The caves in the Tora Bora complex were, according to reports coming out now, basically untouched. What may have had more of an impact was the ground troops closing in on the place, trying to cut off supplies (or were they? The whole "siege" might have been staged by bribed or otherwise beholden-to-the-other-side commanders, in order to allow the quarry time to escape.).
I always got the impression that he may have been entirely fictional (in the context of the book) -- made up by the Party in order to attract and help to identify the disaffected. In other words, rather than having to infiltrate a bona fide rebel group, the Party simply made its own facsimile and used it as bait.
The latter. After all, if you use cookies to track voting, you're relying on people not deleting those cookies after each vote (which a script could easily do).
You could make it more obnoxious by requiring a full sign-in with some crypto-signed cookie being the result, and this cookie being needed to vote (and used to index 'em as well), but a script could still sign in...
If you really wanted to do it w/o stuffing, you'd probably need to rely on some real-world authentication scheme, like having to mail in a valid passport for copying (record the number, and return the passport and an authentication code based on the passport). Or iris scans, or...
"Necessary and proper". Remember the elastic clause, and also that the First has absolutely nothing to do with requiring that other people provide access to their PRIVATE systems, like corporate e-mail servers.
It was on sale in a pre-Xmas sale at PhotoAlley (price went back up the day afterwards), but my Minolta DiMAGE S304 cost $399.95, not including sundry accessories like extra CF cards. That was a sale price, but if you wait a bit and search around you might be able to find it at that price again.
It's a 4X optical zoom, 3.1 MP (that is, 3.3MP total, but 3.1MP used), fits in... about a large coat pocket, say. The LowePro 20AW case that I bought with it is a very snug fit -- note that it doesn't come with a case, and Minolta doesn't seem to make any.
I'm happy with it so far, 'tho it does have a weakness -- there are only two aperture settings available at any given set of other parameters (focal length, which can be selected from a list [IOW not continuous dial], exposure compensation, exposure time, et al). The cf card included is only 16MB, 'tho, so you might want to buy, say, a SanDisk 128MB (what I currently use). Oh, and it includes 4 non-rechargeable AAs -- use NiMHs instead.
They test logic and reasoning far more than they do programming skill, or fluency with Windows programming software. I doubt that programmers are the only ones who have enough reasoning skills to pass the interviews.
And what if a programmer were convinced that he was working for a particular group, but was really working for somebody else?
Re:XP? Wouldn't Linux be just as easy?
on
al Qaeda Hacks XP?
·
· Score: 1
Another approach might be targetting the linux kernel source mirrors. That approach was taken once with... TCP Wrappers and ftp.win.tue.nl or something like that.
'course, you'd be relying on people not verifying the signatures, or of snarfing the signing private key, or trojaning the crypto software, but it's another approach.
Said programmer wouldn't have to be an al Qaeda member, if there's one vulnerable to blackmail/extortion tactics. He wouldn't even have to be aware of a connection, if this were a false-flag operation -- playing on possible loyalties to the FBI, Mossad, or whoever else the programmer might be biased towards.
ROTK is certainly good from the point of intrigue and scale. And of the ruthlessness necessary to forge an empire...
"Journey to the West", 'tho, wore on a me quite a bit as the latter chapters seemed... gratuitiously repetitive. The monk being such a clueless, incompetent naif, while clearly necessary for the plot (so that his compatriots can save him... again... and again... and again...), also annoyed the HELL out of me eventually.
The OIG's role includes investigating malfeasance by the employees of the EPA.
From the NYT article:
Members of Warez includes corporate executives, computer-network administrators and students at major universities, government workers and employees of technology and computer firms, the Customs Service said today.
Now, they don't say *which* government employees were involved, or which agency, but it might be a reasonable inference that EPA people were among those government workers, and that some EPA systems administrator either noticed or was tipped off by another employee.
Get themselves entered into a search engine? Drop an FTP site/dir combo into an IRC room?
Advertising isn't entrapment, however. It's doubtful that they took random people aside and *talked them into* visiting; if people are hanging out in #w4r3z channels asking for sites, it's pretty clear that they're asking for pirated software (or are cops themselves).
Ubiquitious CD burners, some degree of technical know-how, incredible amounts of bandwidth, very little oversight, personal computers being very common, still young enough to likely be infringing with large collections of either downloaded music or unauthorized computer games, or quite possibly both.
You probably won't find many 45- and 50- year-olds salivating over the next version of Unreal Tournament. You also won't find many 35-40-yr olds needing to pirate business software, since their company likely has a site license. Students, on the other hand, may not have easy access to site-licensed software and may want software for their dorm machine, so that they don't have to deal with overfull clusters. Oh, and students are often sufficiently immature to have poor control over their impulses and their desires, resulting in a variety of consequences such as suddenly gaining weight from bad dieting, to suddenly having huge debt from going overboard with a credit card, to getting busted for DUI.
(Incidentally, using MS Word for a 400-page paper would be sheer masochism. Using it for anything beyond 10 might be... learning LaTeX is pretty much *vital* anyway if you're going towards writing technical papers.)
People also pirate cheap software, like where $45 plus shipping buys you a small manual, a CD, and tech support. Well, actually, the latter's free from developers and publishers who actually care about their products, and who maintain and actually *use* active discussion forums to communicate with their users.
One of the games I've played as had over 40 patches released, an extremely large number of them adding user-requested features and enhancements -- and not one of them cost a penny extra. Not a shabby deal. This level of support isn't that unusual, it seems, among the Small Gaming Houses, which need to rely more on individual consumers and word of mouth -- and thus need excellent customer relations.
And yes, they're still having to shut down people who feel it's fine to rip 'em off en masse.
Ever watch a crowd at a traffic light? It usually takes one to jaywalk first, and then many others follow in a clump. It's a nice, friendly environment for jaywalking.
People also don't often simply start doing lines in a business meeting, but if it were an acceptable practice in the eyes of others, they might, just as drug use and groupie sex isn't considered too far from the norm for rockers...
So do you believe that people who use illegally redistributed software do so in complete ignorance of the idea that many other people are also doing the same, and that therefore such actions are independent?
More likely, broader appeal => more popularity => more pirates. I don't hear of bootleggers eagerly redistributing vast quantities of Sierra's "Outpost", and given what I've heard about the quality (er, lack of) that game, it wouldn't help.
Go ask a small publisher / developer, like Shrapnel Games or Battlefront, how much they *appreciate* pirates.
- Why should we care about what you think your rights are? What matters is what your rights *actually* are.
- Not all software comes from companies owned by GAtes, believe it or not.
- Commerce is all about *consent*. Consent involves an exchange acceptable to both sides, not just the consumer. As an example of the consequences of BROKEN agreements, consider the financial straits of Sir-Tech, which has had a great deal of trouble collecting money from companies which sold JA2:UB in Europe. Both the "Jagged Alliance" and Wizardry franchises are pretty much over, and Sir-Tech isn't exactly in good shape either.
It's your right to offer software with no restrictions. It's also your right -- or mine -- to offer software with conditions, and the user gets to decide whether he'll accept the software, and along with them the restrictions (within certain limits, such as you can't request somebody's firstborn as a slave).
It sounds like you're still in the juvenile "me" stage of psychological development. Grow up and realize that life involves agreements and deals, not just taking whatever you think is yours.
Useful against low-tech foo as well. A mortar round filled with sarin is pretty low-tech, and you *really* would like to intercept it before it gets anywhere near. Sometimes you *need* high-tech to counter low-tech. For instance, you can "counter" a nuclear missile via MAD, but that won't *stop* a nuclear missile if the other guy simply doesn't care (either believing that he won't be identified, or won't be hit for other reasons, or doesn't mind being vaporized in the name of a greater cause). Stopping an attack tends to be a far harder problem than replying with a symmetric attack.
'sides, think ahead. We'd be monumentally stupid to ignore the potential for enemies more powerful than the Taliban. For instance, there is a fair probability that there'll need to be a Desert Storm II eventually; and if Pres. Hussein believes that the next time, we *won't* stop before deposing him, he may decide that with nothing left to lose he might as well pull out all the stops. Or what if North Korea implodes due to famine, and perhaps the tensest DMZ on Earth explodes? Or...
Well, as the old axiom goes, get there FIRST with the most.
Hm. I wonder how accurate these things are at tracking guided munitions, in contrast to pure ballistic foo. Katyushas and mortar rounds don't change course to take evasive action, but something like the JDAM with which we hit our own (and our allies, who lost more) is an actively guided weapon whose trajectory might therefore be harder to predict.
Plus, the firing platform was a lot more mobile, making it harder to predict subsequent trajectories, I'd suspect. Hrmmm.
Re:This raises some frightening questions
on
Battlefield Lasers
·
· Score: 1
You might have to look at British case law to figure out the distinction between arms and, say, field artillery.
ISTR that way back when, they might have had some provisions protecting the individual keeping of arms -- by which they meant man-portable personal anti-people weapons, unlike, say, cannons, mortars and their ilk. I'd suspect that the US interpretation would be a more modernized version (0.50-cal Barrett, OK; 60mm mortar or 105mm howitzer, not OK).
Re:This raises some frightening questions
on
Battlefield Lasers
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Sure, it could be used as anti-equipment.
That 0.50-BMG cartridge was originally designed as an anti-tank (WWI era tank...) round, if memory serves. It likely has enough penetration to still be good enough for damaging many things besides flesh and blood today.
Making something illegal or applying manditory monitoring does nothing to stop those who intend to circumvent/ignore those measures.
Sure it does. Fines, jail time, and execution (for, say, homicide -- I'm not talking strictly about network security here, although eventually it may be quite possible to commit murder via a network attack; think DOS of critical systems) tend to have varying levels of deterrent or incapacitative effects.
Perhaps that wouldn't be the case if there were clear, severe penalties for negligence in implementation or design when it comes to leaking information.
For instance, I'm not aware[*] of any major legal action taken against e-commerce companies which leak CC# numbers wholesale. AFAIK, they are not even obligated to pay any penalty or offer any compensation or assistance with, say, cancelling cards or contacting credit firms. If there were a steep price to pay for failure, then the cost-benefit analysis might swing towards security.
[*] Not saying there aren't; there quite possibly have been. I'm just not aware of any yet. *shrug*
Slashdot Mirror
s/little difficult/basically impossible for now/
The caves in the Tora Bora complex were, according to reports coming out now, basically untouched. What may have had more of an impact was the ground troops closing in on the place, trying to cut off supplies (or were they? The whole "siege" might have been staged by bribed or otherwise beholden-to-the-other-side commanders, in order to allow the quarry time to escape.).
*shrug*
I always got the impression that he may have been entirely fictional (in the context of the book) -- made up by the Party in order to attract and help to identify the disaffected. In other words, rather than having to infiltrate a bona fide rebel group, the Party simply made its own facsimile and used it as bait.
The latter. After all, if you use cookies to track voting, you're relying on people not deleting those cookies after each vote (which a script could easily do).
You could make it more obnoxious by requiring a full sign-in with some crypto-signed cookie being the result, and this cookie being needed to vote (and used to index 'em as well), but a script could still sign in...
If you really wanted to do it w/o stuffing, you'd probably need to rely on some real-world authentication scheme, like having to mail in a valid passport for copying (record the number, and return the passport and an authentication code based on the passport). Or iris scans, or...
"Necessary and proper". Remember the elastic clause, and also that the First has absolutely nothing to do with requiring that other people provide access to their PRIVATE systems, like corporate e-mail servers.
It was on sale in a pre-Xmas sale at PhotoAlley (price went back up the day afterwards), but my Minolta DiMAGE S304 cost $399.95, not including sundry accessories like extra CF cards. That was a sale price, but if you wait a bit and search around you might be able to find it at that price again.
It's a 4X optical zoom, 3.1 MP (that is, 3.3MP total, but 3.1MP used), fits in... about a large coat pocket, say. The LowePro 20AW case that I bought with it is a very snug fit -- note that it doesn't come with a case, and Minolta doesn't seem to make any.
I'm happy with it so far, 'tho it does have a weakness -- there are only two aperture settings available at any given set of other parameters (focal length, which can be selected from a list [IOW not continuous dial], exposure compensation, exposure time, et al). The cf card included is only 16MB, 'tho, so you might want to buy, say, a SanDisk 128MB (what I currently use). Oh, and it includes 4 non-rechargeable AAs -- use NiMHs instead.
Try DPReview for specs, review and comparisons.
You could do that in Quake I as well, if memory serves.
For a really twisted out-of-control game, you could set negative friction, and use a map with a fair number of wide open spaces...
AieeeeeeeeeeeeWHAM.
They test logic and reasoning far more than they do programming skill, or fluency with Windows programming software. I doubt that programmers are the only ones who have enough reasoning skills to pass the interviews.
And what if a programmer were convinced that he was working for a particular group, but was really working for somebody else?
Another approach might be targetting the linux kernel source mirrors. That approach was taken once with... TCP Wrappers and ftp.win.tue.nl or something like that.
'course, you'd be relying on people not verifying the signatures, or of snarfing the signing private key, or trojaning the crypto software, but it's another approach.
Said programmer wouldn't have to be an al Qaeda member, if there's one vulnerable to blackmail/extortion tactics. He wouldn't even have to be aware of a connection, if this were a false-flag operation -- playing on possible loyalties to the FBI, Mossad, or whoever else the programmer might be biased towards.
ROTK is certainly good from the point of intrigue and scale. And of the ruthlessness necessary to forge an empire...
"Journey to the West", 'tho, wore on a me quite a bit as the latter chapters seemed... gratuitiously repetitive. The monk being such a clueless, incompetent naif, while clearly necessary for the plot (so that his compatriots can save him... again... and again... and again...), also annoyed the HELL out of me eventually.
Hrmm. Weren't there contracts with Rambus to this effect?
The OIG's role includes investigating malfeasance by the employees of the EPA.
From the NYT article:
Members of Warez includes corporate executives, computer-network administrators and students at major universities, government workers and employees of technology and computer firms, the Customs Service said today.
Now, they don't say *which* government employees were involved, or which agency, but it might be a reasonable inference that EPA people were among those government workers, and that some EPA systems administrator either noticed or was tipped off by another employee.
Get themselves entered into a search engine? Drop an FTP site/dir combo into an IRC room?
Advertising isn't entrapment, however. It's doubtful that they took random people aside and *talked them into* visiting; if people are hanging out in #w4r3z channels asking for sites, it's pretty clear that they're asking for pirated software (or are cops themselves).
Ubiquitious CD burners, some degree of technical know-how, incredible amounts of bandwidth, very little oversight, personal computers being very common, still young enough to likely be infringing with large collections of either downloaded music or unauthorized computer games, or quite possibly both.
You probably won't find many 45- and 50- year-olds salivating over the next version of Unreal Tournament. You also won't find many 35-40-yr olds needing to pirate business software, since their company likely has a site license. Students, on the other hand, may not have easy access to site-licensed software and may want software for their dorm machine, so that they don't have to deal with overfull clusters. Oh, and students are often sufficiently immature to have poor control over their impulses and their desires, resulting in a variety of consequences such as suddenly gaining weight from bad dieting, to suddenly having huge debt from going overboard with a credit card, to getting busted for DUI.
(Incidentally, using MS Word for a 400-page paper would be sheer masochism. Using it for anything beyond 10 might be... learning LaTeX is pretty much *vital* anyway if you're going towards writing technical papers.)
People also pirate cheap software, like where $45 plus shipping buys you a small manual, a CD, and tech support. Well, actually, the latter's free from developers and publishers who actually care about their products, and who maintain and actually *use* active discussion forums to communicate with their users.
One of the games I've played as had over 40 patches released, an extremely large number of them adding user-requested features and enhancements -- and not one of them cost a penny extra. Not a shabby deal. This level of support isn't that unusual, it seems, among the Small Gaming Houses, which need to rely more on individual consumers and word of mouth -- and thus need excellent customer relations.
And yes, they're still having to shut down people who feel it's fine to rip 'em off en masse.
Ever watch a crowd at a traffic light? It usually takes one to jaywalk first, and then many others follow in a clump. It's a nice, friendly environment for jaywalking.
People also don't often simply start doing lines in a business meeting, but if it were an acceptable practice in the eyes of others, they might, just as drug use and groupie sex isn't considered too far from the norm for rockers...
So do you believe that people who use illegally redistributed software do so in complete ignorance of the idea that many other people are also doing the same, and that therefore such actions are independent?
More likely, broader appeal => more popularity => more pirates. I don't hear of bootleggers eagerly redistributing vast quantities of Sierra's "Outpost", and given what I've heard about the quality (er, lack of) that game, it wouldn't help.
Go ask a small publisher / developer, like Shrapnel Games or Battlefront, how much they *appreciate* pirates.
- Why should we care about what you think your rights are? What matters is what your rights *actually* are.
- Not all software comes from companies owned by GAtes, believe it or not.
- Commerce is all about *consent*. Consent involves an exchange acceptable to both sides, not just the consumer. As an example of the consequences of BROKEN agreements, consider the financial straits of Sir-Tech, which has had a great deal of trouble collecting money from companies which sold JA2:UB in Europe. Both the "Jagged Alliance" and Wizardry franchises are pretty much over, and Sir-Tech isn't exactly in good shape either.
It's your right to offer software with no restrictions. It's also your right -- or mine -- to offer software with conditions, and the user gets to decide whether he'll accept the software, and along with them the restrictions (within certain limits, such as you can't request somebody's firstborn as a slave).
It sounds like you're still in the juvenile "me" stage of psychological development. Grow up and realize that life involves agreements and deals, not just taking whatever you think is yours.
Useful against low-tech foo as well. A mortar round filled with sarin is pretty low-tech, and you *really* would like to intercept it before it gets anywhere near. Sometimes you *need* high-tech to counter low-tech. For instance, you can "counter" a nuclear missile via MAD, but that won't *stop* a nuclear missile if the other guy simply doesn't care (either believing that he won't be identified, or won't be hit for other reasons, or doesn't mind being vaporized in the name of a greater cause). Stopping an attack tends to be a far harder problem than replying with a symmetric attack.
'sides, think ahead. We'd be monumentally stupid to ignore the potential for enemies more powerful than the Taliban. For instance, there is a fair probability that there'll need to be a Desert Storm II eventually; and if Pres. Hussein believes that the next time, we *won't* stop before deposing him, he may decide that with nothing left to lose he might as well pull out all the stops. Or what if North Korea implodes due to famine, and perhaps the tensest DMZ on Earth explodes? Or...
Well, as the old axiom goes, get there FIRST with the most.
Hm. I wonder how accurate these things are at tracking guided munitions, in contrast to pure ballistic foo. Katyushas and mortar rounds don't change course to take evasive action, but something like the JDAM with which we hit our own (and our allies, who lost more) is an actively guided weapon whose trajectory might therefore be harder to predict.
Plus, the firing platform was a lot more mobile, making it harder to predict subsequent trajectories, I'd suspect. Hrmmm.
You might have to look at British case law to figure out the distinction between arms and, say, field artillery.
ISTR that way back when, they might have had some provisions protecting the individual keeping of arms -- by which they meant man-portable personal anti-people weapons, unlike, say, cannons, mortars and their ilk. I'd suspect that the US interpretation would be a more modernized version (0.50-cal Barrett, OK; 60mm mortar or 105mm howitzer, not OK).
Sure, it could be used as anti-equipment.
That 0.50-BMG cartridge was originally designed as an anti-tank (WWI era tank...) round, if memory serves. It likely has enough penetration to still be good enough for damaging many things besides flesh and blood today.
Making something illegal or applying manditory monitoring does nothing to stop those who intend to circumvent/ignore those measures.
Sure it does. Fines, jail time, and execution (for, say, homicide -- I'm not talking strictly about network security here, although eventually it may be quite possible to commit murder via a network attack; think DOS of critical systems) tend to have varying levels of deterrent or incapacitative effects.
Perhaps that wouldn't be the case if there were clear, severe penalties for negligence in implementation or design when it comes to leaking information.
For instance, I'm not aware[*] of any major legal action taken against e-commerce companies which leak CC# numbers wholesale. AFAIK, they are not even obligated to pay any penalty or offer any compensation or assistance with, say, cancelling cards or contacting credit firms. If there were a steep price to pay for failure, then the cost-benefit analysis might swing towards security.
[*] Not saying there aren't; there quite possibly have been. I'm just not aware of any yet. *shrug*