In the words of the late great Leonard Nimoy, fascinating.
Uhm... as far as I know, whilst Leonard Nimoy is great, he is by no means late. He's still ticking. He would probably find your conclusions about his state of being, illogical.
I've been a build-it-myself guy for a long time too, mostly because I found that I could put together a higher quality machine myself than I could buy off the shelf for the same amount of money. And, if that's the way you want to go, all the more power to you. However, every Mac I've seen recently I've been impressed with. Above all else, Apple does at least one thing right - It Just Works. So, yes, there will be those of the BYOB crowd that will steadfastly refuse to buy an Apple because they can't pick and choose the parts, but if/when I was interested in buying one I don't think I'd have any problem putting down the cash for a quality computer, to be able to enjoy the advantages of the OS.
This is based on my personal experience. I've run my own linux server from home for many years, providing quite a range of services (DNS, HTTP, FTP, shell, etc), and if you live in an area with good power service, then I think you could pull it off.
First off, find yourself a local, geek run ISP. They generally will have good service, with high speed low latency connections to multiple higher-tier ISP's, and their own backup power.
Second, get a decent DSL package through them, and I'm not talking the "speed not garunteed" SBC deal-o-the-week - something in the range of 3.0-6.0mbit downstream and 384-768kbit upstream. If you can't find a decent local ISP, look at a larger geek friendly ISP like Speakeasy. With my DSL, which is 3.0/384 via a Covad line, I can get consistant 20ms ping times to google.com, so latency is not a problem. Plus, I've had maybe 90-120 minutes of downtime in the last 12 months. Sure, it ain't 5 nines, but it's not bad, either.
Get yourself a/29 or/28 netblock for the heck of it, and you're your own mini-ISP. You can expand services and machines as you see fit, and you have complete and secure physical and administrative control over your boxen, and you don't have to give the boys down at the NOC a call at 3am to power cycle your box if something goes wrong.
Just speculation, but if the software is installed even if the EULA is rejected, could not one point to that and say, hey, you installed the software even after we said no to the license, so I guess you think the license doesn't mean anything, eh?
Maybe I'm a bit jaded at having been in the computer support industry for too long, but with the proliferation of nasties these days that disrupt internet connectivity in one form or another, I'm skeptical as to whether this is going to actually work. Hell, a good percentage of infections these days, be they viruses or malware, require manual cleaning, often from safe mode or self contained non-volatile bootable media. Even Symantec overwhelmingly recommends booting to safe mode to clean infections in most of their AV DB articles.
HTML is of course HyperText Markup Language (emphasis mine). It was designed for inserting links and other nifty widgets like forms into hypertext. Of course, over time some basic formatting tags snuck in (bold, italics, paragraphs, etc), but those don't come close to dealing with the advanced formatting available in most word processing or desktop publishing packages. One of the reasons even older versions of Word et al produce such nasty HTML is due to them trying to as faithfully as possible replicate their formatting to HTML, which before CSS was no easy task.
So yeah. I'd much rather have an open binary format than HTML. I honestly don't care if my documents are human readable in their raw format - if I want that I'll use a text file. As long as it's an open, well documented format, I could care less.
Neeeeeeoooooobody expects the Slashdot editors! Our chief weapons are laziness, laziness and corporate shilling, our *two* weapons are laziness and corporate shilling...
Isn't that kind of hard to do with one of them already in orbit? I thought that the idea was that they could scramble Atlantis for a rescue mission if Discovery was seriously damaged...
That guy's implemtation certianly has some cool features, but I think Google's idea is slicker, since it gives you just the bare essentials in the overlay, as opposed to having to adjust the transparency so you can kind of see the satellite and kind of see the map.
But someone out there makes a unit that can be switched between being a trackball and being a mouse, so I suppose it's close. I don't recall who makes/made it... I want to say Microsoft, but I could be wrong. I had a customer who had one of them and the first time I saw it she laughed when I gave her a look of whisky tango foxtrot.
However, if members of the military were given special treatment at the border, it would create a rather obvious security hole... I don't think it's a good thing to hassle members of the military on the way home, but if we're truly interested in securing the borders, it's necessary.
I'm not talking about special treatment nor do I think hassling members of the military is necessary. I suppose it comes down to the fact that I don't think anybody should be treated like that.
The real problem I have is that "homeland security" has decided that the idea of probable cause is unfashionable in this "terrorist" riddled day and age. I will grant the proceedure searching my luggage and my person for prohibited items at a security checkpoint. If I am not carrying any prohibited items, not doing anything illegal at the time, and if I am not acting in a clearly suspicious fashion, then airport security should have no probable cause to detain me.
The military of all groups is security concious. Servicemembers traveling on orders these days have multiple ways to authenticate who they are and account for their actions (we are required to carry official copies of our orders when we travel). If the military trusts these documents enough for their own security purposes, then airport security should, too. Otherwise, the whole trust metric breaks down.
Basically, if I show up at the security checkpoint with my military ID and orders, once I have been physically checked, why should they have any further need to detain or check me? Members of the military might not warrant special treatment but like it or not we are held to a different standard. If "homeland security" ignores that standard, then they're saying that it is as much as worthless, which is yet another slap in the face.
The above scenario really pisses me off, and it is a scenario that I see has a real probability of happening, all the more so because of the moronic alarmist intimidating position that the powers that be have taken about this whole national security thing. (Something similar, though not necessarily technology related happened during the "war" in Afghanistan when a wounded army Lt. was told he could not bring the wire clippers, that he could use to cut the wire holding his wounded jaw shut in case he started to choke, on the plane).
As a reservist, the scenario gets me going even more because I could see it happening to a fellow reservist. Not only do you have a brave young man or woman who has, regardless of whether you think it right or wrong, been dodging bullets and rockets in humvee's with barely improvised armour, but who has also made the sacrifice as a reservist, by being away from their family and their chosen life in the line of duty. To me, if one of my shipmates who'd been on a year's deployment over there had this happen to them, it would be the ultimate smack in the face. "Thanks for serving, here's what we think of you!"
I think by and large that most people, regardless of how they feel about the greater agenda, wouldn't hesitate to give a helping hand to that single instance of a citizen soldier. Except, of couse, for those big wigs who make policy, and to whom every man woman and child is guilty until proven innocent in the name of "homeland security".
The first person sticks his hand in boiling water, gets burned, and from there on out avoids sticking his hand in boiling water.
The second person sticks his hand in boiling water, gets burned, waits a while, then sticks his hand right back in the boiling water just to see if its still hot.
History generally considers the first person to be the wiser. No pun intended, but you can only get burned so many times before it just isn't worth it any more.
First off, I can't control what our customers do with the machines after they leave the shop. What we can and do do is to make sure that automatic updates are turned on (sketchy on a server, but better than not on a desktop), make sure there's a software firewall enabled, and make sure there's antivirus software installed. Despite all of this, a frightening number of machines still get gunked up with malware.
I'm going to dispute your statement that a computer running ANY operating system will get sick if left online for 6 months with nothing more than the initial patch load. The classic trend is that MacOS and Linux have a statistically significant higher survivability after initially being connected to the internet. Anecdotally, I've had Linux servers that went years with no major software updates, and worked just fine.
In my book, there's a problem when even a cluefull user like myself needs to lock my computer down like a fortress just to survive day to day operation. And keep in mind, this isn't a third party piece of software taking down the system due to a vulnerability - this is the operating system itself.
Maybe I'm jaded from spending most of the last year or so forever cleaning crap off of Windows machines. Maybe I'm letting my contrasting experiences with my Windows machines and my Linux servers get in the way. Whatever. I still think it's a bleeding crime that Microsoft designed Windows the way they did in the first place, and that after all these years they haven't fixed the damned thing.
I'm the senior tech for a small OEM. Unlike Dell et al, we custom build our computers. There is no production line, there is no "master model image", none of that. Each computer is tailored to each customer's requirements, and as such, we can take the time to make sure the machine is fully patched before it leaves.
I can set a brand new computer on our network behind our firewall, download every single patch, make sure a software firewall is on, make sure an antivirus product is installed and updated, and make sure the main user for the machine is a standard user (not power user or admin).
Despite having done all that, a non-trivial number of our new machines will be infected with some virus or some spyware within 6 months of delivery. Whether this is because the user elivated themselves to power user or administrator in order to use some piece of software that doesn't play nice with the Windows "security" model, or whether they've been infected with something that made use of a vulnerability in a LOCAL_SYSTEM process, they still get it.
No matter what happened, I have, do, and will for the forseeable future blame Microsoft. Apple had (and still has) the right idea. If Apple had ruled the roost, chances are we would by now see computers as household appliances, instead of some freakish pile of hardware that requires the trained likes of me to keep in an operable condition. Microsoft set the computing idustry back a decade with its shenanahgens, and the article author was spot on with his observations as such.
Sure, to most people, amateur radio is more of a hobby than anything else. But every hour I work other stations, every hour I speak on the radio, every hour I spend operating my equipment, makes me a better operator as a whole, and more importantly makes me a more effective operator in an emergency.
Conversely, If I have to constantly look up a certian function, or if I'm so nervous I can't compose a coherent message, then in an emergency I will probably not be an effective operator.
So, you see, as with any other skill, the more you practive, the better you'll be. It's unlikely, but I'd much rather be prepared to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
In the words of the late great Leonard Nimoy, fascinating.
Uhm... as far as I know, whilst Leonard Nimoy is great, he is by no means late. He's still ticking. He would probably find your conclusions about his state of being, illogical .
Microsoft is one to make claims of reliability and dependability.
... when many years ago I convinced the old biddy at the reference desk to get the book on nudist resorts out of the cage for me.
You young whippersnapers! Git offa mah lawn!
Yeah, but taking a sledgehammer to a cockroach makes such a nice satisfying *splat* ...
Did anyone else remark that the metal tag rivited onto the carriage of the cannon bears the following text:
No. 42
Model of 1896
Rock Island Arsenal
1900
JWB
Of course MIT wanted this cannon. It must obviously shoot forth with great power the answer to Life, The Universe, And Everything!
Or, hire Christopher Walken as a Project manager.
Walken: Well guys, Vista looks good, but I tell you what... it needs more cowbell.
I've been a build-it-myself guy for a long time too, mostly because I found that I could put together a higher quality machine myself than I could buy off the shelf for the same amount of money. And, if that's the way you want to go, all the more power to you. However, every Mac I've seen recently I've been impressed with. Above all else, Apple does at least one thing right - It Just Works. So, yes, there will be those of the BYOB crowd that will steadfastly refuse to buy an Apple because they can't pick and choose the parts, but if/when I was interested in buying one I don't think I'd have any problem putting down the cash for a quality computer, to be able to enjoy the advantages of the OS.
Seriously... good for her.
This is based on my personal experience. I've run my own linux server from home for many years, providing quite a range of services (DNS, HTTP, FTP, shell, etc), and if you live in an area with good power service, then I think you could pull it off.
/29 or /28 netblock for the heck of it, and you're your own mini-ISP. You can expand services and machines as you see fit, and you have complete and secure physical and administrative control over your boxen, and you don't have to give the boys down at the NOC a call at 3am to power cycle your box if something goes wrong.
First off, find yourself a local, geek run ISP. They generally will have good service, with high speed low latency connections to multiple higher-tier ISP's, and their own backup power.
Second, get a decent DSL package through them, and I'm not talking the "speed not garunteed" SBC deal-o-the-week - something in the range of 3.0-6.0mbit downstream and 384-768kbit upstream. If you can't find a decent local ISP, look at a larger geek friendly ISP like Speakeasy. With my DSL, which is 3.0/384 via a Covad line, I can get consistant 20ms ping times to google.com, so latency is not a problem. Plus, I've had maybe 90-120 minutes of downtime in the last 12 months. Sure, it ain't 5 nines, but it's not bad, either.
Get yourself a
Just speculation, but if the software is installed even if the EULA is rejected, could not one point to that and say, hey, you installed the software even after we said no to the license, so I guess you think the license doesn't mean anything, eh?
Maybe I'm a bit jaded at having been in the computer support industry for too long, but with the proliferation of nasties these days that disrupt internet connectivity in one form or another, I'm skeptical as to whether this is going to actually work. Hell, a good percentage of infections these days, be they viruses or malware, require manual cleaning, often from safe mode or self contained non-volatile bootable media. Even Symantec overwhelmingly recommends booting to safe mode to clean infections in most of their AV DB articles.
Those responsible have been sacked.
HTML is of course HyperText Markup Language (emphasis mine). It was designed for inserting links and other nifty widgets like forms into hypertext. Of course, over time some basic formatting tags snuck in (bold, italics, paragraphs, etc), but those don't come close to dealing with the advanced formatting available in most word processing or desktop publishing packages. One of the reasons even older versions of Word et al produce such nasty HTML is due to them trying to as faithfully as possible replicate their formatting to HTML, which before CSS was no easy task.
So yeah. I'd much rather have an open binary format than HTML. I honestly don't care if my documents are human readable in their raw format - if I want that I'll use a text file. As long as it's an open, well documented format, I could care less.
Neeeeeeoooooobody expects the Slashdot editors! Our chief weapons are laziness, laziness and corporate shilling, our *two* weapons are laziness and corporate shilling...
oh, I give up.
Isn't that kind of hard to do with one of them already in orbit? I thought that the idea was that they could scramble Atlantis for a rescue mission if Discovery was seriously damaged...
That guy's implemtation certianly has some cool features, but I think Google's idea is slicker, since it gives you just the bare essentials in the overlay, as opposed to having to adjust the transparency so you can kind of see the satellite and kind of see the map.
But someone out there makes a unit that can be switched between being a trackball and being a mouse, so I suppose it's close. I don't recall who makes/made it... I want to say Microsoft, but I could be wrong. I had a customer who had one of them and the first time I saw it she laughed when I gave her a look of whisky tango foxtrot.
However, if members of the military were given special treatment at the border, it would create a rather obvious security hole ... I don't think it's a good thing to hassle members of the military on the way home, but if we're truly interested in securing the borders, it's necessary.
I'm not talking about special treatment nor do I think hassling members of the military is necessary. I suppose it comes down to the fact that I don't think anybody should be treated like that.
The real problem I have is that "homeland security" has decided that the idea of probable cause is unfashionable in this "terrorist" riddled day and age. I will grant the proceedure searching my luggage and my person for prohibited items at a security checkpoint. If I am not carrying any prohibited items, not doing anything illegal at the time, and if I am not acting in a clearly suspicious fashion, then airport security should have no probable cause to detain me.
The military of all groups is security concious. Servicemembers traveling on orders these days have multiple ways to authenticate who they are and account for their actions (we are required to carry official copies of our orders when we travel). If the military trusts these documents enough for their own security purposes, then airport security should, too. Otherwise, the whole trust metric breaks down.
Basically, if I show up at the security checkpoint with my military ID and orders, once I have been physically checked, why should they have any further need to detain or check me? Members of the military might not warrant special treatment but like it or not we are held to a different standard. If "homeland security" ignores that standard, then they're saying that it is as much as worthless, which is yet another slap in the face.
*rant mode: enable*
The above scenario really pisses me off, and it is a scenario that I see has a real probability of happening, all the more so because of the moronic alarmist intimidating position that the powers that be have taken about this whole national security thing. (Something similar, though not necessarily technology related happened during the "war" in Afghanistan when a wounded army Lt. was told he could not bring the wire clippers, that he could use to cut the wire holding his wounded jaw shut in case he started to choke, on the plane).
As a reservist, the scenario gets me going even more because I could see it happening to a fellow reservist. Not only do you have a brave young man or woman who has, regardless of whether you think it right or wrong, been dodging bullets and rockets in humvee's with barely improvised armour, but who has also made the sacrifice as a reservist, by being away from their family and their chosen life in the line of duty. To me, if one of my shipmates who'd been on a year's deployment over there had this happen to them, it would be the ultimate smack in the face. "Thanks for serving, here's what we think of you!"
I think by and large that most people, regardless of how they feel about the greater agenda, wouldn't hesitate to give a helping hand to that single instance of a citizen soldier. Except, of couse, for those big wigs who make policy, and to whom every man woman and child is guilty until proven innocent in the name of "homeland security".
*rant mode: disable*
So sad to know that less than 50 miles away from me this poor little server faithfully chugged along until with a wimper and a sigh it gave up.
*points to his own server*
Hear that, MIKE? If you don't keep on the straight and narrow, you could be next...
Take the example of two people:
The first person sticks his hand in boiling water, gets burned, and from there on out avoids sticking his hand in boiling water.
The second person sticks his hand in boiling water, gets burned, waits a while, then sticks his hand right back in the boiling water just to see if its still hot.
History generally considers the first person to be the wiser. No pun intended, but you can only get burned so many times before it just isn't worth it any more.
When Mal kicks one of Niska's minions into one of Serenity's engines?
God bless that man...
First off, I can't control what our customers do with the machines after they leave the shop. What we can and do do is to make sure that automatic updates are turned on (sketchy on a server, but better than not on a desktop), make sure there's a software firewall enabled, and make sure there's antivirus software installed. Despite all of this, a frightening number of machines still get gunked up with malware.
I'm going to dispute your statement that a computer running ANY operating system will get sick if left online for 6 months with nothing more than the initial patch load. The classic trend is that MacOS and Linux have a statistically significant higher survivability after initially being connected to the internet. Anecdotally, I've had Linux servers that went years with no major software updates, and worked just fine.
In my book, there's a problem when even a cluefull user like myself needs to lock my computer down like a fortress just to survive day to day operation. And keep in mind, this isn't a third party piece of software taking down the system due to a vulnerability - this is the operating system itself.
Maybe I'm jaded from spending most of the last year or so forever cleaning crap off of Windows machines. Maybe I'm letting my contrasting experiences with my Windows machines and my Linux servers get in the way. Whatever. I still think it's a bleeding crime that Microsoft designed Windows the way they did in the first place, and that after all these years they haven't fixed the damned thing.
I'm the senior tech for a small OEM. Unlike Dell et al, we custom build our computers. There is no production line, there is no "master model image", none of that. Each computer is tailored to each customer's requirements, and as such, we can take the time to make sure the machine is fully patched before it leaves.
I can set a brand new computer on our network behind our firewall, download every single patch, make sure a software firewall is on, make sure an antivirus product is installed and updated, and make sure the main user for the machine is a standard user (not power user or admin).
Despite having done all that, a non-trivial number of our new machines will be infected with some virus or some spyware within 6 months of delivery. Whether this is because the user elivated themselves to power user or administrator in order to use some piece of software that doesn't play nice with the Windows "security" model, or whether they've been infected with something that made use of a vulnerability in a LOCAL_SYSTEM process, they still get it.
No matter what happened, I have, do, and will for the forseeable future blame Microsoft. Apple had (and still has) the right idea. If Apple had ruled the roost, chances are we would by now see computers as household appliances, instead of some freakish pile of hardware that requires the trained likes of me to keep in an operable condition. Microsoft set the computing idustry back a decade with its shenanahgens, and the article author was spot on with his observations as such.
Sure, to most people, amateur radio is more of a hobby than anything else. But every hour I work other stations, every hour I speak on the radio, every hour I spend operating my equipment, makes me a better operator as a whole, and more importantly makes me a more effective operator in an emergency.
Conversely, If I have to constantly look up a certian function, or if I'm so nervous I can't compose a coherent message, then in an emergency I will probably not be an effective operator.
So, you see, as with any other skill, the more you practive, the better you'll be. It's unlikely, but I'd much rather be prepared to use it.