Fun idea: Make a "HERF gun" type device to permanently disable the tags from a short distance. Then sit by the roadside and whack all the RFID tags of the vehicles as they pass by. The cops will have a lot of fun stopping all those innocent people and trying to figure out how all the RFID tags on the block are toast.
Disabling your own tag might single you out for persecution (and prosecution), but doing it to everyone's tag would create a gigantic mess for the perps of this scheme.
Is the USPTO is even *nationally* respected any longer?
No, but it's still respected in Sosume, Iowa, because the USPTO allowed one of the locals to patent a process for swinging sideways pulling first on one chain, then the other. The mayor of Sosume, Ima Hankerin, was quoted as saying "This patent protects our youngin's right to their intellectual property, other communities have tried to copy this technique and claim it for themselves, now, if they try that they're gonna be in a world of hurt".
The Patent on Basmati rice (a US corporation obtained a patent on Basmati Rice, which's been grown in India for thousands of years), and even the war on Iraq
They patented the war on Iraq! Shocking!
I knew could could patent a business process, but a war? Does this mean the US Government will be able to extract royalties from all future conflicts.
I've noticed that also. Strange how people with an agenda feel they can skip being unbiased, even if they are (like the media) assumed to be as some sort of code of ethics. I think their passions get them carried away and they often are so transparent about their agenda they really look like fools.
I thought of another example of this, remember the Presiedential press conference when all the reporters were trying desperately to get a personal apology from the President of the "WMD issue". They so obviously wanted a "sound bite" to help his opponents politically, that they kept asking the same (thinly veiled) question over and over. It's like the reporters agreed ahead of time and were doing some sort of tag team to get what they wanted. In the end they didn't get it and wasted a lot of question time making themselves look like idiots.
That's what they are there for. Since you paid for the OS, you should go ahead and avail yourself of the phone support. That is a big part of the value of proprietary software, you have a company you can blame/sue/etc until you get some satisfaction. I know it costs money to call MS, but it's not your money, so go for it (the folks at MS need to eat too ).
Just remember:
Expensive software ==> expensive support
Free software ==> free support
Be warned that in either case you may get no answer (or a wrong answer).
True, and like nukes, it might have some deterrent value as well. I wonder if they might respect a black list a little more if they thought retaliation was a viable option for the recipient.
I want a button on my mail client called "Retaliate", that will hunt down the sender, use various cracking techniques to take over their system, send back a copy of all their personal data, and subtly corrupt any email addresses it finds in any files or databases on the system. Optionally, it would locate some illegal content off the internet and copy it all over the filesystem, then send the IP address and other identifying info to the appropriate government agency.
Databases are cool, but they're almost useless by themselves. Are we supposed to grok SQL statements every day just to locate a SCSI adapter?
Linux is cool, but it's almost useless by itself. Are we supposed to grok cryptic commands every day just to fix stuff that ought to work?
Databases are like UNIX, they are powerful for those who understand them, magical (or even scary) for those who do not. And yes, there are GUI interfaces to help manage both, but it's still the apps that make it really useful.
But the very best of everything is to have a database running on UNIX/Linux.
In other words, you don't understand databases, so you use a spreadsheet. It's OK to be honest about this, no one's gonna look down on you because of it.
Yup, it's like we're working for the FDA. Any arcane rules they want to make up become our marching orders.
Sometimes I'm not sure how long I can take working in this industry, but it was sure nice to feel no effects of the last recession on my job. My frustration is more or less cancelled out by my paycheck. It might not be a moral victory, but it pays the bills. Plus, no one complains that I post on Slashdot.
I'm not shitting you that I say that in a train station, you need to get a ticket booking request form, not to book a ticket (that'd be too obvious), but just to request a ticket booking form. Desks, queues, forms, meticulous, pains-taking handwriting -- that's just India!
Ahh! This explains why Indian nationals are such a good fit for American business processes!
I grate my teeth everytime I have to fill out 2 days worth of paperwork to run a 5 second command (my company is regulated by a 3 letter gov't agency), but for someone who grew up with that sort of process as part of everyday life, it would just seem normal.
I can never complain much about the rules and regulations that stifle the actual work effort, because that would show a bad attitude. Instead I just think about how much it's costing them for me to issue a one line SQL statement (I have to find my entertainment wherever it comes). It's also a big plus for job security, doing the same work with fewer people is not only frowned upon, it could be outright illegal -- so let's not take a chance.
I'm not too concerned about outsourcing. In fact I hope they outsource the paperwork for the sake of accountability. I'll just wait until I get the "official" authorization and type in the 6 words to formally complete the procedure. Last time someone asked for an additional system privilege, it took more than a month to get approved and executed, this poor response time really cuts down on frivilous requests, the requestor has to really want the change to go through the hassle. Maybe that's part of the motivation for the Indian system as well (motto -- more people working, less getting done).
It wholly depends on how many people are downloading it at any specific moment, so when you come back maybe 3 days later, the download speeds drop to a trickle because you're the only one downloading the file now. And nobody leaves their BT clients open longer than it takes to download a file - I'm sorry, but relying on people's altruistic behavior is plain stupid.
That's the whole point! After a few days, when everyone already has it, getting the ISO's the conventional way from the mirrors is no problems, but when the ISO's are first out, BT works great.
And a lot of people (like me) do leave their Torrents run for a while. I throttle the upload (--max_upload_rate) so it doesn't hurt my interactivity much at all and let is run as long as possible, usually several days. I get a good feeling from being altruistic, and I bet I'm not that rare.
Have you actually tried BT, or just read about it and decided it's not worthwhile? I'm amazed each time I use it. It often starts slow (right now it says it will take 1426 hours to download!) but then it really picks up (I'll be surprised if it takes more than 3 hours, probably less). It's always seemed faster than a straight download, and I'm giving back while getting my "fix". It's a win all around, IMO.
I guess only rich people should be allowed personal aircraft. I guess rich people aren't terrorists?
So you think that lowering the financial bar for aerial terrorists is a good thing?
I think the costs should be raised, anything that has the effect of making an attack more costly, will have some effect on reducing the frequency. Plus a botched attempt might costs as much as a successful one, making it more risky for the terrorists. That's why terrorsts prefer low-tech, low-cost weapons. There are a lot of failures and a lot of plots get discovered or the perps caught for something else. If the weapons were expensive it would be easier to starve them for funds. Their contributors might even start to question the cost/benefit ration, potentially dooming their organizations.
Your right! I wonder why no one has written an X screensaver to do that. They have ones for system crashes on almost all the OS's, why not a defrag screensaver. You could make it start out horribly fragmented and make if run really fast to impress you geek friends (though how impressed they would be that you're running Win 98 is debatable).
Yup, that's why I stick with FAT32. The Windows 98 Defrag utility is so cool!! I love watching the little blocks move around and change color. It's like playing a video game, but a lot less work.
Hint: if you do this at work, keep your hand on the mouse and have an intent look on your face to your co-workers are impressed with all the work you are getting done.
Now all I need is a fragmenting utility to make running the defrag utility take longer. Anyone got one of those?
It could easily spark an arms race as other countries develop missiles than can penetrate the defense.
A waste of money all around...
Is it?
This is exactly what ended the cold war. The US outspent the SU and basically bankrupted them. That might suck for them in the short term, but the US gained a "peace dividend" and became the only superpower. Money well spent in that case. You can say it's a waste of money in the total, but not "all around". That's a big part of the reason these programs are pursued.
Regardless of your moral convictions about it, you should recognize that it is not uniformly a waste of money.
I AM however, putting SpamAssassin on a Linux box to do mail filtering.:)
Your situation sounds very much like mine. I got approval to use Linux for a Spam filter and it is working great. In a recent training class, I showed stats to the users that indicate we throw away 3 Spam emails for every good one they get. They had no idea the problem was that bad.
BTW, we do use Sendmail and SpamAssassin, but we are using Can-It from Roaring Penguin Software to make is really easy to admin and provide the "paid support contract" that makes the director have a warm, fuzzy feeling. The price was a tiny fraction of the cost of a proprietary package and worth every penny since it's web interface is accessible to non-Linux savvy IT staff. This was the "foot in the door" to get Linux part of our data center. Last Monday we launched our intranet portal (Plone on Linux) and a few weeks back, the Director expressed an interest in finding out what other Windows server apps could be replaced by Linux.
I was warned by many that doing Tech Support for a living was a burnout job, and borderline emotional abuse. But the last couple years of parasites have made it pure insanity. Tech Support is at a whole new low...
"i need to find a new job" is an understatement.
Now you can understand why so much of this is being outsourced to foreign countries. The stress levels are too high for minimum wage, but paying a real techie $40/hour to sit on the phone with a clueless customer for 2 hours is too expensive.
Until the revenue model changes to actually charge the end user for the hours used, this will continue.
from the if-you-can't-beat'em-join'em-dept.
Have you considered acquiring a foreign accent to make it harder for people to understand you? When they give up and just live with all the slowness and annoyances, then your job is done!
They cause the computer to run really slow, and screw things up, including networking settings, killing IE, destroy the cryptography service, so that you can't get updates, and the ability to repair the TCP/IP layer.
How can you tell that this is caused by a virus. Every Windows system I've used does this out of the box.
Slashdot Mirror
Disabling your own tag might single you out for persecution (and prosecution), but doing it to everyone's tag would create a gigantic mess for the perps of this scheme.
No, but it's still respected in Sosume, Iowa, because the USPTO allowed one of the locals to patent a process for swinging sideways pulling first on one chain, then the other. The mayor of Sosume, Ima Hankerin, was quoted as saying "This patent protects our youngin's right to their intellectual property, other communities have tried to copy this technique and claim it for themselves, now, if they try that they're gonna be in a world of hurt".
They patented the war on Iraq! Shocking!
I knew could could patent a business process, but a war? Does this mean the US Government will be able to extract royalties from all future conflicts.
60 Minutes better get to the bottom of this fast!
I thought of another example of this, remember the Presiedential press conference when all the reporters were trying desperately to get a personal apology from the President of the "WMD issue". They so obviously wanted a "sound bite" to help his opponents politically, that they kept asking the same (thinly veiled) question over and over. It's like the reporters agreed ahead of time and were doing some sort of tag team to get what they wanted. In the end they didn't get it and wasted a lot of question time making themselves look like idiots.
Just remember:
Expensive software ==> expensive support
Free software ==> free support
Be warned that in either case you may get no answer (or a wrong answer).
True, and like nukes, it might have some deterrent value as well. I wonder if they might respect a black list a little more if they thought retaliation was a viable option for the recipient.
Yeah, I forgot about that
Still, it'd be a nice option. Might even teach some folks to be careful what they click (or what they wish for).
I want a button on my mail client called "Retaliate", that will hunt down the sender, use various cracking techniques to take over their system, send back a copy of all their personal data, and subtly corrupt any email addresses it finds in any files or databases on the system. Optionally, it would locate some illegal content off the internet and copy it all over the filesystem, then send the IP address and other identifying info to the appropriate government agency.
That would make it fun to get Spam!
Who'd have thought the moderators would be so humorless today? flamebait? What a stupid use of mod points.
I guess from now on I'll have to use <funny></funny> to give the mods some more clues.is
BTW, this isn't meant to be funny or flamebait. Maybe "insightful"
Linux is cool, but it's almost useless by itself. Are we supposed to grok cryptic commands every day just to fix stuff that ought to work?
Databases are like UNIX, they are powerful for those who understand them, magical (or even scary) for those who do not. And yes, there are GUI interfaces to help manage both, but it's still the apps that make it really useful.
But the very best of everything is to have a database running on UNIX/Linux.
"We like databases!"
-- Dilbert
In other words, you don't understand databases, so you use a spreadsheet. It's OK to be honest about this, no one's gonna look down on you because of it.
really!
signed,
your friendly DBA
And SCO is really only trying to help Linux.
Oh, and in other news, the Easter bunny really exists!!
Really, truly!!
Sometimes I'm not sure how long I can take working in this industry, but it was sure nice to feel no effects of the last recession on my job. My frustration is more or less cancelled out by my paycheck. It might not be a moral victory, but it pays the bills. Plus, no one complains that I post on Slashdot.
Ahh! This explains why Indian nationals are such a good fit for American business processes!
I grate my teeth everytime I have to fill out 2 days worth of paperwork to run a 5 second command (my company is regulated by a 3 letter gov't agency), but for someone who grew up with that sort of process as part of everyday life, it would just seem normal.
I can never complain much about the rules and regulations that stifle the actual work effort, because that would show a bad attitude. Instead I just think about how much it's costing them for me to issue a one line SQL statement (I have to find my entertainment wherever it comes). It's also a big plus for job security, doing the same work with fewer people is not only frowned upon, it could be outright illegal -- so let's not take a chance.
I'm not too concerned about outsourcing. In fact I hope they outsource the paperwork for the sake of accountability. I'll just wait until I get the "official" authorization and type in the 6 words to formally complete the procedure. Last time someone asked for an additional system privilege, it took more than a month to get approved and executed, this poor response time really cuts down on frivilous requests, the requestor has to really want the change to go through the hassle. Maybe that's part of the motivation for the Indian system as well (motto -- more people working, less getting done).
That's the whole point! After a few days, when everyone already has it, getting the ISO's the conventional way from the mirrors is no problems, but when the ISO's are first out, BT works great.
And a lot of people (like me) do leave their Torrents run for a while. I throttle the upload (--max_upload_rate) so it doesn't hurt my interactivity much at all and let is run as long as possible, usually several days. I get a good feeling from being altruistic, and I bet I'm not that rare.
Have you actually tried BT, or just read about it and decided it's not worthwhile? I'm amazed each time I use it. It often starts slow (right now it says it will take 1426 hours to download!) but then it really picks up (I'll be surprised if it takes more than 3 hours, probably less). It's always seemed faster than a straight download, and I'm giving back while getting my "fix". It's a win all around, IMO.
So you think that lowering the financial bar for aerial terrorists is a good thing?
I think the costs should be raised, anything that has the effect of making an attack more costly, will have some effect on reducing the frequency. Plus a botched attempt might costs as much as a successful one, making it more risky for the terrorists. That's why terrorsts prefer low-tech, low-cost weapons. There are a lot of failures and a lot of plots get discovered or the perps caught for something else. If the weapons were expensive it would be easier to starve them for funds. Their contributors might even start to question the cost/benefit ration, potentially dooming their organizations.
Wait until MS send the BSA to try to sue the Swedish Navy -- their vessel might be boarded by unfriendlies in the way in.
Your right! I wonder why no one has written an X screensaver to do that. They have ones for system crashes on almost all the OS's, why not a defrag screensaver. You could make it start out horribly fragmented and make if run really fast to impress you geek friends (though how impressed they would be that you're running Win 98 is debatable).
I love watching the little blocks move around and change color. It's like playing a video game, but a lot less work.
Hint: if you do this at work, keep your hand on the mouse and have an intent look on your face to your co-workers are impressed with all the work you are getting done.
Now all I need is a fragmenting utility to make running the defrag utility take longer. Anyone got one of those?
You're such a patient son! I just tell her to turn it off at the power strip, and that the filesystem check is the normal startup procedure.
Still, having a way to help our little furry friends lose weight can only be a good thing :)
A waste of money all around...
Is it?
This is exactly what ended the cold war. The US outspent the SU and basically bankrupted them. That might suck for them in the short term, but the US gained a "peace dividend" and became the only superpower. Money well spent in that case. You can say it's a waste of money in the total, but not "all around". That's a big part of the reason these programs are pursued.
Regardless of your moral convictions about it, you should recognize that it is not uniformly a waste of money.
Your situation sounds very much like mine. I got approval to use Linux for a Spam filter and it is working great. In a recent training class, I showed stats to the users that indicate we throw away 3 Spam emails for every good one they get. They had no idea the problem was that bad.
BTW, we do use Sendmail and SpamAssassin, but we are using Can-It from Roaring Penguin Software to make is really easy to admin and provide the "paid support contract" that makes the director have a warm, fuzzy feeling. The price was a tiny fraction of the cost of a proprietary package and worth every penny since it's web interface is accessible to non-Linux savvy IT staff. This was the "foot in the door" to get Linux part of our data center. Last Monday we launched our intranet portal (Plone on Linux) and a few weeks back, the Director expressed an interest in finding out what other Windows server apps could be replaced by Linux.
"i need to find a new job" is an understatement.
Now you can understand why so much of this is being outsourced to foreign countries. The stress levels are too high for minimum wage, but paying a real techie $40/hour to sit on the phone with a clueless customer for 2 hours is too expensive. Until the revenue model changes to actually charge the end user for the hours used, this will continue.
from the if-you-can't-beat'em-join'em-dept.
Have you considered acquiring a foreign accent to make it harder for people to understand you? When they give up and just live with all the slowness and annoyances, then your job is done!
How can you tell that this is caused by a virus. Every Windows system I've used does this out of the box.