Schools, non-profits, and small but long-lived businesses.
My mother's school just had a whole bunch of Pentium I 75s donated. They are an upgrade from the 386s (running Win 3.1) the classrooms have had for about 4 years.
Unfortunately, due to MS policies businesses are donating PCs without operating systems. The school has one copy of Win95. They are installing it on all the machines--the poor things can't run much more. They are not buying licenses, because they basically *can't*.
Their 'tech guy' is a 60-year-old 5th grade teacher whose only qualification is that he's not afraid of the computers and is willing to install software. They can't hire an MS or a Unix admin to do configuration or install.
I guess the only piece of luck in this situation is that the school had to cancel its internet connection due to lack of funds, so those unpatched Win95 machines aren't going to be online.
But antivirus companies are different. You *need* those updates, (if you're running Windoze.) The biggest risk to your computer, organization and network are from the Nimba-like virus/trojan/worm that was released today, not the DOS virus that first appeared in 1993. A computer might still get that DOS virus, but the Nimba-like malcode is going to cause far more extensive damage. As virus writers become more 'inventive' (aka, good at exploiting masses of vulnerable Win boxes) your antivirus program needs to keep pace. New virus signatures are added constantly, and you're paying the subscription fee to be able to constantly keep up, to protect yourself.
But Word doesn't evolve in that manner. Word95 is a full-featured word processor--perhaps not the most stable, but neither is Word2000. There is no pressing need to upgrade, except that of incompatible file formats with newer versions of Word--a problem that was INTENTIONALLY created by Microsoft. The added-value you're getting out of a subscription, in this model, is much, much smaller than in the antivirus model. Basically, you're making it profitable for Miscrosoft to change things to force upgrades. To intentionally make things incompatible. To make each generation of the program "different" enough to keep their revenue stream going. And doing dramatic changes to the way things work with each generation (to make the subscription model "logical" and profitable) is going to result in buggy code.
Basically, you're comparing apples and oranges here. Antivirus subscriptions are not the same as Office subscriptions--they are not part of the same model. A service I could see being similar to AV (and useful!) under Windows would be a subscription that automatically updated the OS's built-in firewall (XP has a firewall, right?) Got a Code Red XX that's attacking a flaw in WinXP over port something-or-another? Push out an update that blocks its signature at the firewall to your subscribers. It would be an additional layer of protection beyond patching--it could also help in a situation whereas a exploit was released prior to a patch. Yes, it would be a stop-gap measure, but SO IS MOST ANTIVIRUS. (Stop-gap against stupidity.)
Re:X-Files Still One of the Best Out There, By Far
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The End of The X-Files
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· Score: 1
There have been some GREAT episodes in the past two seasons. There have also been some absolutely terrible dogs. Of course, that's been the story of the past four years of the show, too...
The show has been extremely inconsistant in quality since season 4. The mythfans--who were in it for good story-telling and good writing--mainly left around season 5-6 and the ratings have been on a downhill slide since then.
4-D (a 9th season episode; about the parallel universes) was about one of the best episodes I've seen in recent seasons. I seem to recall XF addressed parallel universes in another, unmemorable episode, so it could be called a retread, but it was so far and away better than the other...
Redrum, the episode about the lawyer moving backward in time, was also wonderful.
Trust No 1 sucked. There wasn't even a story in the episode. I kind of wish they'd finally kill off Mulder already; but then they wouldn't have their movie franchise. Although they're not getting my money for that--especially if it's Mulder and Scully focused after the Mulder/Scully crap of seasons 7-9.
Anderson's been doing 'arts films' in the off-season and has indicated she's perfectly happy with continuing to do smaller films like those and theatre. She's more of a classic actor than a big-name star. I've really liked all the smaller budget films she has done, and she really does have a greater talent than you'd suspect from just the X-Files.
As for DD--he was okay in "Return to Me." Nothing else he has done has impressed me; part of the problem there was the poor quality films he seems have have chosen. Evolution *gag* I think that he's partly been type-casted, and partly doesn't have a clue at how to pick films that'll use his talents.
This is really nothing new. Here in Canada, some universities are using similar techniques to
ferret out term-paper cheats. There is a company (can't remember the name) that offers this
service which, basically, compares a student's paper to a number of ready-to-buy papers one
can find on the Web, etc. If the 'similarity index' reaches a threshold, the student's paper is
flagged for further investigation by the teacher.
So, it'll chase all the cheaters back to paper mills. (Businesses which charge more, but generally produce original papers.) Paper mills have been around and easily accessible by college students for decades.
In my area, CompUSA has had the FreeBSD PowerPak, although it tends to be a release behind. The PowerPak was expensive last time I looked; I think I saw it for $70-$90 (it also comes with "The Complete FreeBSD.") Best Buy had it once or twice.
Barnes & Nobles has had The Complete FreeBSD before, with the basic CDs included. It was cheaper than the PowerPak ($50?). If the current release has been out for a month or so, they should have it on hand or be able to order it.
We've also got a local shop which has CDs with the basic ISOs for $10; take a look around at your small computer stores.
Apple has a great story, they have a solution that caters to geeks (the cool factor, OS X being a BSD derivative) and they're doing well there. What's needed is for the masses to break out of the Microsoft mentality and realize learning to Mac isn't that hard of an ordeal. I'd like to see Linux get more penetration too, but not on my Dads desk, it's not there yet for him. OS X is, and when he learns OS X he'll be more apt to give Linux a try as well.
I have never owned a Mac, although I have worked with them and supported them (what little support the Macs needed;)
OS X peaked my curiousity. But I thought that the candy-colored iMacs were as ugly as sin (I'm not into bright colors) and the gray-colored one was a little too expensive (it was the options-stuffed "professional" one, I believe.) The Apple towers were as boring as anything else on my desk.
I like the iLamp. I really like the iLamp. This big desktop-hogging system has been getting on my nerves. These huge monitors have been getting on my nerves. The tablet PCs that companies have been blabbering about for the past 12-16 months have interested me, but they're not on the market yet (and I wouldn't want to buy them first generation.) When I saw the iLamp, I saw what I wanted, even though I couldn't have described it to you before *seeing* it. The concept is not that far a leap from what has come before, yet it is not a way I thought about computer design.
I'm not going to jump up and buy the new iMac as soon as it hits the shelves. I liked the cube too, and we all know where it ended up. I'll wait a while to see (make sure they don't run into any major hardware problems, etc.)
But I'm not afraid of switching operating systems--an OS is just a means to an end, whether it be Windows, OS X, Linux, *BSD, Solaris. I think there are a lot of "up-and-coming" kids who think the same. (Alot of kids who wanted a candy-colored iMac in their bedroom had a beige PC in their family room; alot of kids have Macs at school and PCs at home.) There is a real possibility that an iMac may come to join the rest of the household network at some point in the future. As long as it plays nice, none of the other systems will care...
For me, the old iMac, was "cute idea, but I have no desire for one." The new iMac is "wow... gimme!";)
So you're saying that if you go to sleep at 22:00, and wake up at say 02:00, you can stay
awake and productive for the rest of the day?
I can go to sleep at 3AM and wake at 6AM, and be productive and fully awake for the rest of the day. But I cannot do that for more than two days in a row, or my body's defenses start to weaken and I begin to become ill. I don't become noticeably tired, though.
BTW, the type of "day" whereas I would go to sleep at 3AM and awake at 6AM consists of working from 7AM-4PM, and class from 6PM-9PM (with 30min-45 min drives between work and class, and class and home; I'm typically gone from home from 6:40AM-10:00PM on those days.) I'm a fulltime CS graduate student working fulltime to pay for it. And sometimes, I'm still working on those projects at 3AM...
During my undergraduate years, I worked out my sleep patterns as part of a psych class. I have a three-hour pattern, which actually sucks. That means I'm best if I can get 3, 6, or 9 hours of sleep. I feel absolutely horrid with either 7 or 8. For instance, I went to bed at 11PM last night, and woke at 5AM this morning. I felt fine at 5AM but gave into the temptation of the warm bed and went back to sleep until 6:30. Now my head hurts and I'm grumpy. I should have gotten up at 5 and I would be a much happier person today.
But, my best is getting 9 hours of sleep. And that's hard for an adult to accomplish on weekdays, and still get work + the rest of life done.
The problem isn't of course any individual spammer but the problem as a whole... I think in any given day I recieve between 15 and 25 spams either via email or messenger, this is between quite a few accounts (10 email accounts, maybe 6 messenger accounts). Where do my rights not to be bothered with this bullshit start, and "free speech" begin... Im sure I spend (just) 5
mins a day deleting spams or closing AOL/ICQ spam windows... Thats 12 seconds per spam if I recieve 25 a day. Do the math, thats 30 *hours* a year dealing with spam.
I work with a volunteer-based website that has specific e-mails (which I filter into specific folders) for different types of complaints and requests. These addresses have been on the web since 1997.
We run our own mail server. We use ALL the anti-spam services we can track down (MAPS RBL, ORBS when it was alive, all its successors now, etc.) We block IPs for open relays and spam servers that aren't in these services at the firewall (basically, IPs for any piece of spam that gets through the above.) We still receive--at most of these addresses--5-10 pieces of SPAM for each legitimate piece of mail. And we receive quite a bit of legitimate mail.
The problem arises in attempting to find the legitimate mail amongst all the SPAM. If I am off-line and not dealing with my e-mail for 2-3 days, I can come back to 50+ e-mails in each of those folders. Probably 5-7 are users, the rest are spammers. I have to find the users from amongst the spammers. And since the users that tend to contact us are not always among the smartest of users, their e-mails can accidently *look* like spam from just the index view. (No subject line, subject line with just Re:, nonsensical/unrelated subject line.) This is very frustrating. This can result in poor user service. When the noise-to-signal ratio becomes high... it becomes harder and harder to separate.
It is bad enough that we've switched some addresses (as an experiment) to a whitelist system on top of all the blacklist systems we participate in. (If the e-mail address isn't on the approved list, the sender gets an e-mail back saying that they must validate their address--by clicking on a link--in order for their message to be processed. The address is then added to the whitelist.) We're testing the intelligence levels of our users. If the majority of them can figure out how to click on the link and thus approve their message, it's a possibility for an additional level of filtering. It protects against the forged bulk SPAM, at least.
What depresses me is that such a restrictive system is necessary to provide users with the service we wish to provide them. It seems counter-intuitive; but my mail folders after my Xmas holidays have proven to me that *something* needs to be done. I just have to hope that it's not the future of the Internet itself.
But alt.usenet.kooks is good for a laugh when you're having a really bad day.;)
If you've got to deal with idiots in RL, it's a good place to come to the realization you could be dealing with someone even more clueless. And a good place to remind yourself that your personal usenet kook isn't as kooky as he/she could be...
Those work, and when my right hand became really bad I kidnapped the egro keyboard of my former boss and the trackball of our former IT guy. (My organization has a lot of former employees...)
My hands are fairly good now. I can even write again:)
Most organizations should be willing to purchase an ergo keyboard and trackball to avoid current and future problems. If not, they are worth the investment and label them as YOURS so that you can take them away with you.
SPAM is actually about anti-personalization. It's about bombing millions of e-mail addresses because 1/2 of 1 percent *might* be interested. Take a look at what's become the overwhelming percentage of SPAM over the past few months--advertisements for p0rn, spamming services and spamming databases. Guess what perks up the most interest--gets the most response from the LCD.
Personalization takes work--personalization of SPAM *might* result in a bigger payoff for the spammer but that would *definitely* require time and money. If spammers even utilized the most basic aspects of personalization, we wouldn't all be getting spammed to death with useless and [big-5] e-mails. Our autoresponder (for a faq) wouldn't be getting ads for boob jobs and viagra every day... poor server, what could it do with either?;)
Re:Wicked cool, but not as much as I hoped...
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New iMac Announced
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· Score: 4, Interesting
OK - I love the new iMac. It's great-looking, finally a G4 is included, the screen looks real nice, and the drive combinations are right on. This is probably the Mac that the Cube should have been. The price is about $100 higher than I'd like, but I expect to see the price points all adjusted once the new Pro machines _finally_ ship. Even though they still have old iMacs around for now, they need to get the new one to the sub $1000 point ASAP.
To tell you the truth--I don't think that the consumer price point is sub-$1000 right now unless that consumer is willing to buy an Emachine or something similar (cheap hardware, off-brand.) After Xmas, we went shopping with my father-in-law for his new computer. Outside of processor speeds (which can't be compared on a one-to-one basis between Intel and Apple, anyhow) the machines we were looking at were very similar to the low-end iMac/Lamp. We could have picked up an open item for under $1000, but nothing from a name brand, even Dell (every time you clicked through the front page "deals" the price jumped!) The price range everywhere we looked (online, offline) was about $1099-$1399 for the system/hardware he wanted. This iMac, if it had been out (and if he was willing to go with an Mac, which would have been the bigger struggle;) could have easily been in the running. And that's what really surprised me, out of everything announced today. $1,299 is pretty close to what is on the market right now. And it's a lot slicker-looking...
I keep expecting it to start hopping around like the Pixer desk lamp!;)
Re:So, all you people who are panning Ep2....
on
Attack of the Clones
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· Score: 1
and no medi-cloridians.
Am I the only one for whom that reference brings up bizarre connections to L'Engle's use of mitochondria in "A Wind in the Door" (for those not familar, it's a sequel to "A Wrinkle in Time," published in 1973.)
I always thought that the mitochondria as used in her "Wrinkle" novel series were supposed to explain Charlie's "specialness," and I couldn't stop thinking about it when the Jedis went off on that genetic tangent.
First, the hypertext transport protocol does not define the net (that's http to you youngsters).
Second, the net's been around for more than a quarter century, and shows no signs of slowing down.
Third, I think that you might want to hang around for a few years or so before you start to make
pronouncements like this one. Check out the posts that Google has archived if you don't think your
mistakes live forever. Mine sure do (and I left them there, why not?).
Fourth, the internet is indeed maturing. It will continue to change, and grow, just as it has in the
past. Remember, the future is stranger than we can imagine.
Yes it is.
But, I think I understand what the other poster was trying to say. I was thinking the same thing this morning, while reading an article in an IT management publication (don't worry, I read but don't practice;)
Of course, I can't find the quote right now...
But basically, what the quote said was that the internet is a unique business environment that must be regarded as this "separate" thing. That's bullshit, especially now. It might be a separate thing for the clueless CEO types who have chosen NOT to be educated in its use. But it's come to a certain point of maturation, whereas it's considered a normal part of daily life for many ordinary people. Any company that still treats it separately from their overall business plan is going to run into problems.
But this acceptance of the internet is actually slowing down the overall evolution. There are innovations going on, but the LCD is bigger than ever. Not only are my parents not going to upgrade the OS until they get a new computer--they are probably not going to upgrade their browser. And if you're an active business on the internet, you can't move forward too much faster than the speed of the LCD. IE 5/6 and NS 6 have been out for a while now. But my biggest group of users (as a webmaster) are STILL IE 4 and NS 4 (IE 4 is slowly moving towards IE 5/5.5/6--but think about how *long* IE 5 has actually been out there!) It has not gotten to the point whereas I can easily disregard those browsers and all their bugs. The consumer cycle of upgrading has slowed (and right at the point where it makes it painful to introduce complex CSS *argh*)
Some time in the last year, the W3 reversed their stance on things. It used to be that they were at the forefront of urging people to program for all browsers. But I think they've come to realize something--that doing so prolongs the lifespan of these browsers for far too long. Now they say to use the new features, force users to upgrade. As an NFP site, we may do that. We have been stuck for so long--we want to use the display features that things like CSS offer us. But it's a lot tougher for business [with good business sense.] If your chosen 4 series browser doesn't work with site #1, will you as a consumer upgrade your browser, or go to site #2? Many consumers will go to site #2. It's a balancing act between consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. It has always been present, but I think that consumers themselves have managed to plateau the evolution in the past year.
The innovations will come, but you've got to overcome the consumer's desire to stagnate in order to introduce them. That's were the trick is. It will continue to change and grow, but people hesitate at change. The growth of the use of IM and P2P is actually promising, as it shows that something that is introduced properly will eventually grab the attention of the LCD. But the slow browser upgrade cycle that I see as a webmaster is worrisome (Especially when you're dealing with IE. They need those damned patches!)
I have felt trapped by the continuing consumer embrace of the 4 (and IE 5.0; it has many of the same problems) series browsers. And that I think is telling of the type of problems that will slow the evolution of the internet in the near future. Once something is accepted, newer versions of it are hard to introduce. Even Microsoft is coming to that realization--their biggest competitor is earlier versions of their own software!
Nobody has ever dared use our "BigMediaCompany.tv" and we saved the $50K that the.tv folks wanted. Basically, the.tv people were blackmailing the Fortune 500.
Not just the Fortune 500. I help administer a popular (within limited circles) media-related domain. We've been around under the same name since 1995. We picked up the.org domain for our name in 1997 (prior to that we were pretty happy with second-level domains at various hosting companies.)
When.tv premiered, I popped over to see what they wanted for that version of our name. 25K. *falls over laughing* Because our name has NOTHING to do with the television show or even the content of the site (it was an accident--the original site was hosted on a server at Ohio-State and the server's name was based on their naming scheme, not the content, yet the name stuck with the site even after it left the university servers) and the.tv suggested alternatives were related to either the television show or the content, it was clearly aimed at us. But we've never made a scrap of money off the site (and are not interested in doing so) and nobody else would be interested in that domain for that amount of money.
Of course, I think that.tv has become aware of the "error" of their ways. That version of our name is now considered a regular site... but I still wouldn't pay $50 a year for it!
They're the same. How could they possibly be anything but the same?
*sigh* I should think through before I post. I thought there was a situation in which blue would be purer than red, but I haven't been able to devise one. That one is mean!;)
(Because, the liquid transferred from the red container to the blue container is already a mixture of blue and red; therefore, there is less red in the blue container than blue in the red container.)
There are thousands of single-gene "monogenic" disorders. A Good example is Cystic Fibrosis, although you could replace this in the example for countless diseases. Cystic fibrosis is a recessive disease. This means that you have two copies of the gene (called CFTR), and if both are "damaged" or mutated, you will have the disease. However, if you have only one mutated copy, you are just fine. In this case you are a "carrier" for CF - but you will probably never know it.
There is also mounting evidence that some "monogenic" diseases offer protection to carriers (which is why they have not been breed out by natural selection.) The most commonly known one is the protection against malaria offered by the sickle cell genes. The body of a carrier of CF is better at retaining hydration than someone without a copy of the gene, which historically may have protected from death by disease-caused dehydration (which was a major concern up until the middle of the 20th centuary.) When two copies are brought together, it means bad things--but the single copy may be helpful.
That tendency is a piece of knowledge that could also drive suspicions that these cases of autism are genetically-linked. For many years, studies have suggested that two parents of high intelligence tend to produce children of average intelligence. (Note tend.) An argument can be made for both environment causes and genetic causes. Here, this article suggests to me, and apparently to those who have decided to investigate, that two parents with a tendency towards mild "autistic" behaviors have a tendency to produce children who are diagnosed with full-blown autism. That suggests a link. Further studies are needed to prove or disprove the link--and that's basically what the article is saying. Both genetics and environment can produce tendencies, but studies are required to determine whether either (or both!) are to blame. Both can be under suspicion.
This is especially true given that we're talking about autism, a disease that's not very well understood. Therapies that work for some children have no effect on others. There has been some suspicion recently that diseases with similar sympotms but different underlying causes may be lumped together under the heading of autism. (For example, last I heard, there were studies starting up to determine whether the lack of/malfunction of a particular digestive enzyme could be the underlying cause behind some cases of autism--for some children, a treatment which replaced that enzyme through injections has worked wonders while in other cases it hasn't had a damn bit of effect. That lack of effect in some caused the treatment's dismissal by some researchers; now some are wondering about the discrepency and looking at what, outside of parental illusion, might cause that.) Autism requires the type of research that this article suggests it is beginning to receive. The tendency to blame it on bad/detacted parenting during the 1970s and early 1980s severly hindered scientific investigation of other possible causes, and that has only begun to be remedied recently. It's rather sad that a clustering effect like this is what it takes to get this type of attention, but perhaps the clustering itself will give more insights into what particular causes can be. There are so many factors that can be brought under suspicion here. It may not be simply one factor which is causing this. But it may lead to the scientific identification of some factors in autism, which can help diagnosis and treatment. When you're talking about looking at genetics and environmental factors, it's not only the psychs which are involved any longer. It's scientific investigators as well.
I have worked with several sites that pass files through CGI scripts to the user. Because all the web masters I have worked with are from a unix background, we've never cared about the extension. Files over the web should be passed and parsed by content-type, right?
There has been bug after bug dealing with content-type and extension in Internet Explorer. They PRE-DATE the fuller integration of IE into the operating system, although that integration worsened them. Every time a problem is reported to Microsoft, they fix the specific problem, not the underlying problem. Thus, you can change your tactics a little and create another "exploit".
I'm not at all surprised that a destructive exploit has been created. Most iterations of the problem that I've experienced have come from attempts to correctly serve valid data to IE users--in most of those cases, the browser was simply unable to correctly identify/render the files. I could see possibilities for destructive exploits, but because my field is communications, not white hatting, I really wasn't in a [mental/academic] place to experiement with them. Unless Microsoft fixes the UNDERLYING PROBLEM, which allows Internet Explorer to incorrectly interprete by extension in some cases thus ignoring content-type, they are going to continue to see exploits. Even I know that the mixture of two standards is far worse than following either one or the other--and opens the program to far many more exploits. Why can't Microsoft learn that?
I think that the problem is that early Deja began archiving in 1995 (around May), but didn't archive some of the alt.* groups until 1996. Although, bizarrely enough, the archives for the group begin exactly on January 1, 1996.
I don't think they've tried to cover the lapses in Deja's own collection process. So they've now got a bunch of earlier stuff, and the majority of later stuff, but not the in-between whereas they were ignoring us;) It's pretty funny.
I found plenty from that timeframe. Here's one [google.com] that was interesting in light of your comments though.
I was trying to say that there is nothing from the particular newsgroup I was speaking of from April-December, 1995. That particular newsgroup suffers from an archive gap for those months. (Well, not entirely--there are five cross-posted pieces of spam with a reference to that newsgroup in their headers; but otherwise there is nothing from what was a rather active newsgroup. Whatever source they received posts from that time period from did not contain this newsgroup.)
Where in the world did they dig this data up from? Were these tapes that Deja had somehow acquired, but never
read in, or did Google actually root around and restore backups from way back when, and if so, from who did they
get the tapes from???
I figure that Google has to be getting these posts from trusted sources, or else you could inject false data into the
historical archives. Anyone know for sure?
Deja always said that they intended to have archives back to 1981. I presume that they did acquire some archives (which were then passed on to Google), and that perhaps Google continued their research after acquiring Deja. Deja was doing most of its existence--they just may have not had the staff or the knowledge required for such a mass data conversion project.
Thinking about trusted sources and the historical record--you've got to take Usenet with a grain of salt (as is true with ALL historical records). Yes, it is a historical record, but seen through a certain bias. Early Usenet was limited in scope--it was contributed to by mainly by academics and people with certain types of access which weren't really useable by the norm. Current usenet has other biases (it tends to attract users more towards the 'fringes' of society, not the LCD.) The historical record isn't the be-all-and-end-all. The reasons for its existence and population must be examined as closely as its data. Data fraud, in particular, has been rampant on Usenet for years now. That throws all data into question.
As for sources injecting fake data into the records--it's possible. The questions you must then look at are why? for what purpose? and how would it affect?
Affecting the accuracy would be the biggest concern. But because the existence of the records as a whole are the main importance (in my eyes) unless there was mass data fraud (which would be fairly apparent), its effect would be small. In a lot of cases, those that perform fraud do it so poorly that it would be obvious.
And, as a historical record, I think that Usenet ranks more as a intellectual curiousity than a serious area of research. But people have done serious research on the damnest of things!
Slashdot Mirror
Schools, non-profits, and small but long-lived businesses.
My mother's school just had a whole bunch of Pentium I 75s donated. They are an upgrade from the 386s (running Win 3.1) the classrooms have had for about 4 years.
Unfortunately, due to MS policies businesses are donating PCs without operating systems. The school has one copy of Win95. They are installing it on all the machines--the poor things can't run much more. They are not buying licenses, because they basically *can't*.
Their 'tech guy' is a 60-year-old 5th grade teacher whose only qualification is that he's not afraid of the computers and is willing to install software. They can't hire an MS or a Unix admin to do configuration or install.
I guess the only piece of luck in this situation is that the school had to cancel its internet connection due to lack of funds, so those unpatched Win95 machines aren't going to be online.
But antivirus companies are different. You *need* those updates, (if you're running Windoze.) The biggest risk to your computer, organization and network are from the Nimba-like virus/trojan/worm that was released today, not the DOS virus that first appeared in 1993. A computer might still get that DOS virus, but the Nimba-like malcode is going to cause far more extensive damage. As virus writers become more 'inventive' (aka, good at exploiting masses of vulnerable Win boxes) your antivirus program needs to keep pace. New virus signatures are added constantly, and you're paying the subscription fee to be able to constantly keep up, to protect yourself.
But Word doesn't evolve in that manner. Word95 is a full-featured word processor--perhaps not the most stable, but neither is Word2000. There is no pressing need to upgrade, except that of incompatible file formats with newer versions of Word--a problem that was INTENTIONALLY created by Microsoft. The added-value you're getting out of a subscription, in this model, is much, much smaller than in the antivirus model. Basically, you're making it profitable for Miscrosoft to change things to force upgrades. To intentionally make things incompatible. To make each generation of the program "different" enough to keep their revenue stream going. And doing dramatic changes to the way things work with each generation (to make the subscription model "logical" and profitable) is going to result in buggy code.
Basically, you're comparing apples and oranges here. Antivirus subscriptions are not the same as Office subscriptions--they are not part of the same model. A service I could see being similar to AV (and useful!) under Windows would be a subscription that automatically updated the OS's built-in firewall (XP has a firewall, right?) Got a Code Red XX that's attacking a flaw in WinXP over port something-or-another? Push out an update that blocks its signature at the firewall to your subscribers. It would be an additional layer of protection beyond patching--it could also help in a situation whereas a exploit was released prior to a patch. Yes, it would be a stop-gap measure, but SO IS MOST ANTIVIRUS. (Stop-gap against stupidity.)
There have been some GREAT episodes in the past two seasons. There have also been some absolutely terrible dogs. Of course, that's been the story of the past four years of the show, too ...
...
The show has been extremely inconsistant in quality since season 4. The mythfans--who were in it for good story-telling and good writing--mainly left around season 5-6 and the ratings have been on a downhill slide since then.
4-D (a 9th season episode; about the parallel universes) was about one of the best episodes I've seen in recent seasons. I seem to recall XF addressed parallel universes in another, unmemorable episode, so it could be called a retread, but it was so far and away better than the other
Redrum, the episode about the lawyer moving backward in time, was also wonderful.
Trust No 1 sucked. There wasn't even a story in the episode. I kind of wish they'd finally kill off Mulder already; but then they wouldn't have their movie franchise. Although they're not getting my money for that--especially if it's Mulder and Scully focused after the Mulder/Scully crap of seasons 7-9.
Anderson's been doing 'arts films' in the off-season and has indicated she's perfectly happy with continuing to do smaller films like those and theatre. She's more of a classic actor than a big-name star. I've really liked all the smaller budget films she has done, and she really does have a greater talent than you'd suspect from just the X-Files.
As for DD--he was okay in "Return to Me." Nothing else he has done has impressed me; part of the problem there was the poor quality films he seems have have chosen. Evolution *gag* I think that he's partly been type-casted, and partly doesn't have a clue at how to pick films that'll use his talents.
This is really nothing new. Here in Canada, some universities are using similar techniques to
ferret out term-paper cheats. There is a company (can't remember the name) that offers this
service which, basically, compares a student's paper to a number of ready-to-buy papers one
can find on the Web, etc. If the 'similarity index' reaches a threshold, the student's paper is
flagged for further investigation by the teacher.
So, it'll chase all the cheaters back to paper mills. (Businesses which charge more, but generally produce original papers.) Paper mills have been around and easily accessible by college students for decades.
Oops ... sorry, the parent was modded down so far that I didn't see it was UK-centric.
In my area, CompUSA has had the FreeBSD PowerPak, although it tends to be a release behind. The PowerPak was expensive last time I looked; I think I saw it for $70-$90 (it also comes with "The Complete FreeBSD.") Best Buy had it once or twice.
Barnes & Nobles has had The Complete FreeBSD before, with the basic CDs included. It was cheaper than the PowerPak ($50?). If the current release has been out for a month or so, they should have it on hand or be able to order it.
We've also got a local shop which has CDs with the basic ISOs for $10; take a look around at your small computer stores.
Apple has a great story, they have a solution that caters to geeks (the cool factor, OS X being a BSD derivative) and they're doing well there. What's needed is for the masses to break out of the Microsoft mentality and realize learning to Mac isn't that hard of an ordeal. I'd like to see Linux get more penetration too, but not on my Dads desk, it's not there yet for him. OS X is, and when he learns OS X he'll be more apt to give Linux a try as well.
;)
...
... gimme!" ;)
I have never owned a Mac, although I have worked with them and supported them (what little support the Macs needed
OS X peaked my curiousity. But I thought that the candy-colored iMacs were as ugly as sin (I'm not into bright colors) and the gray-colored one was a little too expensive (it was the options-stuffed "professional" one, I believe.) The Apple towers were as boring as anything else on my desk.
I like the iLamp. I really like the iLamp. This big desktop-hogging system has been getting on my nerves. These huge monitors have been getting on my nerves. The tablet PCs that companies have been blabbering about for the past 12-16 months have interested me, but they're not on the market yet (and I wouldn't want to buy them first generation.) When I saw the iLamp, I saw what I wanted, even though I couldn't have described it to you before *seeing* it. The concept is not that far a leap from what has come before, yet it is not a way I thought about computer design.
I'm not going to jump up and buy the new iMac as soon as it hits the shelves. I liked the cube too, and we all know where it ended up. I'll wait a while to see (make sure they don't run into any major hardware problems, etc.)
But I'm not afraid of switching operating systems--an OS is just a means to an end, whether it be Windows, OS X, Linux, *BSD, Solaris. I think there are a lot of "up-and-coming" kids who think the same. (Alot of kids who wanted a candy-colored iMac in their bedroom had a beige PC in their family room; alot of kids have Macs at school and PCs at home.) There is a real possibility that an iMac may come to join the rest of the household network at some point in the future. As long as it plays nice, none of the other systems will care
For me, the old iMac, was "cute idea, but I have no desire for one." The new iMac is "wow
So you're saying that if you go to sleep at 22:00, and wake up at say 02:00, you can stay
...
awake and productive for the rest of the day?
I can go to sleep at 3AM and wake at 6AM, and be productive and fully awake for the rest of the day. But I cannot do that for more than two days in a row, or my body's defenses start to weaken and I begin to become ill. I don't become noticeably tired, though.
BTW, the type of "day" whereas I would go to sleep at 3AM and awake at 6AM consists of working from 7AM-4PM, and class from 6PM-9PM (with 30min-45 min drives between work and class, and class and home; I'm typically gone from home from 6:40AM-10:00PM on those days.) I'm a fulltime CS graduate student working fulltime to pay for it. And sometimes, I'm still working on those projects at 3AM
During my undergraduate years, I worked out my sleep patterns as part of a psych class. I have a three-hour pattern, which actually sucks. That means I'm best if I can get 3, 6, or 9 hours of sleep. I feel absolutely horrid with either 7 or 8. For instance, I went to bed at 11PM last night, and woke at 5AM this morning. I felt fine at 5AM but gave into the temptation of the warm bed and went back to sleep until 6:30. Now my head hurts and I'm grumpy. I should have gotten up at 5 and I would be a much happier person today.
But, my best is getting 9 hours of sleep. And that's hard for an adult to accomplish on weekdays, and still get work + the rest of life done.
The problem isn't of course any individual spammer but the problem as a whole ... I think in any given day I recieve between 15 and 25 spams either via email or messenger, this is between quite a few accounts (10 email accounts, maybe 6 messenger accounts). Where do my rights not to be bothered with this bullshit start, and "free speech" begin ... Im sure I spend (just) 5
... Thats 12 seconds per spam if I recieve 25 a day. Do the math, thats 30 *hours* a year dealing with spam.
... it becomes harder and harder to separate.
mins a day deleting spams or closing AOL/ICQ spam windows
I work with a volunteer-based website that has specific e-mails (which I filter into specific folders) for different types of complaints and requests. These addresses have been on the web since 1997.
We run our own mail server. We use ALL the anti-spam services we can track down (MAPS RBL, ORBS when it was alive, all its successors now, etc.) We block IPs for open relays and spam servers that aren't in these services at the firewall (basically, IPs for any piece of spam that gets through the above.) We still receive--at most of these addresses--5-10 pieces of SPAM for each legitimate piece of mail. And we receive quite a bit of legitimate mail.
The problem arises in attempting to find the legitimate mail amongst all the SPAM. If I am off-line and not dealing with my e-mail for 2-3 days, I can come back to 50+ e-mails in each of those folders. Probably 5-7 are users, the rest are spammers. I have to find the users from amongst the spammers. And since the users that tend to contact us are not always among the smartest of users, their e-mails can accidently *look* like spam from just the index view. (No subject line, subject line with just Re:, nonsensical/unrelated subject line.) This is very frustrating. This can result in poor user service. When the noise-to-signal ratio becomes high
It is bad enough that we've switched some addresses (as an experiment) to a whitelist system on top of all the blacklist systems we participate in. (If the e-mail address isn't on the approved list, the sender gets an e-mail back saying that they must validate their address--by clicking on a link--in order for their message to be processed. The address is then added to the whitelist.) We're testing the intelligence levels of our users. If the majority of them can figure out how to click on the link and thus approve their message, it's a possibility for an additional level of filtering. It protects against the forged bulk SPAM, at least.
What depresses me is that such a restrictive system is necessary to provide users with the service we wish to provide them. It seems counter-intuitive; but my mail folders after my Xmas holidays have proven to me that *something* needs to be done. I just have to hope that it's not the future of the Internet itself.
But alt.usenet.kooks is good for a laugh when you're having a really bad day. ;)
...
If you've got to deal with idiots in RL, it's a good place to come to the realization you could be dealing with someone even more clueless. And a good place to remind yourself that your personal usenet kook isn't as kooky as he/she could be
Those work, and when my right hand became really bad I kidnapped the egro keyboard of my former boss and the trackball of our former IT guy. (My organization has a lot of former employees ...)
:)
My hands are fairly good now. I can even write again
Most organizations should be willing to purchase an ergo keyboard and trackball to avoid current and future problems. If not, they are worth the investment and label them as YOURS so that you can take them away with you.
SPAM is actually about anti-personalization. It's about bombing millions of e-mail addresses because 1/2 of 1 percent *might* be interested. Take a look at what's become the overwhelming percentage of SPAM over the past few months--advertisements for p0rn, spamming services and spamming databases. Guess what perks up the most interest--gets the most response from the LCD.
... poor server, what could it do with either? ;)
Personalization takes work--personalization of SPAM *might* result in a bigger payoff for the spammer but that would *definitely* require time and money. If spammers even utilized the most basic aspects of personalization, we wouldn't all be getting spammed to death with useless and [big-5] e-mails. Our autoresponder (for a faq) wouldn't be getting ads for boob jobs and viagra every day
To tell you the truth--I don't think that the consumer price point is sub-$1000 right now unless that consumer is willing to buy an Emachine or something similar (cheap hardware, off-brand.) After Xmas, we went shopping with my father-in-law for his new computer. Outside of processor speeds (which can't be compared on a one-to-one basis between Intel and Apple, anyhow) the machines we were looking at were very similar to the low-end iMac/Lamp. We could have picked up an open item for under $1000, but nothing from a name brand, even Dell (every time you clicked through the front page "deals" the price jumped!) The price range everywhere we looked (online, offline) was about $1099-$1399 for the system/hardware he wanted. This iMac, if it had been out (and if he was willing to go with an Mac, which would have been the bigger struggle ;) could have easily been in the running. And that's what really surprised me, out of everything announced today. $1,299 is pretty close to what is on the market right now. And it's a lot slicker-looking ...
I keep expecting it to start hopping around like the Pixer desk lamp! ;)
and no medi-cloridians.
Am I the only one for whom that reference brings up bizarre connections to L'Engle's use of mitochondria in "A Wind in the Door" (for those not familar, it's a sequel to "A Wrinkle in Time," published in 1973.)
I always thought that the mitochondria as used in her "Wrinkle" novel series were supposed to explain Charlie's "specialness," and I couldn't stop thinking about it when the Jedis went off on that genetic tangent.
Say what? Until last year?
;)
...
First, the hypertext transport protocol does not define the net (that's http to you youngsters).
Second, the net's been around for more than a quarter century, and shows no signs of slowing down.
Third, I think that you might want to hang around for a few years or so before you start to make
pronouncements like this one. Check out the posts that Google has archived if you don't think your
mistakes live forever. Mine sure do (and I left them there, why not?).
Fourth, the internet is indeed maturing. It will continue to change, and grow, just as it has in the
past. Remember, the future is stranger than we can imagine.
Yes it is.
But, I think I understand what the other poster was trying to say. I was thinking the same thing this morning, while reading an article in an IT management publication (don't worry, I read but don't practice
Of course, I can't find the quote right now
But basically, what the quote said was that the internet is a unique business environment that must be regarded as this "separate" thing. That's bullshit, especially now. It might be a separate thing for the clueless CEO types who have chosen NOT to be educated in its use. But it's come to a certain point of maturation, whereas it's considered a normal part of daily life for many ordinary people. Any company that still treats it separately from their overall business plan is going to run into problems.
But this acceptance of the internet is actually slowing down the overall evolution. There are innovations going on, but the LCD is bigger than ever. Not only are my parents not going to upgrade the OS until they get a new computer--they are probably not going to upgrade their browser. And if you're an active business on the internet, you can't move forward too much faster than the speed of the LCD. IE 5/6 and NS 6 have been out for a while now. But my biggest group of users (as a webmaster) are STILL IE 4 and NS 4 (IE 4 is slowly moving towards IE 5/5.5/6--but think about how *long* IE 5 has actually been out there!) It has not gotten to the point whereas I can easily disregard those browsers and all their bugs. The consumer cycle of upgrading has slowed (and right at the point where it makes it painful to introduce complex CSS *argh*)
Some time in the last year, the W3 reversed their stance on things. It used to be that they were at the forefront of urging people to program for all browsers. But I think they've come to realize something--that doing so prolongs the lifespan of these browsers for far too long. Now they say to use the new features, force users to upgrade. As an NFP site, we may do that. We have been stuck for so long--we want to use the display features that things like CSS offer us. But it's a lot tougher for business [with good business sense.] If your chosen 4 series browser doesn't work with site #1, will you as a consumer upgrade your browser, or go to site #2? Many consumers will go to site #2. It's a balancing act between consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. It has always been present, but I think that consumers themselves have managed to plateau the evolution in the past year.
The innovations will come, but you've got to overcome the consumer's desire to stagnate in order to introduce them. That's were the trick is. It will continue to change and grow, but people hesitate at change. The growth of the use of IM and P2P is actually promising, as it shows that something that is introduced properly will eventually grab the attention of the LCD. But the slow browser upgrade cycle that I see as a webmaster is worrisome (Especially when you're dealing with IE. They need those damned patches!)
I have felt trapped by the continuing consumer embrace of the 4 (and IE 5.0; it has many of the same problems) series browsers. And that I think is telling of the type of problems that will slow the evolution of the internet in the near future. Once something is accepted, newer versions of it are hard to introduce. Even Microsoft is coming to that realization--their biggest competitor is earlier versions of their own software!
Nobody has ever dared use our "BigMediaCompany.tv" and we saved the $50K that the .tv folks wanted. Basically, the .tv people were blackmailing the Fortune 500.
.org domain for our name in 1997 (prior to that we were pretty happy with second-level domains at various hosting companies.)
.tv premiered, I popped over to see what they wanted for that version of our name. 25K. *falls over laughing* Because our name has NOTHING to do with the television show or even the content of the site (it was an accident--the original site was hosted on a server at Ohio-State and the server's name was based on their naming scheme, not the content, yet the name stuck with the site even after it left the university servers) and the .tv suggested alternatives were related to either the television show or the content, it was clearly aimed at us. But we've never made a scrap of money off the site (and are not interested in doing so) and nobody else would be interested in that domain for that amount of money.
.tv has become aware of the "error" of their ways. That version of our name is now considered a regular site ... but I still wouldn't pay $50 a year for it!
Not just the Fortune 500. I help administer a popular (within limited circles) media-related domain. We've been around under the same name since 1995. We picked up the
When
Of course, I think that
They're the same. How could they possibly be anything but the same?
;)
*sigh* I should think through before I post. I thought there was a situation in which blue would be purer than red, but I haven't been able to devise one. That one is mean!
The blue container, right?
(Because, the liquid transferred from the red container to the blue container is already a mixture of blue and red; therefore, there is less red in the blue container than blue in the red container.)
There is also mounting evidence that some "monogenic" diseases offer protection to carriers (which is why they have not been breed out by natural selection.) The most commonly known one is the protection against malaria offered by the sickle cell genes. The body of a carrier of CF is better at retaining hydration than someone without a copy of the gene, which historically may have protected from death by disease-caused dehydration (which was a major concern up until the middle of the 20th centuary.) When two copies are brought together, it means bad things--but the single copy may be helpful.
That tendency is a piece of knowledge that could also drive suspicions that these cases of autism are genetically-linked. For many years, studies have suggested that two parents of high intelligence tend to produce children of average intelligence. (Note tend.) An argument can be made for both environment causes and genetic causes. Here, this article suggests to me, and apparently to those who have decided to investigate, that two parents with a tendency towards mild "autistic" behaviors have a tendency to produce children who are diagnosed with full-blown autism. That suggests a link. Further studies are needed to prove or disprove the link--and that's basically what the article is saying. Both genetics and environment can produce tendencies, but studies are required to determine whether either (or both!) are to blame. Both can be under suspicion.
This is especially true given that we're talking about autism, a disease that's not very well understood. Therapies that work for some children have no effect on others. There has been some suspicion recently that diseases with similar sympotms but different underlying causes may be lumped together under the heading of autism. (For example, last I heard, there were studies starting up to determine whether the lack of/malfunction of a particular digestive enzyme could be the underlying cause behind some cases of autism--for some children, a treatment which replaced that enzyme through injections has worked wonders while in other cases it hasn't had a damn bit of effect. That lack of effect in some caused the treatment's dismissal by some researchers; now some are wondering about the discrepency and looking at what, outside of parental illusion, might cause that.) Autism requires the type of research that this article suggests it is beginning to receive. The tendency to blame it on bad/detacted parenting during the 1970s and early 1980s severly hindered scientific investigation of other possible causes, and that has only begun to be remedied recently. It's rather sad that a clustering effect like this is what it takes to get this type of attention, but perhaps the clustering itself will give more insights into what particular causes can be. There are so many factors that can be brought under suspicion here. It may not be simply one factor which is causing this. But it may lead to the scientific identification of some factors in autism, which can help diagnosis and treatment. When you're talking about looking at genetics and environmental factors, it's not only the psychs which are involved any longer. It's scientific investigators as well.
I have worked with several sites that pass files through CGI scripts to the user. Because all the web masters I have worked with are from a unix background, we've never cared about the extension. Files over the web should be passed and parsed by content-type, right?
There has been bug after bug dealing with content-type and extension in Internet Explorer. They PRE-DATE the fuller integration of IE into the operating system, although that integration worsened them. Every time a problem is reported to Microsoft, they fix the specific problem, not the underlying problem. Thus, you can change your tactics a little and create another "exploit".
I'm not at all surprised that a destructive exploit has been created. Most iterations of the problem that I've experienced have come from attempts to correctly serve valid data to IE users--in most of those cases, the browser was simply unable to correctly identify/render the files. I could see possibilities for destructive exploits, but because my field is communications, not white hatting, I really wasn't in a [mental/academic] place to experiement with them. Unless Microsoft fixes the UNDERLYING PROBLEM, which allows Internet Explorer to incorrectly interprete by extension in some cases thus ignoring content-type, they are going to continue to see exploits. Even I know that the mixture of two standards is far worse than following either one or the other--and opens the program to far many more exploits. Why can't Microsoft learn that?
:P
;) It's pretty funny.
I think that the problem is that early Deja began archiving in 1995 (around May), but didn't archive some of the alt.* groups until 1996. Although, bizarrely enough, the archives for the group begin exactly on January 1, 1996.
I don't think they've tried to cover the lapses in Deja's own collection process. So they've now got a bunch of earlier stuff, and the majority of later stuff, but not the in-between whereas they were ignoring us
I found plenty from that timeframe. Here's one [google.com] that was interesting in light of your comments though.
I was trying to say that there is nothing from the particular newsgroup I was speaking of from April-December, 1995. That particular newsgroup suffers from an archive gap for those months. (Well, not entirely--there are five cross-posted pieces of spam with a reference to that newsgroup in their headers; but otherwise there is nothing from what was a rather active newsgroup. Whatever source they received posts from that time period from did not contain this newsgroup.)
I figure that Google has to be getting these posts from trusted sources, or else you could inject false data into the historical archives. Anyone know for sure?
Deja always said that they intended to have archives back to 1981. I presume that they did acquire some archives (which were then passed on to Google), and that perhaps Google continued their research after acquiring Deja. Deja was doing most of its existence--they just may have not had the staff or the knowledge required for such a mass data conversion project.
Thinking about trusted sources and the historical record--you've got to take Usenet with a grain of salt (as is true with ALL historical records). Yes, it is a historical record, but seen through a certain bias. Early Usenet was limited in scope--it was contributed to by mainly by academics and people with certain types of access which weren't really useable by the norm. Current usenet has other biases (it tends to attract users more towards the 'fringes' of society, not the LCD.) The historical record isn't the be-all-and-end-all. The reasons for its existence and population must be examined as closely as its data. Data fraud, in particular, has been rampant on Usenet for years now. That throws all data into question.
As for sources injecting fake data into the records--it's possible. The questions you must then look at are why? for what purpose? and how would it affect? Affecting the accuracy would be the biggest concern. But because the existence of the records as a whole are the main importance (in my eyes) unless there was mass data fraud (which would be fairly apparent), its effect would be small. In a lot of cases, those that perform fraud do it so poorly that it would be obvious.
And, as a historical record, I think that Usenet ranks more as a intellectual curiousity than a serious area of research. But people have done serious research on the damnest of things!