I live in Canada and every time I go to the USA I am shocked at the driving. This is mainly in New York and Michigan states. I see more stomach-churning driving there in a day than I do in a decade in Canada.
I don't doubt it. I grew up in Indianapolis, and I now live in Columbus, Ohio and on every trip I've ever made towards the east coast (Philadelphia, NYC, Boston) the driving has been frighteningly bad. They also tend to be incredibly rude too. Of course, I think that most people in the midwest can't drive to save their lives either...
I remember the first two Dooms fondly because they were engrossing single-player games. Quake I was good as well, but Quake II, Arena and games like Unreal, etc. catered to the multi-player crowd. Fine, that's what some people want, but not me.
Quake II wasn't bad for single player, but it definitely had more of a multiplayer focus. We used to play it at work on occasion and I had fun because I regularly fragged the non-game players that I worked with. Then I played it online, got the floor wiped with my carcass, and quit.
I think the main reason that I don't like multiplayer FPS games is that I suck. My friends (when we can co-ordinate something) kick my ass, and I get tired really quickly of having my ass fragged on the net by some 14 year-old who runs circles around me. I don't have my whole life to devote to improving my Quake skills. Therefore, I like to play single-player, where I can set my own handicap.
Agreed. While I think that the multi-player games with classes and different skills are neat (Counterstrike, RTCW, Medal of Honor), I'm no good at them. If I'm going to get into a game where the object is to simply kill stuff and blow stuff up, I want to be able to do so without having to worry about learning all the different skills and techniques and so on for the mechanic, medic, sniper, rocketman, etc. I just wanna sit down and frag for 20 minutes and then go read a book. I don't have the time to devote to learning the intricacies of "ultra-cool new multiplayer game" because I have a job and a life to deal with. I'm sure I'd think differently if I were a teenager.
IMHO, we need more games that focus on the single-player experience. I just bought Jedi Knight II this past Friday. It was great fun, I had a blast. I also had beaten it by Monday monring. So much for the $50 it cost me. I tried playing a little bit of multiplayer Jedi Knight but it was not enjoyable. You couldn't have a single character that had all of the skills and weapons available like in the single-player game. You had to customize your character so that you only had a subset of the single-player abilities. So after spending a weekend learning how to play JK2, I had to relearn a completely new playstyle just to even think about being competitive online. I remember in the old days when games had 50-100 levels and it took weeks of playing to beat them. Nowdays games are considered deep if they have 25 levels and last you a weekend. Modern game companies spend so much time working on making sure that the latest game has all the cool multiplayer functions of the last big hit that nobody really works at producing good, single-player games.
Honestly, what is so much fun about running in circles and shooting each other just so that you can trash-talk them afterwards? Can you really play a multiplayer fragfest for 3 hours and say that you enjoyed it? I just can't see what is so engrossing about this playstyle. Especially since every game out there (Unreal Tournament, Q3A, RTCW, CS, etc) has exactly the same multiplayer features (classes, game types, weapon types). The only thing that's any different are the images onscreen.
You can't show me a single Pentium III 733 with only 64 megabytes of ram that will do ANYTHING close to what the XBox is doing,
If we stripped the OS down to the bare minimum like was done with the Xbox OS then we would. But then again we'd finally be comparing apples to apples at that point, and we all know it's more fun to argue pointlessly about apples to oranges comparisons.
and most games coming out will still run on a Pentium II 400, so whatever super-beefed k-rad system you've got probably isn't getting pushed very hard since most games just aren't taking advantage of it,
While it's true that most games currently being released will run on a PII-400, most of them won't run that well. I mean, you can turn down the resolution to 640x480 and turn down the detail levels and turn off all the visual effects and it will, in fact, run on the low-end hardware. But what's the point? If you've got a 1.6 GHz processor, a GF2 or GF3 video card and a half gig of RAM, why not crank it up to the max and see the game in it's full glory, the way it was intended to be played? 1024x768 anti-aliased with full visual effects sure looks a hell of a lot better than anything on a TV screen. And the gameplay is the same.
I'm giving my half sister cash for her going away to college gift. I sure as hell ain't gonna give her condoms.
That's cool, I always hated using condoms and those Freshmen girls were always the easiest to convince that you wouldn't need them anyways. They'll believe anything you tell them if you're an upper classman, including such lines as "I'm sterile from chemotherapy when I was younger," "I'll pull out," and "I've never been with anyone so I couldn't possibly have any diseases."
In addition, the quality fo a laserprinter, even a cheap one, is much better than even a good inkjet. The wet ink thing just doesn't look professional at all. After it dries, ti can smear, bunch up the paper, etc. And the resolution still isn't nearly as good as a laser.
That used to be the case, but it's not so much anymore. Even my old 855C prints as cleanly as my LJ 5P (company fire sale, $35). The newer inkjets (if you get a quality unit, and not just the freebie thrown in with a PC bundle) are quite impressive. My father has a new HP Color DeskJet (can't recall the number) that prints in higher resolution that my LaserJet, is roughly the same speed as my laserjet, and will also duplex without user intervention. Color quality is outstanding, and as long as you don't use exceptionally lightweight paper (most any office store sells inkjet quality paper by the ream or case) the wet ink isn't an issue. I'm actually quite impressed with modern inkjets.
Granted, facotry ink refills are kinda pricey, but there are ways around that. Toner cartridges for my LaserJet run $76 (HP brand), each ink cartridge for my InkJet runs about $30 (HP brand). Since I've got a CMYK printer I only have to replace individual colors as needed. As long as your printer doesn't use the 4-in-1 cartridges, they aren't too pricey (especially if you buy refill kits instead). Just don't get a cheap inkjet, and you'll be fine.
I use an internet calling card exclusively and was looking to drop long distance on the land line altogether. The fact is, you CANNOT, unless you go to the extreme of having NO land line. In the age of wireless communications this is of course possible, but I don't know of a cellular phone contract that works out to being less expensive than a land line.
It's not particularly extreme to have no land line and go with a cellular phone. I've been doing that for over two years. It's cheaper for me to do so. In the past I'd pay Ameritech around $25/month plus long distance for a land line that has an unlisted and unpublished number (not available in the phone book or directory assistance). Invariably my credit card companies or other companies with whom I have done business would sell my number on a telemarketing list or I would begin getting telemarketing calls from them ("Please consider our credit protection insurance policy" kinda crap) and I'd have to pay to change the number. This was a hassle.
On top of that, I'm usually at work all day and out somewhere in the evenings, so I've had wireless since 1995 or so. Any of my friends, family members, or business associates would always call me on my mobile phone because they knew that they could find me quickly. My monthly wireless bill was usually around $40 a month, and I thought that was pretty reasonable.
After a while it got to the point that I never answered my land line, I just let the machine get it (voicemail would have been another additional monthly fee from Ameritech). It was never anybody that I wanted to talk to. After a month or two of this I decided that it was pointless to pay $25/month for a phone line that was only used by people who I didn't want to talk to (or for the occasional long distance call), so I had the land line shut off. I also upgraded my wireless plan to account for the potential of more minutes, and I now pay around $55/month for wireless service. That includes all the minutes that I use, plus free voicemail, call waiting, caller ID, and 3-way calling. Right now I'm looking into plans that offer no roaming and no LD charges too. One of the features that I especially like is that their "411" information service is really information, not just directory assistance. For example, if you call and ask for a number to a movie theatre they'll look up what movies are playing and give you showtimes too. Try getting that from Ma Bell! Plus I don't have to ever worry about my number being listed somewhere for telemarketers to get at.
On that note, I know that telemarketers aren't allowed to solicit you on your mobile phone because it costs you money, but I wonder if they have a list of mobile prefixes for each area code? I've never gotten a telemarketing call on my mobile, even after giving it to my creditors.
At any rate, from my perspective it makes sense to go purely wireless. It ended up saving me around $10/month since I already had wireless service, and it includes far more features than my land line did. I've got several friends and coworkers who've done the same thing after seeing how well I've gotten along without it. If you're afraid of the contract issue, just buy a mobile phone and get a pay-as-you-go plan. Phones have become so inexpensive lately that buying them up-front isn't that big of a deal, especially if you don't need one that does WAP and SMS and all that other garbage. Wireless companies are getting much smarter about this and now offer family packages with shared minutes (great if you're married, but I'd still get a land line for the kids).
Off our high horse? Get off the damned couch and do something for the country, or for other people before you start bashing the guys that do. Don't ever equate a soldier's sacrifice with a politician's intent.
You obviously have never done any kind of service or charity work, with an attitude like that.
The above is ridiculously unfounded, indefensible, and just plain incorrect speculation. But then you wouldn't know that since your only intent appeared to be to bash me and smear my name. Especially since I never bashed any soldiers in my post. I understand though, you don't want the truth to get in the way of your bitching.
The right to speech also includes the right to keep your stupid troll opionions to yourself.
It's not a troll. It's "insightful" and "informative." Just check the mod points.
No president has ever been reelected to office following a war.
That may or may not be true as I haven't taken the time to check the stats, but either way it is irrelevant here. I very distinctly recall the elder president Bush's approval rating skyrocketing when the US invaded Iraq. And I very distinctly recall the younger president Bush's approval rating skyrocketing when the US invaded Afghanistan. So the notion that invading the lands of a "hated enemy" (even one that you yourself invented) boosts approval ratings is quite valid. As to your claim about reelection, that's not what we are discussing here.
Comments like this is just plain stupid...Plus, I don't believe it's going to happen. The current administration is using "other means necessary" to stop any type of terrorist activity there. I don't think terrorism has a statute of limitations.
Sure it will. The current Bush administration has had a hard-on for Hussein since they first came to power. The last thing that Dubby wants is to be known as the second generation of Bush presidents who "failed to get the job done." Have you been watching the news lately? Have you been listening to Cheney during his almost weekly visits to "Meet the Press" where he talks about the evils of Iraq? It's going to happen, it's just simply a matter of timing now. Bush is just waiting for an excuse (liked failed negotiations on weapons inspectors).
It's another thing entirely to raise your hand and swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Don't knock it until you've tried it.
I dunno, it didn't look all that hard when I watched President Dubya do it on TV. And judging by his example, you can swear to protect and uphold the constitution of the US and piss on it at the same time. Imagine that!
Sounds like fun to me. I liked Thief: The Dark Project. Death was very easy to find, and very hard to deal. I spent most of my time in that game slowly sneaking through, waiting for the enemy to come into my sights.
I think it's very classy of you to make jokes about people who have died for your freedom. Sure, it sucks that the US get stuck policing the world, but as we've been shown, it's not going to do it on its own, and it doesn't look like anyone else is jumping up to do the job. Your attitude is disgusting.
Get off your high horse. Yes, they died for our freedom but that also includes the freedom to say what we want about them and criticize the government when we feel it's necessary. Pull your head out of your ass and smell reality for a change.
If Bush invades Iraq it certainly won't be the first time that a politician has picked a fight to boost his approval ratings. What I find to be truly disgusting is the way that the Bush-Cheney gang have used and are still using the events of September 11th as an excuse to grab more power for themselves and then keep the American people and congress in the dark by claiming "national security". This also isn't the first time that a politician has done this either.
I take it that your data has to be open to everyone on your network, no limitations (including therefore anyone that can hack your network).
No, it doesn't. But there are many people on the network who need access to one category of confidential data, and other groups who need access to other pieces of the confidential data. Again, I think that you are thinking far too simplistically about the whole situation. There isn't anybody who has access to all of the data on our networks, nor is there anybody who has a legitimate business need to access all of the data.
Dude, that is totally not the way to do it. It's like a vicous circle against your own users. Your problem is lack of compartmentalisation. I don't care if anyone hacks into our accounts, because our most important data is stored on a system that only has a keyboard, monitor and Zip drive, NO ethernet card. The computer's in a lock cupboard. I have the key, my comrade in Japan has another in case I get run over or something. I suppose a locksmith can always break in.
I think that you fail to appreciate the scale and complexity of a large, national insurance and finance company. You can't just lock your "most important data" away in a cupboard and hold the key yourself. The company I work for processes many many millions of dollars worth of finanical transactions between banks, consumers, markets and our own accounts on a daily basis. We process and store confidential information from millions of our customers and partners, not to mention our employees. All of this data needs to be secured, yet still be available to process or be manipulated as needed by a wide variety of people with legitimate purposes within the company.
Maybe if you work for Bob's Widget Store you can afford to lock up the payroll list in a cupboard. But at our company our most important data consists of terabytes of information that is used daily to conduct business.
For years I've been creating my passwords not based on words, but on easy to remember hand motions. to give a very simple example: Qwerty78 a simple rolling left to right motion, plus a few numbers. Very easy to remember, tough to crack if you try a brute force attempt.
That's hardly any good. "QWERTY" would probably be my 9th or 10th guess if I were trying to hack someone's password by guessing. I can guarantee you that simple strings like that are in most PW cracker dictionarys.
I did the same thing on our NT SAM database a while back. 75% of all passwords fell in about five seconds.;-)
I did that once for a previous employer. Boy was my boss suprised when after a minute or so of cracking I called to ask him why he'd choose such a stupidly simple password as "miscio".
Give a look at any paper by Sasse, Brostoff and Adams, such as this one [mdx.ac.uk], and then re-think your sysadmin I-never-change-my-dictionary-password-but-I-force- all-my-users-to-32-char-monthly-passwords bullshit attitude.
I've currently got a 12 character password that I change on the same schedule as regular users do. Even though I only speak English and Spanish, I translated two unrelated words into two different languages (French and Welsh), then took the first half of one of the words, stuck it onto the second half of the other word, did a character substitution ("0" for "O", "1" for "L" or "I", and so on) and then tacked on a couple of random digits for good measure.
So apparently by your logic I can now tell you to fuck off and that the users are, in fact, the problem.
In what way does changing a well-chosen password increase security on a non-compromised system?
That all depends upon a) how many people who no longer need access to the system (former employees) know the password, b) how many other systems use the same password somewhere, and c) to what degree of certainty you believe that your system is not compromised.
Dude, hate to break it to you, but with difficult passwords like that I'd estimate that 95% of people you admin have their password written down in 10 places including on post-it notes stuck to their monitors.
DUDE! No way! What if they use Dell computers?
A few of them do have post-it notes up, most of them don't. When I encounter sticky-note passwords I usually confiscate them and lock their account. By the time they've called the helpdesk (for which their manager gets charged, and the user thereby gets some heat) they start to get the hint. But more importantly, what's the point of writing it down if you can use something as memorable as "Beliskner1" (which though valid is a very bad idea)? These are personnel issues rather than an IT issues. If the user can't be expected to adhere to info security policy then they need to be reprimanded or released. The alternative to a complex password that is moderately difficult to break is a simple password that is easy to break. Which would you rather have if you are the admin who's career could be on the line?
I guess you can look at biometrics. We all know how well fingerprint scanners work. The wider-spread problem of using biometrics is that you are using a single measurement as your password everywhere. For example, say you work at ABC Corp and they have fingerprint scanners (or retinal scanners, or voiceprint scanners, or whatever) for authentication. Say also that you leave ABC Corp to work at XYZ Corp who also uses fingerprint/retinal/voiceprint authentication. Now your password has been compromised since ABC Corp already has a copy of it. To make matters worse, short of extreme medical procedures there is no way to change that password. Where does that leave you?
Biometrics + a password is only marginally more secure than a password alone once your biometric measurement is available. I guess that we could all go to SecureID systems, though those are not impossible to defeat either (especially when users tend to leave the SecureID cards or keychains in their desk drawer).
What it eventually comes down to is that there really isn't a simple, effortless method of having a secure authentication process. Security simply requires thought and effort on the part of end-users, and until we can beat it into their tiny little heads then we're going to be stuck with stupid end users making our systems insecure.
The company I work for (large, national insurance company with over 50,000 users) has a "strong" password policy that is enforced by the system. A password for our domain must be a minimum of 8 characters with a mix of upper and lower case letters plus numbers. Password changes are forced every 2 months, and a previously used password is not able to be reused for the next dozen password changes. That being said, just yesterday I was working with a user whose password was their first name with a number one tacked onto the end of it. I imagine that she started with Firstname1 and then just incremented it on subsequent changes.
The problem isn't just forcing "strong passwords" onto the end users, but making sure that end users understand the reasoning behind it. Making someone use complex password formulas is useless when a large number of the users are going to use something that can still be easily guessed that conforms to the formula.
True enough, but nobody here is talking GiB's and GoB's and MoB's and MiB' and BoB's and Boob's. As far as using the MB Mb GB and Gb scale goes (as does the original post) I'm on the money.
Does anybody know the difference between GB and Gb? Here's a hint...one is bit and the other is byte. If the article is posted correctly then it would seem that they have capped their users at a total of 384 megabytes of downstream per month, not even enough to download a single Linux ISO. Why is it that I get the impression that they're actually talking about gigabytes instead of gigabits, even though the original poster and the Slashdot editor can't tell the difference?
Maybe they could get a job at NASA converting meters to yards.
Most PC games out today don't support 5 year old hardware. 5 years ago, almost no games required a hardware graphics accelerator. Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't.
Either you're kidding or truly and seriously misguided. The first graphics accelrator cards started showing up in 1992 and 1993. Granted, they only did 2D operations, but they were accelerator cards.
In 1997 (five years ago) I have a VooDoo Graphics card and a Riva128 video card and shortly thereafter I was considering buying a TNT-based video card. There were plenty of 3D-only games then.
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I live in Canada and every time I go to the USA I am shocked at the driving. This is mainly in New York and Michigan states. I see more stomach-churning driving there in a day than I do in a decade in Canada.
I don't doubt it. I grew up in Indianapolis, and I now live in Columbus, Ohio and on every trip I've ever made towards the east coast (Philadelphia, NYC, Boston) the driving has been frighteningly bad. They also tend to be incredibly rude too. Of course, I think that most people in the midwest can't drive to save their lives either...
I remember the first two Dooms fondly because they were engrossing single-player games. Quake I was good as well, but Quake II, Arena and games like Unreal, etc. catered to the multi-player crowd. Fine, that's what some people want, but not me.
Quake II wasn't bad for single player, but it definitely had more of a multiplayer focus. We used to play it at work on occasion and I had fun because I regularly fragged the non-game players that I worked with. Then I played it online, got the floor wiped with my carcass, and quit.
I think the main reason that I don't like multiplayer FPS games is that I suck. My friends (when we can co-ordinate something) kick my ass, and I get tired really quickly of having my ass fragged on the net by some 14 year-old who runs circles around me. I don't have my whole life to devote to improving my Quake skills. Therefore, I like to play single-player, where I can set my own handicap.
Agreed. While I think that the multi-player games with classes and different skills are neat (Counterstrike, RTCW, Medal of Honor), I'm no good at them. If I'm going to get into a game where the object is to simply kill stuff and blow stuff up, I want to be able to do so without having to worry about learning all the different skills and techniques and so on for the mechanic, medic, sniper, rocketman, etc. I just wanna sit down and frag for 20 minutes and then go read a book. I don't have the time to devote to learning the intricacies of "ultra-cool new multiplayer game" because I have a job and a life to deal with. I'm sure I'd think differently if I were a teenager.
IMHO, we need more games that focus on the single-player experience. I just bought Jedi Knight II this past Friday. It was great fun, I had a blast. I also had beaten it by Monday monring. So much for the $50 it cost me. I tried playing a little bit of multiplayer Jedi Knight but it was not enjoyable. You couldn't have a single character that had all of the skills and weapons available like in the single-player game. You had to customize your character so that you only had a subset of the single-player abilities. So after spending a weekend learning how to play JK2, I had to relearn a completely new playstyle just to even think about being competitive online. I remember in the old days when games had 50-100 levels and it took weeks of playing to beat them. Nowdays games are considered deep if they have 25 levels and last you a weekend. Modern game companies spend so much time working on making sure that the latest game has all the cool multiplayer functions of the last big hit that nobody really works at producing good, single-player games.
Honestly, what is so much fun about running in circles and shooting each other just so that you can trash-talk them afterwards? Can you really play a multiplayer fragfest for 3 hours and say that you enjoyed it? I just can't see what is so engrossing about this playstyle. Especially since every game out there (Unreal Tournament, Q3A, RTCW, CS, etc) has exactly the same multiplayer features (classes, game types, weapon types). The only thing that's any different are the images onscreen.
You can't show me a single Pentium III 733 with only 64 megabytes of ram that will do ANYTHING close to what the XBox is doing,
If we stripped the OS down to the bare minimum like was done with the Xbox OS then we would. But then again we'd finally be comparing apples to apples at that point, and we all know it's more fun to argue pointlessly about apples to oranges comparisons.
and most games coming out will still run on a Pentium II 400, so whatever super-beefed k-rad system you've got probably isn't getting pushed very hard since most games just aren't taking advantage of it,
While it's true that most games currently being released will run on a PII-400, most of them won't run that well. I mean, you can turn down the resolution to 640x480 and turn down the detail levels and turn off all the visual effects and it will, in fact, run on the low-end hardware. But what's the point? If you've got a 1.6 GHz processor, a GF2 or GF3 video card and a half gig of RAM, why not crank it up to the max and see the game in it's full glory, the way it was intended to be played? 1024x768 anti-aliased with full visual effects sure looks a hell of a lot better than anything on a TV screen. And the gameplay is the same.
I'm giving my half sister cash for her going away to college gift. I sure as hell ain't gonna give her condoms.
That's cool, I always hated using condoms and those Freshmen girls were always the easiest to convince that you wouldn't need them anyways. They'll believe anything you tell them if you're an upper classman, including such lines as "I'm sterile from chemotherapy when I was younger," "I'll pull out," and "I've never been with anyone so I couldn't possibly have any diseases."
The kiss is in Empire, after Han saves Luke on Hoth.
IIRC, there was also a quick kiss in Episode IV right before they swing across the chasm where there should have been a bridge on the Death Star.
In addition, the quality fo a laserprinter, even a cheap one, is much better than even a good inkjet. The wet ink thing just doesn't look professional at all. After it dries, ti can smear, bunch up the paper, etc. And the resolution still isn't nearly as good as a laser.
That used to be the case, but it's not so much anymore. Even my old 855C prints as cleanly as my LJ 5P (company fire sale, $35). The newer inkjets (if you get a quality unit, and not just the freebie thrown in with a PC bundle) are quite impressive. My father has a new HP Color DeskJet (can't recall the number) that prints in higher resolution that my LaserJet, is roughly the same speed as my laserjet, and will also duplex without user intervention. Color quality is outstanding, and as long as you don't use exceptionally lightweight paper (most any office store sells inkjet quality paper by the ream or case) the wet ink isn't an issue. I'm actually quite impressed with modern inkjets.
Granted, facotry ink refills are kinda pricey, but there are ways around that. Toner cartridges for my LaserJet run $76 (HP brand), each ink cartridge for my InkJet runs about $30 (HP brand). Since I've got a CMYK printer I only have to replace individual colors as needed. As long as your printer doesn't use the 4-in-1 cartridges, they aren't too pricey (especially if you buy refill kits instead). Just don't get a cheap inkjet, and you'll be fine.
I use an internet calling card exclusively and was looking to drop long distance on the land line altogether. The fact is, you CANNOT, unless you go to the extreme of having NO land line. In the age of wireless communications this is of course possible, but I don't know of a cellular phone contract that works out to being less expensive than a land line.
It's not particularly extreme to have no land line and go with a cellular phone. I've been doing that for over two years. It's cheaper for me to do so. In the past I'd pay Ameritech around $25/month plus long distance for a land line that has an unlisted and unpublished number (not available in the phone book or directory assistance). Invariably my credit card companies or other companies with whom I have done business would sell my number on a telemarketing list or I would begin getting telemarketing calls from them ("Please consider our credit protection insurance policy" kinda crap) and I'd have to pay to change the number. This was a hassle.
On top of that, I'm usually at work all day and out somewhere in the evenings, so I've had wireless since 1995 or so. Any of my friends, family members, or business associates would always call me on my mobile phone because they knew that they could find me quickly. My monthly wireless bill was usually around $40 a month, and I thought that was pretty reasonable.
After a while it got to the point that I never answered my land line, I just let the machine get it (voicemail would have been another additional monthly fee from Ameritech). It was never anybody that I wanted to talk to. After a month or two of this I decided that it was pointless to pay $25/month for a phone line that was only used by people who I didn't want to talk to (or for the occasional long distance call), so I had the land line shut off. I also upgraded my wireless plan to account for the potential of more minutes, and I now pay around $55/month for wireless service. That includes all the minutes that I use, plus free voicemail, call waiting, caller ID, and 3-way calling. Right now I'm looking into plans that offer no roaming and no LD charges too. One of the features that I especially like is that their "411" information service is really information, not just directory assistance. For example, if you call and ask for a number to a movie theatre they'll look up what movies are playing and give you showtimes too. Try getting that from Ma Bell! Plus I don't have to ever worry about my number being listed somewhere for telemarketers to get at.
On that note, I know that telemarketers aren't allowed to solicit you on your mobile phone because it costs you money, but I wonder if they have a list of mobile prefixes for each area code? I've never gotten a telemarketing call on my mobile, even after giving it to my creditors.
At any rate, from my perspective it makes sense to go purely wireless. It ended up saving me around $10/month since I already had wireless service, and it includes far more features than my land line did. I've got several friends and coworkers who've done the same thing after seeing how well I've gotten along without it. If you're afraid of the contract issue, just buy a mobile phone and get a pay-as-you-go plan. Phones have become so inexpensive lately that buying them up-front isn't that big of a deal, especially if you don't need one that does WAP and SMS and all that other garbage. Wireless companies are getting much smarter about this and now offer family packages with shared minutes (great if you're married, but I'd still get a land line for the kids).
Off our high horse? Get off the damned couch and do something for the country, or for other people before you start bashing the guys that do. Don't ever equate a soldier's sacrifice with a politician's intent.
You obviously have never done any kind of service or charity work, with an attitude like that.
The above is ridiculously unfounded, indefensible, and just plain incorrect speculation. But then you wouldn't know that since your only intent appeared to be to bash me and smear my name. Especially since I never bashed any soldiers in my post. I understand though, you don't want the truth to get in the way of your bitching.
The right to speech also includes the right to keep your stupid troll opionions to yourself.
It's not a troll. It's "insightful" and "informative." Just check the mod points.
No president has ever been reelected to office following a war.
That may or may not be true as I haven't taken the time to check the stats, but either way it is irrelevant here. I very distinctly recall the elder president Bush's approval rating skyrocketing when the US invaded Iraq. And I very distinctly recall the younger president Bush's approval rating skyrocketing when the US invaded Afghanistan. So the notion that invading the lands of a "hated enemy" (even one that you yourself invented) boosts approval ratings is quite valid. As to your claim about reelection, that's not what we are discussing here.
Comments like this is just plain stupid...Plus, I don't believe it's going to happen. The current administration is using "other means necessary" to stop any type of terrorist activity there. I don't think terrorism has a statute of limitations.
Sure it will. The current Bush administration has had a hard-on for Hussein since they first came to power. The last thing that Dubby wants is to be known as the second generation of Bush presidents who "failed to get the job done." Have you been watching the news lately? Have you been listening to Cheney during his almost weekly visits to "Meet the Press" where he talks about the evils of Iraq? It's going to happen, it's just simply a matter of timing now. Bush is just waiting for an excuse (liked failed negotiations on weapons inspectors).
It's another thing entirely to raise your hand and swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Don't knock it until you've tried it.
I dunno, it didn't look all that hard when I watched President Dubya do it on TV. And judging by his example, you can swear to protect and uphold the constitution of the US and piss on it at the same time. Imagine that!
Sounds like fun to me. I liked Thief: The Dark Project. Death was very easy to find, and very hard to deal. I spent most of my time in that game slowly sneaking through, waiting for the enemy to come into my sights.
I think it's very classy of you to make jokes about people who have died for your freedom. Sure, it sucks that the US get stuck policing the world, but as we've been shown, it's not going to do it on its own, and it doesn't look like anyone else is jumping up to do the job. Your attitude is disgusting.
Get off your high horse. Yes, they died for our freedom but that also includes the freedom to say what we want about them and criticize the government when we feel it's necessary. Pull your head out of your ass and smell reality for a change.
If Bush invades Iraq it certainly won't be the first time that a politician has picked a fight to boost his approval ratings. What I find to be truly disgusting is the way that the Bush-Cheney gang have used and are still using the events of September 11th as an excuse to grab more power for themselves and then keep the American people and congress in the dark by claiming "national security". This also isn't the first time that a politician has done this either.
I take it that your data has to be open to everyone on your network, no limitations (including therefore anyone that can hack your network).
No, it doesn't. But there are many people on the network who need access to one category of confidential data, and other groups who need access to other pieces of the confidential data. Again, I think that you are thinking far too simplistically about the whole situation. There isn't anybody who has access to all of the data on our networks, nor is there anybody who has a legitimate business need to access all of the data.
Dude, that is totally not the way to do it. It's like a vicous circle against your own users. Your problem is lack of compartmentalisation. I don't care if anyone hacks into our accounts, because our most important data is stored on a system that only has a keyboard, monitor and Zip drive, NO ethernet card. The computer's in a lock cupboard. I have the key, my comrade in Japan has another in case I get run over or something. I suppose a locksmith can always break in.
I think that you fail to appreciate the scale and complexity of a large, national insurance and finance company. You can't just lock your "most important data" away in a cupboard and hold the key yourself. The company I work for processes many many millions of dollars worth of finanical transactions between banks, consumers, markets and our own accounts on a daily basis. We process and store confidential information from millions of our customers and partners, not to mention our employees. All of this data needs to be secured, yet still be available to process or be manipulated as needed by a wide variety of people with legitimate purposes within the company.
Maybe if you work for Bob's Widget Store you can afford to lock up the payroll list in a cupboard. But at our company our most important data consists of terabytes of information that is used daily to conduct business.
For years I've been creating my passwords not based on words, but on easy to remember hand motions. to give a very simple example: Qwerty78 a simple rolling left to right motion, plus a few numbers. Very easy to remember, tough to crack if you try a brute force attempt.
That's hardly any good. "QWERTY" would probably be my 9th or 10th guess if I were trying to hack someone's password by guessing. I can guarantee you that simple strings like that are in most PW cracker dictionarys.
I did the same thing on our NT SAM database a while back. 75% of all passwords fell in about five seconds. ;-)
I did that once for a previous employer. Boy was my boss suprised when after a minute or so of cracking I called to ask him why he'd choose such a stupidly simple password as "miscio".
Give a look at any paper by Sasse, Brostoff and Adams, such as this one [mdx.ac.uk], and then re-think your sysadmin I-never-change-my-dictionary-password-but-I-force- all-my-users-to-32-char-monthly-passwords bullshit attitude.
I've currently got a 12 character password that I change on the same schedule as regular users do. Even though I only speak English and Spanish, I translated two unrelated words into two different languages (French and Welsh), then took the first half of one of the words, stuck it onto the second half of the other word, did a character substitution ("0" for "O", "1" for "L" or "I", and so on) and then tacked on a couple of random digits for good measure.
So apparently by your logic I can now tell you to fuck off and that the users are, in fact, the problem.
In what way does changing a well-chosen password increase security on a non-compromised system?
That all depends upon a) how many people who no longer need access to the system (former employees) know the password, b) how many other systems use the same password somewhere, and c) to what degree of certainty you believe that your system is not compromised.
Dude, hate to break it to you, but with difficult passwords like that I'd estimate that 95% of people you admin have their password written down in 10 places including on post-it notes stuck to their monitors.
DUDE! No way! What if they use Dell computers?
A few of them do have post-it notes up, most of them don't. When I encounter sticky-note passwords I usually confiscate them and lock their account. By the time they've called the helpdesk (for which their manager gets charged, and the user thereby gets some heat) they start to get the hint. But more importantly, what's the point of writing it down if you can use something as memorable as "Beliskner1" (which though valid is a very bad idea)? These are personnel issues rather than an IT issues. If the user can't be expected to adhere to info security policy then they need to be reprimanded or released. The alternative to a complex password that is moderately difficult to break is a simple password that is easy to break. Which would you rather have if you are the admin who's career could be on the line?
I guess you can look at biometrics. We all know how well fingerprint scanners work. The wider-spread problem of using biometrics is that you are using a single measurement as your password everywhere. For example, say you work at ABC Corp and they have fingerprint scanners (or retinal scanners, or voiceprint scanners, or whatever) for authentication. Say also that you leave ABC Corp to work at XYZ Corp who also uses fingerprint/retinal/voiceprint authentication. Now your password has been compromised since ABC Corp already has a copy of it. To make matters worse, short of extreme medical procedures there is no way to change that password. Where does that leave you?
Biometrics + a password is only marginally more secure than a password alone once your biometric measurement is available. I guess that we could all go to SecureID systems, though those are not impossible to defeat either (especially when users tend to leave the SecureID cards or keychains in their desk drawer).
What it eventually comes down to is that there really isn't a simple, effortless method of having a secure authentication process. Security simply requires thought and effort on the part of end-users, and until we can beat it into their tiny little heads then we're going to be stuck with stupid end users making our systems insecure.
The company I work for (large, national insurance company with over 50,000 users) has a "strong" password policy that is enforced by the system. A password for our domain must be a minimum of 8 characters with a mix of upper and lower case letters plus numbers. Password changes are forced every 2 months, and a previously used password is not able to be reused for the next dozen password changes. That being said, just yesterday I was working with a user whose password was their first name with a number one tacked onto the end of it. I imagine that she started with Firstname1 and then just incremented it on subsequent changes.
The problem isn't just forcing "strong passwords" onto the end users, but making sure that end users understand the reasoning behind it. Making someone use complex password formulas is useless when a large number of the users are going to use something that can still be easily guessed that conforms to the formula.
True enough, but nobody here is talking GiB's and GoB's and MoB's and MiB' and BoB's and Boob's. As far as using the MB Mb GB and Gb scale goes (as does the original post) I'm on the money.
Does anybody know the difference between GB and Gb? Here's a hint...one is bit and the other is byte. If the article is posted correctly then it would seem that they have capped their users at a total of 384 megabytes of downstream per month, not even enough to download a single Linux ISO. Why is it that I get the impression that they're actually talking about gigabytes instead of gigabits, even though the original poster and the Slashdot editor can't tell the difference?
Maybe they could get a job at NASA converting meters to yards.
What an incredibly irresponsible statement. Don't go pointing fingers until you have some evidence.
It wasn't a statement, it was a question. Don't go pointing fingers until you know the difference.
Most PC games out today don't support 5 year old hardware. 5 years ago, almost no games required a hardware graphics accelerator. Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't.
Either you're kidding or truly and seriously misguided. The first graphics accelrator cards started showing up in 1992 and 1993. Granted, they only did 2D operations, but they were accelerator cards.
In 1997 (five years ago) I have a VooDoo Graphics card and a Riva128 video card and shortly thereafter I was considering buying a TNT-based video card. There were plenty of 3D-only games then.