I think the claim is that the NATO forces are using cellphones. The article is poorly worded; near the top it sounds like cellphones are being used to locate the terrorists, later one it sounds like the are being used by NATO to communicate to each other, at least the way I read it.
How about them replying: "well if I can get your phone number I'd be happy to have a 'customer service manager' reply to your concerns.":)
Re:It is all about the platform.
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Yep and workstations. Opterons are still popular for HPC uses as well (re the recent article on/. that the next top 500 supercomputer will be a Sun/Opteron system 15k+ quad core CPUs). I think AMD still wins on the small but growing x86 64 bit market.
There is no surprise here, at least not to those of us who have not been doing communications network programming for a few decades. Which must be something like 80% of slashdotters;)
Glad I could be of assistance. Hopefully the blow over from the telco stuff will actually make companies paranoid enough to demand a supeona first, but who knows?
Yes and that warrant/supeona should be presented to the company before they release info. The info existing isn't a problem in itself. With proper protections in place to make sure that it is a "legitimate request" I don't see what the problem is.
Oh no, you can't do business without letting people know which business their dealing with. I can't see printer manufactures releasing that information to anyone that calls in, and I don't see where law enforcement being able to call up a printer manufacture and find out who registered a printer is a privacy infringement. Presumably something illegal has been done otherwise the police wouldn't be involved. It just aids in the investigation. In this day and age corps know enough to get a supeona before releasing info or risk bad press/law suites so what is the problem?
How is it a privacy invasion? People can figure out who sent that printed paper, so? If you hand wrote it they could figure it out too. Either way they have to have a comparision to identify you, ie. they have to suspect you run a test sheet and compare.
It seems strange to me that a government can spend billions of dollars spying on other countries citizens but its own citizens kick up a stink when they look their way. Why should other countries' citizens tolerate US espionage but the US can't look in their own backyard? By definition stuff internal to the country are more important and of greater risk than those external (the foreign country still has to either get their troops or bombs into your region for them to effect you). I say the international community should take out the american and other country spy satilletes and sue for "invasion of privacy".
I'm just curious with these "super slim" laptops coming out, are there cases designed for them? If you have a laptop case meant for a normal sized laptop wouldn't the laptop bounce around a lot inside of the case? Wouldn't be good for the components and would be a pain if you where say biking with one of them. I know it sucks to bike with stuff sliding around in a bag too (say a pair of shoes in a napsack, it bounces around and throws off your rhythm.
In my view there isn't really an arguement for super slim laptops. Light weight sure. Small in the other two dimensions sure (limited work space, cases can be the size of a purse or something). But thin? What does that accomplish? It might help save weight, but in and of itself I don't see what it does for you especially when they throw out components like DVD drives to make it thin. Why don't you just plastic coat a mother board and monitor and call it a computer?
When cheap people buy cheap computers but want to be able to run something that isn't set to come out for another year or so. Do you really expect your "value PC" to run the latest software at full functionality a year from now? Gamers don't, unfortunately the OS market has become like the game market "we got the eye candy use ours". The rules have changed, the non-gamer has to start thinking like a gamer buying a gaming rig if they want vector graphics up the wazoo on there OS.
The Vista capable phrase was wrong, or at least should have been prefaced when you went to the store and asked will this run Vista, they should say it would run Vista basic. Sortly after this fiasco in my area at least all the adds had small text saying that Vista capable = will run Vista Basic.
Re:You need to clarify your question
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
IT ethics = if I can I will. How does someone "find out" they are root on a Sun workstation? You either logged in as root or you didn't. If root did a chmod/chown on the mail directory well they explicitly granted rights to the directory.
I have several gripes about the requirement all the IT guys have to learn and enforce security.
1) I subscribe to the theory that I'm smarter than some people and some are smarter than me. So I think it is secure = I think people dumber than or equal to me can't break it.
2) Hackers have a lot more time to sit around and try to find a hole than I do (I have to keep the system running, go to meetings buy new equipment, and have a life).
3) IT security is analogous to office security, you have a guy walking the parameter, you put locks on the door but someone still can get in or be let in and read the mail sitting on your desk. Why if it is a technical breach the IT guy gets crucified but if the much simpler to implement physical security gets breached management is happy to call the cops and be done with it?
IT ethics: do a good job, try to stop security problems,think of the "customers" needs(whether internal, or external) first. But know the difference between spending all day reading firewall logs and getting your job done (unless of course your job is security then well happy reading;)). Advise your management of the risks and costs of the various approaches to the best of your ability and let them decide how to spend your time/there resources.
I agree very weird. I have a lot of Muslim friends and they haven't ever said anything about not having images of him. Now obviously your not supposed to have idols of all sorts, so making him an idol would be an no no. This appears to be one particular sect or perhaps people that lean to a more zealous bent that are coming up with this. Even if your not supposed to have images of him (you should be referring to muslims not everyone), what is another sin among us infidles? Heck if we listened and obeyed to what every religion told us not to do we'd not eat beef (in respect to Hindus), not eat pork (in respect to jews and muslims), not drink (in repect to muslims, baptists et al), not work on Friday (muslims), Saturday (jews), Sunday (orthdox christians), etc etc. In short if I'm an infidel let me go to hell in peace:)
I think you got that right. Mainstream democrats can "settle" (I actually think both are good candidates) for either Obama and Clinton. Romney and McCain though both have large groups in their own party that can't stand them. McCain's not "conservative" enough, Romney's that "guy with a wacky religion".
It's hard for mainline democrats to get too upset with either of their candidates though. At worst you can not like the Bill Clinton years and not want a repeat but then your probably not a democrat.
P.S. I use Firefox as my browser at home it works well (other than being slow to load and the rare page that insists on only working with windows). I use IE7 at work because of compatiblity issues with some of our software. I find IE7 almost as good as Firefox. My intent isn't to bash FF or Linux, just to point out if you are using closed source software then obey the EULA, just like you should when using FOSS. EULA with FOSS? Where? That little thing like BSD/GPL that gets smacked/refered to on the top of all source and header files. A license is a license even if it grants you most rights without cost. GPL doesn't by the way because it forces you to keep the software free, so you don't have all rights. Sure with GPL you can modify the code, but you can't sell the modified version without giving the customers your codebase.
Well, if it will be fixed in IE7 only, hen it is not just an IE6 vulnerability, is it now? In that case your talking about past tense notice "fixed/will be fixed", as in fixed with IE7 so we aren't going to bother finding the code in the 7 year old browser so we can make a second patch for the old system, and as in "we don't want two code bases to maintain".
They could have designed a proper security model, too. That would have kept the ecosystem much, much cleaner. I'll give you that.
Fun fact: there are no known Linux zombies in botnets. No, and Linux never has buffer overflow exploits. The pain is in the C/C++ runtime and is a fundamental flaw in the language design, but mah it exists in Linux too. How about the fun situations where you end up with a file that is owned by "nobody" in *NIX and even su can't chown it? How about X (yes that peice of crap, 1970's research project that nobody in the *NIX community seems to be willing to let die)?
And the one time I installed Windows and used IE to get Firefox, it took me some 10 minutes. As opposed to the 10 minutes it takes to open Firefox?
Great. So we've finally found the one thing IE is good for. That I would agree with:)
Yes, because we know software from a reputable source never ever comes with malware. Rarely comes with malware and if it does you know who to sue. Who do you go after if you stole the software in the first place? As an aside it never ceases to amaze me the number of developers that come on/. and bash proprietary software yet make a living making it. Wow that is amazing your work on the proprietary software is worth a paycheck and not so evil that you feel compelled to quit, but all corporate software is "bad" when you post online. Amazing.
P.S. I use Firefox as my browser at home it works well (other than being slow to load and the rare page that insists on only working with windows). I use IE7 at work because of compatiblity issues with some of our software. I find IE7 almost as good as Firefox. My intent isn't to bash FF or Linux, just to point out if you are using closed source software then obey the EULA, just like you should when using FOSS.
P.P.S. No need to preach to the converted. I'm a IT manager by way of UNIX/Linux admin and like both *NIX and Win (yes it is possible). Given a choice I'd run the servers on *NIX and the GUI/end users on Win. People already know how to use Windows and I wouldn't ask my corp to retrain everyone. Heck we have some software that requires UNIX on the desktop and the users that have used it for 5 years still don't know how to copy files (they have buttons for it in the app, they click button X and the file goes "somewhere" very helpful to troubleshoot:)). Most/. can use *NIX I think but that by far isn't the normal user. For whatever reason end users are willing to push and poke a windows system and figure out how it works, but throw an X system at them (our case Solaris CDE) and they call IT whenever anything needs to get done. That demonstrates "free" knowledge (ie. crap the employee learnt on their own time playing with PC's elsewhere) and usablity (at least for common simple tasks, and that is all I'll trust an end user with:)).
There you go. So whom exactly does this benefit? The people that don't get infected do to a IE6 vulnerablity that was fixed/will be fixed for IE7 only. MS for not having to put up with said people for complaining that they got infected even though they are using an 7 year old browser.
Paying for the OS doesn't make it stable, but having a friend of a friend install "Windows" for you doesn't leave me too confident that that burned disk is "Windows" and not an infected ISO of a torrent site. There is something to be said for removing the software from the shrink wrap after you purchased it from a reputable source. WGA was both meant to sell more Windows copies, and to help the windows "ecosystem" stay clean of modified copies. You had a problem with your windows, one moment while I verify that you have a real copy of the software.
As for including IE into the OS: how exactly did you download your first copy of Firefox? Microsoft realized (as have pretty much every disto of Linux, Mac, Solaris, etc etc) that people want a browser built in. If you don't have a browser you'll have a hard time patching up the system. Sure there are other methods like having a one function patch downloader(linux is great for that) but that wasn't the route that MS went(it is rare that people complain about getting extra features with their OS, but bare in mind you can choose not to install it if you do a custom install of windows). Sure FOSS people are generous and will give you a disk of the program to install etc, etc, but I suspect the vast majority of Firefox downloads etc, begin with someone firing up there Windows system and using IE to download it.
Yeah I was going to say much the same thing. You also have soil condition, and seasonal changes etc etc. I can't count how many times I've heard software vendors say: what you have program X version 1.45 installed? That's the problem you need to roll back to 1.3. They mandate (especially with "complicated" software) the platform, hardware, software right down to the patch level. You can't do that in engineering a lot of time, sure you can tell the customer that the location isn't the greatest etc etc. But you have to work with what they ask for, or tell them it can't be done. You can't tell them well sorry Ford you need to re-design the wiring plan for the car to accomidate the shape of the part I want to use for my component.
I work in the medical field (radiation treatments). The vendors have triple redundancy in the software (three workstations have to agree on the position of components), + hardware backup (analog computer anyone?:) ). Agreed software is more complicated, it can even be said that software requires more intellectual capital (you get smart people sitting at a desk all day thinking), versus a lot of other engineering (where a vacuum cleaner sales man can come up with an idea and grab readily available parts to make a FlowBe say:) ). Again this would be oversimplifying because a lot of the software industry just crazy glues other peoples stuff together too (ie. you don't make your own DBMS you use MySQL, you don't make your own GUI from the ground up you use X or Win32).
Maybe a better analogy is something like a pre fly by wire airplane. At any rate, perhaps there isn't as much engineering as far as risk analysis goes into software because it is deemed to not have serious consequences to its failure. The exceptions like ABS firmware, flight control etc. get really tight engineering, but your web-browser no one cares.
So what have we learned today, kids? That's right, avoid non-standard solutions. The problem is a lot of the stuff didn't exist as a standard when it was implemented into the browsers. If you wanted a nice way to do something (or even worse you wanted to be able to do something which no solution currently existed) you had to break compliance and add the feature.
There is a difference between giving and forcing down one's throat. Nice. I agree, sort of. The problem only exists for users that have selected automatically approve rollups. Admittedly this is an upgrade, but there is enough vulnerablities in IE6 that it can also be considered a security roll up. How forgiving is Firefox if you have autoupdate enabled? As well I seem to recall auto update is enabled by default in FF where as in Windows you have to turn it on. I can't recall the number of times when launching FF I get told "do you want to install now or later?". Microsoft is in an unenviable position. Someone steals their product then blogs about how it is a vulnerable peice of crap on the internet. Those people I have no pity for, MS should be able to push/pull/jerk around those people as much as they want (you don't own the OS, and the OS wrote the files, so how about revoking the filesystem access;)). It is the corporate users that are most likely to get screwed around unfortunately(they just inherently have more workstations, more likely to have them all set to autoupdate, more money for software etc. = more risk).
as the review says
on
Geekonomics
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"Software is not sufficiently engineered to serve as a foundation" [for society] - I agree whole hardily. Things are getting better but we still have very little idea whether what we code "works" or not, let alone is secure. For example: a software vendor will say we have 80% path coverage. Great, now tell me: do you have 80% path coverage because only that 80% was deemed risky, or because writing tests for the remaining 20% was deemed too time consuming (or worse your test/dev team weren't skilled enough to write tests for those paths)?
In my experience there is so much feature creap in software projects that there always seems to be that last feature that needs to get squeezed into the next release at the last moment and there isn't time to test. "lets just hope that 10k line module works and is secure. Even if it's not, we can always release a SP after we have the product on the market". It is even to the point where major software companies (MS comes to mind) have a concept of Zero Bounced Bugs. That is the point where the bugs getting fixed equals the bugs being found. If no "major" bugs and you've reached ZBB you ship. Now I can see you can't wait forever to ship, but there is this inherit acceptance of flaws in software that you won't see in say bridge building.
My point is Microsoft has a version (admittedly internal dev currently) that does pass, Firefox says "it will for FF3". Being non-complaint doesn't mean anything if the two most used browsers (with ~ 97% of the market) aren't compliant. It is just a matter of which features in the standards to you thing are more important. Giving someone a newer version of your app which you think is better (and tab based browsing is a definite win IMHO) for free because of security problems in the earlier version, regardless of if their current version is pirated is hardly "evil". Will problems happen, yeah. Some vendors won't have bothered getting their apps working on IE7 (healthcare is huge for this because of all the FDA crap they have to go through each time they change anything).
Heres hoping they make it available on XP and don't require Geniune Advantage too. All this bitching about standards drives me nuts. The web is "only" ~15 years old as far as us civi guys as users(more like 12 in mainstream use). In the early days people were looking for ways to get things done, MS made extensions to HTML, Netscape had their own thing etc. What would you rather have MS come out with IE 6 say and kill every website that assumed you'd be viewing it using IE or have them remain compatible? Any standardization process is slow and painful, it just is. Heck processor architechure never standardized over big endian little endian, no one agrees on a lot of networking stuff (TCP timeouts for example), etc, etc. People coding for IE want IE to work the way they learnt how to use it.
Standards will be good, but it will also break things that rely on IE (we have several web portals at my work that only work on IE6 or earlier). Upgrading would be painful and costly (the software interfaces to a PACS and various other multimillion dollar peices of medical software) not something you want to stop working when you need a doctor.
I work for a hospital, it is corporate policy that the workstations remain on at all times. The reasoning is if there is an urgent patch or something that they need to push they want to make sure everyone gets it. Not everyone complies, but a good 90% of workstations are on permemantly.
Slashdot Mirror
How about them replying: "well if I can get your phone number I'd be happy to have a 'customer service manager' reply to your concerns." :)
Yep and workstations. Opterons are still popular for HPC uses as well (re the recent article on /. that the next top 500 supercomputer will be a Sun/Opteron system 15k+ quad core CPUs). I think AMD still wins on the small but growing x86 64 bit market.
Glad I could be of assistance. Hopefully the blow over from the telco stuff will actually make companies paranoid enough to demand a supeona first, but who knows?
Yes and that warrant/supeona should be presented to the company before they release info. The info existing isn't a problem in itself. With proper protections in place to make sure that it is a "legitimate request" I don't see what the problem is.
Oh no, you can't do business without letting people know which business their dealing with. I can't see printer manufactures releasing that information to anyone that calls in, and I don't see where law enforcement being able to call up a printer manufacture and find out who registered a printer is a privacy infringement. Presumably something illegal has been done otherwise the police wouldn't be involved. It just aids in the investigation. In this day and age corps know enough to get a supeona before releasing info or risk bad press/law suites so what is the problem?
How is it a privacy invasion? People can figure out who sent that printed paper, so? If you hand wrote it they could figure it out too. Either way they have to have a comparision to identify you, ie. they have to suspect you run a test sheet and compare.
It seems strange to me that a government can spend billions of dollars spying on other countries citizens but its own citizens kick up a stink when they look their way. Why should other countries' citizens tolerate US espionage but the US can't look in their own backyard? By definition stuff internal to the country are more important and of greater risk than those external (the foreign country still has to either get their troops or bombs into your region for them to effect you). I say the international community should take out the american and other country spy satilletes and sue for "invasion of privacy".
I'm just curious with these "super slim" laptops coming out, are there cases designed for them? If you have a laptop case meant for a normal sized laptop wouldn't the laptop bounce around a lot inside of the case? Wouldn't be good for the components and would be a pain if you where say biking with one of them. I know it sucks to bike with stuff sliding around in a bag too (say a pair of shoes in a napsack, it bounces around and throws off your rhythm. In my view there isn't really an arguement for super slim laptops. Light weight sure. Small in the other two dimensions sure (limited work space, cases can be the size of a purse or something). But thin? What does that accomplish? It might help save weight, but in and of itself I don't see what it does for you especially when they throw out components like DVD drives to make it thin. Why don't you just plastic coat a mother board and monitor and call it a computer?
The Vista capable phrase was wrong, or at least should have been prefaced when you went to the store and asked will this run Vista, they should say it would run Vista basic. Sortly after this fiasco in my area at least all the adds had small text saying that Vista capable = will run Vista Basic.
I have several gripes about the requirement all the IT guys have to learn and enforce security.
1) I subscribe to the theory that I'm smarter than some people and some are smarter than me. So I think it is secure = I think people dumber than or equal to me can't break it.
2) Hackers have a lot more time to sit around and try to find a hole than I do (I have to keep the system running, go to meetings buy new equipment, and have a life).
3) IT security is analogous to office security, you have a guy walking the parameter, you put locks on the door but someone still can get in or be let in and read the mail sitting on your desk. Why if it is a technical breach the IT guy gets crucified but if the much simpler to implement physical security gets breached management is happy to call the cops and be done with it?
IT ethics: do a good job, try to stop security problems,think of the "customers" needs(whether internal, or external) first. But know the difference between spending all day reading firewall logs and getting your job done (unless of course your job is security then well happy reading ;)). Advise your management of the risks and costs of the various approaches to the best of your ability and let them decide how to spend your time/there resources.
I agree very weird. I have a lot of Muslim friends and they haven't ever said anything about not having images of him. Now obviously your not supposed to have idols of all sorts, so making him an idol would be an no no. This appears to be one particular sect or perhaps people that lean to a more zealous bent that are coming up with this. Even if your not supposed to have images of him (you should be referring to muslims not everyone), what is another sin among us infidles? Heck if we listened and obeyed to what every religion told us not to do we'd not eat beef (in respect to Hindus), not eat pork (in respect to jews and muslims), not drink (in repect to muslims, baptists et al), not work on Friday (muslims), Saturday (jews), Sunday (orthdox christians), etc etc. In short if I'm an infidel let me go to hell in peace :)
It's hard for mainline democrats to get too upset with either of their candidates though. At worst you can not like the Bill Clinton years and not want a repeat but then your probably not a democrat.
NATO troops in Pakistan and Afganistan need bandwidth for Skype and porn.
P.S. I use Firefox as my browser at home it works well (other than being slow to load and the rare page that insists on only working with windows). I use IE7 at work because of compatiblity issues with some of our software. I find IE7 almost as good as Firefox. My intent isn't to bash FF or Linux, just to point out if you are using closed source software then obey the EULA, just like you should when using FOSS.
P.P.S. No need to preach to the converted. I'm a IT manager by way of UNIX/Linux admin and like both *NIX and Win (yes it is possible). Given a choice I'd run the servers on *NIX and the GUI/end users on Win. People already know how to use Windows and I wouldn't ask my corp to retrain everyone. Heck we have some software that requires UNIX on the desktop and the users that have used it for 5 years still don't know how to copy files (they have buttons for it in the app, they click button X and the file goes "somewhere" very helpful to troubleshoot :)). Most /. can use *NIX I think but that by far isn't the normal user. For whatever reason end users are willing to push and poke a windows system and figure out how it works, but throw an X system at them (our case Solaris CDE) and they call IT whenever anything needs to get done. That demonstrates "free" knowledge (ie. crap the employee learnt on their own time playing with PC's elsewhere) and usablity (at least for common simple tasks, and that is all I'll trust an end user with :)).
Yeah I did that :) My bad. In my defense though I'm often accused of being heartless and had a hard, er, never mind.
Paying for the OS doesn't make it stable, but having a friend of a friend install "Windows" for you doesn't leave me too confident that that burned disk is "Windows" and not an infected ISO of a torrent site. There is something to be said for removing the software from the shrink wrap after you purchased it from a reputable source. WGA was both meant to sell more Windows copies, and to help the windows "ecosystem" stay clean of modified copies. You had a problem with your windows, one moment while I verify that you have a real copy of the software.
As for including IE into the OS: how exactly did you download your first copy of Firefox? Microsoft realized (as have pretty much every disto of Linux, Mac, Solaris, etc etc) that people want a browser built in. If you don't have a browser you'll have a hard time patching up the system. Sure there are other methods like having a one function patch downloader(linux is great for that) but that wasn't the route that MS went(it is rare that people complain about getting extra features with their OS, but bare in mind you can choose not to install it if you do a custom install of windows). Sure FOSS people are generous and will give you a disk of the program to install etc, etc, but I suspect the vast majority of Firefox downloads etc, begin with someone firing up there Windows system and using IE to download it.
Yeah I was going to say much the same thing. You also have soil condition, and seasonal changes etc etc. I can't count how many times I've heard software vendors say: what you have program X version 1.45 installed? That's the problem you need to roll back to 1.3. They mandate (especially with "complicated" software) the platform, hardware, software right down to the patch level. You can't do that in engineering a lot of time, sure you can tell the customer that the location isn't the greatest etc etc. But you have to work with what they ask for, or tell them it can't be done. You can't tell them well sorry Ford you need to re-design the wiring plan for the car to accomidate the shape of the part I want to use for my component.
Maybe a better analogy is something like a pre fly by wire airplane. At any rate, perhaps there isn't as much engineering as far as risk analysis goes into software because it is deemed to not have serious consequences to its failure. The exceptions like ABS firmware, flight control etc. get really tight engineering, but your web-browser no one cares.
In my experience there is so much feature creap in software projects that there always seems to be that last feature that needs to get squeezed into the next release at the last moment and there isn't time to test. "lets just hope that 10k line module works and is secure. Even if it's not, we can always release a SP after we have the product on the market". It is even to the point where major software companies (MS comes to mind) have a concept of Zero Bounced Bugs. That is the point where the bugs getting fixed equals the bugs being found. If no "major" bugs and you've reached ZBB you ship. Now I can see you can't wait forever to ship, but there is this inherit acceptance of flaws in software that you won't see in say bridge building.
My point is Microsoft has a version (admittedly internal dev currently) that does pass, Firefox says "it will for FF3". Being non-complaint doesn't mean anything if the two most used browsers (with ~ 97% of the market) aren't compliant. It is just a matter of which features in the standards to you thing are more important. Giving someone a newer version of your app which you think is better (and tab based browsing is a definite win IMHO) for free because of security problems in the earlier version, regardless of if their current version is pirated is hardly "evil". Will problems happen, yeah. Some vendors won't have bothered getting their apps working on IE7 (healthcare is huge for this because of all the FDA crap they have to go through each time they change anything).
Heres hoping they make it available on XP and don't require Geniune Advantage too. All this bitching about standards drives me nuts. The web is "only" ~15 years old as far as us civi guys as users(more like 12 in mainstream use). In the early days people were looking for ways to get things done, MS made extensions to HTML, Netscape had their own thing etc. What would you rather have MS come out with IE 6 say and kill every website that assumed you'd be viewing it using IE or have them remain compatible? Any standardization process is slow and painful, it just is. Heck processor architechure never standardized over big endian little endian, no one agrees on a lot of networking stuff (TCP timeouts for example), etc, etc. People coding for IE want IE to work the way they learnt how to use it.
Standards will be good, but it will also break things that rely on IE (we have several web portals at my work that only work on IE6 or earlier). Upgrading would be painful and costly (the software interfaces to a PACS and various other multimillion dollar peices of medical software) not something you want to stop working when you need a doctor.
I work for a hospital, it is corporate policy that the workstations remain on at all times. The reasoning is if there is an urgent patch or something that they need to push they want to make sure everyone gets it. Not everyone complies, but a good 90% of workstations are on permemantly.