It may be the corporate IT staff who are "dealing" with it, but the user still has to wait until their computer is fixed before they can get any work done.
With your example of purchasing a prototype vehicle, I would fully expect some sort of physical contract that would require notarized signatures and copies of the completed contract for both parties before anyone would allow the buyer to leave with the vehicle. I consider that a legal and binding agreement and no verbal agreement would be sufficient. Simply clicking a picture on a screen does not meet the minimum requirements for a "legal and binding" agreement in my book. As a counter example, web sites like amazon.com do not ship a product to the buyer simply because someone clicks on a picture of a product. If they did, they would never be able to win a case against the buyer in court. There are certain requirements that should be met. I think we all agree that expecting payment for a product simply because someone clicked a picture on the computer screen is extremely naive and foolish. Why would we think any differently of clicking to agree to a EULA? By Microsoft making the requirements so ridiculously easy, the company seems to imply that they don't care if people break the agreement. Otherwise, there would be more strict requirements.
I fully believe Helium3 is the primary reason we are going back to the moon (and that other countries are racing us to get there), as Helium3 is the most likely fuel source for the reactors that fusion scientists want to build today since it gives off far less destructive neutron radiation than hydrogen reactions. Petroleum won't last forever and we're already complaining about the high prices. Still, I don't agree with scrapping ISS at this time. ISS allows us to learn about the effects of longer-duration missions on the human body, for example bone loss. Going to the moon or Mars, we need more experience and to learn how to adapt ourselves to the environment.
I know in my own organization that management barely knows what the proprietary software does for them, much less the open source software. So this could be a really good thing if it causes IT managers, CIOs, CTOs, etc. to wake up and realize just how much of their business really runs on open source software. They might start treating it with a little more respect, even though much of it does not appear on their budget reports.
Mind you, the mirror itself will heat up over time, even if only from the ambient air temperature. So if the mirror is hot, it should not be touching the networking enclosure. For good effect, the mirror should probably be placed at least two centimeters away from the enclosure, so as not be touching it in any way. You want air-flow between the two. In addition to reducing heat transfer through radiation, you will also want to reduce heat transfer through conduction and convection as much as possible.
Use a bit of science! You can make the box a little cooler by reflecting infra-red light away from the box. When we human beings "feel heat" from things like the sun and electric heaters, we are sensing the infra-red electromagnetic "light waves" radiating from the source. Since that is light, even though we humans can't see it, finding a mirror that reflects infra-red well should help keep the box cooler, if it is near the heat source. Of course, you will still need to cool the box since the ambient air temperature near the box is probably higher than recommended for the networking equipment. Still, using an IR mirror may greatly reduce the amount of cooling needed.
If we define Internet addiction as a "real" disease, then what else might be considered so? For example: Let's say you are about to terminate an office worker for using the phone for personal business too often. Can this office worker then claim a medical issue in that they are addicted to talking on the phone and then request treatment? I think that is going too far. If anything, we are simply talking about general obsessive-compulsive behavior. Of course, those people might spend less time on the Internet if society placed much more value upon getting out of the house or office to enjoy other people's company in person... perhaps a shorter work week?
My opinion on this topic is that current problems in education are a result of not treating students with proper respect. Some will consider this statement completely backward, thinking that students should be treating the faculty with more respect. However, I think students perceive that standardized test grades are the only thing that matter to the schools. Whatever talents or interests a student may have, only the grades matter -- not the student as a person. This perception by the students is demeaning to them. They are only worth the grades they earn. In that case, I completely understand why they would want to leave school, go to work, and be "graded" on real-world tasks, not academic standardized tests. Treat the student more like a rational, sensitive, and valuable person and I think you will see them enjoying their education a little more and staying in school. Of course, it also helps to find ways to make the subject matter interesting. I've also seen far too many faculty who repeat the same tired old riff year after year. Keep it fresh, folks.
It may be true that only one percent of pages on the Internet contain porn, but porn-related spam gets to much more than one percent of Internet mailboxes.
The article says "the cost of business interruption was the most helpful metric." That's great with a for-profit business that loses money when their computing systems are down and customers will go to another vendor. What about non-profits, government, education, etc? These types of operations don't have a strong monetary incentive to keep systems secure. If the tax collector's office computers are down because of the latest virus, it doesn't cost the government anything except time. They are still going to get your money.
In my opinion, hydrogen is a distraction by the petroleum industry, which would be the primary source and that is why G.W. supports it. The problems with hydrogen are stated as "production, storage, distribution and use". It seems to me this is true of any energy source. However, I believe that we have solved all but the storage issue for electricity. We know how to produce electricity in great quantities and new means of production are coming on-line every day (solar, hydro, wind, etc.) and these techniques are ever improving. We have a distribution system in place for electric, which just needs to be expanded. Use is also covered as electric motors are far more efficient than fuel engines. That only leaves storage. Research monies should be spent on engineering storage solutions for electricity instead of solving all of the above stated problems for hydrogen.
And at my business, we use Novell's eDirectory 8.8.1 product running on SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 and Novell Identity Manager to synchronize passwords in real-time (event driven) to Active Directory, other Novell eDirectory systems, Oracle and MS-SQL databases, PeopleSoft and other systems, some in different cities, all secured with SSL connections. Our system holds over 300,000 accounts, with about 60,000 of those being active. I think we expire about 300 passwords a day on average.
A recent Infoworld article ranked it very highly. Novell Identity Manager is very flexible and powerful product and I highly recommend it, especially if you're not a huge fan of Microsoft. Storing passwords in a centralized system is a valid solution as long as your "identity vault", to borrow Novell's term, is properly secured. Personally, I could never feel safe storing all our passwords in Active Directory. Besides all that, I don't have to worry about the critical security patch of the week since it runs on Linux.
Having managed both Windows and Linux systems in an environment with 500-1000 machines, I can say that the workload ends up being about the same. If someone were to tell me that managing Linux is "too complex", I would respond by saying that you just haven't yet learned Linux, but perhaps have learned a specific distribution. In essence, Windows is a single distribution and learning only one is easy enough. However, once you understand the fundamental concepts of Linux (or any unix-like OS), adapting to a new distribution is relatively easy. There is a learning curve with Linux, but there is with Windows too. Just ask anyone who has switched from a Mac to Windows. If you're not willing to learn, then you're just lazy.
Novell still has a lot to offer. Just one example is Identity Manager, which synchronizes data between different kinds of systems in "real-time" (event driven). It can handle just about any type of directory service (eDir, AD, or LDAP) and any sort of database (Oracle, MSSQL, MySQL, Sybase, Postgres, etc.). It can synchronize accounts and passwords (bi-directionally with eDir, AD, and NT domains) to many systems, including various operating systems. Infoworld recently ranked it the best such solution available (and that was the older version). The product can also handle provisioning of resources automatically. The tools used to manage this very complex software make it about as simple and easy as it possibly could be. This sort of software is very beneficial to larger companies with many different types of systems that all need to be synchronized in some way.
I'm glad to hear that sort of knowlegable and encouraging talk and am tired of companies who appoint a CEO only hoping to increase the stock price, with no idea of what the company is really about. Novell does have some very good products (eDirectory and Identity Manager are excellent) and moving the existing services from NetWare to Linux, especially taking advantage of 64-bit memory access) should be accelerated (in my opinion). It's obvious that there will never be a 64-bit NetWare and the NetWare platform is being asked to do too much, much more than was originally intended -- causing NetWare to be unstable (many memory leaks), in my opinion.
Moving to Linux and focusing the development resources on providing services is a good strategic direction. I'm also pleased that Novell has decided to make the Linux desktop a viable solution for those who are currently using Windows. Redhat, SuSE, and others have never made Linux as accessible as say Apple has done with Mac OS. I hope Novell will finally be able to take the lead and finally bring Linux desktops into the mainstream (not just in the workplace). When you look around, Windows is the only non-unix-based OS with any significant market share. Resistance is futile, Microsoft! Your days are numbered! Unix will prevail!:-)
What I've wanted for a long time is an "EM camera" where I could "see" sources of electromagnetic radiation in real-time, something like a modern digital camera with an LCD view screen. We've got cameras for EM in the light range, but why not for other frequencies (higher or lower)? For example, I want to point this camera at an EM source like a microwave dish and see it sending out a beam like the headlamp on a car. I'm not saying it's practical. I just want one. If you could do this at low enough frequencies, you might be able to detect radio transmissions at a distance (say finding someone hiding in foliage across the street and using a FRS/CB/amatuer radio).
Whenever I have a question like this, I try to devise a similar question from a non-computer perspective (a different context) to help me wrap my brain around the idea. This also happens to work especially well when trying to explain computer issues to those who are not computer literate.
For example, "What does vehicle literate mean?" A car, like a computer, is a single complex machine that the average person above a certain age is expected to know how to operate. So how does one become "car literate"? Because you know how to drive one vehicle does not mean you can operate a boat or airplane or the space shuttle. So "computer literate" probably does not mean that you can operate any computer, just the most common variety (e.g. Windows and Office). Even then, you might know how to drive an automatic and not a standard (Windows vs Linux).
Analogy is a great tool to not only improve others understanding of a given concept but also your own.
Just for fun consider this: Computer support technicians and doctors are similar in many ways. They are both supposed to be highly paid, highly trained, highly skilled, and highly knowledgeable about an extremely complex machine that they did not design or create and of which cannot possibly know everything about. Often, they rely on their limited experience to make a best guess about the root cause of the machine's particular problem and then follow up with lots of testing to see if they are correct or not. As you probably know, some computer support people, trained and certified or not, seem to have an innate gift for solving computer problems while others should never be allowed to touch a computer. Makes you think about your doctor, eh?
I'm guessing you have already considered the relevant
University of Texas System polices,
the Office of General Council Ethics Standards,
and the ITS Policies. Sorry, I work for another Texas university.:-)
Universities tend to be generous and tolerant of a personal computer on their network so long as it does not interfere with your work, does not violate any laws or policies, and does not interfere in any way with the network or other computing systems.
With that in mind, know that you and only you are responsible for the security of your computer and that you will be held responsible for any undesireable activity coming from your computer. If someone were to manage to compromise your computer and then attempt to compromise other university systems, you will at least be held responsible for not securing your own system, if not held responsible for anything coming from your computer -- or through it.
If you are quite certain that you can keep your computer secure, then by all means run your own server and learn as much as possible. It's best not to experiment with production university systems. Besides, one could argue that using university-owned systems for your own purposes is a violation of the ethics policy. However, using your personal computer on the university network is no different than any student using a laptop.
How do get a patent for an "infinite-speed" device? Sounds like some kind of "free energy" scam to me, probably due to "zero-point" energy and having to with "wormholes" and "warps" and crystals and all that jazz.;-)
I am reasonably aware of the conditions required in the marketplace for such a thing to happen and that the "right" thing often isn't profitable. I simply speculate upon how long it might be before such conditions exist, which I why I wonder "how long" and not "what must happen".
Slashdot Mirror
It may be the corporate IT staff who are "dealing" with it, but the user still has to wait until their computer is fixed before they can get any work done.
With your example of purchasing a prototype vehicle, I would fully expect some sort of physical contract that would require notarized signatures and copies of the completed contract for both parties before anyone would allow the buyer to leave with the vehicle. I consider that a legal and binding agreement and no verbal agreement would be sufficient. Simply clicking a picture on a screen does not meet the minimum requirements for a "legal and binding" agreement in my book. As a counter example, web sites like amazon.com do not ship a product to the buyer simply because someone clicks on a picture of a product. If they did, they would never be able to win a case against the buyer in court. There are certain requirements that should be met. I think we all agree that expecting payment for a product simply because someone clicked a picture on the computer screen is extremely naive and foolish. Why would we think any differently of clicking to agree to a EULA? By Microsoft making the requirements so ridiculously easy, the company seems to imply that they don't care if people break the agreement. Otherwise, there would be more strict requirements.
I fully believe Helium3 is the primary reason we are going back to the moon (and that other countries are racing us to get there), as Helium3 is the most likely fuel source for the reactors that fusion scientists want to build today since it gives off far less destructive neutron radiation than hydrogen reactions. Petroleum won't last forever and we're already complaining about the high prices. Still, I don't agree with scrapping ISS at this time. ISS allows us to learn about the effects of longer-duration missions on the human body, for example bone loss. Going to the moon or Mars, we need more experience and to learn how to adapt ourselves to the environment.
I know in my own organization that management barely knows what the proprietary software does for them, much less the open source software. So this could be a really good thing if it causes IT managers, CIOs, CTOs, etc. to wake up and realize just how much of their business really runs on open source software. They might start treating it with a little more respect, even though much of it does not appear on their budget reports.
As he said, the unit is selling well at its current price so there is no need for a price cut. Want a price cut? Stop buying it.
Mind you, the mirror itself will heat up over time, even if only from the ambient air temperature. So if the mirror is hot, it should not be touching the networking enclosure. For good effect, the mirror should probably be placed at least two centimeters away from the enclosure, so as not be touching it in any way. You want air-flow between the two. In addition to reducing heat transfer through radiation, you will also want to reduce heat transfer through conduction and convection as much as possible.
Use a bit of science! You can make the box a little cooler by reflecting infra-red light away from the box. When we human beings "feel heat" from things like the sun and electric heaters, we are sensing the infra-red electromagnetic "light waves" radiating from the source. Since that is light, even though we humans can't see it, finding a mirror that reflects infra-red well should help keep the box cooler, if it is near the heat source. Of course, you will still need to cool the box since the ambient air temperature near the box is probably higher than recommended for the networking equipment. Still, using an IR mirror may greatly reduce the amount of cooling needed.
If we define Internet addiction as a "real" disease, then what else might be considered so? For example: Let's say you are about to terminate an office worker for using the phone for personal business too often. Can this office worker then claim a medical issue in that they are addicted to talking on the phone and then request treatment? I think that is going too far. If anything, we are simply talking about general obsessive-compulsive behavior. Of course, those people might spend less time on the Internet if society placed much more value upon getting out of the house or office to enjoy other people's company in person... perhaps a shorter work week?
My opinion on this topic is that current problems in education are a result of not treating students with proper respect. Some will consider this statement completely backward, thinking that students should be treating the faculty with more respect. However, I think students perceive that standardized test grades are the only thing that matter to the schools. Whatever talents or interests a student may have, only the grades matter -- not the student as a person. This perception by the students is demeaning to them. They are only worth the grades they earn. In that case, I completely understand why they would want to leave school, go to work, and be "graded" on real-world tasks, not academic standardized tests. Treat the student more like a rational, sensitive, and valuable person and I think you will see them enjoying their education a little more and staying in school. Of course, it also helps to find ways to make the subject matter interesting. I've also seen far too many faculty who repeat the same tired old riff year after year. Keep it fresh, folks.
Only for people who have "photographic" memories.
It may be true that only one percent of pages on the Internet contain porn, but porn-related spam gets to much more than one percent of Internet mailboxes.
The article says "the cost of business interruption was the most helpful metric." That's great with a for-profit business that loses money when their computing systems are down and customers will go to another vendor. What about non-profits, government, education, etc? These types of operations don't have a strong monetary incentive to keep systems secure. If the tax collector's office computers are down because of the latest virus, it doesn't cost the government anything except time. They are still going to get your money.
In my opinion, hydrogen is a distraction by the petroleum industry, which would be the primary source and that is why G.W. supports it. The problems with hydrogen are stated as "production, storage, distribution and use". It seems to me this is true of any energy source. However, I believe that we have solved all but the storage issue for electricity. We know how to produce electricity in great quantities and new means of production are coming on-line every day (solar, hydro, wind, etc.) and these techniques are ever improving. We have a distribution system in place for electric, which just needs to be expanded. Use is also covered as electric motors are far more efficient than fuel engines. That only leaves storage. Research monies should be spent on engineering storage solutions for electricity instead of solving all of the above stated problems for hydrogen.
By that chart, I would suggest Google move its data centers to Idaho.
And at my business, we use Novell's eDirectory 8.8.1 product running on SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 and Novell Identity Manager to synchronize passwords in real-time (event driven) to Active Directory, other Novell eDirectory systems, Oracle and MS-SQL databases, PeopleSoft and other systems, some in different cities, all secured with SSL connections. Our system holds over 300,000 accounts, with about 60,000 of those being active. I think we expire about 300 passwords a day on average.
A recent Infoworld article ranked it very highly. Novell Identity Manager is very flexible and powerful product and I highly recommend it, especially if you're not a huge fan of Microsoft. Storing passwords in a centralized system is a valid solution as long as your "identity vault", to borrow Novell's term, is properly secured. Personally, I could never feel safe storing all our passwords in Active Directory. Besides all that, I don't have to worry about the critical security patch of the week since it runs on Linux.
Having managed both Windows and Linux systems in an environment with 500-1000 machines, I can say that the workload ends up being about the same. If someone were to tell me that managing Linux is "too complex", I would respond by saying that you just haven't yet learned Linux, but perhaps have learned a specific distribution. In essence, Windows is a single distribution and learning only one is easy enough. However, once you understand the fundamental concepts of Linux (or any unix-like OS), adapting to a new distribution is relatively easy. There is a learning curve with Linux, but there is with Windows too. Just ask anyone who has switched from a Mac to Windows. If you're not willing to learn, then you're just lazy.
Novell still has a lot to offer. Just one example is Identity Manager, which synchronizes data between different kinds of systems in "real-time" (event driven). It can handle just about any type of directory service (eDir, AD, or LDAP) and any sort of database (Oracle, MSSQL, MySQL, Sybase, Postgres, etc.). It can synchronize accounts and passwords (bi-directionally with eDir, AD, and NT domains) to many systems, including various operating systems. Infoworld recently ranked it the best such solution available (and that was the older version). The product can also handle provisioning of resources automatically. The tools used to manage this very complex software make it about as simple and easy as it possibly could be. This sort of software is very beneficial to larger companies with many different types of systems that all need to be synchronized in some way.
I'm glad to hear that sort of knowlegable and encouraging talk and am tired of companies who appoint a CEO only hoping to increase the stock price, with no idea of what the company is really about. Novell does have some very good products (eDirectory and Identity Manager are excellent) and moving the existing services from NetWare to Linux, especially taking advantage of 64-bit memory access) should be accelerated (in my opinion). It's obvious that there will never be a 64-bit NetWare and the NetWare platform is being asked to do too much, much more than was originally intended -- causing NetWare to be unstable (many memory leaks), in my opinion.
:-)
Moving to Linux and focusing the development resources on providing services is a good strategic direction. I'm also pleased that Novell has decided to make the Linux desktop a viable solution for those who are currently using Windows. Redhat, SuSE, and others have never made Linux as accessible as say Apple has done with Mac OS. I hope Novell will finally be able to take the lead and finally bring Linux desktops into the mainstream (not just in the workplace). When you look around, Windows is the only non-unix-based OS with any significant market share. Resistance is futile, Microsoft! Your days are numbered! Unix will prevail!
What I've wanted for a long time is an "EM camera" where I could "see" sources of electromagnetic radiation in real-time, something like a modern digital camera with an LCD view screen. We've got cameras for EM in the light range, but why not for other frequencies (higher or lower)? For example, I want to point this camera at an EM source like a microwave dish and see it sending out a beam like the headlamp on a car. I'm not saying it's practical. I just want one. If you could do this at low enough frequencies, you might be able to detect radio transmissions at a distance (say finding someone hiding in foliage across the street and using a FRS/CB/amatuer radio).
Whenever I have a question like this, I try to devise a similar question from a non-computer perspective (a different context) to help me wrap my brain around the idea. This also happens to work especially well when trying to explain computer issues to those who are not computer literate.
For example, "What does vehicle literate mean?" A car, like a computer, is a single complex machine that the average person above a certain age is expected to know how to operate. So how does one become "car literate"? Because you know how to drive one vehicle does not mean you can operate a boat or airplane or the space shuttle. So "computer literate" probably does not mean that you can operate any computer, just the most common variety (e.g. Windows and Office). Even then, you might know how to drive an automatic and not a standard (Windows vs Linux).
Analogy is a great tool to not only improve others understanding of a given concept but also your own.
Just for fun consider this: Computer support technicians and doctors are similar in many ways. They are both supposed to be highly paid, highly trained, highly skilled, and highly knowledgeable about an extremely complex machine that they did not design or create and of which cannot possibly know everything about. Often, they rely on their limited experience to make a best guess about the root cause of the machine's particular problem and then follow up with lots of testing to see if they are correct or not. As you probably know, some computer support people, trained and certified or not, seem to have an innate gift for solving computer problems while others should never be allowed to touch a computer. Makes you think about your doctor, eh?
I'd rather have Apple pie than Windows pie. Ewww.. gross!
Why is it that Larry's on a buying spree lately? Can't he do anything useful with his own company?
I'm guessing you have already considered the relevant University of Texas System polices, the Office of General Council Ethics Standards, and the ITS Policies. Sorry, I work for another Texas university.
With that in mind, know that you and only you are responsible for the security of your computer and that you will be held responsible for any undesireable activity coming from your computer. If someone were to manage to compromise your computer and then attempt to compromise other university systems, you will at least be held responsible for not securing your own system, if not held responsible for anything coming from your computer -- or through it. If you are quite certain that you can keep your computer secure, then by all means run your own server and learn as much as possible. It's best not to experiment with production university systems. Besides, one could argue that using university-owned systems for your own purposes is a violation of the ethics policy. However, using your personal computer on the university network is no different than any student using a laptop.
How do get a patent for an "infinite-speed" device? Sounds like some kind of "free energy" scam to me, probably due to "zero-point" energy and having to with "wormholes" and "warps" and crystals and all that jazz. ;-)
I am reasonably aware of the conditions required in the marketplace for such a thing to happen and that the "right" thing often isn't profitable. I simply speculate upon how long it might be before such conditions exist, which I why I wonder "how long" and not "what must happen".