Making an EXACT copy, encryption and all should not violate the DMCA
Wouldn't that violate their copyright, assuming that the restrictions on the media don't allow copying? The C in DMCA still stands for Copyright, right? Nevermind the `digital' parts that were added on...
Back in the 80s, there were floppy drives that did bitwise copying
Are you sure about that? Can you give us some specific examples?
I ask because I had an Apple II at the time, and I kept up on the various copy protection schemes -- and there were so many of them! Later on, they started doing funky things like half and quarter tracks, weak bits and other things that a standard Apple II disk drive just couldn't write, but could sort-of read.
You can't copy bit-by-bit if you can't even decide where the bits are or what a bit is. With half/quarter tracks, it's hard to tell where the bits are (and if you choose wrong, you overwrite some other bits), and with weak bits, it may be a 1 now but a zero later -- you can't copy that properly unless you can make weak bits with your writer -- but then you're not copying bits anymore, since there's three states, 0, 1 and `weak'. And I'm sure there are several other things that I've since forgotten that would fool a bit-by-bit copier.
Most of these techniques don't transfer to the CD and DVD readers, because the format is more rigidly defined (and if you deviate from the format too much, some readers won't be able to read your media. Unlike the Apple II drives, where they were all pretty much identical.) But of course, some do, and there are some new techniques that can be used and are being used... but I don't keep up with this stuff so much anymore.
I'm not going to trust my grandma's insulin to any sort of Windows OS.
To be fair...
I'm not going to trust my grandma's insulin (well, she doesn't need it, even though she's like 98. She's in remarkably good shape considering. But let's suppose that she does need it) to Linux either. Or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, MacOS, BeOS or anything that runs on a PC or a Mac.
Assuming that a failure will cost her her life (that is your idea, right?), I'd suggest a small (the smaller the better) embedded system with no hard drive and no fans -- no moving parts except what's needed to analyze her blood and deliver any needed insulin.
Since you've said `no Windows OS'... what OS (since you seem to think it's an OS thing) do *you* think is safe enough? (This should be good...)
Like it or not, people *do* use Windows 2000 (or 20003, XP, etc.) for situations where if it fails `their business or project is screwed'. And there are certainly cases where the wrong Windows failure can cause people to be hurt or killed. It may not be smart, but it its done, and merely saying `mod this parent way down' isn't going to change it.
Nuker = microwave? Interesting, I'd expect more attenuation. Most cell phones now use frequencies in the microwave region, and of course your microwave itself works at about 2.4 gHz. I guess a few watts of EM being leaked by the microwave just isn't a concern. (If it's 700 watts, leaking 1% means leaking 7 watts, which generally isn't considered dangerous at all, though it'll certainly mess up your WiFi.)
Going down to the basement (lots of reinforced concrete): no reception at all (i.e. 5 bars...)
Concrete is indeed re-enforced with a `mesh' of rebar, which makes a nice Faraday cage. However, the mesh is way too large to stop the RF frequencies used by cell phones. The reason you get no reception in your basement is probably the ground. Ground conducts, especially when moist. It's not a particularly good conductor, but it's quite thick:)
Or maybe, cellphones are just designed to very sensitive, even to very low levels of signal. The nuker (or ziplock bag) could actually be blocking 99% of signal strength, but the phone is sensitive enough to detect the 1% remaining...
No, that's not it. Sure, they're relatively sensitive, but not unusually sensitive.
As for 1% of the signal, that's only a factor of 100, or two bars on an S meter. I imagine that would cost you a bar or two on your cell phone, but not too much. Depending on the application, the ratio between a strong signal and a weak signal's power is often 10^6 -- or more. A factor of 100 is signifigant, but certainly not enough.
If you can see into your anti-static bag, look at your cell phone display. Mine doesn't even lose any bars when put inside.
The reason the anti-static bag makes a poor Faraday cage is that it's a poor conductor. It's not meant to be a Faraday cage, because one is not required to protect something from static electricity buildups.
Just in case somebody has never heard of this, I meant to say electrostatic:) This link may be useful to some who wish to understand this.
and it'll equally as well connected or not
... and it'll _work_ equally as well...
Re:Not actually based on a joke.
on
Tin Foil Passports?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Better still, save the metallized ziplock bag
that your video card probably came in,
and use it. Dual purpose -- keep RFI
out, as well as moisture.
The anti-static bags that computer cards come in do very little to stop RF. Doubt this? Put your cell phone in one, then call yourself. It'll work fine. Tin foil will work *much* better, and no, it doesn't need to be grounded. (In fact, grounding will have no effect.) Again, this is very easy to test -- just wrap your cell phone (or any other radio) in tin foil -- it will not work.
Anti-static bags have high resistances. They're not completely insulators, but not good conductors either, and a Faraday cage needs a good conductor. Their high resistances allow static electricity (with many thousands of volts) to drain off, slowly. Tin foil *can* be used instead of an anti-static bag, but 1) if your circuit has potential somewhere (like a battery, or a charged capacitator) the tin foil will basically short circuit this, which is bad, and 2) it tends to look like a wad of tin foil, which may get thrown away as trash:)
I don't think that you would actually
need to drag a chain behind you to stay
at earth ground -- that's what the Faraday
cage does.
A Faraday cage really has nothing to do with Earth ground. It certainly does not have to stay at the same potential as the Earth unless it's somehow connected to the Earth, and it'll equally as well connected or not connected to the Earth.
Old fashioned Faraday cages did
have problems -- they generally use a wire
mesh of some particular size, which doesn't
stop ALL RF signals.
There's nothing `old fashioned' about any of this -- the first Faraday cage was built in 1836, and once the radio was invented, it was learned not long after that a Faraday cage will block any RF who's wavelength is much larger than the gaps in the cage. I'll bet this was known (and probably understood) long before 1930 or so. People use Faraday cages with a wire mesh today because it does what they need it to do. To do more would cost and weigh more, and might cause other problems (like not let air in, etc.) -- it's as simple as that.
Faraday cages block *electrostic* fields, and you really don't need a tight mesh at all for this. Even your car makes a reasonable Faraday cage. Blocking RF is an added bonus, but for that, you need to make sure the mesh is a good deal smaller than the wavelength of what you need to block.
So, if you need absolute protection against all frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, then you use something with no holes at all. If you also want to block magnetic fields (as the government will want to do to completely prevent TEMPEST attacks and such), then you'll make it out of something magnetic (mu-metal is ideal) and thick. And heavy, and expensive. But secure.
We (normal people, non-telecom companies) don't fire people for installing essential software.
Sorry, but Firefox does not qualify as essential software. IE, as provided by the IT department, provides approximately the same functionality. Perhaps Firefox is more secure, but since everybody else there runs IE, what difference does it make?
As for why they don't allow Firefox, it's probably that they don't want to support it. With XP, IE, Outlook and Office on everybody's desktop, with some relatively simple tools, they can update everybody at once. So in theory, they should be able to keep up on patches and such, and keep it as secure as possible (as MS software ever is, anyways.)
When people start installing their own software, then that either adds more things for IT to support, or adds things that IT does not update. If it's the latter, then it's possible that a hole will appear in Firefox that does not exist in IE, and the company could be compromised that way. (Yes, if the hole appears in IE, the company is compromised that way. But they like to limit the number of vulnerabilities.)
I'm not saying this attitude is correct, but it's pretty pervasive. When IT tells you to not do something, and you do it anyways, that's the sort of thing that can get you fired at many places, or at least make them think again about your name when making lists of people to sack for the newest round of layoffs...
(For the record, I work in a land of Microsoft software, but I do run Linux (and the assorted applications that go with it) on my boxes at work. And I even have permission to do so -- but it certainly wasn't easy to get. But at least I know I won't get fired for it. (Ultimately, I was told to stop, and so I pushed for official permission rather than stop.))
Personally, I'm highly skeptical of all of this. Sure, I believe he's sick. And I hope he gets better.
But I really don't buy the idea that he cannot get medical care without appealing to the computing community. [and yes, I have read his postings]
Previously, he was asking for a doctor who could prescribe strong antibiotics. And it appears that he has gotten them. I see the word `viral' in the/. story, but his post doesn't say anything about viruses.
People, bacteria and viruses are very different. Bacteria can be treated with antibiotics, but antibiotics have no effect on viruses. You might get antibiotics if you're really sick and the doctor thinks you have a virus, but that's just because 1) he realizes that may be wrong about it being a virus and 2) while you're sick with a virus, a bacterial infection may creep up on you. (And then there's the fungii, which tend to creep up when you're on strong antibiotics, as most women on antibiotics or parents with infants on antibiotics have noticed.)
IRC is just a telnet hack, so everything's plaintext. They can easily sniff packets at the ISP level.
A telnet hack? Is that your name for any relatively plain-text TCP protocol? The IRC protocol has a lot more in common with the SMTP or NNTP protocols than the telnet protocol (though all three (and many, many more) use TCP, so all three have a lot in common.)
I'm not sure the word `hack' is appropriate there either. The IRC protocol has many shortcomings, but it's hardly a hack (at least not as defined by the jargon file.) Much effort was put into it, and it's evolved over the years (at least over it's early years.)
But really, it's just the lack of encryption that makes it so easy to sniff. Even if the protocol was binary, the CIA would have no trouble sniffing it as long as it's not encrypted -- after all, the IRC protocol is well documented (though the RFC doesn't cover the many extensions that have come since. For those, you generally have to go to the source code, which also is generally available. But even so, understanding those extensions generally isn't crucial to decoding conversations.)
It's certainly possible to make a plain text protocol that's still encrypted. It would be a bit... odd... for something like IRC, but it's certainly possible. THE GLOVELSCHTOP FLIES AT NIGH! GNORPLE VEE?
Were the data in a binary format (like many chat systems that have come since), then the CIA (or anybody else that wants to watch IRC traffic) would just need to add an additional layer that decodes the binary traffic. This would not be difficult, as it would be well documented. (If not documented, then this might be trickier, though I'm sure the NSA/CIA/FBI would have little trouble with it.)
Personally, I suspect that the CIA (and NSA, FBI, etc.) have been sniffing IRC traffic for decades now. I'll bet the Carnivore (or whatever they've being called now) boxes already have that capability. It looks like they're just trying to go beyond looking for `key words' like bomb, terrorist, etc.
I wonder how many of these sniffers are already in place. Alas, we'll probably never know, because I'll bet when they're installed, gag orders are made that prevent the people who do know about them from even speaking of them.
[IRC traffic... encrypted]
At least that's the way it is on a private IRC network I spend time on.
Well, it's not that way in the major networks (Efnet, Undernet, IRCnet, Dalnet at least.) Sure, you could set up DCC to use SSL or some other form of encryption to talk to your friends, but unless you go out of your way to use encryption, nothing is encrypted.
It's cute that the CIA is just looking into this now. I think it was 1990 or so that Avalon (?) was caught logging PRIVMSG traffic on a server on his network. Sniffing the network and putting it into human readable format, and then grepping that for `interesting' stuff, is *extremely* simple when you have access to the network.
However, a precedent legitimizing silent redirection is a real problem.
... except that several have pointed out that the redirection was not silent (I didnt' see it myself -- I don't live in Australia.)
Beyond that, I feel sorry for BigPond. They had a tough problem (not caused by them) to solve, and no matter what solution they picked (redirect silently, redirect with warning, do nothing), they're going to get flack for it.
In Blue Shift, you don't have an HEV suit, so you have to armor yourself from the helmets and vests of store rooms and fallen guards.
`Second verse, same as the first!' Really, it's six one way and a half dozen the other way. The change in armor types (HEV suit, vs. powered armor vs. bulletproof vests and helmets) didn't make a bit of difference. Sure, your armor didn't talk to you and remind you that you're hurt, but beyond that, no big deal.
I was pretty disappointed in both expansions. I made it through Opposing Forces -- it wasn't too bad. But Blue Shift, I lost interest half way through.
You're right about Opposing Forces -- having teammates occasionally was indeed a nice change. And they could give you medpacks, ammo and even open doors for you. But even so, they were mostly just monster fodder and plot elements and never lasted long and never stuck around long.
No. That was in the original. They were called "Barney", and their infinite ammo made them sometimes very useful.
Barney is back in HL2. And he's obviously been dieting, as not only does he appear to be only one person (instead of an army of head-crab fodder), he's much less of a man than he used to be.
(At least I assume it's supposed to be the same guy. Though I never did keep track of how many Barney's got themselves killed in the first HL. Quite a few.)
Re:I want to, but should I?
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
As someone whom has *gasp* never played Half-Life, would I be lost trying to pick it up in it's second incarnation?
No -- it's still your basic FPS, you'd be fine, though you'd miss a lot of the story. And the story is very good for a FPS...
However, if you buy the collector's edition, or the `HL2 Gold' or whatever pack on Steam, you'll get `Half Life Source', which is (I believe) the original Half Life re-released with the new graphics engine. You might want to go that route, and play through the first Half Life first.
If you do get HL1 to play it, forget about the expansion packs (Opposing Forces, Blue Shift.) They really didn't add anything signifigant to the story.
HL2, on the other hand, is really excellent.
I was one of the people who had lots of Steam problems (and yes, I did buy the retail edition.) I still don't like how it phones home every time I start HL2, but at least it's sped up greatly -- now HL2 starts in about 2 minutes rather than 8 or so minutes.
Now to the politics...the UNIX Administrator does not want to give me root access to this box.
Well, who's going to have to fix the box if you break it? The UNIX Administrator, probably.
You've not mentioned anything of your skills or previous experience. `Webmaster' could mean that you're a skilled systems administrator and/or programmer yourself... or it could mean that you spent 15 minutes playing with Frontpage and Photoshop. Or anything in between.
What have others done when faced with this type of systems politics?
It's a university, so things may be different, but in the business sector, one makes a business case for needing root access, and puts that, plus the pros and cons into a presentation and presents that to management and the systems administrator. If you have the needed skills, and can convince people that having root access would make for a better web site, the sysadmin may be happy to let you have access to your box (because it may mean less work for him.) At least in the business world, politics definately exist, but a good business case can often cut through it like a knife through butter. (It's unfortunate when skilled sysadmins and programmers have to spend their time making Powerpoint presentations, but it's often how you deal with the suits.)
But if you're some `loose cannon' who doesn't know anything about *nix system administration beyond what you've read in some book, then root access is a disaster waiting to happen.
(As I said, I don't know which group you fit into.)
Is it even possible to function as a full scale webmaster without root access to the box you serve from?
It sounds like you've already answered your own question, and want us to come up with the same answer. `full scale webmaster?' In any event, my answer is `yes', which is probably not the answer you want to hear.
Not having root access is a blessing in disguise too. If something gets really messed up and root access is needed to fix it, you have the benefit of 1) not being blamed for it, because you couldn't have done it, and 2) not having to fix it.
One piece of advice -- what ever happens, don't try to `crack' root access. Getting caught, even if you think it helps you do your job, is likely to end in your being fired, and could even find you being arrested. (Yes, it has happened.) If you're a student, you could even be expelled. Not worth the risk.
It's probably not as far-fetched as you may think.
If any ham radio is ready to do so, it's probably
this one. In case it's not obvious, those gauges and displays and such are all one big LCD display.
It's already there. It was created at install. It doesn't work unless Steam is already started. (I imagine there's some message being printed out, so I should try running it from the command line instead.)
I've never had that validation dialog, but I purchased it over Steam, not a physical CD.
It happens every time I start up the game. I suspect it might not happen if I didn't shut down between game sessions, however.
You're complaining about 90 seconds?!
No, that's the part I'm *not* complaining about:)
The problem is that it takes about six minutes after login before I get to the point where that 90 seconds starts...
Umm, Vavle was founded by ex-Microsoft employees, what makes you think that they'd want to go back?
Money, of course.:)
If such a buyout turns a large percentage of the workforce into millionaires (due to options they may own in a company that's not yet traded publically. Is Valve publically traded?), they may be willing to go back to Microsoft -- at least for as long as they have to before they can cash in those options and walk away as millionaires.
This is just conjecture, of course -- I have no idea what sort of situation the Valve employees would be in there was a buyout.
There are 2 check boxes to TURN OFF this notification.
Yes, after it started popping stuff up, I looked for and found the options. Defaulted to on, of course. And in the past, companies have decided that some issues are important enough to ignore or reset checkboxes like this before, so...
Either way, I don't care how configurable it is. I don't like that it's forced on me. And I failed to find the option that says `don't connect to the Steam servers, ever again, unless I ask for it.' I was under the impression that letting it save my Steam account information would mean it doesn't need to talk to Steam, but apparantly not.
Try actually looking at the program before saying it sucks.
I haven't actually said that Steam sucks. I've said that I want to play HL2 without (waiting several minutes for) Steam. Not quite the same thing.
Steam actually looks kind of neat, from a marketing perspective. But I don't think it has a place being forced upon people just to play a single player game.
It is worth pointing out that the Source engine is loaded before the title screen comes up. The background is an actual in-game location, so the engine needs to be loaded first. That is why it takes a long time to load.
Yes, I realize this. But it's a lot more than that :
HL2 won't start *at all* until the Steam icon is in the task bar. Until the icon is there, attempts to start HL2 fail silently. The Steam task-bar icon doesn't appear for about 2-3 minutes after login. (And I do have a cable modem -- my Internet connection is plenty fast.)
Once the task-bar icon is there, *then* I can successfully start HL2. A popup will appear, and it'll tell me that it's validating my Steam account or something like that. The popup will hang around for about 2-3 minutes, then go away.
A few seconds after the popup is gone, the screen goes blank, I see the guy with a valve for an eye, and the title screen appears shortly after. From the time that the Steam popup goes away until I see the title screen (from which I can load games) takes about 90 seconds.
I'm guessing that the Source engine doesn't even attempt to start until that Steam popup is gone. That's when the disk gets really busy, after all. Once that popup is gone, HL2 starts up approximately as fast as other programs (such as Doom 3.) But it takes a long time to get to that point, and the only way I see to get around that is to not turn my computer off.
Two different people just finished telling you that disconnecting WILL NOT make HL2 faster
Odd, I said the same thing... I wonder if I'm counted in the two people that supposedly told me this...
because authentication is NOT the part that your PC takes so long to load.
HL2 will not start until Steam starts. Steam takes several minutes to start. I don't want to play Steam -- I want to play HL2. But I have to wait for Steam to start, because if I try to start HL2 before it's done, HL2 silently fails. I don't care what Steam is doing, be it authentication, checking for updates or something else -- I still have to wait for it to finish before I can play HL2.
I did not find an option in the Steam menu to tell it not to do whatever it was doing (I assume it's talking to the Internet, but I really don't know -- I haven't whipped out the network sniffer yet.)
Either way, from the time I get logged into my computer, it's almost 8 minutes until I can play HL2. Compare to Doom 3, where it's only 90 seconds. If you've got an option in Steam that will remove this delay, by all means, share it. I didn't find it on my own.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Apparantly the fact that I want to play a single player game that still needs to talk to an Internet anti-piracy/advertising service.
Have you considered that maybe I'm not as dense as you're assuming I am?
Did you read the EULA? I suspect (but don't know since I don't own the game) that's part of the EULA.
Yes, I read it *very* carefully. And yes, it's there. (Like most EULAs, it gives Valve the permission to pretty much do anything it wants.) But I wanted to play HL2, so I sold a bit of my soul to do so.
I knew what I was getting into, mostly. Though I was under the impression that Steam was a one-time thing, that once authenticated I didn't need to deal with it ever again. I was obviously very wrong.
But none of this means that I have to like it, or that I can't bitch about it and either improve Steam or make it optional for single player games again, as it should be. Maybe if enough people bitch enough, Valve will see the light. In theory, I could return the game (voting with your pocketbook is very effective), but it does work eventually, and it's fun once started, so I don't really have much of a case to make to return it.
Can't you just shut off steam when you are not running HL2? I can't believe it has to be active in the system tray even when you are not playing the game...
Probably. But why should I have to turn off spyware? I should remove it! In fact, it shouldn't be installed in the first place, unless I wanted it there!
Having programs that work only when the spyware that came with them is running is nothing new. But this is the first time that I actually *paid* for the program (at the store, no less) and it still required that spyware be installed and active for the program to run.
He wasn't suggesting that you turn steam off, disconnect from the internet, and start up again to save time.
... which will take even longer. I don't think you understood my point at all. Perhaps some examples will help :
I turn my computer on, I log in. I double click on Doom 3. 90 seconds later, I'm playing Doom 3.
I turn my computer on. I log in. I double click on Half Life 2. I get the hour glass for a moment, but then nothing more happens. Then the Steam task-bar thing appears, after a while. I double click on Half Life 2 again, or I click on the Steam task-bar thing and select `Play Games' and then `Half Life 2'. Then it spends a minute or two talking to Steam, and then it starts loading HL2. 90 seconds later, I get to play HL2.
Time spent from the first time I clicked on HL2? About 6-8 minutes.
No, I don't want to disconnect my ethernet cable all the time just to make my computer start up HL2 faster (and I doubt it'll work anyways.) I also do not want to leave it powered on all the time (that I believe *would* work.)
Unless you have a suggestion that would allow me to turn my computer on, log in, click on HL2 and 90 seconds later be playing HL2? I suspect that installing one of the no-Steam (i.e. for pirated copies) patches might do this for me...
Slashdot Mirror
I ask because I had an Apple II at the time, and I kept up on the various copy protection schemes -- and there were so many of them! Later on, they started doing funky things like half and quarter tracks, weak bits and other things that a standard Apple II disk drive just couldn't write, but could sort-of read.
You can't copy bit-by-bit if you can't even decide where the bits are or what a bit is. With half/quarter tracks, it's hard to tell where the bits are (and if you choose wrong, you overwrite some other bits), and with weak bits, it may be a 1 now but a zero later -- you can't copy that properly unless you can make weak bits with your writer -- but then you're not copying bits anymore, since there's three states, 0, 1 and `weak'. And I'm sure there are several other things that I've since forgotten that would fool a bit-by-bit copier.
Most of these techniques don't transfer to the CD and DVD readers, because the format is more rigidly defined (and if you deviate from the format too much, some readers won't be able to read your media. Unlike the Apple II drives, where they were all pretty much identical.) But of course, some do, and there are some new techniques that can be used and are being used ... but I don't keep up with this stuff so much anymore.
I'm not going to trust my grandma's insulin (well, she doesn't need it, even though she's like 98. She's in remarkably good shape considering. But let's suppose that she does need it) to Linux either. Or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, MacOS, BeOS or anything that runs on a PC or a Mac.
Assuming that a failure will cost her her life (that is your idea, right?), I'd suggest a small (the smaller the better) embedded system with no hard drive and no fans -- no moving parts except what's needed to analyze her blood and deliver any needed insulin.
Since you've said `no Windows OS' ... what OS (since you seem to think it's an OS thing) do *you* think is safe enough? (This should be good ...)
Like it or not, people *do* use Windows 2000 (or 20003, XP, etc.) for situations where if it fails `their business or project is screwed'. And there are certainly cases where the wrong Windows failure can cause people to be hurt or killed. It may not be smart, but it its done, and merely saying `mod this parent way down' isn't going to change it.
As for 1% of the signal, that's only a factor of 100, or two bars on an S meter. I imagine that would cost you a bar or two on your cell phone, but not too much. Depending on the application, the ratio between a strong signal and a weak signal's power is often 10^6 -- or more. A factor of 100 is signifigant, but certainly not enough.
If you can see into your anti-static bag, look at your cell phone display. Mine doesn't even lose any bars when put inside.
The reason the anti-static bag makes a poor Faraday cage is that it's a poor conductor. It's not meant to be a Faraday cage, because one is not required to protect something from static electricity buildups.
Anti-static bags have high resistances. They're not completely insulators, but not good conductors either, and a Faraday cage needs a good conductor. Their high resistances allow static electricity (with many thousands of volts) to drain off, slowly. Tin foil *can* be used instead of an anti-static bag, but 1) if your circuit has potential somewhere (like a battery, or a charged capacitator) the tin foil will basically short circuit this, which is bad, and 2) it tends to look like a wad of tin foil, which may get thrown away as trash :)
A Faraday cage really has nothing to do with Earth ground. It certainly does not have to stay at the same potential as the Earth unless it's somehow connected to the Earth, and it'll equally as well connected or not connected to the Earth. There's nothing `old fashioned' about any of this -- the first Faraday cage was built in 1836, and once the radio was invented, it was learned not long after that a Faraday cage will block any RF who's wavelength is much larger than the gaps in the cage. I'll bet this was known (and probably understood) long before 1930 or so. People use Faraday cages with a wire mesh today because it does what they need it to do. To do more would cost and weigh more, and might cause other problems (like not let air in, etc.) -- it's as simple as that.Faraday cages block *electrostic* fields, and you really don't need a tight mesh at all for this. Even your car makes a reasonable Faraday cage. Blocking RF is an added bonus, but for that, you need to make sure the mesh is a good deal smaller than the wavelength of what you need to block.
So, if you need absolute protection against all frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, then you use something with no holes at all. If you also want to block magnetic fields (as the government will want to do to completely prevent TEMPEST attacks and such), then you'll make it out of something magnetic (mu-metal is ideal) and thick. And heavy, and expensive. But secure.
As for why they don't allow Firefox, it's probably that they don't want to support it. With XP, IE, Outlook and Office on everybody's desktop, with some relatively simple tools, they can update everybody at once. So in theory, they should be able to keep up on patches and such, and keep it as secure as possible (as MS software ever is, anyways.)
When people start installing their own software, then that either adds more things for IT to support, or adds things that IT does not update. If it's the latter, then it's possible that a hole will appear in Firefox that does not exist in IE, and the company could be compromised that way. (Yes, if the hole appears in IE, the company is compromised that way. But they like to limit the number of vulnerabilities.)
I'm not saying this attitude is correct, but it's pretty pervasive. When IT tells you to not do something, and you do it anyways, that's the sort of thing that can get you fired at many places, or at least make them think again about your name when making lists of people to sack for the newest round of layoffs ...
(For the record, I work in a land of Microsoft software, but I do run Linux (and the assorted applications that go with it) on my boxes at work. And I even have permission to do so -- but it certainly wasn't easy to get. But at least I know I won't get fired for it. (Ultimately, I was told to stop, and so I pushed for official permission rather than stop.))
But I really don't buy the idea that he cannot get medical care without appealing to the computing community. [and yes, I have read his postings]
Previously, he was asking for a doctor who could prescribe strong antibiotics. And it appears that he has gotten them. I see the word `viral' in the /. story, but his post doesn't say anything about viruses.
People, bacteria and viruses are very different. Bacteria can be treated with antibiotics, but antibiotics have no effect on viruses. You might get antibiotics if you're really sick and the doctor thinks you have a virus, but that's just because 1) he realizes that may be wrong about it being a virus and 2) while you're sick with a virus, a bacterial infection may creep up on you. (And then there's the fungii, which tend to creep up when you're on strong antibiotics, as most women on antibiotics or parents with infants on antibiotics have noticed.)
(And no, I'm not a doctor.)
I'm not sure the word `hack' is appropriate there either. The IRC protocol has many shortcomings, but it's hardly a hack (at least not as defined by the jargon file.) Much effort was put into it, and it's evolved over the years (at least over it's early years.)
But really, it's just the lack of encryption that makes it so easy to sniff. Even if the protocol was binary, the CIA would have no trouble sniffing it as long as it's not encrypted -- after all, the IRC protocol is well documented (though the RFC doesn't cover the many extensions that have come since. For those, you generally have to go to the source code, which also is generally available. But even so, understanding those extensions generally isn't crucial to decoding conversations.)
It's certainly possible to make a plain text protocol that's still encrypted. It would be a bit ... odd ... for something like IRC, but it's certainly possible. THE GLOVELSCHTOP FLIES AT NIGH! GNORPLE VEE?
Were the data in a binary format (like many chat systems that have come since), then the CIA (or anybody else that wants to watch IRC traffic) would just need to add an additional layer that decodes the binary traffic. This would not be difficult, as it would be well documented. (If not documented, then this might be trickier, though I'm sure the NSA/CIA/FBI would have little trouble with it.)
Personally, I suspect that the CIA (and NSA, FBI, etc.) have been sniffing IRC traffic for decades now. I'll bet the Carnivore (or whatever they've being called now) boxes already have that capability. It looks like they're just trying to go beyond looking for `key words' like bomb, terrorist, etc.
I wonder how many of these sniffers are already in place. Alas, we'll probably never know, because I'll bet when they're installed, gag orders are made that prevent the people who do know about them from even speaking of them.
It's cute that the CIA is just looking into this now. I think it was 1990 or so that Avalon (?) was caught logging PRIVMSG traffic on a server on his network. Sniffing the network and putting it into human readable format, and then grepping that for `interesting' stuff, is *extremely* simple when you have access to the network.
Beyond that, I feel sorry for BigPond. They had a tough problem (not caused by them) to solve, and no matter what solution they picked (redirect silently, redirect with warning, do nothing), they're going to get flack for it.
I was pretty disappointed in both expansions. I made it through Opposing Forces -- it wasn't too bad. But Blue Shift, I lost interest half way through.
You're right about Opposing Forces -- having teammates occasionally was indeed a nice change. And they could give you medpacks, ammo and even open doors for you. But even so, they were mostly just monster fodder and plot elements and never lasted long and never stuck around long.
(At least I assume it's supposed to be the same guy. Though I never did keep track of how many Barney's got themselves killed in the first HL. Quite a few.)
However, if you buy the collector's edition, or the `HL2 Gold' or whatever pack on Steam, you'll get `Half Life Source', which is (I believe) the original Half Life re-released with the new graphics engine. You might want to go that route, and play through the first Half Life first.
If you do get HL1 to play it, forget about the expansion packs (Opposing Forces, Blue Shift.) They really didn't add anything signifigant to the story.
HL2, on the other hand, is really excellent.
I was one of the people who had lots of Steam problems (and yes, I did buy the retail edition.) I still don't like how it phones home every time I start HL2, but at least it's sped up greatly -- now HL2 starts in about 2 minutes rather than 8 or so minutes.
You've not mentioned anything of your skills or previous experience. `Webmaster' could mean that you're a skilled systems administrator and/or programmer yourself ... or it could mean that you spent 15 minutes playing with Frontpage and Photoshop. Or anything in between.
It's a university, so things may be different, but in the business sector, one makes a business case for needing root access, and puts that, plus the pros and cons into a presentation and presents that to management and the systems administrator. If you have the needed skills, and can convince people that having root access would make for a better web site, the sysadmin may be happy to let you have access to your box (because it may mean less work for him.) At least in the business world, politics definately exist, but a good business case can often cut through it like a knife through butter. (It's unfortunate when skilled sysadmins and programmers have to spend their time making Powerpoint presentations, but it's often how you deal with the suits.)But if you're some `loose cannon' who doesn't know anything about *nix system administration beyond what you've read in some book, then root access is a disaster waiting to happen.
(As I said, I don't know which group you fit into.)
It sounds like you've already answered your own question, and want us to come up with the same answer. `full scale webmaster?' In any event, my answer is `yes', which is probably not the answer you want to hear.Not having root access is a blessing in disguise too. If something gets really messed up and root access is needed to fix it, you have the benefit of 1) not being blamed for it, because you couldn't have done it, and 2) not having to fix it.
One piece of advice -- what ever happens, don't try to `crack' root access. Getting caught, even if you think it helps you do your job, is likely to end in your being fired, and could even find you being arrested. (Yes, it has happened.) If you're a student, you could even be expelled. Not worth the risk.
Oh, and the list price? I've heard $11,000.
The problem is that it takes about six minutes after login before I get to the point where that 90 seconds starts ...
If such a buyout turns a large percentage of the workforce into millionaires (due to options they may own in a company that's not yet traded publically. Is Valve publically traded?), they may be willing to go back to Microsoft -- at least for as long as they have to before they can cash in those options and walk away as millionaires.
This is just conjecture, of course -- I have no idea what sort of situation the Valve employees would be in there was a buyout.
Either way, I don't care how configurable it is. I don't like that it's forced on me. And I failed to find the option that says `don't connect to the Steam servers, ever again, unless I ask for it.' I was under the impression that letting it save my Steam account information would mean it doesn't need to talk to Steam, but apparantly not.
I haven't actually said that Steam sucks. I've said that I want to play HL2 without (waiting several minutes for) Steam. Not quite the same thing.Steam actually looks kind of neat, from a marketing perspective. But I don't think it has a place being forced upon people just to play a single player game.
HL2 won't start *at all* until the Steam icon is in the task bar. Until the icon is there, attempts to start HL2 fail silently. The Steam task-bar icon doesn't appear for about 2-3 minutes after login. (And I do have a cable modem -- my Internet connection is plenty fast.)
Once the task-bar icon is there, *then* I can successfully start HL2. A popup will appear, and it'll tell me that it's validating my Steam account or something like that. The popup will hang around for about 2-3 minutes, then go away.
A few seconds after the popup is gone, the screen goes blank, I see the guy with a valve for an eye, and the title screen appears shortly after. From the time that the Steam popup goes away until I see the title screen (from which I can load games) takes about 90 seconds.
I'm guessing that the Source engine doesn't even attempt to start until that Steam popup is gone. That's when the disk gets really busy, after all. Once that popup is gone, HL2 starts up approximately as fast as other programs (such as Doom 3.) But it takes a long time to get to that point, and the only way I see to get around that is to not turn my computer off.
I did not find an option in the Steam menu to tell it not to do whatever it was doing (I assume it's talking to the Internet, but I really don't know -- I haven't whipped out the network sniffer yet.)
Either way, from the time I get logged into my computer, it's almost 8 minutes until I can play HL2. Compare to Doom 3, where it's only 90 seconds. If you've got an option in Steam that will remove this delay, by all means, share it. I didn't find it on my own.
Apparantly the fact that I want to play a single player game that still needs to talk to an Internet anti-piracy/advertising service.Have you considered that maybe I'm not as dense as you're assuming I am?
I knew what I was getting into, mostly. Though I was under the impression that Steam was a one-time thing, that once authenticated I didn't need to deal with it ever again. I was obviously very wrong.
But none of this means that I have to like it, or that I can't bitch about it and either improve Steam or make it optional for single player games again, as it should be. Maybe if enough people bitch enough, Valve will see the light. In theory, I could return the game (voting with your pocketbook is very effective), but it does work eventually, and it's fun once started, so I don't really have much of a case to make to return it.
Having programs that work only when the spyware that came with them is running is nothing new. But this is the first time that I actually *paid* for the program (at the store, no less) and it still required that spyware be installed and active for the program to run.
I turn my computer on, I log in. I double click on Doom 3. 90 seconds later, I'm playing Doom 3.
I turn my computer on. I log in. I double click on Half Life 2. I get the hour glass for a moment, but then nothing more happens. Then the Steam task-bar thing appears, after a while. I double click on Half Life 2 again, or I click on the Steam task-bar thing and select `Play Games' and then `Half Life 2'. Then it spends a minute or two talking to Steam, and then it starts loading HL2. 90 seconds later, I get to play HL2.
Time spent from the first time I clicked on HL2? About 6-8 minutes.
No, I don't want to disconnect my ethernet cable all the time just to make my computer start up HL2 faster (and I doubt it'll work anyways.) I also do not want to leave it powered on all the time (that I believe *would* work.)
Unless you have a suggestion that would allow me to turn my computer on, log in, click on HL2 and 90 seconds later be playing HL2? I suspect that installing one of the no-Steam (i.e. for pirated copies) patches might do this for me ...