The (cell phone) company that I work for has local numbers in each of the "local calling areas" in out coverage area. In the cities, we may have several 10,000 blocks, in which case we have our own prefix. In smaller towns / rural areas we may only have a 1000 block of numbers.
While the numbers have the same area code as landline numbers, they are blocked together, and can be easily filtered if you know what to look for. For instance 555-1000 to 1999 are all cells or all 123-xxxx or whatever.
I expect that the information on which number blocks belong to what company is not that hard to obtain.
Unfortunately I can't afford to be quite so idealistic. I've had people call/mail me that are offering services that I someday want to use.
If I get a telemarketing call, I tell them that I don't do business with companies that stoop to using unsolicited telemarketing, then hang up on them. I generally don't even know what they are trying to sell by the time I have told them this.
If I happen to buy from them in the future, it's unrelated to their call, because I haven't heard about their product during their abbreviated call to me.
We are currently on the "customer" side of one of these deals.
Except, the supplier didn't bother to tell us that the software that we had bought was still a "development version" . And we didn't find out until after we had about 1200-1400 installations done in the hardware that our customers were using.
Imagine our skecpicism when they presented us with the next version, which they claimed was new features, and incidentally over 75 bug fixes.
I just surfed over to The Onion, and got met by my company's "you have violated the corporate use of electronic media policy, this access has been logged" message.
I guess I'll have to go to some pages that the filter will let me read, like The Sun, and page three.
Where do I send my voltmeter to have it's A-D convertors retrofitted to comply with the new laws? And my Temperature recorder? And all the other test gear in my shop.
either the hotel's switches are being hacked into or the hotel or someone at the hotel is being paid to change the hotel switch's call routing tables.
Or someone at a company that installs/maintains PBXs for hotels.
I would expect that would be a fairly cost efficient way of affecting multiple hotel phone systems. The less people who need to get bribed/keept quiet, the better for the success of any scam.
In my years as a tech (component level repair for over 10 years), I haven't seen any components get trashed by static while I was working on them, however I always keep myself grounded. Either with a wriststrap, or with one hand on something that is grounded.
If ESD protection wasn't a big deal, I wonder why all of the component manufacturers spend so much time and effort on it? I haven't seen a repair manual that dates from post-tube-era that dosen't spend some ink on ESD.
Alcatel and Ericsson spend time on ESD during every course that I have attended.
Those anti-stat bags cost more than simple paper/plactic. In this era of "maximizing profits" what responsible company would spend the extra cash, if there wasn't some benifit?
I have used both Toshiba and Panasonic laptops at work (hard use, mostly field service) and have not had any major problems with either.
I'm currently using a Panasonic CF-45, which I started using 06/99. It has been frozen, x-rayed, banged, in excessive humidity, and high static environments, and the only trouble that I've had is the switch in the "main" (upper/left) trackball button gave out recently.
My previous Toshiba Satellite never gave me any trouble in the 3+ years that I used it, befoe it was retired.
Jail time is only a deterrent if would-be crooks consider it likely they will be caught
DING!DING!DING!
Give that man a cee-gar (or at least more karma)
If the criminal figures "they'll never catch me", then why would he give any cosideration to the punishment?
This is such an obvious use of existing technology, it's a surprise that ALL police departments don't have this.
Maybe the insurance companies should finance some of these for use by the local police. Sounds like a win/win to me.
I don't know how much play Linux advocates are getting out of security issues right now. I think you'll need to see another big (ie. well covered by regular news channels) security breach or two before security really becomes a factor in migration again.
Many of the recent well publicized security problems were related to Outlook. Does Crossover do anything to minimize those? Probably not.
Unfortunately that's a big problem with this whole thing. Yes, you have a more secure OS, but if the apps are still vulnerable to attack, where's the advantage (in terms of what the pointy-hairs think)?
According to the guys who set up our system, you can breathe immediately after a release of this stuff. It's a compound of Nitrogen, Argon, and CO2. They also said that it's not a good plan to be in the room if the system does discharge, as a properly designed system has 1.5* the room's volume in the tanks. The installation includes venting to the outside atmosphere, otherwise the windows will be blown out.
But it is effective at snuffing fires, and relatively benign to the electronics.
There are the following systems in the usa:
AMPS: 800 mhz ancient analogue system
GSM: 900/1900 mhz (voicestream)
TDMA 800/1900 mhz (att, cingular, etc)
CDMA 800/1900 mhz (sprint)
So you see, GSM and (t|c)dma run at the same (higher) frequency.
The above frequencies are mostly true for Canada as well (not sure about the 900 though).
In the UK, GSM is 900Mhz, on the European continent it's 1800Mhz
The whole point of the fee is to facilitate the recycling
Which is , of course, a good thing.
However, the fuel taxes that the government collects are intended to be used for maintaining the highway system, but seem to find their way into other government budgets (like the all important "general revenue")
hand-over is what you want, i.e. the ability to have a permanent session when you switch from one transmitter to another.
It is embedded in cellular networks (PCS, GSM, 3G, etc.) but is not (I think) a 802.11b feature, which was built for home, soho networks, not wireless internet coverage.
How the cellular network does this is to have a central computer (the cellular switch, or BSC in a GSM network) monitoring the RF connection to each subscriber's mobile. If tht S/N, BER, or overall recieve level reaches a threshold, the switch starts querying surrounding base stations to get a signal measurement on the mobile. If another base station has a better signal, then a handoff (handover in GSM) is begun.
At the minimum, what would have to happen to make 802.11b do this is central co-ordination.
Those are better than the coverage maps that the cell phone providers offer. Their, almost certainly, far more accurate too.
The engineering dept. at the cell providers have maps that are at least this good, often better.
The maps that the public gets to see, however, don't come from the engineers, but rather the marketing department.
That said, if you had a 3 watt phone with a properly mounted 3Db gain antenna on the roof of your car, you probably could get the coverage that the marketeers claim.
Of course, almost no real customers use a setup like that anymore.
As for Nortel equipment most of the stuff I have heard of is like the DMS series being used only for LEC (Local Exchange Carrier) switches.
Nortel switches can also handle cellular, and they have a cellular base station product. As you said, Nortel's customers tend to be landline phone companies. If they also happen to oparate a wireless system they tend to stay with Nortel for that.
However, as you said, Ericsson and Lucent supply switching and base station equipment to the majority of wireless-only providers.
I have personal experience with Ericsson equipment, and I know that they are struggling to keep up with demand for certain base station products right now.
Something like this perhaps?
I've heard that RIM also has a similar thing in the pipe, also GSM/GPRS. (standard "real soon now"/vapourware dislaimers apply)
At the risk of turning this from a debate into an arguement...
I tend to disagree. The historical record shows numerous examples of successful "terrorism." For instace, the Vandals who sacked Rome in the 4th century could be called "terrorists." Or, perhaps, look at the IRA in Northern Ireland. Years of terrorism resulted in a strong negotiating position for Sinn Fein, their political wing. Perhaps you prefer the example of the PLO, which terrorised Israel for decades and now makes up the rulers of a (very marginal) Palestinian state
IRA: maybe they have a bargaining position, but they don't appear to have gotten "what they relaay want", independence from Brittish rule, IIRC.
PLO: The fighting continues, and there are still daily killings on both sides. And the Isarlies are still occupying the "occupied territories".
I'm not enough of a history student to comment inteligently on the other examples that you offered, so I won't. (I may be wrong on the facts of the two that I did comment on)
I do stand by my original position. Attacking the civilian population of an enemy (IE: terrorism) tends to piss them off more than it makes them want to give you what you want.
Slashdot Mirror
The (cell phone) company that I work for has local numbers in each of the "local calling areas" in out coverage area. In the cities, we may have several 10,000 blocks, in which case we have our own prefix. In smaller towns / rural areas we may only have a 1000 block of numbers.
While the numbers have the same area code as landline numbers, they are blocked together, and can be easily filtered if you know what to look for. For instance 555-1000 to 1999 are all cells or all 123-xxxx or whatever.
I expect that the information on which number blocks belong to what company is not that hard to obtain.
Unfortunately I can't afford to be quite so idealistic. I've had people call/mail me that are offering services that I someday want to use.
If I get a telemarketing call, I tell them that I don't do business with companies that stoop to using unsolicited telemarketing, then hang up on them. I generally don't even know what they are trying to sell by the time I have told them this.
If I happen to buy from them in the future, it's unrelated to their call, because I haven't heard about their product during their abbreviated call to me.
We are currently on the "customer" side of one of these deals.
Except, the supplier didn't bother to tell us that the software that we had bought was still a "development version" .
And we didn't find out until after we had about 1200-1400 installations done in the hardware that our customers were using.
Imagine our skecpicism when they presented us with the next version, which they claimed was new features, and incidentally over 75 bug fixes.
It looks lke I may have to subscribe.
I just surfed over to The Onion, and got met by my company's "you have violated the corporate use of electronic media policy, this access has been logged" message.
I guess I'll have to go to some pages that the filter will let me read, like The Sun, and page three.
Or tell them that Furball is an integral part of your UPS.
Perpetual power for your PC.
Hmmm...
Hello, Patent office?...
Where do I send my voltmeter to have it's A-D convertors retrofitted to comply with the new laws?
And my Temperature recorder?
And all the other test gear in my shop.
They did say all A-D, didn't they?
either the hotel's switches are being hacked into or the hotel or someone at the hotel is being paid to change the hotel switch's call routing tables.
Or someone at a company that installs/maintains PBXs for hotels.
I would expect that would be a fairly cost efficient way of affecting multiple hotel phone systems. The less people who need to get bribed/keept quiet, the better for the success of any scam.
Whats really needed is a giant electromagnetic pulse which would destroy the electronics in the phone
...and your Walkman, and the laptop in your backpack, and the pacemaker that guy over there is wearing...
Yup, a real good plan...
In my years as a tech (component level repair for over 10 years), I haven't seen any components get trashed by static while I was working on them, however I always keep myself grounded. Either with a wriststrap, or with one hand on something that is grounded.
If ESD protection wasn't a big deal, I wonder why all of the component manufacturers spend so much time and effort on it?
I haven't seen a repair manual that dates from post-tube-era that dosen't spend some ink on ESD.
Alcatel and Ericsson spend time on ESD during every course that I have attended.
Those anti-stat bags cost more than simple paper/plactic. In this era of "maximizing profits" what responsible company would spend the extra cash, if there wasn't some benifit?
The question that pops into my mind is:
Are there any other operations like this around (and if not, why not), and where do I go to voulenteer?
I have used both Toshiba and Panasonic laptops at work (hard use, mostly field service) and have not had any major problems with either.
I'm currently using a Panasonic CF-45, which I started using 06/99. It has been frozen, x-rayed, banged, in excessive humidity, and high static environments, and the only trouble that I've had is the switch in the "main" (upper/left) trackball button gave out recently.
My previous Toshiba Satellite never gave me any trouble in the 3+ years that I used it, befoe it was retired.
Jail time is only a deterrent if would-be crooks consider it likely they will be caught
DING!DING!DING!
Give that man a cee-gar (or at least more karma)
If the criminal figures "they'll never catch me", then why would he give any cosideration to the punishment?
This is such an obvious use of existing technology, it's a surprise that ALL police departments don't have this.
Maybe the insurance companies should finance some of these for use by the local police. Sounds like a win/win to me.
I don't know how much play Linux advocates are getting out of security issues right now. I think you'll need to see another big (ie. well covered by regular news channels) security breach or two before security really becomes a factor in migration again.
Many of the recent well publicized security problems were related to Outlook. Does Crossover do anything to minimize those? Probably not.
Unfortunately that's a big problem with this whole thing. Yes, you have a more secure OS, but if the apps are still vulnerable to attack, where's the advantage (in terms of what the pointy-hairs think)?
Or Inergen
According to the guys who set up our system, you can breathe immediately after a release of this stuff. It's a compound of Nitrogen, Argon, and CO2.
They also said that it's not a good plan to be in the room if the system does discharge, as a properly designed system has 1.5* the room's volume in the tanks. The installation includes venting to the outside atmosphere, otherwise the windows will be blown out.
But it is effective at snuffing fires, and relatively benign to the electronics.
There are the following systems in the usa:
AMPS: 800 mhz ancient analogue system
GSM: 900/1900 mhz (voicestream)
TDMA 800/1900 mhz (att, cingular, etc)
CDMA 800/1900 mhz (sprint)
So you see, GSM and (t|c)dma run at the same (higher) frequency.
The above frequencies are mostly true for Canada as well (not sure about the 900 though).
In the UK, GSM is 900Mhz, on the European continent it's 1800Mhz
But /. generally links to things that /.ers find interesting
/.
Like Goatse.cx ?
The number of links to that here (which I intentionally didn't add to) would indicate that it's highly relevant to
Won't they need a transit number as well as a bank account number?
If they have enough information to make the deposit, then they have all the info they need to forge a withdrawl as well.
The whole point of the fee is to facilitate the recycling
Which is , of course, a good thing.
However, the fuel taxes that the government collects are intended to be used for maintaining the highway system, but seem to find their way into other government budgets (like the all important "general revenue")
hand-over is what you want, i.e. the ability to have a permanent session when you switch from one transmitter to another. It is embedded in cellular networks (PCS, GSM, 3G, etc.) but is not (I think) a 802.11b feature, which was built for home, soho networks, not wireless internet coverage.
How the cellular network does this is to have a central computer (the cellular switch, or BSC in a GSM network) monitoring the RF connection to each subscriber's mobile. If tht S/N, BER, or overall recieve level reaches a threshold, the switch starts querying surrounding base stations to get a signal measurement on the mobile. If another base station has a better signal, then a handoff (handover in GSM) is begun.
At the minimum, what would have to happen to make 802.11b do this is central co-ordination.
Those are better than the coverage maps that the cell phone providers offer. Their, almost certainly, far more accurate too.
The engineering dept. at the cell providers have maps that are at least this good, often better.
The maps that the public gets to see, however, don't come from the engineers, but rather the marketing department.
That said, if you had a 3 watt phone with a properly mounted 3Db gain antenna on the roof of your car, you probably could get the coverage that the marketeers claim.
Of course, almost no real customers use a setup like that anymore.
As for Nortel equipment most of the stuff I have heard of is like the DMS series being used only for LEC (Local Exchange Carrier) switches.
Nortel switches can also handle cellular, and they have a cellular base station product. As you said, Nortel's customers tend to be landline phone companies. If they also happen to oparate a wireless system they tend to stay with Nortel for that.
However, as you said, Ericsson and Lucent supply switching and base station equipment to the majority of wireless-only providers.
I have personal experience with Ericsson equipment, and I know that they are struggling to keep up with demand for certain base station products right now.
But GSM/GPRS is just getting off the ground with the US carriers w/VoiceStream [voicestream.com] and AT&T [attws.com].
.. And Rogers in Canada.
GPRS would be ideal for this kind of terminal!
Something like this perhaps?
I've heard that RIM also has a similar thing in the pipe, also GSM/GPRS. (standard "real soon now"/vapourware dislaimers apply)
Please excuse the nasty spelling in my last post.
where's my chalk...
I will preview before submitting...(repeats 100 times)
At the risk of turning this from a debate into an arguement...
I tend to disagree. The historical record shows numerous examples of successful "terrorism." For instace, the Vandals who sacked Rome in the 4th century could be called "terrorists." Or, perhaps, look at the IRA in Northern Ireland. Years of terrorism resulted in a strong negotiating position for Sinn Fein, their political wing. Perhaps you prefer the example of the PLO, which terrorised Israel for decades and now makes up the rulers of a (very marginal) Palestinian state
IRA: maybe they have a bargaining position, but they don't appear to have gotten "what they relaay want", independence from Brittish rule, IIRC.
PLO: The fighting continues, and there are still daily killings on both sides. And the Isarlies are still occupying the "occupied territories".
I'm not enough of a history student to comment inteligently on the other examples that you offered, so I won't. (I may be wrong on the facts of the two that I did comment on)
I do stand by my original position. Attacking the civilian population of an enemy (IE: terrorism) tends to piss them off more than it makes them want to give you what you want.