That being said, XP and.Net server are currently being CC evaluated. Their evaluations shouldn't take as long because they are both from 2K's code base with mostly cosmetic and relatively minor system changes.
This is huge: 1) The CC certification is a globally accepted ISO standard (ISO-IEC 15408) established for evaluating the security features and capabilities of information technology products. 14 countries accept it as the method for evaluating the security claims of IT products and systems.
2) Just "running service pack 3" does not mean you are running a system that is at the same level of security as those evaluated. Microsoft has several documents (enumerated below) that describe how to set up, use, and administer a CC evaluation ready system.
3) Yes, Windows 2000 is on Service Pack 3 with a few post-service pack hot fixes. My Red Hat installation has at least as many fixes applied to it, and it's not even DoD "Orange Book" certified, let alone evaluated to any international standard of security.
4) There are three very helpful checklists Microsoft released with this announcement:
I) Common Criteria Evaluated Configuration User's Guide describes how to use a secured system in a secure way. All organizations should be sharing this information with their users. Anyone running Windows 2000 or later should read and follow this.
II) Common Criteria Evaluated Configuration Administrator's Guide tells administrators how to run their system once it's been securely configured. If all Windows 2000 admins read this and the next document there'd be fewer security incidents out there.
III) Common Criteria Security Configuration Guide tells you what steps need to be taken to properly configure a CC evaluation worthy system. It is very simple, especially with the templates Microsoft provides, but it is more complex than "apply service pack 3 then drink a beer". These checklists will hopefully alleviate the problem of clueless admins incorrectly configuring and administering Windows 2000 systems.
5) Windows XP and Windows.Net server should be relatively quick to certify. They are from the same code base as Windows 2000 with mostly cosmetic changes and relatively minor system tweaks.
The baseling is this: no other company has certified such a detailed procedure for assuring the ongoing security of their operating system products. Not linux, not BSD, no one. Windows 2000 is the first.
This isn't just a locked box in a closet with no net connection certification. Several Dell and Compaq systems were evaluated in real world situations. From an interview with Microsoft's Security and Server executives: "...directory service, Kerberos, single sign on, file system encryption, VPN functionality, policy-based network management, desktop management, and more. To our knowledge, Linux has not been evaluated for any protection profiles under Common Criteria."
For the record: I run Redhat-based LAMP servers and OpenBSD-based border-gateways. I wish they'd get their acts together and get evaluated; it'd be nice to have an honest-to-god standards-based evaluation of their security.
I just want to say that if you really like NPR you should consider giving that $10 a month to the public radio station you listen to instead of XM.
$120 a year isn't much to most upwardly mobile middle class Americans, and I believe public radio is worth at least that.
I listen almost exclusively to North Dakota Public Radio. Even here in ND the radio market is saturated with Clear Channel crap. I've found NDPR, to be informative, entertaining, and to have regional content that the now Clear Channel stations no longer carry.
...Slashdot should just have a slashbox of Wired News' RSS feed. Or a Wired category (if they do and I haven't seen it just slap me).
It seems like every article that is printed in Wired eventually makes it to Slashdot's front page.
I subscribe to the mag. (Worth the $10 btw.) I don't need to see it here.
Not only that, but the subject of the geek home has been covered here, and other geek sites, many times and this article doesn't really add anything to the discussion.
It's short, which means you can find time to read the whole thing each month.
It has informative articles about Novell products, not lame marketing-written crap. It's worth keeping up on what Novell is doing because most of their products are truly kick-ass.
You can probably qualify for a free subscription.
The killer feature is the monthly column on packet filtering and traffic shaping. Awesome. Probably the best regular column out of the dozen or so IT/Networking mags I get each month.
With the US government detaining "suspected terrorists" (and suspending their US Constitutional rights) as well as tapping the communication and private records of whomever they please, I've been looking more and more at ways of securing my communications and documents from prying eyes.
Cryptography is great as long as I'm the only person controlling the data. So it's great for the documents I want to protect.
But as far as encrypting my communications, I have to wonder if the effort is really worth it. Sure, encrypting my communication stream to the other party prevents a man-in-the-middle.
But that's not the only part that needs protecting. What happens when it gets to my lady friend, Ima Muslim? She could really be someone pretending to be her. She could be forced into compromising her password. There's no way to keep secret that I'm communicating with her, which can be as damning as if they knew what the message said.
How does PGP address those issues? If PGP doesn't address them, what solutions do exist?
Given your new used computers are running at least a Pentium 133, have 64 MB RAM and a 2GB hard disk:
Pirate a copy of Windows 2000.
Install it on the first computer using the NTFS file system. Install your pirated copy of Office 2000.
Change the permissions on C:\, making sure permissions are inherited by child objects:
SYSTEM: Full Control
CREATOR OWNER: Full Control
Administrators: Full Control
Authenticated Users: Read & Execute, Read, List
Use Computer Management administration tool to create a new user who is a member of Users group. Use Users and Passwords control panel to automatically log that user into the system.
Use sysprep to image this disk to the rest of the computers.
Bonus points if you pirate Windows 2000 Server, set up a simple Active Directory, and control group policy for the systems from there.
Linux is horrible for centralized administration and locking down the desktop. My way you don't have to network anything which saves time and money. You don't have to worry about someone stealing the CD you are booting from. And since you are pirating the software Microsoft doesn't get any money.
Despite the naysayers, Windows 2000 runs great on a P133 with 64 megs o' ram, especially when all you are doing is word processing or surfing the Internet.
NIST has a great guide for securely configuring a Windows 2000 workstation. It takes you step by step through each of the items you will need to configure. If you want to get a bit more jiggy than my 6 point solution above, check this out: http://csrc.nist.gov/itsec/download_W2Kpro.html
I have a couple labs where I'd love to stick some inexpensive, quiet, low-power systems that have decent speed.
I've talked to at least a dozen people with Crusoe laptops and they really like how long the battery lasts, how cool the system runs, and how surprisingly quick it is.
This is late to the party. Hope you see this. I wish you had provided an email where I could reach you.
No, there aren't any office suite agnostic books out there that are worth your time. I've looked.
_Running Microsoft Office_ is my recommended reference for that suite, but it's not a great teaching book.
I've developed my own materials that I present in the Intro to Computers class I teach. Here's the outline in a nutshell. It's everything you need to use any word processor. You can flesh it out to actually present yourself.
Essential Word Processor Skills
I. Enter & Edit Text
A. Delete & Backspace Keys
B. Arrow Keys
C. Word Wrap & Enter Key
D. Selecting Text
E. Cut, Copy, & Paste
F. Undo & Redo
II. Layout
A. Justification
B. Margins
C. Tabs
D. Tables
E. Headers & Footers III. Format
A. Text Properties
i. Typeface (Maximum of two per document: 1 heading and 1 body text)
ii. Size
iii. Bold, Italic, & Underline
iv. Text, Highlight, & Background Color
B. Indenting, Number, & Bullets
C. WordArt (Stress this should rarely be used)
IV. Tools
A. Save, Save As, & Open
B. Print Preview, Page Setup, & Layout Views
C. Spell Check
D. Options (tell them they're there, point to Help for more info; very app specific)
V. Workflow
A. Save Regularly
B. Enter Text
C. Layout Text
D. Format Text
E. Spellcheck & Edit Text
This all seems very basic, I'm sure. In fact, most people who have been using computers for years still don't know this stuff. My experience has shown the outline above cover the essentials people have to know. Don't leave anything out, but don't add anything either.
You can cover it all in an hour if you rush. Ideally, you create some exercises for each topic and cover a couple topics per class (Enter & Edit Text, Layout, etc.). Stress the Workflow from the beginning and at each topic, this is where most people do the most damage. They type some, format it, type some, format it... until the document looks and reads like a ransom note and weird formatting errors abound. Then they lose it all when the program crashes because they haven't saved since they started typing.
The essential topics any Intro to Computers class should cover, IMHO, are Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Windows/Operating System, Hardware & Software Components, Computer History & Current Business Usage, Internet & LAN (including Netiquette), and Security.
I could go on for a long time about this stuff. I've developed all my own materials because what is generally available is crap. Someday I'll post it to the web under the OCL, but it's mostly up in my head right now. Hopefully I've given you enough to start from.
I see alot of comments joking about already owning their gene map and about releasing their map under the GPL.
No, you don't and no, you can't.
Most of the genes in your body are already patented, trademarked, and/or copyrighted. Those that aren't will be within the next few years.
We don't own our own bodies.
I hope that literally scares the shit out of you. It did to me: I locked myself in my bathroom until I could cope with the insanity of some corporation owning the natural devices that construct humans.
Wired had a very informative article on this some time back. Also, you can Google for the info and you'll find it.
What really scares me is that I've got at least 80 years left to live. I'm going to be fighting and putting up with a lot of shit before I can finally rest.
I wasn't really meaning to claim anything. The guy asked why it should be necessary to turn off.Net if it isn't installed and I ventured a guess that it is installed with the service pack, so there should be an option to turn it off.
I found out some guy I know wants to get into the IT consulting gig. He's charging $35 an hour.
First thing I said to my wife?
"$35 an hour? He must not be any good. That's what the Staples guy charges. If I was going it alone, it'd be at least $200 per hour."
A bit hyperbolic maybe. But I think undercharging also betrays a lack of self-confidence, among other things.
A lack of self-confidence implies you aren't sure you can really do it. Nobody's going to pay for some wank who isn't sure he can do what you are paying him to do.
I hate replying to myself, but the Juvenile Justive Fact Sheet has great info and backs up my first point: http://www.aacap.org/legislation/jjfacts.htm
Its from the American Academy of Child & Adolecent Psychiatry so I think its pretty honest.
Overall juvenile violence is rising. But the number of juveniles is also rising because of the "baby boomerang": baby boomers' kids are growing up. By 2005 the number of kids age 14-17 will increase 20%.
Per-capita juvenile violence is at a 30-year low. This is backed up by several reports to the Department of Justice since 1995.
It's very hard to find good numbers because it seems everyone who does a study on juvenile violence has an agenda to push. Meaning groups like the video game industry, movie industry, concerned mothers, or the christian coalition are sponsoring/performing the study.
I believe my statements are correct based on my studying the studies.
In my experience, when you start getting into a debate about video game violence you have to limit yourself to three topics and just keep repeating those topics over and over:
1. Juvenile violence is at a 30-year low.
2. People serving time for violent crime consume less media than average. Also, the surgeon general's report stated home life and mental stability are the risk factors, not media exposure.
3. Finally, videogames are rated and the violent ones are clearly labeled "M-for-Mature, 17+" and the factors that lead to that rating are also clearly labeled. Mature rated games account for less than 10% of videogame sales.
All of these points were raised in the Salon article. Stay on these three topics and drill them into the other persons head. Try not to become disoriented and/or gag by their arguments of "think of the children" and "but violence makes baby jesus cry".
Well, if you join a co-op you are basically an investor and have a loud voice in deciding company policy.
That means if you don't like the way they are running the business you can use the democratic process to your advantage: get support from other customers/investors, take control of how things are being run, and change them to the way you like them.
I've seen it done before, and because each customer/investor has one vote it's much more possible (ie takes much less cash and people) to be a catlyst for change in a co-op than in a corporation.
Also, as a customer of a coop you get part of the profit back at the end of the fiscal year. That's very cool.
I'm served by a telecom cooperative in my community (Souris River Telecom in Minot, ND). I couldn't be happier: local and long-distance phone service is very inexpensive, they've set up an all-digital cellular network in their coverage area that's $20/month for basically unlimited talk-time, and I get 1 megabit (bothways) DSL with a static IP and no limits on servers I set up for $40/month. Oh, and here's the kicker: when I call them with a question or for service I get a real, live person on the other end and am routed to someone who can actually help me the first time!
I used to live in an area that was served by an electric co-op. It was the same situation with great service, great value, and they were constantly pushing at the edges of the state-of-the-art. The investor-owned electric utility that serves me now couldn't care less about me as a person, my needs, or future plans for my home or business. They just want to see the check at the end of the month and they will keep operating the way the do (utility wise if not business wise) until they are forced to change by regulatory changes.
So to get to my question: as advantageous to the customer as the cooperative principles are, why aren't more utilities set up this way?
I just wanted to add that I've used several other MP3 players and like the Nex II best.
Players I've tried: Rio 300 Rio 600 Archos Jukebox (early one, don't remember the model) Creative Jukebox Yepp iPod
The Rio 300, Archos, and Creative took for-freaking-ever to fill up. The Rio 300 because it attaches via parallel port and the Archos and Creative because GBs take along time to travel over USB. And if you only fill a few 100MB what's the point of having a jukebox right?
The Rio 600 has crappy DRM issues. You need special (Win or Mac) software to put files on it, and you can't take files off it on another machine.
The yepp was basically a piece of shit.
The iPod was excellent. But it doesn't work with n*x that I'm aware of and it's quite a bit more expensive than the Nex. I'd actually say the Nex is as easy to use as the iPod, and I just don't need GB's of space so the Nex gets my nod.
Also, all of these are really too heavy to run or bike with except the Yepp, which was crap. The Nex is just perfect at a few ounces.
I have a Nex II from Frontier Labs and absolutely love it.
It uses a Compact Flash slot. I've used several brands and they've all worked. It currently has a 128MB card in it, but it could take the IBM Microdrive, 1GB!!
It acts like a removable drive, attached via USB (I actually have some non-MP3 files on it and the player doesn't care). You can drag and drop (or cp) right to the NexII. You can take the NexII to another machine and drag and drop from the Nex to the machine. Lovely.
It's incredibly small and light, just a few ounces plus battery weight. Mine came with a sweet neoprene case to carry it in that has an attached belt clip. Perfect to run or bike with.
You can find it for dirt cheap brand new on eBay, about $80. This company sells them, it's where I got mine and I'll vouch for them. (I'm not associate, just a happy customer.) 128MB compact flash card go for about $40 new on ebay.
You can get "Nexkins" to change the look of the device. Pretty trivial (the machine already looks cool) but there are some neat ones you can find on ebay.
The Nex is really easy to use, and it's just so userfriendly I love it. Moving between tracks, changing the volume, adjusting the built in equalizer (it really works!), using the backlight are all very easy.
I haven't had any problems with mine and I've had it for over a year. Love it, love it, love it. It really is everything you want: light, inexpensive, n*x compatible as removable USB storage, usable, and reliable.
I really don't think you could go wrong with this.
Here's a real "what's the point" question:
on
Men vs. Machines
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Or maybe more of a "why would you want to":
Chessbase has several chess programs for sale on their website. While quite inexpensive (~$45-$80 USD) they are advertised as being damn near impossible to beat. In fact, Chessbase's front page highlights one of the programs for sale kicking the ass of the entire Swiss Chess Team!
So why would you want to actually buy one of these programs? They aren't teaching programs. They aren't for a friendly game against the computer. They aren't open sourced (that I could see) so you can't study the algorithms. They are meant to destroy every human they come in contact with.
Does anyone outside of chess grand masters use these things? (How many grand masters are there, anyway?) I'm a very mediocre chess player myself, and if I want my ass handed to me in chess I'll go down to the local high school club and call them all smelly virgins before starting a game. At least I'll have some face-to-face interaction.
Yeah, counting "one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand" is definetly not scientific. But I'm just standing there anyway so what the hell, right?
But say my bladder fills up, and my blood stream/kidneys/stomach are expanding while waiting for room to be made. When I finally go to empty my bladder my blood stream isn't pouring excess waste into my bladder at the same time is it. I mean not fast enough that it happens during the same session?
I'd guess what happens is I have to go again shortly after I'm done with my first session, like 10, 15 minutes later.
When you're out drinking, the reason you have to go so often after you "break the seal" is because your bladder filled up, then your bloodstream/kidneys/stomach started backing up. You "break the seal" which empties the bladder but not the bloodstream/etc. So shortly thereafter you end up going again because your bladder has filled up from the bloodstream.
Slashdot Mirror
Win2k is CC evaluated/certified now.
.Net server are currently being CC evaluated. Their evaluations shouldn't take as long because they are both from 2K's code base with mostly cosmetic and relatively minor system changes.
An upgrade cycle won't and can't take that away.
That being said, XP and
My god, I've just had it. I submitted this news, but with an unbiased, informative write-up. That took a whole 4 minutes to get rejected.
0 2/10-29CommonCriteriaPR.asp 0 2/1029CommonCriteriaFAQ.asp
.Net server should be relatively quick to certify. They are from the same code base as Windows 2000 with mostly cosmetic changes and relatively minor system tweaks.
n /news/bulletins/cccert.asp for more info.
For the record, here's Microsoft's remarkably FUD-free press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/Oct
The FAQ tells all about the CC and what it really means: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/Oct
This is huge:
1) The CC certification is a globally accepted ISO standard (ISO-IEC 15408) established for evaluating the security features and capabilities of information technology products. 14 countries accept it as the method for evaluating the security claims of IT products and systems.
2) Just "running service pack 3" does not mean you are running a system that is at the same level of security as those evaluated. Microsoft has several documents (enumerated below) that describe how to set up, use, and administer a CC evaluation ready system.
3) Yes, Windows 2000 is on Service Pack 3 with a few post-service pack hot fixes. My Red Hat installation has at least as many fixes applied to it, and it's not even DoD "Orange Book" certified, let alone evaluated to any international standard of security.
4) There are three very helpful checklists Microsoft released with this announcement:
I) Common Criteria Evaluated Configuration User's Guide describes how to use a secured system in a secure way. All organizations should be sharing this information with their users. Anyone running Windows 2000 or later should read and follow this.
II) Common Criteria Evaluated Configuration Administrator's Guide tells administrators how to run their system once it's been securely configured. If all Windows 2000 admins read this and the next document there'd be fewer security incidents out there.
III) Common Criteria Security Configuration Guide tells you what steps need to be taken to properly configure a CC evaluation worthy system. It is very simple, especially with the templates Microsoft provides, but it is more complex than "apply service pack 3 then drink a beer".
These checklists will hopefully alleviate the problem of clueless admins incorrectly configuring and administering Windows 2000 systems.
5) Windows XP and Windows
The baseling is this: no other company has certified such a detailed procedure for assuring the ongoing security of their operating system products. Not linux, not BSD, no one. Windows 2000 is the first.
This isn't just a locked box in a closet with no net connection certification. Several Dell and Compaq systems were evaluated in real world situations. From an interview with Microsoft's Security and Server executives: "...directory service, Kerberos, single sign on, file system encryption, VPN functionality, policy-based network management, desktop management, and more. To our knowledge, Linux has not been evaluated for any protection profiles under Common Criteria."
For the record: I run Redhat-based LAMP servers and OpenBSD-based border-gateways. I wish they'd get their acts together and get evaluated; it'd be nice to have an honest-to-god standards-based evaluation of their security.
I guess I'm done.
See http://microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evaluatio
I just want to say that if you really like NPR you should consider giving that $10 a month to the public radio station you listen to instead of XM.
$120 a year isn't much to most upwardly mobile middle class Americans, and I believe public radio is worth at least that.
I listen almost exclusively to North Dakota Public Radio. Even here in ND the radio market is saturated with Clear Channel crap. I've found NDPR, to be informative, entertaining, and to have regional content that the now Clear Channel stations no longer carry.
...Slashdot should just have a slashbox of Wired News' RSS feed. Or a Wired category (if they do and I haven't seen it just slap me).
It seems like every article that is printed in Wired eventually makes it to Slashdot's front page.
I subscribe to the mag. (Worth the $10 btw.) I don't need to see it here.
Not only that, but the subject of the geek home has been covered here, and other geek sites, many times and this article doesn't really add anything to the discussion.
Novell Connection magazine is really an excellant rag. http://www.nwconnection.com/
It's short, which means you can find time to read the whole thing each month.
It has informative articles about Novell products, not lame marketing-written crap. It's worth keeping up on what Novell is doing because most of their products are truly kick-ass.
You can probably qualify for a free subscription.
The killer feature is the monthly column on packet filtering and traffic shaping. Awesome. Probably the best regular column out of the dozen or so IT/Networking mags I get each month.
With the US government detaining "suspected terrorists" (and suspending their US Constitutional rights) as well as tapping the communication and private records of whomever they please, I've been looking more and more at ways of securing my communications and documents from prying eyes.
Cryptography is great as long as I'm the only person controlling the data. So it's great for the documents I want to protect.
But as far as encrypting my communications, I have to wonder if the effort is really worth it. Sure, encrypting my communication stream to the other party prevents a man-in-the-middle.
But that's not the only part that needs protecting. What happens when it gets to my lady friend, Ima Muslim? She could really be someone pretending to be her. She could be forced into compromising her password. There's no way to keep secret that I'm communicating with her, which can be as damning as if they knew what the message said.
How does PGP address those issues? If PGP doesn't address them, what solutions do exist?
I'm a big fan of Micro ATX.
Small and unobtrusive, but with enough expansion to replace integrated components.
I really don't understand why there aren't more Micro ATX mobos and cases available to the general public.
Linux is horrible for centralized administration and locking down the desktop. My way you don't have to network anything which saves time and money. You don't have to worry about someone stealing the CD you are booting from. And since you are pirating the software Microsoft doesn't get any money.
Despite the naysayers, Windows 2000 runs great on a P133 with 64 megs o' ram, especially when all you are doing is word processing or surfing the Internet.
NIST has a great guide for securely configuring a Windows 2000 workstation. It takes you step by step through each of the items you will need to configure. If you want to get a bit more jiggy than my 6 point solution above, check this out: http://csrc.nist.gov/itsec/download_W2Kpro.html
So when are we gonna get some Crusoe mobos?
I have a couple labs where I'd love to stick some inexpensive, quiet, low-power systems that have decent speed.
I've talked to at least a dozen people with Crusoe laptops and they really like how long the battery lasts, how cool the system runs, and how surprisingly quick it is.
I want that on the desktop, damnit.
This is late to the party. Hope you see this. I wish you had provided an email where I could reach you.
No, there aren't any office suite agnostic books out there that are worth your time. I've looked.
_Running Microsoft Office_ is my recommended reference for that suite, but it's not a great teaching book.
I've developed my own materials that I present in the Intro to Computers class I teach. Here's the outline in a nutshell. It's everything you need to use any word processor. You can flesh it out to actually present yourself.
Essential Word Processor Skills
I. Enter & Edit Text
A. Delete & Backspace Keys
B. Arrow Keys
C. Word Wrap & Enter Key
D. Selecting Text
E. Cut, Copy, & Paste
F. Undo & Redo
II. Layout
A. Justification
B. Margins
C. Tabs
D. Tables
E. Headers & Footers
III. Format
A. Text Properties
i. Typeface (Maximum of two per document: 1 heading and 1 body text)
ii. Size
iii. Bold, Italic, & Underline
iv. Text, Highlight, & Background Color
B. Indenting, Number, & Bullets
C. WordArt (Stress this should rarely be used)
IV. Tools
A. Save, Save As, & Open
B. Print Preview, Page Setup, & Layout Views
C. Spell Check
D. Options (tell them they're there, point to Help for more info; very app specific)
V. Workflow
A. Save Regularly
B. Enter Text
C. Layout Text
D. Format Text
E. Spellcheck & Edit Text
This all seems very basic, I'm sure. In fact, most people who have been using computers for years still don't know this stuff. My experience has shown the outline above cover the essentials people have to know. Don't leave anything out, but don't add anything either.
You can cover it all in an hour if you rush. Ideally, you create some exercises for each topic and cover a couple topics per class (Enter & Edit Text, Layout, etc.). Stress the Workflow from the beginning and at each topic, this is where most people do the most damage. They type some, format it, type some, format it... until the document looks and reads like a ransom note and weird formatting errors abound. Then they lose it all when the program crashes because they haven't saved since they started typing.
The essential topics any Intro to Computers class should cover, IMHO, are Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Windows/Operating System, Hardware & Software Components, Computer History & Current Business Usage, Internet & LAN (including Netiquette), and Security.
I could go on for a long time about this stuff. I've developed all my own materials because what is generally available is crap. Someday I'll post it to the web under the OCL, but it's mostly up in my head right now. Hopefully I've given you enough to start from.
Good Luck!
I see alot of comments joking about already owning their gene map and about releasing their map under the GPL.
No, you don't and no, you can't.
Most of the genes in your body are already patented, trademarked, and/or copyrighted. Those that aren't will be within the next few years.
We don't own our own bodies.
I hope that literally scares the shit out of you. It did to me: I locked myself in my bathroom until I could cope with the insanity of some corporation owning the natural devices that construct humans.
Wired had a very informative article on this some time back. Also, you can Google for the info and you'll find it.
What really scares me is that I've got at least 80 years left to live. I'm going to be fighting and putting up with a lot of shit before I can finally rest.
It'd be nice if some of you would give me a hand.
It's too bad the people who claim broadband is too expensive can't do math.
It's easy to show it as a better value than dial up, especially if you factor in the time saved not having to wait for pages to transmit and display.
The enabling of multimedia online is really just gravy.
No. I through out a wild-assed guess.
.Net if it isn't installed and I ventured a guess that it is installed with the service pack, so there should be an option to turn it off.
It's a shame I was modded up.
I wasn't really meaning to claim anything. The guy asked why it should be necessary to turn off
Love-
Foo
The service packs actually install the .net components.
I found out some guy I know wants to get into the IT consulting gig. He's charging $35 an hour.
First thing I said to my wife?
"$35 an hour? He must not be any good. That's what the Staples guy charges. If I was going it alone, it'd be at least $200 per hour."
A bit hyperbolic maybe. But I think undercharging also betrays a lack of self-confidence, among other things.
A lack of self-confidence implies you aren't sure you can really do it. Nobody's going to pay for some wank who isn't sure he can do what you are paying him to do.
I hate replying to myself, but the Juvenile Justive Fact Sheet has great info and backs up my first point: http://www.aacap.org/legislation/jjfacts.htm
Its from the American Academy of Child & Adolecent Psychiatry so I think its pretty honest.
Overall juvenile violence is rising. But the number of juveniles is also rising because of the "baby boomerang": baby boomers' kids are growing up. By 2005 the number of kids age 14-17 will increase 20%.
Per-capita juvenile violence is at a 30-year low. This is backed up by several reports to the Department of Justice since 1995.
It's very hard to find good numbers because it seems everyone who does a study on juvenile violence has an agenda to push. Meaning groups like the video game industry, movie industry, concerned mothers, or the christian coalition are sponsoring/performing the study.
I believe my statements are correct based on my studying the studies.
My point number 3 came from the FTC report that was dubbed "Joe Camel goes to Hollywood".
Only 7% of video games sold since 1995 are rated Mature. Additionally, 70% of video games are purchased by adults.
In my experience, when you start getting into a debate about video game violence you have to limit yourself to three topics and just keep repeating those topics over and over:
1. Juvenile violence is at a 30-year low.
2. People serving time for violent crime consume less media than average. Also, the surgeon general's report stated home life and mental stability are the risk factors, not media exposure.
3. Finally, videogames are rated and the violent ones are clearly labeled "M-for-Mature, 17+" and the factors that lead to that rating are also clearly labeled. Mature rated games account for less than 10% of videogame sales.
All of these points were raised in the Salon article. Stay on these three topics and drill them into the other persons head. Try not to become disoriented and/or gag by their arguments of "think of the children" and "but violence makes baby jesus cry".
Well, if you join a co-op you are basically an investor and have a loud voice in deciding company policy.
That means if you don't like the way they are running the business you can use the democratic process to your advantage: get support from other customers/investors, take control of how things are being run, and change them to the way you like them.
I've seen it done before, and because each customer/investor has one vote it's much more possible (ie takes much less cash and people) to be a catlyst for change in a co-op than in a corporation.
Also, as a customer of a coop you get part of the profit back at the end of the fiscal year. That's very cool.
I'm served by a telecom cooperative in my community (Souris River Telecom in Minot, ND). I couldn't be happier: local and long-distance phone service is very inexpensive, they've set up an all-digital cellular network in their coverage area that's $20/month for basically unlimited talk-time, and I get 1 megabit (bothways) DSL with a static IP and no limits on servers I set up for $40/month. Oh, and here's the kicker: when I call them with a question or for service I get a real, live person on the other end and am routed to someone who can actually help me the first time!
I used to live in an area that was served by an electric co-op. It was the same situation with great service, great value, and they were constantly pushing at the edges of the state-of-the-art. The investor-owned electric utility that serves me now couldn't care less about me as a person, my needs, or future plans for my home or business. They just want to see the check at the end of the month and they will keep operating the way the do (utility wise if not business wise) until they are forced to change by regulatory changes.
So to get to my question: as advantageous to the customer as the cooperative principles are, why aren't more utilities set up this way?
I just wanted to add that I've used several other MP3 players and like the Nex II best.
Players I've tried:
Rio 300
Rio 600
Archos Jukebox (early one, don't remember the model)
Creative Jukebox
Yepp
iPod
The Rio 300, Archos, and Creative took for-freaking-ever to fill up. The Rio 300 because it attaches via parallel port and the Archos and Creative because GBs take along time to travel over USB. And if you only fill a few 100MB what's the point of having a jukebox right?
The Rio 600 has crappy DRM issues. You need special (Win or Mac) software to put files on it, and you can't take files off it on another machine.
The yepp was basically a piece of shit.
The iPod was excellent. But it doesn't work with n*x that I'm aware of and it's quite a bit more expensive than the Nex. I'd actually say the Nex is as easy to use as the iPod, and I just don't need GB's of space so the Nex gets my nod.
Also, all of these are really too heavy to run or bike with except the Yepp, which was crap. The Nex is just perfect at a few ounces.
I have a Nex II from Frontier Labs and absolutely love it.
It uses a Compact Flash slot. I've used several brands and they've all worked. It currently has a 128MB card in it, but it could take the IBM Microdrive, 1GB!!
It acts like a removable drive, attached via USB (I actually have some non-MP3 files on it and the player doesn't care). You can drag and drop (or cp) right to the NexII. You can take the NexII to another machine and drag and drop from the Nex to the machine. Lovely.
It's incredibly small and light, just a few ounces plus battery weight. Mine came with a sweet neoprene case to carry it in that has an attached belt clip. Perfect to run or bike with.
You can find it for dirt cheap brand new on eBay, about $80. This company sells them, it's where I got mine and I'll vouch for them. (I'm not associate, just a happy customer.) 128MB compact flash card go for about $40 new on ebay.
You can get "Nexkins" to change the look of the device. Pretty trivial (the machine already looks cool) but there are some neat ones you can find on ebay.
The Nex is really easy to use, and it's just so userfriendly I love it. Moving between tracks, changing the volume, adjusting the built in equalizer (it really works!), using the backlight are all very easy.
I haven't had any problems with mine and I've had it for over a year. Love it, love it, love it. It really is everything you want: light, inexpensive, n*x compatible as removable USB storage, usable, and reliable.
I really don't think you could go wrong with this.
Or maybe more of a "why would you want to":
Chessbase has several chess programs for sale on their website. While quite inexpensive (~$45-$80 USD) they are advertised as being damn near impossible to beat. In fact, Chessbase's front page highlights one of the programs for sale kicking the ass of the entire Swiss Chess Team!
So why would you want to actually buy one of these programs? They aren't teaching programs. They aren't for a friendly game against the computer. They aren't open sourced (that I could see) so you can't study the algorithms. They are meant to destroy every human they come in contact with.
Does anyone outside of chess grand masters use these things? (How many grand masters are there, anyway?) I'm a very mediocre chess player myself, and if I want my ass handed to me in chess I'll go down to the local high school club and call them all smelly virgins before starting a game. At least I'll have some face-to-face interaction.
So what's the point?
Yeah, counting "one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand" is definetly not scientific. But I'm just standing there anyway so what the hell, right?
But say my bladder fills up, and my blood stream/kidneys/stomach are expanding while waiting for room to be made. When I finally go to empty my bladder my blood stream isn't pouring excess waste into my bladder at the same time is it. I mean not fast enough that it happens during the same session?
I'd guess what happens is I have to go again shortly after I'm done with my first session, like 10, 15 minutes later.
When you're out drinking, the reason you have to go so often after you "break the seal" is because your bladder filled up, then your bloodstream/kidneys/stomach started backing up. You "break the seal" which empties the bladder but not the bloodstream/etc. So shortly thereafter you end up going again because your bladder has filled up from the bloodstream.
Right?