You would be suprised how big computer forensics is, especially within government agencies. In fact, a quick Google Search can show you this.
The FBI has an entire laboratory set up for computer forensics, as a part of their Computer Analysis and Response Team.
The Secret Service has established the Electronic Crimes Special Agent Program (ECSAP), that trains agents to conduct forensic examinations of computers.
The National Security Agency (NSA) has a huge program training people for computer forensics.
The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) has a program as well.
The National Science Foundation is setting up a Scholarship For Service program in schools all over the nation to train students to take government positions in the area of computer crime.
In fact, just about every government agency has a cyber crime program. Police units are establishing their own as well.
When you show up to a crimminal's home, you have to secure their computer and investigate it in a forensically-sound way (or bag and tag it and take it back to the lab where you will be doing a more in-depth investigation.) Forensics tools for Windows are important because a large percentage of responses are on Windows machines (following the market share trend of Windows.) You can't just tear through a system like a bull in a china shop, or you will change timestamps and volatile information, and a good defense will get the crimminal off based on the lack of integrity of the investigation. This is why getting a tested and reliable tool that can be demonstrated in court is very important.
Yes, crimes happen on and evidence is located on computers now.
However, that user did not explain a point that many people do not know: you can incorporate anywhere. Your business does not have to be located there. Delaware has lots of nice provisions for the startup corporation. If not there, do some investigation first, and don't necessarily incorporate where you are located.
Most business courses suggest that if you incorporate, you do so in Delaware.
First of all, you can go fill out a few papers and pay $100 (the cost depending on your state) to become incorporated. Declare yourself CEO and lead contractor of your company. Become a limited liability corporation so that, in the case that the shit hits the fan, your corporation is legally responsible but you, as owner, are not. Then, you can theoretically declare bankruptcy and although you will lose everything associated with your business (if, forbid, something terrible happened), you won't lose your home, car, etc.
When you contract, you often don't have the same resources as you would working at a larger company. For instance, if you need an oscilloscope for a job, you would normally have to buy an oscilloscope out of your own money. And you will be taxed on ALL income. However, using the money you make doing some initial contract work, you can buy the oscilloscope and deduct that income from your taxes at the end of the year. You see, businesses are taxed differently than individuals; specifically, instead of being taxed on income, you are taxed on what is left over at the end of the fiscal year after business expenses are deducted. If you tie up everything in business assets, your overall worth will be much greater.
If nothing else, become incorporated (as a limited liability corporation.)
2) Factor in liability and convenience.
You won't want to do a direct conversion of salary to contract costs. You will want to charge more as a contractor, not only to cover the increased cost of your insurance and such and such (as more than enough posters have covered, giving good conversions and ideas about this), but you will also want to charge above all of that for the service (convenience factor) of your customers not having to worry about that; they get you, all of the liability is transferred to you, and they don't have to worry about health insurance, wages, raises, etc. And that brings up one word of caution: as a contractor, you take on all liability should anything go wrong. You will want to limit your liability through contracts as much as possible while retaining customers, and also consider the ability to declare bankruptcy as a company.
3) Read this book.
http://www.superb.org/book/leader/PersonBook.pdf It is a work-in-progress by someone who I have seen build great success and who has mentored many entrepreneurs. His techniques may seem counter-intuitive and sorta nit-picky, but they seem to work. (It has everything down to how your body posture affects the customer's perception of you subconsciously, which seems silly until you go out and give it a try.) His book is downloadable (for now, since its a work-in-progress) for free.
4) Find a lawyer.
You don't have to secure them. But investigate good lawyers (business law) that you can turn to on short notice if you need them. For large contracts (tens of thousands of dollars or more), you might want them to approve your contracts. You will want to factor these fees into your contracts as well.
5) Check your local law.
Be careful how you market yourself. In some states, if you market yourself as a qualified engineer but do not have your PE license (regardless of if you have a degree or not or tons of experience in the field), you can get in legal trouble. I have known of this happening. This is especially true if you conduct interstate business.
There is a lot more obviously involved in becoming a contractor, but this is a start. Without more specific questions, I could go on for hours. I just suggest you read some of the books other posters have listed (Jack Ganssle's book I saw mentioned earlier) and consult contractors local to you (since things vary by location) and ask lots of questions.
this is generally suggested for law enforcement who respond to a crime scene for which there is a standalone running machine and a qualified computer forensic examiner is not readily available. In the "bag and tag" process, the responding cops are then told to pull the plug (literally...not from the wall, but from the machine itself) and then bag and tag the machine. This might seem odd at first, and yes things can be lost, but the key is obtaining "forensically sound" evidence which is admissible in court.
Just as you wouldn't want the computer guy touching the dead body on the floor, you don't want the average police guy trying to do an analysis of the machine. Even if he does open a few folders and find undeniable evidence of the crime, a good crossexaminer would rip that up in court. The idea is that you allow the least amount of "tampering" as possible before the guy who knows what he is doing gets ahold of the machine.
Now, that said, if you walk in and there is an unsaved but important-looking document sitting on the desktop, you're not going to want to pull the plug. At that point, you take pictures and then have several witnesses present to try to preserve the document by saving it to an external drive. In that case, you gotta do what you gotta do.
However, the plug-pulling strategy, I can second, is a standard practice for first responders when a live, on-site replication of the machine is not possible. In that case, you really do have to pull the plug, bag, tag, and examine later.
This is partially true in that most crimes are taken on a "Big fish versus Small fish" basis. This is no different from traditional crime. In the case that a hacker hit a small business with very little effect, it is generally more practical for an incident response team to find out what happened, restore from a trusted backup, and then go about fixing the problem so it doesn't happen again.
However, if you're trading kiddie porn or decide to peruse your local financial institution or any other institution regulated and required by law to report hacking incidents, I will guarantee that you become a "Big Fish" fairly quickly.
And the range of forensic tools available to a good forensics analyst is likely to cover most anything you throw at it. You are correct in that local PD cyber crime units are often started by guys who have very little computer expertise and do not initially know how to get forensically-sound evidence. However, free software like iLook and expanded forensics education programs are changing that. And, if you do become a "Big Fish," you can almost bet that the guy assigned to your case knows what he is doing.
Computer forensic analysts are without a doubt some of the most talented people in IT period. Computer forensics is multi-discipline and analysts typically have backgrounds in engineering, programming, criminology, and languages. And why are you assuming that most computer forensics experts are in law enforcement? The best analysts are in the private sector, military, and government intelligence.
Exactly. From my experience, the forensic analysts I have experience with came from Computer Science and Electrical Engineering backgrounds, and are highly trained. The "average nerds and hackers" fail to realize, sometimes, that the best among them sometimes cross the road to become these top-notch forensics analysts. It is not uncommon to find an ex-blackhat pop up in the private sector years later as a computer forensics analyst. In training, they bring in the guys who were on the "other side" and teach you to think like those guys, so that you can catch them.
And the tools (iLook--which is free to law enforcement, EnCase, Foremost, etc., etc.) are fairly effective against your average case. Some people do not realize that even NASA has a computer forensics division. It is, however, the attitude of being invincible that makes most guys all the more catchable.
As far as #1 goes, anything that doesn't fit under the Dauber rules of evidence (at least, if there is a good DA involved) will be quickly made null, but programs like EnCase certainly qualify.
EnCase is not free to law enforcement, though, and can be quite expensive. As far as networked machines go, this requires the Enterprise edition, which has to be previously-installed to the machine.
iLook, however, is free to law enforcement and government agencies and generates rather nice forensics reports. It doesn't have the same bells-and-whistles feel as EnCase does, but it is free and thus provides a nice tool to budget-strapped law enforcement agencies.
However, the grandparent post's attitude is one which computer forensics can rely on. As long as people believe they are invincible, then it makes the job easier. They don't realize that, essentially using free tools, you can recover deleted files from their machine and find just about anything, including stuff hidden in slack space.
Foremost is another free tool which works in file recovery. Very, very nice tool. I would say that last time we used it, we got more information out of it than EnCase, although I am not putting EnCase down by any means.
Pets cannot die. However, each account is allowed up to four pets. You may also abandon pets at an adoption agency (which is rather full) and create another one if you are unhappy with the ones you have. There is no limit to the number of times you can leave a pet at the adoption agency. This accounts for the larger amount of pets than there are owners.
Yes. I later clarified that we are a democratic republic, which makes us more strongly a republic flavour than a democratic one. We are further removed from a straight-up democracy, although we directly elect our sub-leaders.
Or is this more of the media's misguided use of terminology and its application whenever they report "Democracy". Does it really mean "Republic"?
As someone correctly clarified in a nested post, we are a democratic republic. However, in the end, we are basically a republic.
Of course, I imagine the media's handling of the word "Democracy," is tantamount to their handling of the word "Communism," of which there has never been a true implementation. Democracy has a certain feel-good rhetoric... it is just easier to carry out the misunderstood application of the term than to bother to correct it for people. I mean, when more people can't name the vice President than can, I don't think they bother about making sure to say "republic," which sounds so much more un-nice than "democracy" does.
I disagree. I would be interested in hearing of a country that has been more stable over the period since the civil war.
A more directed nitpick, I think, would be that the United States is not technically a democracy. It is a republic. A common mistake. A democracy directly elects its leaders. Because we elect people who represent our interests and we trust them to represent our intentions, we have a republic.
Perhaps someone can comment on the dangers of this "watching over us" since that seems to be all it is. When they interfere and begin choosing who we put into power, then there should be concern. In the end, though, this seems to be the international community returning the favor and assuring checks and balances. No, I don't like interference or being under the eye of the rest of the world, but I think that we need to pick our battles, and this one doesn't seem to be where our energy should go.
A look at the converted Geo is here. It was retitled the "Paradyne."
A much cooler looking HEV, though, is the Proxima, which was built ground-up. I was on the team that built and designed the car. The design and material cost for this car, being built from ground up (I kid you not. I remember nights out there with a heat gun, hot glue, and pipe making the frame and shaping the body) is way out there.
I don't remember the costs of the conversion for the Metro, since I wasn't involved, but someone interested in the numbers could certainly write and ask. Contact information is on our webpage, or you could IM me, and I could ask next time I am around the HMW.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I first saw the picture, my reaction was not "Oh, it's a rock!"
In fact, not that I believe it is as such necessarily, it looks like a fossilized organic somethingoranother. The back end looks something like a frog. Now, this is probably proposterous (it is most likely a volcanic-produced rock), but I sure wouldn't mind being (accidentally) correct.
With the casual way that they mention that they *might* go by and check it out, I certainly hope that they do! Of all of the "rocks" that they have studied so far, I think that this one merits a much less casual reaction. I find their treatment of this discovery a bit odd.
Oh, I would more than happy to chat about EE. I was lucky enough to get a very unorthodox education in EE.
If you have any specific questions, it would be easier for me to answer those rather than rambling forever about the great parts of EE, what you can do, and why I am bridging my ME/EE with CS. That, or you are welcome to email me (dexterpexter@gmaCOWil.com minus the herbivore), or you can jump over to my profile page and grab my IM information, if you have any IM accounts. Don't be shy about IMing me.
I appologize if I came off as criticizing your choice of hardware/software/whatever. As I said, you know what was best to use and I can't fault you for that. It wasn't meant to be an anti-MS post, and it certainly was not a high and mighty attitude in that "we could do it and you couldn't, hah hah!" as much as a "you might not realize there are other options out there that you can use; we were able to do it, so have more confidence in yourselves to be able to find an alternative." It was meant to be a positive.
I was simply questioning your assertion that it couldn't have been done without XP Embedded, as though that were the only tool. I thought that was a poor remark to make as engineers. You have now came and clarified your point to say that it was your preferred choice and what was offered to you, which is certainly respectable. I now do not have issue, as you have demonstrated that you realize it was possible to use something else, but you made the (smart) choice to use the tools that were donated to you. I can respect that, as I would have done the same.
And thank-you for kind words about the blood sweat and tears. It was indeed a long road (as you well know), and one that was both exciting and infuriating at the same time.
Congratulations are in order to your team as well.
I was a member of an autonomous ground vehicle team and wonder why you didn't consider using a PC-104 board. They have a Disk-on-Chip which is Linux Compatible, and a framegrabber that integrates very nicely.
I find the statement "We couldn't have written the software without XP Embedded. Just to get that out in the open. Couldn't have done it" concerning. As designers, that sort of limiting of yourselves might become an issue in the future (in industry). We considered an XP Embedded device, but in having a small budget, decided to go with an Open Source system.
You might not be confident in the team's abilities to do so, but our team of three electrical engineering undergraduate students worked on a very similar project using the PC-104, M-Systems DOC, Arvoo Framegrabber, a GPS (part of our system used GPA waypoints as well, in addition to the object-recognition vision software used for avoiding obstacles), a radio link, and some robot controllers...and we did it on a Linux-based system. If we can do it, you can too.
I agree with the other poster in that I have no idea why an ATMEL chip would ever even be a consideration.
You all might want to, as students not just doing a project but also learning to be engineers, consider other design alternatives. You should not need an XP Embedded device any more than any other embedded system. Now, it might have been the best choice for your application (only you can make that decision since none of us has the benefit of seeing your design specs), and I can respect that, but it is by no means your only option.
While I see the overall point of what you are saying, I want to add my own nitpick in saying that programming has a lot to do with engineers.
I, too, have a Mechanical Engineering background and an Electrical Engineering Degree. I have worked on autonomous robots (which the engineers programmed, not CS students), VoIP over WDM in a telecommunications research lab (programming is required for things like OPNET, and certainly this has to do with IT. All of the people in the lab are EEs, because hardware to software knowledge is necessary), a hybrid electric vehicle (someone had to put in a vision system and program the touch-screens), and intrusion detection sensors for military use (Assembly coding is key here and no one was CS).
I suppose, though, that one could say that today's engineers are having to take on the role of programmer in addition to their design duties.
The engineering profession, at least it seems, has been fairly stable. While the engineering position can incorporate the programming position in some cases, you usually don't find the opposite true. That is why you are seeing engineers hired into positions, and CS knowledge is encouraged in many engineering programs.
That said, I am working on my masters in EE, and am switching to CS because I have had enough offers in the CS area and was invited to join an awesome program that requires CS degrees. I already have the one degree in engineering. I would like to finish the EE masters degree, but I don't feel so bad going over to CS. Like I said, I have seen job offers regardless. And that is the point. The people who need to be there will be there. The folks that joined just for the money will have to find another venture, because the dedicated and CS talented workers usually outshine the "sunshine CS worker."
Oh yes, and I forgot to mention one of the greatest features of Mozilla that I emphasized to the research students.
I tell the students that tabbed browsing will become their greatest friend when writing research papers. With subscriptions to the IEEE papers and such online, most of the students use online references. So, say after a day of researching, they have a screen full of tabs of references they plan to use in their paper. They just have to simply go to Bookmarks, and then click "Bookmark This Group of Tabs." Come time to write the reference page of the paper, they only have to reopen their browser, click on one single bookmark, and have their 20 references reopen in tabbed form. Much handier than 20 individual bookmarks. And, if they want to keep those references, they just have to open the program files folder on the machine and save the HTML file Mozilla creates for bookmarks to their webdirectory, and they will have a webpage full of clickable links to their individual references.
After the research students play with this option a few times, they are happily singing Mozilla's praises!
The Electrical Engineering Department at my university finally broke with university trends and installed Mozilla on all of the lab machines and hid the Internet Explorer icon on most of the machines.
In addition, in the course that I assisted, we taught about Mozilla, how tabbed browsing works, how to set it to block popup ads, the security issues of Mozilla versus IE, etc., and basically encouraged navigation from IE. At first, the students were a little unsure since it was not what they were used to. However, shortly thereafter, many of the students preferred to use Mozilla.
I am happy to say that since the migration to Mozilla in my department on lab and professor machines, and after several of us (EE and several CS students) getting together on the university forums and singing Mozilla's praises, a suprising percentage of students posted back saying that they decided to give it a try and loved it. Looks like one small step led to an even greater following because even more of these students helped their room mates, friends, and families make the change as well.
I am currently in the process of putting together a workshop so that the computer-ignorant on campus can bring in their machines, have a few volunteers clean it of viruses and spyware, show them how to configure their machines (getting rid of processes on startup, how to update critical updates and virus definitions, and install and demonstrate Mozilla. We have also discussed putting together a group to help set up dual boots of Windows/Linux for interested students who would like to try out Linux, yet want to stay with Windows for now.
I think that the office should be made to be comfortable for the employees, but not to the expense of professionalism. I mean, it depends on what sort of business you are doing and how much access the customers get to the office area.
If I were hiring a lawyer, for instance, I would not feel comfortable hiring one who has hammocks strewn across the office, and who plays foosbol on breaks. The same goes for a bank. Since they are depending on their reputation and professional stature to gain business, it is in their interest to maintain a traditional, professional look where suits and ties are a must. That might seem unfair, but it is in human nature to expect a certain level of professionalism in certain jobs, yet to grant leniency in others. It is more of a case of what the customer sees versus what they don't see. Out of sight, out of mind.:) If the customers aren't getting access to an area, and having a fun work environment is adding to the productivity (meaning: if the air hockey table is getting more time than the work at hand is, the table has got to go), then that is fine.
Now, that aside, I like the way that Google has their office set up. Their corporate offices, I am sure, are more professional, but the way Google has built its business model, it can have all of the fun things that the Googleplex has to offer, and not suffer a loss of respectability. They appeal to their core demographic. Who hasn't dreamed of the Hammock office with bean bags? With Google, somehow, that is alright. The bean bag chairs, pianos, street hockey, on-site dental, free meals, etc. (I encourage everyone to check out the pages of information on Google's 'Plex) that you see at the Googleplex really makes Google appear to be a fun place to work. Of course, my Google job offer was a work from home one (which I turned down due to having other plans. Before you all scream WHY!?, read here), so I would not have gotten the chance more than likely to work at the Googleplex, at least initially.
Anyways... indeed one of the most stifling places I have worked had the brown walls and shared office space. It was constantly demoralizing because the whole operation felt rinky-dink, even when were doing big business with the government and military. I mean, it was a fine place to work, but a bit more personal office space for the engineers, the semblance of technical savvy by the administration by allowing us to get computers with more than 32 Megs of RAM, new chairs when the old ones were worn/broken, and brighter lighting would have improved things drastically. I think that having new things come in gives the feeling of growth... when one sees older office equipment (I am not suggesting constantly buying the latest and greatest... I am just suggesting there be occasional improvements made) that have been "well-loved," it gives the whole operation a second-class feel not only to the employees, but to the customers.
A good office to me doesn't have to be the Googleplex (although that is uber-cool). It does, however, need to have replacements made when things get worn (chairs and computers being the big over-looked items), brighter lighting (with dimming option), good cleaning staff, bright colored pictures on the wall that don't look like some cheap $5 print picked up at Wal-Mart, some plant life, carpeting, windows, adequate personal space, a closeable door for private meetings, reasonable personal effects allowed (such as pictures of loved ones), access to caffeine (be it soda or coffee) for the engineers, non-scheduled breaks for the engineers (we carry our work in our minds and that doesn't just shut off on the hour... we stare at computers and think all day long. Our breaks should be at our discretion, as some of the better instances I have worked they have been), a modern feel, and access to buying the office supplies that each person feels they need. If this guy
I am assuming you said this to be funny, otherwise it is indeed a shame.
ECE (especially those with a heavy electrical engineering lean) people deal with microprocessors. Motorola chips have special features that you can't access with most C compilers and thus it is necessary to know assembly.
Also, until recently, finding a good C compiler wasn't cheap. Now, of course, there are free ones.
Coming from an ECE program without a microprocessors class in which you apply Assembly will make you less competitive than the graduates coming from schools in which engineers are taught both practical assembly application, and high level languages.
The only problem I could see with this is that driving through things was not seen as an acceptable solution by DARPA. It stipulated that the terrain and obstacles must be left unharmed. I think there are reasonable allowances made, such as running through "weeds" and leaving faint tire tracks.
Sending a bulldozer through something, however, would likely cause harm.
The motive behind this, if I get to guess, is that they are looking for a more covert vehicle. Something that has torn through the terrain and left chaos in its wake is more likely to be tracked/disabled than something that can quickly and nimbly navigate across the terrain.
I think that your idea is a fine idea, though. If they are looking at application for war situations and covert navigation is not an issue, I think that you are onto something.
When I first heard about the competition, that was my first reaction, too. Why not just create a tank and plow through the terrain along the most direct route? A review of the rules showed that they had already taken into consideration this solution and created a rule against it. I can see their reasoning, though.
Slashdot Mirror
You would be suprised how big computer forensics is, especially within government agencies. In fact, a quick Google Search can show you this.
The FBI has an entire laboratory set up for computer forensics, as a part of their Computer Analysis and Response Team.
The Secret Service has established the Electronic Crimes Special Agent Program
(ECSAP), that trains agents to conduct forensic examinations of computers.
Many local police stations are setting up Cyber Crime units.
The National Security Agency (NSA) has a huge program training people for computer forensics.
The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) has a program as well.
The National Science Foundation is setting up a Scholarship For Service program in schools all over the nation to train students to take government positions in the area of computer crime.
In fact, just about every government agency has a cyber crime program. Police units are establishing their own as well.
When you show up to a crimminal's home, you have to secure their computer and investigate it in a forensically-sound way (or bag and tag it and take it back to the lab where you will be doing a more in-depth investigation.) Forensics tools for Windows are important because a large percentage of responses are on Windows machines (following the market share trend of Windows.) You can't just tear through a system like a bull in a china shop, or you will change timestamps and volatile information, and a good defense will get the crimminal off based on the lack of integrity of the investigation. This is why getting a tested and reliable tool that can be demonstrated in court is very important.
Yes, crimes happen on and evidence is located on computers now.
-Child Porn
-Drug runner contact lists
-Pictures of Crimes in-action
-Hacking
-Credit Card fraud
-Online Fraud
-Network Intrusion
-Email exchange detailing crimes
-Electronic warfare
-Cyber-terrorism
to name a few.
I have only seen this mentioned once and it was buried, so I wanted to tack it on here because it was a wonderful point:
d =10905562
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=130655&ci
Incorporate in Delaware.
However, that user did not explain a point that many people do not know: you can incorporate anywhere. Your business does not have to be located there. Delaware has lots of nice provisions for the startup corporation. If not there, do some investigation first, and don't necessarily incorporate where you are located.
Most business courses suggest that if you incorporate, you do so in Delaware.
Good luck!
1) Become incorporated.
f
First of all, you can go fill out a few papers and pay $100 (the cost depending on your state) to become incorporated. Declare yourself CEO and lead contractor of your company. Become a limited liability corporation so that, in the case that the shit hits the fan, your corporation is legally responsible but you, as owner, are not. Then, you can theoretically declare bankruptcy and although you will lose everything associated with your business (if, forbid, something terrible happened), you won't lose your home, car, etc.
When you contract, you often don't have the same resources as you would working at a larger company. For instance, if you need an oscilloscope for a job, you would normally have to buy an oscilloscope out of your own money. And you will be taxed on ALL income. However, using the money you make doing some initial contract work, you can buy the oscilloscope and deduct that income from your taxes at the end of the year. You see, businesses are taxed differently than individuals; specifically, instead of being taxed on income, you are taxed on what is left over at the end of the fiscal year after business expenses are deducted. If you tie up everything in business assets, your overall worth will be much greater.
If nothing else, become incorporated (as a limited liability corporation.)
2) Factor in liability and convenience.
You won't want to do a direct conversion of salary to contract costs. You will want to charge more as a contractor, not only to cover the increased cost of your insurance and such and such (as more than enough posters have covered, giving good conversions and ideas about this), but you will also want to charge above all of that for the service (convenience factor) of your customers not having to worry about that; they get you, all of the liability is transferred to you, and they don't have to worry about health insurance, wages, raises, etc. And that brings up one word of caution: as a contractor, you take on all liability should anything go wrong. You will want to limit your liability through contracts as much as possible while retaining customers, and also consider the ability to declare bankruptcy as a company.
3) Read this book.
http://www.superb.org/book/leader/PersonBook.pd
It is a work-in-progress by someone who I have seen build great success and who has mentored many entrepreneurs. His techniques may seem counter-intuitive and sorta nit-picky, but they seem to work. (It has everything down to how your body posture affects the customer's perception of you subconsciously, which seems silly until you go out and give it a try.) His book is downloadable (for now, since its a work-in-progress) for free.
4) Find a lawyer.
You don't have to secure them. But investigate good lawyers (business law) that you can turn to on short notice if you need them. For large contracts (tens of thousands of dollars or more), you might want them to approve your contracts. You will want to factor these fees into your contracts as well.
5) Check your local law.
Be careful how you market yourself. In some states, if you market yourself as a qualified engineer but do not have your PE license (regardless of if you have a degree or not or tons of experience in the field), you can get in legal trouble. I have known of this happening. This is especially true if you conduct interstate business.
There is a lot more obviously involved in becoming a contractor, but this is a start. Without more specific questions, I could go on for hours. I just suggest you read some of the books other posters have listed (Jack Ganssle's book I saw mentioned earlier) and consult contractors local to you (since things vary by location) and ask lots of questions.
Commenting on the pulling the plug...
this is generally suggested for law enforcement who respond to a crime scene for which there is a standalone running machine and a qualified computer forensic examiner is not readily available. In the "bag and tag" process, the responding cops are then told to pull the plug (literally...not from the wall, but from the machine itself) and then bag and tag the machine. This might seem odd at first, and yes things can be lost, but the key is obtaining "forensically sound" evidence which is admissible in court.
Just as you wouldn't want the computer guy touching the dead body on the floor, you don't want the average police guy trying to do an analysis of the machine. Even if he does open a few folders and find undeniable evidence of the crime, a good crossexaminer would rip that up in court. The idea is that you allow the least amount of "tampering" as possible before the guy who knows what he is doing gets ahold of the machine.
Now, that said, if you walk in and there is an unsaved but important-looking document sitting on the desktop, you're not going to want to pull the plug. At that point, you take pictures and then have several witnesses present to try to preserve the document by saving it to an external drive. In that case, you gotta do what you gotta do.
However, the plug-pulling strategy, I can second, is a standard practice for first responders when a live, on-site replication of the machine is not possible. In that case, you really do have to pull the plug, bag, tag, and examine later.
And if the case is too small they wont bother.
This is partially true in that most crimes are taken on a "Big fish versus Small fish" basis. This is no different from traditional crime. In the case that a hacker hit a small business with very little effect, it is generally more practical for an incident response team to find out what happened, restore from a trusted backup, and then go about fixing the problem so it doesn't happen again.
However, if you're trading kiddie porn or decide to peruse your local financial institution or any other institution regulated and required by law to report hacking incidents, I will guarantee that you become a "Big Fish" fairly quickly.
And the range of forensic tools available to a good forensics analyst is likely to cover most anything you throw at it. You are correct in that local PD cyber crime units are often started by guys who have very little computer expertise and do not initially know how to get forensically-sound evidence. However, free software like iLook and expanded forensics education programs are changing that. And, if you do become a "Big Fish," you can almost bet that the guy assigned to your case knows what he is doing.
Computer forensic analysts are without a doubt some of the most talented people in IT period. Computer forensics is multi-discipline and analysts typically have backgrounds in engineering, programming, criminology, and languages. And why are you assuming that most computer forensics experts are in law enforcement? The best analysts are in the private sector, military, and government intelligence.
Exactly. From my experience, the forensic analysts I have experience with came from Computer Science and Electrical Engineering backgrounds, and are highly trained. The "average nerds and hackers" fail to realize, sometimes, that the best among them sometimes cross the road to become these top-notch forensics analysts. It is not uncommon to find an ex-blackhat pop up in the private sector years later as a computer forensics analyst. In training, they bring in the guys who were on the "other side" and teach you to think like those guys, so that you can catch them.
And the tools (iLook--which is free to law enforcement, EnCase, Foremost, etc., etc.) are fairly effective against your average case. Some people do not realize that even NASA has a computer forensics division.
It is, however, the attitude of being invincible that makes most guys all the more catchable.
As far as #1 goes, anything that doesn't fit under the Dauber rules of evidence (at least, if there is a good DA involved) will be quickly made null, but programs like EnCase certainly qualify.
EnCase is not free to law enforcement, though, and can be quite expensive. As far as networked machines go, this requires the Enterprise edition, which has to be previously-installed to the machine.
iLook, however, is free to law enforcement and government agencies and generates rather nice forensics reports. It doesn't have the same bells-and-whistles feel as EnCase does, but it is free and thus provides a nice tool to budget-strapped law enforcement agencies.
However, the grandparent post's attitude is one which computer forensics can rely on. As long as people believe they are invincible, then it makes the job easier. They don't realize that, essentially using free tools, you can recover deleted files from their machine and find just about anything, including stuff hidden in slack space.
Foremost is another free tool which works in file recovery. Very, very nice tool. I would say that last time we used it, we got more information out of it than EnCase, although I am not putting EnCase down by any means.
Pets cannot die. However, each account is allowed up to four pets. You may also abandon pets at an adoption agency (which is rather full) and create another one if you are unhappy with the ones you have. There is no limit to the number of times you can leave a pet at the adoption agency. This accounts for the larger amount of pets than there are owners.
Pets in the game cannot die. If you do not feed them, they will reach a level called "Dying," but they do not ever actually die.
You may have up to four pets per account.
Yes. I later clarified that we are a democratic republic, which makes us more strongly a republic flavour than a democratic one. We are further removed from a straight-up democracy, although we directly elect our sub-leaders.
You are very correct.
I will check those out and report back. Thanks for suggesting a few.
Or is this more of the media's misguided use of terminology and its application whenever they report "Democracy". Does it really mean "Republic"?
As someone correctly clarified in a nested post, we are a democratic republic. However, in the end, we are basically a republic.
Of course, I imagine the media's handling of the word "Democracy," is tantamount to their handling of the word "Communism," of which there has never been a true implementation.
Democracy has a certain feel-good rhetoric... it is just easier to carry out the misunderstood application of the term than to bother to correct it for people.
I mean, when more people can't name the vice President than can, I don't think they bother about making sure to say "republic," which sounds so much more un-nice than "democracy" does.
You are correct. I mispoke.
We are a democratic republic, democracy being the qualifying condition of the state, which is a republic.
I disagree. I would be interested in hearing of a country that has been more stable over the period since the civil war.
A more directed nitpick, I think, would be that the United States is not technically a democracy. It is a republic. A common mistake.
A democracy directly elects its leaders. Because we elect people who represent our interests and we trust them to represent our intentions, we have a republic.
Perhaps someone can comment on the dangers of this "watching over us" since that seems to be all it is. When they interfere and begin choosing who we put into power, then there should be concern. In the end, though, this seems to be the international community returning the favor and assuring checks and balances. No, I don't like interference or being under the eye of the rest of the world, but I think that we need to pick our battles, and this one doesn't seem to be where our energy should go.
The University of Tulsa Hurricane Motor Works converted a Geo Metro as well as built several one-off concept cars from ground-up.
A look at the converted Geo is here. It was retitled the "Paradyne."
A much cooler looking HEV, though, is the Proxima, which was built ground-up. I was on the team that built and designed the car. The design and material cost for this car, being built from ground up (I kid you not. I remember nights out there with a heat gun, hot glue, and pipe making the frame and shaping the body) is way out there.
I don't remember the costs of the conversion for the Metro, since I wasn't involved, but someone interested in the numbers could certainly write and ask. Contact information is on our webpage, or you could IM me, and I could ask next time I am around the HMW.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I first saw the picture, my reaction was not "Oh, it's a rock!"
In fact, not that I believe it is as such necessarily, it looks like a fossilized organic somethingoranother. The back end looks something like a frog. Now, this is probably proposterous (it is most likely a volcanic-produced rock), but I sure wouldn't mind being (accidentally) correct.
With the casual way that they mention that they *might* go by and check it out, I certainly hope that they do! Of all of the "rocks" that they have studied so far, I think that this one merits a much less casual reaction. I find their treatment of this discovery a bit odd.
Who knows...
Oh, I would more than happy to chat about EE. I was lucky enough to get a very unorthodox education in EE.
If you have any specific questions, it would be easier for me to answer those rather than rambling forever about the great parts of EE, what you can do, and why I am bridging my ME/EE with CS.
That, or you are welcome to email me (dexterpexter@gmaCOWil.com minus the herbivore), or you can jump over to my profile page and grab my IM information, if you have any IM accounts. Don't be shy about IMing me.
I appologize if I came off as criticizing your choice of hardware/software/whatever. As I said, you know what was best to use and I can't fault you for that. It wasn't meant to be an anti-MS post, and it certainly was not a high and mighty attitude in that "we could do it and you couldn't, hah hah!" as much as a "you might not realize there are other options out there that you can use; we were able to do it, so have more confidence in yourselves to be able to find an alternative." It was meant to be a positive.
I was simply questioning your assertion that it couldn't have been done without XP Embedded, as though that were the only tool. I thought that was a poor remark to make as engineers. You have now came and clarified your point to say that it was your preferred choice and what was offered to you, which is certainly respectable. I now do not have issue, as you have demonstrated that you realize it was possible to use something else, but you made the (smart) choice to use the tools that were donated to you. I can respect that, as I would have done the same.
And thank-you for kind words about the blood sweat and tears. It was indeed a long road (as you well know), and one that was both exciting and infuriating at the same time.
Congratulations are in order to your team as well.
I was a member of an autonomous ground vehicle team and wonder why you didn't consider using a PC-104 board. They have a Disk-on-Chip which is Linux Compatible, and a framegrabber that integrates very nicely.
I find the statement "We couldn't have written the software without XP Embedded. Just to get that out in the open. Couldn't have done it" concerning. As designers, that sort of limiting of yourselves might become an issue in the future (in industry). We considered an XP Embedded device, but in having a small budget, decided to go with an Open Source system.
You might not be confident in the team's abilities to do so, but our team of three electrical engineering undergraduate students worked on a very similar project using the PC-104, M-Systems DOC, Arvoo Framegrabber, a GPS (part of our system used GPA waypoints as well, in addition to the object-recognition vision software used for avoiding obstacles), a radio link, and some robot controllers...and we did it on a Linux-based system. If we can do it, you can too.
I agree with the other poster in that I have no idea why an ATMEL chip would ever even be a consideration.
You all might want to, as students not just doing a project but also learning to be engineers, consider other design alternatives. You should not need an XP Embedded device any more than any other embedded system. Now, it might have been the best choice for your application (only you can make that decision since none of us has the benefit of seeing your design specs), and I can respect that, but it is by no means your only option.
While I see the overall point of what you are saying, I want to add my own nitpick in saying that programming has a lot to do with engineers.
I, too, have a Mechanical Engineering background and an Electrical Engineering Degree. I have worked on autonomous robots (which the engineers programmed, not CS students), VoIP over WDM in a telecommunications research lab (programming is required for things like OPNET, and certainly this has to do with IT. All of the people in the lab are EEs, because hardware to software knowledge is necessary), a hybrid electric vehicle (someone had to put in a vision system and program the touch-screens), and intrusion detection sensors for military use (Assembly coding is key here and no one was CS).
I suppose, though, that one could say that today's engineers are having to take on the role of programmer in addition to their design duties.
The engineering profession, at least it seems, has been fairly stable. While the engineering position can incorporate the programming position in some cases, you usually don't find the opposite true. That is why you are seeing engineers hired into positions, and CS knowledge is encouraged in many engineering programs.
That said, I am working on my masters in EE, and am switching to CS because I have had enough offers in the CS area and was invited to join an awesome program that requires CS degrees. I already have the one degree in engineering. I would like to finish the EE masters degree, but I don't feel so bad going over to CS. Like I said, I have seen job offers regardless. And that is the point. The people who need to be there will be there. The folks that joined just for the money will have to find another venture, because the dedicated and CS talented workers usually outshine the "sunshine CS worker."
Oh yes, and I forgot to mention one of the greatest features of Mozilla that I emphasized to the research students.
I tell the students that tabbed browsing will become their greatest friend when writing research papers. With subscriptions to the IEEE papers and such online, most of the students use online references. So, say after a day of researching, they have a screen full of tabs of references they plan to use in their paper. They just have to simply go to Bookmarks, and then click "Bookmark This Group of Tabs." Come time to write the reference page of the paper, they only have to reopen their browser, click on one single bookmark, and have their 20 references reopen in tabbed form. Much handier than 20 individual bookmarks. And, if they want to keep those references, they just have to open the program files folder on the machine and save the HTML file Mozilla creates for bookmarks to their webdirectory, and they will have a webpage full of clickable links to their individual references.
After the research students play with this option a few times, they are happily singing Mozilla's praises!
The Electrical Engineering Department at my university finally broke with university trends and installed Mozilla on all of the lab machines and hid the Internet Explorer icon on most of the machines.
In addition, in the course that I assisted, we taught about Mozilla, how tabbed browsing works, how to set it to block popup ads, the security issues of Mozilla versus IE, etc., and basically encouraged navigation from IE. At first, the students were a little unsure since it was not what they were used to. However, shortly thereafter, many of the students preferred to use Mozilla.
I am happy to say that since the migration to Mozilla in my department on lab and professor machines, and after several of us (EE and several CS students) getting together on the university forums and singing Mozilla's praises, a suprising percentage of students posted back saying that they decided to give it a try and loved it. Looks like one small step led to an even greater following because even more of these students helped their room mates, friends, and families make the change as well.
I am currently in the process of putting together a workshop so that the computer-ignorant on campus can bring in their machines, have a few volunteers clean it of viruses and spyware, show them how to configure their machines (getting rid of processes on startup, how to update critical updates and virus definitions, and install and demonstrate Mozilla. We have also discussed putting together a group to help set up dual boots of Windows/Linux for interested students who would like to try out Linux, yet want to stay with Windows for now.
Note: Most of this is student-led.
I think that the office should be made to be comfortable for the employees, but not to the expense of professionalism. I mean, it depends on what sort of business you are doing and how much access the customers get to the office area.
:) If the customers aren't getting access to an area, and having a fun work environment is adding to the productivity (meaning: if the air hockey table is getting more time than the work at hand is, the table has got to go), then that is fine.
If I were hiring a lawyer, for instance, I would not feel comfortable hiring one who has hammocks strewn across the office, and who plays foosbol on breaks. The same goes for a bank. Since they are depending on their reputation and professional stature to gain business, it is in their interest to maintain a traditional, professional look where suits and ties are a must. That might seem unfair, but it is in human nature to expect a certain level of professionalism in certain jobs, yet to grant leniency in others. It is more of a case of what the customer sees versus what they don't see. Out of sight, out of mind.
Now, that aside, I like the way that Google has their office set up. Their corporate offices, I am sure, are more professional, but the way Google has built its business model, it can have all of the fun things that the Googleplex has to offer, and not suffer a loss of respectability. They appeal to their core demographic. Who hasn't dreamed of the Hammock office with bean bags? With Google, somehow, that is alright. The bean bag chairs, pianos, street hockey, on-site dental, free meals, etc. (I encourage everyone to check out the pages of information on Google's 'Plex) that you see at the Googleplex really makes Google appear to be a fun place to work. Of course, my Google job offer was a work from home one (which I turned down due to having other plans. Before you all scream WHY!?, read here), so I would not have gotten the chance more than likely to work at the Googleplex, at least initially.
Anyways... indeed one of the most stifling places I have worked had the brown walls and shared office space. It was constantly demoralizing because the whole operation felt rinky-dink, even when were doing big business with the government and military. I mean, it was a fine place to work, but a bit more personal office space for the engineers, the semblance of technical savvy by the administration by allowing us to get computers with more than 32 Megs of RAM, new chairs when the old ones were worn/broken, and brighter lighting would have improved things drastically. I think that having new things come in gives the feeling of growth... when one sees older office equipment (I am not suggesting constantly buying the latest and greatest... I am just suggesting there be occasional improvements made) that have been "well-loved," it gives the whole operation a second-class feel not only to the employees, but to the customers.
A good office to me doesn't have to be the Googleplex (although that is uber-cool). It does, however, need to have replacements made when things get worn (chairs and computers being the big over-looked items), brighter lighting (with dimming option), good cleaning staff, bright colored pictures on the wall that don't look like some cheap $5 print picked up at Wal-Mart, some plant life, carpeting, windows, adequate personal space, a closeable door for private meetings, reasonable personal effects allowed (such as pictures of loved ones), access to caffeine (be it soda or coffee) for the engineers, non-scheduled breaks for the engineers (we carry our work in our minds and that doesn't just shut off on the hour... we stare at computers and think all day long. Our breaks should be at our discretion, as some of the better instances I have worked they have been), a modern feel, and access to buying the office supplies that each person feels they need. If this guy
I am assuming you said this to be funny, otherwise it is indeed a shame.
ECE (especially those with a heavy electrical engineering lean) people deal with microprocessors. Motorola chips have special features that you can't access with most C compilers and thus it is necessary to know assembly.
Also, until recently, finding a good C compiler wasn't cheap. Now, of course, there are free ones.
Coming from an ECE program without a microprocessors class in which you apply Assembly will make you less competitive than the graduates coming from schools in which engineers are taught both practical assembly application, and high level languages.
The only problem I could see with this is that driving through things was not seen as an acceptable solution by DARPA. It stipulated that the terrain and obstacles must be left unharmed. I think there are reasonable allowances made, such as running through "weeds" and leaving faint tire tracks.
Sending a bulldozer through something, however, would likely cause harm.
The motive behind this, if I get to guess, is that they are looking for a more covert vehicle. Something that has torn through the terrain and left chaos in its wake is more likely to be tracked/disabled than something that can quickly and nimbly navigate across the terrain.
I think that your idea is a fine idea, though. If they are looking at application for war situations and covert navigation is not an issue, I think that you are onto something.
When I first heard about the competition, that was my first reaction, too. Why not just create a tank and plow through the terrain along the most direct route? A review of the rules showed that they had already taken into consideration this solution and created a rule against it. I can see their reasoning, though.