So this is a 4th hand report that ultimately points right back to the vendor. I would bet anything that some qualifier like "home users, in dollar sales, during the last quarter, in the United States, etc..." got dropped along the way...
A search of the SPA.org web site found no such claim...
Let's find the original source... hopefully the SPA didn't estimate market share based on Apple estimates.:)
I agree completely with the prediction that once.xxx is functioning, legislation will arrive requiring pornographic web sites to be herded into cattle cars and shipped off to.xxx land.
However, believing that it is evil conservatives who will do this is misguided.
- it was Tipper Gore who led the campaign to put warning labels on music - Patrick Leahy was the co-sponsor of the Hatch-Leahy bill (S151) in 2003 that overturned the Supreme Court ruling that Computer-Generated kiddie porn was was not real porn. The Senate approved the bill 84-0. To do otherwise would have you labelled as supporting kiddie porn - who is going to do that? http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp ?documentID=17597 - Feminist groups (Catherine McKinnon comes to mind) have led the charge proposing many anti-pornography laws URL:http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript2 15.htm l?
[The following is based on ISDN in the US - I know the rest of the world works differently]
ISDN is a dialup technology. Almost all of the major wholesale dialup networks have equipment that doesn't care if the incoming call is ISDN or analog. Unless you are talking to a local ISP that still thinks it is 1996, there should be no surcharge for ISDN. The experience of the ISP comes into play if you want to bond both ISDN channels to get 128k up/down and/or want BandWidth on Demand to automatically connect the second channel only when it is needed (and to release theh 2nd channel if you pick up the phone or an incoming call arrives).
The hard/expensive part is getting the ISDN line from the phone company. ISDN will work out to 35,000 feet without doing special magic (digital repeaters, etc...). Since ISDN is being pushed aside for DSL, finding someone in the phone company who can place the order and knows the correct tariff may take time.
Also, the tariffs vary widely depending on where you live and whether the phone company will consider you to be a business user. An ISDN circuit consist of 2 64kb channels (+signaling channel). If you have two phone lines today, the ISDN can replace both and wind up being comparable in cost to what you pay now... IF the local phone company does not impose a per minute connect charge.
The technology the parent is alluding to is called DoV (Data over Voice). The call is set up as if it is a voice call, and once it is connected, the modems agree that they are both digital devices and switch to data mode. Voice calls on residential ISDN do not normally carry a per minute charge for local calls. Note that the definition of "local" for ISDN may be different than for analog.
Some local ISPs will also support ISDN dialback - they buy the T1 from the telco, and they don't have to pay a per minute charge - so your ISDN modem dials in, provides its callerID, hangs up and the ISP dials you back. The recipient of a ISDN call does not pay a per minute charge.
ISDN connects almost immediately - there is no analog squawking to determing line quality, negotiate v.90 bit rates, etc... if you are paying per minute charges, having a short idle timeout is much less annoying than it is for analog.
As others have alluded to, don't overlook "Fixed Wireless". If you have an ISP in line of sight (REAL line of sight, not almost LOS)... This uses 802.11 either on licensed or unlicensed spectrum with parabolic antennas. This can get you DSL speeds out 10-15 miles, depending on terrain. Typical cost for residential use is about $300-500 for installation, and then monthly fees comparable to DSL or cable.
IDSL is DSL over ISDN. Since it is a dedicated point to point connection, there is no need for the signalling channel, so the entire 144 Kb bandwidth is available (vs 128kb for dialup ISDN).
Since IDSL is basically a leased circuit, it ties you into the specific ISP where the other end is terminated. Typical monthly charges run $100-$150, plus substantial setup charges.
Be careful when dicussing ISDN in US vs non US contexts. Because of the way ISDN was deployed in the US, it is not compatible with European equipement. Most houses do not have the required 6 wires to every jack that "real" ISDN requires, so the functionality that is typically present in a European phone system at the telco handoff point is instead incorporated in the end-user device. Translation: Don't buy an ISDN modem (actually called a terminal adapter since it isn't doing analog modulation) from eBay if you are in the US and the equipment was not built for the US. Adapters are available, but that increases the cost and is another potential failure point.
Also, note that if you connect the incoming ISDN line to your computer using one of the cheap cards, and then plug the phone into the ISDN card, the
It seems that by publicly disclosing these trolls, Wikipedia did several bad things:
1) As others have pointed out, the disclosure acknowledged an unfixed defect in the management of the passwords (no seed)
2) It disclosed a defensive method that was useful in detecting and shutting down probable sockpuppet accounts. The net effect is that it trained the trolls how to create better sock puppet accounts...
3) it revealed that a software developer had unfettered access to the entire user database, including the password hashes.
It appears that Wikipedia took this thread to heart as they have pulled the list, and explained that they are now salting the hashes, and the CTO didn't know it was still online.
But even if the page is pulled (as slashdot points out daily), once something has been seen one time on the internet, you can never safely assume that copies don't exist somewhere else.
Henry Ford: "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."
AT&T: Your telephone can be any color as long as it is black.
"Open" Source: Our Open Software will run on any type of computer you want - as long as it is Linux-based, uses one of a handful of processor types and you use a C compiler to compile the software. [Author's apparent solution because the open source model has serious management issues due to relying on the kindness of strangers to accomplish work]
All we need now is a law to enforce this conformity and use the power of government to suppress diversity.
Back in my time [insert old age joke here], my mother knew exactly what I was eating for lunch, because I ran home during lunch hour and ate at home. When they stopped letting us go home for lunch, I came to school with a lunch in a bronw bag.
This is another good expample of government creating a problem, and then creating a solution at the loss of our freedom.
BTW, this new script thing sucks - you try to figure out these letters: http://images.slashdot.org/hc/36/aed86508e752.jpg Is it any coincidence that since schools started giving out free lunches and now free breakfast (along with giving the parents food stamps if they qualify) that we have an obesity problem?
All of the bps/baud arguments were hashed over by the l337 d00dz of twenty years ago, and really - nobody cares any more. Given a few more years, it will be very unusual to even have a copper phone line let alone an analog modem.
my memory is this might have been on Prodigy, but we know how unreliable memory is. Could have been AOL...
Basically, they led you through about 20 levels of asking you "We are about to reformat your hard drive- you will lose everything on your computer. You will have no legal recourse... are you really really sure you want to do this?
When you reached the end of it, basically the final page just did nothing and never came back.
more than anything I suspect it was an experiment in just how far people would go along with totally self-destructive behavior.
In order to successfully login, you need two pieces of information - the userid and the security credential (password or PIN).... If you make either part "easy", you've compromised the value of the other part.
Many banks have set up their web sites to use either the social security number or the ATM/Debit card number as the userid. Sure, it made for fewer problems getting their customers onto the web site, but it greatly simplifies the task of breaking in.
Another issue that people without a security mindset don't understand or appreciate is to not use the same password on two different authentication schemes. If you use the same password for everything, and one of the passwords is compromised (maybe not even something you did), then all of your other accounts are now at risk. Stop the damage at the first point and prevent it from cascading. Having someone's Social Security number is a useful step for way too many future problems.
I'm still waiting to see if the Microsoft's AntiSpyware is ultimately going to be a subscription service. During the install, the beta mentioned an expiration date.
Overall, I think the AntiSpyware product is making a serious dent in the the Spyware business - if Microsoft starts to charge for the service and fewer people run it, then it will become much less effective.
How many seconds are there in a metric minute? How many days in a metric year? How many degrees in a metric circle?
Just because humans have 8 fingers + 2 thumbs does not mean the universe is based on 10, any more than God measures the passage of time by how frequently the Earth rotates on its axis:)
Click on the map to get it to move or rezoom. Nothing happens.
Of course, one could assert that Yahoo should change their web site to be more FireFox compatible (in the same way AOL has a webmaster page telling us how to be create websites that are more AOL compatible). http://webmaster.aol.com/
If I cared enough about it, I could probably read through the javascript and isolate the problem and create a workaround or fiddle with some undocumented options in the Firefox configuration, but the mass market isn't going to ever do that.
So while I mainly use firefox, I've switched to maps.google.com (and modified my website's map links for the same reason)
But for programmer types in the United States facing the lower wage pressure of competing with outsourced programming projects, I can't think of a better way to decrease the pressure from outside the US than if those other countries vent their anti-US xenophobia to force their students to learn only *nix.
*nix at its core is still basically a 30 year old, command line based O/S that was designed to do multi-user timesharing when computers where very expensive and hard to get access to over 300 bps dialup lines (can you say TTY?).
Sure, for the desktop you have GUI implementations, but underneath you still have to deal with grep, perl, bash, etc... each with 43 different single letter command line options and non-trivial things like rebuilding and recompiling your kernel.
*nix is getting better than the first time I used Fortune Unix on a Motorola 68000 box in the mid 80s, but man pages and How-Tos are just as cryptic, incomplete, inaccurate and jargon filled as they have ever been. The Linux Community continues to promise that "Some day" we'll have community project to fix all of those problems, but it never quite seems to happen.
To a/. geek, the ability to recomplie your kernel from source provides self-worth as a person, but to a business it provides risk of error, increased change control management issues, and the security risk of hidden suprises inside the operating system left by an ex-employee...
About a week ago, I discovered that I "needed" to install SP3 for Microsoft Office. It informed me that I needed the Office CD, but also offered a choice in case I didn't have the CD (which would download a bigger file). The CD was on the other side of the room and I'm on 8 Mb/sec broadband, so I clicked on "I don't have the CD"... the download was going slow enough that it would have taken hours to complete (I think it was like 80 MB)...
I cancelled out of that and got the CD and then downloaded the SP3 update (albeit a somewhat smaller one) in a minute or two.
So either they just were not paying attention to a bandwitdh choked server doing the complete download, or they are already making it uncomfortable for people who may have pirated software by giving them really slow downloads for the updates.
You can be sure there is logging of the entire IP data stream to the computer. While the cause might not be apparent the instant of any breach, the ability to replay the attack should give little mystery to what was done and how - and the passive data logger is not going to be affected by an IIS exploit on the target machine.
There is no evidence that DDT itself was responsible for the effects on birds (ie bald eagles). The buildup of levels of DDT in the food chain is not the cause of the problems with the birds. There is no "toxic level" of DDT which kills a bird or causes cancer.
The connection is that DDT is so effective as a pesticide that it wipes out the insect larvae that are the food source for the fish, the fish are the food source for the eagles. Fewer insects, fewer and smaller fish... fewer fish, the Eagles have a smaller food supply and have to look to alternate types of food for survival. Their eggs are fewer and the shells are thinner, their offspring are more likely to be deformed.
This misunderstanding of cause and effect and the resulting ban on DDT now plays a major role in the 2.7 million deaths per year from Malaria.
How much did Jason Blair's ethics and morality cost the New York Times?
Re:Not a bad idea -- government funded copyleft
on
Dutch Pass iPod Tax
·
· Score: 1
Would modifying binary object code to disable registration requirements, software expiration, or copy protection constitute making a "legal" derivative work?
What about distributing copies of that derivative work?
"The rover has six wheels aligned in two rows and each of the four corner wheels has its own steering mechanism. The problem is with the front right wheel, which can still roll but is now stuck at a 7 inward angle. NASA rover project manager Jim Erickson says it is like a car losing its power steering."
It continues with a quote from the "Quote I wish I could take back" department:
"At this point, with this one actuator failed, it's an inconvenience, nothing more," says rover chief scientist Steven Squyres.
The JPL statement on the issue at that time is here: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_oppo rtunityAll.html#sol430 [...] "Opportunity's right-front steering motor stalled out on sol 433 during an end-of-drive turn. While performing tests to help the team diagnose the condition of that motor, the rover also continued to make remote-sensing observations. Testing in sol 435 did show motion in the steering motor, but analysis is still underway. The rover resumed normal science and driving operations on sol 436, but with restrictions on use of the right-front steering motor. It drove 30 meters on sol 437. Opportunity and Spirit are capable of driving with one or more steering motors disabled, though turns would be less precise. The latest revision in flight software on both rovers, uploaded in February, gives them improved capabilities for dealing with exactly this type of condition. It gives them upgraded ability to repeatedly evaluate how well they are following the intended course during a drive, and to adjust the steering autonomously if appropriate."
So the JPL story seems to say on sol 435 that the steering motor was still working, but testing was still underway and its use was restricted.
How much of the revenue this agency collects for the tax on blank media will be sent to Microsoft to compensate for the Dutch people pirating Microsoft software?
"(noticed in the picture that one of the wheels is perpendicular to the track line, not a great way to get out.)"
As is pointed out elsewhere, the front wheel is stuck at a 7 degree angle. That's why the rover is running in reverse, and dragging the crooked wheel behind it.
Anyone experienced in snow driving knows that the first thing you do if your drive wheels are spinning while stuck in a snow drift is to make sure the steering wheels are straight, to get rid of the lateral forces that block whatever movement the limited friction from the spinning wheel(s) is generating. [this applies much more to rear wheel drive than to front drive]
Since the most obvious course of action is to "back out" the way you came, and the lead wheel in that direction is stuck at an angle, I would put pretty long odds on this thing ever moving again. But NASA has been known to pull off miracles in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read more carefully, this claim is attributed to Wizzard Software, who makes the claim that the SPA says 16%.
e ases/2005/141.htm
:)
Looking at the Wizzard Software web site, their press release says that APPLE told them that the SPA told them 16%.
http://www.wizzardsoftware.com/Investor/press_rel
So this is a 4th hand report that ultimately points right back to the vendor. I would bet anything that some qualifier like "home users, in dollar sales, during the last quarter, in the United States, etc..." got dropped along the way...
A search of the SPA.org web site found no such claim...
Let's find the original source... hopefully the SPA didn't estimate market share based on Apple estimates.
It surprises me how some .UK anti-gun nuts think they can protect themselves from illegal immigrant criminal gangs using only a pointy knife.
Oops.
I agree completely with the prediction that once .xxx is functioning, legislation will arrive requiring pornographic web sites to be herded into cattle cars and shipped off to .xxx land.
p ?documentID=17597 2 15.htm l?
However, believing that it is evil conservatives who will do this is misguided.
- it was Tipper Gore who led the campaign to put warning labels on music
- Patrick Leahy was the co-sponsor of the Hatch-Leahy bill (S151) in 2003 that overturned the Supreme Court ruling that Computer-Generated kiddie porn was was not real porn. The Senate approved the bill 84-0. To do otherwise would have you labelled as supporting kiddie porn - who is going to do that?
http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.as
- Feminist groups (Catherine McKinnon comes to mind) have led the charge proposing many anti-pornography laws
URL:http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript
[The following is based on ISDN in the US - I know the rest of the world works differently]
ISDN is a dialup technology. Almost all of the major wholesale dialup networks have equipment that doesn't care if the incoming call is ISDN or analog. Unless you are talking to a local ISP that still thinks it is 1996, there should be no surcharge for ISDN. The experience of the ISP comes into play if you want to bond both ISDN channels to get 128k up/down and/or want BandWidth on Demand to automatically connect the second channel only when it is needed (and to release theh 2nd channel if you pick up the phone or an incoming call arrives).
The hard/expensive part is getting the ISDN line from the phone company. ISDN will work out to 35,000 feet without doing special magic (digital repeaters, etc...). Since ISDN is being pushed aside for DSL, finding someone in the phone company who can place the order and knows the correct tariff may take time.
Also, the tariffs vary widely depending on where you live and whether the phone company will consider you to be a business user. An ISDN circuit consist of 2 64kb channels (+signaling channel). If you have two phone lines today, the ISDN can replace both and wind up being comparable in cost to what you pay now... IF the local phone company does not impose a per minute connect charge.
The technology the parent is alluding to is called DoV (Data over Voice). The call is set up as if it is a voice call, and once it is connected, the modems agree that they are both digital devices and switch to data mode. Voice calls on residential ISDN do not normally carry a per minute charge for local calls. Note that the definition of "local" for ISDN may be different than for analog.
Some local ISPs will also support ISDN dialback - they buy the T1 from the telco, and they don't have to pay a per minute charge - so your ISDN modem dials in, provides its callerID, hangs up and the ISP dials you back. The recipient of a ISDN call does not pay a per minute charge.
ISDN connects almost immediately - there is no analog squawking to determing line quality, negotiate v.90 bit rates, etc... if you are paying per minute charges, having a short idle timeout is much less annoying than it is for analog.
Here are more details for the curious:
http://www.findanisp.com/isdn.php
As others have alluded to, don't overlook "Fixed Wireless". If you have an ISP in line of sight (REAL line of sight, not almost LOS)... This uses 802.11 either on licensed or unlicensed spectrum with parabolic antennas. This can get you DSL speeds out 10-15 miles, depending on terrain. Typical cost for residential use is about $300-500 for installation, and then monthly fees comparable to DSL or cable.
IDSL is DSL over ISDN. Since it is a dedicated point to point connection, there is no need for the signalling channel, so the entire 144 Kb bandwidth is available (vs 128kb for dialup ISDN).
Since IDSL is basically a leased circuit, it ties you into the specific ISP where the other end is terminated. Typical monthly charges run $100-$150, plus substantial setup charges.
Be careful when dicussing ISDN in US vs non US contexts. Because of the way ISDN was deployed in the US, it is not compatible with European equipement. Most houses do not have the required 6 wires to every jack that "real" ISDN requires, so the functionality that is typically present in a European phone system at the telco handoff point is instead incorporated in the end-user device. Translation: Don't buy an ISDN modem (actually called a terminal adapter since it isn't doing analog modulation) from eBay if you are in the US and the equipment was not built for the US. Adapters are available, but that increases the cost and is another potential failure point.
Also, note that if you connect the incoming ISDN line to your computer using one of the cheap cards, and then plug the phone into the ISDN card, the
It seems that by publicly disclosing these trolls, Wikipedia did several bad things:
1) As others have pointed out, the disclosure acknowledged an unfixed defect in the management of the passwords (no seed)
2) It disclosed a defensive method that was useful in detecting and shutting down probable sockpuppet accounts. The net effect is that it trained the trolls how to create better sock puppet accounts...
3) it revealed that a software developer had unfettered access to the entire user database, including the password hashes.
It appears that Wikipedia took this thread to heart as they have pulled the list, and explained that they are now salting the hashes, and the CTO didn't know it was still online.
But even if the page is pulled (as slashdot points out daily), once something has been seen one time on the internet, you can never safely assume that copies don't exist somewhere else.
Henry Ford: "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."
AT&T: Your telephone can be any color as long as it is black.
"Open" Source: Our Open Software will run on any type of computer you want - as long as it is Linux-based, uses one of a handful of processor types and you use a C compiler to compile the software. [Author's apparent solution because the open source model has serious management issues due to relying on the kindness of strangers to accomplish work]
All we need now is a law to enforce this conformity and use the power of government to suppress diversity.
or "Dianetics".
Could this survey be making the case for accepting the teachings of Scientology?
Back in my time [insert old age joke here], my mother knew exactly what I was eating for lunch, because I ran home during lunch hour and ate at home. When they stopped letting us go home for lunch, I came to school with a lunch in a bronw bag.
This is another good expample of government creating a problem, and then creating a solution at the loss of our freedom.
BTW, this new script thing sucks - you try to figure out these letters:
http://images.slashdot.org/hc/36/aed86508e752.jpg
Is it any coincidence that since schools started giving out free lunches and now free breakfast (along with giving the parents food stamps if they qualify) that we have an obesity problem?
(This anti-script test -really- sucks!)
A million miles @ 186,000 miles/sec = 5.3 seconds, not 8 minutes. You're dead.
It IS you.
All of the bps/baud arguments were hashed over by the l337 d00dz of twenty years ago, and really - nobody cares any more. Given a few more years, it will be very unusual to even have a copper phone line let alone an analog modem.
And Elvis is dead, too.
my memory is this might have been on Prodigy, but we know how unreliable memory is. Could have been AOL...
Basically, they led you through about 20 levels of asking you "We are about to reformat your hard drive- you will lose everything on your computer. You will have no legal recourse... are you really really sure you want to do this?
When you reached the end of it, basically the final page just did nothing and never came back.
more than anything I suspect it was an experiment in just how far people would go along with totally self-destructive behavior.
An even more basic security issue.
In order to successfully login, you need two pieces of information - the userid and the security credential (password or PIN).... If you make either part "easy", you've compromised the value of the other part.
Many banks have set up their web sites to use either the social security number or the ATM/Debit card number as the userid. Sure, it made for fewer problems getting their customers onto the web site, but it greatly simplifies the task of breaking in.
Another issue that people without a security mindset don't understand or appreciate is to not use the same password on two different authentication schemes. If you use the same password for everything, and one of the passwords is compromised (maybe not even something you did), then all of your other accounts are now at risk. Stop the damage at the first point and prevent it from cascading. Having someone's Social Security number is a useful step for way too many future problems.
I'm still waiting to see if the Microsoft's AntiSpyware is ultimately going to be a subscription service. During the install, the beta mentioned an expiration date.
Overall, I think the AntiSpyware product is making a serious dent in the the Spyware business - if Microsoft starts to charge for the service and fewer people run it, then it will become much less effective.
Or today's CERT notice about all the holes in Mac OS X
1 528
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30
How many seconds are there in a metric minute? How many days in a metric year? How many degrees in a metric circle?
:)
Just because humans have 8 fingers + 2 thumbs does not mean the universe is based on 10, any more than God measures the passage of time by how frequently the Earth rotates on its axis
Try maps.yahoo.com
Click on the map to get it to move or rezoom. Nothing happens.
Of course, one could assert that Yahoo should change their web site to be more FireFox compatible (in the same way AOL has a webmaster page telling us how to be create websites that are more AOL compatible).
http://webmaster.aol.com/
If I cared enough about it, I could probably read through the javascript and isolate the problem and create a workaround or fiddle with some undocumented options in the Firefox configuration, but the mass market isn't going to ever do that.
So while I mainly use firefox, I've switched to maps.google.com (and modified my website's map links for the same reason)
But for programmer types in the United States facing the lower wage pressure of competing with outsourced programming projects, I can't think of a better way to decrease the pressure from outside the US than if those other countries vent their anti-US xenophobia to force their students to learn only *nix.
/. geek, the ability to recomplie your kernel from source provides self-worth as a person, but to a business it provides risk of error, increased change control management issues, and the security risk of hidden suprises inside the operating system left by an ex-employee...
*nix at its core is still basically a 30 year old, command line based O/S that was designed to do multi-user timesharing when computers where very expensive and hard to get access to over 300 bps dialup lines (can you say TTY?).
Sure, for the desktop you have GUI implementations, but underneath you still have to deal with grep, perl, bash, etc... each with 43 different single letter command line options and non-trivial things like rebuilding and recompiling your kernel.
*nix is getting better than the first time I used Fortune Unix on a Motorola 68000 box in the mid 80s, but man pages and How-Tos are just as cryptic, incomplete, inaccurate and jargon filled as they have ever been. The Linux Community continues to promise that "Some day" we'll have community project to fix all of those problems, but it never quite seems to happen.
To a
About a week ago, I discovered that I "needed" to install SP3 for Microsoft Office. It informed me that I needed the Office CD, but also offered a choice in case I didn't have the CD (which would download a bigger file). The CD was on the other side of the room and I'm on 8 Mb/sec broadband, so I clicked on "I don't have the CD"... the download was going slow enough that it would have taken hours to complete (I think it was like 80 MB)...
:)
I cancelled out of that and got the CD and then downloaded the SP3 update (albeit a somewhat smaller one) in a minute or two.
So either they just were not paying attention to a bandwitdh choked server doing the complete download, or they are already making it uncomfortable for people who may have pirated software by giving them really slow downloads for the updates.
Which I have no issue with
That's a bit naive.
You can be sure there is logging of the entire IP data stream to the computer. While the cause might not be apparent the instant of any breach, the ability to replay the attack should give little mystery to what was done and how - and the passive data logger is not going to be affected by an IIS exploit on the target machine.
There is no evidence that DDT itself was responsible for the effects on birds (ie bald eagles). The buildup of levels of DDT in the food chain is not the cause of the problems with the birds. There is no "toxic level" of DDT which kills a bird or causes cancer.
3 0904.asp
The connection is that DDT is so effective as a pesticide that it wipes out the insect larvae that are the food source for the fish, the fish are the food source for the eagles. Fewer insects, fewer and smaller fish... fewer fish, the Eagles have a smaller food supply and have to look to alternate types of food for survival. Their eggs are fewer and the shells are thinner, their offspring are more likely to be deformed.
This misunderstanding of cause and effect and the resulting ban on DDT now plays a major role in the 2.7 million deaths per year from Malaria.
Curiously, the one presidential candidate who favors undoing this mistake and lifting the ban on DDT is Ralph Nader:
http://www.csrl.org/malaria/
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bate2004060
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
So consider transferring to a school where the science professors aren't teaching propoganda or teaching Rachel Carson's fictional writings as fact.
How much did Jason Blair's ethics and morality cost the New York Times?
Would modifying binary object code to disable registration requirements, software expiration, or copy protection constitute making a "legal" derivative work?
What about distributing copies of that derivative work?
New Scientist has the story from about 2 weeks ago:
o rtunityAll.html#sol430
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7284
"The rover has six wheels aligned in two rows and each of the four corner wheels has its own steering mechanism. The problem is with the front right wheel, which can still roll but is now stuck at a 7 inward angle. NASA rover project manager Jim Erickson says it is like a car losing its power steering."
It continues with a quote from the "Quote I wish I could take back" department:
"At this point, with this one actuator failed, it's an inconvenience, nothing more," says rover chief scientist Steven Squyres.
The JPL statement on the issue at that time is here: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_opp
[...]
"Opportunity's right-front steering motor stalled out on sol 433 during an end-of-drive turn. While performing tests to help the team diagnose the condition of that motor, the rover also continued to make remote-sensing observations. Testing in sol 435 did show motion in the steering motor, but analysis is still underway. The rover resumed normal science and driving operations on sol 436, but with restrictions on use of the right-front steering motor. It drove 30 meters on sol 437. Opportunity and Spirit are capable of driving with one or more steering motors disabled, though turns would be less precise. The latest revision in flight software on both rovers, uploaded in February, gives them improved capabilities for dealing with exactly this type of condition. It gives them upgraded ability to repeatedly evaluate how well they are following the intended course during a drive, and to adjust the steering autonomously if appropriate."
So the JPL story seems to say on sol 435 that the steering motor was still working, but testing was still underway and its use was restricted.
How much of the revenue this agency collects for the tax on blank media will be sent to Microsoft to compensate for the Dutch people pirating Microsoft software?
"(noticed in the picture that one of the wheels is perpendicular to the track line, not a great way to get out.)"
As is pointed out elsewhere, the front wheel is stuck at a 7 degree angle. That's why the rover is running in reverse, and dragging the crooked wheel behind it.
Anyone experienced in snow driving knows that the first thing you do if your drive wheels are spinning while stuck in a snow drift is to make sure the steering wheels are straight, to get rid of the lateral forces that block whatever movement the limited friction from the spinning wheel(s) is generating. [this applies much more to rear wheel drive than to front drive]
Since the most obvious course of action is to "back out" the way you came, and the lead wheel in that direction is stuck at an angle, I would put pretty long odds on this thing ever moving again. But NASA has been known to pull off miracles in the past.