"Battle.net is shaping up to be a really impressive addition.... They're [also] rolling out what is essentially an integrated IM client..."
What the heck for? In-game chat makes sense. Man, there are already too many communication paths - why do we need yet another one? Imagine: you are trying to concentrate on a game, chatting in-game, you have your normal IM client, you probably get e-mail notifications - heck, you also have your telephone and maybe Skype - and now you are supposed to chat on Battle.net as well?
Sounds to me like a solution in need of a problem...
Boy, is that off topic - and off base - but I'll bite. Swiss law requires that foreign countries wanting banking data from Swiss banks go through proper legal channels. The USA and Switzerland have a mutually signed treaty defining what this procedure is.
The IRS decided instead to try blackmail: give us your customer data or we'll whack you with a massive fine. That violates the treaty, but it's typical of IRS bullying tactics.
I would like to hope that the IRS would have lost in court, but it's even better that diplomacy finally worked. The IRS has agreed to follow the legal procedures set up in the treaty. Switzerland has agreed to process the requests expediently.
For information: that does not mean the the IRS will get the data. Swiss law makes a larger distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud that the USA does. Basically: tax evasion is a civil issue - the government is a creditor like any other, and has to file civil suit to collect. Tax fraud is a criminal offense, and can land you in jail. UBS will only be allowed to provide customer data if Switzerland agrees that the individuals are likely guilty of tax fraud. Which means that the IRS must provide some evidence of this: letter-box companies, forged documents, whatever. No evidence, no data.
Please have a look at that earlier sentence: "the government is a creditor like any other". At the end of the year, the Swiss government sends you a bill, which you pay like any other (ok, it's usually a bit bigger than, say, your phone bill).
The IRS in the USA has far too much power - not paying your US taxes is worse than criminal, as the IRS is not even bound by due process. Just incredible.
...and while there are people who object to having their house put online, that does not seem to be the main objection. After all, the view of the house or apartment is a view from a public street. Google is going "above and beyond" by offering to remove these images on request.
The main objection is to the people and license plates. To take the example that seems to be brayed about the most, the google-cars also travel the red-light districts. If you happen to be popping into an erotic shop or a brothel as the car drives by - do you really want this memorialized on the Internet? I think this is a realistic objection, and it is the basis for the requirement that Google blur faces and license plates.
They do the blurring automatically, but their algorithm does not catch everything. They are working on it...
"If they are trying to take your property, then there is no reason to come up behind them and hit them in the head. Warn them off. If they come after you, then hit them in the head."
The problem is: you absolutely do not want to give a warning. A criminal is more used to violence that your average joe - be it from gang fights, time in prison, or whatever. Your only chance in a physical confrontation is surprise. Give warning that you are going to hit him with a baseball bat, and he's likely to take the bat away and use it on you. Guess what, the same applies to a gun, unless you have explicitly trained for this sort of situation.
Car theft is in the gray zone, because you have the option of just letting it happen, with no personal confrontation at all. However, if someone is mugging you, or is in your house, they expect a personal confrontation. They are prepared for violence and definitely pose a threat to your life. If you are the type to do so (macho chest-thumping aside, not everyone is), you should shoot first and ask questions of the corpse. In countries where this is illegal, you may want to do it anyway - else you may be the one on the marble slab.
Re the discussion above about the drunken high school student breaking into the house: he deserved to be shot. Maybe you will feel guilty afterwards. But - at that particular moment - you have every reason to assume that some dangerous criminal is breaking in and intends the worst.
Speaking as a professor, I absolutely detest the practice of issuing new editions every year to screw the students. It is (a) never clear what has changed, (b) there is no reason students shouldn't be able pass on their used textbooks if they no longer want them, and (c) if you need translations, they are always a year or so behind, meaning that editions do not match across languages.
So, as a potential customer of textbooks, what is important?
The book must come up in Google. I find books by searching both in general and specifically within publishers sites. The best textbook in the world is useless if I never find out about it. Unfortunately, this means that the known academic publishers have a big advantage.
Content, content, content. I want real, useful, practical content. Stay relevant, cut the fluff. Take an example from the operating systems text by Tanenbaum: No student now alive gives a damn how the IBM 360 used to work. Heck, I cut my teeth programming an IBM 360, and I don't care how it worked. So why does he keep blathering on about it?
Price. I dislike the feeling that my students are getting ripped off. For my sins, I am teaching a new intro-to-CS course for business students next semester. The only half-way-decent textbook I could find is a 300 page, overly fluffy paperback - and it costs 50 Euros (that's about 75 bucks). Oh, yes, and there is a new edition out this year, great...
Online resources. I mention this almost as a negative point. Many publishers make much ado about online resources. It is nice to provide source-code and basic illustrations in electronic form. Perhaps solutions to some exercises. Anything else is useless - for example, I cannot imagine any competent professor using pre-prepared lecture slides.
For what it's worth, I would not be a fan of a purely electronic textbook. Electronic resources are great, but having a written reference on the side is still very useful - if only because you may need to see the reference while looking at stuff on your screen.
We looked into this at one point: got details on the audit, etc. Technically, it seemed to be a pretty trivial check of your systems. As I recall, you also had to agree to pay for a annual remote check - basically a port scan - which also cost a pretty penny.
Basically, it's a way of raking in money. Of course, the people who go through with the audit wind up passing the costs on to consumers. This is in addition to the transaction costs of 3-4%, the transaction processing costs, the fees paid by the consumers, etc, etc.
Can we please find a secure way of using direct debit, so we can cut the credit-card companies out of the loop?
Now, since I tell the police to "F off" they probably think that I've got state secrets or kiddie porn (like you just assumed). Which might not be true, I could just be exercising my rights.
I agree - it's about protecting those of us who use encryption for legitimate reasons.
I use truecrypt. Why? Because I have a lousy memory and cannot possibly remember all of the login information for my own accounts, let alone all the VPN and remote-access info for my clients.
Solution: create a file that truecrypt can mount as a volume. In this volume is a TiddlyWiki where I write down all of the usernames and passwords. The whole thing, along with the truecrypt software, lives on a USB stick that I always have with me. Plug it into any computer, mount the volume, and I have my "secret" notes. For backups, just copy the truecrypt file to permanent storage. It's a great solution, highly recommended!
However, the idea that I might be considered "suspicious" just because I use truecrypt is disturbing. In this sense, the article makes a lot of sense.
As I recall, another aspect of customs searches is this: if you have not yet cleared customs into the USA, you are not yet considered to be on US territory. As with Guantanamo, the government declares that actions outside of US territory do not have to respect US law.
"only our generation understands the truly public and universal nature of the internet"
Um, which generation would that be? Depending on how you count it, there are serious numbers of Slashdot users across two or possibly three generations.
I think most/. readers and all hardcore games will agree: graphics take second place to storyline. However, what interests the big game companies are sales figures. What drives game sales? By far the most important are articles and reviews. How many reviewers actually spend more than an hour or two playing the game? Having "wow" graphics are important to making a good impression. The fact that the gameplay had problems will eventually come out, but only after hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold.
Mass Effect is the most recent mistake I have personally seen. It great reviews! The graphics really are pretty (though not as good as expected, given the system requirements). And the gameplay? There are four scenarios with some depth. All of the other encounters use the same small set of maps, with one or the other door welded shut - very repetitive. Using personal weapons is reasonably well done, but vehicle weapons are a joke. The main storyline is complete, but many secondary stories either never finish, or end abruptly - more was clearly intended, but never implemented.
In short: the graphics are pretty, but the gameplay is just good enough to get by the reviewers who spend a couple of hours with the game. Play any longer, and all the shortcomings become glaringly obvious. But that's ok, it has already sold its million copies...
What market do they think they have for this? Unless you are out in the countryside away from any wireless coverage, why would you want to use a geosynchronous satellite? The lag is incredibly annoying. For data connections it won't matter so much, but who has different providers for voice and data?
Unless there is something I am missing, this is concept is DOA.
There is no feeling of entitlement. It's the feeling of "I want the product, but MS is pricing me out of my ability to buy it"
Man, there is this car for sale that I really like, but the dealership is pricing me out of my ability to buy it.
Sorry, dude, but if you can't afford a product, the normal thing is to do without. If enough people do without, and Microsoft really wants to sell it, they will drop the prices. Economics 101.
The other alternative is to join MSDN - you get licenses to use practially all Microsoft products. Obviously, you can't go install them on your friends' and family's computers, but you can install anything you want on your own systems.
Switzerland is a great place, but there are some things to be aware of
If you want to have friends outside of other expats, you must learn the local language where you live. Everyone speaks English, but it remains a foreign language, and not what you speak in the pub over a beer.
Things move slowly here. The classic example is that women didn't get the right to vote until the 1970s. The advantage of moving slowly is that the politics avoid many of the extreme swings of the pendulum that you see elsewhere.
Your best way in is to find a job. Your employer will then take care of the paperwork.
Learning the local language (Swiss German, French or Italian, depending) is really important. It is entirely possible to get by on English, however, you then wind up socially isolated from the locals. Another poster in this thread said that the Swiss seem hostile to foreigners. That's not true at all. They are, however, irritated by foreigners who live here for years, but make no effort to integrate themselves into the culture and language.
As with any big move, you would probably be well advised to vacation here a couple of times, to see if the country suits your tastes...
"Last I checked, Linux desktops were loaded with exciting new innovative features but failing on extremely basic tasks."
That's exactly right. I have yet to administer a linux system where I did not have to hand-edit some file in the/etc hierarchy. Changing the boot order, so that the system had found the domain server before accepting logins (which otherwise failed - permanently - you had to reboot the system). Incorrectly configured CD/DVD drives. Write-protected files in/tmp that stop the boot process. USB-sticks recognized just fine - unless they were plugged in when the system is booted. The list of annoyances goes on and on. As a techie, I can solve them - but I shouldn't have to. For non-technies, they are show-stoppers.
On the optimistic side: since Ubuntu came out, things are improving - they are driving Linux in the right direction.
In principle, you can solve any programming problem in any complete language. But why not take the right tool for the job? Fortran is suited to numerical analysis and is highly optimized for it. Python isn't, nor is Java, nor is C++. In particular, if you are doing numerical number crunching, you do not want object oriented crapola getting in your way. OO is great for the vast majority of standard programming problems, but it is a hindrance in a lot of scientific and numerical analysis tasks.
Here's an example: you are analyzing radar signals. These come in as a continuous stream of numbers, which are packed into arrays and analyzed. There are no objects yet, just lots of numbers to crunch as quickly and efficiently as you can - and that's what Fortran is good at. Once you have identified airplanes and figured out their distance, speed, etc - then maybe you want to pass these on to an OO module written in another language.
Read the book "How to win friends and influence people". Yeah, it's a cheesy title. But this is the book that made that title cheesy.
The point is this: we IT-types are often not that comfortable connecting with people. This book lays down some basics. Try to apply them in day-to-day interactions. Things like: know people's names. Take an interest in them: do they have kids, pets, hobbies? Connect with them on a personal level. This will make then regard you as a person as well - rather than an anonymous piece of infrastructure.
It's all stuff you can find in a lot of other books, but this is the original. For us techies, the most important stuff is in the first third - a few dozen pages, I think it's something like seven points.
The question is: does a certification have a value, or not?
Consider an example in a different area: accounting. At the end of the year, a public corporation must have its accounts certified by an auditor. The audit essentially states that the accounts are an accurate reflection of the company's financial state - that the accountants haven't "disappeared" a few million dollars into their private accounts, or whatever.
If the accounts turn out to be fraudulent, the auditors have failed - and it is entirely correct to sue them.
Back to IT certifications: if the audit missed something, then it is entirely appropriate to sue the auditors. If the security breach was not due to problems the auditors should have caught (inside job, violation of established procedures, etc.), then the auditors should not be liable.
Consider what happens if you do not hold the auditors liable: a very current example from the financial world. The ratings agencies said that derivatives based on sub-prime mortgages were top-quality, low risk investments. Screwing up a rating costs them nothing, so they gave in to political pressure and rated these derivatives too high. Had they been liable for the consequences of their ratings, they would have done a better job. At least, one would like to think so - sadly, there is no way to go back and test this hypothesis...
Our small company (based outside the US) was advised by our lawyer to never sell to a customer in the USA. Even if your company has no local presence beyond an accessible website, local courts will use the long arm statute to claim jurisdiction. It doesn't matter that your contract specifies the legal jurisdiction. It doesn't matter that you have no local presence. Local lawyer plus local judge = right-to-do-whatever-they-damn-well-please. And you know those foreign corporations are just rolling in dough...
It is theoretically possible to purchase legal liability insurance. However, legal liability insurance generally excludes the US as simply to risky.
Despite the legal advice, we did sell to one customer in the USA whom we though we could trust. A couple of years later things apparently went south. Their lawyer thought "Quick, who can we screw out of some cash?" We got this registered letter in the mail...
Lovely legal system you guys have, just lovely.
p.s. The outcome was good for us, but only because I personally know a couple of lawyers in the US, and one of them helped us out. For most foreign companies, this could have been very, very expensive. If you choose not to show up at the courthouse in Podunk City, the judge will enter a default judgement against you, which will hang around your company's neck like an albatross.
6. Laws must be written in a way that is understandable to laymen. If the IRS can do it, so can the legislators.
7. The total text of all laws applying to individuals cannot exceed one million words (that's about 10 normal novels, or four really thick ones). For businesses, you get another million.
There are so many laws of such complexity that no layman can possibly be aware of them all - much less understand them. If "ignorance of the law is no excuse" then it must be possible for a normal person to actually know what the law is.
Funny, the first think I thought when I tried a search on Bing was: they copied Google's layout entirely. The search results are formatted similarly, adverts with a colored background appear at the top, other text adverts at the top-right. The only substantive difference is the area on the left with "related searches".
The Google results remain qualitatively better, at least in my quick test. Google tends to give the home-page of a useful site at the first hit. Bing's top results seem to be either sites that link to a useful site, or else content pages deep within a site. Frankly, the same kind of poor results that I associate with MSN. Perhaps Bing nothing but a new face on an old search engine?
Wouldn't it make more sense to just put the darn things on the map? I mean, anyone trying to spy on the agencies is as likely to look for stuff being buried that never appears on maps. Better to just pretend it's "yet another fiber", and encrypt the contents. It would also save these needless interruptions of service...
On the side, I manage a small network, and I've also wondered the same sort of thing: if someone else needed to find their way around, where would they start.
A Wiki makes for a really nice way to document things, not least because you can include all sorts of cross references. For example, a list of servers, with links to the services they provide - and a list of services, with links to the servers. But Wiki's normally run on servers, which leaves your successor with a chicken-and-egg problem.
A bit of random surfing turned up TiddlyWiki, which is a Wiki in a single HTML file. A really elegant bit of engineering, and very handy for self-contained documentation. Since the entire Wiki is just a single file, it's easy to protect. I wound up with two: one with "public" information describing the general architecture and one with private information (including passwords). The private one you can put on a USB-stick in a safe, hand to your boss, or whatever seems appropriate...
Some systems used to limit you to 4 digits - maybe some still do. I certainly have a card with a 6-digit limit.
If you are using 10-digit pins that you change, one of the following is true: (a) you have a ridiculous memory for numbers, or (b) you write your PIN down, or (c) you are using something simple for your PIN like 1234513245. The average person has trouble remembering more than 7 digits (not coincidentally, the maximum length of a local telephone number).
I read a persuasive article once that argued that writing down passwords was a good thing. The argument was that this allows the user to select stronger passwords without worrying about forgetting them.
In essence, you replace an IT security problem with a physical security problem. The number of people with physical access to your desk, or wallet, or whatever is probably considerably smaller than the number of people with electronic access to hack your account.
Having recently worked for a company that forced password changes (insistence of the owner over the objections of IT), I can tell you that almost everyone in the office selected a one-time password and incremented a number on the end of it: xxxx13, xxxx14, xxxx15, and so on. So a compromised password would stay compromised - one gained nothing beyond irritating the users...
Slashdot Mirror
"Battle.net is shaping up to be a really impressive addition. ... They're [also] rolling out what is essentially an integrated IM client..."
What the heck for? In-game chat makes sense. Man, there are already too many communication paths - why do we need yet another one? Imagine: you are trying to concentrate on a game, chatting in-game, you have your normal IM client, you probably get e-mail notifications - heck, you also have your telephone and maybe Skype - and now you are supposed to chat on Battle.net as well?
Sounds to me like a solution in need of a problem...
Boy, is that off topic - and off base - but I'll bite. Swiss law requires that foreign countries wanting banking data from Swiss banks go through proper legal channels. The USA and Switzerland have a mutually signed treaty defining what this procedure is.
The IRS decided instead to try blackmail: give us your customer data or we'll whack you with a massive fine. That violates the treaty, but it's typical of IRS bullying tactics.
I would like to hope that the IRS would have lost in court, but it's even better that diplomacy finally worked. The IRS has agreed to follow the legal procedures set up in the treaty. Switzerland has agreed to process the requests expediently.
For information: that does not mean the the IRS will get the data. Swiss law makes a larger distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud that the USA does. Basically: tax evasion is a civil issue - the government is a creditor like any other, and has to file civil suit to collect. Tax fraud is a criminal offense, and can land you in jail. UBS will only be allowed to provide customer data if Switzerland agrees that the individuals are likely guilty of tax fraud. Which means that the IRS must provide some evidence of this: letter-box companies, forged documents, whatever. No evidence, no data.
Please have a look at that earlier sentence: "the government is a creditor like any other". At the end of the year, the Swiss government sends you a bill, which you pay like any other (ok, it's usually a bit bigger than, say, your phone bill).
The IRS in the USA has far too much power - not paying your US taxes is worse than criminal, as the IRS is not even bound by due process. Just incredible.
...and while there are people who object to having their house put online, that does not seem to be the main objection. After all, the view of the house or apartment is a view from a public street. Google is going "above and beyond" by offering to remove these images on request.
The main objection is to the people and license plates. To take the example that seems to be brayed about the most, the google-cars also travel the red-light districts. If you happen to be popping into an erotic shop or a brothel as the car drives by - do you really want this memorialized on the Internet? I think this is a realistic objection, and it is the basis for the requirement that Google blur faces and license plates.
They do the blurring automatically, but their algorithm does not catch everything. They are working on it...
"If they are trying to take your property, then there is no reason to come up behind them and hit them in the head. Warn them off. If they come after you, then hit them in the head."
The problem is: you absolutely do not want to give a warning. A criminal is more used to violence that your average joe - be it from gang fights, time in prison, or whatever. Your only chance in a physical confrontation is surprise. Give warning that you are going to hit him with a baseball bat, and he's likely to take the bat away and use it on you. Guess what, the same applies to a gun, unless you have explicitly trained for this sort of situation.
Car theft is in the gray zone, because you have the option of just letting it happen, with no personal confrontation at all. However, if someone is mugging you, or is in your house, they expect a personal confrontation. They are prepared for violence and definitely pose a threat to your life. If you are the type to do so (macho chest-thumping aside, not everyone is), you should shoot first and ask questions of the corpse. In countries where this is illegal, you may want to do it anyway - else you may be the one on the marble slab.
Re the discussion above about the drunken high school student breaking into the house: he deserved to be shot. Maybe you will feel guilty afterwards. But - at that particular moment - you have every reason to assume that some dangerous criminal is breaking in and intends the worst.
Speaking as a professor, I absolutely detest the practice of issuing new editions every year to screw the students. It is (a) never clear what has changed, (b) there is no reason students shouldn't be able pass on their used textbooks if they no longer want them, and (c) if you need translations, they are always a year or so behind, meaning that editions do not match across languages.
So, as a potential customer of textbooks, what is important?
For what it's worth, I would not be a fan of a purely electronic textbook. Electronic resources are great, but having a written reference on the side is still very useful - if only because you may need to see the reference while looking at stuff on your screen.
We looked into this at one point: got details on the audit, etc. Technically, it seemed to be a pretty trivial check of your systems. As I recall, you also had to agree to pay for a annual remote check - basically a port scan - which also cost a pretty penny.
Basically, it's a way of raking in money. Of course, the people who go through with the audit wind up passing the costs on to consumers. This is in addition to the transaction costs of 3-4%, the transaction processing costs, the fees paid by the consumers, etc, etc.
Can we please find a secure way of using direct debit, so we can cut the credit-card companies out of the loop?
I agree - it's about protecting those of us who use encryption for legitimate reasons.
I use truecrypt. Why? Because I have a lousy memory and cannot possibly remember all of the login information for my own accounts, let alone all the VPN and remote-access info for my clients.
Solution: create a file that truecrypt can mount as a volume. In this volume is a TiddlyWiki where I write down all of the usernames and passwords. The whole thing, along with the truecrypt software, lives on a USB stick that I always have with me. Plug it into any computer, mount the volume, and I have my "secret" notes. For backups, just copy the truecrypt file to permanent storage. It's a great solution, highly recommended!
However, the idea that I might be considered "suspicious" just because I use truecrypt is disturbing. In this sense, the article makes a lot of sense.
As I recall, another aspect of customs searches is this: if you have not yet cleared customs into the USA, you are not yet considered to be on US territory. As with Guantanamo, the government declares that actions outside of US territory do not have to respect US law.
"only our generation understands the truly public and universal nature of the internet"
Um, which generation would that be? Depending on how you count it, there are serious numbers of Slashdot users across two or possibly three generations.
I think most /. readers and all hardcore games will agree: graphics take second place to storyline. However, what interests the big game companies are sales figures. What drives game sales? By far the most important are articles and reviews. How many reviewers actually spend more than an hour or two playing the game? Having "wow" graphics are important to making a good impression. The fact that the gameplay had problems will eventually come out, but only after hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold.
Mass Effect is the most recent mistake I have personally seen. It great reviews! The graphics really are pretty (though not as good as expected, given the system requirements). And the gameplay? There are four scenarios with some depth. All of the other encounters use the same small set of maps, with one or the other door welded shut - very repetitive. Using personal weapons is reasonably well done, but vehicle weapons are a joke. The main storyline is complete, but many secondary stories either never finish, or end abruptly - more was clearly intended, but never implemented.
In short: the graphics are pretty, but the gameplay is just good enough to get by the reviewers who spend a couple of hours with the game. Play any longer, and all the shortcomings become glaringly obvious. But that's ok, it has already sold its million copies...
What market do they think they have for this? Unless you are out in the countryside away from any wireless coverage, why would you want to use a geosynchronous satellite? The lag is incredibly annoying. For data connections it won't matter so much, but who has different providers for voice and data?
Unless there is something I am missing, this is concept is DOA.
There is no feeling of entitlement. It's the feeling of "I want the product, but MS is pricing me out of my ability to buy it"
Man, there is this car for sale that I really like, but the dealership is pricing me out of my ability to buy it.
Sorry, dude, but if you can't afford a product, the normal thing is to do without. If enough people do without, and Microsoft really wants to sell it, they will drop the prices. Economics 101.
The other alternative is to join MSDN - you get licenses to use practially all Microsoft products. Obviously, you can't go install them on your friends' and family's computers, but you can install anything you want on your own systems.
Switzerland is a great place, but there are some things to be aware of
Learning the local language (Swiss German, French or Italian, depending) is really important. It is entirely possible to get by on English, however, you then wind up socially isolated from the locals. Another poster in this thread said that the Swiss seem hostile to foreigners. That's not true at all. They are, however, irritated by foreigners who live here for years, but make no effort to integrate themselves into the culture and language.
As with any big move, you would probably be well advised to vacation here a couple of times, to see if the country suits your tastes...
"Last I checked, Linux desktops were loaded with exciting new innovative features but failing on extremely basic tasks."
That's exactly right. I have yet to administer a linux system where I did not have to hand-edit some file in the /etc hierarchy. Changing the boot order, so that the system had found the domain server before accepting logins (which otherwise failed - permanently - you had to reboot the system). Incorrectly configured CD/DVD drives. Write-protected files in /tmp that stop the boot process. USB-sticks recognized just fine - unless they were plugged in when the system is booted. The list of annoyances goes on and on. As a techie, I can solve them - but I shouldn't have to. For non-technies, they are show-stoppers.
On the optimistic side: since Ubuntu came out, things are improving - they are driving Linux in the right direction.
In principle, you can solve any programming problem in any complete language. But why not take the right tool for the job? Fortran is suited to numerical analysis and is highly optimized for it. Python isn't, nor is Java, nor is C++. In particular, if you are doing numerical number crunching, you do not want object oriented crapola getting in your way. OO is great for the vast majority of standard programming problems, but it is a hindrance in a lot of scientific and numerical analysis tasks.
Here's an example: you are analyzing radar signals. These come in as a continuous stream of numbers, which are packed into arrays and analyzed. There are no objects yet, just lots of numbers to crunch as quickly and efficiently as you can - and that's what Fortran is good at. Once you have identified airplanes and figured out their distance, speed, etc - then maybe you want to pass these on to an OO module written in another language.
Read the book "How to win friends and influence people". Yeah, it's a cheesy title. But this is the book that made that title cheesy.
The point is this: we IT-types are often not that comfortable connecting with people. This book lays down some basics. Try to apply them in day-to-day interactions. Things like: know people's names. Take an interest in them: do they have kids, pets, hobbies? Connect with them on a personal level. This will make then regard you as a person as well - rather than an anonymous piece of infrastructure.
It's all stuff you can find in a lot of other books, but this is the original. For us techies, the most important stuff is in the first third - a few dozen pages, I think it's something like seven points.
The question is: does a certification have a value, or not?
Consider an example in a different area: accounting. At the end of the year, a public corporation must have its accounts certified by an auditor. The audit essentially states that the accounts are an accurate reflection of the company's financial state - that the accountants haven't "disappeared" a few million dollars into their private accounts, or whatever.
If the accounts turn out to be fraudulent, the auditors have failed - and it is entirely correct to sue them.
Back to IT certifications: if the audit missed something, then it is entirely appropriate to sue the auditors. If the security breach was not due to problems the auditors should have caught (inside job, violation of established procedures, etc.), then the auditors should not be liable.
Consider what happens if you do not hold the auditors liable: a very current example from the financial world. The ratings agencies said that derivatives based on sub-prime mortgages were top-quality, low risk investments. Screwing up a rating costs them nothing, so they gave in to political pressure and rated these derivatives too high. Had they been liable for the consequences of their ratings, they would have done a better job. At least, one would like to think so - sadly, there is no way to go back and test this hypothesis...
Our small company (based outside the US) was advised by our lawyer to never sell to a customer in the USA. Even if your company has no local presence beyond an accessible website, local courts will use the long arm statute to claim jurisdiction. It doesn't matter that your contract specifies the legal jurisdiction. It doesn't matter that you have no local presence. Local lawyer plus local judge = right-to-do-whatever-they-damn-well-please. And you know those foreign corporations are just rolling in dough...
It is theoretically possible to purchase legal liability insurance. However, legal liability insurance generally excludes the US as simply to risky.
Despite the legal advice, we did sell to one customer in the USA whom we though we could trust. A couple of years later things apparently went south. Their lawyer thought "Quick, who can we screw out of some cash?" We got this registered letter in the mail...
Lovely legal system you guys have, just lovely.
p.s. The outcome was good for us, but only because I personally know a couple of lawyers in the US, and one of them helped us out. For most foreign companies, this could have been very, very expensive. If you choose not to show up at the courthouse in Podunk City, the judge will enter a default judgement against you, which will hang around your company's neck like an albatross.
6. Laws must be written in a way that is understandable to laymen. If the IRS can do it, so can the legislators.
7. The total text of all laws applying to individuals cannot exceed one million words (that's about 10 normal novels, or four really thick ones). For businesses, you get another million.
There are so many laws of such complexity that no layman can possibly be aware of them all - much less understand them. If "ignorance of the law is no excuse" then it must be possible for a normal person to actually know what the law is.
Funny, the first think I thought when I tried a search on Bing was: they copied Google's layout entirely. The search results are formatted similarly, adverts with a colored background appear at the top, other text adverts at the top-right. The only substantive difference is the area on the left with "related searches".
The Google results remain qualitatively better, at least in my quick test. Google tends to give the home-page of a useful site at the first hit. Bing's top results seem to be either sites that link to a useful site, or else content pages deep within a site. Frankly, the same kind of poor results that I associate with MSN. Perhaps Bing nothing but a new face on an old search engine?
Wouldn't it make more sense to just put the darn things on the map? I mean, anyone trying to spy on the agencies is as likely to look for stuff being buried that never appears on maps. Better to just pretend it's "yet another fiber", and encrypt the contents. It would also save these needless interruptions of service...
On the side, I manage a small network, and I've also wondered the same sort of thing: if someone else needed to find their way around, where would they start.
A Wiki makes for a really nice way to document things, not least because you can include all sorts of cross references. For example, a list of servers, with links to the services they provide - and a list of services, with links to the servers. But Wiki's normally run on servers, which leaves your successor with a chicken-and-egg problem.
A bit of random surfing turned up TiddlyWiki, which is a Wiki in a single HTML file. A really elegant bit of engineering, and very handy for self-contained documentation. Since the entire Wiki is just a single file, it's easy to protect. I wound up with two: one with "public" information describing the general architecture and one with private information (including passwords). The private one you can put on a USB-stick in a safe, hand to your boss, or whatever seems appropriate...
Some systems used to limit you to 4 digits - maybe some still do. I certainly have a card with a 6-digit limit.
If you are using 10-digit pins that you change, one of the following is true: (a) you have a ridiculous memory for numbers, or (b) you write your PIN down, or (c) you are using something simple for your PIN like 1234513245. The average person has trouble remembering more than 7 digits (not coincidentally, the maximum length of a local telephone number).
I read a persuasive article once that argued that writing down passwords was a good thing. The argument was that this allows the user to select stronger passwords without worrying about forgetting them.
In essence, you replace an IT security problem with a physical security problem. The number of people with physical access to your desk, or wallet, or whatever is probably considerably smaller than the number of people with electronic access to hack your account.
Having recently worked for a company that forced password changes (insistence of the owner over the objections of IT), I can tell you that almost everyone in the office selected a one-time password and incremented a number on the end of it: xxxx13, xxxx14, xxxx15, and so on. So a compromised password would stay compromised - one gained nothing beyond irritating the users...