Zixar

I have the older Linksys Wireless-B router. All you had to do to turn on WEP was point your web browser at 192.168.1.1 and give the admin password. WEP was an option on the main screen. You picked "WEP Mandatory" and clicked on the Set Password button. Entering a password would then generate a 128-bit WEP key. You copy down your password and the WEP key, go around to the other computers' Network Connection screen and enter one or the other (depending on the other computer's wireless card) and that was it. As soon as the password is applied, the computer is back up on the net as if nothing happened. Easy. You only have to do it once. Oh, another wireless tip--Change your router's default wireless channel to anything but channel 6! Most US electronic devices that operate in the 2.4GHz band default to channel 6 so there's a high noise factor if you have a 2.4GHz cordless phone and a microwave. I use channel 10, but any of the others is just as good a choice. You get higher throughput because there aren't as many interference errors if you aren't on channel 6.

Tom: Once they're on your network, they can run AirSnare themselves and write all your packets out to a log, including usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, whatever you might type into a website. It takes 5 minutes to turn WEP on and set the passphrase on all your machines and it keeps "wardrivers" from just walking right in. It's like the old joke about the two hikers suddenly noticing an enraged bear charging them. One stops to tie his sneakers, and the other one says "Do you really think you can outrun a charging grizzly?" The first says, "I don't have to. I only have to outrun YOU." Given a choice, criminals will hit the person with the least amount of security. All you have to do is outrun your neighbors.

John: Your neighbor is right. Expect the rollout of city-wide Wi-Fi as an alternative to DSL and Cable within the next year... ;)-->

There's no reason not to turn WEP on if you're at all concerned about security. Yes, it's theoretically crackable, but if you don't have it on, all your traffic is instantly readable! It does not significantly affect speed, and the only additional setup is to enter the key onto each machine. WPA is better, but some routers will only handle WEP. Paw's right--make sure you change the default name of your wireless access point, its admin password, and Disable SSID Broadcasting. If you want to see who might be trying to mooch off your net, go download a program called AirSnare. It will show you the MAC address of every packet that flies over your net, and once you have all your known MAC addresses listed in the table, AirSnare can be configured to set off alarms when someone tries to hook in without you knowing it. The more security you have, the better. While you can't keep a determined hacker out for certain, you can make your network so much of a hassle to break into that it's easier for the criminal to go hack someone who leaves the door open.

Shell: Be gentle, now. Some things bruise easily! ;)-->

Thanks for the correction, RGeek! As for VPW's accent, my father was born and raised in the same region of Ohio, and he never spoke as hicked-up as VPW. Nor do any of my other Ohio-native relatives, all of whom still live in the vicinity of Dayton. If there's an Ohio accent, that isn't it.

Sadly, yes. Unless you can find some sort of Internet bootleg. Otherwise, it's June 30.... :(-->

WordWolf: Amazing what you can learn through RPG sourcebooks, isn't it? ;)--> "Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that was not immune to bullets..."--Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Commander of U.N.I.T., Doctor Who

That's par for the course. Still, there's a lot you can do on a shoestring budget nowadays. Just let me know if you need me.

diazbro: No offense, but the thread is getting away from the lawsuit and devolving into a personality clash. Hasn't enough time been spent on questioning each other's motives for now? Just asking, Zix

Mikey: I forgot we're in the same area. Maybe I can help. How big is this grant, anyway? :)-->

Mikey: It's pretty simple. You could make the whole thing a big PowerPoint presentation, or use various HTML tools like Shockwave. In fact, you can even code the whole thing like a web site and dump all the content to the CD. That way it wouldn't be limited to just PCs able to view it.

Not that I'm an authority on it by any means, but some vowels in Greek have an accent mark to indicate a "rough" breathing, which is kind of equivalent to adding an "H" before it. The pronouns ho and hos look like "o" and "os". Rough breathing is used for some adjacent vowels to show they don't join into a diphthong. That's why pleroo is three syllables and doesn't rhyme with "Peru". Wierwille was probably trying to over-enunciate the rough "h" so much that he mangled it into a "k" sound.

Okay, Mummy IV, then. My mistake! ;)-->

Had to have been early 80s, since I remember the first "Branded" album had the brand on its cover.

Thanks. New shoes, dontcha know... ;)-->

A quick review of that case Goey posted: Some guy was p*ssed-off at the company that built his house and registered a domain name that was nearly identical to the company. He used it to run an I-hate-these-guys gripe site. Even though that would seem to interfere with the company's business, the appeals court ruled that that was ok, since the guy wasn't profiting from it. Since Pat never misrepresented himself as the real TWI, and since there was no representation that the donations he solicited (if he even received any through that site) were supposed to go to TWI, it's entirely possible that this decision is sufficient precedent to give Pat a win. Maybe not on his countersuit, but that's a bit dodgy. Looks like I was wrong about your chances earlier, Pat. Sometimes you really can win a fight with a windmill... ;)-->

Goey: I think Pat owes you some legal fees... :D--> The cases are similar enough that he can probably use the appellate decision as leverage in a settlement. At the very least, he owes you a beer... :D-->

I never could fit a divan into my oven... :D-->

Steve: Actually, what I was thinking on that crossbow was that the gas bottle in the stock must have been a holy relic, forged from the adamantine of the gates of Hell. While the mechanism seems far-fetched, there's nothing physically impossible about it, save the reservoir for the compressed gas. When the trigger is pulled, a gas valve could open as the bolt receiver slammed into the headstock, moving a piston to re-cock the crossbow, while the exhaust gas could turn the bolt cylinder on some sort of ratchet. It would work--but you wouldn't get more than a shot or two off of a softball-sized gas tank. But I take it your question was more "why not use the gas directly to shoot the bolts out of a barrel, instead of the whole crossbow thing?" After all, VH uses two regular Webley .455 manstoppers anyway, and Hiram Maxim invented the machine gun around the time of the movie, so why a crossbow? Two answers: 1) You have to stake a vampire through the heart, according to legend. Wooden bullets wouldn't stand up to the stress of being fired, and would really be too small, anyway. Since the bolts have to be fletched in order to have a stable flight, you can't form a gas seal around the feathers. You could push it out with a gas check block from behind, but friction would require a gas seal beyond the technology of the time. Transferring energy from a short release of gas to compressing the steel of a crossbow's arms keeps the energy ready to discharge better than relying on gas, whose pressure will drop as rounds are fired. It also allows the crossbow to be manually cocked when the Miraculous Gas Bottle runs out. 2) It just looks cooler on film. Oh, btw, anyone else notice Frankenstein's steam-powered leg? Nice touch.

Okay, so you can now buy a hard drive for your PS2, but since it uses a totally different CPU than a PC, your PC can't catch a virus from your PS2 even if there were a PS2 virus. It's a good thing those aliens in Independence Day just happened to run their whole fleet on a Macintosh, otherwise Jeff Goldblum's virus would never have worked... ;)-->

The PS2 is no danger to your network. They have no hard drives and no web browsers. An Xbox is slightly less safe because it's Microsoft and it has a hard drive, but it's still nothing to worry about.

Same thing happened at our viewing. A couple brought in a very young child who would start screaming at the loud noises (of which there were a lot in this film). The mother's solution? Take the baby into the entranceway and stand there so she could still watch the movie. Of course, all that did was shield her from view, the kid's screams were just as bad twelve feet down the aisle. If you have a baby, spring for a babysitter or wait for the frickin' DVD.

The writers said that the joke with the six keys was that the door was supposedly never locked at any time during the ten-year run. That seems a little far-fetched, but I can't recall a single time it was locked, so it's probably true.

And why is it that I should explain myself to a sock puppet?