I grew up on 5.25" floppies. Never could figure out why they decided to carry the name "floppy" over to the 3.5" 'hard discs', as they were anything but floppy. And then to add to the confusion, they came up with fixed disk drives, and called them "hard disks". Were they TRYING to confuse us?
But look at it... we've been in a "magnetic media" age for what, over 30 years now. (anyone remember "drum" or "core" memory?) We were suppsed to be using crystals or holograms or isolinear chips or those spiffy colored rectangles in STTOS by now. I think the tech is getting about played out, it's time for something new.
Assuming you have the actual original discs, (copying was rampant on the//) boot the other side of the disk.
That's one of my all-time-favorite easter eggs.
I'd like to know if there's something tangible I can do about spam. I've seen lots of suggestions... don't reply to "to remove" links, just throw it away, etc. Basically "ignore it". A few antispam efforts have popped up from time to time, some of them legislation, some net efforts, etc, but they all seemed hopeless or completely without effect.
I have spent some time in my own efforts, tracking headers and finding the spam portals, and writing nastygrams to the portals who are alway claiming "all our sponsors are opt-in and have removal links". Now I never did get a reply and I doubt it really did any good, but even with that, it felt like it had an impact, even if only a spec of sand on a beach.
Is there anything we can do that will REALLY MATTER? Something we can see is having some sort of impact somewhere?
lets see, inventory time... I have a (utility) belt of course.
Belt: swiss army knife (swiss champ, the big 'un), pager, digital camera. All three have their own holster/belt clip.
Pockets: wallet, green laser pointer, digital audio recorder, pen, keys, car alarm remote.
Then of course my watch. (w/metal band)
All in all, more then enough to scare the metal detectors into ringing when I approach. Metal detectors generally stink because I have to take off my belt to remove all the attachments and I can't help but wonder if people think I'm gonna strip completely for the stroll through the gates...
All of this is actually cut down a bit... I used to carry a second set of keys and an attached mini swiss army knife too but that was proving too much of a load for the pockets which were tearing out.
While these "DSL routers" and other various "consumer grade" networking products have popped up like dandelions in spring, so have the problems.
My first venture into the fray was with an XSense (formerly MacSense) Xrouter. It was their variation on the "cable router" scene, for what is really more properly named a NAT box. It seemed to handle the fileserver well and port mapping was working fine. For their credit I'd also like to say they have some of the most impressive event logging I have ever seen, even recognizing attacks and identifying them by name. Then I tried to run a traceroute to an outside point to see how hop times were looking. Nothing.
"Maybe it's filtering my packets?" I think, and try to connec to its web administration page, but no response. Oops, my clients just lost connection to the servers they were attached to. And look, all the users are dropping off my server. What the...? It turns out that any attempt to traceroute out causes the router to reboot. It continues to reboot until you stop the traceroute, and then takes several seconds to unscramble its eggs before you get connectivity back.
I called up XSense and asked them what was going on, and if they had a firmware flash for me to fix it. Surprise, he reminds me that they did indeed ship their own traceroute program with the router, and I should use that. I run it, and surely enough, no crash. Tried every other traceroute app I could find, and every single one crashed the router except theirs.
The words known issue float through my head. I bickered a bit with the rep about how NO app I (or any of my users!!!) runs should be able to crash my NAT. End result, they don't care. Got off the phone with them and called up the vendor, they're like "here, let me get you the manufacturer's support number". "Nope, they told me tough luck they know about it and they don't care." "Oh... let me get you an RMA."
I actually ended up exchanging it for an Asante FR4003, which has worked flawlessly ever since. It gets a bit warm, so I keep it elevated so the metal bottom plate gets some convection. (it really should have some ventillation slots) And they've updated their firmware twice now, once both times including suggestions for improvements that I sent them. Very solid product. Interesting people answering their tech support though, I got a bit agitated one time when I was doing something stupid and got a big argumentative with them... that's the only time I've ever had a customer support rep tell me to "shut the hell up and listen for a minute!" but maybe that's what I needed to hear at the time...;-)
There was some confusion as to what value there was in shooting a hole in an artillery shell.
If you hit a rocket with a laser, your best shot would disable its guidance and control systems. This would quite possibly shut down its engine, but would certainly prevent it from hitting you at all. Secondary targets on a misile include control surfaces, engine, and fuel, all of which have the potential to destroy the misile before it reaches you.
Now if you are applying these countermeasures on a misile that is already very near you, another factor comes into play... what kind of a hit it is. If you're on an aircraft carrier and someone shoots an antiship misile at you from reasonably close range, and it's of a Russian design, it's going to fly up at 45deg, and then sharp down at 45 degrees at you, very fast. If you manage to detonate the propellant or disable the rocket, there's still a good chance it will hit you and deliver its full damage. (a "hard" hit) If you get luckier and detonate its payload, or destroy the control and detonation systems, you are still going to get hit, but this is a "soft" hit. The misile body, rocket motor, and all the other bits (in one piece or many) will still do appreciable damage, but at least it's not likely to sink the boat.
Shells are different. Major shells are going to have armor piercing or high explosive payloads, and C4 just doesn't blow up if you vaporize it with a laser... it burns. So you are not all that likely to detonate it. Shells are fired with great precision, and if all factors are known, they will land with that same precision. Your best hit on a shell is to damage it physically, and change its aerodynamic characteristics. Take a shell and scar the nose with a pocket knife, and it's totalled... you won't hit anything with it, it's not going to fly straight anymore. The laser just has to damage the casing. It's worth noting that if you punch a hole in it fast enough and start burning up the C4 inside, you might just plain burst the shell by simple gas expansion. In any event, it's effectively dealt with. It may still land and blow up, but it's not going to hit what it was aimed at.
Even changing the orientation of the misile/shell is very useful in countermeasures. Most of these have "shaped charges", where the explosive payload is directed in a very carefully engineered way to do maximum damage. When hitting a tank with an antitank round, having the "business end" hit the tank is the difference between destroying the tank (piercing the armor and sending chaff all around the cabin to kill the crew) or doing negligible damage by exploding harmlessly outside the tank. Misiles are essentially the same... a misile that would normally destroy a target may not even detonate if it's tumbling when it hits and contacts sideways, and if the target is even lightly armored, damage will be minimal rather than fatal.
I expect lasers to prove very effective as a projectile countermeasure.
I did have one curiosity about the shell test they did... does anyone know how long they "beamed" the shell before it was effectively dealt with? That's one thing that must be considered... if you have to hold the beam on the target for a considerable length of time, it may be much more difficult to get in a fatal shot. Misiles tend not to roll, so if you are shooting at it from the side, (i.e.you're not the target) you still can hit one spot continuously. Shells on the other hand, are usually designed to spin as they fly downrange, and so targetting the side is actually targetting a band around the shell.
When the cable installers (there were two, one was in training) showed up, I took the offensive and was showing them how the installation was going to go. Their original plan had them using the ~20 year old existing coax, drilling a hole in my floor and yanking the coax up through that. No. You'll be running fresh coax (and my wirecutters proved the point) and be pulling it up through the wall. We argued about that for a bit, as they insisted it was impossible to pull through the wall. I pointed to the network cables going up through the wall, and they changed their mind.
Then they were just going to drill a hole in the wall and pull the cable through. No. Wall plate. So they go out and get a wall plate from the truck. (they have this stuff, they just don't want to USE it!) So he makes a hole in the plate and is preceeding to pull the coax THROUGH the plate. No. "Have you EVER done this before? Get a feed-through connector!" I could see in his eyes, "crap... that's TWO more connections I'm going to have to crimp..."
And so we finally have a good hardware installation, and they cut me a nice 5ft length of coax to jump between the wall and the modem. The guy has a nic card in his hand and starts trying to find the computer. Heh, laptop, fewl. He gets out his magic CD and I simply say "No." He realized long before this that I wasn't worth fighting with and just had me initial that I had refused their software install.
I can't claim total victory though. They assured me the modem would take a few hours to sync up, and that they couldn't stay to make sure it was working, so I let them leave. Half an hour later I got impatient and called the service number, and they assured me they were required to stay until the sync light was on. Owell. A few minutes into the call the sync came on and all was well anyway.
Since then I have talked with numerous people that have allowed the techs to install the software, and it's really annoying. I don't know what all covert things it is capable of, but it has the obvious effect of messing with your browser by changing the animation icon to an animation of the company's logo, and of course changes your home page.
one problem with triangulation
on
WiFi Triangulation
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Odds are about 100% that if you are setting up multiple wifi base stations, you are placing them for optimal coverage of your own intended users. Wifi triangulation works best when the user is somewhere within the perimiter of the base stations, and works most poorly when the strongest received signal is a station on the perimiter.
So to accurately determine if someone is outside the intended coverage area, wouldn't you really need to deploy additional base stations? For instance, if you have three stations at your business, one near the front, and two in the rear corners of your building, and someone is wifi'ing in from the bus stop bench outside, he's going to hit the front station and not do much for the two in back. It's very hard to tell this user apart from someone just inside the building and very near the front base station. To settle this, you'd need a base station like across the street or something.
I don't see wifi triangulation as a practical way of identifying users outside the perimiter for this reason.
It's also worth noting that it would be a poor choice to place the base station right at the front of the building, because you'd be wasting 50% of the station's coverage area. But to pull the stations in toward the building's center would further degrade your triangulation abilities because relative signal strength differences would lower your triangulation precision.
Just tossing ideas out, I'd propose the best way to keep warchalkers out if that is your intention, is to deploy your base stations in such a way as to not provide (effective) coverage to areas outside your premisis. If your business is already too small to keep coverage just inside your building, then obviously buying several base stations to try for triangulation is patently absurd.
Of course, my final suggestion would be to openly allow public access, and use it as a P.R. booster. Free advertisement is handy, and in most cases, this would almost be free.
For the entrepeneur: I haven't seen anyone selling warchalking plaques yet. I bet there are some businesses out there (cafe's etc) that would buy a custom made brass or bronze wall plaque they could affix to the outside of their buildings to attract more customers.
Slashdot Mirror
I grew up on 5.25" floppies. Never could figure out why they decided to carry the name "floppy" over to the 3.5" 'hard discs', as they were anything but floppy. And then to add to the confusion, they came up with fixed disk drives, and called them "hard disks". Were they TRYING to confuse us? But look at it... we've been in a "magnetic media" age for what, over 30 years now. (anyone remember "drum" or "core" memory?) We were suppsed to be using crystals or holograms or isolinear chips or those spiffy colored rectangles in STTOS by now. I think the tech is getting about played out, it's time for something new.
Assuming you have the actual original discs, (copying was rampant on the //) boot the other side of the disk.
That's one of my all-time-favorite easter eggs.
I'd like to know if there's something tangible I can do about spam. I've seen lots of suggestions... don't reply to "to remove" links, just throw it away, etc. Basically "ignore it". A few antispam efforts have popped up from time to time, some of them legislation, some net efforts, etc, but they all seemed hopeless or completely without effect. I have spent some time in my own efforts, tracking headers and finding the spam portals, and writing nastygrams to the portals who are alway claiming "all our sponsors are opt-in and have removal links". Now I never did get a reply and I doubt it really did any good, but even with that, it felt like it had an impact, even if only a spec of sand on a beach. Is there anything we can do that will REALLY MATTER? Something we can see is having some sort of impact somewhere?
Took some digging, I knew I'd seen it somewhere before.
u ps _on_fire
http://marina.horde.org/gallery/?g=2000-01-10--
Yes, that's a UPS on fire. The interesting part... it's still on and running. Definitely not something to spray with water!
lets see, inventory time... I have a (utility) belt of course.
Belt: swiss army knife (swiss champ, the big 'un), pager, digital camera. All three have their own holster/belt clip.
Pockets: wallet, green laser pointer, digital audio recorder, pen, keys, car alarm remote.
Then of course my watch. (w/metal band)
All in all, more then enough to scare the metal detectors into ringing when I approach. Metal detectors generally stink because I have to take off my belt to remove all the attachments and I can't help but wonder if people think I'm gonna strip completely for the stroll through the gates...
All of this is actually cut down a bit... I used to carry a second set of keys and an attached mini swiss army knife too but that was proving too much of a load for the pockets which were tearing out.
While these "DSL routers" and other various "consumer grade" networking products have popped up like dandelions in spring, so have the problems.
;-)
My first venture into the fray was with an XSense (formerly MacSense) Xrouter. It was their variation on the "cable router" scene, for what is really more properly named a NAT box. It seemed to handle the fileserver well and port mapping was working fine. For their credit I'd also like to say they have some of the most impressive event logging I have ever seen, even recognizing attacks and identifying them by name. Then I tried to run a traceroute to an outside point to see how hop times were looking. Nothing.
"Maybe it's filtering my packets?" I think, and try to connec to its web administration page, but no response. Oops, my clients just lost connection to the servers they were attached to. And look, all the users are dropping off my server. What the...? It turns out that any attempt to traceroute out causes the router to reboot. It continues to reboot until you stop the traceroute, and then takes several seconds to unscramble its eggs before you get connectivity back.
I called up XSense and asked them what was going on, and if they had a firmware flash for me to fix it. Surprise, he reminds me that they did indeed ship their own traceroute program with the router, and I should use that. I run it, and surely enough, no crash. Tried every other traceroute app I could find, and every single one crashed the router except theirs.
The words known issue float through my head. I bickered a bit with the rep about how NO app I (or any of my users!!!) runs should be able to crash my NAT. End result, they don't care. Got off the phone with them and called up the vendor, they're like "here, let me get you the manufacturer's support number". "Nope, they told me tough luck they know about it and they don't care." "Oh... let me get you an RMA."
I actually ended up exchanging it for an Asante FR4003, which has worked flawlessly ever since. It gets a bit warm, so I keep it elevated so the metal bottom plate gets some convection. (it really should have some ventillation slots) And they've updated their firmware twice now, once both times including suggestions for improvements that I sent them. Very solid product. Interesting people answering their tech support though, I got a bit agitated one time when I was doing something stupid and got a big argumentative with them... that's the only time I've ever had a customer support rep tell me to "shut the hell up and listen for a minute!" but maybe that's what I needed to hear at the time...
There was some confusion as to what value there was in shooting a hole in an artillery shell.
If you hit a rocket with a laser, your best shot would disable its guidance and control systems. This would quite possibly shut down its engine, but would certainly prevent it from hitting you at all. Secondary targets on a misile include control surfaces, engine, and fuel, all of which have the potential to destroy the misile before it reaches you.
Now if you are applying these countermeasures on a misile that is already very near you, another factor comes into play... what kind of a hit it is. If you're on an aircraft carrier and someone shoots an antiship misile at you from reasonably close range, and it's of a Russian design, it's going to fly up at 45deg, and then sharp down at 45 degrees at you, very fast. If you manage to detonate the propellant or disable the rocket, there's still a good chance it will hit you and deliver its full damage. (a "hard" hit) If you get luckier and detonate its payload, or destroy the control and detonation systems, you are still going to get hit, but this is a "soft" hit. The misile body, rocket motor, and all the other bits (in one piece or many) will still do appreciable damage, but at least it's not likely to sink the boat.
Shells are different. Major shells are going to have armor piercing or high explosive payloads, and C4 just doesn't blow up if you vaporize it with a laser... it burns. So you are not all that likely to detonate it. Shells are fired with great precision, and if all factors are known, they will land with that same precision. Your best hit on a shell is to damage it physically, and change its aerodynamic characteristics. Take a shell and scar the nose with a pocket knife, and it's totalled... you won't hit anything with it, it's not going to fly straight anymore. The laser just has to damage the casing. It's worth noting that if you punch a hole in it fast enough and start burning up the C4 inside, you might just plain burst the shell by simple gas expansion. In any event, it's effectively dealt with. It may still land and blow up, but it's not going to hit what it was aimed at.
Even changing the orientation of the misile/shell is very useful in countermeasures. Most of these have "shaped charges", where the explosive payload is directed in a very carefully engineered way to do maximum damage. When hitting a tank with an antitank round, having the "business end" hit the tank is the difference between destroying the tank (piercing the armor and sending chaff all around the cabin to kill the crew) or doing negligible damage by exploding harmlessly outside the tank. Misiles are essentially the same... a misile that would normally destroy a target may not even detonate if it's tumbling when it hits and contacts sideways, and if the target is even lightly armored, damage will be minimal rather than fatal.
I expect lasers to prove very effective as a projectile countermeasure.
I did have one curiosity about the shell test they did... does anyone know how long they "beamed" the shell before it was effectively dealt with? That's one thing that must be considered... if you have to hold the beam on the target for a considerable length of time, it may be much more difficult to get in a fatal shot. Misiles tend not to roll, so if you are shooting at it from the side, (i.e.you're not the target) you still can hit one spot continuously. Shells on the other hand, are usually designed to spin as they fly downrange, and so targetting the side is actually targetting a band around the shell.
When the cable installers (there were two, one was in training) showed up, I took the offensive and was showing them how the installation was going to go. Their original plan had them using the ~20 year old existing coax, drilling a hole in my floor and yanking the coax up through that. No. You'll be running fresh coax (and my wirecutters proved the point) and be pulling it up through the wall. We argued about that for a bit, as they insisted it was impossible to pull through the wall. I pointed to the network cables going up through the wall, and they changed their mind.
Then they were just going to drill a hole in the wall and pull the cable through. No. Wall plate. So they go out and get a wall plate from the truck. (they have this stuff, they just don't want to USE it!) So he makes a hole in the plate and is preceeding to pull the coax THROUGH the plate. No. "Have you EVER done this before? Get a feed-through connector!" I could see in his eyes, "crap... that's TWO more connections I'm going to have to crimp..." And so we finally have a good hardware installation, and they cut me a nice 5ft length of coax to jump between the wall and the modem. The guy has a nic card in his hand and starts trying to find the computer. Heh, laptop, fewl. He gets out his magic CD and I simply say "No." He realized long before this that I wasn't worth fighting with and just had me initial that I had refused their software install.
I can't claim total victory though. They assured me the modem would take a few hours to sync up, and that they couldn't stay to make sure it was working, so I let them leave. Half an hour later I got impatient and called the service number, and they assured me they were required to stay until the sync light was on. Owell. A few minutes into the call the sync came on and all was well anyway.
Since then I have talked with numerous people that have allowed the techs to install the software, and it's really annoying. I don't know what all covert things it is capable of, but it has the obvious effect of messing with your browser by changing the animation icon to an animation of the company's logo, and of course changes your home page.
Odds are about 100% that if you are setting up multiple wifi base stations, you are placing them for optimal coverage of your own intended users. Wifi triangulation works best when the user is somewhere within the perimiter of the base stations, and works most poorly when the strongest received signal is a station on the perimiter.
So to accurately determine if someone is outside the intended coverage area, wouldn't you really need to deploy additional base stations? For instance, if you have three stations at your business, one near the front, and two in the rear corners of your building, and someone is wifi'ing in from the bus stop bench outside, he's going to hit the front station and not do much for the two in back. It's very hard to tell this user apart from someone just inside the building and very near the front base station. To settle this, you'd need a base station like across the street or something.
I don't see wifi triangulation as a practical way of identifying users outside the perimiter for this reason.
It's also worth noting that it would be a poor choice to place the base station right at the front of the building, because you'd be wasting 50% of the station's coverage area. But to pull the stations in toward the building's center would further degrade your triangulation abilities because relative signal strength differences would lower your triangulation precision.
Just tossing ideas out, I'd propose the best way to keep warchalkers out if that is your intention, is to deploy your base stations in such a way as to not provide (effective) coverage to areas outside your premisis. If your business is already too small to keep coverage just inside your building, then obviously buying several base stations to try for triangulation is patently absurd.
Of course, my final suggestion would be to openly allow public access, and use it as a P.R. booster. Free advertisement is handy, and in most cases, this would almost be free.
For the entrepeneur: I haven't seen anyone selling warchalking plaques yet. I bet there are some businesses out there (cafe's etc) that would buy a custom made brass or bronze wall plaque they could affix to the outside of their buildings to attract more customers.