Heh. What if the ship is only 90% full of penguins? Does this mean that only 10% of the ship is really being used, while the other 90% stores penguins? "Normality has been restored. If there's anything else you can't deal with, you're on your own." ---
About all I've heard about this case is that they caught the guy because he bragged about doing it on irc. Lots of hacker wannabes brag about doing stuff they never did all the time. The bigger the better. It's kind of like in high school when guys brag about having sex with so and so, when the people doing the most bragging are really virgins. This is pretty thin evidence to convict someone with, and besides, didn't this happen before with the last guy they arrested for exactly this crime? ---
This whole thread is annoying. For several reasons:
- Jon Katz is using this sort of thing every bit as much as these corporations and politicians are using this thing to boost their own egos and bank accounts. A bunch of people once told Jon that he "gets it" when it comes to geek issues, and now he jumps at every chance to be the champion of "our cause." It's really starting to get annoying now, especially when he really doesn't get it.
- There have been a number of people saying "Hey, if we want to get rid of violence, do X." I hate to tell you this kids, but as it is stated in the article to which you are responding and elsewhere, crime - violent or otherwise - is at its lowest level in the US for a long time. Things are even better now than they were in that fabled golden age that you think you remember. (whenever that was.) You clearly can't "fix" this problem by doing X. If you fix it any more than it's already fixed, you're going to break something. Like laws.
- It is your right to own firearms. There are more reasons than you think for this right. There are plenty of people who hunt game for food in the US, and telling them they can't own a gun is a lot like telling them they shouldn't be allowed to eat so much over the winter. Then there's the obvious reason: self protection. Ban guns and only the criminals will have guns. Don't think it will make guns unavailable to them either. Even more important is the following scenario: Imagine if some Ultra-violent lunatic decides to make the nation a little more racially pure with a shotgun and a McDonalds, killing all 40 patrons (children included), the staff, and himself in the span of about 20 minutes.
The loudmouths would stand up and start shouting for all firearms to be banned. They will get a _lot_ of public support right at that moment, and a large number of politicians would be delighted to soak up that support, saying that "Something Must Be Done About the Violent Culture We Live In Today," (tm) proposing a large number of changes to laws, including the repealing of the fourth amendment, and the banning of all violent content on Television, even the news. The minority of people saying "Hey, that's not right!" will be drowned out by the majority _demanding_ these changes. 95% of voters will vote, a record high for the past 100 years. People will get what they want, and the majority of them will be happy with it. They will feel a lot safer now; they won't see news items about murder and destruction, they won't see violence in the streets, and they will be secure in the knowledge that since all the guns are gone, people aren't being killed by them.
The whole world will be wonderful, with this perspective. Of course, a minority would protest these changes, and do it very loudly. Those that aren't so enthusiastic, would eventually stop protesting. The politicians declare that they aren't going to listen to the outrageous demands of "special interest groups," especially those protests that are getting increasingly smaller and louder because only the most fervent are going to stick around very long. The general populace is going to see these protests populated by nuts and lunatics - just like that guy a couple years back - and they don't want to have anything to do with _that_.
Seeing what's happening, the organizers of these protests start to organize something quite a lot bigger with all the people who used to support them, but haven't had the time or energy lately to picket. One way or another, this peaceful protest slowly gains momentum and people get angry, throwing rocks and bottles at the police who start to confront the unruly crowd. A number of the protesters are injured when the police respond with teargas and billy clubs. This is just the first day. All these people that planned on being here all week aren't going anywhere soon. They're also quite surprised to see that their protest isn't on the news. The next night, the same scenario gets played out with the teargas and whatnot, but it only serves to piss off the crowd even more. A riot breaks out, and the police no longer have control of the situation. TV stations start debating whether they'll be allowed to air this or not, what with the strict controls on violent content.
The people in the city where this is all going on are getting scared though, and are starting to panic, many boarding up their businesses and leaving town. In an effort to get control of the situation, the government tells the newsies that they shouldn't air the protest at all, or the whole country is going to panic. Well, that's a good enough reason, right? The government never said anything about the army moving in to control the riots that have been ongoing though. Martial law has been declared in the city and it's been kept quiet so as not to alarm the populace. Reporters that have specifically been told by their bosses _not_ to cover this are being turned away by the military, and most do, because they feel as if they're doing something wrong.
But a tape gets smuggled out, and the BBC is more than happy to broadcast it. Similar protests and riots crop up in major cities around the US as a result; a large minority of people are angry at the abuse the government is dishing out to its citizens, and because of the media coverup. This country was supposed to have free speech protected by law! After a week of protests and riots, California, New York, and Massachusetts all declare martial law across the state, and rumours about the army killing hundreds of people in New York City spread throughout the east coast. The same politicians who wanted to "Do Something About America's Violent Culture" are shunning the violent protests, and demanding that more be done. Houses are searched illegally for banned weapons (meaning all of them, now.) across the country in an effort to stop the uprising.
One sane voice in the government speaks out against all the human rights abuses that the federal government has implemented: the governor of Texas. He manages to win support of the state's senators, and withdraw from the senate in protest. Colorado, the Dakotas and Nevada soon join in. On the East Coast however, five politically active college students storm a television station in Rochester(they had to... it was guarded by national guardsmen.) using weapons they had obtained on the black market, (Bad! Bad kids!) and with the help of the crew and newsies that were sympathetic, barricade themselves inside and proceeded to broadcast the news of the injustice being done for a full hour, calling for a general revolt. They, along with the rest of the people on that floor, are killed when the army eventually breaches the building.
However, with the gun ban of the past three years, the revolt is quickly put down since existing firearms are so scarce, and it was impossible to import them with the rather tight border controls that had been implemented just recently. Oh, and by the way, before the riots started, murders were up by 2% over the past five years.
Sure, this account is fictional. But to tell the truth, how plausible is this scenario? You might say to yourself "oh, that's not going to happen, we have a good government." Well, that may be true, but the politics that started everything in the first place echoes the rhetoric that is being spewed forth _right now_. Yes, there are politicians who want to restrict or remove not only your right to bear arms, but your right to free speech, and your right to free association, and your right not to be searched without due cause. Even more scary is the fact that all these attributes often don't each exist in _separate_ politicians, but in the same individuals. Scarier still is the fact that people are voting for them. And to think that it can get even scarier, think about how your "checks and balances" won't do you a damn bit of good when the majority of your politicians are on the same side. That is exactly what happened to Germany in 1933, and their government was based very closely on your own.
For the love of god, don't vote for the fucking nazis who would take away _any_ of your rights to make you feel a little more secure! They _are_ up to no good, and they _will_ fuck someone over!
Heh. There's this thing called "self-motivation" you might have heard about... it's where you go and do work even when you're distracted by something else. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Heh. So I guess there are hoardes of ISP's out there that depend on Windows NT for their 24/7 mission critical servers, eh?
Most IT managers wouldn't do that, because their jobs depend on the infrequency of things crashing at critical times... they depend on stability and redundancy, because when every last one of your customers is calling to complain that the DNS server isn't doing anything, you can guarantee that many of those customers are going to go away in a short period of time.
Tell me that these people do not drop windows because it crashes. Because, after all, windows is so great and wonderful. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Does it really slant the playing field?
on
Laptop Exams?
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· Score: 1
Think of it this way:
The college says that each student must buy a laptop. If I'm not mistaken, they do not say whether or not you need a _new_ laptop. Or even one that is remotely up to date. I suspect that the only requirements are that the said laptop performs a certain set of tasks.
For instance, I could go and buy a high-end 386 or low-end 486 that runs Windows 3.11 just fine, on which I can do word processing for notes and essays, (with Microsoft word no less...) spreadsheets and graphs for science experiments, e-mail, web browsing and god-knows-what-else. With enough hard drive space, I could even run Linux on it if I really wanted to. And how much would this laptop cost? Oh, about $100 Canadian or so. I have textbooks that cost more than that.
The fact of the matter is that you don't _need_ a VIAO for most applications anyway. (Take your favourite word processor... Is there an older version that does 95%+ of the things you want but does it with 30% of the hardware?) Especially for the things I just listed. All the student really needs to use this low-end hardware is slightly more technical savvy than the average windows user. And isn't that the point anyway?
That aside, I think having open communication during an exam is stupid at best. Not to mention with wireless communications. Whoever came up with this idea is clearly brain-damaged. Unless it's a computer science/engineering class, in which case perhaps you get an A for successfully hacking the network.:) --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
He's an sf writer, and he was thinking "big picture:" a coming infopocalypse in which sysadmins devote their every waking moment to re-archiving their old backup data."
I couldn't help but laugh when I read this, for a number of reasons: 1) If your sysadmin is worth anything at all, he does backups anyway. Probably every day. Heck, he might even get cron to do it every night when he's not even there. If it's important, it goes to tape every night. This may appear to be a temporary backup (since most organizations cycle about six or seven tapes through the week, overwriting each of them probably every seven days) but if the Very Important Data you want archived is on the drive every night, then it gets backed up every night. When the tape fails, it's on the hard drive. When the drive fails, it's on one of six or seven tapes. Replace as needed. 2) The vast majority of (unix) sysadmins are good at automating tasks. If any of us wind up doing one particular task all day long (as if it could possibly get that far...) we'd just write some program or other to do it for us. Even if it took a week to build, it would slash through the backlog in no time.
The issue of Archiving Things For Posterity Without Constant Maintenance (the Library of Congress, for instance) however, is a different can of worms that we need to worry about. However, if you consider the fact that you can still pick up a copy of Principia Mathematica at your local library, despite the fact that the original paper is probably long since gone, it's a testament to the durability of Important Information, and the public domain, not to mention the printing press. Nothing short of a global catastrophe such as a nuclear war is going to prevent the important stuff from being handed down over the next million years. And if that happens, well, there won't be any archeologists to dig up the pieces anyway. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
I really don't understand the gaming programmers reluctance to move to Linux.
Because they've already written the program once already? Personally I hate it when I'm writing something (software or text) and I lose today's changes through either my own stupidity, or some software screwup, even if it's only like, 15 lines that I've lost. I've already put all my creative blood and sweat into doing the thing that I'm going to have to do all over now. I've already done it perfectly,(or not... even so it was good enough) and now I have to remember how I did it, or reinvent it. And if I don't think it's all that important, it's simply not going to _be_ redone, and the entire project gets set aside, never to be finished.
Then you also include the fact that most gamers who use linux at home dual boot anyway. (porting office apps is a different thing, especially when a computer is being used almost exclusively for a small number of applications at most workplaces.) This does not impress the boss or the accountant, especially when it comes to the cost of porting the game.
I suspect the reasons that games get ported to linux at all are things like "because the programmer really wants to," or "because there's not much to change," or "because the boss has been fooled into thinking there's a really big market for linux games." The first reason is the reason Doom was ported at all. Management didn't think it was a good idea, and didn't really want the programmer doing it to waste his time. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
So you think that the University should make a profit on internet access? Um, sure.... In reality, the University should charge at cost. And since they get bandwidth in bulk, they should charge bulk rates. (cost of OC-3 per year / 33,000 workstations) I suspect they should also charge extra for bandwidth. This will defray (or eliminate) the amount they pay for bandwidth, and will ensure that students curb their own behaviour. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
, and they can wreck havoc with your system, your life, and everything that you own.
Dude, you've watched "enemy of the state" one too many times.
The fact of the matter is, no, it really is very very highly unlikely that this is going to happen to you because of the GOVERNMENT. This is instead going to happen to you because some asshole of a 15 year old wants to. PAY ATTENTION! Don't worry so much about Big Brother as you should about your little brother.
Although I may not be completely up on this matter myself, I suspect that the real reason that the NSA has a portion of the key they're using is because the NSA _invented_ the key they're using. This should come as no surprise, since that's what the NSA does: invent new encryption technologies for the government and break other government's encryption technologies. I think they might be a little busier doing that than worrying about your petty little sandbox, where you've kept your term papers. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Remember those "ball-on-a-metal-stick" joysticks? Yeah. Like that. I think those are about as phallic as the tires on your car. (although, around here, you'll see a lot of macho men with really big tires on their pickup trucks...) --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Actually, if they open sourced the OS, or if they completely redesigned it so that I don't have to reboot it so bloody often, I would cheer them on. I've been begging for _years_ for Microsoft to _please_ make an operating system that wasn't able to suck a golf ball through a garden hose. The last thing I want to do is spend such a large percentage of the time I spend fixing computer problems by waiting for the bloody OS to reboot. 18 times in one session. (okay, I exagerate about the 18 times... more like only 9)
It wouldn't be so bad if we've got a "standard" operating system (alright, dominant/monopoly) that actually works very very well.
Things I would LOVE to see Microsoft do in Windows are proper process control - including being able to kill a process NOW, because _I_ think it's safe, rather than letting whatever program has gone zombie decide if it's safe or not, before finally letting the operating system say "okay, it's dead now. Should I kill it?" after about 45 seconds. The applications that most people use to create documents with already have some sort of functionality to automatically save your work every couple of minutes, just in case things go bad. (why? Because everything is so damn unstable...) The process control Windows has now doesn't help this problem any, because once a program has gone south, 99% of the time there is No Going Back to save your files anyway. Included in "proper process control" are things like telling any process to re-read its configuration file, which you just changed, and to do it without rebooting the whole OS. I hear they've managed this with W2K, but I'm skeptical.
I'd also like to see some decent Protected Memory designed into the OS. I understand that they might have gotten it sort of right this time with W2k, with its much-hailed stability.
And for the love of god, design the filesystem so that you don't _have_ to defrag the drive! It takes long enough to do on a 2 gig drive, let alone the 20 gigs that are typically in new computers.
Another neat functionality that any unix user would really appreciate, is a checkbox somewhere, maybe even hidden deep in the GUI away from clueless eyes, saying "No, I'm not an idiot. You can stop asking me if I'm really sure I wanna do that. (I hereby declare that if I screw up, it's my own damn fault, and I won't sue Microsoft.)"
If Microsoft can do all of these things, that would make me very happy to use Windows. I still won't like Microsoft, because they're Completely Evil(TM), (It's true! Isn't that what the CE in Windows CE means?;) but at least I won't hate them for making Billions of dollars each year off of something that completely sucks and everyone would love to be without. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
We can't just trust the end-user to solve these problems themselves," Valentine said.
I think that's pretty obvious when they don't open source the OS!:)
Actually, I think it's pretty obvious when something like 85% (or probably more) of the people who use windows have -at best!- only the tiniest sliver of a clue. Most of that 85% don't have any clue at all. To them, "Windows security" means that you should lock your doors and windows at night before going to bed. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Hahahahah. I think I'll use that one at my next job interview.:) "I'm better than an MCSE, because I actually know how a TCP connection is made. And to think that I'm self taught..." --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Ooo, 128-bit encryption, that's 16 whole BYTES. No one will ever break that...
Hmm. But exactly _what_ is being encrypted? Your passwords? (does it matter how strong this encryption is, when there's 1000 backdoors waiting to be discovered?) Your network connection? Or just your browser? Do they even say? Does it really matter? Knowing how secure Microsoft OS's have been historically, this sounds like putting a strong deadbolt into a flimsy wood-panel door that's really only suitable for indoor doors.
And here's an even better question: can you export this encryption? (The French just might not care anyway, if it's the only strong link in a weak chain.) Another is to ask whether the filesystem has any security whatsoever, besides "are you sure you want to delete everything in this directory?" Of course, filesystem security doesn't mean jack when you can do whatever you want from the outside anyway. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Don't be worried about the CIA or the NSA. They tap all your phone conversations anyway.;> Worry about the 15 year old kid down the street who thinks that hacking the config.sys files at school is going to make him cool. (or |3\/\/1!, as the case may be.) Imagine what it would be like for him once he learns how to exploit certain holes in W2k "security" to format your hard drive through your cable modem. Those are the people I'm worried about, not the government. --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Heh. Sure... they might respond faster... but will they put the patches on the net for free? Or are they going to fix it in the next release, and charge everyone for it, like they've always done? (Windows 3.1, 3.11, 3.11 WFW, NT 3.1 ad nauseum, Windows 95, Windows 95b, Windows 98....) --- I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. What if the ship is only 90% full of penguins? Does this mean that only 10% of the ship is really being used, while the other 90% stores penguins? "Normality has been restored. If there's anything else you can't deal with, you're on your own."
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About all I've heard about this case is that they caught the guy because he bragged about doing it on irc. Lots of hacker wannabes brag about doing stuff they never did all the time. The bigger the better. It's kind of like in high school when guys brag about having sex with so and so, when the people doing the most bragging are really virgins. This is pretty thin evidence to convict someone with, and besides, didn't this happen before with the last guy they arrested for exactly this crime?
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This whole thread is annoying. For several reasons:
- Jon Katz is using this sort of thing every bit as much as these corporations and politicians are using this thing to boost their own egos and bank accounts. A bunch of people once told Jon that he "gets it" when it comes to geek issues, and now he jumps at every chance to be the champion of "our cause." It's really starting to get annoying now, especially when he really doesn't get it.
- There have been a number of people saying "Hey, if we want to get rid of violence, do X." I hate to tell you this kids, but as it is stated in the article to which you are responding and elsewhere, crime - violent or otherwise - is at its lowest level in the US for a long time. Things are even better now than they were in that fabled golden age that you think you remember. (whenever that was.) You clearly can't "fix" this problem by doing X. If you fix it any more than it's already fixed, you're going to break something. Like laws.
- It is your right to own firearms. There are more reasons than you think for this right. There are plenty of people who hunt game for food in the US, and telling them they can't own a gun is a lot like telling them they shouldn't be allowed to eat so much over the winter. Then there's the obvious reason: self protection. Ban guns and only the criminals will have guns. Don't think it will make guns unavailable to them either. Even more important is the following scenario: Imagine if some Ultra-violent lunatic decides to make the nation a little more racially pure with a shotgun and a McDonalds, killing all 40 patrons (children included), the staff, and himself in the span of about 20 minutes.
The loudmouths would stand up and start shouting for all firearms to be banned. They will get a _lot_ of public support right at that moment, and a large number of politicians would be delighted to soak up that support, saying that "Something Must Be Done About the Violent Culture We Live In Today," (tm) proposing a large number of changes to laws, including the repealing of the fourth amendment, and the banning of all violent content on Television, even the news. The minority of people saying "Hey, that's not right!" will be drowned out by the majority _demanding_ these changes. 95% of voters will vote, a record high for the past 100 years. People will get what they want, and the majority of them will be happy with it. They will feel a lot safer now; they won't see news items about murder and destruction, they won't see violence in the streets, and they will be secure in the knowledge that since all the guns are gone, people aren't being killed by them.
The whole world will be wonderful, with this perspective. Of course, a minority would protest these changes, and do it very loudly. Those that aren't so enthusiastic, would eventually stop protesting. The politicians declare that they aren't going to listen to the outrageous demands of "special interest groups," especially those protests that are getting increasingly smaller and louder because only the most fervent are going to stick around very long. The general populace is going to see these protests populated by nuts and lunatics - just like that guy a couple years back - and they don't want to have anything to do with _that_.
Seeing what's happening, the organizers of these protests start to organize something quite a lot bigger with all the people who used to support them, but haven't had the time or energy lately to picket. One way or another, this peaceful protest slowly gains momentum and people get angry, throwing rocks and bottles at the police who start to confront the unruly crowd. A number of the protesters are injured when the police respond with teargas and billy clubs. This is just the first day. All these people that planned on being here all week aren't going anywhere soon. They're also quite surprised to see that their protest isn't on the news. The next night, the same scenario gets played out with the teargas and whatnot, but it only serves to piss off the crowd even more. A riot breaks out, and the police no longer have control of the situation. TV stations start debating whether they'll be allowed to air this or not, what with the strict controls on violent content.
The people in the city where this is all going on are getting scared though, and are starting to panic, many boarding up their businesses and leaving town. In an effort to get control of the situation, the government tells the newsies that they shouldn't air the protest at all, or the whole country is going to panic. Well, that's a good enough reason, right? The government never said anything about the army moving in to control the riots that have been ongoing though. Martial law has been declared in the city and it's been kept quiet so as not to alarm the populace. Reporters that have specifically been told by their bosses _not_ to cover this are being turned away by the military, and most do, because they feel as if they're doing something wrong.
But a tape gets smuggled out, and the BBC is more than happy to broadcast it. Similar protests and riots crop up in major cities around the US as a result; a large minority of people are angry at the abuse the government is dishing out to its citizens, and because of the media coverup. This country was supposed to have free speech protected by law! After a week of protests and riots, California, New York, and Massachusetts all declare martial law across the state, and rumours about the army killing hundreds of people in New York City spread throughout the east coast. The same politicians who wanted to "Do Something About America's Violent Culture" are shunning the violent protests, and demanding that more be done. Houses are searched illegally for banned weapons (meaning all of them, now.) across the country in an effort to stop the uprising.
One sane voice in the government speaks out against all the human rights abuses that the federal government has implemented: the governor of Texas. He manages to win support of the state's senators, and withdraw from the senate in protest. Colorado, the Dakotas and Nevada soon join in. On the East Coast however, five politically active college students storm a television station in Rochester(they had to... it was guarded by national guardsmen.) using weapons they had obtained on the black market, (Bad! Bad kids!) and with the help of the crew and newsies that were sympathetic, barricade themselves inside and proceeded to broadcast the news of the injustice being done for a full hour, calling for a general revolt. They, along with the rest of the people on that floor, are killed when the army eventually breaches the building.
However, with the gun ban of the past three years, the revolt is quickly put down since existing firearms are so scarce, and it was impossible to import them with the rather tight border controls that had been implemented just recently. Oh, and by the way, before the riots started, murders were up by 2% over the past five years.
Sure, this account is fictional. But to tell the truth, how plausible is this scenario? You might say to yourself "oh, that's not going to happen, we have a good government." Well, that may be true, but the politics that started everything in the first place echoes the rhetoric that is being spewed forth _right now_. Yes, there are politicians who want to restrict or remove not only your right to bear arms, but your right to free speech, and your right to free association, and your right not to be searched without due cause. Even more scary is the fact that all these attributes often don't each exist in _separate_ politicians, but in the same individuals. Scarier still is the fact that people are voting for them. And to think that it can get even scarier, think about how your "checks and balances" won't do you a damn bit of good when the majority of your politicians are on the same side. That is exactly what happened to Germany in 1933, and their government was based very closely on your own.
For the love of god, don't vote for the fucking nazis who would take away _any_ of your rights to make you feel a little more secure! They _are_ up to no good, and they _will_ fuck someone over!
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Heh. There's this thing called "self-motivation" you might have heard about... it's where you go and do work even when you're distracted by something else.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Heh. So I guess there are hoardes of ISP's out there that depend on Windows NT for their 24/7 mission critical servers, eh?
Most IT managers wouldn't do that, because their jobs depend on the infrequency of things crashing at critical times... they depend on stability and redundancy, because when every last one of your customers is calling to complain that the DNS server isn't doing anything, you can guarantee that many of those customers are going to go away in a short period of time.
Tell me that these people do not drop windows because it crashes. Because, after all, windows is so great and wonderful.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Think of it this way:
:)
The college says that each student must buy a laptop. If I'm not mistaken, they do not say whether or not you need a _new_ laptop. Or even one that is remotely up to date. I suspect that the only requirements are that the said laptop performs a certain set of tasks.
For instance, I could go and buy a high-end 386 or low-end 486 that runs Windows 3.11 just fine, on which I can do word processing for notes and essays, (with Microsoft word no less...) spreadsheets and graphs for science experiments, e-mail, web browsing and god-knows-what-else. With enough hard drive space, I could even run Linux on it if I really wanted to. And how much would this laptop cost? Oh, about $100 Canadian or so. I have textbooks that cost more than that.
The fact of the matter is that you don't _need_ a VIAO for most applications anyway. (Take your favourite word processor... Is there an older version that does 95%+ of the things you want but does it with 30% of the hardware?) Especially for the things I just listed. All the student really needs to use this low-end hardware is slightly more technical savvy than the average windows user. And isn't that the point anyway?
That aside, I think having open communication during an exam is stupid at best. Not to mention with wireless communications. Whoever came up with this idea is clearly brain-damaged. Unless it's a computer science/engineering class, in which case perhaps you get an A for successfully hacking the network.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
I couldn't help but laugh when I read this, for a number of reasons:
1) If your sysadmin is worth anything at all, he does backups anyway. Probably every day. Heck, he might even get cron to do it every night when he's not even there. If it's important, it goes to tape every night. This may appear to be a temporary backup (since most organizations cycle about six or seven tapes through the week, overwriting each of them probably every seven days) but if the Very Important Data you want archived is on the drive every night, then it gets backed up every night. When the tape fails, it's on the hard drive. When the drive fails, it's on one of six or seven tapes. Replace as needed.
2) The vast majority of (unix) sysadmins are good at automating tasks. If any of us wind up doing one particular task all day long (as if it could possibly get that far...) we'd just write some program or other to do it for us. Even if it took a week to build, it would slash through the backlog in no time.
The issue of Archiving Things For Posterity Without Constant Maintenance (the Library of Congress, for instance) however, is a different can of worms that we need to worry about. However, if you consider the fact that you can still pick up a copy of Principia Mathematica at your local library, despite the fact that the original paper is probably long since gone, it's a testament to the durability of Important Information, and the public domain, not to mention the printing press. Nothing short of a global catastrophe such as a nuclear war is going to prevent the important stuff from being handed down over the next million years. And if that happens, well, there won't be any archeologists to dig up the pieces anyway.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Because they've already written the program once already? Personally I hate it when I'm writing something (software or text) and I lose today's changes through either my own stupidity, or some software screwup, even if it's only like, 15 lines that I've lost. I've already put all my creative blood and sweat into doing the thing that I'm going to have to do all over now. I've already done it perfectly,(or not... even so it was good enough) and now I have to remember how I did it, or reinvent it. And if I don't think it's all that important, it's simply not going to _be_ redone, and the entire project gets set aside, never to be finished.
Then you also include the fact that most gamers who use linux at home dual boot anyway. (porting office apps is a different thing, especially when a computer is being used almost exclusively for a small number of applications at most workplaces.) This does not impress the boss or the accountant, especially when it comes to the cost of porting the game.
I suspect the reasons that games get ported to linux at all are things like "because the programmer really wants to," or "because there's not much to change," or "because the boss has been fooled into thinking there's a really big market for linux games." The first reason is the reason Doom was ported at all. Management didn't think it was a good idea, and didn't really want the programmer doing it to waste his time.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
So you think that the University should make a profit on internet access? Um, sure.... In reality, the University should charge at cost. And since they get bandwidth in bulk, they should charge bulk rates. (cost of OC-3 per year / 33,000 workstations) I suspect they should also charge extra for bandwidth. This will defray (or eliminate) the amount they pay for bandwidth, and will ensure that students curb their own behaviour.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Dude, you've watched "enemy of the state" one too many times.
The fact of the matter is, no, it really is very very highly unlikely that this is going to happen to you because of the GOVERNMENT. This is instead going to happen to you because some asshole of a 15 year old wants to. PAY ATTENTION! Don't worry so much about Big Brother as you should about your little brother.
Although I may not be completely up on this matter myself, I suspect that the real reason that the NSA has a portion of the key they're using is because the NSA _invented_ the key they're using. This should come as no surprise, since that's what the NSA does: invent new encryption technologies for the government and break other government's encryption technologies. I think they might be a little busier doing that than worrying about your petty little sandbox, where you've kept your term papers.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Heh. You didn't play arcade games as a kid?
Remember those "ball-on-a-metal-stick" joysticks? Yeah. Like that. I think those are about as phallic as the tires on your car. (although, around here, you'll see a lot of macho men with really big tires on their pickup trucks...)
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Actually, if they open sourced the OS, or if they completely redesigned it so that I don't have to reboot it so bloody often, I would cheer them on. I've been begging for _years_ for Microsoft to _please_ make an operating system that wasn't able to suck a golf ball through a garden hose. The last thing I want to do is spend such a large percentage of the time I spend fixing computer problems by waiting for the bloody OS to reboot. 18 times in one session. (okay, I exagerate about the 18 times... more like only 9)
;) but at least I won't hate them for making Billions of dollars each year off of something that completely sucks and everyone would love to be without.
It wouldn't be so bad if we've got a "standard" operating system (alright, dominant/monopoly) that actually works very very well.
Things I would LOVE to see Microsoft do in Windows are proper process control - including being able to kill a process NOW, because _I_ think it's safe, rather than letting whatever program has gone zombie decide if it's safe or not, before finally letting the operating system say "okay, it's dead now. Should I kill it?" after about 45 seconds. The applications that most people use to create documents with already have some sort of functionality to automatically save your work every couple of minutes, just in case things go bad. (why? Because everything is so damn unstable...) The process control Windows has now doesn't help this problem any, because once a program has gone south, 99% of the time there is No Going Back to save your files anyway. Included in "proper process control" are things like telling any process to re-read its configuration file, which you just changed, and to do it without rebooting the whole OS. I hear they've managed this with W2K, but I'm skeptical.
I'd also like to see some decent Protected Memory designed into the OS. I understand that they might have gotten it sort of right this time with W2k, with its much-hailed stability.
And for the love of god, design the filesystem so that you don't _have_ to defrag the drive! It takes long enough to do on a 2 gig drive, let alone the 20 gigs that are typically in new computers.
Another neat functionality that any unix user would really appreciate, is a checkbox somewhere, maybe even hidden deep in the GUI away from clueless eyes, saying "No, I'm not an idiot. You can stop asking me if I'm really sure I wanna do that. (I hereby declare that if I screw up, it's my own damn fault, and I won't sue Microsoft.)"
If Microsoft can do all of these things, that would make me very happy to use Windows. I still won't like Microsoft, because they're Completely Evil(TM), (It's true! Isn't that what the CE in Windows CE means?
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
I think that's pretty obvious when they don't open source the OS! :)
Actually, I think it's pretty obvious when something like 85% (or probably more) of the people who use windows have -at best!- only the tiniest sliver of a clue. Most of that 85% don't have any clue at all. To them, "Windows security" means that you should lock your doors and windows at night before going to bed.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Hahahahah. I think I'll use that one at my next job interview. :) "I'm better than an MCSE, because I actually know how a TCP connection is made. And to think that I'm self taught..."
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Hmm. But exactly _what_ is being encrypted? Your passwords? (does it matter how strong this encryption is, when there's 1000 backdoors waiting to be discovered?) Your network connection? Or just your browser? Do they even say? Does it really matter? Knowing how secure Microsoft OS's have been historically, this sounds like putting a strong deadbolt into a flimsy wood-panel door that's really only suitable for indoor doors.
And here's an even better question: can you export this encryption? (The French just might not care anyway, if it's the only strong link in a weak chain.) Another is to ask whether the filesystem has any security whatsoever, besides "are you sure you want to delete everything in this directory?" Of course, filesystem security doesn't mean jack when you can do whatever you want from the outside anyway.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Don't be worried about the CIA or the NSA. They tap all your phone conversations anyway. ;> Worry about the 15 year old kid down the street who thinks that hacking the config.sys files at school is going to make him cool. (or |3\/\/1!, as the case may be.) Imagine what it would be like for him once he learns how to exploit certain holes in W2k "security" to format your hard drive through your cable modem. Those are the people I'm worried about, not the government.
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
Heh. Sure... they might respond faster... but will they put the patches on the net for free? Or are they going to fix it in the next release, and charge everyone for it, like they've always done? (Windows 3.1, 3.11, 3.11 WFW, NT 3.1 ad nauseum, Windows 95, Windows 95b, Windows 98....)
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.