I've never had problems keeping a Windows install relatively clean. And I've never "migrated" to Linux. I've used both Linux (since around '98/'99) and Windows (since 3.1). I've never been compelled to use one exclusively over the other. Linux provides me with an excellent development platform and Windows provides me with games and "professional" audio recording tools.
The parent does have a valid point. I don't know for certain that I've never been infected, but I've never had problems. There has been the odd occasion where I've run a virus scanner because I'd been experienced odd behaviour and suspected that Windows may be infected with something. They've never turned up anything. And occasions where I've had such problems are rare and usually end up turning out to be hardware issues.
My point was that, in my experience, nothing beats common sense. Obviously I have experience using anti virus products, otherwise I wouldn't know that I don't like them. I've just always found that, for me, they've created more hassle than anything else. I chose to do without them. That doesn't mean that I don't recommend them to other users. People never cease to amaze me by how messed up they can let their systems get. I was hoping that my wife could do without one. I guess my expectations where just a little too high. Though she hasn't had any issues (or viruses detected) since I installed AVG Free.
I despise AV products as well, and have never used one on my own PC. I've also never, in my entire 15+ years online, had a virus infect a Windows PC that belonged to me. Not once.
However, despite all of the preaching and common sense talk I've given to my wife she still somehow managed to get her PC infected not too long ago. I installed AVG free and am trying to convince her to switch to Linux. The problem is all of the windows games that won't work in wine or vmware (the sims2 for example - I did try on my ubuntu feisty box). Other than that she'd be happy to run ubuntu. So I'm considering doing a dual-boot on her box and disabling all networking on windows.
The key point they're missing is that it works under the assumption that a very small part of the populace doesn't recognize this as spam. These people then think that an investment firm decided to tip everyone off and they mistakenly buy the stock so that it goes up a nickel only to watch it drop shortly after the spammer drops the stock.
Yeah, which is why a good rule of thumb is NEVER buy anything that was advertised to you via e-mail.
I wasn't defending them. Just trying to explain that chances are it wasn't actually a 'business' (in the sense of an office with employees etc.) and more likely just one or two guys running things from his PC at home renting dedicated servers for $100 / month and reselling space on them. That's what many of those $5 - $10 / month hosting "companies" actually are.
For $80 USD you can rent a server and then hire a web design student at the local community college to make you a "corprote" web site. Do a bit of online promoting and use open source cpanel software on your server and you've got a "hosting business".
They were most likely a reseller and didn't actually have physical access to the machine.
This is actually quite common. Many companies rent cheap dedicated servers from large providers like theplanet.com and then resell shared hosting on them. It's a good way to make money and offer really cheap hosting to a lot of customers. The downside is that if an incident occurs then the reseller has to go through the support channels of their own hosting provider to get the matter resolved.
It's not like they can just drive to the data center with a fresh new server with the most recent non-compromised backups imported and plug in the new system with no downtime. They need to rely on their own hosting company to do whatever procedures they have in place. This usually involves filling out a support ticket and waiting 24 hours for them to give you a new box. Then you've gotta import whatever backups yourself over the network from the backup server you've rented, provided you bothered to rent one. Which, if you're a reseller, you'd better hope for your customers' sake you did. Problem is most of these 'companies' are looking for the cheapest way to make money and so it's tempting to pay $80 / month for a dedicated box with 1200 GB transfer. A backup solution could end up doubling that fee. Not to mention the reseller is responsible to implement the backup procedures. The hosting provider only provides the boxes, they don't care how you manage your data.
All of this slows down the process. So the moral is... beware of resellers. Make sure your hosting company has their own data center, or at the very least uses co-location instead of reselling rented dedicated boxes that are not physically accessible to them.
Then again, like others have said, you get what you pay for.
Well, even if they reset it and e-mailed you the new password it wouldn't help any in this case.
Of course, if they don't bother to hash it then that's probably another symptom of complacent or non-existent security policies and could be a red flag that kind of problem is a possibility. And to the converse, if they bother to hash the password they're probably smart enough to have stricter policies in place.
Yeah I realize that my assumption about her not paying Flickr was pretty ignorant. I honestly thought that Flickr was entirely a free service. I'm not a photographer, I never use the site. I only know a bunch of amateur photographers who use it for free to share their photos. I had no idea that Flickr offered any kind of paid service of any kind. My bad for posting before reading.
While I certainly sympathize with the photographer I don't think Flickr has any obligation in the matter what-so-ever. She took advantage of a free service that they offer in order to gather support for her cause. If anything, she was the one who overstepped her bounds. Of course I think her motivation may have been to warn other Flickr users. In that case it's more of a grey area. She could have gone through Flickr admin/mod/whatever channels first.
Either way I don't see this as being an issue of "right vs. wrong". She doesn't pay Flickr anything so far as I can assume. She can't expect anything from them. They have the right to do whatever they want. And yeah if they piss off the market the market may decide to find an alternative, but that's their problem and has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they "overstepped their bounds". Their bounds are basically they can do whatever they want with their property. They can't resell or claim ownership of your work (as that is not their property), but they can sure as hell refuse to host it on their servers. If you've got a problem with that go pay $5 / month for some cheap web hosting or sign up for a free blogger account, post your story there and submit it to/. where you're sure to get a massive amount of support (;p)
I accidentally dialed 911 once while trying to order a pizza (the number started with 977 and I dialed 911 by mistake). I quickly realized what I did and hung up. I then spent the next minute or two trying to get a dial tone before I accepted the fact that the call actually went through and just hung up and waited for them to call back. The dispatcher asked me why I kept hanging up and I explained what had happened. She said "ok next time just wait on the line and tell us it was a wrong number".
I spent the entire rest of the day being paranoid expecting police, fire and ambulance to show up. They never did.
I realize my experience is different than a 'hang up' where the dispatcher doesn't end up talking to anyone. But it's still not hard to imagine a few hypothetical situations where someone really could have been in danger.
and I still cling to my landline and do not own a cellphone.
However, I really hate the telephone in general. It's intrusive. When someone calls I have to drop what I'm doing to screen the call and then more often than not it's someone that I don't want to talk to. I much prefer e-mail where I can read it at my leisure and get back when and if I have feel like it / have a chance.
I have had a cellphone in the past for work and I admit there are times when it's convenient but I try to minimize those occasions because I can't be a hypocrite. If I reach into my pocket to phone someone while I'm in a grocery store (for example) I have to justify that with the only reason I'm doing it is because IT CAN'T WAIT. I find those situations to be extremely rare, and do everything that I can to keep them so. Because if I were on the recipient of such a call (which I often am) I would be annoyed.
I'm all for instant communication. If it weren't for the Internet I wouldn't have a job. But the nice thing about other forms of instant communication is that you can tend to them at your convenience, block the overly annoying and intrusive ones etc. I know someone will respond with "well you can turn a cellphone off". Yup, you can. Point is mine would always be turned off.
On Windows I can't play games from a few years ago, let alone the classic PC games I have. On Linux, I can still play all the old games, and OSS emulators provide methods to play old games from other systems (dosbox, scummvm, agi, qemu). Games that require 3D acceleration just work, and don't require fiddling around and tons of patches. Linux may not have all games running native, but it's clear that when a game is made for Linux, it works superior compared to when a game is made for any other OS.
I ran Linux exclusively from about 1998 to 2003. I eventually switched back to Windows because I was out of a job and needed MS Word for resume stuff. Later on I bought a bunch of audio hardware and applications like Cubase etc. and set up a little studio.
2 weeks ago I put together a new computer for my cousin and as payment he gave me his old 120GB IDE drive (he went SATA so didn't need it / want it anymore) and I stuck Ubuntu on it. I certainly didn't need the user friendliness but I wanted to see what the hype was all about.
I haven't booted back into Windows since. I left my other two drives un-touched so I'd be able to but I just haven't had a need to.
However, I will continue to keep Windows around for the games and the audio/studio stuff. The biggest issue with teh audio/studio stuff is that the hardware isn't supported and while there are some cool audio apps I've been checking out, they just don't even start to compete with Cubase and FruityLoops etc. yet.
Anyway, I agree that Linux is an excellent platform for games when they're written for it. When Loki first hit the scene I went to Electronics Boutique and I bought up all their titles. I spent like $250 CAD that day on Linux games. The problem is there's just too many specific titles out there that won't work on Linux (at the moment).
I installed GTA Vice City the other day just for fun, to see if wine would get it up and running with absolutely no expectations. I was downright shocked that it actually installed and ran. That's a clear sign that things are finally starting to "get there". However, it's still not playable. I can only run it at 640x480 and the audio stutters.
My wife used to use Linux too since we used to share a computer. After I showed her Ubuntu she got Linux-envy but she wanted to make sure all of the kids' games would run first. So I installed The Sims 2. No luck. It won't even install with wine. I tried in VMWare too and it installed but it won't play. Says the wrong disc is inserted even though that's false.
The real point here is that if there are any specific applications that someone is attached to, games or other-wise, and there are no suitable replacements then people will feel like they are losing something if they have to give them up.
Linux is an excellent platform for games and it has a lot of cool OSS games for it and a lot of win32 games will run with wine. My kids are loving the children's games that I installed in Ubuntu. But if they can't play the Sims 2 then Linux is not touching my wife's computer. And if I can't play Vice City at 1280x1024 with no audio problems and use Cubase and FruityLoops (or suitable replacements) with my E-mu 1820m then a dual-boot will continue to exist on my PC.
I think most stores are probably scared that if they used the glass approach for all of their products then consumers will go somewhere else.
Particularly with DVDs, Audio CDs, Books and so on. People like to read the backs of them. Get the selling pitch. Flip through the pages etc. The glass seriously degrades the shopping experience. I think most people put up with the glass system for games because they realize that those games are targeted (largely) at teenagers who can't afford them and who's parents won't always pay for them.
I recently put together a new computer for my cousin and as payment he gave me his old 120GB IDE drive (he went SATA and upgraded to 320GB so didn't need it / want it anymore) and I threw Ubuntu on it. I've wanted to go back to Linux for a while now but wasn't planning to in the immediate since my hard drives were pretty full and I have a few bills to pay before I can justify buying new hardware.
Anyway I'm a web developer so I need to test sites in IE, plus there's a few apps that don't feel like running with wine so I set up VMWare and installed XP. Unfortunately I made the mistake of using a slipstreamed cd that I made from my cousin's retail copy of XP home instead of my OEM Pro cd and so it keeps asking me to activate it.
The problem is, even if I start up with a clean image every time it still reads the current time/date and substracts the time/date that it was installed. So yes, you still need to activate it. I'm going to have to wipe it and install from my OEM cd.
The entire session should be secured. Bank account numbers, credit card numbers, transaction histories, information about billers and automatic withdraw dates etc. are easily sniffed.
Just because they can't get your password doesn't mean they can't get useful information about you. Sniffing out an online banking session could be a big jackpot for an identity thief.
I don't think I've ever seen so many separate comments each with their own analogies before.
One thing that hasn't been brought up (that I saw anyway), is that even if software security issues were mostly eliminated and the industry found itself without a consumer market for anti-virus products and firewalls etc. there will always be a niche market for specific applications where that little bit of extra security is needed. Intrusion detection systems, forensics software etc. will always have a market. And particularly any product that caters to securing users. Other people have already said it. Statistically most compromises are accomplished by people who had access to the compromised data without having to exploit a software bug (disgruntled employees, people betraying their employers for profit etc.)
I guess what I'm saying is that as long as there's reason to be paranoid there will be a market for products that ease that paranoia. Even if all software were somehow made to be inherently "secure".
One other thing, even software that is inherently "secure" can still be configured to be "not secure". Configuration errors can cause just as many problems.
There's nothing wrong with trying to get top rankings in the search engines. Your business will definitely go up tremendously if you succeed. That still doesn't make it smart to put your business entirely in the hands of a company with it's own interests.
Offline we use paid advertising to drive traffic to our businesses. Paid advertising exists online as well. That is one obvious place to start when coming up with an online business plan. Many people are drawn in by the free ride that free search engine listings give them but then they get burned.
You might not be wrong about customer perception, and I'm not saying that search engine traffic should be ignored entirely. Just that putting your business entirely in someone else's hands when your business simply doesn't matter to them is ridiculously stupid. If you NEED search engine traffic then buy with paid listings. Then it's guaranteed and you end up with a shared business interest that affects both parties. With free listings the search engine companies don't give the slightest care in the world if you go out of business.
I don't claim to be a google or SEO expert... but from my limited understanding, inbound links do not hurt no matter what. I know that google claims that hiring people to get you involved in shady link farming can be harmful. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but the simple fact is that you can not control who links to you.
A lot of people have theorized that what might be harmful is many unrelated links of very low quality in a very short period of time, however as you just pointed out, that opens completely innocent people to attacks of this kind. I could have a network of 5,000 sites with a PR of 0 and add a link to slashdot on every single one of them. Will slashdot all of a sudden find itself in the supplemental index ? I HIGHLY doubt it.
Of course, slashdot has thousands of high quality links from all over the internet. So those might kick the "attack" in the butt.
So perhaps new domains with a PR of 0 and a ton of inbound links from other UNRELATED PR 0 pages in a very short period of time is what hurts. In that case such an attack would not be successful against any well established site with high quality inbound links.
This kind of thing has always baffled me. It is quite possible to conduct business online without relying solely on search engine traffic. While search engine traffic is valuable, if your business strategy is relying on that then you're placing your entire business in the hands of an independent party with it's own interests.
Google can do whatever the hell they want with their search index. Why on earth any company would place themselves entirely in someone else's hands, particularly someone else who doesn't have the slightest care in the world what happens to your business is really beyond me.
Any sane business person should enjoy search engine traffic when they have it, but place themselves primarily in the position where they don't need it. Relying entirely on an independent company with it's own interests for your business survival is beyond stupid.
I agree as well. The last time I did any "real" OSS development was when I was a teenager. I wrote really crummy code back then and didn't make very many useful contributions. But I had a ton of ambition and a "do-good" attitude.
Now that I'm an adult and have a family to support I really wish I could get back into the game. I know I could really make a useful contribution. I'm am much more experienced, have vastly more knowledge and am thus in a much better position to contribute.
I just don't have the time anymore. Now I'm profit driven. My kids need to eat. The only way I see myself doing open source work is if I get paid for it. I wish I had more time to devote to hobbies but I spend 100% of my professional life sitting at a computer and so my hobby time is reserved for non-computer tasks.
So if companies can take people that are in my position and enable them to contribute to the community then that can only be a good thing.
Maybe it's just because I have no personal reasons/need for using a calendar program, but what does a calendar have to do with e-mail ?
I understand that Outlook merged the two and a lot of people who used to use (or currently use) Outlook got used to it. But I really don't see how calendar / scheduling and e-mail is related and why Thunderbird (or any e-mail client) should feel pressed to integrate a calendar application.
Wouldn't you be better served using a stand-alone calendar / scheduler and stand-alone e-mail application that each does it's job extremely well and has all the features you need then a mashed together combination of the two that's bloated and sacrifices features because they're focusing on doing too many unrelated tasks ?
Please enlighten me as to how calendar / scheduling is related to e-mail and what functionality is gained by merging the two that wouldn't otherwise be present using standalone applications.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite.
I've never had problems keeping a Windows install relatively clean. And I've never "migrated" to Linux. I've used both Linux (since around '98/'99) and Windows (since 3.1). I've never been compelled to use one exclusively over the other. Linux provides me with an excellent development platform and Windows provides me with games and "professional" audio recording tools.
The parent does have a valid point. I don't know for certain that I've never been infected, but I've never had problems. There has been the odd occasion where I've run a virus scanner because I'd been experienced odd behaviour and suspected that Windows may be infected with something. They've never turned up anything. And occasions where I've had such problems are rare and usually end up turning out to be hardware issues.
My point was that, in my experience, nothing beats common sense. Obviously I have experience using anti virus products, otherwise I wouldn't know that I don't like them. I've just always found that, for me, they've created more hassle than anything else. I chose to do without them. That doesn't mean that I don't recommend them to other users. People never cease to amaze me by how messed up they can let their systems get. I was hoping that my wife could do without one. I guess my expectations where just a little too high. Though she hasn't had any issues (or viruses detected) since I installed AVG Free.
I despise AV products as well, and have never used one on my own PC. I've also never, in my entire 15+ years online, had a virus infect a Windows PC that belonged to me. Not once.
However, despite all of the preaching and common sense talk I've given to my wife she still somehow managed to get her PC infected not too long ago. I installed AVG free and am trying to convince her to switch to Linux. The problem is all of the windows games that won't work in wine or vmware (the sims2 for example - I did try on my ubuntu feisty box). Other than that she'd be happy to run ubuntu. So I'm considering doing a dual-boot on her box and disabling all networking on windows.
The key point they're missing is that it works under the assumption that a very small part of the populace doesn't recognize this as spam. These people then think that an investment firm decided to tip everyone off and they mistakenly buy the stock so that it goes up a nickel only to watch it drop shortly after the spammer drops the stock.
Yeah, which is why a good rule of thumb is NEVER buy anything that was advertised to you via e-mail.
I completely agree.
I wasn't defending them. Just trying to explain that chances are it wasn't actually a 'business' (in the sense of an office with employees etc.) and more likely just one or two guys running things from his PC at home renting dedicated servers for $100 / month and reselling space on them. That's what many of those $5 - $10 / month hosting "companies" actually are.
For $80 USD you can rent a server and then hire a web design student at the local community college to make you a "corprote" web site. Do a bit of online promoting and use open source cpanel software on your server and you've got a "hosting business".
Joe Satriani is coming to kill us ?
I always suspected he was a maniacal killer in disguise!
They were most likely a reseller and didn't actually have physical access to the machine.
This is actually quite common. Many companies rent cheap dedicated servers from large providers like theplanet.com and then resell shared hosting on them. It's a good way to make money and offer really cheap hosting to a lot of customers. The downside is that if an incident occurs then the reseller has to go through the support channels of their own hosting provider to get the matter resolved.
It's not like they can just drive to the data center with a fresh new server with the most recent non-compromised backups imported and plug in the new system with no downtime. They need to rely on their own hosting company to do whatever procedures they have in place. This usually involves filling out a support ticket and waiting 24 hours for them to give you a new box. Then you've gotta import whatever backups yourself over the network from the backup server you've rented, provided you bothered to rent one. Which, if you're a reseller, you'd better hope for your customers' sake you did. Problem is most of these 'companies' are looking for the cheapest way to make money and so it's tempting to pay $80 / month for a dedicated box with 1200 GB transfer. A backup solution could end up doubling that fee. Not to mention the reseller is responsible to implement the backup procedures. The hosting provider only provides the boxes, they don't care how you manage your data.
All of this slows down the process. So the moral is... beware of resellers. Make sure your hosting company has their own data center, or at the very least uses co-location instead of reselling rented dedicated boxes that are not physically accessible to them.
Then again, like others have said, you get what you pay for.
Well, even if they reset it and e-mailed you the new password it wouldn't help any in this case.
Of course, if they don't bother to hash it then that's probably another symptom of complacent or non-existent security policies and could be a red flag that kind of problem is a possibility. And to the converse, if they bother to hash the password they're probably smart enough to have stricter policies in place.
Still...
Yeah I realize that my assumption about her not paying Flickr was pretty ignorant. I honestly thought that Flickr was entirely a free service. I'm not a photographer, I never use the site. I only know a bunch of amateur photographers who use it for free to share their photos. I had no idea that Flickr offered any kind of paid service of any kind. My bad for posting before reading.
While I certainly sympathize with the photographer I don't think Flickr has any obligation in the matter what-so-ever. She took advantage of a free service that they offer in order to gather support for her cause. If anything, she was the one who overstepped her bounds. Of course I think her motivation may have been to warn other Flickr users. In that case it's more of a grey area. She could have gone through Flickr admin/mod/whatever channels first.
/. where you're sure to get a massive amount of support (;p)
Either way I don't see this as being an issue of "right vs. wrong". She doesn't pay Flickr anything so far as I can assume. She can't expect anything from them. They have the right to do whatever they want. And yeah if they piss off the market the market may decide to find an alternative, but that's their problem and has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they "overstepped their bounds". Their bounds are basically they can do whatever they want with their property. They can't resell or claim ownership of your work (as that is not their property), but they can sure as hell refuse to host it on their servers. If you've got a problem with that go pay $5 / month for some cheap web hosting or sign up for a free blogger account, post your story there and submit it to
I accidentally dialed 911 once while trying to order a pizza (the number started with 977 and I dialed 911 by mistake). I quickly realized what I did and hung up. I then spent the next minute or two trying to get a dial tone before I accepted the fact that the call actually went through and just hung up and waited for them to call back. The dispatcher asked me why I kept hanging up and I explained what had happened. She said "ok next time just wait on the line and tell us it was a wrong number".
I spent the entire rest of the day being paranoid expecting police, fire and ambulance to show up. They never did.
I realize my experience is different than a 'hang up' where the dispatcher doesn't end up talking to anyone. But it's still not hard to imagine a few hypothetical situations where someone really could have been in danger.
and I still cling to my landline and do not own a cellphone.
However, I really hate the telephone in general. It's intrusive. When someone calls I have to drop what I'm doing to screen the call and then more often than not it's someone that I don't want to talk to. I much prefer e-mail where I can read it at my leisure and get back when and if I have feel like it / have a chance.
I have had a cellphone in the past for work and I admit there are times when it's convenient but I try to minimize those occasions because I can't be a hypocrite. If I reach into my pocket to phone someone while I'm in a grocery store (for example) I have to justify that with the only reason I'm doing it is because IT CAN'T WAIT. I find those situations to be extremely rare, and do everything that I can to keep them so. Because if I were on the recipient of such a call (which I often am) I would be annoyed.
I'm all for instant communication. If it weren't for the Internet I wouldn't have a job. But the nice thing about other forms of instant communication is that you can tend to them at your convenience, block the overly annoying and intrusive ones etc. I know someone will respond with "well you can turn a cellphone off". Yup, you can. Point is mine would always be turned off.
On Windows I can't play games from a few years ago, let alone the classic PC games I have. On Linux, I can still play all the old games, and OSS emulators provide methods to play old games from other systems (dosbox, scummvm, agi, qemu). Games that require 3D acceleration just work, and don't require fiddling around and tons of patches. Linux may not have all games running native, but it's clear that when a game is made for Linux, it works superior compared to when a game is made for any other OS.
I ran Linux exclusively from about 1998 to 2003. I eventually switched back to Windows because I was out of a job and needed MS Word for resume stuff. Later on I bought a bunch of audio hardware and applications like Cubase etc. and set up a little studio.
2 weeks ago I put together a new computer for my cousin and as payment he gave me his old 120GB IDE drive (he went SATA so didn't need it / want it anymore) and I stuck Ubuntu on it. I certainly didn't need the user friendliness but I wanted to see what the hype was all about.
I haven't booted back into Windows since. I left my other two drives un-touched so I'd be able to but I just haven't had a need to.
However, I will continue to keep Windows around for the games and the audio/studio stuff. The biggest issue with teh audio/studio stuff is that the hardware isn't supported and while there are some cool audio apps I've been checking out, they just don't even start to compete with Cubase and FruityLoops etc. yet.
Anyway, I agree that Linux is an excellent platform for games when they're written for it. When Loki first hit the scene I went to Electronics Boutique and I bought up all their titles. I spent like $250 CAD that day on Linux games. The problem is there's just too many specific titles out there that won't work on Linux (at the moment).
I installed GTA Vice City the other day just for fun, to see if wine would get it up and running with absolutely no expectations. I was downright shocked that it actually installed and ran. That's a clear sign that things are finally starting to "get there". However, it's still not playable. I can only run it at 640x480 and the audio stutters.
My wife used to use Linux too since we used to share a computer. After I showed her Ubuntu she got Linux-envy but she wanted to make sure all of the kids' games would run first. So I installed The Sims 2. No luck. It won't even install with wine. I tried in VMWare too and it installed but it won't play. Says the wrong disc is inserted even though that's false.
The real point here is that if there are any specific applications that someone is attached to, games or other-wise, and there are no suitable replacements then people will feel like they are losing something if they have to give them up.
Linux is an excellent platform for games and it has a lot of cool OSS games for it and a lot of win32 games will run with wine. My kids are loving the children's games that I installed in Ubuntu. But if they can't play the Sims 2 then Linux is not touching my wife's computer. And if I can't play Vice City at 1280x1024 with no audio problems and use Cubase and FruityLoops (or suitable replacements) with my E-mu 1820m then a dual-boot will continue to exist on my PC.
I think most stores are probably scared that if they used the glass approach for all of their products then consumers will go somewhere else.
Particularly with DVDs, Audio CDs, Books and so on. People like to read the backs of them. Get the selling pitch. Flip through the pages etc. The glass seriously degrades the shopping experience. I think most people put up with the glass system for games because they realize that those games are targeted (largely) at teenagers who can't afford them and who's parents won't always pay for them.
I didn't imply that I don't own a legit copy.
All I said was that I installed from the wrong cd by mistake.
I recently put together a new computer for my cousin and as payment he gave me his old 120GB IDE drive (he went SATA and upgraded to 320GB so didn't need it / want it anymore) and I threw Ubuntu on it. I've wanted to go back to Linux for a while now but wasn't planning to in the immediate since my hard drives were pretty full and I have a few bills to pay before I can justify buying new hardware.
Anyway I'm a web developer so I need to test sites in IE, plus there's a few apps that don't feel like running with wine so I set up VMWare and installed XP. Unfortunately I made the mistake of using a slipstreamed cd that I made from my cousin's retail copy of XP home instead of my OEM Pro cd and so it keeps asking me to activate it.
The problem is, even if I start up with a clean image every time it still reads the current time/date and substracts the time/date that it was installed. So yes, you still need to activate it. I'm going to have to wipe it and install from my OEM cd.
The entire session should be secured. Bank account numbers, credit card numbers, transaction histories, information about billers and automatic withdraw dates etc. are easily sniffed.
Just because they can't get your password doesn't mean they can't get useful information about you. Sniffing out an online banking session could be a big jackpot for an identity thief.
I don't think I've ever seen so many separate comments each with their own analogies before.
One thing that hasn't been brought up (that I saw anyway), is that even if software security issues were mostly eliminated and the industry found itself without a consumer market for anti-virus products and firewalls etc. there will always be a niche market for specific applications where that little bit of extra security is needed. Intrusion detection systems, forensics software etc. will always have a market. And particularly any product that caters to securing users. Other people have already said it. Statistically most compromises are accomplished by people who had access to the compromised data without having to exploit a software bug (disgruntled employees, people betraying their employers for profit etc.)
I guess what I'm saying is that as long as there's reason to be paranoid there will be a market for products that ease that paranoia. Even if all software were somehow made to be inherently "secure".
One other thing, even software that is inherently "secure" can still be configured to be "not secure". Configuration errors can cause just as many problems.
NOTHING is 512 bytes anymore
Unless you've got a powerful fetish for ASCII pr0n
There's nothing wrong with trying to get top rankings in the search engines. Your business will definitely go up tremendously if you succeed. That still doesn't make it smart to put your business entirely in the hands of a company with it's own interests.
Offline we use paid advertising to drive traffic to our businesses. Paid advertising exists online as well. That is one obvious place to start when coming up with an online business plan. Many people are drawn in by the free ride that free search engine listings give them but then they get burned.
You might not be wrong about customer perception, and I'm not saying that search engine traffic should be ignored entirely. Just that putting your business entirely in someone else's hands when your business simply doesn't matter to them is ridiculously stupid. If you NEED search engine traffic then buy with paid listings. Then it's guaranteed and you end up with a shared business interest that affects both parties. With free listings the search engine companies don't give the slightest care in the world if you go out of business.
I don't claim to be a google or SEO expert ... but from my limited understanding, inbound links do not hurt no matter what. I know that google claims that hiring people to get you involved in shady link farming can be harmful. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but the simple fact is that you can not control who links to you.
A lot of people have theorized that what might be harmful is many unrelated links of very low quality in a very short period of time, however as you just pointed out, that opens completely innocent people to attacks of this kind. I could have a network of 5,000 sites with a PR of 0 and add a link to slashdot on every single one of them. Will slashdot all of a sudden find itself in the supplemental index ? I HIGHLY doubt it.
Of course, slashdot has thousands of high quality links from all over the internet. So those might kick the "attack" in the butt.
So perhaps new domains with a PR of 0 and a ton of inbound links from other UNRELATED PR 0 pages in a very short period of time is what hurts. In that case such an attack would not be successful against any well established site with high quality inbound links.
This kind of thing has always baffled me. It is quite possible to conduct business online without relying solely on search engine traffic. While search engine traffic is valuable, if your business strategy is relying on that then you're placing your entire business in the hands of an independent party with it's own interests.
Google can do whatever the hell they want with their search index. Why on earth any company would place themselves entirely in someone else's hands, particularly someone else who doesn't have the slightest care in the world what happens to your business is really beyond me.
Any sane business person should enjoy search engine traffic when they have it, but place themselves primarily in the position where they don't need it. Relying entirely on an independent company with it's own interests for your business survival is beyond stupid.
"but the Slashdot editors really suck."
+2 Informative
Man I wish we could mod moderations. +5 Funny.
I believe he was referring to a symptom of rickets, which is caused by vitamin D deficiency.
I agree as well. The last time I did any "real" OSS development was when I was a teenager. I wrote really crummy code back then and didn't make very many useful contributions. But I had a ton of ambition and a "do-good" attitude.
Now that I'm an adult and have a family to support I really wish I could get back into the game. I know I could really make a useful contribution. I'm am much more experienced, have vastly more knowledge and am thus in a much better position to contribute.
I just don't have the time anymore. Now I'm profit driven. My kids need to eat. The only way I see myself doing open source work is if I get paid for it. I wish I had more time to devote to hobbies but I spend 100% of my professional life sitting at a computer and so my hobby time is reserved for non-computer tasks.
So if companies can take people that are in my position and enable them to contribute to the community then that can only be a good thing.
Maybe it's just because I have no personal reasons/need for using a calendar program, but what does a calendar have to do with e-mail ?
I understand that Outlook merged the two and a lot of people who used to use (or currently use) Outlook got used to it. But I really don't see how calendar / scheduling and e-mail is related and why Thunderbird (or any e-mail client) should feel pressed to integrate a calendar application.
Wouldn't you be better served using a stand-alone calendar / scheduler and stand-alone e-mail application that each does it's job extremely well and has all the features you need then a mashed together combination of the two that's bloated and sacrifices features because they're focusing on doing too many unrelated tasks ?
Please enlighten me as to how calendar / scheduling is related to e-mail and what functionality is gained by merging the two that wouldn't otherwise be present using standalone applications.