Here's the thing: If you really have such a small organization that one person is all you need to run everything... then you're better off contracting an outside company to run it. Yes, it'll cost more than the one guy would - but you can't really get by with just one guy, because of sick days, vacations, etc. Even if you only have enough work to keep one person busy, you're going to wind up hiring two or three if you need high reliability.
The consulting company will be more expensive than one guy, but shouldn't be nearly as expensive as three, and it becomes their job to make sure that there's always someone available, to hire properly, etc.
On the other hand, if you really feel like you need to have your own people, and things are the way you're presenting them - go ahead and hire three people. If each of your Linux guys costs as much as two MCSEs did, you're still saving 40%.
Oh... and if you "can't rely on your existing Linux technician for that clue since Linux people are strange", then it's your own damn fault for hiring the wrong Linux person in the first place. There are plenty of non-strange Linux people around.
Point of order: all electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light. It's simply that the speed of light in copper is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Part of me says that everyone should have or be able to develop that level of digital literacy... but then, experience shows that too, too many don't.
So, yeah. I can see where librarians are useful, and I support libraries. It still just constantly amazes me, though, how many people can't tell good information from bad, even when it seems obvious to me. But then I go read Snopes for a while, and remind myself that people have believed much, much less plausible things.:-)
On the information-finding side, I'd make a great librarian. On the dealing with people side, not so much. I can see you're good at both, and hope your employers recognize it!
I thought publishers were required by law to sell books to libraries at a reasonable rate. You mean that they now currently can just say "this book will not be in any library"? I always figured that they would say that if given the choice - why let people get your book for free?
Nope, no such law. The difference comes in the fact that courts have held multiple times that publishers can't prevent people from lending out the books they've bought. Thus, a library simply buys the same edition of the book that you do, from the same places. They don't even have to say that it's for a library. Thus, de facto, publishers have to sell to libraries at the same price as they do to the public, since they have no way of distinguishing who's buying for a library from who isn't.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s in the US, book publishers tried to prevent libraries and used book stores from having their books. To do this, they put notices in the fronts of their books saying that the book was being licensed to the purchaser, not sold, and that the purchaser was forbidden from lending the book to others or reselling it without permission from the publisher. Court cases were fought, and it led to the 1908 case that created the "Doctrine of First Sale", which states that one a publisher has sold a particular copy of a work, they no longer have control over that copy, and the purchaser can do anything they want to with it, as long as they don't make more copies.
Now, we're going through the same thing again, with e-books and software. The publishers want to say you can't lend your copy to someone else, even if you don't make another copy in so doing. They also want to say you can't re-sell your copy. In the case of library sales, they want to sell to them under a different license, for a higher price - or at the same price, but with a severely limited number of times that the library can lend out the book.
In a couple of decades, maybe the Supreme Court will hold that the right of first sale applies to electronic materials as well - but honestly, I'm not counting on it. Especially with the current set of justices.
Well, I have been to the public library lately... and generally, they don't have the books that I want. Their fiction section is okay, but small. Generally, when I'm looking for something specific, unless it's by a major author or won an award, they don't have it. Their nonfiction, though... if you want something that's truly in-depth on anything, most likely they won't have it. Sometimes there are gems there, though, so I still look. However, I find I do most of my borrowing from the local University library. I pay $50 a year for the privilege, but I don't mind that, since they have a much, much better selection of books.
And... ask a librarian instead of Google? Sure. Let's look at the questions I've had that I've searched Google for answers on lately, according to my browser histories. (Reformatted as actual questions, instead of just a list of key terms.)
How much does PVC electrical conduit cost?
What is the history of mail order shopping before the Internet?
Why do LEDs appear to flicker on video?
Who are well-reviewed roofers in ?
What year was Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" published?
Does chlorophyll include any metallic elements?
What are Florida's statutes on firearms?
What are some examples of good-looking lightsaber props people have made from plumbing supplies, and what parts did they use?
What's the supplied voltage of an NiMH AAA battery?
What are the dates for GenCon and DragonCon this year?
What are the laws in the various states of the US with regard to slower traffic having to move aside for faster traffic?
How do I get a list of all tables that aren't views in a MySQL database?
What are the rules for lightsaber dueling in lightsaber clubs?
Most of these, I got the right answers for by searching Google, then clicking one link. Sometimes I didn't even have to click a link - the answer was in the sample text being shown from the page. A few of them, I had to click multiple links for - but in some cases, that was because I wanted to see multiple answers (e.g., the roofers and the lightsaber props). Two of them, I wasn't able to find good answers for in the time I wanted to take - searching for the history of mail-order shopping before the Internet gave me lots of brief one-or-two paragraph summaries, and a few in-depth pieces about the beginnings of mail-order shopping back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but neither of those was what I wanted. Searching for rules for lightsaber dueling gave me a lot about fictional lightsaber dueling, but I only found a couple of threads from forums about clubs doing it and their rules, and neither of those was very helpful.
So... two cases where a librarian might have been more helpful than Google, but it's doubtful in both of those cases. For the rest, it would have taken longer for me to get ahold of a librarian and ask the question than it took me to find the correct answer via Google.
Honestly, the only time a librarian has ever successfully helped me find anything, it was by letting me go back into the area where they had books that had been turned in, but not yet put on the shelves. And before they'd let me back there, I had to physically prove to them that the book in question wasn't on the shelf, and that the online catalog said that it had been turned in by someone that day.
I suggest changing it to 1600 Pennsylvania St., Washington, DC. This will solve the problem in that (a) the people living there have very good protection, and don't have to worry about a random nut who won't believe they don't have his/her phone, (b) it will become national news, so everyone even vaguely informed will soon know that if your phone locator shows it's there, don't believe it, and (c) it should provide for a new, entertaining conspiracy theory for nutters to go on about, all on how Obama is stealing phones and using his power as President to cover it up.
Point of order: fermenting grain at home is perfectly legal. What's illegal is distilling alcohol without a commercial license to do so. It doesn't matter whether that alcohol came from grain, grapes, or what.
Actually, whether you 'must move over' depends on where you are:
http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html
In most states of the US, however, you are not required to move over if you are going at or above 'the normal speed of traffic'. Unfortunately, the law doesn't actually bother to define what that's considered to be, so interpretations vary.
On the bright side, almost all states now allow passing on the right when there are multiple lanes traveling in the same direction.
For those who don't want to actually read the article, the interface for the Touch was largely created with HTML5 apps, using Javascript. Digging into things, the jailbreak designer found that a Javascript function had been put in on the system to allow arbitrary command lines to be passed to the underlying Linux-based OS. However, when being used as a web browser, the Touch's interface code protected that function, and wouldn't allow it to be called.
So, he started looking for other apps that had been created that way, that might not be protecting that function. One of them was an MP3 player. He tried putting HTML in an ID3 tag, and found that the HTML was processed and displayed. He then tried putting Javascript in the tag, and found that it was executed... and the function wasn't protected when called from there, so he was then able to run arbitrary shell commands as root on the system. This allowed the creation of an MP3 file that could be loaded onto a Touch and used to jailbreak it.
Yes, it would be. However, people (in the US, at least) on average spend much less time handling guns than they do driving cars. Thus, we'd expect to see a lot more true car accidents than gun accidents, by simple math. We'd also expect to see a lot more 'accidents' resulting from negligence as well, simply because much more time is being spent driving cars than handling guns. I'd expect that to go at a more than linear rate of increase as well - if you do something for a few minutes at a time, it's much easier to pay attention the whole time than if you're doing it for hours at a time.
The big question in determining which is more dangerous comes down to that - what's the mean time between injury or death-causing incidents (to avoid the term 'accidents') for each? My wild-ass guess would be that guns are much more dangerous, going by that. But that is a wild-ass guess - I'd be interested in seeing actual statistics.
There have been, however, and will continue to be, incidents where seemingly healthy people have strokes or heart attacks. Sometimes, this happens while they're driving, and as a result, the vehicle becomes uncontrolled. There have also been cases where vehicles have been struck by lightning while being driven, which has caused a loss of control.
Or would you class these as something other than accidents?
Speaking of that... it should be noted that their proposed terms of service doesn't define "photos" to mean "only photos you uploaded to the service". Thus, they're saying that they have the right to use any photo you have ever taken, regardless of whether you gave it to them or not. Similarly with their bit about using users' likenesses - there's nothing that restricts them to only using photos people have uploaded to them for your likeness. That bit gets interesting for celebrities....
Not that AT&T aren't thieves... but your mother probably just isn't paying attention. I have AT&T, and they send me a text when I pass 50% of my cap. They send another when I pass 90%. I've gotten the 50% one several times. I've only gotten the 90% one twice, since I don't usually use anywhere near my cap, but each time I got it, I hadn't passed the cap yet. (Actually, the warnings got kind of annoying for a while, when I was using just over 50% of my cap each month.)
One of the times, I was only a day from the end of the billing cycle, so I didn't have to do anything about it. The second time, I was on vacation and using Internet on the phone a lot, so I logged into AT&T's site and switched to the next higher plan, and noted when the billing cycle would reset my usage. The day after my usage reset, I logged into AT&T and switched back to my normal plan. Bumping up the plan a tier was less than the overage charge would have been... and for extra fun, AT&T pro-rates, so I only got charged for about five days at the higher rate... which bumped my bill up maybe $2.
I was wondering that as well. Looking through the article in more detail, though, the computer wasn't the school's either. It came from a program which gives out laptops to students for their school and personal use, and the students are allowed to keep the laptops permanently if they graduate. The only reason the laptop wound up being given back was because the father was being transferred to another state, and thus, the son wasn't going to be staying in the area the program applied to.
The students issued the laptops are allowed to install personal software on them, and the schools are supposed to operate only as distribution/administration points - they don't own the laptops, and aren't allowed to use them for their own purposes. Thus the bit about the laptop having been stolen by the principal - he apparently didn't report its return and kept it for his own use.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to say that since the parents still had authority over the child (he was in 7th grade, so about 12 or 13), if the child is allowed to install software on the computer, the parents are allowed as well.
Looking at the article in more detail, it appears that the program in question gives students laptops for their own use, which they are allowed to keep once they graduate. The students are allowed to install software on the laptops - indeed, the only reason he wound up giving it back was because the father was transferred to somewhere else, so they were going to move before his son could graduate.
Judging from that, it seems it was legal for him to install the spyware on that laptop.
Considering, however, that it's most likely illegal for him to have installed spyware on a computer that he didn't own, it's more like he was an off-duty police officer who broke into a store, then stumbled across others looting it and decided to arrest them.
Note, though, that most email clients these days have a preview pane that shows the message as soon as you select it, and that it's difficult to override the reflex to look at something that changes. Thus, he may have clicked the message to select it, intending to delete it, then noticed before hitting the delete key something in the contents that made him stop.
"May" being the operative word there. Most likely, he felt curious and deliberately read it. But there is room for doubt.
Try checking the OED - or, for that matter, the actual Wikipedia article on "virus" rather than a talk page. It's "viruses". It takes the English plural, because the word has no Latin plural - it's a mass noun in Latin, so in Latin "virus" is already plural, and can never be singular. Further, even if it were a singular form in Latin, "virii" would not be the correct plural for it. No one's 100% positive what would be the correct plural, since we have no existing records of a noun of that declension and ending ever being pluralized in Latin, but the consensus from experts is that it would be "vira", since that's what's used for neuter nouns that end in "-us" in other declensions.
You might want to think about that plausible deniability. First off, if the **AA sues you, the standard of proof in a lawsuit is "preponderance of the evidence", not "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". Second, much law is written on the basis of what a hypothetical 'reasonable person' would do or understand. It's quite easy to argue that a reasonable person with your level of technical skill would understand that their open wifi and tor exit node would likely be used by people engaging in criminal activity. Going from there to persuading a jury that you were knowingly aiding and abetting criminal activity likely would not be hard - especially if they know that the secret service has spoken to you in the past and advised you to stop it.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the thing: If you really have such a small organization that one person is all you need to run everything... then you're better off contracting an outside company to run it. Yes, it'll cost more than the one guy would - but you can't really get by with just one guy, because of sick days, vacations, etc. Even if you only have enough work to keep one person busy, you're going to wind up hiring two or three if you need high reliability.
The consulting company will be more expensive than one guy, but shouldn't be nearly as expensive as three, and it becomes their job to make sure that there's always someone available, to hire properly, etc.
On the other hand, if you really feel like you need to have your own people, and things are the way you're presenting them - go ahead and hire three people. If each of your Linux guys costs as much as two MCSEs did, you're still saving 40%.
Oh... and if you "can't rely on your existing Linux technician for that clue since Linux people are strange", then it's your own damn fault for hiring the wrong Linux person in the first place. There are plenty of non-strange Linux people around.
Point of order: all electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light. It's simply that the speed of light in copper is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Was no need to fix - they wear them too. I never said they wear them for longer than it takes to get out of sight of Mom.
Five year olds take naps for the same reason teenagers wear sweaters: because mom needs a nap/sweater, so by God, you need one too.
Part of me says that everyone should have or be able to develop that level of digital literacy... but then, experience shows that too, too many don't.
So, yeah. I can see where librarians are useful, and I support libraries. It still just constantly amazes me, though, how many people can't tell good information from bad, even when it seems obvious to me. But then I go read Snopes for a while, and remind myself that people have believed much, much less plausible things. :-)
On the information-finding side, I'd make a great librarian. On the dealing with people side, not so much. I can see you're good at both, and hope your employers recognize it!
I thought publishers were required by law to sell books to libraries at a reasonable rate. You mean that they now currently can just say "this book will not be in any library"? I always figured that they would say that if given the choice - why let people get your book for free?
Nope, no such law. The difference comes in the fact that courts have held multiple times that publishers can't prevent people from lending out the books they've bought. Thus, a library simply buys the same edition of the book that you do, from the same places. They don't even have to say that it's for a library. Thus, de facto, publishers have to sell to libraries at the same price as they do to the public, since they have no way of distinguishing who's buying for a library from who isn't.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s in the US, book publishers tried to prevent libraries and used book stores from having their books. To do this, they put notices in the fronts of their books saying that the book was being licensed to the purchaser, not sold, and that the purchaser was forbidden from lending the book to others or reselling it without permission from the publisher. Court cases were fought, and it led to the 1908 case that created the "Doctrine of First Sale", which states that one a publisher has sold a particular copy of a work, they no longer have control over that copy, and the purchaser can do anything they want to with it, as long as they don't make more copies.
Now, we're going through the same thing again, with e-books and software. The publishers want to say you can't lend your copy to someone else, even if you don't make another copy in so doing. They also want to say you can't re-sell your copy. In the case of library sales, they want to sell to them under a different license, for a higher price - or at the same price, but with a severely limited number of times that the library can lend out the book.
In a couple of decades, maybe the Supreme Court will hold that the right of first sale applies to electronic materials as well - but honestly, I'm not counting on it. Especially with the current set of justices.
Well, I have been to the public library lately... and generally, they don't have the books that I want. Their fiction section is okay, but small. Generally, when I'm looking for something specific, unless it's by a major author or won an award, they don't have it. Their nonfiction, though... if you want something that's truly in-depth on anything, most likely they won't have it. Sometimes there are gems there, though, so I still look. However, I find I do most of my borrowing from the local University library. I pay $50 a year for the privilege, but I don't mind that, since they have a much, much better selection of books.
And... ask a librarian instead of Google? Sure. Let's look at the questions I've had that I've searched Google for answers on lately, according to my browser histories. (Reformatted as actual questions, instead of just a list of key terms.)
How much does PVC electrical conduit cost?
What is the history of mail order shopping before the Internet?
Why do LEDs appear to flicker on video?
Who are well-reviewed roofers in ?
What year was Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" published?
Does chlorophyll include any metallic elements?
What are Florida's statutes on firearms?
What are some examples of good-looking lightsaber props people have made from plumbing supplies, and what parts did they use?
What's the supplied voltage of an NiMH AAA battery?
What are the dates for GenCon and DragonCon this year?
What are the laws in the various states of the US with regard to slower traffic having to move aside for faster traffic?
How do I get a list of all tables that aren't views in a MySQL database?
What are the rules for lightsaber dueling in lightsaber clubs?
Most of these, I got the right answers for by searching Google, then clicking one link. Sometimes I didn't even have to click a link - the answer was in the sample text being shown from the page. A few of them, I had to click multiple links for - but in some cases, that was because I wanted to see multiple answers (e.g., the roofers and the lightsaber props). Two of them, I wasn't able to find good answers for in the time I wanted to take - searching for the history of mail-order shopping before the Internet gave me lots of brief one-or-two paragraph summaries, and a few in-depth pieces about the beginnings of mail-order shopping back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but neither of those was what I wanted. Searching for rules for lightsaber dueling gave me a lot about fictional lightsaber dueling, but I only found a couple of threads from forums about clubs doing it and their rules, and neither of those was very helpful.
So... two cases where a librarian might have been more helpful than Google, but it's doubtful in both of those cases. For the rest, it would have taken longer for me to get ahold of a librarian and ask the question than it took me to find the correct answer via Google.
Honestly, the only time a librarian has ever successfully helped me find anything, it was by letting me go back into the area where they had books that had been turned in, but not yet put on the shelves. And before they'd let me back there, I had to physically prove to them that the book in question wasn't on the shelf, and that the online catalog said that it had been turned in by someone that day.
I suggest changing it to 1600 Pennsylvania St., Washington, DC. This will solve the problem in that (a) the people living there have very good protection, and don't have to worry about a random nut who won't believe they don't have his/her phone, (b) it will become national news, so everyone even vaguely informed will soon know that if your phone locator shows it's there, don't believe it, and (c) it should provide for a new, entertaining conspiracy theory for nutters to go on about, all on how Obama is stealing phones and using his power as President to cover it up.
Point of order: fermenting grain at home is perfectly legal. What's illegal is distilling alcohol without a commercial license to do so. It doesn't matter whether that alcohol came from grain, grapes, or what.
Actually, whether you 'must move over' depends on where you are:
http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html
In most states of the US, however, you are not required to move over if you are going at or above 'the normal speed of traffic'. Unfortunately, the law doesn't actually bother to define what that's considered to be, so interpretations vary.
On the bright side, almost all states now allow passing on the right when there are multiple lanes traveling in the same direction.
Joke's on them. I only have a daughter.
An ID3 tag attack was the method used initially to jailbreak the Kindle Touch:
http://yifan.lu/2011/12/10/kindle-touch-5-0-jailbreakroot-and-ssh/
For those who don't want to actually read the article, the interface for the Touch was largely created with HTML5 apps, using Javascript. Digging into things, the jailbreak designer found that a Javascript function had been put in on the system to allow arbitrary command lines to be passed to the underlying Linux-based OS. However, when being used as a web browser, the Touch's interface code protected that function, and wouldn't allow it to be called.
So, he started looking for other apps that had been created that way, that might not be protecting that function. One of them was an MP3 player. He tried putting HTML in an ID3 tag, and found that the HTML was processed and displayed. He then tried putting Javascript in the tag, and found that it was executed... and the function wasn't protected when called from there, so he was then able to run arbitrary shell commands as root on the system. This allowed the creation of an MP3 file that could be loaded onto a Touch and used to jailbreak it.
Yes, it would be. However, people (in the US, at least) on average spend much less time handling guns than they do driving cars. Thus, we'd expect to see a lot more true car accidents than gun accidents, by simple math. We'd also expect to see a lot more 'accidents' resulting from negligence as well, simply because much more time is being spent driving cars than handling guns. I'd expect that to go at a more than linear rate of increase as well - if you do something for a few minutes at a time, it's much easier to pay attention the whole time than if you're doing it for hours at a time.
The big question in determining which is more dangerous comes down to that - what's the mean time between injury or death-causing incidents (to avoid the term 'accidents') for each? My wild-ass guess would be that guns are much more dangerous, going by that. But that is a wild-ass guess - I'd be interested in seeing actual statistics.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-sales-gasoline-cigarette-and-alcohol-tax-rates-state-2000-2010
There you go.
There have been, however, and will continue to be, incidents where seemingly healthy people have strokes or heart attacks. Sometimes, this happens while they're driving, and as a result, the vehicle becomes uncontrolled. There have also been cases where vehicles have been struck by lightning while being driven, which has caused a loss of control.
Or would you class these as something other than accidents?
Speaking of that... it should be noted that their proposed terms of service doesn't define "photos" to mean "only photos you uploaded to the service". Thus, they're saying that they have the right to use any photo you have ever taken, regardless of whether you gave it to them or not. Similarly with their bit about using users' likenesses - there's nothing that restricts them to only using photos people have uploaded to them for your likeness. That bit gets interesting for celebrities....
Not that AT&T aren't thieves... but your mother probably just isn't paying attention. I have AT&T, and they send me a text when I pass 50% of my cap. They send another when I pass 90%. I've gotten the 50% one several times. I've only gotten the 90% one twice, since I don't usually use anywhere near my cap, but each time I got it, I hadn't passed the cap yet. (Actually, the warnings got kind of annoying for a while, when I was using just over 50% of my cap each month.)
One of the times, I was only a day from the end of the billing cycle, so I didn't have to do anything about it. The second time, I was on vacation and using Internet on the phone a lot, so I logged into AT&T's site and switched to the next higher plan, and noted when the billing cycle would reset my usage. The day after my usage reset, I logged into AT&T and switched back to my normal plan. Bumping up the plan a tier was less than the overage charge would have been... and for extra fun, AT&T pro-rates, so I only got charged for about five days at the higher rate... which bumped my bill up maybe $2.
Because:
(a) You already have an iPad, so buying the docking station is cheaper than buying an Air, and simpler than buying the Air and selling your iPad, or
(b) Apple doesn't make an Air with a detachable monitor that becomes a tablet, and that's what you want.
Replying to kill mistaken moderation. Sorry!
I was wondering that as well. Looking through the article in more detail, though, the computer wasn't the school's either. It came from a program which gives out laptops to students for their school and personal use, and the students are allowed to keep the laptops permanently if they graduate. The only reason the laptop wound up being given back was because the father was being transferred to another state, and thus, the son wasn't going to be staying in the area the program applied to.
The students issued the laptops are allowed to install personal software on them, and the schools are supposed to operate only as distribution/administration points - they don't own the laptops, and aren't allowed to use them for their own purposes. Thus the bit about the laptop having been stolen by the principal - he apparently didn't report its return and kept it for his own use.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to say that since the parents still had authority over the child (he was in 7th grade, so about 12 or 13), if the child is allowed to install software on the computer, the parents are allowed as well.
Looking at the article in more detail, it appears that the program in question gives students laptops for their own use, which they are allowed to keep once they graduate. The students are allowed to install software on the laptops - indeed, the only reason he wound up giving it back was because the father was transferred to somewhere else, so they were going to move before his son could graduate.
Judging from that, it seems it was legal for him to install the spyware on that laptop.
Considering, however, that it's most likely illegal for him to have installed spyware on a computer that he didn't own, it's more like he was an off-duty police officer who broke into a store, then stumbled across others looting it and decided to arrest them.
Note, though, that most email clients these days have a preview pane that shows the message as soon as you select it, and that it's difficult to override the reflex to look at something that changes. Thus, he may have clicked the message to select it, intending to delete it, then noticed before hitting the delete key something in the contents that made him stop.
"May" being the operative word there. Most likely, he felt curious and deliberately read it. But there is room for doubt.
Try checking the OED - or, for that matter, the actual Wikipedia article on "virus" rather than a talk page. It's "viruses". It takes the English plural, because the word has no Latin plural - it's a mass noun in Latin, so in Latin "virus" is already plural, and can never be singular. Further, even if it were a singular form in Latin, "virii" would not be the correct plural for it. No one's 100% positive what would be the correct plural, since we have no existing records of a noun of that declension and ending ever being pluralized in Latin, but the consensus from experts is that it would be "vira", since that's what's used for neuter nouns that end in "-us" in other declensions.
You might want to think about that plausible deniability. First off, if the **AA sues you, the standard of proof in a lawsuit is "preponderance of the evidence", not "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". Second, much law is written on the basis of what a hypothetical 'reasonable person' would do or understand. It's quite easy to argue that a reasonable person with your level of technical skill would understand that their open wifi and tor exit node would likely be used by people engaging in criminal activity. Going from there to persuading a jury that you were knowingly aiding and abetting criminal activity likely would not be hard - especially if they know that the secret service has spoken to you in the past and advised you to stop it.