Sorry, but you're wrong here. That time is spent loading the game. Want proof? Exit Steam. Disconnect from the internet, and restart Steam. This will start steam in offline mode (it can't talk to Valve - you have no internet connection).
Maybe you count time differently than I do. I don't want to play Steam -- I want to play HL2. So I consider the time spent starting Steam as part of the time spent starting HL2. And I don't want to spend time unplugging my computer from the network just so HL2/Steam will start faster.
Also, this is my `game' computer (I do most of my work and other stuff on a Linux box that's up 24/7.) So it's not left on all the time. If it were, and I left myself logged in all the time, it might be a lot faster, as Steam would have started at login and would be ready to go. But that's not how I do things on that computer, and I don't plan on changing, in spite of how slow it makes HL2 start up.
This will start steam in offline mode (it can't talk to Valve - you have no internet connection).
I suspect that this would make things even *slower* for me. After all, the connection to the Steam servers will probably have to time out, which is generally even slower than making the connection in the first place.
I suspect that this Steam requirement was made with the assumption that people turn on their computer, log in and leave themselves logged in and don't turn the computer off. That's fine, but in my case, I turn the computer on, log in, click on my application to run (in this case HL2), wait several minutes for all the crap to start, then play my game, then shut down the computer. (My computer room gets very hot with two computers on all the time...)
All this, so that Valve can watch me, and serve up advertisements to me, and know when I play their fine game. Thanks guys. Really.
while managing to avoid pissing off their consumer base.
Really? I bought HL2 (and HL1, and the expansions, and...) and I'm pretty pissed off by Steam.
It took two hours to get HL2 actually up and ready to play on tuesday, even though the installer actually put the bits onto the disk from the CD in under 15 minutes. And now, to actually play the game, in single player mode, it still takes several minutes from the time I click on the icon to start the game before I can even choose to load a saved game -- this time is spent starting Steam, then verifying that my copy is legit.
And then, even when I'm not playing, Steam pops up and sends messages to my screen. So far, they've been related to HL2 and Steam, but how long will it be before Valve is advertising their new game? Or somebody else's new game, available through Steam? Or how about some new energy drink to drink while playing their game?
Don't pretend that everybody likes Steam. It seems clever enough, but really what it is is an advertising, piracy prevention and sales portal. And if you want HL2, to actually *buy* HL2 rather than pirate it, it's forced on you.
So I click on `Half Life 2' to play the single player mode some more, after waiting for hours to get Stream to decide to let me play.
`Validating Stream Files'... and it spends about 8 minutes doing this. WTF? I just want to play a single player game, and it needs to make sure all my files are correct or whatever.
No one on slashdot seems to realize that one of the primary points of steam is NOT to stop piracy.
I'm sure there's somebody on/. who feels this way. Like you, perhaps. So much for `no one'...
I'm quite sure that the *requirement* of Steam activation to even play HL2 single player is all about the prevention of piracy. Who cares if you cheat if you're playing a single player game?
I imagine they also want Steam on everybody's hard drives, popping up ads and the like. It took me two hours to get HL2 up and running yesterday (after many errors and problems), and already today Steam popups are appearing telling me that my registration finally went through. Tomorrow, I imagine popups will appear telling me that Valve's new game is available for purchase and download...
For now, Steam seems to have set itself up as a `portal' to games on my system. I'm sure Valve is just loving this...
It may help prevent cheating, but that's NOT why it's been installed on MY hard drive. It's on MY hard drive because Valve wants *more* money, both now and in the future. They're setting it up as a useful service -- which is fine, but I don't like how I *have* to use this service just to play a game that I bought, a game that really should not need the Internet. If it were a MMORPG, then I'd understand the need for the Internet. But for a single player game, it's a marketing thing only. It benefits Valve and *not* me.
Don't get me wrong -- HL2 is great, what I've seen of it so far (I'm somewhere in Chapter 2 (?) driving that swamp boat around. Great fun!) -- but I do *not* like what Steam represents. I'm very tempted to download to a HL2 crack just so I can ditch Steam...
Pixar keeps hitting them out of the park, movie after movie after movie. Nemo was great, and the Incredibles is even better...
Pixar does NOT need Disney. Maybe they're not really equipped to distribute their own movies, but they could certainly either become equipped or find somebody else who is. They have enough name recognition of their own that they don't need Disney anymore.
Disney, on the other hand... what's the last movie they did by themselves? Operation Dumbo Drop? Pocahantas II?
Timmy couldn't have waited another 2 hours to post this?
Two hours from then (45 minutes from now), he'll be busy trying to get into Steam so he can play HL2 -- except that Steam will have crashed due to the load.
It is the reason that ship-to-shore communications worked.
Not quite. Well, sure, they did use tubes in their radios, but it's quite possible to make a radio that can transmit hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of miles without using amplifying tubes (or anything more modern like transistors.) A spark-gap transmitter and a crystal radio (except that I guess you'd use a valve tube which does not amplify) could do CW over a long distance. Well, your standard crystal radio only does AM, but I'm sure they could add a BFO somehow and make it do CW or SSB without using an amplifier...
I guess if you define `amplifier' widely enough, then yes, just about everything is an amplifier:)
Re:Burning a thousand optical discs.
on
The Music Man
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· Score: 1
People always think burning masses of optical discs is some huge chore and it's actually almost effortless.
I've burned lots of CDs and DVDs. I have scripts set up that burn it, then verify that the burn matches the original. For a DVD, this takes about 50 minutes -- (30 to burn at 4x, 20 to verify.) And no, the verify step is NOT optional! I find a reasonable number of failures -- probably due to the cheap media that I usually use.
Assuming that I've got 4 burners (on four computers, probably) and I spend 8 hours a day swapping disks (4 disks every 50 minutes), that's 38 a day and so it'll take 26 days to burn 1000.
That's fine -- he's probably not doing all this at once anyways, but over the course of many months. But once done, he'll have 1000 DVDs with mp3s on it (and hopefully he'll keep an index on a hard disk somewhere) -- that will take up a fair amount of space. And I'd be afraid of bit rot -- I've not found DVDs to be particularly reliable.
And suppose he wants an off-site backup -- that doubles the amount of work. (He does claim to be keeping an archive in case of nuclear war -- that requires lots of copies kept in various secure (or at least protected somewhat) locations.)
It's not an impossible job, to burn 1000 DVDs, but it's not a small job either. I'd much rather just use 12 400 GB disks -- it would be much faster and more reliable as well. You could even have all 12 drives hooked up and mounted on one computer at once, using off the shelf hardware that's not *that* expensive.
Think about it. Let's say you use four machines and change the discs ten times an hour while you're browsing the web and doing whatever else. That's forty an hour.
To swap out 40 CDs an hour and to put meaningful labels on each burned CD would use up much of my time during that hour. Certainly, it would make it hard to concentrate on anything, because every six minutes you'd have to swap four cds out. This would probably reduce my productivity by at least 60%, depending on what I was doing. Goofing off, not so much. Programming, it would probably be more like 80%.
Given that activation is a ONE TIME thing per account, I'm still missing your point here.
One time per account? No.
I'm assuming that if you reinstall HL2, you have to activate again, even if you use the same account. And I wonder what prevents you from just copying an install from one box to another box -- there's probably something, and if you make signifigant changes to your box, it may have to be activated again (like Windows.)
Basically, steam and valve's account system would have to fold AND they would have to be dick enough not to release a patch (something that virtually every other game that sunsets does in such a situation).
This situation (*requiring* online activation for a single player game) is pretty much unprecendented for games. Please do list other games that have run into the same situation that have released such a patch. You say `virtually every other game', but I think this list is `virtually' empty.
As for non-games, having the companies that write software go out of business leaving their customers high and dry, unable to even get license keys is nothing new. At an old job, we had a WinDD server that needed to be re-installed, which requires a new license key. But since the license key is provided on a diskette that is erased when it's activated (but put back when you `uninstall' they key from the install), and the system hard disk crashed preventing the uninstall of the license, and the company was out of business and could not give us a new license key, we were stuck -- our $10k software was useless.
The drives are relatively cheap. Assuming that the 4.5 TB figures given earlier are accurate, and that IDE drives can be had for about $0.50/GB, that's only $2500. Triple that for two offsite backups, and it's still only $7500 -- which I believe is still cheaper than the average settlement in the RIAA lawsuits:)
DVD-Rs are even cheaper, with 4.5 GB DVD-R available at my local Frys for $0.29 each. Though if my purpose is archival, I'd think the IDE hard disks would be better. Besides, burning 1000 DVD-Rs (even if they only cost $290) is not my idea of a good time.
Also note that this isn't that many disks. I believe there are now 400 GB IDE disks. A full backup would only require 11-12 disks, which could fit in a briefcase or a safe deposit box.
no actually it won't. in 10 years, we may all be saying "valve who?".
And that's exactly the point. Valve may have folded 8 years earlier, but HL and the cd-key that came with it will still work.
But unless they released a patch for HL2 removing the activation requirement, or somebody else is running servers, you won't be able to even install it on a computer, even a 10 year old computer, and play it. Not without a crack anyways.
not to mention the computer that the Cd key is authenticated against will be missing.
So? Install it again.
Personally, I write CD-keys on CDs -- that way, when the manual or case with the key on it is lost, I still have it.
We (or at least me, though I seriously doubt I'm alone) generally have no problems with `spyware' if it's installation is *completely* voluntary and if the user is educated on what it is and does clearly (and not in some 500 page document) before it's installed. Especially if it's something that the person has to manually install the program, and especially if the program is benign and useful (counting linux users = benign, but not terribly useful for a given user.)
You may think this has something to do with Linux, but it really doesn't -- we generally don't have problems with Microsoft Update either, for example, even the automatic functions, and they phone home on a regular basis as well. This could change, however -- for example, if we were to learn that the program was reporting back more information than we were told it did.
Perhaps your town doesn't have a real electronics shop?
My town is Austin, TX. We have various Radio Shacks, Altex and Frys. And there's a ham radio shop.
Frys has big gaps in what they carry (they don't carry many components, but they do have some.) Altex doesn't carry much at all anymore beyond computers. The ham radio shop doesn't really carry components. That leaves... Radio Shack.
(which doesn't carry much, but they do fill in some of the Frys gaps.)
I don't buy from radio shack, and I don't need to order online either.
How nice for you. I don't feel like moving, so I go to Radio Shack occasionally. And I don't think that makes me less of a man:)
I also understand that Hams can broadcast up to 200 Watts on these fgrequencies.
Actually, hams can transmit with up to *1500* watts on *some* of those frequencies. But if you use spread spectrum, the limit is only 100 watts, and then only if your system is smart enough to automatically use only as much power as is needed. This site might help explain this a bit more.
Wi-Fi is considered "encoded" by the FCC, so my Tech (HAM) license gets me nada - zip - nothing.
This is not true. WiFi is certainly allowed under the ham rules, as long as you follow the other ham rules. Identification is the biggest one, but that's easily taken care of by using your callsign as your SSID. You won't be able to use WEP, however, and you won't be able to legally send encrypted things like ssh over the link.
We need to change this silly reg - atleast some classes of HAMs should be able to broadcast Wi-Fi at increased power levels.
Good luck with that (assuming that `that' = allowing encrypted transmissions.) Ham radio has always been readable by anybody who can receive the signal, and most hams seem to like it that way. I don't see this being changed.
(forgot if it was every 15 minutes or 30 minutes).
As mentioned, it's 10 minutes. And as mentioned, you really should know this.
As for spamming, there's two problems: 1) ham radio cannot be used to broadcast to the general public, and 2) it cannot be used to make money. The identification requirement just makes it easier to catch offenders (or to know more easily that they're offenders, because they're not IDing themselves.)
The reason that the government crack down on this is because HAM radio is considered as an emergency communication channel.
Not really. Yes, ham radio is used in emergency, but it's not afforded the same protections as `true' emergency communications. Case in point -- BPL. The FCC themselves said that most ham radio transmissions were `routine' (which is accurate enough) and didn't need to be protected from BPL interference via notches and the like, but other `emergency' bands did.
As for cracking down, I'm not aware of any new crackdown movement. Hams report offenders to the FCC, and the FCC takes action. This has been going on for decades.
AD5RH
It just that in the past, softwares and HAM radio didn't have much in common. Only until recently the HAM operators and software engineers began to find ways to combine the two.
I disagree completely. Hams have been using computers to enhance hamming for as long as hams have had computers. Grab a 20 year old ARRL Handbook -- you'll find mentions of computers being used for lots of things. You'll even find BASIC programs to do stuff...
As for your list of combinations, none of these is new -- all of these things have been done for at least 10 years. (I guess it depends on how you define `only recently'...)
Picture transmission (different color use different band, so you hear this odd static. Since by law you can't encrypt it, no porn).
Different band? I guess if you're trying to obfuscate things, you could use multiple bands, but the law doesn't let you really do that either. And anything obscene is not permitted, as you know...
5. Radio chat (think chatroom).
psk31 is relatively new, but people have been doing packet chats for at least 10 years, probably 20 years.
6. Short telephone call (by law, you can't hog the band space, forgot what the definitions are).
The law doesn't say you can't hog the bandspace. It says you have to share it. Not quite the same thing.
No self respecting Ham radio operator would set foot inside a Radio Shack.
Spoken like a true non-ham.
Granted, Radio Shack hardly lives up to it's name anymore (unless cell phones qualify, and they sort of do, but not really), but they do still have things that are useful to hams. Basic components (generally overpriced, but if all you need is two resistors, you don't want to order it), and some other stuff like power supplies and the like.
They do also still carry a useful selection of things like RF connectors and coax. They even still have some ham equipment like antennas and the like -- usually on clearance, and quite cheap:)
For the record, I'm AD5RH, and I check the local Radio Shack on a regular basis. Mostly I'm looking for clearance stuff, but I do occasionally buy components and the like too.
Is this just another old school EM jamming technique, or something new?
Old school jamming techniques will be quite effective. You find out what the uplink frequency band is, and hit the satellite with a few thousand watts on that band using a high gain antenna. No commands will be received while your jamming is in effect.
Now, jamming the downlink is harder, but if you hit the satellite with enough power on any band, it'll freak out. With a highly directional antenna, you could even take out only a specific satellite.
Satellites do have to deal with ionizing radiation and can't have enough shielding to totally block it, so they're equipped to reset themselves when they get `stuck' because some IC got hit with a stray alpha particle -- because it's not *if* it will happen, it's *when*.
Of course, if you hit the satellite with enough power, you may actually damage it. If that happens, you just play dumb. Sure, it may have happened while the satellite was over the US (or a US base, or US ship), but that was just a coincidence, right?
I guess a new school jamming technique might be to actually hit it with ionizing radiation (typically X and gamma rays, and high energy electrons and protons (often with some neutrons in the form of an alpha particle) but these are generally attenutated greatly by the atmosphere (and the charged particles diverted by our magnetic field), so this would be hard to do from the ground. But I guess if you can make it strong enough, or do it from a tall mountain/plane flying above most of our atmosphere...
That's one way. Of course, it doesn't have to be a RAID at all -- just 500 GB of disk. Could be on a different system (in fact, that's probably safest.) If your data compresses well, and you can compress it as you copy it over, you may not even need the full 500 GB.
Of course, other options including spending oodles on a DLT drive and media -- probably a good deal more than you spent on the hard drives in the first place. Or a DVD-R drive and 120 disks. (I know, it sounds crazy, but it works for some people.)
Or maybe you can tolerate losing most of that 500 GB of data (if it's your porn collection, you may not really care that much.) In that case, you back up what you need to another disk or to some other backup solution, and leave the rest to chance.
In any event, for important data, RAID 5 is not a subsitute for backups. It may protect you against the loss of one disk (if you replace it before another fails and rebuild the array) but it will do NOTHING to protect you against `rm -rf *' or the entire machine sh*tting itself and taking your data with it (which happens more than we'd like, RAID or not, though RAID seems to make it happen more often, on pretty much any OS.)
it was much cheaper to make discrete replacements to complaining customers, than formally announce a recall.
Recalls are typically done for safety issues -- this hardly qualifies. Applying The Formula (scroll down to `I'm a recall coordinator.') will pretty much guarantee that they're unlikely to do a recall on something like this unless it because a big embarassment (a class action lawsuit like this has the possiblity of doing so, but it seems unlikely.)
But apparantly, if you ask nicely, Microsoft will fix them for you for free, even out of warranty. And I'll bet the guy who filed the lawsuit knew this when he did so. My guess is he wants more than to just get his X-Box fixed.
I figured it was either that or because of a certain website hosted on campus.
Certain website = http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhima nyway.com/ ?
What makes you think that's hosted at the A&M campus? The IP address resolves back to ip-64-202-167-129.secureserver.net, and doesn't appear to be anywhere near A&M's netblock.
Generally it's pretty easy to tell what the DDoSers are after -- they usually attack the exact address that bothers them. If it's a web site, it's the web site's address. If it's an IRCer, it's the address that they appear on IRC as. Unless your entire resnet is NAT'd, CIS probably knows exactly who the attacks are after.
They [people who do DDoS attacks] generally aren't sophisticated enough to try and hide the target (by attacking the entire/24, for example) to hide their target. And besides, if you can get the ISP annoyed at your target for bringing down an attack on them, they may do your dirty work for you and take it down themselves.
I am not sure why we would be getting DoS attacks at a major university.
It's probably aimed at one individual. I get packeted at home on my cable modem because people want the nick I use on IRC, for example. Typically if they can flood me badly enough, it only takes 10 minutes to kick me off and get my nick, but sometimes they'll leave the flood going for hours or even days, I guess to `teach me a lesson' or something. What lesson have I learned? To log everything, and make phone calls while it happens, and emails to all the IP addresses involved when it's done. I've nailed one guy already that I know of (in Romania no less -- visited by the local police. I don't know how it turned out, however.) -- it's rarely effective, but if you keep at it, it'll eventually work.
I wish they would try something that would prevent them. Stupid CIS...
Tell us, how should they prevent them? Since you've labeled them as stupid, I'm sure you have the answer all figured out? We'd love to hear what the victim of a DDoS attack can do to prevent an arbitrary DDoS attack.
Filtering on your router doesn't work, because it's usually your pipe that's overloaded. (Though schools often have huge pipes.) Having your provider filter can be effective, but not all attacks are easy to filter. Buying more bandwidth and faster routers is usually effective -- I'm sure you won't mind your tuition going up to cover the costs? Turning off the campus resnet completely would probably be effective...
You got any better ideas?
No, I don't work for your school's CIS. But I certainly understand their position.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, this is my `game' computer (I do most of my work and other stuff on a Linux box that's up 24/7.) So it's not left on all the time. If it were, and I left myself logged in all the time, it might be a lot faster, as Steam would have started at login and would be ready to go. But that's not how I do things on that computer, and I don't plan on changing, in spite of how slow it makes HL2 start up.
I suspect that this would make things even *slower* for me. After all, the connection to the Steam servers will probably have to time out, which is generally even slower than making the connection in the first place.I suspect that this Steam requirement was made with the assumption that people turn on their computer, log in and leave themselves logged in and don't turn the computer off. That's fine, but in my case, I turn the computer on, log in, click on my application to run (in this case HL2), wait several minutes for all the crap to start, then play my game, then shut down the computer. (My computer room gets very hot with two computers on all the time ...)
All this, so that Valve can watch me, and serve up advertisements to me, and know when I play their fine game. Thanks guys. Really.
It took two hours to get HL2 actually up and ready to play on tuesday, even though the installer actually put the bits onto the disk from the CD in under 15 minutes. And now, to actually play the game, in single player mode, it still takes several minutes from the time I click on the icon to start the game before I can even choose to load a saved game -- this time is spent starting Steam, then verifying that my copy is legit.
And then, even when I'm not playing, Steam pops up and sends messages to my screen. So far, they've been related to HL2 and Steam, but how long will it be before Valve is advertising their new game? Or somebody else's new game, available through Steam? Or how about some new energy drink to drink while playing their game?
Don't pretend that everybody likes Steam. It seems clever enough, but really what it is is an advertising, piracy prevention and sales portal. And if you want HL2, to actually *buy* HL2 rather than pirate it, it's forced on you.
`Validating Stream Files' ... and it spends about 8 minutes doing this. WTF? I just want to play a single player game, and it needs to make sure all my files are correct or whatever.
Screw this.
I'm quite sure that the *requirement* of Steam activation to even play HL2 single player is all about the prevention of piracy. Who cares if you cheat if you're playing a single player game?
I imagine they also want Steam on everybody's hard drives, popping up ads and the like. It took me two hours to get HL2 up and running yesterday (after many errors and problems), and already today Steam popups are appearing telling me that my registration finally went through. Tomorrow, I imagine popups will appear telling me that Valve's new game is available for purchase and download ...
For now, Steam seems to have set itself up as a `portal' to games on my system. I'm sure Valve is just loving this ...
It may help prevent cheating, but that's NOT why it's been installed on MY hard drive. It's on MY hard drive because Valve wants *more* money, both now and in the future. They're setting it up as a useful service -- which is fine, but I don't like how I *have* to use this service just to play a game that I bought, a game that really should not need the Internet. If it were a MMORPG, then I'd understand the need for the Internet. But for a single player game, it's a marketing thing only. It benefits Valve and *not* me.
Don't get me wrong -- HL2 is great, what I've seen of it so far (I'm somewhere in Chapter 2 (?) driving that swamp boat around. Great fun!) -- but I do *not* like what Steam represents. I'm very tempted to download to a HL2 crack just so I can ditch Steam ...
Pixar does NOT need Disney. Maybe they're not really equipped to distribute their own movies, but they could certainly either become equipped or find somebody else who is. They have enough name recognition of their own that they don't need Disney anymore.
Disney, on the other hand ... what's the last movie they did by themselves? Operation Dumbo Drop? Pocahantas II?
Oops.
Assuming that I've got 4 burners (on four computers, probably) and I spend 8 hours a day swapping disks (4 disks every 50 minutes), that's 38 a day and so it'll take 26 days to burn 1000.
That's fine -- he's probably not doing all this at once anyways, but over the course of many months. But once done, he'll have 1000 DVDs with mp3s on it (and hopefully he'll keep an index on a hard disk somewhere) -- that will take up a fair amount of space. And I'd be afraid of bit rot -- I've not found DVDs to be particularly reliable.
And suppose he wants an off-site backup -- that doubles the amount of work. (He does claim to be keeping an archive in case of nuclear war -- that requires lots of copies kept in various secure (or at least protected somewhat) locations.)
It's not an impossible job, to burn 1000 DVDs, but it's not a small job either. I'd much rather just use 12 400 GB disks -- it would be much faster and more reliable as well. You could even have all 12 drives hooked up and mounted on one computer at once, using off the shelf hardware that's not *that* expensive.
To swap out 40 CDs an hour and to put meaningful labels on each burned CD would use up much of my time during that hour. Certainly, it would make it hard to concentrate on anything, because every six minutes you'd have to swap four cds out. This would probably reduce my productivity by at least 60%, depending on what I was doing. Goofing off, not so much. Programming, it would probably be more like 80%.I'm assuming that if you reinstall HL2, you have to activate again, even if you use the same account. And I wonder what prevents you from just copying an install from one box to another box -- there's probably something, and if you make signifigant changes to your box, it may have to be activated again (like Windows.)
This situation (*requiring* online activation for a single player game) is pretty much unprecendented for games. Please do list other games that have run into the same situation that have released such a patch. You say `virtually every other game', but I think this list is `virtually' empty.As for non-games, having the companies that write software go out of business leaving their customers high and dry, unable to even get license keys is nothing new. At an old job, we had a WinDD server that needed to be re-installed, which requires a new license key. But since the license key is provided on a diskette that is erased when it's activated (but put back when you `uninstall' they key from the install), and the system hard disk crashed preventing the uninstall of the license, and the company was out of business and could not give us a new license key, we were stuck -- our $10k software was useless.
DVD-Rs are even cheaper, with 4.5 GB DVD-R available at my local Frys for $0.29 each. Though if my purpose is archival, I'd think the IDE hard disks would be better. Besides, burning 1000 DVD-Rs (even if they only cost $290) is not my idea of a good time.
Also note that this isn't that many disks. I believe there are now 400 GB IDE disks. A full backup would only require 11-12 disks, which could fit in a briefcase or a safe deposit box.
But unless they released a patch for HL2 removing the activation requirement, or somebody else is running servers, you won't be able to even install it on a computer, even a 10 year old computer, and play it. Not without a crack anyways.
So? Install it again.Personally, I write CD-keys on CDs -- that way, when the manual or case with the key on it is lost, I still have it.
We (or at least me, though I seriously doubt I'm alone) generally have no problems with `spyware' if it's installation is *completely* voluntary and if the user is educated on what it is and does clearly (and not in some 500 page document) before it's installed. Especially if it's something that the person has to manually install the program, and especially if the program is benign and useful (counting linux users = benign, but not terribly useful for a given user.)
You may think this has something to do with Linux, but it really doesn't -- we generally don't have problems with Microsoft Update either, for example, even the automatic functions, and they phone home on a regular basis as well. This could change, however -- for example, if we were to learn that the program was reporting back more information than we were told it did.
Frys has big gaps in what they carry (they don't carry many components, but they do have some.) Altex doesn't carry much at all anymore beyond computers. The ham radio shop doesn't really carry components. That leaves ... Radio Shack.
(which doesn't carry much, but they do fill in some of the Frys gaps.)
How nice for you. I don't feel like moving, so I go to Radio Shack occasionally. And I don't think that makes me less of a manAD5RH
As for spamming, there's two problems: 1) ham radio cannot be used to broadcast to the general public, and 2) it cannot be used to make money. The identification requirement just makes it easier to catch offenders (or to know more easily that they're offenders, because they're not IDing themselves.)
Not really. Yes, ham radio is used in emergency, but it's not afforded the same protections as `true' emergency communications. Case in point -- BPL. The FCC themselves said that most ham radio transmissions were `routine' (which is accurate enough) and didn't need to be protected from BPL interference via notches and the like, but other `emergency' bands did.As for cracking down, I'm not aware of any new crackdown movement. Hams report offenders to the FCC, and the FCC takes action. This has been going on for decades. AD5RH
As for your list of combinations, none of these is new -- all of these things have been done for at least 10 years. (I guess it depends on how you define `only recently' ...)
Different band? I guess if you're trying to obfuscate things, you could use multiple bands, but the law doesn't let you really do that either. And anything obscene is not permitted, as you knowAD5RH
Granted, Radio Shack hardly lives up to it's name anymore (unless cell phones qualify, and they sort of do, but not really), but they do still have things that are useful to hams. Basic components (generally overpriced, but if all you need is two resistors, you don't want to order it), and some other stuff like power supplies and the like.
They do also still carry a useful selection of things like RF connectors and coax. They even still have some ham equipment like antennas and the like -- usually on clearance, and quite cheap :)
For the record, I'm AD5RH, and I check the local Radio Shack on a regular basis. Mostly I'm looking for clearance stuff, but I do occasionally buy components and the like too.
Does Radio Shack still sell soldering irons? Yes. They also sell electronic components -- not a huge selection, but they do still have the basics.
Satellites cost a lot to put together on the ground, but they cost a lot to get put up into orbit too ...
Now, jamming the downlink is harder, but if you hit the satellite with enough power on any band, it'll freak out. With a highly directional antenna, you could even take out only a specific satellite.
Satellites do have to deal with ionizing radiation and can't have enough shielding to totally block it, so they're equipped to reset themselves when they get `stuck' because some IC got hit with a stray alpha particle -- because it's not *if* it will happen, it's *when*.
Of course, if you hit the satellite with enough power, you may actually damage it. If that happens, you just play dumb. Sure, it may have happened while the satellite was over the US (or a US base, or US ship), but that was just a coincidence, right?
I guess a new school jamming technique might be to actually hit it with ionizing radiation (typically X and gamma rays, and high energy electrons and protons (often with some neutrons in the form of an alpha particle) but these are generally attenutated greatly by the atmosphere (and the charged particles diverted by our magnetic field), so this would be hard to do from the ground. But I guess if you can make it strong enough, or do it from a tall mountain/plane flying above most of our atmosphere ...
Of course, other options including spending oodles on a DLT drive and media -- probably a good deal more than you spent on the hard drives in the first place. Or a DVD-R drive and 120 disks. (I know, it sounds crazy, but it works for some people.)
Or maybe you can tolerate losing most of that 500 GB of data (if it's your porn collection, you may not really care that much.) In that case, you back up what you need to another disk or to some other backup solution, and leave the rest to chance.
In any event, for important data, RAID 5 is not a subsitute for backups. It may protect you against the loss of one disk (if you replace it before another fails and rebuild the array) but it will do NOTHING to protect you against `rm -rf *' or the entire machine sh*tting itself and taking your data with it (which happens more than we'd like, RAID or not, though RAID seems to make it happen more often, on pretty much any OS.)
But apparantly, if you ask nicely, Microsoft will fix them for you for free, even out of warranty. And I'll bet the guy who filed the lawsuit knew this when he did so. My guess is he wants more than to just get his X-Box fixed.
What makes you think that's hosted at the A&M campus? The IP address resolves back to ip-64-202-167-129.secureserver.net, and doesn't appear to be anywhere near A&M's netblock.
Generally it's pretty easy to tell what the DDoSers are after -- they usually attack the exact address that bothers them. If it's a web site, it's the web site's address. If it's an IRCer, it's the address that they appear on IRC as. Unless your entire resnet is NAT'd, CIS probably knows exactly who the attacks are after.
They [people who do DDoS attacks] generally aren't sophisticated enough to try and hide the target (by attacking the entire /24, for example) to hide their target. And besides, if you can get the ISP annoyed at your target for bringing down an attack on them, they may do your dirty work for you and take it down themselves.
Filtering on your router doesn't work, because it's usually your pipe that's overloaded. (Though schools often have huge pipes.) Having your provider filter can be effective, but not all attacks are easy to filter. Buying more bandwidth and faster routers is usually effective -- I'm sure you won't mind your tuition going up to cover the costs? Turning off the campus resnet completely would probably be effective ...
You got any better ideas?
No, I don't work for your school's CIS. But I certainly understand their position.