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bitmasher · Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Posts: 2652 Location: Colorado

Hey Cob, that is interesting... Ever worry about the DMCA?

expatriate · Joined: 26 Oct 2002 Posts: 1520 Location: Alaska

Cob, here's another one. If the friend's military career involved a security clearance and he's using that on the outside to pursue an illegal activity, the legal issue goes way beyond DMCA.

cob · Joined: 28 Oct 2002 Posts: 65 Location: Texas panhandle

Well, i'm not worried about anything, i don't have the illegal tv, because if you get busted you're liable for every single program that got to your box. That means you would have to pay for the highest prices package, which is well over $100 a month, plus every pay per view weather you watched them or not. He's not using military clearance to do this, he's just using some of the knowledge, and he's smarter about it than the average person that does this. without going into a long explanation on how this stuff works i can't explain it but the only way he would get caught is if somebody that knew how this stuff worked walked into his house and saw it.

bitmasher · Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Posts: 2652 Location: Colorado

I have to admit getting free tv because of a clever hack is just plain cool. However, with the laws being as they are these days, just doing it for purely hobby interests can get you in to megahotwater. In the end it doesn't seem worth it.

Sounds like Direct-TV is pretty stiff with its penalties too.

Speaking of cool hacks. Have you ever messed with stenography programs? There has been a lot of jabbering in the press about osama et al hiding messages in porn pictures. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, either way "stenography" wasn't in my vocab at the time, so I checked out some of the publicly available steno programs, and was amazed to find they did exactly as billed. Putting encrypted text in a visually unaltered image (porn optional) is pretty cool, but definitely goes in the "only useful if your an international spy or severely paranoid" category.

cob · Joined: 28 Oct 2002 Posts: 65 Location: Texas panhandle

it is also used in advertising. when i was in highschool we had a lady come give a program. Part of her thing was showing magazine ads. she had a slide show where she flipped through these slides of magazine ads about the speed you would flip through magazine pages and she had everybody write down the number of the ones that caught our eye. at the end almost everybody had the same numbers. the ones we wrote down had some sort of "subliminal message" in them. it was something in the picture that even if you're looking for something odd, you don't notice it but when somebody points it out to you, its plain as day. Most of them had to do with sex, either the word sex or naked bodies or body parts. there were also guns and skulls. granted, some of them were questionable but for the most part, there just seemed no way that stuff could accidentally be there.
ps. its a good thing this is the anything goes forum.

expatriate · Joined: 26 Oct 2002 Posts: 1520 Location: Alaska

Interesting thought...I can see the news story:

For reasons unknown, 46 year-old accountant Randall Finkelstein suddenly changed his name to Achmed Muhammed recently and bought a plane ticket to Damascus in order to join the Hezbollah.

"I don't understand it," his wife said to reporters. "He was perfectly fine until last Tuesday night; he was up late again behind closed doors on the computer when he suddenly yelled, 'Allahu Akhbar!' and began mixing household chemicals together in the garage. When I asked him what he was doing, he called me a Zionist harlot and ran out the door. I haven't seen him since."

In a related story, reports from the Middle East suggest that several terrorist organizations are beginning to provide dental coverage and tax-deferred savings plans for employees...

bitmasher · Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Posts: 2652 Location: Colorado

Heh...Heh... yeah I always thought that Finkelstein was a gear waiting to come off his spindle...

Actually, I was referring to another type of steno, what you guys have said above referrers to what I think is "psychological" stenography. Meaning how a video is composed it can be interlaced with some other image for however brief that it registers at the subconscious but not conscious level.

The program I was talking about were acutal computer code, for placing a message within the byte ordering of a digital image. For example a JPEG image because it is compressed usually has some "room" to put in extra info (just bits as in 1's and 0's) without changing the visual appearance. The extra info is inserted in a manner that is repeatable and extractable. So by first encrypting a message like "Meet me at the park", then running the steno program on the encrypted text plus the carrier image you get a steno laced image. It looks the same as before but the file size is a bit larger.

One might say well "that's lame", if your crypto is good enough, why worry about how you pass it. The idea behind the steno is to hide that you might be trying to pass secret info. If some intellegence agency intercepts an openly ciphered message, chances are good something is up and draws attention, if however if they just capture pictures of a wedding festival, it might get overlooked...

It is this type of trickery that I assume makes the NSA publicly complain (like they did before and after 9/11) that they have info overload.

bitmasher · Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Posts: 2652 Location: Colorado

This is a bit off topic, but the other day the IRS released their annual report on the previous years taxation.

In 2001 the top 1% income bracket made just over 20% of all U.S. income and paid just over 36% of all income taxes.

Maybe you all are aware of this, but I always find it interesting, so thought I would post....

12ga. mag. · Joined: 04 Nov 2002 Posts: 6 Location: upstate N.Y.

Ted can own all the land he wants to, but he can't take it with him, and I probably enjoy my garden more that he enjoys all of his land, I wonder if he has ever actually walked on the land or does he stick to the blacktop.
I don't hold it against anyone that pays a guide, it's just not my way to hunt.
I spend about 1500. deep sea fishing and for launching my boat on fresh water lakes during the summer, but it is spent in twenty and fifty dollar amounts, If I handed someone 3 grand at one time, it had better be for roof repair or a new septic other wise I may become the hunted.

chechatonga · Joined: 15 Nov 2002 Posts: 146

Rich mans sport, let me see,
shotgun 400.00
shells 12.00
clothes 150.00
permits 20.00
license 16.00
calls 100.00
gas/veh 50.00
total 748.00
Cost of a butterball at the food store 20.00
yeap it is a rich mans sport.

Keepitsimple · Joined: 19 Nov 2002 Posts: 44 Location: Northern Wisconsin

Rifle/shotgun = $400
License = $20
Clothing and "esential gear" = $300

Having the freedom to own the gun, buy the license and hunt the land for game for you table = Priceless.

chechatonga · Joined: 15 Nov 2002 Posts: 146

good one keepitsimple, leaving now to go to the cabin and land to hunt deer, oh I forgot about that cost, rough hunters cabin and land - $150,000.00. But that is not a fair cost estimate I guess because there is always public land, and a camper.

Keepitsimple · Joined: 19 Nov 2002 Posts: 44 Location: Northern Wisconsin

Face it, everyone would like to have a lot of money so they can buy everything and anything they want. Does Ted Turner deserve to own Thousands upon Thousands of acres of prime land? Does one man deserve to be able to afford 3 shotguns at one time? I don't know what theysacrificed in order to acheive this high level of "sucess". I for one value my family and as such do not voluntarily give up my time with them so I can pursue other business deals. Furthermore I value my integrity, I will not compromise my morals to "get more". I would love to own a "rough hunters cabin" and land. Perhaps one day I will, but I will not waste my time being jealous. I love my 20 year old rifle, its like a comfortable pair of jeans, an inanimate old friend. My shotgun is a Browning pump, wouldn't trade it for the world. Every scratch tells a story and one day I hope one of my children will value it as much as I value their grandfathers old model 94. My advice to those that feel compelled to long for the other side of the fence, go across. Me I prefer to fully explore this side, it may not be the best, but it's good enough for me.

chechatonga · Joined: 15 Nov 2002 Posts: 146

Keepitsimple, your on the mark friend, family is number one, hunting is fun and when it becomes a "who has more toys game" you have lost the direction . I worked my whole life for that rough hunters cabin, it was a goal that I had when young and pursued with all my heart. It was not bragging it was just conversation. So I hope no offence was taken, and by the way I still hunt the public lands cause there close.

Keepitsimple · Joined: 19 Nov 2002 Posts: 44 Location: Northern Wisconsin

Chechatonga - It's always been a dream of mine to own my getaway. One day when the kids are older and maybe done with school. In the meantime it's refreshing to know that some people still get theirs the old fashioned way...they earn it.

Take Care and Merry X-Mas