Students need learn to use computers, not OS's.. OSes... OSesses... Bah!/Strongbad moment
Think about this. A junior/two year school is primarily vocational. Training people to work in the general labor pool, not as doctors, lawyers or (more importantly) systems engineers. Such a school may have programs and accredation for transfer credit, preparing the local student for those remaining two (or more) years at Whatever State University. Students usually choose their school, depending on how well it is likely to meet their needs for their tuition dollar.
If the local accounting firm needs clerks who know Excel, then the college isn't meeting the needs of the community by limiting their choices to 'everything, but Excel', nice as that sounds.
This really puts me in mind of my early idealistic experience when I worked at just such a two year school. If the local employment base calls for 200 Office trained people per year then the college will do that. It's not their job to buck the trend, tell local employers "Nyah, to Microsoft, it's your job to retrain our StarOffice graduates."
Lastly, local companies often kick in a chunk of the money which funds learning labs. They're a prime target for the College Development Office, and such idealism would make the CDO's job much harder.
The ugly truth is, your college students are there to learn and be trained for the work-place of tomorrw (or the day after, depending upon war with Iraq) and forcing a non-Microsoft choice
on them is simply as bad as forcing a Microsoft-only choice on them. The classroom (or lab, as the case be) is paid for by taxes, state and federal funds (more taxes) and often grants and donations
from foundations, families, etc., further it demands faculty teach in non-Microsoft stuff. Don't expect to find a large population of these folks.
Best to see if there's some negotiating room with this benefactor, i.e. set up and Open Source lab and fund at least one faculty position to instruct in the use of whatever the curriculum calls for.
It might seem interesting: couple days ago a law was introduced in Poland which actually outlaws spam;-) In other words, no one can send you any kind of advertisement through e-mail, SMS or fax unless you explicitly agree to receive these advertisements.
In Warsaw they're probably telling american jokes.
All good, for now, but how long before this is extended to a national Do-Not-Email list?
Assuming this passes the Supremes, regarding the 'first amendment - free speech' test, it seems only logical.
I would personally like such a thing considering my volume of spam, but aside from anyone who lives by
spamming, does anyone find issues with the extended concept?
It seems whenever anyone finds a reasonably large crater, they declare "this is it, this is the one that killed the dinos"
Yeah, but it missed Barney. Tho there's always hope.
"I have this theory, and I'd like a grant of $1 billion to study it, I say the Dinosaurs were killed off by restrictive intellectual property laws run amok."
I spent some time reading up on how buffer overflows were used for exploits on this port, UDP packets, and so on. I'm not convinced this is innocent activity, particularly since I do have a firewall configured and don't see any outgoing traffic.
Learning about attacks is an ongoing thing for me and until I have all the facts, or enough of them, I'm leaving it my firewall to keep intruders out. I have seen bursts, usually on weekends when I assume more infected computers have been turned on and the worms are active. At various times I've had as many as 100 hits within 2-3 minutes.
Since I have no current reason for anyone on the internet to access my system, I believe a complete lockdown is a good position to start with. If I put it on a high-speed connection, with fixed IP and fire up services, then I'll allow ports as necessary.
Let me guess, UDP port 137 is producing lots and lots of logged events?
UDP 137 has been logging lots of hits since day 1 for this system. Fortunately I have a firewall and have been very excited to see how many worms are out there trying to find a new host. A few weeks back I examined the log for the few hours I was connected over a dial-up (no DSL or ISDN, just 56K) and found 335 attempts, most of which are aimed at 137. A quick search of this with Google yielded info that this was indeed likely caused by a worm on many computers, scanning IP addresses and testing port 137.
My first log of a probe on 445 was 3/7/2003 at 21:12 (9:12 PM in California) seems they come in pairs or threes. The number of probes has been increasing.
Given what I've seen of my firewall logs, there's no way I'll ever put another computer within spitting distance of an internet connection without a firewall. Like, cripes 'n stuff!
Please tell me how it's MS's fault that people pick easy to guess passwords?
Some systems I haved used in the past have a built in list and/or password analyzer, for the purpose of forbidding use of easily predictable passwords. While users tend to hate what these methods limit them to, break-ins tend to be limited to those people they know.
You can't fault Microsoft for not including such a feature. Chances are, if Microsoft did build in such a feature, someone would be taking issue with it on slashdot.
A modest proposal:
Suggest Microsoft include the ability for the administrator to select a tool (yeah, I know they typically want you to use only Microsoft Brand stuff, hence the aforementioned 'issue') Does Microsoft accept advice from users, or do they only innovate buy buying up a company that already makes such a product, integrating it, then driving all competitors out of the market? (oops, I did it myself...)
And how many people really have 42 x's as their password?
What's the maximum or mininum limit for password? I generally go with 6-8 with a combination of letters and numbers, often defering to foreign languages, rather than english.
I was surprised that it didn't include:
Months (i.e. january, february,...) since I catch people using those a lot
system (i.e. another favorite)
xyzzy
plugh
Tho I do not 'foobar' is in there, but I generally use that on internet sites where I could care less if someone assumes my identity.
Their server appears in dire need of upgrade, it's slashdotted already.
...wait... I just got the first couple characters, all is not lost...
What I'm curious about is what software they plan to run on their desktop. If it's the standard office package then cool. If they run, like some public agencies do, canned software they they may have issues with getting that ported or finding alternatives, which isn't so cool (unless the alternatives are equal or better in useability and performance.)
A friend was contracted to design a city landfill which would produce natural gas. It won't hit peak production of natural gas for another 50 years and already produces enough electricty for the city (pop. ~10K) plus excess which is sold. Countless landfills in the US could be doing the same thing, further, the gas that isn't used just escapes into the atmosphere.
If this is such a good idea, and so cost effective, why isn't it being done more places?
"In the USA we don't just waste our natural resources, we waste our waste, too!"
An Interplanetary highway, eh? Better head down to the pub, in a hurry!
Perhaps a quick check of your digital watch might give you some idea how much time you've got. Oh, and a fashion tip: don't go down to the pub is your dressing gown.
I agree, there's no need to bash the reviewers. Everyone knows that they try to butter up the hardware suppliers,
but they still deliver fairly objective reviews, so there's no real problem.
So, who needs to bash reviewers, when spokesweasels utter thusly:
All of Nvidia's latest chips use the CineFX architecture, which supports
DirectX 9 and high-level shading languages that the company says
provides easier, more realistic lighting and shading effects.
"We're trying to make the PC more like a
console, a truly liberating experience for
developers to write for," says Bill Rehbock,
Nvidia's director of developer relations.
Are they suggesting people not spend $500-600 to have the latest and greatest, instead just buy an Xbox? Perhaps not, only referring to what an ideal world it would be for us coders if we only had one graphics card & standard (yet, a continually moving target, nonetheless) to code for, like with consoles, but the wording context requires an informed listener.
The Anandtech's article shows interesting effects when underclocking the 9800 to same values of 9700. Performance is equal without AA or Anisotropic filtering, but with filtering 9800 is 10 to 30% faster.
The Anantech article is also unabashedly crammed with flash ads for ATI video cards. So polluted I'm finally motivated to remove the flash plug-in. I respect their reviews, but WTF is WRONG with these people?
Swedish newspaper is the only one to
take up the story yet
Does any US paper have a decent Science section? There's a Technology section in the SJ Murky News, but it seems more a mouthpiece for pushing the latest technotoys.
Given the low standard of personaly hygiene some geeks have, you may want to stock up on air freshener and/or nose plugs...
Man, you ain't kidding on the noseplugs. Air freshener runs screaming from pungent B.O. There won't be many who stink, but all it takes is a few and your eyes water and all you can think of is getting fresh, sweet air into your sinuses.
This, naturally leads to non-obvious sponsors. I.e. hand out free sample size deodorants and breath cleaners. It probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to have people patrol these things and properly chastise (e.g. humiliate) offenders. Nothing like being shown up as a pig among your peers to get the point across.
Please, we've had more than enough snow already.. wh y don't you study sunshine or something?
sn0w 0wnz j00!
Seriously, this is one of the more intriguing articles I've ever seen on Slashdot. It's made my bookmarks and is certainly inspiration to whip up some stuff in PoV. I'm an old math and geometry buff (and former resident of the Great White North) and appreciate the beauty of snow. Perhaps moreso that I've got all the technology crap to play with it, yet now live in a warm climate.
Yet, there we geeks were, spellbound decades ago by Julias and Mandelbrots, and accumulating libraries of books, like:
The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Benoit B. Mandelbrot
The Science of Fractal Images (Peitgen, Saupe)
The Beauty of Fractals (Peitgen, Richter)
The Algorithmic Beatuy of Plants (Prusinkiewicz, Lindenmayer)
All the while, I could have gone outside and been inspired by a light dusting of tiny snow or those huge flakes which fell infrequently in a dead calm. Sometimes it is good to get outside.
From the spelling, you'd
guess a/.-er penned the thing.
Nah, it was signed 'Laurie', not Anonymous Coward or CmdrTaco.
As an email, I would never expect any, but the most anal journalist to follow editorial style. I write some very nice technical documentation, but my emails resemble the following:
sup? anyone for SoC? Bike? get some chinese sze stuff or mebbe pizza from p. murphy? join me for triv @ 99 on Weds? laters, eh?
For it's informal content and intended audience I dispense with formalities. I expect 'Laurie' just tapped it in and sent it, without so much as a proofread.
The point I think the original poster was pointing to was that if China cannot build the binaries themselves, then there
is no point to being able to look at the source code.
Oh, I agree entirely. See my other posting (people mod this kind of stuff as Funny, but I tend to look upon it as editorial, too bad I can't draw like Mike Peters or Pat Oliphant.) I like the irony and to stretch it out to underscore the point.
being a good programmer and being a person with whom other people want to
spend a lot of time, who has good hygiene and good social skills, are not
correlated."
These matter to a programmer not! When in coding arts skilled you are, is all that matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Think about this. A junior/two year school is primarily vocational. Training people to work in the general labor pool, not as doctors, lawyers or (more importantly) systems engineers. Such a school may have programs and accredation for transfer credit, preparing the local student for those remaining two (or more) years at Whatever State University. Students usually choose their school, depending on how well it is likely to meet their needs for their tuition dollar.
If the local accounting firm needs clerks who know Excel, then the college isn't meeting the needs of the community by limiting their choices to 'everything, but Excel', nice as that sounds.
This really puts me in mind of my early idealistic experience when I worked at just such a two year school. If the local employment base calls for 200 Office trained people per year then the college will do that. It's not their job to buck the trend, tell local employers "Nyah, to Microsoft, it's your job to retrain our StarOffice graduates."
Lastly, local companies often kick in a chunk of the money which funds learning labs. They're a prime target for the College Development Office, and such idealism would make the CDO's job much harder.
Best to see if there's some negotiating room with this benefactor, i.e. set up and Open Source lab and fund at least one faculty position to instruct in the use of whatever the curriculum calls for.
In Warsaw they're probably telling american jokes.
Cool, isn't it ;-)
Very!
I would personally like such a thing considering my volume of spam, but aside from anyone who lives by spamming, does anyone find issues with the extended concept?
Yeah, but it missed Barney. Tho there's always hope.
"I have this theory, and I'd like a grant of $1 billion to study it, I say the Dinosaurs were killed off by restrictive intellectual property laws run amok."
Opaserv
network.vbs
There were some others I found before, but I'm not finding them now, probably need to refine my search, but I don't have the time atm.
Here's some more reading material...
911, etc.
port scan
I spent some time reading up on how buffer overflows were used for exploits on this port, UDP packets, and so on. I'm not convinced this is innocent activity, particularly since I do have a firewall configured and don't see any outgoing traffic.
Learning about attacks is an ongoing thing for me and until I have all the facts, or enough of them, I'm leaving it my firewall to keep intruders out. I have seen bursts, usually on weekends when I assume more infected computers have been turned on and the worms are active. At various times I've had as many as 100 hits within 2-3 minutes.
Since I have no current reason for anyone on the internet to access my system, I believe a complete lockdown is a good position to start with. If I put it on a high-speed connection, with fixed IP and fire up services, then I'll allow ports as necessary.
It's all those redundant or offtopic spelling and grammar corrections of CmdrTaco. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.
UDP 137 has been logging lots of hits since day 1 for this system. Fortunately I have a firewall and have been very excited to see how many worms are out there trying to find a new host. A few weeks back I examined the log for the few hours I was connected over a dial-up (no DSL or ISDN, just 56K) and found 335 attempts, most of which are aimed at 137. A quick search of this with Google yielded info that this was indeed likely caused by a worm on many computers, scanning IP addresses and testing port 137.
My first log of a probe on 445 was 3/7/2003 at 21:12 (9:12 PM in California) seems they come in pairs or threes. The number of probes has been increasing.
Given what I've seen of my firewall logs, there's no way I'll ever put another computer within spitting distance of an internet connection without a firewall. Like, cripes 'n stuff!
Please tell me how it's MS's fault that people pick easy to guess passwords?
Some systems I haved used in the past have a built in list and/or password analyzer, for the purpose of forbidding use of easily predictable passwords. While users tend to hate what these methods limit them to, break-ins tend to be limited to those people they know.
You can't fault Microsoft for not including such a feature. Chances are, if Microsoft did build in such a feature, someone would be taking issue with it on slashdot.
A modest proposal:
Suggest Microsoft include the ability for the administrator to select a tool (yeah, I know they typically want you to use only Microsoft Brand stuff, hence the aforementioned 'issue') Does Microsoft accept advice from users, or do they only innovate buy buying up a company that already makes such a product, integrating it, then driving all competitors out of the market? (oops, I did it myself...)
What's the maximum or mininum limit for password? I generally go with 6-8 with a combination of letters and numbers, often defering to foreign languages, rather than english.
I was surprised that it didn't include:
Months (i.e. january, february, ...) since I catch people using those a lot
system (i.e. another favorite)
xyzzy
plugh
Tho I do not 'foobar' is in there, but I generally use that on internet sites where I could care less if someone assumes my identity.
Thank goodness it didn't include 'cowboyneal4ever', since I use that for everything and it has never let me down for security purposes.
What I'm curious about is what software they plan to run on their desktop. If it's the standard office package then cool. If they run, like some public agencies do, canned software they they may have issues with getting that ported or finding alternatives, which isn't so cool (unless the alternatives are equal or better in useability and performance.)
Still have the brown screen. Looks grim.
If this is such a good idea, and so cost effective, why isn't it being done more places?
"In the USA we don't just waste our natural resources, we waste our waste, too!"
See my favorite fishies here. Thanks to evil landlord who won't let me have any pet larget than a dust mite, this is pretty much as good as it gets.
Perhaps a quick check of your digital watch might give you some idea how much time you've got. Oh, and a fashion tip: don't go down to the pub is your dressing gown.
So, who needs to bash reviewers, when spokesweasels utter thusly:
Are they suggesting people not spend $500-600 to have the latest and greatest, instead just buy an Xbox? Perhaps not, only referring to what an ideal world it would be for us coders if we only had one graphics card & standard (yet, a continually moving target, nonetheless) to code for, like with consoles, but the wording context requires an informed listener.
The Anantech article is also unabashedly crammed with flash ads for ATI video cards. So polluted I'm finally motivated to remove the flash plug-in. I respect their reviews, but WTF is WRONG with these people?
Tho I won't have the top of the line =(
It beats having the bottom of the line =)
Does any US paper have a decent Science section? There's a Technology section in the SJ Murky News, but it seems more a mouthpiece for pushing the latest technotoys.
Man, you ain't kidding on the noseplugs. Air freshener runs screaming from pungent B.O. There won't be many who stink, but all it takes is a few and your eyes water and all you can think of is getting fresh, sweet air into your sinuses.
This, naturally leads to non-obvious sponsors. I.e. hand out free sample size deodorants and breath cleaners. It probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to have people patrol these things and properly chastise (e.g. humiliate) offenders. Nothing like being shown up as a pig among your peers to get the point across.
sn0w 0wnz j00!
Seriously, this is one of the more intriguing articles I've ever seen on Slashdot. It's made my bookmarks and is certainly inspiration to whip up some stuff in PoV. I'm an old math and geometry buff (and former resident of the Great White North) and appreciate the beauty of snow. Perhaps moreso that I've got all the technology crap to play with it, yet now live in a warm climate.
Yet, there we geeks were, spellbound decades ago by Julias and Mandelbrots, and accumulating libraries of books, like:
The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Benoit B. Mandelbrot
The Science of Fractal Images (Peitgen, Saupe)
The Beauty of Fractals (Peitgen, Richter)
The Algorithmic Beatuy of Plants (Prusinkiewicz, Lindenmayer)
All the while, I could have gone outside and been inspired by a light dusting of tiny snow or those huge flakes which fell infrequently in a dead calm. Sometimes it is good to get outside.
Actually, if you go back and try the Yale link again, it works. She fessed up and then got into it with critics and trolls alike. An interesting read.
Nah, it was signed 'Laurie', not Anonymous Coward or CmdrTaco.
As an email, I would never expect any, but the most anal journalist to follow editorial style. I write some very nice technical documentation, but my emails resemble the following:
For it's informal content and intended audience I dispense with formalities. I expect 'Laurie' just tapped it in and sent it, without so much as a proofread.
Oh, I agree entirely. See my other posting (people mod this kind of stuff as Funny, but I tend to look upon it as editorial, too bad I can't draw like Mike Peters or Pat Oliphant.) I like the irony and to stretch it out to underscore the point.
These matter to a programmer not! When in coding arts skilled you are, is all that matters.