southsideirish71

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 16, 2007 -> 11:32 AM) To be honest, this has to go on more than we ever can imagine. Corporate spying is done by most governments outside of the US because many countries either heavily subsidize, or even own key industries and companies. I was at an FBI Infraguard meeting where they had a counter-terrorism specialist talk to the threat of corporate espionage from foreign governments. It was a very interesting, and scary presentation on what is really going on.

I am probably the most paranoid person when it comes to trusting items in an OS. However this one has too much public scrutiny and will have too many security researchers and handlers looking for security issues and communication leaks coming from it. I deal with looking at traffic traces on a daily basis. If Vista starts to reach out, and make communications encrypted or not, someone in my field (hopefully me for the publishing rights) will see it and will publish it. The NSA provides a great service to the security community. Their guides and templates can provide a blueprint on how to lock down some problematic Operating systems to lock down. Whenever a company, hopefully with a good security group , hands over intellectual property such as code or the Operating system itself they would of performed some sort of cryptographic hashing like MD5 or SHA-1 of every single file to help fight against any rogue code being placed in there. These ciphers create a signature in HEX that can provide a template for the integrity of that file. Now hopefully they didnt use SHA-1 as it was designed by the NSA. The real risk to you as a user or as a company is not the placement of trojans or rootkits at inception. Its the placement of these pieces of malware during your normal browsing, email and downloading. Spyware, and viruses and worms provide more of an intellectual property and personal liberty risk than the NSA review. There are pieces of malware out there that place sniffers and taps on your system that filter on credit cards, or passwords and send them back to a foreign host. There are worms that target specific files such as Cad, design, and word, excel and powerpoint presentations. They filter on these and zip them up and send them off. As far as Vista from a security standpoint. I have mixed reviews. Some items they have changed, like their new memory randomization feature to keep malware from running. I will have to see how this works in the wild before I declare that they have fixed malware. However with the Operating system designed to be so developer friendly they will still have all sorts of issues. They are making strides from a security standpoint. But still have quite a way to go.

QUOTE(WHarris1 @ Jan 14, 2007 -> 08:38 PM) What member of the Bears org pissed in Wojo's Cheerios? http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/sto...&id=2731418 What a douche You can't expect Gene to be a good writer, with all of his original thoughts coming up in his soon to be released book in 08. 100 Years of Crap What its like to be drunk and a cubs fan.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Jan 14, 2007 -> 04:08 AM) Maybe he is a bit over-rated.... but nobody is moreso than Beckham. He is a great passer and a great freekicker if thats even a word, but the rest of his game at this stage of his career especially is lacking. Donovan is in my mind no doubt a better player but of course Beckham has soooo much more star power. Even at over 30 Beckham is better than Donovan. Beckham has played in some of the toughest environments on the biggest stages and has had some really good moments, and some not so good. Donovan likes to play like a star against minnows like Costa Rica and Canada and such, but put a good team on him, or say send him to Germany in the Bundesliga and you watch him wimper and fall aside. Donovan has talent, but he doesnt have the stones. If Donovan had stones, he would be telling people he wanted to play in Europe, with the best. But he likes to nutmeg some 37 year old Ukranian wearing an MLS jersey instead of playing against the best.

QUOTE(robinventura23 @ Jan 13, 2007 -> 09:45 AM) Jack also has the best cell phone service. He can go through tunnels, on airplanes, underground, etc. and still have great communication with Chloe. The technology is cool from the show, however not even close to reality. You have to take it with a grain of salt when you see some of it. I love the realtime data uploads and how quick it is. Its faster than the speed of light. Last nights little thing where the presidents sister decided to "shred" the server. 30 seconds and the data is gone, yeah right. You cant even delete data at that rate even with the fastest drives on earth, more or less send random data to fill every sector on a hard drive(which is what shredding is). I love how they crack military level encryption that the NSA cant either in a matter of minutes. Chloe just clicks a few keystrokes and poof the cipher is gone. I love the show, and wish some of the technology that was in it was reality. My only question is how many times will Cisco get plugged in this season. They obviously pay a lot of bank to get that privilege. I almost fell off my chair last year when Chloe actually used the phrase "dont worry the Cisco Self Defending network will take care of it". Nice product placement.

How hard is this for people to understand. Mike Murphy is a cub fan. Think about that for a second, when have you had an objective conversation with a cub fan on the state of the sox. Some people need constant reassurance from the media that everything is ok, that every move is correct. Well that isnt going to happen. The media are people, just like you and I. And that means that everyone is flawed, like you and I. Take everything these douches say with a grain of salt, and remember that its just an opinion from another flawed human being.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Jan 12, 2007 -> 12:52 AM) If we left tomorrow, would it be a defeat? What events have to occur for it to be a "win"? How are you measuring defeat and victory? The perception after Somalia was simple. If you kill Americans and draw blood, the american public will not have the stomach for it, and will want to get out. Its what our adversaries count on. This is why withdrawing right now is a bad idea. IMO this war was fought wrong. Bush wanted it both ways, he wanted to topple the dictator, and then make nice with the natives. So instead of just going in and winning this thing. We fought it enough to get the "technical" win, but left too much of the infrastructure of war up that could be used against us. When you fight a war it should be to win. You dont embed reporters in your army if you are trying to win a war. Now its just a mess, and we have 2 problems.

QUOTE(SoxFan1 @ Jan 12, 2007 -> 12:38 AM) The best player doesn't always dominate...especially with Beckham being a midfielder. There is no doubt he'll score a few goals, but he won't be the superstar everyone thinks he will. He's already showing signs of slowing (much of the English media called him out for it too) and 50 millions dollars isn't really motivation to work harder. On the outside, he will have an impact due to name recognition. On the pitch he can have an impact, but it depends on his fitness level and his work ethic. The MLS game is not a technical game right now. Its an athletic game. Lots of running balls out. Its the one comment that is said when the premiership players have had to deal with the MLS, its that the fitness of the US players is first class. However the technical side is where we lack. He will have an impact on the MLS due to how that club is setup and how the league plays. Most of the midfielders play lob and run with their forwards. Beckham unless he changes, will deliver a crisp pass on the run to Donovan who hopefully will be able to strike with that kind of pass. We develop speed on the outside, we develop defense and goalkeepers. However we dont develop midfielders well in the US. The US game needs to catch up with the world game and start to feed passes on the ground in a quick crisp strike, to catch the runner in motion. Right now I see midfielders lobbing the ball, which is hard to catch on the run and create with. Mainly strikes happen due to defensive blunders more than from creativity. Its the biggest deficiency in the US program. The way for US soccer to establish a hotbed of talent is to get inner city youth involved in soccer. Its always been the game of the common man, because all you need is a ball and that is it. Hence why its huge in every country. You get a kid who might not be talented enough to play first string baseball, basketball or football...but he still might be more athletic or talented than the bevy of midgets we have been featuring on the US team. The minute we get a better pool of athletes, and identify them, and get them in the right programs the better US soccer will be in the long run. And if Becks gets people involved who wouldnt be, then its worth it.

The Olsen Twins I never get how these two little alien muppett looking creatures get all the love that they do. They have kermit the frogs body, mixed with Stewie Griffin's oval head. That plus their overly large eyes make them look almost alien. If they want to look totally alien, they wear goofy oversized clown glasses, and some sort of prego tent on their stick body.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Jan 11, 2007 -> 10:21 AM) What a coup for American Soccer. I am back and forth on this move. Lets all get this straight. He was picked up for his name, not his footballing. His status has been dropping for a while. He was dropped from the English squad by McClaren and mid level Premiership clubs were after him. This move works out great for Becks, Posh gets to Hollywood. And his fame will go around here like crazy. Now from the good side, you will see for the first time people buying MLS La Galaxy shirts outside of the US based on his name. However on the bad side, if the league really wanted to become more competitive it would of sunk this money into some premier players and taken the quality of play up a notch. Watching the MLS flow of a game is almost like watching them run in quicksand. When Chelsea plaid the MLS allstarts they wet down the field, and didnt cut the grass in Bridgview so the weren't run off the field by Chelsea. For this type of money the league could of picked up a few top of the line guys who could of made this league a bit more competitive. Now on the other side of the pond, Fulham keeps signing US players in the Premiership. They just signed Clint Dempsey, have McBridge, and Bocanegra. And are trying to sign gooch for defense. Coleman is a good manager and gets the most out of a medicore budget over in the Premiership. So inmho, the Beckham thing gives the MLS its glory boy that Donovan isnt, but from a US soccer standpoint, our moves to the real competitive leagues around the world makes our country stronger for the WC.

QUOTE(BobDylan @ Jan 11, 2007 -> 03:11 AM) You must be skilled with a knife, as the cases aren't meant to be popped open. The phone doesnt need this as it is flash based. However one of my geek reverse engineering sites will disassemble this and will have detailed intructions on how to dissemble the new iPhone after they become available. However on the older IPOD this is not that difficult. You dont need to be skilled with a knife. All it takes is a precision screwdriver and to fit in an turn just a bit, then move around the case. It will pop open in a matter of seconds. The case was in 2 pieces before. So it can be opened. It has a backplate, and a front plate. The front plate has the controller board on it where the drive is mounted with a standard IDE connector, and the back plate has a ribbon cable that connects the IPOD interface to the controller board. You just have to be careful when you swing it open as the ribbon cable is delicate.

QUOTE(BobDylan @ Jan 10, 2007 -> 07:40 PM) So you know my friends, eh? If I were to buy a "smart"phone, I'd buy a Sidekick 3. They use flash cards. And I'm sorry that your phone couldn't transfer your data. Do some research next time. Thanks for all the sarcasm, by the way. You sound like a Mac user. I am a Mac user, and I am also a CCIE. I know the view is that most Mac users are arts/publishing people. Some of us configure routers, switches, and firewalls with them. Some of us actually perform security audits from them. I am a Unix user that happens to like BSD based operating systems. First of all transferring phone information including contacts, numbers and other information has not been an issue even with older phones. Either your vendor will transfer the information, my wife uses sprint and her phone doesn't have a SIM card, and they transfered it for her. Or you can pickup 3rd party software to backup the phone and transfer that information for you. A SIM card is not the only way, in fact we have seen just as many issues with SIM cards where the get damaged, corrupted, and fail. Comparing the Hiptop OS that comes on the Sidekick to even a scaled down version of a BSD like OS like OSX or Windows Mobile is not even close. Items running Linux/Windows Mobile/or OSX are smartphones. Items running simple operating system that port a few java apps ontop of them are not. The SD/CF cards that run on these models of phones might have the capacity from a storage standpoint however they lack the throughput to run an OS/interactive video or support context switching within a full fledged interactive OS. You might see a 4.8 mb/s write speed, however without cache or the proper interface these cards will not be able to support a real OS whether that is Windows Mobile or a scaled down version of OSX. Apple used a mobile hard drive in the original ipods due to size limitations at the time, but also due to throughput. I have tested and have used several smart phones including the Windows Mobile. I have decided that I dont need the bells and whistles of the smartphone group. My biggest gripe is battery life. Especially with WiFi connections, I will be interested on how Apple solves this issue. My current blackberry works great for my purposes. The small keyboard is easy to use and most blackberry users get very proficient in typing with it. I figure that the same will hold for the iPhone. The blackberry is not what I would call a smart phone. It has a base OS that runs some Java Apps ontop of it. It gives me my corporate email which works just fine for my needs. Outside of the video/media the iphone has some real promise. The OSX os can run a ton of open source/optimized apps that run on slower hardware. You can really get your bang for the buck. Where a smartphone like the iPhone or the windows mobile phone will make a splash is when some companies write apps for them. When a sales associate can pull up numbers on their phone with a few clicks instead of having boot your laptop up. I am not talking about a silly spreadsheet also. Some interactive app with some data drilldown capabilities. The Apple IPOD disk failure issue. I get a kick out of this one. As far as the hard drive issues. If you know how to replace an HD in a computer, you can replace the hard drive in an Ipod. I had one hard drive error in my gen 4 Ipod. It took about 2 minutes to pop out the 1.8 inch hard drive, and about 10 minutes to find a 60 dollar replacement on ebay. After reinstalling the software my ipod was good as new.

Ventura's slam off of Gossage with 2 outs to win it. That was the most insane that I have seen that park, up until the playoffs and series of 05. The strike was the worst moment for me. That team had so much potential. It marked the end of an era for the strong armed club of the early 90s, we went from being a good team to being crap in a short period of time.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Jan 10, 2007 -> 10:01 AM) After watching the demo online for the Iphone, I want one. The ipod interface in itself is the most innovative thing I have seen in quite some time. I am waiting for this technology to move to the IPOD standalone.

Take a good look at the Iphone. Now in about a month or maybe 2 you will see a side announcement with a new video Ipod that has all of the same wide screen, touch features that the iphone has. That is what I am waiting for. I was a bit disappointed. I know that they wanted to really push the iphone and itv. But I was hoping to see more of the next version of OSX Leopard and of the high end Mac Pro's with quad and octal core systems. But as my boss just commented, Apple likes to trickle some of these out to keep a sustained spin going. The cingular move is the same thing that a lot of cell phone vendors use. The Treo700 series came out on Verizon only. Eventually the exclusive contract runs out and different version of the product run on different plans.

Picked up 2 for Sunday. Everyone tries for Saturday right off the bat.

Fathead icons I heard about this on the radio and was going to pick up a sox logo for my basement and low and behold they dont have it yet. I clicked on the link that stated dont see your team or player. If you read this, click on the link and put the sox up there. I am sure that others would like these for their wall, shrine to the sox.

.293BA 46Hrs 115RBIs

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Jan 5, 2007 -> 05:31 PM) I'm about to submit a work purchase order for a new 17" dual core MacBook Pro (not enough budget for a new desktop machine). Do you know if Jobs is announcing new laptops this round? I would hold off until after the keynote. You never know how many "AND"s Job will have this time. They just bumped the macbook up to a core duo 2. I

QUOTE(spataro51 @ Jan 5, 2007 -> 02:31 PM) That whole picture just irkes me..... First why in the heck doesn't he have a nice suit on? and second is i hope KW has known about him possibly sitting out!!!! Regardless of Uribes free swinging at the plate his defense his great and without him would leave us with a BIG hole!! Defense and pitching wins Championships! In a country that has a lot of poverty, showing up in a suit is not necessarily the best message you want to project.

Next Tuesday is Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld, or when Steve announces all the new cool hardware and software. You could of gotten a new macbook. Actualy, I have my eye on a new dual quad core mac pro for my work desktop which is what I think he is going to announce. Maybe I could hold out for the 8 core boxes that will come out. For a PC the Dells are pretty good laptops. You will like it.

24 The Unit NCIS Jericho Sopranos Family Guy Las Vegas

QUOTE(Middle Buffalo @ Dec 29, 2006 -> 11:04 PM) 1. Growing up, my parents didn't let us drink soda (all of which were called Coke - whether they were Coke or not). We could only have "Coke" as a treat on the weekends. One glass each, poured from the bottle. During the week we drank milk or Kool Aid, which we called "red juice." 2. My cousin is arguably the most famous Irish-American violin player in the world, and another cousin danced in the original version of "Riverdance." I have no talent in either area. My sister, however, took dance lessons with Michael Flatley. She is marginally more talented at Irish dance than I. 3. In high school, my dad was diagnosed with high cholesterol. The doctor said he needed to cut down on red meat and include more fish in his diet. My mom bought a deep fryer to cook the fish in. No lie. 4. In third grade, I lost the part of Paul Bunyan in a school play to a girl. I later took that girl to senior prom. My wife was also at that prom (though I didn't know at the time). I met my wife a few months later on my first day at U of I. Still together 16 years later with three kids. 5. I once shot at the wrong basket in a high school basketball game. I came off the bench at the beginning of the fourth quarter, and I hadn't been paying attention. A teammate inbounded the ball to me as I broke toward the basket. I went in for the layup. And missed. No wonder I never played. My wife was in Flatley's school on the northside when she was a little girl. Your sister probably ran into the same thing, they were a lot better at the dance but got hit at some feis's with not keeping their hands locked at the side, which is counted as part of the style.

Here is an update: So far the babies are doing a good job fighting. One of them had some complications this morning with the lung collapsing, the little girl. However she has recovered from that is back getting a good oxygen mix. My father was able to see them this morning, and he says that they are very small, but the nurses told him that they doing a good job fighting, and are getting stronger. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers.