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Short Answer: Yes you can be, but you won't be === Yes, you can be hacked. Anything is possible on a computer with an open port. The right question to ask is, what is the likelihood of being hacked. The likelihoods of you being hacked through your dvr software is so remote, you've got a better chance of a plane dropping from the sky onto your house. Consider these things: 1. For someone to have a decent chance of finding a vulnerability in your DVR software, would need to have an exact copy of your version to reverse engineer how it handles ports ect. How long might this take? Perhaps hundreds or even thousands of hours? 2. For someone to hack your system they would need some motivation. They have to know that you have the system in the first place, they have to find your IP address, they have to find the port numbers that your system uses. All this takes alot of detective work. It costs time. With all the credit cards flying about the Internet, malicious hackers are not wasting their time with dvr systems. There's too much loot to be had planting spyware and cashing in in your banking information. If you do get hacked, it will be through a web browser hack from surfing bad sites, an email worm or installing otherwise questionable software. On the other hand, if your name is Osama Binladen and it becomes known that you run a DVR system, expect to be hacked within 2 weeks. Hacking happens when one of two things is increased: Motivation (Binladen example) or Opportunity (email worms that can infect millions of systems overnight).

Black Friday is when many companies go from being "In the Red" to being "In the Black". Meaning, up until this point in the year they were losing money. The day after Thanksgiving (a US holiday, thus you may not have it in other countries) many retailers offer very low pricing on popular items, often purchased for holiday gifts. While Black Friday is not a national holiday, it is almost as well known as Christmas and Easter.

Too funny! Who are those guys? Canada ain't safe anymore. Love it!

I'm somewhat of a cowboy on the subject of recession. I say "If the economy is down, let that be your competition's problem". Just scoop up a bigger share of the market.

I read 1984 again last year. Great book. Hard to imagine it was written in 1948 and so many of it's themes have come true or are coming true.

Vint Cerf? I thought Al Gore invented the Internet. I'm so confused now.

Looks like the wave of the future, lol. 3D camera's that see behind objects and around walls are in development phase, but they don't see through them. One image can be several gigabytes of data, so storage and transfer rates will have to catch up with the technology before it goes mainstream.

That stuff is too funny. I always tell my crews to wear safety glasses. "Skin can heal, but your eye's are gone forever".

Very exciting story. I love the background music they added in too. I am impressed by the valience of those police and staff.

It's insane what the media calls HACKING. They just do it to sell news. Knowing, guessing or using security questions to gain access is not hacking. It's breaking in, but not hacking. Hashing a hexidecimal memory dump and decoding the password is hacking. Using a backend brute force tool to try the most common 1500000 passwords without tripping the max attempt switch. That is hacking. The real hackers are usually smart enough to not get caught, so you don't hear about the really intelligent hacks that go on. I guess the concept of getting hacked causes great fear and therefore people buy more newspapers and other media.

It was just another day for me. I stayed clear of downtown that day.

Welcome. Enjoy the information blitz

If it was me, and the quality was not imperitive, I'd probly go with one of the low end eBay model DVR cards. I've used them in the passed for 'budget' clients. They work fine, but the picture quality is not the best. They range from $140 to $500 for a 16 line system that runs in a Windows XP box. For the PC, I went to tigerdirect.com and got a refurbished winXP box (Intel chipset) for under $200. Add a monitor if needed while your there, flatscreens are pretty cheap now. On the other hand, I would expect less problems from the standalone DVR system as the are not subject to virus's and constant Window's updates. Good luck with your system. I know it can be rather intimidating if you don't put many of these together, so ask lot's of questions here. -Rob

Fiber is cool. Cable companies are going all fiber instead of copper. I've never installed it, but I saw a demo once. The speed of transmission is unlimited. It's only limted by the speed of the transmitter/receiver. So when a new model of transmitter comes out, it's just a matter of swapping that one unit, rather than putting down miles and miles of the latest coax. But satilite has many of the bonuses. Michigan lottery just put in an all satilite network. Look on the roof of most any brand gas station, you will see satalites (for credit card processing). It's a fun and exciting time to be alive for us technophiles.

Do you have the model of your Ultrak color camera?