Anyone with access to a computer and modem, phone line, user ID and password can access a person's dialup account, from anywhere in the world. Most DSL providers use user accounts with logins and passwords, not physical wires, to associate the user with the bill for the purpose of allowing or disallowing the connection. That means, for example, that if the forensic image was used to create a live clone someone's computer, and they both used DSL, and attach it to another Verizon DSL line, the clone might appear to be the original to the logging system. If it used dialup, it definitely would.
Someone could also pull the dialup info out of someone's trash and use it for free internet. This is common. It can also be guessed. A computer with a modem can be configured to dial up the server and try permutations repeatedly until it gets a correct username and password.
Any other kind of connection can be wireless, using the "DMZ" configuration option of the wireless router to specify which computer gets the world visible ip address. It is often possible using the default account and password of the wireless router to configure this remotely. The other hosts connected to the router would get NAT translated addresses, but the DMZ host would use the real IP address. A person who is using your wireless access point to share files might do this to improve the network performance. A novice would not even begin to know whether any of these things had been done to their account, and I saw no information that the expert looked for any of them.
If I trade cable modems with my neighbor (or they were switched accidentally) I believe we would each also be logged as the other. The cable company cannot and does not identify which signal comes down the wire to my house. They use serial numbers embedded in the products to identify which user can access the service and when to disconnect it.
In short, an ip address signifies nothing, even which device on the network is talking. It does not mean what this "expert" seems to think it means. The logs of the service provider, even if they were as accurate as physically possible, do not rise to the level certainty required of evidence.
If this is all the RIAA has to go on, it's time to go for their assets.
Care to explain the relative thermodynamic benefits of "furnaces" he mentioned?
I'll give you that some applications of heat pump will give you better efficiency overall during the winter, if it's not too cold outside, and if you want to warm the whole house. Even then you'll pay it back in the summer when the heat pump is working in reverse and you can't resist the temptation to leave it on.
Regardless, if you can shave a few degrees off of your overall temp using some mini light+heat spots, you save electricity overall without losing any comfort. That brighter light makes people happy is just a free bonus for doing your bit to save the planet.
Face it. The rabid antipathy for incandescent bulbs is a general solution to a special case. Like all such solutions, it sucks.
It's pretty clear you understand the marketing of heaters, but not thermodynamics.
All of the energy put into a resistance heater that is not converted to some other form of energy is converted to heat. Since only a tiny fraction of it is turned into audio waves or light, and almost all of that is subsequently converted to heat also, it's fair to say that all of it becomes heat. All of it. To have a more efficient heater would be to have one that put out more energy than was put in.
To provide the work (heat) where it is required, rather than generally spraying it around until some of it happens to fall upon where you need it is inefficient.
You know, one reason to use incandescent bulbs is that they're horribly inefficient -- translating only a small percentage of the electricity as light, while converting much of the energy to heat. Why, even the light is often absorbed by materials within the room, causing "radiant heat". As heaters they're ridiculously efficient.
Not to be too obvious, if you live in a cool climate like I do, having location specific mini heaters that turn on with the lights when you're using a room and turn off safely with the lights when you leave, and aren't required when the weather is warm and sunny, this is a good thing. It promotes less use of central heating, which is good because central heating is not nearly as efficient (heating the whole house, leakage, venting, etc). The only time they're not ideal is when it's dark outside and the weather is warm and I don't want to sleep -- which happens seldom enough where I live, and less and less every year that goes by.
So, the short story: I think the CFD gestapo needs to rethink their strategy. Air conditioning. There's a big energy sucker right there, and "less toxic than CFC's" is hardly a ringing environmental endorsement. There is no reason why every home and car in Southern California requires air conditioning. Except for maybe Death Valley, it just doesn't get hot often enough to warrant it. While we're at it, all forms of unnecessary features take energy to produce but are never used. The luggage rack on your SUV. Mud Tires. The firewire jack on your digital cable box. The three fourths of your desktop tower computer that's empty space for expansion capacity when you know you don't dare open the case. Floppy drives. The "energy saver" nonfunctional setting on a dishwasher, clothes dryer or desktop computer. Just in the lamps of engineers burning the midnight oil to design the next great CD Jewel case there is a huge energy savings to be had. Software development! Why the quality of software update that's coming downstream right now could be produced more efficiently by a random code generator. Not only would a great deal of energy be saved, but an entire coffee plantation could be replanted with forest.
Enough for now. You get the picture. They should stop solving the wrong problem. This post custom crafted entirely from 100% recycled electrons.
Using an OEM OS install in this day and age is just plain stupid. Not only do they all sell access to their image, they don't tell you who they sold it to, or under what terms. Running thier OS is like downloading software from random internet sites.
The OS and crapplets they install shouldn't matter, because the first thing you should do is wipe the drive and install your OS from the original media that came from the OS provider, not the PC OEM.
Personally, if they ship this they'll be selling me at least one, and more likely five. Good on 'em. Nuts to all the/.'ers that think you should wait until the thing is perfect. The Windows PC's are far from perfect. That I get a laptop that's linux compatible and I don't have to pay the Microsoft tax, that's enough for me.
Now if I could only hold off until they've got a quad core Dell notebook...
But the only likely secure method of decryption for their content would reasonably be to put it in the drive and provide drives with audio and video output, much like the digital audio output found on CDROM drives.
With their secure channel (HDMI) to the monitor, this prevents the decryption from being done inside a general-purpose PC.
Yeah, I would buy a linux laptop from Dell next month if they offered a Linux or even no-OS option. I usually build my family desktops, but frankly I could start with one of their minimum boxes and save some time and money. For laptops building it yourself isn't yet an easy option.
I wouldn't actually use their linux on a bet but if an installed OS is what it takes to force Ballmer, Gates & Co to accept that they're not getting paid, I'll take linux. Nobody in their right mind would take an OEM install of the OS. There's just too much access being sold to that image.
The numbers of individuals may be exaggerated -- it's easy enough to vote up something, but another to dial up the company an put a PC or five on your Visa. One thing I haven't seen people post is that some people here buy thousands of PCs a year. One of those folks' votes probably mean a lot more to Dell, and they're being undercounted.
That's 7,000 customers in two days. 2.4 votes per minute, 24 hours a day. One in five votes cast. Even for Dell, that's a market. That's demand. That's opportunity. That's what the site is there to discover. Those numbers are only for the Linux Desktop option. If you add 6000 votes for Linux Laptop, 1400 for dual boot with Linux that's one in four voters want Linux one way or another.
and I can just imagine how many zelots voted multiple time
I'm confident some people voted only once even if they order a great many desktops every year. It's a Digg style poll; it's not scientific. It still tells Dell everything the site is capable of saying. People want the option to buy their Dells with Linux.
Population estimation - An estimate of the population of near-Earth objects (NEOs), including
their sizes, albedos and orbit distributions, was generated using the best methods in the current
literature. We estimate a population of about 1100 near-Earth objects larger than 1 km, leading
to an impact frequency of about one in half a million years. To the lower limit of an object's
atmospheric penetration (between 50 and 100 m diameter), we estimate about half a million
NEOs, with an impact frequency of about one in a thousand years.
Good luck with that
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
or we can all look for ways to help to bring our ideas to fruition.
You guys are having trouble with this concept so I'll say it again slowly.
No American is going to achieve anything near this scale again, ever in history. It's over. It's done. There is no more "Great America". Get over it. We have traded our energetic, optimistic overwhelmingly adventurous spirit to 5th Avenue Marketing wizards for Pergo floors and SlimFast; to Microsoft and the RIAA for self-expiring entertainment we can buy over and over again. We have surrendered it to the serial drama that is electoral politics. We gave it up because we swallowed the notion that it is wrong to win. We don't have the focus to make it through a two hour movie, let alone a seven year plan. We are cattle. That's not going to change.
Even if some dreamer got a good start at something big, he would still be shut down before he achieved it, no matter how much help he got at first.
That's the tragic thing. It still looks like we can meet lofty goals, but before they're within our grasp they will always be shut down by lack of public confidence or failures of leadership or another new reform administration, waning popularity, budget shortfalls, economic changes, an infestation of lawyers or some other reason.
It makes me sad, but it's time we accepted our passive role and quit wasting time and money on trying to do things we are no longer capable of. We've reached our dotage and it's time for a fresh spirit to shoulder the load. Barely two hundred years, too. That's not long in national age. We burned out fast. Well, it was ever the "grand experiment". It went well for a while I think.
It is better not to attempt anything significant with a nation full of whiny obstructionists. Wait a few years and somebody with a WILL will pick up the torch we've dropped. It is too late for us.
I think the Iraq war is much less like trying to land on an alien world, and more like trying to land on the sun.
That you're posting as Anonymous Coward for this one is hilarious. You refute my point by proving it.
I would say we've wandered off the topic, except that this thread goes to the heart of the credibility of the premise question in TFA. This is not my grandfather's America. There are no more grand achievements like TFA within us, and you are an example of why. Americans have given up their great ambitions. There are dreamers yet but they are so few they can be weighed down by the mass. There is no hope they might achieve anything requiring this much prolonged coordinated effort before they're incarcerated, expatriated, debudgeted or sued into ineffectiveness.
It makes me sad to write it, but I calls 'em like I sees 'em. Our day is done. Who's got next? I, for one, welcome our new determined overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil on their interstellar ark.
We should build it and send it, but just beyond the Kuyper belt they should be ordered to turn back because the rest of the trip is hard, expensive, and perilous, there's better things to spend money on and the trip isn't popular any more.
It is better not to attempt anything significant with a nation full of whiny obstructionists. Wait a few years and somebody with a WILL will pick up the torch we've dropped. It is too late for us.
To discover the scope of the infringement all the computers, hard drives and backup tapes used by the MPAA should be seized as evidence. Preferably this should be done by armed marshalls in daylight raids with lots of press.
For a good lawyer this doesn't sound too hard. After all, they can crib from the MPAA supoenas for rationale.
The next logical step would be to subpoena every computer, hard drive and backup tape in the organization, worldwide, as discovery in a lawsuit to recover damages.
I'm certain their own seizure subpoenas could be referenced for precedent and legal justification.
....I think that there are more commonplace disasters we need to worry about, like earthquakes and tsunamis, which involve more boring, mundane solutions, like good building codes, tsunami warning networks, tsunami evacuation sirens, and flood control.
You worry about those things. Let the Asteroid worriers worry about asteroids. There are billions of us. We can divide the worrying up and not all worry about the same thing. That way when you figure out a way to save us all from earthquakes, you won't immediately drop dead of ebola.
Seriously, if somebody doesn't get a plan for dealing with asteroids, mankind will end. No Earthquake, tsunami, famine, plague, global warming or war will do that. It isn't a question of if the asteroid is coming, but when. It's not likely to hit today, and on the 112th day of 2076 it's equally unlikely. In the fullness of time it's not just likely, it is certain. There is no more "realistic" worry than the certain end of all mankind. If the next dinosaur killer arrives and we have no plan for preventing it or dealing with it, or at least have an offsite backup, there will be no second chance; we will have had our go at Darwin's test and failed. Please -- for the sake of the children -- leave the asteroid scientists to their work.
Oh, and if you figure out a cure for tsunamis that doesn't involve moving our huts further from the sea do please let us know.
I believe what you're looking for is called "Archive.org"
How large is the Wayback Machine?
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress.
Everybody familiar with the literature knows that dimensionality itself is a farce, but that if you must interpret the world in that way the system that works best is six directional dimensions, six time dimensions and six for plausibility, yielding 6^6^6 potential major universes, a truly beastly number (although many are too implausible to exist I think). Since dimensionality really is a farce (the multiverses are non-euclidian and since there can be no "right angle" there can be no dimensionality) and one dimension blends continuously into another, the manifold goes unbounded.
Which is ok, because it's all really a joke we're making up between ourselves and the indivisible unit of space / time / energy / matter is a "ficton".
Sure, we'll get 3THz RAM, and it will be $150 for a 1GB stick. That's not what I want, nor what I expect. What I expect is that I get a 2GB stick for what was the price of a 1GB stick 12-18 months ago. By now 4GB sticks should be $75.
In the last couple years prices haven't dropped hardly at all and new stuff is no bigger than before. That doesn't happen in IT unless someone isn't playing fair. So who is it and how do we get them to stop?
Google "remote desktop hosting", or something like that and select a hosting provider in a country less friendly to the *IAA. Most have vpn access and reasonable storage prices.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a shame funny points don't count towards karma on slashdot. I wish someone had modded this insightful.
They have this. It's called hotmail.
duh.
Someone could also pull the dialup info out of someone's trash and use it for free internet. This is common. It can also be guessed. A computer with a modem can be configured to dial up the server and try permutations repeatedly until it gets a correct username and password.
Any other kind of connection can be wireless, using the "DMZ" configuration option of the wireless router to specify which computer gets the world visible ip address. It is often possible using the default account and password of the wireless router to configure this remotely. The other hosts connected to the router would get NAT translated addresses, but the DMZ host would use the real IP address. A person who is using your wireless access point to share files might do this to improve the network performance. A novice would not even begin to know whether any of these things had been done to their account, and I saw no information that the expert looked for any of them.
If I trade cable modems with my neighbor (or they were switched accidentally) I believe we would each also be logged as the other. The cable company cannot and does not identify which signal comes down the wire to my house. They use serial numbers embedded in the products to identify which user can access the service and when to disconnect it.
In short, an ip address signifies nothing, even which device on the network is talking. It does not mean what this "expert" seems to think it means. The logs of the service provider, even if they were as accurate as physically possible, do not rise to the level certainty required of evidence.
If this is all the RIAA has to go on, it's time to go for their assets.
Care to explain the relative thermodynamic benefits of "furnaces" he mentioned?
I'll give you that some applications of heat pump will give you better efficiency overall during the winter, if it's not too cold outside, and if you want to warm the whole house. Even then you'll pay it back in the summer when the heat pump is working in reverse and you can't resist the temptation to leave it on.
Regardless, if you can shave a few degrees off of your overall temp using some mini light+heat spots, you save electricity overall without losing any comfort. That brighter light makes people happy is just a free bonus for doing your bit to save the planet.
Face it. The rabid antipathy for incandescent bulbs is a general solution to a special case. Like all such solutions, it sucks.
All of the energy put into a resistance heater that is not converted to some other form of energy is converted to heat. Since only a tiny fraction of it is turned into audio waves or light, and almost all of that is subsequently converted to heat also, it's fair to say that all of it becomes heat. All of it. To have a more efficient heater would be to have one that put out more energy than was put in.
To provide the work (heat) where it is required, rather than generally spraying it around until some of it happens to fall upon where you need it is inefficient.
It's clear somebody sold you a slogan. Now think.
Not to be too obvious, if you live in a cool climate like I do, having location specific mini heaters that turn on with the lights when you're using a room and turn off safely with the lights when you leave, and aren't required when the weather is warm and sunny, this is a good thing. It promotes less use of central heating, which is good because central heating is not nearly as efficient (heating the whole house, leakage, venting, etc). The only time they're not ideal is when it's dark outside and the weather is warm and I don't want to sleep -- which happens seldom enough where I live, and less and less every year that goes by.
So, the short story: I think the CFD gestapo needs to rethink their strategy. Air conditioning. There's a big energy sucker right there, and "less toxic than CFC's" is hardly a ringing environmental endorsement. There is no reason why every home and car in Southern California requires air conditioning. Except for maybe Death Valley, it just doesn't get hot often enough to warrant it. While we're at it, all forms of unnecessary features take energy to produce but are never used. The luggage rack on your SUV. Mud Tires. The firewire jack on your digital cable box. The three fourths of your desktop tower computer that's empty space for expansion capacity when you know you don't dare open the case. Floppy drives. The "energy saver" nonfunctional setting on a dishwasher, clothes dryer or desktop computer. Just in the lamps of engineers burning the midnight oil to design the next great CD Jewel case there is a huge energy savings to be had. Software development! Why the quality of software update that's coming downstream right now could be produced more efficiently by a random code generator. Not only would a great deal of energy be saved, but an entire coffee plantation could be replanted with forest.
Enough for now. You get the picture. They should stop solving the wrong problem. This post custom crafted entirely from 100% recycled electrons.
The OS and crapplets they install shouldn't matter, because the first thing you should do is wipe the drive and install your OS from the original media that came from the OS provider, not the PC OEM.
Personally, if they ship this they'll be selling me at least one, and more likely five. Good on 'em. Nuts to all the /.'ers that think you should wait until the thing is perfect. The Windows PC's are far from perfect. That I get a laptop that's linux compatible and I don't have to pay the Microsoft tax, that's enough for me.
Now if I could only hold off until they've got a quad core Dell notebook...
With their secure channel (HDMI) to the monitor, this prevents the decryption from being done inside a general-purpose PC.
But it would be cracked shortly anyway.
I wouldn't actually use their linux on a bet but if an installed OS is what it takes to force Ballmer, Gates & Co to accept that they're not getting paid, I'll take linux. Nobody in their right mind would take an OEM install of the OS. There's just too much access being sold to that image.
The numbers of individuals may be exaggerated -- it's easy enough to vote up something, but another to dial up the company an put a PC or five on your Visa. One thing I haven't seen people post is that some people here buy thousands of PCs a year. One of those folks' votes probably mean a lot more to Dell, and they're being undercounted.
I'm confident some people voted only once even if they order a great many desktops every year. It's a Digg style poll; it's not scientific. It still tells Dell everything the site is capable of saying. People want the option to buy their Dells with Linux.
The package you reference is actually the Common Lisp interface to the Oracle database.
You guys are having trouble with this concept so I'll say it again slowly.
No American is going to achieve anything near this scale again, ever in history. It's over. It's done. There is no more "Great America". Get over it. We have traded our energetic, optimistic overwhelmingly adventurous spirit to 5th Avenue Marketing wizards for Pergo floors and SlimFast; to Microsoft and the RIAA for self-expiring entertainment we can buy over and over again. We have surrendered it to the serial drama that is electoral politics. We gave it up because we swallowed the notion that it is wrong to win. We don't have the focus to make it through a two hour movie, let alone a seven year plan. We are cattle. That's not going to change.
Even if some dreamer got a good start at something big, he would still be shut down before he achieved it, no matter how much help he got at first.
That's the tragic thing. It still looks like we can meet lofty goals, but before they're within our grasp they will always be shut down by lack of public confidence or failures of leadership or another new reform administration, waning popularity, budget shortfalls, economic changes, an infestation of lawyers or some other reason.
It makes me sad, but it's time we accepted our passive role and quit wasting time and money on trying to do things we are no longer capable of. We've reached our dotage and it's time for a fresh spirit to shoulder the load. Barely two hundred years, too. That's not long in national age. We burned out fast. Well, it was ever the "grand experiment". It went well for a while I think.
Who's got next?
I would say we've wandered off the topic, except that this thread goes to the heart of the credibility of the premise question in TFA. This is not my grandfather's America. There are no more grand achievements like TFA within us, and you are an example of why. Americans have given up their great ambitions. There are dreamers yet but they are so few they can be weighed down by the mass. There is no hope they might achieve anything requiring this much prolonged coordinated effort before they're incarcerated, expatriated, debudgeted or sued into ineffectiveness.
It makes me sad to write it, but I calls 'em like I sees 'em. Our day is done. Who's got next? I, for one, welcome our new determined overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil on their interstellar ark.
It is better not to attempt anything significant with a nation full of whiny obstructionists. Wait a few years and somebody with a WILL will pick up the torch we've dropped. It is too late for us.
For a good lawyer this doesn't sound too hard. After all, they can crib from the MPAA supoenas for rationale.
I'm certain their own seizure subpoenas could be referenced for precedent and legal justification.
But I Am Not A Lawyer.
You worry about those things. Let the Asteroid worriers worry about asteroids. There are billions of us. We can divide the worrying up and not all worry about the same thing. That way when you figure out a way to save us all from earthquakes, you won't immediately drop dead of ebola.
Seriously, if somebody doesn't get a plan for dealing with asteroids, mankind will end. No Earthquake, tsunami, famine, plague, global warming or war will do that. It isn't a question of if the asteroid is coming, but when. It's not likely to hit today, and on the 112th day of 2076 it's equally unlikely. In the fullness of time it's not just likely, it is certain. There is no more "realistic" worry than the certain end of all mankind. If the next dinosaur killer arrives and we have no plan for preventing it or dealing with it, or at least have an offsite backup, there will be no second chance; we will have had our go at Darwin's test and failed. Please -- for the sake of the children -- leave the asteroid scientists to their work.
Oh, and if you figure out a cure for tsunamis that doesn't involve moving our huts further from the sea do please let us know.
Which is ok, because it's all really a joke we're making up between ourselves and the indivisible unit of space / time / energy / matter is a "ficton".
Sure, we'll get 3THz RAM, and it will be $150 for a 1GB stick. That's not what I want, nor what I expect. What I expect is that I get a 2GB stick for what was the price of a 1GB stick 12-18 months ago. By now 4GB sticks should be $75.
In the last couple years prices haven't dropped hardly at all and new stuff is no bigger than before. That doesn't happen in IT unless someone isn't playing fair. So who is it and how do we get them to stop?
Google "remote desktop hosting", or something like that and select a hosting provider in a country less friendly to the *IAA. Most have vpn access and reasonable storage prices.
posting from my crackberry. This thing needs a bluetooth keyboard.
AIDS has already been invented. The best he can do is use his lawyers to magically patent someone else's prior art.