I'm having trouble grasping the elephant unit (get your mind out of the gutter, that's not what I mean). Does someone know the conversion from elephants to VW Bugs? Or are elephants units of mass and VW Bugs units of volume? I always get those mixed up.
Exactly. There probably are admins who "coulda dunnit" but didn't, but I think there are a lot of us folks out there who can't install the latest patches because of corporate policy (sometimes it's even a good reason). Likewise, I'm not sure I know many (or even any) "IT guy" paid $74k/year to clean up this mess. I know I sure get paid a lot less than that.
This could be wrong, but I would guess (I haven't tried it) that a Windows program couldn't bind itself to port 135 to listen since it's the RPC port and the system is already listening there!
We too use nearly the same list. I've had numerous users complain that they can't mail shorcuts or other small not-yet-exploited files. I do think we allow Excel, PPT, and Word files, but not Access databases. Another strike against Microsoft in my book. We're supposed to use their products, but we end up removing functionality that could be useful (and for which is a reason for using Microsoft in the first place) for the sake of security. I know, I'm griping, but it really is annoying.
Just curious, where did two come from? June had two--or three, depending how you count. Microsoft Security Bulletin Archive shows five "Windows" vulnerabilities for July, all of which are root exploits (well, "attacker may take control of your computer" exploits). Six if you include the DirectX one from July 23rd. There's an addition DOS vulnerability for only NT 4 as well.
You certainly make a good point about vulnerability frequency on the both of the platforms, but it's good to keep in mind that Windows vulnerabilities are disclosed if and when a fix is available, as well as the fact that most everyone that finds a Windows vulnerability coordinates with Microsoft and doesn't disclose it until they release a fix. I don't believe that's always the case with Linux vulnerabilities.
I know you're trying to be cute, but you seem to totally misunderstand the point of doing this. Users have private folders on network drives to keep their files. The network drives are backed up, which local drives are not. Their profiles are stored on these network drives, so they don't have to lose anything when we reimage.
Basically, if the computer exhibits those wierd problems that are difficult or take a long time to fix, we save everybody's time by reimaging. The user loses only the things which they kept on the local HD (which is what the network drives are for) and that's it.
A lot of people here are bashing this guy, some even with some good reasons. However, it really comes down to company policy. At my workplace, and probably his, there is little room for interpretation or bending of the rules. My company is Fortune 200, so standardization is a very big thing. We use Windows, which wouldn't be my choice of an OS, but it's not my choice!
The company makes volume licensing agreements which means we HAVE to use certain software. Since software licensing can be a liability, ALL machines are required to have audit software, including *nix boxes! In fact, Linux is explicitly prohibited except where VP approval is obtained, so as SA for my site, I definitely would show extreme prejudice if I found a Linux installation. Moreover, we even tell users that we reserve the right to reimage their PCs at any time. They keep things on their local drives at their own risk. Again, it's not about the way *I* think things should be (because I definitely hate administering Windows boxes), it's about what I'm paid to do (and when I'm ready to find another job because I don't like these software policies, I'll do that).
The point is, if it's against the rules, prepare to face the consequences, whatever they may be (be happy if your workplace doesn't care). If you get approval to run a box, good for you, but your local IT damn well should know about.
Why can't this be settled peaceably by having one side agree to change their name? I mean, look at these great alternative names from the trusty thesaurus that give the same impression as "Max Payne." Check out these gems:
Extreme Payne
Supreme Payne
Paramount Payne
Ultimate Payne
Superlative Payne
Mostest Payne
Mmm, on second thought, my buddy Mostest might have a problem with that last one.
Re:on second thought, pass the lead gloves please.
on
United Nuclear
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Are these the same experts that say that Depleted Uranium weapons do no leave any harmfull after effects after they are used
Uh, I thought that was the point? I know what you mean, though, it just seems kind of funny:
Scientist 1: Today we're testing to see if there are harmful effects from depleted uranium weapons Scientist 2: Righto. Commence with experiment. (Scientist 2 activates 30mm chaingun with depleted uranium shells to deliver DU to test subject) Scientist 2: Uh...harmful effects? (Scientist 1 inspects test subject) Scientist 1: Hmm, hard to say. Maybe on that bit over there?
Others have made good points, so I'll just throw this out there: People typically use words or names as passwords rather than random characters, so just compare the space that would have to be searched:
Number of English words: 616,500 (from OED2, and this should be pretty generous) Number of random 8 char-length passwords: 208,827,064,576 (letters only, 26^8)
This is just speculation, but maybe because it's easier for humans to identify things with symmetry? It occurs a lot in nature. And it guarantees there is at least some kind of pattern in the image instead of: big Amorphous blob 1, green amorphous blob 2, etc.
What an odd title for a movie review...Equating OSS and Pirates doesn't help the cause ya know. The weirdest thing is that the review doesn't even mention Johnny Depp. What's up with that?!?
If it's anything like my work, it probably started out as an Access (etc) database created by someone with limited knowledge of database design to try to make their job easier. It worked well enough and someone decided to get a contractor to flesh it out (perhaps explaining why the contractor referred questions back to the govnt: they are limited by using existing database or something). I don't think the contractor is necessarily ripping off the taxpayers, but who knows. Still, you'd think they'd do a better job of it. I think it's something started small, but got too big too fast. Happens all the time in companies, but has bigger impact when it happens in the government.
Ah, I know the rest of this story. Indiana Jones' discovery of the "Spear of Destiny," (aka Lance of Longinus) starts research into human origins and the discovery of the being which all humans come from. This, in turn, starts the human instrumentality project to take humans to the next step of evolution. It's neat how these stories connect...wait...maybe I'm thinking of Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny first person shooter? Oh. Hmm.
This is a bit late, but Eaton Corporation has a collision warning system called VORAD made for semi-trucks. There's a short little video here that gives a little demonstration. I'd bet Honda's is somewhat similar.
I forgot to mention one thing I really like about Mozilla (and open source). I can see the progress for this bug at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200347 where I also see there is a three week old patch which fixes the problem, although it looks like it still needs review. Is there a patch for the IE bug that was mentioned? I looked briefly but didn't find any. Perhaps there is. At least I know where this one stands in Mozilla.
I remember a time when Mozilla got little mercy. Over the five long years of its development there have been thousands of posts talking about how much it sucks, how buggy, how slow, how bloated, how long it took. I remember the general attitude of comments in stories of the early Mozilla releases being very negative. Not very nice for an "open source" project. Do you remember jwz's resignation and his disappointment with mozilla.org and the reaction that producted? "Slashdot" was brutal enough (and even pro-microsoft!). Here's a small list of some postively moderated comments to jog your memory:
So what does it mean? The perception of mozilla among a good number of users on/. has swung in the other direction. Who cares if there are a bunch of 'M$ is teh sux' posts. Does it mean something different from all the 'Mozilla is teh sux' posts from four years ago?
In my opinion, I think Mozilla IS better than IE. Yes, I snicker when I see silly little exploits or bugs in Microsoft products. I work with this stuff all day. I know how many millions of dollars my company spends on Microsoft, and I know that in many cases I can get an open source product that does the job well enough, or sometimes better than the equivalent Microsoft product. I subscribe to ntbugtraq and I see 2-3 vulnerabilities a week for Microsoft products. It makes me wonder why this expensive software has so many problems, and makes me appreciate the effort that goes into free software, even when they get the same kinds of bugs. Mozilla has come a long way, and, I think, surpassed IE. I hope jwz is proud of what Mozilla has become, even with its problems.
Never saw Supernova, but hated Event Horizon. I guess I thought it was gonna be sci-fi, but it's really just horror. Plus I have a thing about eyes being poked out. *shudder*
On a side note, I actually enjoyed Pitch Black. I know most people hated it, but I thought it was kind of fun.
The bulbs we use at work have a life of 2000 hrs. We've had the original projector bulb last for two years with pretty heavy usage (a couple hours a day), as well as moving the projector around a lot. They are expensive though, that's for sure. Still, the way I watch stuff (not much) it'd last me a couple years, and I'd love to have HDTV thru a projector.
Dude, I own an Audigy 2, and I got sound working on both Mandrake 8.0 and 9.0. You need the latest version of the emu10k1 driver (like cvs latest) and you're set. It wasn't that hard to get working. Also, there's a lot of people complaining about this card, but I'll tell you it's pretty nice. It had some performance problems in games initially, but the latest drivers help that tremendously. It's a consumer audio card that approaches commercial quality, and does a damn fine job, IMHO. It's not perfect, but it's the best offering from Creative I've seen.
The Happy Birthday song is copyrighted and, if laws stay the way they are, won't expire till 2030 even though it was originally copyrighted in 1935. What if groups of people all over the US started singing the HB song in restaurants--an illegal public performance unless that restaurant has paid their ASCAP rent. Announce to the crowd that you have just committed a crime because of the Sonny Bono CTEA. That will piss people off. If enough people did this across the US, it wouldn't be long before it got national press. I think it'd be a great way to make something happen!
If MS really had a monopoly, why aren't they charging $1000 a copy then?
Microsoft charges a price they believe the market will bear. They don't charge $1000 a copy because people wouldn't stand for that. That isn't to say the price could creep up to close $1000 in a few years (provided they will still be in the OS business). Actually, this issue is already covered in Judge Jackson's finding of fact in 1999. See this.
Notice in particular the first sentence (emphasis mine):
Microsoft's actual pricing behavior is consistent with the proposition that the firm enjoys monopoly power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems...Another indication of monopoly power is the fact that Microsoft raised the price that it charged OEMs for Windows 95, with trivial exceptions, to the same level as the price it charged for Windows 98 just prior to releasing the newer product. In a competitive market, one would expect the price of an older operating system to stay the same or decrease upon the release of a newer, more attractive version.
And this is all from 1999! How much have they (not) changed in three years?
I don't know if this was true or not, but my high school biology teacher used to claim that when he was in college, he (or someone else) froze a dead cat in liquid nitrogen, and then broke it in the lab (or a professor's office?). I believe when it made a bit of a mess when the cat bits returned to normal temperature.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm having trouble grasping the elephant unit (get your mind out of the gutter, that's not what I mean). Does someone know the conversion from elephants to VW Bugs? Or are elephants units of mass and VW Bugs units of volume? I always get those mixed up.
Exactly. There probably are admins who "coulda dunnit" but didn't, but I think there are a lot of us folks out there who can't install the latest patches because of corporate policy (sometimes it's even a good reason). Likewise, I'm not sure I know many (or even any) "IT guy" paid $74k/year to clean up this mess. I know I sure get paid a lot less than that.
This could be wrong, but I would guess (I haven't tried it) that a Windows program couldn't bind itself to port 135 to listen since it's the RPC port and the system is already listening there!
We too use nearly the same list. I've had numerous users complain that they can't mail shorcuts or other small not-yet-exploited files. I do think we allow Excel, PPT, and Word files, but not Access databases. Another strike against Microsoft in my book. We're supposed to use their products, but we end up removing functionality that could be useful (and for which is a reason for using Microsoft in the first place) for the sake of security. I know, I'm griping, but it really is annoying.
Microsoft Security Bulletin Archive shows five "Windows" vulnerabilities for July, all of which are root exploits (well, "attacker may take control of your computer" exploits). Six if you include the DirectX one from July 23rd. There's an addition DOS vulnerability for only NT 4 as well.
You certainly make a good point about vulnerability frequency on the both of the platforms, but it's good to keep in mind that Windows vulnerabilities are disclosed if and when a fix is available, as well as the fact that most everyone that finds a Windows vulnerability coordinates with Microsoft and doesn't disclose it until they release a fix. I don't believe that's always the case with Linux vulnerabilities.
Basically, if the computer exhibits those wierd problems that are difficult or take a long time to fix, we save everybody's time by reimaging. The user loses only the things which they kept on the local HD (which is what the network drives are for) and that's it.
The company makes volume licensing agreements which means we HAVE to use certain software. Since software licensing can be a liability, ALL machines are required to have audit software, including *nix boxes! In fact, Linux is explicitly prohibited except where VP approval is obtained, so as SA for my site, I definitely would show extreme prejudice if I found a Linux installation. Moreover, we even tell users that we reserve the right to reimage their PCs at any time. They keep things on their local drives at their own risk. Again, it's not about the way *I* think things should be (because I definitely hate administering Windows boxes), it's about what I'm paid to do (and when I'm ready to find another job because I don't like these software policies, I'll do that).
The point is, if it's against the rules, prepare to face the consequences, whatever they may be (be happy if your workplace doesn't care). If you get approval to run a box, good for you, but your local IT damn well should know about.
Extreme Payne
Supreme Payne
Paramount Payne
Ultimate Payne
Superlative Payne
Mostest Payne
Mmm, on second thought, my buddy Mostest might have a problem with that last one.
Are these the same experts that say that Depleted Uranium weapons do no leave any harmfull after effects after they are used
Uh, I thought that was the point? I know what you mean, though, it just seems kind of funny:
Scientist 1: Today we're testing to see if there are harmful effects from depleted uranium weapons
Scientist 2: Righto. Commence with experiment.
(Scientist 2 activates 30mm chaingun with depleted uranium shells to deliver DU to test subject)
Scientist 2: Uh...harmful effects?
(Scientist 1 inspects test subject)
Scientist 1: Hmm, hard to say. Maybe on that bit over there?
Others have made good points, so I'll just throw this out there: People typically use words or names as passwords rather than random characters, so just compare the space that would have to be searched:
Number of English words: 616,500 (from OED2, and this should be pretty generous)
Number of random 8 char-length passwords: 208,827,064,576 (letters only, 26^8)
Which would you rather search?
This is just speculation, but maybe because it's easier for humans to identify things with symmetry? It occurs a lot in nature. And it guarantees there is at least some kind of pattern in the image instead of: big Amorphous blob 1, green amorphous blob 2, etc.
Just a thought.
12-meter mass of flesh...obscure 'giant octopus'
Are we sure they didn't mean 'whale sperm'?
Okay, yeah, yeah, that's disgusting. Sorry.
What an odd title for a movie review...Equating OSS and Pirates doesn't help the cause ya know. The weirdest thing is that the review doesn't even mention Johnny Depp. What's up with that?!?
If it's anything like my work, it probably started out as an Access (etc) database created by someone with limited knowledge of database design to try to make their job easier. It worked well enough and someone decided to get a contractor to flesh it out (perhaps explaining why the contractor referred questions back to the govnt: they are limited by using existing database or something). I don't think the contractor is necessarily ripping off the taxpayers, but who knows. Still, you'd think they'd do a better job of it. I think it's something started small, but got too big too fast. Happens all the time in companies, but has bigger impact when it happens in the government.
Ah, I know the rest of this story. Indiana Jones' discovery of the "Spear of Destiny," (aka Lance of Longinus) starts research into human origins and the discovery of the being which all humans come from. This, in turn, starts the human instrumentality project to take humans to the next step of evolution. It's neat how these stories connect...wait...maybe I'm thinking of Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny first person shooter? Oh. Hmm.
This is a bit late, but Eaton Corporation has a collision warning system called VORAD made for semi-trucks. There's a short little video here that gives a little demonstration. I'd bet Honda's is somewhat similar.
I forgot to mention one thing I really like about Mozilla (and open source). I can see the progress for this bug at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200347 where I also see there is a three week old patch which fixes the problem, although it looks like it still needs review. Is there a patch for the IE bug that was mentioned? I looked briefly but didn't find any. Perhaps there is. At least I know where this one stands in Mozilla.
"Slashdot" was brutal enough (and even pro-microsoft!). Here's a small list of some postively moderated comments to jog your memory:
An Overview Of PNG; Mozilla M17: M25
Mozilla Milestone 14 Awaits: This better not be M14
Mozilla To Be Dual Licensed - MPL/GPL: IE?
Mozilla M8 Released: Improvement over Netscape, but barely
Mozilla M8 Released: Top 10 things I love about Mozilla.
21 Linux Web Browsers? MS IE for Linux - I'd use it, wouldn't you?
/. has swung in the other direction. Who cares if there are a bunch of 'M$ is teh sux' posts. Does it mean something different from all the 'Mozilla is teh sux' posts from four years ago?
The editors of slashdot were hardly generous in their criticism either:Netscape 6 Fails To Support Web Standards
So what does it mean? The perception of mozilla among a good number of users on
In my opinion, I think Mozilla IS better than IE. Yes, I snicker when I see silly little exploits or bugs in Microsoft products. I work with this stuff all day. I know how many millions of dollars my company spends on Microsoft, and I know that in many cases I can get an open source product that does the job well enough, or sometimes better than the equivalent Microsoft product. I subscribe to ntbugtraq and I see 2-3 vulnerabilities a week for Microsoft products. It makes me wonder why this expensive software has so many problems, and makes me appreciate the effort that goes into free software, even when they get the same kinds of bugs.
Mozilla has come a long way, and, I think, surpassed IE. I hope jwz is proud of what Mozilla has become, even with its problems.
I know I am.
Never saw Supernova, but hated Event Horizon. I guess I thought it was gonna be sci-fi, but it's really just horror. Plus I have a thing about eyes being poked out. *shudder*
On a side note, I actually enjoyed Pitch Black. I know most people hated it, but I thought it was kind of fun.
The bulbs we use at work have a life of 2000 hrs. We've had the original projector bulb last for two years with pretty heavy usage (a couple hours a day), as well as moving the projector around a lot. They are expensive though, that's for sure. Still, the way I watch stuff (not much) it'd last me a couple years, and I'd love to have HDTV thru a projector.
Dude, I own an Audigy 2, and I got sound working on both Mandrake 8.0 and 9.0. You need the latest version of the emu10k1 driver (like cvs latest) and you're set. It wasn't that hard to get working. Also, there's a lot of people complaining about this card, but I'll tell you it's pretty nice. It had some performance problems in games initially, but the latest drivers help that tremendously. It's a consumer audio card that approaches commercial quality, and does a damn fine job, IMHO. It's not perfect, but it's the best offering from Creative I've seen.
The Mother of all Batteries?
Huk huk huk.
The Happy Birthday song is copyrighted and, if laws stay the way they are, won't expire till 2030 even though it was originally copyrighted in 1935. What if groups of people all over the US started singing the HB song in restaurants--an illegal public performance unless that restaurant has paid their ASCAP rent. Announce to the crowd that you have just committed a crime because of the Sonny Bono CTEA. That will piss people off. If enough people did this across the US, it wouldn't be long before it got national press. I think it'd be a great way to make something happen!
Microsoft charges a price they believe the market will bear. They don't charge $1000 a copy because people wouldn't stand for that. That isn't to say the price could creep up to close $1000 in a few years (provided they will still be in the OS business). Actually, this issue is already covered in Judge Jackson's finding of fact in 1999. See this.
Notice in particular the first sentence (emphasis mine):
And this is all from 1999! How much have they (not) changed in three years?
Shattering things with liquid nitrogen.
:-)
I don't know if this was true or not, but my high school biology teacher used to claim that when he was in college, he (or someone else) froze a dead cat in liquid nitrogen, and then broke it in the lab (or a professor's office?). I believe when it made a bit of a mess when the cat bits returned to normal temperature.