Because they (banks) are as lazy and even cheaper than many corporations today. If they can hire cheaper labor they will (and they do); expecting this cheaper labor to know about exploits; have time to learn about exploits; or to use their free time to learn about exploits in order to thwart and prevent them is a bit much.
Do not assume because you care and take the time to look at the code of every patch you download and install on your PC that others do. (Besides by definition, only open source users have even the potential to go through the code and look for suspicious code, not that many do).
Time is money.
You get what you pay for. And if you want quality security, quality applications, quality people; you MUST give them the time to learn about the exploits. Give them time to test the update, upgrade, patch before rolling it out to the general population. How many of you, responsible for this task at your business, are not given adequate time to use and test a new release before rolling it out to the general population? My guess is more than 95% are not given the time as their boss simply expects the upgrade, update, patch to have been sufficiently tested, checked and verified okay, thus why give any of his employees to do it again. Never mind that your environment (network, software, hardware, etc) is most likely a little different than those releasing the patch, update, upgrade.
And remember, IE and Active X gives the user a richer experience with the banks website (pun intended)
I also thought there were laws on the books in the United States governing security for banks specifically. To protect and keep safe the pipes between financial institutions and therefore ensure secure transactions. With the many break ins reported over the last two years it makes one wonder if the laws are inadequate; or if the banks are ignoring the laws and installing software / hardware that is honestly NOT secure behind their firewall/routers. or if the banks are taking the easier, cheaper way out, paying inexperienced people to install insecure and buggy software and hardware.
Compliance might be overly expensive for banks.
After all Microsoft only spent billions to secure a Windows Operating System (not the OS you and I have access to) for government use ONLY AFTER the US government threatened to remove Windows desktop operating systems from the acceptable to purchase BID list used by most government agencies.
I have not read about any similar edicts from the Federal Reserve, Banks in general or other financial institutions. Thus banks have not given proprietary vendors the same incentive that the US Government gave Microsoft.
My guess is that the banks do not publicize these weaknesses as many do not have a viable solution. And given the state of auto-updates, auto-downloads and forced updates and installs today, if a bank did secure their environment, they would NOT be able to maintain a secure environment as these forced updates are usually weekly and at least monthly. I was on a site that updated daily, never bothered to check what they were updating every day, why look into a foolish practice in the first place.
Note: not saying daily builds is foolish, just forcing users to update every day, without option not to is foolish.
Are there any banks that are maintaining their own independent repositories for updates / downloads, thus not automatically accepting all the patches that are pushed down users throats by proprietary companies? Can you even do this with the Microsoft platform, prevent external update sources and have 100% of all updates / upgrades performed from your internally tested secure repositories?
I know you can do this with Unix and Linux. But are any banks doing this, I know a few companies are.
I loved it when officials in the US government stated as fact that there was no water on Mars years ago. So will they still deny the facts? Probably.
I would love to hear from those officials that denied water was present/possible on Mars in the past; for them to admit they were wrong! If not the individuals, at least the official governmental organizations that they represent.
Maybe next time they will answer, We do not know but will keep an open mind and find out! or not.
I'm all for open standards, and I would love it if the Ogg codecs were to become primary; but don't try to tell me it is a serious contender now. No default media player on Windows or Mac OS X can play them, no 'commonly distributed by OEMs' media player (read: QuickTime for Windows and Real,) can play them.
The Ogg community needs to push to either get Ogg support added to Windows Media Player, QuickTime, and Real *BY DEFAULT* (not by plugin,) or else they need to push to have major OEMs (Dell, HP, etc,) include open-source media software, like VLC or Mplayer included by the OEM. (Which won't happen, because VLC and Mplayer aren't big corporations that will pay the OEMs money to include their software.)
Perhaps you were being funny, as your second paragraph seems to note that you understand that historically proprietary companies (hardware and especially software companies) have been purposefully avoiding collaborating with any open document formats. (for well over two decades now) The history is clear and anyone who refuses to acknowledge the historical facts obviously has some other agenda (against open document formats and for vendor lock-in types of solutions).
There was a reason that proprietary companies want you and I to use their software. Oh and by the way, their video player required their browser (Internet Explorer). Oh and by the way their video player which required their browser, required their operating system (Vista). Oh by the way their operating system, which costs you as much as they are able to charge, requires you to purchase new hardware with more memory (RAM) than most computers have ever had to have. Why? Because their operating system is bloated and eats up most of that extra memory. Does anyone run Vista well in less than 2 GB of RAM? Less than 4 GB of RAM? Seems 4 GB or more is required today to run Vista and Windows 7 well.
Of course when they were not able to buy and vendor lock-in the last open source H.264 CODEC, what did they do? Why make sure that their Video players did not use the open video CODEC (Translated formats created by theora and ffmpeg). Why so that anyone using any system except Microsoft might not be able to play videos online.
FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video and supports H.264, VLC and many more formats and buckets.
If YouTube switches to a proprietary H.264 codec; it would be huge and would very much hurt the open source open document formats, standard settings and interoperability efforts. Google would definitely be moving toward the dark side. Not good for a company, whose mantra is to not be evil.
And your second paragraph seems to demonstrate that you understand that Microsoft will never work with the Ogg Community to get their format included by *BY DEFAULT.
Increasingly proprietary software companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe are pushing video and audio formats that restrict access and restrict software developers, but there is an alternative that can be played on all computers without restriction â" Ogg
Is it in your (consumers) best interest that any one company c
I met the entire family at SCALE 7x, held every February in Los Angeles (reasonably priced at $75 for the tradeshow, beats $600 to $1,400 which is the cost of most other tradeshows), they traveled from their home in Colorado to attend. Great people who stand behind their products. All their products come with a 1 year warranty.
For 2010, the premier Open Source Community conference in the United States, will return to the Westin LAX Hotel. SCALE 8x will be February 19th-21st, 2010
For netbooks, they are lite and weigh next to nothing, less than 2 lbs, which means very cheap shipping costs. So get the pre-installed with Linux netbooks from an online vendor. Use Pricegrabber, I can recommend NewEgg as a reputable vendor. Just be sure of the model you are ordering. The Asus Eee PC 901 has a webcam, the Asus Eee PC 901 Surf does NOT! So order the correct model and you will NOT have issues. You can read the reviews posted on the site to find a good vendor at a reasonable price.
I have found replacement software products, most superior to Microsoft, for everything I was using over the last 20 years. If I had to use a MS-Operating-specific-application I would try first to run it in its own virtual machine or WINE. But the reality is there are alternatives for everything! And you will discover as most of us have, that the incompatibilities are because of Microsoft. Stupid things like not rendering the open document format standards correctly in Microsoft Word and dumb things like that. Fortunately for every issue that I have encountered I have been able to find help in the may Linux support forums online and resolve them. When I encounter these lame FUD issues it just makes Microsoft more loathsome to me. I use to like Microsoft, not any more, its been too many years of too many artificial and unnecessary hassles. They come across as even more juvenial when they deny the problem exists and you can repeat it. Years later you learn that they knew about the problem, but did not have a fix, so they just go into denial mode. No they lost my TRUST! When you start to discover the real issues, start to see through their FUD, you will want to use them less and less as many of us do. Today that is possible. And in this economy, we need to cut corners and save money every where that we can.
Remember if you get a system with Linux preinstalled, it just works. You avoid all the proprietary driver crap and vendor LOCK IN shenanigans associated with other proprietary vendors. If WiFi is important to you, get it pre-installed and it will just work. Whatever you need, get it pre-installed from the vendor to avoid unnecessary hassles.
With the Asus Eee netbook PC WiFi, Ethernet, Webcam, Sound, Video, USB plug and play, all just worked out of the box. It was fantastic! And when the Coreboot project officially releases, you will be able to buy a Linux system based on Coreboot compatible products which will make us not dependent on the BIOS vendors who are not always Linux friendly with comp
but we are very interested in not getting stuck in vendor lock-in or abandonment.
Thus you must look at the vendor that purchases and their specific history with open source projects and decide what to do.
Historically, when a proprietary vendor takes an open source project in house, especially when said open source project competes (or appears to compete) with their proprietary product, eventually they do something (or nothing, as in letting it stagnate) that results in what-use-to-be-called open source being abandoned.
If Microsoft adopts, historically they only support long enough to replace with a proprietary product and then kill it off. History is littered with examples.
If a company that has a strong relationship with Microsoft adopts, eventually the relationship results in the company either killing or abandoning the project. History gives us ample examples of this scenario as well.
The only example that I am currently aware of, and there are people who would NOT agree with me here, of an open source project going in house and continue to being supported is OpenOffice.Org (OOo) which was acquired by Sun.
Of course whenever the majority of developers jump ship after an event like this, that is usually a good tale-tale sign of the acquiring companies intentions with the open source project.
A good solid fork by the founder starts to sound safer than the official fork at that point.
I will probably continue to use the official fork for a few more months to one year to give Sun a chance to show their true intentions. As soon as something is implemented that can NOT be forked, as in they alter the license for that feature, I will move to the fork.
Equally bad, will be if the company does not dedicate enough resources to keep the official fork current, which is what I suspect is more likely given the defection of many core MySQL devs, than I will move to the fork.
Obviously I will be installing a forked version of MySQL to make sure that I can test in both the forked and official version. If for any reason the official version starts to require Java, or some other proprietary product in order to install it and/or use it, that too is a death knell for the official version.
Java can be an option, but should NEVER be required. Just my two cents.
Am I the only one who sees how easily it would be to tie in this type of information with adverts to get someone to visit your restaurant while in town. Or take advantage of being a specific location and see in person Joe Blow at their new book signing, who just happens to be in the same area.
How about reminding someone of a long lost friend that lives in the area you are visiting.
Your friend has a MySpace page and is on twitter live right now, would you like to send them a Direct Message or Twit (DM/T/N)?
That guy you were chatting with last week on FriendFinder lives 4.6 miles from the airport, here is a google map to the closest IN/Out, that you two were chatting about, near their location. Would you like to invite him to join you there? (Y/N)
The possibilities are as invasive as they are endless.
Someone travels to your location allot for business, perhaps you can lure them to your hotel instead of another one, treat them right and secure a new long term customer.
This twitter user shows his GPS coordinates, they are in the car next to you right now, do you want to wave (Y/N)? It could even be hands free and talk to you like GPS devices do. lol,
I've never been filtered, and given a choice I would go work somewhere else. Any human worth their salt wouldn't put up with being treated like a dipshit.
Not that you know of.
Please see many of my other posts here on slashdot for links to actual articles on each and everything in this post. Its all documented elsewhere if you honestly care, just see my previous posts.
Unless you have a fiber optic back-door-channel last-mile-from your-home connection to the internet, in which case I want one too. You are most likely being filtered by your ISP. You simply are unaware of it.
American telcos think all their customers, you and I included, are, in your words, dipshit s. Anyone who defends them, certainly is one.
I doubt anyone in America, unless they:
own a telco and their fiber path to/from the internet (of course there is still filtering capabilities by your upstream ISP / telco, its called Deep Packet Inspection)
own a fiber optic trans-Atlantic cable (same issue as point above, filtering capability via upstream telco, with DPI.)
honestly knows to what level they are being filtered, throttled, and in some cases blocked from some sites on the internet.
All the American telcos have peering agreements and other relationships with each other. I have personally seen documentation, proprietary of course therefore I can NOT post it, that shows percentage ownership of one telco to others and vice versa. They are all in it together against all consumers. This is the only way they can spread FUD about the bandwidth scarcity myth and artificially continue to raise your monthly fees without giving you additional services.
And they pay princely sums, in lobbying fees, directly or indirectly to your elected officials so that they might continue to stick it to you and I!
They spend an estimated $15 million per week lobbying yours and my elected officials, and those numbers were only for Washington D.C, so the figure is much, much higher considering local elected leaders that have decision making power about whether or not to open up your local connections to the internet or not perpetuating a scarcity myth for no other useful purpose than to raise your monthly fee from whatever it is now to their target-for-every American range of $100 - $150 per month.
You can be filtered and totally oblivious to it. Honestly how would you know?
The only way you will ever be aware of filtering, throttling and other anti-net neutrality impacts of your internet access by American telcos is if you have accessed a website in the past and today you can NOT get to it. And you will still be unsure that you are being filtered or blocked from seeing that website until you can gain access to the internet via a different telco than the one you are currently being blocked by and see that the website is still there.
You will not see that your telco is forging packets to disrupt your internet access unless you are taking the time (and it takes time) to actually use a sniffer and monitor the flows of packets to/from your local area network in your home and your PCs.
If you are not using Linux, only 2% of the desktop market today per some sources I believe the reality is higher than that as you have to consider the source of the information and who they have access to, than you probably do not have access to sniffer software to monitor the packets to/from your PC.
The telcos terms of service, if they want to enforce them, can interrupt the service of 90% of Americans today. (I am being generous and over-stating what I believe here, that only 10% of American consumers ONLY have 1 PC at home attached to the interent at a time. I am sure that most homes have more than 2 PCs attached to the internet at the same time.) You say not so, here is a simple taboo. Are you allowing more than
Thanks for the compliment, however I do not feel that I am that well informed. I would love to get paid to research open source and Linux topics, work from home, but than would not we all. Even better would be to be the Product Manager for an Open Source hand-held running on OS2008 or derivative of that open source operating system. Traveling around the country evangelizing the project to the public, developers, etc... Talk about a dream job.
My best advice, focus on the operating system and development tools used. If either is proprietary, than you should expect that whatever hardware/software hand-held tools will be end-of-life-d before you are ready to spend more money on updating.
This eliminates the iPod, iTouch, all the cellular hand-helds and anything running on Microsoft CE from the list. If it is proprietary, eventually you will regret it, so just do NOT go there and save yourself future hassles, in addition to money.
If you are flush with cash and do not mind throwing out $500 - $2,000 for the latest greatest hand held device every year or two, than more power to you. Given the state of our current economy, I do not know of people that are happy about having to buy a new handset, a new computer, a new gaming system, etc, just to use an application anymore. It really is quite insane when you think about it.
The only hand held operating system that is completely 100% open source that I am aware of is Maemo. The Nokia N770, N800 and N880 became popular thanks to the OS2008 Linux software. Basically a firmware replacement to the Nokia default-from-the-factory software. Installing it can be problematic without a direct connection to the internet, but far from impossible. I have not looked recently but I know there are more than 300 different applications modified and/or written specifically for the OS2008 Linux software. This is a great place to start your search. Check for other hand-helds, tablets, etc that you could load the OS2008 software on.
With the OS2008 software it is possible to increase your memory on the Nokia from 128 MB to 64 GB of Flash memory. Not too many hand-helds are open enough to allow for that. If the operating system is proprietary you would most likely be limited by the firmware (think BIOS for hand-held) from going above 2 GB and not for any particularly good reason either.
I prefer a little larger screen than the tiny cell phones, so I would suggest at least a 4 inch screen, not too small, but not so large that you can not slip it into a pocket, purse, bag, etc. Big enough to watch a video, play a game, and in a pinch surf the internet. At least you can do it with OS 2008, full browser is available and usable on it. I doubt that a cell phone size screen would cut it. The Nokia s 800 x 400 resolution on a 4â diagonal screen is as small as I would want to go.
So features you MUST have:
WiFi enabled device, it should be built in and usable if an internet connection is available. If proprietary software is your only choice, your WiFi could be locked down or encumbered in some way, so beware.
Either miniSD cards or regular SDHC cards (their are adapters for the miniSD cards for SDHC size slots for use in hand-helds and cameras today. There are also USB adapters for the micro SD cards, nothing better than pulling a 4 GB, 8GB or 16 GB card out of a camera, putting it into a USB adapter and copying your photos to a computer to be worked with. Fast and efficient.), ideally there should be a minimum of two of these slots on your hand-held. That way you can use one for software and one for data, granted with 8GB and 16 GB memory cards this is becoming a non issue. When traveling, just bring more memory
LOL, I know I get a little wordy, and that is putting it mildly.
I figured down the road I would parse all my posts, counting the number of words, characters, # of lines etc... just to make fun of myself.
Granted that is not an original idea, as I saw another person, either here on slashdot or in their blog make fun of themselves in a similar manner. It made for a series of entertaining blog posts. Figure I can list longest, shortest, average, mean, etc.. posts and make fun of myself. Will do that sometime in the next few months as I have NOT picked a blog site yet. And I am looking at them all.
I plan to run my own blogging software based with PHP and MySQL on a distributed server collocated somewhere. Who knows, down the road I might make two nickels with advertising to rub them together, but I will not hold my breath on that. Just my preference of how I would like to do it. I am a bit of a control nut, if software will not do what I want it to do, I like to be able to make it work for me.
As to the length of my posts, if I can not make fun of myself, well life is too short. I have a decent sense of humor, love to laugh at myself. In fact while I will defend a point hard and play devils advocate on occasion, I am more than willing to admit that I am wrong once presented with facts that I can confirm. Think quantitative over qualitative when possible.
Listened to Leo Laporte's twit.TV pod cast today (either it was a live or a rebroadcast, not that it matters). Once again he was stating that for either Apple MacIntosh or Microsoft Windows he would NOT purchase a laptop (or desktop) with less than 4 GB of RAM. Especially considering that memory is so cheap these days. I agree with Leo on that one, though to be less inflammatory in my posts here on slashdot I use the 2GB mark in reference to Windows. (I am no longer a fan.) I just know that if I posted that you MUST have 4 GB to run Windows well, someone would get pissed off at me and accuse me of trying to start a flame war, therefore I just put 2 GB for those situations, like I did above.
Funny, everyone knows that to run it well you need more RAM, so Leos suggestion of 4 GB or more is probably a correct one. But man will some people (MS fans) complain if you state as fact that they MUST have at least 4 GB of RAM. Sure it will run with less, slowly.
Another reason I love Linux, I run every day with either 512 MB of RAM on my netbook or 1 GB of RAM on my development tower and love it. If I had 4 GB of RAM on a Linux machine it would be screaming fast with the applications. Perhaps my next purchase I will go for 4 GB minimum of RAM.
Granted I do not do massive amounts of video editing yet, if I did that I would want a Graphics processor / adapter with a GPU, dual processors and probably at least 8 GB of RAM, even with Linux. Probably could really edit video vary well with Linux and 4 GB.
How can one easily find portable devices
without a built-in camera?"
The Asus Eee PC 4G Surf (701) does NOT have a web cam, same price as the Asus Eee 901 which does have a web cam. Since you can run Linux, on it 512 MB of RAM is plenty of memory. I am sure you can still pick one up somewhere, probably get one used and install Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu is one of the many Linux distros that have a build specifically for the Asus Eee PC.
Biggest issue may be screen size, for a netbook, when I travel this is a perfect size as it fits easily into a carry on, even a purse for the ladies. When using it at home I hook it up to an external monitor, a USB keyboard and USB Mouse. I even use the USB mouse when I travel as I hate those track pads. I picked up the keyboard on sale for less than $8, and the mouse (both Logitech) for around $15. When I am at home, this is not my primary PC, though it is for a friend of mine who blogs and writes.
If storage is a concern, I recommend getting (either or both) an external USB storage device (500G B or 1 TB, I use the 500 GB Seagate Free Agent without problems, no where on the box does it advertise Linux compatibility, just FYI, so do NOT attempt to install the software that comes with it if you use it on a Windows PC as that will probably introduced problems for Linux systems.) and those Micro SSD memory cards (1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB or 16 GBI have seen all of these for less than $15 on sale) and a USB adapter for those cards to use in the third USB slot. If you need more USB slots, get a USB extender (plug in one USB and get four more USB ports). I even use a cooling fan at home (mine stays on 24 x 7 running Skype for VoIP calls, its basically my telephone at home). The micro USBs also work with my Nokia N800 (2 built in micro memory slots - I have 2 X 4 GB now, planning on getting two 16 GB micros fro 32 GB on additional storage on my Linux hand held). Yes the Nokia N800 runs Linux, has built in WiFi and it also comes pre-installed with Skype, so if you have WiFi access you have a telephone; chances are you have WiFi access in both work and home, therefore you have WiFi access in 80% of where you spend your time. Nothing like free text messaging (though Bluetooth external keyboard is recommended for the Nokia) of course you have to use the little pin just like other hand helds where the keyboard is displayed on the screen.
There is room for a GPS module in the Nokia N800, that costs extra, at least it is built into the device like the micro SSD memory slots. The Nokia N800 also comes with a web cam built in and the sound and video quality is excellent. With Skype you can hear a pin drop without headsets, however in a noisy environment you will want an ear bud, at least there is a port for it. The built in microphone is excellent as well. The Nokia N800 is an excellent Linux hand held. Any hand held that will run Maemo will NOT let you down. Do yourself a favor and stay away from the proprietary software ONLY hand helds!
Battery life is a problem on most netbooks, the Asus is no exception, (you can count on about 2 hours without plugging it in) so you will want to get an extension cord (I recommend the 9' ones so that you can hook up in those ceiling outlets at Panera Breads (free WiFi) when you get
Even if you get a Fiber last mile to your house or apartment if that Fiber is owned by the telcos without government forced deregulation as they had in Japan, you will still be stuck with the same BS scarcity myths and tiered pricing and bandwidth caps and deep packet inspection and without net neutrality. You will NOT BE FREE and will have less than what you should, less than what your tax dollars already should have bought you!
The only viable solution is complete forced government deregulation as they have had in Japan in 2000.
OR
A new independent of the current American telcos company that owns its own fibers, owns its own data centers, owns its own deep sea cables to other continents so that they will NOT be forced by the current monopoly / duopoly American Telcos to artificially limit their service to consumers. (Note: to be independent the company must have its own connections overseas and NOT be dependent on any of the current telcos in any country where deregulation has not already occurred.. They must be independent of peering agreements and artificial constraints meant to ONLY to control them and hurt you.)
When you have fiber to your door and have either 100MB/100MB for $55 per month or 1GB / 1GB is expected to be less than $52.00 per month or 1 TB / 1 TB for less than $45 per month; no caps (they are NOT necessary); no censorship (Deep Packet Inspection as it is NOT necessary); no throttling of service (as it is NOT necessary);
than and only than will you be secure in yours and your families future internet access. You can do without cable TV, but you can NOT do without the Internet today.
History has shown us how the telcos operate and it is NOT good for consumers. Accept that without intervention they have no incentive to change their customer-no-service business practices.
Some of the facts as we know them today, 2009, are:
It costs telcos less than.50 cents to provided 1 GB of bandwidth. (the telcos will be able to provide this even cheaper once we get Fiber over the last mile. Once the fiber is laid, lit up and hardware in place, it does not cost the telcos an additional penny to provide more bandwidth.)
With Fiber over the last mile, since before 2005, technology has existed so that a single strand of glass can be multiplexed and the bandwidth increased from 1 to a factor of 1024. That is from 1 to X 1024 with a single strand of glass, thus the telcos can provide bandwidth even cheaper than.50 cents per 1 GB.
It should be noticed that you are an Anonymous Coward. Enough said.
But not enough from me, lamapper, This is the second time that someone has accused me of being a twitter sockpuppet. Though the last attempt was shouted down by others. I still do not know what a twitter sockpuppet crap is.
I have been on slashdot long enough posting that many know that I am a real person. More than I can say for you, Mr or Mrs Anonymous..
If having a twitter account is somehow wrong, than you better start condemning all the other social networking sites, Facebook, MySpace, etc... there are over 100.
For the record I do NOT have a Facebook or a MySpace account at this time. Just my preference. Perhaps one day I will determine a need for one.
As for twitter, I created it long ago, but only started using it in the last couple of months. So yes I have a twitter account, lamapper, just as my account is here. If you are a twitter user, feel free to follow me and I will check you out to see if I want to follow you.
If the simple act of having a twitter account is what you mean by a twitter sockpuppet them I am obviously guilty.
If not liking Microsoft and prefering Linux makes me a twitter sockpuppet then I am probably guilty as well. I got pissed off with Microsoft back in the GPF days. I have been in IT since 1979, yet I do not have an early slashdot account because I was not smart enough to join it when it started. Heck I held on to my CompuServe account for years after I stopped using it.
Guess the same applies to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace as I did not start any of them when it started either. Twitter has been around for over two years and is only recently taking off based on my experience.
No you are an ANONYMOUS COWARD!
And anyone else who tries to slam anyone because they disagree with you, and blindly labels them a sockpuppet because of it, GET A LIFE. Is that what a twitter sockpuppet is to you, anyone who does not agree with you?
Anyone who is on any site, including slashdot under a name other than their real true name (which means everyone who is smart and wants to avoid spam and other cracking crap) could be considered a sockpuppet if that is what it means.
So ANONYMOUS COWARD, what exactly makes me a twitter sockpuppet? (How about providing some links for others, including me to see, because right now you do not make any sense)
Simply having a twitter account?
Simply disliking Microsoft and preferring Linux?
What is your criteria for being a sock puppet anyway?
If it is either of the two above than I just may be guilty.
Regardless of what label you attempt to place on me, everyone KNOWS that you are a COWARD! And an ANONYMOUS COWARD at that!
Perhaps you are the one who has multiple sock accounts.
But for whatever reason, a lot of Microsoft users don't update.
Because once bitten, twice shy. If you continue to auto update, it is not a matter of if you will get hit, it is a matter of when. Hopefully you will not be denied access to your PC, or access to your data as many have been over the years. The worst one was when a vendor forced their users to update to a new version of the application. The vendor changed the data to a new format when the update occurred. Since the vendor was trying to lock in the users to their application, they did not provide a method to convert the data back to the old data format. Vendor Lock in at its finest.
Sure enough show stoppers were discovered that could only be discovered when the new version of the application was being used. However the professionals that depended on the application for their lively hood suddenly had a real big problem. A problem big enough to literally put them OUT OF BUSINESS. They could not convert the data back to the older format as the vendor, did not want them to be able to do that, that vendor lock in issue and all.
If they had back ups, well they could at least restore those, but they still lost their time spent updating everything from that point. Many did NOT have backups. They were the hardest hit. They were forced to go back to their customer base and request data that the customer expected them to have. Some customers did not have backups of this data, thus they had to assign staff to analysis, research and re-enter the data. Many customers were irritated enough to switch to other companies, thus the businesses that were stupid enough to update early literally lost clients. For the customers that stuck with them, they still had to enter all that data back into their system again.
Had they not auto updated the software, they would have been better off. Even waiting a month or two, would have prevented many from experiencing the problems as those that did upgrade / update were pissed when they discovered the problem. Everyone in the industry knew about the problem at that point.
That same scenario has happened in more than one industry more than one vertical market to different businesses.
When the application update forces the update of the operating system before it will continue, and the new operating system will not run on the computer that you have for any reason, well that is just insulting. I would suggest that it is stupid. And anyone who blindly goes along with it is not smart enough to be in a position to make businesses decisions. Its one thing to upgrade because it enhances and provides value. It is quite another to be forced, only because the business doing the forcing wants to make more money. Business decision my behind. Smart for the business forcing the upgrade, stupid and unnecessarily expensive for the business blindly going along. Worse as it impacts the already limited budget in IT for every company, thus if you are an IT professional, ultimately that poor business decision is costing you. In training, in raises, in sleep, in some way you too are being screwed because of the forced auto update.
Intelligent IT professionals plan updates and test in a test environment before updating any PC considered to be in production. I can understand why some IT professionals find it easier not to think about it. Not to have to test first before updating. I can also understand the false sense of security that comes with having a vendor to blame. Lucky you do not work for me as that would NEVER be an acceptable excuse. If you are an IT professional paid to do a job, I expect you to use your brain and help make the business more profitable. Thus I would hold you accountable for problems due to the forced update. After all you are the professional that I am paying to enhance my business. No wonder that System Administrator roles are paying so much less in salary these days then they use too. Why pay you more, you do not have to thi
As another "sub 7-digit guy" - there is a reason for this... There is no way I'm going to let over 60 servers automatically install patches without me checking them first! Download, yes. Install, no
Great post and my sentiments exactly. Download yes, but install only after I have performed testing on at least one box and really utilized that box. The last thing I want is to load up junk on anyone elses box or a production server.
As for those that mentioned concern with someone hacking in and getting access to your desktops or servers, if your hardware / firewall router is doing its job and you are actively monitoring both outgoing and incoming packets for suspicious activity, you know if the systems behind your firewall/router are secure or not.
Having Linux (probably same with Macs) instead of MS lets me sleep much better. But I am still monitor, test before updating additional machines. Just the smart safe way.
After IBM was stupidly (as it turned out) snubbed by Digital Research, Mary Gates happened to meet an IBM exec at the club, and when he mentioned that they were looking for an operating system for little computers, she made the connection between him and Bill.
History is littered with startups that were created only after the business the principals were working for failed to see the potential in a product.
A couple of the well known ones are Xerox and Novell. So many new products and markets came out of Xerox, its just amazing. Seems like they had difficulty thinking outside the box and marketing new products.
I was not aware that Mary Gates met an IBM exec at the club and introduced Bill to him. I should not be surprised. It is often who you know, as much, if not more than what you know. Granted you still need to be proficient enough to successfully do the work, but often you simply do not get that opportunity without someone making the introduction.
Voting with your feet assumes that the market is healthy enough to have other carriers that don't practice the exact same thing you're trying to get away from. I'm not in Europe, so the outcome of this does not DIRECTLY affect me. I just like playing devil's advocate some days.
All the current telcos have current relationships with each other. We saw it with long distance, we saw it with local calling service and we saw it with the build out of the cellular networks.
There are ONLY two options:
Government intervention as they had in Japan, thus they had 100 MB / 100MB for $55 and now they are getting 1 GB / 1 GB for under $55 and the providers are making MORE MONEY.
A new, non aligned company enters the market with fiber to homes, in the communities where politicians have NOT already been bought off by the telcos, to apartments, to the last mile.
My bets are on Obama and Google.
I am not a democrat, I just see a smart American trying to do the right thing in the face of party politics.
And if they don't get what they initially wanted, they'll try another law, and if that doesn't go through, they'll try another law... Until they finally manage to come up with the perfect timing when nobody is paying attention and it goes through.
Basically how any minority party and/or group gets stuff passed that the majority of citizens do not want.
Of course with each new proposal, they tweak it a little bit each time, often wording the proposal to generate more confusion, as they know that they can NOT get their agenda passed if they speak the honest, plain spoken, truth. (Proposal FUD, could be monitored and used against both parties, and should be)
While I agree with your post, I do not agree that it is hopeless either. No you did not state that it was either, but I read too many posts that tend to imply that people may as well be apathetic as they can not change things.
We can change things for the better, we are changing things for the better. Granted its slower then we might like and both political parties are busy fighting the majority of us that want a great country with strong economics and desire the ability to raise a family without working so much you never see your family. Thus the results of the race to the bottom in corporation salaries thanks to the owners of the Federal Reserve dictating policy around the Globe.
They successfully made their money grab with both the Republican and Democratic assistance. The majority of Americans were against the bailouts, but we were fed so much FUD about how the failures would make it worse for all of us. That even we became apathetic in the end and allowed it to occur. Shame on all of us.
Add to the list the rival party using a grass roots movement that is factually non partisan and adopting it only long enough to attack the rival party with it, then quickly dropping the issue as they do NOT want it passed either. (recent examples: FairTaxâ and TEA Parties
The FairTax has been held up in committee and prevented from coming to a floor vote since 1996. Yes for over a decade, your politicians have prevented this from coming to a vote. Why, because passage while bringing in more revenue then the current system, will limit the games they can play with our tax dollars. They want nothing to do with anything that will restrain their spending and consuming of our tax dollars. This comment applies to both the Republicans and the Democrats.
Its telling that any elected official, other than the Presidential candidate specifically, that runs against the FairTax loses. Because at a grass roots non partisan level it just makes sense and we the majority of the people of the US want it. Duh.
Do NOT give up, you can help to change the future for the better!
Basically both parties are a disgrace, playing politics when Americans are hurting, you are both pathetic.
I will forever remain an Independent minded American that believes the founding fathers were much smarter than any of us are today.
Most, not all, of todays politicians look for ways to divide, spread FUD and do anything they can to create apathy so they can pass their minority views and opinions into laws that can be inflicted on the majority of us.
We must rise above their petty party politics. We must find ways to work together, even in the face of their obvious attempts to divide us, only then can the majority of Americans fix the system.
Its definitely broken as both parties want it to be.
From David Adair s book, America s fall from Space, while I admit that I have not read the book yet, it is on my list. I have quite a bit about David Adair on the radio and the stories are as excellent as they are incredible. An incredible American who is now teaching Science somewhere in the Caribbean.
David was young when they met, around 11 years of age.
Either you are a telco industry SHILL or a TROLL or have bought into their FUD or you are sadly misinformed.
I will assume the later and even if I am wrong, hopefully many, many others will read your post and than learn some more FACTS through this post.
First everyone reading this, realize that there is HOPE. There is hope for all of us. We all just have to be active and participate to help bring that HOPE alive. Please do not allow anonymous SHILLS and TROLLs continue to distract and divide us. They count on that division to keep their status quo alive.
They are FAILING miserably, thank goodness.
When a NEW INTERNET company comes into the US, with Fiber over the LAST MILE to your home and begins offering uncapped, unlimited monthly service to customers. Basically Japan-like-rates here in the US (ie. 100 MB / 100 MB or better yet 1 GB / 1 GB for LESS THAN $55.00 PER MONTH!) I like many of pissed off consumers will NEVER go back to our current telcos and ISPs, EVER. I will also educate all my friends, my family, my children to the anti-American corporate policies that have persisted since you all began offering service (or more correctly stated, your customer no service).
You can screw with us, AS YOU HAVE, AS YOU DO, AS YOU WILL, but many of us remember, we do not forget and we tell everyone we know so that you can NOT continue your FUD ways.
Ultimately we will have this. Either through government intervention (we vow to keep replacing politicians accepting telco money until we have enough that will actually represent us) or through a responsible NEW corporation. (one that has no ties to existing telcos) That corporation will be like the GOOGLE of telcos and will have 90% of the US Market, let the rest of you who have been screwing your neighbors (your customers) over for multiple decades fight over the 10% of SHILLS and fools left to you.
Basic economics will tell you that for increased services, there must be an increased cost.
The fact of the matter is you do not know your facts.
It costs them less than.50 cents per Gigabyte, to provide service. And their costs continue to decline, even today. Also they have publicly stated that while their costs have declined the amount of bandwidth being consumed has ALSO declined. They talk this up when talking to INVESTORS, and sheepishly admit they can NOT explain the justification for higher fees given the BASIC ECONOMIC FACTS!
They lie to you and me. You and many others buy the telco FUD, I and many others do NOT.
They (the telcos) HAVE accepted an estimated $200 billion, (2006 estimate based on regulatory filing documents and documents from the telcos promising Fiber build out among other services for the money) in cash, increased fees, taxes in order to build out fiber in the United States. Instead of building Fiber as they promised, they used the money much as the financial institutions and current banks did thanks to the Republican bail-out under Bush that is being perpetuated by the Democrats under Obama, to buy up competitors, make bandwidth seem scarce (in face of facts stating that bandwidth is decreasing, thus it is NOT scarce) so they could charge their customers more each month. (This they continue to do today). They have been accepting these increased fees and taxes since 1994. Not only are these fees still part of your bill each month, they have added other fees that they successfully lobbied Congress and the House of Representatives for and received. Yet here it is 2009 and still no Fiber in the majority of cities. Where there is Fiber, the SCARCITY MYTH is still perpetuated, CAPs are instituted based on this MYTH and higher fees are charged in the face of telco reducing costs.
As of 2009, the telcos have publicly gone on the record they want ever American receivi
If by "twenty states [without income tax]" you mean seven.;)
Thanks TheoMurpse! I should have taken the time to do the search, but did not. Now based on that map, there are nine states without a state income tax. Though the other two will tax dividends and interest. Something tells me that if you are smart enough to invest wisely over a period of years it would have been better to pay the income tax and not pay an extra tax on dividends and interest.
Actually we would be better off if they passed the FairTax (I wish more people would understand that the FairTax is complete non partisan, regardless of who comes out in favor of it. It got its name from an average citizen who after evaluating it as part of a focus group, stated that this new tax system was fair to everyone, thus it was named the FairTax.) and we no longer had to pay taxes a second, third, fourth and fifth time. It does get a bit ridiculous doesn't it.
And if I want to stay in a warmer climate, than the number just reduced to three: Nevada, Texas and Florida. To avoid the mosquitoes, well probably less in Nevada, but I bet they have a few. Anywhere near water, right.
I think the two yellow states are interesting, since they only tax dividends and interest, there is still not income tax on your salary or regular income. So does that mean nine total, perhaps?
Below is a side-track and a bit off topic, so do not read further if you are only interested in the states without income tax. Consider yourself warned....lol.
Speaking specifically of Mosquitoes, in LA, near the La Brea tar pits, they posted this warning!, here is a rather tasty picture, but tasty for who?
The picture on Flickr posted as near the La Brea Tar Pits is actually pointing to the wrong location, Whittier is to the East by about 20 miles. here is the true location of the La Brea tar pits, some might remember the images from the movie Volcanoe (1997) with Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Keith David, Gaby Hoffman, Don Cheadle and many others.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing personal cawpin, just noting that the first line in his response mentioned time, which certainly is quantifiable.
He does have a basis -- the effort (time or cost) required to get the system to a state where compromise was not likely.
note no IT system can really protect against physical access
Nor based on the exploit mentioned in this post on slashdot could the windows machine protect against an external access.
Because they (banks) are as lazy and even cheaper than many corporations today. If they can hire cheaper labor they will (and they do); expecting this cheaper labor to know about exploits; have time to learn about exploits; or to use their free time to learn about exploits in order to thwart and prevent them is a bit much.
Do not assume because you care and take the time to look at the code of every patch you download and install on your PC that others do. (Besides by definition, only open source users have even the potential to go through the code and look for suspicious code, not that many do).
Time is money.
You get what you pay for. And if you want quality security, quality applications, quality people; you MUST give them the time to learn about the exploits. Give them time to test the update, upgrade, patch before rolling it out to the general population. How many of you, responsible for this task at your business, are not given adequate time to use and test a new release before rolling it out to the general population? My guess is more than 95% are not given the time as their boss simply expects the upgrade, update, patch to have been sufficiently tested, checked and verified okay, thus why give any of his employees to do it again. Never mind that your environment (network, software, hardware, etc) is most likely a little different than those releasing the patch, update, upgrade.
And remember, IE and Active X gives the user a richer experience with the banks website (pun intended)
I also thought there were laws on the books in the United States governing security for banks specifically. To protect and keep safe the pipes between financial institutions and therefore ensure secure transactions. With the many break ins reported over the last two years it makes one wonder if the laws are inadequate; or if the banks are ignoring the laws and installing software / hardware that is honestly NOT secure behind their firewall/routers. or if the banks are taking the easier, cheaper way out, paying inexperienced people to install insecure and buggy software and hardware.
Compliance might be overly expensive for banks.
After all Microsoft only spent billions to secure a Windows Operating System (not the OS you and I have access to) for government use ONLY AFTER the US government threatened to remove Windows desktop operating systems from the acceptable to purchase BID list used by most government agencies.
I have not read about any similar edicts from the Federal Reserve, Banks in general or other financial institutions. Thus banks have not given proprietary vendors the same incentive that the US Government gave Microsoft.
My guess is that the banks do not publicize these weaknesses as many do not have a viable solution. And given the state of auto-updates, auto-downloads and forced updates and installs today, if a bank did secure their environment, they would NOT be able to maintain a secure environment as these forced updates are usually weekly and at least monthly. I was on a site that updated daily, never bothered to check what they were updating every day, why look into a foolish practice in the first place.
Note: not saying daily builds is foolish, just forcing users to update every day, without option not to is foolish.
Are there any banks that are maintaining their own independent repositories for updates / downloads, thus not automatically accepting all the patches that are pushed down users throats by proprietary companies? Can you even do this with the Microsoft platform, prevent external update sources and have 100% of all updates / upgrades performed from your internally tested secure repositories?
I know you can do this with Unix and Linux. But are any banks doing this, I know a few companies are.
Can you do this with the MacIntosh platform?
The idea that you can be 100% secure now
I would love to hear from those officials that denied water was present/possible on Mars in the past; for them to admit they were wrong! If not the individuals, at least the official governmental organizations that they represent.
Maybe next time they will answer, We do not know but will keep an open mind and find out! or not.
I'm all for open standards, and I would love it if the Ogg codecs were to become primary; but don't try to tell me it is a serious contender now. No default media player on Windows or Mac OS X can play them, no 'commonly distributed by OEMs' media player (read: QuickTime for Windows and Real,) can play them. The Ogg community needs to push to either get Ogg support added to Windows Media Player, QuickTime, and Real *BY DEFAULT* (not by plugin,) or else they need to push to have major OEMs (Dell, HP, etc,) include open-source media software, like VLC or Mplayer included by the OEM. (Which won't happen, because VLC and Mplayer aren't big corporations that will pay the OEMs money to include their software.)
Perhaps you were being funny, as your second paragraph seems to note that you understand that historically proprietary companies (hardware and especially software companies) have been purposefully avoiding collaborating with any open document formats. (for well over two decades now) The history is clear and anyone who refuses to acknowledge the historical facts obviously has some other agenda (against open document formats and for vendor lock-in types of solutions).
There was a reason that proprietary companies want you and I to use their software. Oh and by the way, their video player required their browser (Internet Explorer). Oh and by the way their video player which required their browser, required their operating system (Vista). Oh by the way their operating system, which costs you as much as they are able to charge, requires you to purchase new hardware with more memory (RAM) than most computers have ever had to have. Why? Because their operating system is bloated and eats up most of that extra memory. Does anyone run Vista well in less than 2 GB of RAM? Less than 4 GB of RAM? Seems 4 GB or more is required today to run Vista and Windows 7 well.
Of course when they were not able to buy and vendor lock-in the last open source H.264 CODEC, what did they do? Why make sure that their Video players did not use the open video CODEC (Translated formats created by theora and ffmpeg). Why so that anyone using any system except Microsoft might not be able to play videos online.
x264 is a free software library for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video and supports H.264, VLC and many more formats and buckets.
If YouTube switches to a proprietary H.264 codec; it would be huge and would very much hurt the open source open document formats, standard settings and interoperability efforts. Google would definitely be moving toward the dark side. Not good for a company, whose mantra is to not be evil.
And your second paragraph seems to demonstrate that you understand that Microsoft will never work with the Ogg Community to get their format included by *BY DEFAULT.
So I guess you were trying to be funny.
For others this says it all, from the Free Software Foundation, Getting started with Ogg:
Increasingly proprietary software companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe are pushing video and audio formats that restrict access and restrict software developers, but there is an alternative that can be played on all computers without restriction â" Ogg
Is it in your (consumers) best interest that any one company c
Full 3D support for a better 3D desktop experience with Compiz or Beryl for only $349; Limbo 3550 desktop.
For only $299, get the Limbo 2550A desktop. They have laptops and more.
For $699, get the Homebox 4.
I met the entire family at SCALE 7x, held every February in Los Angeles (reasonably priced at $75 for the tradeshow, beats $600 to $1,400 which is the cost of most other tradeshows), they traveled from their home in Colorado to attend. Great people who stand behind their products. All their products come with a 1 year warranty.
For 2010, the premier Open Source Community conference in the United States, will return to the Westin LAX Hotel. SCALE 8x will be February 19th-21st, 2010
For netbooks, they are lite and weigh next to nothing, less than 2 lbs, which means very cheap shipping costs. So get the pre-installed with Linux netbooks from an online vendor. Use Pricegrabber, I can recommend NewEgg as a reputable vendor. Just be sure of the model you are ordering. The Asus Eee PC 901 has a webcam, the Asus Eee PC 901 Surf does NOT! So order the correct model and you will NOT have issues. You can read the reviews posted on the site to find a good vendor at a reasonable price.
I have found replacement software products, most superior to Microsoft, for everything I was using over the last 20 years. If I had to use a MS-Operating-specific-application I would try first to run it in its own virtual machine or WINE. But the reality is there are alternatives for everything! And you will discover as most of us have, that the incompatibilities are because of Microsoft. Stupid things like not rendering the open document format standards correctly in Microsoft Word and dumb things like that. Fortunately for every issue that I have encountered I have been able to find help in the may Linux support forums online and resolve them. When I encounter these lame FUD issues it just makes Microsoft more loathsome to me. I use to like Microsoft, not any more, its been too many years of too many artificial and unnecessary hassles. They come across as even more juvenial when they deny the problem exists and you can repeat it. Years later you learn that they knew about the problem, but did not have a fix, so they just go into denial mode. No they lost my TRUST! When you start to discover the real issues, start to see through their FUD, you will want to use them less and less as many of us do. Today that is possible. And in this economy, we need to cut corners and save money every where that we can.
Remember if you get a system with Linux preinstalled, it just works. You avoid all the proprietary driver crap and vendor LOCK IN shenanigans associated with other proprietary vendors. If WiFi is important to you, get it pre-installed and it will just work. Whatever you need, get it pre-installed from the vendor to avoid unnecessary hassles.
With the Asus Eee netbook PC WiFi, Ethernet, Webcam, Sound, Video, USB plug and play, all just worked out of the box. It was fantastic! And when the Coreboot project officially releases, you will be able to buy a Linux system based on Coreboot compatible products which will make us not dependent on the BIOS vendors who are not always Linux friendly with comp
Sucks for me if I do NOT want to use Winblows platforms any more.
but we are very interested in not getting stuck in vendor lock-in or abandonment.
Thus you must look at the vendor that purchases and their specific history with open source projects and decide what to do.
Historically, when a proprietary vendor takes an open source project in house, especially when said open source project competes (or appears to compete) with their proprietary product, eventually they do something (or nothing, as in letting it stagnate) that results in what-use-to-be-called open source being abandoned.
If Microsoft adopts, historically they only support long enough to replace with a proprietary product and then kill it off. History is littered with examples.
If a company that has a strong relationship with Microsoft adopts, eventually the relationship results in the company either killing or abandoning the project. History gives us ample examples of this scenario as well.
The only example that I am currently aware of, and there are people who would NOT agree with me here, of an open source project going in house and continue to being supported is OpenOffice.Org (OOo) which was acquired by Sun.
Of course whenever the majority of developers jump ship after an event like this, that is usually a good tale-tale sign of the acquiring companies intentions with the open source project.
A good solid fork by the founder starts to sound safer than the official fork at that point.
I will probably continue to use the official fork for a few more months to one year to give Sun a chance to show their true intentions. As soon as something is implemented that can NOT be forked, as in they alter the license for that feature, I will move to the fork.
Equally bad, will be if the company does not dedicate enough resources to keep the official fork current, which is what I suspect is more likely given the defection of many core MySQL devs, than I will move to the fork.
Obviously I will be installing a forked version of MySQL to make sure that I can test in both the forked and official version. If for any reason the official version starts to require Java, or some other proprietary product in order to install it and/or use it, that too is a death knell for the official version.
Java can be an option, but should NEVER be required. Just my two cents.
Sun seems to love requiring Java in their apps
How about reminding someone of a long lost friend that lives in the area you are visiting.
Your friend has a MySpace page and is on twitter live right now, would you like to send them a Direct Message or Twit (DM/T/N)?
That guy you were chatting with last week on FriendFinder lives 4.6 miles from the airport, here is a google map to the closest IN/Out, that you two were chatting about, near their location. Would you like to invite him to join you there? (Y/N)
The possibilities are as invasive as they are endless.
Someone travels to your location allot for business, perhaps you can lure them to your hotel instead of another one, treat them right and secure a new long term customer.
This twitter user shows his GPS coordinates, they are in the car next to you right now, do you want to wave (Y/N)? It could even be hands free and talk to you like GPS devices do. lol,
Ideas, ideas, ideas....
I've never been filtered, and given a choice I would go work somewhere else. Any human worth their salt wouldn't put up with being treated like a dipshit.
Not that you know of.
Please see many of my other posts here on slashdot for links to actual articles on each and everything in this post. Its all documented elsewhere if you honestly care, just see my previous posts.
Unless you have a fiber optic back-door-channel last-mile-from your-home connection to the internet, in which case I want one too. You are most likely being filtered by your ISP. You simply are unaware of it.
American telcos think all their customers, you and I included, are, in your words, dipshit s. Anyone who defends them, certainly is one.
I doubt anyone in America, unless they:
honestly knows to what level they are being filtered, throttled, and in some cases blocked from some sites on the internet.
All the American telcos have peering agreements and other relationships with each other. I have personally seen documentation, proprietary of course therefore I can NOT post it, that shows percentage ownership of one telco to others and vice versa. They are all in it together against all consumers. This is the only way they can spread FUD about the bandwidth scarcity myth and artificially continue to raise your monthly fees without giving you additional services.
And they pay princely sums, in lobbying fees, directly or indirectly to your elected officials so that they might continue to stick it to you and I!
They spend an estimated $15 million per week lobbying yours and my elected officials, and those numbers were only for Washington D.C, so the figure is much, much higher considering local elected leaders that have decision making power about whether or not to open up your local connections to the internet or not perpetuating a scarcity myth for no other useful purpose than to raise your monthly fee from whatever it is now to their target-for-every American range of $100 - $150 per month.
You can be filtered and totally oblivious to it. Honestly how would you know?
The only way you will ever be aware of filtering, throttling and other anti-net neutrality impacts of your internet access by American telcos is if you have accessed a website in the past and today you can NOT get to it. And you will still be unsure that you are being filtered or blocked from seeing that website until you can gain access to the internet via a different telco than the one you are currently being blocked by and see that the website is still there.
You will not see that your telco is forging packets to disrupt your internet access unless you are taking the time (and it takes time) to actually use a sniffer and monitor the flows of packets to/from your local area network in your home and your PCs.
If you are not using Linux, only 2% of the desktop market today per some sources I believe the reality is higher than that as you have to consider the source of the information and who they have access to, than you probably do not have access to sniffer software to monitor the packets to/from your PC.
The telcos terms of service, if they want to enforce them, can interrupt the service of 90% of Americans today. (I am being generous and over-stating what I believe here, that only 10% of American consumers ONLY have 1 PC at home attached to the interent at a time. I am sure that most homes have more than 2 PCs attached to the internet at the same time.) You say not so, here is a simple taboo. Are you allowing more than
Thanks for the compliment, however I do not feel that I am that well informed. I would love to get paid to research open source and Linux topics, work from home, but than would not we all. Even better would be to be the Product Manager for an Open Source hand-held running on OS2008 or derivative of that open source operating system. Traveling around the country evangelizing the project to the public, developers, etc... Talk about a dream job.
My best advice, focus on the operating system and development tools used. If either is proprietary, than you should expect that whatever hardware/software hand-held tools will be end-of-life-d before you are ready to spend more money on updating.
This eliminates the iPod, iTouch, all the cellular hand-helds and anything running on Microsoft CE from the list. If it is proprietary, eventually you will regret it, so just do NOT go there and save yourself future hassles, in addition to money.
If you are flush with cash and do not mind throwing out $500 - $2,000 for the latest greatest hand held device every year or two, than more power to you. Given the state of our current economy, I do not know of people that are happy about having to buy a new handset, a new computer, a new gaming system, etc, just to use an application anymore. It really is quite insane when you think about it.
The only hand held operating system that is completely 100% open source that I am aware of is Maemo. The Nokia N770, N800 and N880 became popular thanks to the OS2008 Linux software. Basically a firmware replacement to the Nokia default-from-the-factory software. Installing it can be problematic without a direct connection to the internet, but far from impossible. I have not looked recently but I know there are more than 300 different applications modified and/or written specifically for the OS2008 Linux software. This is a great place to start your search. Check for other hand-helds, tablets, etc that you could load the OS2008 software on.
With the OS2008 software it is possible to increase your memory on the Nokia from 128 MB to 64 GB of Flash memory. Not too many hand-helds are open enough to allow for that. If the operating system is proprietary you would most likely be limited by the firmware (think BIOS for hand-held) from going above 2 GB and not for any particularly good reason either.
I prefer a little larger screen than the tiny cell phones, so I would suggest at least a 4 inch screen, not too small, but not so large that you can not slip it into a pocket, purse, bag, etc. Big enough to watch a video, play a game, and in a pinch surf the internet. At least you can do it with OS 2008, full browser is available and usable on it. I doubt that a cell phone size screen would cut it. The Nokia s 800 x 400 resolution on a 4â diagonal screen is as small as I would want to go.
So features you MUST have:
LOL, I know I get a little wordy, and that is putting it mildly.
I figured down the road I would parse all my posts, counting the number of words, characters, # of lines etc... just to make fun of myself.
Granted that is not an original idea, as I saw another person, either here on slashdot or in their blog make fun of themselves in a similar manner. It made for a series of entertaining blog posts. Figure I can list longest, shortest, average, mean, etc.. posts and make fun of myself. Will do that sometime in the next few months as I have NOT picked a blog site yet. And I am looking at them all.
I plan to run my own blogging software based with PHP and MySQL on a distributed server collocated somewhere. Who knows, down the road I might make two nickels with advertising to rub them together, but I will not hold my breath on that. Just my preference of how I would like to do it. I am a bit of a control nut, if software will not do what I want it to do, I like to be able to make it work for me.
As to the length of my posts, if I can not make fun of myself, well life is too short. I have a decent sense of humor, love to laugh at myself. In fact while I will defend a point hard and play devils advocate on occasion, I am more than willing to admit that I am wrong once presented with facts that I can confirm. Think quantitative over qualitative when possible.
Listened to Leo Laporte's twit.TV pod cast today (either it was a live or a rebroadcast, not that it matters). Once again he was stating that for either Apple MacIntosh or Microsoft Windows he would NOT purchase a laptop (or desktop) with less than 4 GB of RAM. Especially considering that memory is so cheap these days. I agree with Leo on that one, though to be less inflammatory in my posts here on slashdot I use the 2GB mark in reference to Windows. (I am no longer a fan.) I just know that if I posted that you MUST have 4 GB to run Windows well, someone would get pissed off at me and accuse me of trying to start a flame war, therefore I just put 2 GB for those situations, like I did above.
Funny, everyone knows that to run it well you need more RAM, so Leos suggestion of 4 GB or more is probably a correct one. But man will some people (MS fans) complain if you state as fact that they MUST have at least 4 GB of RAM. Sure it will run with less, slowly.
Another reason I love Linux, I run every day with either 512 MB of RAM on my netbook or 1 GB of RAM on my development tower and love it. If I had 4 GB of RAM on a Linux machine it would be screaming fast with the applications. Perhaps my next purchase I will go for 4 GB minimum of RAM.
Granted I do not do massive amounts of video editing yet, if I did that I would want a Graphics processor / adapter with a GPU, dual processors and probably at least 8 GB of RAM, even with Linux. Probably could really edit video vary well with Linux and 4 GB.
You asked...
How can one easily find portable devices without a built-in camera?"
The Asus Eee PC 4G Surf (701) does NOT have a web cam, same price as the Asus Eee 901 which does have a web cam. Since you can run Linux, on it 512 MB of RAM is plenty of memory. I am sure you can still pick one up somewhere, probably get one used and install Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu is one of the many Linux distros that have a build specifically for the Asus Eee PC.
Biggest issue may be screen size, for a netbook, when I travel this is a perfect size as it fits easily into a carry on, even a purse for the ladies. When using it at home I hook it up to an external monitor, a USB keyboard and USB Mouse. I even use the USB mouse when I travel as I hate those track pads. I picked up the keyboard on sale for less than $8, and the mouse (both Logitech) for around $15. When I am at home, this is not my primary PC, though it is for a friend of mine who blogs and writes.
If storage is a concern, I recommend getting (either or both) an external USB storage device (500G B or 1 TB, I use the 500 GB Seagate Free Agent without problems, no where on the box does it advertise Linux compatibility, just FYI, so do NOT attempt to install the software that comes with it if you use it on a Windows PC as that will probably introduced problems for Linux systems.) and those Micro SSD memory cards (1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB or 16 GB I have seen all of these for less than $15 on sale) and a USB adapter for those cards to use in the third USB slot. If you need more USB slots, get a USB extender (plug in one USB and get four more USB ports). I even use a cooling fan at home (mine stays on 24 x 7 running Skype for VoIP calls, its basically my telephone at home). The micro USBs also work with my Nokia N800 (2 built in micro memory slots - I have 2 X 4 GB now, planning on getting two 16 GB micros fro 32 GB on additional storage on my Linux hand held). Yes the Nokia N800 runs Linux, has built in WiFi and it also comes pre-installed with Skype, so if you have WiFi access you have a telephone; chances are you have WiFi access in both work and home, therefore you have WiFi access in 80% of where you spend your time. Nothing like free text messaging (though Bluetooth external keyboard is recommended for the Nokia) of course you have to use the little pin just like other hand helds where the keyboard is displayed on the screen.
There is room for a GPS module in the Nokia N800, that costs extra, at least it is built into the device like the micro SSD memory slots. The Nokia N800 also comes with a web cam built in and the sound and video quality is excellent. With Skype you can hear a pin drop without headsets, however in a noisy environment you will want an ear bud, at least there is a port for it. The built in microphone is excellent as well. The Nokia N800 is an excellent Linux hand held. Any hand held that will run Maemo will NOT let you down. Do yourself a favor and stay away from the proprietary software ONLY hand helds!
Battery life is a problem on most netbooks, the Asus is no exception, (you can count on about 2 hours without plugging it in) so you will want to get an extension cord (I recommend the 9' ones so that you can hook up in those ceiling outlets at Panera Breads (free WiFi) when you get
Even if you get a Fiber last mile to your house or apartment if that Fiber is owned by the telcos without government forced deregulation as they had in Japan, you will still be stuck with the same BS scarcity myths and tiered pricing and bandwidth caps and deep packet inspection and without net neutrality. You will NOT BE FREE and will have less than what you should, less than what your tax dollars already should have bought you!
The only viable solution is complete forced government deregulation as they have had in Japan in 2000.
OR
A new independent of the current American telcos company that owns its own fibers, owns its own data centers, owns its own deep sea cables to other continents so that they will NOT be forced by the current monopoly / duopoly American Telcos to artificially limit their service to consumers. (Note: to be independent the company must have its own connections overseas and NOT be dependent on any of the current telcos in any country where deregulation has not already occurred.. They must be independent of peering agreements and artificial constraints meant to ONLY to control them and hurt you.)
When you have fiber to your door and have either 100MB/100MB for $55 per month or 1GB / 1GB is expected to be less than $52.00 per month or 1 TB / 1 TB for less than $45 per month; no caps (they are NOT necessary); no censorship (Deep Packet Inspection as it is NOT necessary); no throttling of service (as it is NOT necessary);
than and only than will you be secure in yours and your families future internet access. You can do without cable TV, but you can NOT do without the Internet today.
History has shown us how the telcos operate and it is NOT good for consumers. Accept that without intervention they have no incentive to change their customer-no-service business practices.
Some of the facts as we know them today, 2009, are:
perhaps its time for you to move to a more sane area, no way am I going to wait for anything if someone breaks down my door.
No to you COWARD, NICE TRY!
It should be noticed that you are an Anonymous Coward. Enough said.
But not enough from me, lamapper, This is the second time that someone has accused me of being a twitter sockpuppet. Though the last attempt was shouted down by others. I still do not know what a twitter sockpuppet crap is.
I have been on slashdot long enough posting that many know that I am a real person. More than I can say for you, Mr or Mrs Anonymous..
If having a twitter account is somehow wrong, than you better start condemning all the other social networking sites, Facebook, MySpace, etc... there are over 100.
For the record I do NOT have a Facebook or a MySpace account at this time. Just my preference. Perhaps one day I will determine a need for one.
As for twitter, I created it long ago, but only started using it in the last couple of months. So yes I have a twitter account, lamapper, just as my account is here. If you are a twitter user, feel free to follow me and I will check you out to see if I want to follow you.
If the simple act of having a twitter account is what you mean by a twitter sockpuppet them I am obviously guilty.
If not liking Microsoft and prefering Linux makes me a twitter sockpuppet then I am probably guilty as well. I got pissed off with Microsoft back in the GPF days. I have been in IT since 1979, yet I do not have an early slashdot account because I was not smart enough to join it when it started. Heck I held on to my CompuServe account for years after I stopped using it.
Guess the same applies to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace as I did not start any of them when it started either. Twitter has been around for over two years and is only recently taking off based on my experience.
No you are an ANONYMOUS COWARD!
And anyone else who tries to slam anyone because they disagree with you, and blindly labels them a sockpuppet because of it, GET A LIFE. Is that what a twitter sockpuppet is to you, anyone who does not agree with you?
Anyone who is on any site, including slashdot under a name other than their real true name (which means everyone who is smart and wants to avoid spam and other cracking crap) could be considered a sockpuppet if that is what it means.
So ANONYMOUS COWARD, what exactly makes me a twitter sockpuppet? (How about providing some links for others, including me to see, because right now you do not make any sense)
Simply having a twitter account?
Simply disliking Microsoft and preferring Linux?
What is your criteria for being a sock puppet anyway?
If it is either of the two above than I just may be guilty.
Regardless of what label you attempt to place on me, everyone KNOWS that you are a COWARD! And an ANONYMOUS COWARD at that!
Perhaps you are the one who has multiple sock accounts.
But for whatever reason, a lot of Microsoft users don't update.
Because once bitten, twice shy. If you continue to auto update, it is not a matter of if you will get hit, it is a matter of when. Hopefully you will not be denied access to your PC, or access to your data as many have been over the years. The worst one was when a vendor forced their users to update to a new version of the application. The vendor changed the data to a new format when the update occurred. Since the vendor was trying to lock in the users to their application, they did not provide a method to convert the data back to the old data format. Vendor Lock in at its finest.
Sure enough show stoppers were discovered that could only be discovered when the new version of the application was being used. However the professionals that depended on the application for their lively hood suddenly had a real big problem. A problem big enough to literally put them OUT OF BUSINESS. They could not convert the data back to the older format as the vendor, did not want them to be able to do that, that vendor lock in issue and all.
If they had back ups, well they could at least restore those, but they still lost their time spent updating everything from that point. Many did NOT have backups. They were the hardest hit. They were forced to go back to their customer base and request data that the customer expected them to have. Some customers did not have backups of this data, thus they had to assign staff to analysis, research and re-enter the data. Many customers were irritated enough to switch to other companies, thus the businesses that were stupid enough to update early literally lost clients. For the customers that stuck with them, they still had to enter all that data back into their system again.
Had they not auto updated the software, they would have been better off. Even waiting a month or two, would have prevented many from experiencing the problems as those that did upgrade / update were pissed when they discovered the problem. Everyone in the industry knew about the problem at that point.
That same scenario has happened in more than one industry more than one vertical market to different businesses.
When the application update forces the update of the operating system before it will continue, and the new operating system will not run on the computer that you have for any reason, well that is just insulting. I would suggest that it is stupid. And anyone who blindly goes along with it is not smart enough to be in a position to make businesses decisions. Its one thing to upgrade because it enhances and provides value. It is quite another to be forced, only because the business doing the forcing wants to make more money. Business decision my behind. Smart for the business forcing the upgrade, stupid and unnecessarily expensive for the business blindly going along. Worse as it impacts the already limited budget in IT for every company, thus if you are an IT professional, ultimately that poor business decision is costing you. In training, in raises, in sleep, in some way you too are being screwed because of the forced auto update.
Intelligent IT professionals plan updates and test in a test environment before updating any PC considered to be in production. I can understand why some IT professionals find it easier not to think about it. Not to have to test first before updating. I can also understand the false sense of security that comes with having a vendor to blame. Lucky you do not work for me as that would NEVER be an acceptable excuse. If you are an IT professional paid to do a job, I expect you to use your brain and help make the business more profitable. Thus I would hold you accountable for problems due to the forced update. After all you are the professional that I am paying to enhance my business. No wonder that System Administrator roles are paying so much less in salary these days then they use too. Why pay you more, you do not have to thi
As another "sub 7-digit guy" - there is a reason for this... There is no way I'm going to let over 60 servers automatically install patches without me checking them first! Download, yes. Install, no
Great post and my sentiments exactly. Download yes, but install only after I have performed testing on at least one box and really utilized that box. The last thing I want is to load up junk on anyone elses box or a production server.
As for those that mentioned concern with someone hacking in and getting access to your desktops or servers, if your hardware / firewall router is doing its job and you are actively monitoring both outgoing and incoming packets for suspicious activity, you know if the systems behind your firewall/router are secure or not.
Having Linux (probably same with Macs) instead of MS lets me sleep much better. But I am still monitor, test before updating additional machines. Just the smart safe way.
After IBM was stupidly (as it turned out) snubbed by Digital Research, Mary Gates happened to meet an IBM exec at the club, and when he mentioned that they were looking for an operating system for little computers, she made the connection between him and Bill.
History is littered with startups that were created only after the business the principals were working for failed to see the potential in a product.
A couple of the well known ones are Xerox and Novell. So many new products and markets came out of Xerox, its just amazing. Seems like they had difficulty thinking outside the box and marketing new products.
I was not aware that Mary Gates met an IBM exec at the club and introduced Bill to him. I should not be surprised. It is often who you know, as much, if not more than what you know. Granted you still need to be proficient enough to successfully do the work, but often you simply do not get that opportunity without someone making the introduction.
Voting with your feet assumes that the market is healthy enough to have other carriers that don't practice the exact same thing you're trying to get away from. I'm not in Europe, so the outcome of this does not DIRECTLY affect me. I just like playing devil's advocate some days.
All the current telcos have current relationships with each other. We saw it with long distance, we saw it with local calling service and we saw it with the build out of the cellular networks.
There are ONLY two options:
Government intervention as they had in Japan, thus they had 100 MB / 100MB for $55 and now they are getting 1 GB / 1 GB for under $55 and the providers are making MORE MONEY.
A new, non aligned company enters the market with fiber to homes, in the communities where politicians have NOT already been bought off by the telcos, to apartments, to the last mile.
My bets are on Obama and Google.
I am not a democrat, I just see a smart American trying to do the right thing in the face of party politics.
And if they don't get what they initially wanted, they'll try another law, and if that doesn't go through, they'll try another law... Until they finally manage to come up with the perfect timing when nobody is paying attention and it goes through.
Basically how any minority party and/or group gets stuff passed that the majority of citizens do not want.
Of course with each new proposal, they tweak it a little bit each time, often wording the proposal to generate more confusion, as they know that they can NOT get their agenda passed if they speak the honest, plain spoken, truth. (Proposal FUD, could be monitored and used against both parties, and should be)
While I agree with your post, I do not agree that it is hopeless either. No you did not state that it was either, but I read too many posts that tend to imply that people may as well be apathetic as they can not change things.
We can change things for the better, we are changing things for the better. Granted its slower then we might like and both political parties are busy fighting the majority of us that want a great country with strong economics and desire the ability to raise a family without working so much you never see your family. Thus the results of the race to the bottom in corporation salaries thanks to the owners of the Federal Reserve dictating policy around the Globe.
They successfully made their money grab with both the Republican and Democratic assistance. The majority of Americans were against the bailouts, but we were fed so much FUD about how the failures would make it worse for all of us. That even we became apathetic in the end and allowed it to occur. Shame on all of us.
Add to the list the rival party using a grass roots movement that is factually non partisan and adopting it only long enough to attack the rival party with it, then quickly dropping the issue as they do NOT want it passed either. (recent examples: FairTaxâ and TEA Parties
The FairTax has been held up in committee and prevented from coming to a floor vote since 1996. Yes for over a decade, your politicians have prevented this from coming to a vote. Why, because passage while bringing in more revenue then the current system, will limit the games they can play with our tax dollars. They want nothing to do with anything that will restrain their spending and consuming of our tax dollars. This comment applies to both the Republicans and the Democrats.
Its telling that any elected official, other than the Presidential candidate specifically, that runs against the FairTax loses. Because at a grass roots non partisan level it just makes sense and we the majority of the people of the US want it. Duh.
Do NOT give up, you can help to change the future for the better!
Basically both parties are a disgrace, playing politics when Americans are hurting, you are both pathetic.
I will forever remain an Independent minded American that believes the founding fathers were much smarter than any of us are today.
Most, not all, of todays politicians look for ways to divide, spread FUD and do anything they can to create apathy so they can pass their minority views and opinions into laws that can be inflicted on the majority of us.
We must rise above their petty party politics. We must find ways to work together, even in the face of their obvious attempts to divide us, only then can the majority of Americans fix the system.
Its definitely broken as both parties want it to be.
Stephen Hawking, we wish you well.
From David Adair s book, America s fall from Space, while I admit that I have not read the book yet, it is on my list. I have quite a bit about David Adair on the radio and the stories are as excellent as they are incredible. An incredible American who is now teaching Science somewhere in the Caribbean.
David was young when they met, around 11 years of age.
Dr. Stephen Hawking, who at that time had just received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Astrophysics and was at the beginning of his own career. When they met and David was asked for the source of his formulas, he sheepishly replied that many came to him in dreams. To that Stephen Hawking replied, I get a lot of my ideas through dreams also. We dream on the same wavelength; therefore, that makes us brothers.
May the story bring you a smile during darker days.
Either you are a telco industry SHILL or a TROLL or have bought into their FUD or you are sadly misinformed.
I will assume the later and even if I am wrong, hopefully many, many others will read your post and than learn some more FACTS through this post.
First everyone reading this, realize that there is HOPE. There is hope for all of us. We all just have to be active and participate to help bring that HOPE alive. Please do not allow anonymous SHILLS and TROLLs continue to distract and divide us. They count on that division to keep their status quo alive.
They are FAILING miserably, thank goodness.
When a NEW INTERNET company comes into the US, with Fiber over the LAST MILE to your home and begins offering uncapped, unlimited monthly service to customers. Basically Japan-like-rates here in the US (ie. 100 MB / 100 MB or better yet 1 GB / 1 GB for LESS THAN $55.00 PER MONTH!) I like many of pissed off consumers will NEVER go back to our current telcos and ISPs, EVER. I will also educate all my friends, my family, my children to the anti-American corporate policies that have persisted since you all began offering service (or more correctly stated, your customer no service).
You can screw with us, AS YOU HAVE, AS YOU DO, AS YOU WILL, but many of us remember, we do not forget and we tell everyone we know so that you can NOT continue your FUD ways.
Ultimately we will have this. Either through government intervention (we vow to keep replacing politicians accepting telco money until we have enough that will actually represent us) or through a responsible NEW corporation. (one that has no ties to existing telcos) That corporation will be like the GOOGLE of telcos and will have 90% of the US Market, let the rest of you who have been screwing your neighbors (your customers) over for multiple decades fight over the 10% of SHILLS and fools left to you.
Basic economics will tell you that for increased services, there must be an increased cost.
The fact of the matter is you do not know your facts.
If by "twenty states [without income tax]" you mean seven. ;)
Thanks TheoMurpse! I should have taken the time to do the search, but did not. Now based on that map, there are nine states without a state income tax. Though the other two will tax dividends and interest. Something tells me that if you are smart enough to invest wisely over a period of years it would have been better to pay the income tax and not pay an extra tax on dividends and interest.
Actually we would be better off if they passed the FairTax (I wish more people would understand that the FairTax is complete non partisan, regardless of who comes out in favor of it. It got its name from an average citizen who after evaluating it as part of a focus group, stated that this new tax system was fair to everyone, thus it was named the FairTax.) and we no longer had to pay taxes a second, third, fourth and fifth time. It does get a bit ridiculous doesn't it.
And if I want to stay in a warmer climate, than the number just reduced to three: Nevada, Texas and Florida. To avoid the mosquitoes, well probably less in Nevada, but I bet they have a few. Anywhere near water, right.
I think the two yellow states are interesting, since they only tax dividends and interest, there is still not income tax on your salary or regular income. So does that mean nine total, perhaps?
Below is a side-track and a bit off topic, so do not read further if you are only interested in the states without income tax. Consider yourself warned....lol.
Speaking specifically of Mosquitoes, in LA, near the La Brea tar pits, they posted this warning!, here is a rather tasty picture, but tasty for who?
Here is the link so that you can post your own images and tag them anything related to mosquitoes, specifically West Nile Virus, mosquito, mosquitoes,
The picture on Flickr posted as near the La Brea Tar Pits is actually pointing to the wrong location, Whittier is to the East by about 20 miles. here is the true location of the La Brea tar pits, some might remember the images from the movie Volcanoe (1997) with Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Keith David, Gaby Hoffman, Don Cheadle and many others.
yes