'What? Oh, no!' André laughed. 'Good heavens... it's a... a kind of convenient name, I suppose. Sometimes someone has to sing a very minor part... perhaps a singer is in a role that they'd rather not be remembered in... well, here, they just go down on the programme as Walter Plinge. Lots of theatres have a useful name like that. Like A. N. Other. It's convenient for everyone.'
Andre did not explain the name in the same way as the grandparent says it means. It's just a thowaway name in the book. No hidden meaning or joke other than Walter's name appearing in the programme.
This isn't intended to prove the Met's paintings worthless (NOBODY wants that),
The owners of the artist's authentic paintings would be rather pleased if the others were proved to be false and their's authentic. The authentic paintings would be immediately worth quite a bit more.
This is also a great extortion opportunity for an authentication service. "Pay us to prove your painting's authenticity. If you don't, well... what will people think?"
For the short time required to commit many crimes, "good enough" is good enough. As long as the paint reflectivity is close enough to fool the camera, an embossed metal plate can be faked by a piece of cardboard. One of those acrylic license place protectors would make it hard for even a human to see the difference unless they were close up.
Remember, these people are criminals, and will be dumping the fake plates and/or the entire stolen car as soon as possible.
A stolen car with fake plates matching a non-stolen car of the same model/color is an obvious technique, but with real-time tracking the fact that there's two vehicles on the road with the same plates should raise a flag indicating a crime in progress.
In this case I think it's a good thing. Of the three people he specifically mentions, he insults and belittles two of them. Whoever the top ten are, they must be pretty relieved right about now.
Where I'm from, the price ticket or label is an offer to sell, and my acceptance of that offer forms a binding contract. Businesses which offer to sell and then reneg on that offer find themselves in court.
Pull apart a few USB keyboards. You'll find a lots of ASICs. A popular flavour is an 8051 core with USB and matrix switch interfaces, plus a few GPIO pins for designers to get fancy with.
The chips generally come in three basic models, a version with flash program memory and programming support, a One Time Programmable version with programming support, and a factory-programmable version. The first is most expensive, and is targetted at designers who will have to re-program the chip many times before the design is finalised. The next is much cheaper and used for final testing and short production runs. The last is extremely cheap per unit, but because of the setup cost from the manufacturer it is only feasable for many thousands of units.
So, find out which chip your target hotel is using, buy a few of the developer version and a few hundred or thousand of the OTP version and add a serial flash chip onto some spare GPIO pins.
The cheaper keyboards(like you'll find in hotels) will be using firmware very close to the code examples provided by the chip manufacturer, so re-writing the firmware would be fairly straightforward.
The biggest problem is the changeover. You could probably do it in 15 minutes or so, but getting to each keyboard with a soldering iron for that time in a busy hotel would be difficult if you don't want to rent each room in turn. Finding an accomplice in the supply/service chain for the units would be easyest, and retrieval would be as simple as a housekeeper plugging a flash key into each unit, and typing a code on the keyboard.
I think it would be technically simpler than the ATM prosthetics scammers are doing, but requiring more social engineering for installation.
There is such a thing as "right of fair use", which is sacrosanct.
In your country perhaps, but not in mine. We have no fair use rights, we can't even back up an audio or video CD/DVD to preserve the original from physical damage.
...there will be no money left to pay SCO's lawyers.
I'm sure someone will be willing to take on the case pro bono. After all, this all about the little guy fighting the corporate behemoth, and there's reputations to be made.
You can in W2K. The BIOS provides disk services, which enable the first stage partition/format to succeed. After that, the cut down version of Windows that the installer runs in loads hardware drivers which take over the disk sub-system and if the SATA drivers are not compatible with your chipset/motherboard/drive, the system will blue-screen with a vengance.
Dell desktops have been particularly prone to this over the past year. We had to get the SATA drivers from IBM, as the DELL recovery CDs did not work.
My comment was targetted at men who practice or encourage it. Your assumption that I would discriminate againist the victim is offensive. You've managed to interpret my comment in exactly the wrong way. Or perhaps you're a troll, trying to twist my words. Whatever.
The most common reason(that I know of) for female circumcision is for a male-dominated culture to deny women sexual pleasure, and so nip infidelity in the bud. Well, there's the whole power trip/control/torture thing, but they're not the reason. Really.
You raise a good point, though. I was being sexist. The matriarchy(such as it is in those cultures) supports the practice, to maintain what power they have, because it was done to them, sheer bloodymindedness, or whatever reason.
A case may be made for male circumcision. No such case may be made for female circumcision.
Slashdot Mirror
...and the carnivorous oatmeal likes YOU.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19980509
My K3B uses cdrdao or growisofs as required. No cdrecord here...
Lord Vetinari had the solution to an out of control rat bounty.
"Tax the rat farms."
'nuf said.
'What? Oh, no!' André laughed. 'Good heavens... it's a... a kind of convenient name, I suppose. Sometimes someone has to sing a very minor part... perhaps a singer is in a role that they'd rather not be remembered in... well, here, they just go down on the programme as Walter Plinge. Lots of theatres have a useful name like that. Like A. N. Other. It's convenient for everyone.'
Andre did not explain the name in the same way as the grandparent says it means. It's just a thowaway name in the book. No hidden meaning or joke other than Walter's name appearing in the programme.
This isn't intended to prove the Met's paintings worthless (NOBODY wants that),
... what will people think?"
The owners of the artist's authentic paintings would be rather pleased if the others were proved to be false and their's authentic. The authentic paintings would be immediately worth quite a bit more.
This is also a great extortion opportunity for an authentication service. "Pay us to prove your painting's authenticity. If you don't, well
For the short time required to commit many crimes, "good enough" is good enough. As long as the paint reflectivity is close enough to fool the camera, an embossed metal plate can be faked by a piece of cardboard. One of those acrylic license place protectors would make it hard for even a human to see the difference unless they were close up.
Remember, these people are criminals, and will be dumping the fake plates and/or the entire stolen car as soon as possible.
A stolen car with fake plates matching a non-stolen car of the same model/color is an obvious technique, but with real-time tracking the fact that there's two vehicles on the road with the same plates should raise a flag indicating a crime in progress.
In this case I think it's a good thing. Of the three people he specifically mentions, he insults and belittles two of them. Whoever the top ten are, they must be pretty relieved right about now.
If that's the way your contract law works, I'm glad I don't live in the US.
Where I'm from, the price ticket or label is an offer to sell, and my acceptance of that offer forms a binding contract. Businesses which offer to sell and then reneg on that offer find themselves in court.
Very insightful, not to mention obvious.
Do Not Trust Anyone Else's Hardware
Pull apart a few USB keyboards. You'll find a lots of ASICs. A popular flavour is an 8051 core with USB and matrix switch interfaces, plus a few GPIO pins for designers to get fancy with.
The chips generally come in three basic models, a version with flash program memory and programming support, a One Time Programmable version with programming support, and a factory-programmable version. The first is most expensive, and is targetted at designers who will have to re-program the chip many times before the design is finalised. The next is much cheaper and used for final testing and short production runs. The last is extremely cheap per unit, but because of the setup cost from the manufacturer it is only feasable for many thousands of units.
So, find out which chip your target hotel is using, buy a few of the developer version and a few hundred or thousand of the OTP version and add a serial flash chip onto some spare GPIO pins.
The cheaper keyboards(like you'll find in hotels) will be using firmware very close to the code examples provided by the chip manufacturer, so re-writing the firmware would be fairly straightforward.
The biggest problem is the changeover. You could probably do it in 15 minutes or so, but getting to each keyboard with a soldering iron for that time in a busy hotel would be difficult if you don't want to rent each room in turn. Finding an accomplice in the supply/service chain for the units would be easyest, and retrieval would be as simple as a housekeeper plugging a flash key into each unit, and typing a code on the keyboard.
I think it would be technically simpler than the ATM prosthetics scammers are doing, but requiring more social engineering for installation.
Yes!
Nope, Australia.
Australia. What country are you in?
There is such a thing as "right of fair use", which is sacrosanct.
In your country perhaps, but not in mine. We have no fair use rights, we can't even back up an audio or video CD/DVD to preserve the original from physical damage.
A corporate WAN with multiple routes to the internet and load-balanced http proxies would do it, too.
I didn't really think I needed the sarcasm tags. Obviously, I was wrong.
...there will be no money left to pay SCO's lawyers.
I'm sure someone will be willing to take on the case pro bono. After all, this all about the little guy fighting the corporate behemoth, and there's reputations to be made.
You can in W2K. The BIOS provides disk services, which enable the first stage partition/format to succeed. After that, the cut down version of Windows that the installer runs in loads hardware drivers which take over the disk sub-system and if the SATA drivers are not compatible with your chipset/motherboard/drive, the system will blue-screen with a vengance.
Dell desktops have been particularly prone to this over the past year. We had to get the SATA drivers from IBM, as the DELL recovery CDs did not work.
Keep in mind that the United States and European armies are the only military forces that don't use disposable regiments
We beg to differ. So do they. Both are currently deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Europe, and the Pacific islands.
My comment was targetted at men who practice or encourage it. Your assumption that I would discriminate againist the victim is offensive. You've managed to interpret my comment in exactly the wrong way. Or perhaps you're a troll, trying to twist my words. Whatever.
The most common reason(that I know of) for female circumcision is for a male-dominated culture to deny women sexual pleasure, and so nip infidelity in the bud. Well, there's the whole power trip/control/torture thing, but they're not the reason. Really.
You raise a good point, though. I was being sexist. The matriarchy(such as it is in those cultures) supports the practice, to maintain what power they have, because it was done to them, sheer bloodymindedness, or whatever reason.
A case may be made for male circumcision. No such case may be made for female circumcision.
You can get one from Australia, the UK or Singapore. Google is your friend.
Import one from AU, UK or SG, just like we have to do from US when things don't get released here.
my Samsung Yepp has support for a playlist, or you could just organise files by folder and tell it to play whichever folder.
Here's two from the PR department:
"Microsoft Supports Female Circumcision!"
"Begone Foul Clit"