It happens. Or, perhaps I should say that there are cases where IT pays for stuff that may be owned/used by departments outside of IT.
For example, I work for a department that is not IT. IT provided our department with many of our workstations. I believe that this came out of their budget, not ours. So, the parent poster's hypothetical situation applies to us: if we asked for more RAM to come out of IT's budget, it'd be within their rights to say "no", or if they had the money they might do it.
Granted, my situation is uncommon, I think (this is the only place I've worked that was like this).
My situation is very similar to yours. I am a tech person for a department outside of the formal IT group which sometimes seems to be inefficient and/or ineffective. However, I don't believe that IT is the enemy and tend to sympathize with them.
In my current position I've seen some of the worst behaviors (in system administration, application development, etc.) practiced by tech people outside of IT who then expect IT to automagically make everything work and clean up any messes the non-IT folk created. On the other hand, there are also times when our IT department really does drop the ball.
This has created deep-seeded animosity between some non-IT departments and IT, I think. The non-IT folk believe IT are bureaucratic obstructionists who don't know what they're doing; while IT believes the non-IT folk are disorganized, loose cannons who don't know what they're doing. Unfortunately, to some extent, I think they're both right.
That said, my best advice to you is to help IT help you. Try come to some agreement or understanding with IT and define what it is they they need in order for them to be more responsive to your needs. Respect their needs as much as you want them to respect yours.
Also, don't undermine or bypass policies and procedures defined by IT. It might seem like you can get around IT's requirements and do something your own way, but that just perpetuates the problem. If you think IT is being unreasonable with their policies, find out why their policies are the way they are. You might discover that there is a good reason for it.
Think of IT as a finite resource -- don't squander it. I've never met (or worked in) an IT department that wasn't overwhelmed with things to do. Keep in mind that any system you implement may require some amount of time and effort for IT to support and/or maintain it. And keep in mind that there is always a Y2K or Service Pack N+1 or something like that around the corner keeping IT busy. So, as much as possible, budget your IT-time wisely. And, of course, plan ahead.
You may already be doing all of this, which makes your situation a more bitter pill to swallow, in which case I'd suggest helping other non-IT departments do the same, if they're not already.
And, of course, doing all of this doesn't guarantee that your IT experience will improve. But, I think it's a case of "you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar" and "you who are without sin may cast the first stone."
To track visitors you have to implement a small piece of javascript in your HTML pages. This browser-based tagging method is proven to be the most reliable and effective way of tracking your visitors. Measurements are based on IP number, cookie and browser string.
Each day thousands of new IP addresses are added to OneStat's growing database which is based on 2,3 million IP ranges. Nowhere else you can achieve such an accurate picture of where your business visitors are coming from.
So that would suggest that their statistics only count people who visit their customers' websites. I don't think I'd count that as a complete, objective picture of the Internet as a whole. Plus, whether or not you accept cookies from a site might skew their data further. [For the record, I use Firefox and only accept cookies when I have to].
When I was a kid (back in the 1970s), someone tried to explain the rationale for why women were not as appropriate as men for jobs like news anchors, lawyers, police officers, doctors, etc. The argument went something like this:
Men are, or are perceived to be, more professional than women. So, the customers/clients of these positions would be more comfortable with men than with women. Thus, men tend to be hired for these jobs more than women and, similarly, boys are primed for these positions more than girls.
Thankfully, views have changed since then and we now have many women in these fields (in America, anyway). But, if the same attitude still exists about women in technical fields, then I could see how that could dissuade young girls from pursuing those kinds of careers.
In any event, having shows that portray women in technical fields doesn't pressure girls into following that path, I don't think -- it just suggests to them that they could, if they wanted to. No harm, no foul, I think.
Another point, where are the "innocent Americans" that are being spied on? Can you name one? Has anyone been prosecuted based on such spying? Do you think an "innocent American" who had no involvement in terrorism would have any trouble at all getting such evidence thrown out?
Well, there were cases of people getting put on the no-fly list, causing innocent Americans to miss their flights. Per CBS News, "[Senator Ted] Kennedy says he had to enlist the help of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to get his name stricken from the list. The process took several weeks, in all." Imagine how long it would take for an "ordinary" citizen without any political clout to get this resolved.
So, yes, there's precedence for concern over things like this.
Speaking for myself, I'm not opposed to the surveillance, but I want some due process to ensure that the government is not abusing this power. My concern is that the Bush administration may be ignoring that due process.
Since Mac OS X is based on BSD, I suspected it was like that but figured I'd ask the experts (or, at least, Slashdot) in case there was some weird, esoteric thing about OS X. I've worked in this industry long enough to know that just because something should work a certain way doesn't mean it does.
Too bad, shoulda bought a Mac You weren't kidding about 'not a Mac expert' Heh. No, I wasn't kidding. Just for the record, though, I do own a G4 Powerbook, but I haven't had it for long and am still a newbie (and didn't have it with me when I posted the original message). In any even't, I'm secure enough in the skills I have that I don't mind asking questions about the ones I don't.:-)
I think the article is worded poorly. I don't think you need to have admin rights to exploit the vulnerability.
The dsidentity vulnerability mentioned in the article suggests that dsidentity uses the "USER" environmental variable to determine whether or not the current user is a member of the admin group. So, presumably, a non-admin user could set the USER variable to the name of someone who is an admin and then dsidentity would allow the non-admin to add/remove user accounts.
I'm not a Mac expert, so
How easy is it to change the value of the USER environmental variable in Mac OS X? In Windows it's trivial. Does OS X require special privileges or a password?
Is there a universal username that is member of the admin group on all Mac OS X installations? For example, is "root" a valid username on all Macs? Or, can a non-admin or a program launched by a non-admin query the system to list all user accounts?
Unless non-admin users are prevented from changing the value of the USER environmental variable some how, I could see how this vulnerability could have been exploited by a non-admin user trying to crack a shared Mac. Or, I suppose a trojan could have been written that queried the system to list all accounts and then tried each one in succession until it found one that was a member of the admin group and then gone crazy adding and deleting accounts.
In any event, version 10.4.3 fixes the problem and I still dig my PowerBook.
I'm curious about the terms of the contract (if any) between the website owner and the advertisers. I wonder how long the owner guarantees that the site and the advertisements will be functional and if he put any disclaimers in the contract?
The FAQ says he guarantees it'll be around for 5 years. But what happens if it crashes for a few days? Or what if the site gets hacked and someone alters the graphic file? Could the advertisers sue the website owner for breach of contract?
I'm sure this is off-topic... but you started it!:-)
Your point is valid and well-taken, but I think the reaction on Slashdot was equally valid and illuminating if only because it shows how many of us think that the student's tale wasn't that far-fetched.
While I was a bit skeptical of the student's story because it sounded too much like the movie Se7en, I thought back to when some government agents came to a library where a friend of mine worked and demanded access to some or all of the customers' reading/check-out histories. Thankfully, in that case, the librarians refused to release the information, but that was back in the early 1980's, before computers were cheap, before the World Wide Web and all the subsequent technology existed. Surely, the technology exists now for the feds to get that information without permission. And in light of the recent admission that the US Goverment authorized spying on US citizens without a warrant, it isn't ridiculous to think that the goverment might also be tapping into people's library records.
But, more to the point, while the student's tale may have turned out to be false, it is entirely valid for people to have spoken up about it, if only as a cautionary tale about what America could be like if we continue to surrender our civil rights without protest (if it's not like that already).
Our right to protest is one of the things that makes America great. This is Freedom of Speech at its best, in my opinion -- We are each other's bulls**t detectors. And that's a Good Thing.
So, thanks for following-up on that story -- I'm glad it turned out to be a hoax -- but I plan to continue to voice my concerns whenever I see something like that pop up.:-)
Interesting comments. I too tend to believe that there's more to life than simple biomechanics, but IMO the fuss isn't about Evolution vs Intelligent Design or Science vs Religion.
Many (and I'd hope most) of the scientists, teachers and professors who object to including Intelligent Design in science classes aren't objecting because they think Evolution is 100% correct, or because they think Intelligent Design is wrong. They object because Intelligent Design isn't science, by definition of the term "science".
There are two purposes to any science class, in my opinion: one is to teach students what are currently believed to be the most accurate scientific theories, but the other (and perhaps more important) purpose is to teach the scientific method: the method by which those theories are developed.
The main components of the scientific method are observation and experimentation. That is, you observe something, formulate a hypothesis, develop experiments that you can run to test the hypothesis, run the experiment and then see how well your hypothesis holds up. Typically, you'd find that something wasn't exactly the way you thought it would be, so you'd tweak your hypothesis, develop new experiments, and repeat the process ad infinitum. Through this process, you'd inch closer and closer to "the truth".
With Intelligent Design, however, there aren't any experiments that you can run to reliably test the hypothesis. If God is omnipotent, God can alter the outcome of any experiment. Thus, you can never prove or disprove the theory (which, is the whole point of Faith, as I understand it). While that doesn't mean Intelligent Design is wrong, it means it doesn't fit the definition of Science.
Now, many people (including Senator John McCain) wonder why teachers and scientists are so opposed to including Intelligent Design in the curriculum. The problem is that doing so would be an inherent contradition and, as a result, teachers would not be teaching the scientific method, which is the whole point of the class. It would be like teaching that beef is a vegetable in a botany class.
That's not to say that the current scientific theories are all correct. In fact, we know that they're not. One hope of teaching science is to develop the next generation of scientists who can test and refine or change the current theories (or develop new ones) and bring us closer to "the truth". If we teach students that it's acceptible to ignore the results of scientific method in favor of theories that are untestable, then we are crippling our own progress and will slip further and further behind Germany and Japan (for example) in fields like Engineering. Would you want to fly in an airplane whose design was based on theories that are not testable and which contradict what we believe to be the laws of physics? Or, more succinctly, would you fly in an airplane whose design was based on faith?
This is not to say that we should never discuss Intelligent Design at all. I've heard many scientists say that it is a valid topic, just not for a science class (or, at least, not a high-school level science class, in my opinion).
Interestingly, many scientists feel the same way about String Theory as well (which is why this isn't about Science vs Religion). String theory is an attempt to rectify some of the inconsistencies between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The problem is that there's no observable tests for String Theory. So, while it might be true, there's no way we could test it to find out.
At one point (and it may still be the case) there were five versions of string theory, all of which seemed equally valid. But some of those theories contradicted the others. Since none of them could be tested, how would you know which one is correct? Similarly
Awhile ago, my brother-in-law and I once discussed the idea of a 'sweet spot' in pricing. I suggested that there is a price that I would consider fair for a CD or DVD (etc.) that I'd be willing to pay, even if I could download the contents for free. Also, I listen to a lot of indie/small/local bands (such as Diamond Fist Werny), and I try to support them by buying their music. So, ultimately, I'm not opposed to paying for these things.
I think part of the download-for-free movement was spurred by the inflated prices of CDs in the last decade, when music companies "conspired to illegally raise the prices" of certain products. So, if the music companies aren't going to play fair, why should we?
Another way to encourage people to buy CDs and DVDs, I think, is to include little bonuses in the packaging, like the inserts you get with CDs that include band information, lyrics, etc. I notice that movie DVDs have been pretty sparse on the inserts lately (except for special editions and so forth) and some are pretty lacking in "extras". As a result, I can see why people download them instead: there's little (if any) value gained by buying the real thing.
btw, bottled water is a big industry I think because there's a lot of places in the world where drinking the tap water will make you ill. There's probably a parallel with the music/movie industry there somewhere...:-)
If there are 1 trillion people in the world and each of them is assigned 1 trillion new IPv6 addresses every day, it will take over 931 billion years to use up all of the possible addresses.
3.4 x 10^38 / (10^12 x 10^12 x 365) = 9.315 x 10^11
FWIW, about a month ago I made the switch and bought my first Mac (Powerbook G4) and I am a very happy camper.
I've used and managed Windows at work and at home since version 3.0 and it's been mostly adequate. Over the years, though, I've come to dislike/distrust Microsoft a lot as a company and have had fewer and fewer nice things to say about their products. So, like you, I was looking for alternatives.
I've used Linux a little but am not an expert. So, when I recently found I needed a laptop quickly -- and one that would "just work" without any fuss -- I went with the PowerBook and have not regretted it.
Just to list some of the things that were/are good about the Mac:
* All the software I need and want either came with it and/or could be downloaded for free, including OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, GIMP, VLC, OmniGraffle, Fugu, and Virex ($WORK has a license that allows us staff to download it for free). So, other than games, I haven't had to spend any money on software.
* The only games I play (NeverWinter Nights and The Sims 2) have Mac OS X versions
* OS X has a Unix core and you can get "under the hood", if you want. This appeals to me since I want to improve my Unix/Linux skills.
* Apple service and support was nice and helpful. After I purchased the PowerBook, I discovered that I could have gotten a discount because of where I work. I called their support number, talked to a polite service rep, faxed them my ID and they credited my bill for the difference. No hassles.
* The physical design of the PowerBook is appealing. Although I tend not to care about those things much, I'm happy with the way it looks and fits together.
Ultimately, my goal (as soon as I find some of that mythical thing called Time) is to install some distro of Linux on my desktop. That way, I'll have the best of both worlds: a laptop that is solid and works and a desktop for development and experimentation.
INANE (I'm Not A Network Engineer) but, as I understand it, peering has been a problem for awhile. Even if network providers do peer, as a customer your quality of service suffers. If your packets are sloughed off to some other provider's network and then there are problems downstream, for example, that provider has little incentive to help you since you're not one of their paying customers. Or something like that.
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said -- "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
* Data migration and testing (especially if customer uses Access database) By that same argument, no one should ever migrate their data from Access to SQL Server either, right?
User support such as training (OpenOffice UI, although similar in many ways to Office, is not the same and users may require "retraining") But then, so does switching from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows 2000 to Windows XP. While many things look/act the same between these Operating Systems, many things do not.
But more importantly, the fact that something requires retraining is not a reason not to change. If it were, we'd all still be using manual typewriters instead of computers.
If anything, this argument is an admission by Microsoft that they've got people over a barrel and are now telling them to stop squealing.
OpenOffice offers limited compatibility with Microsoft Office. So, if everyone switches to OpenOffice, the problem is solved.:)
While the specific vulnerability exploited by Witty was announced on March 18 by ISS, there was another vulnerability in ISS products announced on February 26 that also involved the Protocol Analysis Module (PAM) component.
So, I wonder if the author of Witty, knowing that there was one vulnerability in the way those products parsed messages, looked for (and discovered) another.
There was also the old flippy trick (turning a single-sided 5.25" floppy disk into a double-sided one by cutting an extra notch into the floppy disk cover and inserting it into the drive upside-down). That actually did work, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when does IT own anything outside of IT?
It happens. Or, perhaps I should say that there are cases where IT pays for stuff that may be owned/used by departments outside of IT.
For example, I work for a department that is not IT. IT provided our department with many of our workstations. I believe that this came out of their budget, not ours. So, the parent poster's hypothetical situation applies to us: if we asked for more RAM to come out of IT's budget, it'd be within their rights to say "no", or if they had the money they might do it.
Granted, my situation is uncommon, I think (this is the only place I've worked that was like this).
My situation is very similar to yours. I am a tech person for a department outside of the formal IT group which sometimes seems to be inefficient and/or ineffective. However, I don't believe that IT is the enemy and tend to sympathize with them.
In my current position I've seen some of the worst behaviors (in system administration, application development, etc.) practiced by tech people outside of IT who then expect IT to automagically make everything work and clean up any messes the non-IT folk created. On the other hand, there are also times when our IT department really does drop the ball.
This has created deep-seeded animosity between some non-IT departments and IT, I think. The non-IT folk believe IT are bureaucratic obstructionists who don't know what they're doing; while IT believes the non-IT folk are disorganized, loose cannons who don't know what they're doing. Unfortunately, to some extent, I think they're both right.
That said, my best advice to you is to help IT help you. Try come to some agreement or understanding with IT and define what it is they they need in order for them to be more responsive to your needs. Respect their needs as much as you want them to respect yours.
Also, don't undermine or bypass policies and procedures defined by IT. It might seem like you can get around IT's requirements and do something your own way, but that just perpetuates the problem. If you think IT is being unreasonable with their policies, find out why their policies are the way they are. You might discover that there is a good reason for it.
Think of IT as a finite resource -- don't squander it. I've never met (or worked in) an IT department that wasn't overwhelmed with things to do. Keep in mind that any system you implement may require some amount of time and effort for IT to support and/or maintain it. And keep in mind that there is always a Y2K or Service Pack N+1 or something like that around the corner keeping IT busy. So, as much as possible, budget your IT-time wisely. And, of course, plan ahead.
You may already be doing all of this, which makes your situation a more bitter pill to swallow, in which case I'd suggest helping other non-IT departments do the same, if they're not already.
And, of course, doing all of this doesn't guarantee that your IT experience will improve. But, I think it's a case of "you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar" and "you who are without sin may cast the first stone."
So that would suggest that their statistics only count people who visit their customers' websites. I don't think I'd count that as a complete, objective picture of the Internet as a whole. Plus, whether or not you accept cookies from a site might skew their data further. [For the record, I use Firefox and only accept cookies when I have to].
Agreed.
When I was a kid (back in the 1970s), someone tried to explain the rationale for why women were not as appropriate as men for jobs like news anchors, lawyers, police officers, doctors, etc. The argument went something like this:
Men are, or are perceived to be, more professional than women. So, the customers/clients of these positions would be more comfortable with men than with women. Thus, men tend to be hired for these jobs more than women and, similarly, boys are primed for these positions more than girls.
Thankfully, views have changed since then and we now have many women in these fields (in America, anyway). But, if the same attitude still exists about women in technical fields, then I could see how that could dissuade young girls from pursuing those kinds of careers.
In any event, having shows that portray women in technical fields doesn't pressure girls into following that path, I don't think -- it just suggests to them that they could, if they wanted to. No harm, no foul, I think.
Another point, where are the "innocent Americans" that are being spied on? Can you name one? Has anyone been prosecuted based on such spying? Do you think an "innocent American" who had no involvement in terrorism would have any trouble at all getting such evidence thrown out?
Well, there were cases of people getting put on the no-fly list, causing innocent Americans to miss their flights. Per CBS News, "[Senator Ted] Kennedy says he had to enlist the help of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to get his name stricken from the list. The process took several weeks, in all." Imagine how long it would take for an "ordinary" citizen without any political clout to get this resolved.
So, yes, there's precedence for concern over things like this.
Speaking for myself, I'm not opposed to the surveillance, but I want some due process to ensure that the government is not abusing this power. My concern is that the Bush administration may be ignoring that due process.
Thanks all for the clarification.
:-)
Since Mac OS X is based on BSD, I suspected it was like that but figured I'd ask the experts (or, at least, Slashdot) in case there was some weird, esoteric thing about OS X. I've worked in this industry long enough to know that just because something should work a certain way doesn't mean it does.
Too bad, shoulda bought a Mac
You weren't kidding about 'not a Mac expert'
Heh. No, I wasn't kidding. Just for the record, though, I do own a G4 Powerbook, but I haven't had it for long and am still a newbie (and didn't have it with me when I posted the original message). In any even't, I'm secure enough in the skills I have that I don't mind asking questions about the ones I don't.
The dsidentity vulnerability mentioned in the article suggests that dsidentity uses the "USER" environmental variable to determine whether or not the current user is a member of the admin group. So, presumably, a non-admin user could set the USER variable to the name of someone who is an admin and then dsidentity would allow the non-admin to add/remove user accounts.
I'm not a Mac expert, so
-
-
Unless non-admin users are prevented from changing the value of the USER environmental variable some how, I could see how this vulnerability could have been exploited by a non-admin user trying to crack a shared Mac. Or, I suppose a trojan could have been written that queried the system to list all accounts and then tried each one in succession until it found one that was a member of the admin group and then gone crazy adding and deleting accounts.How easy is it to change the value of the USER environmental variable in Mac OS X? In Windows it's trivial. Does OS X require special privileges or a password?
Is there a universal username that is member of the admin group on all Mac OS X installations? For example, is "root" a valid username on all Macs? Or, can a non-admin or a program launched by a non-admin query the system to list all user accounts?
In any event, version 10.4.3 fixes the problem and I still dig my PowerBook.
I'm curious about the terms of the contract (if any) between the website owner and the advertisers. I wonder how long the owner guarantees that the site and the advertisements will be functional and if he put any disclaimers in the contract?
The FAQ says he guarantees it'll be around for 5 years. But what happens if it crashes for a few days? Or what if the site gets hacked and someone alters the graphic file? Could the advertisers sue the website owner for breach of contract?
If the kid hasn't protected himself, the next five years could be interesting (as in "may you live in interesting times").
What? Paris is not like Amelie? Man, you just ruined my day! :-)
I'm sure this is off-topic... but you started it! :-)
:-)
Your point is valid and well-taken, but I think the reaction on Slashdot was equally valid and illuminating if only because it shows how many of us think that the student's tale wasn't that far-fetched.
While I was a bit skeptical of the student's story because it sounded too much like the movie Se7en, I thought back to when some government agents came to a library where a friend of mine worked and demanded access to some or all of the customers' reading/check-out histories. Thankfully, in that case, the librarians refused to release the information, but that was back in the early 1980's, before computers were cheap, before the World Wide Web and all the subsequent technology existed. Surely, the technology exists now for the feds to get that information without permission. And in light of the recent admission that the US Goverment authorized spying on US citizens without a warrant, it isn't ridiculous to think that the goverment might also be tapping into people's library records.
But, more to the point, while the student's tale may have turned out to be false, it is entirely valid for people to have spoken up about it, if only as a cautionary tale about what America could be like if we continue to surrender our civil rights without protest (if it's not like that already).
Our right to protest is one of the things that makes America great. This is Freedom of Speech at its best, in my opinion -- We are each other's bulls**t detectors. And that's a Good Thing.
So, thanks for following-up on that story -- I'm glad it turned out to be a hoax -- but I plan to continue to voice my concerns whenever I see something like that pop up.
better be on the lookout for green slime and primords....
or Lord Kinbote!
why not GoOpera
I was thinking they could call the browser Ogle"; then they could say "Go Ogle".
Interesting comments. I too tend to believe that there's more to life than simple biomechanics, but IMO the fuss isn't about Evolution vs Intelligent Design or Science vs Religion.
Many (and I'd hope most) of the scientists, teachers and professors who object to including Intelligent Design in science classes aren't objecting because they think Evolution is 100% correct, or because they think Intelligent Design is wrong. They object because Intelligent Design isn't science, by definition of the term "science".
There are two purposes to any science class, in my opinion: one is to teach students what are currently believed to be the most accurate scientific theories, but the other (and perhaps more important) purpose is to teach the scientific method: the method by which those theories are developed.
The main components of the scientific method are observation and experimentation. That is, you observe something, formulate a hypothesis, develop experiments that you can run to test the hypothesis, run the experiment and then see how well your hypothesis holds up. Typically, you'd find that something wasn't exactly the way you thought it would be, so you'd tweak your hypothesis, develop new experiments, and repeat the process ad infinitum. Through this process, you'd inch closer and closer to "the truth".
With Intelligent Design, however, there aren't any experiments that you can run to reliably test the hypothesis. If God is omnipotent, God can alter the outcome of any experiment. Thus, you can never prove or disprove the theory (which, is the whole point of Faith, as I understand it). While that doesn't mean Intelligent Design is wrong, it means it doesn't fit the definition of Science.
Now, many people (including Senator John McCain) wonder why teachers and scientists are so opposed to including Intelligent Design in the curriculum. The problem is that doing so would be an inherent contradition and, as a result, teachers would not be teaching the scientific method, which is the whole point of the class. It would be like teaching that beef is a vegetable in a botany class.
That's not to say that the current scientific theories are all correct. In fact, we know that they're not. One hope of teaching science is to develop the next generation of scientists who can test and refine or change the current theories (or develop new ones) and bring us closer to "the truth". If we teach students that it's acceptible to ignore the results of scientific method in favor of theories that are untestable, then we are crippling our own progress and will slip further and further behind Germany and Japan (for example) in fields like Engineering. Would you want to fly in an airplane whose design was based on theories that are not testable and which contradict what we believe to be the laws of physics? Or, more succinctly, would you fly in an airplane whose design was based on faith?
This is not to say that we should never discuss Intelligent Design at all. I've heard many scientists say that it is a valid topic, just not for a science class (or, at least, not a high-school level science class, in my opinion).
Interestingly, many scientists feel the same way about String Theory as well (which is why this isn't about Science vs Religion). String theory is an attempt to rectify some of the inconsistencies between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The problem is that there's no observable tests for String Theory. So, while it might be true, there's no way we could test it to find out.
At one point (and it may still be the case) there were five versions of string theory, all of which seemed equally valid. But some of those theories contradicted the others. Since none of them could be tested, how would you know which one is correct? Similarly
Me too. ;-)
I mostly agree with this --
:-)
Awhile ago, my brother-in-law and I once discussed the idea of a 'sweet spot' in pricing. I suggested that there is a price that I would consider fair for a CD or DVD (etc.) that I'd be willing to pay, even if I could download the contents for free. Also, I listen to a lot of indie/small/local bands (such as Diamond Fist Werny), and I try to support them by buying their music. So, ultimately, I'm not opposed to paying for these things.
I think part of the download-for-free movement was spurred by the inflated prices of CDs in the last decade, when music companies "conspired to illegally raise the prices" of certain products. So, if the music companies aren't going to play fair, why should we?
Another way to encourage people to buy CDs and DVDs, I think, is to include little bonuses in the packaging, like the inserts you get with CDs that include band information, lyrics, etc. I notice that movie DVDs have been pretty sparse on the inserts lately (except for special editions and so forth) and some are pretty lacking in "extras". As a result, I can see why people download them instead: there's little (if any) value gained by buying the real thing.
btw, bottled water is a big industry I think because there's a lot of places in the world where drinking the tap water will make you ill. There's probably a parallel with the music/movie industry there somewhere...
Just for fun, I did some math:
If there are 1 trillion people in the world and each of them is assigned 1 trillion new IPv6 addresses every day, it will take over 931 billion years to use up all of the possible addresses.
3.4 x 10^38 / (10^12 x 10^12 x 365) = 9.315 x 10^11
By comparison, the sun might swallow the Earth in 4 to 5 billion years.
FWIW, about a month ago I made the switch and bought my first Mac (Powerbook G4) and I am a very happy camper.
I've used and managed Windows at work and at home since version 3.0 and it's been mostly adequate. Over the years, though, I've come to dislike/distrust Microsoft a lot as a company and have had fewer and fewer nice things to say about their products. So, like you, I was looking for alternatives.
I've used Linux a little but am not an expert. So, when I recently found I needed a laptop quickly -- and one that would "just work" without any fuss -- I went with the PowerBook and have not regretted it.
Just to list some of the things that were/are good about the Mac:
* All the software I need and want either came with it and/or could be downloaded for free, including OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, GIMP, VLC, OmniGraffle, Fugu, and Virex ($WORK has a license that allows us staff to download it for free). So, other than games, I haven't had to spend any money on software.
* The only games I play (NeverWinter Nights and The Sims 2) have Mac OS X versions
* OS X has a Unix core and you can get "under the hood", if you want. This appeals to me since I want to improve my Unix/Linux skills.
* Apple service and support was nice and helpful. After I purchased the PowerBook, I discovered that I could have gotten a discount because of where I work. I called their support number, talked to a polite service rep, faxed them my ID and they credited my bill for the difference. No hassles.
* The physical design of the PowerBook is appealing. Although I tend not to care about those things much, I'm happy with the way it looks and fits together.
Ultimately, my goal (as soon as I find some of that mythical thing called Time) is to install some distro of Linux on my desktop. That way, I'll have the best of both worlds: a laptop that is solid and works and a desktop for development and experimentation.
INANE (I'm Not A Network Engineer) but, as I understand it, peering has been a problem for awhile. Even if network providers do peer, as a customer your quality of service suffers. If your packets are sloughed off to some other provider's network and then there are problems downstream, for example, that provider has little incentive to help you since you're not one of their paying customers. Or something like that.
In any event, that's why companies like InterNAP offer multi-homed services.
Reminds me of that poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Heh. Good list. I'd add...
:)
* Data migration and testing (especially if customer uses Access database)
By that same argument, no one should ever migrate their data from Access to SQL Server either, right?
User support such as training (OpenOffice UI, although similar in many ways to Office, is not the same and users may require "retraining")
But then, so does switching from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows 2000 to Windows XP. While many things look/act the same between these Operating Systems, many things do not.
But more importantly, the fact that something requires retraining is not a reason not to change. If it were, we'd all still be using manual typewriters instead of computers.
If anything, this argument is an admission by Microsoft that they've got people over a barrel and are now telling them to stop squealing.
OpenOffice offers limited compatibility with Microsoft Office.
So, if everyone switches to OpenOffice, the problem is solved.
While the specific vulnerability exploited by Witty was announced on March 18 by ISS, there was another vulnerability in ISS products announced on February 26 that also involved the Protocol Analysis Module (PAM) component.
So, I wonder if the author of Witty, knowing that there was one vulnerability in the way those products parsed messages, looked for (and discovered) another.
Unless some has a better idea?
How about force-feeding them one can of Spam for every spam message they sent? You are what you eat, so maybe you should eat what you are.
There was also the old flippy trick (turning a single-sided 5.25" floppy disk into a double-sided one by cutting an extra notch into the floppy disk cover and inserting it into the drive upside-down). That actually did work, though.
And everyone named "Scott" now owes SCO $99 for embedded use of their name.
Heh heh heh. Jane Badler will forever be remembered for deep throating a guinea pig (or was it a ferret?)...