Another Houston denizen myself, I fully concur with the observation of KPRC ( Channel Two here ). They're about as lost as they can get when it comes to reporting. So annoying, in fact, I refuse to watch it anymore. Example would be a Tornado sighting.
Normal news it's " Tornado spotted near I-10 and Highway 6 "
KPRC's version of the same story is: " Terrible Twisters harass Travelers on Tuesday ! "
It's like news for third grade. . . .
Anyhoo
The price range on the plane is likely due to the electronics package you want installed on it. Start putting very high resolution cameras, thermal cameras and whatnot on it and your price will jump quickly.
Probably can blind it with high powered laser or determine it's operating freq and jam the hell out of it.
Absolute entertainment will be flying a second FPV equipped aircraft, paint it black and give it a nice small Pirate Flag to boot. Fly it up and intercept it. Arrrgh ! Ramming Speed ! Would make a nice YouTube video:)
Be creative. Maybe a ground based Estes engine equipped mini Sam site ? A few of the bigger engines can get up fairly high. Probably wouldn't even need a warhead. Kinetic impact alone would wreak havoc.
All fun aside though, the weather here in Houston can change at the drop of a hat. You can go from sunny day to full blown omg thunderstorm in fifteen minutes. The weather is so unpredictable that a convertible is not what you want to drive around in. Not sure how well this thing is going to fly when it goes head on with severe weather. It's a whole lot lighter than the Heli's HPD flies for sure. . . .
In defense of HPD, this thing would be MUCH cheaper to operate than the helicopters they currently fly around in. Basic camera equipped models would likely also be cheaper than one fully equipped squad car with a laser speed gun. Simple matter of marking the freeway at set intervals then timing the cars between marks. *shrug* They don't need an officer to write you a ticket, they simply mail them out like they do with the red light cameras.
In my opinion though, and I realize it doesn't amount to much, they're WAY understaffed with officers as it is. They probably should concentrate on getting additional police on the ground before they start looking at high tech toys.
I sent half a dozen plaintext emails from that account to my Comcast account. Once I sent a plaintext email, I then encrypted it and sent it next. All of the plaintext showed up in my Comcast Inbox almost instantly.
No issues there.
The encrypted ones, on the other hand, all went MIA. Which is what I found odd. Even more so, was the fact that all of the encrypted mail all showed up at the same time early in the am. Even though all of the mail ( encrypted and plaintext ) were all sent out around the same time. ONLY the encrypted ones ended up going missing.
I'll have to play with it some more. Perhaps it was just a fluke.
With the US dollar falling rapidly, it will not be long before India starts outsourcing their own work to the much, much cheaper United States of America !:)
The first sign will be the return of all our recently ' offshored ' jobs.
I always tell folks that the falling dollar is part of our great leaders Grand Plan to curb illegal immigration.
If we can get the dollar to fall far enough, all the illegal immigrants will leave because they can make more money if they stayed home.:)
AFAIK, the only folks who are allowed to telecommute at all are management. The non management employees are not even allowed to use the VPN system to access the network.
As a management employee, they have little recourse if AT&T decided their jobs are no longer necessary. All that is required ( in my region anyway ) is sixty days notice.
So, if AT&T wanted to lose them, they could. It wouldn't be as difficult as many think.
What I don't get is why AT&T doesn't embrace telecommuting. It's QUITE expensive to keep office space for those employees. It's expensive to provide power, environmental ( read that AC ) and everything else that goes along with having employees at a single location. It would seem to me the electric bill alone would be a big enough reason to try and push as many employees into telecommuting as possible.
Granted, there are many jobs that cannot be done remotely. Central Office and other areas that require folks on site come to mind. We do, however, have a multitude of jobs that could easily be done from . . . well. . . anywhere. A computer, phone line and VPN access and my job could easily be done from the house. Gas savings would be in the $300-$400 range per month. Lunch savings would be around $200 / month. ( Wouldn't be eating out daily ) etc. etc.
I just fail to see where having your employees all reporting to a single location could possibly have any greater cost benefits over letting them work from home.
*shrug*
Then again, my thinking is probably why I don't wear a suit for AT&T:)
I don't understand why folks are so upset over this. You do NOT give out your private keys. Ever. For anything. I don't care how convenient the new version is, if you don't have control over your private keys, they're no longer private.
In a related note:
Last night I noticed that my encrypted emails were not making it to my Comcast account. ( Yeah, I hate em too but they're a monopoly in my area. You want high speed ? You have Comcast or you have dial up. )
After checking spam settings and whatnot ( everything is disabled and wide open, no spam blocking enabled at all ) I was sending test emails from another online account to see which ones made it through.
Extremely short messages ( 1-4 lines ) would make it through. But anything longer would simply vanish. To verify my end I would send a misc cleartext message of decent length and it would go through instantly. Each and every time. Send a PgP encrypted email of the same length, and it would go MIA.
Changed to a different application and it is able to send encrypted messages through no problem. ( Encrypt This FireFox Addon ) Though this application doesn't use symbols in the cyphertext. AES algorithm that outputs alpha characters in five character groups.
I pulled the flags off of the PgP emails thinking they may be triggering on that, to no avail. Still MIA. Maybe it's keying on the random gibberish output ?
I sent in an email to tech support on it and oddly enough at five am this morning, all my encrypted emails that went MIA all came in at the same time.:|
I'm hoping they just got caught up in a Anti Virus system or something. Then again, with Comcast's reputation, it bothers me somewhat.
While I do not hold a PH.D in Mathematics, nor any grand insight as to encryption algorithms as a whole, I can't possibly believe the NSA would consider such a flawed system unless it was intentional. You don't get hired into that department unless your qualifications are somewhat impressive.
Hmm. . . well. ..just put it out there and see if anyone notices. . . .
*Dons tin foil hat*
Then again, with such a gLaringly Obvious flaw, I would Go try and find somethinG that was a bit more subtlE that may be overlooked due to the obvious distRaction.:)
Considering I WORK for AT&T, I would give him far more credit than any engineer or planner this company employs. They are engineers in title only. If you want to know how things work within a Central Office, go ask the folks who work in it. They have far better insight than the planners do.
The ONLY other possible explanation for having a room full of equipment locked up would be a co-located company. It's not uncommon for other carriers to have equipment in the office that's unaccessible to AT&T and vice versa.
However, none of them require a government clearance to gain entry. Just a simple key. Nor are they usually hidden from view. They simply put up wire cages to restrict access to the rooms in question.
All it will take is an audit of the fibers in question and the splitters. If the splitters actually exist on the backbone fibers and they route into that room, then AT&T will have some explaining to do. Simple as that.
The theory I've kicked around is this type of equipment will have a specific eqpt code in the databases AT&T uses. ( Assuming it's inventoried at all. Though the word document produced indicates that it might be ) Shouldn't be all that tough to run an eqpt scan against a Central Office CLLI code to see if it shows up in the inventory. . . .
Just a theory mind you;)
Now as to the percentage of the internet comment I saw earlier.
Do you actually believe this is the ONLY office this type of setup is installed in ? Please. If this gear is what we all think it is, then the major Toll buildings ( read that the major hubs ) will likely ALL have this gear installed in it. It's just a matter of figuring out which offices have been compromised. Probably easy to spot. Find the biggest serving office in any given city and start your search there.
It's also doubtful they are saving the Internet in real time. It's more than likely a scan and flag type setup. It's likely not even done on site. It's far more probable that the redirected traffic is shipped out another fiber that is directly connected to an NSA office in the region.
For the encryption comment:
The day we start encrypting everything on the net will be the day you see the bills popping back up to keep those ' terrorist tools ' out of the hands of the average citizen.
" It's not just illegal, it's totally unethical. My wife and I both carry cellphones - I'm a sysadmin and she's a surgeon and we're both on call basically 24/7. And yet, you'd never know that we have them, because we mute them when appropriate and never start conversations when we shouldn't. Instead, we'll either step outside quickly to answer them or let it roll to voicemail so we don't kill ourselves and others as we dive over rows of seats and then respond ASAP. Cell phone jammers punish the jackasses in theaters that we all love to hate, but they also punish the majority of users who are quiet and responsible.
Imagine that you or your mom or your kid has a problem with their recent surgery and is desperately trying to reach their doctor who went to a movie, but some smug asshole with a jammer is blocking the call. Kinda puts it in a different light, huh? "
Not really. Even if you are a responsible user of a cellphone ( and I assure you, this puts you into a very small group ) if
YOU will not ask the person next to you to take the phone outside, then you have zero complaints if someone like myself does
it via technology. If you're not willing to step up and take action, then step aside for those of us who will.
Understand, if your phone rings and you get up and leave the theater, then we will have no problems. It's when you can't
be bothered to get UP and leave when you get that call that the jammer comes into play. Use your phone responsibly and it's
unlikely you'll ever have any issues. Act like the common cell user and I'll limit your options for you.
Recall, we can't keep jammers running 24 / 7 as they do require batteries. Typically they are available but not in use until
the situation warrants it.
*shrug*
Why does everyone resort to the ' OMG what about an emergency ' defense when folks start trying to restore some decency and common sense to the cell phone ? It's the same old defense folks have used back when pagers were the annoying toy of the day. OMG What IF a DOCTOR is in the movie and he doesn't get his emergency page and someone. . . *gasp* has to call another doctor ? *rolls eyes* What DID we do as a species before the advent of the cellular phone. . ..
Out of the bazillion calls you get to overhear on a daily basis because some self-important fool is yapping away on a cell phone, what percentage of those are emergency calls ? I'm guessing it's pretty low. If it's even one percent remind me not to live anywhere near your town.
Here's the thing:
Cell phones in general do not bother me. They can be a useful tool when operated by someone who has enough snap to know they probably shouldn't fire up a conversation with Mom in the middle of a movie. Or talk to person X while attempting to drive down the freeway at eighty miles per hour. People also don't want to hear your ring tone from across the restaurant because you're too damn deaf to hear it unless the volume is completely maxed out. I personally don't enjoy standing in line at the sandwich shop while you yap on the phone instead of ordering your food. Apparently Subway doesn't like it either as they now have signs ( assuming the aforementioned phone user is literate ) that politely ask you to STFU, hang up the phone and order your meal. Yeah, it's become THAT bad when you have to post signs to remind folks to quit holding up the line while you yap on the phone.
You have other alternatives. You can ask them to realize their car isn't a phonebooth. Or that the entire movie theater doesn't really give a sh*t about their personal life. Asking someone to use some decent judgement when it comes to using a cell phone will elicit one of the following scenarios:
1) You'll be told to STFU and an instant fight will ensue ( there's that 1% emergency call I referred to earlier ) 2) They'll pretend they didn't hear you and keep on talking 3) They might actually listen to you and put the phone away
# 3 is about as likely as my winning the lotto.
Enter the jammer.
This little device forces the behavior that SHOULD be second nature to all cell phone users. Make no mistake about it, people don't go out and spend a few hundred dollars on a jammer without good reason. That reason is folks have tried conventional methods to possibly remind and / or teach the common cell phone junkie how to use the device correctly. I'd have better luck teaching a brick to sing.
I've talked, pleaded, threatened and nearly physically assaulted a number of folks after politely asking them to ' take it outside ' and getting nothing but arrogant attitude back. It's the same level of intelligence you deal with when you spot the guy smoking while filling up his gas tank. No common sense whatsoever. Beyond any ability to reason with. DARE to question what they're doing and it's likely you'll be fighting shortly thereafter.
As a result, and to keep a stupid situation from becoming a hospital visit for you, people like me will resort to technology. If you don't have enough grey matter to figure out your blabbing on a cell phone during the movie *might* annoy the hell out of folks, then you're also probably lacking the intelligence to know your phone is being deliberately jammed.
So ! The next time your phone shows ' no signal ' in the theater, keep me in mind. I'm saving us both from a fist fight, and keeping you from your God given right to annoy masses of people all at the same time.
Now if only someone can invent a device that jams crying children. . . ..
You would blow up the check-in counter exactly ONE time before our knee-jerk, reaction based society would DEMAND that security screenings be held outside the airport. Perhaps at the front gate ?
Then some yahoo would blow up the crowd of folks waiting there and we would continue to move the primary security screening points out so far, you would end up having to check with the local gestapo and get screened before you even left your home.
Bottom line, if you want to kill masses of people there will always be a way. No matter how much ' security ' we have, or how careful we all pretend to be.
All the worry in the world isn't going to change this. So you may as well save yourself that ulcer and get on with life. . .
Simply because the information is available doesn't mean everyone who reads and / or learns the information contained therein instantly becomes a terrorist. Nor do they feel any overwhelming urge to launch a Jihad against everything in sight.
Reading these types of books is fascinating. It's interesting for minds who require a bit more advanced entertainment than hours of mindless TV night after night.
TIP: If you enjoy ' Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader ' then reading anything is probably not on your list of things you like to do.
Sarcasm aside, banning information is a surefire method to ensure everyone will try and read it. Possession of the information itself should not be a criminal offense. Getting caught trying to implement some of the ideas ( ergo building an incendiary or explosive device ) to protest your taxes is still covered by our current laws.
Where do you stop ? Going to throw everyone in jail who has already read them ? How about the authors who wrote them ? Why don't we just jail everyone who can read and be done with it ? You know, go back to the old religious way of doing things where it was an offense to be literate at all. Only the clergy were allowed to read. Wouldn't want the common folks forming their own opinions you know. . . . .
To date, I have never created anything more explosive than the Taco Bell I made the mistake of consuming once. . . .
Yet, I have owned ( at some point ) books and information far, FAR more dangerous than the Anarchist Cookbook. . . .
Once upon a time, Paladin Press was a respectable publisher who believed censorship had no place in the books / information they sold. Apparently, the Government changed their mind and they ceased selling anything that was considered ' controversial. '
The last purchase I made from the company was titled " The Spook Book II. " It became the last purchase when several of the schematics within had various parts censored out. ( Because building an amplifier assembly for a parabolic mic might endanger someones life somewhere of course. . . .:| )
It angered me so much that I destroyed every title I owned from the company in protest ( A few thousand dollars worth ) and have never ordered anything from them again.
Information censorship just doesn't work. It will find a way to get to the folks who need it. Legal or otherwise.
The United States doesn't NEED to do this in order to decrypt your data. The UK law is the lazy way of going about it. In the US, if you're under investigation and the powers that be believe you encrypt your data, you can expect to be the recipient of a key logger in some form or another in the near future.
Your PI to the Nth power key is worth squat once the key logger has done it's job.
So yes, we might FEEL like our data is safe, but in reality who checks their system and / or hardware on a daily basis to look for things the FBI likes to leave behind while you're at work ?
Microwaves will produce a current in metallic objects.
If you've ever been on a ship with higher powered radars, you've seen the warning circles painted on various things in the immediate vicinity of a radar.
For the same reasons ammo transfers are done after ensuring all radar systems are offline. You don't want a radar sweep to generate a current in the round your moving from point A to point B.
How hard could it be to rig up a suicide vest to trigger on these ' specifically tuned ' microwaves ? Not much danger to the bomber until someone shines the ol pain beam on his ass. . . .
I can pretty much say with some confidence that if you were hit with a device such as this your attitude would likely change. Pain teaches very very quickly. It is likely you will not simply stand there and let it happen again if you have been exposed to it's effects already.
If I walked up and hit you with a Taser on a daily basis for a few days, would you simply stand there and let me do it again knowing what was about to happen ? Doubtful. After one or two applications, it would be likely we would be fighting the moment you saw the device from that point on.
You may find yourself doing whatever it took to keep it from happening again. If that meant resorting to deadly force and / or using a firearm, so be it.
" Why? An officer that's shown to abuse people can't keep his job unless an elected official/body allows him/her to. There isn't a law enforcement officer of any type, working at any level in the US that doesn't answer to elected civilians. "
You fail to understand the problem. Yes, your statement is a true one provided you can PROVE the officer actually
did something to warrant his / her dismissal. Here's a news flash, if you don't have video proof that the officer
did what you claim, you're SOL.
Your word vs the officers word in a court of law is nothing. The officers word will always ( ALWAYS ) trump a
non-officers. With a device like this that leaves no evidence of it's use, I personally think it will only
escalate a situation out of the fear of it being used in the first place.
If I knew I was going to be on the receiving end of one of these simply because I'm not following orders
fast enough, I can flat out guarantee you it would turn into a gun fight because I would open fire long before
they could deploy it.
If these become commonplace the problem will snowball. Pain begets one of two things:
1) Compliance 2) Ultra-Violence
As a result, when hit with one of these things folks are either going to crawl up into a ball and hope it goes away, or come out guns blazing to destroy the device causing the pain to begin with. ( and likely the wielder with it )
If I were to attend a demonstration where it is known the police would likely use such a device on the crowd I would either:
1) Re-consider my attendance
or
2) Setup similar devices to aim at the police or resort to current tech ( read that firearms )
You cannot use what would be considered an electronic torture device on me and expect me to be ok with it. The operators of such a device would be the FIRST targets I went after. Since it's unlikely the citizens would have similar tech in their hands for use, firearms will put a stop to it just as quickly.
I actually have the original CD to this thing somewhere. . . .
I had forgotten all about it till I saw this article.
One of my all time favorite spells had to be " Mean Stalks ". The icon of plants with an ' angry face ' just cracked me up.:)
I'm gonna have to go dust this one off again. . . . .
The issues with Bio-Shock
on
BioShock Review
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I believe the issues folks are having with Bio-Shock has nothing to do with the gameplay or it's environment at all. Rather, the SecuRom DRM, the online activation and restrictive number of times it can be loaded on a PC.
The console variants do not suffer from any of this, thus those folks would not have been exposed to it.
I've long been of the mindset that if the console folks would wake up and give me a keyboard and / or a mouse / trackball interface, I would switch to consoles for all my gaming needs tomorrow.
Just absolutely hate the controllers the consoles come with today:)
Ahhh. I watched something similar to this unfold in front of me a few months ago.
As I was walking in the door to to Fry's ( typical electronic store here ) a man was walking out the front door with his plastic bag in one hand, receipt in the other after just submitting himself to the idiots checking the receipt at the front door.
What happened next was interesting.
Some goofy retard is sitting on one of the giant concrete spheres placed in front of the entrance ( this somewhat deters folks from driving through the front door with their car ) and appears to be chatting on the phone. When the aforementioned individual, his bag and receipt come out the front door, the guy sitting on the sphere jumps up whips out his Fry's Badge and decries
" Asset Protection ! Stand where you are ! "
Whereafter he physically grabs the individual by the arm. Now, no fewer than THREE more employees come running out of nowhere and TACKLE this guy. The question I asked myself was " Do you really need to tackle the guy when you outnumber him four to one ? "
Did this really need to take place at all when you could have stopped him at the register or even at the front door before he walked outside ?
This all happened in about five seconds.
Now, perhaps I'm thinking the wrong way here but if I were in his shoes and did nothing wrong I would have done my best to destroy the first individual who grabbed me. As for the rest, the fight would have been on at that point.
Granted, he may have been the evil mastermind of an elaborate credit card fraud ring. Though I find it very unlikely. If the card came back as stolen why not notify the store manager / security and deal with it right there ?
What happens in the above situation when the store gets it wrong ? They basically attack some customer and let's say the customer ( being fully in the right ) severely injures or even kills one of the ' Asset Protection ' employees during the fight. After all, someone I don't know yells something at me then proceeds to immobilize me ? One of us is guaranteed a trip to the hospital. . .
Is this a risk the store really wants to be taking ?
On an unrelated note, maybe I'm just not paying attention much but everytime I post a comment here now, Slashdot.org runs what looks like a portscan against my IP address. ( My firewall starts yelling ) About sixteen different ports are scanned including 80, 8080, 1026, 444 and several others. I would post the actual scan from my logs but it seems to get caught up in the lame filter preventing the post. . . .
No need to put the soapbox away:) Your tirade is quite understandable.
I personally hate our Union.
There are those who believe that without it, our benefits and pay would suffer. I disagree on that one. Any company who wishes to hire and KEEP employees will need to offer benefits and pay on par with what the other companies can offer. If you cannot, then your longterm employee pool will suffer greatly as your best employees leave to find greener pastures.
The hard core Union supporters never think about WHY the Union fights for pay raises. It's really not all that difficult to see when you take the blinders off. Our Union get 2.25 hours of pay as dues. Thus as my pay goes up, so does theirs. They're simply voting in their own pay raise in an indirect manner.
Strikes ? LOL ineffective anymore. My company ( the Evil AT&T ) has a long term solution in the works. Non-management no longer gets any training on any new equipment that we are required to maintain. ( Not in this years budget you know. Gotta keep the exec bonus pool up ! )
Yet, all the management seem to have unlimited access to any schools they require for the same equipment. Within five to ten years, there will be no one except management who knows how to work on these systems. Easy to shift the responsibility once that happens:)
What's the difference ? AT&T doesn't have to pay it's management employees any overtime. They're on call 24 / 7 and slaved to their pagers / cell phones. They can fire a manager at the drop of a hat with zero explanation if they need to. The ultimate employee in their eyes.
Unions were a great idea once upon a time. These days I think they cause more problems than they solve.
I do some minor IT work for the evil phone company ( yeah I know, boo hiss, I hate em too:) )
It is a Union Company. If you are not management, you have to abide by the Union rules, regardless if you're actually a member or not.
What this means is, I can be the most brilliant employee the company has, the absolute star performer. Or, I can be the employee who can't even boot their own computer without calling the help desk.
Our pay will be the same.
That alone is a serious motivation killer. You can single handedly double the companies income but when layoffs start, he who hath more seniority ( even if he is a complete idiot ) will stay and you'll be on the street.
There is no motivation to be the ' better / faster / more efficient ' employee because there is no justification for it. As a result, your more efficient employees will appear to be goofing off more, yet still seem to be able to get the same amount of work done.
Not surprising. CALEA setups give law enforcement direct access to the Central Office switches. Regardless of flavor ( DMS, 5ESS, Erickson, etc. etc. ) While I am not certain what level of access they have, I've seen their connections. It's a simple matter of telnetting to an IP / Socket and shazam, they're in the switch. One of these days, I'll set up a monitor across one of those systems and see just how often they're actually used. . .
Typical OOB access to the switch is accomplished using Cisco 2511 systems or Applied Innovations boxes sitting on a semi-restricted network. ( Data collection network actually )
Gotta agree with you on this one. I too am somewhat familiar with the Medeco series of locks and until I see someone actually open one without a key, I will remain very, very skeptical of any claim otherwise.
The units I am familiar with were used on high security doors. Things like weapons lockers, arms magazines, even my Armored Box Launched Tomahawk Cruise missile launchers. . . . .
I did lock picking as a hobby and a means to keep my sanity during deployments. I was able to pull apart a Medeco cylinder to see what made them so tough. Besides the fact that the pins are made of carbide ( as well as carbide inserts in the face of the lock to deter drilling ) there is no shear line that you will be able to hear or feel.
Medeco's use an angled tumbler concept where a hole is drilled into the side of each tumbler. The key is beveled so it will both lift and twist the pin to the proper height and angle for the drilled hole to line up with a pinned sidebar. My cylinder was equipped with six or seven tumblers. Thus lifting to the correct height, twisting for the correct angle and holding it for each of the tumblers is a very tall order for someone trying to ' pick ' the lock.
Once all the tumblers are lifted to height X and twisted for angle Y, all of the drilled holes line up with the pins on the sidebar. The sidebar is able to seat and the cylinder will now open.
Bottom line, they can make all the claims they want. I'll believe it when I see it. Easier to blast the door open with some C-4.:)
I don't think Rail Guns will replace cruise missiles, they may augment them, but not replace. They just don't have the range unless we get the rail guns to ICBM distance standards.
Typical land attack cruise missile ( Tomahawk ) has an unclassified max range of ~1700km. It's true max range, as you can guess, exceeds this by some distance. Some variables come into play here like weather and warhead loadout. ( Trivia! W-80 warhead is lighter thus can go further ) Some variants of the Tomahawk ( specifically the TLAM-D ) can engage multiple targets along the flight path.
Lasers are going to be short range systems. Due to atmospheric conditions they'll have to be. Line of sight is pretty much the rule on a good day. Heat buildup and the removal of it will dictate how fast the system can fire. Wonder how long it will take before mortar and artillery rounds get a nice chrome plating to reflect most of the incoming laser energy ?
Slashdot Mirror
Another Houston denizen myself, I fully concur with the observation
:)
of KPRC ( Channel Two here ). They're about as lost as they can get
when it comes to reporting. So annoying, in fact, I refuse to watch
it anymore. Example would be a Tornado sighting.
Normal news it's
" Tornado spotted near I-10 and Highway 6 "
KPRC's version of the same story is:
" Terrible Twisters harass Travelers on Tuesday ! "
It's like news for third grade. . . .
Anyhoo
The price range on the plane is likely due to the electronics package
you want installed on it. Start putting very high resolution cameras,
thermal cameras and whatnot on it and your price will jump quickly.
Probably can blind it with high powered laser or determine it's
operating freq and jam the hell out of it.
Absolute entertainment will be flying a second FPV equipped aircraft,
paint it black and give it a nice small Pirate Flag to boot. Fly it up and
intercept it. Arrrgh ! Ramming Speed ! Would make a nice YouTube video
Be creative. Maybe a ground based Estes engine equipped mini Sam site ?
A few of the bigger engines can get up fairly high. Probably wouldn't even
need a warhead. Kinetic impact alone would wreak havoc.
All fun aside though, the weather here in Houston can change at the drop
of a hat. You can go from sunny day to full blown omg thunderstorm in
fifteen minutes. The weather is so unpredictable that a convertible is
not what you want to drive around in. Not sure how well this thing is
going to fly when it goes head on with severe weather. It's a whole lot
lighter than the Heli's HPD flies for sure. . . .
In defense of HPD, this thing would be MUCH cheaper to operate than the
helicopters they currently fly around in. Basic camera equipped models
would likely also be cheaper than one fully equipped squad car with a
laser speed gun. Simple matter of marking the freeway at set intervals then
timing the cars between marks. *shrug* They don't need an officer to write
you a ticket, they simply mail them out like they do with the red light
cameras.
In my opinion though, and I realize it doesn't amount to much, they're WAY
understaffed with officers as it is. They probably should concentrate on
getting additional police on the ground before they start looking at high
tech toys.
As a test, I fired up a Yahoo account.
I sent half a dozen plaintext emails from that account to my Comcast account.
Once I sent a plaintext email, I then encrypted it and sent it next.
All of the plaintext showed up in my Comcast Inbox almost instantly.
No issues there.
The encrypted ones, on the other hand, all went MIA. Which is what I found odd.
Even more so, was the fact that all of the encrypted mail all showed up at
the same time early in the am. Even though all of the mail ( encrypted and plaintext )
were all sent out around the same time. ONLY the encrypted ones ended up going missing.
I'll have to play with it some more. Perhaps it was just a fluke.
Ahhh but Padi-Wan !
:)
:)
With the US dollar falling rapidly, it will not be long before
India starts outsourcing their own work to the much, much cheaper
United States of America !
The first sign will be the return of all our recently ' offshored '
jobs.
I always tell folks that the falling dollar is part of our great
leaders Grand Plan to curb illegal immigration.
If we can get the dollar to fall far enough, all the illegal immigrants
will leave because they can make more money if they stayed home.
Is it that expensive ?
:)
AFAIK, the only folks who are allowed to telecommute at all are management. The non
management employees are not even allowed to use the VPN system to access the network.
As a management employee, they have little recourse if AT&T decided their jobs are no
longer necessary. All that is required ( in my region anyway ) is sixty days notice.
So, if AT&T wanted to lose them, they could. It wouldn't be as difficult as many think.
What I don't get is why AT&T doesn't embrace telecommuting. It's QUITE expensive to keep
office space for those employees. It's expensive to provide power, environmental ( read that
AC ) and everything else that goes along with having employees at a single location. It would
seem to me the electric bill alone would be a big enough reason to try and push as many
employees into telecommuting as possible.
Granted, there are many jobs that cannot be done remotely. Central Office and other areas
that require folks on site come to mind. We do, however, have a multitude of jobs that could
easily be done from . . . well. . . anywhere. A computer, phone line and VPN access and my
job could easily be done from the house. Gas savings would be in the $300-$400 range per month.
Lunch savings would be around $200 / month. ( Wouldn't be eating out daily ) etc. etc.
I just fail to see where having your employees all reporting to a single location could
possibly have any greater cost benefits over letting them work from home.
*shrug*
Then again, my thinking is probably why I don't wear a suit for AT&T
Have to agree with you on this.
:|
I don't understand why folks are so upset over this. You do NOT
give out your private keys. Ever. For anything. I don't care
how convenient the new version is, if you don't have control over
your private keys, they're no longer private.
In a related note:
Last night I noticed that my encrypted emails were not making it
to my Comcast account. ( Yeah, I hate em too but they're a monopoly
in my area. You want high speed ? You have Comcast or you have dial
up. )
After checking spam settings and whatnot ( everything is disabled and
wide open, no spam blocking enabled at all ) I was sending test emails
from another online account to see which ones made it through.
Extremely short messages ( 1-4 lines ) would make it through. But
anything longer would simply vanish. To verify my end I would send
a misc cleartext message of decent length and it would go through
instantly. Each and every time. Send a PgP encrypted email of the
same length, and it would go MIA.
Changed to a different application and it is able to send encrypted
messages through no problem. ( Encrypt This FireFox Addon ) Though
this application doesn't use symbols in the cyphertext. AES algorithm
that outputs alpha characters in five character groups.
I pulled the flags off of the PgP emails thinking they may be triggering
on that, to no avail. Still MIA. Maybe it's keying on the random gibberish
output ?
I sent in an email to tech support on it and oddly enough at five
am this morning, all my encrypted emails that went MIA all came in
at the same time.
I'm hoping they just got caught up in a Anti Virus system or something.
Then again, with Comcast's reputation, it bothers me somewhat.
*shrug*
While I do not hold a PH.D in Mathematics, nor any grand insight as to encryption
.just put it out there and see if anyone notices. . . .
:)
algorithms as a whole, I can't possibly believe the NSA would consider such a flawed
system unless it was intentional. You don't get hired into that department unless your
qualifications are somewhat impressive.
Hmm. . . well. .
*Dons tin foil hat*
Then again, with such a gLaringly Obvious flaw, I would Go try and find
somethinG that was a bit more subtlE that may be overlooked due to the obvious
distRaction.
Considering I WORK for AT&T, I would give him far more credit than any engineer
;)
or planner this company employs. They are engineers in title only. If you want
to know how things work within a Central Office, go ask the folks who work in it.
They have far better insight than the planners do.
The ONLY other possible explanation for having a room full of equipment locked up
would be a co-located company. It's not uncommon for other carriers to have
equipment in the office that's unaccessible to AT&T and vice versa.
However, none of them require a government clearance to gain entry. Just a
simple key. Nor are they usually hidden from view. They simply put up wire cages
to restrict access to the rooms in question.
All it will take is an audit of the fibers in question and the splitters. If the
splitters actually exist on the backbone fibers and they route into that room, then
AT&T will have some explaining to do. Simple as that.
The theory I've kicked around is this type of equipment will have a specific eqpt
code in the databases AT&T uses. ( Assuming it's inventoried at all. Though the
word document produced indicates that it might be ) Shouldn't be all that tough to run
an eqpt scan against a Central Office CLLI code to see if it shows up in the
inventory. . . .
Just a theory mind you
Now as to the percentage of the internet comment I saw earlier.
Do you actually believe this is the ONLY office this type of setup is installed in ?
Please. If this gear is what we all think it is, then the major Toll buildings
( read that the major hubs ) will likely ALL have this gear installed in it. It's
just a matter of figuring out which offices have been compromised. Probably easy to
spot. Find the biggest serving office in any given city and start your search there.
It's also doubtful they are saving the Internet in real time. It's more than likely
a scan and flag type setup. It's likely not even done on site. It's far more probable
that the redirected traffic is shipped out another fiber that is directly connected to
an NSA office in the region.
For the encryption comment:
The day we start encrypting everything on the net will be the day you see the bills
popping back up to keep those ' terrorist tools ' out of the hands of the average
citizen.
" It's not just illegal, it's totally unethical. My wife and I both carry cellphones - I'm a sysadmin and she's a surgeon and we're both on call basically 24/7. And yet, you'd never know that we have them, because we mute them when appropriate and never start conversations when we shouldn't. Instead, we'll either step outside quickly to answer them or let it roll to voicemail so we don't kill ourselves and others as we dive over rows of seats and then respond ASAP. Cell phone jammers punish the jackasses in theaters that we all love to hate, but they also punish the majority of users who are quiet and responsible. Imagine that you or your mom or your kid has a problem with their recent surgery and is desperately trying to reach their doctor who went to a movie, but some smug asshole with a jammer is blocking the call. Kinda puts it in a different light, huh? " Not really. Even if you are a responsible user of a cellphone ( and I assure you, this puts you into a very small group ) if YOU will not ask the person next to you to take the phone outside, then you have zero complaints if someone like myself does it via technology. If you're not willing to step up and take action, then step aside for those of us who will. Understand, if your phone rings and you get up and leave the theater, then we will have no problems. It's when you can't be bothered to get UP and leave when you get that call that the jammer comes into play. Use your phone responsibly and it's unlikely you'll ever have any issues. Act like the common cell user and I'll limit your options for you. Recall, we can't keep jammers running 24 / 7 as they do require batteries. Typically they are available but not in use until the situation warrants it. *shrug*
Why does everyone resort to the ' OMG what about an emergency ' defense when folks start trying to restore some decency .
.
and common sense to the cell phone ? It's the same old defense folks have used back when pagers were the annoying toy
of the day. OMG What IF a DOCTOR is in the movie and he doesn't get his emergency page and someone. . . *gasp* has to
call another doctor ? *rolls eyes* What DID we do as a species before the advent of the cellular phone. . .
Out of the bazillion calls you get to overhear on a daily basis because some self-important fool is yapping away
on a cell phone, what percentage of those are emergency calls ? I'm guessing it's pretty low. If it's even one
percent remind me not to live anywhere near your town.
Here's the thing:
Cell phones in general do not bother me. They can be a useful tool when operated by someone who has enough snap
to know they probably shouldn't fire up a conversation with Mom in the middle of a movie. Or talk to person X while
attempting to drive down the freeway at eighty miles per hour. People also don't want to hear your ring tone from
across the restaurant because you're too damn deaf to hear it unless the volume is completely maxed out. I personally
don't enjoy standing in line at the sandwich shop while you yap on the phone instead of ordering your food. Apparently
Subway doesn't like it either as they now have signs ( assuming the aforementioned phone user is literate ) that politely
ask you to STFU, hang up the phone and order your meal. Yeah, it's become THAT bad when you have to post signs to remind
folks to quit holding up the line while you yap on the phone.
You have other alternatives. You can ask them to realize their car isn't a phonebooth. Or that the entire
movie theater doesn't really give a sh*t about their personal life. Asking someone to use some decent judgement
when it comes to using a cell phone will elicit one of the following scenarios:
1) You'll be told to STFU and an instant fight will ensue ( there's that 1% emergency call I referred to earlier )
2) They'll pretend they didn't hear you and keep on talking
3) They might actually listen to you and put the phone away
# 3 is about as likely as my winning the lotto.
Enter the jammer.
This little device forces the behavior that SHOULD be second nature to all cell phone users. Make no mistake about it,
people don't go out and spend a few hundred dollars on a jammer without good reason. That reason is folks have tried
conventional methods to possibly remind and / or teach the common cell phone junkie how to use the device correctly.
I'd have better luck teaching a brick to sing.
I've talked, pleaded, threatened and nearly physically assaulted a number of folks after politely asking them to ' take
it outside ' and getting nothing but arrogant attitude back. It's the same level of intelligence you deal with when you
spot the guy smoking while filling up his gas tank. No common sense whatsoever. Beyond any ability to reason with.
DARE to question what they're doing and it's likely you'll be fighting shortly thereafter.
As a result, and to keep a stupid situation from becoming a hospital visit for you, people like me will resort to
technology. If you don't have enough grey matter to figure out your blabbing on a cell phone during the movie *might*
annoy the hell out of folks, then you're also probably lacking the intelligence to know your phone is being deliberately
jammed.
Keeping the blissfully ignorant. . . . well. . . blissfully ignorant.
So ! The next time your phone shows ' no signal ' in the theater, keep me in mind. I'm saving us both from a
fist fight, and keeping you from your God given right to annoy masses of people all at the same time.
Now if only someone can invent a device that jams crying children. . . .
And now some jammer tips!
Tip # 1: A jammer will actually let you watch the
Ok.
You would blow up the check-in counter exactly ONE time before
our knee-jerk, reaction based society would DEMAND that security
screenings be held outside the airport. Perhaps at the front
gate ?
Then some yahoo would blow up the crowd of folks waiting there
and we would continue to move the primary security screening points
out so far, you would end up having to check with the local
gestapo and get screened before you even left your home.
Bottom line, if you want to kill masses of people there will
always be a way. No matter how much ' security ' we have, or
how careful we all pretend to be.
All the worry in the world isn't going to change this. So you
may as well save yourself that ulcer and get on with life. . .
Simply because the information is available doesn't mean
:| )
everyone who reads and / or learns the information contained
therein instantly becomes a terrorist. Nor do they feel any
overwhelming urge to launch a Jihad against everything in sight.
Reading these types of books is fascinating. It's interesting
for minds who require a bit more advanced entertainment than
hours of mindless TV night after night.
TIP: If you enjoy ' Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader ' then
reading anything is probably not on your list of things you like
to do.
Sarcasm aside, banning information is a surefire method to ensure
everyone will try and read it. Possession of the information itself
should not be a criminal offense. Getting caught trying to implement
some of the ideas ( ergo building an incendiary or explosive device )
to protest your taxes is still covered by our current laws.
Where do you stop ? Going to throw everyone in jail who has already
read them ? How about the authors who wrote them ? Why don't we just
jail everyone who can read and be done with it ? You know, go back to
the old religious way of doing things where it was an offense to be
literate at all. Only the clergy were allowed to read. Wouldn't want
the common folks forming their own opinions you know. . . . .
To date, I have never created anything more explosive than the Taco Bell
I made the mistake of consuming once. . . .
Yet, I have owned ( at some point ) books and information far, FAR more
dangerous than the Anarchist Cookbook. . . .
Once upon a time, Paladin Press was a respectable publisher who believed
censorship had no place in the books / information they sold. Apparently,
the Government changed their mind and they ceased selling anything that
was considered ' controversial. '
The last purchase I made from the company was titled " The Spook Book II. "
It became the last purchase when several of the schematics within had various
parts censored out. ( Because building an amplifier assembly for a parabolic
mic might endanger someones life somewhere of course. . . .
It angered me so much that I destroyed every title I owned from the company
in protest ( A few thousand dollars worth ) and have never ordered anything
from them again.
Information censorship just doesn't work. It will find a way to get to the
folks who need it. Legal or otherwise.
The United States doesn't NEED to do this in order to decrypt your data. The UK law is the lazy way
of going about it. In the US, if you're under investigation and the powers that be believe you
encrypt your data, you can expect to be the recipient of a key logger in some form or another in the
near future.
Your PI to the Nth power key is worth squat once the key logger has done it's job.
So yes, we might FEEL like our data is safe, but in reality who checks their system and / or hardware
on a daily basis to look for things the FBI likes to leave behind while you're at work ?
Just a thought.
Microwaves will produce a current in metallic objects.
If you've ever been on a ship with higher powered radars, you've
seen the warning circles painted on various things in the immediate
vicinity of a radar.
For the same reasons ammo transfers are done after ensuring all
radar systems are offline. You don't want a radar sweep to generate
a current in the round your moving from point A to point B.
How hard could it be to rig up a suicide vest to trigger on these
' specifically tuned ' microwaves ? Not much danger to the bomber
until someone shines the ol pain beam on his ass. . . .
I can pretty much say with some confidence that if you were hit with a device such as this
your attitude would likely change. Pain teaches very very quickly. It is likely you will
not simply stand there and let it happen again if you have been exposed to it's effects
already.
If I walked up and hit you with a Taser on a daily basis for a few days, would you simply
stand there and let me do it again knowing what was about to happen ? Doubtful. After one
or two applications, it would be likely we would be fighting the moment you saw the device
from that point on.
You may find yourself doing whatever it took to keep it from happening again. If that meant
resorting to deadly force and / or using a firearm, so be it.
" Why? An officer that's shown to abuse people can't keep his job unless an elected official/body allows him/her to. There isn't a law enforcement officer of any type, working at any level in the US that doesn't answer to elected civilians. " You fail to understand the problem. Yes, your statement is a true one provided you can PROVE the officer actually did something to warrant his / her dismissal. Here's a news flash, if you don't have video proof that the officer did what you claim, you're SOL. Your word vs the officers word in a court of law is nothing. The officers word will always ( ALWAYS ) trump a non-officers. With a device like this that leaves no evidence of it's use, I personally think it will only escalate a situation out of the fear of it being used in the first place. If I knew I was going to be on the receiving end of one of these simply because I'm not following orders fast enough, I can flat out guarantee you it would turn into a gun fight because I would open fire long before they could deploy it.
No you wouldn't.
If these become commonplace the problem will snowball. Pain begets one of two things:
1) Compliance
2) Ultra-Violence
As a result, when hit with one of these things folks are either going to crawl up into
a ball and hope it goes away, or come out guns blazing to destroy the device causing the
pain to begin with. ( and likely the wielder with it )
If I were to attend a demonstration where it is known the police would likely use such
a device on the crowd I would either:
1) Re-consider my attendance
or
2) Setup similar devices to aim at the police or resort to current tech ( read that firearms )
You cannot use what would be considered an electronic torture device on me and expect me
to be ok with it. The operators of such a device would be the FIRST targets I went after.
Since it's unlikely the citizens would have similar tech in their hands for use, firearms will
put a stop to it just as quickly.
I actually have the original CD to this thing somewhere. . . .
:)
I had forgotten all about it till I saw this article.
One of my all time favorite spells had to be " Mean Stalks ". The
icon of plants with an ' angry face ' just cracked me up.
I'm gonna have to go dust this one off again. . . . .
I believe the issues folks are having with Bio-Shock has nothing to do with the gameplay or it's
:)
environment at all. Rather, the SecuRom DRM, the online activation and restrictive number of times
it can be loaded on a PC.
The console variants do not suffer from any of this, thus those folks would not have been exposed to it.
I've long been of the mindset that if the console folks would wake up and give me a keyboard and / or a
mouse / trackball interface, I would switch to consoles for all my gaming needs tomorrow.
Just absolutely hate the controllers the consoles come with today
Ahhh. I watched something similar to this unfold in front of me a few months ago.
As I was walking in the door to to Fry's ( typical electronic store here ) a man was walking out the
front door with his plastic bag in one hand, receipt in the other after just submitting himself to
the idiots checking the receipt at the front door.
What happened next was interesting.
Some goofy retard is sitting on one of the giant concrete spheres placed in front of the entrance
( this somewhat deters folks from driving through the front door with their car ) and appears to
be chatting on the phone. When the aforementioned individual, his bag and receipt come out the
front door, the guy sitting on the sphere jumps up whips out his Fry's Badge and decries
" Asset Protection ! Stand where you are ! "
Whereafter he physically grabs the individual by the arm. Now, no fewer than THREE more employees
come running out of nowhere and TACKLE this guy. The question I asked myself was " Do you really
need to tackle the guy when you outnumber him four to one ? "
Did this really need to take place at all when you could have stopped him at the register or even
at the front door before he walked outside ?
This all happened in about five seconds.
Now, perhaps I'm thinking the wrong way here but if I were in his shoes and did nothing wrong I
would have done my best to destroy the first individual who grabbed me. As for the rest, the
fight would have been on at that point.
Granted, he may have been the evil mastermind of an elaborate credit card fraud ring. Though I
find it very unlikely. If the card came back as stolen why not notify the store manager / security
and deal with it right there ?
What happens in the above situation when the store gets it wrong ? They basically attack some
customer and let's say the customer ( being fully in the right ) severely injures or even kills
one of the ' Asset Protection ' employees during the fight. After all, someone I don't know yells
something at me then proceeds to immobilize me ? One of us is guaranteed a trip to the hospital. . .
Is this a risk the store really wants to be taking ?
On an unrelated note, maybe I'm just not paying attention much but everytime I post a comment here
now, Slashdot.org runs what looks like a portscan against my IP address. ( My firewall starts yelling )
About sixteen different ports are scanned including 80, 8080, 1026, 444 and several others. I would post
the actual scan from my logs but it seems to get caught up in the lame filter preventing the post. . . .
Any others notice this ?
No need to put the soapbox away :) Your tirade is quite understandable.
:)
I personally hate our Union.
There are those who believe that without it, our benefits and pay would suffer. I disagree on that one.
Any company who wishes to hire and KEEP employees will need to offer benefits and pay on par with what the
other companies can offer. If you cannot, then your longterm employee pool will suffer greatly as your
best employees leave to find greener pastures.
The hard core Union supporters never think about WHY the Union fights for pay raises. It's really not
all that difficult to see when you take the blinders off. Our Union get 2.25 hours of pay as dues.
Thus as my pay goes up, so does theirs. They're simply voting in their own pay raise in an
indirect manner.
Strikes ? LOL ineffective anymore. My company ( the Evil AT&T ) has a long term solution in the works.
Non-management no longer gets any training on any new equipment that we are required to maintain. ( Not
in this years budget you know. Gotta keep the exec bonus pool up ! )
Yet, all the management seem to have unlimited access to any schools they require for the same equipment.
Within five to ten years, there will be no one except management who knows how to work on these systems.
Easy to shift the responsibility once that happens
What's the difference ? AT&T doesn't have to pay it's management employees any overtime. They're on
call 24 / 7 and slaved to their pagers / cell phones. They can fire a manager at the drop of a hat
with zero explanation if they need to. The ultimate employee in their eyes.
Unions were a great idea once upon a time. These days I think they cause more problems than they
solve.
I do some minor IT work for the evil phone company ( yeah I know, boo hiss, I hate em too :) )
It is a Union Company. If you are not management, you have to abide by the Union
rules, regardless if you're actually a member or not.
What this means is, I can be the most brilliant employee the company has, the
absolute star performer. Or, I can be the employee who can't even boot their own computer
without calling the help desk.
Our pay will be the same.
That alone is a serious motivation killer. You can single handedly double the companies income
but when layoffs start, he who hath more seniority ( even if he is a complete idiot ) will
stay and you'll be on the street.
There is no motivation to be the ' better / faster / more efficient ' employee because there is
no justification for it. As a result, your more efficient employees will appear to be goofing
off more, yet still seem to be able to get the same amount of work done.
*shrug*
Not surprising. CALEA setups give law enforcement direct access to the Central Office switches.
Regardless of flavor ( DMS, 5ESS, Erickson, etc. etc. ) While I am not certain what level of access
they have, I've seen their connections. It's a simple matter of telnetting to an IP / Socket and
shazam, they're in the switch. One of these days, I'll set up a monitor across one of those systems
and see just how often they're actually used. . .
Typical OOB access to the switch is accomplished using Cisco 2511 systems or Applied Innovations boxes
sitting on a semi-restricted network. ( Data collection network actually )
So does it work the other way around ?
Ergo, if you're in perfect health do you get a discount ?
If you prove you ran the last Triathlon do you get a bonus ?
Where do you draw the line ?
If you have a family history of heart disorder or cancer
do you even get benefits at all ?
*grumble*
Gotta agree with you on this one. I too am somewhat familiar with the Medeco series of locks and until I see
:)
someone actually open one without a key, I will remain very, very skeptical of any claim otherwise.
The units I am familiar with were used on high security doors. Things like weapons lockers, arms magazines,
even my Armored Box Launched Tomahawk Cruise missile launchers. . . . .
I did lock picking as a hobby and a means to keep my sanity during deployments. I was able to pull apart a
Medeco cylinder to see what made them so tough. Besides the fact that the pins are made of carbide ( as well
as carbide inserts in the face of the lock to deter drilling ) there is no shear line that you will be able to
hear or feel.
Medeco's use an angled tumbler concept where a hole is drilled into the side of each tumbler. The key is
beveled so it will both lift and twist the pin to the proper height and angle for the drilled hole to line
up with a pinned sidebar. My cylinder was equipped with six or seven tumblers. Thus lifting to the correct
height, twisting for the correct angle and holding it for each of the tumblers is a very tall order for someone
trying to ' pick ' the lock.
Once all the tumblers are lifted to height X and twisted for angle Y, all of the drilled holes line up with the
pins on the sidebar. The sidebar is able to seat and the cylinder will now open.
Bottom line, they can make all the claims they want. I'll believe it when I see it. Easier to blast the door open
with some C-4.
Not sure about that. . .
I don't think Rail Guns will replace cruise missiles, they may augment
them, but not replace. They just don't have the range unless we
get the rail guns to ICBM distance standards.
Typical land attack cruise missile ( Tomahawk ) has an unclassified max
range of ~1700km. It's true max range, as you can guess, exceeds this
by some distance. Some variables come into play here like weather and
warhead loadout. ( Trivia! W-80 warhead is lighter thus can go further )
Some variants of the Tomahawk ( specifically the TLAM-D ) can engage
multiple targets along the flight path.
Lasers are going to be short range systems. Due to atmospheric conditions
they'll have to be. Line of sight is pretty much the rule on a good day.
Heat buildup and the removal of it will dictate how fast the system can
fire. Wonder how long it will take before mortar and artillery rounds get
a nice chrome plating to reflect most of the incoming laser energy ?