Needs work. When I was in the USA last month, I replaced the hard drive in my Powerbook G4 AND I bought one of those cameras. In both cases, the documentation came in very useful. And yes, I did use a soft cloth for the keyboard and rested the PowerBook display in my lap. If you have one, you'ld know why.
It's difficult to predict anything, particularly if it involves the future, but I'll give it a go. My experience with the expansion of higher education in the UK to the great unwashed is that it hasn't changed the top end of the curve--the added programming labor has been rather clueless. Then my experience with foreign students taking a software engineering MSc has been that they fit in with that group, probably because the resources aren't yet available to teach them adequately at the BSc level. I've also heard from colleagues in the USA that sending programming tasks offshore is even worse than sending them across the country--don't have anything life-critical or mission-essential done in a place where you can't check up on the help. So if you're good, you'll keep your job or even get a raise if you can manage a bit. If you're not so good, it won't be so much fun.
A very relevant point--you should have enough liquid assets to be able to survive without work for six months. Quitting is always an option then. If nothing else, you can pay some tuition for upgrading your skills or even change fields.
When I first joined the Society for Risk Analysis, I was warned to watch out for industry-funded research, since it often failed the straight-face test. ("Can you honestly say that with a straight face?") Knowing quite a few people with carpal tunnel syndrome, I have some difficulty believing this report. Who funded the research?
If you can find a DSL connection and an employer who likes the idea, you should have no difficulty. On the other hand, US employers are rather leery of employing teleworkers in the UK. Two reasons--UK tax rules, and the fact that most US workers do not have a contract and most do in the UK.
The underlying problem became clear to me when I went to the UK and learned how analysts there look at security engineering differently from analysts in the US Government. In the UK, they emphasize two areas more strongly:
Levels of trust that reflect a sensitivity to how information is used. In the US, it's all or nothing.
Explicit rules and policies for granting access that match the various levels of trust. This tends to be more informal in the US.
Consequently, US Government systems tend to be harder to use.
Would you prefer a mission-essential system that had to be updated every time MS released a new operating system, or one that had a long history of working correctly? Imagine hosting the shuttle flight control software on Windows XP. Sometimes it is not a good idea to be an early adopter.
NT4 may be EOL in June 2003, but that doesn't mean the problems needn't be fixed. NT4 is used by both the US military and the FAA in some mission-essential systems, and I'm sure they have concerns about a Cat 2 problem remaining unfixed. The recommended workaround (block port 135 with a firewall) is only acceptable for Cat 3+ problems. I suspect this issue will bubble up through management once the Government expresses its concern.
My argument this last year for using a Macintosh on my desk over a UNIX workstation or a Windows box has been mostly security (where Apple is very strong), but it has been looking a bit pale in view of the speed difference. There's a chance now to catch up, especially given Intel's current dalliance with 64-bit chips and hardware DRM. I'm glad to see this.
You do have all the UNIX/LINUX/X11 UI elements you're used to, so folks from that community can port over with very little difficulty--as long as your software is addressed at UNIX/LINUX/X11 users....
This general problem is quite common--80+% of the attacks on e-commerce systems involve insiders. You either have to trust your people or watch them. Unfortunately, watching them (using intrusion detection technology) is not very effective at present. You either have to program the IDS to detect the specific signatures of malicious acts (not well understood at present), or you have to train the system to detect anomalies. The training problem is very hard because:
The training data may include an attack. Then hacking will be considered normal.
New things happen on networks all the time.
Successful retraining of an existing AI system to handle this is a hard problem, worth a PhD.
Categorization of attacks requires expert input.
False positives are common.
Attack indicators are brittle, so that hackers can sneak past them.
Slashcrunch comments: "mouse/keyboard (Controller) MVC... umm... the C doesn't equate to keyboard or mouse. M = Model - business objects and such V = View - presentation, web pages etc. C = Controller - code, in this case a Servlet that decides what is to be done And now back to your coffee:)"
See this discussion of MVC, where it states "A controller offers facilities to change the state of the model." The idea back in the late 70s was to allow the computer user to select the most appropriate control interface to address his or her possible disabilities.
MVC is great if you really have an application that needs to separate Model from the display windows (View) and mouse/keyboard (Controller). It ain't so great if any of the following are a concern:
Complexity of implementation
Modularity and decoupling
A distinction between domain model (the system of concern) and applications model (what people want to see).
Coupling between View and Controller.
Most programmers at least combine the View and Controller--Java supports this rather effectively--and some distinguish between domain and applications models (Visual Proxy pattern).
With Windows 2000 just getting Common Criteria certification allowing it to be used with classified information, how long will it be until.NET server is certified? Perhaps the scrapping of Longhorn makes sense. It may not have a chance at certification. At this rate, MS may find itself in a situation where the only certified OSs it can sell to the Gummint (and corporate users with an interest in strong security) are EOL.
Research indicates the problem with using a cell phone while driving is the distraction of conducting a phone conversation while also controlling a car, not the hands off the steering wheel. Drivers using a head-set experience the same increase in accident rate (to a level similar to driving drunk) as drivers using a cell-phone. See this legal discussion.
There's a great deal of variation in how prepared students are for a graduate degree. For example, many UK computing graduates lack depth in data structures, language theory, languages other than VB, C, and Java, and a number of other subjects found in the ACM Model Curriculum. It's generally worse in second and third-world countries. The value of a GRE score is that it gives the department some way of assessing the real readiness of an unknown student. I agree that many programs require GREs for certain students only. I didn't need it for my second PhD course, but I was already an adjunct lecturer in the CS department.
It has been 34 years since I took the GRE in math, but the system hasn't changed that much. American graduate programs include several years of coursework prior to doing research (resulting in added years to the research degree, but also better preparation), and the GREs serve much the same function as the SATs--to provide a third party assessment of the readiness of the student for (graduate) coursework.
OK, I see the issue. I have a PB G4/500 that I use as a brain supplement, a PB G3/400 that my wife and I use to play DVDs (region-free 8), and a dual G4/1000 desktop that I use for research (neuroscience and security). VPC gives me access to Windows, and fink to the Linux world. No complaints. I suspect your box was a return that was refurbished and sent out again.
The security boffins at Qinetiq in the UK like Mac OS X a _lot_--it's locked down out of the box! Unlike certain unnamed vendors, Apple takes security seriously and is extremely responsive in releasing security updates.
New Scientist is not a peer-reviewed journal and often publishes speculative articles. This report is interesting, but I'd like to see the scientific article. There are alternative explanations, I'm sure, and I'm interested in seeing whether they've been adequately ruled out. In any case, how would you test this theory?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm very interested in seeing how Java implements generic programming (template programming). That's an area where it currently falls down.
Be prepared to resign. Saying 'no' is insubordination and legal grounds in the US for being fired, no matter how absurd the demand.
Needs work. When I was in the USA last month, I replaced the hard drive in my Powerbook G4 AND I bought one of those cameras. In both cases, the documentation came in very useful. And yes, I did use a soft cloth for the keyboard and rested the PowerBook display in my lap. If you have one, you'ld know why.
Cheers,
Harry Erwin
It's difficult to predict anything, particularly if it involves the future, but I'll give it a go. My experience with the expansion of higher education in the UK to the great unwashed is that it hasn't changed the top end of the curve--the added programming labor has been rather clueless. Then my experience with foreign students taking a software engineering MSc has been that they fit in with that group, probably because the resources aren't yet available to teach them adequately at the BSc level. I've also heard from colleagues in the USA that sending programming tasks offshore is even worse than sending them across the country--don't have anything life-critical or mission-essential done in a place where you can't check up on the help. So if you're good, you'll keep your job or even get a raise if you can manage a bit. If you're not so good, it won't be so much fun.
Apparently this worm fakes the from address. Someone infected has your address in his or her address book.
A very relevant point--you should have enough liquid assets to be able to survive without work for six months. Quitting is always an option then. If nothing else, you can pay some tuition for upgrading your skills or even change fields.
When I first joined the Society for Risk Analysis, I was warned to watch out for industry-funded research, since it often failed the straight-face test. ("Can you honestly say that with a straight face?") Knowing quite a few people with carpal tunnel syndrome, I have some difficulty believing this report. Who funded the research?
If you can find a DSL connection and an employer who likes the idea, you should have no difficulty. On the other hand, US employers are rather leery of employing teleworkers in the UK. Two reasons--UK tax rules, and the fact that most US workers do not have a contract and most do in the UK.
Consequently, US Government systems tend to be harder to use.
Would you prefer a mission-essential system that had to be updated every time MS released a new operating system, or one that had a long history of working correctly? Imagine hosting the shuttle flight control software on Windows XP. Sometimes it is not a good idea to be an early adopter.
NT4 may be EOL in June 2003, but that doesn't mean the problems needn't be fixed. NT4 is used by both the US military and the FAA in some mission-essential systems, and I'm sure they have concerns about a Cat 2 problem remaining unfixed. The recommended workaround (block port 135 with a firewall) is only acceptable for Cat 3+ problems. I suspect this issue will bubble up through management once the Government expresses its concern.
My argument this last year for using a Macintosh on my desk over a UNIX workstation or a Windows box has been mostly security (where Apple is very strong), but it has been looking a bit pale in view of the speed difference. There's a chance now to catch up, especially given Intel's current dalliance with 64-bit chips and hardware DRM. I'm glad to see this.
You do have all the UNIX/LINUX/X11 UI elements you're used to, so folks from that community can port over with very little difficulty--as long as your software is addressed at UNIX/LINUX/X11 users....
TANSTAAFL.
Slashcrunch comments: "mouse/keyboard (Controller) MVC... umm... the C doesn't equate to keyboard or mouse. M = Model - business objects and such V = View - presentation, web pages etc. C = Controller - code, in this case a Servlet that decides what is to be done And now back to your coffee :)"
See this discussion of MVC, where it states "A controller offers facilities to change the state of the model." The idea back in the late 70s was to allow the computer user to select the most appropriate control interface to address his or her possible disabilities.
Most programmers at least combine the View and Controller--Java supports this rather effectively--and some distinguish between domain and applications models (Visual Proxy pattern).
With Windows 2000 just getting Common Criteria certification allowing it to be used with classified information, how long will it be until .NET server is certified? Perhaps the scrapping of Longhorn makes sense. It may not have a chance at certification. At this rate, MS may find itself in a situation where the only certified OSs it can sell to the Gummint (and corporate users with an interest in strong security) are EOL.
Research indicates the problem with using a cell phone while driving is the distraction of conducting a phone conversation while also controlling a car, not the hands off the steering wheel. Drivers using a head-set experience the same increase in accident rate (to a level similar to driving drunk) as drivers using a cell-phone. See this legal discussion.
There's a great deal of variation in how prepared students are for a graduate degree. For example, many UK computing graduates lack depth in data structures, language theory, languages other than VB, C, and Java, and a number of other subjects found in the ACM Model Curriculum. It's generally worse in second and third-world countries. The value of a GRE score is that it gives the department some way of assessing the real readiness of an unknown student. I agree that many programs require GREs for certain students only. I didn't need it for my second PhD course, but I was already an adjunct lecturer in the CS department.
It has been 34 years since I took the GRE in math, but the system hasn't changed that much. American graduate programs include several years of coursework prior to doing research (resulting in added years to the research degree, but also better preparation), and the GREs serve much the same function as the SATs--to provide a third party assessment of the readiness of the student for (graduate) coursework.
OK, I see the issue. I have a PB G4/500 that I use as a brain supplement, a PB G3/400 that my wife and I use to play DVDs (region-free 8), and a dual G4/1000 desktop that I use for research (neuroscience and security). VPC gives me access to Windows, and fink to the Linux world. No complaints. I suspect your box was a return that was refurbished and sent out again.
It sounds refurbished... Was the hard drive new?
The security boffins at Qinetiq in the UK like Mac OS X a _lot_--it's locked down out of the box! Unlike certain unnamed vendors, Apple takes security seriously and is extremely responsive in releasing security updates.
fink install perl ...
New Scientist is not a peer-reviewed journal and often publishes speculative articles. This report is interesting, but I'd like to see the scientific article. There are alternative explanations, I'm sure, and I'm interested in seeing whether they've been adequately ruled out. In any case, how would you test this theory?