I've spent the last month eradicating everything which transmits other than my mobiles. No more wireless keyboards & mice, bye bye WiFi - back to good old cable. Oh, and no more ethernet over power either. that was a temp measure to sort out a problem but I stopped that when I could plug in in the basement - whilst I live on the 3rd floor..
The main advantage so far is that everything just works. No WiFi collisions, no keyboards and mice to discover (and you can use the cable to find the mouse under a heap of paper:-), no piles of batteries to swap - nice.
I have hard evidence that London Underground overcharges PAYG to quite a substantial degree (at least at the time when I discovered it, this was almost a year ago), and I checked with two different cards just to be sure. I managed to spend £17 over a 2 day period, only traveling inside zones 1..4 - you can work out for yourself just how much more that is than is required.
When I started talking to customer support about paying some of it back, they came back with a killer line: "I should register the card online" or "give them my details over the phone" before they could do anything. When I asked them which part of "unregistered" they didn't understand they told me "it was for my protection because someone could have found my card". When I finished laughing I asked them how they were going to prove that *I* wasn't the finder, and this was when the service guy finally went off script and admitted he couldn't work that one out either:-).
I could have gotten the money back but it wasn't enough to bother. I don't live in the UK so I would cost me more to go after the money than just write it off as a business cost.
Last but not least, isn't it impressive how well they are set up to take your money well in advance, but how hard it is to get some of it back? Since John Mayor came up with the Customer Charter they have been actively hiding the fact that you can get your money back for delayed journeys, and this must have saved them millions over the years. Just consider:
- you have to know the scheme exists. Even as much as 5 years ago, I did a check at a station. Out of 35 brochures there was ONE which mentioned the scheme in a one-liner, but then omitted to describe what it actually did. - with ticketed travel you have to retain the ticket. What happens when you pass the gate? Yup - extra effort for you to hang on to the ticket.. - somehow, the opportunity to directly and automatically refund onto the Oyster PAYG and prepay cards has been "omitted" - the whole process is still voucher based - handing in a voucher means manual labor, the ticket office has about a million forms they need to fill in so you're the one holding up the queue. Accident or social engineering? Your choice..
Ripoff Britain. It took New Labour to turn it into an art, and combine it with the type of state 1984 had been trying to warn us against. Instead, they treat 1984 like a blueprint..
In this case, yes. If you would point out the flaws they would fix it, leaving it alone means it will collapse under its own weight of incompetence and greedy consultancies soaking up the budget so there's nothing left for the actual system.
I call it the "Yes minister" effect.
The sooner the country loses the incompetent clowns that run it now the better. There is an economy to fix which is presently a LOT more important than this (no, I don't think Brown will "lead the UK out of the crisis" - he's the one who led the UK into it in the first place).
You're absolutely correct. If someone excludes options it means they have their reasons for it, political, imposed policy, vendor goodies or maybe just being nervous to go unchartered waters (in itself not a bad thing as long as it occasionally involved re-evaluation of the underlying decisions).
Plus, the guy may not have the mental strength or clout to get into a battle he can't win because companies are presently as little controlled for their abuse and malfeasance as bank and politicians are (and we know the mess that made).
However, creating Open Source awareness can happen in different ways. You may not want to use it, but it can still form part of your negotiation tactics and missing that trick almost amounts to negligence..
If I look what NYCL does I think your statement (actually, it is really a theory) is already disproved. And, FWIW, I actually know a few lawyers I could commend for their ethics. I also know a few (and some judges) in another country I would immediately help with an anvil if they were drowning so I'm sort of in the middle of this.
Further, a lawyer does have a professional duty to help a client with the law. That does not mean they like it, because sometimes they have to continue doing so from professional ethics after it emerges that the client hasn't been quite as truthful as they should. That is really a crap position to be in..
Not a job for me, even if I managed to stay on the "nice" side..
It seems to me the only way that gets addressed is if they start losing with costs, and maybe punitive damages for having the gal to try. I find it distressing that they very visibly abuse the legal system, even after warnings by judges not to. Only heavy sanctions can rectify this as warnings very clearly have no effect whatsoever.
What's the state of that case where someone started to fight back with a class action (if I recall correctly)? Anywhere near going to court?
I once spent $100 or so on a Sony noise cancelling headphone whilst flying long distance. Ironically, the one thing that is apparently not allowed in the pack is the battery, so until we landed (and I no longer needed it to cancel noise) it was just a "regular" headset. Duh.
IMHO, you get severe hearing damage because the cabin announcements are all set at an (non-adjustable) volume to accommodate the usual crappy headsets. The result is that you turn the movie volume all the way down and get good sound, then a cabin announcement will make you jump a foot in the air unless you have kept your belt fastened..
This made me laugh. You're proposing to beat a (to me) rather questionable set of conditions with a creative use of how Open Source works. I like this one. Quality, and if the poster would get away with doing just that it would be a deserved deception.
This is anti-competitive behaviour which ties in with earlier complaints. As the EU is rather concerned about a level playing field they will look at this in the context of earlier events - I have no doubt they will start asking questions.
Umm, you write as if you believe that industrial espionage is only inbound in China.
Why do you think the US likes to tap as much of the world's communication as possible? I hope you don't buy the myth that this is exclusively to look for Osama buddies..
AFAIK, about the earliest example of IP theft from China is silk production, but I may be wrong.
Back to the topic: I think what China is asking for is unrealistic if they really need good products. I can see what they're trying to achieve, but nobody with a REALLY good product is going to do this because that's commercial suicide in more ways then one.
This would mean that China is asking any supplier to lay down their IP to sell in China with the following risks:
- claims of other nations that the supplier supports Chinese intelligence in bypassing their product (read: NOBODY will buy) - duplication of the product (China stealing the IP and making its own, which is something it has been repeatedly accussed of in the past)). It's hard enough to bring out anything these days without some US patent troll trying to get a slice of your life's work so avoiding China would thus appear to be a good move. - leaking any real or alleged deficiency to the rest of the world (espionage and politics is a seriously filthy mix together).
I think this generations of badmouthing China coming home to roost in combination with the shenanigans of the Bush administration which has evaporated the last smidgen of trust in them doing anything NOT self serving. Whereas the main flaw of the previous administration was an overfondness of interns, they did have good international relationships and thus trade, a degree of trust and a budget surplus. Whoever votes to keep the current clowns in place will be ignoring the fact they they CAUSED the problems, making the US a virtual pariah that nobody trusts, turning a surplus that would have helped everyone when deployed into a ginormous black hole that will take decades to recover from.
I can fully understand China not trusting anything coming from the US because it wouldn't be the first time the US administration sells something with a backdoor. (look for the story about Swiss Crypto AG if you want an earlier example)
The most immediate result of this policy would be that only second rate products would be offered to the Chinese, offers by people that feel so little confident about their product that they will happily give away the crown jewels to get a few bucks. There are better ways.
I suspect someone hasn't been quoted right. I'm sure they meant to say they would require full audits of any company supplying security gear, and that company should be in a trusted nation (if such a beast exists, but that's my theory).
They could combine that with what a large quantity of Arab banks have done over the last few months: eject everything US sourced. I've heard of banks even throwing out Messagelabs because it's American (no kidding). No idea if that led to an upsurge in Linux desktops, though..
The thinking behind the demand is good. Implementation, however, could be better.
I know exactly what it's like to be at the receiving end of a judge who is clueless - due to the idiocy residing in the British court system it has taken a year longer to get someone who defrauded me into bankruptcy. This is what you get when people no longer have to take responsibility for their actions.
But I digress: what's next? Surely there must be a way to get insanity like this corrected? Or would it need a solid public outcry and exposure before this gets corrected? This decision disgraces the system.
The bit I positively hate about Windows is that it pretends to be usable while in reality it is still miles away from it. It boots, you log in and then you get a desktop. If have the nerve to touch anything in the first 3 minutes you extend the time to get a moderately responsive desktop by minutes.
In the end you have to watch the disk light to get some sort of idea at which point it is, and that's just a relatively normal XP based laptop with all the crud removed.
And just when you think you can use the box, Windows update pops up telling you that it has found new reasons to reboot and go through it all again..
That's an interesting point, because that differs per country. I live in a country where I can just order such a laser out of a catalog and use it - no limit on acquisition (well, to a limit - importing some of the more powerful versions like the stuff sold at wickedlasers would probably require justification).
However, where I would get in trouble is the consequences of that use. If I blind someone, or (as per topic) I use it to prevent camera recording of, say, my license plate or me (they check for seatbelts as well) - that's the point where the law would rightfully come down on me like a tonne of bricks.
To me, this approach makes sense. Some products like DVD writers use quite powerful lasers, and as long as they stay inside that case that's perfectly OK - it would be impractical to ban DVD writers because they contained a product that COULD be misused. Only when you remove them and do something different with them becomes it a dangerous matter.
I've been through this exercise when checking ways to preserve privacy, and the answer here too is that technological countermeasures just start off an arms race on what is in essence not a technical problem - it is a political one. What the Chaos Computer Club did in Germany was good in this context: they took the fingerprint problem right back to the politicians involved..
An IR laser diode that is left unfocused will do the trick. It won't zap the sensor, but unless they have used a decent IR filter it will saturate the chip to the point of not registering anything else.
Reasons why you may want to avoid doing this: - no idea if there will be retinal damage if someone else looks at it - ANY camera will get upset, so an traffic monitoring will show up your car as worthy of close inspection - AFAIK, anything that hinders reading your license plate by whatever means is illegal (it is in most of the countries I've been in, no idea about AU).
This is NOT a tech problem, it is a political one. As long as the population doesn't make it VERY clear they disagree with what is going on, their government will continue to seek ways to waste a lot of taxpayer money. I'm willing to bet money on the UK ID Card scheme getting nuked if there is a change of government (AFAIK that is an election pledge), that's why they're so pushy about implementing it in at least some form (hence the contract announcements etc etc) - the intention is to make it hard to roll back.
You know, I can recall times when being in politics was something respectful. I'm obviously old..
Apart from the possibly biased conclusion (just winding you up, relax) I agree with you 100%
Two main arguments:
1 - my job as a parent is to ensure my kid can exist in this world. That means building awareness of right and wrong (moral compass), respect for others (instead of being politically correct) and developing his senses for where danger may lie and what to do about it.
2 - I'm not always around (neither is any other parent). Choose your preference: the kid standing a chance on his own because he knows how to use his own brain or him being a rabbit in headlights?
That doesn't mean I won't keep an eye on what he does, because a child's innocence can be used against him, but I won't impose limits on his exploration. He's already learned that there are safe sites and "very scary" ones (his term) where a mistype landed him, and he comes to me with questions which I can answer.
I've kept a "no lies" policies for all his life - I can tell him that something isn't really for his age but he won't get BS from me, it means he's got someone he can trust to give him confidential, open and honest answers when he grows up. In this world, kids need that, and he now expects me to give him the unvarnished reality. Sure, it means I sometimes spend hours with him to get through a complex topic, but that's what being a parent is about.
Simple summary: "I should have" is a useless phrase, it translates to "I didn't".
Balls. There is no consistent standard, and personal details still fly freely over the wire. Show me ANY, repeat, ANY recruitment agency that publishes a PGP key and that emails CVs encrypted.
Even that setup that has more ways to waste money than a teenager, the government, has failed to pull something consistent together. Mind you, last time I rescued them from embarrassment they had Microsoft consultants cook up some secure email solution. Given the rates that MS pays it's "consultants" it was no surprise the result was a non-scalable demo that had huge problems interoperating with the real world.
The law and reality, like politics and reality: mind the gap.
The only people that have it halfway right are banks. They use Lotus Notes because it's the only system that is secure as long as email stays within it. If IBM could grow a clue and really INVEST in building a usable Notes interface they could zap Outlook and Exchange right off the market. As it is, the front end sucks big time and it will only ever have a very reluctant market.
I'll do it again this evening and let you know where this breaks in usability (or where I screwed up, let's face, I can have an off day too). The whole shenanigans with data sources et al is overly complicated.
IMHO, the killer app in OOo is Base. It's got the visual interface that have misguided many into develop business apps on Access (argh), but it works with grown up database. All you need now is a Linux version of Visio and a drop in for Outlook..
And that firm grip by the balls is happily maintained by ye mobile phone providers, because they all only flog an Outlook sync package with the phone. Just in case you had ANY illusions about losing MS Office (just to rub it in) I would suggest you make an end user do the following simple task:
1 - stick a list of numbers in a spreadsheet 2 - print sheets of labels, one label per entry on the spreadsheet.
Sure, it isn't that easy on MS Office. But it is simply impossible in OpenOffice.
This guy is so used to translate RIAA gibberish into the cleartext nonsense it is that I personally think they have made their biggest mistake since starting their campaign.
Ray, thanks for showing that the legal profession DOES have people with old fashioned ethics.
I can't speak for others, but I am certainly 100% behind you. Thanks for your work.
ÌMHO, MS has been riding on the back of IBM making the PC a relative open architecture. Where Apple was already having fights with people producing DIY motherboards and imitations like the Pear II (no kidding), MS nicely remained in the background and rode with IBM into many homes.
When it finally had enough products begged, borrowed, copied, imitated and plain stolen to have a complete offering it started to close the door.
From the closed shop angle, Apple has never been any other way.
Slashdot Mirror
I've spent the last month eradicating everything which transmits other than my mobiles. No more wireless keyboards & mice, bye bye WiFi - back to good old cable. Oh, and no more ethernet over power either. that was a temp measure to sort out a problem but I stopped that when I could plug in in the basement - whilst I live on the 3rd floor..
The main advantage so far is that everything just works. No WiFi collisions, no keyboards and mice to discover (and you can use the cable to find the mouse under a heap of paper :-), no piles of batteries to swap - nice.
Worth the effort..
I have hard evidence that London Underground overcharges PAYG to quite a substantial degree (at least at the time when I discovered it, this was almost a year ago), and I checked with two different cards just to be sure. I managed to spend £17 over a 2 day period, only traveling inside zones 1..4 - you can work out for yourself just how much more that is than is required.
When I started talking to customer support about paying some of it back, they came back with a killer line: "I should register the card online" or "give them my details over the phone" before they could do anything. When I asked them which part of "unregistered" they didn't understand they told me "it was for my protection because someone could have found my card". When I finished laughing I asked them how they were going to prove that *I* wasn't the finder, and this was when the service guy finally went off script and admitted he couldn't work that one out either :-).
I could have gotten the money back but it wasn't enough to bother. I don't live in the UK so I would cost me more to go after the money than just write it off as a business cost.
Last but not least, isn't it impressive how well they are set up to take your money well in advance, but how hard it is to get some of it back? Since John Mayor came up with the Customer Charter they have been actively hiding the fact that you can get your money back for delayed journeys, and this must have saved them millions over the years. Just consider:
- you have to know the scheme exists. Even as much as 5 years ago, I did a check at a station. Out of 35 brochures there was ONE which mentioned the scheme in a one-liner, but then omitted to describe what it actually did.
- with ticketed travel you have to retain the ticket. What happens when you pass the gate? Yup - extra effort for you to hang on to the ticket..
- somehow, the opportunity to directly and automatically refund onto the Oyster PAYG and prepay cards has been "omitted" - the whole process is still voucher based
- handing in a voucher means manual labor, the ticket office has about a million forms they need to fill in so you're the one holding up the queue. Accident or social engineering? Your choice..
Ripoff Britain. It took New Labour to turn it into an art, and combine it with the type of state 1984 had been trying to warn us against. Instead, they treat 1984 like a blueprint..
In this case, yes. If you would point out the flaws they would fix it, leaving it alone means it will collapse under its own weight of incompetence and greedy consultancies soaking up the budget so there's nothing left for the actual system.
I call it the "Yes minister" effect.
The sooner the country loses the incompetent clowns that run it now the better. There is an economy to fix which is presently a LOT more important than this (no, I don't think Brown will "lead the UK out of the crisis" - he's the one who led the UK into it in the first place).
I use that to start a FOSS introduction: who has ever used Open Source or has frequent contact with a company that does. Very few hands raised..
You're absolutely correct. If someone excludes options it means they have their reasons for it, political, imposed policy, vendor goodies or maybe just being nervous to go unchartered waters (in itself not a bad thing as long as it occasionally involved re-evaluation of the underlying decisions).
Plus, the guy may not have the mental strength or clout to get into a battle he can't win because companies are presently as little controlled for their abuse and malfeasance as bank and politicians are (and we know the mess that made).
However, creating Open Source awareness can happen in different ways. You may not want to use it, but it can still form part of your negotiation tactics and missing that trick almost amounts to negligence..
If I look what NYCL does I think your statement (actually, it is really a theory) is already disproved. And, FWIW, I actually know a few lawyers I could commend for their ethics. I also know a few (and some judges) in another country I would immediately help with an anvil if they were drowning so I'm sort of in the middle of this.
Further, a lawyer does have a professional duty to help a client with the law. That does not mean they like it, because sometimes they have to continue doing so from professional ethics after it emerges that the client hasn't been quite as truthful as they should. That is really a crap position to be in..
Not a job for me, even if I managed to stay on the "nice" side..
It seems to me the only way that gets addressed is if they start losing with costs, and maybe punitive damages for having the gal to try. I find it distressing that they very visibly abuse the legal system, even after warnings by judges not to. Only heavy sanctions can rectify this as warnings very clearly have no effect whatsoever.
What's the state of that case where someone started to fight back with a class action (if I recall correctly)? Anywhere near going to court?
I once spent $100 or so on a Sony noise cancelling headphone whilst flying long distance. Ironically, the one thing that is apparently not allowed in the pack is the battery, so until we landed (and I no longer needed it to cancel noise) it was just a "regular" headset. Duh.
IMHO, you get severe hearing damage because the cabin announcements are all set at an (non-adjustable) volume to accommodate the usual crappy headsets. The result is that you turn the movie volume all the way down and get good sound, then a cabin announcement will make you jump a foot in the air unless you have kept your belt fastened..
So that's the missing piece - auto-gain..
A while back I was on a plane, ready for takeoff. Staff was just going through their normal safety instructions when a phone went off.
In a stewardess' pocket.
If a plane can't accept basic human failure I will start worrying.
BTW; wasn't there a Dilbert once with the PHB flying the plane by spreadsheet? :-)
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I would really like a survey on what proponents of this idiocy did in their youth. It may hold a key to all this control freakery.
This made me laugh. You're proposing to beat a (to me) rather questionable set of conditions with a creative use of how Open Source works. I like this one. Quality, and if the poster would get away with doing just that it would be a deserved deception.
However, IANAL - worth checking up on this.
.. we found you.. :-)
Does anyone have the email address?
This is anti-competitive behaviour which ties in with earlier complaints. As the EU is rather concerned about a level playing field they will look at this in the context of earlier events - I have no doubt they will start asking questions.
MS is really playing with fire here.
Umm, you write as if you believe that industrial espionage is only inbound in China.
Why do you think the US likes to tap as much of the world's communication as possible? I hope you don't buy the myth that this is exclusively to look for Osama buddies..
AFAIK, about the earliest example of IP theft from China is silk production, but I may be wrong.
Back to the topic: I think what China is asking for is unrealistic if they really need good products. I can see what they're trying to achieve, but nobody with a REALLY good product is going to do this because that's commercial suicide in more ways then one.
I fear an official must have been misunderstood.
This would mean that China is asking any supplier to lay down their IP to sell in China with the following risks:
- claims of other nations that the supplier supports Chinese intelligence in bypassing their product (read: NOBODY will buy)
- duplication of the product (China stealing the IP and making its own, which is something it has been repeatedly accussed of in the past)). It's hard enough to bring out anything these days without some US patent troll trying to get a slice of your life's work so avoiding China would thus appear to be a good move.
- leaking any real or alleged deficiency to the rest of the world (espionage and politics is a seriously filthy mix together).
I think this generations of badmouthing China coming home to roost in combination with the shenanigans of the Bush administration which has evaporated the last smidgen of trust in them doing anything NOT self serving. Whereas the main flaw of the previous administration was an overfondness of interns, they did have good international relationships and thus trade, a degree of trust and a budget surplus. Whoever votes to keep the current clowns in place will be ignoring the fact they they CAUSED the problems, making the US a virtual pariah that nobody trusts, turning a surplus that would have helped everyone when deployed into a ginormous black hole that will take decades to recover from.
I can fully understand China not trusting anything coming from the US because it wouldn't be the first time the US administration sells something with a backdoor. (look for the story about Swiss Crypto AG if you want an earlier example)
The most immediate result of this policy would be that only second rate products would be offered to the Chinese, offers by people that feel so little confident about their product that they will happily give away the crown jewels to get a few bucks. There are better ways.
I suspect someone hasn't been quoted right. I'm sure they meant to say they would require full audits of any company supplying security gear, and that company should be in a trusted nation (if such a beast exists, but that's my theory).
They could combine that with what a large quantity of Arab banks have done over the last few months: eject everything US sourced. I've heard of banks even throwing out Messagelabs because it's American (no kidding). No idea if that led to an upsurge in Linux desktops, though..
The thinking behind the demand is good. Implementation, however, could be better.
I know exactly what it's like to be at the receiving end of a judge who is clueless - due to the idiocy residing in the British court system it has taken a year longer to get someone who defrauded me into bankruptcy. This is what you get when people no longer have to take responsibility for their actions.
But I digress: what's next? Surely there must be a way to get insanity like this corrected? Or would it need a solid public outcry and exposure before this gets corrected? This decision disgraces the system.
The bit I positively hate about Windows is that it pretends to be usable while in reality it is still miles away from it. It boots, you log in and then you get a desktop. If have the nerve to touch anything in the first 3 minutes you extend the time to get a moderately responsive desktop by minutes.
In the end you have to watch the disk light to get some sort of idea at which point it is, and that's just a relatively normal XP based laptop with all the crud removed.
And just when you think you can use the box, Windows update pops up telling you that it has found new reasons to reboot and go through it all again..
That's an interesting point, because that differs per country. I live in a country where I can just order such a laser out of a catalog and use it - no limit on acquisition (well, to a limit - importing some of the more powerful versions like the stuff sold at wickedlasers would probably require justification).
However, where I would get in trouble is the consequences of that use. If I blind someone, or (as per topic) I use it to prevent camera recording of, say, my license plate or me (they check for seatbelts as well) - that's the point where the law would rightfully come down on me like a tonne of bricks.
To me, this approach makes sense. Some products like DVD writers use quite powerful lasers, and as long as they stay inside that case that's perfectly OK - it would be impractical to ban DVD writers because they contained a product that COULD be misused. Only when you remove them and do something different with them becomes it a dangerous matter.
I've been through this exercise when checking ways to preserve privacy, and the answer here too is that technological countermeasures just start off an arms race on what is in essence not a technical problem - it is a political one. What the Chaos Computer Club did in Germany was good in this context: they took the fingerprint problem right back to the politicians involved..
An IR laser diode that is left unfocused will do the trick.
It won't zap the sensor, but unless they have used a decent IR filter it will saturate the chip to the point of not registering anything else.
Reasons why you may want to avoid doing this:
- no idea if there will be retinal damage if someone else looks at it
- ANY camera will get upset, so an traffic monitoring will show up your car as worthy of close inspection
- AFAIK, anything that hinders reading your license plate by whatever means is illegal (it is in most of the countries I've been in, no idea about AU).
This is NOT a tech problem, it is a political one. As long as the population doesn't make it VERY clear they disagree with what is going on, their government will continue to seek ways to waste a lot of taxpayer money. I'm willing to bet money on the UK ID Card scheme getting nuked if there is a change of government (AFAIK that is an election pledge), that's why they're so pushy about implementing it in at least some form (hence the contract announcements etc etc) - the intention is to make it hard to roll back.
You know, I can recall times when being in politics was something respectful. I'm obviously old..
Apart from the possibly biased conclusion (just winding you up, relax) I agree with you 100%
Two main arguments:
1 - my job as a parent is to ensure my kid can exist in this world. That means building awareness of right and wrong (moral compass), respect for others (instead of being politically correct) and developing his senses for where danger may lie and what to do about it.
2 - I'm not always around (neither is any other parent). Choose your preference: the kid standing a chance on his own because he knows how to use his own brain or him being a rabbit in headlights?
That doesn't mean I won't keep an eye on what he does, because a child's innocence can be used against him, but I won't impose limits on his exploration. He's already learned that there are safe sites and "very scary" ones (his term) where a mistype landed him, and he comes to me with questions which I can answer.
I've kept a "no lies" policies for all his life - I can tell him that something isn't really for his age but he won't get BS from me, it means he's got someone he can trust to give him confidential, open and honest answers when he grows up. In this world, kids need that, and he now expects me to give him the unvarnished reality. Sure, it means I sometimes spend hours with him to get through a complex topic, but that's what being a parent is about.
Simple summary: "I should have" is a useless phrase, it translates to "I didn't".
Balls. There is no consistent standard, and personal details still fly freely over the wire. Show me ANY, repeat, ANY recruitment agency that publishes a PGP key and that emails CVs encrypted.
Even that setup that has more ways to waste money than a teenager, the government, has failed to pull something consistent together. Mind you, last time I rescued them from embarrassment they had Microsoft consultants cook up some secure email solution. Given the rates that MS pays it's "consultants" it was no surprise the result was a non-scalable demo that had huge problems interoperating with the real world.
The law and reality, like politics and reality: mind the gap.
The only people that have it halfway right are banks. They use Lotus Notes because it's the only system that is secure as long as email stays within it. If IBM could grow a clue and really INVEST in building a usable Notes interface they could zap Outlook and Exchange right off the market. As it is, the front end sucks big time and it will only ever have a very reluctant market.
I'll do it again this evening and let you know where this breaks in usability (or where I screwed up, let's face, I can have an off day too). The whole shenanigans with data sources et al is overly complicated.
IMHO, the killer app in OOo is Base. It's got the visual interface that have misguided many into develop business apps on Access (argh), but it works with grown up database. All you need now is a Linux version of Visio and a drop in for Outlook..
No, Outlook is.
And that firm grip by the balls is happily maintained by ye mobile phone providers, because they all only flog an Outlook sync package with the phone. Just in case you had ANY illusions about losing MS Office (just to rub it in) I would suggest you make an end user do the following simple task:
1 - stick a list of numbers in a spreadsheet
2 - print sheets of labels, one label per entry on the spreadsheet.
Sure, it isn't that easy on MS Office. But it is simply impossible in OpenOffice.
This guy is so used to translate RIAA gibberish into the cleartext nonsense it is that I personally think they have made their biggest mistake since starting their campaign.
Ray, thanks for showing that the legal profession DOES have people with old fashioned ethics.
I can't speak for others, but I am certainly 100% behind you. Thanks for your work.
ÌMHO, MS has been riding on the back of IBM making the PC a relative open architecture. Where Apple was already having fights with people producing DIY motherboards and imitations like the Pear II (no kidding), MS nicely remained in the background and rode with IBM into many homes.
When it finally had enough products begged, borrowed, copied, imitated and plain stolen to have a complete offering it started to close the door.
From the closed shop angle, Apple has never been any other way.