The only involvement that the HR dept. has been left with in the hiring processes at the last two companies I've managed was simply offer letters and benefits coordination. They don't even interview the person as a rule. You get a better class of people at a better price that way.
Over here we let HR interview people, but their role is solely to make sure we don't hire a technicaly compitant but worthless person. Ie, HR makes sure the person we have in for an interview today isn't going to become an axe murder while here. Okay, so that is a bit extreem, but you get the idea. Not that we always let them interview, but sometimes. They don't know technical subjects, but they are supposed to be able to detect people lieing about their abilities/expirence.
We agree though, HR doesn't know technical people. (That is us technical people and HR here) They do however know people in general, and technical people are a lot closer to normal people than you might think.;)
What about downtime? Re:can do the same thing
on
BSD And Politics
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· Score: 2
Topic says it all. Sure, with floppie (cdrom for some like NT) I can secure most any OS from crackers trying to write changes.
Add in your turn off other services I can help prevent them from getting in.
What if there is a hole in the web server? It has happened before ya know. Or maybe a ping of death type attack. Whatever. Once the OS is shutdown or cracked (think shutdown -h now) someone needs to (perhaps physically) reboot the machine. Since machines tend to take a few minutes to reboot (mine takes over a minute in the bios, though half of that is finding my scsi harddrives). It is fairly simple once a hole is found to shutdown the machine, to write a script to do so.
Remember this is a poltical website. You have to consider that the person doing the cracking might not just be a script kiddie, he might be an otherwise intellegant adult with poltical motivations. Someone trying to shutdown a website for political reasons isn't as interested in gaining root as he is with keeping others off the net. Few people can afford to do a DoS attack against a machine where the slowest link is a T3. (Which a good hosting company will probably have just to deal with the bandwidth normally seen)
In Mionnesota (and probably other states) it is illegal to view pornographcis images. Just put print out a copy of the relavent law, and in large print hang some signs "Warning, we will provide evidence to law enforcement." (Make sure you provide the evidence when you find it!)
The advantage is you don't block anything accidently. If someone wants to take a chance, that is their problem. If they think they are going to a legitmate sight and "accidently" end up at the wrong one, let the courts sort it out. (Whitehouse.com comes to mind as a potentialy accident). If you are researching breast cancer, tell that to the judge.
Just remember to make the signs big so that nobody can claim they weren't warned. And it wouldn't hurt to face the monitors towards the donut shop so cops can see it...
Remember too, most people want their porn in private. I don't know anyone who doesn't know one prude that they wouldn't want to know about their porn habbits. A public place is therefore not someplace people will be looking for porn, just go the last step to scare them away.
However you need to ask why any student would port scan from his own comptuer. If it is for reasearch then his department (CS most likely) should provide the machine.
For many students I would guess that if their machine is port scanning someone, that means that the machine is compromised and a remote cracker is looking for more holes.
IMHO, the last point is the one you should consider most likely.
Interestinly enough, just this week I've conceived the idea of starting a wireless ISP in my town. Even though I'm Add to the above: within a few mile radius is farm country, but with many lakes that "rich" folks live on. I'm thinking put a radio on some poor farmers Silo, in exchange for his internet access, and sell to the city folks so they have a the ability to work from home.
I'm still in the early stages, but it looks like the above plan is workable. (Anyone know a good upstream ISP for me work from? I've already found a buisness T1 customer and I'm not up yet)
Err, in case you haven't read the constitution, schools are a local issue. The US consitution definds a school district (which is not what current distrcts are, but I digress) No power is given to states to affect local school board issues. Some states take power into their own hands (including Texas's teacher testing), but pay is set by the local school district, not the state goverment.
As for capitol punishment, those verdits are decided by the court system. All Bush could do is a pardon, which then puts a murder on the street. Now some reasonable people argue against capitol punishment, but there are also those who argue against it. But it is legal - so long as every possibal angle of appeal is exhausted.
and the parties forced to allow independants like myself to vote in BOTH primaries.
Err, accually parties should not allow anyone but members to vote in their primaries. The purpose of a party is a bunch of like minded individuals get togather and decide on one person they can all agree on to represent them. Without the party 7 like minded people run (like minded should be read to allow differences, but more agreement with each other then not)
When an independant votes in the primary they are screwing up the process. They are not a member of the party, but they are choosing what the party wants.
I personally belong to a party. (Those who know me can probably guess, but it doesn't matter for this point) When I go to a primary nobody looks at that membership. I often vote for the worst member of the opposite party. If amnisty International would endorce a Hitlet/Stalin ticket over the idiots the other party is running, then my party has a excellent chance of winning. (Saddly canidates that bad are rare and I have to work the campaign trails in other ways to assure the "good guy" wins.)
I'm not the only one who works as the above. After Gore secured the Democrat nomination, Rush Limbaugh managed to find several people who claimed to be democrats who voted in the republican primary. Their goal was to make the other canidate with a chance (and face it, only two canidates have a chance) someone who is a good second choice. This is wrong, and I don't understand why parties allow it.
Not directly. Insurance companies should however be allowed to give me lower rates because I'm a "honest, in shape, hard working, non-drug/tobacco/alcahol user, eat right, etc goody goody person" (Not all of which may be true for me)
Those who smoke and then try to get non-smoker rates on life insurance should be caught and made to pay higher rates. (if the insurance company disoceres it they will not pay, but they can't discover all liers)
Now diabettics and those with cancer probably didn't do anything to get it. However your looking at it wrong. If my sister walks through the door, and the scanners conclude she is a higher then normal risk for breat cancer, they would charge higher rates to her, but in return they would make her get screenings twice a year rather then the normal yearly or every other year. She pays for her treatment, but because they are screening often odds are they catch it sooner when it is cheaper to treat. I get to keep my sister, and the insurance company doesn't have to pay for 6 months of hospital bills before she finially dies. Everyone wins. (One could argue that rates are cheaper becuase they don't pay those expensive 6 month bills, but I don't know exactly how that would work)
Insurance isn't for things that you expect, insurance is for things that you can't anticipate and save for. My odds spending 6 months (for example) in the hospital are pretty low. I pool my money with 10 other people, and when one of us spends 6 months in the hospital the bills are paid. If I knew it was going to be me nobody would pool with me because my odds of landing in the hospital do not affect theirs.
If not, how hard is it for the cyclist to push the button?
Psycologist have studied those buttons and concluded that they are often not connected to anything. Well at least nothing useful, sometimes they turn on the walk light, IF a car is detected wanting to cross there.
In other words, the button doesn't make the light turn green, you need a car to come along as triggure the sensor so that you can cross!
Err, this is direct from the goverment. Accidents per 100 cars or some such.
Now on face value you are right, a uncontrolled intersection cannot get as many cars through as a normal one. However a round-about (Not a traffic circle) can handle almost as many cars and is safer.
You imply that the company is in negotations with the author. That suggests to me that he knows about it. He just wants a lot of money.
The company legally needs to stop shipping any product until this issue is cleared up. Often on the first day of negottions both parties will agree to a license to ship code under the terms of the eventially agreement. This can take time to work out. If the code is strictly GPL and isn't being shipped then they are safe.
If the above is not the case, you should contact a lawyer. $100 for your peace of mind is a good idea. Find one with knowledge in copyrights (and preferably software copyrights) and inform him. Ask the lawer to keep copies of your documentation. It could be illegal to overlook an illegal act that you are aware of. A lawyer can advise you on what you need to do to protect yourself. In most cases there are whilstle blowers acts to protect you.
Ministers at my church love to point out examples of people in similear situations, who have done the right thing. Some folks have been "let go" (probably in a legal way, if you want to get someone you can do so type thing), but they soon found a better job, and the new boss said "We hired you in part because of your integraty". Of course in church the point is a little different, but don't be afraid to do the right thing.
PS, talk to your co-workers about this too. The honest ones will not be happy and may want to join you. A lone whistle blower isn't as effective as half the company.
All those old trackball based games taught me that if your parents are too cheep to buy you are a real trackball you can substitute by moving the joystick back and forth really quickly. Course then they have to buy a joystick, but a $5 joystick is more accaptable then a $40 trackball.
PS, I've only tried this trick on a Atari 400, the best machine ever made. Users of lesser machines (This means you C= guy) may not have luck.
PPS, sorry about the last line, I got carried away in nastalga.
In theory a normal PCI bus can reach 132MB/s. However you not only are reading (writing?) that data from your harddrive, I'm assuming that you also need to put that onto your display.
Don't forget cache issues, you DMA that into memory, then read it out to the processor. Can your memory handle that kind of access? Your putting a lot of stress on the memory bus. If your main code doesn't fit into the processor cache (or isn't optomised to fit well) Sure the lastest gigahertz CPUs can deal with the data just fine, but typically PCs can't keep up with the data flow.
For fast disks, SCSI rules. while ATA now allows taged queueing, AFAIK nothing impliments taged queueing in ATA disks, while scsi does this as a matter of course. Meaning that you will want to select disks based on that feature.
Remember, your application is time critical. If a frame is late it matters.
Now can ATA disks keep up? I don't know. Are scsi disks going to be better? Probably. Is the difference enough to matter? Maybe.
In any case, no single disk can keep up with your requirements. What you need is a raid 0+1 so that data can always be read from two disks, in a good implimentation you read from which ever drive is less busy now. Unfortunatly your writing costs go up as you add more drive to make the reading faster. If you can put data on a different disk so that you never read from the same one you write to you will have better luck.
If you encode a copyrighted music file in a mp3, and put it on a t-shirt (see also the comments about uuencoding or such) and wear it in public you are fine because that is courts have held that medium transfers (they use a different term) is fair use.
However if you see the t-shirt without including the orginial recording (or vise vera sell the CD without including the t-shirt) you are now illegal.
Good try, but in fact the govermetn did buy a $400 hammer. What the over hymp everything media never mentions is that this hammer is ment to be used in an explosive enviroment, and has to be made of a Gaurentied not to spark metal. Because of the nature of that particular enviroment $400 for the hammer is accually reasonable.
Just like the $200 toilet seat isn't what they use on most toilets, but there are a few toilets that need a special design (the space shuttle comes to mind - you need to fit men and women, be comfortable, keep waste in the toilet - all in zero g.)
I did a search on this once. The most dangerious form of intersection is the one controlled by a traffic light. (The least has no controll at all) Second least is the round-about, which can handle as much traffic as the lights. (Except in a few extreem cases)
The above is all according to the US goverment, and if you search their web sites enough you can find it too. (I'm too lazy today - I already lost the battle with local traffic planners who have the old Not invented here syndrom and thus ruined traffic in myk town)
Good luck making use of the above knowlege though.
Above the rs6000 IBM puts the As/400 and Mainframe. The mainframe can run linux, which means that the rs/6000 is a low end system. Instead of looking at the high end, look at the low end rs/6000s which are much cheaper then the mainframe.
This has NOTHING to do with speed or price nessicarly.
I think you are looking at the wrong end of the scale
High end Sun: a few million dollars. (3 If I remember right, but when you get into these systems discounts are the norm, not to mention all the other hardware you would typically buy with it)
High end Mac: $15,000, and I don't think they have had a machine that expensive in a few years.
hmmm... I don't know what SGI sells sytesm for. IBM considers their RS6000 a low end unix machines. God knows what Dec is doing. (I refuse to use the C word on them or pay attention to the C company)
Of course linux and *BSD generally runs on cheap x86 machines, as does SCO. The biggest unix market by far, but not the only one.
Many people I work with bring either personal CDs, or a radio. So long as they listen with headphones, we can contact them when we need to, and they get the work done the company doesn't care.
Now if there were illegal (I didn't read the artical) or tieing up bandwidth they have grounds. However if they have a under utilized machine on their desktop what does the company care if they use it for music?
I agree, worst case is let the kids who want to figgure it out. However there are two gottchas to this approach: Make sure that you have the ability to wipe the entire system clean should you want to use it. You never know what the kids leave behind (perhaps on accident), and it is best to start from a clean slate once in a while.
Second, make sure that the kids can use this to harm other machines. Most kids are good, but there are bad apples in every bunch, so protect yourself from them.
Lots of useful things to do with this machine, so don't let it go to waste.
It is illegal to make unsolicitated calls to a cell phone (US for sure, not sure about other countires) because I pay for the time. I don't answer my land line phone, as that is for the computer, and will soon be cancled when something better comes through. Turns out that with free long distance it is cheaper for me and my roommates to use a cell phone with 600-1000 (day vs weekend) mintues a month.
Accually if I sign my check D. Duck it should clear. In fact courts have held that unsigned checks can clear, so long as there is reason to belive the owner of the checking account intended to sign the check but forgot. Courts have also held that I can write out and sign my dads checks (I don't have power of atterny or any such thing) so long as dad would have wrote out that check had he been there - ie if dad always writes a check for the phone bill and I pay the bill one month with his checks).
Some of the above examples depend more on the mood of the judge then others. I would expect an unsigned or miss signed check to hold up in court (so long as the rest is in my hand writing!) much more likely then someone else writing one of my checks for something that I always buy.
I have learned to sign my credit card with my right hand, and then sign the recipts with my left. I've only had one clerk ask for further ID, and those signatures are very different.
Back about 3 or 4 years ago someone on the Scary Devil Monastery got mad at all the lusers posting with line lenghts longer then 72 charicters. So he made all the line lenghs of his next few posts exactly that. The neat thing was he did it by hand, without inserting extra spaces. Those posts made gramitical sense and were intellegent.
So with practice you should be able to set up a low bandwidth code based on line lenghts. Shorter then 72 is a 0, longer is a 1 (or maybe encode 2 bits in a line...)
Of course the point is that you need to communicate without rasing suspition. Thus you need a pen-pal that you can write long letters to often, on innocent subjects. (Talk about your girl friend, go into detail about your date at a restaruant - someplace they can quickly verify that you really were in). If keep sending pictures of the mona-lisa around slightly altered, then you better be talking a email class on gimp filters. (This is what I came up with when doing a blur to the nose - and then embed your message in the least significant bits of the nose area only.)
Slashdot Mirror
The only involvement that the HR dept. has been left with in the hiring processes at the last two companies I've managed was simply offer letters and benefits coordination. They don't even interview the person as a rule. You get a better class of people at a better price that way.
Over here we let HR interview people, but their role is solely to make sure we don't hire a technicaly compitant but worthless person. Ie, HR makes sure the person we have in for an interview today isn't going to become an axe murder while here. Okay, so that is a bit extreem, but you get the idea. Not that we always let them interview, but sometimes. They don't know technical subjects, but they are supposed to be able to detect people lieing about their abilities/expirence.
We agree though, HR doesn't know technical people. (That is us technical people and HR here) They do however know people in general, and technical people are a lot closer to normal people than you might think. ;)
Topic says it all. Sure, with floppie (cdrom for some like NT) I can secure most any OS from crackers trying to write changes.
Add in your turn off other services I can help prevent them from getting in.
What if there is a hole in the web server? It has happened before ya know. Or maybe a ping of death type attack. Whatever. Once the OS is shutdown or cracked (think shutdown -h now) someone needs to (perhaps physically) reboot the machine. Since machines tend to take a few minutes to reboot (mine takes over a minute in the bios, though half of that is finding my scsi harddrives). It is fairly simple once a hole is found to shutdown the machine, to write a script to do so.
Remember this is a poltical website. You have to consider that the person doing the cracking might not just be a script kiddie, he might be an otherwise intellegant adult with poltical motivations. Someone trying to shutdown a website for political reasons isn't as interested in gaining root as he is with keeping others off the net. Few people can afford to do a DoS attack against a machine where the slowest link is a T3. (Which a good hosting company will probably have just to deal with the bandwidth normally seen)
In Mionnesota (and probably other states) it is illegal to view pornographcis images. Just put print out a copy of the relavent law, and in large print hang some signs "Warning, we will provide evidence to law enforcement." (Make sure you provide the evidence when you find it!)
The advantage is you don't block anything accidently. If someone wants to take a chance, that is their problem. If they think they are going to a legitmate sight and "accidently" end up at the wrong one, let the courts sort it out. (Whitehouse.com comes to mind as a potentialy accident). If you are researching breast cancer, tell that to the judge.
Just remember to make the signs big so that nobody can claim they weren't warned. And it wouldn't hurt to face the monitors towards the donut shop so cops can see it...
Remember too, most people want their porn in private. I don't know anyone who doesn't know one prude that they wouldn't want to know about their porn habbits. A public place is therefore not someplace people will be looking for porn, just go the last step to scare them away.
There are legitmate reasons to port scan someone.
However you need to ask why any student would port scan from his own comptuer. If it is for reasearch then his department (CS most likely) should provide the machine.
For many students I would guess that if their machine is port scanning someone, that means that the machine is compromised and a remote cracker is looking for more holes.
IMHO, the last point is the one you should consider most likely.
Direct PC appearently has both up and downstream now. Worth checking out.
Interestinly enough, just this week I've conceived the idea of starting a wireless ISP in my town. Even though I'm Add to the above: within a few mile radius is farm country, but with many lakes that "rich" folks live on. I'm thinking put a radio on some poor farmers Silo, in exchange for his internet access, and sell to the city folks so they have a the ability to work from home.
I'm still in the early stages, but it looks like the above plan is workable. (Anyone know a good upstream ISP for me work from? I've already found a buisness T1 customer and I'm not up yet)
Err, in case you haven't read the constitution, schools are a local issue. The US consitution definds a school district (which is not what current distrcts are, but I digress) No power is given to states to affect local school board issues. Some states take power into their own hands (including Texas's teacher testing), but pay is set by the local school district, not the state goverment.
As for capitol punishment, those verdits are decided by the court system. All Bush could do is a pardon, which then puts a murder on the street. Now some reasonable people argue against capitol punishment, but there are also those who argue against it. But it is legal - so long as every possibal angle of appeal is exhausted.
and the parties forced to allow independants like myself to vote in BOTH primaries.
Err, accually parties should not allow anyone but members to vote in their primaries. The purpose of a party is a bunch of like minded individuals get togather and decide on one person they can all agree on to represent them. Without the party 7 like minded people run (like minded should be read to allow differences, but more agreement with each other then not)
When an independant votes in the primary they are screwing up the process. They are not a member of the party, but they are choosing what the party wants.
I personally belong to a party. (Those who know me can probably guess, but it doesn't matter for this point) When I go to a primary nobody looks at that membership. I often vote for the worst member of the opposite party. If amnisty International would endorce a Hitlet/Stalin ticket over the idiots the other party is running, then my party has a excellent chance of winning. (Saddly canidates that bad are rare and I have to work the campaign trails in other ways to assure the "good guy" wins.)
I'm not the only one who works as the above. After Gore secured the Democrat nomination, Rush Limbaugh managed to find several people who claimed to be democrats who voted in the republican primary. Their goal was to make the other canidate with a chance (and face it, only two canidates have a chance) someone who is a good second choice. This is wrong, and I don't understand why parties allow it.
Not directly. Insurance companies should however be allowed to give me lower rates because I'm a "honest, in shape, hard working, non-drug/tobacco/alcahol user, eat right, etc goody goody person" (Not all of which may be true for me)
Those who smoke and then try to get non-smoker rates on life insurance should be caught and made to pay higher rates. (if the insurance company disoceres it they will not pay, but they can't discover all liers)
Now diabettics and those with cancer probably didn't do anything to get it. However your looking at it wrong. If my sister walks through the door, and the scanners conclude she is a higher then normal risk for breat cancer, they would charge higher rates to her, but in return they would make her get screenings twice a year rather then the normal yearly or every other year. She pays for her treatment, but because they are screening often odds are they catch it sooner when it is cheaper to treat. I get to keep my sister, and the insurance company doesn't have to pay for 6 months of hospital bills before she finially dies. Everyone wins. (One could argue that rates are cheaper becuase they don't pay those expensive 6 month bills, but I don't know exactly how that would work)
Insurance isn't for things that you expect, insurance is for things that you can't anticipate and save for. My odds spending 6 months (for example) in the hospital are pretty low. I pool my money with 10 other people, and when one of us spends 6 months in the hospital the bills are paid. If I knew it was going to be me nobody would pool with me because my odds of landing in the hospital do not affect theirs.
If not, how hard is it for the cyclist to push the button?
Psycologist have studied those buttons and concluded that they are often not connected to anything. Well at least nothing useful, sometimes they turn on the walk light, IF a car is detected wanting to cross there.
In other words, the button doesn't make the light turn green, you need a car to come along as triggure the sensor so that you can cross!
Just arouther reason to hate traffic lights.
Err, this is direct from the goverment. Accidents per 100 cars or some such.
Now on face value you are right, a uncontrolled intersection cannot get as many cars through as a normal one. However a round-about (Not a traffic circle) can handle almost as many cars and is safer.
You imply that the company is in negotations with the author. That suggests to me that he knows about it. He just wants a lot of money.
The company legally needs to stop shipping any product until this issue is cleared up. Often on the first day of negottions both parties will agree to a license to ship code under the terms of the eventially agreement. This can take time to work out. If the code is strictly GPL and isn't being shipped then they are safe.
If the above is not the case, you should contact a lawyer. $100 for your peace of mind is a good idea. Find one with knowledge in copyrights (and preferably software copyrights) and inform him. Ask the lawer to keep copies of your documentation. It could be illegal to overlook an illegal act that you are aware of. A lawyer can advise you on what you need to do to protect yourself. In most cases there are whilstle blowers acts to protect you.
Ministers at my church love to point out examples of people in similear situations, who have done the right thing. Some folks have been "let go" (probably in a legal way, if you want to get someone you can do so type thing), but they soon found a better job, and the new boss said "We hired you in part because of your integraty". Of course in church the point is a little different, but don't be afraid to do the right thing.
PS, talk to your co-workers about this too. The honest ones will not be happy and may want to join you. A lone whistle blower isn't as effective as half the company.
All those old trackball based games taught me that if your parents are too cheep to buy you are a real trackball you can substitute by moving the joystick back and forth really quickly. Course then they have to buy a joystick, but a $5 joystick is more accaptable then a $40 trackball.
PS, I've only tried this trick on a Atari 400, the best machine ever made. Users of lesser machines (This means you C= guy) may not have luck.
PPS, sorry about the last line, I got carried away in nastalga.
In theory a normal PCI bus can reach 132MB/s. However you not only are reading (writing?) that data from your harddrive, I'm assuming that you also need to put that onto your display.
Don't forget cache issues, you DMA that into memory, then read it out to the processor. Can your memory handle that kind of access? Your putting a lot of stress on the memory bus. If your main code doesn't fit into the processor cache (or isn't optomised to fit well) Sure the lastest gigahertz CPUs can deal with the data just fine, but typically PCs can't keep up with the data flow.
For fast disks, SCSI rules. while ATA now allows taged queueing, AFAIK nothing impliments taged queueing in ATA disks, while scsi does this as a matter of course. Meaning that you will want to select disks based on that feature.
Remember, your application is time critical. If a frame is late it matters.
Now can ATA disks keep up? I don't know. Are scsi disks going to be better? Probably. Is the difference enough to matter? Maybe.
In any case, no single disk can keep up with your requirements. What you need is a raid 0+1 so that data can always be read from two disks, in a good implimentation you read from which ever drive is less busy now. Unfortunatly your writing costs go up as you add more drive to make the reading faster. If you can put data on a different disk so that you never read from the same one you write to you will have better luck.
If you encode a copyrighted music file in a mp3, and put it on a t-shirt (see also the comments about uuencoding or such) and wear it in public you are fine because that is courts have held that medium transfers (they use a different term) is fair use.
However if you see the t-shirt without including the orginial recording (or vise vera sell the CD without including the t-shirt) you are now illegal.
Good try, but in fact the govermetn did buy a $400 hammer. What the over hymp everything media never mentions is that this hammer is ment to be used in an explosive enviroment, and has to be made of a Gaurentied not to spark metal. Because of the nature of that particular enviroment $400 for the hammer is accually reasonable.
Just like the $200 toilet seat isn't what they use on most toilets, but there are a few toilets that need a special design (the space shuttle comes to mind - you need to fit men and women, be comfortable, keep waste in the toilet - all in zero g.)
I did a search on this once. The most dangerious form of intersection is the one controlled by a traffic light. (The least has no controll at all) Second least is the round-about, which can handle as much traffic as the lights. (Except in a few extreem cases)
The above is all according to the US goverment, and if you search their web sites enough you can find it too. (I'm too lazy today - I already lost the battle with local traffic planners who have the old Not invented here syndrom and thus ruined traffic in myk town)
Good luck making use of the above knowlege though.
Above the rs6000 IBM puts the As/400 and Mainframe. The mainframe can run linux, which means that the rs/6000 is a low end system. Instead of looking at the high end, look at the low end rs/6000s which are much cheaper then the mainframe.
This has NOTHING to do with speed or price nessicarly.
Both the CIA and NSA have missions of "spying" on other countires. How does your mission differ from the CIA?
I think you are looking at the wrong end of the scale
High end Sun: a few million dollars. (3 If I remember right, but when you get into these systems discounts are the norm, not to mention all the other hardware you would typically buy with it)
High end Mac: $15,000, and I don't think they have had a machine that expensive in a few years.
hmmm... I don't know what SGI sells sytesm for. IBM considers their RS6000 a low end unix machines. God knows what Dec is doing. (I refuse to use the C word on them or pay attention to the C company)
Of course linux and *BSD generally runs on cheap x86 machines, as does SCO. The biggest unix market by far, but not the only one.
Many people I work with bring either personal CDs, or a radio. So long as they listen with headphones, we can contact them when we need to, and they get the work done the company doesn't care.
Now if there were illegal (I didn't read the artical) or tieing up bandwidth they have grounds. However if they have a under utilized machine on their desktop what does the company care if they use it for music?
I agree, worst case is let the kids who want to figgure it out. However there are two gottchas to this approach: Make sure that you have the ability to wipe the entire system clean should you want to use it. You never know what the kids leave behind (perhaps on accident), and it is best to start from a clean slate once in a while.
Second, make sure that the kids can use this to harm other machines. Most kids are good, but there are bad apples in every bunch, so protect yourself from them.
Lots of useful things to do with this machine, so don't let it go to waste.
It is illegal to make unsolicitated calls to a cell phone (US for sure, not sure about other countires) because I pay for the time. I don't answer my land line phone, as that is for the computer, and will soon be cancled when something better comes through. Turns out that with free long distance it is cheaper for me and my roommates to use a cell phone with 600-1000 (day vs weekend) mintues a month.
Accually if I sign my check D. Duck it should clear. In fact courts have held that unsigned checks can clear, so long as there is reason to belive the owner of the checking account intended to sign the check but forgot. Courts have also held that I can write out and sign my dads checks (I don't have power of atterny or any such thing) so long as dad would have wrote out that check had he been there - ie if dad always writes a check for the phone bill and I pay the bill one month with his checks).
Some of the above examples depend more on the mood of the judge then others. I would expect an unsigned or miss signed check to hold up in court (so long as the rest is in my hand writing!) much more likely then someone else writing one of my checks for something that I always buy.
I have learned to sign my credit card with my right hand, and then sign the recipts with my left. I've only had one clerk ask for further ID, and those signatures are very different.
Back about 3 or 4 years ago someone on the Scary Devil Monastery got mad at all the lusers posting with line lenghts longer then 72 charicters. So he made all the line lenghs of his next few posts exactly that. The neat thing was he did it by hand, without inserting extra spaces. Those posts made gramitical sense and were intellegent.
So with practice you should be able to set up a low bandwidth code based on line lenghts. Shorter then 72 is a 0, longer is a 1 (or maybe encode 2 bits in a line...)
Of course the point is that you need to communicate without rasing suspition. Thus you need a pen-pal that you can write long letters to often, on innocent subjects. (Talk about your girl friend, go into detail about your date at a restaruant - someplace they can quickly verify that you really were in). If keep sending pictures of the mona-lisa around slightly altered, then you better be talking a email class on gimp filters. (This is what I came up with when doing a blur to the nose - and then embed your message in the least significant bits of the nose area only.)