I'm playing Jak X for PS2 right now, and I hit a similar thing on the final grand prix event. They throw a new opponent at you (I won't spoil it here) and he's really hard. To top it off, the 3 tracks happen to be the ones I suck most at, yet the opponent drives like his tyres are glued to the track. It makes me very frustrated to play the same grand prix over and over and over, yet not come even close to winning. I don't know that I'm going to finish this game, and it's the last event. Grrrrrr...
Maybe I'm not being fair though, maybe I'm just taking it out of context or he could be loon. I'm still debating it.
Here's the context: In an April 25, 2005 letter to the Chief Branch Discipline Council, Florida Bar, Jack writes: (emphasis & reference added by me)
The reason I have repeatedly written the U.S. Attorney about the conduct of Mr. Kelley and Mr. Landes is that together they have, in my opinion, violated 18 USC 241, which is a criminal statute that prohibits the chilling of someone's constitutional rights. Mr. Landes says in his April 1, 2005, letter to you that such complaints to the federal prosecutor are "retaliation" and "ham-fisted."
Fine. If Mr. Landes thinks so then he can bring a malicious prosecution action against me. Maybe he can conjure up some kind of cause of action against Ohio-based Bob Evans Farm Sausage for my illicit use of ham on my fists. This is the first time I can recall a Bar complaint that brings pigs into the discussion.
It's interesting that, to me, SANS is starting to look like a spammer. I joined their mailing list several years ago. Now, my work role has changed to the point where I no longer need to be on their mailing list. I use the "portal" link at the bottom of their email to try to unsubscribe, but as many times as I try to remove myself, it doesn't work. I've emailed their "help" addresses several times, trying to be taken off the list, and haven't gotten any response. So I just get in the habit of deleting that email whenever it shows up, but it's feeling a lot like spam at this point. How ironic that SANS is breaking rule #1.
Remember "Spaceballs": the code is: "1", "2", "3", "4".
And in real life, when trying to crack the German military Enigma, they had a hard time of it ("if only we knew the letter sequence on the wheels!") until they found the wheels were set up with letters ordered A-B-C-D. (ob. wikipedia reference.)
For me, it's not about "choosing an allegiance to one side", but it's about quality games. I hate it when I play a game that's been written to the lowest common denominator across all the available platforms (sometimes also including the PC.) Every platform has its strengths and weaknesses - and they rarely overlap. So you find that level maps have been broken down into smaller chunks that are easier for one system to cope with, but that means interrupting play with a "loading" screen. Or graphics are done poorly because it works better on one of the systems. Or the control scheme sucks because you have to support the button layout on all the consoles at once.
A well-done game that happens to be exclusive to one system is okay for me.
From the article, there are three points that she raises on page 1:
Computers pose special Fourth Amendment search problems because they pack so much information in such a small, monolithic physical form. As a result, courts are grappling with how to protect privacy rights during searches of computers.
Three digital search topics in particular are converging in interesting, and foreboding, ways.
First, there are several new cases that suggest that agents can search computers at the border (including international airports) without reasonable suspicion or a warrant, under the routine border search exception to the warrant requirement.
She mentions "several new cases" that suggest this, but doesn't give any examples. If you're going to tromp out something this scary, I need examples here. What were the cases? Did airport security run a swab on the laptop, and it came back showing explosives material? Did the laptop belong to someone that was entering the country illegally? Or did the laptop belong to some poor, random guy who looked like he might be of Middle-Eastern descent? Details?
Second, a recent case in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has held that private employees have no reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus no Fourth Amendment rights, in their workplace computers (gulp!).
Yes, and this has been the case for a very long time. There is nothing new here. If you are using a computer provided to you by your employer, don't keep personal data on it. Your employer has the right to monitor their own systems, including the laptop you asked for so you could do work at home.
Third and finally, the 9th Circuit is struggling, and failing, to define ways to judicially supervise police searches of computers to ensure that law enforcement gets the information it needs, while leaving undisturbed any private information on unrelated matters that may be on the same disk drive.
This one I may give you. But look at this example of a police search: in the 1930's, if you were under reasonable suspicion of being involved in a mail fraud operation, the police would have a warrant to search your home, including papers that might provide a paper trail. If they found a few papers on your desk, the police would look at them there, and determine if they should confiscate them as evidents. If they found a big, 4-drawer filing cabinet stuffed with papers, the police would likely confiscate the whole thing to search on their own premises. It doesn't matter if you claim the bottom 3 drawers contain only personal files (photos, family tree history, etc.) they would take the whole thing to search later.
Now fast-forward to the present: if you were under reasonable suspicion of being involved in a Nigerian-like scam ring, the police would have a warrant to search your home, including items that might provide a paper trail. If they found a few papers on your desk, the police would look at them there, and determine if they should confiscate them as evidents. If they found a laptop, the police would likely confiscate the whole thing to search on their own premises. It doesn't matter if you claim the laptop contains only personal files (photos, email, family tree history, etc.) they would take the whole thing to search later.
One last thing about this item: she mentions "... while leaving undisturbed any private information on unrelated matters that may be on the same disk drive". Before computers, police could thumb through (not thoroughly search) a stack of papers to verify that yes, the "papers" were just a pile of photos of the grandkids and the dog, your gas bill, and other stuff that had nothing to do with their search. But in today's electronic world, searching a hard drive is different. Who's to say that someone didn't rename their Excel spreadsheet, listing the people they've ripped off with their Nigerian-like scam (including names, addresses, and dollar amounts), to something totally innocuous like "christmas_letter.doc"? It's really difficult (impossible?) for police to do searches of electronic material without looking at everything.
Ok, I RTFA, and the first half of the first sentence of the first paragraph really blows the whole article. Emphasis mine:
My laptop computer was purchased by Stanford, but my whole life is stored on it. I have e-mail dating back several years, my address book with the names of everyone I know, notes and musings for various work and personal projects, financial records, passwords to my blog, my web mail, project and information management data for various organizations I belong to, photos of my niece and nephew and my pets.
In short, my computer is my most private possession. I have other things that are more dear, but no one item could tell you more about me than this machine.
This laptop is not hers; it belongs to Stanford. As such, she shouldn't be storing any personal items on this machine. When you use a computer provided to you by your employer - even in higher ed (where I am an MIS manager) - the employer has every right to do with that machine as they please. They can take it away from you at any time for no reason, or volunteer it for searches, etc. This is your work machine, not yours.
I'm not being callous, just realistic. If you have personal data, don't keep it on a machine that belongs to your employer. Your personal email? Store it on a thumb drive, or use a service like Gmail. Personal financial records? Keep that on your computer at home - or at least encrypt it on a thumb drive. Photos of family members? Thumb drive.
XM has argued it is protected from infringement lawsuits by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which permits individuals to record music off the radio for private use. The judge said she did not believe the company was protected in this instance by the act.
If they're not protected, who is?
I know my question isn't about radio, but I think it's related... I am a Comcast cable TV subscriber, and I have the DVR that came with the service. The function of the DVR is to record shows off the cable service for private use. So if the judge believes XM isn't protected by the Act, what does it mean for cable companies that provide the DVR? It's essentially the same issue - the company I subscribed to is the one who provided me the technology device that allows me to record content for private use, to consume at a later time.
In 'Thief' and 'Thief 2', if you left a body on the floor and a guard found it, they'd react by coming to look for you. And they'd look hard - not like when they heard you make a noise, and they'd give up after a minute or so, thinking they'd heard a mousefart or something. No, if they saw a body, the jig was pretty much up.
At the end of last season, I downloaded the BSG podcast for the first time. Big mistake in this case. The podcast was about 90 minutes of the writers room, and in those 90 minutes it became increasingly clear to me that the BSG writers have no frakking clue as to where they are taking the show. They didn't have an overall arc to the show; they mapped out only the next "pod" (that's "mini-season" to the rest of us) and were clear that they'd end it on a note where you could take the next "pod" in any number of directions.
That's probably easier, to map out only the "pod" you are starting. But for us viewers, eventually we realize it's tap-dancing.
This in contrast to shows that definitely were mapped out with a multi-season plan, like any Joss Whedon show (Firefly, Angel, Buffy) or even Lost.
It was very disappointing for me to realize that BSG was just something the writers made up as they went along. It would have been much better to have mapped out a general plan for, say, the first 4 seasons - and written a rough framework for what each season needed to include and where it would go. If the writers aren't invested enough in the show to know where it's going, why should I be invested enough to watch it?
As a result, I may watch the next season of BSG, or I may not. We'll see.
I can't find it now, but there was a good piece NPR ran last year (I think) about prison inmates that were being trained in fine watch repair. You didn't need to have a high school diploma (many of these inmates didn't) to do the job, and you could make a good wage at it when you got out of prison. The training facility was sponsored in part by Timex (at least, a watchmaker name I recognized at the time). The story described several prisoners who immediately got jobs in watch repair as soon as they got released.
If anyone can help find this article, please post below.
And here we are years later, and where's a decent GPL CAD program, especailly one with a decent interface? It's not the recently open sourced BRL-CAD -- the interface on that is horrible too.
Just the other day, I was looking for a free (preferably GPL or otherwise suitably open) CAD program that I could use to do a design of my basement. We're doing work there, and I wanted to have something to create a simple overhead 2-D diagram of how things will look. I eventually ended up doing a drawing in OpenOffice Draw. It did the job for what I was trying to do, but I would have been happier to use an actual CAD program.
In the words of Universal Music's Doug Morris, "These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,. So it's time to get paid for it."
I'm looking in the linked article and I don't see the quote anywhere. The article itself is very short, so it's not that I'm missing it in all the text.
Did you link to the wrong article, or are you over-sensationalizing the article?
The only quote in the article is:
"It would be a nice idea. We have a negotiation coming up not too far. I don't see why we wouldn't do that... but maybe not in the same way," [Universal Music Group Chief Executive Doug Morris] told the Reuters Media Summit, when asked if Universal would negotiate a royalty fee for the iPod that would be similar to Microsoft's Zune.
"The Zune (deal) was an amazingly interesting exercise, to end up with a piece of technology," he added.
Hula is a [Linux-based] mail and calendar server with a friendly web-interface designed for a great user experience.
So if Novell has taken all their FT developers off Hula, are we to assume that Microsoft is now going to offer a Linux-native version of the Exchange server? I mean, come on. If Microsoft-Novell is really serious with their "we are working on Linux-Windows interoperability" then they're dropping out of Hula in order to work on their Linux-native of the Exchange server, right??
I mean, the only other possibility is that Microsoft "asked" Novell to stop supporting a direct competitor for a Microsoft product. And that would just be silly of them, wouldn't it...
I'll also add that if you're going to stop playing games forever, the last game to play should be 'Jaws: Unleashed'. You'll throw your controller aside, possibly smash it to pieces, and swear off games forever. Seriously, it's really that bad.
I bought the game because it was supposed to be terrible. Sometimes, you just have to re-set the metric on "bad".
How bad is it? I mean, you play as Jaws, a huge eating machine. Your goal is to eat people and destroy things. How can you mess up a game like that? Fairly early in the game, you find yourself trapped in a lab pool. To get out, you need to open an underwater door, but it's locked by electronic cardkey. And only the scientists in lab coats have them, but fortunately they're walking around the perimeter of the pool. You have to jump up onto the deck, grab a scientist but not eat him, wave his body in front of the card reader. Then you have to avoid the school of piranha (which are freshwater fish) as you make your way to the orca boss. No, really.
I think I played a few hours after that, upgraded all my shark stats, before I decided I'd had enough punishment.
As a manager, let me say the best manager is someone who does less "doing" and puts the focus on "leading". That's a hard thing for managers to come to grips with, especially those that have risen up to management "from the ranks". To be a manager, you must be willing to give up the day-to-day hands-on stuff, and leave that to your staff. To try to remain hands-on means you aren't doing your job as a manager. When you move into management, your job changes. It's a big thing to accept.
However, that does not mean that a manager shouldn't understand the technology. For example, I manage an infrastructure group at a Big-Ten University. There are about 25 staff who report under me, including AIX admins, Linux admins, Solaris admins, Windows admins, Novell admins, and storage admins. But I'm also RHCE, and I'll probably keep up my certification as long as I think I can. At the same time, I don't try to admin any of our Linux hosts. The certification means I understand how the technology works, but since I don't do any of the hands-on work, I can focus on how to apply that technology to larger problems. Sure, I can do the job, but doing the admin work isn't my job anymore. If a manager tries to remain hands-on, he/she gets too bogged down in the day-to-day, and you forget to look forwards into stuff you should do a year out.
In my case, to lead successfully, I've had to accept that I shouldn't do the hands-on anymore. Understand the level of your staff, and rely on them. Once I accepted that, I found I was a much more effective leader. I could free myself from the "where we are now" and focus on "where we should be". As a result, I've helped to change how we work. We do more "central" stuff for the organization, and have given up some things we used to do "just because we always did them." My folks are way more efficient now than we were a few years ago, and they're generally happier in what they do.
We use this in our lab (university) on shared computers, and found that our computer problems just went away after about 6 weeks. And on the 24x7 shared computers with staff, the staff typically have an Administrator-like account.
Before installing DeepFreeze, the staff on the shared computers would install music players, sharing programs, all the regular stuff. And we'd get a call from Network Security every so often about the machine having been nailed, and sending out spam.
Immediately after installing DeepFreeze, staff did what they normally did - they'd still install the music players, etc. But when their shift ended, and the PC got rebooted, all their installed stuff "magically" went away.
About 6 weeks after DeepFreeze, the staff kind of figured out it wasn't worth re-installing software every damn day just to have their cute toys. PC management on these systems has been a breeze ever since.
Note that a DeepFreeze Administrator can still put the system into "thaw" where you can install updates, add new software, whatever, then put the system back into "freeze" mode. When it's frozen, the system can still be used just like any normal PC.. but when you reboot, any changes you made are gone. And you can even set aside an area that's permanently "unfrozen" to store docs, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm playing Jak X for PS2 right now, and I hit a similar thing on the final grand prix event. They throw a new opponent at you (I won't spoil it here) and he's really hard. To top it off, the 3 tracks happen to be the ones I suck most at, yet the opponent drives like his tyres are glued to the track. It makes me very frustrated to play the same grand prix over and over and over, yet not come even close to winning. I don't know that I'm going to finish this game, and it's the last event. Grrrrrr...
Here's the context: In an April 25, 2005 letter to the Chief Branch Discipline Council, Florida Bar, Jack writes: (emphasis & reference added by me)
I mean, wow...
If you don't allow PDF into your network, you might try an online converter. I haven't tried it, but I see that Adobe has one.
It's interesting that, to me, SANS is starting to look like a spammer. I joined their mailing list several years ago. Now, my work role has changed to the point where I no longer need to be on their mailing list. I use the "portal" link at the bottom of their email to try to unsubscribe, but as many times as I try to remove myself, it doesn't work. I've emailed their "help" addresses several times, trying to be taken off the list, and haven't gotten any response. So I just get in the habit of deleting that email whenever it shows up, but it's feeling a lot like spam at this point. How ironic that SANS is breaking rule #1.
And in real life, when trying to crack the German military Enigma, they had a hard time of it ("if only we knew the letter sequence on the wheels!") until they found the wheels were set up with letters ordered A-B-C-D. (ob. wikipedia reference.)
For me, it's not about "choosing an allegiance to one side", but it's about quality games. I hate it when I play a game that's been written to the lowest common denominator across all the available platforms (sometimes also including the PC.) Every platform has its strengths and weaknesses - and they rarely overlap. So you find that level maps have been broken down into smaller chunks that are easier for one system to cope with, but that means interrupting play with a "loading" screen. Or graphics are done poorly because it works better on one of the systems. Or the control scheme sucks because you have to support the button layout on all the consoles at once.
A well-done game that happens to be exclusive to one system is okay for me.
From the article, there are three points that she raises on page 1:
She mentions "several new cases" that suggest this, but doesn't give any examples. If you're going to tromp out something this scary, I need examples here. What were the cases? Did airport security run a swab on the laptop, and it came back showing explosives material? Did the laptop belong to someone that was entering the country illegally? Or did the laptop belong to some poor, random guy who looked like he might be of Middle-Eastern descent? Details?
Yes, and this has been the case for a very long time. There is nothing new here. If you are using a computer provided to you by your employer, don't keep personal data on it. Your employer has the right to monitor their own systems, including the laptop you asked for so you could do work at home.
This one I may give you. But look at this example of a police search: in the 1930's, if you were under reasonable suspicion of being involved in a mail fraud operation, the police would have a warrant to search your home, including papers that might provide a paper trail. If they found a few papers on your desk, the police would look at them there, and determine if they should confiscate them as evidents. If they found a big, 4-drawer filing cabinet stuffed with papers, the police would likely confiscate the whole thing to search on their own premises. It doesn't matter if you claim the bottom 3 drawers contain only personal files (photos, family tree history, etc.) they would take the whole thing to search later.
Now fast-forward to the present: if you were under reasonable suspicion of being involved in a Nigerian-like scam ring, the police would have a warrant to search your home, including items that might provide a paper trail. If they found a few papers on your desk, the police would look at them there, and determine if they should confiscate them as evidents. If they found a laptop, the police would likely confiscate the whole thing to search on their own premises. It doesn't matter if you claim the laptop contains only personal files (photos, email, family tree history, etc.) they would take the whole thing to search later.
One last thing about this item: she mentions "... while leaving undisturbed any private information on unrelated matters that may be on the same disk drive". Before computers, police could thumb through (not thoroughly search) a stack of papers to verify that yes, the "papers" were just a pile of photos of the grandkids and the dog, your gas bill, and other stuff that had nothing to do with their search. But in today's electronic world, searching a hard drive is different. Who's to say that someone didn't rename their Excel spreadsheet, listing the people they've ripped off with their Nigerian-like scam (including names, addresses, and dollar amounts), to something totally innocuous like "christmas_letter.doc"? It's really difficult (impossible?) for police to do searches of electronic material without looking at everything.
Ok, I RTFA, and the first half of the first sentence of the first paragraph really blows the whole article. Emphasis mine:
This laptop is not hers; it belongs to Stanford. As such, she shouldn't be storing any personal items on this machine. When you use a computer provided to you by your employer - even in higher ed (where I am an MIS manager) - the employer has every right to do with that machine as they please. They can take it away from you at any time for no reason, or volunteer it for searches, etc. This is your work machine, not yours.
I'm not being callous, just realistic. If you have personal data, don't keep it on a machine that belongs to your employer. Your personal email? Store it on a thumb drive, or use a service like Gmail. Personal financial records? Keep that on your computer at home - or at least encrypt it on a thumb drive. Photos of family members? Thumb drive.
I know my question isn't about radio, but I think it's related ... I am a Comcast cable TV subscriber, and I have the DVR that came with the service. The function of the DVR is to record shows off the cable service for private use. So if the judge believes XM isn't protected by the Act, what does it mean for cable companies that provide the DVR? It's essentially the same issue - the company I subscribed to is the one who provided me the technology device that allows me to record content for private use, to consume at a later time.
In 'Thief' and 'Thief 2', if you left a body on the floor and a guard found it, they'd react by coming to look for you. And they'd look hard - not like when they heard you make a noise, and they'd give up after a minute or so, thinking they'd heard a mousefart or something. No, if they saw a body, the jig was pretty much up.
At the end of last season, I downloaded the BSG podcast for the first time. Big mistake in this case. The podcast was about 90 minutes of the writers room, and in those 90 minutes it became increasingly clear to me that the BSG writers have no frakking clue as to where they are taking the show. They didn't have an overall arc to the show; they mapped out only the next "pod" (that's "mini-season" to the rest of us) and were clear that they'd end it on a note where you could take the next "pod" in any number of directions.
That's probably easier, to map out only the "pod" you are starting. But for us viewers, eventually we realize it's tap-dancing.
This in contrast to shows that definitely were mapped out with a multi-season plan, like any Joss Whedon show (Firefly, Angel, Buffy) or even Lost.
It was very disappointing for me to realize that BSG was just something the writers made up as they went along. It would have been much better to have mapped out a general plan for, say, the first 4 seasons - and written a rough framework for what each season needed to include and where it would go. If the writers aren't invested enough in the show to know where it's going, why should I be invested enough to watch it?
As a result, I may watch the next season of BSG, or I may not. We'll see.
Except you just did. Right there. Why bring it up, then?
I can't find it now, but there was a good piece NPR ran last year (I think) about prison inmates that were being trained in fine watch repair. You didn't need to have a high school diploma (many of these inmates didn't) to do the job, and you could make a good wage at it when you got out of prison. The training facility was sponsored in part by Timex (at least, a watchmaker name I recognized at the time). The story described several prisoners who immediately got jobs in watch repair as soon as they got released.
If anyone can help find this article, please post below.
Just the other day, I was looking for a free (preferably GPL or otherwise suitably open) CAD program that I could use to do a design of my basement. We're doing work there, and I wanted to have something to create a simple overhead 2-D diagram of how things will look. I eventually ended up doing a drawing in OpenOffice Draw. It did the job for what I was trying to do, but I would have been happier to use an actual CAD program.
Well, that would probably be why I have a really bad cold right now, and have for the last 3 days. You f*ckers. (j/k)
I'm looking in the linked article and I don't see the quote anywhere. The article itself is very short, so it's not that I'm missing it in all the text.
Did you link to the wrong article, or are you over-sensationalizing the article?
The only quote in the article is:
From the Hula Project web site:
So if Novell has taken all their FT developers off Hula, are we to assume that Microsoft is now going to offer a Linux-native version of the Exchange server? I mean, come on. If Microsoft-Novell is really serious with their "we are working on Linux-Windows interoperability" then they're dropping out of Hula in order to work on their Linux-native of the Exchange server, right??
I mean, the only other possibility is that Microsoft "asked" Novell to stop supporting a direct competitor for a Microsoft product. And that would just be silly of them, wouldn't it...
[/sarcasm]
I'll also add that if you're going to stop playing games forever, the last game to play should be 'Jaws: Unleashed'. You'll throw your controller aside, possibly smash it to pieces, and swear off games forever. Seriously, it's really that bad.
I bought the game because it was supposed to be terrible. Sometimes, you just have to re-set the metric on "bad".
How bad is it? I mean, you play as Jaws, a huge eating machine. Your goal is to eat people and destroy things. How can you mess up a game like that? Fairly early in the game, you find yourself trapped in a lab pool. To get out, you need to open an underwater door, but it's locked by electronic cardkey. And only the scientists in lab coats have them, but fortunately they're walking around the perimeter of the pool. You have to jump up onto the deck, grab a scientist but not eat him, wave his body in front of the card reader. Then you have to avoid the school of piranha (which are freshwater fish) as you make your way to the orca boss. No, really.
I think I played a few hours after that, upgraded all my shark stats, before I decided I'd had enough punishment.
As a manager, let me say the best manager is someone who does less "doing" and puts the focus on "leading". That's a hard thing for managers to come to grips with, especially those that have risen up to management "from the ranks". To be a manager, you must be willing to give up the day-to-day hands-on stuff, and leave that to your staff. To try to remain hands-on means you aren't doing your job as a manager. When you move into management, your job changes. It's a big thing to accept.
However, that does not mean that a manager shouldn't understand the technology. For example, I manage an infrastructure group at a Big-Ten University. There are about 25 staff who report under me, including AIX admins, Linux admins, Solaris admins, Windows admins, Novell admins, and storage admins. But I'm also RHCE, and I'll probably keep up my certification as long as I think I can. At the same time, I don't try to admin any of our Linux hosts. The certification means I understand how the technology works, but since I don't do any of the hands-on work, I can focus on how to apply that technology to larger problems. Sure, I can do the job, but doing the admin work isn't my job anymore. If a manager tries to remain hands-on, he/she gets too bogged down in the day-to-day, and you forget to look forwards into stuff you should do a year out.
In my case, to lead successfully, I've had to accept that I shouldn't do the hands-on anymore. Understand the level of your staff, and rely on them. Once I accepted that, I found I was a much more effective leader. I could free myself from the "where we are now" and focus on "where we should be". As a result, I've helped to change how we work. We do more "central" stuff for the organization, and have given up some things we used to do "just because we always did them." My folks are way more efficient now than we were a few years ago, and they're generally happier in what they do.
My $.02
I suppose it says something about me that my recommended games are mostly platformers on the Playstation2:
Okay, I said I'd post 5, but here's another few for you. Consider it a "bonus":
How about "In the future, there will be robots"?
You prefer that he use a plastic spork, do you? :-)
I still like Battlefield 2: The Pwned Life. :-)
We use this in our lab (university) on shared computers, and found that our computer problems just went away after about 6 weeks. And on the 24x7 shared computers with staff, the staff typically have an Administrator-like account.
Before installing DeepFreeze, the staff on the shared computers would install music players, sharing programs, all the regular stuff. And we'd get a call from Network Security every so often about the machine having been nailed, and sending out spam.
Immediately after installing DeepFreeze, staff did what they normally did - they'd still install the music players, etc. But when their shift ended, and the PC got rebooted, all their installed stuff "magically" went away.
About 6 weeks after DeepFreeze, the staff kind of figured out it wasn't worth re-installing software every damn day just to have their cute toys. PC management on these systems has been a breeze ever since.
Note that a DeepFreeze Administrator can still put the system into "thaw" where you can install updates, add new software, whatever, then put the system back into "freeze" mode. When it's frozen, the system can still be used just like any normal PC .. but when you reboot, any changes you made are gone. And you can even set aside an area that's permanently "unfrozen" to store docs, etc.
Okay, I had no idea you could do this in GNOME ... just tried it. Very cool! Thanks!