But if said 8 year old is looking at a Windows 98 login screen, he might try the unthinkable and hit "cancel". Or even the esc key. I did this, and I was maybe 12 or 14 or something.
That's not really hacking though. Windows is asking you for your network password before it starts mapping drives. You can enter whatever you want and it'll still let you in.
The #1 mistake I see is them dumbing down the computer stuff -- can you name a single hack that's actually been explained to you that made any real sense, without you inventing huge amounts of crap to fill the gaps?
There is one legit hack I know of, that I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet. In one of the Matrix sequels, Trinity uses an SSH exploit to get into a powerstation control network. Apparently nmap is involved as well. Sort of the exception-that-proves-the-rule, just about everything else is silly.
If you want to other silly movie plots/effects non-specific to IT, Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics is a good resource and funny too.
Nope, the post I replied to wasn't using sarcasm. Trust me, I'm a Brit; we practically invented sarcasm. Read it again, in it's entirety. The people who modded it "interesting" agreed with me (on it not being a troll/joke at least). It's basically a typical "Microsoft are the cause of the worlds problems" rant.
how on earth can someone code so sloppily that a WORD PROCESSOR has a serious security exploit?!
Buffer overflows aside, a legitimate exploit hole is Macro programming. Most people are scared of macros and have never looked into them, but they are extremely powerful. However, with that power comes a cost. Want to read/write CSV data? Fine, but the same disk I/O functionality could be used to install a trojan payload to a startup script.
Oh, and I'm fairly sure that vi has had a couple of buffer-overflow issues over the years. Anything that deals with external data comes with a risk.
ya, it is much better to trust your most secret internal documents to random third party "businessmen" over in whoknowswhereistan after you got *owned*
No it isn't. How old are you? Have you ever worked in anything other than McDonalds? Company Confidentiality is essential for running a business. It's also a legal requirement in the case of HR records. Uploading particualar records to Google would breach numerous laws and could get you closed down.
Legal issues aside, it's well known that Google do analysis of their data. Do you really want a bot crawling over your companies secrets? What if your business is something that overlaps with one of Google's products?
Do Google provide an SLA? Do you even know what an SLA is? What if the site's down, do you just send everyone home for the day? What's their privacy policy? Data safeguards? Encryption? Backups? Version control?
The rest of your post is equally nonsensical. What does the warranty provided with Microsoft Word have to do with corporate mismanagement and it's possible effects on the western economy? Next you'll be telling me it was Microsoft that invaded Poland.
This is why peaceful protests make me nervous. If "just trying to deny the intersections to protesters with sawhorses" nearly touched off a riot, then I'm not convinced that the demonstration was all that peaceful in the first place.
Crowds are dangerous and unpredictable. It's nothing to do with the people in the crowd really, could happen to any large group of people. The Hajj is a very large example; hundreds of people have died on several occasions just with the sheer volume of people. The same applies to soccer matches; there have been a number of incidents in the UK where there have been fatalities in crowds. One example is visible from where I am just now, during a Glasgow Rangers match. 66 people died and over 200 were injured caused by crowds pushing through a bottleneck.
And that's just random crowd responses. Put them in a position where they feel threatened can trigger a much more severe fight or fight response. Plus the anonymity of the crowd helps, much in the same was as being in a car can make normally placid people aggressive. Yup, crowds are dangerous and I'm not so sure inflicting pain on them as a whole is really a good idea.
My car was drivable and I continued on my way. All three cars that rear-ended me were towed away.
See, that's why I dislike SUV drivers as a rule. You seem proud of the fact that you'd be OK in a collision, but laugh at the mess of everyone else's cars. You were lucky, sounds like your reinforced tank didn't kill anyone this time. Sure, the accident wasn't your fault, but had you been driving a more considerate vehicle, you might have shared the energy of the impact. Small cars have things like crumple zones that SUVs just tear through.
The bad drivers that I have seen are most luxury car drivers (all types SUV, car, whatever), then if the people who don't drive according to the weather. If it is snowing, slow down. If it is raining very hard slow down. 4-wheel drive means you may be able to go in bad traction but it does nothing for stopping.
But statements like that make some SUV owners redeem themselves.:-) At least you haven't got the entire invincibility meme going on!
Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to place a small object ejection device on your car.
Look up HERF guns. RF transmitters that zap any electronics in the vicinity. Simply have a rear facing horn over the emitter and you can disable anyone behind you. You'll knock out their engine management system and stall the car. Dangerous however, it could cause them to crash if they are a poor driver which is quite likely if they are tailgating you.
Normally, I try to avoid these kinds of drivers. You sort-of develop a sixth-sense on which cars around you might be dangerous. Just give them room and try to either get away from them, or let them past. I notice issues most with SUVs and BMWs. It's the sort of inconsiderate, self-centered trash that drives these cars that leads to the problem in the first place.
Watching traffic beyond of the car in front of you helps you avoid this problem, but with the larger vehicles and dark tinted windows on the road these days it's becoming less and less practical as a defensive driving tactic.
Thank god for that; I thought I was the only one that had an issue with this. I don't mind vans & trucks as that's unavoidable, but I curse anyone else who drives a car that stops me from viewing the road ahead. 4x4 owners, you know who you are and you are a danger to yourself and others.
If that car you're following hits a brick wall (or a stopped armored car, rig, whatever) then you have the time the GP post stated + the added time to cover the ground opened up by the elastic deformation of the car in front of you and whatever it hit, which while >0, is still essentially trivial.
What he said. Braking distances are and should be worst-case scenarios. Having a matched deceleration from the car in front is best-case. The worst-case is hitting a pileup completely blocking the road. That's when you need to stop in (reaction time) + (braking distance).
This is speaking as someone who had to do just that this morning, coming around a blind bend into a static wall of traffic. At least the break-pumping instinct kicked in (dunno how, my last car had ABS) and I managed to stop.
Not in Memphis. 50 MPH is the limit on the ramps. Some of them are so sharp of a turn-off that quite a few SUVs going at that speed to get on end up flipping or rolling, or losing control and doing a side-dive into the k-rail. I see that about once a week.
Sounds like an intelligent design, removing all of the SUV owners from the gene pool!
I could see this as being a real cause for concern for privacy for celebrities. Celebrities are regular everyday people.
Depends on the celebrity. If you are talking about a media-whore (as many of them are) who milk the media for their own benefits, then I really aren't going to lose some sleep over them being hounded over the media-buzz they contrived to create. On the other hand, celebrities that keep to themselves and don't play the game deserve their privacy. This is mostly self-regulating due to the brain-dead public, who are only interested in the Paris Hiltons of the world.
Indeed, that is text-book propaganda. However, so is calling it "anti-semitic". If anything, it's "anti-Israeli", which is a completely different thing altogether. I'd imagine the irony of labeling Hezbolla propaganda as "anti-semitic" is completely lost on most people.
There are also other similar calls in the UK that are scams. When telcos first dish out mobile numbers, the prefix shows the operator. I got mine over ten years ago and the original operator is now known as "BT Cellnet". I've since transfered three or four times over the years, each time taking my number with me. I am not currently a BT Cellent customer.
However, now and then I'll get a phone call asking me if I want to upgrade my "BT Cellnet" phone. They try their best to sound like the actual operator, but are careful to never actually say that. They are essentially cold-calling all of the numbers in the mobile "area" code and trying to get you to switch to their service.
I've tried pressing them a few times, just to see how brazen they are. Once I asked how they got my details and the girl instantly hung up. Another, I pointed out that my phone was no longer Cellnet and that I knew they were war-dialing. Again, an instant hang-up.
Complaints have been passed and handled by the UK telecoms watchdog, Oftel, but they just keep on adjusting their tactics to be borderline legal or to avoid getting a complaint in the first place.
Most banks these days don't use the magnetic strip. It's there for backwards compatibility with ye olde ATMs if you ever encounter them. I haven't seen a card without an embedded chip for years. Stops the cloning problem at least.
That's because there's no good way to "monetize" physics. If the particle-accelerator crowd wants funding they need to find a way to:
1. Allow teenagers to upload videos to the accelerator 2. Allow teenagers to download ringtones from the accelerator 3. Allow teenagers to instant-message entangled particles on the other side of the universe
Or you could go with the more traditional route and suggest that it could be used to kill people. You'll get all the funding you need.
You act as if this is something new. We haven't exorcised all of the demons from the past, the least of all wars of conquest. A history of the Mexican War and the Spanish American War is much more useful in understanding the Iraq War's motivations that the Vietnam War. Both the Mexican War and the Spanish American War were optional wars spurned on by the U.S. drawing a line and looking for the means to make it look like the enemy started it
I mostly agree, WW2 Pacific was essentially the same "line drawn in the sand", regarding the naval blockade. With Iraq, the CIA were instructed to look for the "smoking gun" pointing to Iraq. Not "find out who did 9-11", but "find any evidence of Iraqi involvement"
What is new however is the fact that wars could now be fought without losing a single one of your own countrymen.
The results from the Mexican War and the Spanish American War greatly increased US territory and power. While the Iraq War isn't for territory, it certainly is for power.
Iraq is partly for territory; it's a beach-head to the middle east that also allows the US to withdraw from Saudi. Ironically that was Osama's primary goal, so if anything "the terrorists have already won". The PNAC website is quite clear on their beach-head goals ("foothold" is the word they use IIRC).
I know a lot of people don't think of the UK as part of Europe, but it is, and I've never seen an ATM like that here.
They generally use induction loops, the same technology used for deaf people (and bootleggers) in the cinema. But I've also seen the headphone jacks on some newer machines.
they even managed to fix it so that ATMs gave out Deutschmark right up until midnight on Dec. 31, 2001 and as soon as 2002 rolled over, pumped out shiny new Euro notes.
An idea clearly put forward by an old fart. A younger person would never have done it at midnight on New Years. Generally it's not a good idea to switch currency at the one point where more people in your country are drunk than at any other time.
On the other hand, I'm sure the run-up to the bells was fun, as everyone attempted to spend the last of their own currency!
Nah, I'd argue that we use the size more often. You can find the note you want out of a bundle with little effort. When they are in my wallet I cannot see the size or the colour without opening it up further.
Plus, we get none of that " 98 x $1 bills wrapped in two $100s " con over here!;-)
Of course they put guns on them. Adding explosive chemicals is a sure way to get funding!
Personally, I think this is one of the more disturbing elements of the 21st century. The only thing that stops us western powers invading the next oil-rich country is the fact that body-bags equals votes for your opposition. If you can fight a war where no people* die, then fighting war just became politically cheaper.
*People as in the "there are only 3000 deaths in Iraq" form of the word. You know, the racist "our enemies are sub-human" and we aren't counting bodies meme.
I've had a lot of drive failures. I have three dead ones on my desk right now. A Segate Baracuda and two of the DeskStar drives you mention. The IBM ones are so bad they got knicknamed "DeathStar".
I've also used the freezer trick to get data off. On one of the DeathStars I had to actually tap it with a hammer to get it going again. It was either that or the dataloss bin; it's not something I make a habit of!!
How many of those people signing up are government agents there to just delete and change everything to what the government wants.
Well, seeing as how our own "freedom" loving governments are doing the exact same thing already, I would have to assume that the Chinese do it as well. And we've got people doing this sort of thing all over the web just to promote Ashley Simpson and the like, so you can be your bottom dollar that our own governments are just as bad.
Depends on the kids. Some young ones, especially infants cannot cope with the ear-popping and cry the whole flight. Being near one of them can be a nightmare on a long flight. However, the last flight I was on there were two really young kids in the seats in front on me and the only noise I heard was them having fun. That I can happily live with.
Why would this movie, or Alive, or even United 93 or Twin Towers be inappropriate?
Because they may upset some people. This is why you'll NEVER see any of those films on a plane. Lots of things are edited out of the special airplane-versions of movies. Take "The Abyss" for example. The start of the film is missing, where the submarine sinks. Apparently the reason for this is the imagery of people on a long cylindrical tube dying.
I remember once watching a movie on a flight, I think it was "The Man In The Iron Mask" and one thing that particularly stood out was the censorship of a large cleavage. Picture a large breasted middle-aged woman in a French period dress. Not lewd, pornographic or anything like that. But they were cavernous. Anyhow, one point where she bent over slightly to pickup something from a table and they blurred out the cleavage!! What make me remember it is the stupidity of it. Up to that point I hadn't noticed her breasts. After having them so blatantly pointed out to me, any scene she was in focused on them.
Airplane movies are a special breed. They are edited to make them broadcastable on the central monitors in older jets as well as the personal screens. With a movie or a book, you have to choose to buy it. With TV you can always change the channel. But the shared screens are inescapable and so must not offend anyone. Which is why shows like Mr Bean are common.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not really hacking though. Windows is asking you for your network password before it starts mapping drives. You can enter whatever you want and it'll still let you in.
There is one legit hack I know of, that I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet. In one of the Matrix sequels, Trinity uses an SSH exploit to get into a powerstation control network. Apparently nmap is involved as well. Sort of the exception-that-proves-the-rule, just about everything else is silly.
If you want to other silly movie plots/effects non-specific to IT, Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics is a good resource and funny too.
Nope, the post I replied to wasn't using sarcasm. Trust me, I'm a Brit; we practically invented sarcasm. Read it again, in it's entirety. The people who modded it "interesting" agreed with me (on it not being a troll/joke at least). It's basically a typical "Microsoft are the cause of the worlds problems" rant.
Buffer overflows aside, a legitimate exploit hole is Macro programming. Most people are scared of macros and have never looked into them, but they are extremely powerful. However, with that power comes a cost. Want to read/write CSV data? Fine, but the same disk I/O functionality could be used to install a trojan payload to a startup script.
Oh, and I'm fairly sure that vi has had a couple of buffer-overflow issues over the years. Anything that deals with external data comes with a risk.
No it isn't. How old are you? Have you ever worked in anything other than McDonalds? Company Confidentiality is essential for running a business. It's also a legal requirement in the case of HR records. Uploading particualar records to Google would breach numerous laws and could get you closed down.
Legal issues aside, it's well known that Google do analysis of their data. Do you really want a bot crawling over your companies secrets? What if your business is something that overlaps with one of Google's products?
Do Google provide an SLA? Do you even know what an SLA is? What if the site's down, do you just send everyone home for the day? What's their privacy policy? Data safeguards? Encryption? Backups? Version control?
The rest of your post is equally nonsensical. What does the warranty provided with Microsoft Word have to do with corporate mismanagement and it's possible effects on the western economy? Next you'll be telling me it was Microsoft that invaded Poland.
Crowds are dangerous and unpredictable. It's nothing to do with the people in the crowd really, could happen to any large group of people. The Hajj is a very large example; hundreds of people have died on several occasions just with the sheer volume of people. The same applies to soccer matches; there have been a number of incidents in the UK where there have been fatalities in crowds. One example is visible from where I am just now, during a Glasgow Rangers match. 66 people died and over 200 were injured caused by crowds pushing through a bottleneck.
And that's just random crowd responses. Put them in a position where they feel threatened can trigger a much more severe fight or fight response. Plus the anonymity of the crowd helps, much in the same was as being in a car can make normally placid people aggressive. Yup, crowds are dangerous and I'm not so sure inflicting pain on them as a whole is really a good idea.
See, that's why I dislike SUV drivers as a rule. You seem proud of the fact that you'd be OK in a collision, but laugh at the mess of everyone else's cars. You were lucky, sounds like your reinforced tank didn't kill anyone this time. Sure, the accident wasn't your fault, but had you been driving a more considerate vehicle, you might have shared the energy of the impact. Small cars have things like crumple zones that SUVs just tear through.
But statements like that make some SUV owners redeem themselves. :-) At least you haven't got the entire invincibility meme going on!
Look up HERF guns. RF transmitters that zap any electronics in the vicinity. Simply have a rear facing horn over the emitter and you can disable anyone behind you. You'll knock out their engine management system and stall the car. Dangerous however, it could cause them to crash if they are a poor driver which is quite likely if they are tailgating you.
Normally, I try to avoid these kinds of drivers. You sort-of develop a sixth-sense on which cars around you might be dangerous. Just give them room and try to either get away from them, or let them past. I notice issues most with SUVs and BMWs. It's the sort of inconsiderate, self-centered trash that drives these cars that leads to the problem in the first place.
Thank god for that; I thought I was the only one that had an issue with this. I don't mind vans & trucks as that's unavoidable, but I curse anyone else who drives a car that stops me from viewing the road ahead. 4x4 owners, you know who you are and you are a danger to yourself and others.
What he said. Braking distances are and should be worst-case scenarios. Having a matched deceleration from the car in front is best-case. The worst-case is hitting a pileup completely blocking the road. That's when you need to stop in (reaction time) + (braking distance).
This is speaking as someone who had to do just that this morning, coming around a blind bend into a static wall of traffic. At least the break-pumping instinct kicked in (dunno how, my last car had ABS) and I managed to stop.
Sounds like an intelligent design, removing all of the SUV owners from the gene pool!
Depends on the celebrity. If you are talking about a media-whore (as many of them are) who milk the media for their own benefits, then I really aren't going to lose some sleep over them being hounded over the media-buzz they contrived to create. On the other hand, celebrities that keep to themselves and don't play the game deserve their privacy. This is mostly self-regulating due to the brain-dead public, who are only interested in the Paris Hiltons of the world.
Indeed, that is text-book propaganda. However, so is calling it "anti-semitic". If anything, it's "anti-Israeli", which is a completely different thing altogether. I'd imagine the irony of labeling Hezbolla propaganda as "anti-semitic" is completely lost on most people.
There are also other similar calls in the UK that are scams. When telcos first dish out mobile numbers, the prefix shows the operator. I got mine over ten years ago and the original operator is now known as "BT Cellnet". I've since transfered three or four times over the years, each time taking my number with me. I am not currently a BT Cellent customer.
However, now and then I'll get a phone call asking me if I want to upgrade my "BT Cellnet" phone. They try their best to sound like the actual operator, but are careful to never actually say that. They are essentially cold-calling all of the numbers in the mobile "area" code and trying to get you to switch to their service.
I've tried pressing them a few times, just to see how brazen they are. Once I asked how they got my details and the girl instantly hung up. Another, I pointed out that my phone was no longer Cellnet and that I knew they were war-dialing. Again, an instant hang-up.
Complaints have been passed and handled by the UK telecoms watchdog, Oftel, but they just keep on adjusting their tactics to be borderline legal or to avoid getting a complaint in the first place.
Most banks these days don't use the magnetic strip. It's there for backwards compatibility with ye olde ATMs if you ever encounter them. I haven't seen a card without an embedded chip for years. Stops the cloning problem at least.
Or you could go with the more traditional route and suggest that it could be used to kill people. You'll get all the funding you need.
I mostly agree, WW2 Pacific was essentially the same "line drawn in the sand", regarding the naval blockade. With Iraq, the CIA were instructed to look for the "smoking gun" pointing to Iraq. Not "find out who did 9-11", but "find any evidence of Iraqi involvement"
What is new however is the fact that wars could now be fought without losing a single one of your own countrymen.
Iraq is partly for territory; it's a beach-head to the middle east that also allows the US to withdraw from Saudi. Ironically that was Osama's primary goal, so if anything "the terrorists have already won". The PNAC website is quite clear on their beach-head goals ("foothold" is the word they use IIRC).
They generally use induction loops, the same technology used for deaf people (and bootleggers) in the cinema. But I've also seen the headphone jacks on some newer machines.
An idea clearly put forward by an old fart. A younger person would never have done it at midnight on New Years. Generally it's not a good idea to switch currency at the one point where more people in your country are drunk than at any other time.
On the other hand, I'm sure the run-up to the bells was fun, as everyone attempted to spend the last of their own currency!
Nah, I'd argue that we use the size more often. You can find the note you want out of a bundle with little effort. When they are in my wallet I cannot see the size or the colour without opening it up further.
Plus, we get none of that " 98 x $1 bills wrapped in two $100s " con over here! ;-)
Of course they put guns on them. Adding explosive chemicals is a sure way to get funding!
Personally, I think this is one of the more disturbing elements of the 21st century. The only thing that stops us western powers invading the next oil-rich country is the fact that body-bags equals votes for your opposition. If you can fight a war where no people* die, then fighting war just became politically cheaper.
*People as in the "there are only 3000 deaths in Iraq" form of the word. You know, the racist "our enemies are sub-human" and we aren't counting bodies meme.
I've also used the freezer trick to get data off. On one of the DeathStars I had to actually tap it with a hammer to get it going again. It was either that or the dataloss bin; it's not something I make a habit of!!
Surely you can't be serious!
Well, seeing as how our own "freedom" loving governments are doing the exact same thing already, I would have to assume that the Chinese do it as well. And we've got people doing this sort of thing all over the web just to promote Ashley Simpson and the like, so you can be your bottom dollar that our own governments are just as bad.
Depends on the kids. Some young ones, especially infants cannot cope with the ear-popping and cry the whole flight. Being near one of them can be a nightmare on a long flight. However, the last flight I was on there were two really young kids in the seats in front on me and the only noise I heard was them having fun. That I can happily live with.
Because they may upset some people. This is why you'll NEVER see any of those films on a plane. Lots of things are edited out of the special airplane-versions of movies. Take "The Abyss" for example. The start of the film is missing, where the submarine sinks. Apparently the reason for this is the imagery of people on a long cylindrical tube dying.
I remember once watching a movie on a flight, I think it was "The Man In The Iron Mask" and one thing that particularly stood out was the censorship of a large cleavage. Picture a large breasted middle-aged woman in a French period dress. Not lewd, pornographic or anything like that. But they were cavernous. Anyhow, one point where she bent over slightly to pickup something from a table and they blurred out the cleavage!! What make me remember it is the stupidity of it. Up to that point I hadn't noticed her breasts. After having them so blatantly pointed out to me, any scene she was in focused on them.
Airplane movies are a special breed. They are edited to make them broadcastable on the central monitors in older jets as well as the personal screens. With a movie or a book, you have to choose to buy it. With TV you can always change the channel. But the shared screens are inescapable and so must not offend anyone. Which is why shows like Mr Bean are common.