Sprint is stopping the connections cold (my traceroutes showed as complete, and not as timing out)
Am I understanding this correctly? Sprint is reporting the packets as delivered but they are actually dropped? If so, why isn't this criminal fraud? If FedEx took your money, told you the package was delivered, but then threw the package away, there would be severe criminal and civil penalties. Existing law about lying and forgery needs to be applied to packet headers (also applies to the forged reset packets Comcast was using to throttle P2P traffic). If I'm misunderstanding the situation, I would appreciate it if someone could explain why.
I have never understood the angst about movie theaters. The solution seems obvious to me. The theater should have a device that makes every phone in the room ring. You put up the notice on the screen that says "please silence your cell phone" and then say "3... 2... 1... " and make all the phones ring. It embarrasses the people who forgot to silence their phone, and an usher can kick non-compliant people out before the movie ever starts. Yes there is a way to get around the system (turn your phone back on whe the movie starts) but there will always be a way to hack the system.
MacDonalds shouldn't be able to ring my phone when I walk past them on the street, but I don't have a problem with a movie theater. I have already voluntarily consented to having them play loud music and sound into my ear. I am carrying a device that I have already consented to allow ANYONE to make ring, as long as they know my number.
My main concern is that the device shouldn't tell the movie theater who I am or what my cell phone number is. And, the device should be required to have a valid registered caller ID, so if someone does it to me when I didn't consent, it is trivial for me to call the cops and report them.
Just the very idea that spammers would supply a genuine reply address seemed so incredibly stupid
I'm not saying that this is smart, but they DO have a reason for configuring their mail servers this way: for the false positives. Those do have valid reply addreses. Ignoring the backscatter problem, I do appreciate it when Verizon tells me that it has blocked a message I sent to my mom.
Apple appears to have made a deliberate corporate decision to be incompatible with OpenOffice.
Apple made a deal with Microsoft. Microsoft agreed to write an Intel version of Office, and to license MSXML to Apple for iWork. (I refuse to call it OOxml, that would be contributing to trademark infringement on Open Office).
In return, Apple agreed not to support ODF in iWork.
Notice how clever that was. Apple said they won't put ODF in iWork, but they never said that they wouldn't put ODF into TextEdit, which comes free with every single Mac.
The author's (correct) sense that millions of Americans don't know if Hungary is in Europe or Asia, and a good chunk of them probably would think that the phrase "Hungarian coder" is somehow referring to the guy's appetite. Sadly, I am not kidding. I watched the 16 year old son of the Chief of Police of a major US city fail to locate Great Britain, Russia, Australia, and even the United States on a map of the world. Yes, hopefully Slashdot's U.S. readers are a little smarter than average, but that is where the tendency to generalize to "Eastern European" comes from.
Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into it
on
Third Undersea Cable Cut
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The locations where many of the recent cable cuts have occurred (China, Pakistan, Palestine/Egypt, and now Iran) is highly suspicious. I suspect that the U.S. intelligence community is using a sub to tap into the fiberoptic line to capture all of the data. Unlike copper lines, they probably can't splice into glass fiberoptic lines without breaking the circuit for a while.
1) Cut the line somewhere roughly, so it clearly looks like an accident
2) Somewhere else far away, splice into the line using a sub, so the NSA can capture all the data (or even potentially alter it in transit)
3) Let the commercial communication providers fix the obvious break
4) Profit! (at least in terms of intelligence gathering and cyber-war capability
Net neutrality is like saying that the airline can't sell you a first-class ticket, and then bump you down to coach unless you win a bidding war with another guy in first-class after you're on the airplane.
No, net neutrality is like saying that the airline kicks you off the plane because you are black, and the NAACP hasn't paid it's monthly extortion fee yet. You are given a stand-by ticket on the next flight, so you can't complain, because you weren't "blocked."
My roommate in college signed everything from his check card for over a year: "Check My ID", or "Bill Gates", or "Bill Clinton" and/or "Jack Meoff" or something funny along those lines. Only got caught at it a few times. LOL
This is a common misconception. The signature obtained during a credit card transaction has nothing to due with security or identity confirmation. The signature is obtained because the credit card company lawyers feel that getting a signature helps confirm that a "contract" was agreed to by the credit card holder, in case any lawsuits arise from the transaction. They want to be able to say "you must have known you were agreeing to this, because you signed your name." Yes, they want you to sign your name, not Bill Clinton's, but they could care less if your signature is a handwriting match to the one on the back of the card.
Why not bite the bullet and go with an OSX type operating system? It'll be a bit painful but it'll cure a lot of the security woes
Because Microsoft's entire business model is build upon being "good enough" and "works with all the programs I already have." If the customer is going to totally switch their operating system and abandon backward compatibility, then they could just as easily switch to Linux or MacOS. The enterprise customers would choose the former, and the consumers would choose the latter. All Windows has to do is loose just enough market share to no longer be "what everyone uses" and it will implode, because that has always been it's only advantage over the competition.
Micrsoft's long term hope is to improve security while maintaining backward compatibility and adopting just enough of the Macintosh's features to remain "good enough."
If you have a house built, push the developer into a higher efficiency than anything he's seen before or find someone who can. It's going to cost more, but it's also going to drive the money into a new area of the industry. By moving where the money goes, you will move the attentions of the american industry and american politics.
I have a better idea. Vote for a politician who supports a gradual but significant increase tax on non-clean energy sources such as oil. It will have the exact same effect as your proposal, and it will force the rest of us to do the same with our next house. The profit motive will inevitably push society to invest in whatever area provides the most energy savings. Residential heating and cooling may not be the most efficient opportunity for improvement.
Why do I say gradual? Because much of the resistance to this idea currently is from people who just bought a suburban house and an SUV based on an assumption about the price of gasoline over the next 10 years. The general public will be much more likely to vote for a "5 cents per year" gasoline tax increase than a "50 cent" increase.
people get what they deserve for running a Server application on a Desktop OS.
With all due respect, RTFA:
(Before any more of you fire off an outraged e-mail informing me that Vista doesn't run SQL Server, go back and read the above paragraphs again: I'm talking about SQL Server 2005 Express, which is the desktop counterpart of SQL Server - not the server version.)
Testing is necessary, there is no way around that. Someone, somehow, somewhere, is going to be the first human to be injected with any new drug. If you are morally opposed to human testing of new drugs, then you need to refuse to take any medication even invented. (The same is true for animal testing, by the way)
The mistake made here was clear: do NOT inject a new drug into several people AT THE SAME TIME. In the interest of saving time and money, they gave the drug to several people at once. How hard would it have been to give the drug to one person only, and then stand back and see if anything bad happened before you give it to a second person?
Although that makes sense, I doubt that a small town government has enough weight to really netociate [sic] much of anything.."
Not unless you make enough waves in the press to get posted on slashdot.
:)
This is the reason I said that you need to be from a "prominent organization." I too am impressed that Steamboat Springs managed to make enough waves to get noticed. It's the eyeballs on the press articles that give them leverage. Nevertheless, I agree that they are a bit too small to have much effect. Now, if you were a large government organization like a mid-sized east coast state.....
the organization currently runs Windows 2000 but will start rolling out XP this year
Hmmmm. We're about to start rolling out Windows XP? That means we need to start price negotiations with Microsoft. Hey! Lets call a reporter and tell them that we are THINKING about switching to Linux. That will undoubtedly get us a better price for our Windows licenses, since Microsoft would love to have the follow up story be "Steamboat Springs chooses Windows after all."
You are almost neglegent as the CIO of a prominent organization/government entity if you don't do the obligitory "I'm thinking of Linux" story before you negotiate for Windows licenses.
Based on my experience with the Patent Office, even if they were presented with a working model it would still take them four years to process it.
You don't get it! They need the FTL drive so that they can travel back through time. They are asking for a "working model" because they are planning to use it to solve their problem with a four year backlog of applications.
Seriously. I remember in the early 90s, tv ads for banks that ended with "...and remember, our staff will never ask for your credit card number over the phone." I think people *eventually* got the message on that one.
They do this all the time. Just last week, Discover called and left a message on my machine "This is the security department, we have a question about the activity on your account, please call 800-###-#### to ensure continued service." When I called that number, they started off saying "Please tell me your card number, your mother's maiden name, etc." all to "confirm my identity" I of course refused, hung up, and called the 800 number printed on my credit card.
They were understanding, but never acknowledged that they were essentially asking me to give all my personal information to a random person who called my home phone number.
One of the few good reasons that there was very little security for the refugees in the early hours was that armed teams were sent into the city to secure all the material that might be used for a "weapons of mass destruction" terrorist attack. Bio-hazards weren't really the biggest problem. Every major hospital, for example, has a radiation oncology department with some really radioactive stuff in it used for cancer treatment. Abdul Im-a-punk Al-Quaeda might want to run in, grab it, drive it to Manhattan, and spread it all over Central Park. Getting that stuff out of the city is the first priority whenever rampant looting breaks out... not people.
Yes, ideally you have enough security to accomplish both tasks.
Spotlight sees the Entourage database as one large file. Everytime you download a single piece of email spam, the entire database file changes and Spotlight tries to reindex the whole thing, over and over again. If you have Entourage open and set to check your mail every 20 minutes, you force Spotlight to reindex a ~1GB file containing every email message on your computer every 20 min.
Spotlight can't see into Entourage anyway, so you aren't loosing any functionality by telling Spotlight to ignore that file.
I doubt this 'blogger' is a member of any professional journalism organizations. I doubt they have any formal training, or indeed any training whatsoever.
Cell phones crash planes when you want them to, and don't crash planes when you don't want them to. Proof:
1) Cell phone use by passengers saved the White House on September 11th. Passengers were able to learn what happened at the World Trade Center, and correctly deduced that the plane was going to be used as a weapon. This is actually a security measure. Cell phones in the hands of passengers is the best chance that NORAD has of learning that a plane has been hijacked before it can be used to hit anything.
2) Cell phones are constantly, constantly being left on accidentally in flight (along with Wifi laptops, etc.) If this could bring down a plane, they would be falling out of the sky left and right. In the 21st Century, the only way to be safe is to build a plane that is immune to cell phone interference. Anything less is delusional folly.
Actually, for a cell phone provider, the 800-900 MHz band is far more valuable than the 1800-1900 MHz band. "800" allows cellular towers to be spaced much farther apart, significantly reducing costs to provide service to a given area. Much of this is do to the poor building penetration of 1900 MHz signals (I'm talking real world results, not theoretical physics)
Case in point: ATT Wireless put 1900 MHz GSM antennas on their existing 800 MHz TDMA towars... and the 1900 system had FAR worse coverage.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I understanding this correctly? Sprint is reporting the packets as delivered but they are actually dropped? If so, why isn't this criminal fraud? If FedEx took your money, told you the package was delivered, but then threw the package away, there would be severe criminal and civil penalties. Existing law about lying and forgery needs to be applied to packet headers (also applies to the forged reset packets Comcast was using to throttle P2P traffic). If I'm misunderstanding the situation, I would appreciate it if someone could explain why.
http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp
Basically they argue that, just like Netflix today, Coca-Cola simply screwed up.
I have never understood the angst about movie theaters. The solution seems obvious to me. The theater should have a device that makes every phone in the room ring. You put up the notice on the screen that says "please silence your cell phone" and then say "3 ... 2 ... 1 ... " and make all the phones ring. It embarrasses the people who forgot to silence their phone, and an usher can kick non-compliant people out before the movie ever starts. Yes there is a way to get around the system (turn your phone back on whe the movie starts) but there will always be a way to hack the system.
MacDonalds shouldn't be able to ring my phone when I walk past them on the street, but I don't have a problem with a movie theater. I have already voluntarily consented to having them play loud music and sound into my ear. I am carrying a device that I have already consented to allow ANYONE to make ring, as long as they know my number.
My main concern is that the device shouldn't tell the movie theater who I am or what my cell phone number is. And, the device should be required to have a valid registered caller ID, so if someone does it to me when I didn't consent, it is trivial for me to call the cops and report them.
Notice how clever that was. Apple said they won't put ODF in iWork, but they never said that they wouldn't put ODF into TextEdit, which comes free with every single Mac.
1) Cut the line somewhere roughly, so it clearly looks like an accident
2) Somewhere else far away, splice into the line using a sub, so the NSA can capture all the data (or even potentially alter it in transit)
3) Let the commercial communication providers fix the obvious break
4) Profit! (at least in terms of intelligence gathering and cyber-war capability
No, net neutrality is like saying that the airline kicks you off the plane because you are black, and the NAACP hasn't paid it's monthly extortion fee yet. You are given a stand-by ticket on the next flight, so you can't complain, because you weren't "blocked."
Micrsoft's long term hope is to improve security while maintaining backward compatibility and adopting just enough of the Macintosh's features to remain "good enough."
Kevin Rose cries "Uncle," using a few more words: http://blog.digg.com/?p=73
It has to be said, for old time's sake..... Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.
Why do I say gradual? Because much of the resistance to this idea currently is from people who just bought a suburban house and an SUV based on an assumption about the price of gasoline over the next 10 years. The general public will be much more likely to vote for a "5 cents per year" gasoline tax increase than a "50 cent" increase.
With all due respect, RTFA:
Testing is necessary, there is no way around that. Someone, somehow, somewhere, is going to be the first human to be injected with any new drug. If you are morally opposed to human testing of new drugs, then you need to refuse to take any medication even invented. (The same is true for animal testing, by the way)
The mistake made here was clear: do NOT inject a new drug into several people AT THE SAME TIME. In the interest of saving time and money, they gave the drug to several people at once. How hard would it have been to give the drug to one person only, and then stand back and see if anything bad happened before you give it to a second person?
Although that makes sense, I doubt that a small town government has enough weight to really netociate [sic] much of anything.."
:)
Not unless you make enough waves in the press to get posted on slashdot.
This is the reason I said that you need to be from a "prominent organization." I too am impressed that Steamboat Springs managed to make enough waves to get noticed. It's the eyeballs on the press articles that give them leverage. Nevertheless, I agree that they are a bit too small to have much effect. Now, if you were a large government organization like a mid-sized east coast state.....
the organization currently runs Windows 2000 but will start rolling out XP this year
Hmmmm. We're about to start rolling out Windows XP? That means we need to start price negotiations with Microsoft. Hey! Lets call a reporter and tell them that we are THINKING about switching to Linux. That will undoubtedly get us a better price for our Windows licenses, since Microsoft would love to have the follow up story be "Steamboat Springs chooses Windows after all."
You are almost neglegent as the CIO of a prominent organization/government entity if you don't do the obligitory "I'm thinking of Linux" story before you negotiate for Windows licenses.
Based on my experience with the Patent Office, even if they were presented with a working model it would still take them four years to process it.
You don't get it! They need the FTL drive so that they can travel back through time. They are asking for a "working model" because they are planning to use it to solve their problem with a four year backlog of applications.
Seriously. I remember in the early 90s, tv ads for banks that ended with "...and remember, our staff will never ask for your credit card number over the phone." I think people *eventually* got the message on that one.
They do this all the time. Just last week, Discover called and left a message on my machine "This is the security department, we have a question about the activity on your account, please call 800-###-#### to ensure continued service." When I called that number, they started off saying "Please tell me your card number, your mother's maiden name, etc." all to "confirm my identity" I of course refused, hung up, and called the 800 number printed on my credit card. They were understanding, but never acknowledged that they were essentially asking me to give all my personal information to a random person who called my home phone number.
How many labs were flooded during Katrina?
... not people.
One of the few good reasons that there was very little security for the refugees in the early hours was that armed teams were sent into the city to secure all the material that might be used for a "weapons of mass destruction" terrorist attack. Bio-hazards weren't really the biggest problem. Every major hospital, for example, has a radiation oncology department with some really radioactive stuff in it used for cancer treatment. Abdul Im-a-punk Al-Quaeda might want to run in, grab it, drive it to Manhattan, and spread it all over Central Park. Getting that stuff out of the city is the first priority whenever rampant looting breaks out
Yes, ideally you have enough security to accomplish both tasks.
Spotlight sees the Entourage database as one large file. Everytime you download a single piece of email spam, the entire database file changes and Spotlight tries to reindex the whole thing, over and over again. If you have Entourage open and set to check your mail every 20 minutes, you force Spotlight to reindex a ~1GB file containing every email message on your computer every 20 min.
Spotlight can't see into Entourage anyway, so you aren't loosing any functionality by telling Spotlight to ignore that file.
Cell phones crash planes when you want them to, and don't crash planes when you don't want them to. Proof: 1) Cell phone use by passengers saved the White House on September 11th. Passengers were able to learn what happened at the World Trade Center, and correctly deduced that the plane was going to be used as a weapon. This is actually a security measure. Cell phones in the hands of passengers is the best chance that NORAD has of learning that a plane has been hijacked before it can be used to hit anything. 2) Cell phones are constantly, constantly being left on accidentally in flight (along with Wifi laptops, etc.) If this could bring down a plane, they would be falling out of the sky left and right. In the 21st Century, the only way to be safe is to build a plane that is immune to cell phone interference. Anything less is delusional folly.
Actually, for a cell phone provider, the 800-900 MHz band is far more valuable than the 1800-1900 MHz band. "800" allows cellular towers to be spaced much farther apart, significantly reducing costs to provide service to a given area. Much of this is do to the poor building penetration of 1900 MHz signals (I'm talking real world results, not theoretical physics) Case in point: ATT Wireless put 1900 MHz GSM antennas on their existing 800 MHz TDMA towars ... and the 1900 system had FAR worse coverage.