I have a problem believing that a brand new 747 is only $50,000. Even without the seats, avionics, engines, etc, there's no way in hell it costs the same as a decent sports car. Either it's a typo, or there's some shenanigans afoot.
They were also using a junked-to-hell, old-as-shit airplane they found in a fucking SCRAPYARD. Of course it isn't airtight, it's been decommissioned because it's fucking BROKEN, hence why it's in a SCRAPYARD.
Also, although the engines pump air into the cabin, it's not like this thing is a sieve that needs the engines to constantly keep it from depressurizing completely. A big issue is humidity, there isn't much of it at cruising altitude and so a lot of the air is recycled in order to prevent everything from drying out. There's some flow in and out of the plane, but it can be shut off if necessary to become almost completely airtight. (I say almost because it can't possibly last forever, but it'll last a couple hours, which is effectively airtight.)
"apparently, an eye-witness account is not good enough these days" Of course it's not good enough. I could say that I saw you steal my car, you certainly wouldn't want to be arrested based on that, would you?
The question is, why didn't you go ahead with the super soaker idea? Sounds like it would actually work. If nothing else, it would keep them from coming back.
"The trick to stuff like this mist is that it marks not only the clothes, but any exposed skin as well, which increases the amount of work the offender has to do to avoid being prosecuted (destroy clothes, scrub the ink off their skin - not easy to do the latter). It still requires policing and detection to actually find them, but should serve to increase the rate of successful prosecutions."
If you can stop an alarm then you can stop this device from spraying you. Somehow this device has to be set off, whether that's linked to a security system, or manually triggered or whatever. If you can stop a guy from arming an alarm system or from hitting a panic button then you can stop him from hitting the "spray the dude with the water" button.
""How did you come to have a UV marker solution on the clothes you wore last night that is ONLY issued to Company X"
Are you sure it was only issued to company X? Show my evidence that no other bottle could possibly contain the same solution. See, with humans this process occurs naturally, everyone has different DNA (with extremely high probability) because of how biology works. Once you start making your own, you've shown that it's possible to duplicate DNA, thus the solution is NOT necessarily unique.
"I also know from experience that a 50ml pot of SmartWater is enough to chemically mark every PC or electrical item in a school several times a year and last several years."
So, you have now just told us that you have the ability to put the SAME SOLUTION on multiple DIFFERENT ENTITIES MULTIPLE TIMES PER YER for years on end. Thus, anyone could, with only a tiny amount of this stuff, frame any number of different people with extreme ease.
"but with SmartWater once it's in police possession even the smallest tiny speck of SmartWater (which can be deployed even on hard-to-cleanse areas like across the PCB's of (unpowered) motherboards) or similar will link it to it's owner."
No, it will link it to whoever managed to get their hands on one of these bottles and spray it on whatever the fuck they felt like. I could go mark every computer at my local university with this stuff and then claim that the entire computer lab belonged to me because only I have this bottle of magic property-identifying liquid.
It's nothing to do with your safety. If it were up to the store, you'd be required to chase the fucker down and you'd be liable for everything stolen if the guy got in his car before you caught him.
The reason they don't want you chasing anyone is because these people have, in the past, run from guards out into traffic, been hit by a car, and successfully sued the store. The idea is some nonsense like "because the store guard was chasing me, I thought I was in danger and so the store put me in the dangerous situation of making me run into traffic". The store doesn't want a $200,000 lawsuit for an item that only costs $10.
Why on earth were email filters even implemented? Seems to me that if you have to put filters in place to stop people sending pornographic messages through the company email then you have a lot more problems than the email system.
I mean, anyone sending around inappropriate stuff would just be disciplined as soon as the boss sees it.
Your argument is "well, if you're not breaking the law then why do you care?"
Let's extrapolate: Why can't we put a camera in your house? I mean, you're not breaking the law, so why should you care? Obviously you don't want cameras in your house because you just want to break laws.
"Blade — short for Block All Drive-By Download Exploits"
Typical government acronyms. A lot of government agencies and defense contractors feel the need to give their product some stupid ass name like this to imply that it's a powerful program. I mean, it's called BLADE! It must be good. This is usually more important that actually describing what the device does. Thus, we end up with a lot of bullshit devices like "Kill, blade, death" and so on that all sound like doomsday devices but are really nothing more than an account system or a program designed to stop morons from downloading malware. I mean, is this even and issue if you aren't using IE6?
"But ordering those systems without Windows would have been an additional level of effort with not enough financial gain to justify it."
I don't know how many machines you deal with, but the microsoft tax is fucking huge when you're dealing with hundreds of machines. There's been a couple people that have managed to order laptops without windows and received a discount for it. It takes a few hours on the phone, but you receive a laptop without an OS and a check for about $50. Multiply $50 by however many machines you have and you end up with a lot of money.
I suspect that vendors like this completely refuse to offer this no-windows option at the business level even if it means losing a sale of many hundred machines, lest they have to explain to MS why they're not getting lots of money.
To be honest, I don't know how it all works at the business level, all I know is that I'm ordering my next laptop without windows and I'm going to spend up to 12 hours on the phone to get the discount for it.
As is every single piece of technology that ever has, and ever will be, invented. Any progress in any field of study has both benevolent and malevolent purposes. Fire is used for cooking, also for arson. The wheel is used to transport goods, also make off with stolen goods. The hammer helps build things, and bash skulls in. Etc.
This new visible light "x-ray" can be used for spying or legitimate medical purposes.
The trick is to ensure that those in power do not abuse this technology. This is done by not allowing them to keep secrets. This is done by forcing information out of them, by deadly force if necessary.
OK, fine, but let's say you have a reader. The reader tells you "Tag X detected". You know that Tag X corresponds to machine Y. Where is machine Y?
You have the following circumstances: A) Low power reader. You have to hold the reader right next to the machine for the RFID to work. This requires manual inspection and knowledge of where the machine is in the first place. B) Mid-power reader. The machine is within, say, 5 feet. Unless your organization is freaking horrible you're basically just performing visual inspection again. Because you have to walk up and down the isles anyway. C) High-power reader. The machine is somewhere on this floor, the floor above, the floor below, or elsewhere in the building. Now you're back where you started.
Of course, this isn't going to help locate "ghost" hardware anyway because even perfect inventory control systems are just that... INVENTORY CONTROL, not computer resource management. Sure, you know that Machine X,Y,and Z are in building 1 and machines I,J,K are in building 2, but you need to audit your resource usage to see if anything is superfluous and just sucking up power.
"Vendors offer estimates, ranging from single to low double digits, on the number of servers either misplaced or working as ghosts" Surprise! Vendors say that their product is quite important and totally not a waste of money.
Though I do agree with you that putting on RFID can prevent theft. Tags on the boxes, readers on the doors.
I see your argument and all but clearly YOU'RE A TERRORIST AND UNAMERICAN NOT HANDING OVER YOUR PASSWORD IS HELPING THE TERRORISTS IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO HIDE WHY DO YOU CARE!!!!!!!
At least, that's how it'd go today.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
It really depends on the company. Comcast has a strict no servers policy that states "any machine used for a purpose of serving content to anyone outside of the local network". These policies are not designed to prevent you from making money without them charging you for it. These policies are designed to limit bandwidth usage so they don't have to upgrade their infrastructure. Same reason they can drop you for "any use of the network for anything that, in deems "abusive"". Meaning, they can disconnect you for checking your email because they decide it's abusive.
Again, these are all to limit bandwidth usage, not for any legitimate purpose.
My point is that you can save yourself a lot of time and hastle if you just give your users a bit of education. You have the choice of explaining to people why it's a bad idea to plug a wireless router into an ethernet port, or rebuilding half your network when a hacker gets in and tears the place up.
"After that, if it recurs, we need to see either an invoice from a repair shop or retail shop for repair of purchase of a computer."
You assume that your users are incapable of cleaning an infection? It's quite possible that they know what they're doing but got infected twice. You're also assuming that any repair shop actually knows what they're doing. Geeksquad routinely misses malware after you pay them to clean it and they often mistake malware-filled laptops as "not fast enough to run windows xp".
"So: they don't have an e-mail address for you, or a phone number, and you throw out all postal mail you get from them. How do you suggest they contact you if there's a problem?"
Anyone that throws out mail from comcast can just as easily ignore the overlay. Besides, it's not comcast's responsibility to tell you if you have a bot running on your machine. This would be a little like your car putting an overlay on your windshield if your windshield wipers are in need of replacing, it's just ridiculous.
Also, what happens when someone gets flagged falsely and they can't get the overlay removed. Every try calling comcast customer service. Wait three hours on hold and then talk to a moron in india that doesn't speak english only to be read a script in a thick accent and then have them hang up on you.
Yeah, and technically all the jews that Hitler murdered (yeah, different time period, I know) were all criminals.
Of course, we generally don't accept the definition of "criminal" as defined by MASS MURDERING FUCKHEADS. Therefore, those people were NOT criminals. They were innocent civilians regardless of what the oppressive, illegal, government classified them as.
"By choosing to play the border guard and kill the escapee, the player would win an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial."
Explain to me what part of this doesn't have tact. A lot of people will probably object to killing civilians, but the killing of innocent civilians IS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE TIME AND PLACE IN WHICH THIS GAME IS SET. There isn't any way around this. Either you want to teach history with all the violence and bloodshed that it entails, or you want to censor history. There's no way to point out the atrocities of what Hitler's army did without pointing out the atrocities carried out by Hitler's army. Yes, it was gruesome, yes it was inhuman, yes it was violent. If you think that pointing this out is "tactless" then you're a moron.
That's a very optimistic view. Unfortunately it's also entirely naive. The fact of the matter is there's no way you're going to be able to do a anything if you get a poor education. If your school can't afford more than 1-2 textbooks per class and your entire recess is spent trying not to get shot rather than trying to have fun then you're screwed, the end. Unfortunately, this situation exists in some public schools around the country.
The problem is that if they prefix this with "This program is not 100% perfect" then it's an opinion, which isn't libel. Also, if they say "so and so posted such and such to some website", that's not libel either, because truth is an absolute defense against libel claims.
Better to go after the employer who fires you based on activities outside of work... though that isn't likely to succeed either unfortunately.
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I have a problem believing that a brand new 747 is only $50,000. Even without the seats, avionics, engines, etc, there's no way in hell it costs the same as a decent sports car. Either it's a typo, or there's some shenanigans afoot.
They were also using a junked-to-hell, old-as-shit airplane they found in a fucking SCRAPYARD. Of course it isn't airtight, it's been decommissioned because it's fucking BROKEN, hence why it's in a SCRAPYARD.
Also, although the engines pump air into the cabin, it's not like this thing is a sieve that needs the engines to constantly keep it from depressurizing completely. A big issue is humidity, there isn't much of it at cruising altitude and so a lot of the air is recycled in order to prevent everything from drying out. There's some flow in and out of the plane, but it can be shut off if necessary to become almost completely airtight. (I say almost because it can't possibly last forever, but it'll last a couple hours, which is effectively airtight.)
"apparently, an eye-witness account is not good enough these days"
Of course it's not good enough. I could say that I saw you steal my car, you certainly wouldn't want to be arrested based on that, would you?
The question is, why didn't you go ahead with the super soaker idea? Sounds like it would actually work. If nothing else, it would keep them from coming back.
"The trick to stuff like this mist is that it marks not only the clothes, but any exposed skin as well, which increases the amount of work the offender has to do to avoid being prosecuted (destroy clothes, scrub the ink off their skin - not easy to do the latter). It still requires policing and detection to actually find them, but should serve to increase the rate of successful prosecutions."
If you can stop an alarm then you can stop this device from spraying you. Somehow this device has to be set off, whether that's linked to a security system, or manually triggered or whatever. If you can stop a guy from arming an alarm system or from hitting a panic button then you can stop him from hitting the "spray the dude with the water" button.
""How did you come to have a UV marker solution on the clothes you wore last night that is ONLY issued to Company X"
Are you sure it was only issued to company X? Show my evidence that no other bottle could possibly contain the same solution. See, with humans this process occurs naturally, everyone has different DNA (with extremely high probability) because of how biology works. Once you start making your own, you've shown that it's possible to duplicate DNA, thus the solution is NOT necessarily unique.
"I also know from experience that a 50ml pot of SmartWater is enough to chemically mark every PC or electrical item in a school several times a year and last several years."
So, you have now just told us that you have the ability to put the SAME SOLUTION on multiple DIFFERENT ENTITIES MULTIPLE TIMES PER YER for years on end. Thus, anyone could, with only a tiny amount of this stuff, frame any number of different people with extreme ease.
"but with SmartWater once it's in police possession even the smallest tiny speck of SmartWater (which can be deployed even on hard-to-cleanse areas like across the PCB's of (unpowered) motherboards) or similar will link it to it's owner."
No, it will link it to whoever managed to get their hands on one of these bottles and spray it on whatever the fuck they felt like. I could go mark every computer at my local university with this stuff and then claim that the entire computer lab belonged to me because only I have this bottle of magic property-identifying liquid.
It's nothing to do with your safety. If it were up to the store, you'd be required to chase the fucker down and you'd be liable for everything stolen if the guy got in his car before you caught him.
The reason they don't want you chasing anyone is because these people have, in the past, run from guards out into traffic, been hit by a car, and successfully sued the store. The idea is some nonsense like "because the store guard was chasing me, I thought I was in danger and so the store put me in the dangerous situation of making me run into traffic". The store doesn't want a $200,000 lawsuit for an item that only costs $10.
Why on earth were email filters even implemented? Seems to me that if you have to put filters in place to stop people sending pornographic messages through the company email then you have a lot more problems than the email system.
I mean, anyone sending around inappropriate stuff would just be disciplined as soon as the boss sees it.
Your argument is "well, if you're not breaking the law then why do you care?"
Let's extrapolate:
Why can't we put a camera in your house? I mean, you're not breaking the law, so why should you care? Obviously you don't want cameras in your house because you just want to break laws.
"Blade — short for Block All Drive-By Download Exploits"
Typical government acronyms. A lot of government agencies and defense contractors feel the need to give their product some stupid ass name like this to imply that it's a powerful program. I mean, it's called BLADE! It must be good. This is usually more important that actually describing what the device does. Thus, we end up with a lot of bullshit devices like "Kill, blade, death" and so on that all sound like doomsday devices but are really nothing more than an account system or a program designed to stop morons from downloading malware. I mean, is this even and issue if you aren't using IE6?
"But ordering those systems without Windows would have been an additional level of effort with not enough financial gain to justify it."
I don't know how many machines you deal with, but the microsoft tax is fucking huge when you're dealing with hundreds of machines. There's been a couple people that have managed to order laptops without windows and received a discount for it. It takes a few hours on the phone, but you receive a laptop without an OS and a check for about $50. Multiply $50 by however many machines you have and you end up with a lot of money.
I suspect that vendors like this completely refuse to offer this no-windows option at the business level even if it means losing a sale of many hundred machines, lest they have to explain to MS why they're not getting lots of money.
To be honest, I don't know how it all works at the business level, all I know is that I'm ordering my next laptop without windows and I'm going to spend up to 12 hours on the phone to get the discount for it.
"This is a double edged sword."
As is every single piece of technology that ever has, and ever will be, invented. Any progress in any field of study has both benevolent and malevolent purposes. Fire is used for cooking, also for arson. The wheel is used to transport goods, also make off with stolen goods. The hammer helps build things, and bash skulls in. Etc.
This new visible light "x-ray" can be used for spying or legitimate medical purposes.
The trick is to ensure that those in power do not abuse this technology. This is done by not allowing them to keep secrets. This is done by forcing information out of them, by deadly force if necessary.
OK, fine, but let's say you have a reader. The reader tells you "Tag X detected". You know that Tag X corresponds to machine Y. Where is machine Y?
You have the following circumstances:
A) Low power reader. You have to hold the reader right next to the machine for the RFID to work. This requires manual inspection and knowledge of where the machine is in the first place.
B) Mid-power reader. The machine is within, say, 5 feet. Unless your organization is freaking horrible you're basically just performing visual inspection again. Because you have to walk up and down the isles anyway.
C) High-power reader. The machine is somewhere on this floor, the floor above, the floor below, or elsewhere in the building. Now you're back where you started.
Of course, this isn't going to help locate "ghost" hardware anyway because even perfect inventory control systems are just that... INVENTORY CONTROL, not computer resource management. Sure, you know that Machine X,Y,and Z are in building 1 and machines I,J,K are in building 2, but you need to audit your resource usage to see if anything is superfluous and just sucking up power.
"Vendors offer estimates, ranging from single to low double digits, on the number of servers either misplaced or working as ghosts"
Surprise! Vendors say that their product is quite important and totally not a waste of money.
Though I do agree with you that putting on RFID can prevent theft. Tags on the boxes, readers on the doors.
You misplace your keys, yes? Despite using them day in and day out.
I see your argument and all but clearly YOU'RE A TERRORIST AND UNAMERICAN NOT HANDING OVER YOUR PASSWORD IS HELPING THE TERRORISTS IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO HIDE WHY DO YOU CARE!!!!!!!
At least, that's how it'd go today.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
It really depends on the company. Comcast has a strict no servers policy that states "any machine used for a purpose of serving content to anyone outside of the local network". These policies are not designed to prevent you from making money without them charging you for it. These policies are designed to limit bandwidth usage so they don't have to upgrade their infrastructure. Same reason they can drop you for "any use of the network for anything that, in deems "abusive"". Meaning, they can disconnect you for checking your email because they decide it's abusive.
Again, these are all to limit bandwidth usage, not for any legitimate purpose.
Whoops, hit post too soon.
My point is that you can save yourself a lot of time and hastle if you just give your users a bit of education. You have the choice of explaining to people why it's a bad idea to plug a wireless router into an ethernet port, or rebuilding half your network when a hacker gets in and tears the place up.
"After that, if it recurs, we need to see either an invoice from a repair shop or retail shop for repair of purchase of a computer."
You assume that your users are incapable of cleaning an infection? It's quite possible that they know what they're doing but got infected twice. You're also assuming that any repair shop actually knows what they're doing. Geeksquad routinely misses malware after you pay them to clean it and they often mistake malware-filled laptops as "not fast enough to run windows xp".
"So: they don't have an e-mail address for you, or a phone number, and you throw out all postal mail you get from them. How do you suggest they contact you if there's a problem?"
Anyone that throws out mail from comcast can just as easily ignore the overlay. Besides, it's not comcast's responsibility to tell you if you have a bot running on your machine. This would be a little like your car putting an overlay on your windshield if your windshield wipers are in need of replacing, it's just ridiculous.
Also, what happens when someone gets flagged falsely and they can't get the overlay removed. Every try calling comcast customer service. Wait three hours on hold and then talk to a moron in india that doesn't speak english only to be read a script in a thick accent and then have them hang up on you.
Yeah, and technically all the jews that Hitler murdered (yeah, different time period, I know) were all criminals.
Of course, we generally don't accept the definition of "criminal" as defined by MASS MURDERING FUCKHEADS. Therefore, those people were NOT criminals. They were innocent civilians regardless of what the oppressive, illegal, government classified them as.
"By choosing to play the border guard and kill the escapee, the player would win an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial."
Explain to me what part of this doesn't have tact. A lot of people will probably object to killing civilians, but the killing of innocent civilians IS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE TIME AND PLACE IN WHICH THIS GAME IS SET. There isn't any way around this. Either you want to teach history with all the violence and bloodshed that it entails, or you want to censor history. There's no way to point out the atrocities of what Hitler's army did without pointing out the atrocities carried out by Hitler's army. Yes, it was gruesome, yes it was inhuman, yes it was violent. If you think that pointing this out is "tactless" then you're a moron.
Hit the "encrypt this information" button, really that simple. They're not harvesting your info.
That's a very optimistic view. Unfortunately it's also entirely naive. The fact of the matter is there's no way you're going to be able to do a anything if you get a poor education. If your school can't afford more than 1-2 textbooks per class and your entire recess is spent trying not to get shot rather than trying to have fun then you're screwed, the end. Unfortunately, this situation exists in some public schools around the country.
The problem is that if they prefix this with "This program is not 100% perfect" then it's an opinion, which isn't libel. Also, if they say "so and so posted such and such to some website", that's not libel either, because truth is an absolute defense against libel claims.
Better to go after the employer who fires you based on activities outside of work... though that isn't likely to succeed either unfortunately.
This will work great... right up until apple releases a firmware upgrade that intentionally breaks it.
It's generally a bad idea to antagonize a judge. They tend to have connections to the boss of said officer.