WHO isn't about power, it's about health. I've seen the work they do and it's helping people. We need a global organisation like this because there are some health problems (pollution-related etc.) that cannot be solved on a national level.
In my opinion this might be a good idea. If you look for health information now, you never know which industry might be behind it to help their products sell better. The health industry is good at this, even funding research to show that their products work. I would like to be able to find some independent information on the web, instead of in industry-funded flyers your doctor passes around.
Can they do this ? I think it all depends in which country you are ie. what laws apply.
I am pretty sure though they will need a warrant for this and they will have to be able to show some proof that the warrant is justified beforehand. I've seen large newspaper ads here in Holland a while back, saying that they "would be coming to your business to check your licenses soon" without mentioning this fact. I think they might rely on ppl being intimidated into allowing them to enter the company's or persons premises to investigate thus circumventing the need for a warrant. I for one wouldn't let them near anything without a warrant, if only for the fact that this is the proper procedure. I might have some confidential material on my pc's when they come to "check my licenses" and i couldn't justify just letting them peep at this stuff without a legal obligation. Does anyone know how often they are able to get a warrant and on what grounds ?
I have found in the past that software companies don't usually bother checking local laws when putting together licenses and related material. They count on a lack of legal knowledge among their customers. German courts for instance ruled that any agreement or license that was not shown on the outside of a box when buying software (ie. couldn't be read before purchasing) was not legal. Likewise, most limited warranties are not applicable in Holland simply because they interfere with Dutch consumer laws.
Does anyone have any direct experience with this ?
In general I agree with the consensus here, leave em alone or even complimenting them on their choice but in my work i come accross some reasons why the more radical negative approaches are sometimes preferable and even necessary:
Support
A lot of organisations have to deal with lusers or even worse: self proclaimed power users who regularly make a mess of their workstations, and the organisation spends money to keep everything going. Allowing ppl to use something different can set a precedent. How are you going to explain to a user that (s)he can't use this application when another user installs a different OS ? (anyone who's ever been a sysadmin knows what i'm talking about)
Security
Some organisations have security requirements. Some are even required to be able to prove that they are secure. This is usually done by getting certification from experts who will create a setup that has been configured and tested to be secure. Linux isn't secure, nor is WinNT, but they might be when they're run in a specific setup. Allowing users to do things differently means you cannot guarantee security on your whole system, simply because you don't know how it's been set up.
Compatibility
In some organisations software is used that's not compatible with non MS OSes. My current client requires me to use Outlook to plan my days so they can see what i'm up to. Even though i might not like using Windows, I don't know a way to do this on Linux (yes i know about Outlook web access, but you need a server for that). Other organisations have custom applications, same story.
This is all I can think off right now, but there is probably a lot more.
Bottom line is that a lot of organisations are Windows based, and it might not always be possible to do anything sensible with a Linux box in those.
The SIM card being destroyed was probably a side-effect of having to remove the battery while the phone was still turned on. Nokia even warns about doing this, saying that in some rare cases taking the battery off without switching off the phone you might damage the sim. (Although you usually don't have a choice when you're phone has crashed). I have to do it all the time, my 7110 crashes every third wap-page. Anyone know if there's a software version that fixes this ?
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
It's hard to give sound advice without a little more info. Is this mirror goig to serve as a backup-server in case the main server is not available ? How many users are we talking here ? If there's only a few users, i can't think of anything against an x86 based server, other then maybe supporting a linux/insert_db_engine_here.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
I am not sure the lower speed back to main memory would be a problem. If all of the processing would be done on the graphicsboard, all you would need to read back are the results, which would be much less data then the original data.
(i am not really that familiar with the data involved so i could be mistaken)
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
My gf actually wrote a thesis on this stuff (she's an environmental health major). Although she specifically looked at GSM phones (maximum output power 2 Watts) this might still be a good reference. She generally found that the radiation caused several effects. First and most important are the effects of heating induced by the radiation. Tests show that this effect is measurable in tenths of degrees at most, and this is not to be regarded as a health risk. There are some other effects (electrical, and several others I don't recall right now) which are either not measurable or are not known to have any adverse health effects. Bottom line is, there's minimal risk if (as with anything else) you don't overdo it.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
A japanese company showed these at CEBIT 2 years ago. I don't know if they're commercially available over there, but it looked like a finished product.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
Just ordered an ADSL line here, in The Netherlands. Reading the offerings in the UK I realized what a great deal I am getting. I get 4 fixed IP's, an ethernet connection (No USB, parallel or other weird port) 1024Kb downstream, and I get specific permission to run servers. I don't recall the upstream speed (I think it was half your downstream speed). Price is about $70 a month. You can get a 512Kb connection with one IP for a little over $30. They made us wait for this a long time though.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
Yep I remember our Progress guys boasting that Progress set some world record on an S80 (We use S70's) I think it was most database transactions a second
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
Some manufacturer demo'd links over 60 to 100 km's of singlemode fibre. I was to busy playing with the funny gadgets they passed around to us for attending the presentation that i don't remember what kind of bandwidth they were talking about (hey, i don't have clients with offices that big). Pretty sure it was 10Mb or over. They already had it working along some oil-pipeline with a few repeaters along the way.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
Killer bees might be a good example of a small scale genetic thingie gone wrong. Alas i've been working all day so the details on this particular story just don't seem to be present at this time;-) Anyone ?
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
I remember reading a quote by the founder (or owner/me is a bit sketchy on the details) of Hilton who said that if the cost of getting payload would drop under x per kilo/lbs (don't remember the price, something like $10) they would build a space hotel. This was something like 10-15 years ago.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
I would have to agree with the ppl above who see this as a sensible move. A lot of the places I come to put default installs of most software on their systems. Lack of knowledge about the systems you work with is not a good thing (tm) and with the complexity of some systems you can't blame it all on a stupid sys-admin. Microsoft software for example is notorious for the stuff that's enabled when you choose a default install. One of the key things in security is not putting doors where you don't need them. MacOS doesn't have any doors by default. You can laugh at this or you can judge it by it's merits as the U.S.Army did.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
Actually the Dutch cards are very different. Chipper or Chipknip cards, as they're called, are the electronic equivalent of cash. When you charge them, money is taken from your account, and put on the card. The only security in this card is designed to stop you from charging it yourself, which would be the same as printing your own money. It was created to eleminate the high transaction costs of "traditional" ATM payment where a connection with the bank would need to be established to authorize a transaction. The cards in this story are more "traditional" cards, just used to authorize transactions, not to actually "contain" money.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
SecurID cards have little lcd screens. Led would probably use too much power. These cards usually run for 3 years, then the battery runs out. If I've been informed correctly (not bloody likely with the &*(*& we buy them from) the battery cannot be replaced so you need a new card after the battery runs out. There are two varieties of this card, one where you type your pin on the SecurID card (the pin will be verified by the card), and one where you combine your pin or password with the code generated by the card (pin will be verified by whatever security system on the server side (radius is what we use)).
I would think the first option would be safer (inputting the pin on the card)
(Not nitpicking, just trying to clarify the comment)
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
Slashdot Mirror
Have the X files finally gotten to you ?
WHO isn't about power, it's about health. I've seen the work they do and it's helping people. We need a global organisation like this because there are some health problems (pollution-related etc.) that cannot be solved on a national level.
In my opinion this might be a good idea. If you look for health information now, you never know which industry might be behind it to help their products sell better. The health industry is good at this, even funding research to show that their products work. I would like to be able to find some independent information on the web, instead of in industry-funded flyers your doctor passes around.
Can they do this ? I think it all depends in which country you are ie. what laws apply.
I am pretty sure though they will need a warrant for this and they will have to be able to show some proof that the warrant is justified beforehand. I've seen large newspaper ads here in Holland a while back, saying that they "would be coming to your business to check your licenses soon" without mentioning this fact. I think they might rely on ppl being intimidated into allowing them to enter the company's or persons premises to investigate thus circumventing the need for a warrant. I for one wouldn't let them near anything without a warrant, if only for the fact that this is the proper procedure. I might have some confidential material on my pc's when they come to "check my licenses" and i couldn't justify just letting them peep at this stuff without a legal obligation. Does anyone know how often they are able to get a warrant and on what grounds ?
I have found in the past that software companies don't usually bother checking local laws when putting together licenses and related material. They count on a lack of legal knowledge among their customers. German courts for instance ruled that any agreement or license that was not shown on the outside of a box when buying software (ie. couldn't be read before purchasing) was not legal. Likewise, most limited warranties are not applicable in Holland simply because they interfere with Dutch consumer laws.
Does anyone have any direct experience with this ?
Then again, we don't have Halloween, so I'm probably not very skull-oriented
Free as in free to develop something with and test it by yourself or free as in develop something and distribute it at will including libraries ?
In general I agree with the consensus here, leave em alone or even complimenting them on their choice but in my work i come accross some reasons why the more radical negative approaches are sometimes preferable and even necessary:
Support
A lot of organisations have to deal with lusers or even worse: self proclaimed power users who regularly make a mess of their workstations, and the organisation spends money to keep everything going. Allowing ppl to use something different can set a precedent. How are you going to explain to a user that (s)he can't use this application when another user installs a different OS ? (anyone who's ever been a sysadmin knows what i'm talking about)
Security
Some organisations have security requirements. Some are even required to be able to prove that they are secure. This is usually done by getting certification from experts who will create a setup that has been configured and tested to be secure. Linux isn't secure, nor is WinNT, but they might be when they're run in a specific setup. Allowing users to do things differently means you cannot guarantee security on your whole system, simply because you don't know how it's been set up.
Compatibility
In some organisations software is used that's not compatible with non MS OSes. My current client requires me to use Outlook to plan my days so they can see what i'm up to. Even though i might not like using Windows, I don't know a way to do this on Linux (yes i know about Outlook web access, but you need a server for that). Other organisations have custom applications, same story.
This is all I can think off right now, but there is probably a lot more.
Bottom line is that a lot of organisations are Windows based, and it might not always be possible to do anything sensible with a Linux box in those.
lolol in other words which is better optimized for porn ?
The SIM card being destroyed was probably a side-effect of having to remove the battery while the phone was still turned on. Nokia even warns about doing this, saying that in some rare cases taking the battery off without switching off the phone you might damage the sim. (Although you usually don't have a choice when you're phone has crashed). I have to do it all the time, my 7110 crashes every third wap-page. Anyone know if there's a software version that fixes this ?
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Funny thing, could you refer me to a shop that can sell me an x86 based machine that will outperform a fully loaded RS/6000 S80 on large databases ?
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
It's hard to give sound advice without a little more info. Is this mirror goig to serve as a backup-server in case the main server is not available ? How many users are we talking here ? If there's only a few users, i can't think of anything against an x86 based server, other then maybe supporting a linux/insert_db_engine_here.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Integer Math ? PPC 604e or G4
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
I am not sure the lower speed back to main memory would be a problem. If all of the processing would be done on the graphicsboard, all you would need to read back are the results, which would be much less data then the original data.
(i am not really that familiar with the data involved so i could be mistaken)
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
My gf actually wrote a thesis on this stuff (she's an environmental health major). Although she specifically looked at GSM phones (maximum output power 2 Watts) this might still be a good reference.
She generally found that the radiation caused several effects. First and most important are the effects of heating induced by the radiation. Tests show that this effect is measurable in tenths of degrees at most, and this is not to be regarded as a health risk. There are some other effects (electrical, and several others I don't recall right now) which are either not measurable or are not known to have any adverse health effects. Bottom line is, there's minimal risk if (as with anything else) you don't overdo it.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
A japanese company showed these at CEBIT 2 years ago. I don't know if they're commercially available over there, but it looked like a finished product.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Upstream is 256 Kbit, remembered I could look it up and provide accurate information.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Just ordered an ADSL line here, in The Netherlands. Reading the offerings in the UK I realized what a great deal I am getting. I get 4 fixed IP's, an ethernet connection (No USB, parallel or other weird port) 1024Kb downstream, and I get specific permission to run servers. I don't recall the upstream speed (I think it was half your downstream speed). Price is about $70 a month. You can get a 512Kb connection with one IP for a little over $30. They made us wait for this a long time though.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Yep I remember our Progress guys boasting that Progress set some world record on an S80 (We use S70's) I think it was most database transactions a second
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
I always refer to mine as my "Stinkpad"
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Some manufacturer demo'd links over 60 to 100 km's of singlemode fibre. I was to busy playing with the funny gadgets they passed around to us for attending the presentation that i don't remember what kind of bandwidth they were talking about (hey, i don't have clients with offices that big). Pretty sure it was 10Mb or over. They already had it working along some oil-pipeline with a few repeaters along the way.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Killer bees might be a good example of a small scale genetic thingie gone wrong. Alas i've been working all day so the details on this particular story just don't seem to be present at this time ;-) Anyone ?
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
I remember reading a quote by the founder (or owner /me is a bit sketchy on the details) of Hilton who said that if the cost of getting payload would drop under x per kilo/lbs (don't remember the price, something like $10) they would build a space hotel. This was something like 10-15 years ago.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
I have the same location vs. time thingy going on.
If the GPS module is in place, coding for it shouldn't be too hard (never tried anything for Palm tho)
Maybe it could even remind me I have a hotel booked in the city I was working in that day before I am halfway home.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
It's small
It's a planet
But....
Does it run Linux ?
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
I would have to agree with the ppl above who see this as a sensible move. A lot of the places I come to put default installs of most software on their systems. Lack of knowledge about the systems you work with is not a good thing (tm) and with the complexity of some systems you can't blame it all on a stupid sys-admin. Microsoft software for example is notorious for the stuff that's enabled when you choose a default install.
One of the key things in security is not putting doors where you don't need them. MacOS doesn't have any doors by default. You can laugh at this or you can judge it by it's merits as the U.S.Army did.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Actually the Dutch cards are very different. Chipper or Chipknip cards, as they're called, are the electronic equivalent of cash. When you charge them, money is taken from your account, and put on the card. The only security in this card is designed to stop you from charging it yourself, which would be the same as printing your own money.
It was created to eleminate the high transaction costs of "traditional" ATM payment where a connection with the bank would need to be established to authorize a transaction. The cards in this story are more "traditional" cards, just used to authorize transactions, not to actually "contain" money.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
SecurID cards have little lcd screens. Led would probably use too much power. These cards usually run for 3 years, then the battery runs out. If I've been informed correctly (not bloody likely with the &*(*& we buy them from) the battery cannot be replaced so you need a new card after the battery runs out.
There are two varieties of this card, one where you type your pin on the SecurID card (the pin will be verified by the card), and one where you combine your pin or password with the code generated by the card (pin will be verified by whatever security system on the server side (radius is what we use)).
I would think the first option would be safer (inputting the pin on the card)
(Not nitpicking, just trying to clarify the comment)
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"