And it isn't. Because quality coffee is grown in Africa, especially the Kenyan highlands. Whatever they do in middle America has little impact on quality coffee.
Yes, except that it takes a PhD to create styles in LaTeX, whereas it is dead easy in MS Word (although of course people still fail, but that is a different issue). LaTeX is great for certain things, but for writing a quite note it is not suitable.
An IT manager does not have to be an IT technology whizz kid, but he does have to be a decent manager. Managing sometimes means listening to the right people. If the IT manager is a bad manager, that has to be documented, and a plan for finding a better manager has to be pursued. But surely as a consultant the OP should know that?
> At the least, a civil suit for any damage caused.
Good point. I assume there is a contract, and the contract specifies damages caused by incompetence? In that case it would not be the OP's problem again. The question is whether it is worth suing a supplier - usually that does not exactly help the business relationship. But it may be leverage to come to some kind of resolution.
Finally someone with a solution. The job of manufacturing is to make things, and more often than not that will require vendor support. Security is nice, but performance is more important. Judging by the OP's words, going through IT is major pain, so they don't.
I would recommend a VPN or a web based solution to enable access with a simple password. It has to be easy to use for the vendor - they have many customers, and remember that they have corporate machines with specialist software, too. So they may not be able to install your preferred tool, and they will certainly not allow the Cisco VPN client to reconfigure security settings, for example.
When I did vendor support, the companies did trust us. We had access when we wanted, one customer was just via password, another had an RSA token. And we were a small company, but we did not screw up. That is what you should aim for.
At the end of the day, B2B connections are always tricky, because more often than not two authoritarian IT departments clash. I could tell a story about trying to set up a shared drive between three companies... And if IT cannot sort it out, it will be overruled on financial grounds.
> If his data won't be readable, that's his problem.
Actually the problem is (as usual) in front of the screen. There are many programs that can read a 1997 powerpoint file - he just picked the one version of office that does not.
Using a format that is designed for compatibility would also solve the problem. PDF is pretty good, but there can be issues with embedded objects. PDF/A seems to be a safe bet, maybe missing some nice features, though.
Despite the fact that Intel has only about 3 phone models released, all on the same platform (a second one is coming), they fail to provide updates to Android 4.2 for all of them.
So this is just another shot in the foot for them. Android is a great ecosystem, but it is not for the faint of heart. If you want to compete, you have to do it properly. Half-hearted attempts will like (just like HTC).
> with the best will in the world you're always just one mistake away from letting the bad guys in.
Not at all. With a bad security model you are only one step away from being owned. If you have a proper security model, you have several layers, and just a single one. So there should be no single point of failure. Combine this with decent testing etc, and you have a reasonable amount of security.
Every other version. Windows 3 sucked less than DOS (which was still used by Windows 1.0). Windows 95 sucked less than Windows 3.1. Windows XP was pretty decent, although the time was not quite ready when it was released. Windows 7 was certainly a decent release (not without flaws and regressions, but lots of things are better), and I hope they support it for a long time. Windows 8 is again something the time is not ready for, but that may change.
Because it is * wide spread, both in terms of users and in terms of malicious sites * serious: remote exploit with none but the initial user interaction * arrogant of Oracle not to respond * avoidable, because nearly nobody needs Java anyway
Oracle really dropped the ball here, and they deserve to be kicked.
I wound agree, the only problems with Win95 came from incompatible software, and Win98 was just fine for me. I never tried Win98SE, but I agree that ME was crap. In fact, I think Win ME started the bad - good - bad cycle. Think about it: Win 3 and Win 3.1 were both kind of ok, too.
And for good reason, C++ in kernel space is a recipe for disaster. Some parts of it may be useful, others would be highly inappropriate.
> What is it with open-source leaders and their irrational hate of C++?
There is nothing irrational about it. C++ is one of the most powerful compiled languages ever conceived, but it is very ugly. It also supports just about any programming paradigm, badly, making the choice between them especially hard. Every other language out there has more focus and more style, except maybe perl.
It seems that in good Slashdot style, nobody has even read the abstract. It is quite specific:
"The higher-order “g” factor is an artifact of tasks recruiting multiple networks"
Now that is an interesting statement, it says that there is not one key element (or factor) for intelligence, which helps with a lot of tasks. Rather many tests measure the same core aspects of intelligence. That is an interesting finding, but it is also very hard to support: how do you measure that which you cannot measure? And at the end of the day, I am not sure it has much significance in a practical sense.
There is more truth in this than it first appears. Apple wants 30% of your profits with the app - and that may be fine for retail software, but it is hardly acceptable for specialist software. Then again the app store is designed for a general audience, not for specialist software.
I think the logical conclusion is that specialist software should not be distributed over the app store. It should be side loaded.
Exactly. I would recommend to dial back the paranoia, not every bug is evidence of being hacked. Unfortunately the WiFi stack of Android is absolutely full of bugs, but most only cause a bad connection or a disconnect.
That being said, Android 2.2 is way out of date, and you should not consider it secure in any sense of the word. Watch the information that you put on your phone, including login data. And there is nothing you can do about it, except complain to the manufacturer about it not being "fit for purpose".
> Meanwhile they're not competeing in servers or smartphones, the PC market
And they are not competing in the PC market, either. You can get the same performance (and usually less driver issues) by just going with Intel. AMD lost the performance advantage that they had with the Athlon64, and now they have lost the price advantage, too. The only thing they have going is the APU concept, but single thread performance is terrible, power consumption is high, and the price is again not that much less than you would pay for Intel plus an entry level graphics card.
> "amd64" is called that because that's what AMD branded their implementation of x86_64. You know what Intel calls their x86_64 implementation? "Intel 64"
No, they don't. Intel 64 is the Itanium architecture, which is lesson in how you can turn a good idea into a bad product.
> "maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath"
Of course we should wear a helmet (or better a harness and a safety rope) when climbing ladders. It is know to be one of the most dangerous activities in a normal household.
But you also have to look at the context. Free-climbing for example is technically much more dangerous than climbing a ladder, but people are typically skilled and very concentrated when they do it. Average folk climbing a ladder are inexperienced and often distracted. This combination can make any activity dangerous.
> Interesting as my multi-national (70k +) corp still runs Office 2003
And why exactly would they do that? Office 2010 is so much more functional, and a lot easier to use to. Word may not have changed all that much, but it has a new GUI and a good equation editor. PowerPoint has changed massively, from an ugly program to complete the package to something actually quite useful.
I understand that you may want to wait with updates, and not do every version. But since Office 2010 has SP1, there is really no reason not to start upgrading. Plus of course the support is running out soon, and there should be time for an orderly conversion...
Slashdot Mirror
True, but they are all much better than IE6. And any sane OS supports at least IE9, which is not bad.
And it isn't. Because quality coffee is grown in Africa, especially the Kenyan highlands. Whatever they do in middle America has little impact on quality coffee.
Yes, except that it takes a PhD to create styles in LaTeX, whereas it is dead easy in MS Word (although of course people still fail, but that is a different issue). LaTeX is great for certain things, but for writing a quite note it is not suitable.
Absolutely, this is the key to understanding management. But it seems that the manager is not very good at his job either.
An IT manager does not have to be an IT technology whizz kid, but he does have to be a decent manager. Managing sometimes means listening to the right people. If the IT manager is a bad manager, that has to be documented, and a plan for finding a better manager has to be pursued. But surely as a consultant the OP should know that?
> At the least, a civil suit for any damage caused.
Good point. I assume there is a contract, and the contract specifies damages caused by incompetence? In that case it would not be the OP's problem again. The question is whether it is worth suing a supplier - usually that does not exactly help the business relationship. But it may be leverage to come to some kind of resolution.
> Connect the VPN device to the locked down port.
Finally someone with a solution. The job of manufacturing is to make things, and more often than not that will require vendor support. Security is nice, but performance is more important. Judging by the OP's words, going through IT is major pain, so they don't.
I would recommend a VPN or a web based solution to enable access with a simple password. It has to be easy to use for the vendor - they have many customers, and remember that they have corporate machines with specialist software, too. So they may not be able to install your preferred tool, and they will certainly not allow the Cisco VPN client to reconfigure security settings, for example.
When I did vendor support, the companies did trust us. We had access when we wanted, one customer was just via password, another had an RSA token. And we were a small company, but we did not screw up. That is what you should aim for.
At the end of the day, B2B connections are always tricky, because more often than not two authoritarian IT departments clash. I could tell a story about trying to set up a shared drive between three companies... And if IT cannot sort it out, it will be overruled on financial grounds.
passenger - do you want to restrict them, too?
> If his data won't be readable, that's his problem.
Actually the problem is (as usual) in front of the screen. There are many programs that can read a 1997 powerpoint file - he just picked the one version of office that does not.
Using a format that is designed for compatibility would also solve the problem. PDF is pretty good, but there can be issues with embedded objects. PDF/A seems to be a safe bet, maybe missing some nice features, though.
Despite the fact that Intel has only about 3 phone models released, all on the same platform (a second one is coming), they fail to provide updates to Android 4.2 for all of them.
So this is just another shot in the foot for them. Android is a great ecosystem, but it is not for the faint of heart. If you want to compete, you have to do it properly. Half-hearted attempts will like (just like HTC).
So, itunes is a dog? Always has been, always will be. News at 11.
> with the best will in the world you're always just one mistake away from letting the bad guys in.
Not at all. With a bad security model you are only one step away from being owned. If you have a proper security model, you have several layers, and just a single one. So there should be no single point of failure. Combine this with decent testing etc, and you have a reasonable amount of security.
That would let them do a lot more searching...
Every other version. Windows 3 sucked less than DOS (which was still used by Windows 1.0). Windows 95 sucked less than Windows 3.1. Windows XP was pretty decent, although the time was not quite ready when it was released. Windows 7 was certainly a decent release (not without flaws and regressions, but lots of things are better), and I hope they support it for a long time. Windows 8 is again something the time is not ready for, but that may change.
> I guess either he's completely deluded
Spot on, end of story.
> Why does this one deserve special treatment?
Because it is
* wide spread, both in terms of users and in terms of malicious sites
* serious: remote exploit with none but the initial user interaction
* arrogant of Oracle not to respond
* avoidable, because nearly nobody needs Java anyway
Oracle really dropped the ball here, and they deserve to be kicked.
I wound agree, the only problems with Win95 came from incompatible software, and Win98 was just fine for me. I never tried Win98SE, but I agree that ME was crap. In fact, I think Win ME started the bad - good - bad cycle. Think about it: Win 3 and Win 3.1 were both kind of ok, too.
> I knew about Linus Torvalds's distaste of C++
And for good reason, C++ in kernel space is a recipe for disaster. Some parts of it may be useful, others would be highly inappropriate.
> What is it with open-source leaders and their irrational hate of C++?
There is nothing irrational about it. C++ is one of the most powerful compiled languages ever conceived, but it is very ugly. It also supports just about any programming paradigm, badly, making the choice between them especially hard. Every other language out there has more focus and more style, except maybe perl.
It seems that in good Slashdot style, nobody has even read the abstract. It is quite specific:
"The higher-order “g” factor is an artifact of tasks recruiting multiple networks"
Now that is an interesting statement, it says that there is not one key element (or factor) for intelligence, which helps with a lot of tasks. Rather many tests measure the same core aspects of intelligence. That is an interesting finding, but it is also very hard to support: how do you measure that which you cannot measure? And at the end of the day, I am not sure it has much significance in a practical sense.
There is more truth in this than it first appears. Apple wants 30% of your profits with the app - and that may be fine for retail software, but it is hardly acceptable for specialist software. Then again the app store is designed for a general audience, not for specialist software.
I think the logical conclusion is that specialist software should not be distributed over the app store. It should be side loaded.
Exactly. I would recommend to dial back the paranoia, not every bug is evidence of being hacked. Unfortunately the WiFi stack of Android is absolutely full of bugs, but most only cause a bad connection or a disconnect.
That being said, Android 2.2 is way out of date, and you should not consider it secure in any sense of the word. Watch the information that you put on your phone, including login data. And there is nothing you can do about it, except complain to the manufacturer about it not being "fit for purpose".
> Meanwhile they're not competeing in servers or smartphones, the PC market
And they are not competing in the PC market, either. You can get the same performance (and usually less driver issues) by just going with Intel. AMD lost the performance advantage that they had with the Athlon64, and now they have lost the price advantage, too. The only thing they have going is the APU concept, but single thread performance is terrible, power consumption is high, and the price is again not that much less than you would pay for Intel plus an entry level graphics card.
> "amd64" is called that because that's what AMD branded their implementation of x86_64. You know what Intel calls their x86_64 implementation? "Intel 64"
No, they don't. Intel 64 is the Itanium architecture, which is lesson in how you can turn a good idea into a bad product.
> "maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath"
Of course we should wear a helmet (or better a harness and a safety rope) when climbing ladders. It is know to be one of the most dangerous activities in a normal household.
But you also have to look at the context. Free-climbing for example is technically much more dangerous than climbing a ladder, but people are typically skilled and very concentrated when they do it. Average folk climbing a ladder are inexperienced and often distracted. This combination can make any activity dangerous.
> Interesting as my multi-national (70k +) corp still runs Office 2003
And why exactly would they do that? Office 2010 is so much more functional, and a lot easier to use to. Word may not have changed all that much, but it has a new GUI and a good equation editor. PowerPoint has changed massively, from an ugly program to complete the package to something actually quite useful.
I understand that you may want to wait with updates, and not do every version. But since Office 2010 has SP1, there is really no reason not to start upgrading. Plus of course the support is running out soon, and there should be time for an orderly conversion...