From: ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld.invalid
On Thu, 06 Dec 2012, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in article
, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>I thought I was finally over this two-month cold, but apparently it's
>not gone yet.
Are you sure it's not something you're passing back and forth with
others and it's morphing as it does so? Did you get a flu shot yet?
>> It's still in the "he says, they say" stage, but it's an interesting
>> case.
>I'm almost inured to fraud these days. I hardly think corrupt
>businessmen and officials are unique to our country or our era. OTOH
>I would be /very/ upset if they intentionally did anything that would
>affect the health of the patients.
Some states (New York is one) have their own version of the federal
False Claims law. All it takes is a whistle, and the attorney general
will investigate. Medical mal-practice is somewhat harder to charge.
I have a problem with the local news-radio station, because they give
(what amounts to be) filler stories with only the briefest details of
the item - and then I can't find the story on their web-site, that of
the local newspaper, or national sites. This morning, it was a story
about a Mississippi cancer clinic where the doctor pled guilty to one
count of health care fraud and two counts of making false statements
back in July in a "multi-million-dollar" health care fraud along with
"re-used" needles and diluted chemotherapy drugs (which couldn't be
proved) in addition to the usual charges of over-billing and false
statements. Apparently, the doctor, office manager and billing clerk
(outside contractor) are to be sentenced today. The numbers tossed
around for the doctor was UP TO 165 years, $3.6e6 in fines, and
$15.1e6 billings to Medica*. (OK, doctor got 20 years in Federal pen
and ordered to repay $8.2e6 which is probably a lost cause, office
manager got 13 months for false statements, billing clerk only got 3
months house arrest for conspiracy.) Quoting from an article I found
this morning:
The Mississippi Health Department closed the clinic in July 2011
because of "unsafe infection control practices" after 11 patients
were hospitalized with the same bacterial infection. The scare led
officials to test nearly 300 cancer patients for infections such
as HIV. The department has said none of the patients tested had
blood-borne viral infections related to the clinic's care. However,
a civil lawsuit claims at least one patient died about the time the
clinic was shut down from HIV he contracted there.
Wonderful. But corruption has been around for centuries, and the
only thing changing is the number of $CURRENCY_UNITS involved. Recall,
the Federal Claims Act is 1860s, but there were problems back during
the French-Indian War in 1750-63, never mind the naval contractors in
the 1400-1600s relating to ship-building and sustenance supplies to
several European navies. 'taint nothin' new here. Actually, it
was probably slightly better back then, because if you screwed the
sovereign or similar, it was Queen Of Hearts time ("OFF WITH HER
HEAD!!!") rather than mere fines and/or time in the Gray Bar Resort.
>> "Y'all be careful, ya heah." (A quick traceroute to something out
>> on the Internet may indicate if it's even possibly useful.)
>Another "problem" is that I can't control any other router's power
>switch. I think my Wi-Fi is up more than anybody else's even though
>eris is usually off.
Do you turn off the router (or at least down the wireless part) when
it's not being used? Most don't, but most of what I see here are
separate boxes hanging off a wired link, and those seem to get turned
off - likely the same power switch as the computers.
["personal firewall" programs]
>>> Does that mean those "personal firewalls" could be useful, if used
>>> knowledgeably (as they seldom are)?
>> Anything is possible, but you have to remember that they are running
>> on the system that (may have|has) the mal-ware installed. There
>> have been many reports of the mal-ware simply disabling the firewall
>> app, or at least the detection of that specific mal-ware's traffic.
>Also, the problem of users who don't know or refuse to follow basic
>guidelines is /not/ going to go away. I've seen enough stories online
>of "ever since you installed that antivirus/firewall it won't let me
>play my game, so I just removed the antivirus/firewall and now I can
>play it."
I honestly don't know which is worse, or more common. I've seen
both problems.
>> You're forgetting that ports exist for TCP and also for UDP (and
>> several other protocols). As for protocols, the IP header has an
>> eight bit field that identifies the protocol in the packet, and 143
>> of the 255 values are assigned although you're unlikely to see more
>> than a half dozen or so "in the wild".
>That sounds like about 256 x 64K = 4M things to check.
Not really - Never mind that few are used, many do not use a "port"
style scheme. Most common that comes to mind is ICMP (RFC0792).
>As I understand it, 'nmap' can check for every one of those, if told
>to.
I haven't tried the latest, but this was somewhat limited in earlier
versions. While it knew how to stick an appropriate protocol number
in the headers, it knew little about constructing the actual data in
the packet, and the best you could hope for is that the target would
reply with an ICMP Type 3 Code 2 (Protocol unreachable), or ICMPv6
Type 4 Code 1 (unrecognized Next Header type encountered) which is the
network stack's way of saying "Huh???".
>>> everyone else in my class is dragging some sort of laptop in a
>>> backpack.
>> one of the backpacks I have does have a separate section that is
>> somewhat designed for one, but I'd be wary of using it to also
>> carry books, etc.
>What about briefcase-like carrying cases that also have room for books,
>papers, etc.?
That's essentially what I'm using now - this one has a metal side that
essentially holds the shape, and reduces the risk of crushing the
laptop with the books. The backpack is all fabric, with nothing to
prevent the load (or my back) from trying to bend the laptop, or put
unwanted forces in the wrong place. The last three classes I took
had huge textbooks (four-ish pounds - about the size of Mueller's
recent editions), plus the three-ring binder for handouts and paper.
>> The ASUS and HP we have come with a touch pad which is "usable" -
>> but my wife carries a USB mouse with hers because she dislikes the
>> touch-pad.
>In my inexperienced opinion, having to use external peripherals on a
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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