Well said. Perhaps it's time to invest in Seagate and Western Digital.
If they want the RAM dump, one could just dump the binary to a 50,000-page Word document with 6-point font and hand that in. Not overly useful, but does fit with the draconian requirement to create documents of all RAM states.
And you thought Windows was slow now... just wait until you have to dump every RAM state every 64ms.
I have over 50 domains, and when I teach HTML classes, I buy each student a web domain. Enom is not for the casual web domain user. You have to deposit funds starting at $100US, but the domains are only $8.10US. The website is very thourough, and includes custom MX records, DNS entries, and a free web generator for those who don't know HTML or hate parking spam pages.
It's easy to transfer domains, and they have excellent customer service. I've been with them for years, and have been completely satisfied with their services.
The US Navy has a series of electronics books called the "NEETS" series. It's what I used when I was in the US Navy. You can find them on EBay, or on many bittorrent sites as a burnable CD/DVD with more interactive content. They're not perfect, but they have great explanations and examples for you to learn. They were designed for people who had no electronics background, but wanted to get an electronics rating/job in the military.
Use both. The more you write, the better you'll be. You can always use a pen name for the blog if you're really concerned about getting labeled as an amateur by the big rags. Keep up with the local media, work up to a major market. Hell, why not take three paths and toss in a YouTube presence. Since a large part of your field is luck, having three tickets to the big game gives you an advantage, especially when the dead tree rags start to 'get' the electronic age. You'll be ahead of the pack.
By the by, don't get in the field for the money -- it's like being a teacher. No money, but the job satisfaction goes a long way. Good luck/break a leg and all that.
I was going by the scenario the OP posted, and since a good tape unit was already on hand, it made no sense to ignore it.
I find a lot of people who have limited enterprise experience disparage tape backups. Yes, there are good and bad units, just as there are good and bad HDDs -- remember the Fujitsu fiasco with burned chips? Tapes work well when they are properly configured, the admin properly rotates tapes, old media is thrown away (I had one client with a 4yo tape that wouldn't restore... duh!), and the admin does proactive restore checks.
In one class I teach, almost every student has a built-in bias against tape backups -- until they're taught proper techniques and configurations. When you have large data sets, tape is one of the best choices. If you are only restoring some documents, then an external drive works fine. I always teach professional solutions for professionals, and consumer solutions for home or SOHO users.
I have a group that uses an old disk imaging software set (Ghost Corp 7) to dump client disks to a server every weekend, then they dump the files to tape. If you have access to an imaging software product like Ghost Corp 7 (the Symantec abominations suck), I'd suggest setting up an older server as the backup system (and include the tape drive), then dump the clients and your main server to the backup server. Leave the images on the backup server HDD for fast restores, and use the tapes for offsite backups. This system has worked quite well for a couple of years.
Looks like there IS evidence of a nuke test. CNN is now reporting the US has evidence of radioactivity from North Korea's ground test. If there was a nuke test, it will be interesting to find out why it was so under-powered. Not that a paltry 5 kiloton nuke wouldn't ruin anyone's day. At least we know they don't quite have it down right just yet.
If you don't like the news, just wait five minutes. Something will be along quickly.
I bought two old 3-cylinder Geo Metros for my business and painted them industrial safety yellow. One gets 54MPG and the other gets 50MPG. Odd thing is the one with the air conditioner gets the better mileage.
I also thought about converting them to electron drive, but the cost and technology isn't there yet. I'm actually researching switching over to propane or compressed natural gas. The mileage drops a little, but the cost is less, the engine runs much cleaner and it's far better for the environment.
CNT and propane powered conversions are particularly big in Canada. There's a lot of research on the net on the benefits. The conversion isn't too bad either - converting an old Toyota pickup (22R engine) to CNT is less than a grand. Luckily, there are filling stations around me, and if you re-setup for propane, you can get a fill-up anywhere they refill bar-b-que tanks.
OMNI Magazine story on prototype robots in '81
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Fast Robot Prototyping
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Back in the early 1980-1981 era, OMNI magazine had a great artical on building prototype robots that thought like insects. The gent in charge of the program at MIT decided that it would be a good idea to begin a robotic life at the insect level, then build (evolve?) from there. He used toy cars from Radio Shack, and they had programmed responses, such as flee when the lights came on, following tail-lights, and setting up a territory.
When the robots started doing odd things, they learned quite a lot. One thing that was programmed into the bugs was to defend a territory. The bugs would run a perimeter, and if another robot had tresspassed, they would park and shine their headlights on each other. Theoretically, they should have stayed locked this way, but sometimes one would give up and stake out a new territory.
They were using this for prototyping, and I wonder how far they've come since 1981.
While I don't mind if my students cite Wikipedia (I teach at the college level), I ask that they turn in a printout of the referenced page. This way, should the web page change drastically, I have their original intended reference.
I personally like Everything2.com, since there is usually a long list of items per topic, including the loony ones. Most of the serious posts are heavily cited, and contain links to other posts and websites for further reference. Having a funny post in the middle is also a welcome relief in the throes of research and manuscript writing.
There are several methods for communications through amateur radio. The slow method would be via a message traffic system, the quicker would be phone patch.
A large segment of hams participate in the National Traffic System (NTS), which transports messages from station to station, sort of like a telegram. When the message is routed to an area where it is a local phone call, the receiving ham would call the recipient and read off the message. Not overly fast, but it is free and usually works very well. If one had access to email, that would be faster. Out in the field, you could use radio equipment to send bundles of messages.
A phone patch is a bit more difficult. A radio operator in the field would try to get in contact with another radio operator in the destination country. That ham would dial the phone and, using a device called a phone patch, connect the radio to the phone system for half-duplex communications (say 'over' when your done so the ham can unkey his microphone). Getting a clear radio signal can be difficult. Some folks operate on a schedule, called a 'net'. Many maritime mobile stations check in to maritime nets to pass messages and make calls.
I used both methods when I was in the Persian Gulf back in 1988. I had a ham radio license, and I would use the helicopter HF radio to make connections to the States. I could pass traffic and request phone patches from friends who would be listening on set schedules. All I had to do was get permission from the pilot.
Since most of the folks here are in America, they tend to respond with American ways of thinking. For the record, I'm a US citizen with 11 years of service in the US Navy and I am a disabled vet.
A good example of how France handled the case can be seen in how many cars are marketed in Europe. In the US, every vehicle is compared to the competition (ex: The Ford F250 has more towing power than a Chevy pickup, has more legroom than a Dodge pickup, and has better rims than the Toyota Tundra). This is not allowed in Europe. They can extoll the virtues of their own vehicles without dragging in other manufacturers products. To an informed consumer, both methods are silly, since they're all based on lies, damn lies and statistics.
Therefore, one is not allowed to use someone else's trademark in advertising in most European countries. This seems to be the spot where Google got in trouble. While it can be argued that Google was only the messenger, they actually made money from selling the key adwords that were trademarked. I think this is where they got hit, since they made a profit from the dealing. If they didn't charge for keywords, they probably would have avoided the fine. Perhaps if they change their adwords to kill trademarked names and separate the first and last names as different words, instead of the phrase "Louis V..." use "Louis" "Vuitton" "handbag", they could get away with it, but with this on the books I'd be extra cautious. As someone else pointed out, hire a lawyer and get legal in most of Europe - pay less than the 250K they were fined. Good insurance, IMHO.
Great, and after a while you'll be able to wardrive around with a laptop and an antenna and see who has the really good narcotics in their cabinets. There will be more break-ins, since people will know where the 'good stuff' is located.
I would doubt that people would carry around stolen narcotics with a trackable RFID in the bottle. Just transfer them to a 7-pocket daily pill container and no one would be the wiser.
This is an unfortunate turn of events, and I believe one of the biggest threats to the open source movement. Some of the patents are so oddball or general that anyone can use them to hammer away at some underfunded Sourceforge group to keep them from developing anything that can be used as a competitive product.
The small software houses can't afford to hire patent specialists, and the big behemoths will steal the ideas out from under the little guys. I wonder how well the patents will hold up in other software-rich countries, like India, Russia, Croatia and Serbia.
SP2 was a great idea, but it was poorly implemented. It caused almost as much havoc as the Netsky worm. I have several clients that had their systems set up automatically load and install SP2, and they found themselves without viable machines the next day.
One instance involved a gent who was using WinXPPro to serve out a cash register and inventory system for his store. He only had four machines, and it had been working fine for over a year. After SP2 was autoloaded, everything stopped working, from Quickbooks to his cash register system to Norton Internet Security.
I had to go in and poke around - there were workarounds for Quickbooks and Norton, but not for his cash register program. I had to uninstall SP2, fix the issues that popped up from that evolution, uninstall Norton AV the hard way and reinstall it (and it turned out he did have Netsky and Klez - his LiveUpdate was damaged and his def file was from March 2004).
Overall, two hours of work at $125/hr, plus I threw in some training on updating his AV and ran a spyware remover.
If M$ had done their homework and worked with the major SW vendors, this could have been avoided to a large extent. It would have been a better idea to incorporate updates loadable by Windoze Update, like some major hardware manufacturers do.
The Security Pros are in two camps right now - reactive and proactive. My belief is that proactive may be the philosophically better choice, but the reactive is the modern-day way of life.
Security has always been the bastard stepchild of the IT world. Nobody wants to spend any money or time on it, but it is the biggest reason why networks fail. It's akin to buying insurance for your network. While some high-end gurus want to come up with methods of protecting networks on a high-level, the folks who are writing virii and spyware are working on new methodologies to counteract the standards. Compare this with the way battles were fought during the American Revolution - the British lined up in neat rows, and some American snipers hid in the surroundings. The British bemoaned the tactics, and were generally unable to understand or cope with the revolutionaries who "didn't fight fairly". The end result was Britain was defeated, and having general proactive security plans will also get defeated because the 'bad' coders don't play by the rules.
What may be a good idea is to train and develop more folks who look for security holes and spyware methods and plug them before they get exploited. Anti-spyware and anti-virus companies could do it, and they could use it as a marketing tool (Our new update protects against the IE URL buffer overflow hack!). Companies like MickeySoft can invest some of that capital they have lying around under their couch cushions to either promote (or buy) and AV company, and it would allow M$ to get exploits identified quicker, and perhaps hush the chatter on how hole-y their software is by fixing those holes before they become public.
So, like the rest of the IT world, I have to go on, day after day, reacting to any new threats that show up on my virtual doorstep. For most admins and security folks, that is their focus. When companies go down for lack of vigilence, their competitors will begin to see the use of having trained folks on-site to watch their backs.
Too much complaining and it's off to India
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A College Guide to EA
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· Score: 4, Insightful
After EA is done grinding through all the folks who are desparate for a job or just graduated, and enough word is out that EA is not a place to make a career, they'll just begin to outsource the work to India or Asia. They'll keep some of the folks who generate the hot-selling game ideas (and treat them well) while outsourcing the code jockey work. Keep a small and well-treated group to fix the problems, and you'll have lots of profits.
The only other way for them to start treating their employees in a reasonable manner is to start buying their competitors products and just stick to getting EA games off of Usenet.
Eventually, there will be enough of the old EA gurus around to pool together resources and start their own game company, then beat EA at their own game (pun intended).
Do you think that GNOME and KDE should attempt to become more "windows-ish" to foster familiarity and thereby tempt more desktop users to the Linux platform or do you believe that both projects should continue innovation that sweeps along the current Linux user but may exclude or intimidate the new user?
Your ceaseless work is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
1. Will there be an accepted format for documentation for all distros?
2. Who would be the overall "manual assembler"? I am assuming that your job is the thankless administration and coordination of the overall doc project. If pieces of documentation for one distro also applies to another distro, would it be rewritten or would someone be charged with the task of applying it to other documents?
3. What will be the accepted distribution medium for all the open source documents? HTML, Text, Adobe Acrobat? All of them?
4. When writing technical manuals through your organization, what are the requirements for cohesive writing? What is the accepted stylebook? Is personal style accepted, or only straight technical (de-humanized, if you will) writing wanted? If personal style is acceptable, how does your manual assembler combine differing and clashing personal styles within one document without de-humanizing it?
Thanks...
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
Thank you very much, I will check them out ASAP. $100/test and $30/text is reasonable. I'm surprised I've missed that info with all the schlepping around I do on Linux sites.
I'm working on my MCSE right now, and I intend to get the NT4 cert under the wire. Unfortunately, unless you have the alphabet soup after your name, you don't even get called in to an interview (I have experience dating back to 1977 and PRIME mainframes). Luckily, the Veterans Administration is paying for the college course I am in and the following degree. I am forced to get the MCSE just to get in the door, after which my experience will speak for itself. I agree with you that a lot of the folks who are bashing the MCSEs couldn't pass Network Essentials, and I am sure that there are a bunch of Linux/Unix folks who could've written it better. Seems that the derision concerning M$ is misplaced by those who are getting or have a cert by M$. Hell, for all I know maybe the MCSE is the mark of the Anti-Christ in the Apocolypse!
I do expect to push Linux when I need to develop a networking solution. When a client wants M$ "reliability" though, I have to be able to deliver, no matter how oxymoronish M$ and "reliability" are. You are correct in saying that just because you have the letters trailing your name it does not equate to being pro-M$. It is (sadly) just a marketing requirement. I've been getting back into Unix, and I own legit copies of Novell and SCO. I then went out and got distros of this newfangled Linux thingy, and I have been pro-Linux ever since. I have a virtual library of the evolution of Linux in my Linux CD case. I can't wait until a Linux certification is available to the working poor.
Insightful post, onyxruby, thanks for your thoughts.
I agree that most of the folks who snag full CDs don't buy legit copies. I was just giving my own personal example. I do happen to own several CDRW drives (and a legit copy of Photoshop 5.0, but that's another issue). I did download the complete Rob Zombie album, excellent rip at 160. I liked it. I bought the CD. Why? Only because I wanted to support the artist. If I like what they do, it's worth my ducats. So, you now know someone who did that very thing:)
You're right, there is no easy solution. I know that to most folks out there that online and available equates to free. All I can do is account for myself, so I'm doing just that. Nice post, by the by, well stated.
Hopefully this will get appealed. On one of my domains I have the following clause: The sending of any unsolicited email advertising messages to ANY ADDRESS from this domain will result in the imposition of civil liability against you in accordance with Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code Section 17538.45.
I have been spammed 3 times at the email address above (yup, it's active, and yup, some of my other accounts get spam daily... it seems just the email addy discourages spam for some odd reason). I was able to track down two of them, and sent bills for services rendered, as outlined on the site. One ignored it, one paid me $35 in accordance with my pricing policy. All my postings on newsgroups have a disclaimer about entering into a contract. I hate spam with such venom that I spend money just to make an example of the perpetrator. If I find out who they are, I always follow up with a legal notice to their ISP and host. It was drafted by an attorney, so it goes a long way towards shutting that part of their operation down. The second spammer who ignored the bill had his home ISP account cancelled, and it's a remote part of Arizona. He's now stuck with AOL. Yes, spammers hop to and fro getting free remailers, but I doggedly continue to play whack-a-spammer. Did I mention I hate spammers?
Hopefully the legal eagles in Washington will appeal, it looks like they have a good case. It really sucks when laws are made by folks with no concept of new technologies. Some anonymous person here said it best: sign the judge up (and the jerk's new employer) to every spam list... like going to a business opportunity newsgroup and asking for ideas to make money off of the internet.
This is going to narrowly focus on one area of the article... MP3s.
I personally use MP3s to see if a CD is worth buying. I have been burned so many times I cannot count... I have dozens of CDs that have only one or two decent songs, but the rest of the CD is crap or totally unlike the "hit single" they released. So, I now snag most of the songs I am curious about from the newsgroups. If I find at least one-third of the CD is decent, I will buy it at a traditional local music shop (and always from small non-chains, gotta keep the locals in business). If the album just plain sucks, I may keep the one or two songs that were decent as a fee for attempting to dupe me into buying crapola. In all honesty, MP3s have increased my CD purchasing, it's just that I can now choose what I want to purchase. The folks who made the music need to get paid, and I support those I believe put out consistant personally enjoyable music. As examples (please, no flameing or "they suck shyt", it's what I personally listen to, not what I think you should listen to), I liked some of what White Zombie did, but I was unsure about Rob Zombie's solo effort. I downloaded it, liked it, then bought it. When I was teaching in Thailand, I heard a group called Curve and a song called Chinese Burn, which I particularly enjoyed. I snagged the CD from the newsgroups and hated every other song. I didn't buy it, and only kept the one song. I always listen before I leap when it comes to industrial and techno music, and by sampling what was available using MP3s, I found new groups I had never heard of before (before they were famous): Front Line Assy, Delirium, 808State, KMFDM, etc. I now own legit copies of a lot of CDs that I never would have even known about, let alone purchased.
One item that seems to be missed is that the frequencies have already been sold (auctioned off over a year ago). What the FCC wants to do is allow those companies that already own a particular frequency band to sublet parts out to other companies. They're working on the rules for an exchange/trade program.
The Federal Government made a huge windfall profit when they sold off your frequency spectrum. It was almost as bad as selling off Yosimite or Yellowstone (Old Faithful, brought to you by Seiko, the official time piece for timing the geyser).
As for the companies that bought them, it was a good investment, especially now that they will be able to sublet at a profit. Imagine, selling invisible intangible airwaves! Now imagine what is going to happen when more spectrum is up for grabs, as possibly the allocation for Iridium will be. Reselling parts at a profit? Like printing your own legal tender.
I would expect the prices for WAN-wireless devices to creep up to help pay the subleasing of the frequencies.
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Well said. Perhaps it's time to invest in Seagate and Western Digital.
If they want the RAM dump, one could just dump the binary to a 50,000-page Word document with 6-point font and hand that in. Not overly useful, but does fit with the draconian requirement to create documents of all RAM states.
And you thought Windows was slow now... just wait until you have to dump every RAM state every 64ms.
Enom has been suggested, I'd like to say why.
I have over 50 domains, and when I teach HTML classes, I buy each student a web domain. Enom is not for the casual web domain user. You have to deposit funds starting at $100US, but the domains are only $8.10US. The website is very thourough, and includes custom MX records, DNS entries, and a free web generator for those who don't know HTML or hate parking spam pages.
It's easy to transfer domains, and they have excellent customer service. I've been with them for years, and have been completely satisfied with their services.
The US Navy has a series of electronics books called the "NEETS" series. It's what I used when I was in the US Navy. You can find them on EBay, or on many bittorrent sites as a burnable CD/DVD with more interactive content. They're not perfect, but they have great explanations and examples for you to learn. They were designed for people who had no electronics background, but wanted to get an electronics rating/job in the military.
Why do you think that only one path is available?
Use both. The more you write, the better you'll be. You can always use a pen name for the blog if you're really concerned about getting labeled as an amateur by the big rags. Keep up with the local media, work up to a major market. Hell, why not take three paths and toss in a YouTube presence. Since a large part of your field is luck, having three tickets to the big game gives you an advantage, especially when the dead tree rags start to 'get' the electronic age. You'll be ahead of the pack.
By the by, don't get in the field for the money -- it's like being a teacher. No money, but the job satisfaction goes a long way. Good luck/break a leg and all that.
Thank you, that was a well thought out reply.
I was going by the scenario the OP posted, and since a good tape unit was already on hand, it made no sense to ignore it.
I find a lot of people who have limited enterprise experience disparage tape backups. Yes, there are good and bad units, just as there are good and bad HDDs -- remember the Fujitsu fiasco with burned chips? Tapes work well when they are properly configured, the admin properly rotates tapes, old media is thrown away (I had one client with a 4yo tape that wouldn't restore... duh!), and the admin does proactive restore checks.
In one class I teach, almost every student has a built-in bias against tape backups -- until they're taught proper techniques and configurations. When you have large data sets, tape is one of the best choices. If you are only restoring some documents, then an external drive works fine. I always teach professional solutions for professionals, and consumer solutions for home or SOHO users.
I have a group that uses an old disk imaging software set (Ghost Corp 7) to dump client disks to a server every weekend, then they dump the files to tape. If you have access to an imaging software product like Ghost Corp 7 (the Symantec abominations suck), I'd suggest setting up an older server as the backup system (and include the tape drive), then dump the clients and your main server to the backup server. Leave the images on the backup server HDD for fast restores, and use the tapes for offsite backups. This system has worked quite well for a couple of years.
If you don't like the news, just wait five minutes. Something will be along quickly.
I also thought about converting them to electron drive, but the cost and technology isn't there yet. I'm actually researching switching over to propane or compressed natural gas. The mileage drops a little, but the cost is less, the engine runs much cleaner and it's far better for the environment.
CNT and propane powered conversions are particularly big in Canada. There's a lot of research on the net on the benefits. The conversion isn't too bad either - converting an old Toyota pickup (22R engine) to CNT is less than a grand. Luckily, there are filling stations around me, and if you re-setup for propane, you can get a fill-up anywhere they refill bar-b-que tanks.
Back in the early 1980-1981 era, OMNI magazine had a great artical on building prototype robots that thought like insects. The gent in charge of the program at MIT decided that it would be a good idea to begin a robotic life at the insect level, then build (evolve?) from there. He used toy cars from Radio Shack, and they had programmed responses, such as flee when the lights came on, following tail-lights, and setting up a territory.
When the robots started doing odd things, they learned quite a lot. One thing that was programmed into the bugs was to defend a territory. The bugs would run a perimeter, and if another robot had tresspassed, they would park and shine their headlights on each other. Theoretically, they should have stayed locked this way, but sometimes one would give up and stake out a new territory.
They were using this for prototyping, and I wonder how far they've come since 1981.
While I don't mind if my students cite Wikipedia (I teach at the college level), I ask that they turn in a printout of the referenced page. This way, should the web page change drastically, I have their original intended reference.
I personally like Everything2.com, since there is usually a long list of items per topic, including the loony ones. Most of the serious posts are heavily cited, and contain links to other posts and websites for further reference. Having a funny post in the middle is also a welcome relief in the throes of research and manuscript writing.
There are several methods for communications through amateur radio. The slow method would be via a message traffic system, the quicker would be phone patch.
A large segment of hams participate in the National Traffic System (NTS), which transports messages from station to station, sort of like a telegram. When the message is routed to an area where it is a local phone call, the receiving ham would call the recipient and read off the message. Not overly fast, but it is free and usually works very well. If one had access to email, that would be faster. Out in the field, you could use radio equipment to send bundles of messages.
A phone patch is a bit more difficult. A radio operator in the field would try to get in contact with another radio operator in the destination country. That ham would dial the phone and, using a device called a phone patch, connect the radio to the phone system for half-duplex communications (say 'over' when your done so the ham can unkey his microphone). Getting a clear radio signal can be difficult. Some folks operate on a schedule, called a 'net'. Many maritime mobile stations check in to maritime nets to pass messages and make calls.
I used both methods when I was in the Persian Gulf back in 1988. I had a ham radio license, and I would use the helicopter HF radio to make connections to the States. I could pass traffic and request phone patches from friends who would be listening on set schedules. All I had to do was get permission from the pilot.
Since most of the folks here are in America, they tend to respond with American ways of thinking. For the record, I'm a US citizen with 11 years of service in the US Navy and I am a disabled vet.
A good example of how France handled the case can be seen in how many cars are marketed in Europe. In the US, every vehicle is compared to the competition (ex: The Ford F250 has more towing power than a Chevy pickup, has more legroom than a Dodge pickup, and has better rims than the Toyota Tundra). This is not allowed in Europe. They can extoll the virtues of their own vehicles without dragging in other manufacturers products. To an informed consumer, both methods are silly, since they're all based on lies, damn lies and statistics.
Therefore, one is not allowed to use someone else's trademark in advertising in most European countries. This seems to be the spot where Google got in trouble. While it can be argued that Google was only the messenger, they actually made money from selling the key adwords that were trademarked. I think this is where they got hit, since they made a profit from the dealing. If they didn't charge for keywords, they probably would have avoided the fine. Perhaps if they change their adwords to kill trademarked names and separate the first and last names as different words, instead of the phrase "Louis V..." use "Louis" "Vuitton" "handbag", they could get away with it, but with this on the books I'd be extra cautious. As someone else pointed out, hire a lawyer and get legal in most of Europe - pay less than the 250K they were fined. Good insurance, IMHO.
Great, and after a while you'll be able to wardrive around with a laptop and an antenna and see who has the really good narcotics in their cabinets. There will be more break-ins, since people will know where the 'good stuff' is located.
I would doubt that people would carry around stolen narcotics with a trackable RFID in the bottle. Just transfer them to a 7-pocket daily pill container and no one would be the wiser.
This is an unfortunate turn of events, and I believe one of the biggest threats to the open source movement. Some of the patents are so oddball or general that anyone can use them to hammer away at some underfunded Sourceforge group to keep them from developing anything that can be used as a competitive product.
The small software houses can't afford to hire patent specialists, and the big behemoths will steal the ideas out from under the little guys. I wonder how well the patents will hold up in other software-rich countries, like India, Russia, Croatia and Serbia.
SP2 was a great idea, but it was poorly implemented. It caused almost as much havoc as the Netsky worm. I have several clients that had their systems set up automatically load and install SP2, and they found themselves without viable machines the next day.
One instance involved a gent who was using WinXPPro to serve out a cash register and inventory system for his store. He only had four machines, and it had been working fine for over a year. After SP2 was autoloaded, everything stopped working, from Quickbooks to his cash register system to Norton Internet Security.
I had to go in and poke around - there were workarounds for Quickbooks and Norton, but not for his cash register program. I had to uninstall SP2, fix the issues that popped up from that evolution, uninstall Norton AV the hard way and reinstall it (and it turned out he did have Netsky and Klez - his LiveUpdate was damaged and his def file was from March 2004).
Overall, two hours of work at $125/hr, plus I threw in some training on updating his AV and ran a spyware remover.
If M$ had done their homework and worked with the major SW vendors, this could have been avoided to a large extent. It would have been a better idea to incorporate updates loadable by Windoze Update, like some major hardware manufacturers do.
The Security Pros are in two camps right now - reactive and proactive. My belief is that proactive may be the philosophically better choice, but the reactive is the modern-day way of life.
Security has always been the bastard stepchild of the IT world. Nobody wants to spend any money or time on it, but it is the biggest reason why networks fail. It's akin to buying insurance for your network. While some high-end gurus want to come up with methods of protecting networks on a high-level, the folks who are writing virii and spyware are working on new methodologies to counteract the standards. Compare this with the way battles were fought during the American Revolution - the British lined up in neat rows, and some American snipers hid in the surroundings. The British bemoaned the tactics, and were generally unable to understand or cope with the revolutionaries who "didn't fight fairly". The end result was Britain was defeated, and having general proactive security plans will also get defeated because the 'bad' coders don't play by the rules.
What may be a good idea is to train and develop more folks who look for security holes and spyware methods and plug them before they get exploited. Anti-spyware and anti-virus companies could do it, and they could use it as a marketing tool (Our new update protects against the IE URL buffer overflow hack!). Companies like MickeySoft can invest some of that capital they have lying around under their couch cushions to either promote (or buy) and AV company, and it would allow M$ to get exploits identified quicker, and perhaps hush the chatter on how hole-y their software is by fixing those holes before they become public.
So, like the rest of the IT world, I have to go on, day after day, reacting to any new threats that show up on my virtual doorstep. For most admins and security folks, that is their focus. When companies go down for lack of vigilence, their competitors will begin to see the use of having trained folks on-site to watch their backs.
The only other way for them to start treating their employees in a reasonable manner is to start buying their competitors products and just stick to getting EA games off of Usenet.
Eventually, there will be enough of the old EA gurus around to pool together resources and start their own game company, then beat EA at their own game (pun intended).
Do you think that GNOME and KDE should attempt to become more "windows-ish" to foster familiarity and thereby tempt more desktop users to the Linux platform or do you believe that both projects should continue innovation that sweeps along the current Linux user but may exclude or intimidate the new user?
Your ceaseless work is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
1. Will there be an accepted format for documentation for all distros?
2. Who would be the overall "manual assembler"? I am assuming that your job is the thankless administration and coordination of the overall doc project. If pieces of documentation for one distro also applies to another distro, would it be rewritten or would someone be charged with the task of applying it to other documents?
3. What will be the accepted distribution medium for all the open source documents? HTML, Text, Adobe Acrobat? All of them?
4. When writing technical manuals through your organization, what are the requirements for cohesive writing? What is the accepted stylebook? Is personal style accepted, or only straight technical (de-humanized, if you will) writing wanted? If personal style is acceptable, how does your manual assembler combine differing and clashing personal styles within one document without de-humanizing it?
Thanks...
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
Thank you very much, I will check them out ASAP. $100/test and $30/text is reasonable. I'm surprised I've missed that info with all the schlepping around I do on Linux sites.
Relax, this isn't a flame :)
I'm working on my MCSE right now, and I intend to get the NT4 cert under the wire. Unfortunately, unless you have the alphabet soup after your name, you don't even get called in to an interview (I have experience dating back to 1977 and PRIME mainframes). Luckily, the Veterans Administration is paying for the college course I am in and the following degree. I am forced to get the MCSE just to get in the door, after which my experience will speak for itself. I agree with you that a lot of the folks who are bashing the MCSEs couldn't pass Network Essentials, and I am sure that there are a bunch of Linux/Unix folks who could've written it better. Seems that the derision concerning M$ is misplaced by those who are getting or have a cert by M$. Hell, for all I know maybe the MCSE is the mark of the Anti-Christ in the Apocolypse!
I do expect to push Linux when I need to develop a networking solution. When a client wants M$ "reliability" though, I have to be able to deliver, no matter how oxymoronish M$ and "reliability" are. You are correct in saying that just because you have the letters trailing your name it does not equate to being pro-M$. It is (sadly) just a marketing requirement. I've been getting back into Unix, and I own legit copies of Novell and SCO. I then went out and got distros of this newfangled Linux thingy, and I have been pro-Linux ever since. I have a virtual library of the evolution of Linux in my Linux CD case. I can't wait until a Linux certification is available to the working poor.
Insightful post, onyxruby, thanks for your thoughts.
I agree that most of the folks who snag full CDs don't buy legit copies. I was just giving my own personal example. I do happen to own several CDRW drives (and a legit copy of Photoshop 5.0, but that's another issue). I did download the complete Rob Zombie album, excellent rip at 160. I liked it. I bought the CD. Why? Only because I wanted to support the artist. If I like what they do, it's worth my ducats. So, you now know someone who did that very thing :)
You're right, there is no easy solution. I know that to most folks out there that online and available equates to free. All I can do is account for myself, so I'm doing just that.
Nice post, by the by, well stated.
Hopefully this will get appealed. On one of my domains I have the following clause: The sending of any unsolicited email advertising messages to ANY ADDRESS from this domain will result in the imposition of civil liability against you in accordance with Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code Section 17538.45.
I have been spammed 3 times at the email address above (yup, it's active, and yup, some of my other accounts get spam daily... it seems just the email addy discourages spam for some odd reason). I was able to track down two of them, and sent bills for services rendered, as outlined on the site. One ignored it, one paid me $35 in accordance with my pricing policy. All my postings on newsgroups have a disclaimer about entering into a contract. I hate spam with such venom that I spend money just to make an example of the perpetrator. If I find out who they are, I always follow up with a legal notice to their ISP and host. It was drafted by an attorney, so it goes a long way towards shutting that part of their operation down. The second spammer who ignored the bill had his home ISP account cancelled, and it's a remote part of Arizona. He's now stuck with AOL. Yes, spammers hop to and fro getting free remailers, but I doggedly continue to play whack-a-spammer. Did I mention I hate spammers?
Hopefully the legal eagles in Washington will appeal, it looks like they have a good case. It really sucks when laws are made by folks with no concept of new technologies. Some anonymous person here said it best: sign the judge up (and the jerk's new employer) to every spam list... like going to a business opportunity newsgroup and asking for ideas to make money off of the internet.
This is going to narrowly focus on one area of the article... MP3s.
I personally use MP3s to see if a CD is worth buying. I have been burned so many times I cannot count... I have dozens of CDs that have only one or two decent songs, but the rest of the CD is crap or totally unlike the "hit single" they released. So, I now snag most of the songs I am curious about from the newsgroups. If I find at least one-third of the CD is decent, I will buy it at a traditional local music shop (and always from small non-chains, gotta keep the locals in business). If the album just plain sucks, I may keep the one or two songs that were decent as a fee for attempting to dupe me into buying crapola. In all honesty, MP3s have increased my CD purchasing, it's just that I can now choose what I want to purchase. The folks who made the music need to get paid, and I support those I believe put out consistant personally enjoyable music. As examples (please, no flameing or "they suck shyt", it's what I personally listen to, not what I think you should listen to), I liked some of what White Zombie did, but I was unsure about Rob Zombie's solo effort. I downloaded it, liked it, then bought it. When I was teaching in Thailand, I heard a group called Curve and a song called Chinese Burn, which I particularly enjoyed. I snagged the CD from the newsgroups and hated every other song. I didn't buy it, and only kept the one song. I always listen before I leap when it comes to industrial and techno music, and by sampling what was available using MP3s, I found new groups I had never heard of before (before they were famous): Front Line Assy, Delirium, 808State, KMFDM, etc. I now own legit copies of a lot of CDs that I never would have even known about, let alone purchased.
One item that seems to be missed is that the frequencies have already been sold (auctioned off over a year ago). What the FCC wants to do is allow those companies that already own a particular frequency band to sublet parts out to other companies. They're working on the rules for an exchange/trade program.
The Federal Government made a huge windfall profit when they sold off your frequency spectrum. It was almost as bad as selling off Yosimite or Yellowstone (Old Faithful, brought to you by Seiko, the official time piece for timing the geyser).
As for the companies that bought them, it was a good investment, especially now that they will be able to sublet at a profit. Imagine, selling invisible intangible airwaves! Now imagine what is going to happen when more spectrum is up for grabs, as possibly the allocation for Iridium will be. Reselling parts at a profit? Like printing your own legal tender.
I would expect the prices for WAN-wireless devices to creep up to help pay the subleasing of the frequencies.