Many, many times... I'm at one of those famous Fortune 500 companies the anti-virus types refer to, and I get these.exe and/or.vbs attachments all the time - users are obviously still clueless enough to open them.
If we could have a "Bitchslap Utility" to give such users a wake-up call after they run said attachments, that would be damn useful...
The pace of cultural change in the western world has accelerated so rapidly that it's reached the breaking point, according to the late anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Wait a second. She's dead, and she's Jon's source on the pace of cultural change now?
Speaking of high pitched squeals, I used to have a Mac "exploding" Powerbook 5300; it squealed whenever you charged the battery. Many people didn't notice it, but I sure did! Similar thing.
True enough. But I do think Mrs. M. has a point. There may be hues of color that are undetectable by a "normal" (trichromatic) human eye but that are quite jarring to a tetrachromatic eye - much in the same way that someone who detects very high or very low pitch may think differently about a piece of music, or a type of noise, than you or I might.
Of course illumination has an impact - but if there's a hue that is fairly strong, the strength of said hue will outweigh it, like a deep bass or high whistle can be heard over other sounds.
Every toymaker wants to have the hot toy that people wait in line for. It is much more valuable to get all that publicity, and be anointed as the "one to have," than to make a few extra bucks by selling to everyone who wants one at Xmas. I am convinced that Sony planned this carefully and will have lots of PS2s available come February. Until then, get in line - preferably the one with TV cameras rolling!
Hey HackTivo types - what would it take to create a "30 Sec Skip" feature on Tivo, since that was the only really good feature on Replay (and it was also what the broadcasters squawked most loudly about)? I have no idea but I bet one of y'all might...
Too bad the law firms involved (notably Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach) are well known sharks, uninterested in anything but their own bottom lines. These are the guys who mount investor class actions whenever stocks go down, and the ones who sponsored California's Prop. 211 a few years ago.
If an ethical plaintiff were involved, I'd give this story more credence.
Conceptually, what's to stop your favorite consulting company from setting up a VPN on a dedicated T3 to Bangalore and hiring people there
for WAY less than they pay you?
Nothing! And this is a good thing. The world benefits hugely from the expansion of high-skilled jobs to overseas markets; programmers in Bangalore make more money than they might otherwise had, and US consumers benefit from lower costs (and a reduced labor shortage).
The benefits of geographic proximity and familiarity with the home market (not to mention US programmers' generally higher skills) will continue to keep demand high for those on this side of the border.
I'm a remote worker of a sort (I live in SF and most of my peers are on the east coast) and I can tell you with certainty it isn't for everyone. Face to face contact still has value.
I'm going to say that to the next prick in the city that bitches the government should do something about the nasty air in the city. They should simply move out into the country.
Okay, I know I've been trolled, but: This is a really terrible way to reduce pollution. By "moving out to the country" (the suburbs), millions of Americans contribute to pollution and environmental damage, mainly by driving longer distances. It's actually much better for the environment to live in the city because you don't drive as much if there's a subway, and higher-density living keeps open space open.
Discriminating against rural areas is as unacceptable as discriminating against, say, hispanic areas or native american areas.
That's ridiculous.
DSL, for example, only works up to about 15,000 feet from the central office (more for IDSL). Do you mean to say that urban users shouldn't benefit from DSL because people 10 miles from the nearest central office wouldn't be able to get it? That is what you are advocating, I think, and the result would be no service for anyone, or very expensive service for those willing to pay those high rates.
Rural areas are necessarily costly to serve. Unless you think it's good social policy for urban users to subsidize those people who live there, in which case something more like the US Universal Service Fund makes sense, I think you'll be stuck paying at least some of those added costs. I for one think this is fair; as a city dweller, I pay many other higher costs (food, parking, rent, etc.) - why should I additionally subsidize someone who lives in an area where these costs are lower, even though certain services (telecom) are more expensive?
Am I the only one who thinks this may be designed to fail? It sounds to me that they are really talking about the "rental" option to satisfy the PHBs and the analysts, who have been talking about this for many years, but they are pricing it in a way that will incent people to go with the standard license. Remember Windows Terminal Server, which was priced much higher than Winframe and really designed to steer people away from the "thin client" architecture? I think this is the same idea.
Digital signatures trust that the computer is reliable, and that no one else has access to the signature. Digital signatures can be
copied.
What does this mean? They can be "copied"? A digital signature, by definition, is attached to a single document. So "copying" it is
meaningless/impossible. In contrast a physical signature can be copied and placed on a different document.
Well, I think the question is not: can a signature be copied? (Of course it can, otherwise you can't send it in email, silly.) It's: can a private key be stolen, thus enabling forged signatures? (Yes, it can, and probably more easily as the kiddies figure out that the value of a forged digital signature has gone up.)
[I]t's not clear if a digital sig would ever stand up in court, because you could always claim that your computer was compromised, which is not the kind of thing the court can rule on.
I don't think this is true. After the first few cases like this, our oh-so-techsavvy legislators will probably pass a Uniform Commercial Transactions in the Digital Millennium Signatures Act, which will say that all other laws notwithstanding digisigs are to be treated as binding, whether or not they are provably valid, at least on Joe User if not on corporations. (Let's hope not!)
This is why I hate Exchange. I finally had to put my Exchange post office in my LMHOSTS file on my PC because name resolution was so damn slow that I couldn't get my email, particularly while traveling - it was a major pain and (of course) the admins had no idea this was even a problem. Also, just this week my Exchange server went down 4 or 5 times, without notice or warning, and I'm still not sure all my email came through.
Just one user's opinion, but I wouldn't choose it if I were the decisionmaker.
If you buy a national roaming plan like AT&T's Digital One Rate, you can't expense business calls, because they show up on the bill as zero billed until you get to the number of minutes you've bought. So unless you never travel for fun, and never place personal calls while traveling on business, you would much rather have this reimbursement plan, because this way you don't have to pay all those damn roaming charges for all the non-business calls.
My story: I used to pay, and expense, roaming charges for business. Now I have national roaming, and though I haven't figured out how to expense a single call, nonetheless my net expense is much less.
Blacken the appropriate bubble - and human error
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 2
Well, in San Francisco, they introduced a new system this year called "Eagle" that did much the same thing. You fill in a white space in the middle of an arrow next to the candidate you selected; this is then inserted in a machine that checks for integrity and tabulates. It's a big improvement over the punch-card system used until this year's primary, and seems to have worked well. Non-absentee results were complete before midnight (though absentee votes are an increasingly high percentage of those cast, so this was not a complete result).
However: it all depends on the human factor! In my polling place, the machine didn't show up on time - so they had to stack the ballots in a big pile in the back of the room until it did arrive. I actually never saw my ballot go into the machine. Presumably my ballot counted. But there was a very contentious proposition on the ballot this year, Proposition L, which I opposed - and which is trailing at this count by seven votes. Is there a chance that the poll workers at my precinct screwed up one or more ballots, and that this may have made a difference, despite the fancy-pants new voting machines? I think so!
So the key to any new system is that it be idiot-proof and secure by design, of course, so the poll workers don't accidentally make a mistake that could compromise the election. Given the ICANN experience of lost passwords and so on, I definitely think that we have some work to do on the non-technological side of voting to make sure that any new system works.
Well, if you want to spend all your time trying to get permission to do things in technology, like a developer dealing with the planning commission, vote for this idea. Of course you'll end up with another Permit Raj, and technological innovation will grind to a halt, but the bureucrats won't mind, because their jobs will be secure.
Slashdot Mirror
If we could have a "Bitchslap Utility" to give such users a wake-up call after they run said attachments, that would be damn useful...
Wait a second. She's dead, and she's Jon's source on the pace of cultural change now?
I'm confused.
Sue the fuckers if they do this. They are clearly interfering with your rights. Not to flame the RIAA or anything...
have fewer than 15 people in the office needing a PC. Just a thought.
Speaking of high pitched squeals, I used to have a Mac "exploding" Powerbook 5300; it squealed whenever you charged the battery. Many people didn't notice it, but I sure did! Similar thing.
Of course illumination has an impact - but if there's a hue that is fairly strong, the strength of said hue will outweigh it, like a deep bass or high whistle can be heard over other sounds.
"People will think things match, but I can see they don't."
Does this mean that all of my girlfriends have been tetrachromatic? I often hear this about my clothing...
Every toymaker wants to have the hot toy that people wait in line for. It is much more valuable to get all that publicity, and be anointed as the "one to have," than to make a few extra bucks by selling to everyone who wants one at Xmas. I am convinced that Sony planned this carefully and will have lots of PS2s available come February. Until then, get in line - preferably the one with TV cameras rolling!
Hey HackTivo types - what would it take to create a "30 Sec Skip" feature on Tivo, since that was the only really good feature on Replay (and it was also what the broadcasters squawked most loudly about)? I have no idea but I bet one of y'all might...
If an ethical plaintiff were involved, I'd give this story more credence.
What is Darwin doing about Apple?
More content-id, rights management, copy control stuff. Very interesting but users will reject it. Sorry!
Nothing! And this is a good thing. The world benefits hugely from the expansion of high-skilled jobs to overseas markets; programmers in Bangalore make more money than they might otherwise had, and US consumers benefit from lower costs (and a reduced labor shortage).
The benefits of geographic proximity and familiarity with the home market (not to mention US programmers' generally higher skills) will continue to keep demand high for those on this side of the border. I'm a remote worker of a sort (I live in SF and most of my peers are on the east coast) and I can tell you with certainty it isn't for everyone. Face to face contact still has value.
Okay, I know I've been trolled, but: This is a really terrible way to reduce pollution. By "moving out to the country" (the suburbs), millions of Americans contribute to pollution and environmental damage, mainly by driving longer distances. It's actually much better for the environment to live in the city because you don't drive as much if there's a subway, and higher-density living keeps open space open.
That's ridiculous.
DSL, for example, only works up to about 15,000 feet from the central office (more for IDSL). Do you mean to say that urban users shouldn't benefit from DSL because people 10 miles from the nearest central office wouldn't be able to get it? That is what you are advocating, I think, and the result would be no service for anyone, or very expensive service for those willing to pay those high rates.
Rural areas are necessarily costly to serve. Unless you think it's good social policy for urban users to subsidize those people who live there, in which case something more like the US Universal Service Fund makes sense, I think you'll be stuck paying at least some of those added costs. I for one think this is fair; as a city dweller, I pay many other higher costs (food, parking, rent, etc.) - why should I additionally subsidize someone who lives in an area where these costs are lower, even though certain services (telecom) are more expensive?
Am I the only one who thinks this may be designed to fail? It sounds to me that they are really talking about the "rental" option to satisfy the PHBs and the analysts, who have been talking about this for many years, but they are pricing it in a way that will incent people to go with the standard license. Remember Windows Terminal Server, which was priced much higher than Winframe and really designed to steer people away from the "thin client" architecture? I think this is the same idea.
What does this mean? They can be "copied"? A digital signature, by definition, is attached to a single document. So "copying" it is meaningless/impossible. In contrast a physical signature can be copied and placed on a different document.
Well, I think the question is not: can a signature be copied? (Of course it can, otherwise you can't send it in email, silly.) It's: can a private key be stolen, thus enabling forged signatures? (Yes, it can, and probably more easily as the kiddies figure out that the value of a forged digital signature has gone up.)
[I]t's not clear if a digital sig would ever stand up in court, because you could always claim that your computer was compromised, which is not the kind of thing the court can rule on.
I don't think this is true. After the first few cases like this, our oh-so-techsavvy legislators will probably pass a Uniform Commercial Transactions in the Digital Millennium Signatures Act, which will say that all other laws notwithstanding digisigs are to be treated as binding, whether or not they are provably valid, at least on Joe User if not on corporations. (Let's hope not!)
Just one user's opinion, but I wouldn't choose it if I were the decisionmaker.
The Onion has a very important news update on the election.
the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. They were on strike for over a month!
My story: I used to pay, and expense, roaming charges for business. Now I have national roaming, and though I haven't figured out how to expense a single call, nonetheless my net expense is much less.
both of them.
However: it all depends on the human factor! In my polling place, the machine didn't show up on time - so they had to stack the ballots in a big pile in the back of the room until it did arrive. I actually never saw my ballot go into the machine. Presumably my ballot counted. But there was a very contentious proposition on the ballot this year, Proposition L, which I opposed - and which is trailing at this count by seven votes. Is there a chance that the poll workers at my precinct screwed up one or more ballots, and that this may have made a difference, despite the fancy-pants new voting machines? I think so!
So the key to any new system is that it be idiot-proof and secure by design, of course, so the poll workers don't accidentally make a mistake that could compromise the election. Given the ICANN experience of lost passwords and so on, I definitely think that we have some work to do on the non-technological side of voting to make sure that any new system works.
"Comments are owned by the Poster." He can do whatever the fsck he wants.
Yuck.