115 karma · joined August 20, 2010
If the USB doesn't have the RFID, or it doesn't match the carrier or it has the wrong clearance code or the drive doesn't match the RFID ...alarms, guns, trouble.
Better yet, if they want to prevent leaks, just stop doing objectionable things. Especially to their citizens.
Do you have a car? Work out the running costs. Fuel, repairs and maintenance, insurance, car tax or whatever your country charges for annual registration.
Add 20% to this figure to take inflation into account.
Now double the running total to cover the basics of food, consumables, kitchen and bathroom supplies, soap etc.
Double the running total again to cover clothes, fancy gadgets and fun stuff.
This is still only a monthly figure. To work out a minimum amount of Fuck You Money, multiply this figure by 60 to give you the minimum that you can live on for five years without having to go and look for more money, or by 120 to allow you financial independence for 10 years.
A book released after the event, The Hacker Crackdown, gave a blow-by-blow account of the whole farrago. I could not put it down back then. I still own that book. In the light of this last few weeks' nonsense, I'll go and dust it down and read it again.
Because it isn't criminal activity that Fitwatch was advocating, but making sure that those people being harassed by the cops had the law on their side, not the UK Stasi.
And now it appears here. I swear, this link dogs my very footsteps like a bloodhound.
I had a nice conversation with Arika Okrent a while back, over the radio. Amusingly enough, the radio program concerned conlangs - and she knows her stuff.
Qapla'!
But this book encourages its readers, assuming the readers belong to its target readership, to engage in conduct which could be construed as an attempt to slip through the law and evade a deserved sentence for child rape.
I felt my gorge rise when I saw the title of the book listed in the news articles, and found myself wondering how in sanity someone could write such a book in the first place, unless he wrote it to justify child molestation. Unbelievable.
Imagine if the book had instead covered the topic of how to get away with date rape at parties, or how to get away with beating one's spouse regularly, or how to evade the law and become some sort of anti-Semitic race killer or gay basher or stalker. I doubt that any such book should remain on Amazon's shelves for long. I can't praise the gall of the man who thought to post this book on Amazon in the first place.
Nonetheless, despite its despicable content, I doubt that removing this ebook from Amazon's shelves will stamp it out of existence. From email attachments to sneakernet and passing around on memory sticks, this pernicious-sounding book will likely find itself distributed hither and yon.
And I find that thought discomfiting and sad, but for the fact that those pirated copies would not yield one penny of royalties to the author. And I can't see much wrong in that.
Most people tend to stop at the standard infinity that lies at the top end of the real number line - "bigger than the biggest number you can think of, and then some, plus one."
Never mind that there's another infinity, just as big, at the far end of the negative side of the real number line, and further infinities in all directions when you bring in complex numbers, quaternions, infinitesimals, the uncountable infinities lying between any two arbitrarily chosen adjacent real numbers and so on.
Also, the "Arabic" number system was invented in India. It was only introduced to the West by the Muslims.
Yes, America, if not for Muslims you'd still be counting in Roman numerals.
Perhaps the subjects retain more data if presented to them in a horrible font because they believe that if they pass this test first time, they won't have to revisit the horror of staring at a page full of Comic Sans later on down the line.
They should come back to them a week afterwards and ask them if they remembered any part of the test. Then ask them if they would like to stare at another page of Comic Sans, or just answer with what they remember. They might be surprised how many of the subjects might get their memories back rather than go through that earlier ordeal again.
Hail Eris. All Hail Discordia.
If you smoke at your desk, someone will complain about catching secondary lung cancer or it might trigger an asthma attack. Also, the workplace will stink of cigarette, cigar or pipe smoke - not a good sign if you're trying to win a contract from a health store.
If you drink, you'll get drunk at work. Fights could break out, and you'll screw up work that you should be concentrating on. And if you have to get into a car and take off for the client at a moment's notice whilst still drunk, that's deadly lethal.
Other kinds of drugs? Not really. Drinking at work is close to lawbreaking especially where you might need to drive to a client, but smoking a joint in the office is right out.
As for sex ... forget it. You're not going to work for that. You go to work to earn money for you and the company. Where does that sort of adult activity end? Do you allow open displays of sexual activity? Does your firm only allow straight affairs, or do you still go all Victorian if two lesbians or two gay guys take off on some torrid affair, all open public displays of affection in the workplace?
Think about all those employees at your workplace. Think of the one or two that always crop up, even in the most enlightened offices, who will sneer and grumble "Disgusting" under their breath at the sight of two guys locking lips in the copy room.
I know that firms need policies of fun at work to prevent them becoming grim, isolated monasteries. But smoking, drinking and sex are not the best choices of "fun" to allow in the workplace, any more than conversations about sex, football, politics or religion at the watercooler.
So the OP ought to report it. This might be the first instance they hear of, or the third, or the eighteenth. But if it fits the pattern, that's one more piece of the puzzle that can bring the day when the thieves get their collars felt by the Law that much closer.
Cops, then the bank, then the insurance firm (you did take out contents insurance on the laptop, didn't you?), and then anybody else you have data on stored in your computer.
Ignore anybody telling you that they're going to tell the authorities because you have porn on your drive. It's pretty much a given that every laptop and computer in existence now has some porn on it.
If he knows what services you use, for goodness' sakes change every password you can remember. If your passwords are created by a master algorithm that you happen to have stowed on your hard drive, change that algorithm.
But first and foremost, cops. Give them all of the index and key numbers which identify it. Make sure to let them see that email. It has an IP address, and they can begin investigating from there.
The lucky handful of geeks with "two years' experience" already under their belt are not going to sit back and let the employer dictate how much, or how little, they are going to get paid. The employer wants to pay them as little as possible - but the candidate can ask whatever the market allows, as much as possible, and if his name's that good, he will be able to gouge the employer for as much as he can get. And if the employer listens long enough, he'll find that all of the others will all seem to be adopting the same gouging tactic, for exactly the same amount - like a cartel structure.
Basically, you're going to end up with a small clique of experienced coders circulating between firms, raking in the money and coming up with the same tired code they've been peddling to the same firms from day one. The incentive to come up with original solutions isn't there - they're not after hiring newbies who might have something new that could knock them off their perch.
In the meantime, businesses find themselves financially in a hole paying for these bloated whales, they're just as much in the dark as they've always been, their programs are just as rubbish, nothing new seems to work - why should it? Working code costs more money, so you might as well just issue new patches - and folding left and right.
There's more money to be made running a cartel of consultants than by opening the jobs market to newcomers, offering them training and keeping the market fresh, competitive, adaptive and, most of all, viable.
I was at a New Age store buying incense and charcoal blocks for the burner when the pager went off. It was almost 15:00. It had taken till then for the news to come through.
The pager went off just three further times: when the second plane hit, and when each of the towers fell, in turn.
That was the last time I ever received anything on that pager service.