That status page is a few months old. Anyone know if what the mentioned there (that the PATA patch in libata-dev) has made it into the mainline kernel?
Based solely on my individual accounts, of which there are several that get spammed hard, I'd say the phishers have simply moved on from Bank of America to Washington Mutual.
As a point of reference, our class wardrive found 1656 infrastructure networks (according to Kismet), and we didn't even cover a quarter of the city.
Not to mention that Spokane was a downtown-wide hotzone?
Don't forget that Spokane was just ranked in the top ten Intelligent Communities in of the World, including the highest-ranking city in the United States. (We came in at number eight in the world this year, second place (and still tops in the US) last year IIRC).
Spokane, being the largest city between Seattle and Detroit (or something like that), hardly qualifies as being "in the wildernewss"
Of course, the UW project was for a Communications Class. Our Information Warfare class was, of course, a Computer Science class.
Even with the customized Knoppix CD I built for the wardrive, we still had problems with getting the wardrive equipment working properly. NetStumbler in a Windows environment is, of course, going to much more familiar to Communications students than Kismet (a CLI tool) on Linux.
Still a neat project. I'd like to know a bit more about how they stitched the data together and where they got their source maps.
Not to mention that wardriving with GPS will not give you the exact location of an AP, just a radius of where it might be based on the signal strength (for each data point). The more packets you receive, and especially if you do a grid-wise traversal over the target area, you can start to define a smaller and smaller area for the AP. But you'll never identify it exactly short of physically sighting it or its antenna.
I was reading over their project info, because my Information Warfare class last quarter did something similar for Spokane, WA, but didn't actually plot out any maps (we were mostly looking for corporate vs. personal networks, secured vs. non-secured, % in default configuration, etc).
Anyway, I'm surprised that they used NetStumbler on Windows XP for their network detection. Our class used Kismet on Linux.
Netstumbler is a completely active tool. As I recall, sends out association packets and listens for APs that respond (or something along those lines).
Kismet on the other hand is complete passive...it puts the wireless interface into RFmon mode (as opposed to promiscuous mode) and simply records all 802.11 frames that come across the air, allowing you to, among other things, sniff arbitrary packet and detect networks that are not broadcasting beacon frames.
I did a simple wardrive a few months ago: Kismet on my laptop, Netstumbler on my friend's laptop. Kismet found around 3x or 4x as many networks. So I'm surprised that UW used NetStumbler and not Kismet...
That said, I'm still downloading their maps on my Azureus box right now. I might recommend to my CyberSecurity prof that he should get a group of grad students in one of his classes to do something similar for our area.
Don't forget, though, that channels 12-14 are illegal under FCC regulations in the US.
That said, my Netgear WAP/router asked me what country I was in when I first set it up. If I had been dishonest, I could have chosen a country where 12-14 are available, and used those instead (but I'm the strongest WiFi signal near my house, so it's not an issue).
And then I've got some Lucent WaveLAN Orinoco cards that I've hacked to support all 14 channels, so I can use those cards as well (most other domestic cards/drivers are smart enough to restrict themselves to ch. 1-11, at least under Window in my experience).
I went on a wardrive once with those cards, but to my dismay I didn't find any extra access points operating outside the legal range.
Uh, that's VxWorks by Wind River. (My DSL modem runs it, and I've got a buddy who works on embedded systems with that OS--I hear a lot of complaints about it from him, but that's another story.)
And as I recall, the problem with the rover(s? -- I don't remember if both rovers had this issue or just one) was that there was a scheduling conflict where a high priority task spawned a low priority task that blocked waiting for some event, and subsequently prevented a higher priority task from starting (that might have been a task related to filesystem stuff on the flash memory, now that I think about it).
I'm trying to find a link now. This link says the problem was with removing files in the DOS (do they mean VFAT?) filesystem in Spirit's 256MB flash memory (no mention of the same problem with Opportunity). Nothing about a priority problem. Huh. Where did I hear that?
The same company that provides the craptastic Internet service in my university's dorms (where I spent an ungodly 4 years), where service was frequently unusable the first week or two of every quarter, where improved bandwidth was perpetually around the corner, where nobody knew what was going on, where the network administration and university housing routinely denied any problems, even when it was obvious to the students that something was wrong? (As a side note, the Internet access would occasionally go out on my floor in my wing of the dorm I was living in last year. To fix it, I went into the janitor's closet, which doubled as the wiring closet for network, telephone, and cable, and unplugged the router and plugged it back in (hard reset). Wait for equipment for reboot, and voila, service restored. Sad. The equipment was housed in a nice locked cabinet, but two power cords exited the cabinet and plugged into the sole outlet in the closet. Ugh.)
The same company that provides the cable modem service for the town I live in (in partnership with the local cable company), complete with high prices, low service, intermittent outages, blocked ports, and other inane policies? (I ended up choosing DSL, even though it's a tad more expensive, it's a hell of a lot more reliable than the crap service all my cable modem-using friends get.)
I expect this project to crash an burn (literally), especially if the local network admins are in charge...
CyberDave
(For those who care, I'm speaking of Eastern Washington University and Cheney, WA.)
VPNet, Spokane, WA: The Virtual Possibilities Network.
Built from dark fiber once owned by Avista Utilities before they spun off the telecom stuff and, specifically, the fiber to Columbia Fiber Solutions. (Also includes a couple of leased OC-3 lines.) Been in planning for a couple of years and back in September had the ceremonial launch and press event. It's all gigabit networking between the core routers in each node (except for the aforementioned OC-3 lines). Connects all the major educational institutions in the area as well as several research and commercial firms. As of right now, all the fiber is lit and the core routers are connected. Some sites (like the one I work at) are still waiting for network drops to be made from the router to the computer labs (red tape...). Should have an Internet2 connection as soon as another project (something Gigapop, my memory's a bit fuzzy on that) is completed in the next year or so.
Whoops, my post incorrectly cited the parent post. The parent stated that HFS+ is case-sensitive, I was intending to correct that notion and mis-typed.
The default filesystem of Mac OS X, HFS+ (Mac OS Extended format), is case-insensitive but case-preserving. Although it preserves the case of files written to it, it does not recognize the difference between uppercase and lowercase....Note that while most UNIX-based operating systems are case-sensitive, Windows is case-insensitive (and not case-preserving) so this is a general guideline for any cross-platform Java development.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why insiders are typically much more dangerous to your systems than outsiders. I can't find the numbers right now, but I want to say that about 60% of "hacking" attempts came from the inside (as of a year or so ago, if I remember by cybersecurity classes correctly.)
Using a LiveCD or other read-only medium with KNOWN GOOD utilities, as you put it, works well if you've been hacked by a rootkit that replaces ps, ls, top, etc. with hacked versions to hide its tracks. (The idea is that your known-good versions will show the rootkit's files and processes even if your system binaries have been compromised.)
That doesn't really work if you've been hit by a kernel-based rootkit like Adore which hides everything at the kernel level, thus negating the need to replace your system binaries with hacked versions.
However, I don't know of any kernel-level rootkits that still work with the latest versions of the Linux kernel. Does anyone else? (Besides, turning off loadable kernel module support in your kernel and compile in just the drivers you need on your production servers is a good way to negate this problem anyway.)
It's possibly copyright infringement, but that is a civil matter.
Nope. All documents produced by the U.S. Government are public domain (not copyrighted).
CyberDave
Re:Great - there goes free unlimited in network ca
on
VOIP Meets Cell Phones
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I have "unlimited" night and weekend minutes and "unlimited" mobile to mobile minutes on my Cingular plan. When I looked at my usage online a few months ago, it turns out that I indeed did not have truly unlimited airtime: I had 99999 N/W and 99999 M2M minutes each month. Of course, this is more than twice the number of actual minutes in any given month, so there was no way I would ever exceed those minutes, so they were in fact unlimited to me. Now that I've added my brother and sister as additional lines on my plan and we draw from the same minute pool, it would be possible for us to exhaust all those minutes, but we would each have to spend 16 hours a day on the phone. Not gonna happen. That, and it was probably easier to program the billing system with a very high threshold for "unlimited" plans and not worry about it rather than programming truly unlimited minutes.
Yes. Did you even finish reading the Slashdot summary? The link to last week's story was "Verizon Seeks To Nix Fee-Based Municipal Wireless Grids". Does that answer your question?
Re:Testing, Dog Food and Open Source
on
Joel On Software
·
· Score: 1
I'd mod you up if I could, but I don't have mod points.
Your third paragraph is something I've been thinking for many years, but have found somewhat difficult to convey because the people I'm talking to inevitably think I'm attacking them, their ego, their competence as programmers, or something like that.
Developers (programmers, code hackers, whatever you want to call them) invariably will produce a piece of software that works great for them, but sucks major ass when you stick it in front of someone else.
I might not have a problem stringing together 4 or 5 different command line utilities just to print a text file, but my mom and dad couldn't figure that out if their life depended on them and would much rather see a shiny button labeled "Print" in the word processor's window.
The thing that bugs me, though, is that nobody seems to listen (when I say it, when Joel says it, when the customer says it--well, maybe that last one since they pay the bills), and we end up with shitty software program after shitty software program (from a user interface standpoint, anyway).
*sigh* enough ranting
CyberDave
Re:Still can't see how Sun will survive
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There are so many posts here to reply to that it's hard to choose which one. This one will do. I agree with everything you just said. Here's my proactive post against those who will be quick to try to wave away or dismiss your points.
The one thing people seem to forget (or just plain don't know) everywhere I go, whether it's in my graduate Computer Science courses, on Slashdot, talking with geek friends, or whatever, is that tinkering with Linux in your parent's basement on equipment ranging from your 486 with 16MB of RAM as your broadband firewall to the latest 3.6 GHz P4 from Intel is drastically different from maintaining enterprise-level systems and equipment.
There's a world of difference between the two and until you work in both areas, you don't realize how different their needs and requirements actually are. The difference between 3-nines uptime using clustered x86 consumer hardware and 5-nines uptime with enterprise hardware is often worth many multiples of the cost difference between those two solutions.
And paying a Linux or BSD geek (as someone else mentioned) to maintain the system is not the same as buying support from the vendor. Your average Linux or BSD geek does not have access to the vendor's own data on the system, which can be invaluable when something really bizarre happens. (Of course, if the service is outsourced from the vendor to a third-party, like with Dell, you'll end up with the same thing as hiring said geek yourself.)
Or, at least that's been my observation as I pursue my MS degree in Computer Science.
Apple's main font is currently Myriad. When I worked in the campus bookstore, I would occasionally use it in the signage I created as an homage to my favorite computer company.
I just bought MS Streets & Trips 2005 with GPS from Amazon.com this morning. $85 after rebate (+tax) with the explicit intention of using it with Kismet on my laptop. Now I know exactly what to do to make it work. (Too bad your link doesn't say what kernel version it applies to.)
At that price, I figured i would be better off to just buy the whole receiver plus mapping software (even if I have to boot Windows to use it) than spend $65-75 for a simple UBS pod GPS receiver on eBay (which I already did before finding S&T at Amazon. oh, well).
Now I just have to wait for the damn thing to arrive (and hope I can get over the feelings of guilt I have for buying genuine MS Software:)
Patents are public domain documents. They're open and accessible to just about every one. The only useful thing they do is grant the patentee the exclusive right to manufacture/use/license/etc. the patented method/process/item/etc for 20 years. After the patent expires, anyone can use it.
So, in the 100MPG automobile scenario, if the auto companies bought the patent and just sat on it, then after 20 years, it would essentially be worthless as anyone could then go make the 100MPG car and the big auto companies would be out of business.
On the other hand, if they bought the design outright, before it was patented, then they can sit on it as a trade secret for however long they like and keep the man down.
(Apologies for the simplistic overview of things, since I'm at work and can't really look up the finer details, but that's pretty much how it works.)
If my memory is correct, Kerry and I both got an "CAUTION: AT&T Network In Progress" sign from our buddy Rich. It was a pretty poor quality JPEG and at some point I recreated it in Illustrator and printed out a few copies for my neighbors. I think I've still got the.AI file around here somewhere on one of my backup images, but I don't have the inclination at this point to dig it up as evidence to support my claim.
Rest assured, though, that the VB situation you described is applicable only to the IT guys (I'm not even sure we have an "IT" program. We have MIS, CIS, CS, etc, but nothing that's actually officially called "IT").
In the Computer Science Department (where I am now a grad student, having gotten my BS degree here last fall), students are taught Java as the base language for the programming classes.
After that, we offer electives in C++, C, Ptyhon, and a handful of other languages.
We also have quite a few Linux fans on the staff in the CS Dept., a dedicated Linux lab (rather small at the moment) so Linux users should feel right at home. Not too many Mac OS X people, though (I'm the only Mac fan I know at the moment, though there are a couple users here and there).
I'm really looking foward to the completion of the new building in the spring. I got a chance to tour it last week. It's a great building and should further fuel the growth of the University.
As they like to say in the promotional materials around here, "It's a great time to be an Eagle!"
Slashdot Mirror
Fixed link: http://linux.yyz.us/sata/sata-status.html#tx2.
That status page is a few months old. Anyone know if what the mentioned there (that the PATA patch in libata-dev) has made it into the mainline kernel?
Based solely on my individual accounts, of which there are several that get spammed hard, I'd say the phishers have simply moved on from Bank of America to Washington Mutual.
As a point of reference, our class wardrive found 1656 infrastructure networks (according to Kismet), and we didn't even cover a quarter of the city.
Not to mention that Spokane was a downtown-wide hotzone?
Don't forget that Spokane was just ranked in the top ten Intelligent Communities in of the World, including the highest-ranking city in the United States. (We came in at number eight in the world this year, second place (and still tops in the US) last year IIRC).
Spokane, being the largest city between Seattle and Detroit (or something like that), hardly qualifies as being "in the wildernewss"
Replying to my own post...
Of course, the UW project was for a Communications Class. Our Information Warfare class was, of course, a Computer Science class.
Even with the customized Knoppix CD I built for the wardrive, we still had problems with getting the wardrive equipment working properly. NetStumbler in a Windows environment is, of course, going to much more familiar to Communications students than Kismet (a CLI tool) on Linux.
Still a neat project. I'd like to know a bit more about how they stitched the data together and where they got their source maps.
Not to mention that wardriving with GPS will not give you the exact location of an AP, just a radius of where it might be based on the signal strength (for each data point). The more packets you receive, and especially if you do a grid-wise traversal over the target area, you can start to define a smaller and smaller area for the AP. But you'll never identify it exactly short of physically sighting it or its antenna.
I was reading over their project info, because my Information Warfare class last quarter did something similar for Spokane, WA, but didn't actually plot out any maps (we were mostly looking for corporate vs. personal networks, secured vs. non-secured, % in default configuration, etc).
Anyway, I'm surprised that they used NetStumbler on Windows XP for their network detection. Our class used Kismet on Linux.
Netstumbler is a completely active tool. As I recall, sends out association packets and listens for APs that respond (or something along those lines).
Kismet on the other hand is complete passive...it puts the wireless interface into RFmon mode (as opposed to promiscuous mode) and simply records all 802.11 frames that come across the air, allowing you to, among other things, sniff arbitrary packet and detect networks that are not broadcasting beacon frames.
I did a simple wardrive a few months ago: Kismet on my laptop, Netstumbler on my friend's laptop. Kismet found around 3x or 4x as many networks. So I'm surprised that UW used NetStumbler and not Kismet...
That said, I'm still downloading their maps on my Azureus box right now. I might recommend to my CyberSecurity prof that he should get a group of grad students in one of his classes to do something similar for our area.
WiFi = IEEE 802.11 family of standards (802.11, 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, etc.)
WiMax = IEEE 802.16 standard
They're not really the same thing.
</anal retentive>
Hehe...I was about to suggest this myself.
Don't forget, though, that channels 12-14 are illegal under FCC regulations in the US.
That said, my Netgear WAP/router asked me what country I was in when I first set it up. If I had been dishonest, I could have chosen a country where 12-14 are available, and used those instead (but I'm the strongest WiFi signal near my house, so it's not an issue).
And then I've got some Lucent WaveLAN Orinoco cards that I've hacked to support all 14 channels, so I can use those cards as well (most other domestic cards/drivers are smart enough to restrict themselves to ch. 1-11, at least under Window in my experience).
I went on a wardrive once with those cards, but to my dismay I didn't find any extra access points operating outside the legal range.
CyberDave
Uh, that's VxWorks by Wind River. (My DSL modem runs it, and I've got a buddy who works on embedded systems with that OS--I hear a lot of complaints about it from him, but that's another story.)
And as I recall, the problem with the rover(s? -- I don't remember if both rovers had this issue or just one) was that there was a scheduling conflict where a high priority task spawned a low priority task that blocked waiting for some event, and subsequently prevented a higher priority task from starting (that might have been a task related to filesystem stuff on the flash memory, now that I think about it).
I'm trying to find a link now. This link says the problem was with removing files in the DOS (do they mean VFAT?) filesystem in Spirit's 256MB flash memory (no mention of the same problem with Opportunity). Nothing about a priority problem. Huh. Where did I hear that?
Sanswire networks? Oh, fuck.
The same company that provides the craptastic Internet service in my university's dorms (where I spent an ungodly 4 years), where service was frequently unusable the first week or two of every quarter, where improved bandwidth was perpetually around the corner, where nobody knew what was going on, where the network administration and university housing routinely denied any problems, even when it was obvious to the students that something was wrong? (As a side note, the Internet access would occasionally go out on my floor in my wing of the dorm I was living in last year. To fix it, I went into the janitor's closet, which doubled as the wiring closet for network, telephone, and cable, and unplugged the router and plugged it back in (hard reset). Wait for equipment for reboot, and voila, service restored. Sad. The equipment was housed in a nice locked cabinet, but two power cords exited the cabinet and plugged into the sole outlet in the closet. Ugh.)
The same company that provides the cable modem service for the town I live in (in partnership with the local cable company), complete with high prices, low service, intermittent outages, blocked ports, and other inane policies? (I ended up choosing DSL, even though it's a tad more expensive, it's a hell of a lot more reliable than the crap service all my cable modem-using friends get.)
I expect this project to crash an burn (literally), especially if the local network admins are in charge...
CyberDave
(For those who care, I'm speaking of Eastern Washington University and Cheney, WA.)
BTW, if any of you can't figure that out, that list of links is the list of current members of the VPnet project.
Shameless plug, if anyone cares: I'm a grad student in Computer Science at Eastern Washington University, where, among other things, I work on the Inland Northwest Collaborative E-Learning Project (INCEP).
CyberDave
Built from dark fiber once owned by Avista Utilities before they spun off the telecom stuff and, specifically, the fiber to Columbia Fiber Solutions. (Also includes a couple of leased OC-3 lines.) Been in planning for a couple of years and back in September had the ceremonial launch and press event. It's all gigabit networking between the core routers in each node (except for the aforementioned OC-3 lines). Connects all the major educational institutions in the area as well as several research and commercial firms. As of right now, all the fiber is lit and the core routers are connected. Some sites (like the one I work at) are still waiting for network drops to be made from the router to the computer labs (red tape...). Should have an Internet2 connection as soon as another project (something Gigapop, my memory's a bit fuzzy on that) is completed in the next year or so.
Eastern Washington University, Cheney
Eastern Washington University, Spokane at Riverpoint
Gonzaga University
Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS)
Intercollegiate College of Nursing, WSU College of Nursing
North Idaho College
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
Community Colleges of Spokane (Spokane Community College)
Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute (SIRTI)
Spokane Public Schools
University of Idaho
University of Idaho, Research Park, Post Falls
Washington State University, Pullman
Washington State University, Spokane
Whitworth College
Website: http://www.vpnet.org (a little bland at the moment, but still good info).
Whoops, my post incorrectly cited the parent post. The parent stated that HFS+ is case-sensitive, I was intending to correct that notion and mis-typed.
Sorry.
CyberDave
Your assertion that HFS+ is case-insentive is wrong. From http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Java/Conc eptual/Java141Development/Overview/chapter_2_secti on_5.html:
The default filesystem of Mac OS X, HFS+ (Mac OS Extended format), is case-insensitive but case-preserving. Although it preserves the case of files written to it, it does not recognize the difference between uppercase and lowercase....Note that while most UNIX-based operating systems are case-sensitive, Windows is case-insensitive (and not case-preserving) so this is a general guideline for any cross-platform Java development.
CyberDave
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why insiders are typically much more dangerous to your systems than outsiders. I can't find the numbers right now, but I want to say that about 60% of "hacking" attempts came from the inside (as of a year or so ago, if I remember by cybersecurity classes correctly.)
CyberDave
Using a LiveCD or other read-only medium with KNOWN GOOD utilities, as you put it, works well if you've been hacked by a rootkit that replaces ps, ls, top, etc. with hacked versions to hide its tracks. (The idea is that your known-good versions will show the rootkit's files and processes even if your system binaries have been compromised.)
That doesn't really work if you've been hit by a kernel-based rootkit like Adore which hides everything at the kernel level, thus negating the need to replace your system binaries with hacked versions.
However, I don't know of any kernel-level rootkits that still work with the latest versions of the Linux kernel. Does anyone else? (Besides, turning off loadable kernel module support in your kernel and compile in just the drivers you need on your production servers is a good way to negate this problem anyway.)
CyberDave
It's possibly copyright infringement, but that is a civil matter.
Nope. All documents produced by the U.S. Government are public domain (not copyrighted).
CyberDave
I have "unlimited" night and weekend minutes and "unlimited" mobile to mobile minutes on my Cingular plan. When I looked at my usage online a few months ago, it turns out that I indeed did not have truly unlimited airtime: I had 99999 N/W and 99999 M2M minutes each month. Of course, this is more than twice the number of actual minutes in any given month, so there was no way I would ever exceed those minutes, so they were in fact unlimited to me. Now that I've added my brother and sister as additional lines on my plan and we draw from the same minute pool, it would be possible for us to exhaust all those minutes, but we would each have to spend 16 hours a day on the phone. Not gonna happen. That, and it was probably easier to program the billing system with a very high threshold for "unlimited" plans and not worry about it rather than programming truly unlimited minutes.
CyberDave
Yes. Did you even finish reading the Slashdot summary? The link to last week's story was "Verizon Seeks To Nix Fee-Based Municipal Wireless Grids". Does that answer your question?
3 32209&tid=193
Link for the mentally challenged: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/23/2
I'd mod you up if I could, but I don't have mod points.
Your third paragraph is something I've been thinking for many years, but have found somewhat difficult to convey because the people I'm talking to inevitably think I'm attacking them, their ego, their competence as programmers, or something like that.
Developers (programmers, code hackers, whatever you want to call them) invariably will produce a piece of software that works great for them, but sucks major ass when you stick it in front of someone else.
I might not have a problem stringing together 4 or 5 different command line utilities just to print a text file, but my mom and dad couldn't figure that out if their life depended on them and would much rather see a shiny button labeled "Print" in the word processor's window.
The thing that bugs me, though, is that nobody seems to listen (when I say it, when Joel says it, when the customer says it--well, maybe that last one since they pay the bills), and we end up with shitty software program after shitty software program (from a user interface standpoint, anyway).
*sigh* enough ranting
CyberDave
There are so many posts here to reply to that it's hard to choose which one. This one will do. I agree with everything you just said. Here's my proactive post against those who will be quick to try to wave away or dismiss your points.
The one thing people seem to forget (or just plain don't know) everywhere I go, whether it's in my graduate Computer Science courses, on Slashdot, talking with geek friends, or whatever, is that tinkering with Linux in your parent's basement on equipment ranging from your 486 with 16MB of RAM as your broadband firewall to the latest 3.6 GHz P4 from Intel is drastically different from maintaining enterprise-level systems and equipment.
There's a world of difference between the two and until you work in both areas, you don't realize how different their needs and requirements actually are. The difference between 3-nines uptime using clustered x86 consumer hardware and 5-nines uptime with enterprise hardware is often worth many multiples of the cost difference between those two solutions.
And paying a Linux or BSD geek (as someone else mentioned) to maintain the system is not the same as buying support from the vendor. Your average Linux or BSD geek does not have access to the vendor's own data on the system, which can be invaluable when something really bizarre happens. (Of course, if the service is outsourced from the vendor to a third-party, like with Dell, you'll end up with the same thing as hiring said geek yourself.)
Or, at least that's been my observation as I pursue my MS degree in Computer Science.
Apple's main font is currently Myriad. When I worked in the campus bookstore, I would occasionally use it in the signage I created as an homage to my favorite computer company.
You, my friend, just made my day.
:)
I just bought MS Streets & Trips 2005 with GPS from Amazon.com this morning. $85 after rebate (+tax) with the explicit intention of using it with Kismet on my laptop. Now I know exactly what to do to make it work. (Too bad your link doesn't say what kernel version it applies to.)
At that price, I figured i would be better off to just buy the whole receiver plus mapping software (even if I have to boot Windows to use it) than spend $65-75 for a simple UBS pod GPS receiver on eBay (which I already did before finding S&T at Amazon. oh, well).
Now I just have to wait for the damn thing to arrive (and hope I can get over the feelings of guilt I have for buying genuine MS Software
CyberDave
Patents are public domain documents. They're open and accessible to just about every one. The only useful thing they do is grant the patentee the exclusive right to manufacture/use/license/etc. the patented method/process/item/etc for 20 years. After the patent expires, anyone can use it.
So, in the 100MPG automobile scenario, if the auto companies bought the patent and just sat on it, then after 20 years, it would essentially be worthless as anyone could then go make the 100MPG car and the big auto companies would be out of business.
On the other hand, if they bought the design outright, before it was patented, then they can sit on it as a trade secret for however long they like and keep the man down.
(Apologies for the simplistic overview of things, since I'm at work and can't really look up the finer details, but that's pretty much how it works.)
CyberDave
If my memory is correct, Kerry and I both got an "CAUTION: AT&T Network In Progress" sign from our buddy Rich. It was a pretty poor quality JPEG and at some point I recreated it in Illustrator and printed out a few copies for my neighbors. I think I've still got the .AI file around here somewhere on one of my backup images, but I don't have the inclination at this point to dig it up as evidence to support my claim.
Rest assured, though, that the VB situation you described is applicable only to the IT guys (I'm not even sure we have an "IT" program. We have MIS, CIS, CS, etc, but nothing that's actually officially called "IT").
In the Computer Science Department (where I am now a grad student, having gotten my BS degree here last fall), students are taught Java as the base language for the programming classes.
After that, we offer electives in C++, C, Ptyhon, and a handful of other languages.
We also have quite a few Linux fans on the staff in the CS Dept., a dedicated Linux lab (rather small at the moment) so Linux users should feel right at home. Not too many Mac OS X people, though (I'm the only Mac fan I know at the moment, though there are a couple users here and there).
I'm really looking foward to the completion of the new building in the spring. I got a chance to tour it last week. It's a great building and should further fuel the growth of the University.
As they like to say in the promotional materials around here, "It's a great time to be an Eagle!"
CyberDave