It is like saying Tiger Woods will remain number one as long as no one comes along who is better.
Not quite. It's like saying Tiger will have more fans forever because he started with more fans today. And that fan base will ensure that Tiger is always better than everyone else.
The flaw in this article is that they assume:
Companies won't demand open standards
Every version of MS software will continue making significant improvements
MS will not start to get caught with the viral GPL license issues the way open source developers continuously get caught with patents. The nice thing about patents is that they eventually expire, GPL doesn't.
What will really happen is the law of diminishing returns will kick in, and MS users will have even less of a reason to upgrade each time as more eye candy and unneeded features requires more hardware. At some point, the features that MS gives over linux will not be worth the cost of MS. Additionally, as formats open, and applications move to the web, the ability to leverage the monopoly will continuously reduce. The best thing MS has going for it now is application support and the bundling that is done by all the major PC builders. If they lose either of those, they will lose their grip on being number 1.
A bulk eraser, aka degausser, will destroy not only the data, but also the factory written tracks. The end result is that the drive can never be used again. This may invalidate the warranty if the manufacturer doesn't offer the "send back the face plate" option. Not to mention, most of these degaussers cost 10 times that of a replacement drive according to a quick google search. Considering your line of work, make sure you pick drives from manufacturers that allow replacements without sending back the data.
Throwing technology at a non-technical problem won't fix it. I like some ideas including more self directed study and the new class times (though I'd worry about traffic if this was done across an entire city). And as much crap as MS will get for this, I don't think they have evil motives at heart.
However, the real problem with schools is the insistence upon including everyone and teaching to the lowest common denominator. The more we can get the high achievers into more advanced programs where they spend time around other high achievers, the better. The entrance requirements for this school shouldn't have been a lottery, but a skills test and teacher recommendations. The best colleges in the country don't use a lottery for admission, and neither should the best schools.
I'm sure there are a long list of other things that could be done. For example, we need ways to find and reward teachers that engage students and truly educate them. I have a hard time remembering the teachers that taught from a book, but the ones that brought in dry ice and had us build model rockets are at the top of my list. The first management technique that MS should have brought to the table was the proper identification of what the problems are and how they can find and implement the best solutions. Sadly, this was more about money and publicity than it was about fixing a problem.
The "Supplier Surcharge" that Verizon Online DSL pays could only be something paid to Verizon the phone wiring company. So they needed to charge this fee to pay the other part of their own company more, not to mention that this is something that should be factored into the cost of DSL. The various fees are essentially a way to allow false advertising legally. The solution is to make advertising rates without including all the various fees illegal and the problem will quickly go away.
Computers tend to fall into three main categories:
Devices to play games
Devices to use tools to retrieve, organize, and store information
Devices to build programs for the above
The students are hoping for the games, chat, inappropriate web sites, and other fun things. The parents are hoping for the ability to use programs. The techies are hoping for more people to build the programs. Problem is, with too much directionless time around computers, kids will gravitate towards playing and find another way to miss out on the learning.
We need students to spend class time learning the material and not the computer. Time spent on projects and labs should utilize computers where appropriate, but otherwise, the computers should be in a cart that the teachers checkout only when needed. A computer literacy class should be offered to learn the major applications (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, email, web, etc) without stressing a particular suite too much.
Finally, a computer programming course (pick a couple languages and go through the basics), and maybe a computer architecture course (teaching about how computers work, networking, security, and all that other interesting stuff that doesn't fit into the above) should be offered to those more technically inclined students. This would give those kids a head start in the technology field and help make up that gap that seems to be growing between the US and other countries.
I am one of those hated consultants, and I see things pan out three different ways:
1. Never ending project. This one usually seems pretty straight forward and then management keeps extending. When those extensions are because they see the value of me doing more, that's fine. But more often than not, it's because they can't get their own staff to pick up the new challenge. Typically that's a result of under staffing.
2. Scope creep. Essentially I'm brought in for something small, and groups are constantly adding on more tasks. When this is combined with the "never ending project" above, I basically become entrenched. I don't mind if it's interesting work, but all too often, after the first few months, I'm doing things that won't apply to any other customer and have stop growing. When I'm on a project like this for 3 times the original duration, I tend to get antsy and weight the cost to the relationship of not signing the next contract to extend. If the work stays interesting, I'm happy to be paid consulting rates for full time employment.
3. The right way. Not many people successfully do this. The thing these customers have had in common is that the staff wasn't overworked and were truly interesting in learning what I was doing and taking over. Also, the work I'm doing typically involves drawing from experience at my previous clients and vendor training. Any extensions are usually to do something above and beyond the original contract, and not to maintain what I've developed.
It's not a bad thing to be at a customer forever if you are always doing something new and doing it faster and therefore cheaper than their internal staff could have done. It's bad when they keep you there to maintain their environment, and it's bad for both the customer and for the consultant, the good consultants at least.
I don't think the problem is really device support. That isn't to say there are unsupported devices, there are. But ipods and other mp3 players, most digital cameras, many wireless adapters, dvd drives, and so forth don't appear to be among them. It's usually the latest video cards, win-modems, and the lesser known brands that have the problems (though I'm sure people will come up with exceptions). If linux were to take off, people would buy hardware that worked with linux. Then the hardware vendors would make sure their products work with linux to avoid losing that growing market-share.
The true problem with linux is confusion and lack of consolidation. Things that should be easy are still just as hard as they were 10 years ago. There are far too many different projects to make configuring the system easier, from web tools, to all the different custom designs from the distributors, and to different utilities for each application. The KDE/Gnome split isn't making things any better. The ability to fork projects to make a better one is important, but the community needs to be able to quickly decide the best solution and standardize before the developers go too far into counter-productive directions. A common management interface is critical. I shouldn't have to know to run dpkg-reconfigure for one thing, launch a browser to port 631 for another, and edit/etc/network/interfaces for another. When everything was a conf file under/etc, the world wasn't too bad. But with all the different front ends, configuring a system has just gotten too complicated. I see this getting cleaned up over the next 5 years, and by then, we'll have a whole new set of problems.
There's one other critical place that people will walk away from linux, and that's the proprietary apps and data formats. Find me a good replacement for visio, or at least a visio file reader. Tell me how I should download mainstream music from a legal vendor. If I want it bad enough, I'll pay for it like I would have to under windows. But right now, key vendors aren't offering their products for linux, and that's not the fault of linux developers.
When people get a license to use something big and valuable, there's almost always a signed contract involved detailing the rights of each party, and each person keeps a copy of that contract. When license distribution is scaled down to the retail store level, are the rights of the copyright holder reduced because they failed to get any kind of contract signed, nor have they kept track of who they have given a license to? I think it just goes to show how many problems there are with retail distribution of licenses. As the other RIAA article in slashdot says today, many people believe that owning the cd gives permission to copy and provide to friends. There's simply not an understanding by people that they are being sold a license rather than ownership of the material. It seems like the best solution is for the industry to keep a list of everyone they have granted a license to and to have some kind of agreement that you sign at the register. And I don't consider that a violation of one's privacy since you are free to not get a license, and therefore not be on the list.
When it comes time to sue a person for copyright infringement, the RIAA needs to show that either they never gave you a license or that you violated the license that you signed. Click through agreements wouldn't be enforceable, so you'd need a master agreement that you sign and mail in before using an online service. And I'm sure stores would quickly implement master agreements that you sign to get a frequent customer card that you just swipe at checkout.
Yes, this is all a pain in the butt, and to be honest, that's probably why the RIAA never implemented it in the past. Plus, implementing it in the future would imply that everyone in the past is not bound by the same terms. However, has the RIAA lost some of their protections by not keeping track of their licenses?
This brings up a similar question I've had since day one. If time-shifting of content for personal use is legal, does it mater what method a person used to time-shift the material? For example, if I record a song off of the radio, is that more or less legal than if I copied that same song from a friend or download online after hearing it on the radio? If the process you use to time-shift isn't relevant, then it should be legal to have a copy for personal use of anything that was ever played over the open radio waves.
You admit that you don't know what it's like to be poor, and you seem oblivious to the challenges they face.
And how much experience do you have starting a business and hiring employees?
So how much less effective is your advice for people whose situations don't remotely resemble your own?
It won't work for everyone, I already said that. But it's better than bitching about how nothing will ever work for you and expecting someone else to fix your problems.
then where is the incentive for him to strive to make the company better?
To not be replaced by the person that finds a way to do their job in half the time.
Is it the hope of promotion that should drive people? Or the hope that, as the company's profits soar, their employers will hand out pay raises?
What about the desire to be a better person, which in turn, gives you more choice of what you do with your career, and maybe even do something you enjoy?
Finally, people damn well ought to be able to ask for pay raises for "doing the same work as last year."
You just followed that with a bunch of examples of how they are doing different work. Congradulations, enjoy your 3%.
Finally, you have no right to whine about how the government picks your pockets to promote the general welfare.
I'm a citizen, I vote, I have just as much a right as everyone else. I'm confused, where you suggesting higher or lower taxes?
Compare our situation to European countries.
Unemployment around 7-10%, and an average time between jobs around a year. Discuss how good the situation is with some french college graduates that businesses won't hire because they have no experience and a very difficult time being fired.
You seem to think that you'll change my mind, and I hate to break it to you, but I'm too damn stuborn. I'm not going to change the way I run my business because of what an employee wants. I'm the one that loses money when a bad decision is made, so I get to decide. You're welcome to ignore my suggestions, after all, I'm just some guy posting to slashdot. The successful business people were the ones that stopped giving reasons for why they couldn't and decided to just do it, but I don't get to tell you which group to be in. Finally, seeing you claim that I can't give advice to people that are less fortunate and that you should be able to tell businesses how they are run seems hypocrytical at the least.
You sound like somebody who has no idea what it's really like at the bottom of the wage scale.
True, I won't even attempt to claim that I haven't been very fortunate in my life. But I've also giving a fair number of weekends building homes for those less fortunate. It's just a shame that more of those that we help don't pick up a hammer themselves and try to learn, but rather they sweep up the dust. I'm not making a claim to know how to be poor, I'm trying to point out how to get out of the downward spiral.
A small business takes a lot of effort, a lot of knowledge, and a lot of money. What I'm hearing from you is that those who lack any of those three ingredients should be content with jobs where they have no say in what their company does or how the company treats them.
I was laid off from an IT job and started a consulting business without using more than one month's salary. Did it take knowledge and effort? Yes. That's why I learned as much as I could before the day came. The need for huge funds is way overrated, though I was careful to have enough to pay the bills if things failed.
You and I have totally different definitions of "risk".
The person that lives paycheck to paycheck is taking a huge risk with that lifestyle. But that kind of risk has no value to the company. That employee takes very little risk with their job: if they work X hours, they get paid for that. And without taking a risk with the company, the company shouldn't be under any obligation to reward them beyond what they are paying them.
As for the solution, I think people need to stop asking for pay raises for doing the same work they were doing last year. People need to learn that they are rewarded for what they do for the company and not according to what it takes to survive in the world. This isn't a socialist society and if it were, I doubt you'd like things much better when the capitalist all leave for a better place. The landlord that chooses between living without 3 months of rent and investing in a mutual fund does no such thing. When the property doesn't make money, all the rents are raised or the business is sold. Personally, I'd prefer to not have to pay more in rent because other people are unable to pay anything. There's already more than enough spent in my taxes to provide them shelter in other ways.
I have no expectation of changing your ideas toward this. We are simply going to disagree, but you're right that starting a business isn't meant for everyone. However, for those that have the courage, the desire, and a good idea, I'd hope they take this as a suggestion to give it a try and don't give up when they fail the first time. We need a lot more of them in this world. We also need a lot more employees that strive make things better rather than provide a list of excuses for why they can't only do the minimum that's required. The gulf between the haves and have-nots only widends when there are a huge number of employees willing to work for a minimum wage that the few employers get to pick from.
Congradulations on missing the point and greatly exaggerating reality. A reality where people are becoming injured on the job or subject to sexual harassment without the possibility to sue and be more than compensated for an inappropriate practice just doesn't exist anymore, unless the employee is not here legally.
The point being made was that if things are so out of balance that employees don't feel they can get a fair job, then they should start a business. The entire reason the system is out of balance is because everyone insists on being an employee, giving far too much power to the few that are willing to be employers. With more small businesses, there will be fewer unemployed, and the employees will have the choice to leave the companies where they feel under compensated.
As for who is facing the greatest risk? I'll take hidden answer c, the landlord that is getting screwed out of several months of rent and legal fees that it takes to evict a deadbeat, followed by the time to repair the place so that it can be rented again in hopes that in a few more months they can stop losing money.
After that, there's the investor that hopes the business will succeed so that they can be paid, and once they have put down their investment of time and money, they have to wait until the business succeeds to see a dime out of it.
Finally, there's the employee that gets paid regardless of whether their work brings in money for the company and can leave at any time with cash from the investment of their time. And if you aren't being paid enough for the time you've invested, then you should make yourself more valuable to the company. That doesn't necessarily mean getting certified, but more training on something useful wouldn't hurt. Quite simply, it means finding ways to help the company make more money, that's all they really care about. Discover ways to cut costs, improve quality, or deliver more results, and if they still don't see your value, find someone that does.
I don't mean for you to think of me as unsympathetic. I volunteer regularly and donate to those causes I feel deserve it. But I think it's foolish to expect a for-profit business to behave as if they weren't. And if you're behaving foolishly, that might explain the problems you've encountered.
Skyline drive is beautiful, I enjoy a day hike there whenever I can get away. But the road isn't always open after dusk and there are lots of trees and the occasional headlight that mess up a good picture. I was thinking more along the line of a battlefield or park in Manassas or Haymarket.
Business requires money and human effort. How come those who contribute the money control the business; and those who contribute the effort get no say? Does that sound fair or democratic? Isn't it putting money above people? Isn't it contrary to the whole basis of a democratic society?
If you contribute human effort without getting paid, you should be given a share of the company or a partnership. Otherwise, I think it's considered slavery or really really bad negotiating skills. Or were you hoping that you would get rewarded when the business does well and still get paid when it doesn't?
People who put money into a business are investors that know there's a risk they won't see that money again. They are rewarded for that risk with a share of the company that goes up in value when the company does well. The bigger the risk they take, the more that share should be valued if the company actually succeeds.
Employees, on the other hand, take absolutely no risk. If you work, you get paid. If you go working for a startup, they often give you options to reward you for taking the risk that you'll be out of a job in a year and may not have a huge starting salary.
Gordon Gekko said it best, greed is good (up to a point). If you're upset by all those CEO's and business owners that are making all the money, then start your own business or become a CEO (unless you have connections, you're better off trying the former). If you choose to stay an employee, then you get exactly what the company offered in exchange for your services and nothing more.
There are also a few other good showers this year to catch. Both Orionids (Oct 21st) and Geminids (Dec 14th) are said to be decent without so much moon interference. Or just fill your calendar with a whole list. Now if I only knew a good place to drive to get away from the city lights. Any suggestions for those of us living in Northern VA?
Yes, really. You do have a good example with eclipse, but I can find more than enough counter examples. I work in the systems management side, so my examples will be Tivoli biased. But one bad example is patch management. Yes, you're reading that right, 8 cd's to ssh to from one windows box to another and download patches from WSUS. And the product cannot be install on a system that has ever had any other IBM products installed before because of version conflicts.
Another is the way IBM forced all the workload scheduler users to install the Tivoli Framework a few years back. There has yet to be a reason I can see for this. They already had a security mechanism to control logins before, and it's still there, but now it points to framework, so you have to configure a login in two places instead of one. Since then, the popular question on the mailing list has been "how do I fix Framework".
IBM definitely has the resources to create many of these software services themselves for alot less money. I think it's as much about buying these companies up before the competition can than getting the software.
Yes and no. They do have the people, but most are off consulting or supporting the existing product set, not developing new products. IBM has been making all their advances by acquisition for many years now. And seeing what the products look like when IBM builds them in-house, we are probably better off that way. Hint: what do you think happens when someone says don't build something new if we already have it, and they have lots of different tools? Lots and lots of ugly glue and a poor tech that has to learn 15 products to do something other places do with a single simple interface.
More dangerous, he said, was the possibility that spammers might get hold of the list, which would provide them with a gold mine of valid e-mail addresses that would be used for more spam.
Then only distribute the registry as a set of hashes. Simply run a hash on the email you want to send to, and skip it if it matches a hash in the registry. This has the added benefit of making the spammers waste a little more cpu time before filling our inboxes.
Put an address tag on it and a solid lock. I know many people who travel and a few have had issues with their luggage, but if they had proper identifying info on it, they got it... just a few days late.
I was agreeing with you up to this point. First, you can't put a solid lock on checked bags in the US. You can put a flimsy lock that the TSA has a master key to open it with. And we can all be sure that only the good guys have those keys, yeah right. I've had a friend with a laptop and leather jacket stolen out of her checked bag before. Of course instead of feeling sympathetic, everyone wanted to know why she checked a bag with valuables in it.
Then there's the problem of a lost bag. If I'm meeting an important client, showing up with the tennis shoes and dirty clothes that I flew in with the night before is not an option. Finally, I'm guessing you've never had to change planes, or had an airline bump you, or had to go to another airline, or had to race to a completely different airport, to catch a flight. Airlines have problems like this all the time, and it's the people that didn't check a thing that the airlines like best because they are the most flexible. And the lack of security of a checked bag after you've landed is the single biggest reason I hate them. The airline just places them in an unsecured part of the terminal for anyone to pickup. And since they all look alike, it's hard to know your bag has been stolen and not waiting to come out until well after someone has hopped in a car and sped off.
Now before everyone goes on a fit about waiting for people to put their bags in the overhead, you need to consider how much faster the lines at the counter were because nearly half the passengers never waited in that line. And then consider how much less time was spent waiting for the baggage handlers to load up the plane. Finally, consider that it's more likely to be the family with 3 kids than the person with the carry on that holds everyone up. And I don't hear anyone yelling that we should start checking the kids.
Further, I haven't read the paper, but I don't see how this would work unless the user's typing patterns are very well known to the program, or the jitter introduced is significantly greater than 1/2 the average keypress to keypress time.
They do it but having a regular timer on the keylogger. From the usenix article, they pick a window, say 30ms, and you want to put in three values per stroke, 0, 1, "no transmission", with each value being at a 10ms point within the 30ms window. So when you type a key, if it's trying to transmit data, it waits for the appropriate 10ms time and sends it. 10ms is large enough to get around most network induced jitter. And 30ms is small enough to go undetected by the user.
Now, to keep the regular transmissions at 10ms intervals from getting someone's attention, they further hide it by rotating the timer with a preset array of offsets. Say your offset array is {2, 16, 29, 13, 27, 8}. You easily synchronize your sniffer timer to the keyboard timer by looking for that pattern to show up from the "no transmission" bits that you put at the start of every transmission. Then, when you want to transmit a 01010101, you would send at the timing offsets 2, 26, 29, 23, 27, and 18ms. Now, for the first bit at 2ms that you're transmitting, if you typed some key at 8ms into the timing cycle, you would wait 24ms (2ms-8ms mod 30ms) for the keystroke to appear. Continue through each key press and reverse the process on the sniffer.
I hate replying to myself, but the 1/7th of the data that you want to send would obviously be the next 20 characters or so after the ssh user@.* string. Sorry for not finishing the article before posting, but it's pretty damn long and boring. For those that feel like reading along, the usenix article that was posted earlier is at http://www.usenix.org/events/sec06/tech/shah/shah_ html/jbug-Usenix06.html
Pre-programming the logger with the username would also be a good method. Of course you could always switch to a different window (vi) and type some random stuff for a minute before going back to the ssh session if you suspected this problem. Or like everyone else has said, introduce your own jitter into the network traffic. I'd just hate to deal with that kind of throughput.
The best example of using this would be by the police that don't feel like reentering your home and placing the tap on your equipment and can get a sniffer right at the ISP with minimum network lag. Beyond that, I think people are being paranoid. But then, that's what slashdot is here for.
How about clocking the keys out of the keyboard in a regular manner (even if they are typed irregularly) and then adding the delay for the information?
That's what I described, up to 90X for the over all keyboard clock, and another 90X for the additional delay. Of course you could type the character encoded as 1X right at the start of the cycle and hardly see any delay. Actually, thinking through it a bit harder, your overall max is really just 90X since if someone typed the key encoded as 89X right after the start of the timing cycle, you'd still send it at 89X and not wait for the cycle to reset. Still, if X is something like 3ms, 90x3ms = 270ms will be noticable to someone that types fast in a document and notices the application lagging.
However, now that I've read the usenix submission, the researchers are actually proposing to only encode 1 bit of data every 20ms, which can be done unnoticed. However, this means that your keyboard sniffer has to be intelligent enough to know what is important to send since it takes 7 key strokes to send one 7-bit character. How does a key logger know the important 1/7th of the data to send without some interaction with the OS and applications?
The jitter is added to network traffic and it probably has to do with the timing between two packets.
This wasn't described in the article, but I think it's the most feasible option described yet. We are no longer talking about a hacked keyboard, but rather some trojan software running on the computer that doesn't want to be detected. Considering the amount of network traffic compared to the number of keys a user types, I think there is more than enough space to hide a good bit of binary data. The users throughput may go down by a few percent, but if you don't delay when they aren't typing, they probably won't notice.
And now for another idea. What if you simply changed the outgoing TCP in a rarely noticed way, say by dropping the window size or max hop count. As long as no one is looking for the change, and you only make the change when there's data to send, it would be an easy way to encode some data in a more reliable fashion that isn't impacted by outside sources of jitter. And as long as you aren't on the fringe of the max hop count, the bandwidth is completely unaffected.
In the login/password, no, that is buffered and sent all at once after you hit enter. Within the session, it's possible, individual characters are transmitted as you type. But I think the encryption and other overhead makes this more difficult than the researchers presume. See my post below for more details.
Slashdot Mirror
The flaw in this article is that they assume:
- Companies won't demand open standards
- Every version of MS software will continue making significant improvements
- MS will not start to get caught with the viral GPL license issues the way open source developers continuously get caught with patents. The nice thing about patents is that they eventually expire, GPL doesn't.
What will really happen is the law of diminishing returns will kick in, and MS users will have even less of a reason to upgrade each time as more eye candy and unneeded features requires more hardware. At some point, the features that MS gives over linux will not be worth the cost of MS. Additionally, as formats open, and applications move to the web, the ability to leverage the monopoly will continuously reduce. The best thing MS has going for it now is application support and the bundling that is done by all the major PC builders. If they lose either of those, they will lose their grip on being number 1.A bulk eraser, aka degausser, will destroy not only the data, but also the factory written tracks. The end result is that the drive can never be used again. This may invalidate the warranty if the manufacturer doesn't offer the "send back the face plate" option. Not to mention, most of these degaussers cost 10 times that of a replacement drive according to a quick google search. Considering your line of work, make sure you pick drives from manufacturers that allow replacements without sending back the data.
Throwing technology at a non-technical problem won't fix it. I like some ideas including more self directed study and the new class times (though I'd worry about traffic if this was done across an entire city). And as much crap as MS will get for this, I don't think they have evil motives at heart.
However, the real problem with schools is the insistence upon including everyone and teaching to the lowest common denominator. The more we can get the high achievers into more advanced programs where they spend time around other high achievers, the better. The entrance requirements for this school shouldn't have been a lottery, but a skills test and teacher recommendations. The best colleges in the country don't use a lottery for admission, and neither should the best schools.
I'm sure there are a long list of other things that could be done. For example, we need ways to find and reward teachers that engage students and truly educate them. I have a hard time remembering the teachers that taught from a book, but the ones that brought in dry ice and had us build model rockets are at the top of my list. The first management technique that MS should have brought to the table was the proper identification of what the problems are and how they can find and implement the best solutions. Sadly, this was more about money and publicity than it was about fixing a problem.
The "Supplier Surcharge" that Verizon Online DSL pays could only be something paid to Verizon the phone wiring company. So they needed to charge this fee to pay the other part of their own company more, not to mention that this is something that should be factored into the cost of DSL. The various fees are essentially a way to allow false advertising legally. The solution is to make advertising rates without including all the various fees illegal and the problem will quickly go away.
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P.S. Listening to their customers? Haha. Good one. Makes me think of this video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TCX4owupPmo&mode=relat
- Devices to play games
- Devices to use tools to retrieve, organize, and store information
- Devices to build programs for the above
The students are hoping for the games, chat, inappropriate web sites, and other fun things. The parents are hoping for the ability to use programs. The techies are hoping for more people to build the programs. Problem is, with too much directionless time around computers, kids will gravitate towards playing and find another way to miss out on the learning.We need students to spend class time learning the material and not the computer. Time spent on projects and labs should utilize computers where appropriate, but otherwise, the computers should be in a cart that the teachers checkout only when needed. A computer literacy class should be offered to learn the major applications (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, email, web, etc) without stressing a particular suite too much.
Finally, a computer programming course (pick a couple languages and go through the basics), and maybe a computer architecture course (teaching about how computers work, networking, security, and all that other interesting stuff that doesn't fit into the above) should be offered to those more technically inclined students. This would give those kids a head start in the technology field and help make up that gap that seems to be growing between the US and other countries.
They have a store for purchasing tickets:
n s/faq.html
http://kennedyspacecenter.stores.yahoo.net/
Also saw this when searching for the causeway passes, which seems to indicate that you might have to go some other way:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/about/questio
I am one of those hated consultants, and I see things pan out three different ways:
1. Never ending project. This one usually seems pretty straight forward and then management keeps extending. When those extensions are because they see the value of me doing more, that's fine. But more often than not, it's because they can't get their own staff to pick up the new challenge. Typically that's a result of under staffing.
2. Scope creep. Essentially I'm brought in for something small, and groups are constantly adding on more tasks. When this is combined with the "never ending project" above, I basically become entrenched. I don't mind if it's interesting work, but all too often, after the first few months, I'm doing things that won't apply to any other customer and have stop growing. When I'm on a project like this for 3 times the original duration, I tend to get antsy and weight the cost to the relationship of not signing the next contract to extend. If the work stays interesting, I'm happy to be paid consulting rates for full time employment.
3. The right way. Not many people successfully do this. The thing these customers have had in common is that the staff wasn't overworked and were truly interesting in learning what I was doing and taking over. Also, the work I'm doing typically involves drawing from experience at my previous clients and vendor training. Any extensions are usually to do something above and beyond the original contract, and not to maintain what I've developed.
It's not a bad thing to be at a customer forever if you are always doing something new and doing it faster and therefore cheaper than their internal staff could have done. It's bad when they keep you there to maintain their environment, and it's bad for both the customer and for the consultant, the good consultants at least.
I don't think the problem is really device support. That isn't to say there are unsupported devices, there are. But ipods and other mp3 players, most digital cameras, many wireless adapters, dvd drives, and so forth don't appear to be among them. It's usually the latest video cards, win-modems, and the lesser known brands that have the problems (though I'm sure people will come up with exceptions). If linux were to take off, people would buy hardware that worked with linux. Then the hardware vendors would make sure their products work with linux to avoid losing that growing market-share.
/etc/network/interfaces for another. When everything was a conf file under /etc, the world wasn't too bad. But with all the different front ends, configuring a system has just gotten too complicated. I see this getting cleaned up over the next 5 years, and by then, we'll have a whole new set of problems.
The true problem with linux is confusion and lack of consolidation. Things that should be easy are still just as hard as they were 10 years ago. There are far too many different projects to make configuring the system easier, from web tools, to all the different custom designs from the distributors, and to different utilities for each application. The KDE/Gnome split isn't making things any better. The ability to fork projects to make a better one is important, but the community needs to be able to quickly decide the best solution and standardize before the developers go too far into counter-productive directions. A common management interface is critical. I shouldn't have to know to run dpkg-reconfigure for one thing, launch a browser to port 631 for another, and edit
There's one other critical place that people will walk away from linux, and that's the proprietary apps and data formats. Find me a good replacement for visio, or at least a visio file reader. Tell me how I should download mainstream music from a legal vendor. If I want it bad enough, I'll pay for it like I would have to under windows. But right now, key vendors aren't offering their products for linux, and that's not the fault of linux developers.
When people get a license to use something big and valuable, there's almost always a signed contract involved detailing the rights of each party, and each person keeps a copy of that contract. When license distribution is scaled down to the retail store level, are the rights of the copyright holder reduced because they failed to get any kind of contract signed, nor have they kept track of who they have given a license to? I think it just goes to show how many problems there are with retail distribution of licenses. As the other RIAA article in slashdot says today, many people believe that owning the cd gives permission to copy and provide to friends. There's simply not an understanding by people that they are being sold a license rather than ownership of the material. It seems like the best solution is for the industry to keep a list of everyone they have granted a license to and to have some kind of agreement that you sign at the register. And I don't consider that a violation of one's privacy since you are free to not get a license, and therefore not be on the list.
When it comes time to sue a person for copyright infringement, the RIAA needs to show that either they never gave you a license or that you violated the license that you signed. Click through agreements wouldn't be enforceable, so you'd need a master agreement that you sign and mail in before using an online service. And I'm sure stores would quickly implement master agreements that you sign to get a frequent customer card that you just swipe at checkout.
Yes, this is all a pain in the butt, and to be honest, that's probably why the RIAA never implemented it in the past. Plus, implementing it in the future would imply that everyone in the past is not bound by the same terms. However, has the RIAA lost some of their protections by not keeping track of their licenses?
This brings up a similar question I've had since day one. If time-shifting of content for personal use is legal, does it mater what method a person used to time-shift the material? For example, if I record a song off of the radio, is that more or less legal than if I copied that same song from a friend or download online after hearing it on the radio? If the process you use to time-shift isn't relevant, then it should be legal to have a copy for personal use of anything that was ever played over the open radio waves.
You seem to think that you'll change my mind, and I hate to break it to you, but I'm too damn stuborn. I'm not going to change the way I run my business because of what an employee wants. I'm the one that loses money when a bad decision is made, so I get to decide. You're welcome to ignore my suggestions, after all, I'm just some guy posting to slashdot. The successful business people were the ones that stopped giving reasons for why they couldn't and decided to just do it, but I don't get to tell you which group to be in. Finally, seeing you claim that I can't give advice to people that are less fortunate and that you should be able to tell businesses how they are run seems hypocrytical at the least.
As for the solution, I think people need to stop asking for pay raises for doing the same work they were doing last year. People need to learn that they are rewarded for what they do for the company and not according to what it takes to survive in the world. This isn't a socialist society and if it were, I doubt you'd like things much better when the capitalist all leave for a better place. The landlord that chooses between living without 3 months of rent and investing in a mutual fund does no such thing. When the property doesn't make money, all the rents are raised or the business is sold. Personally, I'd prefer to not have to pay more in rent because other people are unable to pay anything. There's already more than enough spent in my taxes to provide them shelter in other ways.
I have no expectation of changing your ideas toward this. We are simply going to disagree, but you're right that starting a business isn't meant for everyone. However, for those that have the courage, the desire, and a good idea, I'd hope they take this as a suggestion to give it a try and don't give up when they fail the first time. We need a lot more of them in this world. We also need a lot more employees that strive make things better rather than provide a list of excuses for why they can't only do the minimum that's required. The gulf between the haves and have-nots only widends when there are a huge number of employees willing to work for a minimum wage that the few employers get to pick from.
Congradulations on missing the point and greatly exaggerating reality. A reality where people are becoming injured on the job or subject to sexual harassment without the possibility to sue and be more than compensated for an inappropriate practice just doesn't exist anymore, unless the employee is not here legally.
The point being made was that if things are so out of balance that employees don't feel they can get a fair job, then they should start a business. The entire reason the system is out of balance is because everyone insists on being an employee, giving far too much power to the few that are willing to be employers. With more small businesses, there will be fewer unemployed, and the employees will have the choice to leave the companies where they feel under compensated.
As for who is facing the greatest risk? I'll take hidden answer c, the landlord that is getting screwed out of several months of rent and legal fees that it takes to evict a deadbeat, followed by the time to repair the place so that it can be rented again in hopes that in a few more months they can stop losing money.
After that, there's the investor that hopes the business will succeed so that they can be paid, and once they have put down their investment of time and money, they have to wait until the business succeeds to see a dime out of it.
Finally, there's the employee that gets paid regardless of whether their work brings in money for the company and can leave at any time with cash from the investment of their time. And if you aren't being paid enough for the time you've invested, then you should make yourself more valuable to the company. That doesn't necessarily mean getting certified, but more training on something useful wouldn't hurt. Quite simply, it means finding ways to help the company make more money, that's all they really care about. Discover ways to cut costs, improve quality, or deliver more results, and if they still don't see your value, find someone that does.
I don't mean for you to think of me as unsympathetic. I volunteer regularly and donate to those causes I feel deserve it. But I think it's foolish to expect a for-profit business to behave as if they weren't. And if you're behaving foolishly, that might explain the problems you've encountered.
Skyline drive is beautiful, I enjoy a day hike there whenever I can get away. But the road isn't always open after dusk and there are lots of trees and the occasional headlight that mess up a good picture. I was thinking more along the line of a battlefield or park in Manassas or Haymarket.
People who put money into a business are investors that know there's a risk they won't see that money again. They are rewarded for that risk with a share of the company that goes up in value when the company does well. The bigger the risk they take, the more that share should be valued if the company actually succeeds.
Employees, on the other hand, take absolutely no risk. If you work, you get paid. If you go working for a startup, they often give you options to reward you for taking the risk that you'll be out of a job in a year and may not have a huge starting salary.
Gordon Gekko said it best, greed is good (up to a point). If you're upset by all those CEO's and business owners that are making all the money, then start your own business or become a CEO (unless you have connections, you're better off trying the former). If you choose to stay an employee, then you get exactly what the company offered in exchange for your services and nothing more.
There are also a few other good showers this year to catch. Both Orionids (Oct 21st) and Geminids (Dec 14th) are said to be decent without so much moon interference. Or just fill your calendar with a whole list. Now if I only knew a good place to drive to get away from the city lights. Any suggestions for those of us living in Northern VA?
Yes, really. You do have a good example with eclipse, but I can find more than enough counter examples. I work in the systems management side, so my examples will be Tivoli biased. But one bad example is patch management. Yes, you're reading that right, 8 cd's to ssh to from one windows box to another and download patches from WSUS. And the product cannot be install on a system that has ever had any other IBM products installed before because of version conflicts.
Another is the way IBM forced all the workload scheduler users to install the Tivoli Framework a few years back. There has yet to be a reason I can see for this. They already had a security mechanism to control logins before, and it's still there, but now it points to framework, so you have to configure a login in two places instead of one. Since then, the popular question on the mailing list has been "how do I fix Framework".
Then there's the problem of a lost bag. If I'm meeting an important client, showing up with the tennis shoes and dirty clothes that I flew in with the night before is not an option. Finally, I'm guessing you've never had to change planes, or had an airline bump you, or had to go to another airline, or had to race to a completely different airport, to catch a flight. Airlines have problems like this all the time, and it's the people that didn't check a thing that the airlines like best because they are the most flexible. And the lack of security of a checked bag after you've landed is the single biggest reason I hate them. The airline just places them in an unsecured part of the terminal for anyone to pickup. And since they all look alike, it's hard to know your bag has been stolen and not waiting to come out until well after someone has hopped in a car and sped off.
Now before everyone goes on a fit about waiting for people to put their bags in the overhead, you need to consider how much faster the lines at the counter were because nearly half the passengers never waited in that line. And then consider how much less time was spent waiting for the baggage handlers to load up the plane. Finally, consider that it's more likely to be the family with 3 kids than the person with the carry on that holds everyone up. And I don't hear anyone yelling that we should start checking the kids.
Now, to keep the regular transmissions at 10ms intervals from getting someone's attention, they further hide it by rotating the timer with a preset array of offsets. Say your offset array is {2, 16, 29, 13, 27, 8}. You easily synchronize your sniffer timer to the keyboard timer by looking for that pattern to show up from the "no transmission" bits that you put at the start of every transmission. Then, when you want to transmit a 01010101, you would send at the timing offsets 2, 26, 29, 23, 27, and 18ms. Now, for the first bit at 2ms that you're transmitting, if you typed some key at 8ms into the timing cycle, you would wait 24ms (2ms-8ms mod 30ms) for the keystroke to appear. Continue through each key press and reverse the process on the sniffer.
I hate replying to myself, but the 1/7th of the data that you want to send would obviously be the next 20 characters or so after the ssh user@.* string. Sorry for not finishing the article before posting, but it's pretty damn long and boring. For those that feel like reading along, the usenix article that was posted earlier is at http://www.usenix.org/events/sec06/tech/shah/shah_ html/jbug-Usenix06.html
Pre-programming the logger with the username would also be a good method. Of course you could always switch to a different window (vi) and type some random stuff for a minute before going back to the ssh session if you suspected this problem. Or like everyone else has said, introduce your own jitter into the network traffic. I'd just hate to deal with that kind of throughput.
The best example of using this would be by the police that don't feel like reentering your home and placing the tap on your equipment and can get a sniffer right at the ISP with minimum network lag. Beyond that, I think people are being paranoid. But then, that's what slashdot is here for.
However, now that I've read the usenix submission, the researchers are actually proposing to only encode 1 bit of data every 20ms, which can be done unnoticed. However, this means that your keyboard sniffer has to be intelligent enough to know what is important to send since it takes 7 key strokes to send one 7-bit character. How does a key logger know the important 1/7th of the data to send without some interaction with the OS and applications?
And now for another idea. What if you simply changed the outgoing TCP in a rarely noticed way, say by dropping the window size or max hop count. As long as no one is looking for the change, and you only make the change when there's data to send, it would be an easy way to encode some data in a more reliable fashion that isn't impacted by outside sources of jitter. And as long as you aren't on the fringe of the max hop count, the bandwidth is completely unaffected.