Uh...what does the "current administration" have to do with this? Three years ago it was even worse, at the end of an 8-year Clinton era. I hate W worse than almost anyone (I live in DC, we hear about 5x the dirt on him here), but he's got nothing to do with this. Trying to drag him into it is just going to muddle the issue.
I know a good bit of law, but this is out of my range. It does sound to me that there's a very high chance that (even if their claims are correct) they're accepting money to license something that isn't theirs to license, provided there's just one UNIX System V-like option out there that doesn't include any of their code. Is this not a criminal act, or at the very least an actionable one?
Reed Hundt...isn't that the same guy who managed to auction off large expanses of spectrum to wireless carriers (who lost money in the deal, in the end)?
The issue (as often in risk management) here isn't likelihood of occurrence, but rather impact of event. While it's not common for there to be attempts to infiltrate, the cost of a successful attack would be huge, and to use the old formula, since (Probability of Loss * Cost of Loss) Cost of Preventive Measures, that's why they have the security. It's also hard to say how many attempts there might be if they DIDN'T have the security, seeing as how nobody knows where they are to attempt it in the first place.
It's cool to see someone write about the building you used to work in! I worked in this building, a bit more than 2 years ago. I was in Network Solutions' consulting arm, whose DC office was in that building, two floors under the NOC. The security really is as spectacular (and low-key) as you'd expect. You would NOT believe the camera surveillance they have facing outwards...you can see some of it, but you can't see some of them at all. And the cameras themselves are startlingly cool...there's a small strip mall across a major highway from the facility, with a clear line of sight. One of the security guys showed me how far the zoom worked, as he zoomed in on a guy smoking in front of a bookstore in the strip mall...about half a mile away. It was still a clear picture.
When 9/11 happened, we were not allowed back into the building for a couple of days, but all they had to stand up as barriers were road cones. Luckily, they're finally moving to a location that isn't just obscure and secure, but armored, as I hear their Mountain View, CA location is.
It's not software to allow companies (or anyone else) to track that Bell Labs is developing. They've realized that that software is inevitable, and that the greater market is for software that lets the cell phone users fuzz that tracking. Jeez...all those posts responding to the misrepresentation of the original post, rather than the actual facts...
I got it this morning, spoofed from a SecurityFocus security mailing list I subscribe to, ironically enough. Current Norton sigs didn't detect it, and it didn't match my spam filters...but Outlook's updated features automatically blocked access to the exe file (not like I would have clicked on it anyways...but it was interesting to see something from Microsoft be the only barricade to stay standing).
Actually, it means quite a bit. For one, they did it right the first time...when did it become the assumption that the FIRST company to try something had an easy time of it, anyways? And besides, it doesn't matter how many companies have had the chance to try; keeping critical infrastructure secure and available is hard, especially for a high-profile target like VeriSign. They've had attack after attack, and have weathered them all, which I have to say is a remarkable thing. They're also one of the very few companies in the world with the distributed infrastructure to support something like this in the first place. Oh yeah, one more thing; VeriSign as it is now is not one company that did one such thing right for years, it's the combined forces of two companies that did two such things. Don't forget about the PKI backbone that VeriSign sustains and defends, and the attacks against it. And as for complexity, this is actually counter to your argument. The system in question here is very much like the two that VeriSign already maintains, which makes them an excellent candidate. Complexity is not relevant here; the more complex systems you talk about are probably not as survivable (numbers of locations/failovers) or robust (bandwidth available to weather a sustained DDoS as they have done while serving literally hundreds of millions of end users). This is not a job for a five-star restaurant, to use a metaphor...it's a job for McDonald's.
I have to say that they've proven that they're a good choice for this. Keep in mind what the #1 priority is for maintaining TLDs, particularly the big ones (.com,.net,.org) that Network Solutions/VeriSign handled for most of their lives. VeriSign's idiocy and abuse with regards to non-existent domain handling and misleading 'renewal' notices are despicable for sure, but while all that was going on, they also kept things up and running quite well, even weathering out the largest DDoS on record without going down.
Um...see under "joke." As in, "not meant to be taken literally." Calling it the "Builder/Plumber/Roofer Effect" would only have been funny if this were "Slashdot. News for Builders/Plumbers/Roofers. Stuff that Matters." Which of course, it isn't...
Why haven't they referred to this as the "Geek Effect?" Men who drink more than 6 cups of coffee a day are at LEAST 50% likely to be geeks of some form, and women about 30%. Coincidenza?
This is nothing new; there are a whole slew of programs that do this. One example is iScrub, often used by law firms (and intelligent in its design; it's actually pretty cool to see in action. It integrates with Outlook, and can differentiate between an email (containing an attachment that needs scrubbing, like MS Word) that is sent externally versus one that is sent internally. It prompts the user to scrub the document before sending the email; the user has the option not to scrub if they so desire.
"Installment," not "installation." Installments are payments at periodic intervals. Remember, Microsoft has gone to a subscription-based licensing model. Or they could be talking about financing the cost, in which case there'd be payments (and interest/processing costs). Either way, it's not installation they're talking about.
Approximately three-fourths of these motorcycle accidents involved collision with another vehicle, which was most often a passenger automobile.
Read the report yourself, before you start preaching, with the baseless expectation that it will support your own idiotic assumptions. BTW, that line is the first and foremost conclusion of the report, and the third sentence in the whole thing.
But that only addresses your second statement, being "The majority of bike accidents do not involve cars." Let's deal with the first one regarding alcohol, "Actually the most common danger to motorcyclists is alcohol."
Almost half of the fatal accidents show alcohol involvement.
Hm. Almost half...definitely enough to point out that drinking on a motorcycle is still a bad idea, but definitely not most either. See above, under "read the report yourself." I've seen too many fellow riders take stupid risks because they falsely believed them not to be among major causes of accidents, and guys like you who purport to be informed are a big part of that problem.
Alright...so they don't want relatively new and untested code...but they want new features. This so sounds like something Dilbert would get as a request, doesn't it?
What the article entirely misses is WHY there's role fragmentation. My girlfriend works in the IT department of a large law firm, and she's tasked with one thing: the implementation, testing, and rollout of a new document management system. And it's a full time job, for months now. Part of it is because they're adopting the latest and greatest version of the product, but part of it is also just simply because the software needs handholding to get it working correctly. There are bugs, nuances, and various sorts of tuning (the web component doesn't work correctly if you keep your browser W3 standards-compliant with regard to number of concurrent connections, for example.) It's not like the admins got together and said, "Let's make this software really manpower-intensive to install so that we'll all have jobs!" The developers have written this stuff that way, although obviously not with that end in mind.
In the end, if there need to be so many admins, it's because the software demands it, not the other way around. And I tend to think admins are pissy because developers are increasingly giving them crap to administer.
Almost any functionality of any form requires learning to some degree. A radio-controlled car, a new stereo, a new cell phone. To expect something like this to require no learning curve at all is unrealistic. Also, most people take some interest in learning things (although I know I'm speaking for people I've never met here). With that in mind, could you not use TikiWiki and tune it a bit to strip off the goodies they won't use.
Another thing you can do to minimize the learning curve is document the features they'll be using, on their own site. That way they don't have to know anything but the url...they can see help on the front page, and utilize it.
That's ridiculous. It'll be easy for other states to not follow suit; what will be difficult will be for the companies who make these machines to avoid producing them with this as an option. This, as a result, will make it easier for states to follow California's example, if they are so inclined. But sticking to the status quo of electonic voting has not become more difficult yet.
The fact that Gartner has said this makes me think that SCO is going to win, and end up the only standing survivor! IBM? GONE! Red Hat? SAYONARA! Novell? FUHGETABOUTIT! SCO will be the new Microsoft.
Or maybe Gartner figured it was about time they were RIGHT about something, and saw this as something they couldn't possibly screw up...
This technology has been around for years. Motorola, for example, has made phones with native encryption capabilities built in, and plug-on encryption modules for normal phones. This goes back all the way to encryption modules for the original "brick" phones. While marketed towards the federal market, all but the highest (STU-III capable, I think the standard is) have been available to anyone who wants to buy them.
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Uh...what does the "current administration" have to do with this? Three years ago it was even worse, at the end of an 8-year Clinton era. I hate W worse than almost anyone (I live in DC, we hear about 5x the dirt on him here), but he's got nothing to do with this. Trying to drag him into it is just going to muddle the issue.
I know a good bit of law, but this is out of my range. It does sound to me that there's a very high chance that (even if their claims are correct) they're accepting money to license something that isn't theirs to license, provided there's just one UNIX System V-like option out there that doesn't include any of their code. Is this not a criminal act, or at the very least an actionable one?
Reed Hundt...isn't that the same guy who managed to auction off large expanses of spectrum to wireless carriers (who lost money in the deal, in the end)?
They use it to pre-empt the formation of cars that don't suck :)
The issue (as often in risk management) here isn't likelihood of occurrence, but rather impact of event. While it's not common for there to be attempts to infiltrate, the cost of a successful attack would be huge, and to use the old formula, since (Probability of Loss * Cost of Loss) Cost of Preventive Measures, that's why they have the security. It's also hard to say how many attempts there might be if they DIDN'T have the security, seeing as how nobody knows where they are to attempt it in the first place.
It's cool to see someone write about the building you used to work in! I worked in this building, a bit more than 2 years ago. I was in Network Solutions' consulting arm, whose DC office was in that building, two floors under the NOC. The security really is as spectacular (and low-key) as you'd expect. You would NOT believe the camera surveillance they have facing outwards...you can see some of it, but you can't see some of them at all. And the cameras themselves are startlingly cool...there's a small strip mall across a major highway from the facility, with a clear line of sight. One of the security guys showed me how far the zoom worked, as he zoomed in on a guy smoking in front of a bookstore in the strip mall...about half a mile away. It was still a clear picture.
When 9/11 happened, we were not allowed back into the building for a couple of days, but all they had to stand up as barriers were road cones. Luckily, they're finally moving to a location that isn't just obscure and secure, but armored, as I hear their Mountain View, CA location is.
It's not software to allow companies (or anyone else) to track that Bell Labs is developing. They've realized that that software is inevitable, and that the greater market is for software that lets the cell phone users fuzz that tracking. Jeez...all those posts responding to the misrepresentation of the original post, rather than the actual facts...
I got it this morning, spoofed from a SecurityFocus security mailing list I subscribe to, ironically enough. Current Norton sigs didn't detect it, and it didn't match my spam filters...but Outlook's updated features automatically blocked access to the exe file (not like I would have clicked on it anyways...but it was interesting to see something from Microsoft be the only barricade to stay standing).
Actually, it means quite a bit. For one, they did it right the first time...when did it become the assumption that the FIRST company to try something had an easy time of it, anyways? And besides, it doesn't matter how many companies have had the chance to try; keeping critical infrastructure secure and available is hard, especially for a high-profile target like VeriSign. They've had attack after attack, and have weathered them all, which I have to say is a remarkable thing. They're also one of the very few companies in the world with the distributed infrastructure to support something like this in the first place. Oh yeah, one more thing; VeriSign as it is now is not one company that did one such thing right for years, it's the combined forces of two companies that did two such things. Don't forget about the PKI backbone that VeriSign sustains and defends, and the attacks against it.
And as for complexity, this is actually counter to your argument. The system in question here is very much like the two that VeriSign already maintains, which makes them an excellent candidate. Complexity is not relevant here; the more complex systems you talk about are probably not as survivable (numbers of locations/failovers) or robust (bandwidth available to weather a sustained DDoS as they have done while serving literally hundreds of millions of end users). This is not a job for a five-star restaurant, to use a metaphor...it's a job for McDonald's.
I have to say that they've proven that they're a good choice for this. Keep in mind what the #1 priority is for maintaining TLDs, particularly the big ones (.com, .net, .org) that Network Solutions/VeriSign handled for most of their lives. VeriSign's idiocy and abuse with regards to non-existent domain handling and misleading 'renewal' notices are despicable for sure, but while all that was going on, they also kept things up and running quite well, even weathering out the largest DDoS on record without going down.
Um...see under "joke." As in, "not meant to be taken literally." Calling it the "Builder/Plumber/Roofer Effect" would only have been funny if this were "Slashdot. News for Builders/Plumbers/Roofers. Stuff that Matters." Which of course, it isn't...
Why haven't they referred to this as the "Geek Effect?" Men who drink more than 6 cups of coffee a day are at LEAST 50% likely to be geeks of some form, and women about 30%. Coincidenza?
This is nothing new; there are a whole slew of programs that do this. One example is iScrub, often used by law firms (and intelligent in its design; it's actually pretty cool to see in action. It integrates with Outlook, and can differentiate between an email (containing an attachment that needs scrubbing, like MS Word) that is sent externally versus one that is sent internally. It prompts the user to scrub the document before sending the email; the user has the option not to scrub if they so desire.
"Installment," not "installation." Installments are payments at periodic intervals. Remember, Microsoft has gone to a subscription-based licensing model. Or they could be talking about financing the cost, in which case there'd be payments (and interest/processing costs). Either way, it's not installation they're talking about.
Read the report yourself, before you start preaching, with the baseless expectation that it will support your own idiotic assumptions. BTW, that line is the first and foremost conclusion of the report, and the third sentence in the whole thing.
But that only addresses your second statement, being "The majority of bike accidents do not involve cars." Let's deal with the first one regarding alcohol, "Actually the most common danger to motorcyclists is alcohol."
Hm. Almost half...definitely enough to point out that drinking on a motorcycle is still a bad idea, but definitely not most either. See above, under "read the report yourself." I've seen too many fellow riders take stupid risks because they falsely believed them not to be among major causes of accidents, and guys like you who purport to be informed are a big part of that problem.
Alright...so they don't want relatively new and untested code...but they want new features. This so sounds like something Dilbert would get as a request, doesn't it?
What the article entirely misses is WHY there's role fragmentation. My girlfriend works in the IT department of a large law firm, and she's tasked with one thing: the implementation, testing, and rollout of a new document management system. And it's a full time job, for months now. Part of it is because they're adopting the latest and greatest version of the product, but part of it is also just simply because the software needs handholding to get it working correctly. There are bugs, nuances, and various sorts of tuning (the web component doesn't work correctly if you keep your browser W3 standards-compliant with regard to number of concurrent connections, for example.) It's not like the admins got together and said, "Let's make this software really manpower-intensive to install so that we'll all have jobs!" The developers have written this stuff that way, although obviously not with that end in mind.
In the end, if there need to be so many admins, it's because the software demands it, not the other way around. And I tend to think admins are pissy because developers are increasingly giving them crap to administer.
God, I'd never use that for a password...that's my name!
Almost any functionality of any form requires learning to some degree. A radio-controlled car, a new stereo, a new cell phone. To expect something like this to require no learning curve at all is unrealistic. Also, most people take some interest in learning things (although I know I'm speaking for people I've never met here). With that in mind, could you not use TikiWiki and tune it a bit to strip off the goodies they won't use.
Another thing you can do to minimize the learning curve is document the features they'll be using, on their own site. That way they don't have to know anything but the url...they can see help on the front page, and utilize it.
Now blind people will be able to talk on their cell phones while driving too! Damn!
That's ridiculous. It'll be easy for other states to not follow suit; what will be difficult will be for the companies who make these machines to avoid producing them with this as an option. This, as a result, will make it easier for states to follow California's example, if they are so inclined. But sticking to the status quo of electonic voting has not become more difficult yet.
The fact that Gartner has said this makes me think that SCO is going to win, and end up the only standing survivor! IBM? GONE! Red Hat? SAYONARA! Novell? FUHGETABOUTIT! SCO will be the new Microsoft.
Or maybe Gartner figured it was about time they were RIGHT about something, and saw this as something they couldn't possibly screw up...
Will he ever get an answer to the classic question:
"Why are my balls on my face?"
This technology has been around for years. Motorola, for example, has made phones with native encryption capabilities built in, and plug-on encryption modules for normal phones. This goes back all the way to encryption modules for the original "brick" phones. While marketed towards the federal market, all but the highest (STU-III capable, I think the standard is) have been available to anyone who wants to buy them.
He must have gone to college with this consultant.