As I recall, the issue with the disk compression software in DOS 6.0 was not that it was defective, but that the compression method MS used infringed on the property rights of a company called Stacker. Stacker sued MS and won, and MS was obliged to change the disk compression technique to something else, hence the release of DOS 6.2.
I remember the compression being defective in 6.0, and it was a bit of a "big deal" in the computer press, comparable to the Pentium FP divide bug (IIRC, the compression bug was worse, giving a much greater change of incorrect or lost data than Intel's divide problem). A little googling brings up this article, describing 6.2 as a 'bug fix' release over 6.0: http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue162/18_ Old_DOS_new_tricks.php The release timeline in in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS MSDOS 6.2 was a "Bug fix release", and the next release, 6.21, says "Following Stac lawsuit, removed DoubleSpace disk compression." Microsoft put disk compression back into MSDOS in the final release, 6.22: "DoubleSpace replaced with non-infringing but compatible DriveSpace tool"
Sure maybe there's a 1/10000000 chance per hour of that particular system malfunctioning, but start adding up the numbers.
Similarly the DC10 was rushed to production and numerous bone-headed design decisions, ie, lack of reasonable redundancy in control systems and cargo door problems, cause the deaths of hundreds of people and ultimately the grounding of the whole fleet until the problems were addressed.
We all know the a320 has it's problems, ie, bizarre computer control problems and (obviously) landing gear problems.
I guess we'll have to wait until one of these planes comes down, horrifically killing 600 people before the problems are addressed.
If they can't learn from their competitors' mistakes, perhaps they could learn from automotive safety (doubtful, it being a slightly different field, but it's worth a mention). There was the Pinto with an explodes-in-rear-end-collisions in the '70's (they knew that statistically it would kill a few people, but the bean counters said that was cheaper than spending $27 or so per car to fix it), and more recently there was a pickup truck with gas tanks on the sides, when they (was it GM?) knew the tanks were safer elsewhere. A man (teen?) died in a side impact crash in which the gas tanks exploded, and his parents sued. They were awarded 110 million dollars, most of that being punitive damage to the manufacturer.
Imagine such a lawsuit against a commercial jet airplane manufacturer involving hudreds of deaths from a "known defect." Add up the awards to relatives at 110 million dollars for each death, and pretty soon you're talking real money.
Any company that values money (never mind human life) should be HIRING people like this guy, and like the late Richard Feynman (famous for, among other things, his investigations and testimony before Congress on the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion), and have procedures in place both to prevent and to find problems BEFORE the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan (ObRef: the movie "Airplane!").
For a while I read comp.risks regularly (I stopped because it was making me not just paranoid, but TOO paranoid), and recall Airbus being mentioned several times (much more often than other commercial jet makers). Put in Airbus for "with all of the words" and comp.dsp for "Return only messages from the group" at http://groups.google.com/ or just click here:
Mangan said he was looking for a new job. He has contacted dozens of aerospace firms in the U.S. and Europe, but none have returned his calls. "Nobody wants to touch me," he said.
But I can't remember WHICH Crichton novel... they all seem the same... the male lead character becomes jobless and powerless as his wife leaves him to go to evil things...
There was much rejoicing several years ago when Google purchased the Usenet archives once made available in the 1990's at deja.com/dejanews.com, and finally made these archives available once more, so this is sort of looking a gift horse in the mouth. But it did bug me just a day or two ago (and it's far from the first time I've seen this) when I read a Usenet post saying the poster wanted to sell a [large, expensive valuable widget], and was there an appropriate Google group to post such a for-sale message to? I counted to ten (in decimal), tried to calm down, then wrote a scathing message explaining the differences between Google 's Usenet archive/web interface and Usenet newsgroups. I finally deleted the scathing explanation, and just said "Yes, there's an appropriate Usenet newsgroup in which to sell your [large, expensive valuable widget], it's....marketplace." I haven't checked but I'm sure the poster somehow figured out how to get there.
I said all that to demonstrate how Google has made Usenet newsgroups look like Google owns them. AOL apparently did this when they connected to Usenet in 1993, but earlier this year AOL dropped Usenet access (I'd like to think October 1993 is immiment, but it doesn't look that way*).
But Google went further, you can "make your own Google Group" but if you do this it isn't a newsgroup (from Usenet's perspective, this is actually a Good Thing), it's a special group like a mailing list, accessible only through "Google Groups." The interface looks a little different, but I've seen search results that return results from these "groups" as well as from Usenet posts (but not recently, maybe they already changed it because of complaints). It's annoying, dilutes the usefulness of Google's Usenet archives, and misleads people about what Usenet is.
* For you young farts, this is a reference to "endless september" or "forever september" or whatever it was called when Usenet was overwhelmed with AOL newbies who had no net.manners. I only started on Usenet in 1996, so I'm just a newbie myself, and I've only read about the problem (surely I didn't contribute to it myself...).
Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.
This is an Insightful quote. I had thought Google was just doing a lame attempt to copy Apple Computer.
I just read John Stossel's [liberals-are-cringing] book "Give Me A Break!" and it has some actual facts concerning personal risks, something quite lacking in the media, and that also appears to be a problem the poster and editor appear to have. So here, off the top of my head, are just a few of many suggestions, any one of which will have a well-documented, much better chance of both improving one's health and lengthening one's life:
1. Fasten seat belts always when in a moving car. 2. Don't drive under the influence of alcohol or mind-altering drugs. 3. Quit smoking 4. Stay upwind of smokers 5. Eat less fat and less meat, eat more fruits and veggies, especially raw ones. 6. Do some aerobic exercise (swim/bike/run/jog/walk/skate) several times per week. 7. Trade the VW Beetle (or other bad-in-a-crash car) for a Volvo (or other good-safety-record-for-its-driver vehicle). 8. Don't drive when drunk/drugged drivers are most likely to be driving.
Okay, I'm sure there are 492 other things that many people commonly do that have a proven, more detrimental effect on life and health ELF fields/living next to high-voltage power lines that people were so worried about in the 1980's and 1990's (the real danger to living near such lines is if one falls and hits the ground - you could be electrocuted by walking away from it! Hop (keep your feet together!) away, don't walk). Even if it's "scientifically proven" (or even a very strong statistical correlation shown) that cancer rates are higher near 60Hz high voltage (electrostatic fields) or high current (generating strong magnetic fields) lines, there are so many other things that we KNOW are MORE risky that any cost-benefit analysis would dictate that it's better to spend thousands of times more money on these other things before you even LOOK at whether ELF radiation kills 0.0001 person per million per year, or if it's even as much as 0.01 person per million per year.
Slashdot's new look looks serious. And especially with responses like this (ELF is NOT news, and it's NOT Stuff That Matters), I'll have to come up with a more serious tagline.
I got a 89 cent Atmel AVR microprocessor that has sub-microsecond interrupt response time, but I dunno if it has the bandwidth for video or even audio processing.
"Unlike Europe, which rejects the 300 million person, 10 year experiment with GM foods."
Some are afraid of GM foods in and of themselves. On the other hand, some are afraid of US-style patent laws that protect those said foods, as well as the political pressure those patent-holders have put on our beloved government to prevent any sort of labelling requirements as were called for in Europe.
That "10 year, 300 million person experiment" you mention is moot when nobody knows whether or not a given person is in the control group or not.
If something goes wrong the doc can always ask what brands of food one has been eating, so guinea pig group vs. control group can be determined in retrospect (unless there is severe mental problems or death).
Or perhaops the implication is that Europe is the control group. That's not very scientific, but these things are done for business reasons (it appears businesses can get away with it in the USA), not for science. What was that line in The Godfather, "It's just Business..."
Somebody higher up than the cops is already listening in and nobody complains. Echelon, damn it!
I've heard/read about Echelon over the years, and there seems to be very little hard evidence for it. But with disk drives now costing less than 50 cents per gigabyte (and that's in single unit quantities! pricewatch.com), they really can record every phone call, fax, and much Internet traffic for LOTS of 'suspicious people' at low cost.
But what if local governments in the US violated Constitutional rights daily, blatantly, and it was easily provable (yes, you're right, topic drift and I have a different axe to grind)?
Why is nobody upset about this?
Why indeed? This isn't the only thing US citizens (and others influenced by the USA, much of the world population) should be concerned about.
Why does no one care that alcohol and drug offendors regularly receive religious indoctrination in the name of "go to drug treatment and get a reduced sentence?" This is surely the most common violation of the US Constitution's First Amendment. Google coerced 12 step attendance.
(yet another topic) Why did so few care about abuse of Eminent Domain until a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a town could take houses, not to build schools or parks as in the original spirit of Eminent Domain, but so the town could sell the land to commercial interests that would pay the town more taxes on the land? It's been going on for years with a very few outspoken voices complaining, but when the Supreme Court OK's it, people hear about it and notice: "Pleasant Valley could easily take MY house and put up a Big Box retailer!"
You have to convince LOTS of people that this (the Echelon stuff, or whatever your ax is) is happening, that it's a major violation of everyone's privacy rights, and most importantly, that Echelon really exists and isn't just the concern of aluminum-hat-wearing conispiracy theorist kooks. AND get them to write their congress and senate representatives, saying what they think about it.
But you're right, we're going to Hell in a handbasket made of webcams and 300gig drives, because most people think the most important public info they need to know is who's doing J-Lo, whoever that is. The police reading Canadians' emails is just not on their list of what's important.
And don't drink and drive, else you too could end up in a church basement with others expecting you to recite the Serenity Prayer with them.
# Drift Clocks, other than primary time standards, drift. That drift has to be measured, so you can tell how often a correction is necessary.
You clearly know more than me, but if one knows drift and it is consistent (say, the computer's hardware clock is always 470 milliseconds fast every 12 hours), one can drop a millisecond every 1.53 whatever minutes, and maintain good accuracy while hitting on the primary less often. I suppose this sort of thing is done and your mention of drift is just the main simplification.
# Leap seconds Leap seconds have real consequences. When a leap second is inserted, every AC generator on the grid has to make 60 extra turns. And they do. It takes about four hours for them to catch up.
This appears a little misleading, after the leap second the clocks are one second too fast, so 60 cycles have to be removed by running the generators slower. The wording that they are 'catching up' is misleading.
They take common names and add three-digit or more extensions just as many acutal AOL users select their names. Start with ann001@aol.com (would anyone used ann000?) through ann999, bill001 thru bill999, to walt001 through walt999, and you can get a bunch of names there. Don't even bother with the bounces, have reply-to point to (poor) ann001. This is not efficient, probably most will bounce, but spammers don't care, especially when the sending bandwidth being abused is some foreign open server.
Wouldn't it be much easier to develop teleporter technology like you see in the science fiction shows and just send objects and astronauts to other planets that way?
There are substantial problems with teleporter technology, ESPECIALLY when going from Earth's surface to low Earth orbit - that can create monster problems. I forget what story that was from (I enjoy Niven's hard SF, he takes into consideration a lot of things you might not think of), but I'd rather work on the foam problem than mess with stuff we know way too little about...
[The real concern of much of local LE and other public safety was the loss of ham radio and other shortwave regional backup systems should their microwave links fail in a disaster.]
I suspect the words "loss of ham radio" are an insult to many Amateurs reading this. Many hams have generators to run their equipment for hours or days without electric power, and have 'field day' constests training for emergencies.
During a disaster the power lines would likely be down, so this really isn't an issue.
I'm not sure what you're saying. If you mean a power outage will stop amateur radio operations, it won't (it may for some, but not all), as I described above. Amateurs are the most likely to have backup generators. Also, the power lines can be down and the interfering BPL signals keep going, depending on where the BPL signals are generated.
If the lines are not down, and interference is an issue, then the emergency management agencies could ask (or order) the utilities to turn off BPL for the duration of the emergency.
There will be idiots who are outraged that their "emergency communications channel," Internet through BPL, was intentionally shut down. Actually it may not be fair to call them idiots, but there would surely be idiots involved, I'm just not sure who they are.
Infrastructure that doesn't play well with other infrastructure (RF bandwidth is effectively infrastructure in tis case) is just a bad idea.
or by other insecure means. Such a phishing campain should only be to enforce and test an already well-known rule that says "Do not follow orders sent by email." Properly encrypted messages excepted, and any military person using email should already know not to respond to a phishing expedition.
For even a new cadet to confuse a phish email with a legit order is a terrible thing to happen.
Admittedly, I haven't found anything bad yet, but I like to stay on my toes. I'm a computer science student, so it'd look awfully bad if I got tricked by a common email scam;)
Yes it would not look good, but I think it would be more shameful because you're a slashdotter than because you're a CS student.
Some go into CS because "it's supposed to be a good-paying carreer" but true nerds have a reputation to uphold.
Slashdot Mirror
As I recall, the issue with the disk compression software in DOS 6.0 was not that it was defective, but that the compression method MS used infringed on the property rights of a company called Stacker. Stacker sued MS and won, and MS was obliged to change the disk compression technique to something else, hence the release of DOS 6.2.
_ Old_DOS_new_tricks.php
I remember the compression being defective in 6.0, and it was a bit of a "big deal" in the computer press, comparable to the Pentium FP divide bug (IIRC, the compression bug was worse, giving a much greater change of incorrect or lost data than Intel's divide problem). A little googling brings up this article, describing 6.2 as a 'bug fix' release over 6.0:
http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue162/18
The release timeline in in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
MSDOS 6.2 was a "Bug fix release", and the next release, 6.21, says "Following Stac lawsuit, removed DoubleSpace disk compression."
Microsoft put disk compression back into MSDOS in the final release, 6.22: "DoubleSpace replaced with non-infringing but compatible DriveSpace tool"
Sure maybe there's a 1/10000000 chance per hour of that particular system malfunctioning, but start adding up the numbers.
Similarly the DC10 was rushed to production and numerous bone-headed design decisions, ie, lack of reasonable redundancy in control systems and cargo door problems, cause the deaths of hundreds of people and ultimately the grounding of the whole fleet until the problems were addressed.
We all know the a320 has it's problems, ie, bizarre computer control problems and (obviously) landing gear problems.
I guess we'll have to wait until one of these planes comes down, horrifically killing 600 people before the problems are addressed.
If they can't learn from their competitors' mistakes, perhaps they could learn from automotive safety (doubtful, it being a slightly different field, but it's worth a mention). There was the Pinto with an explodes-in-rear-end-collisions in the '70's (they knew that statistically it would kill a few people, but the bean counters said that was cheaper than spending $27 or so per car to fix it), and more recently there was a pickup truck with gas tanks on the sides, when they (was it GM?) knew the tanks were safer elsewhere. A man (teen?) died in a side impact crash in which the gas tanks exploded, and his parents sued. They were awarded 110 million dollars, most of that being punitive damage to the manufacturer.
Imagine such a lawsuit against a commercial jet airplane manufacturer involving hudreds of deaths from a "known defect." Add up the awards to relatives at 110 million dollars for each death, and pretty soon you're talking real money.
Any company that values money (never mind human life) should be HIRING people like this guy, and like the late Richard Feynman (famous for, among other things, his investigations and testimony before Congress on the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion), and have procedures in place both to prevent and to find problems BEFORE the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan (ObRef: the movie "Airplane!").
Someone on an amateur radio (one service that could be negatively affected by it) newsgroup said so, and further gave this URL:
http://www.uplc.org/
For a while I read comp.risks regularly (I stopped because it was making me not just paranoid, but TOO paranoid), and recall Airbus being mentioned several times (much more often than other commercial jet makers). Put in Airbus for "with all of the words" and comp.dsp for "Return only messages from the group" at http://groups.google.com/
0 &scoring=r&hl=en&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_ugroup=c omp.risks&as_usubject=&as_uauthors=&lr=&as_drrb=q& as_qdr=&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=1 &as_maxm=10&as_maxy=2005&safe=off
or just click here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=Airbus&num=1
Mangan said he was looking for a new job. He has contacted dozens of aerospace firms in the U.S. and Europe, but none have returned his calls. "Nobody wants to touch me," he said.
... they all seem the same... the male lead character becomes jobless and powerless as his wife leaves him to go to evil things...
But I can't remember WHICH Crichton novel
There was much rejoicing several years ago when Google purchased the Usenet archives once made available in the 1990's at deja.com/dejanews.com, and finally made these archives available once more, so this is sort of looking a gift horse in the mouth. But it did bug me just a day or two ago (and it's far from the first time I've seen this) when I read a Usenet post saying the poster wanted to sell a [large, expensive valuable widget], and was there an appropriate Google group to post such a for-sale message to? I counted to ten (in decimal), tried to calm down, then wrote a scathing message explaining the differences between Google 's Usenet archive/web interface and Usenet newsgroups. I finally deleted the scathing explanation, and just said "Yes, there's an appropriate Usenet newsgroup in which to sell your [large, expensive valuable widget], it's ... .marketplace." I haven't checked but I'm sure the poster somehow figured out how to get there.
I said all that to demonstrate how Google has made Usenet newsgroups look like Google owns them. AOL apparently did this when they connected to Usenet in 1993, but earlier this year AOL dropped Usenet access (I'd like to think October 1993 is immiment, but it doesn't look that way*).
But Google went further, you can "make your own Google Group" but if you do this it isn't a newsgroup (from Usenet's perspective, this is actually a Good Thing), it's a special group like a mailing list, accessible only through "Google Groups." The interface looks a little different, but I've seen search results that return results from these "groups" as well as from Usenet posts (but not recently, maybe they already changed it because of complaints). It's annoying, dilutes the usefulness of Google's Usenet archives, and misleads people about what Usenet is.
* For you young farts, this is a reference to "endless september" or "forever september" or whatever it was called when Usenet was overwhelmed with AOL newbies who had no net.manners. I only started on Usenet in 1996, so I'm just a newbie myself, and I've only read about the problem (surely I didn't contribute to it myself...).
Monty Python:
Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.
This is an Insightful quote. I had thought Google was just doing a lame attempt to copy Apple Computer.
Was anyone else surprised when their google moon turned to cheese when zoomed all the way in?
I was disappointed that it was Swiss cheese, as I prefer good old artery-clogging American Extra Sharp Cheddar.
I just read John Stossel's [liberals-are-cringing] book "Give Me A Break!" and it has some actual facts concerning personal risks, something quite lacking in the media, and that also appears to be a problem the poster and editor appear to have. So here, off the top of my head, are just a few of many suggestions, any one of which will have a well-documented, much better chance of both improving one's health and lengthening one's life:
1. Fasten seat belts always when in a moving car.
2. Don't drive under the influence of alcohol or mind-altering drugs.
3. Quit smoking
4. Stay upwind of smokers
5. Eat less fat and less meat, eat more fruits and veggies, especially raw ones.
6. Do some aerobic exercise (swim/bike/run/jog/walk/skate) several times per week.
7. Trade the VW Beetle (or other bad-in-a-crash car) for a Volvo (or other good-safety-record-for-its-driver vehicle).
8. Don't drive when drunk/drugged drivers are most likely to be driving.
Okay, I'm sure there are 492 other things that many people commonly do that have a proven, more detrimental effect on life and health ELF fields/living next to high-voltage power lines that people were so worried about in the 1980's and 1990's (the real danger to living near such lines is if one falls and hits the ground - you could be electrocuted by walking away from it! Hop (keep your feet together!) away, don't walk). Even if it's "scientifically proven" (or even a very strong statistical correlation shown) that cancer rates are higher near 60Hz high voltage (electrostatic fields) or high current (generating strong magnetic fields) lines, there are so many other things that we KNOW are MORE risky that any cost-benefit analysis would dictate that it's better to spend thousands of times more money on these other things before you even LOOK at whether ELF radiation kills 0.0001 person per million per year, or if it's even as much as 0.01 person per million per year.
Slashdot's new look looks serious. And especially with responses like this (ELF is NOT news, and it's NOT Stuff That Matters), I'll have to come up with a more serious tagline.
I got a 89 cent Atmel AVR microprocessor that has sub-microsecond interrupt response time, but I dunno if it has the bandwidth for video or even audio processing.
And It's Government-Approved as well! How swell.
The guy in Shockwave Rider was right, just "Opt Out" of society.
Since this is the only difference, er, enhancement over Scoutpal...
Millikan measures electron charge with oil drops.
So how is this in any way recent?
Perhaps it was only recently submitted as a Slashdot story? I suspect the editors don't get out much.
"Unlike Europe, which rejects the 300 million person, 10 year experiment with GM foods."
Some are afraid of GM foods in and of themselves. On the other hand, some are afraid of US-style patent laws that protect those said foods, as well as the political pressure those patent-holders have put on our beloved government to prevent any sort of labelling requirements as were called for in Europe.
That "10 year, 300 million person experiment" you mention is moot when nobody knows whether or not a given person is in the control group or not.
If something goes wrong the doc can always ask what brands of food one has been eating, so guinea pig group vs. control group can be determined in retrospect (unless there is severe mental problems or death).
Or perhaops the implication is that Europe is the control group. That's not very scientific, but these things are done for business reasons (it appears businesses can get away with it in the USA), not for science. What was that line in The Godfather, "It's just Business..."
Somebody higher up than the cops is already listening in and nobody complains. Echelon, damn it!
I've heard/read about Echelon over the years, and there seems to be very little hard evidence for it. But with disk drives now costing less than 50 cents per gigabyte (and that's in single unit quantities! pricewatch.com), they really can record every phone call, fax, and much Internet traffic for LOTS of 'suspicious people' at low cost.
But what if local governments in the US violated Constitutional rights daily, blatantly, and it was easily provable (yes, you're right, topic drift and I have a different axe to grind)?
Why is nobody upset about this?
Why indeed? This isn't the only thing US citizens (and others influenced by the USA, much of the world population) should be concerned about.
Why does no one care that alcohol and drug offendors regularly receive religious indoctrination in the name of "go to drug treatment and get a reduced sentence?" This is surely the most common violation of the US Constitution's First Amendment. Google coerced 12 step attendance.
(yet another topic) Why did so few care about abuse of Eminent Domain until a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a town could take houses, not to build schools or parks as in the original spirit of Eminent Domain, but so the town could sell the land to commercial interests that would pay the town more taxes on the land? It's been going on for years with a very few outspoken voices complaining, but when the Supreme Court OK's it, people hear about it and notice: "Pleasant Valley could easily take MY house and put up a Big Box retailer!"
You have to convince LOTS of people that this (the Echelon stuff, or whatever your ax is) is happening, that it's a major violation of everyone's privacy rights, and most importantly, that Echelon really exists and isn't just the concern of aluminum-hat-wearing conispiracy theorist kooks. AND get them to write their congress and senate representatives, saying what they think about it.
But you're right, we're going to Hell in a handbasket made of webcams and 300gig drives, because most people think the most important public info they need to know is who's doing J-Lo, whoever that is. The police reading Canadians' emails is just not on their list of what's important.
And don't drink and drive, else you too could end up in a church basement with others expecting you to recite the Serenity Prayer with them.
# Drift Clocks, other than primary time standards, drift. That drift has to be measured, so you can tell how often a correction is necessary.
You clearly know more than me, but if one knows drift and it is consistent (say, the computer's hardware clock is always 470 milliseconds fast every 12 hours), one can drop a millisecond every 1.53 whatever minutes, and maintain good accuracy while hitting on the primary less often. I suppose this sort of thing is done and your mention of drift is just the main simplification.
# Leap seconds Leap seconds have real consequences. When a leap second is inserted, every AC generator on the grid has to make 60 extra turns. And they do. It takes about four hours for them to catch up.
This appears a little misleading, after the leap second the clocks are one second too fast, so 60 cycles have to be removed by running the generators slower. The wording that they are 'catching up' is misleading.
They take common names and add three-digit or more extensions just as many acutal AOL users select their names. Start with ann001@aol.com (would anyone used ann000?) through ann999, bill001 thru bill999, to walt001 through walt999, and you can get a bunch of names there. Don't even bother with the bounces, have reply-to point to (poor) ann001. This is not efficient, probably most will bounce, but spammers don't care, especially when the sending bandwidth being abused is some foreign open server.
God does not use rand() on the universe.
{ doing my best Niels Bohr impersonation }
Negadecimal, stop telling God how to code!
The people at Marketplace got it, though I always thought they were pretty bright.
Wouldn't it be much easier to develop teleporter technology like you see in the science fiction shows and just send objects and astronauts to other planets that way?
There are substantial problems with teleporter technology, ESPECIALLY when going from Earth's surface to low Earth orbit - that can create monster problems. I forget what story that was from (I enjoy Niven's hard SF, he takes into consideration a lot of things you might not think of), but I'd rather work on the foam problem than mess with stuff we know way too little about...
[The real concern of much of local LE and other public safety was the loss of ham radio and other shortwave regional backup systems should their microwave links fail in a disaster.]
I suspect the words "loss of ham radio" are an insult to many Amateurs reading this. Many hams have generators to run their equipment for hours or days without electric power, and have 'field day' constests training for emergencies.
During a disaster the power lines would likely be down, so this really isn't an issue.
I'm not sure what you're saying. If you mean a power outage will stop amateur radio operations, it won't (it may for some, but not all), as I described above. Amateurs are the most likely to have backup generators. Also, the power lines can be down and the interfering BPL signals keep going, depending on where the BPL signals are generated.
If the lines are not down, and interference is an issue, then the emergency management agencies could ask (or order) the utilities to turn off BPL for the duration of the emergency.
There will be idiots who are outraged that their "emergency communications channel," Internet through BPL, was intentionally shut down. Actually it may not be fair to call them idiots, but there would surely be idiots involved, I'm just not sure who they are.
Infrastructure that doesn't play well with other infrastructure (RF bandwidth is effectively infrastructure in tis case) is just a bad idea.
or by other insecure means. Such a phishing campain should only be to enforce and test an already well-known rule that says "Do not follow orders sent by email." Properly encrypted messages excepted, and any military person using email should already know not to respond to a phishing expedition.
For even a new cadet to confuse a phish email with a legit order is a terrible thing to happen.
Admittedly, I haven't found anything bad yet, but I like to stay on my toes. I'm a computer science student, so it'd look awfully bad if I got tricked by a common email scam ;)
Yes it would not look good, but I think it would be more shameful because you're a slashdotter than because you're a CS student.
Some go into CS because "it's supposed to be a good-paying carreer" but true nerds have a reputation to uphold.