What I did, since Amanda doesn't have very good robotic library support, was to set up our NT server with an old version of Backup Exec (it was available used, from another company that upgraded, and it was cheap). Then I added a surplus Exabyte 8mm library (an EXB210, if I recall correctly) that I got for about $50 at the local used computer place.
Next, I installed Samba on our NetBSD boxes, set up the shares and permissions, and viola! Centralized backup with minimal hassle and cost.
Granted, this was done with older software and surplus components. While the exact hardware, and specific backup software I used may not be suitable for "enterprise" environments, the same principle applies. Samba is a lot more useful than I think some folks give it credit for. Thank you, Andrew Tridgell!
Bay Area & WA State (Puget Sound) Listings
on
Great Surplus Stores?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
At the risk of blowing one's own horn, I have listings of Bay Area (California) and Puget Sound region surplus stores and swap meets at this link. There's also links to other resources.
While he may be correct in saying that radio signals, in and of themselves, don't "interfere" with each other he's neglecting to mention a critical point.
It's also true that two radio signals, each of a different frequency, will, when mixed together, produce an entirely different set of signals based on the sum and difference of the two frequencies.
This is the same principle that superheterodyne circuits (the type used in just about any kind of modern RF receiver) are dependent on. Example: You want to receive a signal on a carrier frequency of 146.5200 MHz, and your receiver has a 10.700 MHz IF.
OK, so the local oscillator (LO) in your receiver needs to produce a frequency of its own that will mix with the incoming 146.5200, and produce 10.7MHz as a result. That 10.7 signal will then be demodulated and turned back into audio.
Assuming you use low-side injection, your receiver's LO would need to generate a frequency of 135.8200MHz (this, by the way, is why scanning receivers are not permitted in commercial aircraft. 135.8200 is in the aircraft comm band), which is merely 146.5200MHz minus 10.700MHz.
Anyway... What I'm driving at is this; Think of a mountain top transmitter site that's got a ton of broadcast, public safety, amateur, and other kinds of transmitters on top of it, many of which are producing hundreds, if not thousands, of watts worth of RF.
There's going to be signal mixing. Lots of it. That means tons of the very "interference" that Reed doesn't seem to think exists.
The techniques mentioned in the article, BTW, including software-defined radios, are nothing new. They've been around for decades, and ham radio folk are already experimenting with them. For one example of a purely software-controlled radio, take a look at this radio kit from TAPR.
Look, I'll freely admit to being biased, but... I'm a little baffled why Sendmail has not been more widely replaced, given that full understanding of its configuration file seems to require a Ph.d in computer science.
There are better (to my eye) alternatives. Postfix and qmail, just to name a couple. I just made the switch to Postfix, and my admin work got a lot easier overnight.
Is it just inertia that's keeping Sendmail in place?
...that the fly in your soup -- the one with the teeny-tiny camera and custom-made mask/snorkel -- is spying on you. Either that, or John Ashcroft has come up with a New and Better(?) method of domestic surveillance.
Ooops! Dang it, I didn't want to give him any ideas!!!
Anyone for a new series? Maybe something like "Spy Fly?"
Yeah, I know... Really bad pun. I couldn'd resist.
Anyway... Worst thing I've done in recent times was trust a used disk drive, that I later realized I'd dropped some months ago, to run my web server (it initially tested OK).
What happened is that my wife and I went to Tucson to visit some friends over a long weekend. Not more than 30 hours after we left, the hard drive failed. HOWEVER -- and this is a real testament to the resiliency of a NetBSD and Apache combo -- the server continued to operate normally, except for being unable to write to the hard drive, for the next three days until I came back to rebuild it.
The moral of the story: Used hardware is OK for the most part, but make DARN sure that it has at least been well-treated, physically and electrically.
My earlier comments on series re-making are hereby suspended -- for now! I should have done this before writing anything, but I just checked the link and saw that Ron Moore is the guy leading the project.
Considering the quality of "Roswell" and his other accomplishments, I believe I will give his image of what BSG could be a chance before I pan it outright.
Granted, it wasn't the SciFi channel that did this, but... Remember what happened when 'Dinotopia' made the transition from a single 2-hour made-for-TV flick to a series? The movie version was weak enough, but showed lots of potential if they could have gotten better writing.
The series flopped after (barely) getting through four or so episodes. Why? A complete cast change. None of the original actors got used, with the possible exception of the voice talent for that scaly librarian, and the replacement "talent" had about as many neurons between their collective ears as a cubic centimeter of space dust.
Look also at "Earth: Final Conflict." Fantastic series until Tribune Entertainment got their grubby mitts on it, and decided (God only knows why) it needed some changes. What'd we get? Death of the leading character(s) and, after a while, nothing but badly-written 'Monster of the Week' episodes. I'm surprised Kevin Kilner even bothered to reappear later on. I wonder if that was a move of desperation, on the part of the producers, to try and revive what they'd already effectively killed?
Few series survive being re-made. Does anyone really trust the production skills of a studio that has given us such... wonders... as "Crossing Over with John (shyster) Edwards," and the cancellation of their single most popular series (Farscape), to be able to do justice to the original BSG, as campy as it may have been?
I think SciFi needs to leave well enough alone. Unless, that is, they plan on hiring Richard Hatch as the producer of the thing. Then it might stand a chance.
I ran into this same question, in terms of design, when I was working out the details of the 'TechMobile,' as my wife dubbed it. Originally, I was going to buy a DC/DC converter supply for the onboard computer (yes, ones with 12V input exist), but I changed my mind after discussing it with a fellow engineer.
He pointed out something that I'd not thought of. Sure, a DC/DC will run the computer easily enough. But consider all the time I spend at electronics/ham radio swap meets, and the fact that there are times when having power tools available on-the-road can be mighty handy.
For about the same price that a DC/DC box would have cost, I got a nice heavy-duty Cobra inverter from an Ebay seller. I've got power to spare for both the onboard PC, and for testing stuff I might want to buy right at a swap meet. Much better value for the $$, IMO.
I've been spammed many times from MSN, and from other spammers hiding out in the Redmond Empire's IP range. I've had their entire set of IP ranges in our mail server's 'Deny' list for nearly two years. No regrets whatsoever.
For those who want to do similarly, and who run their own mail servers, let me save you a little research.
If you run qmail or a similar package with rblsmtpd, make the following entry in the/etc/tcp.smtp file, and recompile it.
207.46.:allow,RBLSMTPD="Microsoft: Access denied." (Or whatever text you want in there).
There are other domains. You may want to add:
207.68.128-207.:allow,RBLSMTPD=(Text as above). 65.52-55.: 213.199.144-159.:
For those using postfix, simply add these to your client_check and sender_check lists, and recompile with postmap.
microsoft.com 554 Go away, Bill. (or whatever you want to say). msft.net 554 (whatever you want to say) msn.com (if desired)
Universal 'Remove' lists have been tried. They've all failed because there's always going to be some spammer who thinks they can get away with not using it.
Don't even get me started on the fact that spammers, for the most part, go to great lengths to hide their real identities and addresses. Can't serve court papers if you can't find the person (and I use the term loosely in reference to spammers) to be served.
Part of the solution has always been there, staring legislators in the face. It's just that nobody seems to have the cojones to do it; Specifically, expand the existing Junk FAX law (47 USC 227(b)) to cover spam. It might not have an immediate effect, but at least it would be a good start.
...as to why 'Nemesis' was a flop, then no amount of explanation from Trek fandom, or any other fandom community for that matter, will make things clear for him.
I agree with others. The 'Trek' franchise should never have turned into a franchise to begin with. Give it a rest (and I say this as someone who grew up with the original series).
Give all the flaky batteries to whatever group makes up the (in)famous RPI Drop Squad. They could station some of the IBM execs at the bottom of their favorite stairwell, and... well, read the web site. You'll get the idea.;-)
Once the system's in place, and before it gets approved for "battlefield" conditions, the Navy should do a "Crack our Battleship's Network!" event as a security test.
If the opportunity to crack into a battleship's control systems isn't enough to draw people in for the challenge, offer a couple of prizes. Second-place winner gets to, say, fire a surface-to-surface missile into a Yugo. First-place winner gets to use another Yugo as an artillery projectile.
Having read the article, this little snippet near the bottom provided much food for thought.
"The lawsuit also demands that buyers and sellers, who use aliases in eBay transactions, register their screen names with the state of California as fictitious business names, and that eBay be forced to collect state sales tax."
Interesting! Now, ignoring the fact that the buyer was a lawyer, and taking into account that the whole spat is alleged to have started simply because of comments in the 'Feedback' areas, why in the Multiverse would the filer of this lawsuit want to use it to try and force two other requirements that are (in my view) utterly irrelevant to the original issue?
Perhaps someone should have a look at any connections Mr. Grace may have to the State of California's Franchise Tax Board, or other California state politicians, direct or otherwise.
On a more personal note: I sincerely hope this is one lawyer that loses his case, big time! Regardless of the condition of the magazines, it sounds like he does indeed need to "get a life." I know from direct experience that it is simply not possible to sell for more than a year or so on Ebay and -not- get a negative feedback or two. It Just Doesn't Happen that way.
Seems to me that there are at least two devices that could wreak havoc with any RFID chip. First, a simple bulk magnetic tape eraser. They generate one heck of a 60Hz AC magnetic field that should be strong enough to permanently fry the chip.
Second option: One of those high-voltage contact stun-guns that you can get from security or cop-supply outfits. Fire that up, pass it all over the tire. The rubber won't be bothered by the arc, since rubber's a darn good insulator, but I'd wager it'd turn the RFID chip into silicon toast.
If product manufacturers get it through their heads that consumers won't put up with this kind of crap, they might just give up.
Any other ideas for chip-zapping, besides a microwave oven? (And I can just see someone trying to stuff a steel-belted radial into a microwave).;-)
"Whoop! It's not the sysadmin's job to make sure you do backups properly -- unless you've got a desktop system constantly conected to the network, and I think the poster clearly stated that the issue at hand was a laptop."
-=-=-=-
Pardon me for following up on my own post, but... Not so! The system in question was anything but a laptop. It was a full-tower case, with a P166 (current for the time). There was a network card, so it must have been hitched to a LAN, but the developer obviously had no backups -- then!
I would be very surprised if they didn't start making backups soon after they got their system back.
Back in the late 90's, when I was still doing PC service work for folks, I had a pretty wild experience in terms of recovery. I ran into this cab driver at CompUSA who was in the process of picking up a whole bunch of power cords and other basic accessories. We got to talking, and he said he was new to computers, and had just gotten a whole bunch of hardware from the local swap meet.
We talked a while longer, and he ended up agreeing to pay my hourly rate to look the machines over, clean them up, and wipe the drives so he could use 'em. What he had was a full-tower Pentium 166 (big stuff back then), and a smaller external drive that had a security key lock on it.
So, I vacuum the system's guts (had a ton of dust-bunnies in there), reseat the memory, and fire it up. It boots into Win95. First thing I notice is a TON of very high-end graphics-manipulation and publishing software installed, including packages like Adobe PageMaker, a full version of Acrobat, PhotoShop, etc. There was also the (then) current version of Visual Basic and Visual C (both Enterprise-class editions).
This set off some alarm bells in my head. The combined software on that system was worth at least as much as the hardware. I started digging a bit deeper. I found a couple of Word documents (yes, the system had a full version of MS Office and MS Exchange on it as well) with the name of a graphics-and-advertising company barely 30 miles away.
I called said company, and got hold of the admin assistant for the programmer who's name was all over the system. Turns out that the entirety of what that cabbie had delivered to me had all been stolen in a burglary the same day it showed up at the swap meet!
You can probably guess the rest. The cabbie, once he learned what was going on, and not wanting any trouble with the King County Sheriffs, agreed to just leave the equipment with me in return for anonymity. The system, as it turned out, belonged to one of their senior developer/programmers who, along with their system, had lost about seven years worth of intense work.
The company involved was so delighted to get everything back intact (yep, every byte of that work was recovered) that they not only paid me for my time involved in cleaning the stuff up, but they also gave me a $50.00 certificate for one of the best restaurants in town. My wife and I had a nice dinner with that one.
The moral of the story: Pay VERY close attention to what may be left on any hard drive or system you get, and follow your instincts if you're the least bit suspicious! You could end up saving someone a ton of grief and lost hours.
You took my comment out of context in that you omitted the next part. No, of course I can't prove those things, or anything else that's one of the 'Great Mysteries' at the moment.
HOWEVER -- It's the fact that there's an awful lot of stuff Out There that cannot be proved OR (more importantly, IMO) DISPROVED that keeps life interesting.
"Watch any of the 'educational' commercial channels (Discovery, TLC, Science) and see the 'documentaries' on complete horse-pooey like ghost-hunting, bigfoot, loch ness monsters, ufos. The amount of air-time this stuff gets is enormous, because it's entertaining. But people are buying it - people think this is science..."
It may not be -- but then again, it just may be "science" of a different color.
Can you conclusively prove to me, right here and now, beyond ANY shadow of doubt, that things like UFOs, ghosts, Nessie, etc. do NOT exist?
I didn't think so. Guess what? I can't prove that they DO exist either!;-)
I'm not saying I believe everything on TV, nor do I believe the stuff that's published in rags like the 'Weekly World News' (though I will say that I got a great deal of amusement out of their photo-headline that Edgar Cayce had been reincarnated as a psychic fly).
What I'm saying is that skepticism and critical thinking are both very healthy, but keeping a closed mind to ideas that may not fit our current perception of science, just because we don't like the idea itself, is downright dangerous.
Where does that leave us, then? Right back at "I don't know." It's that little factor of not knowing that keeps us searching for answers. The kicker is that our knowledge and our science merely describe the world around us in terms that fit our senses, perception, interpretation of observations, and our culture.
I don't see how that same science can possibly define the full and true nature of any object, event, or living critter, especially if it has some sort of effect in an area that none of our senses or current instruments can detect.
"Spammers are not thieves. Under your logic, the weekly coupons your supermarket sends out snail mail would make your supermarket thieves. When in reality, it is those "junk mail" advertisements that are keeping the postal service alive."
Not true. The supermarket PAYS the postal service to deliver their coupons to the neighborhood. There is no cost to the recipient incurred, so no theft has taken place.
Spamming, however, is an entirely different can of worms. Example; I own/operate all my servers. Mail, web, DNS, news, the works. I paid for the hardware out of my own pocket, and I continue to pay for the electricity that runs them, the bandwidth that supports them, and the maintenance in my time and parts cost when something breaks.
When a spammer hits me or my other users with their unwanted crap, it's no different than if one snuck up behind me and tried to pick my pocket. They're stealing MY resources just so they can avoid paying their own way, advertising-wise.
To put it another way; Imagine receiving junk postal mail with postage due, or getting collect calls from telemarketers. Spamming is the same thing.
If you choose not to believe me, believe the courts. In the landmark case of AOL vs. Cyber Promotions, the judge in the case determined (rightly so) that spamming constituted theft by conversion, and trespass to chattel.
"Email is protected speech. There is a fundamental free speech right to be able to send and receive messages, regardless of medium."
Actually, no. That's only partly correct. It would be fully correct if the Internet, and its associated E-mail functionality, were a true "public" resource, with free access for all funded by federal income taxes. However, such is not the case.
While it is true that the act of writing E-mail is indeed protected speech, sending E-mail is a PRIVILEGE, not a right, just like a driver's license. There is (rightfully so) no law or any legal requirement for the admin/owner/operator of any E-mail system to accept any traffic that they do not wish to.
Why? Because the vast majority of the 'net-connected servers are PRIVATELY owned and operated. This is a critical point that all too many people, both admins and end users, are either unaware of or choose to forget.
"Unless that right is being abused by a particular individual, that individual must not be restricted. It is unacceptable, then, for anti-spam policies to limit legitimate rights to send or receive email."
There they go again. Until the EFF gets it through their head that the ability to E-mail is not a "right," they're just going to loop themselves into an endless argument.
If someone is paying monthly fees to an ISP that has a high spammer population along with legitimate customers, and the ISP is doing nothing about their spammers, then that someone is supporting (indirectly) abuse of other people's 'net resources.
Also, I have a challenge for the EFF or anyone else. Show me an ISP service contract which GUARANTEES 100% E-mail delivery to ANY host under ANY conditions, AND the ISP that actually manages to pull it off.
No? I didn't think so.
"To the extent that an anti-spam proposal, whether legal or technical, results in such casualties, that proposal is unacceptable."
And what would be more "acceptable" to the EFF? No functional E-mail at all? Because that's exactly what we'd get, in very short order, if all the current blocklist providers were to simply shut down, as the EFF seems to want.
Come to think of it, there might be an idea. Have SPEWS, Spamhaus/ROKSO, etc. all stop operations for just one or two days. I would wager that the resultant vast increase in spam load would be an excellent example of what would happen if we were to believe the EFF.
I may have agreed with them on other issues, but this position of theirs that E-mail is a "right" won't hold water. Neither will their stance on blocklists.
Perhaps I should just forward all the spam I get to their feedback address?;-)
Slashdot Mirror
What I did, since Amanda doesn't have very good robotic library support, was to set up our NT server with an old version of Backup Exec (it was available used, from another company that upgraded, and it was cheap). Then I added a surplus Exabyte 8mm library (an EXB210, if I recall correctly) that I got for about $50 at the local used computer place.
Next, I installed Samba on our NetBSD boxes, set up the shares and permissions, and viola! Centralized backup with minimal hassle and cost.
Granted, this was done with older software and surplus components. While the exact hardware, and specific backup software I used may not be suitable for "enterprise" environments, the same principle applies. Samba is a lot more useful than I think some folks give it credit for. Thank you, Andrew Tridgell!
At the risk of blowing one's own horn, I have listings of Bay Area (California) and Puget Sound region surplus stores and swap meets at this link. There's also links to other resources.
Enjoy!
While he may be correct in saying that radio signals, in and of themselves, don't "interfere" with each other he's neglecting to mention a critical point.
It's also true that two radio signals, each of a different frequency, will, when mixed together, produce an entirely different set of signals based on the sum and difference of the two frequencies.
This is the same principle that superheterodyne circuits (the type used in just about any kind of modern RF receiver) are dependent on. Example: You want to receive a signal on a carrier frequency of 146.5200 MHz, and your receiver has a 10.700 MHz IF.
OK, so the local oscillator (LO) in your receiver needs to produce a frequency of its own that will mix with the incoming 146.5200, and produce 10.7MHz as a result. That 10.7 signal will then be demodulated and turned back into audio.
Assuming you use low-side injection, your receiver's LO would need to generate a frequency of 135.8200MHz (this, by the way, is why scanning receivers are not permitted in commercial aircraft. 135.8200 is in the aircraft comm band), which is merely 146.5200MHz minus 10.700MHz.
Anyway... What I'm driving at is this; Think of a mountain top transmitter site that's got a ton of broadcast, public safety, amateur, and other kinds of transmitters on top of it, many of which are producing hundreds, if not thousands, of watts worth of RF.
There's going to be signal mixing. Lots of it. That means tons of the very "interference" that Reed doesn't seem to think exists.
The techniques mentioned in the article, BTW, including software-defined radios, are nothing new. They've been around for decades, and ham radio folk are already experimenting with them. For one example of a purely software-controlled radio, take a look at this radio kit from TAPR.
73 de KC7GR
Look, I'll freely admit to being biased, but... I'm a little baffled why Sendmail has not been more widely replaced, given that full understanding of its configuration file seems to require a Ph.d in computer science.
There are better (to my eye) alternatives. Postfix and qmail, just to name a couple. I just made the switch to Postfix, and my admin work got a lot easier overnight.
Is it just inertia that's keeping Sendmail in place?
...that the fly in your soup -- the one with the teeny-tiny camera and custom-made mask/snorkel -- is spying on you. Either that, or John Ashcroft has come up with a New and Better(?) method of domestic surveillance.
;-)
Ooops! Dang it, I didn't want to give him any ideas!!!
Anyone for a new series? Maybe something like "Spy Fly?"
I'm going to go take my meds now...
Yeah, I know... Really bad pun. I couldn'd resist.
Anyway... Worst thing I've done in recent times was trust a used disk drive, that I later realized I'd dropped some months ago, to run my web server (it initially tested OK).
What happened is that my wife and I went to Tucson to visit some friends over a long weekend. Not more than 30 hours after we left, the hard drive failed. HOWEVER -- and this is a real testament to the resiliency of a NetBSD and Apache combo -- the server continued to operate normally, except for being unable to write to the hard drive, for the next three days until I came back to rebuild it.
The moral of the story: Used hardware is OK for the most part, but make DARN sure that it has at least been well-treated, physically and electrically.
Can I get a couple of bagels to go with those LOCs? Onion or blueberry, please...
Thanks!
My earlier comments on series re-making are hereby suspended -- for now! I should have done this before writing anything, but I just checked the link and saw that Ron Moore is the guy leading the project.
Considering the quality of "Roswell" and his other accomplishments, I believe I will give his image of what BSG could be a chance before I pan it outright.
Granted, it wasn't the SciFi channel that did this, but... Remember what happened when 'Dinotopia' made the transition from a single 2-hour made-for-TV flick to a series? The movie version was weak enough, but showed lots of potential if they could have gotten better writing.
The series flopped after (barely) getting through four or so episodes. Why? A complete cast change. None of the original actors got used, with the possible exception of the voice talent for that scaly librarian, and the replacement "talent" had about as many neurons between their collective ears as a cubic centimeter of space dust.
Look also at "Earth: Final Conflict." Fantastic series until Tribune Entertainment got their grubby mitts on it, and decided (God only knows why) it needed some changes. What'd we get? Death of the leading character(s) and, after a while, nothing but badly-written 'Monster of the Week' episodes. I'm surprised Kevin Kilner even bothered to reappear later on. I wonder if that was a move of desperation, on the part of the producers, to try and revive what they'd already effectively killed?
Few series survive being re-made. Does anyone really trust the production skills of a studio that has given us such... wonders... as "Crossing Over with John (shyster) Edwards," and the cancellation of their single most popular series (Farscape), to be able to do justice to the original BSG, as campy as it may have been?
I think SciFi needs to leave well enough alone. Unless, that is, they plan on hiring Richard Hatch as the producer of the thing. Then it might stand a chance.
I ran into this same question, in terms of design, when I was working out the details of the 'TechMobile,' as my wife dubbed it. Originally, I was going to buy a DC/DC converter supply for the onboard computer (yes, ones with 12V input exist), but I changed my mind after discussing it with a fellow engineer.
He pointed out something that I'd not thought of. Sure, a DC/DC will run the computer easily enough. But consider all the time I spend at electronics/ham radio swap meets, and the fact that there are times when having power tools available on-the-road can be mighty handy.
For about the same price that a DC/DC box would have cost, I got a nice heavy-duty Cobra inverter from an Ebay seller. I've got power to spare for both the onboard PC, and for testing stuff I might want to buy right at a swap meet. Much better value for the $$, IMO.
I've been spammed many times from MSN, and from other spammers hiding out in the Redmond Empire's IP range. I've had their entire set of IP ranges in our mail server's 'Deny' list for nearly two years. No regrets whatsoever.
/etc/tcp.smtp file, and recompile it.
For those who want to do similarly, and who run their own mail servers, let me save you a little research.
If you run qmail or a similar package with rblsmtpd, make the following entry in the
207.46.:allow,RBLSMTPD="Microsoft: Access denied." (Or whatever text you want in there).
There are other domains. You may want to add:
207.68.128-207.:allow,RBLSMTPD=(Text as above).
65.52-55.:
213.199.144-159.:
For those using postfix, simply add these to your client_check and sender_check lists, and recompile with postmap.
microsoft.com 554 Go away, Bill. (or whatever you want to say).
msft.net 554 (whatever you want to say)
msn.com (if desired)
Universal 'Remove' lists have been tried. They've all failed because there's always going to be some spammer who thinks they can get away with not using it.
Don't even get me started on the fact that spammers, for the most part, go to great lengths to hide their real identities and addresses. Can't serve court papers if you can't find the person (and I use the term loosely in reference to spammers) to be served.
Part of the solution has always been there, staring legislators in the face. It's just that nobody seems to have the cojones to do it; Specifically, expand the existing Junk FAX law (47 USC 227(b)) to cover spam. It might not have an immediate effect, but at least it would be a good start.
...as to why 'Nemesis' was a flop, then no amount of explanation from Trek fandom, or any other fandom community for that matter, will make things clear for him.
I agree with others. The 'Trek' franchise should never have turned into a franchise to begin with. Give it a rest (and I say this as someone who grew up with the original series).
Give all the flaky batteries to whatever group makes up the (in)famous RPI Drop Squad. They could station some of the IBM execs at the bottom of their favorite stairwell, and... well, read the web site. You'll get the idea. ;-)
Once the system's in place, and before it gets approved for "battlefield" conditions, the Navy should do a "Crack our Battleship's Network!" event as a security test.
If the opportunity to crack into a battleship's control systems isn't enough to draw people in for the challenge, offer a couple of prizes. Second-place winner gets to, say, fire a surface-to-surface missile into a Yugo. First-place winner gets to use another Yugo as an artillery projectile.
...a search for Spud Guns turned up 1900 hits (most of them heavily dented).
Knock yourselves out! (but do be careful about it).
Having read the article, this little snippet near the bottom provided much food for thought.
"The lawsuit also demands that buyers and sellers, who use aliases in eBay transactions, register their screen names with the state of California as fictitious business names, and that eBay be forced to collect state sales tax."
Interesting! Now, ignoring the fact that the buyer was a lawyer, and taking into account that the whole spat is alleged to have started simply because of comments in the 'Feedback' areas, why in the Multiverse would the filer of this lawsuit want to use it to try and force two other requirements that are (in my view) utterly irrelevant to the original issue?
Perhaps someone should have a look at any connections Mr. Grace may have to the State of California's Franchise Tax Board, or other California state politicians, direct or otherwise.
On a more personal note: I sincerely hope this is one lawyer that loses his case, big time! Regardless of the condition of the magazines, it sounds like he does indeed need to "get a life." I know from direct experience that it is simply not possible to sell for more than a year or so on Ebay and -not- get a negative feedback or two. It Just Doesn't Happen that way.
Seems to me that there are at least two devices that could wreak havoc with any RFID chip. First, a simple bulk magnetic tape eraser. They generate one heck of a 60Hz AC magnetic field that should be strong enough to permanently fry the chip.
;-)
Second option: One of those high-voltage contact stun-guns that you can get from security or cop-supply outfits. Fire that up, pass it all over the tire. The rubber won't be bothered by the arc, since rubber's a darn good insulator, but I'd wager it'd turn the RFID chip into silicon toast.
If product manufacturers get it through their heads that consumers won't put up with this kind of crap, they might just give up.
Any other ideas for chip-zapping, besides a microwave oven? (And I can just see someone trying to stuff a steel-belted radial into a microwave).
You wrote...
"Whoop! It's not the sysadmin's job to make sure you do backups properly -- unless you've got a desktop system constantly conected to the network, and I think the poster clearly stated that the issue at hand was a laptop."
-=-=-=-
Pardon me for following up on my own post, but... Not so! The system in question was anything but a laptop. It was a full-tower case, with a P166 (current for the time). There was a network card, so it must have been hitched to a LAN, but the developer obviously had no backups -- then!
I would be very surprised if they didn't start making backups soon after they got their system back.
Back in the late 90's, when I was still doing PC service work for folks, I had a pretty wild experience in terms of recovery. I ran into this cab driver at CompUSA who was in the process of picking up a whole bunch of power cords and other basic accessories. We got to talking, and he said he was new to computers, and had just gotten a whole bunch of hardware from the local swap meet.
We talked a while longer, and he ended up agreeing to pay my hourly rate to look the machines over, clean them up, and wipe the drives so he could use 'em. What he had was a full-tower Pentium 166 (big stuff back then), and a smaller external drive that had a security key lock on it.
So, I vacuum the system's guts (had a ton of dust-bunnies in there), reseat the memory, and fire it up. It boots into Win95. First thing I notice is a TON of very high-end graphics-manipulation and publishing software installed, including packages like Adobe PageMaker, a full version of Acrobat, PhotoShop, etc. There was also the (then) current version of Visual Basic and Visual C (both Enterprise-class editions).
This set off some alarm bells in my head. The combined software on that system was worth at least as much as the hardware. I started digging a bit deeper. I found a couple of Word documents (yes, the system had a full version of MS Office and MS Exchange on it as well) with the name of a graphics-and-advertising company barely 30 miles away.
I called said company, and got hold of the admin assistant for the programmer who's name was all over the system. Turns out that the entirety of what that cabbie had delivered to me had all been stolen in a burglary the same day it showed up at the swap meet!
You can probably guess the rest. The cabbie, once he learned what was going on, and not wanting any trouble with the King County Sheriffs, agreed to just leave the equipment with me in return for anonymity. The system, as it turned out, belonged to one of their senior developer/programmers who, along with their system, had lost about seven years worth of intense work.
The company involved was so delighted to get everything back intact (yep, every byte of that work was recovered) that they not only paid me for my time involved in cleaning the stuff up, but they also gave me a $50.00 certificate for one of the best restaurants in town. My wife and I had a nice dinner with that one.
The moral of the story: Pay VERY close attention to what may be left on any hard drive or system you get, and follow your instincts if you're the least bit suspicious! You could end up saving someone a ton of grief and lost hours.
You took my comment out of context in that you omitted the next part. No, of course I can't prove those things, or anything else that's one of the 'Great Mysteries' at the moment.
HOWEVER -- It's the fact that there's an awful lot of stuff Out There that cannot be proved OR (more importantly, IMO) DISPROVED that keeps life interesting.
You wrote...
;-)
"Watch any of the 'educational' commercial channels (Discovery, TLC, Science) and see the 'documentaries' on complete horse-pooey like ghost-hunting, bigfoot, loch ness monsters, ufos. The amount of air-time this stuff gets is enormous, because it's entertaining. But people are buying it - people think this is science..."
It may not be -- but then again, it just may be "science" of a different color.
Can you conclusively prove to me, right here and now, beyond ANY shadow of doubt, that things like UFOs, ghosts, Nessie, etc. do NOT exist?
I didn't think so. Guess what? I can't prove that they DO exist either!
I'm not saying I believe everything on TV, nor do I believe the stuff that's published in rags like the 'Weekly World News' (though I will say that I got a great deal of amusement out of their photo-headline that Edgar Cayce had been reincarnated as a psychic fly).
What I'm saying is that skepticism and critical thinking are both very healthy, but keeping a closed mind to ideas that may not fit our current perception of science, just because we don't like the idea itself, is downright dangerous.
Where does that leave us, then? Right back at "I don't know." It's that little factor of not knowing that keeps us searching for answers. The kicker is that our knowledge and our science merely describe the world around us in terms that fit our senses, perception, interpretation of observations, and our culture.
I don't see how that same science can possibly define the full and true nature of any object, event, or living critter, especially if it has some sort of effect in an area that none of our senses or current instruments can detect.
I just can't resist. Remember what you all need to sing at midnight in your respective time zone...
Should older packets become dumped
and never brought online,
Let newer packets take their place
on all our T-1 lines!
(I wonder if my older karma will be forgotten?)
FaRuvius writes...
"Spammers are not thieves. Under your logic, the weekly coupons your supermarket sends out snail mail would make your supermarket thieves. When in reality, it is those "junk mail" advertisements that are keeping the postal service alive."
Not true. The supermarket PAYS the postal service to deliver their coupons to the neighborhood. There is no cost to the recipient incurred, so no theft has taken place.
Spamming, however, is an entirely different can of worms. Example; I own/operate all my servers. Mail, web, DNS, news, the works. I paid for the hardware out of my own pocket, and I continue to pay for the electricity that runs them, the bandwidth that supports them, and the maintenance in my time and parts cost when something breaks.
When a spammer hits me or my other users with their unwanted crap, it's no different than if one snuck up behind me and tried to pick my pocket. They're stealing MY resources just so they can avoid paying their own way, advertising-wise.
To put it another way; Imagine receiving junk postal mail with postage due, or getting collect calls from telemarketers. Spamming is the same thing.
If you choose not to believe me, believe the courts. In the landmark case of AOL vs. Cyber Promotions, the judge in the case determined (rightly so) that spamming constituted theft by conversion, and trespass to chattel.
So yes. Spammers are thieves. Period.
The EFF was quoted as saying...
;-)
"Email is protected speech. There is a fundamental free speech right to be able to send and receive messages, regardless of medium."
Actually, no. That's only partly correct. It would be fully correct if the Internet, and its associated E-mail functionality, were a true "public" resource, with free access for all funded by federal income taxes. However, such is not the case.
While it is true that the act of writing E-mail is indeed protected speech, sending E-mail is a PRIVILEGE, not a right, just like a driver's license. There is (rightfully so) no law or any legal requirement for the admin/owner/operator of any E-mail system to accept any traffic that they do not wish to.
Why? Because the vast majority of the 'net-connected servers are PRIVATELY owned and operated. This is a critical point that all too many people, both admins and end users, are either unaware of or choose to forget.
"Unless that right is being abused by a particular individual, that individual must not be restricted. It is unacceptable, then, for anti-spam policies to limit legitimate rights to send or receive email."
There they go again. Until the EFF gets it through their head that the ability to E-mail is not a "right," they're just going to loop themselves into an endless argument.
If someone is paying monthly fees to an ISP that has a high spammer population along with legitimate customers, and the ISP is doing nothing about their spammers, then that someone is supporting (indirectly) abuse of other people's 'net resources.
Also, I have a challenge for the EFF or anyone else. Show me an ISP service contract which GUARANTEES 100% E-mail delivery to ANY host under ANY conditions, AND the ISP that actually manages to pull it off.
No? I didn't think so.
"To the extent that an anti-spam proposal, whether legal or technical, results in such casualties, that proposal is unacceptable."
And what would be more "acceptable" to the EFF? No functional E-mail at all? Because that's exactly what we'd get, in very short order, if all the current blocklist providers were to simply shut down, as the EFF seems to want.
Come to think of it, there might be an idea. Have SPEWS, Spamhaus/ROKSO, etc. all stop operations for just one or two days. I would wager that the resultant vast increase in spam load would be an excellent example of what would happen if we were to believe the EFF.
I may have agreed with them on other issues, but this position of theirs that E-mail is a "right" won't hold water. Neither will their stance on blocklists.
Perhaps I should just forward all the spam I get to their feedback address?