So basically what they're selling is "renew this domain automatically," except that you pay up front for *ahem* "100 years," at the *ahem* low, low discounted rate of $9.99 a year. Which is still more expensive than godaddy.com.
Well, some idiot will probably buy it. (Obligitory MS bashing) Wasn't MS having a problem with forgetting to renew domains?:)
You probably put it better than I would have, and even did the research...I can't really see what market niche they imagine this will fill. If it's on the order of 8"x4"x1.5" (and I don't expect that it could be too much smaller than that), then it's definitely not pocket sized, so "iPod killer" is pretty much right out.
For storing video...well, as others have pointed out, this would have to either (a) be bundled with software that allowed you to rip DVDs for playback on the device, or (b) be tied to an iTunes-esque video download service. Option (a) doesn't seem very likely, and (b) -- given that it's a relatively untested market -- doesn't seem like something you'd want to be the farm on, but maybe that's the direction they're looking in.
In either case, a portable DVD player (or a laptop with a DVD drive) can easily serve the same purpose; DVD players are cheaper, and a lot of people already have laptops.
I guess that I just don't get the whole "digital entertainment convergence appliance" thing. For about $800 I can get a low end Dell Inspiron series laptop, which does everything that this "digital convergence" device does, plus give me internet access, the ability to create and edit a world of different documents, modify the pictures that I've saved on it, blah, blah, blah.
What are the advantages of this device? Sure it's a little smaller, but if I'm sitting down watching a movie, the bigger screen of the laptop is a plus. I guess that it would allow me to listen to mp3s while I'm walking around, but only if I'm carrying a bag. At the size they're talking about it's a different sort of "portable" than that offered by the iPod and its ilk.
Seriously, why is there this obsessive need to make a device that basically does all the same things as the computer that you already have, but is somehow "not a computer?" Apple seems to be getting at this with the iBlah suite of applications: by focusing on an interface that makes it easy to perform these specialized functions, you create a "digital entertainment appliance" within the computer itself.
On the other hand, I could potentially be IT job searching again within four months with a dubious hole on my resume. I'm single and have no kids or major commitments, but I do not want to destroy my IT career either for the future.
Obviously you're the one who's going to make the decision: how averse to risk (because there is risk of unemployment) are you, and how much do you want to go on tour? As long as you're considering both sides of the question, you'll come to a good answer.
Where I can offer some (probably) useful thoughts, is regarding the "dubious hole in [your] resume" that you mentioned. Short version of my thoughts: what hole?
Longer version: if you're looking for an IT job again in four or six months, just put the tour on your resume. Unless you end up on the road for years, then your tech experience isn't going to seem outdated, expecially if your spot on the tour is on the tech end. When somebody asks about it during a job interview, you say "I'd always wanted to do this, and the opportunity presented itself; I decided to make the leap and see whether I liked it, while I was still young, single, and didn't have too many commitments. I enjoyed it but, I found that my real interest is in [whatever IT gig you do]."
I've got a couple of even more suspicious gaps in my resume. They appeared when I went from living in the upper half of a converted church in a cool neighborhood of a relatively expensive west coast city, to living the the bottom half of a small house in a student neighborhood in a small city in western New York. (My wife was going to school in the small city in New York.) Basically, I found that the money we had budgeted to live went a lot further that we had anticipated, so it was six months before I actually had to get a job. After working for a year or two I had more money saved up, and when one contract ended I just didn't look for another for four or five months.
I've been at the same company for a while now, so haven't interviewed much, but when I was interviewing and people asked, I just gave them the background and told them a little about what I did during those "gaps" -- I did some stuff that was a lot more interesting than the average 9-5 job during those periods, and I think that helped during interviews at least as much as it may have hurt me.
Why spend the money on alien abduction insurance when you could just invest it in an AAI Abduction Experience and find out whether you'd actually like being abducted by aliens?
Can't beat the company motto:
If they won't contact you, contact us!
...and hey, if I start getting traffic to it again, maybe I'll get around to updating the site again one of these days...:)
We're on a technological plateau. The next real leap, the next real difference in how we play games via sensory suits or neural inputs or whatever, is still too far away and too expensive.
Yes, a fair amount of time will likely pass before the next technological innovation that makes a significant change in computer based games, and even more time will pass before that technology is cheap enough that it's widely distributed.
That said, the computer game industry seems to me to be subset of the larger game industry more than of the technology industry. The reason that game designers are different from demo designers is that a game is not indended to display how a creative person can push the limits of technology in an appealing way; rather games are intended to be fun to play. There might be a "holy crap, how did they do that?" element to a computer game, but that's not really the point.
Take MMORPGs, for example. A technological advance was required for these games to be possible, but they're not popular because networking technology is cool...they're popular because they're a new, fun kind of game to a lot of people. (And yes, I know that they're basically not new in any sense, either from a game design or technology perspective, but you know what I mean.) In all the cases that I've seen, in fact, the gee-whiz graphics factor has been noticeably lacking...the cool technology is invisible from a gameplay perspective.
The SIMS became absurdly popular for a while. Pretty FPS games were big before that. "You Don't Know Jack" had its day in the sun. Myst and its knockoffs ruled the world ages ago, and we haven't even come close to far enough back to hit the Age of Atari discussed in the article. In all these cases, the popular game or games presented something new, or offered it in an intriguing new way...technology almost always played a role in that, but in my opinion the tech was rarely the primary factor. Gameplay, basically, rules.
Hmmm...I started this post about three hours ago and just now got back to it. Eh, you all get the idea of my ravings...no point in finishing it...:)
[...] it holds an email and doesn't tell the sender's server if it was successfull or not [timeout] then waits for the sender's server to try again and since most spammers use a mass-mailing program that uses a "take it or leave it" tactic, it catches most spam.
Link to more information here, just to make sure that people don't get the wrong idea: a greylisting server will respond to all attempted deliveries from unknown sources with an RFC-compliant deferral, which should cause the sending MTA to queue the message for later delivery. The theory here is that most spam (as well as viruses) is sent by crap software which doesn't understand how to attempt a true "retry." No retry on a deferred message, no delivery for messages from the sending server.
I don't recall having seen any data on effectiveness -- would be interested in hearing from anyone actually using this approach in the wild.
My favorite dot com service was "some guy in a suit dot com."
As I recall, this service started up in 1997 or so. Some guy in a suit knocked on my door and said, "I hear that you know about this 'internet' thing -- I'll leave a big sack of money outside the door of your apartment every two weeks if you'll show up at my office for a couple of hours each day and sit there playing video games."
After that, about every three months or so a different guy in a suit (at least I think it was a different guy) would knock on my door and say, "I hear that you know about this 'internet' thing, and I also hear that there's still room for more sacks of money in your apartment; if you'll show up at my office for a couple of hours each day, and tell me that 'the rules have changed,' and that I 'don't get it,' I'll leave a bigger sack of money outside your door every two weeks.
I guess their their funding dried up or something.
The method works for only about half of all e-mails received - but in all of those cases, it sorts the mail into the right category.
Am I the only one who read this sentence and said "huh??"
Oh, no -- makes perfect sense to me. I applied that logic to quite a few exams when I was in college: "My score on this exam is perfect...I could only come up with answers to half of the questions, but every one that I answered was correct! a+ for me!"
My professors were the bastards who didn't understand...
It's technically a bit offtopic, but apparently MS was taken by surprise by the HP/Apple announcement, and wasn't able to put together a good spin quickly enough. The snip below is from a NY Times article:
Thursday the company appeared unprepared for the Apple-Hewlett agreement, which clearly stung Microsoft executives. They said the agreement would limit choice and harm consumers.
"Windows is about choice, you can mix and match all of this stuff," said David Fester, general manager of Microsoft's Windows digital media division. "We believe you should have the same choice when it comes to music services."
No, but I'm generally familiar with the actual story that inspired the movie; in rough terms, toxic waste generated by PG&E had contaminated the groundwater around Hinkly, CA, with disastrous effects on the health of the citizens. PG&E tried in a variety of ways to deny any responsibility for the effects of decades of dumping on the area's population, but eventually lost the suit in spectacular fashion.
Erin Brockovich (who worked for a law firm but was not a lawyer), found and took an interest in a "dead" case, was able to make the necessary connections, and finally played a significant role in gathering the mountains of information that made a successful class action lawsuit against PG&E possible.
Not sure what the connection between that and this discussion is, though?
Hire a lawyer. Have this lawyer contact the company pretending to be your new potential employer, and ask them for reference information about you. Actually do this twice (be sure completely different people call and pretend to be completely different companies). In one case your "new" position should basically be described as one similar to what you had at the company that outsourced you out. In the other case your "new" position should basically be central to your non-security skill set, such as a network administrator or network engineer (or whatever is appropriate for you). If they give you a good recommendation, then move on with your life and don't worry about it (just don't open your own personal accounts there, etc). However, if they give you a bad recommendation (such as "he was assessed to be a security risk") then discuss with your lawyer that situation and determine what can be done (you may have a case for a defamation lawsuit against either your employer or the outsourcing company).
Good theory, but I suspect that a lot of lawyers might balk at misrepresenting themselves in this way. The other issue it that it likely won't get any information. Because of this very scenario, many companies will not offer "recommendations" for former employees; they'll verify start and end dates for employment, salary, etc. -- factual information -- but won't provide anything that might be considered subjective for fear of a lawsuit like this.
I'll also echo another poster in saying that while your situation does suck and was clearly handled badly, it may not be that you personally represented the security risk. If (and I don't know this to be the case) you were the sole person responsible for security, or your group couldn't provide 24/7/365 active monitoring (real eyes reviewing data at all times, not just responding to specific types of alerts), then the very existence of your job could be viewed as a security risk. It's the company's fault for setting things up that way in the first place, but they may well be right to change their approach to security management.
This doesn't mean that the company will provide better services, of course, simply that the decision may have reflected an attempt to correct a bigger problem...only time will tell whether the correction itself creates more problems for them.
Heisenberg was driving a friend out to the country. His eyes were glued to the road in front of him, and his foot jammed on the accelerator. They drove faster and faster, tires squealing around every corner, until the friend couldn't stand it any more.
With a terrified look in his eyes, the friend finally shrieked "JESUS, Heisenberg, do you know how fast you're going?!?"
His eyes still glued to the road, Heisenberg calmly replied "no, but I know exactly where I am."
In response, the FBI (the blacklists) blocks off your entire street (/24) (which the landlord owns all the housing on) and conducts house to house searches looking for terrorists. You complain when your house is searched. "But I am not a terrorist (spammer)". After finding out your landlord is housing terrorists, you continue to live there and pay rent to him, even though he is harboring terrorists and refuses to remove them off his property. As a result of you continuing to support your landlord finacially, your house keeps getting searched every so often (you stay on the blacklists with the spammer).
Holy crap...I couldn't agree less. So I'm supposed to think that it's reasonable for the FBI to block off any street and search any house, for any reason or no reason at all? Without providing any evidence of any wrondoing, much less proving wrongdoing through the system of justice that we established to deal with such things?
You should seriously think about this -- I disagree with some parts of your position on the blocking question, but see plenty of room for discussion there. If this example actually represents your idea of appropriate government measures that might be taken to ensure security, however, then I am absolutely terrified.
should i even bother explaining why it is damn near the most unlikely thing to happen in IT ? [...] or point out that the unix type of OS is about 30 years old. and to date there havent been any virus's in the "wild".
Ummm...actually, in 1988 (fifteen years ago) Robert Morris wrote a worm that attacked UNIX machines via a number of different routes (holes in sendmail, finger, and a few other approaches that I don't recall at the moment). In the space of something like 24 hours, Morris' worm brought thousands of computers to a grinding halt (a fair percentage of the machines that were networked in the US at that time), and those computers were running UNIX.
This is actually the worrisome issue: a *NIX is not inherently more secure than anything else. I think that there are UNIX-based machines out there that are far more secure than anything else you can find, but that's becuase those particular machines are administered by paranoid freaks...paranoid freaks that are extremely good at what they do...:)
I'm guessing that this isn't the case, but if your position is that "'I don't have to run a damn thing as root' and therefore my linux box is by definition going to be secure forever," then going to get screwed -- and screwed hard -- one of these days.
Not entirely related to your comment, but since your comment isn't entirely related to the posting I'm just going to go ahead anyway...:)
I've found that a scale of 1-7 often works better than 1-10. Granted, you lose 30% of the gradations, but as far as I'm concerned if you care about precise measurement you shouldn't be using a scale of 1-10 anyway.
It seems that having fewer options, and maybe having the benefit of 4 being *exactly* in the middle of the scale, makes people tend to think more about the ratings they're giving things.
Hmmmm...since I can't get the 45 seconds that I spent writing this back, I guess I'll just go ahead and post it...:)
Don't have any moderation points at the moment, so I've got to add a comment to second the VLA suggestion -- the museum is decent enough and interesting, but the real experience is getting out on the field and seeing the actual phyical scale of the array...pretty incredible.
New Mexico is also beautiful and well worth a week or two of wandering around with plenty of time between planned stops.
One of the companies that I work for has been using "canary records" for several years; records are created and deleted regularly, and the data itself contains some embedded information indicating its creation and deletion date in our DB.
Thankfully we've never encountered any cases of these records appearing in the outside world, but if (when?) one does, the record itself may help us to identify when the breach/leak occurred, so that we've got a starting point for futher investigation.
I suspect that this practice may be fairly common even though it isn't discussed much -- in order for it to be effective, you really shouldn't discuss the program at department or company-wide meetings.
While something like this won't make your data any more secure, part of any good security program is practices and tools to help you determine whether, when, and how your data *does* get compromised, and canaries can be one tool to help with the first two items on that list.
A facility like this will have big pipes coming in with the cost split among all of their customers, and typically offer you pricing based on burstable bandwidth use.
It's mentioned elsewhere, but worth mentioning here: be very, very careful if you're going the burstable route. Most providers charge based on 95% utilization, not actual bandwidth usage. What this means to you is that a single short burst of extremely high usage (of the sort described by the poster) causes you to pay as though you were using a lot of bandwidth through the entire month -- that spike throws your average usage WAY up.
I used to operate with a dedicated 10MB line, burstable to 100MB/sec, but after a couple of sudden high traffic periods I found that it was actually cheaper and more effective to get two 10MB lines and pay for unused bandwidth regularly (and just accept a 20MB/sec limit) than it was to pay for the occasional spikes. Yeah, if I get really high traffic I won't be able to handle it, but frankly the costs of having that capacity were just too high.
I think that whether they're "essential" depends a lot on who you're talking to, but three of my favorite albums don't yet appear to have been mentioned:
A New Perspective, Donald Byrd Band and Voices Rather different from much of what Byrd recorded, the vocal work can sound a little...well, cheesy, to some people, but it's fascinating to me.
Add to that Last Date and Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy. Jazz flute doesn't grab everybody, but the man was an extraordinary musician and performer.
Otherwise, it seems like the postings have already covered a lot of what people can agree on as fundamental to a jazz collection: Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, Somethin' Else...I'd add most of Sonny Rollins' recordings to that...hmmm...also some Sun Ra -- I seem to recall that Holiday for Soul Dance was pretty accessible and appealing to me from the first listen.
Ah, well, I could go on forever, and I still have a lot of work to do today...have fun...:)
I registered thismachine.org a while ago, for a project that I accept I'll never actually get around to. Seems like it'd be pretty appropriate: can I get this machine to work? Go to thismachine.org...
For those who studied something productive in school rather than enjoying the four-year binge of drugs and navel gazing that is a liberal arts degree:
The Merovingian line of royalty is believed by some of the more conspiracy-minded to have been a direct bloodline descended from Jesus. (Another theory maintains that they were descended from extraterrestrials, but that's neither here nor there for purposes of this discussion.)
Persephone, the daughter of gods Zeus and Demeter, was kidnapped by Hades (god of the underworld), and through a chain of events better explained elsewhere, she ended up spending part of each year on earth and part of each year in the Underworld.
Now on to the question...
What with Neo (the prophesized "one" who redeems the human race) discovering that he is only one redeemer in a series, and with his lady Trinity having died and been brought back to the land of the living, does anyone else suspect that the next movie will bring a revelation:
...that every "One" ends up presented with the same choice, and makes the same decision that Neo did; and that after making that decision they end up hanging around in the Matrix with the woman that they chose to bring back from death, slightly bitter, disillusioned, and knowing too much...
Or have I just spent too much time hanging out with conspiracy theorists?
I must be the only one who read that headline as The RIAA were suing the Interview
Nope -- I did the same doubletake as I looked at the headline. I was actually disappointed when I read it again and made sense of it, because that means we won't see followup headlines like:
RIAA Sues Houseplant
RIAA Files Suit Against Man's Sense of Self-esteem
RIAA Sues English Language
Oh, well...it's disappointing, but that can you do?:)
Craigslist.org fills this gap, but it is no use to those of us who live outside of the San Francisco Bay Area.
It sounds like the poster knows, but since I'm a longtime user (in three different cities) and supporter of Craigslist, I want to make sure it's clear to others, as well...Craigslist is currently set up in 22 metro areas, and continues to add more:
atlanta
austin
boston
chicago dallas denver detroit houston los angeles miami minneapolis new york philadelphia phoenix portland sacramento san diego seattle wash, DC london toronto vancouver
I agree to a certain extent, but as a desktop linux user with fairly limited knowledge who spent a couple of weeks playing with Gentoo, I think that Gentoo is pretty simple and powerful only if you are comfortable with linux to begin with.
The Gentoo support groups have been an excellent resource, and allowed me to solve most problems that I've come across relatively quickly, but if I hadn't known to go to the user groups and command line for "emerge-regen", "emerge-webrsync" and guidelines for editing/etc/make.conf (was having java problems and needed some potentially unstable packages), I would have been trapped in a hell that was almost -- but not quite -- as bad as the nightmarish carnival of terror that is rpm dependancies.
For now I'm still running redhat as my primary desktop both at home and at work; with the addition of apt-get and synaptic to handle package management, it's almost as easy as Gentoo.
Slashdot Mirror
Some events happening in and around NYC during TV turnoff week are listed here, among other places.
Well, some idiot will probably buy it. (Obligitory MS bashing) Wasn't MS having a problem with forgetting to renew domains? :)
You probably put it better than I would have, and even did the research...I can't really see what market niche they imagine this will fill. If it's on the order of 8"x4"x1.5" (and I don't expect that it could be too much smaller than that), then it's definitely not pocket sized, so "iPod killer" is pretty much right out.
For storing video...well, as others have pointed out, this would have to either (a) be bundled with software that allowed you to rip DVDs for playback on the device, or (b) be tied to an iTunes-esque video download service. Option (a) doesn't seem very likely, and (b) -- given that it's a relatively untested market -- doesn't seem like something you'd want to be the farm on, but maybe that's the direction they're looking in.
In either case, a portable DVD player (or a laptop with a DVD drive) can easily serve the same purpose; DVD players are cheaper, and a lot of people already have laptops.
I guess that I just don't get the whole "digital entertainment convergence appliance" thing. For about $800 I can get a low end Dell Inspiron series laptop, which does everything that this "digital convergence" device does, plus give me internet access, the ability to create and edit a world of different documents, modify the pictures that I've saved on it, blah, blah, blah.
What are the advantages of this device? Sure it's a little smaller, but if I'm sitting down watching a movie, the bigger screen of the laptop is a plus. I guess that it would allow me to listen to mp3s while I'm walking around, but only if I'm carrying a bag. At the size they're talking about it's a different sort of "portable" than that offered by the iPod and its ilk.
Seriously, why is there this obsessive need to make a device that basically does all the same things as the computer that you already have, but is somehow "not a computer?" Apple seems to be getting at this with the iBlah suite of applications: by focusing on an interface that makes it easy to perform these specialized functions, you create a "digital entertainment appliance" within the computer itself.
Obviously you're the one who's going to make the decision: how averse to risk (because there is risk of unemployment) are you, and how much do you want to go on tour? As long as you're considering both sides of the question, you'll come to a good answer.
Where I can offer some (probably) useful thoughts, is regarding the "dubious hole in [your] resume" that you mentioned. Short version of my thoughts: what hole?
Longer version: if you're looking for an IT job again in four or six months, just put the tour on your resume. Unless you end up on the road for years, then your tech experience isn't going to seem outdated, expecially if your spot on the tour is on the tech end. When somebody asks about it during a job interview, you say "I'd always wanted to do this, and the opportunity presented itself; I decided to make the leap and see whether I liked it, while I was still young, single, and didn't have too many commitments. I enjoyed it but, I found that my real interest is in [whatever IT gig you do]."
I've got a couple of even more suspicious gaps in my resume. They appeared when I went from living in the upper half of a converted church in a cool neighborhood of a relatively expensive west coast city, to living the the bottom half of a small house in a student neighborhood in a small city in western New York. (My wife was going to school in the small city in New York.) Basically, I found that the money we had budgeted to live went a lot further that we had anticipated, so it was six months before I actually had to get a job. After working for a year or two I had more money saved up, and when one contract ended I just didn't look for another for four or five months.
I've been at the same company for a while now, so haven't interviewed much, but when I was interviewing and people asked, I just gave them the background and told them a little about what I did during those "gaps" -- I did some stuff that was a lot more interesting than the average 9-5 job during those periods, and I think that helped during interviews at least as much as it may have hurt me.
Okay, I've got to mention it...
Why spend the money on alien abduction insurance when you could just invest it in an AAI Abduction Experience and find out whether you'd actually like being abducted by aliens?
Can't beat the company motto: If they won't contact you, contact us!
We're on a technological plateau. The next real leap, the next real difference in how we play games via sensory suits or neural inputs or whatever, is still too far away and too expensive.
Yes, a fair amount of time will likely pass before the next technological innovation that makes a significant change in computer based games, and even more time will pass before that technology is cheap enough that it's widely distributed.
That said, the computer game industry seems to me to be subset of the larger game industry more than of the technology industry. The reason that game designers are different from demo designers is that a game is not indended to display how a creative person can push the limits of technology in an appealing way; rather games are intended to be fun to play. There might be a "holy crap, how did they do that?" element to a computer game, but that's not really the point.
Take MMORPGs, for example. A technological advance was required for these games to be possible, but they're not popular because networking technology is cool...they're popular because they're a new, fun kind of game to a lot of people. (And yes, I know that they're basically not new in any sense, either from a game design or technology perspective, but you know what I mean.) In all the cases that I've seen, in fact, the gee-whiz graphics factor has been noticeably lacking...the cool technology is invisible from a gameplay perspective.
The SIMS became absurdly popular for a while. Pretty FPS games were big before that. "You Don't Know Jack" had its day in the sun. Myst and its knockoffs ruled the world ages ago, and we haven't even come close to far enough back to hit the Age of Atari discussed in the article. In all these cases, the popular game or games presented something new, or offered it in an intriguing new way...technology almost always played a role in that, but in my opinion the tech was rarely the primary factor. Gameplay, basically, rules.
Hmmm...I started this post about three hours ago and just now got back to it. Eh, you all get the idea of my ravings...no point in finishing it... :)
Link to more information here, just to make sure that people don't get the wrong idea: a greylisting server will respond to all attempted deliveries from unknown sources with an RFC-compliant deferral, which should cause the sending MTA to queue the message for later delivery. The theory here is that most spam (as well as viruses) is sent by crap software which doesn't understand how to attempt a true "retry." No retry on a deferred message, no delivery for messages from the sending server.
I don't recall having seen any data on effectiveness -- would be interested in hearing from anyone actually using this approach in the wild.
As I recall, this service started up in 1997 or so. Some guy in a suit knocked on my door and said, "I hear that you know about this 'internet' thing -- I'll leave a big sack of money outside the door of your apartment every two weeks if you'll show up at my office for a couple of hours each day and sit there playing video games."
After that, about every three months or so a different guy in a suit (at least I think it was a different guy) would knock on my door and say, "I hear that you know about this 'internet' thing, and I also hear that there's still room for more sacks of money in your apartment; if you'll show up at my office for a couple of hours each day, and tell me that 'the rules have changed,' and that I 'don't get it,' I'll leave a bigger sack of money outside your door every two weeks.
I guess their their funding dried up or something.
Am I the only one who read this sentence and said "huh??"
Oh, no -- makes perfect sense to me. I applied that logic to quite a few exams when I was in college: "My score on this exam is perfect...I could only come up with answers to half of the questions, but every one that I answered was correct! a+ for me!"
My professors were the bastards who didn't understand...
It's technically a bit offtopic, but apparently MS was taken by surprise by the HP/Apple announcement, and wasn't able to put together a good spin quickly enough. The snip below is from a NY Times article:
Thursday the company appeared unprepared for the Apple-Hewlett agreement, which clearly stung Microsoft executives. They said the agreement would limit choice and harm consumers.
"Windows is about choice, you can mix and match all of this stuff," said David Fester, general manager of Microsoft's Windows digital media division. "We believe you should have the same choice when it comes to music services."
Priceless... :)
Ever seen Erin Brockovich?
No, but I'm generally familiar with the actual story that inspired the movie; in rough terms, toxic waste generated by PG&E had contaminated the groundwater around Hinkly, CA, with disastrous effects on the health of the citizens. PG&E tried in a variety of ways to deny any responsibility for the effects of decades of dumping on the area's population, but eventually lost the suit in spectacular fashion.
Erin Brockovich (who worked for a law firm but was not a lawyer), found and took an interest in a "dead" case, was able to make the necessary connections, and finally played a significant role in gathering the mountains of information that made a successful class action lawsuit against PG&E possible.
Not sure what the connection between that and this discussion is, though?
Good theory, but I suspect that a lot of lawyers might balk at misrepresenting themselves in this way. The other issue it that it likely won't get any information. Because of this very scenario, many companies will not offer "recommendations" for former employees; they'll verify start and end dates for employment, salary, etc. -- factual information -- but won't provide anything that might be considered subjective for fear of a lawsuit like this.
I'll also echo another poster in saying that while your situation does suck and was clearly handled badly, it may not be that you personally represented the security risk. If (and I don't know this to be the case) you were the sole person responsible for security, or your group couldn't provide 24/7/365 active monitoring (real eyes reviewing data at all times, not just responding to specific types of alerts), then the very existence of your job could be viewed as a security risk. It's the company's fault for setting things up that way in the first place, but they may well be right to change their approach to security management.
This doesn't mean that the company will provide better services, of course, simply that the decision may have reflected an attempt to correct a bigger problem...only time will tell whether the correction itself creates more problems for them.
With a terrified look in his eyes, the friend finally shrieked "JESUS, Heisenberg, do you know how fast you're going?!? "
His eyes still glued to the road, Heisenberg calmly replied "no, but I know exactly where I am."
In response, the FBI (the blacklists) blocks off your entire street (/24) (which the landlord owns all the housing on) and conducts house to house searches looking for terrorists. You complain when your house is searched. "But I am not a terrorist (spammer)". After finding out your landlord is housing terrorists, you continue to live there and pay rent to him, even though he is harboring terrorists and refuses to remove them off his property. As a result of you continuing to support your landlord finacially, your house keeps getting searched every so often (you stay on the blacklists with the spammer).
Holy crap...I couldn't agree less. So I'm supposed to think that it's reasonable for the FBI to block off any street and search any house, for any reason or no reason at all? Without providing any evidence of any wrondoing, much less proving wrongdoing through the system of justice that we established to deal with such things?
You should seriously think about this -- I disagree with some parts of your position on the blocking question, but see plenty of room for discussion there. If this example actually represents your idea of appropriate government measures that might be taken to ensure security, however, then I am absolutely terrified.
Ummm...actually, in 1988 (fifteen years ago) Robert Morris wrote a worm that attacked UNIX machines via a number of different routes (holes in sendmail, finger, and a few other approaches that I don't recall at the moment). In the space of something like 24 hours, Morris' worm brought thousands of computers to a grinding halt (a fair percentage of the machines that were networked in the US at that time), and those computers were running UNIX.
This is actually the worrisome issue: a *NIX is not inherently more secure than anything else. I think that there are UNIX-based machines out there that are far more secure than anything else you can find, but that's becuase those particular machines are administered by paranoid freaks...paranoid freaks that are extremely good at what they do... :)
I'm guessing that this isn't the case, but if your position is that "'I don't have to run a damn thing as root' and therefore my linux box is by definition going to be secure forever," then going to get screwed -- and screwed hard -- one of these days.
Not entirely related to your comment, but since your comment isn't entirely related to the posting I'm just going to go ahead anyway... :)
I've found that a scale of 1-7 often works better than 1-10. Granted, you lose 30% of the gradations, but as far as I'm concerned if you care about precise measurement you shouldn't be using a scale of 1-10 anyway.
It seems that having fewer options, and maybe having the benefit of 4 being *exactly* in the middle of the scale, makes people tend to think more about the ratings they're giving things.
Hmmmm...since I can't get the 45 seconds that I spent writing this back, I guess I'll just go ahead and post it... :)
New Mexico is also beautiful and well worth a week or two of wandering around with plenty of time between planned stops.
Thankfully we've never encountered any cases of these records appearing in the outside world, but if (when?) one does, the record itself may help us to identify when the breach/leak occurred, so that we've got a starting point for futher investigation.
I suspect that this practice may be fairly common even though it isn't discussed much -- in order for it to be effective, you really shouldn't discuss the program at department or company-wide meetings.
While something like this won't make your data any more secure, part of any good security program is practices and tools to help you determine whether, when, and how your data *does* get compromised, and canaries can be one tool to help with the first two items on that list.
It's mentioned elsewhere, but worth mentioning here: be very, very careful if you're going the burstable route. Most providers charge based on 95% utilization, not actual bandwidth usage. What this means to you is that a single short burst of extremely high usage (of the sort described by the poster) causes you to pay as though you were using a lot of bandwidth through the entire month -- that spike throws your average usage WAY up.
I used to operate with a dedicated 10MB line, burstable to 100MB/sec, but after a couple of sudden high traffic periods I found that it was actually cheaper and more effective to get two 10MB lines and pay for unused bandwidth regularly (and just accept a 20MB/sec limit) than it was to pay for the occasional spikes. Yeah, if I get really high traffic I won't be able to handle it, but frankly the costs of having that capacity were just too high.
I think that whether they're "essential" depends a lot on who you're talking to, but three of my favorite albums don't yet appear to have been mentioned:
A New Perspective, Donald Byrd Band and Voices
Rather different from much of what Byrd recorded, the vocal work can sound a little...well, cheesy, to some people, but it's fascinating to me.
Add to that Last Date and Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy. Jazz flute doesn't grab everybody, but the man was an extraordinary musician and performer.
Otherwise, it seems like the postings have already covered a lot of what people can agree on as fundamental to a jazz collection: Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, Somethin' Else...I'd add most of Sonny Rollins' recordings to that...hmmm...also some Sun Ra -- I seem to recall that Holiday for Soul Dance was pretty accessible and appealing to me from the first listen.
Ah, well, I could go on forever, and I still have a lot of work to do today...have fun... :)
I registered thismachine.org a while ago, for a project that I accept I'll never actually get around to. Seems like it'd be pretty appropriate: can I get this machine to work? Go to thismachine.org...
For those who studied something productive in school rather than enjoying the four-year binge of drugs and navel gazing that is a liberal arts degree:
The Merovingian line of royalty is believed by some of the more conspiracy-minded to have been a direct bloodline descended from Jesus. (Another theory maintains that they were descended from extraterrestrials, but that's neither here nor there for purposes of this discussion.)
Persephone, the daughter of gods Zeus and Demeter, was kidnapped by Hades (god of the underworld), and through a chain of events better explained elsewhere, she ended up spending part of each year on earth and part of each year in the Underworld.
Now on to the question...
What with Neo (the prophesized "one" who redeems the human race) discovering that he is only one redeemer in a series, and with his lady Trinity having died and been brought back to the land of the living, does anyone else suspect that the next movie will bring a revelation:
Or have I just spent too much time hanging out with conspiracy theorists?
Nope -- I did the same doubletake as I looked at the headline. I was actually disappointed when I read it again and made sense of it, because that means we won't see followup headlines like:
RIAA Sues Houseplant
RIAA Files Suit Against Man's Sense of Self-esteem
RIAA Sues English Language
Oh, well...it's disappointing, but that can you do? :)
It sounds like the poster knows, but since I'm a longtime user (in three different cities) and supporter of Craigslist, I want to make sure it's clear to others, as well...Craigslist is currently set up in 22 metro areas, and continues to add more:
atlanta
austin
boston
chicago
dallas
denver
detroit
houston
los angeles
miami
minneapolis
new york
philadelphia
phoenix
portland
sacramento
san diego
seattle
wash, DC
london
toronto
vancouver
[...]but Gentoo does exactly that[...]
I agree to a certain extent, but as a desktop linux user with fairly limited knowledge who spent a couple of weeks playing with Gentoo, I think that Gentoo is pretty simple and powerful only if you are comfortable with linux to begin with.
The Gentoo support groups have been an excellent resource, and allowed me to solve most problems that I've come across relatively quickly, but if I hadn't known to go to the user groups and command line for "emerge-regen", "emerge-webrsync" and guidelines for editing /etc/make.conf (was having java problems and needed some potentially unstable packages), I would have been trapped in a hell that was almost -- but not quite -- as bad as the nightmarish carnival of terror that is rpm dependancies.
For now I'm still running redhat as my primary desktop both at home and at work; with the addition of apt-get and synaptic to handle package management, it's almost as easy as Gentoo.