Besides which, if they have a tourist map of the area and a rough idea of their location, they can generally just look out the cockpit window and follow a road... That'll get them near enough to something worth crashing into, whether it be an apartment building, a mall or a bridge. As you say, it doesn't really matter what they hit, as long as they regularly demonstrate the ability and willingness to hit something.
Personally, I'm wondering how long it's going to take Dubya to realise that to "coordinate an attack", all you really need are some moderately accurate digital watches, prepaid cellphones and tourist maps of the area. Terrorists all over the world have shown themselves capable of loading a vehicle with explosives and driving it to the target. All they need is a tourist map of the area with government and other buildings conveniently marked, and a means of communicating with each other to coordinate attacks on multiple targets simultaneously.
What do you get with GPS that a map doesn't give you? I submit that if terrorists have GPS-guided missiles, it's already too late to take action, and anything else is likely to be eyeball-guided. Don't forget that the average fanatic with a bomb has been promised an incredible afterlife, and all he has to do to qualify is to get the bomb to a place where some of the enemy will die.
How hard would it be to replace the GPS receiver in a missile with something that homed in on a strong radio signal?? It's not at all difficult to build a radio transmitter into a box small enough to toss into a tree near the target, or carry to the target in a backpack...
There's something else to take into account. I don't have a link to it, but I remember reading somewhere online about a guy who proved that the music industry cut back on issuing new albums just a short time before starting to whine about piracy. His conclusion was that music sales declined mainly because there was less new stuff available, and that that was deliberate policy by RIAA members so that they could point to declining sales and blame file-sharing by pirates.
If they do try to stamp out filesharing, presumably that means *any* kind of fileshare technology. I think Microsoft are going to be a bit pissed about removing directory sharing from Windows...
I've got one set of over 200 systems, hardly any of which sync passwords between themselves. They don't all have the same password expiry rules (30 - 45 days) and some will allow passwords that other won't. Password Change Day gets to be a real drag. If they go ahead with their plans to merge several sets of support folks, that'll add 300 - 400 more systems with different rules...
It's got to the point where I'm writing a tool that'll log me in, using a locally-stored encrypted password list. When it's done, it'll detect 'password about to expire' messages and change my password to some random string, then update the encrypted list. I only have to remember a couple of passwords - to login to my local system, and to decrypt the list.
Where I work, old desktops are being upgraded to laptops, which we're expected to take home. So, if I were to leave a note of my password under my keyboard at work, the system won't be there for anyone to try it on... I can keep an encrypted file on the laptop with all my other passwords.
I heard this rant a few months back: the patent on Claritin recently expired. A number of generic drug manufacturers began tooling up to produce generic Claritin under their own name. In the meantime, the Claritin patent holder had been doing some research and worked out some improvements but didn't file for a new patent until the old one was close to expiry. Once it was filed, they started to manufacture Clarinex, and pushed it out to doctors as free samples, in order to get patients to switch over regardless of whether the switch was really necessary.
Undoubtedly, enough patients would stick with the original Claritin, and then go with the generics, to make manufacture of the generics a profitable business. The original patent holder, on the other hand, has just secured a rather nice income stream for the next 17 years, during which enough "improvements" will be made to Clarinex that it will qualify for a new patent, and the cycle continues.
The protection of the inventor was the "payment" that the inventor got, not the purpose of the patent.
It doesn't stop there. A "trade secret" has no protection, other than being kept secret by the owner. If it ever "escapes" and becomes known, it ceases to be a trade secret and anyone can use it. The original owner can only really litigate against whoever leaked the secret. On the other hand, a patent-holder stands to gain from licensing his invention to someone that has sufficient funding to manufacture a product based on the invention. Society generally benefits, because the invention sees the light of day.
This is one reason why so many stupid patents are being filed - with the rising cost of fighting patent-infringement lawsuits, it's generally cheaper for the alleged infringer to settle out of court and buy a license. Never mind that the patent (and/or lawsuit) might be completely bogus, people settle anyway rather than gambling on winning in a patent court that currently has a history of siding with the patent-holders more often than not.
Your daughter is probably OK, provided she doesn't try to profit from her patent infringement by selling those crustless PB&Js to your neighbors kids...
Hmmm. But if you *do* right-click and open the Citibank link in a tab, the exploit *doesn't* work. So, what does Firefox do differently when opening a new window as opposed to a new tab???
If you don't need support (and know what you're doing), I'd recommend Debian. Otherwise, SuSE is so far ahead of RHEL it's not funny.
Our "corporate standard" is RHEL too, and I'm not looking forward to having to work with it. At least I've got an Engineering group that are supposed to maintain it for me.
Personally, I'd use Gentoo if I were allowed to go with an "unsupported" distro, but that's mainly because it's one of the few that runs on Sparc as well as x86. It's kinda nice to be able to switch from one to the other and have absolutely everything in the same place on both architectures. Maybe if RedHat hadn't dropped Sparc after v6.2, I'd be a RHEL zealot, but that did kinda irritate me...
I watched a Sun engineer replace a dead E10K system board with the only spare they had in town, and it turned out to be dead too... Next option was to fly one in from out of state, taking at least 4 hours. Luckily we had a spare system board in the cabinet that he could use. At one point he had all three boards dismantled on anti-static mats in the middle of the machine room floor and never lost track of which bit went where.
I also properly recreated the arbitrarily placed carriage returns)...
I've seen that kind of thing introduced by the email client. The originator writes the message in a big box and hits return in all the right places, but on the reader's side, the box is smaller, so the client wraps the lines. It won't take out the newlines, though, so the sender looks a lot stupider than he really is.
Not saying that's what happened in your particular example, just that I've seen it happen.
At least with IM you don't have to decipher his accent... And he may well be backing up and retyping things, which is kinda tricky in a real-time speech environment.
I tried reading that page via The 80's Server and it's kinda scary how one of those poorly written examples actually comes out better:
"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via dweeb-mail (please, like I am SO sure, we valley girls use the phone) (they in Barry file).. to make like, fer sure my logic was like, you know, TOTALLY right It seems like we provide Murray with incorrect information.. Like, however after verifying controls on JBL - JBL totally has the indicator as B ???? Like, I am so sure! - I wanted to make like, fer sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."
I've seen those too. And also a number of emails where the actual message is written in Powerpoint that would have been just a legible as plain text, and a heck of a lot smaller.
So the flash could be the light bulb dying and the streak could be its soul aacending to heaven... Nothing on the APoD site says the streak was seen descending, nor does it say that the light was known to be working (or not working) prior to the event.
I can see that applying to someone actually working for NASA, but any runners-up in NASA's X-prize projects specifically wouldn't be working for NASA. Their product, implemented to match something on NASA's wishlist, didn't quite measure up on price, performance, mass, or whatever.
Besides which, the larger companies would simply offshore such development, then there'd be no question of the product being exported. Instead, NASA might end up begging to be allowed to import...
Not all projects can be done successfully with this build and NASA might pay concept.
Never forget that other countries have space programs too. A runner-up in a NASA project contest could probably find a buyer - in Europe, for example.
It really depends on the project. Your space telescope example might not easily transfer, but if NASA were to start prize projects for space probes, Moon/Mars rovers, etc, there might well be a market elsewhere.
So my greater concern is that the private sector may get as badly hamstrung as NASA, but just in a different way.
The big difference between NASA and the private sector is that a private sector company can simply pick up their bat and ball and ship out to some other country if Congress rains on their parade. There are enough other countries running some kind of space program that it should be possible to find one interested in hosting. Or even a country without a space program. It would be a serious kick in the butt for Congress if Andorra or Lichtenstein were to land a ship on the moon...
Because, according to the article, some people are deliberately setting out to sink a competitor. Suppose you run a company that makes and sells WidgetX. I, as your competitor, make and sell WidgetX lookalikes. You start advertising via Google. It would definitely be to my benefit if I could make you pay out excessive amounts of your advertising budget by repeated clicking on your ad, because you're supposed to be paying Google per click.
I don't know that it would be fraud exactly, because I wouldn't getting money from you under false pretences. It's definitely more than just unethical, though.
What they really need to do is to go after the the people that benefit from the spam. A large proportion of spam is advertizing some product - if the company that manufactured such a product were held responsible for advertizing spam, they'd very quickly switch to other methods. Advertizing via spam is only attractive as long as the price remains very low.
There remains the problem of a company deliberately commissioning spam to cause problems to a competitor, but I think that playing field would level itself fairly quickly. "Two can play that game", and all that...
And equipped with windscreen wipers in case the shooter happens to have a paintball gun handy to paint the camera lens. Oh yeah, and some kind of electrified cage around it in case some enterprising perp tries to climb up and drop a sack over the camera... And it better not be mounted on a pole, because it would sure be embarrassing to have your nice, new, shiny multi-million dollar surveillance system chopped down by a $100 chainsaw.
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Besides which, if they have a tourist map of the area and a rough idea of their location, they can generally just look out the cockpit window and follow a road... That'll get them near enough to something worth crashing into, whether it be an apartment building, a mall or a bridge. As you say, it doesn't really matter what they hit, as long as they regularly demonstrate the ability and willingness to hit something.
What do you get with GPS that a map doesn't give you? I submit that if terrorists have GPS-guided missiles, it's already too late to take action, and anything else is likely to be eyeball-guided. Don't forget that the average fanatic with a bomb has been promised an incredible afterlife, and all he has to do to qualify is to get the bomb to a place where some of the enemy will die.
How hard would it be to replace the GPS receiver in a missile with something that homed in on a strong radio signal?? It's not at all difficult to build a radio transmitter into a box small enough to toss into a tree near the target, or carry to the target in a backpack...
There's something else to take into account. I don't have a link to it, but I remember reading somewhere online about a guy who proved that the music industry cut back on issuing new albums just a short time before starting to whine about piracy. His conclusion was that music sales declined mainly because there was less new stuff available, and that that was deliberate policy by RIAA members so that they could point to declining sales and blame file-sharing by pirates.
If they do try to stamp out filesharing, presumably that means *any* kind of fileshare technology. I think Microsoft are going to be a bit pissed about removing directory sharing from Windows...
It's got to the point where I'm writing a tool that'll log me in, using a locally-stored encrypted password list. When it's done, it'll detect 'password about to expire' messages and change my password to some random string, then update the encrypted list. I only have to remember a couple of passwords - to login to my local system, and to decrypt the list.
Where I work, old desktops are being upgraded to laptops, which we're expected to take home. So, if I were to leave a note of my password under my keyboard at work, the system won't be there for anyone to try it on... I can keep an encrypted file on the laptop with all my other passwords.
I heard this rant a few months back: the patent on Claritin recently expired. A number of generic drug manufacturers began tooling up to produce generic Claritin under their own name. In the meantime, the Claritin patent holder had been doing some research and worked out some improvements but didn't file for a new patent until the old one was close to expiry. Once it was filed, they started to manufacture Clarinex, and pushed it out to doctors as free samples, in order to get patients to switch over regardless of whether the switch was really necessary.
Undoubtedly, enough patients would stick with the original Claritin, and then go with the generics, to make manufacture of the generics a profitable business. The original patent holder, on the other hand, has just secured a rather nice income stream for the next 17 years, during which enough "improvements" will be made to Clarinex that it will qualify for a new patent, and the cycle continues.
It doesn't stop there. A "trade secret" has no protection, other than being kept secret by the owner. If it ever "escapes" and becomes known, it ceases to be a trade secret and anyone can use it. The original owner can only really litigate against whoever leaked the secret. On the other hand, a patent-holder stands to gain from licensing his invention to someone that has sufficient funding to manufacture a product based on the invention. Society generally benefits, because the invention sees the light of day.
This is one reason why so many stupid patents are being filed - with the rising cost of fighting patent-infringement lawsuits, it's generally cheaper for the alleged infringer to settle out of court and buy a license. Never mind that the patent (and/or lawsuit) might be completely bogus, people settle anyway rather than gambling on winning in a patent court that currently has a history of siding with the patent-holders more often than not.
Your daughter is probably OK, provided she doesn't try to profit from her patent infringement by selling those crustless PB&Js to your neighbors kids...
Hmmm. But if you *do* right-click and open the Citibank link in a tab, the exploit *doesn't* work. So, what does Firefox do differently when opening a new window as opposed to a new tab???
Our "corporate standard" is RHEL too, and I'm not looking forward to having to work with it. At least I've got an Engineering group that are supposed to maintain it for me.
Personally, I'd use Gentoo if I were allowed to go with an "unsupported" distro, but that's mainly because it's one of the few that runs on Sparc as well as x86. It's kinda nice to be able to switch from one to the other and have absolutely everything in the same place on both architectures. Maybe if RedHat hadn't dropped Sparc after v6.2, I'd be a RHEL zealot, but that did kinda irritate me...
I watched a Sun engineer replace a dead E10K system board with the only spare they had in town, and it turned out to be dead too... Next option was to fly one in from out of state, taking at least 4 hours. Luckily we had a spare system board in the cabinet that he could use. At one point he had all three boards dismantled on anti-static mats in the middle of the machine room floor and never lost track of which bit went where.
I've seen that kind of thing introduced by the email client. The originator writes the message in a big box and hits return in all the right places, but on the reader's side, the box is smaller, so the client wraps the lines. It won't take out the newlines, though, so the sender looks a lot stupider than he really is.
Not saying that's what happened in your particular example, just that I've seen it happen.
At least with IM you don't have to decipher his accent... And he may well be backing up and retyping things, which is kinda tricky in a real-time speech environment.
I've seen those too. And also a number of emails where the actual message is written in Powerpoint that would have been just a legible as plain text, and a heck of a lot smaller.
So the flash could be the light bulb dying and the streak could be its soul aacending to heaven... Nothing on the APoD site says the streak was seen descending, nor does it say that the light was known to be working (or not working) prior to the event.
Besides which, the larger companies would simply offshore such development, then there'd be no question of the product being exported. Instead, NASA might end up begging to be allowed to import...
$10M prize for a valve or nozzle, $100M for some software - sounds about right... :)
Never forget that other countries have space programs too. A runner-up in a NASA project contest could probably find a buyer - in Europe, for example.
It really depends on the project. Your space telescope example might not easily transfer, but if NASA were to start prize projects for space probes, Moon/Mars rovers, etc, there might well be a market elsewhere.
The big difference between NASA and the private sector is that a private sector company can simply pick up their bat and ball and ship out to some other country if Congress rains on their parade. There are enough other countries running some kind of space program that it should be possible to find one interested in hosting. Or even a country without a space program. It would be a serious kick in the butt for Congress if Andorra or Lichtenstein were to land a ship on the moon...
Because, according to the article, some people are deliberately setting out to sink a competitor. Suppose you run a company that makes and sells WidgetX. I, as your competitor, make and sell WidgetX lookalikes. You start advertising via Google. It would definitely be to my benefit if I could make you pay out excessive amounts of your advertising budget by repeated clicking on your ad, because you're supposed to be paying Google per click.
I don't know that it would be fraud exactly, because I wouldn't getting money from you under false pretences. It's definitely more than just unethical, though.
There remains the problem of a company deliberately commissioning spam to cause problems to a competitor, but I think that playing field would level itself fairly quickly. "Two can play that game", and all that...
So, exactly how difficult would it be to mount a speaker-authentication microphone next to the gunshot-detecting microphone??
And equipped with windscreen wipers in case the shooter happens to have a paintball gun handy to paint the camera lens. Oh yeah, and some kind of electrified cage around it in case some enterprising perp tries to climb up and drop a sack over the camera... And it better not be mounted on a pole, because it would sure be embarrassing to have your nice, new, shiny multi-million dollar surveillance system chopped down by a $100 chainsaw.