How exactly would you prove that the human race is ready for cloning, short of actually cloning someone and finding out? Do we run simulations, tagging a set of identical twins as "clones" and then see if the neo-luddites show up with torches?
I want my freaking webpad!!! I too want to look like Jean-Luc Picard with my trusty cyber-clipboard. I want to surf while walking down the street, bumping into mundane non-technoweenies. Give me webpad or give me death!
Seriously though, when the heck are the webpads/tablet PC's coming out. I've only been seeing prototypes for the last 3 or 4 years. Anyone have one?
I imagine the stockholders would force them to compete. If one of the three can make more money by fiercely competing with the other two, and doesn't, they would be threatened with those wonderful stockholder lawsuits we've seen lately. Each MS would be beholden to stockholders who would demand fierce competition.
That's the theory anyway. Of course, to hedge the bet, the DOJ probably ought to have some sort of legal remebdy to stop collusion.
These guys have taken the ball and run with it, as far as Linux is concerned, but let's not deify the group that brought us Microchannel architecture in a move to regain absolute control of the market. Working with IBM in Linux development is good and important, but don't lose sight of their history as a megacorp bound on dominating everything in sight. The only reason they aren't still doing it, is a bigger, meaner and more evil company came along.
Aha! You've discovered the plan of our Microsoft Masters! When the great XP is launched, our Judge-O-Trons will begin the process of recalling it, driving thousands of Lusers to CompUSA in hopes of getting a copy of the "dangerous and highly illegal" XP! It'll be more popular than Napster!
Instead of separating MS into an OS division and a software division, which just creates two monopolies, why doesn't the DOJ just break them into three identical companies. Each company will hold the same IP rights and can sell and market anything currently being done by MS. Make three companies all selling the same thing and you really will help consumers by forcing giants to compete with each other, thereby driving prices down and reliability up.
Actually, it's not about trust, it's about due
diligence. If the data belonged solely to our
company, then it might be a different issue,
but we are a financial company and we are expected
to do our absolute best to secure our client's
data. Is it possible to close every avenue? No.
But it's possible to make it harder and try our
best.
Well, we have about 500+ employees in multiple
states, many of whom are short term employees
dues to the business my company is in. We have
two major competitors who routinely poach our
sales-people so they can get their client lists.
Sending data to competitors is a big deal for
us, as we are in financial services and could
easily be held liable if financial information
was sent out.
Obviously something a bit more elegant is needed.
Something like the CodeRed worm that hacks and
defaces, while doing minimal damage. A simple
link on every web site it touches, linking to
FreeDmitry.org. Of course, it would crash
them in a heartbeat...
We should absolutely consider organizing an effort to help install and support free software in the public schools. How hard would it be to set up a site where concerned technologists who want to give something back to the school systems can register. We can start a dialogue with administrators, teachers and school boards. We can show them how to save money while increasing the technical ability (and therefore the money-making ability) of themselves and their students.
Imagine with me for a moment:
It's Saturday morning and bleary eyed technical people are showing up on the doorstep of Joe Blow Junior High. Carrying their gear and unloading donated computer systems, they go about setting up an entire network using only free software. The teachers and administrators show up at noon and begin taking short courses on how to use all this new software. At the end of the day, the head administrator gets a technical contact (a local who volunteered) that he can call when things go wrong.
Not only does this help Linux/*BSD/etc...it helps the kids and the people struggling to make sure they don't end up working at McDonald's.
I, for one, would be happy to volunteer my weekends for something like this. Anyone else interested?
I am the mail/network admin for a midsized company. We have limited capital, and therefore limited bandwidth (the big pipes cost big money).
Because of this and to protect ourselves from the liability mentioned above, we monitor email in a way that we consider to be reasonably fair. All incoming, outgoing and intercompany emails are scanned for a set list of words and phrases (that was an interesting day, keying in all of the offensives words I knew), in addition to being virus scanned, checked for size, etc.
Incoming mail that throws a lexical violation (contains enough of the words/phrases to red flag it) gets bounced with a polite messge regarding innapropriate business content. Outgoing and intercompany mails which we might be liable for that throw a lexical violation are forwarded directly to the head of HR, who determines if it is necessary to take any action. 9 times out of 10, nothing is done.
Regarding the web, we catch every single URL that gets keyed in. We do restrict and filter content, more to reduce bandwidth usage than any other reason. On the other hand, as the guy who had to search the logs, I can tell you definately there were people surfing porn. I'm not talking about an occasional glance either, I'm talking an hour long porn fest. The software we use allows us to tailor a surfing policy for different groups of users. Data entry personnel who don't need the internet for business use simply don't have access. My company pays for the pipe. They pay for it so the business can grow, no to provide an ISP to employees.
As a final note, I saw someone talking about smartasses who put all of the offensive words in there sig. Yes, it's very cute, and it happened to us several times. I've found that after an extended conversation with both HR and th Manager of Information Security they find better uses for their time.
Actually, I want my browser to handle email and usenet. I still use usenet fairly constantly and I have yet to use an online email interface that didn't make my teeth ache.
I find it astonishing that Marcus Ranum spews bile out of one of his faces on the "grey hat" hackers and those who expose security holes, yet speaks words of glowing praise out of the other one for a book like "Hacking Exposed" which, of course, gives anyone who cares to read it step-by-step instructions and pointers to all the evil "sploits" Ranum was ranting about.
Slashdot Mirror
How exactly would you prove that the human race is ready for cloning, short of actually cloning someone and finding out? Do we run simulations, tagging a set of identical twins as "clones" and then see if the neo-luddites show up with torches?
I want my freaking webpad!!! I too want to look like Jean-Luc Picard with my trusty cyber-clipboard. I want to surf while walking down the street, bumping into mundane non-technoweenies. Give me webpad or give me death!
Seriously though, when the heck are the webpads/tablet PC's coming out. I've only been seeing prototypes for the last 3 or 4 years. Anyone have one?
I imagine the stockholders would force them to compete. If one of the three can make more money by fiercely competing with the other two, and doesn't, they would be threatened with those wonderful stockholder lawsuits we've seen lately. Each MS would be beholden to stockholders who would demand fierce competition.
That's the theory anyway. Of course, to hedge the bet, the DOJ probably ought to have some sort of legal remebdy to stop collusion.
These guys have taken the ball and run with it, as far as Linux is concerned, but let's not deify the group that brought us Microchannel architecture in a move to regain absolute control of the market. Working with IBM in Linux development is good and important, but don't lose sight of their history as a megacorp bound on dominating everything in sight. The only reason they aren't still doing it, is a bigger, meaner and more evil company came along.
Aha! You've discovered the plan of our Microsoft Masters! When the great XP is launched, our Judge-O-Trons will begin the process of recalling it, driving thousands of Lusers to CompUSA in hopes of getting a copy of the "dangerous and highly illegal" XP! It'll be more popular than Napster!
Instead of separating MS into an OS division and a software division, which just creates two monopolies, why doesn't the DOJ just break them into three identical companies. Each company will hold the same IP rights and can sell and market anything currently being done by MS. Make three companies all selling the same thing and you really will help consumers by forcing giants to compete with each other, thereby driving prices down and reliability up.
Of course, then there would be 3 MS's to hate.
When speaking about CodeRed? Just because the networks have stopped talking about it, doesn't mean it's gone away.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm still getting hundreds of CodeRed attacks every week.
Actually, it's not about trust, it's about due diligence. If the data belonged solely to our company, then it might be a different issue, but we are a financial company and we are expected to do our absolute best to secure our client's data. Is it possible to close every avenue? No. But it's possible to make it harder and try our best.
Well, we have about 500+ employees in multiple
states, many of whom are short term employees
dues to the business my company is in. We have
two major competitors who routinely poach our
sales-people so they can get their client lists.
Sending data to competitors is a big deal for
us, as we are in financial services and could
easily be held liable if financial information
was sent out.
Obviously something a bit more elegant is needed. Something like the CodeRed worm that hacks and defaces, while doing minimal damage. A simple link on every web site it touches, linking to FreeDmitry.org. Of course, it would crash them in a heartbeat...
It's simple. Using PGP you could easily send
confidential company documents out of the company
to a competitor.
We should absolutely consider organizing an effort to help install and support free software in the public schools. How hard would it be to set up a site where concerned technologists who want to give something back to the school systems can register. We can start a dialogue with administrators, teachers and school boards. We can show them how to save money while increasing the technical ability (and therefore the money-making ability) of themselves and their students.
Imagine with me for a moment:
It's Saturday morning and bleary eyed technical people are showing up on the doorstep of Joe Blow Junior High. Carrying their gear and unloading donated computer systems, they go about setting up an entire network using only free software. The teachers and administrators show up at noon and begin taking short courses on how to use all this new software. At the end of the day, the head administrator gets a technical contact (a local who volunteered) that he can call when things go wrong.
Not only does this help Linux/*BSD/etc...it helps the kids and the people struggling to make sure they don't end up working at McDonald's.
I, for one, would be happy to volunteer my weekends for something like this. Anyone else interested?
KitMarlowe
"You don't think science knows everything, do you? Can't there be things outside the realm of scientific knowledge?"
-- reminds me of a quote from a James Morrow novel.
"Science has all the answers, we just don't have all the science."
Well, we handle it by blocking online email sites and chat gateways out of hand. Not Hotmail, No Yahoo, no mirc.
kitmarlowe
I am the mail/network admin for a midsized company. We have limited capital, and therefore limited bandwidth (the big pipes cost big money).
Because of this and to protect ourselves from the liability mentioned above, we monitor email in a way that we consider to be reasonably fair. All incoming, outgoing and intercompany emails are scanned for a set list of words and phrases (that was an interesting day, keying in all of the offensives words I knew), in addition to being virus scanned, checked for size, etc.
Incoming mail that throws a lexical violation (contains enough of the words/phrases to red flag it) gets bounced with a polite messge regarding innapropriate business content. Outgoing and intercompany mails which we might be liable for that throw a lexical violation are forwarded directly to the head of HR, who determines if it is necessary to take any action. 9 times out of 10, nothing is done.
Regarding the web, we catch every single URL that gets keyed in. We do restrict and filter content, more to reduce bandwidth usage than any other reason. On the other hand, as the guy who had to search the logs, I can tell you definately there were people surfing porn. I'm not talking about an occasional glance either, I'm talking an hour long porn fest. The software we use allows us to tailor a surfing policy for different groups of users. Data entry personnel who don't need the internet for business use simply don't have access. My company pays for the pipe. They pay for it so the business can grow, no to provide an ISP to employees.
As a final note, I saw someone talking about smartasses who put all of the offensive words in there sig. Yes, it's very cute, and it happened to us several times. I've found that after an extended conversation with both HR and th Manager of Information Security they find better uses for their time.
Actually, I want my browser to handle email and usenet. I still use usenet fairly constantly and I have yet to use an online email interface that didn't make my teeth ache.
kitmarlowe
I find it astonishing that Marcus Ranum spews bile out of one of his faces on the "grey hat" hackers and those who expose security holes, yet speaks words of glowing praise out of the other one for a book like "Hacking Exposed" which, of course, gives anyone who cares to read it step-by-step instructions and pointers to all the evil "sploits" Ranum was ranting about.