That would seem to be what you're looking for for a laptop. The Biometric sensor slides in and out of the card leaving it perfectly flush with the side of the laptop. This should help avoid accidental breakage.
My experience comes mostly from the Identix Optical sensors. Problems: -Optical Biometrics can be bypassed via simple gummibear technology;). Google it up if you don't believe it:).
-Optical sensors are notoriously finicky. People with poor fingerprint definition - people who work with their hands, as in a garden (earth is abrasive) or workout with weights (sometimes the weight bars can be abrasive) might have problems getting their fingerprints read. Same goes for dry skin, and for some reason, black people. Not trying to be racist here or anything, we did a pilot at work a few years back and 9/10 black people had problems getting their prints read by the system.
-Anything that messes with your Windows GINA authentication system can cause problems. I've seen the Identix product freak out if it couldn't find an internet connection, or a domain controller, or the internet connection was half baked, etc. It was very very random. May have been solved with their latest service packs.
Finally, you're still best off applying some form of encryption to your files.
I'm with you on this issue. I've gone from 20MB way back when in the day to about 2TB of storage on my current network. I have 2 Desktops with RAID1 setups (2x200GB and 2x250GB respectively), a small server with RAID1 (2x120GB) and a few other assorted PCs with multiple different drives of varying capacities.
And I don't want to sound like an ad, but......the machine I am loving the most these days is the Buffalo Terastation (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detai l.php?productid=97&categoryid=19). This thing rocks. 4x250GB you can configure anyway you want (I went for RAID5, 750GB of NAS storage), with gigabit ethernet, SMB, AFS, NFS and FTP. Runs some embedded Linux I believe. Also has 4 USB2 ports through which you can attach more disks for more storage. I think it can also print through them, but I don't use that feature (stupid old parallel printer) so I'm not 100% sure on that.
Coupled with an SMC 8 port gigabit switch I am flying through files and backups. And the damn thing ran about $900 from buy.com. They also have a 120GBx4 model and a 400GBx4, but the former's disks are too cheap for the expense of the surrounding hardware while the latter's disks are too expensive for their own good. The 250x4 seems to be the sweet spot. You can almost buy 2 for the price of a 400x4.
As for DVD storage like people are suggesting, I'd say screw it. I hate having to reach for something physical to find bits. These days I even try to keep my games as ISOs so I don't have to find a CD case. Of course all the new copy protection mechanisms suck, but hey, gamecopyworld is your friend.:) And before I get my ass roasted, I do pay for those games, I just like to play them with the convenience of a virtual CD and not have to keep shuffling CDs in and out of my computer. If I want to play the CD swap game I'll sit in front of my game consoles.
Meh, I hate replying to myself. Forgot to note that most products you'll find are hardware AND software. Little AP detection devices go all over your ceiling while some central server talks to them to figure out where things are.
Oh, and regarding the RADIUS stuff, the authentication can be based on things like "Joe's laptop is in Conference room 6N, so he's authorized for wireless inside that room but not outside it". Obviously you need to define your rules in the software but you get the gist. The system can tell what rooms/buildings/areas/floors you are in and such.
My company recently implemented a product called "WiFi Watchdog" from Newbury Networks (http://www.newburynetworks.com/). Damned nice product, and it has the capabilities you are looking for. The latest version of their software will give you a heat map as to where a device is likely to be overlaid on top of a map of your building.
Other vendors selling a similar products include Airmagnet and AirDefense. Some of the bigger AP infrastructure guys such as Cisco even have some built in products to do similar things.
The big advantage I found with NNI is that their product helps reduce false positives by identifying APs outside our building and labeling as such - so when a Sears truck drives by with a built in AP our alarm bells don't go off. Other neat things include a cool RADIUS service that "authorizes" connections based on location. Tied together with other authentication services that would make for a really really powerful solution for securing your wireless.
Anyway, hope that helps find some good solutions for you.
-Jack Ash
PS: No, I am not an employee of NNI or anything of the sort, I'm just a guy who went through your exact problem last year and ended up finding this solution.
Good points on all of the above. I haven't played PVP at all (I think I'd get ganked given I'm only in my 50s) so I don't know the PVP instances - I assumed PVPs 1 and 2 were in production and 3 would be upcoming. PVPInstance02 in Wowmapview is Azshara Crater, which after reviewing http://worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/ I think is not out yet.
Outland: I really don't know if it's an instance, right now it's about the size of a zone, a pretty big one though. Ideally they would create an entire world on that side (technically I think Outworld is a different planet). Good stuff for an expansion pack.
Airport is supposed to be safe for exploration (Blizz said it was ok somewhere in the forums), as are the "swimmable" spots. As to other places, honestly, I don't care if there's a ban threat or not. I know it was a big issue in beta, but I really don't see how this would be a problem nowadays. It's not like there's monsters or mining to be done in the unpopulated areas.
Finally, in response to one of the messages earlier, I think Blizz closed the hole allowing players to enter the Caverns of Time as a Ghost, but I could be wrong.
Ok, I'm one of the folks that's done a bunch of exploring in Azeroth. Here's a list (I think fairly comprehensive) of places I've been to or seen people get to. Much of this has been done on the live servers, with the threat of banning over my head. I'll list places I've seen with the http://wowmapview.sourceforge.net/ utility when appropriate.
===Azeroth===
1) Airport above Ironforge (and surrounding mountains) This is kind of neat - it's the area you see when flying from Menethil or many other northern places to Ironforge. The trick is to walk from Dun Morogh to Loch Modan through the north gate pass. Once you exit the tunnels on the Loch Modan side, immediately on your left behind some trees (very very close to the gate) there's a small gap in the mountains that has a diagonal you can climb. After that it's all exploration through the mountains.
1.5) Village between Ironforge and Loch Modan Jumping down from the airport or the mountains above Ironforge leads to this very interesting little village. It has a ramp that leads to nowwhere and some animals. It's apparent Ironforge was originally meant to connect to this village, and this village would lead to Menethil via a path in the mountains (possibly the one above the excavation site with the raptors). Ironforge was likely meant to use the flightpath at the airport via the blocked off tunnel up there.
2) Old Ironforge This is curious. Apparently a remnant of Ironforge from the beta days, the doors at the throne room in Ironforge can be walked through in ghost form. Die close to them (I use Divine Intervention, but you can jump in the Lava instead) and then resurrect on the other side (after a brief walk from Kharanos). You'll need to hearthstone out. This would make for an awesome inside-the-city instance like the Orcs have.
3) Area behind Stratholme Nothing much to see here. When swimming along the coast northbound from the Hinterlands, you can eventually climb up the mountains next to the Eastern Plaguelands and get into the unfinished terrain. Continuing north eventually leads to some somewhat interesting areas, such as the gap where Stratholme should be (it's in a separate instance, not the main map), as well as a little house in a path leading North from Eastern Plaguelands (I think this is supposed to be the old Elven Kingdoms - they're on the map as the northeastern most section, but do not exist for now - maybe in the expansion)
4) Village east of Arathi Highlands (south of Hinterlands) Easiest way to get here is swimming south from the coast of the Hinterlands. Neat, kinda peaceful.
5) Broken down bridge near Dun Modr (Between Wetlands and Arathi) You are actually meant to get here, but few people know about it. In the Thandol Span bridge, the Eastern bridge has been destroyed by the Dark Iron dwarves. You can get into it by drinking a potion or using some speed ability (a horse will do). There's a small quest here for a delivery. There's another quest on a scroll hidden in the water underneath.
6) Little house on coast west of Stormwind Swim north from the coast of Westfall. You'll eventually reach an abandoned house with a sign "Newman's Landing".
7) Early entrance into Stranglethorn Vale instance I was once poking around as a ghost in Stranglethorn Vale when I managed to climb the mountains directly south of the SV instance and get inside. Neat architecture, not sure if it can be done alive.
===Kalimdor===
8) Jump off Teldrassil This is neat and easy as a Paladin. Get to Darnassus, exit into the tree, and go to the southern border. There's a couple spots here where you can get on a branch on the outside of the tree (this overlooks the Rutheran Village area). Climb out as far as you can on the branches, and using a horse or a speed potion, jump out as far as you can (otherwise you'll hit other branches on your way down). Once you're close to the bottom (you'll be able to see it with plenty of tim
I came up with this one last year while going through a similar problem - I managed to delete a number of files the malware was using and then discovered it was repopulating itself from one source file I couldn't get rid of. So, I repermissioned the file so no one had access to it except some made up account I created on the spot. I think I even used negative NTFS permissions (block access to this file to System, Adminstrators, etc.). There were some more steps such as searching and removing every instance in the registry of any file that this thing copied, but the NTFS repermissioning was the key.
If you are one Win9x or have FAT32 on your drive, this won't work for you... but good luck anyway.
Finally, I hate to give in, but go ahead and run the uninstaller - their malware already 0wnzors the computer you are working on, this is not likely to make it any worse...
-Jack Ash
PS: Another thing you might try is booting up one of those WinPE environments (bootable windows on a cd) floating around the net, and deleting it from there...
I hate to point it out, but that is not the solution you are looking for (waves hand).
You already have a PC, and the two disks built inside. Mirror or stripe the drives in the system (your choice, I'd got for a mirror) and then install Linux or BSD or whatever server-ish operating system you want on the box with the right services (Samba, NFS, whatever). Connect to it with IP over firewire, Ethernet, or gigabit ethernet if the old system supports it (the laptop does).
This will allow the system to keep running when you are not around, will allow you to use the disk over that fancy wireless connection on your new Po-po-po-powerbook!. If you put SSH on the box I'm sure you'll figure out how to access your home disk from the road (for bonus points roll your own remote file access solution based on some creative web based interface running on port 443 that no one will ever block).
Last but not least, you'll be able to access the disk from the PowerMac system you'll eventually buy when you realize that the Powerbook is just a touch slow, the keyboard is not so comfortable, and the trackpad is complete crap (mind you, I have a 17" PB myself and love it to death, but all of the above are true and that's the reason I use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with it when it's "docked" at home).
I'm considering purchasing one of these to replace my aging Wintendo box. But one concern comes to mind:
Essentially, how will Windows XP be licensed? Last I remember Windows XP Home supports only 1 processor and XP Pro supports 2. Processors with Hyperthreading already look like 2 processors to the OS - won't this thing look like 4 processors (2 real + 2 hyperthreaded virtuals) and break the XP licensing model? Or does XP not count the hyperthreaded processors as real? (I thought it did...)
The Cisco client does some low level stuff that if I understand it correctly, actually installs a new low level IP stack under the OS's that you have no control over or access to. The OS's stack is fully under the control of the VPN client since all traffic has to pass through it's private stack. It's funny, you can't even ping your own defaut gateway, the one the VPN traffic is traveling through.
The way around it is to use another stack. IPX might work but the simplest one i've found the IPv6 stack. It's completely separate from the V4 stack and the Cisco client I've used doesn't touch it. You can use all kinds of fun tricks with that. Hmm... better post this as AC. We all know "freedom of speech" doesn't mean what it used to these days.
AC, you are absolutely right. This is exactly what he needs to do. I've done the IPX trick on the Cisco VPN client many times to print from my work laptop to my home printer (via a second windows box). I'm not sure about IPX support in the Mac (or even worse Netbios over IPX) so I'd go with the IPv6. A second trick that no longer works that well (used to work on older Cisco clients) was to add a second NIC (i.e. a PCMCIA 802.11 card) after the tunnel was established, or to have it deactivated at least, don't remember the exact details.
As a funny note, I notified Cisco of this problem with the Split Routing protection about 5 years ago (through the proper support channels, being as my company were customers of the product). They claimed it wasn't a bug or vulnerability.
Last but not least, you can always just go and get the damn VPN client for the Mac, and share the files the long way - over your tunnel into the office:).
First things first: This is a Windows only device. I'm sure someone will figure out how to get it working with something else, but it comes with software for Windows only.
This is the Digital Persona http://www.digitalpersona.com/ fingerprint scanner, rebranded by Microsoft. I actually use some of their older sensors at home, they're fairly cheap and easy to use.
How secure are they? Not very - these are the same sensors that can be bypassed with highly advanced Nasa Gummi Bear Technology. Yeah, get some latent prints, extrude them with superglue and a couple other items, then pour melted gummi bears into the mold to make a cool new fingerprint that can bypass the sensor.
That being a given, they are pretty damn cool, and extremely convenient. You just come over to your Wintendo XP system, put your finger on the sensor and you are in. You can whip up authentication for websites and applications in no time (although I haven't figured out yet how to get it to authenticate me into World of Warcraft). It really is a "password database" system, unlocked with a fingerprint.
BTW, if you decide to buy these go with Microsoft's sensors - Digital Persona is notoriously stingy with application upgrades. Not that it matters, the supplied software still works with my newest WinXP perfectly, but I feel kinda weird running the 1.0.3 version of a product now in 2.x. MS has traditionally been pretty good about providing updated software for their hardware.
The way I look at it, it can keep people (friends, girlfriend, visitors) away from your Windows box without requiring you to enter a password every time you come back to it:
Now you can press windows-L, get up, get a coke, come back, give the pc the finger (preferrably middle;) and get back to browsing pr0n without anyone getting into your session;).
Not only that, but it will even allow for Fast User Switching just by putting in someone else's finger. Bonus!
Hehe - I'm a spaniard living in America and I too was in Madrid over the weekend (still am, actually). I agree with you that Europe is covering this quite a bit, but not outside the normal shows. TV is still going on, regular shows are being programmed. During the news this gets absolutely top billing and the same footage is repeated over and over again. Still, it's nowhere near 9/11 news reporting. During that tragedy EVERY SHOW on EVERY CHANNEL was preempted, in many cases there wasn't even any advertising. Channels that had no good news reporting simply switched over to the CNN feed.
Nonetheless, I have to point out a flaw in your reasoning and the grandparent post's - the reason this is different than 9/11 is not because of the distance, or evil americans not caring about foreign citizens. That influences only how much time you spend on the specific story in the news shows.
The difference is, 9/11 was a man-made disaster. Back in 2001, someone decided to take down those two towers, and do it in a particularly gruesome way that set back american civil liberties pretty seriously. Some asshole in a hat figured that he didn't like us for a some reasons that I'm sure feel perfectly logical to him and attacked us. Had it been a nation doing the attacking and not a group of terrorists hiding all over the world they would have gotten nuked off the surface of the earth.
This disaster however was natural. The mole people didn't get up last week and figure out they had to kill Arthur C. Clarke before his satellites discover the extent of their underground lair - no, it simply happened. It is tragic, it is terrible, but Mother Nature did not declare war on the Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India - it was just a very unfortunate event. One that could have been ameliorated with the proper warning systems, but that's besides the point now - hopefully they'll be better prepared for the next one.
But seriously, I do own a Tablet PC, the Toshiba M200 (a damn fine machine BTW). Tablet PCs are really not that good for gaming. There's no controls on board, the screen is not touch sensitive but eletroresistive (which is good for writing, bad for turning the machine into a Nintendo DS) and the battery life is already short enough without eating up massive CPU cycles into games.
With that said, I see absolutely no reason why a machine like the M200 (convertible) or slate models that can be "docked" into a keyboard and mouse location can't be used as a regular machine with regular gaming.
Other than, of course, the insane obsession laptop manufacturers have with including crappy video cards, like the Intel Extreme Graphics 2!!! Now with extra ram-shared crappyness! Because at intel, "w3 @re teh suxx0rz".
At least the M200 has a Geforce 5200 (although one with only 32MB of VRAM). If you ask me Microsoft pushing for decent video cards would do a million times more good than any pen input game SDK will ever do. But then again, I'm probably being as visionary as I was back in the Doom days ("Mouse?! Why would I ever need a mouse for an FPS game? My keyboard does everything I need, thank you very much").
All in one unit, you can get it with bluetooth, and it's unixy so that'll keep the Slashdot crowd happy. If you can hide the power plug behind the desk it sits on the little tike will never reach the one cable on the system.
Thanks for the response - I agree with you in that running a program does indeed change the system, but I guess the key question is whether it is better to guarantee no changes whatsoever or risk losing volatile data (which could also be very valuable in the case on an investigation into an ongoing matter, like a hack).
We do have a forensic group on-site or near-site (quick response available). I seem to recall also that PriceWaterhouse is working with Guidance in piloting EEE as a "valid" tool for criminal investigations - I think the philosophy they are adopting is that in modern systems with 512MB and up changing 100KB of disk is preferrable to losing those 512MB...
In any event, thanks for the response, and good job. I can definitely say that every time we've needed to work with your company it's been an absolute pleasure.
I find that second paragraph interesting - doesn't that directly contradict the purpose of your Encase Enterprise Edition product? (of which my security team happens to be a happy customer, btw.?) Also, isn't there a new Live Analysis feature?
For the uninitiated, Encase is quite possibly the industry standard tool for Forensic analysis. The latest interation, Encase Enterprise Edition, allows for forensic acquisition over a live network with the installation of a 100k agent on the target machine. Ideally this agent has been predeployed to your enterprise clients which makes it so you don't corrupt data at the last moment.
Actually, I think the regulations are a bit more industry specific. The company I work at is in the Financial Services area, and we are regulated by NASD and the SEC. I believe both have rules for various different forms of communication. 3 years for electronic communications. 7 years for paper xyz forms. 6 years for TPS reports. You get the picture. I've actually seen a huge, 30-page grid of the various regulations that apply to different items - and these were small, 2-line items on each cell of the grid - the number of regulations is staggering.
Other questions come to mind, like what is an electronic communication? E-mail? Instant Messaging? Video Conference systems? VoIP? Regular phone calls? The general answer you will find these days is "yes".
It used to be prior to Enron and Worldcom that most people believed what you don't have can't hurt you, so they'd ignore these regs or at best take a very limited view of their coverage (Joe, you work in the XYZ critical department, so you need to copy all your business email to this mailbox). These days they go for "the whole company gets journaled to an external service provider" type of approach. And apps like Instant Messaging are not allowed unless we have a server to capture all the traffic from the app.
So yeah, if you're a company, big brother can come and get you - or at least one of his smaller, more industry-specific siblings. It really depends on where you are.
I know that the section is "Your rights online", but shouldn't it be, technically, at least this time, "your rights offline"?:)
Ok, enough of that. I actually live in Boston. This whole DNC thing, to be honest, is turning into a pain in the ass. I really want to find out how bad it's going to be for NYC during the Republican convention though.
I actually ride the Orange T (subway) line every day to work, from the North of town. This is the line that goes virtually underneath the convention center. The local government is already going nuts over this: They will be shutting down highways coming into the city during the convention center, they will not be stopping the subway at the station closest to the center (North Station), and they're promising to shut down the entire subway system in the event of a bomb scare.
But here's the best part: the subway police are reserving the right to do bag searches, and they have forbidden any bags "bigger than a loaf of bread". Goodbye laptop.
I work in computer security. I understand the need for heightened security over someone that seems to have a chance to be the next president of the US. I understand that we all need to give a little, etc. I understand that it's special circumstances. But I think the whole thing is just getting ridiculous, blown way out of proportion. I mean, we're getting a bunch of policians and we are virtually shutting down the city. My company is actually activating our disaster recovery facility (which is way outside the city) so we can have people work during the week.
I have a feeling after the pain they are putting Boston through, the whole city might start voting Republican just to spite the %#!$%! Democrats.:)
No, I'm not kidding. I know they're way out of the range of the price of the buyer, but having owned a few PDA devices and now being on my second Tablet, I can tell you without a doubt that the TabletPC is (at least for me) right now the ultimate platform for e-books.
My current tablet, a Toshiba M200, has a 1400x1050 resolution 12" screen on a laptop about 4 lbs in weight. With the right battery settings I can get over well 4 hours of battery life with pretty good screen brightness, and that's with the wireless radios turned on. It's got the newer 802.11g Centrino stuff on it, with a 1.5Ghz processor (when I got it the 1.7Ghz was virtually unavailable, now it only runs you $200 extra), built in bluetooth, and a GeForce FX 5200 with 32MB of VRAM (not a lot, but it can run older games pretyt well).
As for reading, it's incredible for e-books. I'm currently reading Free Culture (Lawrence Lessig's book) on it and will be reading Cory Doctorow's second book next. I read his first (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) on my old tablet, an Acer C110 and it was a great experience. This one is even better - the screen is almost as sharp as paper. The resolution also helps - in portrait (vertical) mode I have 1050 horizontal pixels, which allows for reading the web with no horizontal scrolling on most web pages (most tablets use 1024*768 screens, which makes it so you have to scroll on pages designed designed for 800*600 when viewing in portrait mode).
I actually read about 50% of the Harry Potter books on a PDA device (I'd read on the PDA while riding the train to work, and read the real book at home), an having done the PDA thing and the Tablet thing, I can wholeheartedly recommend a Tablet over a PDA any day of the week. It's of course somewhere around 2-3k depending on accessories, but hey. It's not exactly a single purpose device.:)
My family actually lives in Spain, and uses Telefonica as their ISP. During my last visit, I discovered a wonderful surprise: Slashdot already blacklists the entire Telefonica data block. Whenever you select a link to read a story's comments, etc., it comes up with some message about not allowing that operation due to abuse from the netblock. It was pretty cool, really.
In any event, Telefonica is a big, monolithic telephone operator. They used to be the official, national telephone monopoly company before the market was opened up to other operators. Telefonica is still huge, nonetheless. They have voice, data, and cell phones in Spain; I think they also own a good chuck of media there. They run a pretty sizeable percentage of the telco business in South America (possibly the largest telco in the region). They bought our Terra back in the 90's, which bought out the Lycos networks for those that actually care.
Telefonica could probably have worse service, but they would need to train their personnel for it. As with most old monopolies there's this pervasive company culture that they are the center of the universe and if you don't like it you can go jump off a cliff or something. So I'd suggest not holding your breath for this situtation to be resolved. Although, as with every bureaucracy, every once in a while messages accidentally make it to the desk of the one guy who has a clue...:)
I thought I had this all figured out a while back. I always figured broadband was a lifestyle thing. Having been a gamer for god knows how long now, I've always done things like keep my computer on 24/7. To me, dialup was an inconvenience - it kept me from being online instantly, the same way that I could flick the mouse and be back at my desktop instantly. When I went to broadband it was obvious that that was the way to go: always-on, instant access. It became a lifestyle change thing. I even observed the behavior change with different girlfriens over time: they'd go from "let's look up the pizza place on the phone book/yellow pages" to "look it up online".
I actually observed the exact same change with my parents: They used to keep the computer off, as there was no reason to keep it on. If they needed something online (like checking their e-mail or looking at a couple of webpages), they'd turn on the PC, wait for it to boot up, fire up the dialup, wait for the connection, download e-mail/check stuff on web, and disconnect as quickly as possible since a) people could be calling on the phone; and b) phone calls were metered by the minute over where they live (Spain). For them, using the computer was a big barrier: You had to go through a long, involved series of steps before even being able to do what you wanted. Looking up someone's information was easier using 411 (over there, 003) than using the PC for it.
Once I convinced them to do the DSL thing, the lifestyle changed completely - the computer remained on constantly, all you had to do to go online and check something was sit in front of it and type - it was always on . I know that's the point of it, but it's a huge mentality change. Seeing the transformation firsthand was amazing.
The curious thing, I find, is the number of people in the article and in the forums here that have experienced broadband, and do so on a daily basis, yet still manage to resist it. Self discipline, cost, just-don't-need-it come up as (to me, surprising) reasons why they say no to broadband.
To me, broadband vs. dialup is like cable/satellite vs. over-the-air reception, faxes vs. mail (back in the 80s), air travel vs. jumping on a boat to come to the US. It's just stuff that once you cross a certain frontier, a certain line, you can't just uncross it, you can't go back. The always-on availability of information, entertainment, and yes, even pr0n;) is just impossible to turn my back to.
Some of my respondents here are absolutely right - it's HIPAA I'm talking about, not S-O. What can I say, long day at the office, been working so much on compliance for both they're freaking interchangeable in my mind by now, etc. etc. Still no excuse.
First, IANAL (as evidenced by my previous stupid message naming the wrong act). In any event, my understanding is that although HIPAA was originally enacted/intended as a Health-Care related act, it's effects have been interpreted to apply outside of Health Care and to any industry that stores people's private, personal data. One of the big flags the act applies is storing social security numbers.
Rule of thumb is that if you see something private stored or transmitted somewhere it needs to be seriously secured. Seriously secured is roughly defined as encryption for every stage of the data lifecycle, from storage to transmission; as well as access control measures and all that jazz.
So anyway, a whole bunch of industries are running around with their panties in a knot because of these new privacy regs. Then you have happy California's 1386 stuff which I think was meant for online shopping but ended up saying something like that if someone hacked your entity and gained access to customer data you have to notify every single member of that customer population that resides in California or be banned from doing any kind of business in that state. I'm sure that strictly speaking the laws apply only to some very specific instances, but that hasn't stopped people from panicking just in case it could be twisted into applying to them. I'm sure that my explanations are grossly overgeneralized, but they do serve the purposes of this conversation.:)
The point being, there's cool new regs that protect your privacy. Make sure your school is taking them into account. I wouldn't be hostile about it, but they might just need a pointer in the right directions.
Working in computer security gives you some wonderful tools - Given that your school is sending sensitive, private data over a wide open network makes it so they are not in compliance with the S-O act, which is Bad(TM) from a legal and privacy point of view. The data needs to be encrypted on disk and sent/showed only over secure networks.
Yeah it's been a bad week for Cisco but they aren't Microsoft. They won't ignore these problems. You'll see firmware updates to fix the password problem in a week tops (if it isn't already out). I suspect you'll also see an update to address the LEAP issues.
Read the article - the LEAP problem was reported to them in AUGUST 2003.
I agree they are not a Microsoft, and they are generally much more responsive, but how would you feel if you had over the past six months implemented a major, wonderful, well protected Cisco LEAP wireless network? Only to receive the news that "yeah, we kinda knew since August our security sucked" (for the record, I am NOT in that situation, but LEAP was a contender for our upcoming wi-fi implementation).
Honestly, Bruce Schneier was recently saying that it's no longer about the crypto, as anyone can do strong crypto these days. It's about the factors around it, like usernames and passwords, physical security, but most of all, implementation. You'd think that something which was hailed at the time as the solution to the broken WEP protocol would be partially secure... Ugh. Now I'm just ranting.
Slashdot Mirror
Identix makes a Biometric PC-Card:
u ch_pc.html
t m
;). Google it up if you don't believe it :).
http://www.identix.com/products/pro_info_fp_bioto
Others:
http://www.secure-it.com/products/umatch/via253.h
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/security/6518/
That would seem to be what you're looking for for a laptop. The Biometric sensor slides in and out of the card leaving it perfectly flush with the side of the laptop. This should help avoid accidental breakage.
My experience comes mostly from the Identix Optical sensors. Problems:
-Optical Biometrics can be bypassed via simple gummibear technology
-Optical sensors are notoriously finicky. People with poor fingerprint definition - people who work with their hands, as in a garden (earth is abrasive) or workout with weights (sometimes the weight bars can be abrasive) might have problems getting their fingerprints read. Same goes for dry skin, and for some reason, black people. Not trying to be racist here or anything, we did a pilot at work a few years back and 9/10 black people had problems getting their prints read by the system.
-Anything that messes with your Windows GINA authentication system can cause problems. I've seen the Identix product freak out if it couldn't find an internet connection, or a domain controller, or the internet connection was half baked, etc. It was very very random. May have been solved with their latest service packs.
Finally, you're still best off applying some form of encryption to your files.
Good luck,
-Jack Ash
I'm with you on this issue. I've gone from 20MB way back when in the day to about 2TB of storage on my current network. I have 2 Desktops with RAID1 setups (2x200GB and 2x250GB respectively), a small server with RAID1 (2x120GB) and a few other assorted PCs with multiple different drives of varying capacities.
...the machine I am loving the most these days is the Buffalo Terastation (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detai l.php?productid=97&categoryid=19). This thing rocks. 4x250GB you can configure anyway you want (I went for RAID5, 750GB of NAS storage), with gigabit ethernet, SMB, AFS, NFS and FTP. Runs some embedded Linux I believe. Also has 4 USB2 ports through which you can attach more disks for more storage. I think it can also print through them, but I don't use that feature (stupid old parallel printer) so I'm not 100% sure on that.
:) And before I get my ass roasted, I do pay for those games, I just like to play them with the convenience of a virtual CD and not have to keep shuffling CDs in and out of my computer. If I want to play the CD swap game I'll sit in front of my game consoles.
And I don't want to sound like an ad, but...
Coupled with an SMC 8 port gigabit switch I am flying through files and backups. And the damn thing ran about $900 from buy.com. They also have a 120GBx4 model and a 400GBx4, but the former's disks are too cheap for the expense of the surrounding hardware while the latter's disks are too expensive for their own good. The 250x4 seems to be the sweet spot. You can almost buy 2 for the price of a 400x4.
As for DVD storage like people are suggesting, I'd say screw it. I hate having to reach for something physical to find bits. These days I even try to keep my games as ISOs so I don't have to find a CD case. Of course all the new copy protection mechanisms suck, but hey, gamecopyworld is your friend.
-Jack Ash
Meh, I hate replying to myself. Forgot to note that most products you'll find are hardware AND software. Little AP detection devices go all over your ceiling while some central server talks to them to figure out where things are.
Oh, and regarding the RADIUS stuff, the authentication can be based on things like "Joe's laptop is in Conference room 6N, so he's authorized for wireless inside that room but not outside it". Obviously you need to define your rules in the software but you get the gist. The system can tell what rooms/buildings/areas/floors you are in and such.
-Jack Ash
My company recently implemented a product called "WiFi Watchdog" from Newbury Networks (http://www.newburynetworks.com/). Damned nice product, and it has the capabilities you are looking for. The latest version of their software will give you a heat map as to where a device is likely to be overlaid on top of a map of your building.
Other vendors selling a similar products include Airmagnet and AirDefense. Some of the bigger AP infrastructure guys such as Cisco even have some built in products to do similar things.
The big advantage I found with NNI is that their product helps reduce false positives by identifying APs outside our building and labeling as such - so when a Sears truck drives by with a built in AP our alarm bells don't go off. Other neat things include a cool RADIUS service that "authorizes" connections based on location. Tied together with other authentication services that would make for a really really powerful solution for securing your wireless.
Anyway, hope that helps find some good solutions for you.
-Jack Ash
PS: No, I am not an employee of NNI or anything of the sort, I'm just a guy who went through your exact problem last year and ended up finding this solution.
Good points on all of the above. I haven't played PVP at all (I think I'd get ganked given I'm only in my 50s) so I don't know the PVP instances - I assumed PVPs 1 and 2 were in production and 3 would be upcoming. PVPInstance02 in Wowmapview is Azshara Crater, which after reviewing http://worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/ I think is not out yet.
Outland: I really don't know if it's an instance, right now it's about the size of a zone, a pretty big one though. Ideally they would create an entire world on that side (technically I think Outworld is a different planet). Good stuff for an expansion pack.
Airport is supposed to be safe for exploration (Blizz said it was ok somewhere in the forums), as are the "swimmable" spots. As to other places, honestly, I don't care if there's a ban threat or not. I know it was a big issue in beta, but I really don't see how this would be a problem nowadays. It's not like there's monsters or mining to be done in the unpopulated areas.
Finally, in response to one of the messages earlier, I think Blizz closed the hole allowing players to enter the Caverns of Time as a Ghost, but I could be wrong.
-Jack Ash
Ok, I'm one of the folks that's done a bunch of exploring in Azeroth. Here's a list (I think fairly comprehensive) of places I've been to or seen people get to. Much of this has been done on the live servers, with the threat of banning over my head. I'll list places I've seen with the http://wowmapview.sourceforge.net/ utility when appropriate.
===Azeroth===
1) Airport above Ironforge (and surrounding mountains)
This is kind of neat - it's the area you see when flying from Menethil or many other northern places to Ironforge. The trick is to walk from Dun Morogh to Loch Modan through the north gate pass. Once you exit the tunnels on the Loch Modan side, immediately on your left behind some trees (very very close to the gate) there's a small gap in the mountains that has a diagonal you can climb. After that it's all exploration through the mountains.
1.5) Village between Ironforge and Loch Modan
Jumping down from the airport or the mountains above Ironforge leads to this very interesting little village. It has a ramp that leads to nowwhere and some animals. It's apparent Ironforge was originally meant to connect to this village, and this village would lead to Menethil via a path in the mountains (possibly the one above the excavation site with the raptors). Ironforge was likely meant to use the flightpath at the airport via the blocked off tunnel up there.
2) Old Ironforge
This is curious. Apparently a remnant of Ironforge from the beta days, the doors at the throne room in Ironforge can be walked through in ghost form. Die close to them (I use Divine Intervention, but you can jump in the Lava instead) and then resurrect on the other side (after a brief walk from Kharanos). You'll need to hearthstone out. This would make for an awesome inside-the-city instance like the Orcs have.
3) Area behind Stratholme
Nothing much to see here. When swimming along the coast northbound from the Hinterlands, you can eventually climb up the mountains next to the Eastern Plaguelands and get into the unfinished terrain. Continuing north eventually leads to some somewhat interesting areas, such as the gap where Stratholme should be (it's in a separate instance, not the main map), as well as a little house in a path leading North from Eastern Plaguelands (I think this is supposed to be the old Elven Kingdoms - they're on the map as the northeastern most section, but do not exist for now - maybe in the expansion)
4) Village east of Arathi Highlands (south of Hinterlands)
Easiest way to get here is swimming south from the coast of the Hinterlands. Neat, kinda peaceful.
5) Broken down bridge near Dun Modr (Between Wetlands and Arathi)
You are actually meant to get here, but few people know about it. In the Thandol Span bridge, the Eastern bridge has been destroyed by the Dark Iron dwarves. You can get into it by drinking a potion or using some speed ability (a horse will do). There's a small quest here for a delivery. There's another quest on a scroll hidden in the water underneath.
6) Little house on coast west of Stormwind
Swim north from the coast of Westfall. You'll eventually reach an abandoned house with a sign "Newman's Landing".
7) Early entrance into Stranglethorn Vale instance
I was once poking around as a ghost in Stranglethorn Vale when I managed to climb the mountains directly south of the SV instance and get inside. Neat architecture, not sure if it can be done alive.
===Kalimdor===
8) Jump off Teldrassil
This is neat and easy as a Paladin. Get to Darnassus, exit into the tree, and go to the southern border. There's a couple spots here where you can get on a branch on the outside of the tree (this overlooks the Rutheran Village area). Climb out as far as you can on the branches, and using a horse or a speed potion, jump out as far as you can (otherwise you'll hit other branches on your way down). Once you're close to the bottom (you'll be able to see it with plenty of tim
I came up with this one last year while going through a similar problem - I managed to delete a number of files the malware was using and then discovered it was repopulating itself from one source file I couldn't get rid of. So, I repermissioned the file so no one had access to it except some made up account I created on the spot. I think I even used negative NTFS permissions (block access to this file to System, Adminstrators, etc.). There were some more steps such as searching and removing every instance in the registry of any file that this thing copied, but the NTFS repermissioning was the key.
If you are one Win9x or have FAT32 on your drive, this won't work for you... but good luck anyway.
Finally, I hate to give in, but go ahead and run the uninstaller - their malware already 0wnzors the computer you are working on, this is not likely to make it any worse...
-Jack Ash
PS: Another thing you might try is booting up one of those WinPE environments (bootable windows on a cd) floating around the net, and deleting it from there...
I hate to point it out, but that is not the solution you are looking for (waves hand).
You already have a PC, and the two disks built inside. Mirror or stripe the drives in the system (your choice, I'd got for a mirror) and then install Linux or BSD or whatever server-ish operating system you want on the box with the right services (Samba, NFS, whatever). Connect to it with IP over firewire, Ethernet, or gigabit ethernet if the old system supports it (the laptop does).
This will allow the system to keep running when you are not around, will allow you to use the disk over that fancy wireless connection on your new Po-po-po-powerbook!. If you put SSH on the box I'm sure you'll figure out how to access your home disk from the road (for bonus points roll your own remote file access solution based on some creative web based interface running on port 443 that no one will ever block).
Last but not least, you'll be able to access the disk from the PowerMac system you'll eventually buy when you realize that the Powerbook is just a touch slow, the keyboard is not so comfortable, and the trackpad is complete crap (mind you, I have a 17" PB myself and love it to death, but all of the above are true and that's the reason I use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with it when it's "docked" at home).
-Jack Ash
I'm considering purchasing one of these to replace my aging Wintendo box. But one concern comes to mind:
Essentially, how will Windows XP be licensed? Last I remember Windows XP Home supports only 1 processor and XP Pro supports 2. Processors with Hyperthreading already look like 2 processors to the OS - won't this thing look like 4 processors (2 real + 2 hyperthreaded virtuals) and break the XP licensing model? Or does XP not count the hyperthreaded processors as real? (I thought it did...)
-Jack Ash
AC, you are absolutely right. This is exactly what he needs to do. I've done the IPX trick on the Cisco VPN client many times to print from my work laptop to my home printer (via a second windows box). I'm not sure about IPX support in the Mac (or even worse Netbios over IPX) so I'd go with the IPv6. A second trick that no longer works that well (used to work on older Cisco clients) was to add a second NIC (i.e. a PCMCIA 802.11 card) after the tunnel was established, or to have it deactivated at least, don't remember the exact details.
As a funny note, I notified Cisco of this problem with the Split Routing protection about 5 years ago (through the proper support channels, being as my company were customers of the product). They claimed it wasn't a bug or vulnerability.
Last but not least, you can always just go and get the damn VPN client for the Mac, and share the files the long way - over your tunnel into the office
-Jack Ash
First things first: This is a Windows only device. I'm sure someone will figure out how to get it working with something else, but it comes with software for Windows only.
;) and get back to browsing pr0n without anyone getting into your session ;).
This is the Digital Persona http://www.digitalpersona.com/ fingerprint scanner, rebranded by Microsoft. I actually use some of their older sensors at home, they're fairly cheap and easy to use.
How secure are they? Not very - these are the same sensors that can be bypassed with highly advanced Nasa Gummi Bear Technology. Yeah, get some latent prints, extrude them with superglue and a couple other items, then pour melted gummi bears into the mold to make a cool new fingerprint that can bypass the sensor.
That being a given, they are pretty damn cool, and extremely convenient. You just come over to your Wintendo XP system, put your finger on the sensor and you are in. You can whip up authentication for websites and applications in no time (although I haven't figured out yet how to get it to authenticate me into World of Warcraft). It really is a "password database" system, unlocked with a fingerprint.
BTW, if you decide to buy these go with Microsoft's sensors - Digital Persona is notoriously stingy with application upgrades. Not that it matters, the supplied software still works with my newest WinXP perfectly, but I feel kinda weird running the 1.0.3 version of a product now in 2.x. MS has traditionally been pretty good about providing updated software for their hardware.
The way I look at it, it can keep people (friends, girlfriend, visitors) away from your Windows box without requiring you to enter a password every time you come back to it:
Now you can press windows-L, get up, get a coke, come back, give the pc the finger (preferrably middle
Not only that, but it will even allow for Fast User Switching just by putting in someone else's finger. Bonus!
-Jack Ash
Hehe - I'm a spaniard living in America and I too was in Madrid over the weekend (still am, actually). I agree with you that Europe is covering this quite a bit, but not outside the normal shows. TV is still going on, regular shows are being programmed. During the news this gets absolutely top billing and the same footage is repeated over and over again. Still, it's nowhere near 9/11 news reporting. During that tragedy EVERY SHOW on EVERY CHANNEL was preempted, in many cases there wasn't even any advertising. Channels that had no good news reporting simply switched over to the CNN feed.
Nonetheless, I have to point out a flaw in your reasoning and the grandparent post's - the reason this is different than 9/11 is not because of the distance, or evil americans not caring about foreign citizens. That influences only how much time you spend on the specific story in the news shows.
The difference is, 9/11 was a man-made disaster. Back in 2001, someone decided to take down those two towers, and do it in a particularly gruesome way that set back american civil liberties pretty seriously. Some asshole in a hat figured that he didn't like us for a some reasons that I'm sure feel perfectly logical to him and attacked us. Had it been a nation doing the attacking and not a group of terrorists hiding all over the world they would have gotten nuked off the surface of the earth.
This disaster however was natural. The mole people didn't get up last week and figure out they had to kill Arthur C. Clarke before his satellites discover the extent of their underground lair - no, it simply happened. It is tragic, it is terrible, but Mother Nature did not declare war on the Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India - it was just a very unfortunate event. One that could have been ameliorated with the proper warning systems, but that's besides the point now - hopefully they'll be better prepared for the next one.
-Jack Ash
... I welcome our new game overlords.
But seriously, I do own a Tablet PC, the Toshiba M200 (a damn fine machine BTW). Tablet PCs are really not that good for gaming. There's no controls on board, the screen is not touch sensitive but eletroresistive (which is good for writing, bad for turning the machine into a Nintendo DS) and the battery life is already short enough without eating up massive CPU cycles into games.
With that said, I see absolutely no reason why a machine like the M200 (convertible) or slate models that can be "docked" into a keyboard and mouse location can't be used as a regular machine with regular gaming.
Other than, of course, the insane obsession laptop manufacturers have with including crappy video cards, like the Intel Extreme Graphics 2!!! Now with extra ram-shared crappyness! Because at intel, "w3 @re teh suxx0rz".
At least the M200 has a Geforce 5200 (although one with only 32MB of VRAM). If you ask me Microsoft pushing for decent video cards would do a million times more good than any pen input game SDK will ever do. But then again, I'm probably being as visionary as I was back in the Doom days ("Mouse?! Why would I ever need a mouse for an FPS game? My keyboard does everything I need, thank you very much").
-Jack Ash
iMac.
All in one unit, you can get it with bluetooth, and it's unixy so that'll keep the Slashdot crowd happy. If you can hide the power plug behind the desk it sits on the little tike will never reach the one cable on the system.
-Jack Ash
Thanks for the response - I agree with you in that running a program does indeed change the system, but I guess the key question is whether it is better to guarantee no changes whatsoever or risk losing volatile data (which could also be very valuable in the case on an investigation into an ongoing matter, like a hack).
We do have a forensic group on-site or near-site (quick response available). I seem to recall also that PriceWaterhouse is working with Guidance in piloting EEE as a "valid" tool for criminal investigations - I think the philosophy they are adopting is that in modern systems with 512MB and up changing 100KB of disk is preferrable to losing those 512MB...
In any event, thanks for the response, and good job. I can definitely say that every time we've needed to work with your company it's been an absolute pleasure.
-Jack Ash
Jon,
I find that second paragraph interesting - doesn't that directly contradict the purpose of your Encase Enterprise Edition product? (of which my security team happens to be a happy customer, btw.?) Also, isn't there a new Live Analysis feature?
For the uninitiated, Encase is quite possibly the industry standard tool for Forensic analysis. The latest interation, Encase Enterprise Edition, allows for forensic acquisition over a live network with the installation of a 100k agent on the target machine. Ideally this agent has been predeployed to your enterprise clients which makes it so you don't corrupt data at the last moment.
-Jack Ash
Actually, I think the regulations are a bit more industry specific. The company I work at is in the Financial Services area, and we are regulated by NASD and the SEC. I believe both have rules for various different forms of communication. 3 years for electronic communications. 7 years for paper xyz forms. 6 years for TPS reports. You get the picture. I've actually seen a huge, 30-page grid of the various regulations that apply to different items - and these were small, 2-line items on each cell of the grid - the number of regulations is staggering.
Other questions come to mind, like what is an electronic communication? E-mail? Instant Messaging? Video Conference systems? VoIP? Regular phone calls? The general answer you will find these days is "yes".
It used to be prior to Enron and Worldcom that most people believed what you don't have can't hurt you, so they'd ignore these regs or at best take a very limited view of their coverage (Joe, you work in the XYZ critical department, so you need to copy all your business email to this mailbox). These days they go for "the whole company gets journaled to an external service provider" type of approach. And apps like Instant Messaging are not allowed unless we have a server to capture all the traffic from the app.
So yeah, if you're a company, big brother can come and get you - or at least one of his smaller, more industry-specific siblings. It really depends on where you are.
-Jack Ash
I know that the section is "Your rights online", but shouldn't it be, technically, at least this time, "your rights offline"? :)
:)
Ok, enough of that. I actually live in Boston. This whole DNC thing, to be honest, is turning into a pain in the ass. I really want to find out how bad it's going to be for NYC during the Republican convention though.
I actually ride the Orange T (subway) line every day to work, from the North of town. This is the line that goes virtually underneath the convention center. The local government is already going nuts over this: They will be shutting down highways coming into the city during the convention center, they will not be stopping the subway at the station closest to the center (North Station), and they're promising to shut down the entire subway system in the event of a bomb scare.
But here's the best part: the subway police are reserving the right to do bag searches, and they have forbidden any bags "bigger than a loaf of bread". Goodbye laptop.
I work in computer security. I understand the need for heightened security over someone that seems to have a chance to be the next president of the US. I understand that we all need to give a little, etc. I understand that it's special circumstances. But I think the whole thing is just getting ridiculous, blown way out of proportion. I mean, we're getting a bunch of policians and we are virtually shutting down the city. My company is actually activating our disaster recovery facility (which is way outside the city) so we can have people work during the week.
I have a feeling after the pain they are putting Boston through, the whole city might start voting Republican just to spite the %#!$%! Democrats.
-Jack Ash
Why do I get the feeling, that the original, huge Xbox controllers are going to be in really high demand?
-Jack Ash
PS: Note that they very tactfully display the camera with the smaller controller-s...
No, I'm not kidding. I know they're way out of the range of the price of the buyer, but having owned a few PDA devices and now being on my second Tablet, I can tell you without a doubt that the TabletPC is (at least for me) right now the ultimate platform for e-books.
:)
My current tablet, a Toshiba M200, has a 1400x1050 resolution 12" screen on a laptop about 4 lbs in weight. With the right battery settings I can get over well 4 hours of battery life with pretty good screen brightness, and that's with the wireless radios turned on. It's got the newer 802.11g Centrino stuff on it, with a 1.5Ghz processor (when I got it the 1.7Ghz was virtually unavailable, now it only runs you $200 extra), built in bluetooth, and a GeForce FX 5200 with 32MB of VRAM (not a lot, but it can run older games pretyt well).
As for reading, it's incredible for e-books. I'm currently reading Free Culture (Lawrence Lessig's book) on it and will be reading Cory Doctorow's second book next. I read his first (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) on my old tablet, an Acer C110 and it was a great experience. This one is even better - the screen is almost as sharp as paper. The resolution also helps - in portrait (vertical) mode I have 1050 horizontal pixels, which allows for reading the web with no horizontal scrolling on most web pages (most tablets use 1024*768 screens, which makes it so you have to scroll on pages designed designed for 800*600 when viewing in portrait mode).
I actually read about 50% of the Harry Potter books on a PDA device (I'd read on the PDA while riding the train to work, and read the real book at home), an having done the PDA thing and the Tablet thing, I can wholeheartedly recommend a Tablet over a PDA any day of the week. It's of course somewhere around 2-3k depending on accessories, but hey. It's not exactly a single purpose device.
-Jack Ash
Hi all,
:)
My family actually lives in Spain, and uses Telefonica as their ISP. During my last visit, I discovered a wonderful surprise: Slashdot already blacklists the entire Telefonica data block. Whenever you select a link to read a story's comments, etc., it comes up with some message about not allowing that operation due to abuse from the netblock. It was pretty cool, really.
In any event, Telefonica is a big, monolithic telephone operator. They used to be the official, national telephone monopoly company before the market was opened up to other operators. Telefonica is still huge, nonetheless. They have voice, data, and cell phones in Spain; I think they also own a good chuck of media there. They run a pretty sizeable percentage of the telco business in South America (possibly the largest telco in the region). They bought our Terra back in the 90's, which bought out the Lycos networks for those that actually care.
Telefonica could probably have worse service, but they would need to train their personnel for it. As with most old monopolies there's this pervasive company culture that they are the center of the universe and if you don't like it you can go jump off a cliff or something. So I'd suggest not holding your breath for this situtation to be resolved. Although, as with every bureaucracy, every once in a while messages accidentally make it to the desk of the one guy who has a clue...
-Jack Ash
I thought I had this all figured out a while back. I always figured broadband was a lifestyle thing. Having been a gamer for god knows how long now, I've always done things like keep my computer on 24/7. To me, dialup was an inconvenience - it kept me from being online instantly, the same way that I could flick the mouse and be back at my desktop instantly. When I went to broadband it was obvious that that was the way to go: always-on, instant access. It became a lifestyle change thing. I even observed the behavior change with different girlfriens over time: they'd go from "let's look up the pizza place on the phone book/yellow pages" to "look it up online".
;) is just impossible to turn my back to.
I actually observed the exact same change with my parents: They used to keep the computer off, as there was no reason to keep it on. If they needed something online (like checking their e-mail or looking at a couple of webpages), they'd turn on the PC, wait for it to boot up, fire up the dialup, wait for the connection, download e-mail/check stuff on web, and disconnect as quickly as possible since a) people could be calling on the phone; and b) phone calls were metered by the minute over where they live (Spain). For them, using the computer was a big barrier: You had to go through a long, involved series of steps before even being able to do what you wanted. Looking up someone's information was easier using 411 (over there, 003) than using the PC for it.
Once I convinced them to do the DSL thing, the lifestyle changed completely - the computer remained on constantly, all you had to do to go online and check something was sit in front of it and type - it was always on . I know that's the point of it, but it's a huge mentality change. Seeing the transformation firsthand was amazing.
The curious thing, I find, is the number of people in the article and in the forums here that have experienced broadband, and do so on a daily basis, yet still manage to resist it. Self discipline, cost, just-don't-need-it come up as (to me, surprising) reasons why they say no to broadband.
To me, broadband vs. dialup is like cable/satellite vs. over-the-air reception, faxes vs. mail (back in the 80s), air travel vs. jumping on a boat to come to the US. It's just stuff that once you cross a certain frontier, a certain line, you can't just uncross it, you can't go back. The always-on availability of information, entertainment, and yes, even pr0n
Amazing stuff.
-Jack Ash
Some of my respondents here are absolutely right - it's HIPAA I'm talking about, not S-O. What can I say, long day at the office, been working so much on compliance for both they're freaking interchangeable in my mind by now, etc. etc. Still no excuse.
:)
First, IANAL (as evidenced by my previous stupid message naming the wrong act). In any event, my understanding is that although HIPAA was originally enacted/intended as a Health-Care related act, it's effects have been interpreted to apply outside of Health Care and to any industry that stores people's private, personal data. One of the big flags the act applies is storing social security numbers.
Rule of thumb is that if you see something private stored or transmitted somewhere it needs to be seriously secured. Seriously secured is roughly defined as encryption for every stage of the data lifecycle, from storage to transmission; as well as access control measures and all that jazz.
So anyway, a whole bunch of industries are running around with their panties in a knot because of these new privacy regs. Then you have happy California's 1386 stuff which I think was meant for online shopping but ended up saying something like that if someone hacked your entity and gained access to customer data you have to notify every single member of that customer population that resides in California or be banned from doing any kind of business in that state. I'm sure that strictly speaking the laws apply only to some very specific instances, but that hasn't stopped people from panicking just in case it could be twisted into applying to them. I'm sure that my explanations are grossly overgeneralized, but they do serve the purposes of this conversation.
The point being, there's cool new regs that protect your privacy. Make sure your school is taking them into account. I wouldn't be hostile about it, but they might just need a pointer in the right directions.
Good luck,
-Jack Ash
I got two wonderful words for you:
Sarbanes-Oxley
Working in computer security gives you some wonderful tools - Given that your school is sending sensitive, private data over a wide open network makes it so they are not in compliance with the S-O act, which is Bad(TM) from a legal and privacy point of view. The data needs to be encrypted on disk and sent/showed only over secure networks.
-Jack Ash
Yeah it's been a bad week for Cisco but they aren't Microsoft. They won't ignore these problems. You'll see firmware updates to fix the password problem in a week tops (if it isn't already out). I suspect you'll also see an update to address the LEAP issues.
Read the article - the LEAP problem was reported to them in AUGUST 2003.
I agree they are not a Microsoft, and they are generally much more responsive, but how would you feel if you had over the past six months implemented a major, wonderful, well protected Cisco LEAP wireless network? Only to receive the news that "yeah, we kinda knew since August our security sucked" (for the record, I am NOT in that situation, but LEAP was a contender for our upcoming wi-fi implementation).
Honestly, Bruce Schneier was recently saying that it's no longer about the crypto, as anyone can do strong crypto these days. It's about the factors around it, like usernames and passwords, physical security, but most of all, implementation. You'd think that something which was hailed at the time as the solution to the broken WEP protocol would be partially secure... Ugh. Now I'm just ranting.
-Jack Ash