A Secret Service agent told me that his agency has a mandate allowing it to investigate any Federal crime. They have spent lots of money training agents in "cyber crime" over the last few years and consider it a high priority.
Last year my wife and I saw "MacHomer," another one-man show where every Simpson's character is placed within "MacBeth." About 85% of the play is original Shakespeare, with the rest being improvisations by performer Rick Miller. It's hilarious and his Homer impression is right on. He also throws in assorted other imitations for an encore! Visit the site at http://www.machomer.com.
I know this reviewer isn't afraid to give bad reviews. However, there's no point in devoting time to bad books. Book reviewers get many books per month and spend their time reading the good ones. The only time a bad review is published is if the reader thinks it will be good, actually buys it, and then feels burnt by his purchase.
On the other hand, Slashdot does publish too many glowing reviews. Good reviews are helpful to publishers and authors but bad for the public. Good luck finding reviewers willing to devote time slogging through bad books, only to look forward to slamming the book when done.
You're stating one of Zeno's Paradoxes and might not know it. If you did, you'd know it is possible to solve the problem such that all of the elements of the series can be summed.
I don't see the point of this post. We will never run out of oil. Why? Economics. Assume oil began to become scarce. No new supply is replacing the oil taken from the ground. Assuming fixed demand, the price of oil would rise as the supply diminished. (If demand rose, the price would rise even more.)
As prices rise, alternatives to oil become financially viable. Suddenly fuel cells or wind power or any other technology currently more expensive than oil looks attractive to investors. Those who can afford oil buy it, while others turn to the alternatives. Assuming no new oil is discovered (to address the supply issue), eventually no one cares about oil as everyone has transitioned to other forms of energy. The remaining oil sits in the ground unused.
Of course this adjustment must take place over the mid- to long-run. Short-term adjustments are called "oil shocks," such as we had in the 1970s or during the early days of most recent wars.
I finally put the pieces together. The 3 Jul 03 Economist (subscription required) posted a story called "A golden eye in the sky":
"So, when DARPA, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, asked Aurora, a company based in Manassas, Virginia, to design an unmanned aerial vehicle that was quiet, small, could fly for several hours on autopilot, and could deliver two cylinders the size of Coke cans to a distant location, Aurora happily obliged."
"The best solution to deliver small, covert communications/ sensor packages is an autonomous airborne vehicle that operates outside the enemy's threat envelope: the Clandestine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (CUAV)."
Try reviewing Snort books when you know something about Snort. For example, saying "This book, and the Koziol book, cover Snort version 2.0, which isn't all that much different from version 1.9 covered in the Rehman book" shows you know nothing about Snort's internals. Snort 2.0 offers several new features -- check them out!
These reviews are more helpful. A copy of the Koziol book is on the way to the Amazon.com reviewer so he should be able to rate it against the Caswell and Rehman books.
And those ratings -- 4/10 for Caswell, currently selling at #423 at Amazon.com, compared to 7/10 for Rehman, currently #5691 at Amazon.com? Popular opinion isn't everything, but people are clearly buying the better book -- despite its faults.
The BSD's legal trouble in the 1990's helped Linux gain popularity at BSD's expense. Now it may be time for the enterprise to remember BSD can do everything Linux can do -- sometimes better!
Corporate income is taxed by the federal government, and then dividends paid by corporations to shareholders are taxed again. How does double taxation of that sort support your argument?
"According to preliminary data released by the Internal Revenue Service and a new Tax Foundation Special Report, the top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned more than two-thirds of the nation's income (67.3%) and paid more than five out of every six dollars collected by the federal income tax (84%) in 2000. There were 32 million tax returns in the top 25 percent, all with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) over $55,225.
The top one percent of U.S. taxpayers (annual income over $313,469) made 20.8 percent of the income earned in 2000 and paid 37.4 percent of the total federal individual income taxes collected that year. This fraction of the tax burden paid by the top one percent - well over a third of the total - is up from 25.1 percent ten years earlier in tax year 1990.
At the other end of the income spectrum, the bottom 50 percent of the nation's taxpayers earned only 13.0 percent of all income in 2000, but they paid an even smaller fraction of the federal individual income taxes collected - 3.9 percent."
Here are the latest tax rates just signed into law.
If you like Sweden's system, don't bother living in the US!
I literally ordered my copy of the fourth edition of The Complete FreeBSD this morning from Buy.com. While I'm passing on Roderick's FreeBSD book, his Multi-Boot Configuration Handbook is good, albeit a few years old.
This thread from 1990 may be the first public posting of this story. Even then no one could produce an actual case to substantitate it. Someone remembers a "DDN bulletin" and having to patch their VMS boxes to remove the "Welcome" part of the login banner.
From: EXE April 1992 v6 n10 p46
Process Communications Ltd. (UK)
Are hackers really criminals? (the UK Computer Misuse Act)
David Martin
"...a shop steward had been using a computer system in the middle of the
night. The shop steward had already got an account of his own. However,
by use of a password used by his daughter, he accessed information that he
was not required, by his job, to be able to access. The Tribunal decided
that although the employer should have defined exactly the extent of access
permitted, any reasonable person would have realized that this was
unauthorised [sic] access. A computer system manager should therefore
ensure that any Welcome banner states that if the user does not have
explicit permission to access the computer system and use it for an
explicitly permitted set of actions, he should log out."
Apparently this has mutated over the years into the story told by people who don't bother to check their sources!
Helevius
High cover price to page ratio
on
802.11 Security
·
· Score: 1
Thank goodness you can buy this book for $22.01, with free shipping from buy.com. O'Reilly says the book has 192 pages. At a cover price of $34.95, that's over 18 cents per page. For $22.01, though, you're spending less than 12 cents per page.
Compare that to one of O'Reilly's best books, Building Internet Firewalls, with a cover of $49.95 and 890 pages -- less than 6 cents per page. buy.com has it for $31.47, dropping the ratio to less than 4 cents per page!
O'Reilly books seem to be the most expensive around, yet I think their ability to charge so much has been eroded by good books from other publishers.
I wonder if "Bill Camarda" is related to the fictitious "L. Peterson", who wrote a glowing July 2001 review of the first Hack Attacks Revealed? (No one named L. Peterson ever worked or does work at the AFCERT.) Excerpts from "L. Peterson's" fake review were published by Wiley in the front cover of Hack Attacks Encyclopedia, much to the Air Force's dismay.
Be wary of positive reviews of these "Hack Attacks" books. Those who rate them highly seem to be:
I certainly hope the second edition is better than the first. That would be good for the security community, which is all that matters in the long run.
This is a hoax which has been repeated for years since its initial release:
---
"The 1991 Infoworld April Fool's story written by reporter John Gantz about a National Security Agency-developed computer virus smuggled into Iraq from France hidden in a chip in a printer continues on with a life of its own a full eight years after its genesis. The joke piece about the virus that attacked the Iraqi air defense computer network during the Gulf War was given a shot in the arm late last year by James Adams' book on information warfare, "The Next World War." Adams had been hooked by the original April Fool, US News & World Report, which had passed on the hoax as fact in its book on the Gulf War, "Triumph Without Victory," in 1992.
In the March 1999 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, at the end of an article on "information warfare," science reporter Jim Wilson takes the sucker-bait: "In the days following the Gulf War, stories circulated that [information warfare] weapons had been unleashed on the Iraqi air defense system. According to these accounts, French printers exported to the Iraqi military were intercepted and equipped with special chips developed by the [National Security Agency]. On these chips were programs designed to infect and disrupt the communications systems that linked anti-aircraft missiles to radar installations."
Popular Mechanics, a magazine seemingly aimed at a readership that gets an erection over stories about the amount and variety of bombs that can be dropped on foreigners by a B-52, can be found on almost any neighborhood newsstand.
More good company: A few months ago ex-CIA chief William Webster and journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave were also gaffed by the Gulf War virus hoax in a Center for Strategic and International Studies report entitled "Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism, Cyberwarfare."
Perhaps it is time for the publisher of Infoworld to consider charging for reuse of the magazine's April Fool's joke."
All three issues were resolved during Reagan's terms. That's why Carter wasn't re-elected, and Reagan was. Try submitting some facts next time, rather than using elegant advjectives like "slimy".
I highly recommend this set of videos from the Teaching Company:
Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear. Prof. Starbird is an exceptional instructor who illustrates insights into calculus using layman's terms. I took three calculus related courses during the course of high school and college, yet found these six tapes to be incredibly enlightening.
Be sure to buy them when they're on sale! They're $54.95 today (2 Jul 02) but retail for as high as $199.95, I believe.
Slashdot Mirror
Helevius
FreeBSD has binary patching as well here
Helevius
Posted from a FreeBSD 5.2 RELEASE laptop
The one Amazon.com review gave this book 4 stars.
Helevius
Helevius
Helevius
Maybe now the "BSD is dead" trolls will turn their attention to Red Hat?
Excuse the wishful thinking...
Helevius
On the other hand, Slashdot does publish too many glowing reviews. Good reviews are helpful to publishers and authors but bad for the public. Good luck finding reviewers willing to devote time slogging through bad books, only to look forward to slamming the book when done.
Helevius
Helevius
I don't see the point of this post. We will never run out of oil. Why? Economics. Assume oil began to become scarce. No new supply is replacing the oil taken from the ground. Assuming fixed demand, the price of oil would rise as the supply diminished. (If demand rose, the price would rise even more.)
As prices rise, alternatives to oil become financially viable. Suddenly fuel cells or wind power or any other technology currently more expensive than oil looks attractive to investors. Those who can afford oil buy it, while others turn to the alternatives. Assuming no new oil is discovered (to address the supply issue), eventually no one cares about oil as everyone has transitioned to other forms of energy. The remaining oil sits in the ground unused.
Of course this adjustment must take place over the mid- to long-run. Short-term adjustments are called "oil shocks," such as we had in the 1970s or during the early days of most recent wars.
Helevius
"Just got myself a 12' PowerBook, oh well."
A 12 foot PowerBook? I'd be upset too.
Helevius
"So, when DARPA, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, asked Aurora, a company based in Manassas, Virginia, to design an unmanned aerial vehicle that was quiet, small, could fly for several hours on autopilot, and could deliver two cylinders the size of Coke cans to a distant location, Aurora happily obliged."
The DOD Small Business Innovation Research Resource Center appears to show the awarded contract for Aurora Flight Sciences Corp:
"The best solution to deliver small, covert communications/ sensor packages is an autonomous airborne vehicle that operates outside the enemy's threat envelope: the Clandestine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (CUAV)."
Now we know what all the pieces are for!
Helevius
These reviews are more helpful. A copy of the Koziol book is on the way to the Amazon.com reviewer so he should be able to rate it against the Caswell and Rehman books.
And those ratings -- 4/10 for Caswell, currently selling at #423 at Amazon.com, compared to 7/10 for Rehman, currently #5691 at Amazon.com? Popular opinion isn't everything, but people are clearly buying the better book -- despite its faults.
Helevius
Helevius
This contains all the items of interest, including the license comments.
Helevius
Helevius
"According to preliminary data released by the Internal Revenue Service and a new Tax Foundation Special Report, the top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned more than two-thirds of the nation's income (67.3%) and paid more than five out of every six dollars collected by the federal income tax (84%) in 2000. There were 32 million tax returns in the top 25 percent, all with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) over $55,225.
The top one percent of U.S. taxpayers (annual income over $313,469) made 20.8 percent of the income earned in 2000 and paid 37.4 percent of the total federal individual income taxes collected that year. This fraction of the tax burden paid by the top one percent - well over a third of the total - is up from 25.1 percent ten years earlier in tax year 1990.
At the other end of the income spectrum, the bottom 50 percent of the nation's taxpayers earned only 13.0 percent of all income in 2000, but they paid an even smaller fraction of the federal individual income taxes collected - 3.9 percent."
Here are the latest tax rates just signed into law.
If you like Sweden's system, don't bother living in the US!
Helevius
An excellent FreeBSD book is Michael Lucas' Absolute BSD. His Absolute OpenBSD book arrives soon.
Enjoy,
Helevius
Another thread in alt.folklore.computers gives another example where "welcome" banners are mentioned:
From: EXE April 1992 v6 n10 p46
Process Communications Ltd. (UK)
Are hackers really criminals? (the UK Computer Misuse Act)
David Martin
"...a shop steward had been using a computer system in the middle of the night. The shop steward had already got an account of his own. However, by use of a password used by his daughter, he accessed information that he was not required, by his job, to be able to access. The Tribunal decided that although the employer should have defined exactly the extent of access permitted, any reasonable person would have realized that this was unauthorised [sic] access. A computer system manager should therefore ensure that any Welcome banner states that if the user does not have explicit permission to access the computer system and use it for an explicitly permitted set of actions, he should log out."
Apparently this has mutated over the years into the story told by people who don't bother to check their sources!
Helevius
Compare that to one of O'Reilly's best books, Building Internet Firewalls, with a cover of $49.95 and 890 pages -- less than 6 cents per page. buy.com has it for $31.47, dropping the ratio to less than 4 cents per page!
O'Reilly books seem to be the most expensive around, yet I think their ability to charge so much has been eroded by good books from other publishers.
Helevius
I'll believe in the second edition of HAR when I see it.
Helevius
Be wary of positive reviews of these "Hack Attacks" books. Those who rate them highly seem to be:
technically clueless
or
cronies/clones of the author
The first edition of HAR supposed solicited 269 Amazon.com reviews! In contrast, the best-selling "hacking" book of all time is Hacking Exposed, with 51 reviews. Something doesn't add up if you peruse these reviews.
I certainly hope the second edition is better than the first. That would be good for the security community, which is all that matters in the long run.
Helevius
---
"The 1991 Infoworld April Fool's story written by reporter John Gantz about a National Security Agency-developed computer virus smuggled into Iraq from France hidden in a chip in a printer continues on with a life of its own a full eight years after its genesis. The joke piece about the virus that attacked the Iraqi air defense computer network during the Gulf War was given a shot in the arm late last year by James Adams' book on information warfare, "The Next World War." Adams had been hooked by the original April Fool, US News & World Report, which had passed on the hoax as fact in its book on the Gulf War, "Triumph Without Victory," in 1992.
In the March 1999 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, at the end of an article on "information warfare," science reporter Jim Wilson takes the sucker-bait: "In the days following the Gulf War, stories circulated that [information warfare] weapons had been unleashed on the Iraqi air defense system. According to these accounts, French printers exported to the Iraqi military were intercepted and equipped with special chips developed by the [National Security Agency]. On these chips were programs designed to infect and disrupt the communications systems that linked anti-aircraft missiles to radar installations."
Popular Mechanics, a magazine seemingly aimed at a readership that gets an erection over stories about the amount and variety of bombs that can be dropped on foreigners by a B-52, can be found on almost any neighborhood newsstand.
More good company: A few months ago ex-CIA chief William Webster and journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave were also gaffed by the Gulf War virus hoax in a Center for Strategic and International Studies report entitled "Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism, Cyberwarfare."
Perhaps it is time for the publisher of Infoworld to consider charging for reuse of the magazine's April Fool's joke."
---
Helevius
All three issues were resolved during Reagan's terms. That's why Carter wasn't re-elected, and Reagan was. Try submitting some facts next time, rather than using elegant advjectives like "slimy".
Helevius
No kidding! Here's Riptech's press release and Recourse's news. This follows the purchase of MountainWave earlier this month.
Helevius
Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear. Prof. Starbird is an exceptional instructor who illustrates insights into calculus using layman's terms. I took three calculus related courses during the course of high school and college, yet found these six tapes to be incredibly enlightening.
Be sure to buy them when they're on sale! They're $54.95 today (2 Jul 02) but retail for as high as $199.95, I believe.
Enjoy,
Helevius