I was able to find a TV without any network connectivity at Wal-Mart a few months ago, but it wasn't easy. The employee seemed confused as to why anybody would want such a thing in the first place, but when I started to walk away, she walked me over to the one set of TVs down at the very end which didn't have any connectivity at all. The biggest of these was a 55-inch (Sanyo FW55D25F-B), which is about as big as I was looking for, so that's what I have in the living room now.
Somebody else in the store at the time overheard the conversation, and told me about an article he had read about TVs which were so "smart" that they would jump on any non-secured wifi they could find, when they didn't have (or couldn't connect to) a configured network.
I wish I could say that my friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart employee got a bit of an education from us that evening, but it was fairly obvious she didn't really care one way or the other...
I find it odd that a web page containing a list of ISPs who promise to protect their customers' privacy, is hosted on blogger.com, which is owned by Google, who has a vested interest in NOT protecting peoples' privacy. (You can't even view the page without allowing your browser to run Javascript from three different Google domains.)
Actually, I've been a digital-only subscriber for some time. The downloads are DRM-free PDF files that I can read, and search, on several devices running a variety of platforms, including Linux (of course), Mac OSX, and iPad. Plus the download area has old issues going back several years (I want to say 2004 but wouldn't swear to it) and I'm able to download all of those as well. Just the thing when I get a new project and need to look up something I vaguely remember seeing in a past issue, but don't know which issue had it.
It's like ebooks, especially the O'Reilly books... it's much easier to carry around an iPad with 300+ EPUB and PDF files than trying to guess which ones I might need on any given day, or even worse trying to carry all of them with me.
DigitalOne's chief executive, Sergej Ostroumow, said: "This problem is caused by the FBI, not our company. In the night FBI has taken 3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server - we cannot check it."
Am I the only one who finds it odd that the management of a datacenter "cannot check" whether or not a particular machine was taken by the FBI? Every datacenter I've ever worked in, had an inventory of what equipment was where, and KNEW where every machine was, down to the specific "U" for shared racks, or at least which rack or cage (in cases where a single client had rented an entire rack or cage.) Presumably they know which racks were emptied, they should be able to check their inventory for those three racks to see what was taken...
Or is he saying that the FBI is preventing his personnel from entering the building to check on what was taken and what's still there?
I spent four and a half years working for RS, and while I remember asking for a phone number with every transaction, the only time I ever asked for anybody's SSN was if they were applying for a credit card.
Although I will admit I stopped working there in 1995, so things might have changed in the post-9/11 world. Where was this store, across the street from NSA headquarters?
... why they moved away from their hobbyist roots. I worked for RS for four and a half years, back in the early 1990's, went through their manager training program, and at one point I was in line to get my own store. (Then in 1995 I was offered a job with an ISP, and the rest is history...)
The "force-feed" merchandise in the backs of the stores (called this because the computers in Ft. Worth decided how many of each item each store needed, instead of the manager ordering them) always had the highest margins in the store. I remember looking up a pack of resistors once. We were selling it for 99 cents in the store, but the store cost (the amount which Ft. Worth charged the store on its P&L) was only 18 cents.
At the same time, we had just started selling RS's first multimedia PC (i.e. with a CD-ROM, sound card, and a few games and an encyclopædia of zoo animals) for $1,999... with a store cost of $1,930. Of course, my paycheck was commission, so I concentrated more on selling computers than selling resistors... and even thouth the huge paychecks were nice, even back then I wondered why they didn't structure things to make the employees concentrate more on margins and profits (which the store managers' pay plans do) instead of just raw volume...
Actually, I tend to remember which products use these kinds of intrusive ads. In the situation you describe (remember x because of an ad, don't know anything about y) I would go with y just because x tried to hammer their name into my brain.
In other words, I *do* remember the products being advertised... but in a negative light.
That's kinda backwards- usually I hear people ask why they can't find a copy of iTunes which doesn't come with Quicktime. The reason for that is because the code which implements Apple's DRM mechanism is actually contained in the Quicktime libraries. They put it there so that Mac users will be able to play their protected files using players other than iTunes- on a Mac, any program which uses the Quicktime framework (i.e. shared library, much like a ".so" or ".dll" file) is able to play the protected files.
The same is true on Windows- their Quicktime player is able to play protected files which were purchased through the iTunes store (provided your computer is "authorized" for the account which purchased the file, of course.) My understanding (I don't write code for Windows) is that any other Windows program which use the Quicktime library can also play them.
The difference is that, on the Mac, the Quicktime framework is installed as a base part of the OS (much like IE on Windows) and therefore it's safe to assume it will always be there on a Mac. For Windows, it's not installed by default, and in fact can be removed by the user (after they uninstall iTunes, which won't work without it.)
As for why it installs Bonjour... first of all, it's not a system for locating other computers, it's a system for finding SERVICES on other computers. iTunes uses it to implement their "sharing" feature, where if multiple machines are running iTunes on the same network, they can play music from each others' libraries.
As for being able to install Quicktime without iTunes, I haven't tried in several years- my desktop and laptop machines are both Macs, and the only Windows machine I own anymore doesn't connect to the internet at all (I used it for ham radio, and install software using a USB stick) And because I'm using a Mac, Apple's web site only shows me the download links for the Mac, so I can't see what their offerings are for Windows.
As for why people use Quicktime to encode their videos "for whatever reason"... If a Windows user makes a video and distributes it, chances are it will be a ".wmv" file. Why? Because "Windows Media" support is built into the operating system, just as Quicktime is built into Mac OS X. Most users don't know, or care, about video codecs, container formats, or anything like that- all they know is that when they hit "go", it makes a file which they can play by double-clicking on it. Mac users are just as human as Windows users, and have the same "laziness" factor. When a Mac user doesn't tell their software any different, they end up producing Quicktime files. However, most of the newer programs are starting to default to MP4 files, which can be played by just about anything- which cannot be said of ".wmv" files.
I have two 2-line 20-character VFD displays, like you'd see on top of a pole on the back of a cash register (in fact it used to be part of a cash register.) I was using one of them as a dual timezone clock for a while. http://www.jms1.net/code/#vfdclock has the code, and a picture of the units, if anybody is interested.
this may be more about perl than regular expressions in general, but i've been using a function for several years to insert data into templates. the template contains tags like "${name}", the function is called with the template and a list of substitutions like ("name" => "john", "ip" => "127.0.0.1") and the return value is the "filled out" version of the template.
sub parse_string($;@) { my $string = shift; my %rep = @_;
I don't know about where you live, but here in Orlando the E-Pass units actually have two transponders inside of them- one in the 2.4GHz range to work with the toll systems, and another one at 915MHz which triggers a different set of detectors, which have been and are still being installed along all of the major roads, highway exits, and major intersections along the entire I-4 corridor. I've been told that the same thing is happening in Jacksonville, and within a few years it's supposed to be state-wide. The detectors are visible in many places- look for two flat panels, usually white, mounted next to each other (one transmits a signal to activate the transponders, the other picks up the return signals from the transponders) although some of them (408 westbound under the Good Homes Rd overpass comes to mind) use different types of antennas.
These other detectors are supposedly in place to gather data which is used to produce the overhead congestion notices- "Lee Road, 9 miles, 17 minutes... Lake Mary Blvd, 18 miles, 40 minutes" kinda thing. This is done by tracking transponders and averaging their speeds from one pickup to the next, however there is nothing to prevent the raw data (which monitoring point detected which transponder at what time) from being used by law enforcement to track the course of an individual vehicle after the fact... or to search the live data streams for a given transponder ID and "follow" a car in real time.
I do have one of the transponders, because some of the tollbooths are cheaper for E-Pass users than they are for people who pay cash (and the truth is that they DO save time.) However, when I'm not going through a tollbooth I keep the unit inside of an anti-static bag, which happens to block low-powered RF signals in the 900MHz range (tested using a handheld amateur radio at 915MHz.) If you drive around with a police scanner (which is apparently not legal in Florida any more, unless you have some kind of FCC license, such as an amateur license) tuned to 915MHz, you can hear these boxes chattering as you pass them, and if you have a transponder, you can hear it answering them (the chattering pattern changes.)
i'll admit it, i've done my share of luzer-bashing over the years. however, i've also learned that there are two main problems with most of the people that we call "luzers"...
(1) they don't want to use a computer in the first place, or they know that they are lost and are therefore scared of the computer. either way, they try to avoid having to even touch the thing if they don't have to. these people i don't mind working with- because they generally know their limitations, and in many cases they actually listen when you tell them something. the trick is to tell them in a way that they actually understand- because just like they're scared of the computer, if you say something and they don't understand it, they're usually scared to ask you to repeat it or explain it in a way which is better for them... or they're afraid you're going to turn into one of these arrogant weenies that the article spoke of- the kind of people who would wear an "i see dumb people" t-shirt to a client's office.
in my current work (consulting) i have quite a bit of contact with these people. for the most part they "just want it to work", and they KNOW that they're not computer experts. these people make mistakes, but they almost always realize when they've screwed something up, and they ask for help. and unless they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing in the first place (installing software that the company doesn't want on the machine is a big one that i see) they will usually admit what happened. and after you explain to them that your service call was only necessary because of the software that they installed, and (in the case of installing unauthorized software) after their boss threatens to take my fee out of their paycheck, they usually won't do it again.
(2) companies like microsoft have convinced a lot of people that, just because they know how to use ALT-TAB to flip between outlook and solitaire when the boss walks by, that they are some kind of computer expert. THESE are the ones who piss me off- the people who think that just because they figured out how to turn on file and printer sharing on a windoze 2000 machine, that they are also qualified to handle everything from mail servers to cisco routers.
i don't normally have much contact with these people in my work, because when i find them, i make it a point to make sure their supervisors know exactly what kind of person they have on the payroll- and either the person starts improving, or they end up fired.
however, in my non-paid work (i maintain a combined patch file for qmail, and am a developer for vpopmail) i deal almost exclusively with these people who believe that, just because they can click the right buttons to make windoze do something, that they are also "computer experts" in general. these people are the ones who generally won't READ any more documentation than they have to- they'll just blindly follow along with some poorly written "qmail install guide" they found on the net, without understanding what they're actually doing. when they're done they'll usually have a machine which will move mail from one place to another, but it won't be secure, and they won't have any idea how it works, how to configure it, or how to fix it when something goes wrong.
THESE are the people who i freely admit to being rude with... the people who are in over their head but just plain don't care. (for me, "being rude" usually means referring them to ESR's "How to ask questions the smart way" page instead of answering the same questions over and over again.)
i think another problem is that many so-called "IT professionals" are afraid to use the phrase "i don't know" in front of a client or employer. i've found that being honest with my clients about my own skills and knowledge, as well as about the things i DON'T know, has worked really well- in a few cases the clients have even been willing to pay for my time to learn about whatever it is.
... unless you take into account that 99% of IE loads itself into memory with the desktop itself. think about how long it takes the typical windows desktop to load, and then guess how much of that time needs to be added to the IE side of your comparison.
firefox would load just as quickly, if not more quickly, if it had 99% of its code pre-loaded in memory like IE does.
Encrypting the data on its way to the drive is a good idea, especially if the key material is, as you said, stored in RAM which loses its contents when power is lost. However, there are ways to recover the contents of RAM "after the fact". I remember reading about a commercial SSH implementation whose "agent" process would "scramble" the secret keys in memory- constantly changing the values of the bytes holding the key material, but doing so in a predictable manner (XOR'ing the bytes with values which result in a loop, for example) so that the agent itself COULD read the key when it needed it, but that if the system lost power they key itself wouldn't be recoverable through a low-level examination of the RAM.
As for having the enemy's military secrets, yes- you would certainly have whatever information you may have gathered during that flight. However, you would also have information which would be useful to the enemy. In many cases, just having them find out exactly what information you have gathered on that flight, or even letting them find out what you were looking for, can be harmful to your side. By looking at exactly what you have collected, they can now tell what your capabilites are (i.e. the resolution of your cameras, the sensitivity of your antennas, etc.) Knowing what you were looking for (which sites you were looking at, which frequencies you were monitoring, etc.) tells them what your interests are, which in itself can tell them things about your side's intelligence-gathering capabilities.
Even something as basic as your flight plan can tell them things you probably don't want them to know- what sites you are interested in seeing, for example... or if there are a LOT of sites on your flight plan, or a lot of time over specific sites, it could tell them that your aircraft has the ability to stay in flight longer than they thought possible- either by in-air refueling, or by having larger or more fuel tanks, or more efficient engines, or fuel, than the enemy knew about.
Of course, finding a "code book" (either electronic, paper, or in the memory of a crew member) would be a major win for the enemy, because it allows them to read your communications. I am not and have never been involved with the Air Force's crypto, but I would imagine that they use specific keys for each aircraft, and if several aircraft are involved in a mission, that there would be one or two keys shared between all aircraft involved with that mission and then never used again, just so that if any of the keys are compromised, they would be useless outside of the scope of that one mission.
So just because you have the enemy's classified info doesn't mean you don't have any of your own side's classified info as well. This is why the intelligence services worry about things like destroying the hard drives on an aircraft which is "about to be" in enemy hands. Aircraft (and air crew) can be replaced, but "information that the enemy doesn't know" cannot be "replaced" once the enemy knows about it. Think about it- the point of gathering intelligence is to get the enemy's info, WITHOUT revealing any of your own info. If an aircraft goes down, your side don't get any of the enemy's info- but your side didn't already have it, so you're no worse off than you were before you started. The priority becomes making sure the enemy doesn't get any of YOUR info when they examine the remains of your aircraft.
Probably because not all of the utilities are using the newer equipment. There are only a few equipment manufacturers which make the gear with proper notching, and very few utilities are using the newer equipment. There are current deployments, and current "testing" deployments, which are using the older, noisy equipment.
http://www.qrpis.org/~k3ng/bpl.html#61 tells who the (currently two) manufacturers are with "clean" equipment. The rest of the page answers a lot of questions about why the problem still exists.
Again, just because YOUR utility is using newer equipment doesn't mean that EVERY utility is doing so... and for those who have to deal with BPL interference every day, this information is NOT "fud".
For that matter, here in Peoria we have a broad scale deployment of BOPL and considering my coworker is a ham enthusiast in the same town I find it odd that this fud is still being spread around.
The INFORMATION is still being spread because it's correct. Not every BPL deployment uses the same equipment- there are several other BPL deployments around the country which use older equipment, and which ARE kicking up large amounts of broadband RF noise, causing interference to amateur radio (and other licensed services.)
Just because the system in your area isn't causing noise doesn't mean that none of the systems in other areas are.
(3) shall not be inconsistent with the customary use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with the purposes of this act and other applicable law.
basically, they're saying that it won't restrict fair use, unless your idea of "fair use" happens to not agree with "the purposes of this act".
This was not the first time a major band has sold MP3 files without DRM... about a year ago I bought two "They Might Be Giants" albums ("They Got Lost" and "No!") through the band's web site, as MP3 files, without any DRM. The only bummer was not having the little book that normally comes with a physical CD, but I was able to find the cover art online, and there are several different web sites with the lyrics.
I wouldn't count on it not becoming at a BILL... all they need there is for one memober of congress to introduce it, it gets a number and it's a bill. Bills can be introduced by any member of congress, and can propose pretty much anything.
And we all know they have a few congresscritters on their payroll.
Whether or not that BILL makes it through the committees and is passed by both houses and becomes a LAW, that's a different question.
I would actually suggest we wait until it does become a bill, so that when we write to our representatives we can give them a specific bill number to oppose. Those congresscritters who actually listen to all of their constituents (rather than just those constituents who write their letters on the backs of hundred dollar bills) will probably appreciate being able to attach a "no" to a specific bill number, rather than having to THINK about what bills are outstanding and have to figure out which bill(s) you're talking about.
I had been with AT&T for several years and was fairly happy with them, until Cingular bought them out. Within a month I started having problems with the service- I started having random service drops (in the middle of Orlando) as if somebody were randomly rebooting the cell sites, they force-downloaded new settings to my phone by accident once... but the final straw was when their customer service web site suddenly didn't recognize my password and the support people refused to reset it because I didn't have a "secret question" attached to my account on the web site- something AT&T had never used but Cingular added without considering the effect on the customers they were inheriting from AT&T.
I switched to T-Mobile and took my number with me- the number porting process was done in four hours, and in the five months since this happened I have yet to have a single problem with their service, other than lack of service on part of US-17 south of Orlando- and even that has since been corrected (I guess they put up a cell site down there.) Their web site even has an interactive widget which shows you the coverage strength at a very specific level- for example if I were to move two blocks, my coverage would be about 15% higher.
I've been very happy with them since moving. The only thing I wish they could do is unlock my old phones from the other carriers I've had over the years.
As for the data services... they charge $5/mo to access the web from the phone itself, or $20/mo to use the phone (Nokia 6600) as a "Bluetooth modem" and access the internet from a laptop (or a Palm device.) I have the $5/mo package and have used the phone's built-in browser, but not enough to judge the speed- if I had to guess I would say it was in the 50-60k range (a little faster than dialup but nowhere near broadband.)
Actually, the problem is that without any extra patches, qmail does NOT refuse mail for unknown recipients. It only checks the recipient's domain name before deciding whether or not to accept a message- which means that if somebody sends a message to a non-existent mailbox, as long as the domain is handled by that server, qmail will accept it during the SMTP conversation, and then bounce it after the mailbox is found not to exist.
There are several patches out there which teach the SMTP server to check for the existence of a given recipient at the "userid" level rather than just the domain name. The problem is that most of these methods are slow or they only work with one specific method of organizing mailboxes (i.e. they only work if the userid's are system accounts, or if you are using vpopmail to manage your virtual domains.)
The most flexible patch I found was one which used a text file full of email addresses to tell what was valid- I ended up making that patch use a cdb file instead of a flat text file, so it will scale for large ISP's. Of course it needs an external process to generate the cdb file, but for most systems that's not an issue- cron jobs are easy to write.
http://www.jms1.net/qmail/patches/ has my modified patch, both as a stand-alone patch, and as part of a larger combined patch that I use for my own server and my clients' servers.
The author of the web page is correct in that qmail has problems, although I think he shold add a note to his blanket condemnation of qmail which says "unless patched appropriately."
I like his idea of building an automatic blacklist of IP addresses which send messages which are rejected by clamav... I'm going to have to look into doing that myself.
Slashdot Mirror
I was able to find a TV without any network connectivity at Wal-Mart a few months ago, but it wasn't easy. The employee seemed confused as to why anybody would want such a thing in the first place, but when I started to walk away, she walked me over to the one set of TVs down at the very end which didn't have any connectivity at all. The biggest of these was a 55-inch (Sanyo FW55D25F-B), which is about as big as I was looking for, so that's what I have in the living room now.
Somebody else in the store at the time overheard the conversation, and told me about an article he had read about TVs which were so "smart" that they would jump on any non-secured wifi they could find, when they didn't have (or couldn't connect to) a configured network.
I wish I could say that my friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart employee got a bit of an education from us that evening, but it was fairly obvious she didn't really care one way or the other...
I find it odd that a web page containing a list of ISPs who promise to protect their customers' privacy, is hosted on blogger.com, which is owned by Google, who has a vested interest in NOT protecting peoples' privacy. (You can't even view the page without allowing your browser to run Javascript from three different Google domains.)
Actually, I've been a digital-only subscriber for some time. The downloads are DRM-free PDF files that I can read, and search, on several devices running a variety of platforms, including Linux (of course), Mac OSX, and iPad. Plus the download area has old issues going back several years (I want to say 2004 but wouldn't swear to it) and I'm able to download all of those as well. Just the thing when I get a new project and need to look up something I vaguely remember seeing in a past issue, but don't know which issue had it.
It's like ebooks, especially the O'Reilly books... it's much easier to carry around an iPad with 300+ EPUB and PDF files than trying to guess which ones I might need on any given day, or even worse trying to carry all of them with me.
I never really got much out of LinkedIn anyway, so when I read about this change, I just cancelled my account. One less thing to deal with.
Now we'll see if they spend the next year harrassing me to come back...
Am I the only one who finds it odd that the management of a datacenter "cannot check" whether or not a particular machine was taken by the FBI? Every datacenter I've ever worked in, had an inventory of what equipment was where, and KNEW where every machine was, down to the specific "U" for shared racks, or at least which rack or cage (in cases where a single client had rented an entire rack or cage.) Presumably they know which racks were emptied, they should be able to check their inventory for those three racks to see what was taken...
Or is he saying that the FBI is preventing his personnel from entering the building to check on what was taken and what's still there?
I spent four and a half years working for RS, and while I remember asking for a phone number with every transaction, the only time I ever asked for anybody's SSN was if they were applying for a credit card.
Although I will admit I stopped working there in 1995, so things might have changed in the post-9/11 world. Where was this store, across the street from NSA headquarters?
... why they moved away from their hobbyist roots. I worked for RS for four and a half years, back in the early 1990's, went through their manager training program, and at one point I was in line to get my own store. (Then in 1995 I was offered a job with an ISP, and the rest is history...)
The "force-feed" merchandise in the backs of the stores (called this because the computers in Ft. Worth decided how many of each item each store needed, instead of the manager ordering them) always had the highest margins in the store. I remember looking up a pack of resistors once. We were selling it for 99 cents in the store, but the store cost (the amount which Ft. Worth charged the store on its P&L) was only 18 cents.
At the same time, we had just started selling RS's first multimedia PC (i.e. with a CD-ROM, sound card, and a few games and an encyclopædia of zoo animals) for $1,999... with a store cost of $1,930. Of course, my paycheck was commission, so I concentrated more on selling computers than selling resistors... and even thouth the huge paychecks were nice, even back then I wondered why they didn't structure things to make the employees concentrate more on margins and profits (which the store managers' pay plans do) instead of just raw volume...
Actually, I tend to remember which products use these kinds of intrusive ads. In the situation you describe (remember x because of an ad, don't know anything about y) I would go with y just because x tried to hammer their name into my brain.
In other words, I *do* remember the products being advertised... but in a negative light.
That's kinda backwards- usually I hear people ask why they can't find a copy of iTunes which doesn't come with Quicktime. The reason for that is because the code which implements Apple's DRM mechanism is actually contained in the Quicktime libraries. They put it there so that Mac users will be able to play their protected files using players other than iTunes- on a Mac, any program which uses the Quicktime framework (i.e. shared library, much like a ".so" or ".dll" file) is able to play the protected files.
The same is true on Windows- their Quicktime player is able to play protected files which were purchased through the iTunes store (provided your computer is "authorized" for the account which purchased the file, of course.) My understanding (I don't write code for Windows) is that any other Windows program which use the Quicktime library can also play them.
The difference is that, on the Mac, the Quicktime framework is installed as a base part of the OS (much like IE on Windows) and therefore it's safe to assume it will always be there on a Mac. For Windows, it's not installed by default, and in fact can be removed by the user (after they uninstall iTunes, which won't work without it.)
As for why it installs Bonjour... first of all, it's not a system for locating other computers, it's a system for finding SERVICES on other computers. iTunes uses it to implement their "sharing" feature, where if multiple machines are running iTunes on the same network, they can play music from each others' libraries.
As for being able to install Quicktime without iTunes, I haven't tried in several years- my desktop and laptop machines are both Macs, and the only Windows machine I own anymore doesn't connect to the internet at all (I used it for ham radio, and install software using a USB stick) And because I'm using a Mac, Apple's web site only shows me the download links for the Mac, so I can't see what their offerings are for Windows.
As for why people use Quicktime to encode their videos "for whatever reason"... If a Windows user makes a video and distributes it, chances are it will be a ".wmv" file. Why? Because "Windows Media" support is built into the operating system, just as Quicktime is built into Mac OS X. Most users don't know, or care, about video codecs, container formats, or anything like that- all they know is that when they hit "go", it makes a file which they can play by double-clicking on it. Mac users are just as human as Windows users, and have the same "laziness" factor. When a Mac user doesn't tell their software any different, they end up producing Quicktime files. However, most of the newer programs are starting to default to MP4 files, which can be played by just about anything- which cannot be said of ".wmv" files.
I have two 2-line 20-character VFD displays, like you'd see on top of a pole on the back of a cash register (in fact it used to be part of a cash register.) I was using one of them as a dual timezone clock for a while. http://www.jms1.net/code/#vfdclock has the code, and a picture of the units, if anybody is interested.
this may be more about perl than regular expressions in general, but i've been using a function for several years to insert data into templates. the template contains tags like "${name}", the function is called with the template and a list of substitutions like ("name" => "john", "ip" => "127.0.0.1") and the return value is the "filled out" version of the template.
; ;
; ;
sub parse_string($;@)
{
my $string = shift
my %rep = @_
$string =~ s/\$\{(.+?)\}/$rep{$1}/gms
return $string
}
I don't know about where you live, but here in Orlando the E-Pass units actually have two transponders inside of them- one in the 2.4GHz range to work with the toll systems, and another one at 915MHz which triggers a different set of detectors, which have been and are still being installed along all of the major roads, highway exits, and major intersections along the entire I-4 corridor. I've been told that the same thing is happening in Jacksonville, and within a few years it's supposed to be state-wide. The detectors are visible in many places- look for two flat panels, usually white, mounted next to each other (one transmits a signal to activate the transponders, the other picks up the return signals from the transponders) although some of them (408 westbound under the Good Homes Rd overpass comes to mind) use different types of antennas.
These other detectors are supposedly in place to gather data which is used to produce the overhead congestion notices- "Lee Road, 9 miles, 17 minutes... Lake Mary Blvd, 18 miles, 40 minutes" kinda thing. This is done by tracking transponders and averaging their speeds from one pickup to the next, however there is nothing to prevent the raw data (which monitoring point detected which transponder at what time) from being used by law enforcement to track the course of an individual vehicle after the fact... or to search the live data streams for a given transponder ID and "follow" a car in real time.
I do have one of the transponders, because some of the tollbooths are cheaper for E-Pass users than they are for people who pay cash (and the truth is that they DO save time.) However, when I'm not going through a tollbooth I keep the unit inside of an anti-static bag, which happens to block low-powered RF signals in the 900MHz range (tested using a handheld amateur radio at 915MHz.) If you drive around with a police scanner (which is apparently not legal in Florida any more, unless you have some kind of FCC license, such as an amateur license) tuned to 915MHz, you can hear these boxes chattering as you pass them, and if you have a transponder, you can hear it answering them (the chattering pattern changes.)
i'll admit it, i've done my share of luzer-bashing over the years. however, i've also learned that there are two main problems with most of the people that we call "luzers"...
(1) they don't want to use a computer in the first place, or they know that they are lost and are therefore scared of the computer. either way, they try to avoid having to even touch the thing if they don't have to. these people i don't mind working with- because they generally know their limitations, and in many cases they actually listen when you tell them something. the trick is to tell them in a way that they actually understand- because just like they're scared of the computer, if you say something and they don't understand it, they're usually scared to ask you to repeat it or explain it in a way which is better for them... or they're afraid you're going to turn into one of these arrogant weenies that the article spoke of- the kind of people who would wear an "i see dumb people" t-shirt to a client's office.
in my current work (consulting) i have quite a bit of contact with these people. for the most part they "just want it to work", and they KNOW that they're not computer experts. these people make mistakes, but they almost always realize when they've screwed something up, and they ask for help. and unless they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing in the first place (installing software that the company doesn't want on the machine is a big one that i see) they will usually admit what happened. and after you explain to them that your service call was only necessary because of the software that they installed, and (in the case of installing unauthorized software) after their boss threatens to take my fee out of their paycheck, they usually won't do it again.
(2) companies like microsoft have convinced a lot of people that, just because they know how to use ALT-TAB to flip between outlook and solitaire when the boss walks by, that they are some kind of computer expert. THESE are the ones who piss me off- the people who think that just because they figured out how to turn on file and printer sharing on a windoze 2000 machine, that they are also qualified to handle everything from mail servers to cisco routers.
i don't normally have much contact with these people in my work, because when i find them, i make it a point to make sure their supervisors know exactly what kind of person they have on the payroll- and either the person starts improving, or they end up fired.
however, in my non-paid work (i maintain a combined patch file for qmail, and am a developer for vpopmail) i deal almost exclusively with these people who believe that, just because they can click the right buttons to make windoze do something, that they are also "computer experts" in general. these people are the ones who generally won't READ any more documentation than they have to- they'll just blindly follow along with some poorly written "qmail install guide" they found on the net, without understanding what they're actually doing. when they're done they'll usually have a machine which will move mail from one place to another, but it won't be secure, and they won't have any idea how it works, how to configure it, or how to fix it when something goes wrong.
THESE are the people who i freely admit to being rude with... the people who are in over their head but just plain don't care. (for me, "being rude" usually means referring them to ESR's "How to ask questions the smart way" page instead of answering the same questions over and over again.)
i think another problem is that many so-called "IT professionals" are afraid to use the phrase "i don't know" in front of a client or employer. i've found that being honest with my clients about my own skills and knowledge, as well as about the things i DON'T know, has worked really well- in a few cases the clients have even been willing to pay for my time to learn about whatever it is.
so when it comes to no
... unless you take into account that 99% of IE loads itself into memory with the desktop itself. think about how long it takes the typical windows desktop to load, and then guess how much of that time needs to be added to the IE side of your comparison.
firefox would load just as quickly, if not more quickly, if it had 99% of its code pre-loaded in memory like IE does.
Encrypting the data on its way to the drive is a good idea, especially if the key material is, as you said, stored in RAM which loses its contents when power is lost. However, there are ways to recover the contents of RAM "after the fact". I remember reading about a commercial SSH implementation whose "agent" process would "scramble" the secret keys in memory- constantly changing the values of the bytes holding the key material, but doing so in a predictable manner (XOR'ing the bytes with values which result in a loop, for example) so that the agent itself COULD read the key when it needed it, but that if the system lost power they key itself wouldn't be recoverable through a low-level examination of the RAM.
As for having the enemy's military secrets, yes- you would certainly have whatever information you may have gathered during that flight. However, you would also have information which would be useful to the enemy. In many cases, just having them find out exactly what information you have gathered on that flight, or even letting them find out what you were looking for, can be harmful to your side. By looking at exactly what you have collected, they can now tell what your capabilites are (i.e. the resolution of your cameras, the sensitivity of your antennas, etc.) Knowing what you were looking for (which sites you were looking at, which frequencies you were monitoring, etc.) tells them what your interests are, which in itself can tell them things about your side's intelligence-gathering capabilities.
Even something as basic as your flight plan can tell them things you probably don't want them to know- what sites you are interested in seeing, for example... or if there are a LOT of sites on your flight plan, or a lot of time over specific sites, it could tell them that your aircraft has the ability to stay in flight longer than they thought possible- either by in-air refueling, or by having larger or more fuel tanks, or more efficient engines, or fuel, than the enemy knew about.
Of course, finding a "code book" (either electronic, paper, or in the memory of a crew member) would be a major win for the enemy, because it allows them to read your communications. I am not and have never been involved with the Air Force's crypto, but I would imagine that they use specific keys for each aircraft, and if several aircraft are involved in a mission, that there would be one or two keys shared between all aircraft involved with that mission and then never used again, just so that if any of the keys are compromised, they would be useless outside of the scope of that one mission.
So just because you have the enemy's classified info doesn't mean you don't have any of your own side's classified info as well. This is why the intelligence services worry about things like destroying the hard drives on an aircraft which is "about to be" in enemy hands. Aircraft (and air crew) can be replaced, but "information that the enemy doesn't know" cannot be "replaced" once the enemy knows about it. Think about it- the point of gathering intelligence is to get the enemy's info, WITHOUT revealing any of your own info. If an aircraft goes down, your side don't get any of the enemy's info- but your side didn't already have it, so you're no worse off than you were before you started. The priority becomes making sure the enemy doesn't get any of YOUR info when they examine the remains of your aircraft.
Probably because not all of the utilities are using the newer equipment. There are only a few equipment manufacturers which make the gear with proper notching, and very few utilities are using the newer equipment. There are current deployments, and current "testing" deployments, which are using the older, noisy equipment.
http://www.qrpis.org/~k3ng/bpl.html#61 tells who the (currently two) manufacturers are with "clean" equipment. The rest of the page answers a lot of questions about why the problem still exists.
Again, just because YOUR utility is using newer equipment doesn't mean that EVERY utility is doing so... and for those who have to deal with BPL interference every day, this information is NOT "fud".
you forgot one...
$expr && dostuff() ;
depending on what "$expr" really is, you may need parentheses around it.
This was not the first time a major band has sold MP3 files without DRM... about a year ago I bought two "They Might Be Giants" albums ("They Got Lost" and "No!") through the band's web site, as MP3 files, without any DRM. The only bummer was not having the little book that normally comes with a physical CD, but I was able to find the cover art online, and there are several different web sites with the lyrics.
I wouldn't count on it not becoming at a BILL... all they need there is for one memober of congress to introduce it, it gets a number and it's a bill. Bills can be introduced by any member of congress, and can propose pretty much anything.
And we all know they have a few congresscritters on their payroll.
Whether or not that BILL makes it through the committees and is passed by both houses and becomes a LAW, that's a different question.
I would actually suggest we wait until it does become a bill, so that when we write to our representatives we can give them a specific bill number to oppose. Those congresscritters who actually listen to all of their constituents (rather than just those constituents who write their letters on the backs of hundred dollar bills) will probably appreciate being able to attach a "no" to a specific bill number, rather than having to THINK about what bills are outstanding and have to figure out which bill(s) you're talking about.
I'm sure that there are plenty of poeple, like myself, were able to find it in less than ten seconds.
It does... I've been doing this with delete.net for over a year now.
v=spf1 -allI had been with AT&T for several years and was fairly happy with them, until Cingular bought them out. Within a month I started having problems with the service- I started having random service drops (in the middle of Orlando) as if somebody were randomly rebooting the cell sites, they force-downloaded new settings to my phone by accident once... but the final straw was when their customer service web site suddenly didn't recognize my password and the support people refused to reset it because I didn't have a "secret question" attached to my account on the web site- something AT&T had never used but Cingular added without considering the effect on the customers they were inheriting from AT&T.
I switched to T-Mobile and took my number with me- the number porting process was done in four hours, and in the five months since this happened I have yet to have a single problem with their service, other than lack of service on part of US-17 south of Orlando- and even that has since been corrected (I guess they put up a cell site down there.) Their web site even has an interactive widget which shows you the coverage strength at a very specific level- for example if I were to move two blocks, my coverage would be about 15% higher.
I've been very happy with them since moving. The only thing I wish they could do is unlock my old phones from the other carriers I've had over the years.
As for the data services... they charge $5/mo to access the web from the phone itself, or $20/mo to use the phone (Nokia 6600) as a "Bluetooth modem" and access the internet from a laptop (or a Palm device.) I have the $5/mo package and have used the phone's built-in browser, but not enough to judge the speed- if I had to guess I would say it was in the 50-60k range (a little faster than dialup but nowhere near broadband.)
Actually, the problem is that without any extra patches, qmail does NOT refuse mail for unknown recipients. It only checks the recipient's domain name before deciding whether or not to accept a message- which means that if somebody sends a message to a non-existent mailbox, as long as the domain is handled by that server, qmail will accept it during the SMTP conversation, and then bounce it after the mailbox is found not to exist.
There are several patches out there which teach the SMTP server to check for the existence of a given recipient at the "userid" level rather than just the domain name. The problem is that most of these methods are slow or they only work with one specific method of organizing mailboxes (i.e. they only work if the userid's are system accounts, or if you are using vpopmail to manage your virtual domains.)
The most flexible patch I found was one which used a text file full of email addresses to tell what was valid- I ended up making that patch use a cdb file instead of a flat text file, so it will scale for large ISP's. Of course it needs an external process to generate the cdb file, but for most systems that's not an issue- cron jobs are easy to write.
http://www.jms1.net/qmail/patches/ has my modified patch, both as a stand-alone patch, and as part of a larger combined patch that I use for my own server and my clients' servers.
The author of the web page is correct in that qmail has problems, although I think he shold add a note to his blanket condemnation of qmail which says "unless patched appropriately."
I like his idea of building an automatic blacklist of IP addresses which send messages which are rejected by clamav... I'm going to have to look into doing that myself.