Oh, so the Debian folks didn't make it easy for you, huh? Jesus H. Christ, if you want an easy install, get RedHat. OR stick with windoze. Duh.
Myself, I prefer Debian and always have. Some folks have trouble getting it installed -- so what? The *nix operating systems have never been the easiest thing in the world to learn, and probably never will be. That't not elitist, that's the way this particular tool works. If you want raw power and lots of flexibility to make your computer do what you want done, Debian is awesome. If you want your hand held, your nose wiped, your diapers changed, and then to be nominated for a Nobel prize, stick with windoze or an Apple.
Personally, I hope that Debian remains as it always has been: The most stable distribution of Linux there is, and one that trades ease of use for extreme flexibility instead of the other way around. But what do I know? I'm just a user.
We determined that it would not be viable at this time because:
Let me see if I have this straight:
a) The costs of supporting a handful of Linux coders who would likely work for free would be difficult to recoup.
b) Piracy is going to run rampant in spite of the fact the cost of the blank media is greater than the cost of the recorded media, and the data on the media is certainly a small enough file that most of us have the bandwidth and hard drive space to snatch up dozens of titles in an evening over the internet.
c) Those same Linux programmers who would code the drivers up would not be intelligent enough to maintain their code, and not generous enough to write HOWTO's for it. XFree86 is likely to ignore the user's desires to continue playing video on their machines. And of course micro$oft's misOperating Systems are standardized by industry, which makes it a lot easier to support them.
Okay, that makes sense to me now. All I had to do was to firmly place my head up against my colon and it all became clear to me. After all, I am running a free operating system on a machine that I stole from the local orphanage after beating the nuns senseless, so I'm pretty likely to steal the copyright material on the DVD's, also. Can't afford much entertainment budget with this nasty crack habit, anyway.
Thanks for clearing that up with the industry insider's perspective.
No, not all online merchants do this -- only the foolish ones. I build e-commerce sites for a living, and steadfastly refuse to even allow credit card information to traverse my client's servers unless they are encrypted at every step.
Of course, we have to provide for those cases where the remote payment processing center is unreachable, so we do sometimes have to store the information on the internet-connected server. The information stays strongly-encrypted until it reaches the merchant, and is never within reach of the HTTP server. We counsel the merchants to keep the decryption process out of any internet-connectable machine, and we keep a very jealous eye on the server logs for crack attempts. When a crack attempt is found, the site is disabled and we go to work analyzing the attempt and searching for any damage or changed files and take whatever action is appropriate.
We make noise to the administrators whose machines and network were used, but the fact remains that a persistent cracker will just come back using some other route -- and the knowledgable ones can cover their tracks pretty well. If they come back often enough they're more likely to make a mistake that gives them away, but even then there may be nothing that can be done about it short of increasing security. In many places on the globe, cracking is not illegal.
As long as there is commerce, there will be thieves. And as long as there are thieves, there will be a few who get away with it. It's easier to commit credit card fraud in the physical realm than it is in the virtual -- and the black market for stolen credit card numbers is huge. All it takes to gather up a group of stolen credit card numbers in the physical world is to find some embittered minimum wage punk in a gas station, mini-mart, or restaurant who wants to make a quick buck on the side, and they'll do so willingly. It's tougher to make a computer give them up unwillingly.
E-commerce is generally no more risky than is handing your credit card across a counter to someone you don't know just because he's there, and I would even go so far as to say that it's probably safer. If for no reason other than the fact that e-commerce sites are not where you'd expect to get caught in the crossfire of an armed robbery.
They're running Slackware, in case anyone's wondering. I've placed several sites there, and have nothing but good things to say about Erika, Jay, and the crew.
Top notch service, and unlike so many other hosting providers, they actually care about keeping things running and clients happy. It's happened more than once that they've contacted me to say "Another client said such-and-such is happening, so you might want to check your client's sites just in case." I've never found a problem, but it's nice to know that WSP is as committed to keeping my clients happy as I am.
The only downside: They're nice folks, so it's easy (for me, anyway) to get distracted and actually have a pleasant conversation during a tech support call. Which messes up my already pinched schedule.
A quick check of the e-commerce sites we've deployed this year shows all of them working fine.
The only problem I have now is that the client whose site I just passed a transaction through isn't in the office to take that $60,000 charge off of my credit card... and I don't really have need of a Steadicam Ultra Cine rig. Anyone shooting a movie and need a new one?;-)
the only reason they were first and only one for a while is that it may have been hard to implement.
I may be wrong, but it seems that the difficulty of the implementation probably has very little to do with it. It seems to me to be a relatively easy thing to do. I think that the reason no one else implemented it first is the same reason I chose not to implement it before they deployed it: It's stoopud.
Absent any accidental or intentional alteration, at best a cookie can indicate which machine it came from, but not whose face is soaking up the warm glow of the monitor. Most are not willing to trust a high-value transaction to that. I'm not. It's an obvious thing and has been since the cookie was invented, it's just dumb to use them in this way.
The potential for malicious mischief is also very high. A script kiddie with a port sniffer can collect cookies all day and night, then spew transactions at the one-click function just for giggles. The likelihood of getting caught is directly proportional to the skills of the script kiddie.
The rule of thumb is that every internet connected machine will be the target of an attack sooner or later. Most "e-tailers" are not willing to accept unnecessary risks -- that is why no one else did single click financial transactions before Amazon did, IHMO.
But kW/h is wrong, and kWh/h is ACTUALLY CORRECT, as silly as it may seem.
Nah, it ain't so. kWh/h is a delta parameter, like acceleration. kW/h is a measure of the rate of power consumption, and is correct in the given context.
The possible extrapolations of this are left as an excercise to the reader. Just don't tell anyone you're doing it if you wish to avoid being labeled as a pathetic creature;-)
Ya know, though, it is decidedly not in a physician's best interests to make referrals to the undertaker. The sawbones makes more money if you keep coming back.
I am not suggesting that TrustE didn't begin with nobler goals in mind, but there is an inherent and inescapable conflict of interest there: TrustE's survival vs. their stated mission. It's an old adage: Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Is it just me, or is the inherent conflict of interest of TrustE as obvious as balls on a tall dog?
The people who display the TrustE graphic are the same people who pay TrustE. How many of us can turn down the cynicism dial far enough to blindly accept that TrustE can/will do things that will have serious negative impact on their bottom line?
Never trust anyone who can make more money screwing you than they can by protecting your interests. It's just that simple, and it makes the furor over TrustE's lack of credibility seem to be pretty pointless. "Oh no! They're acting in their own best interests and not ours!" Duhhhh...
The ugly side effect of this whole debacle is that TrustE has now cast an evil shadow over every web site that provides a privacy policy. People will now view every privacy policy as a disclaimer that site owners use to avoid liability for violating consumer privacy.
The reintroduction of this bill is not about doing The Right Thing and finally removing the biggest hurdle facing e-commerce, it's about electioneering. The only reason it passed the House is because the Democrats don't want to hand the Republicans the anti-technology brick that will later be hurled at their heads.
If we want the legally recognized ability to execute binding contracts via the internet, we must keep pounding on Congress until they can come up with a decent bill and the support needed to override any presidential veto. This one will surely not make it past Clinton's desk.
In order to create solid digital signatures, we must first have strong encryption -- of course, privacy is a threat to our national security, because terrorists might use it to discuss their plans to build weapons of mass destruction. Yeah, yeah, that's it. There's no way that a terrorist seeking to build a thermonuclear device is going to risk being busted for exporting encryption software.
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Myself, I prefer Debian and always have. Some folks have trouble getting it installed -- so what? The *nix operating systems have never been the easiest thing in the world to learn, and probably never will be. That't not elitist, that's the way this particular tool works. If you want raw power and lots of flexibility to make your computer do what you want done, Debian is awesome. If you want your hand held, your nose wiped, your diapers changed, and then to be nominated for a Nobel prize, stick with windoze or an Apple.
Personally, I hope that Debian remains as it always has been: The most stable distribution of Linux there is, and one that trades ease of use for extreme flexibility instead of the other way around. But what do I know? I'm just a user.
Let me see if I have this straight:
a) The costs of supporting a handful of Linux coders who would likely work for free would be difficult to recoup.
b) Piracy is going to run rampant in spite of the fact the cost of the blank media is greater than the cost of the recorded media, and the data on the media is certainly a small enough file that most of us have the bandwidth and hard drive space to snatch up dozens of titles in an evening over the internet.
c) Those same Linux programmers who would code the drivers up would not be intelligent enough to maintain their code, and not generous enough to write HOWTO's for it. XFree86 is likely to ignore the user's desires to continue playing video on their machines. And of course micro$oft's misOperating Systems are standardized by industry, which makes it a lot easier to support them.
Okay, that makes sense to me now. All I had to do was to firmly place my head up against my colon and it all became clear to me. After all, I am running a free operating system on a machine that I stole from the local orphanage after beating the nuns senseless, so I'm pretty likely to steal the copyright material on the DVD's, also. Can't afford much entertainment budget with this nasty crack habit, anyway.
Thanks for clearing that up with the industry insider's perspective.
No, not all online merchants do this -- only the foolish ones. I build e-commerce sites for a living, and steadfastly refuse to even allow credit card information to traverse my client's servers unless they are encrypted at every step.
Of course, we have to provide for those cases where the remote payment processing center is unreachable, so we do sometimes have to store the information on the internet-connected server. The information stays strongly-encrypted until it reaches the merchant, and is never within reach of the HTTP server. We counsel the merchants to keep the decryption process out of any internet-connectable machine, and we keep a very jealous eye on the server logs for crack attempts. When a crack attempt is found, the site is disabled and we go to work analyzing the attempt and searching for any damage or changed files and take whatever action is appropriate.
We make noise to the administrators whose machines and network were used, but the fact remains that a persistent cracker will just come back using some other route -- and the knowledgable ones can cover their tracks pretty well. If they come back often enough they're more likely to make a mistake that gives them away, but even then there may be nothing that can be done about it short of increasing security. In many places on the globe, cracking is not illegal.
As long as there is commerce, there will be thieves. And as long as there are thieves, there will be a few who get away with it. It's easier to commit credit card fraud in the physical realm than it is in the virtual -- and the black market for stolen credit card numbers is huge. All it takes to gather up a group of stolen credit card numbers in the physical world is to find some embittered minimum wage punk in a gas station, mini-mart, or restaurant who wants to make a quick buck on the side, and they'll do so willingly. It's tougher to make a computer give them up unwillingly.
E-commerce is generally no more risky than is handing your credit card across a counter to someone you don't know just because he's there, and I would even go so far as to say that it's probably safer. If for no reason other than the fact that e-commerce sites are not where you'd expect to get caught in the crossfire of an armed robbery.
Top notch service, and unlike so many other hosting providers, they actually care about keeping things running and clients happy. It's happened more than once that they've contacted me to say "Another client said such-and-such is happening, so you might want to check your client's sites just in case." I've never found a problem, but it's nice to know that WSP is as committed to keeping my clients happy as I am.
The only downside: They're nice folks, so it's easy (for me, anyway) to get distracted and actually have a pleasant conversation during a tech support call. Which messes up my already pinched schedule.
The only problem I have now is that the client whose site I just passed a transaction through isn't in the office to take that $60,000 charge off of my credit card... and I don't really have need of a Steadicam Ultra Cine rig. Anyone shooting a movie and need a new one? ;-)
Happy New Year, All!
I may be wrong, but it seems that the difficulty of the implementation probably has very little to do with it. It seems to me to be a relatively easy thing to do. I think that the reason no one else implemented it first is the same reason I chose not to implement it before they deployed it: It's stoopud.
Absent any accidental or intentional alteration, at best a cookie can indicate which machine it came from, but not whose face is soaking up the warm glow of the monitor. Most are not willing to trust a high-value transaction to that. I'm not. It's an obvious thing and has been since the cookie was invented, it's just dumb to use them in this way.
The potential for malicious mischief is also very high. A script kiddie with a port sniffer can collect cookies all day and night, then spew transactions at the one-click function just for giggles. The likelihood of getting caught is directly proportional to the skills of the script kiddie.
The rule of thumb is that every internet connected machine will be the target of an attack sooner or later. Most "e-tailers" are not willing to accept unnecessary risks -- that is why no one else did single click financial transactions before Amazon did, IHMO.
Nah, it ain't so. kWh/h is a delta parameter, like acceleration. kW/h is a measure of the rate of power consumption, and is correct in the given context.
The possible extrapolations of this are left as an excercise to the reader. Just don't tell anyone you're doing it if you wish to avoid being labeled as a pathetic creature ;-)
I am not suggesting that TrustE didn't begin with nobler goals in mind, but there is an inherent and inescapable conflict of interest there: TrustE's survival vs. their stated mission. It's an old adage: Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
The people who display the TrustE graphic are the same people who pay TrustE. How many of us can turn down the cynicism dial far enough to blindly accept that TrustE can/will do things that will have serious negative impact on their bottom line?
Never trust anyone who can make more money screwing you than they can by protecting your interests. It's just that simple, and it makes the furor over TrustE's lack of credibility seem to be pretty pointless. "Oh no! They're acting in their own best interests and not ours!" Duhhhh...
The ugly side effect of this whole debacle is that TrustE has now cast an evil shadow over every web site that provides a privacy policy. People will now view every privacy policy as a disclaimer that site owners use to avoid liability for violating consumer privacy.
If we want the legally recognized ability to execute binding contracts via the internet, we must keep pounding on Congress until they can come up with a decent bill and the support needed to override any presidential veto. This one will surely not make it past Clinton's desk.
In order to create solid digital signatures, we must first have strong encryption -- of course, privacy is a threat to our national security, because terrorists might use it to discuss their plans to build weapons of mass destruction. Yeah, yeah, that's it. There's no way that a terrorist seeking to build a thermonuclear device is going to risk being busted for exporting encryption software.