This goes right next to the cases of people who get fired for bringing their new cell phone to work because their office is a security-tight "no camera zone" and their new phone just happens to be a cameraphone model.
Yes, it's an overparanoid reaction, but it's one that was promised for people who bring in a threat to the security even if they didn't do it on purpose.
Corporate espionage is a great hazard for leading edge firms, not just government "spook" operations. A Japanese firm once sent a person into an American firm pretending to be a collegiate documentary-maker who want actually taking hi-res video of the American firm's designs.
But wait! I work there! Isn't this akin to testing the shoes of an airline pilot for explosives? Well, at work, you may just walk by a secure area whose documents you do not have access to. Just to drop by to see a friend, for example, who buzzed you in. Much harder to lean over a paper and read/memorize it than to take a picture of it.
Corporate espionage is real. Think about it. Post-It pads make millions. The glue procedure takes seven steps to apply. If you can get rid of one, imagine the money you will make. Etc.
I just send an e-mail out to everyone a week before the upgrade, giving everyone the time and date of the maintenance. I usually set them for Friday nights. I send out another round of e-mails a few days before. Then the day of. And then I do it.
If you got screwed, well, it's not my fault you can't read English, is it?
And the lead time isn't bad enough for there to be an exploit of the patches.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Spyware Blaster together with Norton Antivirus 2004. Keep along with the latest Windows Updates (set to auto) and run once a week (or every other week) and you will be kept really safe. None of the dozens of people I've set up with this system has ever had spyware problems again.
It's annoying to have to run so many programs, but what do you want me to do? I'm just a sysadmin.
Microsoft, ever sensitive to the concerns of the average consumer, has created a revolutionary, multi-patened technology to rectify just this very issue. With the new Microsoft "Leave It On OverNight" (LION)TM software, you can now install updates while you sleep. This groundbreaking software will revolutionize software will be installed in the future.
Ahem.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
And can I get some good mods, for once? It's insightful AND funny. Insightful AND funny. Look at my mod history, for Christ's sake.
Then you can enable the automatic update service. I am a little bit more paranoid than most because these upgrades may break production systems, but should be no problem for home end-users.
Any system administration is going to need some work. It's like, a half-hour a week, at most. Like emerging sync with Linux...
If you paid $300 retail or even the $40 or so from an oem, you should be entitled to a free update CD with no shipping cost.
The AOL CD stays pretty much the same over a few months. The WindowsUpdate CD, as well all know, changes quite frequently. You can't ship out stale CDs, as that would be irresponsible to a point that even MS won't do it.
And they have to press the CDs, too, since CD-Rs just don't last that long. Hmm.... All those pressings, must cost a lot of money. And what about those schmoes who never bought XP but run it? How do you verify without pissing off the real users? And what they one guy asks for ten CDs?
Yes. Just charge for them and skip all these headaches.
Am I the only one that has a little series of computers that I roll out updates before I roll them out enterprise-wide? I know some people have a test system... but for my network (and the sake of the hospital's uptime) I have a small testing network.
You are not the only one with a test network. I once updated my system and then the enterpriseware suddenly quit working. On all the production systems. Boss was angry. I spent the whole night regressing the software until I realized that the software was incompatible with the ICF in WinXP. I announced that to the company's CS and they updated their website Knowledge Base with that tidbit.
From then on, I ran all upgrades through a three system network with one masquerading as the "server". In addition to software status, all configuration data is recorded as well. I wonder if I'm violating my licensing agreement this way. Oh, well.
I always enable the ICF firewall that comes with WinXP, update, reboot, update, reboot...repeat as necessary and then disable the firewall. Never got infected this way.
Then I realized that I could download all the updates, and then chain them together in one batch file and then pull them off the server which is behind a real firewall (not just a NAT). When I install, I just filter off the new computers (no Internet access for you!) and then install the patches. Works much slicker and you can simply update the central server.
IIS and Apache are administered, hopefully, by IT professionals. In these situations, we can see the "greatness" of the software. But with Linux systems run by "end-lusers", there will be more worms and viruses in Linux than we now see because these people are not patching their software.
The trojan horse uses a false email address to generate messages with the usual attachment that carries the code.
If users are dumb enough to open the attachment, their PC will be turned into a zombie sending out dozens of new messages.
Oh, the utter disdain for the end-user. The Inquirer *must* know what they are talking about!
I run XP extensively because SofTest and TimeMatters isn't available for Linux yet. = ) I have never been directly infected by a worm or virus because I have Windows Update automatically update itself every week, as well as LiveUpdate for Symantec 2004.
The truth is that the OS is only as safe as the user. The people using Linux are that much more advanced than those using Windows, so that is why there aren't that many Linux bugs (as well as the marketshare argument.)
Yes, Linux is more secure by design, but Debian had its server rooted a few months ago, didn't they? And they presumably know what they are doing.
It's kind of like driving a car. You can buy the safest car on the road, but if you are going to change lanes without checking out your blind spot, well, it doesn't matter, does it?
NOPE. Centrifuging uranium-235 from uranium-238 is incredibly difficult. You cannot centrifuge a metal apart so you have to render it into a gaseous form. Typically, uranium is turned into uranium hexaflouride and then centrifuged through tiny pores. Not only is uranium hexaflouride remarkably toxic, but it is also corrosive so it burns through the pores in your hardware. And then the difference in mass is so small you have to repeat the process many times. And the natural percentage is so small (~3%) that you have to do it *many* more times. And all the while, pores are burning out and poisonous gas is trying to escape.
It always escaped me why the US (or someone else) didn't simply mass produce gun-type bombs, rather than apply the tremendous amount of science and engineering to perfect the implosion assembly type, of which Fat Man was the first design of many.
This is not true on any count. Laws do die. There are "sunshine" provisions to automatically expire laws. Laws get changed: witness what the USA PATRIOT ACT did to all these other laws. Look at all the weird immigration laws that get revised all the time.
And laws are necessary, despite what the parent might think. It keeps a country together to know what rights we each have. But a large country requires a lot of laws. Just think about how much you use each day, from the IP that resulted in your computer to the insurance laws that protect your life, and the traffic laws that keep you alive, presumably. It is complicated and perhaps bad in some instances but definitely necessary. Anything else would be literal anarchy.
Why not lawyers? We need more lawyers in legislatures because they can draft specific bills. Legislatures untrained in the law is the current norm. Look what they have created. Lawyer/legislators are susceptible to the same grafts and pork barrel but perhaps are in a better shape to understand the ramifications of their drafting, vis a vis the Constitution and such. (Witness the COPA, Child Online Protection Act that the Supremes recently knocked down.)
So basically, we need laws. Laws must be complicated to cover all exigencies. Lawyers understand these complexities. Lawyers are suited to writing these complexities.
Not only is it like putting your fuse box on the roof of your house, it's like putting your fuse box on the roof of your house, and instead of getting a ladder to go up to fix it, you're given a trampoline.;) Space isn't friendly, even with space suits.
Actually, it's more like putting the fuse box on the roof of your house and it's always raining hail and acid smog.
The problem with the law is that you cannot punish one person for the acts of another unless you can demonstrate an agreement (tacit or otherwise) between them or there existed special conditions where one party was responsible for the acts of the other (employer/employee, etc.) Think about the flip side: if I wanted to bankrupt MS, I'd spam everyone promoting MS Office, and then watch as MS gets blotted into oblivion. Sure, that might be cool, but what if someone sends an e-mail on behalf of GAIM or their software competitors?
Or you could be one of those defeated masses who just says, "Eh, Windows is supposed to be slow" and then wonder when a newer, faster computer will come through. Seriously. This is not flamebait unless you have an inferiority complex. The truth is that it has gotten to the point where everyone *expects* Windows to be slow and aren't disappointed when it is, but because of spyware.
Flame away. My karma's high and I'll think of something insightful to say anytime now...
This will dilute "open-source" when applied to news broadcasts and magazine articles which PHBs rely upon. We could explain the intricate differences between "true" open-source and the Microsoftian "shared-source" licenses. But not in a brief sentence. And not in five seconds.
PHBs will just think "open-source is good trend" and "Microsoft 'does' open-source".
So yeah, this is a good, though Machievelian move, by Microsoft.
Sure, but they had muskets back then. If the Founding Fathers knew about AK-47s, M-16s, Glocks, and Magnums, perhaps they wouldn't want everyone to have the right to bear arms. So, yeah, I agree. Just because it's in the Constitution doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Freedom of unpopular speech, however, pretty much remains the same.
Go figure, NASA decides to abandon the ISS [nasa.gov] once the USA's commitment is finished, and somehow, the science used to build the ISS due to international collaboration [bbc.co.uk]
just might save one of our most invaluable satellite telescopes.
Uh...isn't Hubble our only space telescope? At least, so far?
Slashdot Mirror
This goes right next to the cases of people who get fired for bringing their new cell phone to work because their office is a security-tight "no camera zone" and their new phone just happens to be a cameraphone model. Yes, it's an overparanoid reaction, but it's one that was promised for people who bring in a threat to the security even if they didn't do it on purpose. Corporate espionage is a great hazard for leading edge firms, not just government "spook" operations. A Japanese firm once sent a person into an American firm pretending to be a collegiate documentary-maker who want actually taking hi-res video of the American firm's designs. But wait! I work there! Isn't this akin to testing the shoes of an airline pilot for explosives? Well, at work, you may just walk by a secure area whose documents you do not have access to. Just to drop by to see a friend, for example, who buzzed you in. Much harder to lean over a paper and read/memorize it than to take a picture of it. Corporate espionage is real. Think about it. Post-It pads make millions. The glue procedure takes seven steps to apply. If you can get rid of one, imagine the money you will make. Etc.
I hear you get good prices when buying tin foil in large orders. I'd probably need that for the garage door.
Should I file this under "missing the point"?
Hmm...Let's remove the garage-door foil, and *then* use the remote to open it.....
I just send an e-mail out to everyone a week before the upgrade, giving everyone the time and date of the maintenance. I usually set them for Friday nights. I send out another round of e-mails a few days before. Then the day of. And then I do it.
If you got screwed, well, it's not my fault you can't read English, is it?
And the lead time isn't bad enough for there to be an exploit of the patches.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Spyware Blaster together with Norton Antivirus 2004. Keep along with the latest Windows Updates (set to auto) and run once a week (or every other week) and you will be kept really safe. None of the dozens of people I've set up with this system has ever had spyware problems again.
It's annoying to have to run so many programs, but what do you want me to do? I'm just a sysadmin.
Microsoft, ever sensitive to the concerns of the average consumer, has created a revolutionary, multi-patened technology to rectify just this very issue. With the new Microsoft "Leave It On OverNight" (LION)TM software, you can now install updates while you sleep. This groundbreaking software will revolutionize software will be installed in the future.
Ahem.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
And can I get some good mods, for once? It's insightful AND funny. Insightful AND funny. Look at my mod history, for Christ's sake.
Then you can enable the automatic update service. I am a little bit more paranoid than most because these upgrades may break production systems, but should be no problem for home end-users.
Any system administration is going to need some work. It's like, a half-hour a week, at most. Like emerging sync with Linux...
If you paid $300 retail or even the $40 or so from an oem, you should be entitled to a free update CD with no shipping cost.
The AOL CD stays pretty much the same over a few months. The WindowsUpdate CD, as well all know, changes quite frequently. You can't ship out stale CDs, as that would be irresponsible to a point that even MS won't do it.
And they have to press the CDs, too, since CD-Rs just don't last that long. Hmm.... All those pressings, must cost a lot of money. And what about those schmoes who never bought XP but run it? How do you verify without pissing off the real users? And what they one guy asks for ten CDs?
Yes. Just charge for them and skip all these headaches.
You are not the only one with a test network. I once updated my system and then the enterpriseware suddenly quit working. On all the production systems. Boss was angry. I spent the whole night regressing the software until I realized that the software was incompatible with the ICF in WinXP. I announced that to the company's CS and they updated their website Knowledge Base with that tidbit.
From then on, I ran all upgrades through a three system network with one masquerading as the "server". In addition to software status, all configuration data is recorded as well. I wonder if I'm violating my licensing agreement this way. Oh, well.
I always enable the ICF firewall that comes with WinXP, update, reboot, update, reboot...repeat as necessary and then disable the firewall. Never got infected this way.
Then I realized that I could download all the updates, and then chain them together in one batch file and then pull them off the server which is behind a real firewall (not just a NAT). When I install, I just filter off the new computers (no Internet access for you!) and then install the patches. Works much slicker and you can simply update the central server.
IIS and Apache are administered, hopefully, by IT professionals. In these situations, we can see the "greatness" of the software. But with Linux systems run by "end-lusers", there will be more worms and viruses in Linux than we now see because these people are not patching their software.
I run XP extensively because SofTest and TimeMatters isn't available for Linux yet. = ) I have never been directly infected by a worm or virus because I have Windows Update automatically update itself every week, as well as LiveUpdate for Symantec 2004.
The truth is that the OS is only as safe as the user. The people using Linux are that much more advanced than those using Windows, so that is why there aren't that many Linux bugs (as well as the marketshare argument.)
Yes, Linux is more secure by design, but Debian had its server rooted a few months ago, didn't they? And they presumably know what they are doing.
It's kind of like driving a car. You can buy the safest car on the road, but if you are going to change lanes without checking out your blind spot, well, it doesn't matter, does it?
NOPE. Centrifuging uranium-235 from uranium-238 is incredibly difficult. You cannot centrifuge a metal apart so you have to render it into a gaseous form. Typically, uranium is turned into uranium hexaflouride and then centrifuged through tiny pores. Not only is uranium hexaflouride remarkably toxic, but it is also corrosive so it burns through the pores in your hardware. And then the difference in mass is so small you have to repeat the process many times. And the natural percentage is so small (~3%) that you have to do it *many* more times. And all the while, pores are burning out and poisonous gas is trying to escape.
Yeah. It's hard.
This is not true on any count. Laws do die. There are "sunshine" provisions to automatically expire laws. Laws get changed: witness what the USA PATRIOT ACT did to all these other laws. Look at all the weird immigration laws that get revised all the time.
And laws are necessary, despite what the parent might think. It keeps a country together to know what rights we each have. But a large country requires a lot of laws. Just think about how much you use each day, from the IP that resulted in your computer to the insurance laws that protect your life, and the traffic laws that keep you alive, presumably. It is complicated and perhaps bad in some instances but definitely necessary. Anything else would be literal anarchy.
Why not lawyers? We need more lawyers in legislatures because they can draft specific bills. Legislatures untrained in the law is the current norm. Look what they have created. Lawyer/legislators are susceptible to the same grafts and pork barrel but perhaps are in a better shape to understand the ramifications of their drafting, vis a vis the Constitution and such. (Witness the COPA, Child Online Protection Act that the Supremes recently knocked down.)
So basically, we need laws. Laws must be complicated to cover all exigencies. Lawyers understand these complexities. Lawyers are suited to writing these complexities.
Duh. They are made from aged dinosaur oil!!!
SATELLITE: But..But...It's Natalie Portman!!!!
NASA: >>slaps forehead
Actually, it's more like putting the fuse box on the roof of your house and it's always raining hail and acid smog.
The problem with the law is that you cannot punish one person for the acts of another unless you can demonstrate an agreement (tacit or otherwise) between them or there existed special conditions where one party was responsible for the acts of the other (employer/employee, etc.) Think about the flip side: if I wanted to bankrupt MS, I'd spam everyone promoting MS Office, and then watch as MS gets blotted into oblivion. Sure, that might be cool, but what if someone sends an e-mail on behalf of GAIM or their software competitors?
Or you could be one of those defeated masses who just says, "Eh, Windows is supposed to be slow" and then wonder when a newer, faster computer will come through. Seriously. This is not flamebait unless you have an inferiority complex. The truth is that it has gotten to the point where everyone *expects* Windows to be slow and aren't disappointed when it is, but because of spyware.
Flame away. My karma's high and I'll think of something insightful to say anytime now...
"Incryption"? That's not a typo, silly. It's security through obscurity.
The Bush Administration flew them out of the country back to Saudi Arabia.
This is either going to be modded really high or really low. Unless no one saw Fahrenheit 9/11, in which case I'm screwed.
This will dilute "open-source" when applied to news broadcasts and magazine articles which PHBs rely upon. We could explain the intricate differences between "true" open-source and the Microsoftian "shared-source" licenses. But not in a brief sentence. And not in five seconds.
PHBs will just think "open-source is good trend" and "Microsoft 'does' open-source".
So yeah, this is a good, though Machievelian move, by Microsoft.
It also protect my right to own a gun.
Sure, but they had muskets back then. If the Founding Fathers knew about AK-47s, M-16s, Glocks, and Magnums, perhaps they wouldn't want everyone to have the right to bear arms. So, yeah, I agree. Just because it's in the Constitution doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Freedom of unpopular speech, however, pretty much remains the same.
Uh...isn't Hubble our only space telescope? At least, so far?