Why hasn't the free market stepped in here? I don't understand why globally, someone isn't taking this opportunity. I understand the cable companies and networks hold the monopolies, and that's where the governments step in. If the governments don't step in, piracy will happily take the lead. Maybe we need an App for our Apple TV/Roku/Chromecast that stream Russian's or Chinese channels that happen to be the popular network show and channels.
Just so I'm completely clear. I pay Foxtel $120/month in Australia to stream non-HD garbage to me. I would happily pay the TV network channels directly each $10/pm to let me stream the same channel and cut the middleman (cable) out of the loop. Or an Internet TV provider $110/pm.
No, why would they be mentioned? The [in]competence of governments (or any customers) should not factor into this calculation.
What should be happening here is the people responsible for technology at the NHS should be getting fired for leaving operation systems in such a state. Still running Exchange 2003? Really? That's just straight negligence.
My company is going through this same problem, but lucky we have been half competent enough to at least use the business risk as a mean for operational change. Sounds like the NHS simply thought, "well, it's not our money."
I challenge your comment that "it would ultimately be a good thing for society". I look around and I'm not particularly impressed. My neighbour downstairs is 29 with a 13 year old daughter and is on social security (called the dole in Australia) - never worked. Based on her first 29 years, I cannot see anything good coming to society for her living an extra 40 years.
Like everyone else on slashdot, I only run Debian and must say I smile when I see reports such as country sponsored malware strikes like this. But it does make me ask an honest question:
How can we be sure that the Linux kernel isn't compromised? I don't really have the time to go through all lines of code and I doubt my security analysis and development skills are up to the task anyway.
What I find interesting about this is not simply the fact they have implemented the start menu and a boot to desktop option. It's the simple fact that when we (Enterprises) sat down with Senior Microsoft Architects and internal consultants two years ago for our Windows 8 upgrade options, they swore black and blue with utter confidence, "It's never coming back". I thought this provided a nice insight into Microsoft's culture and communication.
He may be right that it's only public cloud adoption *now*, but we (enterprises) are looking at the following as our 3 years road map:
Implement Open Stack internally, under a hybrid cloud model
Use this as the opportunity to bring elastic services to internal enterprise systems (OSB, Salable web apps etc) by making key technology discussions that do not pair us to monolithic vendors (Oracle)
Then, when we have the economics and business maturity we can easily migrate our compute sideways into 'any' public cloud
The big problem we have right now is that it's hard, if not impossible, for us to take our big, giant, poorly design monolithic application into the public cloud. We need to implement the cloud methodologies and characteristics internally (elastic, scalable, on-demand etc) before we migrate that compute to a pay per cycle model.
In three years time when we've done the above - I can only imagine how much more stable and mature OpenStack will be.
I truly believe the future of distributed, paid content is for us consumers to be in control, with minimal distribution channels in the middle. As it stands right now, I need to pay Foxtel (Australia) $105 a month, for what they call "IQ2" and a bunch of packages (Standard + Entertainment/Sport). The only channel I actually watch is ABC News 24, which ironically is free to air and only comes with "HD" (another $30) which means I need to switch away to my TV Tuner to actually watch it. The only reason we have Foxtel in the first place is for the wife to watch Channel E and even worse than this, the only reason we have Channel E is because she watches the Kardashians (don't ask) and a few other trash shows.
Here's my point - I have $105 per month where I want to pay TV content creators direction. That is, the Kardashians (*sigh*), Breaking Bad, Suits, and a few others. "In the future", I'm looking forward to media regulation being relaxed (Anyone know why NetFlix isn't in Australia yet?) to using my Android Media Player, and selecting the shows directly I want to watch over the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, feel free to give me free shows and "recommend" shows to me, but do not (!) force me to buy a "Entertainment/Sport" package just for one TV show.
I'm not an Apple fanboi but do own a 2011 Macbook Air (2gb). The only real reason I still have a Desktop PC at home for web and video is because 802.11n cannot stream 1080p (at least not consistently in VLC over SMB). I do not want to buy an overpriced Apple Display for Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. So I'm stuck. I have an Ultrabook (docked to a 24" monitor) I'd like to solely use that's fast enough but it doesn't support the bandwidth I need.
Once the new Macbook Pro's are out I'll finally be able to upgrade to one of them and pair it with a new Airport Extreme (if 802.11ac can do 1080p in my apartment).
Sadly, I think at that point I will probably be masked as a fanboi even though I was really only looking for a powerful Ultrabook platform. None of which was previously possible unless I missed the marketing brochure from a boutique hardware provider (Sony) where they also started shipping 802.11ac.
Please do not use projects "on time" or "on budget" as a success indicator.
My current employer nearly always has all projects in "Green". As an underling (now I'm a Manager and yes I appreciate the irony) it was obvious to me that Exchange 2010 doesn't take 3 years to roll out, even for 10,000 users. Lync (just UM, not even Enterprise Voice) isn't a $1.4m project and it shouldn't take 18 months.
Once a project goes Amber, the PM's just ask for more money or time. Or worse, the Operations Manager kills it so he doesn't look bad. Sadly, he forgets he never delivered the business requirement.
Yea, not being able to afford an upgrade is not an excuse. That's like a truck driver saying he can't afford to buy new tires. At some point he's going to have to or he's not going to be driving his truck.
Sorry that's such a poor metaphor. The core operating system for a PC that performs a functional business role is nothing like the disposable items you mentioned. The actual equivalent metaphoric item on the truck is the trucks engine control unit (ECU) or BIOS on the GPS/Radio.
Just to add further clarification, I have my Firefox configured to "Alway use private browsing mode". It's never saved downloads between browser restarts, and in this instance and in relation to the bug you have just identified, it hasn't recalled any history or uncleared download history for me.
So I think this is a simply a bug (albeit, and agreed, one that should have been avoided).
I think the policy should confirm and enforce that all entities need to abide by the wishes of the deceased (without reason). I don't think we can simply come to a single standard act to {delete, freeze, publicitize} the information.
Then, close the policy with clauses that outline in the event nothing is in the will, the information is available via common law practices (for example a spouse having access to a safety deposit box).
If I want my account deleted, so be it. If I want it open to the public, so be it. If I want to hand over the keys to my social media account to my best friend to let him keep posting as me, then so be it.
What I don't want is for my wishes to be for my wife to have access to all my information (Dropbox, KeePass safes, bank accounts) and her to be denied that access.
This makes a lot of sense. Twitter is and has always been a facilitator of open communication, particularly from censoring governments. This is just an extension of that.
I have always kept an eye on Whisper Systems and specifically TextSecure (and WhisperCore) but they never became really "usable". I would (and I think many people) love to be able to securely text message (or via iMessage or Facebook) knowing it's safely encrypted but still highly usable (similar to Pidgin + OTR).
Will they try to use this for corporate evil? Maybe. But at the same token WhisperSystems never had enough power/traction to develop what they really wanted and we (the people) needed.
I've recently invested time and changed *all* my online passwords. Everything stored inside KeePass with random very strong passwords. Even comparing with the 'core' sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Paypal, Gmail --- *ALL* of them have different requirements which I think is unacceptable. Some enforce 14 chars but don't accept alpha-characters while others cap at 20. One big kudos is Facebook was the best and accepted 256 random characters.
So yes, *we* need to agreed on the minimum standard that all passwords can be. I will propose 20 chars, allowing all upper/lowercase alpha-numerics and non-alphanumeric.
Yes I appreciate security isn't just a simple as allowing 256 random chars, but as the above posters suggested, *WE* (customers) should at least be able to expect a certain level of standards.
As a 20-something tax paying adult I feel this is a topic that needs to be resolved as soon as possible. I am not against bometric or ID scanning, however I am extremely against zero policies being implemented to address this. We must implement the following policies to resolve this:
Do not allow any club/pub/anything to automatically perform these scans without prior consent
Enforce real and strong penalties for pubs/clubs who do not store, protect and secure this information.
Only a few months ago, Vodafone released public information of it's customers. Vodafone is a tech savvy company., I can only imagine how bad the computer information security policies in-place within these clubs/pubs.
I have had my ID scanned in the past at a nightclubs. You line up, the bouncer looks at your ID and immediately (and unethically, if that exists in the bouncer world) passes it to another person who scans it. If you blink, you wouldn't even have realised it. The only thing worse than this is the fact that now my information is "somewhere" in the underground scene in Australia and I have no way of finding out who owns it or how I can have it purged.
Sadly our Minister for Privacy and Freedom of Information (Brendan O'Connor) doesn't understand the fundamentals of Information Security.
Although valid points, you're still inserting invalid and virtual road blocks that don't need to exist.
Let's assume the future cars are electric -- no cylinders.
Let's install run-flats with censors that allows it to cleanly exit a train.
Let's enforce a minimum satefy standard to allow the car to participate in the train (last service passed OK and was less than x KM's)
In other words, the Internet probably wouldn't exist in the state it is in today if people like you were present in the design meetings.
Call me naive, but it seems to me that a lot of these problems can be resolved by Google allowing (and release a application to do it) for any device to be flashed reliably to a stock Android [stable] release. Past and present.
Manufacturers don't want to update there fancy phone and custom UI to the latest? That's fine. But the user is still allowed to manually update themselves and lose the original features they bought into. Guess what -- those fancy features that brought them to your phone may prove to be optional and there's a much better chance they won't choose your hardware platform moving forward. This may be a big enough kick up the butt that the manufacturers need.
In effort of open information, this is roughly how much we pay for goods and services in Australia. Like the above poster, I travel to the USA a lot and quite frankly, I'm like a kid in a candy store for most of the everyone. Everything in the USA is substantially cheaper.
Unleaded Petrol with 10% ethanol: $1.30c a Litre (that's $5/gallon for you Americans!)
Bread: $3 AUD
Milk 2L: $2 AUD
McDonald's Large Big Mac Meal: $9 AUD
Typical Main Meal at a nice (not fine dining) restaurant: $30 AUD
Panasonic 50" 1080p HDTV: $2000 AUD
"Australian" Family Car (Holden Commodore): $35,000
BMW 320ci (this is considered a luxury car in Australia): $65,000
I hope this helps the rest of the world 'understand' how violated we are by monopolized retailers. Aussie dollar gets stronger overseas, people realize it's better to shop overseas and then our fat cat CEO's cry foul play.
Slashdot Mirror
Why hasn't the free market stepped in here? I don't understand why globally, someone isn't taking this opportunity. I understand the cable companies and networks hold the monopolies, and that's where the governments step in. If the governments don't step in, piracy will happily take the lead. Maybe we need an App for our Apple TV/Roku/Chromecast that stream Russian's or Chinese channels that happen to be the popular network show and channels.
Just so I'm completely clear. I pay Foxtel $120/month in Australia to stream non-HD garbage to me. I would happily pay the TV network channels directly each $10/pm to let me stream the same channel and cut the middleman (cable) out of the loop. Or an Internet TV provider $110/pm.
No, why would they be mentioned? The [in]competence of governments (or any customers) should not factor into this calculation.
What should be happening here is the people responsible for technology at the NHS should be getting fired for leaving operation systems in such a state. Still running Exchange 2003? Really? That's just straight negligence.
My company is going through this same problem, but lucky we have been half competent enough to at least use the business risk as a mean for operational change. Sounds like the NHS simply thought, "well, it's not our money."
Sorry this is Slashdot, I think you mean the FOSS version of 1Password called KeePass?
PS. Can someone please do a FOSS and native version of KeePass for Mac OSX.
I challenge your comment that "it would ultimately be a good thing for society". I look around and I'm not particularly impressed. My neighbour downstairs is 29 with a 13 year old daughter and is on social security (called the dole in Australia) - never worked. Based on her first 29 years, I cannot see anything good coming to society for her living an extra 40 years.
Like everyone else on slashdot, I only run Debian and must say I smile when I see reports such as country sponsored malware strikes like this. But it does make me ask an honest question:
How can we be sure that the Linux kernel isn't compromised? I don't really have the time to go through all lines of code and I doubt my security analysis and development skills are up to the task anyway.
What I find interesting about this is not simply the fact they have implemented the start menu and a boot to desktop option. It's the simple fact that when we (Enterprises) sat down with Senior Microsoft Architects and internal consultants two years ago for our Windows 8 upgrade options, they swore black and blue with utter confidence, "It's never coming back". I thought this provided a nice insight into Microsoft's culture and communication.
He may be right that it's only public cloud adoption *now*, but we (enterprises) are looking at the following as our 3 years road map:
The big problem we have right now is that it's hard, if not impossible, for us to take our big, giant, poorly design monolithic application into the public cloud. We need to implement the cloud methodologies and characteristics internally (elastic, scalable, on-demand etc) before we migrate that compute to a pay per cycle model.
In three years time when we've done the above - I can only imagine how much more stable and mature OpenStack will be.
I truly believe the future of distributed, paid content is for us consumers to be in control, with minimal distribution channels in the middle. As it stands right now, I need to pay Foxtel (Australia) $105 a month, for what they call "IQ2" and a bunch of packages (Standard + Entertainment/Sport). The only channel I actually watch is ABC News 24, which ironically is free to air and only comes with "HD" (another $30) which means I need to switch away to my TV Tuner to actually watch it. The only reason we have Foxtel in the first place is for the wife to watch Channel E and even worse than this, the only reason we have Channel E is because she watches the Kardashians (don't ask) and a few other trash shows.
Here's my point - I have $105 per month where I want to pay TV content creators direction. That is, the Kardashians (*sigh*), Breaking Bad, Suits, and a few others. "In the future", I'm looking forward to media regulation being relaxed (Anyone know why NetFlix isn't in Australia yet?) to using my Android Media Player, and selecting the shows directly I want to watch over the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, feel free to give me free shows and "recommend" shows to me, but do not (!) force me to buy a "Entertainment/Sport" package just for one TV show.
I'm not an Apple fanboi but do own a 2011 Macbook Air (2gb). The only real reason I still have a Desktop PC at home for web and video is because 802.11n cannot stream 1080p (at least not consistently in VLC over SMB). I do not want to buy an overpriced Apple Display for Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. So I'm stuck. I have an Ultrabook (docked to a 24" monitor) I'd like to solely use that's fast enough but it doesn't support the bandwidth I need.
Once the new Macbook Pro's are out I'll finally be able to upgrade to one of them and pair it with a new Airport Extreme (if 802.11ac can do 1080p in my apartment).
Sadly, I think at that point I will probably be masked as a fanboi even though I was really only looking for a powerful Ultrabook platform. None of which was previously possible unless I missed the marketing brochure from a boutique hardware provider (Sony) where they also started shipping 802.11ac.
Please do not use projects "on time" or "on budget" as a success indicator.
My current employer nearly always has all projects in "Green". As an underling (now I'm a Manager and yes I appreciate the irony) it was obvious to me that Exchange 2010 doesn't take 3 years to roll out, even for 10,000 users. Lync (just UM, not even Enterprise Voice) isn't a $1.4m project and it shouldn't take 18 months.
Once a project goes Amber, the PM's just ask for more money or time. Or worse, the Operations Manager kills it so he doesn't look bad. Sadly, he forgets he never delivered the business requirement.
Yea, not being able to afford an upgrade is not an excuse. That's like a truck driver saying he can't afford to buy new tires. At some point he's going to have to or he's not going to be driving his truck.
Sorry that's such a poor metaphor. The core operating system for a PC that performs a functional business role is nothing like the disposable items you mentioned. The actual equivalent metaphoric item on the truck is the trucks engine control unit (ECU) or BIOS on the GPS/Radio.
Just to add further clarification, I have my Firefox configured to "Alway use private browsing mode". It's never saved downloads between browser restarts, and in this instance and in relation to the bug you have just identified, it hasn't recalled any history or uncleared download history for me.
So I think this is a simply a bug (albeit, and agreed, one that should have been avoided).
I think the policy should confirm and enforce that all entities need to abide by the wishes of the deceased (without reason). I don't think we can simply come to a single standard act to {delete, freeze, publicitize} the information.
Then, close the policy with clauses that outline in the event nothing is in the will, the information is available via common law practices (for example a spouse having access to a safety deposit box).
If I want my account deleted, so be it. If I want it open to the public, so be it. If I want to hand over the keys to my social media account to my best friend to let him keep posting as me, then so be it.
What I don't want is for my wishes to be for my wife to have access to all my information (Dropbox, KeePass safes, bank accounts) and her to be denied that access.
This makes a lot of sense. Twitter is and has always been a facilitator of open communication, particularly from censoring governments. This is just an extension of that.
I have always kept an eye on Whisper Systems and specifically TextSecure (and WhisperCore) but they never became really "usable". I would (and I think many people) love to be able to securely text message (or via iMessage or Facebook) knowing it's safely encrypted but still highly usable (similar to Pidgin + OTR).
Will they try to use this for corporate evil? Maybe. But at the same token WhisperSystems never had enough power/traction to develop what they really wanted and we (the people) needed.
Agreed!
I've recently invested time and changed *all* my online passwords. Everything stored inside KeePass with random very strong passwords. Even comparing with the 'core' sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Paypal, Gmail --- *ALL* of them have different requirements which I think is unacceptable. Some enforce 14 chars but don't accept alpha-characters while others cap at 20. One big kudos is Facebook was the best and accepted 256 random characters.
So yes, *we* need to agreed on the minimum standard that all passwords can be. I will propose 20 chars, allowing all upper/lowercase alpha-numerics and non-alphanumeric.
Yes I appreciate security isn't just a simple as allowing 256 random chars, but as the above posters suggested, *WE* (customers) should at least be able to expect a certain level of standards.
Why destroy there device? How long will it be until someone finds a way to transfer everyone's locally stored data off there device?
Before those questions are answered, I'd just like to thank Comodo for making my next SSL certification renewal an even easier decision.
Irrelevant if the 'other party' is based out of communist China who aren't shy to publicly admit they have no appreciation copyright infringements.
but for 99+% of users, it's completely unnecessary.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody.” -Bill Gates (1981)
Dear Ms. Julia Gillard,
As a 20-something tax paying adult I feel this is a topic that needs to be resolved as soon as possible. I am not against bometric or ID scanning, however I am extremely against zero policies being implemented to address this. We must implement the following policies to resolve this:
Only a few months ago, Vodafone released public information of it's customers. Vodafone is a tech savvy company., I can only imagine how bad the computer information security policies in-place within these clubs/pubs.
I have had my ID scanned in the past at a nightclubs. You line up, the bouncer looks at your ID and immediately (and unethically, if that exists in the bouncer world) passes it to another person who scans it. If you blink, you wouldn't even have realised it. The only thing worse than this is the fact that now my information is "somewhere" in the underground scene in Australia and I have no way of finding out who owns it or how I can have it purged.
Sadly our Minister for Privacy and Freedom of Information (Brendan O'Connor) doesn't understand the fundamentals of Information Security.
Please fix this as soon as possible.
Although valid points, you're still inserting invalid and virtual road blocks that don't need to exist.
Let's assume the future cars are electric -- no cylinders.
Let's install run-flats with censors that allows it to cleanly exit a train.
Let's enforce a minimum satefy standard to allow the car to participate in the train (last service passed OK and was less than x KM's)
In other words, the Internet probably wouldn't exist in the state it is in today if people like you were present in the design meetings.
Piracy is a simple scapegoat for an overzealous and underachieving CxO.
Extended Status Bar
Call me naive, but it seems to me that a lot of these problems can be resolved by Google allowing (and release a application to do it) for any device to be flashed reliably to a stock Android [stable] release. Past and present.
Manufacturers don't want to update there fancy phone and custom UI to the latest? That's fine. But the user is still allowed to manually update themselves and lose the original features they bought into. Guess what -- those fancy features that brought them to your phone may prove to be optional and there's a much better chance they won't choose your hardware platform moving forward. This may be a big enough kick up the butt that the manufacturers need.
In effort of open information, this is roughly how much we pay for goods and services in Australia. Like the above poster, I travel to the USA a lot and quite frankly, I'm like a kid in a candy store for most of the everyone. Everything in the USA is substantially cheaper.
I hope this helps the rest of the world 'understand' how violated we are by monopolized retailers. Aussie dollar gets stronger overseas, people realize it's better to shop overseas and then our fat cat CEO's cry foul play.