You've seen the movie "6 degrees of separation"? Given a sufficiently large degree of separation value you can pretty much link any one to anyone else. It's not a very large number either (not as low as 6 though).
Funny, that. I've found that 6 is too high a number. It's usually more like 3 or 4, once everything gets worked out. It's all just a matter of identifying these connections.
Take, for instance, King George. I sure didn't vote for him. I am not a fan of his policies, and never have been. Phrases like "flipping idiot" have been pretty common for the past 6 years. But, unbeknownst to me, one of my business partners went to high school with his primary advisors current wife. They still talk on a regular basis, and said partner even stayed the night over last year at their estate in 'DC!
So, in this amazingly small world, I'm 4 degrees of separation from the U.S. President! (Surely, the Prez knows the wife of his primary advisor, even if they don't "hit it off"!)
I've done nothing to gain this connection - but such connections could be blatant and clear to anybody posessing such a database, when combined with the correct search algorithm. The owner of such a system would and could have unbelievable power to determine who is connected to who, and when.
And it's really the pursuit of a very short-term victory to fight the construction of this database. As technology advances, and the cost of storing, retrieving, and processing information continues its inexorable march, such databases will be constructed anyway. Ever looked up your credit history? It's amazing what information is commonly available.
Heck, google your email address - the results may surprise you! Done some years ago, it was amazing to me how many of my emails were public information, and I today generally treat my email like a web posting - public information....
Which brings me back to an article I've raved about over and over and over as the years have gone by. It's the most intellectual, insightful, predictive article I've seen my entire life. It's a fresh look at the problems of privacy, security, and freedom, and so far, it's been 100% spot on. It's how we do 1984 right, so that nobody ends up having to love Big Brother.
I'd be tempted to try to enact something like this.
My first law would be that anybody acting in an official capacity must be on the record. Everybody, from the head honcho down to the janitor. No exceptions. My second law would be that anybody accessing this public store of information also must be on the record - accesses to this database are logged in a secure fashion.
You need methanol or ethanol to make biodiesel anyway. Also, diesels can be run on E95, a 95% ethanol and 5% gasoline mixture, so you have flexibility there. The only conversion needed to run E95 is to raise base compression and to be able to vary fuel delivery, which is a feature of any TDI diesel anyway. Diesels with mechanical injection might be more difficult, but should still be convertible.
Biodiesel is a great fuel. It's extremely dense, (high energy content) and can be used interchangably with diesel without requiring any engine modifications whatsoever.
However, it won't work for Aviation. Biodiesel has a tendency to get very thick when cold, and it often gets below freezing at altitude on an otherwise sunny, beautiful day, simply from the altitude.
Ethanol is the only biofuel I can think of that could be practically used to replace the high-octane gasoline used in a private plane. (I don't know about jet fuel)
I didn't know that tidbit about E95 in diesels, I'll look it up. What most people don't realize is that the diesel engine can run on just about *anything*! The hard part is getting the fuel injection and compression ratios right for whatever the fuel source is.
The original diesel engine was designed to run on coal dust...
Yes, things change quickly in the computer industry. There are new things being developed all the time, but a lot of the stuff I'm talking about transends that. I just used examples that were too specific. If you change it to 'Don't run programs from sources you don't recognize or trust, keep yourself safe by not letting people you don't know have access to your computer, know what a firewall is.' That's all pretty basic stuff, but there are a lot of people (really smart people) who just don't know it.
But you've *STILL* missed my point. I let people I don't know access my systems all the time - that's a basic requirement of a server administrator. They run whatever the !@# programs they want to.
The point is whether the underlying system is broken, and there's no reason why it should be. I have to assume, every day of the week, that untrusted binaries are being executed by clueless dolts who are using the servers I maintain, and that these binaries come from people that even the unknown users don't actually know. And, in spite of this, I still manage to maintain a fairly decent security record.
It's reasonable to expect that a computer shouldn't break simply because people do what they expect to do. And if a computer system can't handle that, it's broken and needs to be replaced by something that isn't.
Don't confuse "possible to exploit" with "likely to be exploited by a stupid, automated attack drummed up by some drunk 19 year old last thursday after reading about how it works".
They aren't the same. Really.
I read/., just as you do. I read and exchange MS Word and Excel documents, like you probably do. I watch videos off the Internet, just like you probably do. It's not exactly the same - I still have to dual-boot into WinXP to play games.
But I have a clean, uncrashed Email archive from 1999 on. Just like you don't. I've never had to reload, rescan, or wipe & reload my O/S since then. No viruses. My work environment has been stable despite numerous changes in hardware (starting with an AMD 486/133 with Redhat 5.1, now running a Centrino 1.6 laptop on Fedora Core 3) and I can read what I wrote way back when without problems.
Remember, in advertising-speak, "up to" means "less than". Values between 0% and 75% fulfill the conditions of being "up to a 75% savings".
You are a tard. "up to" means "at this point under definable conditions". It's like the EPA ratings on your car, EG: 23 city, 31 highway.
If you drive on a level highway, with a fully-tuned car, with a recent oil change, properly inflated tires, at 75 degrees farenheit, at *exactly* 55 degrees, you'll see your 31 MPH.
But reality is that your tires are a tad low, you haven't changed your oil in a year, it's 110 degrees outside, (so the air pressure density is low) you're driving 75 MPH and your car has a fouled plug that misses ever 10th fire or so.
So, you see 26 MPG or so, and you don't complain about it too much because you don't bother to calculate MPG. But, that's legitmately in that "up to 31 MPG" specification.
But it sure as anything doesn't mean "anything from zero up"...
If people just learn how to use their computers (you shouldn't download exe's from people you don't know, a firewall is a good thing to have, ActiveX controls aren't safe and your default response shouldn't be to install them no matter what IE says)
You write these things in as though they were long-established rules of convention that could be written down and shared, and accepted because of their ubiquity and long duration as good rules.
But go back just 10 years. The Internet was fresh and new. A firewall was unheard of, a.EXE almost always were funny, flash videos, forwarded by friends. SPAM was a relatively minor annoyance.
See how different the rules are?
To get rid of ActiveX altogether is another version or two of Windows away. They can change *very* quickly. Heck, they already have.
1) My Linux desktop has no problems with.EXE files. 2) IE doesn't run on this computer - what's this about this "ActiveX" thing? 3) Firewall is on by default. Did I need to do something?
Your rules don't apply to me already, today. And, your rules don't include one that for me has been paramount: Do not let your security updates get out of date!
Whenn the industry has matured enough that rules can last for longer than just a year or two, then I'll buy your argument. Until then, we need to come up with a better way to use a computer.
Before we all go razz-tazz on solving this "problem", I'd like to see some ACTUAL FIGURES to indicate how much of a problem this actually is.
How many "online predators" are there when compared to "real" predators? I don't have any numbers, but I'd guess there are more "real" predators in my small-town America Chico, CA with 75,000 people than there are internationally through myspace.
Are there some?
Sure.
Enough to worry about?
Well, I'm much, much more worried about my dog getting hit on the somewhat busy street I live on than an online predator attacking my daughter by meeting her through myspace!
Let's determine it actually is a problem before we waste time trying to solve it...
To add insult to injury, if your name even remotely resembles the name of a known or suspected "evildoer," you get flagged. My entire family now suffers an extra 45 minutes of screening at the airport, every single time we fly, because my dad's name matches that of some IRA gunman who was last active in the early 80's. (Before you go thinking this might be a valid concern, consider that we're talking about an extremely common name. "John Murphy" isn't exactly "Zaccarias Moussaoui.") And of course, all this color-coded rigmarole does not make us one bit safer, just more vulnerable to the constant fear-mongering coming out of Washington.
No kidding. I'm lucky enough to be given a similarly common name which apparently matches the name of some international money-launderer. (I found this out at a bank - the teller was nice enough to tell me why I had to go through all the extra identification crap, unlike the bored-looking clerks at the airport)
What gets me is that money-laundering is criminal behavior, not terrorism. And, notice that the onus is on me to prove I am *NOT* a criminal, instead of on them to prove that I AM a criminal.
Something in there seems very, very wrong, indeed. If it's the terrorist's goal to take away our freedoms, then it seems that our very government has taken the next step for them. I can only hope we can turn around this modern-day McCarthyism quickly.
I think that, moving forward, one of the core drivers of true artificial intelligence is goinig to be SPAM!
As algorithms become better and better at sending SPAM, combatting methods will become increasingly sophisticated.
Witness the Bayesian filtering phenomenon. Back in the day, who would've thought that a "learning" system would be needed just to determine what's junk mail?
SPAM is a side-effect of intense economic and evolutionary pressure - the value of getting your attention and maybe your pocketbook. Its pressure is relentless, and success is highly profitable.
I give it another 5 years before bona fide neural networks are commonly used to combat SPAM.
At the rates of my host, it would cost me about nine cents in bandwidth for a four-meg track, and you can bet your ass that it doesn't cost Apple even a tenth of that.
Wow. You're getting ass-raped by your hosting provider....
I'm paying a fairly HIGH price for my provider because it's local, and I pay about 1 penny for every 2.5 MB. I've seen hosting for 1/10 what I'm paying, and I currently contract (as a different legal entity) for really high-quality hosting (but 4.5 hours drive away in a major city) for about 1/4 the above. Thus, at the higher-quality colo (triple feeds, redundant power, 24x7 techs, etc) I'm paying in the ballpark of the 1/10 that you quote.
I can only hope you don't live in the USA. Even if not, you might seriously consider something even like Yahoo Small Business hosting. (No, I don't work for Yahoo, and I have my own equipment because I have privacy guarantees in my contracts to my clients, so I can't outsource my equipment or backups)
I can tell you that most members of the community realize how annoying and stupid this idea is. Browser-detection scripts and browser-specific behavior should be buried and forgotten. Firefox is about standards, and the community acknowledges that.
One slight little problem: Internet Explorer is not standards compliant. It's a terrible browser that results in a reduced end user experience.
When you *know* that switching browsers will make using your product easier and better, shouldn't you let them know that? So, I don't write products that you can't use with IE, but there are plenty of things that you can do with Firefox/Moz that you can't with IE, and when these exist, and enhance the user's experience, I like to let them know.
I didn't know you could earn money referring people to FF, though...
The Tivo/DVR changes the whole dynamic of television. It used to be mandatory to watch the commercials, or at least wait them out. Now, the DVR makes it trivial to skip them over.
Ever watch American Idol? Notice the TVs behind Ryan Seacrest displaying Coca Cola logos and bubbles? The ads are becoming part of the show.
But, along these same lines, ads are starting to get better. Every day, I get video files forwarded to me by E-mail that are frequently... ADS. And they're funny as hell.
Or for those who recoil under privacy threats by such a thing, maybe offer a locked-all-to-hell ISP service for $x.00 (web, mail, maybe some game port ranges, and that's it) and a "we'll assume you have a clue about what you're doing" service that leaves ports as they are now for $x+y.00 (nominal enough to scare off the average users, but low enough to prevent gouging and such).
This is how DSL service is sold today, with home vs business accounts. Home account is like $20-30/month, has a roaming IP, port 25 is blocked, etc. Business account is more like $50-60/month, has fixed IPs, no ports blocked, and it's officially "OK" to use for servers.
Is that extra $20-30 "gouging"? Well, I dunno, but I pay that premium in all three of my DSL installs for my company...
I manage servers, with tens of thousands of users, all over California.
ALL of the servers I've deployed in the last 2 years have been AMD, with a heavy bias towards Opterons. For me, one of the key advantages AMD has over Intel is the "last resort" advantage.
If I deploy Xeon servers, and something goes terribly wrong, I can't go to a local retail outlet and buy any hardware that would work - Xeons are not binary compatible with X86. Local tech shops here in my hometown (Chico, CA) don't have Xeon anything. But they DO have Athlon/64s in droves!
So, if I deploy an Opteron server, I *know* that I can get an Athlon/64 that's binary compatible with my system images from the local l337 Gam3rz computer store with aliens and funky lights, but that's binary compatible with my rackmounted servers. No matter what, I have something I can count on in less than a single working day. I've had to fall back to this in the past, so I'm ready to in the future.
This gives me a worst-case recovery time of about 4 hours during business hours. (the only ones that really, really count)
Xeon is compatible with... Xeon. At best, in a worst-case scenario, I wait 48 hours to get some kind of support in small town, CA. Ouch!!!! No way this is acceptable.
4 hours vs 48 hours. Not a hard decision... So Opteron/Athlon/64 it is, then...
And I don't mind that it's both faster and thousands $$$$ cheaper!
Besides the cost, I see this being a huge benefit to reducing power load on the grid. I suppose the real question is, why don't power companies do this further up the pipe, at the generating stations?
Oh, but they do!
About 25 minutes drive away from my expanding Chico, CA home, is the Oroville, CA "Lake Oroville Forebay". It's a beautiful lake managed by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) where they (sesriously!) pump water uphill at night, then run the water out through generators during the day.
The upshot is a beautiful lake that's wonderful for canoing, bike-riding, hiking, and in general enjoying one's self, which acts as a power stabilizer for the California power grid. I've enjoyed a 6-pack or two with my father-in-law, mountain-biking or hiking various trails above it.
I'm sure it's not the only project like it.
For more information, see this CA gov website and pay attention to the numerous references to 'reversible pump' operation....
You are making the classic argument in support of a police state. Just because X can be used by criminals, or X makes harder the police's job in catching criminals, does not mean that we can or should criminalize X itself.
I don't believe I said that. I only said that anonymous communication results in meaningless communication, and is certainly not a requirement for living in a free society.
Just because most people use a lousy email system with a rotten design and limited capabilities in no way means that anonymity should be prevented or criminalized. We simply inherited a legasy email design that never considered the possibility of things like spam.
SPAM == anonymous communication. I defy you to name a system allowing true anonymous communication that doesn't also result in an truly stupendous amount of meaningless and/or criminal communication.
For another example, take a look freenet, particularly if child porn makes you feel all good down inside.
For yet another example, browse Slashdot at -1, where all the anonymous trolls reside. You know who I am, in some form, and that fact means I will try to produce quality feedback. Moderators can smack me down if I speak heresy.
You appear to be implying that anonymous communication is not and cannot be valuable. That is simply false. There are an infinity number of types and mechanisms of very valuable anonymous communication and informaton.
I only said that the right to anonymous communication is not necessary to preserve the right to free speech. You can identify me as "mcrbids", which doesn't prevent me from speaking freely in this public forum. The necessity of anonymity is merely an indication that the right to speak freely has been compromised.
The freedom and ability to engage in anonymous communication means the freedom and ability to be as anonymous or as non-anonymous as you like, and that you can choose to view or not view communication on any basis you like.
I'm not saying that anonymity isn't important. It's especially important where your free speech rights have been trampled. I'm only saying that your right to "free speech" doesn't directly depend on it. Where the need for anonymity is most highlighted is in those regions where your right to speak freely is questionable.
When a highly qualified reporter keeps a source anonymous, there's a trust implied that the qualified reporter won't be quoting some moron off the street. Even in this case, it's not actually anonymous communication -- It's qualified, information restricted communication. Somebody you trust knows the source, and you trust that the "anonymous" person has been identified by some means out of your control and oversight. And it's ok because you trust the source.
That's free speech at work.
SPAM is truly anonymous. It comes from somebody you don't, can't, and never will know. You can't knock them in any way if it turns out to be bogus. But, the so-called "anonymous" tips used by qualifed reports are, in fact, not anonymous at all. The reporter knows who they are, and because free speech is honored, are able to not disclose their sources. If the reporter trusts idiots, they lose their status, and eventually, their jobs.
So, here's a test for you. Think of the most valuable piece of information you could possibly know, dial some phone number at random, and disclose that valuable tidbit. See where it gets you.
See? Truly "anonymous" communication is almost worthless, no matter how you slice it. The first thing anybody wants to know after something is said, is "who said it" so they can evaluate it's worth for consideration.
Anonimity contributes to meaningless and criminal communication. Perfect anonimity will result in nearly worthless communication. Take a look at the "p3n15 pi11z!!" offers in your Email inbox for an excellent example.
Free speech requires VIGILANCE by a population to ensure that the rights to speak freely are not suppressed, and that takes organization, effort, and might.
The correct way to handle the shortage of high-tech labor is to prohibit the government from intervening in the labor market. Specifically, Washington should terminate the H-1B program. Washington should also terminate the the free flow of goods and services between the United States (which is a relatively free market) and (relatively) non-free markets like India and Mexico.
Which is lame advice.
It's like saying that the correct way to manage a free market is to make sure that people in one county can't exchange services with people the next county over - the only difference is one of scale.
The United States has always profited immensely from cheap, imported labor - yes, even the H1B visas in IT - which has contributed handsomely to our way of life, and (dare I say it?!?) has contributed nicely to our economic and political lead. They come here because our economic systems gives them a good set of possibilities for making their life better, and we let them in because by making a good life for themselves, they provide revenue, economic power, and an expanded tax base to our country.
Grow the marketplace, and there's more jobs for all. Let the marketplace go overseas, and we are all seriously screwed. The taxes pay for roads and critical infrastructure. The profits from working here instead of India get ploughed back into our economy, and that means jobs for everyone.
Close the H1Bs, and you just open the doors for moving all that talent, brainpower, and innovation overseas.
And that would be lame.
Sorry you can't compete here in the States against qualified H1Bs, but would you rather compete with them here, where their cost of living is comparable to yours, or in Sri Lanka, where housing costs a miniscule fraction of yours?
Sorry, I say, bring them on! I'll compete with them because I provide better value for the money, not because I'm cheaper.
Make your own damned job. It's the American way. Start your own business, hang a shingle, make some sales, do some cold calls. It hurts at first, contracts don't come with a 401k. But, pretty soon, you get the whole customer-relations thing figured out. Then, not too horribly long after that, you get the whole tax/accountant/bank thing figured out.
Next thing you know, you're swamped with highly paid work! You've stretched your wings, you've gone out, you landed a few key contracts, and suddenly, you have more work than you can do.
So then you figure out hiring and firing. It's a painful lesson, as you often really like the people you're firing. It can be very expensive, if you miscalculate and pay people to make up stuff to "look busy". But, if you come even close to getting it right, it pays, too, and sometimes quite nicely.
If you're half as skilled as you make out to be, you can follow this path, and make better money than your graduate peers in as little as 5-10 years. You can be independently wealthy (retired, never work again) in as little as 20 years.
That's the American way.
Do you want to be the kind of person who mopes when you can't afford your own private plane for at another year? Do you want to be the kind of person who ends up paying more in "recreation" than most people earn in their jobs? Do you long for the stability of knowing you can never be fired, because you're not only the boss, but the owner of the business?
Take your skills, and find a way to market them. A business license costs around $50 in my home town of Chico, CA. A fictitious name statement and accompanying bank account can be had for around $300 most places in California. Everything after that is up to you.
When you take the time to dissect business models to see which works for you, you grow in ways you can't easily convey. When you shoulder the responsibility of keeping the show running, even when your cashflow is bleeding red, you become a bigger, more capable, and more powerful person. When you run the show, you become a bigger, better, more capable, more responsible person in ways that years of college can't even begin to approximate.
I strongly recommend that you turn your frustration into success, and turn your own personal lemon juice into sweet, refreshing lemonade!
Once you've done this, the whole idea of a "job" just seems... well... stupid...
What would you say that we open, photocopy and file away every piece of correspondence that passes through the US Postal Service?
You know that won't pass. But, even in the case of web request logging, it doesn't keep a copy of the *content* of the webpage, just a simple log of the original request.
It's basically a copy off Squid invisible proxy logs. Easily done, hard to detect, and gives a reasonable history of what's done by end user. Example: Google search for "banana republic" returns the URL http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=banana+republ ic&btnG=Google+Search which makes it pretty clear what you were looking for. But the CONTENT of the website hits aren't logged. More lke a copy of the to/from addresses on the outside of the letter... .
I know this is not a popular opinion here, but MSFT really does have a tough job, if you are objective about it, from an engineering point of view.
Hear here!
I agree 100%!
As a software engineer of a rapidly growing company, it's amazing to me how much higher the standard of testing and accountability has to be with each major product release. Our company has been growing exponentially, at least 2x annually. Just a year or two ago, a bug meant a few phone calls, but in the last year or so, it's gotten to where a single bug (even a minor one) can easily swamp our telephones!
The first release was like, a proof of concept more than not. It wasn't even feature complete at release - we relied on an update mechanism built in at the last minute to cover for the fact that not all the features were completed!
Not many phone calls from that issue, I might add. But, in the last year or two, a single bug affecting a relatively small percentage of our users still loads us down with dozens of issues ticketed in a single morning.
Ugh!
Since our deliverable is web-based, fixing a bug is still very fast, but we're working furiously to improve quality control testing prior to release. I can only imagine what a company with the market size of Microsoft has to deal with - when the vast majority of computing resources are in your hands, the task of dealing with bugs and updates must be simply gargantuan.
Even more interesting is who will release the first terabyte drive and (this is what I'm interested in) who will be the first to put one terabyte on a single platter. A terabyte is a lot. It will be a lot 5 years later, and quite a lot even 10 years later. Sure I understand Moores law and how 10MB was huge back then. But there comes a time after which we actually run out of relevant data to put on it. Pictures will go upto 10 megapixels but it will stop there. Video might go upto 1024x768x32-bitx100FPS but will not exceed that. Our humans senses will cease to notice any further difference. Games might require 2 blue-ray DVDs but will not require say 32 blue-ray DVDs in the next 10 years. What will you PUT on it?
Bloat.
Here's an experiment for you: Open up Microsoft Word, the later the version, the better. Now, type in a SINGLE LETTER, and save it to disk. Then, use Explorer to find out how bit it is.
I ran this test with OpenOffice 1.1.3 on my Fedora Core 3 laptop. My single letter "k", with no style attributes or anything, came to 5,181k!
So, we have 5,180 "characters" (bytes) of data being stored just so that my single, solitary letter "k" can be rendered with the right font, size, paragraph, and whatever else attributes to be added.
Similarly, pictures today usually use JPEG compression, which leaves terrible artifacts, particularly noticable around solid color contrasts. It shows up as a sort of "wavy" artifact surrounding the contrasting border.
In the near future, these kinds of artifacts will be less and less acceptable, and people will tend towards lower compression ratios (and better compression algorithms) to avoid them.
I've already switched from 128kbps for all my MP3 encoding to 192kbps. How long before I decide that.wav is just fine?
I heard for years that 24-bit color was "better than the human eye could discern" yet 32-bit color video cards are commonplace nowadays. What about 48 bit? 64 bit? 128 bit?
When I was a kid, the idea of a Star Trek "communicator" was just fantastic. Now, I wear one at my hip (the cell phone) and wish it gave me unmetered Internet Access. When I get that unmetered access, I'll wish it was faster, and with less latency.
Yep. The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence, and that fence is the leading edge of technology.
Nowdays Microsft is in everything from the Xbox to who knows how many software company aquisitions and trying to tie them together in a meaningful manor.
I'm confused.
What does Bill's house have to do with this? I mean, it's a meaningful manor, but it's not like everybody at Microsoft is WORKING there, you know...
If windows apps (or group of apps) were virtualized, we could use activex webpages without having to worry about spyware. Just close the virtualization window and it's gone.
On more than one occasion, I've trolled the warez sites for a "key generator". These are programs that you run that give you a workable key for a particular software product - but they are almost ALWAYS loaded with spyware and other easter eggs.
But, with VMWare, it's no big deal. Take a snapshot, download the generator & run, write down key, revert to snapshot. Snap! Done!
I treat such software products as a sort of "try before you buy" - and I've bought numerous products after reviewing them in this manner. (For example, Qarbon, Dreamweaver, PC/Anywhere)
VMWare is really, really cool, though - there's nothing quite like running 3 or 4 virtual systems in a coordinated network application, all on your laptop while in the airport waiting for the plane to land, to really see what it's all about.
Also, my Windows VM has b0rk3d itself several times after an otherwise innocent update or something, and in the case of a physical install, I would have had to re-install. But, with VMWare, I just revert to snapshot, and 5 minutes later, I'm back up and runing.
SWEET!
Redhat Fedora Linux makes a *great* host O/S for software development, especially when combined with VMWare. What's more, VMWare is FREE!
Slashdot Mirror
You've seen the movie "6 degrees of separation"? Given a sufficiently large degree of separation value you can pretty much link any one to anyone else. It's not a very large number either (not as low as 6 though).
Funny, that. I've found that 6 is too high a number. It's usually more like 3 or 4, once everything gets worked out. It's all just a matter of identifying these connections.
Take, for instance, King George. I sure didn't vote for him. I am not a fan of his policies, and never have been. Phrases like "flipping idiot" have been pretty common for the past 6 years. But, unbeknownst to me, one of my business partners went to high school with his primary advisors current wife. They still talk on a regular basis, and said partner even stayed the night over last year at their estate in 'DC!
So, in this amazingly small world, I'm 4 degrees of separation from the U.S. President! (Surely, the Prez knows the wife of his primary advisor, even if they don't "hit it off"!)
I've done nothing to gain this connection - but such connections could be blatant and clear to anybody posessing such a database, when combined with the correct search algorithm. The owner of such a system would and could have unbelievable power to determine who is connected to who, and when.
And it's really the pursuit of a very short-term victory to fight the construction of this database. As technology advances, and the cost of storing, retrieving, and processing information continues its inexorable march, such databases will be constructed anyway. Ever looked up your credit history? It's amazing what information is commonly available.
Heck, google your email address - the results may surprise you! Done some years ago, it was amazing to me how many of my emails were public information, and I today generally treat my email like a web posting - public information....
Which brings me back to an article I've raved about over and over and over as the years have gone by. It's the most intellectual, insightful, predictive article I've seen my entire life. It's a fresh look at the problems of privacy, security, and freedom, and so far, it's been 100% spot on. It's how we do 1984 right, so that nobody ends up having to love Big Brother.
If you haven't, I strongly, strongly urge you to read about The Transparent Society.
I'd be tempted to try to enact something like this.
My first law would be that anybody acting in an official capacity must be on the record. Everybody, from the head honcho down to the janitor. No exceptions. My second law would be that anybody accessing this public store of information also must be on the record - accesses to this database are logged in a secure fashion.
You need methanol or ethanol to make biodiesel anyway. Also, diesels can be run on E95, a 95% ethanol and 5% gasoline mixture, so you have flexibility there. The only conversion needed to run E95 is to raise base compression and to be able to vary fuel delivery, which is a feature of any TDI diesel anyway. Diesels with mechanical injection might be more difficult, but should still be convertible.
Biodiesel is a great fuel. It's extremely dense, (high energy content) and can be used interchangably with diesel without requiring any engine modifications whatsoever.
However, it won't work for Aviation. Biodiesel has a tendency to get very thick when cold, and it often gets below freezing at altitude on an otherwise sunny, beautiful day, simply from the altitude.
Ethanol is the only biofuel I can think of that could be practically used to replace the high-octane gasoline used in a private plane. (I don't know about jet fuel)
I didn't know that tidbit about E95 in diesels, I'll look it up. What most people don't realize is that the diesel engine can run on just about *anything*! The hard part is getting the fuel injection and compression ratios right for whatever the fuel source is.
The original diesel engine was designed to run on coal dust...
Yes, things change quickly in the computer industry. There are new things being developed all the time, but a lot of the stuff I'm talking about transends that. I just used examples that were too specific. If you change it to 'Don't run programs from sources you don't recognize or trust, keep yourself safe by not letting people you don't know have access to your computer, know what a firewall is.' That's all pretty basic stuff, but there are a lot of people (really smart people) who just don't know it.
/., just as you do. I read and exchange MS Word and Excel documents, like you probably do. I watch videos off the Internet, just like you probably do. It's not exactly the same - I still have to dual-boot into WinXP to play games.
But you've *STILL* missed my point. I let people I don't know access my systems all the time - that's a basic requirement of a server administrator. They run whatever the !@# programs they want to.
The point is whether the underlying system is broken, and there's no reason why it should be. I have to assume, every day of the week, that untrusted binaries are being executed by clueless dolts who are using the servers I maintain, and that these binaries come from people that even the unknown users don't actually know. And, in spite of this, I still manage to maintain a fairly decent security record.
It's reasonable to expect that a computer shouldn't break simply because people do what they expect to do. And if a computer system can't handle that, it's broken and needs to be replaced by something that isn't.
Don't confuse "possible to exploit" with "likely to be exploited by a stupid, automated attack drummed up by some drunk 19 year old last thursday after reading about how it works".
They aren't the same. Really.
I read
But I have a clean, uncrashed Email archive from 1999 on. Just like you don't. I've never had to reload, rescan, or wipe & reload my O/S since then. No viruses. My work environment has been stable despite numerous changes in hardware (starting with an AMD 486/133 with Redhat 5.1, now running a Centrino 1.6 laptop on Fedora Core 3) and I can read what I wrote way back when without problems.
Can you make that claim?
Remember, in advertising-speak, "up to" means "less than". Values between 0% and 75% fulfill the conditions of being "up to a 75% savings".
You are a tard. "up to" means "at this point under definable conditions". It's like the EPA ratings on your car, EG: 23 city, 31 highway.
If you drive on a level highway, with a fully-tuned car, with a recent oil change, properly inflated tires, at 75 degrees farenheit, at *exactly* 55 degrees, you'll see your 31 MPH.
But reality is that your tires are a tad low, you haven't changed your oil in a year, it's 110 degrees outside, (so the air pressure density is low) you're driving 75 MPH and your car has a fouled plug that misses ever 10th fire or so.
So, you see 26 MPG or so, and you don't complain about it too much because you don't bother to calculate MPG. But, that's legitmately in that "up to 31 MPG" specification.
But it sure as anything doesn't mean "anything from zero up"...
If people just learn how to use their computers (you shouldn't download exe's from people you don't know, a firewall is a good thing to have, ActiveX controls aren't safe and your default response shouldn't be to install them no matter what IE says)
.EXE almost always were funny, flash videos, forwarded by friends. SPAM was a relatively minor annoyance.
.EXE files.
You write these things in as though they were long-established rules of convention that could be written down and shared, and accepted because of their ubiquity and long duration as good rules.
But go back just 10 years. The Internet was fresh and new. A firewall was unheard of, a
See how different the rules are?
To get rid of ActiveX altogether is another version or two of Windows away. They can change *very* quickly. Heck, they already have.
1) My Linux desktop has no problems with
2) IE doesn't run on this computer - what's this about this "ActiveX" thing?
3) Firewall is on by default. Did I need to do something?
Your rules don't apply to me already, today. And, your rules don't include one that for me has been paramount: Do not let your security updates get out of date!
Whenn the industry has matured enough that rules can last for longer than just a year or two, then I'll buy your argument. Until then, we need to come up with a better way to use a computer.
Before we all go razz-tazz on solving this "problem", I'd like to see some ACTUAL FIGURES to indicate how much of a problem this actually is.
How many "online predators" are there when compared to "real" predators? I don't have any numbers, but I'd guess there are more "real" predators in my small-town America Chico, CA with 75,000 people than there are internationally through myspace.
Are there some?
Sure.
Enough to worry about?
Well, I'm much, much more worried about my dog getting hit on the somewhat busy street I live on than an online predator attacking my daughter by meeting her through myspace!
Let's determine it actually is a problem before we waste time trying to solve it...
To add insult to injury, if your name even remotely resembles the name of a known or suspected "evildoer," you get flagged. My entire family now suffers an extra 45 minutes of screening at the airport, every single time we fly, because my dad's name matches that of some IRA gunman who was last active in the early 80's. (Before you go thinking this might be a valid concern, consider that we're talking about an extremely common name. "John Murphy" isn't exactly "Zaccarias Moussaoui.") And of course, all this color-coded rigmarole does not make us one bit safer, just more vulnerable to the constant fear-mongering coming out of Washington.
No kidding. I'm lucky enough to be given a similarly common name which apparently matches the name of some international money-launderer. (I found this out at a bank - the teller was nice enough to tell me why I had to go through all the extra identification crap, unlike the bored-looking clerks at the airport)
What gets me is that money-laundering is criminal behavior, not terrorism. And, notice that the onus is on me to prove I am *NOT* a criminal, instead of on them to prove that I AM a criminal.
Something in there seems very, very wrong, indeed. If it's the terrorist's goal to take away our freedoms, then it seems that our very government has taken the next step for them. I can only hope we can turn around this modern-day McCarthyism quickly.
I think that, moving forward, one of the core drivers of true artificial intelligence is goinig to be SPAM!
As algorithms become better and better at sending SPAM, combatting methods will become increasingly sophisticated.
Witness the Bayesian filtering phenomenon. Back in the day, who would've thought that a "learning" system would be needed just to determine what's junk mail?
SPAM is a side-effect of intense economic and evolutionary pressure - the value of getting your attention and maybe your pocketbook. Its pressure is relentless, and success is highly profitable.
I give it another 5 years before bona fide neural networks are commonly used to combat SPAM.
At the rates of my host, it would cost me about nine cents in bandwidth for a four-meg track, and you can bet your ass that it doesn't cost Apple even a tenth of that.
Wow. You're getting ass-raped by your hosting provider....
I'm paying a fairly HIGH price for my provider because it's local, and I pay about 1 penny for every 2.5 MB. I've seen hosting for 1/10 what I'm paying, and I currently contract (as a different legal entity) for really high-quality hosting (but 4.5 hours drive away in a major city) for about 1/4 the above. Thus, at the higher-quality colo (triple feeds, redundant power, 24x7 techs, etc) I'm paying in the ballpark of the 1/10 that you quote.
I can only hope you don't live in the USA. Even if not, you might seriously consider something even like Yahoo Small Business hosting. (No, I don't work for Yahoo, and I have my own equipment because I have privacy guarantees in my contracts to my clients, so I can't outsource my equipment or backups)
I can tell you that most members of the community realize how annoying and stupid this idea is. Browser-detection scripts and browser-specific behavior should be buried and forgotten. Firefox is about standards, and the community acknowledges that.
One slight little problem: Internet Explorer is not standards compliant. It's a terrible browser that results in a reduced end user experience.
When you *know* that switching browsers will make using your product easier and better, shouldn't you let them know that? So, I don't write products that you can't use with IE, but there are plenty of things that you can do with Firefox/Moz that you can't with IE, and when these exist, and enhance the user's experience, I like to let them know.
I didn't know you could earn money referring people to FF, though...
The Tivo/DVR changes the whole dynamic of television. It used to be mandatory to watch the commercials, or at least wait them out. Now, the DVR makes it trivial to skip them over.
Ever watch American Idol? Notice the TVs behind Ryan Seacrest displaying Coca Cola logos and bubbles? The ads are becoming part of the show.
But, along these same lines, ads are starting to get better. Every day, I get video files forwarded to me by E-mail that are frequently... ADS. And they're funny as hell.
Here's an example: It's funny as hell, and I sure don't mind forwarding this to my friends. So, this leather company not only gets people to look at their ad, they don't even pay the costs of distribution!
The world is changing. Guess what? It's been doing that since it was created...
Or for those who recoil under privacy threats by such a thing, maybe offer a locked-all-to-hell ISP service for $x.00 (web, mail, maybe some game port ranges, and that's it) and a "we'll assume you have a clue about what you're doing" service that leaves ports as they are now for $x+y.00 (nominal enough to scare off the average users, but low enough to prevent gouging and such).
This is how DSL service is sold today, with home vs business accounts. Home account is like $20-30/month, has a roaming IP, port 25 is blocked, etc. Business account is more like $50-60/month, has fixed IPs, no ports blocked, and it's officially "OK" to use for servers.
Is that extra $20-30 "gouging"? Well, I dunno, but I pay that premium in all three of my DSL installs for my company...
I am a system administrator, and CTO.
I manage servers, with tens of thousands of users, all over California.
ALL of the servers I've deployed in the last 2 years have been AMD, with a heavy bias towards Opterons. For me, one of the key advantages AMD has over Intel is the "last resort" advantage.
If I deploy Xeon servers, and something goes terribly wrong, I can't go to a local retail outlet and buy any hardware that would work - Xeons are not binary compatible with X86. Local tech shops here in my hometown (Chico, CA) don't have Xeon anything. But they DO have Athlon/64s in droves!
So, if I deploy an Opteron server, I *know* that I can get an Athlon/64 that's binary compatible with my system images from the local l337 Gam3rz computer store with aliens and funky lights, but that's binary compatible with my rackmounted servers. No matter what, I have something I can count on in less than a single working day. I've had to fall back to this in the past, so I'm ready to in the future.
This gives me a worst-case recovery time of about 4 hours during business hours. (the only ones that really, really count)
Xeon is compatible with... Xeon. At best, in a worst-case scenario, I wait 48 hours to get some kind of support in small town, CA. Ouch!!!! No way this is acceptable.
4 hours vs 48 hours. Not a hard decision... So Opteron/Athlon/64 it is, then...
And I don't mind that it's both faster and thousands $$$$ cheaper!
Besides the cost, I see this being a huge benefit to reducing power load on the grid. I suppose the real question is, why don't power companies do this further up the pipe, at the generating stations?
Oh, but they do!
About 25 minutes drive away from my expanding Chico, CA home, is the Oroville, CA "Lake Oroville Forebay". It's a beautiful lake managed by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) where they (sesriously!) pump water uphill at night, then run the water out through generators during the day.
The upshot is a beautiful lake that's wonderful for canoing, bike-riding, hiking, and in general enjoying one's self, which acts as a power stabilizer for the California power grid. I've enjoyed a 6-pack or two with my father-in-law, mountain-biking or hiking various trails above it.
I'm sure it's not the only project like it.
For more information, see this CA gov website and pay attention to the numerous references to 'reversible pump' operation....
You are making the classic argument in support of a police state. Just because X can be used by criminals, or X makes harder the police's job in catching criminals, does not mean that we can or should criminalize X itself.
I don't believe I said that. I only said that anonymous communication results in meaningless communication, and is certainly not a requirement for living in a free society.
Just because most people use a lousy email system with a rotten design and limited capabilities in no way means that anonymity should be prevented or criminalized. We simply inherited a legasy email design that never considered the possibility of things like spam.
SPAM == anonymous communication. I defy you to name a system allowing true anonymous communication that doesn't also result in an truly stupendous amount of meaningless and/or criminal communication.
For another example, take a look freenet, particularly if child porn makes you feel all good down inside.
For yet another example, browse Slashdot at -1, where all the anonymous trolls reside. You know who I am, in some form, and that fact means I will try to produce quality feedback. Moderators can smack me down if I speak heresy.
You appear to be implying that anonymous communication is not and cannot be valuable. That is simply false. There are an infinity number of types and mechanisms of very valuable anonymous communication and informaton.
I only said that the right to anonymous communication is not necessary to preserve the right to free speech. You can identify me as "mcrbids", which doesn't prevent me from speaking freely in this public forum. The necessity of anonymity is merely an indication that the right to speak freely has been compromised.
The freedom and ability to engage in anonymous communication means the freedom and ability to be as anonymous or as non-anonymous as you like, and that you can choose to view or not view communication on any basis you like.
I'm not saying that anonymity isn't important. It's especially important where your free speech rights have been trampled. I'm only saying that your right to "free speech" doesn't directly depend on it. Where the need for anonymity is most highlighted is in those regions where your right to speak freely is questionable.
When a highly qualified reporter keeps a source anonymous, there's a trust implied that the qualified reporter won't be quoting some moron off the street. Even in this case, it's not actually anonymous communication -- It's qualified, information restricted communication. Somebody you trust knows the source, and you trust that the "anonymous" person has been identified by some means out of your control and oversight. And it's ok because you trust the source.
That's free speech at work.
SPAM is truly anonymous. It comes from somebody you don't, can't, and never will know. You can't knock them in any way if it turns out to be bogus. But, the so-called "anonymous" tips used by qualifed reports are, in fact, not anonymous at all. The reporter knows who they are, and because free speech is honored, are able to not disclose their sources. If the reporter trusts idiots, they lose their status, and eventually, their jobs.
So, here's a test for you. Think of the most valuable piece of information you could possibly know, dial some phone number at random, and disclose that valuable tidbit. See where it gets you.
See? Truly "anonymous" communication is almost worthless, no matter how you slice it. The first thing anybody wants to know after something is said, is "who said it" so they can evaluate it's worth for consideration.
Thus, anonymous == worthless.
Free speech requires anonymity.
Anonimity contributes to meaningless and criminal communication. Perfect anonimity will result in nearly worthless communication. Take a look at the "p3n15 pi11z!!" offers in your Email inbox for an excellent example.
Free speech requires VIGILANCE by a population to ensure that the rights to speak freely are not suppressed, and that takes organization, effort, and might.
The correct way to handle the shortage of high-tech labor is to prohibit the government from intervening in the labor market. Specifically, Washington should terminate the H-1B program. Washington should also terminate the the free flow of goods and services between the United States (which is a relatively free market) and (relatively) non-free markets like India and Mexico.
Which is lame advice.
It's like saying that the correct way to manage a free market is to make sure that people in one county can't exchange services with people the next county over - the only difference is one of scale.
The United States has always profited immensely from cheap, imported labor - yes, even the H1B visas in IT - which has contributed handsomely to our way of life, and (dare I say it?!?) has contributed nicely to our economic and political lead. They come here because our economic systems gives them a good set of possibilities for making their life better, and we let them in because by making a good life for themselves, they provide revenue, economic power, and an expanded tax base to our country.
Grow the marketplace, and there's more jobs for all. Let the marketplace go overseas, and we are all seriously screwed. The taxes pay for roads and critical infrastructure. The profits from working here instead of India get ploughed back into our economy, and that means jobs for everyone.
Close the H1Bs, and you just open the doors for moving all that talent, brainpower, and innovation overseas.
And that would be lame.
Sorry you can't compete here in the States against qualified H1Bs, but would you rather compete with them here, where their cost of living is comparable to yours, or in Sri Lanka, where housing costs a miniscule fraction of yours?
Sorry, I say, bring them on! I'll compete with them because I provide better value for the money, not because I'm cheaper.
I parse this phrase to be equivalent to "Hear it Here". Thus, "Hear here!", or perhaps "Here, Hear!"
Since you're the critic, you think it should be.... ???
I'll be glib. I'll be gleeful. And I'll be right.
Make your own damned job. It's the American way. Start your own business, hang a shingle, make some sales, do some cold calls. It hurts at first, contracts don't come with a 401k. But, pretty soon, you get the whole customer-relations thing figured out. Then, not too horribly long after that, you get the whole tax/accountant/bank thing figured out.
Next thing you know, you're swamped with highly paid work! You've stretched your wings, you've gone out, you landed a few key contracts, and suddenly, you have more work than you can do.
So then you figure out hiring and firing. It's a painful lesson, as you often really like the people you're firing. It can be very expensive, if you miscalculate and pay people to make up stuff to "look busy". But, if you come even close to getting it right, it pays, too, and sometimes quite nicely.
If you're half as skilled as you make out to be, you can follow this path, and make better money than your graduate peers in as little as 5-10 years. You can be independently wealthy (retired, never work again) in as little as 20 years.
That's the American way.
Do you want to be the kind of person who mopes when you can't afford your own private plane for at another year? Do you want to be the kind of person who ends up paying more in "recreation" than most people earn in their jobs? Do you long for the stability of knowing you can never be fired, because you're not only the boss, but the owner of the business?
Take your skills, and find a way to market them. A business license costs around $50 in my home town of Chico, CA. A fictitious name statement and accompanying bank account can be had for around $300 most places in California. Everything after that is up to you.
When you take the time to dissect business models to see which works for you, you grow in ways you can't easily convey. When you shoulder the responsibility of keeping the show running, even when your cashflow is bleeding red, you become a bigger, more capable, and more powerful person. When you run the show, you become a bigger, better, more capable, more responsible person in ways that years of college can't even begin to approximate.
I strongly recommend that you turn your frustration into success, and turn your own personal lemon juice into sweet, refreshing lemonade!
Once you've done this, the whole idea of a "job" just seems... well... stupid...
What would you say that we open, photocopy and file away every piece of correspondence that passes through the US Postal Service?
l ic&btnG=Google+Search which makes it pretty clear what you were looking for. But the CONTENT of the website hits aren't logged. More lke a copy of the to/from addresses on the outside of the letter... .
You know that won't pass. But, even in the case of web request logging, it doesn't keep a copy of the *content* of the webpage, just a simple log of the original request.
It's basically a copy off Squid invisible proxy logs. Easily done, hard to detect, and gives a reasonable history of what's done by end user. Example: Google search for "banana republic" returns the URL http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=banana+repub
I know this is not a popular opinion here, but MSFT really does have a tough job, if you are objective about it, from an engineering point of view.
Hear here!
I agree 100%!
As a software engineer of a rapidly growing company, it's amazing to me how much higher the standard of testing and accountability has to be with each major product release. Our company has been growing exponentially, at least 2x annually. Just a year or two ago, a bug meant a few phone calls, but in the last year or so, it's gotten to where a single bug (even a minor one) can easily swamp our telephones!
The first release was like, a proof of concept more than not. It wasn't even feature complete at release - we relied on an update mechanism built in at the last minute to cover for the fact that not all the features were completed!
Not many phone calls from that issue, I might add. But, in the last year or two, a single bug affecting a relatively small percentage of our users still loads us down with dozens of issues ticketed in a single morning.
Ugh!
Since our deliverable is web-based, fixing a bug is still very fast, but we're working furiously to improve quality control testing prior to release. I can only imagine what a company with the market size of Microsoft has to deal with - when the vast majority of computing resources are in your hands, the task of dealing with bugs and updates must be simply gargantuan.
How do they do it with such a shoddy codebase?
Even more interesting is who will release the first terabyte drive and (this is what I'm interested in) who will be the first to put one terabyte on a single platter. A terabyte is a lot. It will be a lot 5 years later, and quite a lot even 10 years later. Sure I understand Moores law and how 10MB was huge back then. But there comes a time after which we actually run out of relevant data to put on it. Pictures will go upto 10 megapixels but it will stop there. Video might go upto 1024x768x32-bitx100FPS but will not exceed that. Our humans senses will cease to notice any further difference. Games might require 2 blue-ray DVDs but will not require say 32 blue-ray DVDs in the next 10 years. What will you PUT on it?
Bloat.
Here's an experiment for you: Open up Microsoft Word, the later the version, the better. Now, type in a SINGLE LETTER, and save it to disk. Then, use Explorer to find out how bit it is.
I ran this test with OpenOffice 1.1.3 on my Fedora Core 3 laptop. My single letter "k", with no style attributes or anything, came to 5,181k!
So, we have 5,180 "characters" (bytes) of data being stored just so that my single, solitary letter "k" can be rendered with the right font, size, paragraph, and whatever else attributes to be added.
Similarly, pictures today usually use JPEG compression, which leaves terrible artifacts, particularly noticable around solid color contrasts. It shows up as a sort of "wavy" artifact surrounding the contrasting border.
In the near future, these kinds of artifacts will be less and less acceptable, and people will tend towards lower compression ratios (and better compression algorithms) to avoid them.
I've already switched from 128kbps for all my MP3 encoding to 192kbps. How long before I decide that
I heard for years that 24-bit color was "better than the human eye could discern" yet 32-bit color video cards are commonplace nowadays. What about 48 bit? 64 bit? 128 bit?
When I was a kid, the idea of a Star Trek "communicator" was just fantastic. Now, I wear one at my hip (the cell phone) and wish it gave me unmetered Internet Access. When I get that unmetered access, I'll wish it was faster, and with less latency.
Yep. The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence, and that fence is the leading edge of technology.
Nowdays Microsft is in everything from the Xbox to who knows how many software company aquisitions and trying to tie them together in a meaningful manor.
I'm confused.
What does Bill's house have to do with this? I mean, it's a meaningful manor, but it's not like everybody at Microsoft is WORKING there, you know...
If windows apps (or group of apps) were virtualized, we could use activex webpages without having to worry about spyware. Just close the virtualization window and it's gone.
On more than one occasion, I've trolled the warez sites for a "key generator". These are programs that you run that give you a workable key for a particular software product - but they are almost ALWAYS loaded with spyware and other easter eggs.
But, with VMWare, it's no big deal. Take a snapshot, download the generator & run, write down key, revert to snapshot. Snap! Done!
I treat such software products as a sort of "try before you buy" - and I've bought numerous products after reviewing them in this manner. (For example, Qarbon, Dreamweaver, PC/Anywhere)
VMWare is really, really cool, though - there's nothing quite like running 3 or 4 virtual systems in a coordinated network application, all on your laptop while in the airport waiting for the plane to land, to really see what it's all about.
Also, my Windows VM has b0rk3d itself several times after an otherwise innocent update or something, and in the case of a physical install, I would have had to re-install. But, with VMWare, I just revert to snapshot, and 5 minutes later, I'm back up and runing.
SWEET!
Redhat Fedora Linux makes a *great* host O/S for software development, especially when combined with VMWare. What's more, VMWare is FREE!
Here's your missing link.