in Canada, online impersonation of Mr m.mouse@wonderland.mil from Albania would be a serious crime and you face jail if you ever cross the border, Mr Mouse.
In real life, Canada and elsewhere - *you* are a troll.
That's someone who's failings are so apparent that they are socially marginalized. Your twisted, bitter, damaged mind takes pleasure in the the misfortune of others - when not practicing cruelty to animals you delight in creating fear from fantasy - just like now.
Go back under your bridge - there's a cleaning flood a coming.
"the ante should be upped and make it impossible to use these client programs to hurt the boxes they reside on." - by Marrow (195242) on Sunday January 02, @07:59PM (#34740466)
Sure: It's called a custom HOSTS file!
Warning - ignore the poster quoted above - APK is an infamous, banned, abusive, stalking, mentally deranged, troll - who refuses to take his medication, as part of his condition is the delusion that "he knows better than the doctors"
At best his proposed cure for "everything" is a partial, weak solution, requiring constant prescient maintenance *with* admin/root access - a 14+MB ineffectual solutions that *might* have been of some, immeasurably small, use in 1995.
Away with you foul troll, back to cross-linking to your many aliases, fake references, and your bullshit "developer" status, and stalking the polite and blameless.
You are the only compelling argument for the government censoring the internet.
The link off that page is dead, but I'll save you the trouble - Captain Midnight didn't do anything to a satellite.
Satellite hacking has been a commercially available service for some years now - don't know if they're still offering the service (their prices look a little old) but these folks can help.
Not funny. Taking pleasure in other people's gullibility is bad. This is serious. Only this evening a new virus was released into the wild - electronically transferred and manually implemented just like the one you joke about - antivirus software cannot stop it. (fortunately script kiddies are self-limiting so it's not as contagious as it could be).
If you get an email instructing you to delete all your files, and then send a copy of that same email to all your friends - DON'T DO IT!.
I didn't say that egress filtering has no merit, and yes, there are situations where it's called for.
Either you're confused - or meta-semantic trolling. I wrote, unambiguously, and quoted you - that the assertion "it's inbound connections that put you at risk" is "frankly, insane". (check it - the words are still there). Anything less that the complete truth *is* a lie. Eg. to claim that inbound is the main cause of malware would be speculative at best, and lacking in good faith (omitting important information).
[snip] It doesn't mean that anyone who doesn't follow your policy is "frankly, insane".
Nor do I claim that they are. It's not "my" policy. It's good practice (see ITIL) to recognize that security is not simply a matter of blocking exits. Again - nowhere did I say (or imply) that failure to follow my policy was "insane" - that's you either putting a spin on an opinion that contradicts your own, or failing to comprehend. If the english language is a problem I'm happy to "try" and accommodate your native preference.
Nor did I say that all networks should follow my policy - reread my post - I celebrate that others don't.
Nor is allowing outbound connections "a massive, massive security issue you could drive an oil tanker through".
Again - I did not say, or imply that.. Though I agree with blocking any *unnecessary* connection - regardless of the direction. Nor is that the language I would use if I had said it.
SOHO routers by Linksys, D-Link, SMC, Netgear, etc. allow unrestricted outbound connections by default,
Apropos of what? Are you confusing the lowest common denominator with best practice? If 15 million people believe a stupid thing does it make it *not* stupid? Does a product protocol reflect best practice or simply acknowledge the limitations of the largest market? That's rhetorical - if I believed that those products would be locked down.
and a hell of a lot of people are using them without it causing "massive security issues".
Now you are really grasping and flailing.
That's not to say these people don't have any massive security issues. They're just not caused by their egress filtering policy.
Contrasting a professional environment to an amateur environment - even with red herrings like "SOHO", is just silly. "massive security issues" is your hyperbole - you can keep it. Likewise the stupidity of an argument where you both deny, and concede the same slimey allegation. I never said it. Your baffle 'em with machinegun bullshit might impress the lads down the bus stop - but it fails in real life where you claims are tested. Any fool can claim they don't have security problems - to extend that to it "being a result of a policy (no outbound filtering)" is just demonstrating the utility of ridiculum absolutum. When you're done plucking spurious claims out of your arse try considering that not all security concerns come from the outside - particularly when it comes to loss of critical information in a business environment. Test your security theories - just like in the real world. It's called a tiger team - not teenage tautology.
Your opinions *are* not necessarily valid, though they are common.
the internet is not an exclusive club for the technically sophisticated
Actually, it was. At least initially. Then someone let the lusers in and its been a race to the bottom ever since.
No no - there are varying degrees of "the internet". (and that's not how I remember bbs:-)
Fortunately. It's a fluid thing, the lusers follow - you just have to keep moving to unsullied pastures, it's not like the lusers are agile. As lusers create nothing, only destroy - there will always be new ground with less lusers. And that post that took you 2 minutes to write - it took the luser 10 minutes. You'll forget this in an hour or two - the luser'll dwell on it the rest of it's miserable life.
Oh - look - there's a shiny thing.... and there's a wire attached....
the lusers as you call them are whom the internet is for
In much the same way as water is there for *you* to swim in, piss in, and drink, and please do post me some of what you're smoking - I'll get it tested, I suspect it's been dipped in cat tranq.
Fail! Good luck with the career there - don't waste your time calling BeTRUSTed, or any reputable company, ditto for any Australian Public Service department, Defense or Defense related contract. Your idea of firewalling relies too strongly on the assistance of Tinkerbell. I hope you just stated that point poorly due to too much emotional involvement.
I'll check back tomorrow just on the off chance you've got something to back that, frankly, insane proposition.
Insisting on being a douchebag over a few kilobytes of bandwidth (non-video calls over Skype are NOT that heavy on traffic) just makes you look like an asswipe.
He(?) did say he was instructed to block it - do you get that?
Whether Skype can be a productivity bonus, ditto every other thing people are "demanding" obviously varies from job to job.
But the job will determine that - not you. In the end you're just the asswipe without the job. In real life you can't even argue that until you're blue in the face - you'd get forcibly removed before then. In real life you'd be best employing a compelling argument.
But what would I know... oh, and your views *are* fascinating.
Maybe he's in Australia?? Or Africa? Or India? Or shittons of other places where bandwidth is not cheap. Strange that!!
Too right - but not that important. I'm in Australia - the cost of bandwidth is not the issue. Firstly it's security - the less the admins have to watch, the better their chance of keeping the system secure. (and) Secondly it's security - the less software on the systems the less difficult they are to maintain - and the more likely they are to work as designed. Thirdly it's about productivity - if it's not work related and I pay for it - it better be work related. Cost of bandwidth comes fifth or sixth. I do buy lunches (sometimes), I also (sometimes) buy beer and pizza - and the laptop is yours to keep. I also pay better than the big employers. It's a free world - plenty of employers will treat you better, music, youtube etc - enjoy the $30ph - sooner or later you get paid a portion of what you earn for the company. If they're a good employer you'll get a large piece, if they're stupid you'll get more than you're worth - until they go broke.
If that sounds harsh - I've had data entry contracts where I banned music for the operators - until they could type accurately. Once they can type accurately I'm happy for them to listen to music - it's a mind-numbingly boring job. Someone new to the job'd take about a week to get up to a reasonable speed and accuracy. They get paid more than they earn during the first two weeks - if they leave in the first three weeks I "might" break even. And yes, quite a few quit, or didn't start because they'd rather do half the work for half the money. Go figure.
The business is not going to wear the cost of 5-10k per month for our users to listen to shitty quality streaming MP3. Thats before you take into account the increase latency to mission critical apps, or remote end points on crappy satellite connections paying anywhere up to $7 per MEG of data
Unless the business is focused on something where having staff listen to music, and supporting the music software, improves the bottom line... (I can't think of any) Fortunately many business *do* allow staff to listen to music, run Skype, view youtube, googlemaps and google earth, lookup Slashdot, run private email, even install their own software. Not great if you own shares in the company - but bloody brilliant if you're a competitor!
Because having 3g service for company laptop will be so much more secure than simply allowing skype...
Also, does your threat model include pissed off users that got fed up with stupid (from their POV) policies?
Since you asked so nicely.
If having Skype is needed to do your job - speak to management. If management disagrees you have two choices. (if it was me you asked I might explain why VOiP lives in the orange zone, depending on your role, and attitude). If you felt strongly that you should have access to services and management disagreed - then you really should quit. If you're right and they're wrong then there's no future working there.
Hopefully the admin has policies in place to ensure that the services necessary to do *work* are available - and *nothing* else. It won't guarantee security, or that staff will actually work. But ultimately it will make their (admin and staff) lives easier. I don't have time or sympathy for staff who think my equipment is for their personal use. Telling the admin how to secure the network might not be good for your career either - but hey, it's your life.
One of our clients is a charity, mainly they provide a phone counseling service - I know they don't allow Skype on their network. (personal calls are personal calls - most people have mobiles) Most of the larger concerns I'm familiar with don't either. I won't even mention public servants who have all sorts of ideas about rights that even Fidel Castro'd slap out of them.
Because these people/governments lack the ability to intercept your copper/GSM/other types of calls?
People do not labor under the delusion that those are safely encrypted.
[rant]
Sometimes I really hate the pedantry of this particular website. You guys are GOD DAMNED LAZY in your arguments.
[/rant]
While I understand that relatively few people believe that there is some degree of encryption on Skype and that it may or may not be inferior or superior to other internet-driven alternatives, I would simply hope to point out that the vast majority of their daily communications and/or of their communication alternatives has even less protection.
If you work for the DOD, they've probably given you a phone to use. If you're anybody else, you probably don't give two craps whether or not you're being intercepted.
[rant]
If only I didn't have to use so many GOD DAMNED KEYSTROKES to make a point around here!!! I honestly think it may be time to find another place to have a conversation. This has been home to some of the most stimulating thought of my lifetime, but our standards seem to have become really, really low. Five seconds of thought, if that, and a snarky one-liner are what constitute good conversation now? Really??
[/rant]
The gist of your bandwidth wasting rant has previously been stated, albeit in a more succinct way. Though humorous - too much satire is tiring, and your inability to make a concise point detracts from the thread.
Cheers, and thanks for taking the time to read previous posts.
Not even a multi-billion dollar company would have a disaster plan that provisions 100x capacity as a hot/cold spare.
Amazon does. That's why Anon couldn't DDos them and why they handle Cyber Monday without the slightest hint of a slowdown.
And maybe that's why Skype use EC2 to rebuild the supernodes.
From some of the other posters comments it's just possible they don't quite understand UDP or latency. Or NAT
The outage couldn't have happened at a worse time for Skype. Literally. IPO *and* massive outage. Clearly (fortunately) none of teh tin foil hat crew have considered that. For non-Windows clients and business clients there was intermittent or no outage.
a major company shouldn't picky-pack on users and actually own their infrastructure that wouldn't go down like that?
Here you go - you sound like a smart person. The shares you want are T3 - the future looks even rosier than the past. Lucky for you there's a few available.
Sounds painful - maybe NSA will probe it for you. I believe they are concerned about the security threats posed by 14 year old socially marginalized youths.
Nothing to stop you putting you own encryption into play - but where would the troll be in that?
Seven years and 72 hours of total down-tine... It might not be five nines, but does seem a pretty respectable up-time percentage.
By POTS standards it's abysmal.
Sorry John, but don't bullshit an ex-Telstra complex data tester. It's better than Telstra's top dollar 10 minutes response 30 minutes restore SLA. Coles rent dedicated lines and they had 4 hours down nationwide in the last 6 months. And POTS ain't POTS when it's through a demux. Don't invest too much in an acronym that only applies to the line *between the pit and your socket*
Perhaps you confuse uptime without a quality metric for a single line not in continuous use, with a world-wide network in continuous heavy use?
Oh damn - that was one of those sarcasm thingies wasn't it.... bloody islanders
I'm still waiting for google to push out trial in Oz, but until they get the sort of coverage Skype gives me they're just not a viable choice. I run all my business through Skype - compared to the cheapest SLA's offered by Telstra it's no competition at all. With the added bonuses that during the last bushfires the only way I could make calls to, and receive calls from the affected areas was Skype, and the floods last month - had my neighbours coming to borrow my VOiP 'cause their landlines were out and mobile was patchy.
Even if they're down 2 days a year I've got a pre-paid mobile I can fall back on (it's the Skype number anyway).
I knew about emergency numbers before I moved off the landline, and I've always called the direct numbers anyway. Video chat works beautiful, even my elderly mother can use the client. Skype actually acknowleges the existence of more than two OS's. And the 30 minutes credit last week was a nice touch - I'm used to having to go through the TIO just to get service! I've moved clients over to Skype, and a couple from Skype to other ISP-based VOip providers, so I also like that moving away from Skype is easy.
I look forward to google's version - personally I hope they make use of all that dark fibre tech they've bought. But until then I'm sticking with Skype.
Note: the *nux client is closed but plenty of plugins exist, call recorder, video plugins, and Asterisk will work with Skype.
So tell me, ye wiser creatures, how can I make big gains from the growing stupidity of Social Networking?
Since you asked so nicely I'm going to tell you. Your problem is that you've been using rationale and logic - those things won't get you rich fast, that's just hard work - to make a killing you need to make unreasonable amounts of money from people's gullibility and greed. Don't make the mistake of looking for what the market needs - remember we want to make a killing, not get a job.
The more unlikely, improbable, and down-right impossible the properties of the product you're pitching - the greater the potential. Couple that with a product that is so outrageously overpriced that even in a mythical movie land where it did as claimed you'd be making 1000% mark-up and you've got the beginnings of your overnight fortune.
Having got your product (which I'll get to in a minute) you need to market it. And that's the easy part. Television. Now twit and facefriend are good - but television is embattled these days and their people will bend over backwards to help you for a very low price - and television is how the fools find out "what's hot and what's not" about the social web.
Note: social media == imaginary friends == social pressure. Combine all the above factors and you cannot lose.
Here's the product selection process:-
Play on the general couch-loving public's inability to completely separate fact from fiction. What crap have people watched lately? Iron Man!
So what got people who identify with screen characters excited about in Iron Man? (I'm guessing here) Super strength from technology! Magic == technology, that bits's easy.
Now you need something incredibly cheap, and preferably toxic - it doesn't have to have real technology, probably better if it doesn't (cheaper). You just have to say it's got technology - that it doesn't actually have any more technology than something found in a packet of junk food just demonstrates that it's "sooper advanced technology". How about a toxic rubber wristband with a Tazo toy stuck on it? Can you buy it in bulk for less than $2 including shipping from China? Perfect!
Let's see - be have a hazy belief in the possibility (if we can "visualize" it must be possible), we've got the stupid greed factor (in real life it'd be a big stretch *and* take time and effort) - sex it up with a few totally implausible bits of jargon like "mylar technology" "human vibration frequency" - now you just need to let the fools know. So what are you waiting for - ring your local television show and book your 10 minutes now - they'll fit you in (for a fee) between the weekly book plug, cure for cancer, a miracle diet.they'll even give you advice on how to best get your message across. Bet you thought ypu could just sell this shit on outright lies right? Think again - those helpful television folks will quickly point out that not everyone watching is totally stupid - and not just the stupid have money. Easy fixed by simply saying "we can't explain why people believe this".
See how easy that was? All you've got to do now is move those millions as quick as possible to somewhere the regulators can't reach when they shut you down. They will shutdown you down eventually - but they'll probably never chase your money. Still - no harm in being careful.
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Rotating cube is nice because it helps me visualize what desktop I'm on, like you pointed out. Translucent windows is helpful because it allows you to work from a document behind (or slightly overlapping) a terminal without spending a lot of time managing windows (resizing, moving). Wobbly windows are just annoying.
I've enjoyed wasting many hours setting up the cube and all the rest, tweaking Kaffeine so I could retain the window elements - lot's of fun. Then I removed it all to regain resources. Then I put it all back again when I recently upgraded - then I apt-get --purge removed it all again - to regain resources and stability. It doesn't play well with vms and X over ssh. But mainly I no longer use it because pretty as it is - I can't see it when I'm working - translucency is tiring in long session and defeats the purpose of my nicely backlit monitors, carefully selected black fonts on wheatstraw - and I can't see the other effects without minimizing windows. The bling is very popular with other people though - another reason it robbed me of productivity. Could be I'm just more easily distracted by shiny things than you (or my work is less interesting), or maybe because I'm the sort of cheap bastard who doesn't care about hubcaps because I can't see them from the drivers seat.
I use KDE, I name my terminal sessions, Alt+tab cycles through open windows, Windoof+Tab cycles through workspace as does the middle mouse button on the desktop. I also only use 4 workspaces on boxen, 2 on portables - and if I can get away with it I'll kill kdm before compiling anything largish.
Bling I do use is drop shadow. One piece of bling I would like, if I could find the time to do it, would be something to make finding the cursor easier on dual monitor setups when waking from screen blank - some way to enable a momentary big flash of colour instead of my usual wave, peer, hunt & hope.
What Linux window managers need is a simple slider control starting with low power requirements, through Windows, advanced (Gnome and Kde simple), and ending with max eye candy (Kde with all the effects turned on). This would allow converting microserfs to start with maximum compatability mode and migrate to more advanced settings as they become more skilled, as well as allowing the rest of us to easily tailor our resource use.
For a moment there I thought you were being witty, sadly.... Anyway, KDE (3.x) has just that and it is a slider. Log in as a new user for the first time and you get to set the level of bling in preferences. I dont' know about other *nux desktop environment/window managers or KDE 4.
Teh make it simple for those just focused on the faux news angle:-
Yes - there are more synonyms for plants than their are plants (duh!)
In no way does this mean that "scientists" thought there was more plants than there actually is.
I'll leave it up to others to speculate on why this "story" is spun like that - though personally, blaming it on festivities implies that the Murdock press (and others) have a "silly season" that's shorter than a year.
To those who see this sort of story as "proof" that all scientists are wrong (I'm looking at you creationists) - just because your dick fits your hand - it's no more proof of "Intelligent Design" than it's acceptable to flop it out in public.
the land has always been theirs to begin with...only compensation that could have been given was for the value additions made to such land such as housing and agricultural infrastructure
Please take your irredentism and fuck off. That sentiment is the #1 practical argument for genocide that has ever existed: if you leave even one alive, they'll come back to haunt you. As for the "value additions", the white farmers were essentially all of the value of the place to begin with, because the value is the knowledge that they had (and that their black staff was learning - let's not forget that the recipients of Mugabe's largesse were not the black men and women who worked the farms, but his political pals). Think back to Guns, Germs, and Steel: the reason that white Australians were able to construct a modern economy and lifestyle out of a population that mainly consisted of the dregs of the society from which they came, while the Abos lunged around in a Stone Age world despite intimate and thorough knowledge of the land in which they lived, was due to the huge inertia of thousands of years of civilization (that was itself the result of a series of lucky accidents). Human capital is the reason that Germany rebounded after WW2 in much less time than it took western Europe to recover after the fall of Rome.
Now you're just being a dick. Go back and read Jared Diamond again. Don't skip chapters and selectively choose words because they suit your beliefs. See the part about why aboriginals didn't conquer the world - civilization bullshit. It's because you can't ride kangaroos! The book doesn't change. You lie, you leave tracks, and I'm calling you out for the fucktard you are.
Citation necessary. Mugabe's regime took what was a functional government where people could feed themselves and turned it into one that required foreign aid in order to subsist. They took the farms from the white farmers and handed them over to black farmers without regard for what the new farmers were going to do with it, and without giving any compensation at all to the farmers who through no fault of their own came into possession of the properties.
Mugabe has committed crimes against humanity and ought to be brought to the Hague to face charges.
Is it too complex for you to consider the possibility that at the time Mugabe came to power he was far "less worse" than the existing regime - that his time has come, and the US approval of a *weak* opposition candidate to replace him is a worrying sign? Monsanto and others might not have been lobbying for his removal just so they can bring peace and prosperity to the region - *and* rightly or wrongly the majority of Zimbabweans have every reason to fear any Western sponsored "help" (ditto for Russian, Chinese, and Indian). Every Zimbabwean I've ever met was quick to point out a long history of other countries (representing corporate interests) fucking with them (makes Latvian history seem tame). To describe the situation before Mugabe as functional is either the worst attempt at satire I've read - or complete and utter bullshit. If you can't understand why the white farmers who took the land in the first place don't have a legitimate complaint - you'll never understand why Iraq won't be grateful for the liberation, or grasp the impossibility of making the Afghans happy for the same. No one ever thanks the invader. If you think justice can be achieved over night (land redistribution) you're dangerously naive. Yes Mugabe is a tyrant - he's Zimbabwe's tyrant - replacing him is fraught with peril if it is perceived that the replacement was chosen by any other country - especially if accompanied by the return of the same companies who "freed" the locals of third-world living standards (land-ownership) and helped "develop" the economy. To put it into a perspective that some might be able to relate to - what companies like Monsanto, Chiquita (American Fruit), Shell and others do to improve life is similar to what the North American oil strikes and coal fields did for the locals there - with the difference that "they" were not foreigners. I'm not American - but I spent some of my youth in "Missouri/misery" not far from Monsanto's plant - not an experience I've ever been able to forget when considering the good things about the States.
Slashdot Mirror
in Canada, online impersonation of Mr m.mouse@wonderland.mil from Albania would be a serious crime and you face jail if you ever cross the border, Mr Mouse.
In real life, Canada and elsewhere - *you* are a troll.
That's someone who's failings are so apparent that they are socially marginalized. Your twisted, bitter, damaged mind takes pleasure in the the misfortune of others - when not practicing cruelty to animals you delight in creating fear from fantasy - just like now.
Go back under your bridge - there's a cleaning flood a coming.
Warning - ignore the poster quoted above - APK is an infamous, banned, abusive, stalking, mentally deranged, troll - who refuses to take his medication, as part of his condition is the delusion that "he knows better than the doctors"
At best his proposed cure for "everything" is a partial, weak solution, requiring constant prescient maintenance *with* admin/root access - a 14+MB ineffectual solutions that *might* have been of some, immeasurably small, use in 1995.
Away with you foul troll, back to cross-linking to your many aliases, fake references, and your bullshit "developer" status, and stalking the polite and blameless.
You are the only compelling argument for the government censoring the internet.
Not too long ago the norm was actually for transponders to simply be open.
He means like this
The link off that page is dead, but I'll save you the trouble - Captain Midnight didn't do anything to a satellite.
Satellite hacking has been a commercially available service for some years now - don't know if they're still offering the service (their prices look a little old) but these folks can help.
An example of what's available from a hijacked surveillance drone is here.
Disclaimer:- this is just a hobby.
Please find attached a tool
Not funny. Taking pleasure in other people's gullibility is bad. This is serious. Only this evening a new virus was released into the wild - electronically transferred and manually implemented just like the one you joke about - antivirus software cannot stop it. (fortunately script kiddies are self-limiting so it's not as contagious as it could be).
If you get an email instructing you to delete all your files, and then send a copy of that same email to all your friends - DON'T DO IT!.
I didn't say that egress filtering has no merit, and yes, there are situations where it's called for.
Either you're confused - or meta-semantic trolling. I wrote, unambiguously, and quoted you - that the assertion "it's inbound connections that put you at risk" is "frankly, insane". (check it - the words are still there). Anything less that the complete truth *is* a lie. Eg. to claim that inbound is the main cause of malware would be speculative at best, and lacking in good faith (omitting important information).
[snip] It doesn't mean that anyone who doesn't follow your policy is "frankly, insane".
Nor do I claim that they are. It's not "my" policy. It's good practice (see ITIL) to recognize that security is not simply a matter of blocking exits. Again - nowhere did I say (or imply) that failure to follow my policy was "insane" - that's you either putting a spin on an opinion that contradicts your own, or failing to comprehend. If the english language is a problem I'm happy to "try" and accommodate your native preference.
Nor did I say that all networks should follow my policy - reread my post - I celebrate that others don't.
Nor is allowing outbound connections "a massive, massive security issue you could drive an oil tanker through".
Again - I did not say, or imply that.. Though I agree with blocking any *unnecessary* connection - regardless of the direction. Nor is that the language I would use if I had said it.
SOHO routers by Linksys, D-Link, SMC, Netgear, etc. allow unrestricted outbound connections by default,
Apropos of what? Are you confusing the lowest common denominator with best practice? If 15 million people believe a stupid thing does it make it *not* stupid? Does a product protocol reflect best practice or simply acknowledge the limitations of the largest market? That's rhetorical - if I believed that those products would be locked down.
and a hell of a lot of people are using them without it causing "massive security issues".
Now you are really grasping and flailing.
That's not to say these people don't have any massive security issues. They're just not caused by their egress filtering policy.
Contrasting a professional environment to an amateur environment - even with red herrings like "SOHO", is just silly. "massive security issues" is your hyperbole - you can keep it. Likewise the stupidity of an argument where you both deny, and concede the same slimey allegation. I never said it. Your baffle 'em with machinegun bullshit might impress the lads down the bus stop - but it fails in real life where you claims are tested. Any fool can claim they don't have security problems - to extend that to it "being a result of a policy (no outbound filtering)" is just demonstrating the utility of ridiculum absolutum. When you're done plucking spurious claims out of your arse try considering that not all security concerns come from the outside - particularly when it comes to loss of critical information in a business environment. Test your security theories - just like in the real world. It's called a tiger team - not teenage tautology.
Your opinions *are* not necessarily valid, though they are common.
the internet is not an exclusive club for the technically sophisticated
Actually, it was. At least initially. Then someone let the lusers in and its been a race to the bottom ever since.
No no - there are varying degrees of "the internet". (and that's not how I remember bbs :-)
Fortunately. It's a fluid thing, the lusers follow - you just have to keep moving to unsullied pastures, it's not like the lusers are agile. As lusers create nothing, only destroy - there will always be new ground with less lusers. And that post that took you 2 minutes to write - it took the luser 10 minutes. You'll forget this in an hour or two - the luser'll dwell on it the rest of it's miserable life.
Oh - look - there's a shiny thing.... and there's a wire attached....
the lusers as you call them are whom the internet is for
In much the same way as water is there for *you* to swim in, piss in, and drink, and please do post me some of what you're smoking - I'll get it tested, I suspect it's been dipped in cat tranq.
it's inbound connections that put you at risk
Fail! Good luck with the career there - don't waste your time calling BeTRUSTed, or any reputable company, ditto for any Australian Public Service department, Defense or Defense related contract. Your idea of firewalling relies too strongly on the assistance of Tinkerbell. I hope you just stated that point poorly due to too much emotional involvement.
I'll check back tomorrow just on the off chance you've got something to back that, frankly, insane proposition.
Insisting on being a douchebag over a few kilobytes of bandwidth (non-video calls over Skype are NOT that heavy on traffic) just makes you look like an asswipe.
He(?) did say he was instructed to block it - do you get that?
Whether Skype can be a productivity bonus, ditto every other thing people are "demanding" obviously varies from job to job.
But the job will determine that - not you. In the end you're just the asswipe without the job. In real life you can't even argue that until you're blue in the face - you'd get forcibly removed before then. In real life you'd be best employing a compelling argument.
But what would I know... oh, and your views *are* fascinating.
Maybe he's in Australia?? Or Africa? Or India? Or shittons of other places where bandwidth is not cheap. Strange that!!
Too right - but not that important. I'm in Australia - the cost of bandwidth is not the issue. Firstly it's security - the less the admins have to watch, the better their chance of keeping the system secure. (and) Secondly it's security - the less software on the systems the less difficult they are to maintain - and the more likely they are to work as designed. Thirdly it's about productivity - if it's not work related and I pay for it - it better be work related. Cost of bandwidth comes fifth or sixth. I do buy lunches (sometimes), I also (sometimes) buy beer and pizza - and the laptop is yours to keep. I also pay better than the big employers. It's a free world - plenty of employers will treat you better, music, youtube etc - enjoy the $30ph - sooner or later you get paid a portion of what you earn for the company. If they're a good employer you'll get a large piece, if they're stupid you'll get more than you're worth - until they go broke.
If that sounds harsh - I've had data entry contracts where I banned music for the operators - until they could type accurately. Once they can type accurately I'm happy for them to listen to music - it's a mind-numbingly boring job. Someone new to the job'd take about a week to get up to a reasonable speed and accuracy. They get paid more than they earn during the first two weeks - if they leave in the first three weeks I "might" break even. And yes, quite a few quit, or didn't start because they'd rather do half the work for half the money. Go figure.
The business is not going to wear the cost of 5-10k per month for our users to listen to shitty quality streaming MP3. Thats before you take into account the increase latency to mission critical apps, or remote end points on crappy satellite connections paying anywhere up to $7 per MEG of data
Unless the business is focused on something where having staff listen to music, and supporting the music software, improves the bottom line... (I can't think of any) Fortunately many business *do* allow staff to listen to music, run Skype, view youtube, googlemaps and google earth, lookup Slashdot, run private email, even install their own software. Not great if you own shares in the company - but bloody brilliant if you're a competitor!
Because having 3g service for company laptop will be so much more secure than simply allowing skype... Also, does your threat model include pissed off users that got fed up with stupid (from their POV) policies?
Since you asked so nicely.
If having Skype is needed to do your job - speak to management. If management disagrees you have two choices. (if it was me you asked I might explain why VOiP lives in the orange zone, depending on your role, and attitude). If you felt strongly that you should have access to services and management disagreed - then you really should quit. If you're right and they're wrong then there's no future working there.
Hopefully the admin has policies in place to ensure that the services necessary to do *work* are available - and *nothing* else. It won't guarantee security, or that staff will actually work. But ultimately it will make their (admin and staff) lives easier. I don't have time or sympathy for staff who think my equipment is for their personal use. Telling the admin how to secure the network might not be good for your career either - but hey, it's your life.
One of our clients is a charity, mainly they provide a phone counseling service - I know they don't allow Skype on their network. (personal calls are personal calls - most people have mobiles) Most of the larger concerns I'm familiar with don't either. I won't even mention public servants who have all sorts of ideas about rights that even Fidel Castro'd slap out of them.
People do not labor under the delusion that those are safely encrypted.
[rant] Sometimes I really hate the pedantry of this particular website. You guys are GOD DAMNED LAZY in your arguments. [/rant]
While I understand that relatively few people believe that there is some degree of encryption on Skype and that it may or may not be inferior or superior to other internet-driven alternatives, I would simply hope to point out that the vast majority of their daily communications and/or of their communication alternatives has even less protection.
If you work for the DOD, they've probably given you a phone to use. If you're anybody else, you probably don't give two craps whether or not you're being intercepted.
[rant] If only I didn't have to use so many GOD DAMNED KEYSTROKES to make a point around here!!! I honestly think it may be time to find another place to have a conversation. This has been home to some of the most stimulating thought of my lifetime, but our standards seem to have become really, really low. Five seconds of thought, if that, and a snarky one-liner are what constitute good conversation now? Really?? [/rant]
The gist of your bandwidth wasting rant has previously been stated, albeit in a more succinct way. Though humorous - too much satire is tiring, and your inability to make a concise point detracts from the thread.
Cheers, and thanks for taking the time to read previous posts.
Amazon does. That's why Anon couldn't DDos them and why they handle Cyber Monday without the slightest hint of a slowdown.
And maybe that's why Skype use EC2 to rebuild the supernodes.
From some of the other posters comments it's just possible they don't quite understand UDP or latency. Or NAT
The outage couldn't have happened at a worse time for Skype. Literally. IPO *and* massive outage. Clearly (fortunately) none of teh tin foil hat crew have considered that. For non-Windows clients and business clients there was intermittent or no outage.
a major company shouldn't picky-pack on users and actually own their infrastructure that wouldn't go down like that?
Here you go - you sound like a smart person. The shares you want are T3 - the future looks even rosier than the past. Lucky for you there's a few available.
gubmint Encrypted my ass.
Sounds painful - maybe NSA will probe it for you. I believe they are concerned about the security threats posed by 14 year old socially marginalized youths.
Nothing to stop you putting you own encryption into play - but where would the troll be in that?
By POTS standards it's abysmal.
Sorry John, but don't bullshit an ex-Telstra complex data tester. It's better than Telstra's top dollar 10 minutes response 30 minutes restore SLA. Coles rent dedicated lines and they had 4 hours down nationwide in the last 6 months. And POTS ain't POTS when it's through a demux. Don't invest too much in an acronym that only applies to the line *between the pit and your socket*
Perhaps you confuse uptime without a quality metric for a single line not in continuous use, with a world-wide network in continuous heavy use?
Oh damn - that was one of those sarcasm thingies wasn't it.... bloody islanders
Google video chat, perhaps?
I'm still waiting for google to push out trial in Oz, but until they get the sort of coverage Skype gives me they're just not a viable choice. I run all my business through Skype - compared to the cheapest SLA's offered by Telstra it's no competition at all. With the added bonuses that during the last bushfires the only way I could make calls to, and receive calls from the affected areas was Skype, and the floods last month - had my neighbours coming to borrow my VOiP 'cause their landlines were out and mobile was patchy.
Even if they're down 2 days a year I've got a pre-paid mobile I can fall back on (it's the Skype number anyway).
I knew about emergency numbers before I moved off the landline, and I've always called the direct numbers anyway. Video chat works beautiful, even my elderly mother can use the client. Skype actually acknowleges the existence of more than two OS's. And the 30 minutes credit last week was a nice touch - I'm used to having to go through the TIO just to get service! I've moved clients over to Skype, and a couple from Skype to other ISP-based VOip providers, so I also like that moving away from Skype is easy.
I look forward to google's version - personally I hope they make use of all that dark fibre tech they've bought. But until then I'm sticking with Skype.
Note: the *nux client is closed but plenty of plugins exist, call recorder, video plugins, and Asterisk will work with Skype.
Make 10 copies of this post and mail to your friends ...
Make 1000 copies of this post and twit them to your imaginary friends for another 1000 imaginary friends....
--- #rm -i `find -iname '*.sol'`
So tell me, ye wiser creatures, how can I make big gains from the growing stupidity of Social Networking?
Since you asked so nicely I'm going to tell you. Your problem is that you've been using rationale and logic - those things won't get you rich fast, that's just hard work - to make a killing you need to make unreasonable amounts of money from people's gullibility and greed. Don't make the mistake of looking for what the market needs - remember we want to make a killing, not get a job.
The more unlikely, improbable, and down-right impossible the properties of the product you're pitching - the greater the potential. Couple that with a product that is so outrageously overpriced that even in a mythical movie land where it did as claimed you'd be making 1000% mark-up and you've got the beginnings of your overnight fortune.
Having got your product (which I'll get to in a minute) you need to market it. And that's the easy part. Television. Now twit and facefriend are good - but television is embattled these days and their people will bend over backwards to help you for a very low price - and television is how the fools find out "what's hot and what's not" about the social web.
Note: social media == imaginary friends == social pressure. Combine all the above factors and you cannot lose.
Here's the product selection process:-
Let's see - be have a hazy belief in the possibility (if we can "visualize" it must be possible), we've got the stupid greed factor (in real life it'd be a big stretch *and* take time and effort) - sex it up with a few totally implausible bits of jargon like "mylar technology" "human vibration frequency" - now you just need to let the fools know. So what are you waiting for - ring your local television show and book your 10 minutes now - they'll fit you in (for a fee) between the weekly book plug, cure for cancer, a miracle diet.they'll even give you advice on how to best get your message across. Bet you thought ypu could just sell this shit on outright lies right? Think again - those helpful television folks will quickly point out that not everyone watching is totally stupid - and not just the stupid have money. Easy fixed by simply saying "we can't explain why people believe this".
See how easy that was? All you've got to do now is move those millions as quick as possible to somewhere the regulators can't reach when they shut you down. They will shutdown you down eventually - but they'll probably never chase your money. Still - no harm in being careful.
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Rotating cube is nice because it helps me visualize what desktop I'm on, like you pointed out. Translucent windows is helpful because it allows you to work from a document behind (or slightly overlapping) a terminal without spending a lot of time managing windows (resizing, moving). Wobbly windows are just annoying.
I've enjoyed wasting many hours setting up the cube and all the rest, tweaking Kaffeine so I could retain the window elements - lot's of fun. Then I removed it all to regain resources. Then I put it all back again when I recently upgraded - then I apt-get --purge removed it all again - to regain resources and stability. It doesn't play well with vms and X over ssh. But mainly I no longer use it because pretty as it is - I can't see it when I'm working - translucency is tiring in long session and defeats the purpose of my nicely backlit monitors, carefully selected black fonts on wheatstraw - and I can't see the other effects without minimizing windows. The bling is very popular with other people though - another reason it robbed me of productivity. Could be I'm just more easily distracted by shiny things than you (or my work is less interesting), or maybe because I'm the sort of cheap bastard who doesn't care about hubcaps because I can't see them from the drivers seat.
I use KDE, I name my terminal sessions, Alt+tab cycles through open windows, Windoof+Tab cycles through workspace as does the middle mouse button on the desktop. I also only use 4 workspaces on boxen, 2 on portables - and if I can get away with it I'll kill kdm before compiling anything largish.
Bling I do use is drop shadow. One piece of bling I would like, if I could find the time to do it, would be something to make finding the cursor easier on dual monitor setups when waking from screen blank - some way to enable a momentary big flash of colour instead of my usual wave, peer, hunt & hope.
What Linux window managers need is a simple slider control starting with low power requirements, through Windows, advanced (Gnome and Kde simple), and ending with max eye candy (Kde with all the effects turned on). This would allow converting microserfs to start with maximum compatability mode and migrate to more advanced settings as they become more skilled, as well as allowing the rest of us to easily tailor our resource use.
For a moment there I thought you were being witty, sadly.... Anyway, KDE (3.x) has just that and it is a slider. Log in as a new user for the first time and you get to set the level of bling in preferences. I dont' know about other *nux desktop environment/window managers or KDE 4.
Teh make it simple for those just focused on the faux news angle:-
I'll leave it up to others to speculate on why this "story" is spun like that - though personally, blaming it on festivities implies that the Murdock press (and others) have a "silly season" that's shorter than a year.
To those who see this sort of story as "proof" that all scientists are wrong (I'm looking at you creationists) - just because your dick fits your hand - it's no more proof of "Intelligent Design" than it's acceptable to flop it out in public.
the land has always been theirs to begin with...only compensation that could have been given was for the value additions made to such land such as housing and agricultural infrastructure
Please take your irredentism and fuck off. That sentiment is the #1 practical argument for genocide that has ever existed: if you leave even one alive, they'll come back to haunt you. As for the "value additions", the white farmers were essentially all of the value of the place to begin with, because the value is the knowledge that they had (and that their black staff was learning - let's not forget that the recipients of Mugabe's largesse were not the black men and women who worked the farms, but his political pals). Think back to Guns, Germs, and Steel: the reason that white Australians were able to construct a modern economy and lifestyle out of a population that mainly consisted of the dregs of the society from which they came, while the Abos lunged around in a Stone Age world despite intimate and thorough knowledge of the land in which they lived, was due to the huge inertia of thousands of years of civilization (that was itself the result of a series of lucky accidents). Human capital is the reason that Germany rebounded after WW2 in much less time than it took western Europe to recover after the fall of Rome.
Now you're just being a dick. Go back and read Jared Diamond again. Don't skip chapters and selectively choose words because they suit your beliefs. See the part about why aboriginals didn't conquer the world - civilization bullshit. It's because you can't ride kangaroos! The book doesn't change. You lie, you leave tracks, and I'm calling you out for the fucktard you are.
Citation necessary. Mugabe's regime took what was a functional government where people could feed themselves and turned it into one that required foreign aid in order to subsist. They took the farms from the white farmers and handed them over to black farmers without regard for what the new farmers were going to do with it, and without giving any compensation at all to the farmers who through no fault of their own came into possession of the properties. Mugabe has committed crimes against humanity and ought to be brought to the Hague to face charges.
Is it too complex for you to consider the possibility that at the time Mugabe came to power he was far "less worse" than the existing regime - that his time has come, and the US approval of a *weak* opposition candidate to replace him is a worrying sign? Monsanto and others might not have been lobbying for his removal just so they can bring peace and prosperity to the region - *and* rightly or wrongly the majority of Zimbabweans have every reason to fear any Western sponsored "help" (ditto for Russian, Chinese, and Indian). Every Zimbabwean I've ever met was quick to point out a long history of other countries (representing corporate interests) fucking with them (makes Latvian history seem tame). To describe the situation before Mugabe as functional is either the worst attempt at satire I've read - or complete and utter bullshit. If you can't understand why the white farmers who took the land in the first place don't have a legitimate complaint - you'll never understand why Iraq won't be grateful for the liberation, or grasp the impossibility of making the Afghans happy for the same. No one ever thanks the invader. If you think justice can be achieved over night (land redistribution) you're dangerously naive. Yes Mugabe is a tyrant - he's Zimbabwe's tyrant - replacing him is fraught with peril if it is perceived that the replacement was chosen by any other country - especially if accompanied by the return of the same companies who "freed" the locals of third-world living standards (land-ownership) and helped "develop" the economy. To put it into a perspective that some might be able to relate to - what companies like Monsanto, Chiquita (American Fruit), Shell and others do to improve life is similar to what the North American oil strikes and coal fields did for the locals there - with the difference that "they" were not foreigners. I'm not American - but I spent some of my youth in "Missouri/misery" not far from Monsanto's plant - not an experience I've ever been able to forget when considering the good things about the States.