I've been lurking here for a while, and just couldn't hold back from
joining in the discussion.
My.02 follows
Dan Kuykendall wrote:
>
> Yes, most are all dead because they couldnt build a solid foundation to
> work from. Running the phpGroupWare project, along with being a
> GroupWise and then Exchange and now Notes admin has taught me a
> considerable amount about groupware systems. I feel like I can build a
> design with the help of a few others with experience writing and
> maintaing groupware systems. With this small group we can get something
> done faster and then can open up for public discussion/critisism.
>
I used to be an admin for this sort of thing. I was at one time a certified engineer and instructor for WP Office
(when it was an email product - before Novell bought it and turned it into GroupWise) so I understand something about
the architecture of a product like that. I was a Notes admin briefly, too, and managed to escape prior to having to implement Exchange.
Today I'm an exchange user - and a fairly hefty one at that. Exchange holds my corporate database - tasks, calendar and contacts as well as records my communications with others. I depend greatly on this database.
The key concept is the storage engine driving the groupware server - all of the messages and data need to be stored somewhere.
As I understand it, Microsoft is kicking themselves now for the Outlook/Exchange architecture - sync is a real hassle, and of course RPC
over NetBIOS over TCP/IP is a lousy solution anyway.
They are in the process of moving to a new infrastructure using http as the transport, XML as the data format, and relational DB technology on the client. Their ost and pst solutions are terrible at handling large qualtities of data!
If we can implement something similar to what MS is starting to build today - starting with the back end and progressing to having a service on the client providing sync and archive services, we'll have something worthy of competing with Domino and Exchange.
The primary consideration is determining the architecture and the engine that will drive the technology.
I'm no DB geek by any definition, but has anyone thinking about this considered what/how the database ought to work? Is it possible to
implement a solution built on top of MySQL or Postgres, or something else that might scale well?
Once we've defined the back end, it should be as simple as building a wrapper around the technology that we select. (I know that's a major
oversimplification.)
Realistically, whatever engine is selected will determine the architectural limits of the size of implementations. Ideally we could pick something that would scale at least to a mid-size business, and while data storage capacities will increase dramatically as we move forward, we need to consider user data sizes in excess of 2GB. While most users don't need that kind of capacity, many do.
We've seen talk on the evo list about scalability issues between maildir and mbox, and unless we account for that in terms of user data needs, the open solution will have real scalability problems.
Additionally I believe strongly that we should not re-invent the wheel on this one. The good news for us is that the base protocols are
already defined, and the problem is one of data organization rather than message flow. We can leverage open standards like http, ssl, xml in the process, and leverage open source engines to help read and write the data.
There are some things for which there are not open protocols - for example, tasks (AFAIK) - but that need not slow down the vision or early
versions.
What's it going to take to get others of you involved in this? To add some detail to the picture of a truly open groupware server platform?
Surely you have needs that aren't met by existing products....
> > I'm all for getting gung-ho and putting fingertips to the keyboard, but
> > it's wasted effort if you don't have a coherent concept. I'm not
> > advocating committee paralysis, just some simple discussion over what
> > will / will not be addressed in the project and setting some priorities.
>
> I agree we need the concepts first, and I fully plan to work that way.
> but I dont plan to have every tiny function decided before I start
> hacking.
>
Plan the work, work the plan.
Let's pick an attainable scope of features, determine minimum functional requirements for those features, and then get started. We need not
define a huge feature set initially, but we need to understand the architectural consequenses of decisions made when implementing those
features.
The scope of features for version, say 0.1 will tell us when that engine has everything that it needs, and the functional requirements define the minimal quality requirements for those features - the features are done when the quality requirements are met.
Not a single day of prayer? It's got a long history - the first I know of was 1775, and it's been an annual thing since 1952. Abraham Lincoln called on the US to do this as well. For more info, see this site
Atheism has no beliefs? dictionary.com
disagrees with you.
Atheism asserts that there is NO God. In the PRC, it is against the law to believe in God. It was that way in Albania and other communist countries as well.
Life's beginning as arbitrary? That doesn't make sense to me. Please explain yourself.
WRT drug treatment progams,
This site claims that traditional programs work 20% of the time.
I think it's telling that there are not consistent methods for evaluating the effectiveness of drug treatment programs. An article about this is located at the Teen Challenge site They claim a very high success rate.
BTW - Atheists consider narcotics anonymous a religious program, and teen challenge is a Christianity-based program
If Mr. Ashcroft is 'on record' as doing something illegal or unethical, please provide a reference to the record.
If you believe that he lied under oath during his confirmation hearing, do you have evidence of this, or is it simply your assertion that he lied?
We will never know the "real" costs of something like this because it is impractical to collect the data (and inaccurate - how do you measure productivity?)
Some costs that we incur for viruses:
1. I work for a major US corporation which spends lots of money on licenses each year for anti-virus software.
2. We have a person on staff (about 1/2 FTE) whose job it is to make sure that the virus definitions are up to date in our environment, to work with the AV software vendor to resolve issues with how the product is configured/installed - this must be done with each patch from the vendor, and is non-trivial.
3. We have to install the AV software on PCs when they are brought into out environment, and make sure that they have up to date virus definitions
4. We have to maintain an ftp site to store the virus definitions. You may say - they can just get it from the web! BZZZZT! wrong answer! There are WAN costs, internet bandwidth costs, as well as quality control issues -
5. We test AV definitions and engine changes before releasing them to the general public in our environment.
6. We have other people whose job it is to keep up with engine updates and virus definition updates for our file servers and email servers - probably at least another.5 FTE.
All of this is simply to prevent virus infections. Recently we had one regional office that hadn't gotten around to installing the AV software on their systems - this meant that they were not following our documented processes - and as a result all of the machines at the site lost all data on their hard drives.
This DID cost us money - we had to dispatch a recovery image to the site to get the machines working again, and the office was out of business for a couple of days until the PCs could be fixed.
We are a customer service business, and we lost revenue as well as customer goodwill by having an outage of services at this location. How much did that cost us? We will never know!
Another indirect cost is maintaining an internal mailing list for virus info. Everyone who keeps up to date with viruses reads the postings there, and that's a real cost of TIME our most valuable resource.
So, I have no good answer, but I know it's not a small number of dollars.
BTW - if we were running Linux, we'd still need to be concerned about these types of things. The more Linux users there are, the more demand there will be for the geek points involved in writing a worm or virus that spreads well.
Also, the cost of implementing Linux (or other reasonably secure OS in our environment) is not small.
By adding local security you run into additional issues like local accounts/passwords - software installation engineering, file/directory permissions, etc....
Linux is not the answer to that problem (nor is NT or W2K, or 9x.)
Separation of church and state is violated by declaring a national day of prayer? This is something which has been done many times in our nation's history with no outcry of violation of church and state.
This concept was developed by people who wanted to protect the common man from an oppressive national government forcing them to have certain religious beliefs. (eg, what is happening with the religion of atheism today in the PRC.)
A national day of prayer has nothing to do with the separation of church and state.
Double-standard? Give me a break. Apparently Mr. Bush believes that abortion is murder.
There's no debate in the scientific community about when life begins - it's at conception - so Mr. Bush apprently believes in protecting the rights of the unborn child.
Many faith-based programs work where "secular" ones fail. For example the rate of recidivism in drug rehabilitation programs is much lower in faith-based programs than in ones that have no faith component. It's better use of tax dollars to give money to programs that work.
Sabotage of the federal budget? This MUST be a troll. People who have historically paid more should get more of a break! It's a precentage thing - and it's fair! Besides the so-called surplus is greater than originally thought. It's MY money, and I want it BACK so that I can distribute it the way I choose. I think I can choose better distribution mechanisms than my federal employees can.
Tell me one case where Mr. Ashcroft has not upheld the law.
flatpack,
As the father of a young son myself, I spend a bit of time reflecting on the example I set for him.
Would you like your son to emulate your behavior?
How would your wife feel about seeing you dump on a young woman who readily admitted that she has struggled with emotional problems?
Why not spend time developing personal character and demonstrating a life of compassion and concern for others instead of simply tearing them down? You'll get along with others better and as a positive side-effect, you'll like yourself better, too.
Or would you have your son grow up to be as cynical and venom-filled as you?
I pray that this is not the case.
Regards,
anomaly
God loves you and longs for relationship with you. For more information about this, contact me at tom underscore cooper at bigfoot dot com
I don't want to go too 1984 on you, but ideas have consequenses.
Some ideas are harmful - even as ideas. No act occurs unless it was first a thought.
For example, if the thought of sex with children was eliminated, the act wouldn't happen either.
Unfortunately, some will not only concieve of such a concept, but will obsess about it, and act out on it.
As a society, we should discourage people from dwelling on ideas that are destructive to society.
There's no social benefit to promoting the idea of sex with children. It's not an idea which should be promoted.
In fact, sex with children is quite detrimental to children, and the risk is so great that I think it makes sense for us as a society to suppress that kind of fantasy.
You don't have to like it, but this is America, and I can believe it if I want.
Exposure to movies and video games has an impact on us - otherwise, no movies could be described as "important" or "moving" we are changed by seeing and experiencing things.
Banning expression of ideas is a slippery slope. There's no question about that, and if there's no objective standard for evaluating whether something is right or wrong then really I have no basis for saying that sex with children is wrong.
I think we should be very very careful about what things we choose to eliminate from public forums - things like making jokes at the airport about hijacking and screaming fire in a public theater are already impingements on free speech - but we as a society believe that this is for the public good.
I believe that a ban on child pornography - using real or virtual people is ok because our society is better off without people fantasizing about sex with my infant son.
There is an external standard for right and wrong - one established by the one who created the entire universe.
God loves you and longs for relationship with you.
If you want to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
Talk about a slippery slope - as soon as you embrace moral relativism, you no longer have the basis for deciding that what Atilla, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, or Mao did was detrimental - you have no platform on which to stand when decrying the loss of your freedoms, or even the loss of your own life.
There is an ultimate truth, and an external standard for determining right and wrong.
Nietzsche lost his mind as a result of denying the basic truths of the world around him.
Be careful, or the mind you lose may be your own.
Embrace relativism, and then don't even think you can complain when your neighbor does as well and then proceeds to do all manner of things to you which you find offensive.
To whom will you complain or appeal, and on what basis?
God loves you and longs for relationship with you.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
If you want to learn more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
> It also shows me that your points are biased and thus invalid.
And you suggest that as an atheist, you are unbiased? That is preposterous. We all have some sort of bias. Apparently you are biased against the idea of a creator God.
> "christianity" meme is MUCH more harmful to children than sex could ever be.
Based on what evidence? It's true that much evil has been done in the name of Christianity, but that doesn't make Christianity untrue.
> You're just the basic gay-bashing bible-thumping type, so...
It makes it easier for you to categorize me in a box of hate, doesn't it? That way you can marginalize me - give me no thought whatsoever.
If I hated anyone rejecting God, I mean REALLY hated them, why would I quote scripture to them?
According to the Bible, people who reject God spend an eternity apart from Him. He gives them what they demand!
As a result, they spend an eternity devoid of peace, comfort, and love - exactly what they demanded.
So, if I really hated ANYONE, the LAST thing I would do is tell them that God loves them. If I was motivated out of hate, I'd want them to be separated from God.
It's out of love for people that I tell them what God's word says.
He does love you, and wants relationship with you.
The reason that your 'minority group' is persecuted is that the behavior
that you desire is not only distasteful, but also repulsive to most people
in our society because it is destructive..
Your assertion that sexual relations are not damaging to children is
simply denial.
The APA says "No responsible
mental health organization, including the American Psychological Association,
endorses pedophilia or denies its negative effects on children. Any statement
that suggests otherwise is a serious distortion of the truth. The American
Psychiatric Association writes: 'An adult who engages in sexual activity
with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act which never can be
considered normal or socially acceptable behavior.' "
Children are not simply little adults. They are cognitively and
developmentally different from adults. Sexual activity involves us
in the most profound physical, intellectual, and emotional risk possible.
There is little in human life which is more tender and delicate than our
sexual identity, perfomance, and pleasure.
To expose children to that while they are yet incapable of understanding
the implications is phenominally damaging to them. Anyone who says
otherwise is indescribably wrong.
I have read about, and in fact know, a large number of people who were
sexually involved as children. The stories they tell about the damage
inflicted on them by selfish adults who used them for sexual pleasure is
a demonstration of the worst kind of evil. These adults
struggle with worth and identity decades later. Their lives
are colored by shame, inadequacy, rage, fear, and confusion.
They are trapped in a bondage of powerlessness, betrayal, and ambivalence.
You say that you do not involve yourself with actual children.
That is a good thing. However, I submit to you that you are unlikely
to be able to continue in this way. Things that we entertain in our
brains become actions. These activities which you fantasize about
will eventually fail to bring you the pleasure that you are currently experiencing.
You know that this is true, because even today it takes far more to arouse
you than it did even a year ago. This is the nature of sexual perversion.
We take no action without previously having thoughts about it.
Your fantasies will eventually become actions of one sort or another.
Lust is always demanding, and never satisfied.
You assert that you did not choose your sexual orientation. I
will not challenge that. I don't think that science has advanced
sufficiently to determine the root cause of our sexual desires. Regardless,
sexual relations with someone who is not your spouse is not acceptable.
Sexual activity with children is loathsome and damaging to you and to children.
A good reference on the damage caused to these children is called "The
Wounded Heart" and can be found here:
Romans
1:18-24 says:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since
what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and
animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another."
Some things in life can be changed, others cannot.
I have no doubt that many racists discriminate against people based on color. I am sure that qualified people are passed over for raises/promotions based on gender and race. This is wrong. There are legal protections for people based on race and gender. This is as it should be. People should be judged on their merits, not on the color of their skin.
However, some things in life cannot be changed. For example, I happen to be caucasion, and the prevailing wisdom in our country today is that caucasions have trodden on non-caucasians and therefore advantages need be granted to non-caucasians.
As a result, I have not been considered for jobs solely based on the color of my skin. (One of the major employers in my hometown hires caucasian males less than 30% of the time so they can get their averages up.)
The major corporation for which I now work has a stated policy that they intend to double the number of women and minorities in senior executive positions.
The side effect of this is that as a caucasian male, I will be less likely to get the positions that do become available.
This brings me to my point. I cannot change the fact that it is culturally acceptable to discriminate against caucasian males in today's workplace. This is simply a fact of life. I can work around it - for example - I relocated 350 miles from my hometown where I could more easily find work. Because I cannot change it, I must adapt to it.
If these people feel the need to have the court redress their grievances, that is their prerogative. I have found that life is much happier if I focus on what I an do rather than what 'the man' is doing to keep me down.
Also, WRT education, I grew up in a poor family in Appalachia, borrowed money to pay for school, and worked my butt off to get my education.
I strongly believe that ANYONE of average intelligence can complete college in the US if they are sufficiently motivated. Government backed loans, grants, and the prospective student's hard work combine to make this possible.
I am cetain that this will be marked as a troll, but seriously -
How can it be that we are all so interested in determining WHO placed this simple monolith, when we blindly accept that life on earth - far more complex than a monolith - is here by chance?
I'm too cheap to pay for good quality home automation, so I have nickel and dimed X10 to provide some level of control.
I recently bought a video camera from them. (A hard wired one, not the wireless kind.)
The ads on the site apprear to target people who want to spy on their neighbors. I bought the black and while "night watch" camera so that my wife and I could see our newborn in the nursery. The funny thing is that it takes a substantial amount of light to see the baby - so much light that it would be difficult for the kiddo to sleep!
That camera is rated to be "5 times more sensitive" than their color cameras.
The joke is that based on my experience trying to watch my son, if some pervert wanted to spy on his neighbor the 'target' would need to have every light on full brightness in order for the camera to work.
Warts and all, I think that X10 is a good deal - particularly if you get on their mailing list and use the vouchers that they mail out.
We're going to install the b&w camera on our porch so we can see it from our basement.
We've been kicking around the idea of using some sort of network appliance for this. We've got a lot of locations, so we need something portable and cheap.
I'm not sure if we're ready for the network-attached storage route yet....
It's a tough nut to crack, because there are so many constraints. Most of our locations don't have servers on site.
Ghost has a couple of advantages, not the least of which is ease of use. That's something we could overcome with traning and/or scripting.
Another thing is that it's possible to edit ghost images - something I don't think is possible with dd.
I'd love to see a linux utility which would read ghost files. Ideally we'd be able to boot linux and use linux USB support for pulling the ghost image file to the hard disk.
In summary I suppose it's possible to replace the existing system with compressed dd images, but it's more complicated - and requires more training than does Ghost.
Thanks for the feedback. There are a couple of challenges with your recomendation:
SCSI is not that cheap! Perhaps for a home system, but my company is betting it's business on the systems that we buy. That means quality, reliability, and driver issues are a big deal to us. Each change in a driver results in a different build of the OS image. If we use a no-name SCSI card, each time the support chipset changes we need to build a new image. This is very expensive for us to maintain.
SCSI hard disks are much more expensive than IDE. I just checked pricewatch, and a roughly equivalent SCSI drive was around $200 more than it's EIDE counterpart (36GB)
Not against the Chinese people, but against the government!
China sees the US as an enemy, has ballistic missles pointed at our land, persecutes Christians for their beliefs (read beat and imprison without trial) forces women to have abortions, and many other atrocities.
It's not as if China is innocently and unfairly persecuted by the mean old US.....
If you're going to install an OS, shouldn't you check the HCL prior to installation?
I've been bitten by this sort of thing in the past, so I make a point of grabbing the HCL before installation! It's not tough, doesn't take long, and avoids sufering!
Note that this procedure works for ANY Os, not just Linux!
Fine. If you want to believe in evolution, that's fine. But don't pretend that it's science. I'll readily agree that adaptation occurs in nature. We definitely see different kinds of bunnies, but we don't have any evidence that bunnies have "evolved" into anything other that bunnies. Any speculation about such a thing is motivated by a metaphysical naturalist worldview and not "purely" by science.
Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Before you get your flamethrowers in a bunch trying to hose me for being
an idiot, I suggest you consider the evidence of specific creation based
on the concept of intelligent design.
If you're walking on the beach and you discover a watch in the sand,
you won't assume that randome processes and time caused this watch to appear.
"When you see hoofprints, think horses, not zebras"
The impetus behind most so-called science rejecting specific creation
is simply the philosophy of metaphysical naturalism. Naturalism is
a religious belief, not a scientific one.
God exists. He created everything. The fact that you are
alive and reading this is an example of His grace.
This is not "offtopic" or a "troll" The article asked a philosophical
question, and it deserves a philosophical answer.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been lurking here for a while, and just couldn't hold back from
.02 follows
joining in the discussion.
My
Dan Kuykendall wrote:
>
> Yes, most are all dead because they couldnt build a solid foundation to
> work from. Running the phpGroupWare project, along with being a
> GroupWise and then Exchange and now Notes admin has taught me a
> considerable amount about groupware systems. I feel like I can build a
> design with the help of a few others with experience writing and
> maintaing groupware systems. With this small group we can get something
> done faster and then can open up for public discussion/critisism.
>
I used to be an admin for this sort of thing. I was at one time a certified engineer and instructor for WP Office
(when it was an email product - before Novell bought it and turned it into GroupWise) so I understand something about
the architecture of a product like that. I was a Notes admin briefly, too, and managed to escape prior to having to implement Exchange.
Today I'm an exchange user - and a fairly hefty one at that. Exchange holds my corporate database - tasks, calendar and contacts as well as records my communications with others. I depend greatly on this database.
The key concept is the storage engine driving the groupware server - all of the messages and data need to be stored somewhere.
As I understand it, Microsoft is kicking themselves now for the Outlook/Exchange architecture - sync is a real hassle, and of course RPC
over NetBIOS over TCP/IP is a lousy solution anyway.
They are in the process of moving to a new infrastructure using http as the transport, XML as the data format, and relational DB technology on the client. Their ost and pst solutions are terrible at handling large qualtities of data!
If we can implement something similar to what MS is starting to build today - starting with the back end and progressing to having a service on the client providing sync and archive services, we'll have something worthy of competing with Domino and Exchange.
The primary consideration is determining the architecture and the engine that will drive the technology.
I'm no DB geek by any definition, but has anyone thinking about this considered what/how the database ought to work? Is it possible to
implement a solution built on top of MySQL or Postgres, or something else that might scale well?
Once we've defined the back end, it should be as simple as building a wrapper around the technology that we select. (I know that's a major
oversimplification.)
Realistically, whatever engine is selected will determine the architectural limits of the size of implementations. Ideally we could pick something that would scale at least to a mid-size business, and while data storage capacities will increase dramatically as we move forward, we need to consider user data sizes in excess of 2GB. While most users don't need that kind of capacity, many do.
We've seen talk on the evo list about scalability issues between maildir and mbox, and unless we account for that in terms of user data needs, the open solution will have real scalability problems.
Additionally I believe strongly that we should not re-invent the wheel on this one. The good news for us is that the base protocols are
already defined, and the problem is one of data organization rather than message flow. We can leverage open standards like http, ssl, xml in the process, and leverage open source engines to help read and write the data.
There are some things for which there are not open protocols - for example, tasks (AFAIK) - but that need not slow down the vision or early
versions.
What's it going to take to get others of you involved in this? To add some detail to the picture of a truly open groupware server platform?
Surely you have needs that aren't met by existing products....
> > I'm all for getting gung-ho and putting fingertips to the keyboard, but
> > it's wasted effort if you don't have a coherent concept. I'm not
> > advocating committee paralysis, just some simple discussion over what
> > will / will not be addressed in the project and setting some priorities.
>
> I agree we need the concepts first, and I fully plan to work that way.
> but I dont plan to have every tiny function decided before I start
> hacking.
>
Plan the work, work the plan.
Let's pick an attainable scope of features, determine minimum functional requirements for those features, and then get started. We need not
define a huge feature set initially, but we need to understand the architectural consequenses of decisions made when implementing those
features.
The scope of features for version, say 0.1 will tell us when that engine has everything that it needs, and the functional requirements define the minimal quality requirements for those features - the features are done when the quality requirements are met.
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
Not a single day of prayer?
It's got a long history - the first I know of was 1775, and it's been an annual thing since 1952. Abraham Lincoln called on the US to do this as well.
For more info, see this site
Atheism has no beliefs? dictionary.com disagrees with you.
Atheism asserts that there is NO God. In the PRC, it is against the law to believe in God. It was that way in Albania and other communist countries as well.
Life's beginning as arbitrary? That doesn't make sense to me. Please explain yourself.
WRT drug treatment progams, This site claims that traditional programs work 20% of the time. I think it's telling that there are not consistent methods for evaluating the effectiveness of drug treatment programs. An article about this is located at the Teen Challenge site They claim a very high success rate.
BTW - Atheists consider narcotics anonymous a religious program, and teen challenge is a Christianity-based program
If Mr. Ashcroft is 'on record' as doing something illegal or unethical, please provide a reference to the record.
If you believe that he lied under oath during his confirmation hearing, do you have evidence of this, or is it simply your assertion that he lied?
We will never know the "real" costs of something like this because it is impractical to collect the data (and inaccurate - how do you measure productivity?)
.5 FTE.
.02
Some costs that we incur for viruses:
1. I work for a major US corporation which spends lots of money on licenses each year for anti-virus software.
2. We have a person on staff (about 1/2 FTE) whose job it is to make sure that the virus definitions are up to date in our environment, to work with the AV software vendor to resolve issues with how the product is configured/installed - this must be done with each patch from the vendor, and is non-trivial.
3. We have to install the AV software on PCs when they are brought into out environment, and make sure that they have up to date virus definitions
4. We have to maintain an ftp site to store the virus definitions. You may say - they can just get it from the web! BZZZZT! wrong answer! There are WAN costs, internet bandwidth costs, as well as quality control issues -
5. We test AV definitions and engine changes before releasing them to the general public in our environment.
6. We have other people whose job it is to keep up with engine updates and virus definition updates for our file servers and email servers - probably at least another
All of this is simply to prevent virus infections. Recently we had one regional office that hadn't gotten around to installing the AV software on their systems - this meant that they were not following our documented processes - and as a result all of the machines at the site lost all data on their hard drives.
This DID cost us money - we had to dispatch a recovery image to the site to get the machines working again, and the office was out of business for a couple of days until the PCs could be fixed.
We are a customer service business, and we lost revenue as well as customer goodwill by having an outage of services at this location. How much did that cost us? We will never know!
Another indirect cost is maintaining an internal mailing list for virus info. Everyone who keeps up to date with viruses reads the postings there, and that's a real cost of TIME our most valuable resource.
So, I have no good answer, but I know it's not a small number of dollars.
BTW - if we were running Linux, we'd still need to be concerned about these types of things. The more Linux users there are, the more demand there will be for the geek points involved in writing a worm or virus that spreads well.
Also, the cost of implementing Linux (or other reasonably secure OS in our environment) is not small.
By adding local security you run into additional issues like local accounts/passwords - software installation engineering, file/directory permissions, etc....
Linux is not the answer to that problem (nor is NT or W2K, or 9x.)
Just my
Separation of church and state is violated by declaring a national day of prayer? This is something which has been done many times in our nation's history with no outcry of violation of church and state.
This concept was developed by people who wanted to protect the common man from an oppressive national government forcing them to have certain religious beliefs. (eg, what is happening with the religion of atheism today in the PRC.)
A national day of prayer has nothing to do with the separation of church and state.
Double-standard? Give me a break. Apparently Mr. Bush believes that abortion is murder.
There's no debate in the scientific community about when life begins - it's at conception - so Mr. Bush apprently believes in protecting the rights of the unborn child.
Many faith-based programs work where "secular" ones fail. For example the rate of recidivism in drug rehabilitation programs is much lower in faith-based programs than in ones that have no faith component. It's better use of tax dollars to give money to programs that work.
Sabotage of the federal budget? This MUST be a troll. People who have historically paid more should get more of a break! It's a precentage thing - and it's fair! Besides the so-called surplus is greater than originally thought. It's MY money, and I want it BACK so that I can distribute it the way I choose. I think I can choose better distribution mechanisms than my federal employees can.
Tell me one case where Mr. Ashcroft has not upheld the law.
I suppose it all depends on how you define bad.
On what basis do you attack Mr. Bush's character?
On what basis to you attack Mr. Ashcroft's character?
You may disagree with their politics, but that's no reason to attack their character.
Now, former president Clinton - there's reason to attack his character - whether you agree with his politics or not!
Wait a minute....
We just left the administration of "it's the economy, stupid" and
Didn't we bomb the Sudan and Afghanistan under Mr. Clinton as well?
Don't attack Mr. Bush without foundation - wait until he does something bad before beating him up.
Mr. Clinton did exactly what you accuse Mr. Bush of doing.
flatpack,
As the father of a young son myself, I spend a bit of time reflecting on the example I set for him.
Would you like your son to emulate your behavior?
How would your wife feel about seeing you dump on a young woman who readily admitted that she has struggled with emotional problems?
Why not spend time developing personal character and demonstrating a life of compassion and concern for others instead of simply tearing them down? You'll get along with others better and as a positive side-effect, you'll like yourself better, too.
Or would you have your son grow up to be as cynical and venom-filled as you?
I pray that this is not the case.
Regards,
anomaly
God loves you and longs for relationship with you. For more information about this, contact me at tom underscore cooper at bigfoot dot com
This is nuts! Calling people 'tattletales' for reporting negative behavior?
This is called accountabilty. When my neighbor is dealing drugs, I'm calling the police.
When my kid is bugging the neighbor's dog, I expect my neighbor to call me to discipline my kid.
Your rights end when they step on someone else's!
Holding each other accountable to certain behavioral standards is good for society.
Sheesh!
LOL
I don't want to go too 1984 on you, but ideas have consequenses.
Some ideas are harmful - even as ideas. No act occurs unless it was first a thought.
For example, if the thought of sex with children was eliminated, the act wouldn't happen either.
Unfortunately, some will not only concieve of such a concept, but will obsess about it, and act out on it.
As a society, we should discourage people from dwelling on ideas that are destructive to society.
There's no social benefit to promoting the idea of sex with children. It's not an idea which should be promoted.
In fact, sex with children is quite detrimental to children, and the risk is so great that I think it makes sense for us as a society to suppress that kind of fantasy.
You don't have to like it, but this is America, and I can believe it if I want.
Exposure to movies and video games has an impact on us - otherwise, no movies could be described as "important" or "moving" we are changed by seeing and experiencing things.
Banning expression of ideas is a slippery slope. There's no question about that, and if there's no objective standard for evaluating whether something is right or wrong then really I have no basis for saying that sex with children is wrong.
I think we should be very very careful about what things we choose to eliminate from public forums - things like making jokes at the airport about hijacking and screaming fire in a public theater are already impingements on free speech - but we as a society believe that this is for the public good.
I believe that a ban on child pornography - using real or virtual people is ok because our society is better off without people fantasizing about sex with my infant son.
There is an external standard for right and wrong - one established by the one who created the entire universe.
God loves you and longs for relationship with you.
If you want to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
I can't believe it! A moral relativist!
Talk about a slippery slope - as soon as you embrace moral relativism, you no longer have the basis for deciding that what Atilla, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, or Mao did was detrimental - you have no platform on which to stand when decrying the loss of your freedoms, or even the loss of your own life.
There is an ultimate truth, and an external standard for determining right and wrong.
Nietzsche lost his mind as a result of denying the basic truths of the world around him.
Be careful, or the mind you lose may be your own.
Embrace relativism, and then don't even think you can complain when your neighbor does as well and then proceeds to do all manner of things to you which you find offensive.
To whom will you complain or appeal, and on what basis?
God loves you and longs for relationship with you.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
If you want to learn more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
I saw Buckaroo Banzai on TV over the weekend.....The answer is obvious - the aliens live RIGHT HERE, but in the 8th dimension.
I heard it from John Bigbootie!
> It also shows me that your points are biased and thus invalid.
And you suggest that as an atheist, you are unbiased? That is preposterous. We all have some sort of bias. Apparently you are biased against the idea of a creator God.
> "christianity" meme is MUCH more harmful to children than sex could ever be.
Based on what evidence? It's true that much evil has been done in the name of Christianity, but that doesn't make Christianity untrue.
> You're just the basic gay-bashing bible-thumping type, so...
It makes it easier for you to categorize me in a box of hate, doesn't it? That way you can marginalize me - give me no thought whatsoever.
If I hated anyone rejecting God, I mean REALLY hated them, why would I quote scripture to them?
According to the Bible, people who reject God spend an eternity apart from Him. He gives them what they demand!
As a result, they spend an eternity devoid of peace, comfort, and love - exactly what they demanded.
So, if I really hated ANYONE, the LAST thing I would do is tell them that God loves them. If I was motivated out of hate, I'd want them to be separated from God.
It's out of love for people that I tell them what God's word says.
He does love you, and wants relationship with you.
Why are you so angry about that?
Your assertion that sexual relations are not damaging to children is simply denial.
The APA says "No responsible mental health organization, including the American Psychological Association, endorses pedophilia or denies its negative effects on children. Any statement that suggests otherwise is a serious distortion of the truth. The American Psychiatric Association writes: 'An adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act which never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behavior.' "
Children are not simply little adults. They are cognitively and developmentally different from adults. Sexual activity involves us in the most profound physical, intellectual, and emotional risk possible. There is little in human life which is more tender and delicate than our sexual identity, perfomance, and pleasure.
To expose children to that while they are yet incapable of understanding the implications is phenominally damaging to them. Anyone who says otherwise is indescribably wrong.
I have read about, and in fact know, a large number of people who were sexually involved as children. The stories they tell about the damage inflicted on them by selfish adults who used them for sexual pleasure is a demonstration of the worst kind of evil. These adults struggle with worth and identity decades later. Their lives are colored by shame, inadequacy, rage, fear, and confusion.
They are trapped in a bondage of powerlessness, betrayal, and ambivalence.
You say that you do not involve yourself with actual children. That is a good thing. However, I submit to you that you are unlikely to be able to continue in this way. Things that we entertain in our brains become actions. These activities which you fantasize about will eventually fail to bring you the pleasure that you are currently experiencing. You know that this is true, because even today it takes far more to arouse you than it did even a year ago. This is the nature of sexual perversion.
We take no action without previously having thoughts about it. Your fantasies will eventually become actions of one sort or another.
Lust is always demanding, and never satisfied.
You assert that you did not choose your sexual orientation. I will not challenge that. I don't think that science has advanced sufficiently to determine the root cause of our sexual desires. Regardless, sexual relations with someone who is not your spouse is not acceptable. Sexual activity with children is loathsome and damaging to you and to children. A good reference on the damage caused to these children is called "The Wounded Heart" and can be found here:
Romans 1:18-24 says:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another."
I strongly urge you to get the help that you need before it is too late.
God loves you and wants relationship with you.
If you would like to know how you can avoid God's wrath, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
Please understand that this is NOT a troll!
Some things in life can be changed, others cannot.
I have no doubt that many racists discriminate against people based on color. I am sure that qualified people are passed over for raises/promotions based on gender and race. This is wrong. There are legal protections for people based on race and gender. This is as it should be. People should be judged on their merits, not on the color of their skin.
However, some things in life cannot be changed. For example, I happen to be caucasion, and the prevailing wisdom in our country today is that caucasions have trodden on non-caucasians and therefore advantages need be granted to non-caucasians.
As a result, I have not been considered for jobs solely based on the color of my skin. (One of the major employers in my hometown hires caucasian males less than 30% of the time so they can get their averages up.)
The major corporation for which I now work has a stated policy that they intend to double the number of women and minorities in senior executive positions.
The side effect of this is that as a caucasian male, I will be less likely to get the positions that do become available.
This brings me to my point. I cannot change the fact that it is culturally acceptable to discriminate against caucasian males in today's workplace. This is simply a fact of life. I can work around it - for example - I relocated 350 miles from my hometown where I could more easily find work. Because I cannot change it, I must adapt to it.
If these people feel the need to have the court redress their grievances, that is their prerogative. I have found that life is much happier if I focus on what I an do rather than what 'the man' is doing to keep me down.
Also, WRT education, I grew up in a poor family in Appalachia, borrowed money to pay for school, and worked my butt off to get my education.
I strongly believe that ANYONE of average intelligence can complete college in the US if they are sufficiently motivated. Government backed loans, grants, and the prospective student's hard work combine to make this possible.
I am cetain that this will be marked as a troll, but seriously -
How can it be that we are all so interested in determining WHO placed this simple monolith, when we blindly accept that life on earth - far more complex than a monolith - is here by chance?
I'm too cheap to pay for good quality home automation, so I have nickel and dimed X10 to provide some level of control.
I recently bought a video camera from them. (A hard wired one, not the wireless kind.)
The ads on the site apprear to target people who want to spy on their neighbors. I bought the black and while "night watch" camera so that my wife and I could see our newborn in the nursery. The funny thing is that it takes a substantial amount of light to see the baby - so much light that it would be difficult for the kiddo to sleep!
That camera is rated to be "5 times more sensitive" than their color cameras.
The joke is that based on my experience trying to watch my son, if some pervert wanted to spy on his neighbor the 'target' would need to have every light on full brightness in order for the camera to work.
Warts and all, I think that X10 is a good deal - particularly if you get on their mailing list and use the vouchers that they mail out.
We're going to install the b&w camera on our porch so we can see it from our basement.
YMMV
Thanks for the feedback.
We've been kicking around the idea of using some sort of network appliance for this. We've got a lot of locations, so we need something portable and cheap.
I'm not sure if we're ready for the network-attached storage route yet....
It's a tough nut to crack, because there are so many constraints. Most of our locations don't have servers on site.
Thanks again!
Regards,
anomaly
Ghost has a couple of advantages, not the least of which is ease of use. That's something we could overcome with traning and/or scripting.
Another thing is that it's possible to edit ghost images - something I don't think is possible with dd.
I'd love to see a linux utility which would read ghost files. Ideally we'd be able to boot linux and use linux USB support for pulling the ghost image file to the hard disk.
In summary I suppose it's possible to replace the existing system with compressed dd images, but it's more complicated - and requires more training than does Ghost.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Regards,
Anomaly
Thanks for the feedback. There are a couple of challenges with your recomendation:
SCSI is not that cheap! Perhaps for a home system, but my company is betting it's business on the systems that we buy. That means quality, reliability, and driver issues are a big deal to us. Each change in a driver results in a different build of the OS image. If we use a no-name SCSI card, each time the support chipset changes we need to build a new image. This is very expensive for us to maintain.
SCSI hard disks are much more expensive than IDE. I just checked pricewatch, and a roughly equivalent SCSI drive was around $200 more than it's EIDE counterpart (36GB)
Thanks again for offering a suggestion
There's lots of reason to be biased agaist China.
Not against the Chinese people, but against the government!
China sees the US as an enemy, has ballistic missles pointed at our land, persecutes Christians for their beliefs (read beat and imprison without trial) forces women to have abortions, and many other atrocities.
It's not as if China is innocently and unfairly persecuted by the mean old US.....
If you're going to install an OS, shouldn't you check the HCL prior to installation?
I've been bitten by this sort of thing in the past, so I make a point of grabbing the HCL before installation! It's not tough, doesn't take long, and avoids sufering!
Note that this procedure works for ANY Os, not just Linux!
I knew Saturday morning cartoons would pay off eventually!
"That's taxation without representation, and it's NOT FAIR!"
(originally with reference to the Boston Tea party)
so....we should package up all of the domain names, sneak up when ICANN is not looking, and dump them in the.....nevermind
(apologies to non-US readers)
Fine. If you want to believe in evolution, that's fine. But don't pretend that it's science.
I'll readily agree that adaptation occurs in nature. We definitely see different kinds of bunnies, but we don't have any evidence that bunnies have "evolved" into anything other that bunnies.
Any speculation about such a thing is motivated by a metaphysical naturalist worldview and not "purely" by science.
Before you get your flamethrowers in a bunch trying to hose me for being an idiot, I suggest you consider the evidence of specific creation based on the concept of intelligent design.
If you're walking on the beach and you discover a watch in the sand, you won't assume that randome processes and time caused this watch to appear. "When you see hoofprints, think horses, not zebras"
The impetus behind most so-called science rejecting specific creation is simply the philosophy of metaphysical naturalism. Naturalism is a religious belief, not a scientific one.
God exists. He created everything. The fact that you are alive and reading this is an example of His grace.
This is not "offtopic" or a "troll" The article asked a philosophical question, and it deserves a philosophical answer.
Regards,
Tom Cooper