I'm not entirely sure if this is true, but back when I took my undergrad CS classes, one professor mentioned to the class that use of the word "Welcome" at a login prompt was supposedly giving the world legal access to the system to do what they wished. He went on to say that a hacker back in the 80's or 90's got away with hacking into a high-profile computer network because of this loophole, where accessing the system from a remote location prompted the user with "Welcome!". His defense was that since this system was welcoming him to login to it, what crime was being commited?
Actually, that's not as "funny" as it seems. Back about a year after War Games was released and my personal computer was an Apple//e, a strange package came in the mail for me form a company I had never heard of. Inside was just a commercial-labled floppy with the title "Global Termonuclear War". So of course, being the geek I was/am, and having seen War Games a few times already, I plopped it in and loaded 'er up. I must say my friends and I were pretty freaked out at the realism at the time of this game -- I recall one friend checking to make sure our modem connection was disconnected in case this floppy wasn't so innocent.
Of course, now I look back and am embarassed at our reaction, but it did freak us out at the time. Not so sure it affected me forever or anything.
The one we use doesn't report info. to a computer, but there may be other models available here that do. The one we use cost about $200US and calls up to three phone numbers with an automated message, letting you know that a low/high temp. has been reached, that the power went out, or that the battery backup is low.
The last few flights I was on, the phones were removed. I have to admit, it struck me as odd, seeing as allowing the passengers the contact people on the ground had helped communicate knowledge of the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
Ah...that's what I thought. Like I said below, have you thought of using a cheap overhead projector (like this one)? I've seen them on Ebay for under $50.
My wife's grandmother had issues with her hearing, so we started to send her faxes instead of calling her. If her eyesight started to fail, we could put transparencies into her fax machine and set her up with a small overhead projector in a back room. When she had a hard time reading the fax, she'd just put it on the Dukane in the back room to read it off the wall, which was plenty big for her to read. This would even work with single-page documents, where she could feed them into the fax as a copier, which would put the text on the transparency. This of course wouldn't work so well for books and newspapers.
Folks, I believe the original poster is looking for a device that will enlarge text of books and print, not emails and online text, but I could be wrong.
He's saying that a $500 device is too costly, which I believe would rule out a decent PC and scanner that's rigged to be easy enough for a non-techie-type to operate.
The first thing that came to mind was some sort of cheap overhead projector (not the expensive types that take video-in, but the ones that take transparencies and such). She could then project what she wants to read onto the wall. I dunno, just a thought.
"On the new Death Star, Vader says a bunch of things to Luke that don't support this hypothesis, so please ignore them."
But yeah, as I was reading your points, I was thinking the above, so it's pretty hard to ignore them in order to believe your hypothesis sticks. Still, it would be cool to think that was what was supposed to be happening (and then, I dunno, Vader was saying all that to Luke because he was afraid the Emperor was listening. Oh, and he chopped luke's hand off because he had bad aim and tried to miss.)
"The theory I came up with is that the galaxy in Star Wars is VERY tiny..."
Even still, one would have to assume the planets are all Death Star in size or smaller. I mean, it's difficult enough to bump into a random person twice in your lifetime on this one planet, nevermind galaxies of planets!
And don't for get the "no noise in the vacuum of space" effect that I just simply loved. Little details like that made me appreciate the show so much more.
ST:TNG, although very entertaining, always had sounds in space. The last time I remember seeing the "no noise in space" effect was in 2001:ASO.
"I do programming and unix systems admnistration."
As a Unix sysadmin myself (among the other aspects of my job), I've only heard of a few cases where someone was able to be a telecommuting sysadmin. In the 10 years or so of doing this sort of work, I've never felt there was much opportunity for someone to do it from home. For example, what do you do when a system is hung-up and needs a good ol' fashioned power cycle (and dont have the fancy networked power strips to do it for you)? How about adding more network drops, troubleshooting someone's workstation, testing/fixing the modem pool or the actual T1 line you're relying on to telecommute? What about popping in CD's/floppies for installing new software? These things may be outside the realm of your particular sysadmin responsibilities, though.
I have to wonder how many telecommuting sysadmins there are out there who are able to do it all, perhaps even being able to rely on non-telecommuters in the office to reboot systems and install CD's for you if you give them a call -- would they feel like your whipping boy/girl for doing that while you're tucked away at home? I'd have to imagine that your choice of working at home would be looked upon even moure sourly with you calling someone in the office to do tasks that would be best handled were you atually in the office to do them.
For a strictly unix sysadmin only, this may not be an issue at all -- rarely happening -- but for someone in my position who wears basically every computer/network/telecommunications administration hat the company has to throw at me, they'd probably panic if I even hinted at the thought of trying to do it all at home (even though I do a lot of that work off-hours from home ANYWAY).
As an off-subject add, I will say that what some people have said here regarding the feelings of non-telecommuters towards telecommuters is basically true. People in the office who have no experience with working from home tend to believe right up front that telecommuters are busy fucking off at home, while they're under the watchful eye of management in the office having to do "real" work. I've seen it not work too, and it's not pretty -- it takes just ONE bad apple to turn feelings towards telecommuters toward the worse. Also, that one time a telecommuter is caught with that ONE file on their work laptop that's a game, or that ONE time they answer a work call with a screaming kid on their lap during working hours, to a non-telecommuter that's just all the proof they need to show the person's a slacker and that they're all suckers for letting them get away with it. I'll even admit that I've taken issue with a few people working from home on occasion, but more for the reason that I had proof they were slacking off that fell on deaf ears.
I will say that a lot of the advice I've read here so far draws a new positive light on telecommuters in general that more coworkers I know should read sometime to get some perspective.
I had a similar gig with GameSpot a few years ago, where we made gameplay movies for their website. We didn't have to do reviews, just make movies of us playing, put a soundtrack to it, add the GameSpot intro, etc. They saw our work at Now-Playing Games (npgames.com, no site there but I own it and quit it once I did so much work on it and never got a dime) and hired us as consultants to do the movies. They not only gave us (two of us) free gaming rigs to play the games, but they'd send us the actual games to make movies of (which we had to send back most of the time, and we did) and they paid us each $1000 a month for our trouble.
Man, I would love that gig again. It all ended when our year contract was up and they had to make cuts. Then there was the issue of my partner refusing to send his gaming rig back at the end of the contract, which I'm sure put us on the "GameSpot Shit List Hall of Fame" for eternity. *sigh*
I've often wondered why nobody takes the Mr. Cranky approach to reviewing video games the way they do movies. Instead of starting off telling you why the movie is good, you state right up front what sucks about the movie.
I've found Mr. Cranky's reviews pretty funny, although I have to say he tends to refer to preferring things protruding through his scrotum/arsehole to sitting through the movie again more times than any man should ever admit.
I know of many people (including myself) who set their "real" working environment on one system running a VNC server, then connect to that from home, the road, etc. via SSH. Not the fastest solution, but it works.
Then if you're really ambitious, build a VNC client for all of the OS's you'll be working on and put them on a CD for portability.
One of the things that grabbed me about the GBA-SP was it's smallish design and the clamshell design, allowing you to easily put it in your pocket and keep the screen protected.
The key words in these draft bills is that these are in regards to the user acting "with intent to defraud" and is written to imply that
it is the use of technologies "to defraud" that is the crime, not
simple possesion. The bigger risk is that this bill could be used
to tack on additional charges to some other crime (e.g. if you
submitted a fraudulent tax return via an encrypted channel).
Unfortunately, some cable vendors have very restrictive usage
agreements so it may be quite easy find yourself technially
guilty of "fraud".
Slashdot Mirror
Here is one page I found that suggests using the world "welcome" in a login banner is asking for trouble. Has some other related info. as well.
I'm not entirely sure if this is true, but back when I took my undergrad CS classes, one professor mentioned to the class that use of the word "Welcome" at a login prompt was supposedly giving the world legal access to the system to do what they wished. He went on to say that a hacker back in the 80's or 90's got away with hacking into a high-profile computer network because of this loophole, where accessing the system from a remote location prompted the user with "Welcome!". His defense was that since this system was welcoming him to login to it, what crime was being commited?
Of course, now I look back and am embarassed at our reaction, but it did freak us out at the time. Not so sure it affected me forever or anything.
The one we use doesn't report info. to a computer, but there may be other models available here that do. The one we use cost about $200US and calls up to three phone numbers with an automated message, letting you know that a low/high temp. has been reached, that the power went out, or that the battery backup is low.
And DAMN, I swear I saw this sort of thing for the PS2, only with MMC cards. I can't find the link anywhere, so maybe I was just seeing things.
The last few flights I was on, the phones were removed. I have to admit, it struck me as odd, seeing as allowing the passengers the contact people on the ground had helped communicate knowledge of the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
My wife's grandmother had issues with her hearing, so we started to send her faxes instead of calling her. If her eyesight started to fail, we could put transparencies into her fax machine and set her up with a small overhead projector in a back room. When she had a hard time reading the fax, she'd just put it on the Dukane in the back room to read it off the wall, which was plenty big for her to read. This would even work with single-page documents, where she could feed them into the fax as a copier, which would put the text on the transparency. This of course wouldn't work so well for books and newspapers.
He's saying that a $500 device is too costly, which I believe would rule out a decent PC and scanner that's rigged to be easy enough for a non-techie-type to operate.
The first thing that came to mind was some sort of cheap overhead projector (not the expensive types that take video-in, but the ones that take transparencies and such). She could then project what she wants to read onto the wall. I dunno, just a thought.
But yeah, as I was reading your points, I was thinking the above, so it's pretty hard to ignore them in order to believe your hypothesis sticks. Still, it would be cool to think that was what was supposed to be happening (and then, I dunno, Vader was saying all that to Luke because he was afraid the Emperor was listening. Oh, and he chopped luke's hand off because he had bad aim and tried to miss.)
Even still, one would have to assume the planets are all Death Star in size or smaller. I mean, it's difficult enough to bump into a random person twice in your lifetime on this one planet, nevermind galaxies of planets!
...when it was called VNC.
This has got to be the worst example of a story the editors threw up without doing some basic snooping.
Here's a mirror, I believe.
ST:TNG, although very entertaining, always had sounds in space. The last time I remember seeing the "no noise in space" effect was in 2001:ASO.
As a Unix sysadmin myself (among the other aspects of my job), I've only heard of a few cases where someone was able to be a telecommuting sysadmin. In the 10 years or so of doing this sort of work, I've never felt there was much opportunity for someone to do it from home. For example, what do you do when a system is hung-up and needs a good ol' fashioned power cycle (and dont have the fancy networked power strips to do it for you)? How about adding more network drops, troubleshooting someone's workstation, testing/fixing the modem pool or the actual T1 line you're relying on to telecommute? What about popping in CD's/floppies for installing new software? These things may be outside the realm of your particular sysadmin responsibilities, though.
I have to wonder how many telecommuting sysadmins there are out there who are able to do it all, perhaps even being able to rely on non-telecommuters in the office to reboot systems and install CD's for you if you give them a call -- would they feel like your whipping boy/girl for doing that while you're tucked away at home? I'd have to imagine that your choice of working at home would be looked upon even moure sourly with you calling someone in the office to do tasks that would be best handled were you atually in the office to do them.
For a strictly unix sysadmin only, this may not be an issue at all -- rarely happening -- but for someone in my position who wears basically every computer/network/telecommunications administration hat the company has to throw at me, they'd probably panic if I even hinted at the thought of trying to do it all at home (even though I do a lot of that work off-hours from home ANYWAY).
As an off-subject add, I will say that what some people have said here regarding the feelings of non-telecommuters towards telecommuters is basically true. People in the office who have no experience with working from home tend to believe right up front that telecommuters are busy fucking off at home, while they're under the watchful eye of management in the office having to do "real" work. I've seen it not work too, and it's not pretty -- it takes just ONE bad apple to turn feelings towards telecommuters toward the worse. Also, that one time a telecommuter is caught with that ONE file on their work laptop that's a game, or that ONE time they answer a work call with a screaming kid on their lap during working hours, to a non-telecommuter that's just all the proof they need to show the person's a slacker and that they're all suckers for letting them get away with it. I'll even admit that I've taken issue with a few people working from home on occasion, but more for the reason that I had proof they were slacking off that fell on deaf ears.
I will say that a lot of the advice I've read here so far draws a new positive light on telecommuters in general that more coworkers I know should read sometime to get some perspective.
Looks up to me (minus the "the"):
Wizard of Odds
And here is the story you were talking about.
Man, I would love that gig again. It all ended when our year contract was up and they had to make cuts. Then there was the issue of my partner refusing to send his gaming rig back at the end of the contract, which I'm sure put us on the "GameSpot Shit List Hall of Fame" for eternity. *sigh*
I've found Mr. Cranky's reviews pretty funny, although I have to say he tends to refer to preferring things protruding through his scrotum/arsehole to sitting through the movie again more times than any man should ever admit.
Then if you're really ambitious, build a VNC client for all of the OS's you'll be working on and put them on a CD for portability.
One of the things that grabbed me about the GBA-SP was it's smallish design and the clamshell design, allowing you to easily put it in your pocket and keep the screen protected.
It's the closest I could find...
The key words in these draft bills is that these are in regards to the user acting "with intent to defraud" and is written to imply that it is the use of technologies "to defraud" that is the crime, not simple possesion. The bigger risk is that this bill could be used to tack on additional charges to some other crime (e.g. if you submitted a fraudulent tax return via an encrypted channel). Unfortunately, some cable vendors have very restrictive usage agreements so it may be quite easy find yourself technially guilty of "fraud".
Hey, that would be cheating!
The Princess Bride
And here