Considering this is a government figure making a statement, I'm guessing there's some spin on this figure. I would bet money this is basically the entire IT budget divided by the number of computers provided that aren't in the IT department. It probably includes support staff salaries, building maintenance and rent on the call centres and offices, infrastructure/server setup costs (amortized over x years) and warranties for everything down to the Biro he doodled on while drinking his first cup of tea while his system booted. Go far enough up the national-scale centralized service/support chain in your per-seat calculation, you'll hit £6k easily.
As laptops are much easier to "misplace", there are a couple of policies that virtually every government department (and big business, for that matter) requires are in place if the unit might get even the slightest sniff of sensitive information.
1 - Hard drive encryption must be in play before the OS boots. 2 - Laptops must be fully powered off when in transit to ensure the hard drive encryption is fully engaged and no residual data is available in RAM.
When I worked for the NHS, the encryption software alone doubled the boot time of every laptop it was installed on. When you start to take into account the sheer weight of software installed on even desktop computers - remote access tools, network access control layers, auditing and management systems - and consider that this isn't your usual pre-installed system bloatware but packages custom-built by highly-paid consultants, monitored and maintained across thousands of sites by teams of technicians, not to mention the other standard software packages (Office, Citrix, developed applications, etc), the hardware itself suddenly becomes a tiny part of the TCO. Depending on how you calculate that (include/exclude network infrastructure/bandwidth/server costs? Divide the whole IT budget by the number of people at your desks?) I could easily see that figure being inflated to £6k if that's what the weasel wants to see.
I would definitely agree on the touchpad thing. I haven't seen a single Wintel-laptop touchpad that's been even half as good as the touchpad that came with my iBook G4 or anything they've released since. However, may I suggest turning off Expose Hot Corners and binding your middle mouse button to Mission Control?
Games are the Achilles' Heel of Mac OS X. World of Warcraft not only doubles it's frame rate under Windows/Boot Camp, but it's image quality improves in a dozen very subtle ways - like ground clutter fading in instead of popping in.
Hmm, I just walked across my design company's open-plan office floor and saw a Mac Pro under every desk and not a single fanboi was found.
"Linux users use Windows exactly because our lives depend on it."
Can't decide whether to go with "Drama Queen" or "Pathetic 1st World Problem". I use Linux, OS X and Windows pretty much every day and couldn't care less. Ok, made up my mind, I've going with "Grow Up".
[OT] An American, an Australian and a German walk into a bar. The American greets the bartender and says "I'll have a Budweiser please." The Australian says "I'll have a pint of Fosters, mate." The German considers things for a moment and says "I think I will have a mint tea, if you have any." The American and the Australian question the German's judgement, and in reply he simply shrugs and says "well, it's not like you're having a beer".
Your position is predicated on the idea that everyone is capable of making suitable judgements about such things themselves. The vast majority of people are not sufficiently informed to make the decisions you speak of, especially considering that issues of safety involve making a decision not only for yourself but also on behalf of everyone else surrounding you during the activity.
Just in case anyone gets a bit... shall we say "Adventurous" and tries to use their root access boxen to attack something they shouldn't, it might be worth isolating the VMs on their own VLAN away from the rest of the network, if you haven't already.
I understand mistrust of government, but I can't see any way that gun ownership actually does anything about that issue or any of it's results. I can understand the feeling of safety it engenders in the gun-owning population but can't see any connection with any solution to the issues here. I would have thought that greater political involvement at a higher quality would be a better way of combating these issues - guns just don't seem to be either the problem or the solution from where I'm standing. If anything, doing something about the gaming of the political system would seem to be the way to go and I can't see why America needs guns to affect that change when grassroots movements like the Tea Party are possible.
I don't see how 1,2 and 5 can be counter-acted by widespread gun ownership. 3 and 4 seem from my point of view to have been exacerbated by widespread gun ownership requiring police counter-tactics of that nature to ensure officer safety.
I'm not trying to be deliberately provocative here, I just don't understand the connection between gun ownership and a guarantee of freedom over and above every other method modern western society uses to maintain liberty for it's people.
Let's ignore the taser/gun comparison, it's apples-oranges in reality. Do you not see how your reasoning of parity-or-better will inevitably result in an arms race? How is this better than prohibition?
"A laser gun ala a Star Trek Phaser, would actually be almost ideal, with minimal collateral damage and multiple power settings, including non-lethal."
If you had such a technology, I don't see how a lethal setting could possibly be justifiable for civilian defense.
I've always been fascinated by this... paranoia (I originally wrote distrust but that just doesn't seem strong enough) that Americans bear towards governments, especially their own. In your own case, what specifically are you worried the government will do and what are these fears based on?
Far be it from me to make fun of a bad situation, but I wonder if the spin doctors who come up with these labels for their legitimate opponents have a BOFH-style excuse calendar to pick who they're blaming everything on this month?
I have the opposite opinion. I'd rather use standard rechargeable cells, I can swap them out in seconds and keep on playing. I even have a AAA-powered music player in my bag for when my mobile is low on battery.
When I want to see my reflection in the flying splatter of blood, I remember that I can only gib my annoying neighbour once. Saving him for a special occasion.
This is supposed to be a security... enhancement?! How many people do you know on Facebook who would "recover" your password, change your profile picture to the photo they took of you in drag being touched up by a biker, change your status to Dead and start inviting people to your funeral? Because that's the vast majority of my friends - I'd trust them with my life but wouldn't dream of trusting them with £5. Or my beer. Or access to my Facebook accou - ohhhhhhh wait!
Not to mention that the 130k probably includes the cost of preventative action to stop this happening again. Much easier and quicker (therefore cheaper) to start from scratch with a new security baseline than try to impose one after the fact.
Got a client at the moment discovering the very same home truth right now with something rather less virulent that Conficker running wild on their network. That'll teach them how "optional" AV update subscriptions are.
It's likely they acted "In Good Faith" given a perfectly normal submission. There may not be an equivalence for that Western legal term in Chinese law.
If you also discount the original crop of nationalised TLDs (eg: co.uk), then my browser history would indeed suggest it's pretty rare. However, past results are no guide to future performance and I'm sure there are some pretty smart, creative mofos out there who'd have a field day with the new TLDs.
And I don't care who you are or what you sell, nations should get priority to TLDs over commercial entities. Bezos can go **** himself, over-inflated little ****.
True, your inability to defend your original argument or comprehend the context of a satirical rebuttal clearly demonstrates your lack of intelligence and education.
If you had bothered to look into the context in which Hitler made that statement you quoted, you'd realise what a total jackass you've made of yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering this is a government figure making a statement, I'm guessing there's some spin on this figure. I would bet money this is basically the entire IT budget divided by the number of computers provided that aren't in the IT department. It probably includes support staff salaries, building maintenance and rent on the call centres and offices, infrastructure/server setup costs (amortized over x years) and warranties for everything down to the Biro he doodled on while drinking his first cup of tea while his system booted. Go far enough up the national-scale centralized service/support chain in your per-seat calculation, you'll hit £6k easily.
As laptops are much easier to "misplace", there are a couple of policies that virtually every government department (and big business, for that matter) requires are in place if the unit might get even the slightest sniff of sensitive information.
1 - Hard drive encryption must be in play before the OS boots.
2 - Laptops must be fully powered off when in transit to ensure the hard drive encryption is fully engaged and no residual data is available in RAM.
When I worked for the NHS, the encryption software alone doubled the boot time of every laptop it was installed on. When you start to take into account the sheer weight of software installed on even desktop computers - remote access tools, network access control layers, auditing and management systems - and consider that this isn't your usual pre-installed system bloatware but packages custom-built by highly-paid consultants, monitored and maintained across thousands of sites by teams of technicians, not to mention the other standard software packages (Office, Citrix, developed applications, etc), the hardware itself suddenly becomes a tiny part of the TCO. Depending on how you calculate that (include/exclude network infrastructure/bandwidth/server costs? Divide the whole IT budget by the number of people at your desks?) I could easily see that figure being inflated to £6k if that's what the weasel wants to see.
I would definitely agree on the touchpad thing. I haven't seen a single Wintel-laptop touchpad that's been even half as good as the touchpad that came with my iBook G4 or anything they've released since. However, may I suggest turning off Expose Hot Corners and binding your middle mouse button to Mission Control?
Games are the Achilles' Heel of Mac OS X. World of Warcraft not only doubles it's frame rate under Windows/Boot Camp, but it's image quality improves in a dozen very subtle ways - like ground clutter fading in instead of popping in.
I bet nobody thought they'd see the day when an OS comparison favoured Vista!
"OSX isn't used by anybody except the fanboys"
Hmm, I just walked across my design company's open-plan office floor and saw a Mac Pro under every desk and not a single fanboi was found.
"Linux users use Windows exactly because our lives depend on it."
Can't decide whether to go with "Drama Queen" or "Pathetic 1st World Problem". I use Linux, OS X and Windows pretty much every day and couldn't care less. Ok, made up my mind, I've going with "Grow Up".
[OT]
An American, an Australian and a German walk into a bar. The American greets the bartender and says "I'll have a Budweiser please." The Australian says "I'll have a pint of Fosters, mate." The German considers things for a moment and says "I think I will have a mint tea, if you have any." The American and the Australian question the German's judgement, and in reply he simply shrugs and says "well, it's not like you're having a beer".
Your position is predicated on the idea that everyone is capable of making suitable judgements about such things themselves. The vast majority of people are not sufficiently informed to make the decisions you speak of, especially considering that issues of safety involve making a decision not only for yourself but also on behalf of everyone else surrounding you during the activity.
Selfish and recalcitrant much?
Just in case anyone gets a bit... shall we say "Adventurous" and tries to use their root access boxen to attack something they shouldn't, it might be worth isolating the VMs on their own VLAN away from the rest of the network, if you haven't already.
I understand mistrust of government, but I can't see any way that gun ownership actually does anything about that issue or any of it's results. I can understand the feeling of safety it engenders in the gun-owning population but can't see any connection with any solution to the issues here. I would have thought that greater political involvement at a higher quality would be a better way of combating these issues - guns just don't seem to be either the problem or the solution from where I'm standing. If anything, doing something about the gaming of the political system would seem to be the way to go and I can't see why America needs guns to affect that change when grassroots movements like the Tea Party are possible.
I don't see how 1,2 and 5 can be counter-acted by widespread gun ownership. 3 and 4 seem from my point of view to have been exacerbated by widespread gun ownership requiring police counter-tactics of that nature to ensure officer safety.
I'm not trying to be deliberately provocative here, I just don't understand the connection between gun ownership and a guarantee of freedom over and above every other method modern western society uses to maintain liberty for it's people.
Let's ignore the taser/gun comparison, it's apples-oranges in reality. Do you not see how your reasoning of parity-or-better will inevitably result in an arms race? How is this better than prohibition?
You had me right up until this bit:
"A laser gun ala a Star Trek Phaser, would actually be almost ideal, with minimal collateral damage and multiple power settings, including non-lethal."
If you had such a technology, I don't see how a lethal setting could possibly be justifiable for civilian defense.
I've always been fascinated by this... paranoia (I originally wrote distrust but that just doesn't seem strong enough) that Americans bear towards governments, especially their own. In your own case, what specifically are you worried the government will do and what are these fears based on?
"The EU (and even UK) has had more problems with such weapons than the US and it only stopped when attitudes changed."
Citation please? Not to be snarky or defensive or anything, I'm interested.
Someone who knows how to use sarcasm tags correctly! Makes me want to cry... so happy!
Far be it from me to make fun of a bad situation, but I wonder if the spin doctors who come up with these labels for their legitimate opponents have a BOFH-style excuse calendar to pick who they're blaming everything on this month?
"If you're not with us, you're against us."
That's really the best line they can come up with? I just got a faint ping on my dubiousonar.
I have the opposite opinion. I'd rather use standard rechargeable cells, I can swap them out in seconds and keep on playing. I even have a AAA-powered music player in my bag for when my mobile is low on battery.
When I want to see my reflection in the flying splatter of blood, I remember that I can only gib my annoying neighbour once. Saving him for a special occasion.
This is supposed to be a security... enhancement?! How many people do you know on Facebook who would "recover" your password, change your profile picture to the photo they took of you in drag being touched up by a biker, change your status to Dead and start inviting people to your funeral? Because that's the vast majority of my friends - I'd trust them with my life but wouldn't dream of trusting them with £5. Or my beer. Or access to my Facebook accou - ohhhhhhh wait!
Not to mention that the 130k probably includes the cost of preventative action to stop this happening again. Much easier and quicker (therefore cheaper) to start from scratch with a new security baseline than try to impose one after the fact.
Got a client at the moment discovering the very same home truth right now with something rather less virulent that Conficker running wild on their network. That'll teach them how "optional" AV update subscriptions are.
It's likely they acted "In Good Faith" given a perfectly normal submission. There may not be an equivalence for that Western legal term in Chinese law.
Thought for a second I'd read that headline backwards.
If you also discount the original crop of nationalised TLDs (eg: co.uk), then my browser history would indeed suggest it's pretty rare. However, past results are no guide to future performance and I'm sure there are some pretty smart, creative mofos out there who'd have a field day with the new TLDs.
And I don't care who you are or what you sell, nations should get priority to TLDs over commercial entities. Bezos can go **** himself, over-inflated little ****.
True, your inability to defend your original argument or comprehend the context of a satirical rebuttal clearly demonstrates your lack of intelligence and education.
If you had bothered to look into the context in which Hitler made that statement you quoted, you'd realise what a total jackass you've made of yourself.