"It is odd that he's had multiple attacks while I've had zero, since he claims the attack is entirely despite any knowledge of the account holder's name or wealth."
OK, maybe you're misinterpreting TFA, but it's pretty clear that some (most) people are using these checks for bragging rights. Thus the checks, which include the account holder's name (Donald Knuth), the bank name, routing number, and account number, are displayed in many cases publically, sometimes as scans on the Internet.
CDMA operates by using mathematical tricks to allow multiple phones to transmit at the same time on the same frequency and only interfere with each other slightly. As a result a CDMA phone in a call is always transmitting.
GSM, iDEN, and D-AMPS (long dead, formerly simply called "TDMA") all use a TDMA access scheme, where each phone is assigned a timeslot it can transmit in. Thus the transmitter keeps keying on and off, and this on/off keying is what gets translated into a low-duty-cycle square wave tone that you hear.
Nope. RTFA, Part 15 devices (consumer electronics, not the phones) have the following regulations: 1) Cannot interfere with devices in a "higher priority" classification (such as a licensed transmitter) 2) Must accept interference from devices in a "higher priority" classification, such as a licensed transmitter. Cell phones are, effectively, licensed transmitter. The user themselves doesn't have the license, but the carrier does.
Yup. CDMA phones (whether Qualcomm cdmaOne, Qualcomm CDMA2000, or UMTS WCDMA) don't cause this problem, as they transmit continuously and use some mathematical tricks to allow multiple devices to transmit on the same frequency at the same time and still allow the receiver to distinguish between them.
Thus the iPhone 3G in a 3G service area SHOULD be nice and quiet.
Depending on this guy's company (specifically what resources he has available), he may also wish to talk with his company's ethics office or legal department (if they have an internal ethics office or legal department - larger companies always do, smaller companies may not). In fact unless he can convince the boss himself very easily that this is a VERY BAD IDEA (it is), he should immediately walk away from Slashdot and to wherever his company's ethics or legal department sits.
Maybe not in real time, but once someone detected a scraper at a given IP, they could easily change their site to feed that IP fake data instead of blocking it.
If I were in the scrapee's position, I'd probably do that because it's the best way to attack the scraper. From order of least effort on the scrapee's part to most: 1) Blocking it makes it obvious to the scraper that they've been found out, and they'll work around it, then you'll need to block them again, on and on the cat-and-mouse game goes. 2) Feeding them mostly good data but with lots of inaccurate information scattered about is nearly impossible for them to detect until it has irreparably damaged their reputation and/or caused them to make bad decisions based on the data. 3) Suing them is a pain in the butt, even more effort than 2)
Spectrum. There was no available 3G spectrum for a while, IIRC the FCC eventually shuffled some stuff around and I believe T-Mo now has 1.7 GHz spectrum for 3G in some areas, but in many cases T-Mo has to wait for the old user in the spectrum to shut down and move elsewhere.
Look at the person he replied to, who seemed to be under the false impression that "no 3G = no calling or data of any sort". He was referring to the performance of the phone in a non-3G area (which is 90% of T-Mobile's small coverage area)
T-Mobile's European networks are a totally different story than in the US. In Europe they are huge (esp. given they are effectively a division of Deutsche Telekom, or at least used to be).
In the USA they are small fry. In rare instances they will have better coverage than AT&T, but in most cases (especially suburban or rural areas) AT&T will be way ahead. For example, in the Binghamton/Vestal/Owego, NY region, AT&T blows away T-Mobile hands-down.
They claim they weren't allowed to sell it, but they probably just didn't have one in stock and wanted to sell something they did have in stock.
I'm surprised they didn't bash the G1 with lies and untruths - kiosk/franchise stores are notorious for doing this for items that they don't stock in order to sell phones they do have in stock.
"Either that or someone left their mentally challenged siblings in charge of the store while they went to lunch. "
Welcome to the world of franchise stores/kiosks. No surprise, and it's not a T-Mobile specific problem.
If you want reps with a clue, you need to go to a company-owned store for that provider, this goes for ANY provider. It's the same for AT&T franchises (as opposed to company-owned stores).
In theory, but not in practice. T-Mo roaming on AT&T network breaks frequently. (My GF is a T-Mo customer and that's the one thing she dislikes about T-Mobile - it's horribly unreliable in the area she now lives.)
"Has anyone tried the G1 on AT&T yet?" I believe the G1 is locked (can't use an AT&T SIM w/o unlocking it) - T-Mo probably has a clause similar to AT&T's where a phone can't be unlocked for at least 90 days after purchase. (The iPhone is the only phone that AT&T will not unlock in any circumstances - any others can be unlocked after 90 days upon request by a customer in good standing, i.e. your bills are paid.)
Also, T-Mo's 3G spectrum is in a new band that doesn't match with AT&T's 3G band, not sure if the G1 supports 3G in the bands that AT&T uses for 3G.
I haven't found it to be a major problem - normal mini-USB plugs fit into the ExtUSB socket when you want to sync or charge, I need a wired headphone far less often.
In general, wired headphones/headsets are going the way of the dodo so manufacturers are putting less and less effort into supporting them - Lots of phones now require an adapter for wired headsets and few people mind because Bluetooth headsets are getting quite cheap (almost as cheap as a good wired one), and headphones/headphone adapters are rapidly dropping in price.
The only time I use the headset adapter of my AT&T Tilt (same connector as the G1) is when watching movies on my phone on airplanes.
If I recall correctly, there are two separate caller ID subsystems. One is relatively easy to spoof "It's a feature not a bug" and provides the user-visible telephone number, one is MUCH harder to spoof but usually not user-visible at either end. The latter (in addition to other data related to billing and such) allows the phone company to track the spoofer.
The only way that the spoofers could have an incomplete paper trail that doesn't allow them to be tracked down would be if they are stealing phone service, in which case the phone company would be VERY interested in hunting them down.
It depends on what car you buy. Some depreciate far faster than others.
For example, Subarus tend to hold their value quite well in states that get appreciable winter snowfall, like upstate NY. Thus the disadvantages and cost risk of a used vehicle (unknown repair/maintenance history mainly) are greater, making a new vehicle a better proposition for some makes/models than others.
At least with a Subaru - If you're getting a good deal on a used Subaru, it probably has known mechanical problems. Subarus that aren't already exhibiting problems tend not to get sold, and if they are sold, usually not cheaply. (At least in upstate NY where the AWD makes them very popular.)
I was recently shopping for a new car. For various reasons, it was pretty much down to three choices:
Subaru Outback (I'm in upstate NY, AWD is a VERY good thing, plus it's roomy but still handles on par with my old convertible, although that's a 1995 LeBaron so that's not saying TOO much.) Toyota Prius (fuel economy, fuel economy, fuel economy) Toyota Camry Hybrid - A stretch, since the only thing it had over the Outback was better gas mileage. No AWD and less room, plus somewhat higher MSRP.
In the end, the Outback won by a long shot. Priuses just aren't available due to their popularity and I was getting to the point where I didn't trust the old LeBaron enough to deal with a multi-month waitlist of unknown length.
Camry Hybrids are available, but while the difference in MSRP was only about $1500-2000 between the Outback I wanted and the base Camry Hybrid, the difference in actual price was FAR more. It's easy to get an Outback for about $2000 below MSRP, while when I stopped at a Toyota dealer about a Camry Hybrid, it basically went like this:
Dealer guy: "How many arms and legs do you have?" Me: "Umm..." Dealer guy: "This is the last base model I'm getting in. They're a hot commodity so I'm only going to be ordering ones with leather/sunroof from now on." Me: "I guess I'll buy that Outback I was looking at."
(The dealer quoted me about $2000 ABOVE MSRP for the Camry Hybrid. So a total of about $5500 price difference despite less than $2000 difference in MSRP, may actually have been only $1000 difference for my Outback SE.)
I'm not going to get involved with the whole "this vs. self-signed certs with SSL" thing.
One thing that SSL and SSH both do NOT do is protect the transport. Encrypt all you want, nothing stops you from getting Sandvined (having your traffic analyzed and then RSTs being sent based purely on bandwidth usage).
This approach actually implements authentication of transport protocol communications, such as RST flags. Thus it is not possible (or at least not nearly as easy as it used to be) for someone to send a spoofed RST at you and kill your connection.
The bad thing about this is: It means the entire transport protocol must be reimplemented including congestion control and flow control. There's a good chance that there will be buggy/"intentionally greedy" implementations out there where congestion control behaves badly, flooding the network.
Neither of those provide authentication of transport protocol flags (such as TCP RST), allowing denial-of-service attacks to be conducted against a connection regardless of the strength of the content encryption.
This approach DOES actually protect the transport from malicious interference, but that has its own issues.
Previous installments of Disagree Mail actually were from people personally contacting Slashdot to complain, and some were quite funny.
These emails are just text used to get spam past Bayesian filters so that an image with the real message can get through. Yes, I realize that the spammers often forget the image, I guess those messages are just "will it bounce" probes.
Good job samzenpus for proving to the aforementioned spammers that not only is your email valid, but you read everything, even the obvious spams that aren't targeted directly at yourself.
How much? More than a dB or two? Could just be temperature variations in the equipment if it's only that much.
As to the whole "skip" phenomenon - You'll see that I did mention that, it's the reason AM stations have to drop power depending on day vs. night.
Tropospheric ducting is kind of like skip but relies on differences in temperature and humidity instead of ionospheric reflection. Ducting can be very significant at VHF (VHF broadcast TV, FM radio). For other readers - Think of how mirages work, the principle behind tropo is the same, where the index of refraction of the atmosphere changes with temperature, bending radio waves. The conditions required are different than for a mirage though, if I recall correctly you need a layer of warm air above a layer of cold air.
The thermal inertia of bodies of water tends to make tropo VERY common over water (Oceans, the Great Lakes).
Slashdot Mirror
"It is odd that he's had multiple attacks while I've had zero, since he claims the attack is entirely despite any knowledge of the account holder's name or wealth."
OK, maybe you're misinterpreting TFA, but it's pretty clear that some (most) people are using these checks for bragging rights. Thus the checks, which include the account holder's name (Donald Knuth), the bank name, routing number, and account number, are displayed in many cases publically, sometimes as scans on the Internet.
You should be able to do such a thing - not quite 400HP but still respectably high - http://www.turbovan.net/van.html
Since it's the same engine as Relentless it could have reached 400+ if the owner had wanted to.
CDMA operates by using mathematical tricks to allow multiple phones to transmit at the same time on the same frequency and only interfere with each other slightly. As a result a CDMA phone in a call is always transmitting.
GSM, iDEN, and D-AMPS (long dead, formerly simply called "TDMA") all use a TDMA access scheme, where each phone is assigned a timeslot it can transmit in. Thus the transmitter keeps keying on and off, and this on/off keying is what gets translated into a low-duty-cycle square wave tone that you hear.
Nope. RTFA, Part 15 devices (consumer electronics, not the phones) have the following regulations:
1) Cannot interfere with devices in a "higher priority" classification (such as a licensed transmitter)
2) Must accept interference from devices in a "higher priority" classification, such as a licensed transmitter. Cell phones are, effectively, licensed transmitter. The user themselves doesn't have the license, but the carrier does.
Yup. CDMA phones (whether Qualcomm cdmaOne, Qualcomm CDMA2000, or UMTS WCDMA) don't cause this problem, as they transmit continuously and use some mathematical tricks to allow multiple devices to transmit on the same frequency at the same time and still allow the receiver to distinguish between them.
Thus the iPhone 3G in a 3G service area SHOULD be nice and quiet.
Depending on this guy's company (specifically what resources he has available), he may also wish to talk with his company's ethics office or legal department (if they have an internal ethics office or legal department - larger companies always do, smaller companies may not). In fact unless he can convince the boss himself very easily that this is a VERY BAD IDEA (it is), he should immediately walk away from Slashdot and to wherever his company's ethics or legal department sits.
Maybe not in real time, but once someone detected a scraper at a given IP, they could easily change their site to feed that IP fake data instead of blocking it.
If I were in the scrapee's position, I'd probably do that because it's the best way to attack the scraper. From order of least effort on the scrapee's part to most:
1) Blocking it makes it obvious to the scraper that they've been found out, and they'll work around it, then you'll need to block them again, on and on the cat-and-mouse game goes.
2) Feeding them mostly good data but with lots of inaccurate information scattered about is nearly impossible for them to detect until it has irreparably damaged their reputation and/or caused them to make bad decisions based on the data.
3) Suing them is a pain in the butt, even more effort than 2)
"I have no clue why they have lagged so much."
Spectrum. There was no available 3G spectrum for a while, IIRC the FCC eventually shuffled some stuff around and I believe T-Mo now has 1.7 GHz spectrum for 3G in some areas, but in many cases T-Mo has to wait for the old user in the spectrum to shut down and move elsewhere.
Look at the person he replied to, who seemed to be under the false impression that "no 3G = no calling or data of any sort". He was referring to the performance of the phone in a non-3G area (which is 90% of T-Mobile's small coverage area)
T-Mobile's European networks are a totally different story than in the US. In Europe they are huge (esp. given they are effectively a division of Deutsche Telekom, or at least used to be).
In the USA they are small fry. In rare instances they will have better coverage than AT&T, but in most cases (especially suburban or rural areas) AT&T will be way ahead. For example, in the Binghamton/Vestal/Owego, NY region, AT&T blows away T-Mobile hands-down.
They claim they weren't allowed to sell it, but they probably just didn't have one in stock and wanted to sell something they did have in stock.
I'm surprised they didn't bash the G1 with lies and untruths - kiosk/franchise stores are notorious for doing this for items that they don't stock in order to sell phones they do have in stock.
"Either that or someone left their mentally challenged siblings in charge of the store while they went to lunch. "
Welcome to the world of franchise stores/kiosks. No surprise, and it's not a T-Mobile specific problem.
If you want reps with a clue, you need to go to a company-owned store for that provider, this goes for ANY provider. It's the same for AT&T franchises (as opposed to company-owned stores).
In theory, but not in practice. T-Mo roaming on AT&T network breaks frequently. (My GF is a T-Mo customer and that's the one thing she dislikes about T-Mobile - it's horribly unreliable in the area she now lives.)
"Has anyone tried the G1 on AT&T yet?"
I believe the G1 is locked (can't use an AT&T SIM w/o unlocking it) - T-Mo probably has a clause similar to AT&T's where a phone can't be unlocked for at least 90 days after purchase. (The iPhone is the only phone that AT&T will not unlock in any circumstances - any others can be unlocked after 90 days upon request by a customer in good standing, i.e. your bills are paid.)
Also, T-Mo's 3G spectrum is in a new band that doesn't match with AT&T's 3G band, not sure if the G1 supports 3G in the bands that AT&T uses for 3G.
Are you absolutely sure it doesn't support AD2P (or is it A2DP? I can't remember...)?
A few? It's nearly their entire product line.
I haven't found it to be a major problem - normal mini-USB plugs fit into the ExtUSB socket when you want to sync or charge, I need a wired headphone far less often.
In general, wired headphones/headsets are going the way of the dodo so manufacturers are putting less and less effort into supporting them - Lots of phones now require an adapter for wired headsets and few people mind because Bluetooth headsets are getting quite cheap (almost as cheap as a good wired one), and headphones/headphone adapters are rapidly dropping in price.
The only time I use the headset adapter of my AT&T Tilt (same connector as the G1) is when watching movies on my phone on airplanes.
If I recall correctly, there are two separate caller ID subsystems. One is relatively easy to spoof "It's a feature not a bug" and provides the user-visible telephone number, one is MUCH harder to spoof but usually not user-visible at either end. The latter (in addition to other data related to billing and such) allows the phone company to track the spoofer.
The only way that the spoofers could have an incomplete paper trail that doesn't allow them to be tracked down would be if they are stealing phone service, in which case the phone company would be VERY interested in hunting them down.
"major city", not "ghost town".
That town is weird - lots of streets and almost no buildings.
Probably because in other states you don't have a major city with the exact same name as the state, such as California, California.
Us upstaters need to differentiate ourselves from the city. Not all of New York has large quantities of pollution, traffic, noise, and crime.
It depends on what car you buy. Some depreciate far faster than others.
For example, Subarus tend to hold their value quite well in states that get appreciable winter snowfall, like upstate NY. Thus the disadvantages and cost risk of a used vehicle (unknown repair/maintenance history mainly) are greater, making a new vehicle a better proposition for some makes/models than others.
At least with a Subaru - If you're getting a good deal on a used Subaru, it probably has known mechanical problems. Subarus that aren't already exhibiting problems tend not to get sold, and if they are sold, usually not cheaply. (At least in upstate NY where the AWD makes them very popular.)
I was recently shopping for a new car. For various reasons, it was pretty much down to three choices:
Subaru Outback (I'm in upstate NY, AWD is a VERY good thing, plus it's roomy but still handles on par with my old convertible, although that's a 1995 LeBaron so that's not saying TOO much.)
Toyota Prius (fuel economy, fuel economy, fuel economy)
Toyota Camry Hybrid - A stretch, since the only thing it had over the Outback was better gas mileage. No AWD and less room, plus somewhat higher MSRP.
In the end, the Outback won by a long shot. Priuses just aren't available due to their popularity and I was getting to the point where I didn't trust the old LeBaron enough to deal with a multi-month waitlist of unknown length.
Camry Hybrids are available, but while the difference in MSRP was only about $1500-2000 between the Outback I wanted and the base Camry Hybrid, the difference in actual price was FAR more. It's easy to get an Outback for about $2000 below MSRP, while when I stopped at a Toyota dealer about a Camry Hybrid, it basically went like this:
Dealer guy: "How many arms and legs do you have?"
Me: "Umm..."
Dealer guy: "This is the last base model I'm getting in. They're a hot commodity so I'm only going to be ordering ones with leather/sunroof from now on."
Me: "I guess I'll buy that Outback I was looking at."
(The dealer quoted me about $2000 ABOVE MSRP for the Camry Hybrid. So a total of about $5500 price difference despite less than $2000 difference in MSRP, may actually have been only $1000 difference for my Outback SE.)
I'm not going to get involved with the whole "this vs. self-signed certs with SSL" thing.
One thing that SSL and SSH both do NOT do is protect the transport. Encrypt all you want, nothing stops you from getting Sandvined (having your traffic analyzed and then RSTs being sent based purely on bandwidth usage).
This approach actually implements authentication of transport protocol communications, such as RST flags. Thus it is not possible (or at least not nearly as easy as it used to be) for someone to send a spoofed RST at you and kill your connection.
The bad thing about this is:
It means the entire transport protocol must be reimplemented including congestion control and flow control.
There's a good chance that there will be buggy/"intentionally greedy" implementations out there where congestion control behaves badly, flooding the network.
Neither of those provide authentication of transport protocol flags (such as TCP RST), allowing denial-of-service attacks to be conducted against a connection regardless of the strength of the content encryption.
This approach DOES actually protect the transport from malicious interference, but that has its own issues.
Previous installments of Disagree Mail actually were from people personally contacting Slashdot to complain, and some were quite funny.
These emails are just text used to get spam past Bayesian filters so that an image with the real message can get through. Yes, I realize that the spammers often forget the image, I guess those messages are just "will it bounce" probes.
Good job samzenpus for proving to the aforementioned spammers that not only is your email valid, but you read everything, even the obvious spams that aren't targeted directly at yourself.
How much? More than a dB or two? Could just be temperature variations in the equipment if it's only that much.
As to the whole "skip" phenomenon - You'll see that I did mention that, it's the reason AM stations have to drop power depending on day vs. night.
Tropospheric ducting is kind of like skip but relies on differences in temperature and humidity instead of ionospheric reflection. Ducting can be very significant at VHF (VHF broadcast TV, FM radio). For other readers - Think of how mirages work, the principle behind tropo is the same, where the index of refraction of the atmosphere changes with temperature, bending radio waves. The conditions required are different than for a mirage though, if I recall correctly you need a layer of warm air above a layer of cold air.
The thermal inertia of bodies of water tends to make tropo VERY common over water (Oceans, the Great Lakes).