Well, 49 states and the District of Confusion don't allow folks a reasonable, peaceable way to end their life when the Grim Reaper is closing in. Stop making end of life a misery and folks will stop shooting themselves.
> After a disaster, you'll see people talking on Nextels
Not any more. NEXTEL is off the air, for good.
> Nowadays, cellular providers truck out COWs (Cellular On Wheels. i.e. mobile cell sites) within hours of a disaster,
Would not have done a thing for this problem, as the dispatch center could not be counted on to have the cellphone numbers of every cop working for MCP, err, the city of Detroit. And, as to the 'rapid response' of the teams rolling out the COWs, well, often not so rapid.
> They'll tell you that some number of HAM radio operators participated during some disaster, but they won't tell you that the only traffic sent over those nets consisted of nothing more than periodic radio checks.
Mulefeathers! A lot of emergency and urgent traffic has been handled in multiple disasters in the Pacific NW alone in which I worked.
> They won't tell you that all HAM radio stations were set up in tactically unimportant locations.
Again, wrong, wrong, wrong. Unless the PSAPs, fire stations, police precincts and Red Cross are 'tactically unimportant'.
And, OBTW, SANS is on record strongly suggesting that telecom/network admins will need ham radios to reestablish communications in the event of major disaster (solar flare, Tungiska-sized-meteorite strike in metro area, short Eastasian dictator sets off an EMP bomp over Seattle). SANS ain't the ARRL, and is very well respected.
Yes. In an emergency where there's a functioning ARES/RACES system, hams are assigned to fire stations, dispatch centers and police precincts. Rarely do hams ride along because there just aren't enough hams, but they can pass messages to the dispatchers who use the fallback VHF analog radio system used for interoperability.
Mass media would publicize an alternate phone number for folks to call and hams would forward messages to the appropriate resource. It's well documented by FEMA (Craig Fuagte is a kick-ass FEMA boss, BTW) how to make this work.
What is -your- police dispatch backup number?
What is -your- fire dispatch backup number?
Do they go to your primary PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point), the same place your 911 calls go to?
Knowing both the Primary and Secondary PSAP ten digit inbound numbers may have been needed here.
Keeping them written down in your wallet is an exceptionally good idea.
That is essentially what they are proposing; not a crypto free-for-all, but allowing encryption in specific situations where it is essentially mandatory (HIPAA information, satellite control, etc). I actually think they should go further, perhaps allowing crypto as a matter of course in certain bands with plaintext station ID wrappers.
But, it is not mandatory under HIPPA regs as life-threatening situations are exempt from HIPPA.
Having worked disasters and handled the traffic of this kind for the largest Served Agency in the US, the proposal is not needed. As long as the patient is not named, there's no chance of a HIPPA violation, so the change isn't needed.
Now, I can see some virtue in security through obscurity; who buys D-STAR or packet rigs? Only hams, and there's your security, as only the elites who will crack a book, apply skull sweat and pass the test get access to the bands. (Calling hams 'elites' is a little silly, especially since we do have our bad apples, but they are few and very far between.) This kept the panicked mobs from storming the distribution centers in emergencies such as Katrina; that, and the basic good sense of the American People.
If there was a genuine need, it could be handled by publishing the encryption method and the keys on a Served Agency, FCC or ARRL website, and then the encryption would be legal under present law and regulation. But, no one's ever needed to do that.
Should the Zombie Apocalypse strike, well, I trust the FCC to look the other way and not enforce the no-secret-messages regulations. Until then, if it ain't broke....
Slashdot Mirror
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm seems to find it acceptable.
Perhaps you could explain the evils inherent in altering my own HOSTS file so that Facebook requests are lost in the aether? No sarcasm intended.
Well, the OP didn't say how big his company is... nor what level of IT talent they have available.
Perhaps edit the HOSTS file so that facebook.com is sent to 127.0.0.1 ? Set and forget solution.
Multiple American Red Cross Level 4 and higher disasters.
Thank you for introducing fact to the argument.
Well, 49 states and the District of Confusion don't allow folks a reasonable, peaceable way to end their life when the Grim Reaper is closing in. Stop making end of life a misery and folks will stop shooting themselves.
The e-book marketplace is pricing at the whim of the seller.
The dead tree marketplace prices at the whim of the publisher.
Is this a case of Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? No.
We've cut the publisher out of the look on pricing, and made it possible for authors to bypass retailers. Looks like win-win to me.
CatKeys. Mod GnuPG so the keys are cute and fuzzy.
Sounds like you sent out an IQ test, and some folks failed.
My classes in Internet Security at http://www.freegeek.org/about/classes/ were pretty well packed yesterday.
> After a disaster, you'll see people talking on Nextels
Not any more. NEXTEL is off the air, for good.
> Nowadays, cellular providers truck out COWs (Cellular On Wheels. i.e. mobile cell sites) within hours of a disaster,
Would not have done a thing for this problem, as the dispatch center could not be counted on to have the cellphone numbers of every cop working for MCP, err, the city of Detroit. And, as to the 'rapid response' of the teams rolling out the COWs, well, often not so rapid.
> They'll tell you that some number of HAM radio operators participated during some disaster, but they won't tell you that the only traffic sent over those nets consisted of nothing more than periodic radio checks.
Mulefeathers! A lot of emergency and urgent traffic has been handled in multiple disasters in the Pacific NW alone in which I worked.
> They won't tell you that all HAM radio stations were set up in tactically unimportant locations.
Again, wrong, wrong, wrong. Unless the PSAPs, fire stations, police precincts and Red Cross are 'tactically unimportant'.
And, OBTW, SANS is on record strongly suggesting that telecom/network admins will need ham radios to reestablish communications in the event of major disaster (solar flare, Tungiska-sized-meteorite strike in metro area, short Eastasian dictator sets off an EMP bomp over Seattle). SANS ain't the ARRL, and is very well respected.
Yes. In an emergency where there's a functioning ARES/RACES system, hams are assigned to fire stations, dispatch centers and police precincts. Rarely do hams ride along because there just aren't enough hams, but they can pass messages to the dispatchers who use the fallback VHF analog radio system used for interoperability.
Mass media would publicize an alternate phone number for folks to call and hams would forward messages to the appropriate resource. It's well documented by FEMA (Craig Fuagte is a kick-ass FEMA boss, BTW) how to make this work.
911 centers fail more often than you will think (mostly due to 'backhoe fade' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backhoe#Backhoe_fade). Been there, done that, handled the traffic.
What is -your- police dispatch backup number?
What is -your- fire dispatch backup number?
Do they go to your primary PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point), the same place your 911 calls go to?
Knowing both the Primary and Secondary PSAP ten digit inbound numbers may have been needed here.
Keeping them written down in your wallet is an exceptionally good idea.
MOTOMESH is its own code and is NOT Open Source, so why are you blaming Open Source when there's a proprietary component?
Of course, this is what Gartner said last week 8.1 would win back the corporate market....
Naah, it's only a two-bit OS.
See above suggestion to have your IT folks edit your HOSTS.TXT file to include the line
127.0.0.1 bing.com
along with 127.0.0.1 references for all the other adservers and nosy websites.
Then I'd suggest editing your HOSTS.TXT file to include the line
127.0.0.1 bing.com
along with 127.0.0.1 references for all the other adservers and nosy websites.
Heinlein wrote about that in the 40s (SPACE CADET). A logic problem was presented to the candidate who had the opportunity to cheat.
That is essentially what they are proposing; not a crypto free-for-all, but allowing encryption in specific situations where it is essentially mandatory (HIPAA information, satellite control, etc). I actually think they should go further, perhaps allowing crypto as a matter of course in certain bands with plaintext station ID wrappers.
But, it is not mandatory under HIPPA regs as life-threatening situations are exempt from HIPPA.
The equipment which the NSA has at Yakima is more than adequate to the task.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/NSA-listening-post-in-Yakima-is-secret-no-more-1194259.php
FB TU OM
Having worked disasters and handled the traffic of this kind for the largest Served Agency in the US, the proposal is not needed. As long as the patient is not named, there's no chance of a HIPPA violation, so the change isn't needed.
Now, I can see some virtue in security through obscurity; who buys D-STAR or packet rigs? Only hams, and there's your security, as only the elites who will crack a book, apply skull sweat and pass the test get access to the bands. (Calling hams 'elites' is a little silly, especially since we do have our bad apples, but they are few and very far between.) This kept the panicked mobs from storming the distribution centers in emergencies such as Katrina; that, and the basic good sense of the American People.
If there was a genuine need, it could be handled by publishing the encryption method and the keys on a Served Agency, FCC or ARRL website, and then the encryption would be legal under present law and regulation. But, no one's ever needed to do that.
Should the Zombie Apocalypse strike, well, I trust the FCC to look the other way and not enforce the no-secret-messages regulations. Until then, if it ain't broke....
Kielbasa theft.