The original story at http://www.wboc.com/story/2636... is dated 8/25 with an update on 8/26,5 days ago. From the today's Baltimore Sun at http://www.wboc.com/story/2636... indicates this is a mental health matter and nothing to do with his books. HIPPA laws kick in to protect Mr. McLaw's privacy.
In 1984 University of Illinois got killed by UCLA in the Rose Bowl. Near the end of the game someone hacked the scoreboard to replace UCLA's name with MIT (the victor) and Illinois' name with CalTech. Never heard anything more as to how they did that but it was pretty funny after suffering through a boring one sided football game.
The problem with baseball analytics is more in the misuse of mathematics than lack of processing power. Few of what they call "peripheral" stats like FIP and BABIP have any mathematical proofs whatsoever. Other stats try and normalize all external conditions to level the field for all players for evaluation. This introduces ambiguous concepts like "stadium effect" being calculated based upon another set of stats and assumptions. All assumptions along the way add up to introduce bias which is why there is no single player evaluation system that can even determine past results with full knowledge of history. WAR tries but there are several variations. If WAR truly had a mathematical proof for it there would only be one answer. Supercomputers might be an interesting science project for some baseball owner but when you enter into it garbage data based on faulty math you end up with garbage results no matter how many processor cycles it consumes.
Depression is a disease much like cancer. If this story was entitled "Start up founders on dealing with cancer," why would anyone think start up founders have any more insight to that suffering than anyone else? Depression can hit anyone, even billionaires without a care in the world. Like cancer, depression too frequently ends in death.
This looks like any standard user interface to a database and basic computer architecture. I suspect the devil is in the details as to what kind of data blobs are defined in a "request" and what data blobs get returned to a user. As far as I can tell, this patent covers all data blob implementations. How can this be a patent?
I recently bought an Android Samsung Galaxy something on the cheap ($200) for development. So far have only put free apps on it. Other than becoming re-addicted and then having to go through re-hab on BeJewels, I mainly use it for a calculator. It's a nice calculator though. Big buttons and easy to see numbers. I could see certain use cases where this device may be a useful tool but even as a remote control for a TV I find it clunky compared to the original remote. As a fashion accessory however, carrying around a Samsung Galaxy tablet makes me look like a cheapskate.
I probably shouldn't have brought Skype up because the vast majority of Skype users scan the upper ports, see they're not open and that's that. I only see them in my post partum analytics and they pose no threat or harm. They then go on to do other things. Some will try and run a non-SSL session through 443 and a non-http session through 80 and find that doesn't work either and they give up. Squid doesn't even log them as invalid. A small minority will generate pages and pages of invalid records in Squid's logs. I was merely venting at Skype for even trying to use port 80 and 443 for something other than the operator of the wifi network intended. I find that rude.
Compare this to the behavior of Netflix streaming. They do all their business on port 80 using valid http protocol. Blocking their streaming is a simple one line regex expression in Squid's config file. Netflix made it simple to turn their streaming off via a transparent proxy for those of us who don't have the bandwidth to handle that.
Sorry if I harped too much on Skype. Just needed to vent. I'm a long time reader and hardly ever post,. This subject fit into what I have been working on so I thought maybe I could add something interesting.
Let me try and respond to all the responses in one fell swoop. Yes. I do play Big Brother and I see nothing unethical about this. I'm providing a free service and exposing myself to all kinds of trolls who want to sue based upon IP. I have a right to make sure Bittorrent does not work. If people don't like it they don't have to use my open wifi. I do not have a captive portal for users to accept TOS so am not sure of the legal technicalities. I might install one. Yes. This setup is rather techie but it is still a work in progress and I am still learning and am working on making it plug and play for the non techie. Maybe something like this would make for a nice open source project. Right now I have lots of scripts strung together and am still doing a lot of things manually.
The pcaps generated by tcpdump are automatically digested after every 5M chunk and used for analytics and stripped of any payload. I have better things to do than to spy on the pictures my users download. The analytics are my research data devoid of any user identification. I probably shouldn't have provided so many details as people on the net like to make assumptions so they can then wax indigent.
.
As for the sniffing password charge: You'd be surprised how rare that is nowadays. Most every device has been very good about encrypting stuff using SSL on port 443. In the past year I might have seen maybe 3 or 4 unique devices transmit credentials in the clear. I think modern devices have become wise about those things.
Skype is obnoxious because it tries to use port 443 and 80 for non SSL and non http traffic because it knows most every router has those ports open. Since port 80 is run through Squid, Squid rejects it. I ban those users who beat on port 80 like this because I'm not sure if they might be trying to break Squid. It's better to ban people who abuse. As for iCloud. I tried to open up UDP ports 16384, 16385, and 16386 for them but when I do they try and probe ports on my external IP address which might be a way for iCloud to punch holes through the router. I simply drop those UDP ports no big deal except that since those Apple devices pound those ports so frequently I have to place those drops near the top of iptables.
tl;dr Just whitelist port 80 and 443, send 80 through a Squid like proxy and 90% of wifi users will have no problems. You can open up some other ports as you see fit. I hope this makes things more clear.
Port 53 is blocked on the FORWARD chain and accepted on INPUT. The firewall runs named which responds to all DNS requests. The firewall runs DHCP for all devices on all access points to tell them that the firewall is the DNS server. In my experience not too many devices try and use their own DNS. Some do but they eventually give in and use my named service.
I've been running an open wifi for over a year with no problems so far. I have a dual ethernet linux box running iptables with a set of white listed ports allowed through. My wifi routers are mere access points all switched on a single subnet to the linux firewall. Over time I looked at generated traffic and opened up ports various devices use for legitimate services like 993, 587, 443 etc. I block all UDP ports except 123, 4500 and 500. Some services, like iCloud, like to abuse the network using UDP. streams. That along with all unauthorized port traffic gets dropped (using -j DROP) into the bit bucket -- the device deserves no response from the firewall. Bittorrent simply doesn't work in this environment out of the box (although I acknowledge it's possible a determined someone could rig something to make it work but people who know how to do that are rare and it's probably not worth their time because I'll probably eventually catch them). I also detect bad SSL sessions by monitoring the first pushed byte sent over whatever TCP ports I leave open. Tcpdump runs constantly and I have some perl scripts to analyze the traffic and create reports of usage. This allows me to see if some new legitimate service needs a port open or if devices are trying to abuse the network which gets them banned by perl script. Skype doesn't work either and I have found it to be a particularly obnoxious service making it look like Bittorrent. Anyone pounding on Skype to get it to work gets banned by IP address. And all port 80 goes through a Squid proxy. Granted a determined user could get around my bans for awhile but for the most part I have found the real obnoxious actors are bad services like Skype and iCloud. And for the most part people use port 80 for web and 443 for encrypted stuff.
So far things have worked out and I get around 250 unique visitors per month. The vast majority of users just get on, do some stuff like check mail or train schedules and get off. I have been doing this more or less as a "science project" to see how these modern devices communicate. Plus the neighbors get Internet access. I have found the bandwidth used per month is rather trivial. I just recently got a tablet with just wifi and so far have had no problems with anything not working through my iptables with white listed ports.
I'm tired of hearing this fallacy: "If you tax the corporations, then they raise the price of their goods,"
This is completely false. The price of goods is set by what the market will bear based upon supply vs. demand. If a company makes a widget for $10 and the market will pay them $100/widget, that company will charge $100. Corporate taxes do not factor into this price at all. Conversely, if a company makes a widget for $150 and the market will only pay $100/widget, that company cannot charge $200 because the market won't support that price. Again, they must charge $100 and take a loss perhaps hoping they can, with advertising, increase what the market will pay (see airline industry).
Corporate taxes only affect corporate earnings which usually is directly related to the stock price. Increasing coporate earning could cause some corporations to reinvest those earnings back into their companies that could translate into more jobs.
But I don't think it's fair that the LLC who owns the 4 flat across from mine should get a break on paying taxes on the rent they collect compared to me, private schmoe filing a 1040something every year, who has to declare my rent as ordinary income. Therefore, IMHO, corporate taxes should be comparable to income taxes or else people start gaming the tax system and the law of unintended consequences comes into play.
I had to reply to this and all comments that blame the TSA for doing these searches. According to all the articles I've read on this subject, the culprit is US Customs -- not the TSA. The TSA has a blog entry up that explains that they do not search laptops or phones. See: http://www.tsa.gov/blog/
The Wal-Mart PR machine likes to give the illusion that they have the cheapest prices but yet again, they don't. For the past year the Microcenter by me has been selling refurbished 2.4G P4 machines loaded with XP Professional for $249. I have no interests in Microcenter other than they have a store a few blocks from me that I shop at and I like reading their monthly sale ads while sitting on the toilet. Here's a link to that PC because it's on sale again this month.
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtm l?product_id=0259605
They also have a refurbished Compaq for $199 (P4 1.7G) that would be good for college students too.
Slashdot Mirror
oops. I goofed up copy/paste and can't seem to fix it quickly. Baltimore Sun article at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...
The original story at http://www.wboc.com/story/2636... is dated 8/25 with an update on 8/26,5 days ago. From the today's Baltimore Sun at http://www.wboc.com/story/2636... indicates this is a mental health matter and nothing to do with his books. HIPPA laws kick in to protect Mr. McLaw's privacy.
Soylent Green is People!
In 1984 University of Illinois got killed by UCLA in the Rose Bowl. Near the end of the game someone hacked the scoreboard to replace UCLA's name with MIT (the victor) and Illinois' name with CalTech. Never heard anything more as to how they did that but it was pretty funny after suffering through a boring one sided football game.
In other news: 55% of all statistics are made up.
The problem with baseball analytics is more in the misuse of mathematics than lack of processing power. Few of what they call "peripheral" stats like FIP and BABIP have any mathematical proofs whatsoever. Other stats try and normalize all external conditions to level the field for all players for evaluation. This introduces ambiguous concepts like "stadium effect" being calculated based upon another set of stats and assumptions. All assumptions along the way add up to introduce bias which is why there is no single player evaluation system that can even determine past results with full knowledge of history. WAR tries but there are several variations. If WAR truly had a mathematical proof for it there would only be one answer. Supercomputers might be an interesting science project for some baseball owner but when you enter into it garbage data based on faulty math you end up with garbage results no matter how many processor cycles it consumes.
Depression is a disease much like cancer. If this story was entitled "Start up founders on dealing with cancer," why would anyone think start up founders have any more insight to that suffering than anyone else? Depression can hit anyone, even billionaires without a care in the world. Like cancer, depression too frequently ends in death.
It is those Joe Sixpacks who are so perplexed by the unconventional moves deployed by Mr. Chu who are doing all the booing.
I suspect Jeopardy's core demographic are old people. Old people generally dislike when young whipper snappers change the way things are done.
I've always had best luck with even Fedora releases. I'm still on Fedora 14 and have been patiently waiting for 20 to hit the shelves.
That can't happen if they use Monster cables.
This looks like any standard user interface to a database and basic computer architecture. I suspect the devil is in the details as to what kind of data blobs are defined in a "request" and what data blobs get returned to a user. As far as I can tell, this patent covers all data blob implementations. How can this be a patent?
And you get an Ipad! And you get an Ipad! Everyone gets an Ipad!!!!
Not to be pedantic but it was Plato who wrote about the allegory of the cave.
I recently bought an Android Samsung Galaxy something on the cheap ($200) for development. So far have only put free apps on it. Other than becoming re-addicted and then having to go through re-hab on BeJewels, I mainly use it for a calculator. It's a nice calculator though. Big buttons and easy to see numbers. I could see certain use cases where this device may be a useful tool but even as a remote control for a TV I find it clunky compared to the original remote. As a fashion accessory however, carrying around a Samsung Galaxy tablet makes me look like a cheapskate.
Clap on. Clap off. The Clapper.
I probably shouldn't have brought Skype up because the vast majority of Skype users scan the upper ports, see they're not open and that's that. I only see them in my post partum analytics and they pose no threat or harm. They then go on to do other things. Some will try and run a non-SSL session through 443 and a non-http session through 80 and find that doesn't work either and they give up. Squid doesn't even log them as invalid. A small minority will generate pages and pages of invalid records in Squid's logs. I was merely venting at Skype for even trying to use port 80 and 443 for something other than the operator of the wifi network intended. I find that rude.
Compare this to the behavior of Netflix streaming. They do all their business on port 80 using valid http protocol. Blocking their streaming is a simple one line regex expression in Squid's config file. Netflix made it simple to turn their streaming off via a transparent proxy for those of us who don't have the bandwidth to handle that.
Sorry if I harped too much on Skype. Just needed to vent. I'm a long time reader and hardly ever post,. This subject fit into what I have been working on so I thought maybe I could add something interesting.
Let me try and respond to all the responses in one fell swoop. Yes. I do play Big Brother and I see nothing unethical about this. I'm providing a free service and exposing myself to all kinds of trolls who want to sue based upon IP. I have a right to make sure Bittorrent does not work. If people don't like it they don't have to use my open wifi. I do not have a captive portal for users to accept TOS so am not sure of the legal technicalities. I might install one. Yes. This setup is rather techie but it is still a work in progress and I am still learning and am working on making it plug and play for the non techie. Maybe something like this would make for a nice open source project. Right now I have lots of scripts strung together and am still doing a lot of things manually.
The pcaps generated by tcpdump are automatically digested after every 5M chunk and used for analytics and stripped of any payload. I have better things to do than to spy on the pictures my users download. The analytics are my research data devoid of any user identification. I probably shouldn't have provided so many details as people on the net like to make assumptions so they can then wax indigent.
.
As for the sniffing password charge: You'd be surprised how rare that is nowadays. Most every device has been very good about encrypting stuff using SSL on port 443. In the past year I might have seen maybe 3 or 4 unique devices transmit credentials in the clear. I think modern devices have become wise about those things.
Skype is obnoxious because it tries to use port 443 and 80 for non SSL and non http traffic because it knows most every router has those ports open. Since port 80 is run through Squid, Squid rejects it. I ban those users who beat on port 80 like this because I'm not sure if they might be trying to break Squid. It's better to ban people who abuse. As for iCloud. I tried to open up UDP ports 16384, 16385, and 16386 for them but when I do they try and probe ports on my external IP address which might be a way for iCloud to punch holes through the router. I simply drop those UDP ports no big deal except that since those Apple devices pound those ports so frequently I have to place those drops near the top of iptables.
tl;dr Just whitelist port 80 and 443, send 80 through a Squid like proxy and 90% of wifi users will have no problems. You can open up some other ports as you see fit. I hope this makes things more clear.
Port 53 is blocked on the FORWARD chain and accepted on INPUT. The firewall runs named which responds to all DNS requests. The firewall runs DHCP for all devices on all access points to tell them that the firewall is the DNS server. In my experience not too many devices try and use their own DNS. Some do but they eventually give in and use my named service.
I've been running an open wifi for over a year with no problems so far. I have a dual ethernet linux box running iptables with a set of white listed ports allowed through. My wifi routers are mere access points all switched on a single subnet to the linux firewall. Over time I looked at generated traffic and opened up ports various devices use for legitimate services like 993, 587, 443 etc. I block all UDP ports except 123, 4500 and 500. Some services, like iCloud, like to abuse the network using UDP. streams. That along with all unauthorized port traffic gets dropped (using -j DROP) into the bit bucket -- the device deserves no response from the firewall. Bittorrent simply doesn't work in this environment out of the box (although I acknowledge it's possible a determined someone could rig something to make it work but people who know how to do that are rare and it's probably not worth their time because I'll probably eventually catch them). I also detect bad SSL sessions by monitoring the first pushed byte sent over whatever TCP ports I leave open. Tcpdump runs constantly and I have some perl scripts to analyze the traffic and create reports of usage. This allows me to see if some new legitimate service needs a port open or if devices are trying to abuse the network which gets them banned by perl script. Skype doesn't work either and I have found it to be a particularly obnoxious service making it look like Bittorrent. Anyone pounding on Skype to get it to work gets banned by IP address. And all port 80 goes through a Squid proxy. Granted a determined user could get around my bans for awhile but for the most part I have found the real obnoxious actors are bad services like Skype and iCloud. And for the most part people use port 80 for web and 443 for encrypted stuff.
So far things have worked out and I get around 250 unique visitors per month. The vast majority of users just get on, do some stuff like check mail or train schedules and get off. I have been doing this more or less as a "science project" to see how these modern devices communicate. Plus the neighbors get Internet access. I have found the bandwidth used per month is rather trivial. I just recently got a tablet with just wifi and so far have had no problems with anything not working through my iptables with white listed ports.
I'm tired of hearing this fallacy: "If you tax the corporations, then they raise the price of their goods,"
This is completely false. The price of goods is set by what the market will bear based upon supply vs. demand. If a company makes a widget for $10 and the market will pay them $100/widget, that company will charge $100. Corporate taxes do not factor into this price at all. Conversely, if a company makes a widget for $150 and the market will only pay $100/widget, that company cannot charge $200 because the market won't support that price. Again, they must charge $100 and take a loss perhaps hoping they can, with advertising, increase what the market will pay (see airline industry).
Corporate taxes only affect corporate earnings which usually is directly related to the stock price. Increasing coporate earning could cause some corporations to reinvest those earnings back into their companies that could translate into more jobs. But I don't think it's fair that the LLC who owns the 4 flat across from mine should get a break on paying taxes on the rent they collect compared to me, private schmoe filing a 1040something every year, who has to declare my rent as ordinary income. Therefore, IMHO, corporate taxes should be comparable to income taxes or else people start gaming the tax system and the law of unintended consequences comes into play.
I had to reply to this and all comments that blame the TSA for doing these searches. According to all the articles I've read on this subject, the culprit is US Customs -- not the TSA. The TSA has a blog entry up that explains that they do not search laptops or phones. See: http://www.tsa.gov/blog/
The Wal-Mart PR machine likes to give the illusion that they have the cheapest prices but yet again, they don't. For the past year the Microcenter by me has been selling refurbished 2.4G P4 machines loaded with XP Professional for $249. I have no interests in Microcenter other than they have a store a few blocks from me that I shop at and I like reading their monthly sale ads while sitting on the toilet. Here's a link to that PC because it's on sale again this month. http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtm l?product_id=0259605
They also have a refurbished Compaq for $199 (P4 1.7G) that would be good for college students too.