Oh yes, the picture is sharp enough to melt your eyeballs. I can toggle the output between 1080i and 720p, the screen will display both natively (and a bunch of other resolutions too). Non HD channels are scaled to 480P.
Use a fast Ethernet switch (100 megabit) between the ONT (optical network terminator) and the Actiontec router.
Plug your TV cable into the Actiontec but use the router of your choice for your Internet access connected to the ONT via the Ethernet switch. Verizon will issue IP addresses to both boxes. I am not guessing about this, this is how I have been running since I added 802.11N support and didn't want to stack routers. You will still only be accessing the Internet via one MAC address, but your program guide, PPV and on demand will come through the other. You should see the packets fly between the ONT and the Actiontec when you fire up an on-demand HD program.
Do not connect both the Actiontec and your other router to the private side of your LAN unless you want to see what dueling DHCP servers do to your connectivity.
On the HD box I get DVI-D, HDMI, Firewire (untested but supposed to work) Y-PB-PR, S-Video and composite, along with L-R audio and optical and coax digital audio. I don't think it has functioning RF output for video.
On the non-HD box I get S-Video, composite and RF (channel 3) output. There is L-R audio and digital as well.
On the free box provided in anticipation of them turning all analog support off this month you get RF, S-Video, composite and L-R audio.
Good package of options. Since they don't support Analog RGB in the DVI port, I push the Y-PB-PR through an RGB converter to get it to display on my Proton at 720P. The picture is stunning on the native 720P 36 inch CRT.
I have been using my original Freeplay radio for about 8 years now.
Unlike the more recent models, it operates on a spring driven generator for about 45 minutes, or in sunlight. It has no internal batteries at all.
The lack of batteries is a Very Good Thing. Rechargable batteries die, and sometimes they short out. If so, you got no radio - cranked or solar.
The downside is that the radio is the size of a loaf of bread. The upside is that it has a very large speaker and very nice sound.
I toyed with the idea of adding an external power tap, but there are dire warnings about opening it up and releasing the giant spring. Someday perhaps...
They do something to create a scattering effect for the lasers, but they say that they don't add anything to the air.
So, do they have a little compressor precipitating water which they then mist over the unit? Will it work in heavily air conditioned offices, or do you need to fill it's little water cup?
The technical description was devoid of useful info, but I bet an ultrasonic humidifier and a video projector could give you an R2D2 effect if you projected into free space.
This very scenario was explored - with humans on the receiving end - in the book "An XT Named Stanley".
http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/daw501-600.html
A nice computer scientist is called in to build what the alien instruction manual describes. Given cameras and microphones, the gizmo ultimately became self-aware and aware of it's mission. Then the evil government types try to hack into it's mind so it would disgorge all it's information. Stanley manages to beam his findings back to wherever he came from before self-destructing.
Anyhow, it's a pretty good read - and very reminiscent of this proposition.
I decomissioned a mail server recently. The IP address is empty. The MX record is flat out gone.
Despite this, my packet sniffer still sees ~20 connection attempts per hour to that old address, nearly three months later. They are all bot-infected PCs according to sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
That address was being mercilessly spammed and under constant dictionary attack.
Ultimately, I was able to use my log files to reconstruct the dictionary they were hitting me with. I put the whole thing under blacklist_to and saw a big drop in junk getting past my filters.
Making NTBackup operate at the command line can be tricky. You can use the backup wizard to create the bkf file for Exchange, and then specify it from the command line.
Here is an example.bat file I use for naming and managing backups without the use of any external utilities. It is pure batch language on Windows 2000.
Move the files to Linux any way you want.
-begin backup.bat-
rem Make room by deleting oldest files, leaving four newest
for/F "skip=4" %%A in ('dir s:\backup\*email.bkf/o-d/b') do del s:\backup\%%A for/F "skip=4" %%A in ('dir s:\backup\*system.bkf/o-d/b') do del s:\backup\%%A
rem Back up the C drive C:\WINNT\system32\ntbackup.exe backup systemstate c:/M normal/F s:\backup\system.bkf
rem Grab the date and time, strip out extra spaces and illegal characters, insert dashes and rename latest backup file FOR/F "tokens=2,3* delims=/ " %%i in ('date/t') do FOR/F "tokens=1,2 delims=: " %%l in ('time/t') do FOR/F "tokens=1-5 " %%n in ('@echo %%i %%j %%k%%l %%m') do rename s:\backup\system.bkf %%n-%%o-%%p-%%q-%%r-system.bkf
rem Back up the Exchange database C:\WINNT\system32\ntbackup.exe backup "@C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data\exchange.bks"/a/v:no/r:no/rs:no/hc:off/m normal/j "exchange"/l:s/f "s:\backup\email.bkf"
rem Grab the date and time, strip out extra spaces and illegal characters, insert dashes and rename latest backup file FOR/F "tokens=2,3* delims=/ " %%i in ('date/t') do FOR/F "tokens=1,2 delims=: " %%l in ('time/t') do FOR/F "tokens=1-5 " %%n in ('@echo %%i %%j %%k%%l %%m') do rename s:\backup\email.bkf %%n-%%o-%%p-%%q-%%r-email.bkf
WHO IS MR. SPARKLE? Mr. Sparkle is everybody's favorite Japanese pop-culture soap logo. His soap is made only from the purest of plants from the mysterious forests of Hokkaido, Japan. He appears frequently in commercials for his soap, and can be seen on billboards, and outside of the Mr. Sparkle plant. According to his box, Mr. Sparkle is a "magnet for foodstuffs", and he banishes dirt to the land of wind and ghosts. If you are further interested in Mr. Sparkle soap, you can contact the factory in Japan for a videotape on distributing Mr. Sparkle in your home prefecture. http://www.geocities.com/chuckhoyt/mrsparkle.html
This explains a LOT of strange things that have happened to me over the years!
Summary: A blind attacker with limited knowledge of a TCP connection may be able to successfully brute force the TCP Sequence number space and thereby cause a connection endpoint or firewall stateful filter to process a spoofed RST packet and close the connection.
Details: The TCP Sequence number is one of the mechanisms that TCP uses to prevent a third party from inserting forged packets into the data-stream between two other hosts. While such an attack has always been known to be theoretically possible against TCP, it is was believed that the range of over four billion possible TCP Sequence numbers was large enough to prevent a successful attack. However, recently such an attack has been proven to be feasible in certain situations.
Specifically, if two hosts are known to talk to each other on a regular basis and/or for long periods of time over known port(s) then it may be possible for an attacker to brute force the TCP Sequence number space and successfully inject a forged packet into the connection and possibly disrupt communications. Certain connections, such as BGP4, which are long lived between two devices are especially vulnerable.
While all TCP connections are potentially vulnerable, NetScreen believes that NetScreen firewalls running BGP4 or with TCP Syn-Check enabled are likely to be vulnerable in practice. Other protocols such as SSH, HTTP and SMTP which usually have shorter connection times are less vulnerable.
Recommended Actions: NetScreen firewall customers should do one or more of the following:
1) Configure Anti-Spoof protection as appropriate.
2) Use secure protocols such as ssh, HTTPS, BGP4 w/ MD5 Authentication
and IPSec which are more resistant to attack.
3) Limit management to dedicated and/or internal interfaces
4) Upgrade to ScreenOS 5.0r6 which enhances the stateful firewall
functionality to protect devices on the network.
Patch Availability: ScreenOS version 5.0r6 is currently available for Juniper NetScreen firewalls.
How to get ScreenOS:
Customers with a valid product warranty or a support contract may download the software from the Juniper NetScreen CSO web portal: http://www.juniper.net/support/
For all other customers, including those with expired support contracts, please call your regional Juniper NetScreen TAC center at one of the numbers listed in: http://www.juniper.net/support/nscn_support/t ao/co ntact.html
Select option 2 from the telephone menu and be sure to select the correct product from the phone tree. Once connected with an engineer state that you are calling in regards to a Security Advisory and provide the title of this notice as evidence of your entitlement to the specified release.
As with any new software installation, NetScreen customers planning to upgrade to any version of ScreenOS should carefully read the release notes and other relevant documentation before beginning any upgrade.
The oil line for my furnace got air in it after the serviceman improperly installed a new fitting. It was 8 degrees F at the time, and I was at work.
I had been purging it daily until I could get it fixed, but this time it got ahead of me.
Told the wife to hit the reset button, but after a couple tries, it stopped cycling.
It turns out Beckett/Honeywell oil burner controllers have a 3 strikes you're out feature on the relight button. (thanks, Google)
This is a safety feature. If you keep shooting oil into the furnace and it doesn't light, it is going to need a cleaning, and is a potential fire hazard. It didn't apply this time, because the problem was a lack of oil, not a lack of ignition.
In lockout, the green LED will blink every 1/2 second.
To unlock the controller, hold the red button for 30 seconds. The LED will blink twice and the controller will now reset.
Once I reset the controller I was able to purge the air out of the fuel line and we were back in business.
The serviceman showed up 2 hours later and repaired the fitting.
This is just like seti@home only backwards. Think of the possibilities of a whole mass of people using intuition and image processing capabilities to solve small parts of large problems.
My apartment was an outbuilding with no cable TV and all underground wiring.
So, I bought a 100 foot fish tape and a roll of RG6qs. I was able to pull cable and ethernet thru 1 inch wide conduit under the parking lot to the basement of the main house.
Got my cable modem, and used the ethernet to share the Internet service back to the main building. The 4 tenants paid for my service.
Lived there for 5 years before I bought my castle.
Other projects included installing cable, phone and ethernet in every room. The landlord was psyched.
Slashdot Mirror
Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Stewardesses - now in actual 3D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87WgmGHz9U4
There may also be "other" applications. I'll get back to you on that.
Oh yes, the picture is sharp enough to melt your eyeballs.
I can toggle the output between 1080i and 720p, the screen will display both natively (and a bunch of other resolutions too). Non HD channels are scaled to 480P.
Use a fast Ethernet switch (100 megabit) between the ONT (optical network terminator) and the Actiontec router.
Plug your TV cable into the Actiontec but use the router of your choice for your Internet access connected to the ONT via the Ethernet switch. Verizon will issue IP addresses to both boxes. I am not guessing about this, this is how I have been running since I added 802.11N support and didn't want to stack routers. You will still only be accessing the Internet via one MAC address, but your program guide, PPV and on demand will come through the other. You should see the packets fly between the ONT and the Actiontec when you fire up an on-demand HD program.
Do not connect both the Actiontec and your other router to the private side of your LAN unless you want to see what dueling DHCP servers do to your connectivity.
On the HD box I get DVI-D, HDMI, Firewire (untested but supposed to work) Y-PB-PR, S-Video and composite, along with L-R audio and optical and coax digital audio. I don't think it has functioning RF output for video.
On the non-HD box I get S-Video, composite and RF (channel 3) output. There is L-R audio and digital as well.
On the free box provided in anticipation of them turning all analog support off this month you get RF, S-Video, composite and L-R audio.
Good package of options. Since they don't support Analog RGB in the DVI port, I push the Y-PB-PR through an RGB converter to get it to display on my Proton at 720P. The picture is stunning on the native 720P 36 inch CRT.
How about AACS-Hole?
But imagine the fun if a group breaks in at night to 'liberate' the electric eels. I hope they brought gloves...
Miniature fighter jets with lasers all etched out of a silicon crystal.
We could drop half a billion of them over the middle east.
I have been using my original Freeplay radio for about 8 years now.
Unlike the more recent models, it operates on a spring driven generator for about 45 minutes, or in sunlight. It has no internal batteries at all.
The lack of batteries is a Very Good Thing. Rechargable batteries die, and sometimes they short out. If so, you got no radio - cranked or solar.
The downside is that the radio is the size of a loaf of bread. The upside is that it has a very large speaker and very nice sound.
I toyed with the idea of adding an external power tap, but there are dire warnings about opening it up and releasing the giant spring. Someday perhaps...
They do something to create a scattering effect for the lasers, but they say that they don't add anything to the air.
So, do they have a little compressor precipitating water which they then mist over the unit? Will it work in heavily air conditioned offices, or do you need to fill it's little water cup?
The technical description was devoid of useful info, but I bet an ultrasonic humidifier and a video projector could give you an R2D2 effect if you projected into free space.
That way I can drive on the 'right' side.
In the mirror it is perfectly natural looking for my left-hand-drive trained reflexes.
Kinda messes up the controls though. Cute demo.
-j
This very scenario was explored - with humans on the receiving end - in the book "An XT Named Stanley".
http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/daw501-600.html
A nice computer scientist is called in to build what the alien instruction manual describes. Given cameras and microphones, the gizmo ultimately became self-aware and aware of it's mission. Then the evil government types try to hack into it's mind so it would disgorge all it's information. Stanley manages to beam his findings back to wherever he came from before self-destructing.
Anyhow, it's a pretty good read - and very reminiscent of this proposition.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the article meant to refer to SILICON carbide.
Silicon and Silicone are often confused.
OTOH, perhaps this will be the next big thing. Talk about too hot to handle...
-j
I decomissioned a mail server recently. The IP address is empty. The MX record is flat out gone.
Despite this, my packet sniffer still sees ~20 connection attempts per hour to that old address, nearly three months later. They are all bot-infected PCs according to sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
That address was being mercilessly spammed and under constant dictionary attack.
Ultimately, I was able to use my log files to reconstruct the dictionary they were hitting me with. I put the whole thing under blacklist_to and saw a big drop in junk getting past my filters.
-j
http://www.ce.wpi.edu/IT/Unix/
I had been administering Windows boxes since the first betas of NT, but I just couldn't wrap my head around Linux.
Concerned about my then-current job, I paid for this training out of my own pocket, and it was well worth it.
It is intense, 3 days a week for 6 months. There are 11 books, and multiple projects. And I got a lovely certificate at the end.
Making NTBackup operate at the command line can be tricky. You can use the backup wizard to create the bkf file for Exchange, and then specify it from the command line.
.bat file I use for naming and managing backups without the use of any external utilities. It is pure batch language on Windows 2000.
/F "skip=4" %%A in ('dir s:\backup\*email.bkf /o-d /b') do del s:\backup\%%A /F "skip=4" %%A in ('dir s:\backup\*system.bkf /o-d /b') do del s:\backup\%%A
/M normal /F s:\backup\system.bkf
/F "tokens=2,3* delims=/ " %%i in ('date /t') do FOR /F "tokens=1,2 delims=: " %%l in ('time /t') do FOR /F "tokens=1-5 " %%n in ('@echo %%i %%j %%k%%l %%m') do rename s:\backup\system.bkf %%n-%%o-%%p-%%q-%%r-system.bkf
/a /v:no /r:no /rs:no /hc:off /m normal /j "exchange" /l:s /f "s:\backup\email.bkf"
/F "tokens=2,3* delims=/ " %%i in ('date /t') do FOR /F "tokens=1,2 delims=: " %%l in ('time /t') do FOR /F "tokens=1-5 " %%n in ('@echo %%i %%j %%k%%l %%m') do rename s:\backup\email.bkf %%n-%%o-%%p-%%q-%%r-email.bkf
Here is an example
Move the files to Linux any way you want.
-begin backup.bat-
rem Make room by deleting oldest files, leaving four newest
for
for
rem Back up the C drive
C:\WINNT\system32\ntbackup.exe backup systemstate c:
rem Grab the date and time, strip out extra spaces and illegal characters, insert dashes and rename latest backup file
FOR
rem Back up the Exchange database
C:\WINNT\system32\ntbackup.exe backup "@C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data\exchange.bks"
rem Grab the date and time, strip out extra spaces and illegal characters, insert dashes and rename latest backup file
FOR
I have two AtaBoy raid systems w/ 3.5 T each. Works very nicely. Comes in Ultra160 LVD/SE and FC flavors. I use one of each.
www.nexsan.com
WHO IS MR. SPARKLE?
Mr. Sparkle is everybody's favorite Japanese pop-culture soap logo. His soap is made only from the purest of plants from the mysterious forests of Hokkaido, Japan. He appears frequently in commercials for his soap, and can be seen on billboards, and outside of the Mr. Sparkle plant. According to his box, Mr. Sparkle is a "magnet for foodstuffs", and he banishes dirt to the land of wind and ghosts. If you are further interested in Mr. Sparkle soap, you can contact the factory in Japan for a videotape on distributing Mr. Sparkle in your home prefecture. http://www.geocities.com/chuckhoyt/mrsparkle.html
This explains a LOT of strange things that have happened to me over the years!
-j
Title: Juniper NetScreen Advisory 58784
t ao/co ntact.html
Date: 21 April 2004
Version: 1
Impact:
A design flaw in the RFC specification of TCP may allow a blind attacker to successfully close a TCP connection.
Affected Products:
Juniper NetScreen Firewalls (all versions)
NISCC Reference: Vul/236929
http://www.uniras.gov.uk/vuls/2004/236929/tcp.htm
Max Risk: Medium
Summary:
A blind attacker with limited knowledge of a TCP connection may be able to successfully brute force the TCP Sequence number space and thereby cause a connection endpoint or firewall stateful filter to process a spoofed RST packet and close the connection.
Details:
The TCP Sequence number is one of the mechanisms that TCP uses to prevent a third party from inserting forged packets into the data-stream between two other hosts. While such an attack has always been known to be theoretically possible against TCP, it is was believed that the range of over four billion possible TCP Sequence numbers was large enough to prevent a successful attack. However, recently such an attack has been proven to be feasible in certain situations.
Specifically, if two hosts are known to talk to each other on a regular basis and/or for long periods of time over known port(s) then it may be possible for an attacker to brute force the TCP Sequence number space and successfully inject a forged packet into the connection and possibly disrupt communications. Certain connections, such as BGP4, which are long lived between two devices are especially vulnerable.
While all TCP connections are potentially vulnerable, NetScreen believes that NetScreen firewalls running BGP4 or with TCP Syn-Check enabled are likely to be vulnerable in practice. Other protocols such as SSH, HTTP and SMTP which usually have shorter connection times are less vulnerable.
Recommended Actions:
NetScreen firewall customers should do one or more of the following:
1) Configure Anti-Spoof protection as appropriate.
2) Use secure protocols such as ssh, HTTPS, BGP4 w/ MD5 Authentication
and IPSec which are more resistant to attack.
3) Limit management to dedicated and/or internal interfaces
4) Upgrade to ScreenOS 5.0r6 which enhances the stateful firewall
functionality to protect devices on the network.
Patch Availability:
ScreenOS version 5.0r6 is currently available for Juniper NetScreen firewalls.
How to get ScreenOS:
Customers with a valid product warranty or a support contract may download the software from the Juniper NetScreen CSO web portal:
http://www.juniper.net/support/
For all other customers, including those with expired support contracts, please call your regional Juniper NetScreen TAC center at one of the numbers listed in:
http://www.juniper.net/support/nscn_support/
Select option 2 from the telephone menu and be sure to select the correct product from the phone tree. Once connected with an engineer state that you are calling in regards to a Security Advisory and provide the title of this notice as evidence of your entitlement to the specified release.
As with any new software installation, NetScreen customers planning to upgrade to any version of ScreenOS should carefully read the release notes and other relevant documentation before beginning any upgrade.
I for one can see several applications that might directly appeal to this crowd.
The oil line for my furnace got air in it after the serviceman improperly installed a new fitting. It was 8 degrees F at the time, and I was at work.
I had been purging it daily until I could get it fixed, but this time it got ahead of me.
Told the wife to hit the reset button, but after a couple tries, it stopped cycling.
It turns out Beckett/Honeywell oil burner controllers have a 3 strikes you're out feature on the relight button. (thanks, Google)
This is a safety feature. If you keep shooting oil into the furnace and it doesn't light, it is going to need a cleaning, and is a potential fire hazard. It didn't apply this time, because the problem was a lack of oil, not a lack of ignition.
In lockout, the green LED will blink every 1/2 second.
To unlock the controller, hold the red button for 30 seconds. The LED will blink twice and the controller will now reset.
Once I reset the controller I was able to purge the air out of the fuel line and we were back in business.
The serviceman showed up 2 hours later and repaired the fitting.
Let me guess, they blacked out the Northeast in retaliation for blowing up Siberia with our trojan-horse pump and valve control system.
This is just like seti@home only backwards. Think of the possibilities of a whole mass of people using intuition and image processing capabilities to solve small parts of large problems.
(insert obligatory overlord comment)
Also, read Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick
DIY is the only way to fly.
My apartment was an outbuilding with no cable TV and all underground wiring.
So, I bought a 100 foot fish tape and a roll of RG6qs. I was able to pull cable and ethernet thru 1 inch wide conduit under the parking lot to the basement of the main house.
Got my cable modem, and used the ethernet to share the Internet service back to the main building. The 4 tenants paid for my service.
Lived there for 5 years before I bought my castle.
Other projects included installing cable, phone and ethernet in every room. The landlord was psyched.
In the Matrix, all three of the Matrix movies would have rocked.
"The golfcart-sized rovers have double-lined bladders"
This may be helpful, but wouldn't it be simpler to take a leak before the landing sequence starts?