Instant messaging can be a great benefit to work for alot of people, because it allows for a very quick exchange of information. He can ask an old co-worker for help or his ideas on a problem, or his wife can tell him to stop and get milk on the way home.
And he can sell secrets to your competitors, all without having to get up from his desk.
The fact of the matter is that there are quite a number of environments where IM software is a security risk. You can't proxy and copy all of the clients, as this article indicates. So you're stuck without a log of activity. In a brokerage house, for example, this is probably in violation of one guideline or another.
Think Unix: Textbook-like, at least
on
Linux Textbooks?
·
· Score: 2
So it's shameful self-promotion, but I wrote
Think Unix so that it could be used effectively as a textbook.
There are practice problems scattered throughout each chapter, with answers in the back of the book. It's short enough to be used as the sole textbook for a seven-week Unix course, or as one of several books in a longer course.
And if a couple thousand Slashdot readers buy the book, I may one day make back my advance.:-)
Not only does it vibrate, but it has a physical switch to change between vibrate and ring modes, so you don't have to fiddle with the interface for five minutes just to change this. (OK, my current Sanyo phone is particularly noxious in this regard, but still...
Yes you can: use jpilot. KDE's PIM supposedly syncs with Palm devices, too, though I haven't tried it out yet.
it uses old mcore like cpu (non arm/mips)
And it still feels faster than comparable units running other OSes and faster chips. Amazing what quality programming can do, huh?
Sure, it won't play my MP3s. That bums me out. And I wish it had the resolution of Sony's units. But the cost difference between implementing those features is substantial enough, and the Treo is already expensive enough, that I'll be happy to forego those advantages when the CDMA version of the Treo ships.
I can see that you've actually never played with the Treo, despite your comments. Walk into any CompUSA and try it...
* The I300 has a speaker phone!
So does Treo.
* The I300 looks professional, not like a toy
This is a matter of taste. To me, the Samsung (while a wonderful device that many of my friends own) looks like a big ugly block, and the Treo looks more professional.
* The I300 isn't wide at all - it's actuall skinnier (width wise) than these Treo's.
Go to CompUSA or wherever and hold them up against each other. I think you're wrong on this.
* The I300 looks/feels like a PDA, secondary it's a phone
And the Treo looks and feels something like both, but not 'primarily' like either one. For those of us who use cell phones for more than ten minutes a week, and who use PDAs primarily as organizers rather than portable computers, this is a better trade-off.
I think it's called the "Peter Pan Effect" or "The Peter Principle" or something to that effect. Basically, everyone rises to their own level of incompetence.
The Peter Principle, yes.
Unfortunately it's not entirely true: I know a number of people who have risen far beyond their level of incompetence.
This is typically because the manager doesn't want this person working for them --- the employee is a total idiot, of course, and usually grating, too --- so the manager gets said employee promoted to the same level as him or herself, thereby no longer "getting" to manage said employee.
USB is too slow. The store would have closed before he finished copying the files
You think so? Well, OK, the Mac has a USB keyboard and mouse, but assume he's not using them, and there's no other USB device operational. USB is 11Mb/sec, assume after overhead that we're talking one Megabyte a second. Say that Office for OS X is 500M --- that's 500 seconds. 500 / 60 = 50 / 6 = 8 minutes 20 seconds.
Not as fast as FireWire, to be sure, but fast enough when all you have to do is outthink CompUSA employees.;->
I would disagree with you about the usefulness of a GUI to implement VPN's or firewalls.
I never said a GUI wasn't useful to implement VPNs. Just that it was dangerous to implement them without reading the documentation, a problem that a GUI makes worse only because it tricks people into thinking they can get away without it.
Anyone know of any ISPs (preferably outside USA) that will route stuff coming from a VPN (or any other type of encrypted tunnel) to The Internet? (i.e. from The Internet's point of view, it would be like I was a local user of that ISP, even though I'm physically somewhere else.)
Why would you want to do that? Not only will it slow down your network connection, but I suspect that it should be fairly easy to do traffic analysis to determine which traffic was yours in the first place, even at a busy ISP...
one of the things that I want to use is free/swan. It does seem great, but as a 1 person IT department I have not found the time that I need to read and understand the documentation on swan. Do I want a GUI Heck yes.
With security software in general, and VPN software in particular, that's a very, very dangerous attitude: a GUI may fool you into thinking that you understand what's going on when in reality you haven't a clue. With most software, that's not an issue, but with security software, that can compromise the very goal you're trying to achieve.
I dont want to do away with the command line at all. I love it for a lot of what I do, but when I want to make changes or try out some new tools I dont want to have to spend 1-2 days reading ALL the docs just to know where to start.
How many days do you want to spend cleaning up after a security incident that occurred because the GUI let you get away without spending two days reading documentation? How much time will you save in the long run if every time you save two days reading documentation you spend three days cleaning up?
(We lose money on every item --- but we make it up in volume!)
If you can demonstrate that your bandwidth to the Internet is greater than about 800 KB/s, I will personally give you a cookie.
Can I have one? I'm no longer working at UMBC, but they have an Internet^2 connection, and so their bandwidth to other I^2 sites is limited by the 100Mbps port on the desktop.
(Hint: there are a number of I^2 sites; I don't know if the questioner is on one, but if he is then there's good reason to want a 100Mbps uplink...)
... because NAI is putting it up for sale, according to
this Register article. Of course, this hasn't actually happened yet, but the fact that they didn't deny it means that the commercial product is probably dead.
Move the codec from the player to the content. Hardware manufacturers would get together and establish an Open Player Platform or something, which essentially standardizes the instruction set and capabilities of the player and the image format of the codec executable.
Right. We can do it in Forth, just like open firmware, right? Muhahahahha
You can do this with NIS, Kerberos, or LDAP on Linux, using PAM modules. In fact, out of the box, Red Hat can support any of those three. New versions of SAMBA have a beta-quality utility to do the same from a Windows domain controller, IIRC.
Now, it's entirely possible that this guy has some needs that weren't articulated in his message --- but if so, he should have articulated them in the message, as the basic case is trivial on Linux. AFAIK it should be no problem to authenticate for any of the afforementioned tasks.
That said, PAM is a major PITA to configure: the files are rather opaque if you haven't used them before. (Need a consultant? I'm available:
www.cluestickconsulting.com)
Why not reduce the information to transmit, using rsync or the equivalent? Or batch the data and use gzip. Or use ssh's -C option for compression, which won't do as good a job. But mucking with the XML is likely to be the least-understood way of doing it when it comes time to admin the system later, or update things.
PG-13 means they won't be admitted unless they're with mom and dad
Er, Duh --- PG-13 is "Parents Strongly Cautioned." No refusal of kids under 13 without their parents. Only rated R is actually Restricted -- that's why it's R, remember.
Bill Landreth's Out of the Inner Circle is a first-person account of early-'80s hacking. It's out of print and, unfortunately, my copy has gone missing, but if I recall correctly it complains extensively about how WarGames ruined the hacker scene.
Markoff and Hafner's book Cyberpunk is extremely flawed, but might be useful for discussing Robert Morris's internet worm. (The section on Pengo is far exceeded by Stoll's in The Cuckoo's Egg, and the Mitnick section is hideously biased, for obvious reasons.
Yeah, I've had multiple e-mails on the subject of "there were worms before the Morris worm" but what I'd intended to say (unfortunately not what I wrote) is that the Morris worm was the first Internet worm.
Funny thing, they ask me for my phone number, and I say no. Just no. No fighting, no "what are you going to use this for?" Just "May I have your phone number sir?" "No."
They goggle for a second and continue the transaction.
Slashdot Mirror
And he can sell secrets to your competitors, all without having to get up from his desk.
The fact of the matter is that there are quite a number of environments where IM software is a security risk. You can't proxy and copy all of the clients, as this article indicates. So you're stuck without a log of activity. In a brokerage house, for example, this is probably in violation of one guideline or another.
So it's shameful self-promotion, but I wrote Think Unix so that it could be used effectively as a textbook.
There are practice problems scattered throughout each chapter, with answers in the back of the book. It's short enough to be used as the sole textbook for a seven-week Unix course, or as one of several books in a longer course.
And if a couple thousand Slashdot readers buy the book, I may one day make back my advance. :-)
Not only does it vibrate, but it has a physical switch to change between vibrate and ring modes, so you don't have to fiddle with the interface for five minutes just to change this. (OK, my current Sanyo phone is particularly noxious in this regard, but still...
Yes you can: use jpilot. KDE's PIM supposedly syncs with Palm devices, too, though I haven't tried it out yet.
And it still feels faster than comparable units running other OSes and faster chips. Amazing what quality programming can do, huh?
Sure, it won't play my MP3s. That bums me out. And I wish it had the resolution of Sony's units. But the cost difference between implementing those features is substantial enough, and the Treo is already expensive enough, that I'll be happy to forego those advantages when the CDMA version of the Treo ships.
I can see that you've actually never played with the Treo, despite your comments. Walk into any CompUSA and try it...
So does Treo.
This is a matter of taste. To me, the Samsung (while a wonderful device that many of my friends own) looks like a big ugly block, and the Treo looks more professional.
Go to CompUSA or wherever and hold them up against each other. I think you're wrong on this.
And the Treo looks and feels something like both, but not 'primarily' like either one. For those of us who use cell phones for more than ten minutes a week, and who use PDAs primarily as organizers rather than portable computers, this is a better trade-off.
Use of which derives, actually, from the Web site.
The Peter Principle, yes.
Unfortunately it's not entirely true: I know a number of people who have risen far beyond their level of incompetence.
This is typically because the manager doesn't want this person working for them --- the employee is a total idiot, of course, and usually grating, too --- so the manager gets said employee promoted to the same level as him or herself, thereby no longer "getting" to manage said employee.
You think so? Well, OK, the Mac has a USB keyboard and mouse, but assume he's not using them, and there's no other USB device operational. USB is 11Mb/sec, assume after overhead that we're talking one Megabyte a second. Say that Office for OS X is 500M --- that's 500 seconds. 500 / 60 = 50 / 6 = 8 minutes 20 seconds.
Not as fast as FireWire, to be sure, but fast enough when all you have to do is outthink CompUSA employees. ;->
I never said a GUI wasn't useful to implement VPNs. Just that it was dangerous to implement them without reading the documentation, a problem that a GUI makes worse only because it tricks people into thinking they can get away without it.
Why would you want to do that? Not only will it slow down your network connection, but I suspect that it should be fairly easy to do traffic analysis to determine which traffic was yours in the first place, even at a busy ISP...
With security software in general, and VPN software in particular, that's a very, very dangerous attitude: a GUI may fool you into thinking that you understand what's going on when in reality you haven't a clue. With most software, that's not an issue, but with security software, that can compromise the very goal you're trying to achieve.
How many days do you want to spend cleaning up after a security incident that occurred because the GUI let you get away without spending two days reading documentation? How much time will you save in the long run if every time you save two days reading documentation you spend three days cleaning up?
(We lose money on every item --- but we make it up in volume!)
Can I have one? I'm no longer working at UMBC, but they have an Internet^2 connection, and so their bandwidth to other I^2 sites is limited by the 100Mbps port on the desktop.
(Hint: there are a number of I^2 sites; I don't know if the questioner is on one, but if he is then there's good reason to want a 100Mbps uplink...)
Not exactly. They developed the _idea_ of public key cryptography, but couldn't figure out quite how to do it.
... because NAI is putting it up for sale, according to this Register article. Of course, this hasn't actually happened yet, but the fact that they didn't deny it means that the commercial product is probably dead.
I have him beat by a year or two. But his novel has the advantage of having been published, while mine is collecting dust on a shelf. :-(
Right. We can do it in Forth, just like open firmware, right? Muhahahahha
You can do this with NIS, Kerberos, or LDAP on Linux, using PAM modules. In fact, out of the box, Red Hat can support any of those three. New versions of SAMBA have a beta-quality utility to do the same from a Windows domain controller, IIRC.
Now, it's entirely possible that this guy has some needs that weren't articulated in his message --- but if so, he should have articulated them in the message, as the basic case is trivial on Linux. AFAIK it should be no problem to authenticate for any of the afforementioned tasks.
That said, PAM is a major PITA to configure: the files are rather opaque if you haven't used them before. (Need a consultant? I'm available: www.cluestickconsulting.com)
Why not reduce the information to transmit, using rsync or the equivalent? Or batch the data and use gzip. Or use ssh's -C option for compression, which won't do as good a job. But mucking with the XML is likely to be the least-understood way of doing it when it comes time to admin the system later, or update things.
Er, Duh --- PG-13 is "Parents Strongly Cautioned." No refusal of kids under 13 without their parents. Only rated R is actually Restricted -- that's why it's R, remember.
Bill Landreth's Out of the Inner Circle is a first-person account of early-'80s hacking. It's out of print and, unfortunately, my copy has gone missing, but if I recall correctly it complains extensively about how WarGames ruined the hacker scene.
Markoff and Hafner's book Cyberpunk is extremely flawed, but might be useful for discussing Robert Morris's internet worm. (The section on Pengo is far exceeded by Stoll's in The Cuckoo's Egg, and the Mitnick section is hideously biased, for obvious reasons.
Yeah, I've had multiple e-mails on the subject of "there were worms before the Morris worm" but what I'd intended to say (unfortunately not what I wrote) is that the Morris worm was the first Internet worm.
Mea culpa
They goggle for a second and continue the transaction.
Absolutely: the problem wasn't the building, it was the administration.
(Hint: it might help to read previous Slashdot stories to understand new ones. Context is everything.)
30 years is overdoing it, I'd think. :-)
Though, come to think of it, it's written in LISP --- it's amazing it's shipping at all.
Don't mind me; I'm just bitter than I can't use it as an xscreensaver plug-in.