What about getting the NAT to also translate the IPid packets as they go out and fix them back when the replies come back. All of the state tables are already present so that this can be done with the source addresses anyway. It would require that the NAT perform defragmenting of the packets as they pass through it but that can be done completely transparently. Linux already offers the defrag option with the NAT filter that comes with iptables. As far as the option of more detailed analysis of the traffic using the full quintuple, source IP/port & dest IP/port a network of computers behind a NAT would then start to look like an old X client/server setup where everyone runs their code on a big box and they connect from an X-terminal.
Another option is the SSHd option of TCP forwarding; once the connection hits the router box, that is running a SSHd server, the packets would be pulled out, decrypted, and sent out an entirely new connection to the Internet. In that respect there would be only one machine accessing the Internet and all of the others on the LAN would be accessing it.
Another option would be to have the NAT box, if it was done on a real computer that could be programmed instead of a dedicated box such as those from D-link, Netgear, etc., check for bandwidth consumption and when there is a lot of excess it could just make its own requests and deliver them to/dev/null. This would add a great deal of garbage to the data that must be analyzed
It seems that the simplest solution for actually cloaking the number of boxen that sit behind a NAT/firewall is simply to get the initial IPid of a connection out of a random number generator like one of the BSD flavors did in the article.
I am a broadband customer of SBC since I couldn't get Earthlink at the time and there is no other choice here. It is against their terms of services to speak truthfully about them; I mean tell the world what kind of arogant assholes they are. A suggestion: don't EVER tell them that you use Linux. The last time I mentioned it they threatened to cut me off. I had to convince them that my primary box was Windows. And yes I know that I'm breaking my terms of service but I don't think they want to give anyone a reason to write the Public Utilities Commission.
SBC is also trying to get everyone to switch to Yahoo/SBC Broadband. A service where Yahoo provides you with all kinds of extra crap you don't need. Yahoo's terms of service start out by telling you that they are going to monitor everything that you do "so they can provide you with a better service." Can you believe that crap. I wonder how many people are just signing up and how many people are objecting. My guess is that the ones that take the time to read their TOS are objecting and the others are signing!
Any chance we can get M$ to adopt this policy? That really would make security eaisier!! I read the whole RFC and figured it had to be a joke but I had forgotten the date. Is anyone keeping track of haw many of the ancient ones are going to pop up again this year? A "Quick Book Review" of the author's book:
"Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker", Cheswick & Bellovin:
I haven't read the second edition but the first I read shortly after setting up my first Linux server and reading O'reiliey's TCP/IP book. I read it cover to cover (no, really) and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a great book for those that are interested in network security; it has well told stories and good examples of best practices. I especially liked the way they described their logging machine: A server connected via a cat five wires that had seven of the eight pairs cut! The only pair left was the receive pair. Bad for TCP / good for UDP.
Microsoft to Open Source WindowsXP.
Stallman becomes the new marketing manager for Microsoft.
No flame bait post on slashdot.
A politician who actually understands technology gets elected.
A foolproof spam filter is announced.
Sadam to vacation in Washington DC. Brings Bin Laden along on the two for one special.
Most other countries in the world support Bush's International policies.
Ashcroft endorses the Policies of George Orwell (Oh yea, that's real)
I remember when I first went to the Pike's Peak Auto Hill Climb in 1985. One of the newest things out that year was a computer that could retune the car for high altitude as it raced up the mountain. Since the starting elevation is about 8,000 ft (I think Colorado Springs is 7700 -- and the Pike's Peak highway is a few miles up Ute Pass leaving the Springs) and the finish line is just over 14,000 ft at the summit of The Peak the chip had a pretty wide altitude range that it had to work in. Now EVERY car that races on the Peak on July 4th has a chip to do something similiar. That year, in 1985 Michelle Moutant, from France, won in an Audi Quartro and now everyone also runs 4wd cars as well.
These are things that we should try to keep everyone we know from buying. Hopefully it will go the way CPRM (for IDE drives) went. Yes I know its still there but the manufacturers are a little bit gun shy about introducing in a public fashion because of the uproar that they caused last time. I know slashdotters are pretty tech savy people but let's try to educate the rest of the world. A disaster would be if they ended up being silently shipped for a little while, until they attained critical mass, and then someone threw the switch and disabled our boxen (or at least the boxes that have their freedom still intact).
I am the author/submitter and...
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Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 1
Although Dow's response is a parody the story is still valid because the story is about DOW using the DMCA to force Verio to terminate service to The Thing, RTMark, and The Yes Men. The copyright and trademark issues may or may not be valid regardless of the DMCA but it is the DMCA that provides DOW with a means to have the upstream provider cancel their service.
Next: the protestors are being sued for interrupting work at the DOW offices in India not for transporting pollutants back to the corporate source.
Finally: a more recent poster lays a pretty good foundation that DOW has paid everything that the courts have ordered and then some.
Conclusion: This is slashdot!! It's not like this is an unbiased group of people here -- anymore than Greenpeace or The Yes Men. What we do here on slashdot is discuss, argue, debate, criticize, demean, curse, and provide links to more information so that we can all become better informed. Thanks for your contribution!
In response to your response below as to why it is being covered up on the Internet how about this fact: it happened in 1984. Back then the Internet was for government and Universities only -- NOT news organizations.
Didn't you read my submission...
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Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 1
From a response below...
At first I was lured into thinking that this was Dow's response too. Then I started paying attention and even pointed out the fact in my submission that this (where you quoted from) was actually part of the parody site.
Pay attention. It's a two step process.
First -- Engage Brain.
Then -- Engage Mouth.
Didn't you read my submission...
on
Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 1
At first I was lured into thinking that this was Dow's response too. Then I started paying attention and even pointed out the fact in my submission that this (where you quoted from) was actually part of the parody site.
Pay attention. It's a two step process.
First -- Engage Brain.
Then -- Engage Mouth.
I was unaware of the SPAM side of this story. I read slashdot almost everyday but somehow missed the earlier story about this. (The earlier story did not contain any info about Dow suing the survivors though.) Back to the SPAM issue. It seems that the issue of SPAM is being considered on Capital Hill by some of our politicians. Although no serious bills are yet being considered there is one form of SPAM that will never be regulated: political speech. That is what RTMark's SPAM was -- political speech. This will never be squelched as it would not be in the interests of politicians to silence themselves or the Political Action Committees (PACs) that speak for them and/or against their opponents. What I'm saying is: This type of SPAM will never go away.
There are grounds for a serious First Amendment lawsuit here against any ISP that limited your ability to speak out politically. Unfortunately there are also grounds for a corporation to sue for sending out regular SPAM as well since the Supreme Court has often upheld the rights of corporations to engage in "Free Speech". I know. I know. What the corporations are speeching about never seems to be free.
A link to a Register Article about the issue.
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Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 2, Informative
I tried to send this to the story gods at slashdot as an amendment to my posting of this story. I guess that it didn't get there in time or they chose not to amend my submission (Although it was edited from the way I submitted it). Anyway here is a link to The Register's article.
Forgive me if this was already posted. I'm going to bed and don't have the time to read all of the posts. As a former EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) I can see a need for that data provided it was recovered by an additional EMT or other emergency worker on the scene and not the primary care giver. The things that I would be most concerened about are the G forces of the accident and the direction that they came from. Usually when an EMT arrives on scene a survey of the crash site and the car is the first thing that is performed. We are looking for what we call "A Major Mechanism of Injury" This does not detract from the patients care as the degree of injury can be surmised in the few seconds that it takes to walk from the ambulance to the victim. Since we are not Doctors we always stabilize the spinal column as soon as we finish our ABC's: Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Is their throat crushed? Are they breathing at least 10 breaths per minute? And do they have a pulse? Once those have been dealt with (via CPR if need be) then their spine is immobilized and we are off to the hospital.
Upon arrival we have to give the patient details to the doctor. After the vitals (respirations, pulse, 'state of consciousness' - aka GCS, Glascow Coma Scale, temperature, and change since the last set) we describe the results of the secondary evaluation (what's broken, bent, and/or leaking and what its leaking), then we have to describe the scene so that the doctor can try and figure out what forces caused the individual's day to become bad. This can be critical information!! If there is a half moon shape of broken glass in the windshield the patient HAS a head injury! If they hit with the part of their head that is covered in hair this injury is usually not evident. It is up to us to tell the doctors about that part of the scene so they know the patient needs a CAT scan.
Was the patient wearing a seatbelt? If not then their upperbody impacted the stering wheel. You might think that a bruise would result but depending upon the interupption of the blood flow this is not always the case. What could that cause? Many things. It could cause the aorta artery to tear off the heart killing you in about a minute. A small tear could cause internal bleeding that might not be evident for hours. It could fracture a rib. Since ribs don't break cleanly -- they break with what's called a 'green stick' break -- you basically have many very sharp objects in you chest. They could puncture a lung and cause it to start filling with blood. It could puncture the pericardium -- the linig around the heart -- causing it to fill with blood and not leaving any room for the heart to beat. In fact, there are a great many things that can be harmed by sharp things (rib fragments) in your chest poking other important things.
Now I am a typical slashdotter in the following respect: I value my privacy! There is no way that I want the insurance company to have access to this information. I would consider it an invasion of privacy. My trauma surgeon, on the ohter hand, is someone that I want to have all of the information possible so as to better my chances of survival. If my life was at risk I would want the cops to get the information and forward it to the hospital; I would like for the police officers not to have access to the information for a minor traffic accident. The problem is: once the information is available, it will be used by everyone that wants it. The police won't need a warrant because they have probable cause -- an accident happened. I don't see anyway to take the good and leave the bad. If you think that you can keep the information from the insurance company think again. First off, it will most likely be in the cop's accident report. If it isn't there then they may refuse to pay; forcing you to file a law suit for compensation. At that point the insurance company has subpeona powers. If the info is available it WILL get used!
The minor things will also try for the information. A warranty disclaimer that says the manufacturer/dealer is not responsible for the vehicle if you drive like me^h^h a nut. Rental cars will have them and try the same stunt as sending tickets to speeders they discovered by the GPS trackers. There was a slashdot story on this not too long ago. Insurance companies will offer discounts for people that have them in their cars and agree to let them have access to the data. It will be interesting to see how they actually work when they are mass deployed. Will they work in Fritz Hollings mode where it will be a felony to try to plug anything into it that is not approved by the manufacturer/insurer? Or will they work in a consumer friendly mode where the owner can plug a device in to read the data and erase it afterwards? Will we be able to disable them? The black boxes in airplanes (they are actually a neon orange) only record half an hour of data. If this is the case, and your car needs warranty work, drive like grandma for half an hour going to the dealer! If the data is available wirelessly will the same idiots that designed WEP for 802.11b design the security or will the boxes become a boon to stalkers?
The report incorporated an April 13 press release that said the standard would "define what data should be captured, including date, time, location, velocity, heading, number of occupants and seat belt usage." Now correct me if I'm wrong but in order to know the location of the car it would have to have GPS equipment. This piece of data is not really relevent to a crash and it STINKS of big brother. Congress will probably have to pass PATRIOT Act II to get access to this without a warrant.
Interesting medical facts.
An interesting thing about the GCS - Glascow Coma Scale - is that you get three points just for showing up. Even if your dead you get three points. Although some slashdotters may lose a point for not being completely lucid, most healthy people will get a score of fifteen.
Another interesting point about defibrillators is that they are not used when the EKG is reading a flat line - CPR is. Defibrillators are actually used to induce a flat line! When the heart is fibrillating it is actually shorting out. In computer speak this would be the same as using many oscillators for the various subsystems -- memory, north/south bridge, CPU, etc. -- and not synchronizing them. The computer would be trying real hard to do something but fail as the data states would be unpredictable. The heart is the same way. The Sino Atrial Nerve should be the master clock for the heart and all of the other parts should sychronize with it in a kind of cascading way. Instead the electrical system of the heart is just firing in an uncoordinated way causing the various heart muscles to contract at the wrong time. The defibrillator overwhelms the heart and causes it to stop beating! All the muscles stop contracting. Usually the Sino Atrial nerve will start on its own in a few seconds. When this happens the rest of the heart falls into line and synchronizes with it. On the rare occasion that it does not CPR is used. Every TV show before ER got this wrong. ER is an amazingly accurate show, from a medical standpoint, and that's what had me hooked for the first few seasons.
The legal aspects of the show are also pretty interesting too. One important thing to remember is that if you are conscious and want to refuse treatment you MUST be awake, alert, and oriented. If you are not then I, or any other EMT, can do whatever we think is best -- including ordering a cop to restrain you by force. When an EMT asks you your name, what day it is, and where you are the answers that you provide determine who is in charge of your care. If you answer correctly and refuse to be treated then there is nothing we can do -- even touching you could be considered assault! Answer wrong and don't cooperate with me/them and you will get forcably restrained! Just something to keep in mind.
Granted, that Alexandria Egypt had a working steam engine in the basement of the great library when it was over run by the Huns, but I do not think that they had a working camera!!
It is funny that I wasnt' taught about Poe beinging an alcoholic while I was in high school. I remember being taught about how bad drugs were and that drinking led to alcoholism. I remember having my mind filled with all of the horror stories that you can imagine but I don't remember being taught the truth. I was taught that Edgar Allen Poe was one of America's greatest poets and we all had to read the Raven. When I brought it to the attention of the teacher that Mr. Poe often went on wild binges where he would awake from his stupor weeks later and hundreds of miles from home with no recollection of the previous weeks experiences I was quickly chastised. I showed Mrs. Eaglton, my English teacher, a research paper that backed up my assertion and was told that the class would hear nothing of this. I said "but we are studying the Raven. I think it is relevant that Mr. Poe has no recollection of writing it. It just happened to be in one of his journals after awaking from an opium and alcohol induced binge." My grade was quietly changed from failing to an A when I stated that I would be willing to defend my analysis of work in front of the school board if necessary. If only we were taught the truth about things then we would have more faith in our teachers.
Another intereseting story along the same lines is the fact that Cleopatra was a nymphomaniac and once had a horse lowered down on her, and how well that played out in history class when we were discussing her love affair with Rome's Marc Antony.
Remeber the film "Refer Madness"? The one produced by DuPont in an effort to get marijuana made illegal before the senators and representatives realized that it was the same thing as hemp. The same plant grown by George Washington on his farm, and tended to by slaves, and the same one that the US made the film "Grow Hemp for Victory" about during World War II in an effort to get farmers to grow the plant. The US has expnded a great deal of money and effort in an attempt to remove that film from existance but it recently resurfaced. Hemp was made illegal to protect DuPont's recently discovered method of making paper from wood pulp. This is an inferior paper because it turns to dust within about 300 years. We are furtunate that most of the research at the Vatican, including the first copy of the King James Bible, was published on hemp. So was the Declaration of Independance! Why are we not taught the truth.
The bottom line here is that we are adults! If the government and others would treat us as such then we wouldn't view them with such scepticism. Poe, although he was not an astronomer, was an avid reader of astronomy books and spent many an evening staring up at the stars. Why should we look at any of his conclusions as anything less than possible. After all this world is full of people that are not formally trained in an area of expertise making some very insightful discoveries and observations. Yet we are trained to dismiss these things out of hand. This dismissal is often times unjustified.
Remember Gene Roddenbery? He came up with a transporter because the model shots of shuttlecraft landing would have been too expensive to shoot every week. That transporter was accepted into science fiction as just that fiction; yet slashdot is full of article about how one discovery or another is getting us one step closer to that reality. I don't know that transporters will ever be reality but if they do finally invent it we should give the credit to Gene for making us all dream that it could one day become.
M$' program is shared source. It is a look but DON'T TOUCH proposition. They do not want you to change the way they do things. Period. At all. In no way, shape, or form!
I think you also have to provide a DNA sample, retina scan, and rights to your first born to get access to it.
Step 1. Pull out that old 486/33 from the closet and dust it off.
Step 2. Install a default Windows 95. (or better yet a 3.11 -- if you can find it)
Step 3. Make sure there is only about 16 MB of RAM.
Step 4. Invite the installer in and tell him/her to proceed with the installation.
Step 5. Wait for him/her to ask a question and kindly explain that your significant other does not allow you to touch the computer and that they scare you. State your refusal to click on anything (including an EULA).
Step 6. Watch them squirm/cuss/moan/etc.
Step 7. Wait for them to leave.
Step 8. Unplug the crappy Winblows box and place back in the closet for the next time you need an installer to come out (line diagnosis, running new drops, etc.)
Step 9. Retrieve the dual Athalon 2000+MP machine from its hiding place and plug it in.
Step 10. Enable DHCP/PPPoE in Debian.
Step 11. Share your entertaining afternoon with other Slashdotters -- we all need humor in our lives.
I am a white water river guide, a kayaker capable of boating class V water, I can rescue people that have been thrown from a river raft with my kayak, and can also run a video camera. That skill set enabled me to strap my kayak on my car, remove the back seat of a Honda Accord and pack it full of crap (including a tent and sleeping bag), and tour the US for a year and a half. I got to boat some of the most intense water in the country and see some of the most beautiful scenery you can imagine. I spent 20 days traveling 228 miles through the entire Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. I started ten miles below Hoover dam and boated all the way to Lake Mead. It only took about 100 cases of beer to get the 16 of us through the trip!:-)
I boated in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North & South Carolina, New Mexico, Utah, and California. I did have to work at a ski resort for Dec, Jan, and Feb when the commercial river industry is pretty weak but I could have gone to Australia, New Zealand, or South America if I could have afforded the air fair as some of my friends have done. All of those countries, as well as Europe and Asia, have large white water attractions. It takes as little as a week to become trained to guide class III water on the Arkansas River in Colorado: the most rafted river in the country. You can get information by contacting the:
Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area 307 West Sackett Ave. Salida, CO 81201 U.S.A. 719-539-7289
They can give you the names and numbers of over 50 rafting companies that will train you to become a guide at the beginning of every year. From there you will meet enough people to get to know where the commercial river comapnies are all over the country. I worked for so many different companies during that year and a half that I lost track.
I thought about that in regards to a previos article in space.com (that I linked to from slashdot somewhere) and wrote the author. His reply (and my message) follow:
Tres:
Thanks for your message.
The Sun as a locale for tossing nuclear waste has been advocated in the past. One issue raised, however, was the prospect that cans of waste would be super-heated en route to the Sun. That heat load might bust open the canisters. Nuclear waste would be spread into free space - with the solar wind blowing the material everywhere - some of it back to Earth.
The key is always going to be lower launch costs. It's hard to tell how the nuclear waste issue and space may mesh in the future.
Time will tell...
Meanwhile, thanks for your message...I'm glad the story was of interest.
Leonard SPACE.com
-----Original Message----- From: Tres Melton To: ldavid @-unspammed-@ hq.space.com Sent: 8/23/02 5:47 AM Subject: RE: Moon Seen As Nuclear Waste Repository
It seems to me that the problems of transporting the material to Nevada would be the same as transporting the material to a launch site. It also seems to me that if you could get the material out of the Earth's orbit then a more appropriate target would be that huge nuclear reactor in the middle of the solar system: the sun.
If it is going to cost $10 Billion to build one 100,000 KM or $1 billion / 10,000 KM and since geosynchronous orbit is 35,000 KM that turns out to be $3.5 billion to get to that point. Since the cable will only be 1/3 the distance it should only have to be 1/3 the thickness for the needed strength making it 1.6 billion to reach geo-synch. If we were to build a cable that was 265,000 KM it would encircle the Earth at the altitude of geosynchronous orbit but have no stress due to gravity and could therefore be thinner just as the shorter cable is. At one third the thickness for the cable that encircles the Earth and the drop down to the Earth we should be able to build a ring that encircles the Earth and a single drop for the same cost as building a single elevator that is 100,000 KM high. We should then be able to build additional drops for a 'mere' 1.6 billion dollars. Isn't this what they call economies of scale people??? This can't be anymore science fiction than the original plan.
Perhaps you didn't know it but Bill is an avid poker player. I read his book The Road Ahead and many other articles about him so I know him as well as anyone that has not actually met him really could. Don't laught at me! Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War to know your enemy over 2400 years ago! Bill loves the game. He is in this to win, to crush his competitors, to be the last player at the table with any chips left in front of him.
He still flies coach so it is not about the money -- it is about the power! Not only could he live a life of luxury but so could the next ten generations of Gates!
That severence contract is just what it says: a contract. If you do not follow through with the terms of the contract then the company could sue to reclaim the severence package that they gave you. They will further claim that any and all legal claims that you may have had at the time that you entered into the severence contract are actually an agreement to "settle" those claims.
Remeber though that it is a contract and like any contract it can be negotiated. There is a very valid legal claim that says that a company may not take away your only means to support yourself and your family. Claim that they need to send you for retraining or you just might have to forgo your severence benefits and apply to their competitors. After all you know what you know and that may be the only means that you have of support.
Don't forget the dual boot issue in the OEM licensing. You remember the one that prevented BeOS from offering a boot screen on the PCs that it was installed on. Sure they could get an OEM to install their software but it was against the MS license for them to provide a boot loader to actually boot it.
First - there is a difference between hacking and cracking!
Second - if your OS detects and tries to connect ot any wireless network itcomes within range of who is the criminal? The dumb ass user or the OS vender? Alot of people use OSes without knowing what they are doing - this is a prerequisite for MS users. Even the experts don't know everything that is happening.
Third - most people that are technically proficient enough to actually crack into something are capable of keeping most people out of their electronic affairs. Even the S-kiddies.
I posted a question to Ask-Slashdot about this but my story acceptance rate is low. Comments seem to get posted though so here goes:
Where is a good reference source to read about things like electrons, protons, and neutrons? What are they made of? What are quarks? leptons? meons? gluons? What other sub-atomic particles are known to exist? What are theorized? I'm looking for information in reference form so that I can easily refer to it when reading articles such as this (and comments such as these).
Is this what George Carlin meant when he said your possessions are stuff and others are shit. Hense the two sayings: "Hand me my stuff." and "Get your shit."
Slashdot Mirror
Another option is the SSHd option of TCP forwarding; once the connection hits the router box, that is running a SSHd server, the packets would be pulled out, decrypted, and sent out an entirely new connection to the Internet. In that respect there would be only one machine accessing the Internet and all of the others on the LAN would be accessing it.
Another option would be to have the NAT box, if it was done on a real computer that could be programmed instead of a dedicated box such as those from D-link, Netgear, etc., check for bandwidth consumption and when there is a lot of excess it could just make its own requests and deliver them to /dev/null. This would add a great deal of garbage to the data that must be analyzed
It seems that the simplest solution for actually cloaking the number of boxen that sit behind a NAT/firewall is simply to get the initial IPid of a connection out of a random number generator like one of the BSD flavors did in the article.
Just my $0.02...
SBC is also trying to get everyone to switch to Yahoo/SBC Broadband. A service where Yahoo provides you with all kinds of extra crap you don't need. Yahoo's terms of service start out by telling you that they are going to monitor everything that you do "so they can provide you with a better service." Can you believe that crap. I wonder how many people are just signing up and how many people are objecting. My guess is that the ones that take the time to read their TOS are objecting and the others are signing!
Then again....
I haven't read the second edition but the first I read shortly after setting up my first Linux server and reading O'reiliey's TCP/IP book. I read it cover to cover (no, really) and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a great book for those that are interested in network security; it has well told stories and good examples of best practices. I especially liked the way they described their logging machine: A server connected via a cat five wires that had seven of the eight pairs cut! The only pair left was the receive pair. Bad for TCP / good for UDP.
Happy 4/1 (or 1/4 in Europe)
I remember when I first went to the Pike's Peak Auto Hill Climb in 1985. One of the newest things out that year was a computer that could retune the car for high altitude as it raced up the mountain. Since the starting elevation is about 8,000 ft (I think Colorado Springs is 7700 -- and the Pike's Peak highway is a few miles up Ute Pass leaving the Springs) and the finish line is just over 14,000 ft at the summit of The Peak the chip had a pretty wide altitude range that it had to work in. Now EVERY car that races on the Peak on July 4th has a chip to do something similiar. That year, in 1985 Michelle Moutant, from France, won in an Audi Quartro and now everyone also runs 4wd cars as well.
These are things that we should try to keep everyone we know from buying. Hopefully it will go the way CPRM (for IDE drives) went. Yes I know its still there but the manufacturers are a little bit gun shy about introducing in a public fashion because of the uproar that they caused last time. I know slashdotters are pretty tech savy people but let's try to educate the rest of the world. A disaster would be if they ended up being silently shipped for a little while, until they attained critical mass, and then someone threw the switch and disabled our boxen (or at least the boxes that have their freedom still intact).
Next: the protestors are being sued for interrupting work at the DOW offices in India not for transporting pollutants back to the corporate source.
Finally: a more recent poster lays a pretty good foundation that DOW has paid everything that the courts have ordered and then some.
Conclusion: This is slashdot!! It's not like this is an unbiased group of people here -- anymore than Greenpeace or The Yes Men. What we do here on slashdot is discuss, argue, debate, criticize, demean, curse, and provide links to more information so that we can all become better informed. Thanks for your contribution!
In response to your response below as to why it is being covered up on the Internet how about this fact: it happened in 1984. Back then the Internet was for government and Universities only -- NOT news organizations.
At first I was lured into thinking that this was Dow's response too. Then I started paying attention and even pointed out the fact in my submission that this (where you quoted from) was actually part of the parody site.
Pay attention. It's a two step process.
First -- Engage Brain.
Then -- Engage Mouth.
Pay attention. It's a two step process.
First -- Engage Brain.
Then -- Engage Mouth.
There are grounds for a serious First Amendment lawsuit here against any ISP that limited your ability to speak out politically. Unfortunately there are also grounds for a corporation to sue for sending out regular SPAM as well since the Supreme Court has often upheld the rights of corporations to engage in "Free Speech". I know. I know. What the corporations are speeching about never seems to be free.
I tried to send this to the story gods at slashdot as an amendment to my posting of this story. I guess that it didn't get there in time or they chose not to amend my submission (Although it was edited from the way I submitted it). Anyway here is a link to The Register's article.
Upon arrival we have to give the patient details to the doctor. After the vitals (respirations, pulse, 'state of consciousness' - aka GCS, Glascow Coma Scale, temperature, and change since the last set) we describe the results of the secondary evaluation (what's broken, bent, and/or leaking and what its leaking), then we have to describe the scene so that the doctor can try and figure out what forces caused the individual's day to become bad. This can be critical information!! If there is a half moon shape of broken glass in the windshield the patient HAS a head injury! If they hit with the part of their head that is covered in hair this injury is usually not evident. It is up to us to tell the doctors about that part of the scene so they know the patient needs a CAT scan.
Was the patient wearing a seatbelt? If not then their upperbody impacted the stering wheel. You might think that a bruise would result but depending upon the interupption of the blood flow this is not always the case. What could that cause? Many things. It could cause the aorta artery to tear off the heart killing you in about a minute. A small tear could cause internal bleeding that might not be evident for hours. It could fracture a rib. Since ribs don't break cleanly -- they break with what's called a 'green stick' break -- you basically have many very sharp objects in you chest. They could puncture a lung and cause it to start filling with blood. It could puncture the pericardium -- the linig around the heart -- causing it to fill with blood and not leaving any room for the heart to beat. In fact, there are a great many things that can be harmed by sharp things (rib fragments) in your chest poking other important things.
Now I am a typical slashdotter in the following respect: I value my privacy! There is no way that I want the insurance company to have access to this information. I would consider it an invasion of privacy. My trauma surgeon, on the ohter hand, is someone that I want to have all of the information possible so as to better my chances of survival. If my life was at risk I would want the cops to get the information and forward it to the hospital; I would like for the police officers not to have access to the information for a minor traffic accident. The problem is: once the information is available, it will be used by everyone that wants it. The police won't need a warrant because they have probable cause -- an accident happened. I don't see anyway to take the good and leave the bad. If you think that you can keep the information from the insurance company think again. First off, it will most likely be in the cop's accident report. If it isn't there then they may refuse to pay; forcing you to file a law suit for compensation. At that point the insurance company has subpeona powers. If the info is available it WILL get used!
The minor things will also try for the information. A warranty disclaimer that says the manufacturer/dealer is not responsible for the vehicle if you drive like me^h^h a nut. Rental cars will have them and try the same stunt as sending tickets to speeders they discovered by the GPS trackers. There was a slashdot story on this not too long ago. Insurance companies will offer discounts for people that have them in their cars and agree to let them have access to the data. It will be interesting to see how they actually work when they are mass deployed. Will they work in Fritz Hollings mode where it will be a felony to try to plug anything into it that is not approved by the manufacturer/insurer? Or will they work in a consumer friendly mode where the owner can plug a device in to read the data and erase it afterwards? Will we be able to disable them? The black boxes in airplanes (they are actually a neon orange) only record half an hour of data. If this is the case, and your car needs warranty work, drive like grandma for half an hour going to the dealer! If the data is available wirelessly will the same idiots that designed WEP for 802.11b design the security or will the boxes become a boon to stalkers?
The report incorporated an April 13 press release that said the standard would "define what data should be captured, including date, time, location, velocity, heading, number of occupants and seat belt usage." Now correct me if I'm wrong but in order to know the location of the car it would have to have GPS equipment. This piece of data is not really relevent to a crash and it STINKS of big brother. Congress will probably have to pass PATRIOT Act II to get access to this without a warrant.
Interesting medical facts.
An interesting thing about the GCS - Glascow Coma Scale - is that you get three points just for showing up. Even if your dead you get three points. Although some slashdotters may lose a point for not being completely lucid, most healthy people will get a score of fifteen.
Another interesting point about defibrillators is that they are not used when the EKG is reading a flat line - CPR is. Defibrillators are actually used to induce a flat line! When the heart is fibrillating it is actually shorting out. In computer speak this would be the same as using many oscillators for the various subsystems -- memory, north/south bridge, CPU, etc. -- and not synchronizing them. The computer would be trying real hard to do something but fail as the data states would be unpredictable. The heart is the same way. The Sino Atrial Nerve should be the master clock for the heart and all of the other parts should sychronize with it in a kind of cascading way. Instead the electrical system of the heart is just firing in an uncoordinated way causing the various heart muscles to contract at the wrong time. The defibrillator overwhelms the heart and causes it to stop beating! All the muscles stop contracting. Usually the Sino Atrial nerve will start on its own in a few seconds. When this happens the rest of the heart falls into line and synchronizes with it. On the rare occasion that it does not CPR is used. Every TV show before ER got this wrong. ER is an amazingly accurate show, from a medical standpoint, and that's what had me hooked for the first few seasons.
The legal aspects of the show are also pretty interesting too. One important thing to remember is that if you are conscious and want to refuse treatment you MUST be awake, alert, and oriented. If you are not then I, or any other EMT, can do whatever we think is best -- including ordering a cop to restrain you by force. When an EMT asks you your name, what day it is, and where you are the answers that you provide determine who is in charge of your care. If you answer correctly and refuse to be treated then there is nothing we can do -- even touching you could be considered assault! Answer wrong and don't cooperate with me/them and you will get forcably restrained! Just something to keep in mind.
Granted, that Alexandria Egypt had a working steam engine in the basement of the great library when it was over run by the Huns, but I do not think that they had a working camera!!
Another intereseting story along the same lines is the fact that Cleopatra was a nymphomaniac and once had a horse lowered down on her, and how well that played out in history class when we were discussing her love affair with Rome's Marc Antony.
Remeber the film "Refer Madness"? The one produced by DuPont in an effort to get marijuana made illegal before the senators and representatives realized that it was the same thing as hemp. The same plant grown by George Washington on his farm, and tended to by slaves, and the same one that the US made the film "Grow Hemp for Victory" about during World War II in an effort to get farmers to grow the plant. The US has expnded a great deal of money and effort in an attempt to remove that film from existance but it recently resurfaced. Hemp was made illegal to protect DuPont's recently discovered method of making paper from wood pulp. This is an inferior paper because it turns to dust within about 300 years. We are furtunate that most of the research at the Vatican, including the first copy of the King James Bible, was published on hemp. So was the Declaration of Independance! Why are we not taught the truth.
The bottom line here is that we are adults! If the government and others would treat us as such then we wouldn't view them with such scepticism. Poe, although he was not an astronomer, was an avid reader of astronomy books and spent many an evening staring up at the stars. Why should we look at any of his conclusions as anything less than possible. After all this world is full of people that are not formally trained in an area of expertise making some very insightful discoveries and observations. Yet we are trained to dismiss these things out of hand. This dismissal is often times unjustified.
Remember Gene Roddenbery? He came up with a transporter because the model shots of shuttlecraft landing would have been too expensive to shoot every week. That transporter was accepted into science fiction as just that fiction; yet slashdot is full of article about how one discovery or another is getting us one step closer to that reality. I don't know that transporters will ever be reality but if they do finally invent it we should give the credit to Gene for making us all dream that it could one day become.
I think you also have to provide a DNA sample, retina scan, and rights to your first born to get access to it.
Step 2. Install a default Windows 95. (or better yet a 3.11 -- if you can find it)
Step 3. Make sure there is only about 16 MB of RAM.
Step 4. Invite the installer in and tell him/her to proceed with the installation.
Step 5. Wait for him/her to ask a question and kindly explain that your significant other does not allow you to touch the computer and that they scare you. State your refusal to click on anything (including an EULA).
Step 6. Watch them squirm/cuss/moan/etc.
Step 7. Wait for them to leave.
Step 8. Unplug the crappy Winblows box and place back in the closet for the next time you need an installer to come out (line diagnosis, running new drops, etc.)
Step 9. Retrieve the dual Athalon 2000+MP machine from its hiding place and plug it in.
Step 10. Enable DHCP/PPPoE in Debian.
Step 11. Share your entertaining afternoon with other Slashdotters -- we all need humor in our lives.
I am a white water river guide, a kayaker capable of boating class V water, I can rescue people that have been thrown from a river raft with my kayak, and can also run a video camera. That skill set enabled me to strap my kayak on my car, remove the back seat of a Honda Accord and pack it full of crap (including a tent and sleeping bag), and tour the US for a year and a half. I got to boat some of the most intense water in the country and see some of the most beautiful scenery you can imagine. I spent 20 days traveling 228 miles through the entire Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. I started ten miles below Hoover dam and boated all the way to Lake Mead. It only took about 100 cases of beer to get the 16 of us through the trip! :-)
I boated in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North & South Carolina, New Mexico, Utah, and California. I did have to work at a ski resort for Dec, Jan, and Feb when the commercial river industry is pretty weak but I could have gone to Australia, New Zealand, or South America if I could have afforded the air fair as some of my friends have done. All of those countries, as well as Europe and Asia, have large white water attractions. It takes as little as a week to become trained to guide class III water on the Arkansas River in Colorado: the most rafted river in the country. You can get information by contacting the:
Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area
307 West Sackett Ave.
Salida, CO 81201
U.S.A.
719-539-7289
They can give you the names and numbers of over 50 rafting companies that will train you to become a guide at the beginning of every year. From there you will meet enough people to get to know where the commercial river comapnies are all over the country. I worked for so many different companies during that year and a half that I lost track.
Best of Luck,
I thought about that in regards to a previos article in space.com (that I linked to from slashdot somewhere) and wrote the author. His reply (and my message) follow:
Tres:
Thanks for your message.
The Sun as a locale for tossing nuclear waste has been advocated in the
past. One issue raised, however, was the prospect that cans of waste would
be super-heated en route to the Sun. That heat load might bust open the
canisters. Nuclear waste would be spread into free space - with the solar
wind blowing the material everywhere - some of it back to Earth.
The key is always going to be lower launch costs. It's hard to tell how the
nuclear waste issue and space may mesh in the future.
Time will tell...
Meanwhile, thanks for your message...I'm glad the story was of interest.
Leonard
SPACE.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Tres Melton
To: ldavid @-unspammed-@ hq.space.com
Sent: 8/23/02 5:47 AM
Subject: RE: Moon Seen As Nuclear Waste Repository
It seems to me that the problems of transporting the material to Nevada
would be the same as transporting the material to a launch site. It
also seems to me that if you could get the material out of the Earth's
orbit then a more appropriate target would be that huge nuclear reactor
in the middle of the solar system: the sun.
Regards,
Tres
Just a thought.
He still flies coach so it is not about the money -- it is about the power! Not only could he live a life of luxury but so could the next ten generations of Gates!
Remeber though that it is a contract and like any contract it can be negotiated. There is a very valid legal claim that says that a company may not take away your only means to support yourself and your family. Claim that they need to send you for retraining or you just might have to forgo your severence benefits and apply to their competitors. After all you know what you know and that may be the only means that you have of support.
Don't forget the dual boot issue in the OEM licensing. You remember the one that prevented BeOS from offering a boot screen on the PCs that it was installed on. Sure they could get an OEM to install their software but it was against the MS license for them to provide a boot loader to actually boot it.
First - there is a difference between hacking and cracking!
Second - if your OS detects and tries to connect ot any wireless network itcomes within range of who is the criminal? The dumb ass user or the OS vender? Alot of people use OSes without knowing what they are doing - this is a prerequisite for MS users. Even the experts don't know everything that is happening.
Third - most people that are technically proficient enough to actually crack into something are capable of keeping most people out of their electronic affairs. Even the S-kiddies.
Where is a good reference source to read about things like electrons, protons, and neutrons? What are they made of? What are quarks? leptons? meons? gluons? What other sub-atomic particles are known to exist? What are theorized? I'm looking for information in reference form so that I can easily refer to it when reading articles such as this (and comments such as these).
Is this what George Carlin meant when he said your possessions are stuff and others are shit. Hense the two sayings: "Hand me my stuff." and "Get your shit."