> Give that person a butterknife, and they might try with that too. >
Reminds me of the time when I did my (compulsory here) military service, the first night in the building across the yard from ours someone completely snapped and attacked a roommate with the standard issue spoon/fork combination utensil (though it's unclear whether he used the spoon or the fork), ended up in mental institute for a good while.
It's quite sad actually but I can't help chuckling with the mental image of someone attacking someone with a spoon (ordinary blunt one, of course one could sharpen the edge and have very dangerous weapon)
In Finland we telcos used to coun the cost of phone calls in "pulses" which were about a minute (give or take some seconds, don't remember the exact lenght), in the evenings and during weekends all calls were always billed only the initial "pulse" of routing the call. This was changed when dialup internet became popular because it caused tremendeus strain on the network, didn't cause a revolution though some grumbling was heard... Some telcos that also operate as ISPs have heavily discounted call rates when dialling up to their ISP.
actually this classic was proved wrong about two years ago in Australia or New zealand (Can't remember the details or reference right now), some PHB (it was a Bank) decided that MS is the way to go over sea of protests from the technical staff and forced an "upgrade" of the system to MS, leading to massive problems and service outages, with enormous costs... Naturally they never got any compensation from MS. In the end the PHB was fired.
You don't know how right you are, the oxygen that is required by the mitocondrio (if that's the correct english plural) the generate the energy our cells need is also one of the great causes of cell degration. Oxygene in purer forms (like on the molecyle level when it's travelling in your body) is highly corrosive (it is very agressive oxidizer [who would have guessed;)]), toxic even.
For phones the solution is simple, you there's a price per minute (that's a beginning minute so the call comes in and you bother to answer it it's instant smallsum of money), then depending on your interest in the case you will either listen for their proposition (each minute they spend your time costs extra) or tell them that you're not interested in this product and they will go and do something productive (like call the next name on the list).
If you just leave the phone on the table they're bound to figure it our pretty quickly and propably flg you number as "abusive, do not call", no litigation here it's their responsibility to decide whether you're actually listening or they're just wastin their time (and money). Also if you just leave the phone on the table then no-one else can call you so there's some incentive for you not the do it.
For email it's much more complicated, I can't figure a good way to time the reading of email (the phone-co does the timing for you to bill the caller around here [no, even local calls are not free, they're cheap but they are not free this leads automatically to timing the calls]) and a flat fee has it's problems too, there should be separate fees for receiving the mail and for reading it (receiving it is also, allthough usually minor, strain on the resources, this is the first starting minute equilavent of telemarketer fees, picking up the phone or receiving the mail automatcially cause smallsum fee). Maybe the "reading" fee should be per (again starting) kilobyte, if you automatically request the body of the message but they won't get any business at all, ever from you then they propably stop sending you these emails because you're "abusive", again no possibility of sueing, they decided to accept the risk that you're not actually reading the message even though the body is requested, this would also encoureage very small (kilobytewise) messages (and yes, inline images,files,whatever that are not included in the actual message body would still count so no that loophole for spammers).
As for greed and lazines, I would very quickly stop being friedns with somebody who would charge me for legit messages, and for spammers, they need to start profiling their targets nore thoroughly, don't send spam to those who only collect the fees but never show any interest for your offerings.
I still don't know wheter reimbursing credit for legit messages for collecting fee only for messages you deem illegit is better in the long run. For reimbursement some really smart whitelist is needed for automatically reimbursing the senders you want to receive mail from (for mailing lists the reimbursement would work so that when you join the list you deposit your fee to their account, then add the list to your whitelist rules and they can always send you 1 message, which will automatically be reimbursed [would require server solution though]) There's a lot of problems to work out with system security and micropayments in general.
And of course there would have to be an open standard, so that anyone can implement the basic functionality, otherwise it's simply doomed to fail.
The parksabers use EL sheets for light, so there's no plasma tube to be shattered, EL sheets themselves are very flexible so I would doubt any force that would not break the polycarbonate casing could damage the sheet in any significatinf fashion.
Another suggestion worth a look is that offered part way down
this page [aardvark.co.nz] which suggests that Microsoft's Flight Simulator might be the new terrorist training tool.
----
Bullshit, while it might not require specific type training for the model of the jet it would take experience in flying a large jet to fly one into a building (according to aviation experts back here in europe).
Fact is that the original pilots did not crash the planes, they would not do it when they are going to die anyways they will rather dump the fuel and crash to the water, then at least some of the passengers would have a chance of surviving and the casualities in WTC would be avoided.
As for hijacking a plane, it is and will always be doable (the surity measures required to stop determined and smart hijacker would be a commercial disaster, there would not be enough passengers), normally the hijackers just have less drastic agendas and when the plane lands into a western airstrip it can be owned quickly (Germans have special force that can secure 747 in less than 17 seconds [minor hostage casualities allowed, the plane however will propably not fly again])
Condolences to those affected, then to my thoughts as outlander. These are not in any specific order and might seem a bit incoherent at times, but that should be forgiven as I'm as shocked as you are.
As for the planes:
According to flight experts back here in europe while flying the plane to a building might not require specific training for the plane type it would require experience in flying large aircraft.
Naturally the training is freely available to anyone who can pass the physical and cough out the cash.
Revenge:
While I understand the feelings you must understand that murdering people is inherently wrong, whatever you use to justify the act to yourself. Someone quoted the mess DEA gave to some drug lords after an agent was killed (without any evidence they crashed trough doors and made mess of the place) and said similar tactis should be used against terrorist harboring nations (whichever those are), now I don't like drug lords but if you start breaking your own laws you have NO right to claim any kind of moral high ground
Bush said "we make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them", now if US uses military force against civilians (they're not all terrorists in those countries, you must
realize this) then it is NO BETTER than the terrorists.
When the dust settles we'll see the full amount of dead, however it might be good idea to think for a while how many die daily in accidents and smaller scale murders, you might notice that the number if not so large when put to scale with deaths in general. NOTE: I do not have any figures right now but US is a big country, bigger than many understand, it has HUGE population which leads to high mortality numbers, put those numbers to scale.
Naturally when a lot of people get killed in terror attack it feels much worse than if they would have died in separate locations in accidents.
What i'm worried about:
That this incident will be sited over and over again when the US first passes more and more draconian laws ("land of the free", yeah right) which will be then pushed by the world police to the rest of the world as well.
I'm also worried that the fact that "when there is will there is way" is ignored or owrse hidden from the public. This was done by professionals, they propably had man or men inside at the airports where planes were hijacked (also the security in domestic flights might have been a bit lax).
You cannot stop professional terrorist unless you have infiltrated their core group, they're trained like elite military forces and propably have very much money behind them (drug cartels also have money, and private armies).
The most worry of course comes from the fact that the largely uneducated masses of US do not understand the basic facts and take this against everyone from the middle-east (remember: a person might be intelligent, groups, let alone masses are stupid, timid and easily frightened)
It might have taken 20-30 professionals and a lot of money plus some background personnel to pull this trough. 20-30 persons can be arranged to any country if you have the resources and the persons know their infiltration 1o1. Besides it's propable that many of the terrorists had already been in the US for years (infiltration 1o1 again), it's like spy networks, infiltrate, wait, strike when you feel like it.
One thing is true, the world will not be the same again.
I really don't understand the concern. It shouldn't be able to explode, no O2, and from what I've read the satelites aren't supposed to crash land. So what's the problem?
The problem is that "things that detonate" ie. true explosives not just pyrotechnical compounds that burn relatively fast (few hundared meters/second as opposed to few kilometers/second) already contain all oxygen they need in they molucular structure. Most pyrotechnical compounds also contain the oxygen they need to burn in some form or another (salt peter [i hope this is the correct english name] is very common oxidizer)
The problem with explosives (or guns, or other things that go boom) is the fact that pressure is rather low in space which causes all sorts of problems like rather poor and non spectacular burn of pyrotechnics, explosives detonate allright but since there is no medium to carry the shockwave it's not much of fun.
Sure there are uses for detaching or welding and stuff for explosives in space but using them is FAR from trivial, you need VERY carefull planning for those things to work properly.
NOTE: I am a trained in handling pyrotechnical compunds and explosives, speciality in special effects (where real explosives have quite little use, pyrotechnics look and sound much, much better).
Argh, this is all very interesting but since in this side of atlantic the devices are rather unavailable I quess I won't be able to cataloque my CD/Book/Video/Whatever collections as here (albeit industrial grade) universal barcode scanner costs about $400. Which is a tad too much.
I'm wondering on how hard it would be to build one ?
I reckon a bright LED (or laser, leds just are cheaper) and photoresistor is needed for I/O then we need some microprosessor to decode the code and send it as correct keyboard codes to the port.
Sounds easy ? Well I'm pretty sure it isn't, so anyone with experience in electronics have comments on this ??
Actually there are more than 70k viruses if you count the variants (general consesus is to count variants). And more coming everyday, however I don't think viruses is what they meant with "programs" (shouldn't that be applications, btw)
Also if we're talking about applications I wouldn't count system files or other critical to the OS tool programs.
>>>>
For example, there are laws against fraud, rape, robbery, and murder. There is an implicit assumption involved that those things are made illegal because they are morally wrong. One can argue that the basis of these laws is that they constitute an aggression of one party onto someone else, but even this presumes that aggression against another is wrong.
<<<<
This boild down to your rights vs my rights, (the basic version) we both have rights to do pretty much whatever we please AS LONG AS it does not infringe others' rights to do whatever they please. Now raping someone sure as hell is infringing their rights, fraud is more complicated matter but can be equaled to stealing (in many cases) and you don't have right to take the property I own (it infringes my right to use my property).
Noted these are not simple issues but there is no inherent need to make them even more complicated.
The hoax part could be pretty simple like this: cross-reference with the 5 best sites listing and explaining hoaxes, then add to the first lines of the mail (this could be shared as a joke too) that this is a hoax and not to be takes seriously and few links to sites explaining the hoax. It would require some intelligence to detect variations of a theme. Since we have language barriers it's next to impossible start judging the senders intentions so it's not good to just delete the mail outright.
Spam doesn't have the language problem (it's mainly english anyways) but it is certainly hard to recognize without some kind of AI (spammers will surely come around any simple script).
It would be good if this could be implemented as some kind of plugin/API so that any mailserver could use with as little variation as possible.
This would be ultra cool and nail the goddam spammers for good, it would also significantly reduce damage from hoaxes and even (hopefully) educate the masses of hoaxes (by telling what they are).
The problem is that certain versions of Outhouse (I don't use it, I don't want to have anything to do with it, so I haven't found out which versions) by default run scripts etc attached to emails, isn't this fun boys and girls ?
I don't have the faintest idea of any sensible and legitimate applications of this feature but it sure enabales some kick-ass worms.
I work for a $avcompany and I've seen this before, I saw it this time and sadly I will see it in the future, MS denies responsibility even though Outhouse is known to automatically execute scripts.
> That's part of the problem with the current crop of (Windows/Mac) virus detection programs - they only check for certain patterns that match known viruses, leaving them vulnerable to the latest versions. >
*Bzzzt!* Wrong,(solely) pattern based virus detection became obsolete with the first polymorphic viruses and this was in the late 80s.
All modern scanning systems have multiple scan modes with different types of execution emulation along with pattern based detection system and on top of that a more or less sophisticated heuristic scanner that can detect previoysly unknown viruses by searching for virus like behaviour (often only simple ones, excemptions to this rule are coming up like F-Secure Orion that detects all known 32bit windows viruses purely on heuristics).
I have not tried, but I would suppose I can make as good copies by capturing data from *GOOD* VHS as by decoding DVD and the resampling it to lower quality.
The quality difference would most propably be so minimal that it would a lot less trouble just capture the video feed from the VHS to the desired quality than first get the data from the DVD and then do the resample (which will take much time, while the capture can be done in realtime)
About the above, I do not have a DVD-ROM drive and I do not know how fast they can transfer data but given the limitations in interfaces they simply can not be many times faster than is required to show the bitstream which means you have to first rip the movie and then resample it, not worth the trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
> Give that person a butterknife, and they might try with that too.
>
Reminds me of the time when I did my (compulsory here) military service, the first night in the building across the yard from ours someone completely snapped and attacked a roommate with the standard issue spoon/fork combination utensil (though it's unclear whether he used the spoon or the fork), ended up in mental institute for a good while.
It's quite sad actually but I can't help chuckling with the mental image of someone attacking someone with a spoon (ordinary blunt one, of course one could sharpen the edge and have very dangerous weapon)
In Finland we telcos used to coun the cost of phone calls in "pulses" which were about a minute (give or take some seconds, don't remember the exact lenght), in the evenings and during weekends all calls were always billed only the initial "pulse" of routing the call. This was changed when dialup internet became popular because it caused tremendeus strain on the network, didn't cause a revolution though some grumbling was heard... Some telcos that also operate as ISPs have heavily discounted call rates when dialling up to their ISP.
"nobody got fired for buying microsoft"
actually this classic was proved wrong about two years ago in Australia or New zealand (Can't remember the details or reference right now), some PHB (it was a Bank) decided that MS is the way to go over sea of protests from the technical staff and forced an "upgrade" of the system to MS, leading to massive problems and service outages, with enormous costs... Naturally they never got any compensation from MS. In the end the PHB was fired.
You don't know how right you are, the oxygen that is required by the mitocondrio (if that's the correct english plural) the generate the energy our cells need is also one of the great causes of cell degration. Oxygene in purer forms (like on the molecyle level when it's travelling in your body) is highly corrosive (it is very agressive oxidizer [who would have guessed;)]), toxic even.
For phones the solution is simple, you there's a price per minute (that's a beginning minute so the call comes in and you bother to answer it it's instant smallsum of money), then depending on your interest in the case you will either listen for their proposition (each minute they spend your time costs extra) or tell them that you're not interested in this product and they will go and do something productive (like call the next name on the list).
If you just leave the phone on the table they're bound to figure it our pretty quickly and propably flg you number as "abusive, do not call", no litigation here it's their responsibility to decide whether you're actually listening or they're just wastin their time (and money). Also if you just leave the phone on the table then no-one else can call you so there's some incentive for you not the do it.
For email it's much more complicated, I can't figure a good way to time the reading of email (the phone-co does the timing for you to bill the caller around here [no, even local calls are not free, they're cheap but they are not free this leads automatically to timing the calls]) and a flat fee has it's problems too, there should be separate fees for receiving the mail and for reading it (receiving it is also, allthough usually minor, strain on the resources, this is the first starting minute equilavent of telemarketer fees, picking up the phone or receiving the mail automatcially cause smallsum fee). Maybe the "reading" fee should be per (again starting) kilobyte, if you automatically request the body of the message but they won't get any business at all, ever from you then they propably stop sending you these emails because you're "abusive", again no possibility of sueing, they decided to accept the risk that you're not actually reading the message even though the body is requested, this would also encoureage very small (kilobytewise) messages (and yes, inline images,files,whatever that are not included in the actual message body would still count so no that loophole for spammers).
As for greed and lazines, I would very quickly stop being friedns with somebody who would charge me for legit messages, and for spammers, they need to start profiling their targets nore thoroughly, don't send spam to those who only collect the fees but never show any interest for your offerings.
I still don't know wheter reimbursing credit for legit messages for collecting fee only for messages you deem illegit is better in the long run. For reimbursement some really smart whitelist is needed for automatically reimbursing the senders you want to receive mail from (for mailing lists the reimbursement would work so that when you join the list you deposit your fee to their account, then add the list to your whitelist rules and they can always send you 1 message, which will automatically be reimbursed [would require server solution though]) There's a lot of problems to work out with system security and micropayments in general.
And of course there would have to be an open standard, so that anyone can implement the basic functionality, otherwise it's simply doomed to fail.
The parksabers use EL sheets for light, so there's no plasma tube to be shattered, EL sheets themselves are very flexible so I would doubt any force that would not break the polycarbonate casing could damage the sheet in any significatinf fashion.
Another suggestion worth a look is that offered part way down
this page [aardvark.co.nz] which suggests that Microsoft's Flight Simulator might be the new terrorist training tool.
----
Bullshit, while it might not require specific type training for the model of the jet it would take experience in flying a large jet to fly one into a building (according to aviation experts back here in europe).
Fact is that the original pilots did not crash the planes, they would not do it when they are going to die anyways they will rather dump the fuel and crash to the water, then at least some of the passengers would have a chance of surviving and the casualities in WTC would be avoided.
As for hijacking a plane, it is and will always be doable (the surity measures required to stop determined and smart hijacker would be a commercial disaster, there would not be enough passengers), normally the hijackers just have less drastic agendas and when the plane lands into a western airstrip it can be owned quickly (Germans have special force that can secure 747 in less than 17 seconds [minor hostage casualities allowed, the plane however will propably not fly again])
Condolences to those affected, then to my thoughts as outlander. These are not in any specific order and might seem a bit incoherent at times, but that should be forgiven as I'm as shocked as you are.
As for the planes:
According to flight experts back here in europe while flying the plane to a building might not require specific training for the plane type it would require experience in flying large aircraft.
Naturally the training is freely available to anyone who can pass the physical and cough out the cash.
Revenge:
While I understand the feelings you must understand that murdering people is inherently wrong, whatever you use to justify the act to yourself. Someone quoted the mess DEA gave to some drug lords after an agent was killed (without any evidence they crashed trough doors and made mess of the place) and said similar tactis should be used against terrorist harboring nations (whichever those are), now I don't like drug lords but if you start breaking your own laws you have NO right to claim any kind of moral high ground
Bush said "we make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them", now if US uses military force against civilians (they're not all terrorists in those countries, you must
realize this) then it is NO BETTER than the terrorists.
When the dust settles we'll see the full amount of dead, however it might be good idea to think for a while how many die daily in accidents and smaller scale murders, you might notice that the number if not so large when put to scale with deaths in general. NOTE: I do not have any figures right now but US is a big country, bigger than many understand, it has HUGE population which leads to high mortality numbers, put those numbers to scale.
Naturally when a lot of people get killed in terror attack it feels much worse than if they would have died in separate locations in accidents.
What i'm worried about:
That this incident will be sited over and over again when the US first passes more and more draconian laws ("land of the free", yeah right) which will be then pushed by the world police to the rest of the world as well.
I'm also worried that the fact that "when there is will there is way" is ignored or owrse hidden from the public. This was done by professionals, they propably had man or men inside at the airports where planes were hijacked (also the security in domestic flights might have been a bit lax).
You cannot stop professional terrorist unless you have infiltrated their core group, they're trained like elite military forces and propably have very much money behind them (drug cartels also have money, and private armies).
The most worry of course comes from the fact that the largely uneducated masses of US do not understand the basic facts and take this against everyone from the middle-east (remember: a person might be intelligent, groups, let alone masses are stupid, timid and easily frightened)
It might have taken 20-30 professionals and a lot of money plus some background personnel to pull this trough. 20-30 persons can be arranged to any country if you have the resources and the persons know their infiltration 1o1. Besides it's propable that many of the terrorists had already been in the US for years (infiltration 1o1 again), it's like spy networks, infiltrate, wait, strike when you feel like it.
One thing is true, the world will not be the same again.
I really don't understand the concern. It shouldn't be able to explode, no O2, and from what I've read the satelites aren't supposed to crash land. So what's the problem?
The problem is that "things that detonate" ie. true explosives not just pyrotechnical compounds that burn relatively fast (few hundared meters/second as opposed to few kilometers/second) already contain all oxygen they need in they molucular structure. Most pyrotechnical compounds also contain the oxygen they need to burn in some form or another (salt peter [i hope this is the correct english name] is very common oxidizer)
The problem with explosives (or guns, or other things that go boom) is the fact that pressure is rather low in space which causes all sorts of problems like rather poor and non spectacular burn of pyrotechnics, explosives detonate allright but since there is no medium to carry the shockwave it's not much of fun.
Sure there are uses for detaching or welding and stuff for explosives in space but using them is FAR from trivial, you need VERY carefull planning for those things to work properly.
NOTE: I am a trained in handling pyrotechnical compunds and explosives, speciality in special effects (where real explosives have quite little use, pyrotechnics look and sound much, much better).
Argh, this is all very interesting but since in this side of atlantic the devices are rather unavailable I quess I won't be able to cataloque my CD/Book/Video/Whatever collections as here (albeit industrial grade) universal barcode scanner costs about $400. Which is a tad too much.
I'm wondering on how hard it would be to build one ?
I reckon a bright LED (or laser, leds just are cheaper) and photoresistor is needed for I/O then we need some microprosessor to decode the code and send it as correct keyboard codes to the port.
Sounds easy ? Well I'm pretty sure it isn't, so anyone with experience in electronics have comments on this ??
Actually there are more than 70k viruses if you count the variants (general consesus is to count variants). And more coming everyday, however I don't think viruses is what they meant with "programs" (shouldn't that be applications, btw)
Also if we're talking about applications I wouldn't count system files or other critical to the OS tool programs.
>>>>
For example, there are laws against fraud, rape, robbery, and murder. There is an implicit assumption involved that those things are made illegal because they are morally wrong. One can argue that the basis of these laws is that they constitute an aggression of one party onto someone else, but even this presumes that aggression against another is wrong.
<<<<
This boild down to your rights vs my rights, (the basic version) we both have rights to do pretty much whatever we please AS LONG AS it does not infringe others' rights to do whatever they please. Now raping someone sure as hell is infringing their rights, fraud is more complicated matter but can be equaled to stealing (in many cases) and you don't have right to take the property I own (it infringes my right to use my property).
Noted these are not simple issues but there is no inherent need to make them even more complicated.
As someone already mentioned this is not a variant of the ILOVEYOU case but an older worm called Freelinks, see http://www.F-Secure.com/v-descs/freeli nk.htm for analysis.
The hoax part could be pretty simple like this: cross-reference with the 5 best sites listing and explaining hoaxes, then add to the first lines of the mail (this could be shared as a joke too) that this is a hoax and not to be takes seriously and few links to sites explaining the hoax. It would require some intelligence to detect variations of a theme. Since we have language barriers it's next to impossible start judging the senders intentions so it's not good to just delete the mail outright.
Few sites:
Spam doesn't have the language problem (it's mainly english anyways) but it is certainly hard to recognize without some kind of AI (spammers will surely come around any simple script).
It would be good if this could be implemented as some kind of plugin/API so that any mailserver could use with as little variation as possible.
This would be ultra cool and nail the goddam spammers for good, it would also significantly reduce damage from hoaxes and even (hopefully) educate the masses of hoaxes (by telling what they are).
The problem is that certain versions of Outhouse (I don't use it, I don't want to have anything to do with it, so I haven't found out which versions) by default run scripts etc attached to emails, isn't this fun boys and girls ?
I don't have the faintest idea of any sensible and legitimate applications of this feature but it sure enabales some kick-ass worms.
I work for a $avcompany and I've seen this before, I saw it this time and sadly I will see it in the future, MS denies responsibility even though Outhouse is known to automatically execute scripts.
>
That's part of the problem with the current crop of (Windows/Mac) virus detection programs - they only check for certain patterns that match known viruses, leaving them vulnerable to the latest versions.
>
*Bzzzt!* Wrong,(solely) pattern based virus detection became obsolete with the first polymorphic viruses and this was in the late 80s.
All modern scanning systems have multiple scan modes with different types of execution emulation along with pattern based detection system and on top of that a more or less sophisticated heuristic scanner that can detect previoysly unknown viruses by searching for virus like behaviour (often only simple ones, excemptions to this rule are coming up like F-Secure Orion that detects all known 32bit windows viruses purely on heuristics).
I have not tried, but I would suppose I can make as good copies by capturing data from *GOOD* VHS as by decoding DVD and the resampling it to lower quality.
The quality difference would most propably be so minimal that it would a lot less trouble just capture the video feed from the VHS to the desired quality than first get the data from the DVD and then do the resample (which will take much time, while the capture can be done in realtime)
About the above, I do not have a DVD-ROM drive and I do not know how fast they can transfer data but given the limitations in interfaces they simply can not be many times faster than is required to show the bitstream which means you have to first rip the movie and then resample it, not worth the trouble.