our big site has 16 IP's on just over half as many machines. Some of the machines use teql to manage their load across two ethernet cards, so they hit one IP, but the traffic comes back from another. I've let a few newbie abuse people know that port 80 is the web server (they had no clue), but most of them look at the reports and let the user know straight off that it's their firewall.
I'm very happy with Level3's abuse department. They're careful to forward every real abuse complaint to me quickly. There was a hosted machine broken into once that was port scanning machines, which I did unplug then fix. The hosting customer wasn't very happy that I unplugged his machine, but hey, he didn't take care of security on it, dammit. Most of the time, I think I'm being wierd that I actually reply to every abuse report, no matter how they come in.. It's wierd how many abuse reports end up going to the billing department first..
It's cool that you take care of all your abuse cases too.. We're a rare bunch out on the Internet, but we're making sure at least our chunk of the net is secure.
I agree, it's frequently older people. The worst complaints I get are from older folks who say they've been programming on the Internet for 40+ years (ummm, the 1960 Internet?). I haven't gotten many of those lately. Most of those came in back in the
Our biggest problem isn't breakins, it's posting web site passwords on the net.. Hey, it's still someone using an illegal means to access materials (yada, yada, yada).
/24's doing the fraud.. They were coming back about once per day and doing the same scam. Each one was a Internet cafe thing, so fairly obviously it's someone sitting on a public machine trying not to get caught. But, they were both at least 1000 miles from where we were, so it was pretty useless for us to catch them. It would have just been so easy for the FBI to send one agent out. $10,000 fraud on one site is nothing. I'd be more than willing to bet that they were hammering a whole bunch of sites with those same transactions.
We do our own defenses, but I always see the users or proxies attempting crap.. I tried calling a few providers, but they're completely dense when you say "someone on your network is attacking one of my servers." Somehow they manage to get the stupidest people handling their support desk, who can't even comprehend what a server is. If you do manage to get to an abuse department, they'll rarely do much.
A few years ago, I got tired of fucking with the help-desk people to complain to, so I called the FBI. They took my information, and had an agent call me back.. It took a couple weeks to get the return call, but I did. He was actually well informed, and seemed to know at least the basics of how the Internet worked. He also said that I'd have to prove a monetary loss. The mininum amount was $5,000, if I recall correctly. It isn't enough that someone can abuse the shit out of your system, you have to prove that you were loosing money in the process.. So I have to make the decision, do I set up the system poorly enough so we do loose sales/members over fairly simple attacks, or do I just forget trying to get anyone to help.
Recently, a friend of mine rewrote a site for selling calling cards on the net.. The company is an established real-world business, they just wanted to expand... So, she spent a few months putting together a kick-ass site, with all the bells and whistles that the owner asked for.. About a month after it went live, someone started hitting it with fraudlent transactions. Even with all her normal precautions (and a few of mine), and using a 3rd party billing company with their own precautions, they still got hammered for about $10,000 worth of fraud.. The FBI was willing to take a report on this one, but never investigated, and never did anything about it.. She (the programmer) had got the IP's of the users, found out who owned the blocks. We actually knew where they physically were and told the FBI. If they were interested, they'd only need to send one agent where we told them, and close the case. They didn't. It's still an open case with no leads. {sigh}
There were IP's in two different
We called the cafe owners and told them what was happening. Their suggestion was to call the police, they weren't going to stop anything. {sigh}
Knowing how bad they are to stop things, I wonder if I'm doing the wrong thing, staying on the legitimate side of things. If we can literally say "They guy sitting in this cafe is running tens of thousands of dollars in fraudelent transactions per day, and stole from us" with proof, and they won't touch it, how much evidence do they really need against someone to do something?
Ya, we see the big "some hacker caught" stories occasionally, but honestly with all the crime going on (yes, there's lots), it's only rarely that you hear about someone getting caught.
I believe in most human languages, that would be considered humor..
I found the thread that they're citing.
:)
:)
In the mlist.linux.kernel From 02-Aug-2002 to 12-Aug-2002
The conversation isn't about SCO at all. The conversation started about virtual memory, and some SGI patents.
Linus' comment was to the effect that it's a waste of time for programmers ("technical people"). It's very likely someone has patented any idea you can come up with. Even if we see the patent, we aren't qualified to judge if it effects us. That's the legal department(s) problem (or your lawyer, or whoever). IANAL. LINAL (Linus is not a lawyer), but a lawyer would be more than happy to tell you that they understand the law better than us technical people.
Think of the recent stories on here about tabbed browsing, hyperlinks, and the one-click purchase. Read the full thread to get it in context, rather than a couple lines thrown in a news story. I doubt that I've written anything that hasn't been patented before, even though I stick (c) on all my code.
BTW, the filters on here really suck. I've been trying to post this message, but have been hitting filters all over the place. The current one I'm hitting is "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 33.3).", so I'm just filling in some space here to get it to post, without changing any of the quoted material. {sigh}
Now for the real messages (quoted directly from dejanews).
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 16:42:30 PST
On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> It goes on in this vein. I suggest all vm hackers have a close look at
> this. Yes, it's stupid, but we can't just ignore it.
Actually, we can, and I will.
I do not look up any patents on _principle_, because (a) it's a horrible
waste of time and (b) I don't want to know.
The fact is, technical people are better off not looking at patents. If
you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly
infringing on them. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you
just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git.
Linus
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 16:44:17 PST
On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a
> hit-man to whack the stupid git.
Btw, I'm not a lawyer, and I suspect this may not be legally tenable
advice. Whatever. I refuse to bother with the crap.
Linus
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 19:22:06 PST
On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Larry McVoy wrote:
>
> This issue is more complicated than you might think.
No, it's not. You miss the point.
> Big companies with
> big pockets are very nervous about being too clo
This sounds scary. But it does have legal precedence, of sorts.
I was recently warned that in Los Angeles county, if you're caught racing (by the judgement of the arresting officer), your vehicle is forfeit to the county.
In Florida, any vehicle involved in any drug violation may be forfeit to the state. Of course, the state is in it for the money, so they'll be nice enough to sell you your own vehicle back. A friend of mine paid over $5,000 to get her own car back over a minor violation. It took over a month to get things arranged, and several trips to that city. She had only been passing through the town, she wasn't a resident.
One particular sheriff's department has some of my handguns still, which I'm particuarly upset about. My ex-wife was getting violent, so I gave a friend everything dangerous from the house. She locked them all away in the trunk of her car. A couple days later, she was pulled over on suspicion of DUI. She wasn't arrested for DUI, but because she was pulled over on suspicion, they seized the weapons. It did absolutely no good to try to explain it to anyone. And yes, they were all perfectly legal. The begging to get my stuff back ended when they finally came up with the standpoint of "we don't know where they are." They just disappeared out of the system. {cough}{cough}. Ya into someone's personal collection, I'm sure.
The gov't is already seizing property without due processes or reasonable cause. I doubt they'll get the law through saying you can hack, but I'd bet they'll pass laws saying any equipment used in the act of the crime (the crime being music piracy) can be seized. I'm sure it'll be broad enough to include just about anything in house/apartment.
As for just killing machines on demand, I'd bet Microsoft will include that in future releases of Windows very willingly. It would terrify me to know that they could just pick and choose machines to zap.
If I was Joe-ISP hosting on Windows machines (ok, that would never happen), and one site had MP3's on it, they could not only destroy that site, but every site hosted there? They could cause damage to the machine itself (i.e., wipe the BIOS, drop the partition table, etc). I'd be afraid to think what would happen with a single BIOS change to bump the voltage up to the CPU and watch it fry. What would 12v do to a low voltage CPU line? Now what if that hosting machine happened to be a big expensive hosting machine? I've seen pricetags over $40k come by. It wouldn't be very good to see one of those go up in smoke.
I'd be just as upset if my kid had friends over, and they were downloading files and got *MY* machine destroyed. I'm not exactly going to be satisfied with "The RIAA destroyed your computer because someone was downloading Enimen's new album. They're legally protected in this action." Well, I'd probably be more upset as this would be my own machine. Customers can live with a server down for a day or two (but they won't like it). My personal property is *MINE*.
I agree completely. It seems someone will always get a wild hair up their ass about some particular animal/species, and go completely nuts about it.
"Save the whales" with particularly gruesome pictures was always lovely. I've lived a small farm, and seen various animals slaughtered, so it just didn't have the same effect on me as it does to high school "I have to change the world today" kids..
High school kids are great. They're inspired to make a change, and can be manipulated to work for or against almost any cause. There are always lots of then, and next year there will be even more.
I'm worried about lizards, squirrels, and small song birds.. Those are what my cats have brought home, usually dead. How many small creatures are killed by the dreaded Felis Domesticus! Forget what the humans are doing to 1,000 sea creatures per day (or the millions of tons of intended catch that they kill), imagine how many birds are killed every year!
How do those rank up with bird road-kills? How about human road-kills (err, pedestrian accidents)?
Lets see, I think it starts off as: /*
* linux/kernel/sched.c
*
* Kernel scheduler and related syscalls
*
* Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Linus Torvalds
(heehee)
I date every girl that'll say yes..
:)
// Mary Jane was wild in bed tonight.
I stalk the rest.
I comment on all of it..
15-Jun-2003 22:27
But, if they're the violation of the SCO license, they're already freely available in the Linux kernel, so they're not giving out new code, simply identifying the code which has been stolen.
As a Linux user (and occasional kernel reader), I'm curious to what code that I'm reading that SCO thinks is theirs.
The only news stories I've read so far haven't identified the code, but simply said "lines". One said "from one to x", where x was 20 to 80 (I can't remember right now).. I'm curious to see if they're trying to claim something like:
#define FALSE 0
#define TRUE !FALSE
Not to knock your opinion, but your desert wasn't always desert, and may not always be desert. The world changes around us naturally. Are you even aware of the huge waterways that used to pass through the deserts of the US? Have you flown over, and seen the obvious marks from huge oceans what is now the land?
Even your flora and fauna require water to live. They survive with very little, but they thrive with more.. What's there now isn't what was there 10k years ago, and won't be there in another 10k years. Well, as long as you have the wonders of the rest of the populated world destroying your environment. Yes, pollution from the rest of the world changes *YOUR* climate too, even though you don't see the dirt in the air. Rain pulls pollutants out of the air, and lets them be filterd naturally.
The best illustration I ever saw of dust pollution in a city was staying in Las Vegas. We went up to a higher floor in one of the casino's, and just stared down at the bubble of dust over the entire city. I can't exactly say it was beautiful, but I can say I was coughing up dirt for days after I left.
You don't have to even look at just the Americans for the cause of this.. America has plenty of industry, but there's bad pollution coming from the rest of the world. Search around for the Asian Brown Cloud. Interesting stuff. I won't try to teach it, you can read on your own.
I guess luckly for you, the people working on your local ecology are the peace-nics with big signs saying "don't kill this bush", or "don't move this tortose". I watched a few of these protests first-hand.. One group (who was formed by a developer with other interests) was protesting a high-school's expansion. They needed 5 acres for the school. There was one tortose on the property, so protesters showed up to stop the development. The school had already agreed that no widlife would be killed. Simply moved to the other empty land (absolutely huge tracts of woodland). Turned out the organizer of the protesters just wanted to sell the school other land at a higher price.
Flame as you wish. Since you already called me a moron, I guess it wouldn't take much to stop you now. I'll just call you a NIMBY. You're a "do as you'd like, but don't fuck with my status quo." type of person.
They just miscalculated the available bandwidth. They had numbers in MegaBytes per second, but the line measurements are in Megabits per second, so they died when their utilization hit 12.5MB/s. :)
:)
The conspiracy theorists say that it's actually so we wouldn't see the alien face on their router, but we all know they really crashed.
I learned about "NIMBY" when I was young.. I grew up in a rural area of Florida. It was fairly isolated, but had enough people for it to require some development..
The first thing I remember was a proposed highway. Everyone were happy to hear that they'd have a decent way to get to the nearest big city. But every time a plan came out of where to put the highway there would always be groups screaming "NO!". This began in 1984. The state decided where to put two more sections of the road, and have already completed them, but the third section is still in the planning stages. The same group will scream "I want highways!" and "You can't put it there!"
The next, from the same area, was a proposed jail. The county jail was simply insufficent for the new size of the county. The population had been growing over the years, but nothing else had. The Sheriff's department was fairly clear about it. They said that they had nowhere to put criminals. So, everyone agreed "Yes, we need a new jail." But then the same people wouldn't allow it in their area.
A new water desalination plant was finished in Tampa Florida last year.. Environmentlaists have been bitching about pumping water from all over the state to support the Tampa/St. Pete area, so this is a good solution. But the same people who are against pumping water are also against the desalination plant. I read one report (by them) that said it had raised the salt levels to a toxic level and would kill all wildlife in the area (yada, yada, yada). The *REAL* reports cite less than a 0.01% change, which is within the naturally occuring variance.
I drove along I-10 a couple times last year, and saw the windmill farms.. Those were absolutely amazing. I honestly believe they should be showing up more often. We should be learning to harness what's around us with no biproducts. Too bad you can't satisfy everyone.
We were brainstorming the other day, and came up with a system to make the Western US more habitable, as well as reduce global warming and air polution. It's an amazingly simple system, but people would get pissed off.. Imagine making even 10% of the Wester US more like usable farm land, rather than dry desert. There used to be a sea running through the middle of the US, known as the "Western Interior Seaway". Bringing that up to even 1% of what it used to be would bring serious life to the a rather sparsely inhabited part of the country..
But, the first person that looses his house because he built on the bottom of a dry river bottom would stop the whole thing. There goes his back yard.
I mentioned the ideas to a few people, and the biggest response I got was, "What if the waterlevel of the oceans drops. Like, if you manage to make the deserts not completely dry, the water comes from somewhere. People get pissy if the sealevel moves 1/4" from their beautiful ocean-side houses.. It may lower property values. (property values? {sigh}). So, I returned the question of, "What if by doing this, you solve the water shortages in dry countries, and give starving countries the ability to feed themselves?" They still worried about the value of their own houses.
{sigh}
One person I talked to gave me positive feedback. The rest were negative for personal reasons. One actually said it would suck because it would raise the humidity in LA.. Ya, it rains 2 days per year out here, and all around you is dirt.. A good regular rain-storm cycle would clean up the air, and give your grass something to grow with, rather than pumping out the available drinking water to your grass.
"NIMBY.. I don't want the humidity to be any higher, that would make me uncomfortable in the summer.."
He couldn't comprehend, clouds and rain would reverse the theoretical global warming thing.
That sounds pretty easy. :)
:)
The machine we've ordered goes like this:
MSI K8D Master
Two Opteron 240
two 512Mb PC2100 (1Gb total)
Enlight EN-8950
3 180Gb Western Digital Special Edition IDE
The price wasn't bad for the whole thing. Getting most of the parts from wholesalers, it came to about $2300.
The motherboard, memory, and drives have already arrived. I'm just waiting on the CPU's and case before I can start playing.
The machine it's replacing doesn't use a lot of memory, so 1Gb will be fine to start. The plan is, we'll swap out CPU's later for faster ones when they come down in price, and add memory as necessary.
I didn't want to go really nuts with it on the first attempt. I needed something the boss wouldn't freak out about the price, but still be impressed with the performance.. If this one works out well, there's a database server that needs to be upgraded, and we'll blow lots of money on that.
The guy who handles purchasing (like, hunting down vendors, and placing the orders) found a place selling the 240's for just under $300/ea. The 242's are just over $700/ea from the same place. He didn't get prices on 244's yet. Since they didn't mention it to him, I'd have to assume they aren't carrying them yet.