Even with free music samples I could not find any compelling reason to use their service. eMusic have no DRM - that's compelling enough for me. I refuse, point blank, to subscribe to iTunes because of DRM. Ditto many other services. I have been a subscriber to eMusic for nearly a year now. Their customer service is very good- I have had one technical issue (with the updated eMusic Download Manager) which, after a lot of to and fro with their technical guys, was solved (turned out to be an Internet Explorer Beta issus - while I use Firefox, their client has some IE connections - tut-tut!) and one account issue (I moved from one country to another) that was resolved satisfactorily and quickly. I even got a refund - try that from Apple!
There is absolutely no point in comparing the eMusic catalog with iTunes - they are apples and pears. But, if you are interested in classical, jazz, folk, world music or other less mainstream genres, you're in for a treat.And, the price per download is VERY competitive. There's lots of excellent catalog there - just no Brittney Spears. And that is just fine by me...
The website is not a problem for me - what specifically, do you not like about it?
What's most amazing about the story is not that they got "made" second time round but that the woman who did so had left the building, started her car and began to drive away. She remembered what had happened, turned round and came back to shop the two pentesters.
That this happened in this fashion 6 months after the initial (and hugely embarassing) successful penetration reflects both the company's response and the quality of the security awareness training delivered to employees.
How many people, hand on heart, once they're out of the office, would turn round and come back for such a scenario?
So, instead of isolating pregnant women from everything, I say we start giving them controlled infections of common sicknesses, so that their immune systems produce the atibodies, and pass them on to the baby. Similarly, while carrying me, my Mum had a weakness for tomato soup. Couldn't get enough of it. Bowls and bowls of the stuff. Result? I cannot stomach tomato soup. I have eaten caterpillar, chicken foot, octopus, cow heel - you name it. But tomato soup - yeuch. Go figure!
Could you be more specific? Which countries and which hate-speech and neo-nazi crap are being repressed. If you can give examples, we can determine whether AI are active or not.
If they're not, then your rhetorical question is answered.If they are, well...
This campaign is out of Amnesty's UK branch. If you visit www.amnesty.org.uk, you'll see the Irrepresible campaign highly featured. Each country (indeed each Local) Amnesty is free to start campaigns. As AI was founded in the UK, it is hardly surprising that the UK AI is the biggest and most active.
And perhaps the AI Worldwide webmaster is based in the US and therefore on a long weekend? Occams Razor?
Google is the kid in high school who is smart (but not exceptionally so), works *very* hard to maintain 4.0 GPA and also sucks up to his teachers all the time. However, he gets very secretive and passive-aggressive when you point out his imperfections.
Cringely's article is very well researched and he brings to our attention some genuine issues with Google. Not to mention Google's spokesperson's descent into corporate bollick-speak (forgive me but that's really the only way to put it).
Google are hurtling towards that point where they lose credibility because the public positions they are forced to take are so obviously driven by their need to maintain shareholder rather than stakeholder (and by stakeholder I mean small and medium business customers and the wider, but influential, technical community) confidence.
I regretted not buying Google stock early on but, frankly, now I'm glad I didn't - if they don't crush the fraudulent AdWord click issue, they'll lose the plot completely and deserve all they get in the markets.
The management level corporate posture towards IT security goes like this: - We want to have our machines and network secure as long as it doesn't cause too much hassle to people and we don't pay a lot for it.
Spot on. Corporations who are legally mandated to secure their information systems will spend the mimimum to achieve compliance. Absent this, they'll spend nothing unless it effects the bottom line and shareholder value.
Information security professionals are no more responsible for the consequences of ignored advice than are weather forecasters for damage caused by hurricanes.
At first, I thought the article was flamebait but it is an interesting read - a good overview of the harsh environment.
The problem is, there is no way you can teach experience.
That's it in a nutshell. And it's not just our beloved grey-haired parents. I worked for Ericsson many moons ago as Technical Training co-ordinator. At one point we were planning a significant intake of new software designers, most of whom would be CS or Telecomms graduates. We had to give them the Ericsson curriculum but time was tight.
One particularly dim-witted department head actually asked me (and I quote) "is there 5-week training course you can deliver which will give these guys two years experience". Yeah, sure, just pop yourself in the training microwave oven and cook on high...
Well done Bill, Melinda and His Boness. Good people with good intentions, doing what they perceive as necessary and possible with the resources they have.
However, I believe that we are witnessing the last era of great philanthropy. I say this because the awareness is growing that charity (aid, philanthropy, whatever) will never solve the problems which give rise to the horrors which motivate us to dig deep or volunteer or otherwise react. And while our reaction is limited to a charitable donation the horrors will continue and worsen - the environment is beginning to crumble while we ignore the warning signs.
I have lived in two developing countries for over 12 years and have worked in others (including Sierra Leone, Liberia, DRC (Congo) and Haiti) and have seen the efforts of international organisations such as UN; government aid agencies (USAID, DFID (UK), CIDA (Canada) etc); big NGOs (take your pick - Habitat for Humanity, Concern, Oxfam etc) right down to the the heroic "one man and his truck" micro-charities.
The bottom line for me? Unless we rewire the way the world works - trade, environment, consumption, international law; the world will spiral downwards to the point that even the huge donations of the likes of Bill & Melinda will be invisible and the combined might of US, UN, EU whoever, will be unable to alleviate the multiple crises faced.
The scariest thing is that I'm not convinced that the human race has the capacity to act globally.
First of all, it should read "goat-renderingly awful".
And, with a line like:
Before pulling away from your crucial Mono project work to write a flame, please hand a normal 25-year-old your Linux box and show them how to connect the system to their bluetooth camera and then smack yourself.
It was the malevolence of his threats which sunk him.
Peterborough Crown Court heard he also threatened to fire-bomb the headquarters of the county's trading standards department and petrol-bomb his local police headquarters.
Just the spamming alone wouldn't have got him such a sentence.
McDonald's, while out of my way a bit, is still a pretty convenient hotspot for me
Denver, while out of my way a bit (I live in the Caribbean), is still a convenient ski-location for me.
Why wasn't the parent post moderated +5 funny? Or am I missing something here?
I was recently involved in an international procurement where 10,000 laptops were supplied with XP Home. The mission-critical application on the laptops was highly secure - all data was encrypted to a high degree but the laptops themselves were wide open to attack or, more likely, inadvertent denial of service by ignorant or curious users.
By the time I flagged this appalling oversight, the procurement process was too far advanced. So, a US$44 million procurement went ahead using XP Home on the kits.
The application? Electronic Voter Registration in a large sub-saharan country in Africa.
So it's not just small businesses who drop the ball.
The budget will never be there to upgrade to XP Pro. And they simply don't have the skills to replace XP with a Linux distro and port the application (which is proprietary anyway).
Does anyone have thoughts on what can be done to improve the security of XP Home?
I agree. I can't wait for a report from a source deemed truly neutral (no man feat) which offers a comprehensive insight into the relative TCO of Microsoft/Linux/BSD/Unix based on real-world research.
The article focuses on application servers - quite a narrow niche.
Is anyone working on a vendor-neutral, broad TCO survey of OS TCO?
Slashdot Mirror
Even with free music samples I could not find any compelling reason to use their service.
eMusic have no DRM - that's compelling enough for me. I refuse, point blank, to subscribe to iTunes because of DRM. Ditto many other services. I have been a subscriber to eMusic for nearly a year now. Their customer service is very good- I have had one technical issue (with the updated eMusic Download Manager) which, after a lot of to and fro with their technical guys, was solved (turned out to be an Internet Explorer Beta issus - while I use Firefox, their client has some IE connections - tut-tut!) and one account issue (I moved from one country to another) that was resolved satisfactorily and quickly. I even got a refund - try that from Apple!
There is absolutely no point in comparing the eMusic catalog with iTunes - they are apples and pears. But, if you are interested in classical, jazz, folk, world music or other less mainstream genres, you're in for a treat.And, the price per download is VERY competitive. There's lots of excellent catalog there - just no Brittney Spears. And that is just fine by me...
The website is not a problem for me - what specifically, do you not like about it?
Leading to the inevitable RTFDP calls - Read the F$#kin Document Properties!
Wait a minute, wasn't Alderaan Robotics completely destroyed by Grand Moff Tarkin a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away?
No, it was AllBran Robotics - for those who like to play fast and loose...
What's most amazing about the story is not that they got "made" second time round but that the woman who did so had left the building, started her car and began to drive away. She remembered what had happened, turned round and came back to shop the two pentesters.
That this happened in this fashion 6 months after the initial (and hugely embarassing) successful penetration reflects both the company's response and the quality of the security awareness training delivered to employees.
How many people, hand on heart, once they're out of the office, would turn round and come back for such a scenario?
So, instead of isolating pregnant women from everything, I say we start giving them controlled infections of common sicknesses, so that their immune systems produce the atibodies, and pass them on to the baby.
Similarly, while carrying me, my Mum had a weakness for tomato soup. Couldn't get enough of it. Bowls and bowls of the stuff.
Result? I cannot stomach tomato soup. I have eaten caterpillar, chicken foot, octopus, cow heel - you name it. But tomato soup - yeuch.
Go figure!
Could you be more specific? Which countries and which hate-speech and neo-nazi crap are being repressed. If you can give examples, we can determine whether AI are active or not.
If they're not, then your rhetorical question is answered.If they are, well...
This campaign is out of Amnesty's UK branch. If you visit www.amnesty.org.uk, you'll see the Irrepresible campaign highly featured. Each country (indeed each Local) Amnesty is free to start campaigns. As AI was founded in the UK, it is hardly surprising that the UK AI is the biggest and most active.
And perhaps the AI Worldwide webmaster is based in the US and therefore on a long weekend? Occams Razor?
Google is the kid in high school who is smart (but not exceptionally so), works *very* hard to maintain 4.0 GPA and also sucks up to his teachers all the time. However, he gets very secretive and passive-aggressive when you point out his imperfections.
Cringely's article is very well researched and he brings to our attention some genuine issues with Google. Not to mention Google's spokesperson's descent into corporate bollick-speak (forgive me but that's really the only way to put it).
Google are hurtling towards that point where they lose credibility because the public positions they are forced to take are so obviously driven by their need to maintain shareholder rather than stakeholder (and by stakeholder I mean small and medium business customers and the wider, but influential, technical community) confidence.
I regretted not buying Google stock early on but, frankly, now I'm glad I didn't - if they don't crush the fraudulent AdWord click issue, they'll lose the plot completely and deserve all they get in the markets.
At the risk of repeating myself, it's better to light a candle than sit and curse the darkness....
White plastic around the keyboard? Do you know how that's going to look after one day of not-so-clean hands resting on it?
We wouldn't want our 1st world technology falling into not-so-clean hands now would we?
The two key skills for file management are:
(1) Give EVERYTHING a name which reflects its content. How many times do you see My Documents with hundreds of Document 1, Document 2....Document N?
So, teach the newbies how to give their files a name "Nephew Birthday.doc", "Church Choir Meeting Notice.doc" etc.
Then (and just as important)
(2) Show them how to search for files with simple keywords. In Windoze, it's F3 and simple keywords like 'Nephew' or "Church Choir'.
That, or put Google Desktop on there and show them how to use that.
It's better to light a candle than to sit and curse the darkness.
The management level corporate posture towards IT security goes like this:
- We want to have our machines and network secure as long as it doesn't cause too much hassle to people and we don't pay a lot for it.
Spot on. Corporations who are legally mandated to secure their information systems will spend the mimimum to achieve compliance. Absent this, they'll spend nothing unless it effects the bottom line and shareholder value.
Information security professionals are no more responsible for the consequences of ignored advice than are weather forecasters for damage caused by hurricanes.
At first, I thought the article was flamebait but it is an interesting read - a good overview of the harsh environment.
The problem is, there is no way you can teach experience.
That's it in a nutshell. And it's not just our beloved grey-haired parents. I worked for Ericsson many moons ago as Technical Training co-ordinator. At one point we were planning a significant intake of new software designers, most of whom would be CS or Telecomms graduates. We had to give them the Ericsson curriculum but time was tight.
One particularly dim-witted department head actually asked me (and I quote) "is there 5-week training course you can deliver which will give these guys two years experience". Yeah, sure, just pop yourself in the training microwave oven and cook on high...
Thank you for the funniest thing I've read in YEARS!!
Not the MSNBC story but your concise description of same.
I went the other way this year and bought a 3.3lb Sony Vaio. I used to have a 9lb Toshiba Satellite which was big and fast and, well, big.
Now I can play two DVDs and MP3s all night on a single charge and carry it to meetings and use it a hell of a lot more than I did the Tosh.
My next purchase is a strong and lightweight replacement for my very heavy Targus leather PC bag (9lbs).
New Year's Resolution (after stop smoking and get more exercise) - get the whole carry-on kit below 12lbs.
Well done Bill, Melinda and His Boness. Good people with good intentions, doing what they perceive as necessary and possible with the resources they have.
However, I believe that we are witnessing the last era of great philanthropy. I say this because the awareness is growing that charity (aid, philanthropy, whatever) will never solve the problems which give rise to the horrors which motivate us to dig deep or volunteer or otherwise react. And while our reaction is limited to a charitable donation the horrors will continue and worsen - the environment is beginning to crumble while we ignore the warning signs.
I have lived in two developing countries for over 12 years and have worked in others (including Sierra Leone, Liberia, DRC (Congo) and Haiti) and have seen the efforts of international organisations such as UN; government aid agencies (USAID, DFID (UK), CIDA (Canada) etc); big NGOs (take your pick - Habitat for Humanity, Concern, Oxfam etc) right down to the the heroic "one man and his truck" micro-charities.
The bottom line for me? Unless we rewire the way the world works - trade, environment, consumption, international law; the world will spiral downwards to the point that even the huge donations of the likes of Bill & Melinda will be invisible and the combined might of US, UN, EU whoever, will be unable to alleviate the multiple crises faced.
The scariest thing is that I'm not convinced that the human race has the capacity to act globally.
Pessimistic - yes - I hope I'm wrong!
Grammer tip: 'Effect' is used as a noun. 'Affect' is used as a verb.
Spelling Tip: Its "Grammar"
First of all, it should read "goat-renderingly awful".
...how could you not laugh out loud?
And, with a line like:
Before pulling away from your crucial Mono project work to write a flame, please hand a normal 25-year-old your Linux box and show them how to connect the system to their bluetooth camera and then smack yourself.
It was the malevolence of his threats which sunk him.
Peterborough Crown Court heard he also threatened to fire-bomb the headquarters of the county's trading standards department and petrol-bomb his local police headquarters.
Just the spamming alone wouldn't have got him such a sentence.
McDonald's, while out of my way a bit, is still a pretty convenient hotspot for me
Denver, while out of my way a bit (I live in the Caribbean), is still a convenient ski-location for me.
Why wasn't the parent post moderated +5 funny? Or am I missing something here?
And now you'll think twice when a friend says...
"Hey, can you lend me a hand?"
Oh dear. There is a typo in the article - not the title. It IS "Columba" and NOT "Columbia".
Follow the link (FTFL??) and confirm this.
I was recently involved in an international procurement where 10,000 laptops were supplied with XP Home. The mission-critical application on the laptops was highly secure - all data was encrypted to a high degree but the laptops themselves were wide open to attack or, more likely, inadvertent denial of service by ignorant or curious users.
By the time I flagged this appalling oversight, the procurement process was too far advanced. So, a US$44 million procurement went ahead using XP Home on the kits.
The application? Electronic Voter Registration in a large sub-saharan country in Africa.
So it's not just small businesses who drop the ball.
The budget will never be there to upgrade to XP Pro. And they simply don't have the skills to replace XP with a Linux distro and port the application (which is proprietary anyway).
Does anyone have thoughts on what can be done to improve the security of XP Home?
I agree. I can't wait for a report from a source deemed truly neutral (no man feat) which offers a comprehensive insight into the relative TCO of Microsoft/Linux/BSD/Unix based on real-world research.
The article focuses on application servers - quite a narrow niche.
Is anyone working on a vendor-neutral, broad TCO survey of OS TCO?
We can also expect the system's cost to come down somewhat in the future, and hopefully to be more prevalent.
Absolutely! As the price drops, the $38bn guff in earlier comments will indeed begin to look like pennypinching.
Now, a campaign to influence public policy and have such systems mandatory for publicly funded swimming pools is called for.
What are the economies of scale for this system? One obvious one is to port it to Linux (thus saving the NT licence fees)!
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Good point, well made.
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