What I want to know is what sort of satellite link did they use???
I am only familiar with the Hughes Directway system and that has such a slow round trip that I doubt it would work for VoIP. Often times the uplinks are slower that a 14.4 modem on a bad wire... Are there better products on the market? I didn't see any mention of what they used. There was a cursory explaination that he tweaked the equipment to work with slower speeds, but how!?
Does anyone know of a more reliable sat connection than the directway? Maybe something that uses Low Earth satellites rather than geosyncronous... or pose the threat of burning flesh of anyone walking in front of the transmitter?
I have had a lot of luck with IPcop (ipcop.org). You can do a firewall yourself with any linux distro using iptables or the older ipchains, but ipcop is nice and easy and specifically designed for firewalls. It has a nice gui interface and works better than many commercial firewalls for the cost of a cheap box and two three nics something most offices (even non-profits) have lying around.
With something like this, you can radically improve the reliabilities of a windows network. I have often used it to reduce trauma calls by up to %80.
I like to use it plugged into the net on oneside and a NAT router on the other... double NAT is very hard to breach.
IPCOP also offers a proxy server and can be triplehomed to offer a dmz for servers you want open to the net. Quite a nice piece of software.
Panda has been for awhile. But they are usually ahead of the curve and tend to find viruses a good two weeks before Nortons or McAfee from my lab tests. I guess being Spanish they don't worry too much about US spyware lawyers.
...Other than malware/Adware starts with a team of lawyers on staff, where as virus writers don't get a lawyer until after they are busted.
And while most malware may not be self replicating, it does have viral components in that it is predatory non-living creature that lives off its host. And good malware, like a good virus goes undetected. Cheating the system of confidentiality and resources. Sending it's host to places that suit it, and exploit the host.
Does it really matter that they aren't totally self replicating like a worm... early viruses were just malicious macros using MS Office and WP as a vector to be passed around by unsuspecting knobs.
A lot of smart viruses use their host to infect others. HIV, for example isn't very good at replicating itself... it relies on humans to do most of the work. It just sits in the blood stream. Other viruses use multiple species to get passed around where some species are adversly effected and other species in the chain don't even notice it's benign precence.
Similarly, code like Roings or Gator, are a great malware/virus hybrid. They just sit around and wait to be downloaded from from blog sites like Xanga or P2P networks like Kazaa... it uses other users to actually recommend to their friends to get the infection. Now that is using relational marketing!
Why bother writing self replicating code when you can get guillable fools to do the replicating for you.
As far as spyware for linux, I suspect it is out there. My browser (mozilla) has been hijacked a few times, I haven't figured out how. Has anyone else experienced this? I am not trying to start a flame war, I know I probably have something missing or misconfigured, but how... I don't know.
First I don't understand where you get your statistics from. They don't hold true for the white trash criminals I know of. No body on the trailer park boys owns a pitbull. The stat I am paraphrasing I read in the StarTribune when Minnesota Corrections was starting a pet therapy program for inmates.
Criminals, by nature, are lazy. They can barely take care of themselves let alone a dog. What most criminals know about dogs could be summed up in two words, they bite!
I don't see how your flame gets 1 point and my advice got zip. Mine was one of the only posts that was taking into consideration that we are making security suggestions for an elderly woman. Suggesting a big dog or a gun makes as much sense as throwing a PII and a couple of openBSD disks her way so she could have a secure box for her first computer.
I think the small territorial dog combined with a voice activated light is a good combination of natural and tech solutions. It helps her notice if someone has set off her car alarm and it also give a fairly credible appearance that someone is home and paying attention.
I have had the opportunity to teach dog sledding to inner city "at risk" youth. It doesn't matter how tough the pose, they are afraid of big dogs. I also stand by my statement that walking down statistically high crime streets with a psycho looking husky bitch will make even the toughest street thug cross the street to avoid getting bit.
But a big dog makes little sense for a little old lady that is unfamiliar with dogs. It would probably jump up to kiss her face and break her hip.
In the same spirit any slashdotter would love to have a room filled with a beouwulf cluster. I doubt the poster's mom would put up with that much hardware in her house for a minute. She wouldn't know what to do with it.
I stand by my suggestion.
And for the record wouldn't step foot in a PetSmart... who knows what strain of parvo you'd pick up from one of those filthy places.
...it came to me today when I was relaying the story in an email and I couldn't resist sharing.... Now to make teeshirts, and other memorabilia! Finally a way to recycle my warehouse full of bicentennial stuff!
Any dog will intimidate a criminal. They tend to associate a dog as an attack dog. There is a stat floating around claiming that most people who end up in prison never had a dog.
It makes sense, since dog ownership usually implies home ownership and stability... something absent from the typical criminal's childhood. On the flipside, most felons have spent more time with a gun in their hands than your mother or the average geek -- it's always best to choose to fight where you have the advantage.
As poster stated, his mom had motion sensor light and an alarm that she didn't hear... small dogs tend to make the biggest fuss over intruders, particularily small males. Combine a male chihuihui with a voice activated lite and you could easily spook a dilligent thief into believing somebody has noticed them even if no one is home.
As far as attack dogs, the unusually quiet lhasa is the most feared among meter readers because they tend to sneak up on intruders and bite them like a pirranah.
I would never have a dog that was a fighter or would bite someone... It's like having a loaded gun lying around a day care. Better just to keep them out of your house.. blood is so hard to clean out of the carpet.
I prefer a large female dog for my protection dog. Large females are territorial and tend to stay home. My dog is a black/brown husky with one blue eye.
She would not bite anyone unless they were violent, but she is scarry when she wants to be and will run bears out of the yard. When I walk her down the street, people tend to cross the street to aviod her.
I am just commenting on what was posted previously that chicago is better because it is greener and property values are higher than they were twenty years ago because I have been away from Chicago basically for twenty years and I disagree.
The point of the "credit thing" is that while home ownership is suppossedly higher, it really isn't.
Things may seem better than twenty years ago since it is hard to have perspective on such change over this time period. You are so rushed, you don't even have time to comment on it. I am in the unique position to comment on the past twenty years of change by having been absent since 1983. It's like I just stepped out of a time machine. I have a clear view as being both an outsider and an insider.
I don't know if it is a problem in every city. Places like Portland, Oregon and Provo Utah come to mind when I think of cities that are getting greener. Even Milwaukee which has grown as much if not more than Chicago over the same period of time looks and smells cleaner than it did twenty years ago.
Greener and massive growth don't coincide very easily.
Clark County Nevada is getting "greener" and that is not necessarily a good thing.
The subway is stinkier. Places like Cabrini Green are still there even though the Chicago Tribune reported their demise and most Chicagoans believed they were razed over a decade ago. Sure Chicago is great if you can afford to live on the Gold Coast. Go a few blocks west and Chicago, a Chicago just as real to a much larger portion of its population, is anything but green.
There are worse places to be for sure. But I don't seem to be inclined to buy into all of the rah rah propaganda.
The Chicago Police force is still infamous for its human rights abuses. Jon Burge will probably walk and his cronies won't ever be touched as they collect their pensions without impunity. Maybe the Daley's are just Chicago's Medici family -- a necessary evil.
As far as the cameras are concerned, unless they are truely publicly accessible they will be privatizing public space. They may stop crime but so will more effective policing: get the cops out of cars and on the street, stop petty crime and and really cleaning of the city. The reak of urine and sewage is a real health and quality of life concern.
Things might be getting better in some respects, but it still has a long way to go before I'd use the term 'greener', unless you are refering to the definition implying naivite.
Running LINUX at home is great... build a network and everything is the best way to learn.
I wouldn't recommending jumping in to the hardest distro first. Go easy with RedHat, SuSE, Slackware... try a bunch if you need to.
Once you get it going, beat down the directories with the man command (i.e. man neat, man ifconfig...) and learn what all the programs do and how to use them. It's amazing how many books are just a regurgitation of the man files.
All the distros have different programs, but most are the same. Using man can really layout what nix is all about and give you a feel for the tools at hand.
And of course some C programming wouldn't hurt either...
I have been away from Chicago for the past twenty years only to return for the summer, and no it isn't any greener. It is stinkier and bigger than ever.
The green spaces have been eaten up. The farm I grew up on a half hour out of town is now a housing project surrounded by housing projects.
The trees look diseased today compared to the photos I took as a child and the city spills out so far into what was once quiet country it is astounding. Even more astounding is that it is filled with morons who will spend a big chunk of their waking hours in stinky big SUV's in an endless sea of traffic.
Any gain achieved in offshoring all the stinky factories to low regulation china seems to be offset by all these overstuffed single passenger ATV's that ceaselessly creep along the pavement day and night.
Seems like the beaches are plagued with closings due to contamination more than they were twenty years ago ( I don't remember one once)... and I really wonder how a beach can be dangerously contaminated one day and less than twenty four hours later be declared conveniently safe for the weekend. I know I am not touchin that filthy polio filled sewage they call "Lake Michigan".
probably the most amazing thing is that the notorious Officer Jon Burge is finally on the stand for the abuse he has been committing ever since he came back from the viet nam. He probably just pissed off the wrong person after shaming the city with the constant amnesty international condemnations the Daley's finally had to give him up to maintain the rest of their abuses.
Sure property values are up, but so is lending in these low interest days.
Thing is most of these people with their "valuable" properties are up to their eyeballs in debt with their home mortgage tied into their credit cards. I imagine most folks are just a few paychecks away from bankruptcy. They don't own their homes at all, the banks do.
For all of the "security measures" I have noticed to be added since I left 20 years ago, they don't seem too effective. Most of the federal buildings that have been fortified still have major chinks in their armor wide open for a truck bomb to drive thru. The subways are patrolled by fat poorly trained german shepards with muzzles, which indicates they are more than likely loose cannon attack dogs made to look like explosives dogs, but really just look like pets with ADD the way they pay little attention to their handlers. It's typical chicago window dressing.
Along with the Cameras in Chicago, the Governor wants new legislation on the tollways (the same tollways that were legislated to become freeways once they paid for themselves over twenty years ago)to double the tolls for people who don't use the government tracking devices called "I-Pass"..
Guess the saying is true, the more things change... the more they stay the same
Since the cameras will not be publicly accessible they will in effect be privatizing public space....Anonimity in public will no longer be an option since public space will be taken over by private overlords!
In many ways, the cameras are probably a good Idea. Chicago is populated with violent subliterate people who have little concern for the law.
Mobsters like Capone are still idolized here.
Unfortunatly these are the same punch drunk morons that "enforce" the laws so in the end sum, they will probably be more offensive than defensive to the citizens. Cops will use the cameras to prey on the weak just like they use their badges, billy clubs and cattle prods today.
You're right, it does ask to install, but most people go with defaults.... there is some popups that seem to come in through AIM that require stuff like Dead AIM to stop them since they are activated by launching AIM.
I generally don't use the products. Mostly just GAIM on Linux. Lately I've been stuck running XP and I haven't bothered to figure out how to remove Outlook or Messenger. Just pulled Messnger off the start button so it doesn't launch everytime I use that menu.
I am mostly just amazed at the amount of crud that goo's up normal users boxes. It's boggling to me and I know how to fix it and avoid it... for the average person it must be demoralizing.
no wonder nobody's becoming computer scientists anymore... too many darn pop ups!
This exploit seems minor compared to the spyware installed by default with AIM. How can AOL say they protect you against viruses and then install Gator et al by default on your box?!
I am pretty sure the animated pop up warning about spy ware on your computer, the one with the animation of bugs fornicating, is installed via AIM as well. How can AOL call themselves a family company?
Saying there is a security hole in AIM is like saying there is a type of virus that attacks people with AIDS. No duh. AIM is a major vector of problems and probably should be classified as a virus.
Thank you for your time. I'll stop ranting now before I even get into that annoying infection called Messenger.
Sorry, but the lawsuits against LA Confidential are being thrown out of court. Not that that proves anything either, but if you actually read the link, there is an exerpt from the book that details Lance's not passing a UCI drug test until the lawyers stepped in.
Cyclists don't test positive mostly because they do their steroids in the off season and they know how to cheat, or they have lawyers who do. Lance's long term relationship with Ferrari shows he has the ways and means to cheat.
And yes you can beat the EPO test with an IV.
Here is an exerpt from a website appropriately called:
since you don't like to check out links, here is the meat of it:
Another team, Kelme of Spain, already has been prohibited from this year's Tour because of the charges leveled by Manzano, one of its former riders. In a five-part series in the Spanish newspaper AS (for which he was paid), Manzano described how team doctors pressured him to take banned drugs; how he collapsed and nearly died during last year's Tour after taking an unknown substance; and how it's like "an open bar" for cyclists to receive growth hormones and EPO.
Kelme officials and the Spanish cycling federation have denied Manzano's claims, much as Cofidis officials have with Gaumont's accusations.
Manzano even detailed how riders evade detection on the blood test that measures hematocrit levels, the proportion of blood consisting of red blood cells. When testing officials show up, Manzano said, team doctors first send down riders with low levels. That gives the other riders time to dilute their blood -- with blood plasma or saline solution, for example -- and lower their hematocrit level.
These blood tests are more common than the EPO test (which requires a urine sample) because they cost less. They can indicate high suspicion, though not absolute proof, of doping.
Most talk of drug use in cycling centers on EPO, because of the way it helps on those taxing rides up the mountain. EPO is a hormone produced naturally by the kidneys, but its recombinant form can increase the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells and therefore boost endurance.
Still, even the EPO test has loopholes: It can reach back and detect the drug for only three or four days, according to Olivier Rabin, science director at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). But an athlete could reap benefits for as long as two weeks, Rabin and other experts said.
There is thus a lengthy period when users enjoy athletic advantage without risking detection. Rabin suspects some cyclists take a high dose of EPO and stop at least three days before the race begins, a strategy mirrored in other sports and a prime illustration of how the cheaters stay one step ahead of the testers.
Cycling union officials acknowledged the need to increase unannounced tests in the weeks preceding a major race. Most testing now occurs during the events; at the Tour de France, for instance, the stage winner, three leaders and three or four randomly chosen riders are tested each day.
Doping experts such as University of Texas professor John Hoberman still criticize the cycling union for being more interested in public relations than the athletes' health.
sorry I am not as much of a Lance fan as you apparantly are and I am not as sure as you are that the French courts received all of his records. There is just too much money involved and the people involved are professional cheaters who are cheating an institution that condones cheating. If it hadn't been for that little mishap with the customs agents, no one would be aware of the level of doping that goes on in races like the tour. Even a cynic like myself was shocked to learn they were shooting heroin, coke a and steroids!
That said, I think the doping part is cool. Those guys are insanely dedicated to what they do. I hate getting shots at the the doctors. Injecting myself with greasy
Taping them down with clear packing tape works great and as far as I know is legal. Time trialist have been doing this since the seventies.. just like eliptical chainrings, it will come back, again..
With his close relationship with Doctor Ferrari Lance certainly does rely on some serious biotech. Considering that the main drug of choice for cyclists (EPO) still has no reliable test that can't be beat by a quick I.V. to water down the blood supply.
As a close follower of cycling, I have always doubted his cancer story and just assumed he made it up to cover his tracks and maybe make some publicity for one of his suppliers. Cindy Oliverri claimed to have mono when she actually tested positive for steroids before the 1984 olympics. The Olympic comittee went along with the lie until she broke the story out of guilt and not wanting other kids to be pressured like she was.
I had similar surgery to Lance (had my left testicle removed)and there was no way I was getting back on a bike for over 9 months. It was more like a year and I didn't have all the cancer he claimed!!!Amgen (the makers of EPO) make a variety of Cancer drugs and the LA story is just too good of a PR pitch.
People with cancer that bad die. They don't win the Tour de France. Lance would have been a hero if he were able to ride after such a severe disease.Instead he went from being a sprinter who was a middle of the road time trialist and basically poor climber into a virtuoso. I don't buy it for a minute.
It's just a good PR wash. There are no cyclists at that level that do not use drugs and they are dying like flies.
Check out the book LA Confidential:
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/6295.0.html
it has evidence of his testing positive. The basic reality is that sports federations cannot handle either the bad PR of a positive test, nor the costs of defending one in court. Atheletes, particularily American Atheletes funded by American drug companies have pockets that run too deep. The federations play along with the dope testing game and look the other way and send flowers to the funerals.
"When it comes to bikes, they all make the same sound when they hit the ground."
-- Dan Bockenstedt
I have a border collie and he is smarter than most people.I can tell him to do things and he figures it out and does it. I tell him once in plain english and a bit of hand gestures and he figures it out.
I have trained him to herd cats. -- he chases the neighbor's cat only when it starts to hang out at the bird feeder.
I have huskies and he works with them. Quite the kick ass lead dog. (his mother is a husky so he is an F1 hybrid vigor).
In the dog yard, if a fight breaks out I tell him to get the dog causing the trouble and he does... he'll run down and grab the perpetrator by the back of the neck and pull him over to me.
He'll go anywhere with me without a leash and he stays away from strangers. When I go in to a shop, he'll lie down outside and wait by the door.
He wakes me up to put wood in the fire when it burns down too much.
He gets me up if I am late for work, but won't bother me on Sunday morning. He also has woken me up to see cool phenomenon like the Northern Lights and the Space Shuttle/Space Station.
When I go to a fastfood restaurant w/him I get him a burger. When we drive by a McD's, he points to it even if we have never been to that particular franchise.I don't think he likes BK or Wendy's, cause he doesn't point his nose at them even the ones we have been to
When I have a difficult programming question, I hang out with him and his psychic abilities help me solve it. He doesn't really care about toys and he hates my Jar Jar doll. There is a story (I think it is athabaskan) about when the humans were divided from the animals the dog jumped across the divide to help us. I think that is just about right.
Right on!!! AKC appropriation of standards are similar to M$'s tactics with open standards and create an inferior a product.
When the border collie was being picked up by the AKC, border collie people sued to be kept out of their crappy breeding program.
More examples on their "standards" include the cute curley tails deemed standard for siberians and huskies. In a working sled dog, a tail that curls over like that indicates a scrunchy backend that can't move properly and any pup carrying that characteristic is culled.
When Jamie Nelson tried to run a team of AKC Malamutes in the Iditarod she had access to the best the AKC offered and she said they had all of their working characteristics bred out of them and was hard presed to put together a team up for the challenge.
AKC is all about owner vanity at the cost of dogs.
all you have to do is copy the directory or file to another device using admin rights, which the repair guy would need to repair the system, and the encryption is decrypted and the files are readable.
Yes, in many ways the invisible act cuts down on your potential mates... but it culls out the shallow end of the gene pool too.
In this example of being a mugger, we are trying to supress the instances of attracting muggers... probably something to Small Mammel Attack Response (SMAR)where predators are triggered by visual clues that indicate a weak and potential target.
Muggers biologically are probably similar to coyotes, the urban wolf, for the human herd. At some level, they weed out the sick and weak keeping the herd healthy.
The Wolf is invisible too. Yet they use that invisibility to their advantage in order to carefully analyze their options and pick out what they want.
So maybe being invisible will keep you from getting hit on, the up side is it will give you an opportunity to be more selective in where you will invest your recreative energies: i.e. smart mates, not bar flies...
For me, there is an advantage to breeding to good stock with in a solid structured relationship. The energies to raise one decent offspring is considerable and not something I want to dabble in lightly.
Humans who breed like flowers gathering whatever seed the wind brings in end up with more genetic variety but tend to lack the stength of a solid household offer.
Wolves, like people tend to have better breeding. Part of this is because the act of initating coupling can quickly result in death either from the bitch or her current mate. Because of this, they are fairly monogamous and have two parents raising the litter.
He mentions this a few places in his fiction. Where he really lays it out is in his book of essays The Adding Machine in an essay I believe entitled L'hombre invisible. My books are in storage right now, but that whole book is like a key to unlock the rest of his novels and to understand his writing methods and vision.
William S. Burroughs wrote about the way he survived the streets of Tangiers was to become invisible using a trick he learned from a Toledo mobster. I have been practicing this trick for twenty years and it works.
The way to do it is walk slow and make sure you see everyone before they see you. By doing this, you trigger a reflex in others to not see you. I can walk past anyone this way, even people I know who are looking for me. It's wierd how effective it is.
Also, with laptops, the bios is a good way to protect your stuff. Most laptops bios p/w need to be factory reset. The best one being the IBM's that send a token from the bios to the hard drive. Even if the factory resets the motherboard p/w without getting ahold of you, because the thief is sophisticated enough to replace the chip (unlikely), the hard drive data is still encrypted and un-retrievable.
Finally, guns are for wimps. If you pull a gun on someone you shouldn't be ready to use it, you use it! BANG! End of story... make it a clean kill. If any moron pulled a gun on me, I'd kill 'em with it.
Like prophet said -- "learn to fight without the corruption of weapons."
They never factor in the economic benefit of a virus. That blaster totally filled in the bottom line for an otherwise crummy quarter last summer for our little shop.
Can't imagine what a boost it was for the big players like the big box computer stores.
That virus came at a time the computer retail industry was hurting. It was easy to fix and
(l)users couldn't ignore it so they happily paid an hour benchtime for ten minutes work.
It almost seemed like blaster was designed to boost the economy. I know it's cynical, but it certainly was a factor in getting our shop close to profitability until our boss wasted a bunch of money on dumb stuff.
C'est la vie.
Slashdot Mirror
What I want to know is what sort of satellite link did they use???
I am only familiar with the Hughes Directway system and that has such a slow round trip that I doubt it would work for VoIP. Often times the uplinks are slower that a 14.4 modem on a bad wire... Are there better products on the market? I didn't see any mention of what they used. There was a cursory explaination that he tweaked the equipment to work with slower speeds, but how!?
Does anyone know of a more reliable sat connection than the directway? Maybe something that uses Low Earth satellites rather than geosyncronous... or pose the threat of burning flesh of anyone walking in front of the transmitter?
I have had a lot of luck with IPcop (ipcop.org). You can do a firewall yourself with any linux distro using iptables or the older ipchains, but ipcop is nice and easy and specifically designed for firewalls. It has a nice gui interface and works better than many commercial firewalls for the cost of a cheap box and two three nics something most offices (even non-profits) have lying around.
With something like this, you can radically improve the reliabilities of a windows network. I have often used it to reduce trauma calls by up to %80.
I like to use it plugged into the net on oneside and a NAT router on the other... double NAT is very hard to breach.
IPCOP also offers a proxy server and can be triplehomed to offer a dmz for servers you want open to the net. Quite a nice piece of software.
Panda has been for awhile. But they are usually ahead of the curve and tend to find viruses a good two weeks before Nortons or McAfee from my lab tests. I guess being Spanish they don't worry too much about US spyware lawyers.
...Other than malware/Adware starts with a team of lawyers on staff, where as virus writers don't get a lawyer until after they are busted.
And while most malware may not be self replicating, it does have viral components in that it is predatory non-living creature that lives off its host. And good malware, like a good virus goes undetected. Cheating the system of confidentiality and resources. Sending it's host to places that suit it, and exploit the host.
Does it really matter that they aren't totally self replicating like a worm... early viruses were just malicious macros using MS Office and WP as a vector to be passed around by unsuspecting knobs.
A lot of smart viruses use their host to infect others. HIV, for example isn't very good at replicating itself... it relies on humans to do most of the work. It just sits in the blood stream. Other viruses use multiple species to get passed around where some species are adversly effected and other species in the chain don't even notice it's benign precence.
Similarly, code like Roings or Gator, are a great malware/virus hybrid. They just sit around and wait to be downloaded from from blog sites like Xanga or P2P networks like Kazaa... it uses other users to actually recommend to their friends to get the infection. Now that is using relational marketing!
Why bother writing self replicating code when you can get guillable fools to do the replicating for you.
As far as spyware for linux, I suspect it is out there. My browser (mozilla) has been hijacked a few times, I haven't figured out how. Has anyone else experienced this? I am not trying to start a flame war, I know I probably have something missing or misconfigured, but how... I don't know.
Sure, Canada is low on the gun deaths, because Canadians use knives.
Thunder Bay Ontario is #1 in knifings... not bad for a pop of 100,000!
First I don't understand where you get your statistics from. They don't hold true for the white trash criminals I know of. No body on the trailer park boys owns a pitbull. The stat I am paraphrasing I read in the StarTribune when Minnesota Corrections was starting a pet therapy program for inmates.
Criminals, by nature, are lazy. They can barely take care of themselves let alone a dog. What most criminals know about dogs could be summed up in two words, they bite!
I don't see how your flame gets 1 point and my advice got zip. Mine was one of the only posts that was taking into consideration that we are making security suggestions for an elderly woman. Suggesting a big dog or a gun makes as much sense as throwing a PII and a couple of openBSD disks her way so she could have a secure box for her first computer.
I think the small territorial dog combined with a voice activated light is a good combination of natural and tech solutions. It helps her notice if someone has set off her car alarm and it also give a fairly credible appearance that someone is home and paying attention.
I have had the opportunity to teach dog sledding to inner city "at risk" youth. It doesn't matter how tough the pose, they are afraid of big dogs. I also stand by my statement that walking down statistically high crime streets with a psycho looking husky bitch will make even the toughest street thug cross the street to avoid getting bit.
But a big dog makes little sense for a little old lady that is unfamiliar with dogs. It would probably jump up to kiss her face and break her hip.
In the same spirit any slashdotter would love to have a room filled with a beouwulf cluster. I doubt the poster's mom would put up with that much hardware in her house for a minute. She wouldn't know what to do with it.
I stand by my suggestion.
And for the record wouldn't step foot in a PetSmart... who knows what strain of parvo you'd pick up from one of those filthy places.
...it came to me today when I was relaying the story in an email and I couldn't resist sharing.... Now to make teeshirts, and other memorabilia! Finally a way to recycle my warehouse full of bicentennial stuff!
Any dog will intimidate a criminal. They tend to associate a dog as an attack dog. There is a stat floating around claiming that most people who end up in prison never had a dog.
It makes sense, since dog ownership usually implies home ownership and stability... something absent from the typical criminal's childhood. On the flipside, most felons have spent more time with a gun in their hands than your mother or the average geek -- it's always best to choose to fight where you have the advantage.
As poster stated, his mom had motion sensor light and an alarm that she didn't hear... small dogs tend to make the biggest fuss over intruders, particularily small males. Combine a male chihuihui with a voice activated lite and you could easily spook a dilligent thief into believing somebody has noticed them even if no one is home.
As far as attack dogs, the unusually quiet lhasa is the most feared among meter readers because they tend to sneak up on intruders and bite them like a pirranah.
I would never have a dog that was a fighter or would bite someone... It's like having a loaded gun lying around a day care. Better just to keep them out of your house.. blood is so hard to clean out of the carpet.
I prefer a large female dog for my protection dog. Large females are territorial and tend to stay home. My dog is a black/brown husky with one blue eye.
She would not bite anyone unless they were violent, but she is scarry when she wants to be and will run bears out of the yard. When I walk her down the street, people tend to cross the street to aviod her.
I am just commenting on what was posted previously that chicago is better because it is greener and property values are higher than they were twenty years ago because I have been away from Chicago basically for twenty years and I disagree.
The point of the "credit thing" is that while home ownership is suppossedly higher, it really isn't.
Things may seem better than twenty years ago since it is hard to have perspective on such change over this time period. You are so rushed, you don't even have time to comment on it. I am in the unique position to comment on the past twenty years of change by having been absent since 1983. It's like I just stepped out of a time machine. I have a clear view as being both an outsider and an insider.
I don't know if it is a problem in every city. Places like Portland, Oregon and Provo Utah come to mind when I think of cities that are getting greener. Even Milwaukee which has grown as much if not more than Chicago over the same period of time looks and smells cleaner than it did twenty years ago.
Greener and massive growth don't coincide very easily.
Clark County Nevada is getting "greener" and that is not necessarily a good thing.
The subway is stinkier. Places like Cabrini Green are still there even though the Chicago Tribune reported their demise and most Chicagoans believed they were razed over a decade ago. Sure Chicago is great if you can afford to live on the Gold Coast. Go a few blocks west and Chicago, a Chicago just as real to a much larger portion of its population, is anything but green.
There are worse places to be for sure. But I don't seem to be inclined to buy into all of the rah rah propaganda.
The Chicago Police force is still infamous for its human rights abuses. Jon Burge will probably walk and his cronies won't ever be touched as they collect their pensions without impunity. Maybe the Daley's are just Chicago's Medici family -- a necessary evil.
As far as the cameras are concerned, unless they are truely publicly accessible they will be privatizing public space. They may stop crime but so will more effective policing: get the cops out of cars and on the street, stop petty crime and and really cleaning of the city. The reak of urine and sewage is a real health and quality of life concern.
Things might be getting better in some respects, but it still has a long way to go before I'd use the term 'greener', unless you are refering to the definition implying naivite.
Running LINUX at home is great... build a network and everything is the best way to learn. I wouldn't recommending jumping in to the hardest distro first. Go easy with RedHat, SuSE, Slackware... try a bunch if you need to.
Once you get it going, beat down the directories with the man command (i.e. man neat, man ifconfig...) and learn what all the programs do and how to use them. It's amazing how many books are just a regurgitation of the man files.
All the distros have different programs, but most are the same. Using man can really layout what nix is all about and give you a feel for the tools at hand.
And of course some C programming wouldn't hurt either...
I have been away from Chicago for the past twenty years only to return for the summer, and no it isn't any greener. It is stinkier and bigger than ever.
...Anonimity in public will no longer be an option since public space will be taken over by private overlords!
The green spaces have been eaten up. The farm I grew up on a half hour out of town is now a housing project surrounded by housing projects.
The trees look diseased today compared to the photos I took as a child and the city spills out so far into what was once quiet country it is astounding. Even more astounding is that it is filled with morons who will spend a big chunk of their waking hours in stinky big SUV's in an endless sea of traffic.
Any gain achieved in offshoring all the stinky factories to low regulation china seems to be offset by all these overstuffed single passenger ATV's that ceaselessly creep along the pavement day and night.
Seems like the beaches are plagued with closings due to contamination more than they were twenty years ago ( I don't remember one once)... and I really wonder how a beach can be dangerously contaminated one day and less than twenty four hours later be declared conveniently safe for the weekend. I know I am not touchin that filthy polio filled sewage they call "Lake Michigan".
probably the most amazing thing is that the notorious Officer Jon Burge is finally on the stand for the abuse he has been committing ever since he came back from the viet nam. He probably just pissed off the wrong person after shaming the city with the constant amnesty international condemnations the Daley's finally had to give him up to maintain the rest of their abuses.
Sure property values are up, but so is lending in these low interest days.
Thing is most of these people with their "valuable" properties are up to their eyeballs in debt with their home mortgage tied into their credit cards. I imagine most folks are just a few paychecks away from bankruptcy. They don't own their homes at all, the banks do.
For all of the "security measures" I have noticed to be added since I left 20 years ago, they don't seem too effective. Most of the federal buildings that have been fortified still have major chinks in their armor wide open for a truck bomb to drive thru. The subways are patrolled by fat poorly trained german shepards with muzzles, which indicates they are more than likely loose cannon attack dogs made to look like explosives dogs, but really just look like pets with ADD the way they pay little attention to their handlers. It's typical chicago window dressing.
Along with the Cameras in Chicago, the Governor wants new legislation on the tollways (the same tollways that were legislated to become freeways once they paid for themselves over twenty years ago)to double the tolls for people who don't use the government tracking devices called "I-Pass"..
Guess the saying is true, the more things change... the more they stay the same
Since the cameras will not be publicly accessible they will in effect be privatizing public space.
In many ways, the cameras are probably a good Idea. Chicago is populated with violent subliterate people who have little concern for the law.
Mobsters like Capone are still idolized here.
Unfortunatly these are the same punch drunk morons that "enforce" the laws so in the end sum, they will probably be more offensive than defensive to the citizens. Cops will use the cameras to prey on the weak just like they use their badges, billy clubs and cattle prods today.
You're right, it does ask to install, but most people go with defaults.... there is some popups that seem to come in through AIM that require stuff like Dead AIM to stop them since they are activated by launching AIM.
I generally don't use the products. Mostly just GAIM on Linux. Lately I've been stuck running XP and I haven't bothered to figure out how to remove Outlook or Messenger. Just pulled Messnger off the start button so it doesn't launch everytime I use that menu.
I am mostly just amazed at the amount of crud that goo's up normal users boxes. It's boggling to me and I know how to fix it and avoid it... for the average person it must be demoralizing.
no wonder nobody's becoming computer scientists anymore... too many darn pop ups!
This exploit seems minor compared to the spyware installed by default with AIM. How can AOL say they protect you against viruses and then install Gator et al by default on your box?!
I am pretty sure the animated pop up warning about spy ware on your computer, the one with the animation of bugs fornicating, is installed via AIM as well. How can AOL call themselves a family company?
Saying there is a security hole in AIM is like saying there is a type of virus that attacks people with AIDS. No duh. AIM is a major vector of problems and probably should be classified as a virus.
Thank you for your time. I'll stop ranting now before I even get into that annoying infection called Messenger.
Sorry, but the lawsuits against LA Confidential are being thrown out of court.
Not that that proves anything either, but if you actually read the link, there is an exerpt from the book that details Lance's not passing a UCI drug test until the lawyers stepped in.
Cyclists don't test positive mostly because they do their steroids in the off season and they know how to cheat, or they have lawyers who do. Lance's long term relationship with Ferrari shows he has the ways and means to cheat.
And yes you can beat the EPO test with an IV. Here is an exerpt from a website appropriately called:
http://www.how-to-pass-a-drug-test.net/2004/drug-d etection-time-urine.htm
since you don't like to check out links, here is the meat of it:
Another team, Kelme of Spain, already has been prohibited from this year's Tour because of the charges leveled by Manzano, one of its former riders. In a five-part series in the Spanish newspaper AS (for which he was paid), Manzano described how team doctors pressured him to take banned drugs; how he collapsed and nearly died during last year's Tour after taking an unknown substance; and how it's like "an open bar" for cyclists to receive growth hormones and EPO.
Kelme officials and the Spanish cycling federation have denied Manzano's claims, much as Cofidis officials have with Gaumont's accusations.
Manzano even detailed how riders evade detection on the blood test that measures hematocrit levels, the proportion of blood consisting of red blood cells. When testing officials show up, Manzano said, team doctors first send down riders with low levels. That gives the other riders time to dilute their blood -- with blood plasma or saline solution, for example -- and lower their hematocrit level.
These blood tests are more common than the EPO test (which requires a urine sample) because they cost less. They can indicate high suspicion, though not absolute proof, of doping.
Most talk of drug use in cycling centers on EPO, because of the way it helps on those taxing rides up the mountain. EPO is a hormone produced naturally by the kidneys, but its recombinant form can increase the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells and therefore boost endurance.
Still, even the EPO test has loopholes: It can reach back and detect the drug for only three or four days, according to Olivier Rabin, science director at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). But an athlete could reap benefits for as long as two weeks, Rabin and other experts said.
There is thus a lengthy period when users enjoy athletic advantage without risking detection. Rabin suspects some cyclists take a high dose of EPO and stop at least three days before the race begins, a strategy mirrored in other sports and a prime illustration of how the cheaters stay one step ahead of the testers.
Cycling union officials acknowledged the need to increase unannounced tests in the weeks preceding a major race. Most testing now occurs during the events; at the Tour de France, for instance, the stage winner, three leaders and three or four randomly chosen riders are tested each day.
Doping experts such as University of Texas professor John Hoberman still criticize the cycling union for being more interested in public relations than the athletes' health.
sorry I am not as much of a Lance fan as you apparantly are and I am not as sure as you are that the French courts received all of his records. There is just too much money involved and the people involved are professional cheaters who are cheating an institution that condones cheating. If it hadn't been for that little mishap with the customs agents, no one would be aware of the level of doping that goes on in races like the tour. Even a cynic like myself was shocked to learn they were shooting heroin, coke a and steroids!
That said, I think the doping part is cool. Those guys are insanely dedicated to what they do. I hate getting shots at the the doctors. Injecting myself with greasy
Taping them down with clear packing tape works great and as far as I know is legal. Time trialist have been doing this since the seventies.. just like eliptical chainrings, it will come back, again..
With his close relationship with Doctor Ferrari Lance certainly does rely on some serious biotech. Considering that the main drug of choice for cyclists (EPO) still has no reliable test that can't be beat by a quick I.V. to water down the blood supply.
As a close follower of cycling, I have always doubted his cancer story and just assumed he made it up to cover his tracks and maybe make some publicity for one of his suppliers. Cindy Oliverri claimed to have mono when she actually tested positive for steroids before the 1984 olympics. The Olympic comittee went along with the lie until she broke the story out of guilt and not wanting other kids to be pressured like she was.
I had similar surgery to Lance (had my left testicle removed)and there was no way I was getting back on a bike for over 9 months. It was more like a year and I didn't have all the cancer he claimed!!!Amgen (the makers of EPO) make a variety of Cancer drugs and the LA story is just too good of a PR pitch.
People with cancer that bad die. They don't win the Tour de France. Lance would have been a hero if he were able to ride after such a severe disease.Instead he went from being a sprinter who was a middle of the road time trialist and basically poor climber into a virtuoso. I don't buy it for a minute.
It's just a good PR wash. There are no cyclists at that level that do not use drugs and they are dying like flies.
Check out the book LA Confidential:
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/6295.0.html
it has evidence of his testing positive. The basic reality is that sports federations cannot handle either the bad PR of a positive test, nor the costs of defending one in court. Atheletes, particularily American Atheletes funded by American drug companies have pockets that run too deep. The federations play along with the dope testing game and look the other way and send flowers to the funerals.
"When it comes to bikes, they all make the same sound when they hit the ground."
-- Dan Bockenstedt
I have a border collie and he is smarter than most people.I can tell him to do things and he figures it out and does it. I tell him once in plain english and a bit of hand gestures and he figures it out.
I have trained him to herd cats. -- he chases the neighbor's cat only when it starts to hang out at the bird feeder.
I have huskies and he works with them. Quite the kick ass lead dog. (his mother is a husky so he is an F1 hybrid vigor).
In the dog yard, if a fight breaks out I tell him to get the dog causing the trouble and he does... he'll run down and grab the perpetrator by the back of the neck and pull him over to me.
He'll go anywhere with me without a leash and he stays away from strangers. When I go in to a shop, he'll lie down outside and wait by the door.
He wakes me up to put wood in the fire when it burns down too much.
He gets me up if I am late for work, but won't bother me on Sunday morning.
He also has woken me up to see cool phenomenon like the Northern Lights and the Space Shuttle/Space Station. When I go to a fastfood restaurant w/him I get him a burger. When we drive by a McD's, he points to it even if we have never been to that particular franchise.I don't think he likes BK or Wendy's, cause he doesn't point his nose at them even the ones we have been to
When I have a difficult programming question, I hang out with him and his psychic abilities help me solve it.
He doesn't really care about toys and he hates my Jar Jar doll.
There is a story (I think it is athabaskan) about when the humans were divided from the animals the dog jumped across the divide to help us. I think that is just about right.
Right on!!! AKC appropriation of standards are similar to M$'s tactics with open standards and create an inferior a product.
When the border collie was being picked up by the AKC, border collie people sued to be kept out of their crappy breeding program.
More examples on their "standards" include the cute curley tails deemed standard for siberians and huskies. In a working sled dog, a tail that curls over like that indicates a scrunchy backend that can't move properly and any pup carrying that characteristic is culled.
When Jamie Nelson tried to run a team of AKC Malamutes in the Iditarod she had access to the best the AKC offered and she said they had all of their working characteristics bred out of them and was hard presed to put together a team up for the challenge.
AKC is all about owner vanity at the cost of dogs.
all you have to do is copy the directory or file to another device using admin rights, which the repair guy would need to repair the system, and the encryption is decrypted and the files are readable.
M$ security is no security, again.
Yes, in many ways the invisible act cuts down on your potential mates... but it culls out the shallow end of the gene pool too.
In this example of being a mugger, we are trying to supress the instances of attracting muggers... probably something to Small Mammel Attack Response (SMAR)where predators are triggered by visual clues that indicate a weak and potential target.
Muggers biologically are probably similar to coyotes, the urban wolf, for the human herd. At some level, they weed out the sick and weak keeping the herd healthy.
The Wolf is invisible too. Yet they use that invisibility to their advantage in order to carefully analyze their options and pick out what they want.
So maybe being invisible will keep you from getting hit on, the up side is it will give you an opportunity to be more selective in where you will invest your recreative energies: i.e. smart mates, not bar flies...
For me, there is an advantage to breeding to good stock with in a solid structured relationship. The energies to raise one decent offspring is considerable and not something I want to dabble in lightly.
Humans who breed like flowers gathering whatever seed the wind brings in end up with more genetic variety but tend to lack the stength of a solid household offer.
Wolves, like people tend to have better breeding. Part of this is because the act of initating coupling can quickly result in death either from the bitch or her current mate. Because of this, they are fairly monogamous and have two parents raising the litter.
He mentions this a few places in his fiction. Where he really lays it out is in his book of essays The Adding Machine in an essay I believe entitled L'hombre invisible. My books are in storage right now, but that whole book is like a key to unlock the rest of his novels and to understand his writing methods and vision.
William S. Burroughs wrote about the way he survived the streets of Tangiers was to become invisible using a trick he learned from a Toledo mobster. I have been practicing this trick for twenty years and it works.
The way to do it is walk slow and make sure you see everyone before they see you. By doing this, you trigger a reflex in others to not see you. I can walk past anyone this way, even people I know who are looking for me. It's wierd how effective it is.
Also, with laptops, the bios is a good way to protect your stuff.
Most laptops bios p/w need to be factory reset. The best one being the IBM's that send a token from the bios to the hard drive. Even if the factory resets the motherboard p/w without getting ahold of you, because the thief is sophisticated enough to replace the chip (unlikely), the hard drive data is still encrypted and un-retrievable.
Finally, guns are for wimps.
If you pull a gun on someone you shouldn't be ready to use it, you use it!
BANG!
End of story... make it a clean kill.
If any moron pulled a gun on me, I'd kill 'em with it.
Like prophet said -- "learn to fight without the corruption of weapons."
They never factor in the economic benefit of a virus. That blaster totally filled in the bottom line for an otherwise crummy quarter last summer for our little shop. Can't imagine what a boost it was for the big players like the big box computer stores. That virus came at a time the computer retail industry was hurting. It was easy to fix and (l)users couldn't ignore it so they happily paid an hour benchtime for ten minutes work. It almost seemed like blaster was designed to boost the economy. I know it's cynical, but it certainly was a factor in getting our shop close to profitability until our boss wasted a bunch of money on dumb stuff. C'est la vie.