As far as I could tell from the limited media coverage and digging through blogs most of the protesters were Vietnamese Americans who either fled the Communist Regime themselves or whose parents did. The rest are Vietnam Vet's.
I've personally spoken with one such refugee who escaped to the Philippines and eventually made it to the US. After the US pulled out, he went home and destroyed all of his documentation proving he worked on the US Base as an aircraft mechanic. He watched his neighbors literally disappear overnight! His house was searched and his family threatened. He moved his wife and kids to his mother in-laws and then he fled the country. It took him many years to save up enough money to have his family smuggled out of the country.
Vietnam is guilty of many Human Rights violations, many more of the Vietnamese died when the US pulled out then were killed in the entire war! The country denied having any American POW's but we all know they did.
I think it's despicable that we would open trade agreements with the country. They failed to build their own economy due to the oppressive nature of Communism. So why help bail them out with trade deals? The same with China... I think it's a mistake, China has shown little results from all the investments we've made. They are actively trying to crack down on the formerly free people in Hong Kong and not to mention Taiwan. Again, why do we give money to Communists?!?! We know their economy will eventually collapse just as it did in Russia.
My first wedding anniversary is coming up in a few weeks as well. I hired my coworker who is a pretty good amateur digital photographer (whose done about 30 weddings so far) with a highend 8 mega-pixel SLR Camera. He took all the main pictures (relatives and friends were taking some themselves) and I brought my PowerBook laptop where he simply downloaded the pictures when his memory cards filled up. This turned out to be rather popular running a slideshow at the reception! People loved seeing the pictures taken from the wedding earlier. I should have setup a projector!
So I had the original RAW images immediately and I burned some DVDs along with some video shots and gave a bunch of them away. I uploaded the photos to Kodak and received prints. I also received a high quality bound photo book too.
I even used an iPod playing a huge list of 80's tunes that the wife and I picked out that looped and played through a PA system. Saved money on the photographer and the DJ!
My photographer buddy has run into the Walmart situation when giving clients a CD of images. He really doesn't care about holding copyright and does not wish to profit on re-prints. He does get paid for his labor but he's not even using film so there's not much up-front cost at all. He does touch up the photos and provide the original untouched RAW images as well.
There is still a place for professional photographers, but many people may not wish to pay for it. Not when you can get real close to the same quality at less then half the price!
Time for the security guys to SMACK some sense into those MS Engineers! Go Man Go! Your system is like Swiss Cheese and you really really need to freaking fix it! This BlueHat event is literally a smackdown to wake the MS engineers and management up to just how bad it really is. It is critical for the MS Engineers to get shaken out of their MS Corporate boots and have their eyes opened to the truth. Seeing you most recent work getting compromised in seconds must have driven some of these guys completely bonkers!
The invited security experts are familiar with all kinds of expliots even at the latest patch release. However, the really smart ones are not working security for a living they are doing International Corporate Espionage where you don't publish what you find, you use it over and over and guard it as secret so you can get paid as you steal IP from one company and sell to another.
Personally, I don't believe that MS will be able to fix Windows unless they go through a complete rewrite, that means beyond Longhorn before they get it right. They can continue to bandaid it or they can start over and design the way OpenBSD designs. Include security regression testing into their milestone workflow. While they are re-doing things they can also fix all the other broken crap that needs fixin!
#1 Problem, you don't have enough RAM! #2 Problem, you don't have enough RAM! #3 Problem, Dude, you dont' have enough RAM!
I've got two PowerBooks and a PowerMac, all three have at least a Gig of RAM and they all run rather fast and reliably.
Office X 2004 runs great! It's better then the latest Windows Office 2003. If it's crashing on you it may be the lack of RAM or some corrupted Office X files.
Always run the latest *PATCHED* version of any software, especially Office X. The reason for the patches is to fix bugs and improve stability!
If you are running Panther, you should have Journaling turned on and periodically running the Repair Permissions and Repair Disk within the Disk Utility.
Also, DON'T BUY CHEAP RAM!!! Apple hardware is notoriously picky about the RAM it uses. Buy something cheap and slightly out of spec and you will have intermittent problems crashing and kernel dumps.
Why would I RTFA, as it's written by Time Magazine who is known to be heavily biased! (of course, I read it...) All media is biased. Whenever I read the New York Times, I need to counter it with other media coverage. Fortunately, I spend the time reviewing alternate view points to find the truth somewhere in between. Unfortunately, the truth is far from the middle. Most of the left's views can be shredded in the arena of ideas rather quickly. The left's views do not hold up to scrutiny. The more the right-wing pushes the left-wings buttons the more bizarre the left becomes. Just look at the so called 'constitution' or 'nuclear option' (take your pick) and as soon as the Republicans threaten to change the Senate rules (happens all the time, btw) to specifically prohibit Fillibusters on approving judges; the Democrats threaten to shutdown the government for the rest of the year. Then when the Republicans claim to have enough votes confirmed to pass the rule change; the Democrats are back peddling and trying to present a compromise! I sincerely hoped the Republicans pass the rule change. If the Democrats do try to shutdown the government, it will be they who pay a political price. It is already against the Senate rules to fillibuster on the approval of judges. There are only a few instances in the Constitution where one can use a fillibuster and the approval of judges is not one of them! Also, the Democrats are not even performing an actual fillibuster in the first place, a true fillibuster is when you keep talking on the Senate floor without stopping to prevent a vote from occuring. As long as you have the floor, you can keep it if you keep talking. It doesn't even matter what you say, as long as you keep doing it. The Democrats declare a fillibuster and then refuse to vote and go home. That's not a fillibuster it's a refusal to do their jobs and it's against the rules!
Those who do not read alternative viewpoints are merely sheep on either the right or left. You can't just come home from work and read only your local newspaper and watch your network news anymore. You are not getting the whole story that way! The media is getting their butt kicked in falling newspaper subscriptions and the networks nightly news ratings are dropping like a rock!
The Internet is quickly becoming the preferred news source. I haven't bought a newspaper in years. Why should I? I can get much more information and see all viewpoints simply by searching Google.
I read a whole lot of books. I've read Karl Marx, but I've also read the founding father's writings as well. I make informed decisions.
I voted for Bush, because when it came right down to it; Kerry was not a viable choice! Kerry's a compulsive liar. He will tell whatever group he's speaking to exactly what they want to hear. (yeah, I know definition of a politician). He changed his position so many times, my head was spinning! I am now glad I didn't vote for Al Gore either, he's become quite the nut case lately and to think he could have been president gives me indigestion! Dean is also a big nut... I would have voted for Lieberman had he been a choice. Having to choose between Lieberman and Bush would have been rather difficult.
Bush stood his ground and did not waver in his message. At least Bush had a message, Kerry had none. Bush is a great leader. What he says, he does and at the same time it makes a lot of sense. I don't agree with everything Bush does, but I agree with most of it.
I have no problem with the administration stripping known supporters of Kerry from a federally funded Telecom foundation. In fact, I would support a change of staff in the CIA and the State Department as well. There are a ton of lifer's in those two organizations who would stop at nothing to stab the administration in the back. The CIA is especially screwed up and I hope that it's restructuring over the next few years fixes the decades old damage.
Certainly you can't say that your Macintosh does this absolutely perfectly every single time in every concievable situation?
Ahhh... Yes, I do say that OS X (Tiger) does switch seamlessly between remembered wireless networks without a single problem Ever! (at least for me and I switch between 5 different wireless networks all the time) It also has improved Locations support. Two clicks and I can switch from DHCP to a static address, etc.
Spotlight works extremely well. Plus it's soooo damn fast! Once you've initially indexed your files the first time... Email searches alone are worth the upgrade! gMail is the only competition. I doubt the Longhorn embedded mini-MS-SQL will be able to truly compete.
The root (no 'pun' intended) cause of the problem is the developers not writing the programs correctly and Microsofts tendency to ensure backwards compatibility.
In an enterprise environment it is not uncommon to be running ancient Win3x software that has been band-aided to run on XP. There are a lot of things that need Admin rights to install and a few that need it to run.
We've been able to get around the admin rights thing by using SMS server and writing advanced wrappers for the installer packages. But this is not easy and smaller shops will have problems.
Just buy an Apple PowerBook or iBook and freaking be done with it! Run OS X if you care more about stuff just 'WORKING'. You can run all of your Open Source software under OS X! Plus you can run all the Apple Software including MS Office! Install the developer tools, install X11 and then go install Fink. You can ssh into your Linux / BSD / Solaris / AIX boxen, run X11 apps remotely, etc. Every *nix user and sysadmin I run into drools over my PowerBook, it's getting to the point where I have to carry a towel with me!
Or if you are a GNU/Open Source Purist, put Linux on the iBook / PowerBook. They are the most supported laptops available for Linux. Most everything works as it should even under Linux! Even Linux Torvalds is running a PowerMac G5 workstation (it was a gift and it blows away most x86 hardware), albeit running Linux and not OS X.
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/ 4.0.1 now supports sleep mode on the Apple laptops w/ATI video cards. Not everything works even on Apple hardware.
This proves that the trouble with outsourcing a call center is with confidential information. Another major problem is pissing off your customers/clients because they can't understand the customer service agents strong accent. I've read several major publications all claiming the above two reasons for not outsourcing their customer service to another country.
There are new laws in the US for privacy. These laws are forcing financial institutions and health insurance companies to better secure their customer/client data. I work in an enterprise environment where we are currently implementing major security changes across all systems just because of the privacy laws. Here's a list of only some of the changes:
1. All users who have access to customer confidential data are completely logged with a full audit log. i.e. you just query a client and only read the data, it's logged. You query a client you shouldn't need to query and a red flag goes up. All transactions are logged and audited. Customer service reps have FULL ACCESS to all client data and transaction history. This need to be protected as much as possible.
2. All users who do not 'need' access to the client data have been removed from access. This includes programmers who once had access to production systems and live customer data. If a production problem occurs, the user has to contact their manager and request a special temporary user ID that is set to expire in 24 hours. This temporary id is issued to the user and reset. When the programmer or engineer is done with the user id, it's returned and reset. If the id is not returned, it's reset automatically within 24 hours or less. These special temp ID's have extra security and logging is more aggressive.
3. All access to client accounts, even access via clients themselves is logged.
4. All call center calls are recorded and archived for long term storage. Clients are told they are on a recorded line three different ways, once the automated voice system tells the user that all calls are recorded, the agent answers the phone and tells the client they are on a recorded line, and three there is a beep now and then to remind the client. Also they are recorded while on hold (just because it's easier then trying to stop recording). I would love to hear what people say when they think they are on hold and no longer being recorded! Call center manager frequently listen in on their service agent calls and review recordings daily.
5. There are departments such as special investigations and some legal departments that end up researching and reviewing logs when necessary. i.e. constantly looking for fraud or assisting the SEC, FBI, or police in an investigation.
Now, you outsource a customer call center to India and you let them access your client data. They need full access just like your local staff did. Trying to secure that data becomes much more difficult then if you are doing it here. Situations like what happened to Citibank are just one possibility. Another one, would be if the Indian Companies network is breached or their servers hijacked? Who really knows, because it's no longer on your network, how do you control the security? Obviously, you can't just host the servers in the US and provide the Indians a secure uplink, the cost is prohibitive and the speed is not great enough. You would have to put the servers in India. Imagine a 1,000 call center reps hitting the servers 24/7 with queries, you can't just pipe that to the US over a leased line!
Outsourcing customer data access to another country opens up major security questions as well as customer relations. I called 411 (information for local telco) and ended up talking to an Indian who couldn't get the name of the restaurant right even though I spelled it for him (Alpha Tango Foxtrot, etc) and kept giving me the wrong number. I gave up and went to the Internet to get the phone number! Try calling Circuit City sometime! I love how they answer the phone with a thick Indian accent but say their name is Chris or Richard! What a hoot, aliases to make them sound American!
I haven't tried the Linux version yet, but I have run both the Windows version and the Mac OS X versions.
Sure, it's a large installation; about 100MB's give or take 10-20MB's for each platform. But who out there seriously has disk space issues nowadays? I mean you can get a 160GB disk for under a $100 bucks! I remember paying several hundred dollars for a hard disk that wasn't even a gig in size! Disk space is cheap.
Sure, it takes a lot of RAM but who out there seriously has memory problems? Aren't most people running 512MB's or even 1GB or 2GB's? RAM is cheap.
I just loaded a 555 page eBook PDF that is encrypted and authorized. I've paged through it and jumped around a bit while I monitored it's memory usage on OS X. Once it settled down after loading and caching pages, it stabilized at less that 1% CPU usage, 7 threads, and memory usage of 48MB's.
Heck, Safari is using more then twice that amount of RAM just to load Slashdot! Bloated, my ass!
Want to talk Bloated? Take a look at Microsoft Word! Just built a document that is 20 pages of plain unformatted text with no pictures, etc. Word is taking more then 9% CPU, and 40MB's or RAM. I even have the spell checker turned off!
But seriously, unless an application hogs the CPU and consumes most of your RAM while it brings your OS to it's knees, forcing it to swap to disk, you can't call it bloated anymore.
Acrobat Reader 7 is a seriously improved version of the application. If you are running 5 or 6, I would highly recommend you upgrade to 7! It's blazingly fast to load and run. Whoever optimized the load time and fixed all the bugs did a freaking great job! I suspect they did something to optimize the loading of plugins as that was what took so long when loading Acrobat 5 and 6. Probably did something similar to XP when it boots, i.e. defers the loading of startup apps, etc.
You can talk about XPDF and other free (open) alternatives but they don't offer the features I need. I have to be able to decrypt purchased documents. i.e. I buy a book and get a discounted eBook to go along with it or just the ebook. I've got hundreds of reference guides that I use with Acrobat. I got tired of lugging 3" thick programming books around with me. Now, they are all stored on a USB Flash memory drive on my keychain or on a laptop. I heard about some school giving iPods to students and placing a bunch of eBooks on the hard disks. I doubt anyone reads the books on the iPod screen, but it makes a great way to store a ton of books.
My recent experience with a near miss can be read here.
Trying to educate automobile drivers does not change the laws of physics. Irregardless of whether or not the driver of the car was at fault, you would still be quite dead or severely injured. As a bicycle or motorcyle rider (either silent or loud) you need to be extremely defensive in your driving. Pedestrians also need to be extremely defensive when crossing streets. Pedestrians may have the right of way, but that's not going to stop them being run over by a multi-ton vehicle moving at speed!
A little common sense and strong instinct for survival will go a long way to saving your bicycle/motorcycling ass!
Also, following the car home and confronting the driver was extremely stupid! What if she decided to 'release the hounds'?!?! Or what if she was psycho? More people get killed by being self-righteous and initiating a confrontation... The most common being road rage.
Re-ignite the browser wars! Freedom to code to real standards! Viva La Revolution!
Here's the thinking, don't ban IE for business customers. Just sniff out MSIE on public sites and redirect to an informational page as to why MSIE is crap. Then give them a FireFox link.
If this starts happening on enough sites, it will snowball into a rather large revolution and it will promote FireFox adoption.
I would love to see this on popular weblogs, sites for downloading WAV's, MP3's, etc., etc.
The average users will simply start using FireFox, the market share will jump quickly and then businesses will begin to follow.
Time to take a stand and stick it to MSIE! I am really fed up with the security problems that lead to viruses, trojans, and spyware!
Make the entertainment side of the Internet FireFox only and literally block out MSIE! It's useless to try to appease businesses, but if their users start loading FireFox and use it, eventually, they will need to adapt themselves.
1. Employee should not have brought GPL code into this companies IP scope knowing full well what their written IP policy stated.
2. Company should not try to hijack GPL'd code.
3. Employee should not have signed such a ridiculous IP contract in the first place. I have no problem with 'normal' IP agreements but this is just too much! Don't care how desperate he is for a job... I'd rather come home smelling of hamburger grease and french fries then be bound by such an overly oppresive IP agreement!
Be prepared to quit your job. Pursue other recommendations mentioned by other/.'rs such as contacting an attorney and notifying the GPL violations site, FSF, and the individual software authors.
Looks like they landed a similar deal with Comcast that they landed with DirecTV.
Sure there are rumors DirecTV may drop TiVo but I seriously doubt it. Anyone who has used TiVo will not be happy with the competition's solution especially if it's a horrible home brewed DVR/PVR solution from the cable provider.
Of course, I assume there will be no lifetime memberships with TiVo and you will have to rent the box through Comcast...
Comcast's DVR is built into the cable box. So this means TiVo will probably have support for On Demand recording and potentially HD recording eventually as well as greatly improving the crap TV Guide on screen guide. Then toss in the TiVo home network media options, etc. Pretty cool!
We outsourced to IBM and they are already dealing with China directly. They were not waiting for approval, they were already in full swing. When the Chinese New Year struck we had to wait for hundreds of IBM hardware orders to ship while the Chinese factories simply shutdown. Thanks to 'Just In Time', IBM didn't have any in stock in the USA and had to wait for the Chinese shipment.
All of the shipments still go through customs. I ordered an Apple PowerBook online to get the cheaper model and upgrade it to the backlit keyboard. I had to wait about 3 extra days due to customs delays. Not fun, watching FexEx package tracking simply stall!
China has been throwing a hell of a lot of money into their military machine lately. We are talking about a hell of a lot of overkill! Certainly much more then is needed for mere self-defense. China has been threatening Taiwan more aggressively as well. China is still a Communist country and as such cannot be trusted. These are the same people who killed all those student protesters with tanks! They have sophisticated submarines an enormous army and nuclear warheads.
China is fighting to keep Hong Kong and Taiwan under control because they are the technological centers of China. They see the potential of capitalism in regards to the economy but they still don't trust diplomacy. Russia is similar. There are a whole lot of old communists that just don't 'Get It'.
China has also got it's sights set on the Middle East and Africa. They are going to need natural resources like oil, copper, etc. China is not a major threat at the moment, but that can quickly change in a short decade.
"Try a week without opening the command line?" Yeah you can do that on OS X! But if you like the raw power of a command line under Solaris/Linux then you are gonna love using the command line in OS X.
There is even an app for OS X called QuickSilver http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/ - It's hard to explain but you can press a hotkey to activate it CTRL+SPACE and type a document then OW for open with then the App and WHAM! it loads. It works with an automatic search that's like filename completion but without the need to press TAB. It's much more then a launcher app. It's the best merger of command line with GUI that I've ever seen.
OS X tends to stay out of my way as much as OS/2 did. Yeah, I've run OS/2 for quite some time. OS X is better in my opinion. Go ahead, buy a Mac-mini and try it out. Just give it enough RAM you will need at least 512MB's of RAM, otherwise you will be swapping frequently to disk. I don't even know why Apple ships machines with 256MB's...
One of the riders on this bill will allow convicted Felons to vote!
This will definitely get vetoed for sure... No way in hell would I support a convicted felon the right to vote. Like it or not Bush will veto this bill.
Changing passwords frequently and forcing users to choose new passwords as well having way too many passwords. I'm up to about 30 for the corporate network. Some I only use once in a while and they are generally expired when I do.
Come up with a tool to help users choose a quality password and have them change it less frequently. OS X has a password strength indicator which is accessible from the change keychain password dialog box. Click the little i button next to the ? button. It will measure the quality of your password.
We are working on SSO - Single Sign On because the users swamped the outsourced help desk with thousands of extra calls every month due to passwords getting locked out. Most users have an average of 12-20 passwords with admins having many more.
SSO should reduce the number of passwords to 4-5. We will also be implementing something like an RSA hardware key at the same time, this gives you two distinct checks.
Personally, I like the idea of a USB based device that works like a smartcard. Plug it in and type a high quality pass-phrase and then you can access everything and never type another password. Time it out with the screensaver. Auto-lock everything if you unplug the USB device.
If the USB key is lost, replace it and invalidate the keys that were on it. Of course, this sucks if the device is lost and you are traveling.
IBM's running an ad with a biometric scanner built into their ThinkPad's. Now that's an idea, the user can't lose their USB key or RSA token that way, just the whole laptop!
Last few times I've witnessed this..
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Google Fires Blogger?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Last few times I've witnessed someone getting fired that quickly, they did something very very very wrong or extremely stupid.
A few examples:
1. Getting caught rifling through a coworkers desk without their permission.
2. Showing up late 5 times in 5 days and were given 2 verbal warnings and 1 written (while being on probation to boot).
3. Failing a drug test.
4. Lying on your resume, claiming a degree you did not have or employement record you did not have.
5. Sexually harassing the unit secretary.
6. Getting arrested and not showing up for work for several days because no one would bail your worthless ass out of jail nor call on your behalf.
#7 should be blogging about your new companies internal policies and procedures, especially mentioning a 'signing bonus' and 'relocation compensation' benefits. Now every nimrod applying to Google will expect these 'optional' and 'discretionary' benefits.
#8 doing something else completely against company policy which you would have known if you weren't napping in the 'boring 3 hour orientation'.
What I want to know is why only 18 months at Microsoft? Hmmm... Get fired from there too? What about that IBM internship? How come he didn't get a job at big blue?
I would guess at #4, they probably turned up something in a background check. These things take time to research. Google wants the best of the best employee's they probably spare no expense in researching the backgrounds of all new hires. Research of this sort takes time, the fact that it may have happened in only a few weeks, is a credit to the company.
I'm running OmniDictionary which is the same exact thing as the NeXTStep version except it goes over the Internet and using the DICT service, hits more then just Webster and even includes a service menu item.
Why do we keep doing this? I mean, why do we start these flame wars such as vim v.s. emacs or QWERTY v.s. DVORAK or Python v.s. Perl v.s. Ruby?
We all know that these arguments are not winnable in any way shape or form. Basically, the fights started many years ago and have yet to define a winner.
GNU Free Software and the Open Source movement are all about choice! There is little need to have market leaders like in the past with flame wars over Word Perfect v.s. Microsoft Word. The whole idea of starting flame wars in the computer field was to promote 'mind share'. The concept that when most people think of a word processor it will point to your product instead of the competition. i.e. Microsoft did not have 'mind share' with Word. When someone thought word processor they thought Word Perfect (at the time frame of the MS vs WP battle). Hence the naming of Word, Microsoft Word. It increased the mind share to associate 'Word' with Microsoft rather then the competitor's Word Perfect. In fact, some people didn't know the difference.
The battle for a text editor or programming language or keyboard layout is not that much different. The thinking seems to be that if one can mention their chosen method frequently enough then mind share will follow. Why must there be evangelical followers who attempt to convert others? I mean, it's a freaking text editor (use what works for you!).
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Personal Opinion on QWERTY vs. DVORAK ---------
QWERTY is by far the current standard in keyboard layout. Most computer users cannot touch-type but those who do mostly type using the QWERTY layout. Now, I don't care if DVORAK makes you more efficient or reduces RSI, etc. It will drive people bananas to try to re-train their fingers to handle touch typing DVORAK.
Want to use DVORAK? That's your problem, society has chosen QWERTY. You still have choice, change the layout on your operating system and pop the key-caps to reposition to DVORAK. However, if you are at work and you don't personally own the keyboard, then you should buy your own keyboard and then keep your original one for when Tech Support shows up at your desk. Nothing is more frustrating to a QWERTY touch typist then to start typing QWERTY and get DVORAK characters. The first time I had this happen (and it's only happened twice in 10 years) I had no idea what was wrong. If you do want to use DVORAK at work, buy your own keyboard, change the key-caps so it's obviously DVORAK and keep your original keyboard around for when someone else want's to use the computer. Even better, tape a note to the keyboard denoting it's DVORAK or use yellow keycaps for the DVORAK keys...
This is why DVORAK will never take over from QWERTY! The argument is not worth the effort. It's like suddenly switching which side of the road you drive on! People would freak out. This is why HDTV hasn't taken over yet. People would have to throw out millions of televisions and upgrade, not gonna happen overnight.
In order for any technology to take over for an earlier yet standard technology it has to be on the order of magnitude at least better then twice as good as the standard. Otherwise, it's not worth the tremendous effort to change. Unless DVORAK makes me more then twice as fast as I can type now, it's not worth it. The studies out are flawed as flawed as political polling. A test just like a poll can be skewed to any outcome desired.
I highly doubt that the Secret Service authorized one of their agents to use a SideKick for 'sensitive' data. It is most likely his own personal device and the ID10T used it to transfer 'sensitive' information over an unprotected network.
Also the hacker violated the T-Mobile servers so of course he could access any of their customer data, even the pictures they take with their T-Mobile phones or Sidekicks.
Other SS agents who were tracking the hacker stumbled across their fellow agents documents being published on IRC, etc.
So I would not be surprised if this SS agent is 'disciplined' by his superiors for using the SideKick for goverment data transmission.
Just because a device is convienent and easy to use doesn't mean there is not a good reason to avoid it's usage. BlackBerries are more secure but nothing is perfect. Heck anything public wireless should scare the heck out of most IT managers at the FBI, CIA, NSA, SS, etc.
I do remember something about Blackberry working with the government on a more secure custom system. The politicians and government officials really want a secure wireless email and SMS platform.
1. A PVR that will grab your shows and is useful as an appliance for day2day usage. Include a DVD burner for mom and dad to archive their own stuff without using a computer and network. Include HD abilities.
2. A way to transfer the recorded data to a server in a format that I can use and convert. Preferably, without using TiVo's proprietary software. This will probably be sniffed and hacked a few months after TiVoToGo is available to many users.
3. Some way to organize all that video onto a Serial ATA RAID SAN where I can archive a ton of data. Have the ability to burn DVD's or convert to DiVX, etc. Edit the content to strip commercials, etc. Or more likely a TiVo box with 4-5 hot swap drive bays on the front.
4. Support for Linux, BSD, and OS X...
5. Bypass cable content providers by using BitTorrent built into a TiVo! Just do the same thing a cable company does but instead of needing a cable infrastructure or Satellites stream it over the Internet using BitTorrent as the transfer mechanism and an XML TiVo program guide. Imagine your TiVo uploading bits and pieces of your recorded shows to those people who didn't record it or watch it live. (increase the buffer on live TV from 30min upto 2 hours and store it until it's overwritten by an actual recorded show or when space is low - BitTorrent upload it's bits to other TiVo users) Whatever's popular will stream over the Internet at faster and faster speeds). Increase the standard disk space on the TiVo with a couple of those new 500GB hard disks. Encourage people to not delete shows on their TiVo as it will help the community to share the data via BitTorrent.
This whole BitTorrent concept is about to peak, there are VC companies just looking for the right company to back with an Internet delivery mechanism. TiVo could blow away the competition and probably get sued but it's coming. I would pay TiVo for television content if they can do it effectively.
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As far as I could tell from the limited media coverage and digging through blogs most of the protesters were Vietnamese Americans who either fled the Communist Regime themselves or whose parents did. The rest are Vietnam Vet's.
I've personally spoken with one such refugee who escaped to the Philippines and eventually made it to the US. After the US pulled out, he went home and destroyed all of his documentation proving he worked on the US Base as an aircraft mechanic. He watched his neighbors literally disappear overnight! His house was searched and his family threatened. He moved his wife and kids to his mother in-laws and then he fled the country. It took him many years to save up enough money to have his family smuggled out of the country.
Vietnam is guilty of many Human Rights violations, many more of the Vietnamese died when the US pulled out then were killed in the entire war! The country denied having any American POW's but we all know they did.
I think it's despicable that we would open trade agreements with the country. They failed to build their own economy due to the oppressive nature of Communism. So why help bail them out with trade deals? The same with China... I think it's a mistake, China has shown little results from all the investments we've made. They are actively trying to crack down on the formerly free people in Hong Kong and not to mention Taiwan. Again, why do we give money to Communists?!?! We know their economy will eventually collapse just as it did in Russia.
My first wedding anniversary is coming up in a few weeks as well. I hired my coworker who is a pretty good amateur digital photographer (whose done about 30 weddings so far) with a highend 8 mega-pixel SLR Camera. He took all the main pictures (relatives and friends were taking some themselves) and I brought my PowerBook laptop where he simply downloaded the pictures when his memory cards filled up. This turned out to be rather popular running a slideshow at the reception! People loved seeing the pictures taken from the wedding earlier. I should have setup a projector!
So I had the original RAW images immediately and I burned some DVDs along with some video shots and gave a bunch of them away. I uploaded the photos to Kodak and received prints. I also received a high quality bound photo book too.
I even used an iPod playing a huge list of 80's tunes that the wife and I picked out that looped and played through a PA system. Saved money on the photographer and the DJ!
My photographer buddy has run into the Walmart situation when giving clients a CD of images. He really doesn't care about holding copyright and does not wish to profit on re-prints. He does get paid for his labor but he's not even using film so there's not much up-front cost at all. He does touch up the photos and provide the original untouched RAW images as well.
There is still a place for professional photographers, but many people may not wish to pay for it. Not when you can get real close to the same quality at less then half the price!
Time for the security guys to SMACK some sense into those MS Engineers! Go Man Go! Your system is like Swiss Cheese and you really really need to freaking fix it! This BlueHat event is literally a smackdown to wake the MS engineers and management up to just how bad it really is. It is critical for the MS Engineers to get shaken out of their MS Corporate boots and have their eyes opened to the truth. Seeing you most recent work getting compromised in seconds must have driven some of these guys completely bonkers!
The invited security experts are familiar with all kinds of expliots even at the latest patch release. However, the really smart ones are not working security for a living they are doing International Corporate Espionage where you don't publish what you find, you use it over and over and guard it as secret so you can get paid as you steal IP from one company and sell to another.
Personally, I don't believe that MS will be able to fix Windows unless they go through a complete rewrite, that means beyond Longhorn before they get it right. They can continue to bandaid it or they can start over and design the way OpenBSD designs. Include security regression testing into their milestone workflow. While they are re-doing things they can also fix all the other broken crap that needs fixin!
#1 Problem, you don't have enough RAM!
#2 Problem, you don't have enough RAM!
#3 Problem, Dude, you dont' have enough RAM!
I've got two PowerBooks and a PowerMac, all three have at least a Gig of RAM and they all run rather fast and reliably.
Office X 2004 runs great! It's better then the latest Windows Office 2003. If it's crashing on you it may be the lack of RAM or some corrupted Office X files.
Always run the latest *PATCHED* version of any software, especially Office X. The reason for the patches is to fix bugs and improve stability!
If you are running Panther, you should have Journaling turned on and periodically running the Repair Permissions and Repair Disk within the Disk Utility.
Also, DON'T BUY CHEAP RAM!!! Apple hardware is notoriously picky about the RAM it uses. Buy something cheap and slightly out of spec and you will have intermittent problems crashing and kernel dumps.
I would recommend a quality RAM supplier like Crucial Memory - http://crucial.com/ http://crucial.com/mac/index.asp -- Hey, they even have an Apple page just for us!
I've been buying RAM from Crucial for years and years, never ever had a problem with their RAM.
Why would I RTFA, as it's written by Time Magazine who is known to be heavily biased! (of course, I read it...) All media is biased. Whenever I read the New York Times, I need to counter it with other media coverage. Fortunately, I spend the time reviewing alternate view points to find the truth somewhere in between. Unfortunately, the truth is far from the middle. Most of the left's views can be shredded in the arena of ideas rather quickly. The left's views do not hold up to scrutiny. The more the right-wing pushes the left-wings buttons the more bizarre the left becomes. Just look at the so called 'constitution' or 'nuclear option' (take your pick) and as soon as the Republicans threaten to change the Senate rules (happens all the time, btw) to specifically prohibit Fillibusters on approving judges; the Democrats threaten to shutdown the government for the rest of the year. Then when the Republicans claim to have enough votes confirmed to pass the rule change; the Democrats are back peddling and trying to present a compromise! I sincerely hoped the Republicans pass the rule change. If the Democrats do try to shutdown the government, it will be they who pay a political price. It is already against the Senate rules to fillibuster on the approval of judges. There are only a few instances in the Constitution where one can use a fillibuster and the approval of judges is not one of them! Also, the Democrats are not even performing an actual fillibuster in the first place, a true fillibuster is when you keep talking on the Senate floor without stopping to prevent a vote from occuring. As long as you have the floor, you can keep it if you keep talking. It doesn't even matter what you say, as long as you keep doing it. The Democrats declare a fillibuster and then refuse to vote and go home. That's not a fillibuster it's a refusal to do their jobs and it's against the rules!
Those who do not read alternative viewpoints are merely sheep on either the right or left. You can't just come home from work and read only your local newspaper and watch your network news anymore. You are not getting the whole story that way! The media is getting their butt kicked in falling newspaper subscriptions and the networks nightly news ratings are dropping like a rock!
The Internet is quickly becoming the preferred news source. I haven't bought a newspaper in years. Why should I? I can get much more information and see all viewpoints simply by searching Google.
I read a whole lot of books. I've read Karl Marx, but I've also read the founding father's writings as well. I make informed decisions.
I voted for Bush, because when it came right down to it; Kerry was not a viable choice! Kerry's a compulsive liar. He will tell whatever group he's speaking to exactly what they want to hear. (yeah, I know definition of a politician). He changed his position so many times, my head was spinning! I am now glad I didn't vote for Al Gore either, he's become quite the nut case lately and to think he could have been president gives me indigestion! Dean is also a big nut... I would have voted for Lieberman had he been a choice. Having to choose between Lieberman and Bush would have been rather difficult.
Bush stood his ground and did not waver in his message. At least Bush had a message, Kerry had none. Bush is a great leader. What he says, he does and at the same time it makes a lot of sense. I don't agree with everything Bush does, but I agree with most of it.
I have no problem with the administration stripping known supporters of Kerry from a federally funded Telecom foundation. In fact, I would support a change of staff in the CIA and the State Department as well. There are a ton of lifer's in those two organizations who would stop at nothing to stab the administration in the back. The CIA is especially screwed up and I hope that it's restructuring over the next few years fixes the decades old damage.
Certainly you can't say that your Macintosh does this absolutely perfectly every single time in every concievable situation?
Ahhh... Yes, I do say that OS X (Tiger) does switch seamlessly between remembered wireless networks without a single problem Ever! (at least for me and I switch between 5 different wireless networks all the time) It also has improved Locations support. Two clicks and I can switch from DHCP to a static address, etc.
Spotlight works extremely well. Plus it's soooo damn fast! Once you've initially indexed your files the first time... Email searches alone are worth the upgrade! gMail is the only competition. I doubt the Longhorn embedded mini-MS-SQL will be able to truly compete.
The root (no 'pun' intended) cause of the problem is the developers not writing the programs correctly and Microsofts tendency to ensure backwards compatibility.
In an enterprise environment it is not uncommon to be running ancient Win3x software that has been band-aided to run on XP. There are a lot of things that need Admin rights to install and a few that need it to run.
We've been able to get around the admin rights thing by using SMS server and writing advanced wrappers for the installer packages. But this is not easy and smaller shops will have problems.
Just buy an Apple PowerBook or iBook and freaking be done with it! Run OS X if you care more about stuff just 'WORKING'. You can run all of your Open Source software under OS X! Plus you can run all the Apple Software including MS Office! Install the developer tools, install X11 and then go install Fink. You can ssh into your Linux / BSD / Solaris / AIX boxen, run X11 apps remotely, etc. Every *nix user and sysadmin I run into drools over my PowerBook, it's getting to the point where I have to carry a towel with me!
Or if you are a GNU/Open Source Purist, put Linux on the iBook / PowerBook. They are the most supported laptops available for Linux. Most everything works as it should even under Linux! Even Linux Torvalds is running a PowerMac G5 workstation (it was a gift and it blows away most x86 hardware), albeit running Linux and not OS X.
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/ 4.0.1 now supports sleep mode on the Apple laptops w/ATI video cards. Not everything works even on Apple hardware.
This proves that the trouble with outsourcing a call center is with confidential information. Another major problem is pissing off your customers/clients because they can't understand the customer service agents strong accent. I've read several major publications all claiming the above two reasons for not outsourcing their customer service to another country.
There are new laws in the US for privacy. These laws are forcing financial institutions and health insurance companies to better secure their customer/client data. I work in an enterprise environment where we are currently implementing major security changes across all systems just because of the privacy laws. Here's a list of only some of the changes:
1. All users who have access to customer confidential data are completely logged with a full audit log. i.e. you just query a client and only read the data, it's logged. You query a client you shouldn't need to query and a red flag goes up. All transactions are logged and audited. Customer service reps have FULL ACCESS to all client data and transaction history. This need to be protected as much as possible.
2. All users who do not 'need' access to the client data have been removed from access. This includes programmers who once had access to production systems and live customer data. If a production problem occurs, the user has to contact their manager and request a special temporary user ID that is set to expire in 24 hours. This temporary id is issued to the user and reset. When the programmer or engineer is done with the user id, it's returned and reset. If the id is not returned, it's reset automatically within 24 hours or less. These special temp ID's have extra security and logging is more aggressive.
3. All access to client accounts, even access via clients themselves is logged.
4. All call center calls are recorded and archived for long term storage. Clients are told they are on a recorded line three different ways, once the automated voice system tells the user that all calls are recorded, the agent answers the phone and tells the client they are on a recorded line, and three there is a beep now and then to remind the client. Also they are recorded while on hold (just because it's easier then trying to stop recording). I would love to hear what people say when they think they are on hold and no longer being recorded! Call center manager frequently listen in on their service agent calls and review recordings daily.
5. There are departments such as special investigations and some legal departments that end up researching and reviewing logs when necessary. i.e. constantly looking for fraud or assisting the SEC, FBI, or police in an investigation.
Now, you outsource a customer call center to India and you let them access your client data. They need full access just like your local staff did. Trying to secure that data becomes much more difficult then if you are doing it here. Situations like what happened to Citibank are just one possibility. Another one, would be if the Indian Companies network is breached or their servers hijacked? Who really knows, because it's no longer on your network, how do you control the security? Obviously, you can't just host the servers in the US and provide the Indians a secure uplink, the cost is prohibitive and the speed is not great enough. You would have to put the servers in India. Imagine a 1,000 call center reps hitting the servers 24/7 with queries, you can't just pipe that to the US over a leased line!
Outsourcing customer data access to another country opens up major security questions as well as customer relations. I called 411 (information for local telco) and ended up talking to an Indian who couldn't get the name of the restaurant right even though I spelled it for him (Alpha Tango Foxtrot, etc) and kept giving me the wrong number. I gave up and went to the Internet to get the phone number! Try calling Circuit City sometime! I love how they answer the phone with a thick Indian accent but say their name is Chris or Richard! What a hoot, aliases to make them sound American!
It's not bloated!
I haven't tried the Linux version yet, but I have run both the Windows version and the Mac OS X versions.
Sure, it's a large installation; about 100MB's give or take 10-20MB's for each platform. But who out there seriously has disk space issues nowadays? I mean you can get a 160GB disk for under a $100 bucks! I remember paying several hundred dollars for a hard disk that wasn't even a gig in size! Disk space is cheap.
Sure, it takes a lot of RAM but who out there seriously has memory problems? Aren't most people running 512MB's or even 1GB or 2GB's? RAM is cheap.
I just loaded a 555 page eBook PDF that is encrypted and authorized. I've paged through it and jumped around a bit while I monitored it's memory usage on OS X. Once it settled down after loading and caching pages, it stabilized at less that 1% CPU usage, 7 threads, and memory usage of 48MB's.
Heck, Safari is using more then twice that amount of RAM just to load Slashdot! Bloated, my ass!
Want to talk Bloated? Take a look at Microsoft Word! Just built a document that is 20 pages of plain unformatted text with no pictures, etc. Word is taking more then 9% CPU, and 40MB's or RAM. I even have the spell checker turned off!
But seriously, unless an application hogs the CPU and consumes most of your RAM while it brings your OS to it's knees, forcing it to swap to disk, you can't call it bloated anymore.
Acrobat Reader 7 is a seriously improved version of the application. If you are running 5 or 6, I would highly recommend you upgrade to 7! It's blazingly fast to load and run. Whoever optimized the load time and fixed all the bugs did a freaking great job! I suspect they did something to optimize the loading of plugins as that was what took so long when loading Acrobat 5 and 6. Probably did something similar to XP when it boots, i.e. defers the loading of startup apps, etc.
You can talk about XPDF and other free (open) alternatives but they don't offer the features I need. I have to be able to decrypt purchased documents. i.e. I buy a book and get a discounted eBook to go along with it or just the ebook. I've got hundreds of reference guides that I use with Acrobat. I got tired of lugging 3" thick programming books around with me. Now, they are all stored on a USB Flash memory drive on my keychain or on a laptop. I heard about some school giving iPods to students and placing a bunch of eBooks on the hard disks. I doubt anyone reads the books on the iPod screen, but it makes a great way to store a ton of books.
ACID Flashback!!!
My recent experience with a near miss can be read here.
Trying to educate automobile drivers does not change the laws of physics. Irregardless of whether or not the driver of the car was at fault, you would still be quite dead or severely injured. As a bicycle or motorcyle rider (either silent or loud) you need to be extremely defensive in your driving. Pedestrians also need to be extremely defensive when crossing streets. Pedestrians may have the right of way, but that's not going to stop them being run over by a multi-ton vehicle moving at speed!
A little common sense and strong instinct for survival will go a long way to saving your bicycle/motorcycling ass!
Also, following the car home and confronting the driver was extremely stupid! What if she decided to 'release the hounds'?!?! Or what if she was psycho? More people get killed by being self-righteous and initiating a confrontation... The most common being road rage.
Re-ignite the browser wars! Freedom to code to real standards! Viva La Revolution!
Here's the thinking, don't ban IE for business customers. Just sniff out MSIE on public sites and redirect to an informational page as to why MSIE is crap. Then give them a FireFox link.
If this starts happening on enough sites, it will snowball into a rather large revolution and it will promote FireFox adoption.
I would love to see this on popular weblogs, sites for downloading WAV's, MP3's, etc., etc.
The average users will simply start using FireFox, the market share will jump quickly and then businesses will begin to follow.
Time to take a stand and stick it to MSIE! I am really fed up with the security problems that lead to viruses, trojans, and spyware!
Make the entertainment side of the Internet FireFox only and literally block out MSIE! It's useless to try to appease businesses, but if their users start loading FireFox and use it, eventually, they will need to adapt themselves.
Satisfaction = Guido + Baseball_Bat * Company_Owners_Kneecaps
/.'rs such as contacting an attorney and notifying the GPL violations site, FSF, and the individual software authors.
Two things:
1. Employee should not have brought GPL code into this companies IP scope knowing full well what their written IP policy stated.
2. Company should not try to hijack GPL'd code.
3. Employee should not have signed such a ridiculous IP contract in the first place. I have no problem with 'normal' IP agreements but this is just too much! Don't care how desperate he is for a job... I'd rather come home smelling of hamburger grease and french fries then be bound by such an overly oppresive IP agreement!
Be prepared to quit your job. Pursue other recommendations mentioned by other
I hope you learned something!
Looks like they landed a similar deal with Comcast that they landed with DirecTV.
Sure there are rumors DirecTV may drop TiVo but I seriously doubt it. Anyone who has used TiVo will not be happy with the competition's solution especially if it's a horrible home brewed DVR/PVR solution from the cable provider.
Of course, I assume there will be no lifetime memberships with TiVo and you will have to rent the box through Comcast...
Comcast's DVR is built into the cable box. So this means TiVo will probably have support for On Demand recording and potentially HD recording eventually as well as greatly improving the crap TV Guide on screen guide. Then toss in the TiVo home network media options, etc. Pretty cool!
We outsourced to IBM and they are already dealing with China directly. They were not waiting for approval, they were already in full swing. When the Chinese New Year struck we had to wait for hundreds of IBM hardware orders to ship while the Chinese factories simply shutdown. Thanks to 'Just In Time', IBM didn't have any in stock in the USA and had to wait for the Chinese shipment.
All of the shipments still go through customs. I ordered an Apple PowerBook online to get the cheaper model and upgrade it to the backlit keyboard. I had to wait about 3 extra days due to customs delays. Not fun, watching FexEx package tracking simply stall!
China has been throwing a hell of a lot of money into their military machine lately. We are talking about a hell of a lot of overkill! Certainly much more then is needed for mere self-defense. China has been threatening Taiwan more aggressively as well. China is still a Communist country and as such cannot be trusted. These are the same people who killed all those student protesters with tanks! They have sophisticated submarines an enormous army and nuclear warheads.
China is fighting to keep Hong Kong and Taiwan under control because they are the technological centers of China. They see the potential of capitalism in regards to the economy but they still don't trust diplomacy. Russia is similar. There are a whole lot of old communists that just don't 'Get It'.
China has also got it's sights set on the Middle East and Africa. They are going to need natural resources like oil, copper, etc. China is not a major threat at the moment, but that can quickly change in a short decade.
"Try a week without opening the command line?" Yeah you can do that on OS X! But if you like the raw power of a command line under Solaris/Linux then you are gonna love using the command line in OS X.
There is even an app for OS X called QuickSilver http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/ - It's hard to explain but you can press a hotkey to activate it CTRL+SPACE and type a document then OW for open with then the App and WHAM! it loads. It works with an automatic search that's like filename completion but without the need to press TAB. It's much more then a launcher app. It's the best merger of command line with GUI that I've ever seen.
OS X tends to stay out of my way as much as OS/2 did. Yeah, I've run OS/2 for quite some time. OS X is better in my opinion. Go ahead, buy a Mac-mini and try it out. Just give it enough RAM you will need at least 512MB's of RAM, otherwise you will be swapping frequently to disk. I don't even know why Apple ships machines with 256MB's...
One of the riders on this bill will allow convicted Felons to vote!
This will definitely get vetoed for sure... No way in hell would I support a convicted felon the right to vote. Like it or not Bush will veto this bill.
http://instiki.org/
Changing passwords frequently and forcing users to choose new passwords as well having way too many passwords. I'm up to about 30 for the corporate network. Some I only use once in a while and they are generally expired when I do.
Come up with a tool to help users choose a quality password and have them change it less frequently. OS X has a password strength indicator which is accessible from the change keychain password dialog box. Click the little i button next to the ? button. It will measure the quality of your password.
We are working on SSO - Single Sign On because the users swamped the outsourced help desk with thousands of extra calls every month due to passwords getting locked out. Most users have an average of 12-20 passwords with admins having many more.
SSO should reduce the number of passwords to 4-5. We will also be implementing something like an RSA hardware key at the same time, this gives you two distinct checks.
Personally, I like the idea of a USB based device that works like a smartcard. Plug it in and type a high quality pass-phrase and then you can access everything and never type another password. Time it out with the screensaver. Auto-lock everything if you unplug the USB device.
If the USB key is lost, replace it and invalidate the keys that were on it. Of course, this sucks if the device is lost and you are traveling.
IBM's running an ad with a biometric scanner built into their ThinkPad's. Now that's an idea, the user can't lose their USB key or RSA token that way, just the whole laptop!
Last few times I've witnessed someone getting fired that quickly, they did something very very very wrong or extremely stupid.
A few examples:
1. Getting caught rifling through a coworkers desk without their permission.
2. Showing up late 5 times in 5 days and were given 2 verbal warnings and 1 written (while being on probation to boot).
3. Failing a drug test.
4. Lying on your resume, claiming a degree you did not have or employement record you did not have.
5. Sexually harassing the unit secretary.
6. Getting arrested and not showing up for work for several days because no one would bail your worthless ass out of jail nor call on your behalf.
#7 should be blogging about your new companies internal policies and procedures, especially mentioning a 'signing bonus' and 'relocation compensation' benefits. Now every nimrod applying to Google will expect these 'optional' and 'discretionary' benefits.
#8 doing something else completely against company policy which you would have known if you weren't napping in the 'boring 3 hour orientation'.
What I want to know is why only 18 months at Microsoft? Hmmm... Get fired from there too? What about that IBM internship? How come he didn't get a job at big blue?
I would guess at #4, they probably turned up something in a background check. These things take time to research. Google wants the best of the best employee's they probably spare no expense in researching the backgrounds of all new hires. Research of this sort takes time, the fact that it may have happened in only a few weeks, is a credit to the company.
I'm running OmniDictionary which is the same exact thing as the NeXTStep version except it goes over the Internet and using the DICT service, hits more then just Webster and even includes a service menu item.
Works great... No Thesaurus though...
Why do we keep doing this? I mean, why do we start these flame wars such as vim v.s. emacs or QWERTY v.s. DVORAK or Python v.s. Perl v.s. Ruby?
We all know that these arguments are not winnable in any way shape or form. Basically, the fights started many years ago and have yet to define a winner.
GNU Free Software and the Open Source movement are all about choice! There is little need to have market leaders like in the past with flame wars over Word Perfect v.s. Microsoft Word. The whole idea of starting flame wars in the computer field was to promote 'mind share'. The concept that when most people think of a word processor it will point to your product instead of the competition. i.e. Microsoft did not have 'mind share' with Word. When someone thought word processor they thought Word Perfect (at the time frame of the MS vs WP battle). Hence the naming of Word, Microsoft Word. It increased the mind share to associate 'Word' with Microsoft rather then the competitor's Word Perfect. In fact, some people didn't know the difference.
The battle for a text editor or programming language or keyboard layout is not that much different. The thinking seems to be that if one can mention their chosen method frequently enough then mind share will follow. Why must there be evangelical followers who attempt to convert others? I mean, it's a freaking text editor (use what works for you!).
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Personal Opinion on QWERTY vs. DVORAK
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QWERTY is by far the current standard in keyboard layout. Most computer users cannot touch-type but those who do mostly type using the QWERTY layout. Now, I don't care if DVORAK makes you more efficient or reduces RSI, etc. It will drive people bananas to try to re-train their fingers to handle touch typing DVORAK.
Want to use DVORAK? That's your problem, society has chosen QWERTY. You still have choice, change the layout on your operating system and pop the key-caps to reposition to DVORAK. However, if you are at work and you don't personally own the keyboard, then you should buy your own keyboard and then keep your original one for when Tech Support shows up at your desk. Nothing is more frustrating to a QWERTY touch typist then to start typing QWERTY and get DVORAK characters. The first time I had this happen (and it's only happened twice in 10 years) I had no idea what was wrong. If you do want to use DVORAK at work, buy your own keyboard, change the key-caps so it's obviously DVORAK and keep your original keyboard around for when someone else want's to use the computer. Even better, tape a note to the keyboard denoting it's DVORAK or use yellow keycaps for the DVORAK keys...
This is why DVORAK will never take over from QWERTY! The argument is not worth the effort. It's like suddenly switching which side of the road you drive on! People would freak out. This is why HDTV hasn't taken over yet. People would have to throw out millions of televisions and upgrade, not gonna happen overnight.
In order for any technology to take over for an earlier yet standard technology it has to be on the order of magnitude at least better then twice as good as the standard. Otherwise, it's not worth the tremendous effort to change. Unless DVORAK makes me more then twice as fast as I can type now, it's not worth it. The studies out are flawed as flawed as political polling. A test just like a poll can be skewed to any outcome desired.
I highly doubt that the Secret Service authorized one of their agents to use a SideKick for 'sensitive' data. It is most likely his own personal device and the ID10T used it to transfer 'sensitive' information over an unprotected network.
Also the hacker violated the T-Mobile servers so of course he could access any of their customer data, even the pictures they take with their T-Mobile phones or Sidekicks.
Other SS agents who were tracking the hacker stumbled across their fellow agents documents being published on IRC, etc.
So I would not be surprised if this SS agent is 'disciplined' by his superiors for using the SideKick for goverment data transmission.
Just because a device is convienent and easy to use doesn't mean there is not a good reason to avoid it's usage. BlackBerries are more secure but nothing is perfect. Heck anything public wireless should scare the heck out of most IT managers at the FBI, CIA, NSA, SS, etc.
I do remember something about Blackberry working with the government on a more secure custom system. The politicians and government officials really want a secure wireless email and SMS platform.
What a Geek Wants:
1. A PVR that will grab your shows and is useful as an appliance for day2day usage. Include a DVD burner for mom and dad to archive their own stuff without using a computer and network. Include HD abilities.
2. A way to transfer the recorded data to a server in a format that I can use and convert. Preferably, without using TiVo's proprietary software. This will probably be sniffed and hacked a few months after TiVoToGo is available to many users.
3. Some way to organize all that video onto a Serial ATA RAID SAN where I can archive a ton of data. Have the ability to burn DVD's or convert to DiVX, etc. Edit the content to strip commercials, etc. Or more likely a TiVo box with 4-5 hot swap drive bays on the front.
4. Support for Linux, BSD, and OS X...
5. Bypass cable content providers by using BitTorrent built into a TiVo! Just do the same thing a cable company does but instead of needing a cable infrastructure or Satellites stream it over the Internet using BitTorrent as the transfer mechanism and an XML TiVo program guide. Imagine your TiVo uploading bits and pieces of your recorded shows to those people who didn't record it or watch it live. (increase the buffer on live TV from 30min upto 2 hours and store it until it's overwritten by an actual recorded show or when space is low - BitTorrent upload it's bits to other TiVo users) Whatever's popular will stream over the Internet at faster and faster speeds). Increase the standard disk space on the TiVo with a couple of those new 500GB hard disks. Encourage people to not delete shows on their TiVo as it will help the community to share the data via BitTorrent.
This whole BitTorrent concept is about to peak, there are VC companies just looking for the right company to back with an Internet delivery mechanism. TiVo could blow away the competition and probably get sued but it's coming. I would pay TiVo for television content if they can do it effectively.