because managers often don't have a clue how computers work, IT can bullshit their way out of any disaster and create a level of job security for themselves that many other professions can only dream of.
if you can't beat them, join them.
mod parent up. there is a tried and true life cycle analysis process for this type of thing (implementing an IT department). the first step is to identify the need. then, for IT at least, the entire information system as a whole must be considered (hardware, software, people, procedures). then you must consider the impact of any change to the information system might have on the various phases of information processing (acquisition, input, validation, manipulation, storage, retrieval, output, disposal). use words like efficiency and effective correctly (they are not the same and should not be used in the same sentence together). consider testing, documentation, training, etc. this is just high school information systems stuff, not rocket science, but not everyone does info systems in high school i guess. anyway, all this analysis should help you understand the problem/need more thoroughly so that you can put some dollar figures on costs and savings. even if only estimated/projected, management will understand this (they do the same). formulate a s.m.a.r.t. goal and some underlying more specific objectives, come up with a scope of work and a work breakdown statement. managers love flowcharts and any kind of shit you can put on powerpoint (and even the more pragmatic ones that despise death by powerpoint will at least see that you've gone to some effort). do the work for your managers so that they don't have to make decisions because you've already justified one for them. then if it turns to shit they can blame you, but because you've done your homework it won't turn to shit unless your plan is deviated from (which will happen anyway but as long as you document adequately you should be able to deflect blame to others around you). managers aren't usually stupid, they just see more of the business from a higher altitude, and because of this many details get blurred.
while i agree that a lot of arguments are regurgitated on/. its a shame that a lot of arguments need to be regurgitated. the grandparent is right about the need for specialists. if gnupg doesn't work as advertised, it shouldn't be relied on. this concept isn't rocket science, but some people are just that thick.
debian squeeze (stable) works "out of the box" on my 7 year old toshiba notebook (512 mb ram). and i run virtual box with windows xp over the top of it. boots quicker than my i7, 16gb ram, windows 7 workstation at work (duh).
I don't use dyndns (i use afraid.org) and i don't need any fancy router settings beyond port forwarding. most broadband addresses are pretty stable nowadays (especially since the pool has dried up, and because often people leave their routers on all the time so even if your address was reset the available address pool at the ISP is likely much smaller than it used to be such that you may get your old address again anyway). i haven't had an address change in nearly 10 years since first getting broadband, but if on the odd occasion it did change, I'd just update my afraid.org settings manually (2 minutes). anyone who requires availability beyond that shouldn't be hosting at home, and anyone trying to host on anything less than a stable broadband address is asking for trouble. when dialup was the only option (i guess in some cases it still may be) dyndns came to the rescue, but technology moves quickly and with broadband address stability, their niche (amateur/semi-professional hosting) has little need for their services. today's economic climate is tough, but people in tech should know that you can't come up with an idea and then sit on your lorels expecting the money to roll in indefinitely. if you can't keep innovating, you get left in the dust. i think this is one reason why offering things for free is becoming more appealing; if you don't make money from the start, you can't become dependent on it. instead, more people are preferring to stick to a more predictable income from a larger company. of course this apathy will ultimately kill capitalism (there can only be so many mergers before there is no longer any competition). When that happens we'll have to begin fending off zombies infected by the T-virus.
The world finally realizes how fucked up capitalism is after global financial markets implode on themselves, and the US loses its reserve currency status and becomes a more dangerous place to live than Mogadishu. Then like-minded people begin establishing non-profit companies using government loans to drive the greedy corporates out of business (mass marketing driving consumer sentiment, competitive pricing, etc) and the non-profits eventually band together when they have a combined revenue higher than most countries, form an R&D group and develop a fleet of horizontal takeoff and landing single stage to orbit space planes with an operational launch cost to LEO of under $100/tonne so that then space becomes truly accessible to the average person.
...alien bursts out of girls (naked) chest and eats boy, ripley chimes in with "get away from her you bitch!" and mows it down with a minigun... NEVER gets old (i love you ripley *mwah*)
I started using Gnome 3 on my laptop just to test it out, and it was clumsy (still is) so I doubt I'll use it that much till it improves, but it was good from the point of view that it is different to most things I've used before. People are naturally averse to change, which is most likely why experienced users of previous gnome versions are getting all pissy (especially the ones with a dented god complex because heaven forbid they might not know how to do something). Just because a pissy old fart that is afraid of change doesn't see any reason to change something doesn't mean there is no reason.
Gnome 3 indicated to me of something inside the organization that isn't specific to software; a desire to innovate. They are thinking outside the square and ahead of the game (well, further ahead than projects like xfce anyway), which is always risky. Its also impossible to keep everyone happy, and that they were awarded comes as no surprise because we rarely hear from people who like Gnome 3 (they just use it) so its more difficult to measure how much people like it unless you have a vote like RC did. In contrast its easy to measure how much people hate it because they are so much more likely to bitch about it on slashdot (misery loves company). Gnome 3 isn't dead. Parent AC is just a pissy old fart having his bitch on slashdot (of course there is nothing wrong with that).
I would like to congratulate the Gnome 3 developers for their win, and I hope they can continue to ignore the pissy old farts that are afraid of change. After all, those old farts will be dead soon and their opinions won't matter anyway. The younger trendier generations are as important to the survival of an GUI platform as the established developer community. They are also more unpredictable so even if Gnome 3 got some things wrong, they have tested concepts and have plenty of feedback to put back into their innovation engine (and thankfully not just bitching from pissy old farts).
Trying to put traditionally PC features (web access, office apps, media players) into game consoles just makes the console more like a PC anyway (xbox360). I'd much rather take an old mini-ATX PC with my fave Linux distro (Debian), put in a decent graphics card and hook it up to one of the HDMI inputs of my home entertainment system. Then I can run Windows games with Wine and I can use the web with little fear of nasties like viruses or malware (with a little security sense), and the cost... nothing because I just use second-hand hardware.
Yeah and cos Apache has hosted more than half the web for years that would make it a big fish for hackers to exploit... and the number of web hosts adversely affected by this bug are?
Whatever the number (small no doubt), has it crippled Apache's share of the web hosting pie?
Re: "But competitors overseas are using it as a way to discourage foreign countries from signing on with U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft"
I'm sure Microsoft and Google are the innocent victims here... not guilty of any sorts of anti-competitive practices at all:)
Re: "we will have to wait a bit for the next opportunity, when the 64 bit epoch runs out . .."
Machines will be programming us by then (well, whatever is left of us). The Matrix said so it must be true.
Hopefully I can catch a transport to the other galaxy far far away by then and hook up with Princess Leia. I'll have to kill of Han Solo and his pet Chewbacca, but I'll have a death ray gun by then.
Re: "protect against red and blue and the fucktard cockholes will just use blue lasers instead"
I must've been half asleep when I wrote that. Should be pretty obvious but I meant "protect against red and green and the fucktard cockholes will just use blue lasers instead"
Same reason why antivirus is pointless... protect against red and blue and the fucktard cockholes will just use blue lasers instead. They might be morons but google can tell them everything. By the way, did you know that if you Google "i'm a laser cockhole", the first result is to a site with lyrics to the david bowie song "i'm a laser". How about that.
Re: "technology-averse industry"... I'd feel so much safer if aircraft were controlled by iPads or Windows 8 than some out-dated technology that has undergone the rigors of pointless airworthiness certification, not to mention the shape of aircraft, while practical and reliable, don't look anything like the awesomely technomological advancities in the action packed movies that I spend all my life watching. The moronic aeronautical engimineers of the world would be much better off if they just listened more to me and my armchair-wielding brethren. I mean they haven't even got photon torpedoes yet for Christ's sake! Time for another ale.
On SEO pages there shouldn't be any reason to bitch as Google is doing you a service (exposing your site to potential customers). On intranet pages or pages requiring credentials to access, just ban any user agent with "google", "facebook", "bot", etc. That's what I do and I think it would be prudent for any other corporate website management.
The OP referred to the limitation as "stupid". Why would Ballmer refer to any feature of a Microsoft product as "stupid"? I think you may have misread the OP. The limitation is just a marketing tactic to get growing businesses that start on P1 to upgrade to enterprise. Nothing more, nothing less.
It only affects Windows machines with Award BIOS's and seems to be pretty hard to get rid of. Maybe this level of infection will someday force Microsoft to consider implementing a permissions-based filesystem to reduce the possibility of this type of infection in the first place.
Cheapest/easiest solution: buy a new mobo.
You may also be able to flash a backup using a Linux live CD as Mebromi is a Windows infector. If the virus infects Linux, use an MS-DOS boot disk (assuming there's an MS-DOS fversion of your BIOS flash utility). Never used it, but there's some info here:
http://www.bay-wolf.com/bootcd-bios.htm
Best prevention: disable BIOS flashing in your setup (if YOU need to flash your bios, enable it, flash, and then disable again).
it already exists... its called a compact disc (or CD for short), and you can boot it by changing a BIOS setting. just chuck in a Linux live CD. works wonders for me (on windows machines)
Slashdot Mirror
because managers often don't have a clue how computers work, IT can bullshit their way out of any disaster and create a level of job security for themselves that many other professions can only dream of.
if you can't beat them, join them.
mod parent up. there is a tried and true life cycle analysis process for this type of thing (implementing an IT department). the first step is to identify the need. then, for IT at least, the entire information system as a whole must be considered (hardware, software, people, procedures). then you must consider the impact of any change to the information system might have on the various phases of information processing (acquisition, input, validation, manipulation, storage, retrieval, output, disposal). use words like efficiency and effective correctly (they are not the same and should not be used in the same sentence together). consider testing, documentation, training, etc. this is just high school information systems stuff, not rocket science, but not everyone does info systems in high school i guess. anyway, all this analysis should help you understand the problem/need more thoroughly so that you can put some dollar figures on costs and savings. even if only estimated/projected, management will understand this (they do the same). formulate a s.m.a.r.t. goal and some underlying more specific objectives, come up with a scope of work and a work breakdown statement. managers love flowcharts and any kind of shit you can put on powerpoint (and even the more pragmatic ones that despise death by powerpoint will at least see that you've gone to some effort). do the work for your managers so that they don't have to make decisions because you've already justified one for them. then if it turns to shit they can blame you, but because you've done your homework it won't turn to shit unless your plan is deviated from (which will happen anyway but as long as you document adequately you should be able to deflect blame to others around you). managers aren't usually stupid, they just see more of the business from a higher altitude, and because of this many details get blurred.
while i agree that a lot of arguments are regurgitated on /. its a shame that a lot of arguments need to be regurgitated. the grandparent is right about the need for specialists. if gnupg doesn't work as advertised, it shouldn't be relied on. this concept isn't rocket science, but some people are just that thick.
debian squeeze (stable) works "out of the box" on my 7 year old toshiba notebook (512 mb ram). and i run virtual box with windows xp over the top of it. boots quicker than my i7, 16gb ram, windows 7 workstation at work (duh).
windows has a "etc" folder too (under c:\windows\system32\drivers).
to make windows... take unix, beat it up, give it a lobotomy, cut its balls off, put a tutu on it and then give it a gay name (vista).
I don't use dyndns (i use afraid.org) and i don't need any fancy router settings beyond port forwarding. most broadband addresses are pretty stable nowadays (especially since the pool has dried up, and because often people leave their routers on all the time so even if your address was reset the available address pool at the ISP is likely much smaller than it used to be such that you may get your old address again anyway). i haven't had an address change in nearly 10 years since first getting broadband, but if on the odd occasion it did change, I'd just update my afraid.org settings manually (2 minutes). anyone who requires availability beyond that shouldn't be hosting at home, and anyone trying to host on anything less than a stable broadband address is asking for trouble. when dialup was the only option (i guess in some cases it still may be) dyndns came to the rescue, but technology moves quickly and with broadband address stability, their niche (amateur/semi-professional hosting) has little need for their services. today's economic climate is tough, but people in tech should know that you can't come up with an idea and then sit on your lorels expecting the money to roll in indefinitely. if you can't keep innovating, you get left in the dust. i think this is one reason why offering things for free is becoming more appealing; if you don't make money from the start, you can't become dependent on it. instead, more people are preferring to stick to a more predictable income from a larger company. of course this apathy will ultimately kill capitalism (there can only be so many mergers before there is no longer any competition). When that happens we'll have to begin fending off zombies infected by the T-virus.
The world finally realizes how fucked up capitalism is after global financial markets implode on themselves, and the US loses its reserve currency status and becomes a more dangerous place to live than Mogadishu. Then like-minded people begin establishing non-profit companies using government loans to drive the greedy corporates out of business (mass marketing driving consumer sentiment, competitive pricing, etc) and the non-profits eventually band together when they have a combined revenue higher than most countries, form an R&D group and develop a fleet of horizontal takeoff and landing single stage to orbit space planes with an operational launch cost to LEO of under $100/tonne so that then space becomes truly accessible to the average person.
...alien bursts out of girls (naked) chest and eats boy, ripley chimes in with "get away from her you bitch!" and mows it down with a minigun... NEVER gets old (i love you ripley *mwah*)
you won't get technical advice from nasa nowadays... they just bitch about their budget woes.
Need Another Soviet Asswhipping
I started using Gnome 3 on my laptop just to test it out, and it was clumsy (still is) so I doubt I'll use it that much till it improves, but it was good from the point of view that it is different to most things I've used before. People are naturally averse to change, which is most likely why experienced users of previous gnome versions are getting all pissy (especially the ones with a dented god complex because heaven forbid they might not know how to do something). Just because a pissy old fart that is afraid of change doesn't see any reason to change something doesn't mean there is no reason. Gnome 3 indicated to me of something inside the organization that isn't specific to software; a desire to innovate. They are thinking outside the square and ahead of the game (well, further ahead than projects like xfce anyway), which is always risky. Its also impossible to keep everyone happy, and that they were awarded comes as no surprise because we rarely hear from people who like Gnome 3 (they just use it) so its more difficult to measure how much people like it unless you have a vote like RC did. In contrast its easy to measure how much people hate it because they are so much more likely to bitch about it on slashdot (misery loves company). Gnome 3 isn't dead. Parent AC is just a pissy old fart having his bitch on slashdot (of course there is nothing wrong with that).
I would like to congratulate the Gnome 3 developers for their win, and I hope they can continue to ignore the pissy old farts that are afraid of change. After all, those old farts will be dead soon and their opinions won't matter anyway. The younger trendier generations are as important to the survival of an GUI platform as the established developer community. They are also more unpredictable so even if Gnome 3 got some things wrong, they have tested concepts and have plenty of feedback to put back into their innovation engine (and thankfully not just bitching from pissy old farts).
the hospital is probably OWNED by Microsoft
Trying to put traditionally PC features (web access, office apps, media players) into game consoles just makes the console more like a PC anyway (xbox360). I'd much rather take an old mini-ATX PC with my fave Linux distro (Debian), put in a decent graphics card and hook it up to one of the HDMI inputs of my home entertainment system. Then I can run Windows games with Wine and I can use the web with little fear of nasties like viruses or malware (with a little security sense), and the cost... nothing because I just use second-hand hardware.
Re: "major security vulnerability"
Yeah and cos Apache has hosted more than half the web for years that would make it a big fish for hackers to exploit... and the number of web hosts adversely affected by this bug are?
Whatever the number (small no doubt), has it crippled Apache's share of the web hosting pie?
I'm sure you get my point.
Re: "But competitors overseas are using it as a way to discourage foreign countries from signing on with U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft"
:)
I'm sure Microsoft and Google are the innocent victims here... not guilty of any sorts of anti-competitive practices at all
i trust who i work with in person, but it also means that if they fuck up i can give them an earful and see their reaction :)
Re: "we will have to wait a bit for the next opportunity, when the 64 bit epoch runs out . . ."
Machines will be programming us by then (well, whatever is left of us). The Matrix said so it must be true.
Hopefully I can catch a transport to the other galaxy far far away by then and hook up with Princess Leia. I'll have to kill of Han Solo and his pet Chewbacca, but I'll have a death ray gun by then.
Re: "protect against red and blue and the fucktard cockholes will just use blue lasers instead"
I must've been half asleep when I wrote that. Should be pretty obvious but I meant "protect against red and green and the fucktard cockholes will just use blue lasers instead"
Same reason why antivirus is pointless... protect against red and blue and the fucktard cockholes will just use blue lasers instead. They might be morons but google can tell them everything. By the way, did you know that if you Google "i'm a laser cockhole", the first result is to a site with lyrics to the david bowie song "i'm a laser". How about that.
Re: "technology-averse industry"... I'd feel so much safer if aircraft were controlled by iPads or Windows 8 than some out-dated technology that has undergone the rigors of pointless airworthiness certification, not to mention the shape of aircraft, while practical and reliable, don't look anything like the awesomely technomological advancities in the action packed movies that I spend all my life watching. The moronic aeronautical engimineers of the world would be much better off if they just listened more to me and my armchair-wielding brethren. I mean they haven't even got photon torpedoes yet for Christ's sake! Time for another ale.
On SEO pages there shouldn't be any reason to bitch as Google is doing you a service (exposing your site to potential customers). On intranet pages or pages requiring credentials to access, just ban any user agent with "google", "facebook", "bot", etc. That's what I do and I think it would be prudent for any other corporate website management.
The OP referred to the limitation as "stupid". Why would Ballmer refer to any feature of a Microsoft product as "stupid"? I think you may have misread the OP. The limitation is just a marketing tactic to get growing businesses that start on P1 to upgrade to enterprise. Nothing more, nothing less.
There's some very useful info about Mebromi here:
http://blog.webroot.com/2011/09/13/mebromi-the-first-bios-rootkit-in-the-wild/
It only affects Windows machines with Award BIOS's and seems to be pretty hard to get rid of. Maybe this level of infection will someday force Microsoft to consider implementing a permissions-based filesystem to reduce the possibility of this type of infection in the first place.
Cheapest/easiest solution: buy a new mobo.
You may also be able to flash a backup using a Linux live CD as Mebromi is a Windows infector. If the virus infects Linux, use an MS-DOS boot disk (assuming there's an MS-DOS fversion of your BIOS flash utility). Never used it, but there's some info here:
http://www.bay-wolf.com/bootcd-bios.htm
Best prevention: disable BIOS flashing in your setup (if YOU need to flash your bios, enable it, flash, and then disable again).
Luckily I'm no wimp... i'm a lamp :)
it already exists... its called a compact disc (or CD for short), and you can boot it by changing a BIOS setting. just chuck in a Linux live CD. works wonders for me (on windows machines)
what's conficker up to nowadays? G, H?
how about the bounty by the consortium of US tech companies on anyone involved in it? $300k, $400k?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker#Response