At my last job, upper management had different password strength requirements because they couldn't handle the normal ones designed to make them use secure passwords. Instead of 8 characters minimum with at least one capital letter, number and special character, they simply got away with 8 characters. Why? Because they complained enough, couldn't remember their passwords, and had the power to exempt themselves.
While working at Enron Broadband Services in 2000, we had partnered with Blockbuster to create a video on demand service, and had all the main/regional CLEC/ILECs as partners to provide last mile connectivity. We were able to stream better than VHS, but slightly worse than DVD quality video over a 1Mbps Internet connection that required you to have a set top box. We had successfully demonstrated the technology in the lab and were going into the first run trials to beta customer homes when Blockbuster pulled the plug.
So they could have beat Netflix to the punch by bypassing the DVD rental business entirely and going straight to VOD, but they decided not to. Also, a little known fact is that it was the pro-forma $150 million Enron booked as earning on that VOD project before it ever hit a customer home that brought increased scrutiny to their financials before they ultimately went out of business a year later.
I would also state that in the vast majority of companies, managers are trained not to take risks. I work for a multibillion dollar company where the most common management decision at the mid-management level is simply to do nothing. By not making a decision, they believe they minimize the risk of making the wrong decision, never mind that doing nothing is rarely the right decision. It also means that most management decisions then come from the very top down, which means there's no innovation from the bottom, nor is there any real quality feedback loop since suggestions for improvement never make it up the chain of command. Of course, we're a health insurance company that wastes our members money on high administrative costs, but as long as we don't lose a substantial amount of members (and won't because the individual members don't decide who their company uses for insurance) we have no reason to change. We simply keep raising our rates. It's a very dirty business, and horribly run.
The OS has nothing to do with it. Firewire ports are DMA, as are Thunderbolt ports if I remember correctly, which means access to the port means direct access to the RAM. That means you can not only read the data, but you can also potentially manipulate it (killing processes, injecting code into already running processes, etc.).
EXACTLY! Mod parent up please! This is not exactly new. Snagging encryption keys from hibernation files or RAM dumps is nothing new. And the Truecrypt win32 binary will allow you mount the volume in read only mode if you want to view the contents and have the acquired key. So, this does everything you can already do for free, but with the added benefit of being a $300 product. I guarantee you that law enforcement is going to be the biggest purchaser of this product, even though this capability already exists and has existed without spending a dime.
My home school kids of MS/HS age are learning chemistry from a PhD chemist through our local home school group co-op. Barring access to a home school co-op, there's plenty of information and fun experiments available that should interest a 10 year old, either from online sources like youtube and google, or from books at Amazon. If you have a local science museum, you can contact them about any local science clubs/groups that cater to children that age. But unless he is more than just interested, most official curriculum is going to be at the high school level and a bit over the head of a 10 year old.
That's how the multi-billion dollar company I work for does it. I get generic PTO days and how I use them is up to me. I get a lump sum on Jan. 1, generally for "sick day" purposes, then earn additional PTO days each month. I also get at least one "diversity day" a year, which is a holdover from allowing each employee to take their birthday off. We actually got two of them this year since so many of our normal paid holidays fell on weekends. Now, I can take them all for vacation, or mix and match them as I need them. I can also take them off as half-days if I want instead of whole days. And yes, it's perfectly acceptable to take unscheduled PTO for a "mental health day," as my manager takes them too, so long as you don't abuse it and get important tasks done. But honestly, my company is really, really good about PTO. The only crappy thing is that starting next year everyone loses one day of PTO as some sort of cost reduction bullshit to increase productivity. I guess our HR goons haven't been following the working productivity studies showing that current working productivity is going down now after so many months of rising. You can only work your employees so hard without rest/PTO before they quit giving a damn. And taking away PTO just makes people sullen and resentful.
One could assume that since these were companies located in Texas, it was a non-issue. The energy business is a little superstitious, and unfortunately dominates the job market in Houston. I moved to Dallas and landed an Information Security job with a billion dollar company and then moved on to consulting for companies of similar size or larger. Life has been good so far. I've even done some work in the energy sector.
As a former Enron employee in the Information Security department, I can tell you that it did not matter that I was not an accountant while looking for information security work after the company tanked in late 2001. The simple mention of Enron on my resume sandbagged any interview I went on. I might as well have been shredding documents myself. Thankfully, I eventually found someone willing to give me a shot and got my career on track again. It just took 3 years to do it.
If they don't have to pay federal taxes, does this mean they can now have automatic weapons in the US? Please don't discount it out of turn. The only thing that keeps US citizens from owning automatic weapons is the fact that the US government demands a tax on those items that they stopped allowing us to pay in 1986. Owning a Class III automatic weapon without having it registered with the BATFE and paying your taxes is really just a tax violation. So, if they are no longer required to pay taxes on property, does this mean that INTERPOL agents in the US can have automatic weapons? That would be a hell of a tax loophole!
In today's modern, tightly packed, overly compressed mastering of commercial audio, you'll have a very hard time telling the difference between MP3 and FLAC. But throw in a song with lots of dynamics, and you'll definitely hear a difference, though which one may be more pleasing is a matter of personal preference.
I sit on an advisory board at the local community college, and as such I get the chance to rub elbows with others in academia, including faculty and administration at prestigious schools in the Ivy League. It's interesting that when you talk to these people, they make no bones about justifying why they charge so much for an education. As someone from Brown put it bluntly, "If we didn't charge so much, people would not think it was worth anything." Some might argue that the easy access of federal funds has done a lot to exacerbate the problem of rising tuition costs. Just as government contractors and consultants view federal government funds as a never-ending supply of money, colleges view it in a very similar way.
Well the larger problem here is what the sequels indicate: Disney is getting its way.
Bullshit. Disney already owned all the rights to all the Pixar characters as part of their distribution deals, and already had a Toy Story 3 in the works. When Pixar joined the Disney fold and John Lasseter became Chief Creative Officer reporting directly to Iger and Roy Disney, and Ed Catmull became President of Pixar Animation and Walt Disney Animation Studios, the first thing Lasseter and Catmull did was kill Toy Story 3 and put all in process productions on hold until they could be reviewed. All Disney productions were stopped until Lasseter and Catmull could review them and approve viable projects, with Meet the Robinsons being the only one that survived after they consulted with the director and the story was drastically changed to be much more personal and reflect director Stephen J Anderson's own story of being an adopted child. The biggest problem with Disney features was Michael "going back to the well for the 11th billion time" Eisner, and the screwed up structure they had Roy Disney relegated to since his direct report also reported to Eisner. Things got better after he was out of the picture.
Disney has been churning out utter dreck for years. Go ahead, what was the last good original animated Disney movie (not counting those made by Pixar)? I don't know, but I'm estimating something like 20 years ago.
Let's see... While these were not successful movies at the box office, they were good and suffered more from the decline of Disney Animation's reputation at the hands of Eisner than their own merits.
The Emperor's New Groove (2000)
Lilo and Stitch (2002)
Meet the Robinsons (2007 and has the John Lasseter seal of approval, and overall favorable ratings)
It's common knowledge that Disney had been pressuring Pixar to do sequels to all their hits because Disney can't think of or even appreciate new ideas. The big question a few years back was, "When Disney buys Pixar, will Pixar be able to maintain their independence, or will Disney's 'creative' minds start steering the ship?"
Pixar's creative team are steering the ship! The only people over them is Bob Iger and the board of directors where Steve Jobs holds a majority stake and Roy Disney is a huge Pixar fan. Why do you think Catmull and Lasseter both report directly to Bob Iger? Furthermore, Disney has never put stock in sequels. Sure, they've churned them out on direct-to-DVD releases, but until Toy Story 2, they never released a theatrical sequel. Pixar, however, is batting 1.000 with sequels, and NOTHING so far indicates they will fail that.
I don't know if we really have a complete and definitive answer, since Pixar may have enough talent to make these sequels good. What's more it might be that these sequels are a blip, and after them we'll get a rash of original characters and story-lines. On the other hand, this doesn't seem like a good sign.
When has Pixar ever disappointed? Their worst works are better than just about anything any other animation house has put out. Even their shorts are exceptional! As long as Lasseter and Catmull are running things, I have absolute faith that if they do create sequels, they will be stories worth telling. Because to those guys, along with Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and Brad Bird, the story IS what is important, and has always come first. Now, bring us a Lasseter/Pixar classic Disney character film!
Fifteen years or more of progress totally wasted. Pity. And the managers of American auto makers wonder why their companies are in the toilet.
You do realize that since the mid-80's, which is when I'm assuming your car was made, significant mandates have been leveled by the federal government for safety? And these mandates have added weight, which decreases efficiency. The average curb weight of a 2010 Toyota Corolla is 3268 lbs. A 1987 Corolla was only 2300 lbs. Take 900lbs of weight off a 2010 Corolla, and you'll see efficiency go up, albeit at the cost of luxury, features, and safety equipment/unibody construction. You could certainly build a car using exotic materials to keep weight down, but you'd do so by increasing costs.
Simply mandating higher fuel efficiency won't make it happen. That, or the US automakers are going to get over their hatred of the diesel engine in the passenger car. VW gets 40+ MPG in the the 2010 Jetta weighing 3280 lbs, and has for a long time.
Paraben has renamed PDA Seizure to Device Seizure, and it supports Blackberry forensics acquisition. Also, check out this link at blackberryforums.com that explains the caveats of blackberry forensics and data acquisition.
Yeah, you can find it at csistick.com. Price is $299 for the hardware + Device Seizure Lite software to access the acquired data.
I have a couple of these at work, since my job is as a forensics investigator, and they're nifty, but they're very limited in what you can do with them since they only support Motorola and Samsung. There are better tools out there:
PDA Seizure, Cell Seizure, Pilot-Link (Open Source), BitPIM (Open Source), ForensicSIM, etc.
... in a Democratic Party controlled Congress? I am not trying to play partisan politics, but it is absurd to think that the party that claims to be "of the people" would bow so easily to Big Business and a President that they have made no bones about despising. This is one of the most patently offensive laws to civil liberties that I've ever seen, and I'm just stunned that there isn't enough Democratic support to either strip the retroactive immunity provision or filibuster the bill.
Isn't it the Republican Party's job to acquiesce to big business?
First, whoever wrote that article has NO clue what the hell they are talking about. No set of tools for taking information about a live/running system is going to take the place of a full disk image and analysis by a tool like Encase. Furthermore, this sounds like nothing more than a set of tools for gathering information on a running system. Since most of the tools that digital forensics investigators utilize for live system analysis for Windows boxes were part of the Winternals suite that Microsoft acquired, I doubt this is anything all that special. I'll probably have access to one sooner or later, as I am a forensic investigator in the private sector with friends in the law enforcement world, and I'm not expecting anything earth shattering. But this article is clearly FUD written by someone who thinks computers are magic.
Fox put BD+ only on The Day After Tomorrow. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer has enhanced BD-J functionality which is the culprit for its problems, but had no BD+ stuff in it's filestructure like The Day After Tomorrow Does. According to this thread at AVS Forum, there are 3 specific BD players that have problems playing either one or both of these Fox discs: the Samsung BD-1200 says it requires a firmware upgrade to play, the Samsung BD-1000 plays F4:2 but stutters/skips, and the LG 100 dual format player must have the firmware updated. So far the biggest complaint has been slow load times for F4:2, but that is due to the enhanced BD-J functionality, and is very similar to the load times for HD-DVD on the Toshiba standalone players (I have both formats).
Well, that's great! Stores have the right to ask for your receipt, but you don't have to show it. Kind of an empty right, but whatever. A determined thief could then just take whatever he wanted and walk out of the store and there's nothing they can do. They can't detain him or stop him. If they touch him at all, they're violating his inalienable rights.
Any thoughts on how to keep goods from leaving the store unauthorized, without violating someone's rights?
That is incorrect. A store has the right to detain a person if they are certain, within a reasonable doubt, that the person stole property, though the specifics of the relevant laws vary from state to state. An eyewitness or video surveillance are acceptable methods of establishing just cause in detaining a person of theft/shoplifting. Problems occur when someone is detained without having stolen property, and this is called an "unproductive stop" in the loss prevention business, and an unproductive stop leaves you open to legal liability, both criminal and civil, depending upon the actions taken by loss prevention. This story is a textbook case of what NOT to do in this situation if you work LP.
If you would rather support explorers than crusaders, make sure the Presidential candidate you vote for in '08 agrees with your point of view, and hold him/her to it.
How exactly do we hold them to it? Are you going to write strongly worded letters? Call the Congressman, or the Congressional or Whitehouse switchboards? Vote them out of office 4-6 years after they've been elected? Petition for a recall? Pray for an ethics scandal or criminal charges to be filed?
Of that list, tell me which ones are actually likely or effective if pursued?
It's the sad truth, but the politicians (I cannot say representatives) of this Republic no longer represents many of us.
/I'm a conservative, and now neither major party represents me.
Need I remind you the DMCA itself started out as one of those "bullshit bills"...
The hell it did! The DMCA started out as the US legislation to bring us in line with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties that were agreed to by President Clinton in the late 90's. You might remember WIPO as one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, the same body that wants to be put in charges of the Internet.
Back in 1999 I was hired by a company in Houston, TX known as AccelerNet to come in and rebuild their existing ISP solution, as they had no idea what they were doing on the backend. They literally had an ISP in a box setup, and needed some real infrastructure designed by someone who had actually worked for a large ISP. The owner had made his money in cellular during the late 80's and early 90's, and he saw the Internet as the next big thing. Since he was in Houston, and there is a considerable amount of urban sprawl with subpar telco/Internet access, he devised a plan to use cablemodems over the air. He got funding and applied for an experimental license from the FCC to use UHF channel 43 in Houston. The system was essentially a cablemodem setup, with each cablemodem plugged into a single channel UHF antennae instead of cable run through the ground. The problem with this type of system was that you could receive packets, but not send. However, each Hybrid Technologies cablemodem had a serial port and ethernet jack, so you could use a wired connection for the return packets. With a 33.6 modem connection, you could reach top speeds of ~850Kbps. This was due to a combination of latency and overall bandwidth for the return packets. With an ISDN connection, download speeds reached between 1-3Mbps, depending on whether you had a 64 or 128Kbps connection. I consulted with the company after I left for a Fortune Ten company in early 2000 due to VC funding issues, but I continued to use my 3Mbps connection for free since I continued to consult with them since I had built their infrastructure. I believe they sold to a large regional ISP in Dallas sometime in 2002 or 2003 who immediately decommissioned the UHF technology for more traditional connectivity.
Here's an article from Broadband Week from April of 2001 that goes into some detail about it. So while all these heavyweights may be getting into it now, they're 12 years behind a little company from Houston, TX called AccelerNet who pioneered the way and spent considerable lobbying dollars to get two-way UHF transmissions going.
Slashdot Mirror
At my last job, upper management had different password strength requirements because they couldn't handle the normal ones designed to make them use secure passwords. Instead of 8 characters minimum with at least one capital letter, number and special character, they simply got away with 8 characters. Why? Because they complained enough, couldn't remember their passwords, and had the power to exempt themselves.
While working at Enron Broadband Services in 2000, we had partnered with Blockbuster to create a video on demand service, and had all the main/regional CLEC/ILECs as partners to provide last mile connectivity. We were able to stream better than VHS, but slightly worse than DVD quality video over a 1Mbps Internet connection that required you to have a set top box. We had successfully demonstrated the technology in the lab and were going into the first run trials to beta customer homes when Blockbuster pulled the plug. So they could have beat Netflix to the punch by bypassing the DVD rental business entirely and going straight to VOD, but they decided not to. Also, a little known fact is that it was the pro-forma $150 million Enron booked as earning on that VOD project before it ever hit a customer home that brought increased scrutiny to their financials before they ultimately went out of business a year later.
I would also state that in the vast majority of companies, managers are trained not to take risks. I work for a multibillion dollar company where the most common management decision at the mid-management level is simply to do nothing. By not making a decision, they believe they minimize the risk of making the wrong decision, never mind that doing nothing is rarely the right decision. It also means that most management decisions then come from the very top down, which means there's no innovation from the bottom, nor is there any real quality feedback loop since suggestions for improvement never make it up the chain of command. Of course, we're a health insurance company that wastes our members money on high administrative costs, but as long as we don't lose a substantial amount of members (and won't because the individual members don't decide who their company uses for insurance) we have no reason to change. We simply keep raising our rates. It's a very dirty business, and horribly run.
The OS has nothing to do with it. Firewire ports are DMA, as are Thunderbolt ports if I remember correctly, which means access to the port means direct access to the RAM. That means you can not only read the data, but you can also potentially manipulate it (killing processes, injecting code into already running processes, etc.).
EXACTLY! Mod parent up please! This is not exactly new. Snagging encryption keys from hibernation files or RAM dumps is nothing new. And the Truecrypt win32 binary will allow you mount the volume in read only mode if you want to view the contents and have the acquired key. So, this does everything you can already do for free, but with the added benefit of being a $300 product. I guarantee you that law enforcement is going to be the biggest purchaser of this product, even though this capability already exists and has existed without spending a dime.
My home school kids of MS/HS age are learning chemistry from a PhD chemist through our local home school group co-op. Barring access to a home school co-op, there's plenty of information and fun experiments available that should interest a 10 year old, either from online sources like youtube and google, or from books at Amazon. If you have a local science museum, you can contact them about any local science clubs/groups that cater to children that age. But unless he is more than just interested, most official curriculum is going to be at the high school level and a bit over the head of a 10 year old.
I've been boycotting them for years, starting with their rootkits on CDs, which should have been charged as a criminal act.
That's how the multi-billion dollar company I work for does it. I get generic PTO days and how I use them is up to me. I get a lump sum on Jan. 1, generally for "sick day" purposes, then earn additional PTO days each month. I also get at least one "diversity day" a year, which is a holdover from allowing each employee to take their birthday off. We actually got two of them this year since so many of our normal paid holidays fell on weekends. Now, I can take them all for vacation, or mix and match them as I need them. I can also take them off as half-days if I want instead of whole days. And yes, it's perfectly acceptable to take unscheduled PTO for a "mental health day," as my manager takes them too, so long as you don't abuse it and get important tasks done. But honestly, my company is really, really good about PTO. The only crappy thing is that starting next year everyone loses one day of PTO as some sort of cost reduction bullshit to increase productivity. I guess our HR goons haven't been following the working productivity studies showing that current working productivity is going down now after so many months of rising. You can only work your employees so hard without rest/PTO before they quit giving a damn. And taking away PTO just makes people sullen and resentful.
One could assume that since these were companies located in Texas, it was a non-issue. The energy business is a little superstitious, and unfortunately dominates the job market in Houston. I moved to Dallas and landed an Information Security job with a billion dollar company and then moved on to consulting for companies of similar size or larger. Life has been good so far. I've even done some work in the energy sector.
As a former Enron employee in the Information Security department, I can tell you that it did not matter that I was not an accountant while looking for information security work after the company tanked in late 2001. The simple mention of Enron on my resume sandbagged any interview I went on. I might as well have been shredding documents myself. Thankfully, I eventually found someone willing to give me a shot and got my career on track again. It just took 3 years to do it.
If they don't have to pay federal taxes, does this mean they can now have automatic weapons in the US? Please don't discount it out of turn. The only thing that keeps US citizens from owning automatic weapons is the fact that the US government demands a tax on those items that they stopped allowing us to pay in 1986. Owning a Class III automatic weapon without having it registered with the BATFE and paying your taxes is really just a tax violation. So, if they are no longer required to pay taxes on property, does this mean that INTERPOL agents in the US can have automatic weapons? That would be a hell of a tax loophole!
In today's modern, tightly packed, overly compressed mastering of commercial audio, you'll have a very hard time telling the difference between MP3 and FLAC. But throw in a song with lots of dynamics, and you'll definitely hear a difference, though which one may be more pleasing is a matter of personal preference.
I sit on an advisory board at the local community college, and as such I get the chance to rub elbows with others in academia, including faculty and administration at prestigious schools in the Ivy League. It's interesting that when you talk to these people, they make no bones about justifying why they charge so much for an education. As someone from Brown put it bluntly, "If we didn't charge so much, people would not think it was worth anything." Some might argue that the easy access of federal funds has done a lot to exacerbate the problem of rising tuition costs. Just as government contractors and consultants view federal government funds as a never-ending supply of money, colleges view it in a very similar way.
Well the larger problem here is what the sequels indicate: Disney is getting its way.
Bullshit. Disney already owned all the rights to all the Pixar characters as part of their distribution deals, and already had a Toy Story 3 in the works. When Pixar joined the Disney fold and John Lasseter became Chief Creative Officer reporting directly to Iger and Roy Disney, and Ed Catmull became President of Pixar Animation and Walt Disney Animation Studios, the first thing Lasseter and Catmull did was kill Toy Story 3 and put all in process productions on hold until they could be reviewed. All Disney productions were stopped until Lasseter and Catmull could review them and approve viable projects, with Meet the Robinsons being the only one that survived after they consulted with the director and the story was drastically changed to be much more personal and reflect director Stephen J Anderson's own story of being an adopted child. The biggest problem with Disney features was Michael "going back to the well for the 11th billion time" Eisner, and the screwed up structure they had Roy Disney relegated to since his direct report also reported to Eisner. Things got better after he was out of the picture.
Disney has been churning out utter dreck for years. Go ahead, what was the last good original animated Disney movie (not counting those made by Pixar)? I don't know, but I'm estimating something like 20 years ago.
Let's see... While these were not successful movies at the box office, they were good and suffered more from the decline of Disney Animation's reputation at the hands of Eisner than their own merits.
The Emperor's New Groove (2000)
Lilo and Stitch (2002)
Meet the Robinsons (2007 and has the John Lasseter seal of approval, and overall favorable ratings)
It's common knowledge that Disney had been pressuring Pixar to do sequels to all their hits because Disney can't think of or even appreciate new ideas. The big question a few years back was, "When Disney buys Pixar, will Pixar be able to maintain their independence, or will Disney's 'creative' minds start steering the ship?"
Pixar's creative team are steering the ship! The only people over them is Bob Iger and the board of directors where Steve Jobs holds a majority stake and Roy Disney is a huge Pixar fan. Why do you think Catmull and Lasseter both report directly to Bob Iger? Furthermore, Disney has never put stock in sequels. Sure, they've churned them out on direct-to-DVD releases, but until Toy Story 2, they never released a theatrical sequel. Pixar, however, is batting 1.000 with sequels, and NOTHING so far indicates they will fail that.
I don't know if we really have a complete and definitive answer, since Pixar may have enough talent to make these sequels good. What's more it might be that these sequels are a blip, and after them we'll get a rash of original characters and story-lines. On the other hand, this doesn't seem like a good sign.
When has Pixar ever disappointed? Their worst works are better than just about anything any other animation house has put out. Even their shorts are exceptional! As long as Lasseter and Catmull are running things, I have absolute faith that if they do create sequels, they will be stories worth telling. Because to those guys, along with Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and Brad Bird, the story IS what is important, and has always come first. Now, bring us a Lasseter/Pixar classic Disney character film!
Fifteen years or more of progress totally wasted. Pity. And the managers of American auto makers wonder why their companies are in the toilet.
You do realize that since the mid-80's, which is when I'm assuming your car was made, significant mandates have been leveled by the federal government for safety? And these mandates have added weight, which decreases efficiency. The average curb weight of a 2010 Toyota Corolla is 3268 lbs. A 1987 Corolla was only 2300 lbs. Take 900lbs of weight off a 2010 Corolla, and you'll see efficiency go up, albeit at the cost of luxury, features, and safety equipment/unibody construction. You could certainly build a car using exotic materials to keep weight down, but you'd do so by increasing costs.
Simply mandating higher fuel efficiency won't make it happen. That, or the US automakers are going to get over their hatred of the diesel engine in the passenger car. VW gets 40+ MPG in the the 2010 Jetta weighing 3280 lbs, and has for a long time.
Paraben has renamed PDA Seizure to Device Seizure, and it supports Blackberry forensics acquisition. Also, check out this link at blackberryforums.com that explains the caveats of blackberry forensics and data acquisition.
Yeah, you can find it at csistick.com. Price is $299 for the hardware + Device Seizure Lite software to access the acquired data.
I have a couple of these at work, since my job is as a forensics investigator, and they're nifty, but they're very limited in what you can do with them since they only support Motorola and Samsung. There are better tools out there:
PDA Seizure, Cell Seizure, Pilot-Link (Open Source), BitPIM (Open Source), ForensicSIM, etc.
... in a Democratic Party controlled Congress? I am not trying to play partisan politics, but it is absurd to think that the party that claims to be "of the people" would bow so easily to Big Business and a President that they have made no bones about despising. This is one of the most patently offensive laws to civil liberties that I've ever seen, and I'm just stunned that there isn't enough Democratic support to either strip the retroactive immunity provision or filibuster the bill. Isn't it the Republican Party's job to acquiesce to big business?
First, whoever wrote that article has NO clue what the hell they are talking about. No set of tools for taking information about a live/running system is going to take the place of a full disk image and analysis by a tool like Encase. Furthermore, this sounds like nothing more than a set of tools for gathering information on a running system. Since most of the tools that digital forensics investigators utilize for live system analysis for Windows boxes were part of the Winternals suite that Microsoft acquired, I doubt this is anything all that special. I'll probably have access to one sooner or later, as I am a forensic investigator in the private sector with friends in the law enforcement world, and I'm not expecting anything earth shattering. But this article is clearly FUD written by someone who thinks computers are magic.
Fox put BD+ only on The Day After Tomorrow. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer has enhanced BD-J functionality which is the culprit for its problems, but had no BD+ stuff in it's filestructure like The Day After Tomorrow Does. According to this thread at AVS Forum, there are 3 specific BD players that have problems playing either one or both of these Fox discs: the Samsung BD-1200 says it requires a firmware upgrade to play, the Samsung BD-1000 plays F4:2 but stutters/skips, and the LG 100 dual format player must have the firmware updated. So far the biggest complaint has been slow load times for F4:2, but that is due to the enhanced BD-J functionality, and is very similar to the load times for HD-DVD on the Toshiba standalone players (I have both formats).
... I won't get mugged? WTF are the police downtown after dark?
Well, that's great! Stores have the right to ask for your receipt, but you don't have to show it. Kind of an empty right, but whatever. A determined thief could then just take whatever he wanted and walk out of the store and there's nothing they can do. They can't detain him or stop him. If they touch him at all, they're violating his inalienable rights. Any thoughts on how to keep goods from leaving the store unauthorized, without violating someone's rights? That is incorrect. A store has the right to detain a person if they are certain, within a reasonable doubt, that the person stole property, though the specifics of the relevant laws vary from state to state. An eyewitness or video surveillance are acceptable methods of establishing just cause in detaining a person of theft/shoplifting. Problems occur when someone is detained without having stolen property, and this is called an "unproductive stop" in the loss prevention business, and an unproductive stop leaves you open to legal liability, both criminal and civil, depending upon the actions taken by loss prevention. This story is a textbook case of what NOT to do in this situation if you work LP.
If you would rather support explorers than crusaders, make sure the Presidential candidate you vote for in '08 agrees with your point of view, and hold him/her to it.
/I'm a conservative, and now neither major party represents me.
How exactly do we hold them to it? Are you going to write strongly worded letters? Call the Congressman, or the Congressional or Whitehouse switchboards? Vote them out of office 4-6 years after they've been elected? Petition for a recall? Pray for an ethics scandal or criminal charges to be filed?
Of that list, tell me which ones are actually likely or effective if pursued?
It's the sad truth, but the politicians (I cannot say representatives) of this Republic no longer represents many of us.
Need I remind you the DMCA itself started out as one of those "bullshit bills"...
The hell it did! The DMCA started out as the US legislation to bring us in line with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties that were agreed to by President Clinton in the late 90's. You might remember WIPO as one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, the same body that wants to be put in charges of the Internet.
Back in 1999 I was hired by a company in Houston, TX known as AccelerNet to come in and rebuild their existing ISP solution, as they had no idea what they were doing on the backend. They literally had an ISP in a box setup, and needed some real infrastructure designed by someone who had actually worked for a large ISP. The owner had made his money in cellular during the late 80's and early 90's, and he saw the Internet as the next big thing. Since he was in Houston, and there is a considerable amount of urban sprawl with subpar telco/Internet access, he devised a plan to use cablemodems over the air. He got funding and applied for an experimental license from the FCC to use UHF channel 43 in Houston. The system was essentially a cablemodem setup, with each cablemodem plugged into a single channel UHF antennae instead of cable run through the ground. The problem with this type of system was that you could receive packets, but not send. However, each Hybrid Technologies cablemodem had a serial port and ethernet jack, so you could use a wired connection for the return packets. With a 33.6 modem connection, you could reach top speeds of ~850Kbps. This was due to a combination of latency and overall bandwidth for the return packets. With an ISDN connection, download speeds reached between 1-3Mbps, depending on whether you had a 64 or 128Kbps connection. I consulted with the company after I left for a Fortune Ten company in early 2000 due to VC funding issues, but I continued to use my 3Mbps connection for free since I continued to consult with them since I had built their infrastructure. I believe they sold to a large regional ISP in Dallas sometime in 2002 or 2003 who immediately decommissioned the UHF technology for more traditional connectivity.
Here's an article from Broadband Week from April of 2001 that goes into some detail about it. So while all these heavyweights may be getting into it now, they're 12 years behind a little company from Houston, TX called AccelerNet who pioneered the way and spent considerable lobbying dollars to get two-way UHF transmissions going.