Once you lose physical control of a machine, you really can't say much about the security of it. You don't know where that laptop has been or who else might have tampered with it while it has been traveling the globe.
And once the user turns it back into the IT department for replacement/reassignment/disposal, the a competent IT department will wipe and re-image the machine anyway, so it really isn't an issue unless you are allowing the computer to connect to your internal network without any firewalling or virus scanning.
The correct approach for the OP is to ask the question of his IT people what their expectations are, not Slashdot. A reasonable person would expect that some personal use will occur, but then again, it's really up to the owner of the machine.
Many products have trials that are limited in functionality in some way, and it seems to work well. You need to walk a fine line; allowing casual use for people who might turn into customers if they are sufficiently impressed with what your software can do for them. Given the expense of a license, it is understandable why "potential customers" would attempt to get a free copy. Your job is to convince those people who already have a free copy to go legit, and you're not going to do that by spying on them.
I have a compiler suite for microcontroller work that is fully functional up to a 64K compiled code size. Enough for the casual user to get a few things done, and not broken in a way that hinders a potential professional user's ability to evaluate how it will really work if they were to purchase it.
Another toolchain I have is fully operational for 30 days before requiring activation. A good thing, too, since "activation" entails faxing some license details to the company's office half-way around the world and waiting for them to get around to generating a license key and e-mailing it back to you.
Maybe with your video editor, you could allow saving only 3 minutes of finished video? Or only one audio channel? CoolEdit Pro, a sound editor, used to present a dialog on startup asking you which 2 of the following 6 features you would like active for this session. I forget exactly what your choices were, but included things like clipboard usage, saving files, waveform generation, etc. Enough of a hassle to encourage springing for a license, but gentle enough that the casual user could actually try out all the features of the software.
Thousands line up to work there because there are billions of people in the country who are increasingly being displaced and are poor, and need anything as a source of income. Doesn't mean it's a good job, just that it's a job.
We could take these same numbers and spin them a different way: Look! The Chinese economy is booming! Apple's success means that Foxconn will shortly be employing 100,000 more people, allowing them to escape dead-end agriculture jobs and join the ranks of the vibrant, hip urban dwellers.
The interesting thing in my view is that there are people lining up to work for Foxconn, while some of the manufacturers that we deal with had trouble finding enough workers to meet the holiday rush only a few weeks ago. I hope this is a good sign that the Chinese are starting to get some options; that they can find good manufacturing jobs, not just have to settle for whatever they can find.
The idea of contactless credit card payments was that the reduced costs due to increase in transaction speed would more than make up for any increases in fraud.
I thought that one of the goals was to reduce the potential for fraud by making it more difficult to duplicate the card?
Or he could just keep enough money in the account.
This is hard to do if the thief doesn't tell you how much he plans to attempt to steal from you beforehand. The lack of the use of your money is the biggest reason (in my mind) to use a credit card instead of a debit card.
The CCV doesn't change until it has been used. So you would need to scan the card, use the information for a transaction before the cardholder uses it, then scan it again to get the next CCV. Realistically, you would only get a single use out of each card. But that would be fine, since the idea would be to harvest many cards.
This is curious to me... how does the card know there has been a transaction? Is it just the act of sending the card information that triggers the change to the CCV? And then it stands to reason that there is a pre-programmed sequence of CCVs that the card and the central bank shares?
In a crowded area, I'd have no trouble holding a briefcase near enough to dozens of wallets very quickly. I could have a fairly large coil in there and a nice decent yagi if I felt I needed to increase the range some.
That sounds like a lot of work. I'd just stick the skimmer under the bench at the bus stop. Let the victims come to me!
The precession of the equinoxes and proper motion of stars means we'll have a new north star long before either happens. A series of them, actually.
Not that a pole star is actually necessary anyway. There isn't a decent south polar star currently.
The North Star is a fairly recent thing. Isaac Asimov used "Shakespeare" quoting Julius Caesar calling himself as constant as the North Star to "prove" that Francis Bacon couldn't have ghosted that play, at least, because Bacon would have known that, due to the precession of the equinoxes, in Roman times the nearest star to the pole spot covered half of the range from horizon to zenith each night, and thus would never be called "the North Star." Of course, Asimov then pointed out that that argument also proved that he, Isaac Asimov, could not have written one of his juvenile books published under an alias, because of an equally simple mistake that surely a science writer as good as he was could never make (except that he did).
Anyway, if Polaris was eaten by an interstellar space goat sometime in the past so that its light disappears tomorrow, we can still use the method which has worked since the Neolithic. The two stars in the pan of the Big Dipper (aka, the Wain or Wagon in The Odyssey) farthest from the handle (or tongue of the Wagon) line up to point to the pole point more exactly than a fairly dim star in a fairly dim constellation ever have, and will continue to do so for thousands of years more. One can also use two stars in Cassiopia to line up with the pole, but I cannot remember which two without being outside on a clear night (and thus away from this keyboard and my wifi signal).
But wouldn't the movement that aligned (and will be removing) Polaris as the "North Star" also affect the alignment of both the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia?
I guess I'll go back to my GPS for direction finding and use my time instead to begin worrying about this interstellar space goat you've turned me onto...
Re:This is where western medicine has failed...
on
How Doctors Die
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· Score: 1
Mostly I fail. And when after all the explaining the family keeps telling me to do something, I cannot disregard them (I do plan on keeping my license, you know?). I don't think it's so much that western medicine failed, as it is that layman's expectations of medicine are unrealistic.
And there is the problem. Where you have to listen to the wishes of the family instead of looking out for the best care of your patient. The patient should come first. IMHO of course. A doctor shouldn't have to worry about his or her license getting yanked in these sorts of situations.
Unfortunately, the dead patient often does not make a good witness in court proceedings.
A movement missing reality...
on
Occupy Flash?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
'Why does it matter when HTML5 has clearly won the fight for the future of our web browsing?'
A future technology still being defined does not solve today's problems.
While we're at it, let's boycott all manufacturers of prosthetic legs as using stem cells and legal pot to regenerate lost limbs is clearly the superior technology.
letting them know they're a sinking ship, and you're a smart rat is quite satisfying.
But phrase it correctly. Using your exit interview to unload all the frustrations you've pent up as an employee can seem satisfying for a short time. If they wouldn't listen to you as an employee, don't waste your time trying to change their mind now.
Once you have an offer that is at least a lateral move, go above the jerks heads and see what you can accomplish (hint: there's a reason you have an offer in hand when doing this)
I disagree completely. Counteroffers are almost always losing propositions, especially if you don't like the people you're working for (because they're manipulative jerks).
Amen to this. The counteroffer is one way to get the raise that you've been waiting for the past four years, but if the environment is what's wrong with your job talking to management, at whatever level, is pissing in the wind.
A co-worker of mine once told me there are three options if you're in a hostile environment: 1. Learn to live with it, 2. Change the environment, or 3. Choose a new environment.
Sounds like option #1 is failing for the OP, management will not implement #2 for one disgruntled employee. The only option left is #3.
Like some of my PhD friends have told me, putting a technical quiz in front of well educated and experienced job candidate is a great way to insult them, and is deserving of a good punch in the face.
There's a very fine line here. I dislike the "tricky" questions which seem to fall into two camps: 1. The Egg of Columbus type problems where the candidate will either know the answer immediately because they have seen it before or will fail miserably. 2. The Let's See if the Candidate Can Solve the Problem Just Like I Did kind of problem, which is really just a control and ego booster for the interviewer.
On the other hand, it's so easy to pad a resume to get past the HR drone that you cannot take the candidates' claims of proficiency at face value. Following up on references is useless; if I'm interviewing for a job, why would I give you the phone number of anyone who might speak badly of me?
As the interviewer, I have no chance in our 90 minute chat for me to gauge your potential to the company over the next 5 years, but there are ways for me to disqualify you as inept and see through your false resume.
When I first read about the FizzBuzz test on Jeff Atwood's blog (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html) I was incredulous about the number of "qualified" programmers who it claimed could not program their way out of a wet paper sack. But over the last two months, on a lark, I've been using it during interviews. Out of 10 applicants, around 6 have been unable to prove to me that they could properly use a for loop, a modulo operator, and an if statement to solve this problem.
I understand how quizzes may come across as insulting to a highly experienced candidate, but a trivial task like FizzBuzz should take maybe 10 minutes of their valuable time. If their egos don't allow them to condescend to the humiliation of proving they can perform the most basic of tasks, it's probably a good idea for both of us that we don't work together.
Unless the entire program is in 1 gigantic 8 billion billion billion line file why would it need that many resources or even be able to use 16 GB of RAM? Assuming it is like a normal program would it not just be a large collection of relatively small files that are compiled one after the other (theoretically number of CPUs + 1 threads running at a time with that many files being compiled concurrently being the optimal solution)? And I just do not see how you could ever use up 16 GB at any one time.
That's the magic tingle of Android you're feeling...
In other words, programs get money where the student has a good chance of applying what they learn and getting a good job, and useless money-pit degree programs are suffering? When there's a demand for sculptors, maybe the alumni sculptors and their sponsors will donate. I seriously doubt anybody is making enough from patent licenses to construct a series of new buildings.
At my university, it was space and other government research grants that fueled the engineering college. These departments were net money-makers. The art and music departments depended on philanthropic foundations, and they kept telling me that my student fees for the football team were a good investment because of alumni fundraising.
I think this hits part of the nail right on the head:
Nearly every job requires a BS or BA...even if they don't care which subject.
This is just wrong, IMO. IMO college is not trade school (not that there is anything wrong with trade school), but it has been turned into one by this notion that pretty much any job that is not Jiffy Lube or the Quickie Mart requires a college degree.
And the reason employers look for a degree is that it is the easiest way to guarantee a minimum standard of competency. No, not a foolproof (or even good) way to do it, but that's what everyone's been trained to think. The prospective employer immediately rejects anyone without a degree, because there are plenty of candidates with degrees to sift through. The prospective student recognizes that they must have the diploma to serve as membership card to the non-minimum wage workers' club.
Life insurance should be considered income replacement insurance. Once no one is depending on your income (kids are moved out, house is paid for, you've got some retirement sorted) continuing to insure your income is the fool's bet.
If you do the math with two options:
A) Whole life, return of premium, or "regular" life insurance
B) 30 year term policy + the difference of premium invested at market rates
I think you will find that you will come out ahead with option B at the 30 year mark. Even worse, if you die in year 29, your "regular" insurance policy will pay out only the face value, not the face value plus the amount of premium you've paid.
The life insurance industry does not run on charity, you can be confident that they have run the numbers.
As far as the law is concerned it's probably not much of an issue, if you asked me and my kid was in that class I'd say "hell yes!" The first part of the law is very much built around what you do if you see or suspect abuse, not abuse that may happen... if the priest's superior knows that his priest-employee has been looking at kiddie porn for 30 years with no instances of abuse, then he can come to a reasonable conclusion that he won't abuse.
Kiddie porn == child abuse. Maybe not directly by him, but the very fact that the images exist mean that there was abuse of the children pictured at some point. Judge and jury will decide, but I can't imagine that anybody in the hierarchy of the Catholic church is not walking on eggshells and erring on the side of paranoia about this stuff. The mind boggles.
Slashdot Mirror
Once you lose physical control of a machine, you really can't say much about the security of it. You don't know where that laptop has been or who else might have tampered with it while it has been traveling the globe.
And once the user turns it back into the IT department for replacement/reassignment/disposal, the a competent IT department will wipe and re-image the machine anyway, so it really isn't an issue unless you are allowing the computer to connect to your internal network without any firewalling or virus scanning.
The correct approach for the OP is to ask the question of his IT people what their expectations are, not Slashdot. A reasonable person would expect that some personal use will occur, but then again, it's really up to the owner of the machine.
Many products have trials that are limited in functionality in some way, and it seems to work well. You need to walk a fine line; allowing casual use for people who might turn into customers if they are sufficiently impressed with what your software can do for them. Given the expense of a license, it is understandable why "potential customers" would attempt to get a free copy. Your job is to convince those people who already have a free copy to go legit, and you're not going to do that by spying on them.
I have a compiler suite for microcontroller work that is fully functional up to a 64K compiled code size. Enough for the casual user to get a few things done, and not broken in a way that hinders a potential professional user's ability to evaluate how it will really work if they were to purchase it.
Another toolchain I have is fully operational for 30 days before requiring activation. A good thing, too, since "activation" entails faxing some license details to the company's office half-way around the world and waiting for them to get around to generating a license key and e-mailing it back to you.
Maybe with your video editor, you could allow saving only 3 minutes of finished video? Or only one audio channel? CoolEdit Pro, a sound editor, used to present a dialog on startup asking you which 2 of the following 6 features you would like active for this session. I forget exactly what your choices were, but included things like clipboard usage, saving files, waveform generation, etc. Enough of a hassle to encourage springing for a license, but gentle enough that the casual user could actually try out all the features of the software.
One thing is clear: you sure are gettin' screwed in Chicago.
Thousands line up to work there because there are billions of people in the country who are increasingly being displaced and are poor, and need anything as a source of income. Doesn't mean it's a good job, just that it's a job.
We could take these same numbers and spin them a different way: Look! The Chinese economy is booming! Apple's success means that Foxconn will shortly be employing 100,000 more people, allowing them to escape dead-end agriculture jobs and join the ranks of the vibrant, hip urban dwellers.
The interesting thing in my view is that there are people lining up to work for Foxconn, while some of the manufacturers that we deal with had trouble finding enough workers to meet the holiday rush only a few weeks ago. I hope this is a good sign that the Chinese are starting to get some options; that they can find good manufacturing jobs, not just have to settle for whatever they can find.
hes a slut of a politician
You repeat yourself...
The idea of contactless credit card payments was that the reduced costs due to increase in transaction speed would more than make up for any increases in fraud.
I thought that one of the goals was to reduce the potential for fraud by making it more difficult to duplicate the card?
Or he could just keep enough money in the account.
This is hard to do if the thief doesn't tell you how much he plans to attempt to steal from you beforehand. The lack of the use of your money is the biggest reason (in my mind) to use a credit card instead of a debit card.
The CCV doesn't change until it has been used. So you would need to scan the card, use the information for a transaction before the cardholder uses it, then scan it again to get the next CCV. Realistically, you would only get a single use out of each card. But that would be fine, since the idea would be to harvest many cards.
This is curious to me... how does the card know there has been a transaction? Is it just the act of sending the card information that triggers the change to the CCV? And then it stands to reason that there is a pre-programmed sequence of CCVs that the card and the central bank shares?
In a crowded area, I'd have no trouble holding a briefcase near enough to dozens of wallets very quickly. I could have a fairly large coil in there and a nice decent yagi if I felt I needed to increase the range some.
That sounds like a lot of work. I'd just stick the skimmer under the bench at the bus stop. Let the victims come to me!
The precession of the equinoxes and proper motion of stars means we'll have a new north star long before either happens. A series of them, actually.
Not that a pole star is actually necessary anyway. There isn't a decent south polar star currently.
The North Star is a fairly recent thing. Isaac Asimov used "Shakespeare" quoting Julius Caesar calling himself as constant as the North Star to "prove" that Francis Bacon couldn't have ghosted that play, at least, because Bacon would have known that, due to the precession of the equinoxes, in Roman times the nearest star to the pole spot covered half of the range from horizon to zenith each night, and thus would never be called "the North Star." Of course, Asimov then pointed out that that argument also proved that he, Isaac Asimov, could not have written one of his juvenile books published under an alias, because of an equally simple mistake that surely a science writer as good as he was could never make (except that he did).
Anyway, if Polaris was eaten by an interstellar space goat sometime in the past so that its light disappears tomorrow, we can still use the method which has worked since the Neolithic. The two stars in the pan of the Big Dipper (aka, the Wain or Wagon in The Odyssey) farthest from the handle (or tongue of the Wagon) line up to point to the pole point more exactly than a fairly dim star in a fairly dim constellation ever have, and will continue to do so for thousands of years more. One can also use two stars in Cassiopia to line up with the pole, but I cannot remember which two without being outside on a clear night (and thus away from this keyboard and my wifi signal).
But wouldn't the movement that aligned (and will be removing) Polaris as the "North Star" also affect the alignment of both the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia?
I guess I'll go back to my GPS for direction finding and use my time instead to begin worrying about this interstellar space goat you've turned me onto...
He will do or say anything to get elected. In short he is a psychopath.
...or a politician. Po-TAY-to, Po-TAU-to.
Basically, if you have a year of living expenses (way less than a year _salary_ mind you)
You don't know that... the poster could be American like me.
You want the Google Earth flight simulator.
And there is the problem. Where you have to listen to the wishes of the family instead of looking out for the best care of your patient. The patient should come first. IMHO of course. A doctor shouldn't have to worry about his or her license getting yanked in these sorts of situations.
Unfortunately, the dead patient often does not make a good witness in court proceedings.
'Why does it matter when HTML5 has clearly won the fight for the future of our web browsing?'
A future technology still being defined does not solve today's problems.
While we're at it, let's boycott all manufacturers of prosthetic legs as using stem cells and legal pot to regenerate lost limbs is clearly the superior technology.
letting them know they're a sinking ship, and you're a smart rat is quite satisfying.
But phrase it correctly. Using your exit interview to unload all the frustrations you've pent up as an employee can seem satisfying for a short time. If they wouldn't listen to you as an employee, don't waste your time trying to change their mind now.
Once you have an offer that is at least a lateral move, go above the jerks heads and see what you can accomplish (hint: there's a reason you have an offer in hand when doing this)
I disagree completely. Counteroffers are almost always losing propositions, especially if you don't like the people you're working for (because they're manipulative jerks).
Amen to this. The counteroffer is one way to get the raise that you've been waiting for the past four years, but if the environment is what's wrong with your job talking to management, at whatever level, is pissing in the wind.
A co-worker of mine once told me there are three options if you're in a hostile environment: 1. Learn to live with it, 2. Change the environment, or 3. Choose a new environment.
Sounds like option #1 is failing for the OP, management will not implement #2 for one disgruntled employee. The only option left is #3.
Like some of my PhD friends have told me, putting a technical quiz in front of well educated and experienced job candidate is a great way to insult them, and is deserving of a good punch in the face.
There's a very fine line here. I dislike the "tricky" questions which seem to fall into two camps: 1. The Egg of Columbus type problems where the candidate will either know the answer immediately because they have seen it before or will fail miserably. 2. The Let's See if the Candidate Can Solve the Problem Just Like I Did kind of problem, which is really just a control and ego booster for the interviewer.
On the other hand, it's so easy to pad a resume to get past the HR drone that you cannot take the candidates' claims of proficiency at face value. Following up on references is useless; if I'm interviewing for a job, why would I give you the phone number of anyone who might speak badly of me?
As the interviewer, I have no chance in our 90 minute chat for me to gauge your potential to the company over the next 5 years, but there are ways for me to disqualify you as inept and see through your false resume.
When I first read about the FizzBuzz test on Jeff Atwood's blog (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html) I was incredulous about the number of "qualified" programmers who it claimed could not program their way out of a wet paper sack. But over the last two months, on a lark, I've been using it during interviews. Out of 10 applicants, around 6 have been unable to prove to me that they could properly use a for loop, a modulo operator, and an if statement to solve this problem.
I understand how quizzes may come across as insulting to a highly experienced candidate, but a trivial task like FizzBuzz should take maybe 10 minutes of their valuable time. If their egos don't allow them to condescend to the humiliation of proving they can perform the most basic of tasks, it's probably a good idea for both of us that we don't work together.
Unless the entire program is in 1 gigantic 8 billion billion billion line file why would it need that many resources or even be able to use 16 GB of RAM?
Assuming it is like a normal program would it not just be a large collection of relatively small files that are compiled one after the other (theoretically number of CPUs + 1 threads running at a time with that many files being compiled concurrently being the optimal solution)?
And I just do not see how you could ever use up 16 GB at any one time.
That's the magic tingle of Android you're feeling...
In other words, programs get money where the student has a good chance of applying what they learn and getting a good job, and useless money-pit degree programs are suffering? When there's a demand for sculptors, maybe the alumni sculptors and their sponsors will donate. I seriously doubt anybody is making enough from patent licenses to construct a series of new buildings.
At my university, it was space and other government research grants that fueled the engineering college. These departments were net money-makers. The art and music departments depended on philanthropic foundations, and they kept telling me that my student fees for the football team were a good investment because of alumni fundraising.
I think this hits part of the nail right on the head:
Nearly every job requires a BS or BA...even if they don't care which subject.
This is just wrong, IMO. IMO college is not trade school (not that there is anything wrong with trade school), but it has been turned into one by this notion that pretty much any job that is not Jiffy Lube or the Quickie Mart requires a college degree.
And the reason employers look for a degree is that it is the easiest way to guarantee a minimum standard of competency. No, not a foolproof (or even good) way to do it, but that's what everyone's been trained to think.
The prospective employer immediately rejects anyone without a degree, because there are plenty of candidates with degrees to sift through.
The prospective student recognizes that they must have the diploma to serve as membership card to the non-minimum wage workers' club.
Life insurance should be considered income replacement insurance. Once no one is depending on your income (kids are moved out, house is paid for, you've got some retirement sorted) continuing to insure your income is the fool's bet.
If you do the math with two options:
A) Whole life, return of premium, or "regular" life insurance
B) 30 year term policy + the difference of premium invested at market rates
I think you will find that you will come out ahead with option B at the 30 year mark. Even worse, if you die in year 29, your "regular" insurance policy will pay out only the face value, not the face value plus the amount of premium you've paid.
The life insurance industry does not run on charity, you can be confident that they have run the numbers.
As far as the law is concerned it's probably not much of an issue, if you asked me and my kid was in that class I'd say "hell yes!" The first part of the law is very much built around what you do if you see or suspect abuse, not abuse that may happen... if the priest's superior knows that his priest-employee has been looking at kiddie porn for 30 years with no instances of abuse, then he can come to a reasonable conclusion that he won't abuse.
Kiddie porn == child abuse. Maybe not directly by him, but the very fact that the images exist mean that there was abuse of the children pictured at some point. Judge and jury will decide, but I can't imagine that anybody in the hierarchy of the Catholic church is not walking on eggshells and erring on the side of paranoia about this stuff. The mind boggles.
Exactly!
Thus improving synergy while extending our core competencies to kick-start a dialog between all the resource involved!
I couldn't have said it any clearer.