Walkout but make sure you have the next job ready
I can second this. Myself and two coworkers recently (last Sept) left our old job for a new opportunity. We were all EE-majors doing IC design work at a major cell phone maker. It wasn't a bad job, but the dept was crippled by bad management. Projects that should have taken months took years instead, and even then a good bit of them were eventually cancelled. All the while the boneheads in the organization floated to the top and the whole mess degenerated into a political power grab for upper mgmt to feed their egos into thinking they were doing something important.
It might not sound untolerable, but trust me after you work on a project for a long time, spending uncountable hours of overtime on it, only to have some bonehead screw it up, you get seriously pissed off. So, after enduring this for a while, myself and a couple others (majority of the core people in our group) decided to look elsewhere. The choice of people was not accidental. The three of us were diverse enough in skills and experienced enough in past projects to function as a self contained design group.
Outside of work we negotiated with various people to move ourselves as a group to a new company. This is where industry contacts really pay off. This part took a long time (on the order of a year or more), and a couple of our opportunities collapsed before they ever got anywhere. But eventually we negotiated to all move to a new company and form a new design group. At that point we got offer letters extended to all of us, told our previous employer we were leaving, and a week later we were in new offices, with new cubes, etc.
Now in the short term it sucked as we all put in a lot of overtime in order to set a good impression on our new employers. They had a bunch of urgent projects for us to chew on, so they were eager to have us go. Everyone got ~30% pay increases to boot, so it all worked out. There is always the risk of unemployment in the near term, whereas in the old job one could assume some amount of job security (I personally think this is a bad assumtion), but I wouldn't change my decision either way.
The thing people should realize above all is that job security does NOT come from your job, it comes from your skills. If you have skills, you can get a job. Jobs come and go, but your skill set stays with you. The best thing you can do as far as job security is to learn as much as you can and augment your skills as much as you can.
I would recommend that if you know a group that is skilled and intends to leave a company, work on lining up a new job first. It may take time, but there are huge advantages in moving as a group. The new company should realize that in acquiring a group of people, they not only get new skilled people, but people that have proven that they -can-work-together-. This is a great benefit, especially if the group can work on its own. In addition, you end up knowing your coworkers, and what their skills are or are not. Pick good people, and move as a group, I would highly recommend it if you can do it.
Agreed. If we can spend billions on a retarded program to monitor our own citizens (Total Information Awareness), we can certainly spend what it takes to keep the space program alive.
Space exploration is an investment in the future of humanity, and its benefits are not only to extra-terrestrial activities. Many of the materials and products used today rely on things invented in the space program.
From the article: Mr Sarris said that the Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine, where Luke Skywalker first meets Han Solo and Chewbacca in Episode IV, will take a game character 55 minutes just to walk across, let alone fully explore.
I'll second this also. I haven't worked with macs, but I have some familiarity with the 3D packages for them. I've had C4D XL v7 for a while now (on PC). Note that it works across platforms (PC or Mac) which is an advantage. If your mac specific (or even if your not) you should check out: www.postforum.com A lot of mac people hang out on the C4D forum there.
I have had opportunity to work with a lot of the lower end programs also (because I was very cheap, until I got a decent job), and frankly I would stay away from all of them. Face it, it takes a -LONG- time to learn a 3D package, and if you pick the wrong one, it can be a huge waste of time. So as long as your serious, don't be cheap when it comes to this. Specifically I would stay away from anything that has a dubious future or upgrade path: EI, Strata - anything that is severely feature limited: Bryce - and anything that costs less than $500: Carrara, Hash (think of it this way, if you don't pay them, they don't pay their programmers, then exactly who is going to fix the bugs???)
Overall I've found C4D XL to be a well rounded program - excellent modeller, a good shader set (esp with SLA shaders), decent animation (if your into animation you probably want version 8). Also has the bodypaint program and dynamics plugin for additional $$$ (just like everyone else). I believe it has a demo, try it out if nothing else..
Why, exactly shouldn't brick and mortar retailers be forced to charge everyone shipping and handling costs just like online retailers?
The "REAL retailer" argument is stupid. "REAL" customers weigh costs of shipping versus the convenience of a local store. Both stores have costs that the other does not. Online retailers have to subsidize shipping and handling for return items. You think the mom and pop store two blocks down the street is going to pay for me to fedex a defective item back to them?
No inventory or rent to pay??? Where exactly do you think Amazon keeps their bazzilion books stored? Under some 12yr olds bed? Perhaps you think a 12yr old assembles all of Dell's computers also, or that they have no inventory or rent to pay either...
The hardware depicted in the photos, despite the disturbingly large quantity of it, is not necessarily from the US or Europe. It could be coming from more local sources - China, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc.. I wouldn't classify any of those countries as third world, a bulk of the high tech industry is centered there after all.
It rather looks like an exceedingly bad way of disposing of their own garbage...
Thats a ridiculous proposal. Why should I pay tax to a -company- !?!?!
Companies don't fund the schools that my kids will go to, or pave the roads that I drive on. In fact those companies don't provide any -public- services at all. You have to pay for their products and services.
If I start an entertainment company, does that mean I can suddenly start collecting taxes?? Imagine the possibilities for corruption of such a system. Suppose a company collects a tax based on how many artists they sign. You can bet every name in the RIAA register would be signing every no-name retard on the planet to increase their portion of the pie.
Sorry, but I'm not interested in maintaining the RIAAs bottom line. If they can't find a real way to make money in the digital age then they should get another job just like everyone else...
Agreed, not a straight answer in the whole thing. Obviously he has been talking to crappy AI bots for too long. I figured in three pages there might be something, but no... what a waste..
According to the link Howard Berman was bought by TV/Movies/Music industry for about $187k. For a multi-billion dollar industry that seems like a bargain. Mabye the EFF should start a "Buy a congressman" fund, instead of trying to drag things through court...
Actually this is quite fitting. MS put Netscape out of business by giving away a web browser for free, which worked directly against their main source of income. Now OpenOffice, by giving away an office suite for free, is going to hit MS right in one of their main sources of income. MS can't complain, after all they proved how well it works! Goes to show - what goes around, comes around...
IANAWE(I am not a wireless engineer), but I can't help but feeling that if we're to see the 'unlimited spectrum' as it's been mentioned before, then equipment manufacturers are going to have to do a hell of a lot better job of making wireless kit that minimizes signal bleed.
IAAWE, and you can't expect the equipment manufacturers to fix the problem, because as the specs are written all of the original equipment works perfectly. All of this equipment has to pass field tests before it can be manufactured and sold. The problem is that you get some clueless dork who either (A) doesn't know anything about wireless systems or (B) doesn't care, to plug in a amplifier and overdrive it into compression, at which point the signal bleeds into all the adjacent channels wiping out all the nearby networks (I can assure you a LOT of engineering work goes into controlling adjacent channel power, and it is VERY easy to destroy this by hooking up a crappy amplifier). End result, you end up with a powerful signal spanning the entire band (and for those who really don't care they plug it into an omnidirectional antenna to spread the joy...)
The root problem is that you have average people putting together an ad-hoc cellular network without any knowledge of how to do such a thing, and typically not working as a group either, but as individuals, with each individual wanting to have an optimum connection at the expense of the others. Now you could argue that equipment should be even lower-powered to avoid interference, but this only makes it more susceptible to real-world intereferers (the microwave ovens and rainstorms), and still doesn't solve the problem of the guy with the overpowered amp.
Unfortunately this problem will only follow into the 802.11a band, as it is irrelevant what particular frequency your using (again the root problem is network design). For now you just have to negotiate with your neighbors to get an optimal setup (assuming you can find them, simply explain that the connection will be better on both sides if your not stepping on each other).
As an aside, this has particular serious issues when you think about it in the context of UWB (ultra wideband) equipment.. can you imagine when UWB appears, how long will it be before someone tries to amplify that, and starts blasting ALL frequencies.. not pretty.. and I seriously doubt the FCC will be able to police it...
I design cellphone ICs for a living, so I can tell you that this could potentially be a "big deal". Reason is that high gain antennas mean you can either get longer range OR you can get the same range at a lower power.
If the PA (power amp) in the phone was connected to a high gain antenna, and did not have to put out as much power to reach the cell tower, that translates directly into a major power savings (the PA is one of the dominant power drains). Power savings means I don't need as big of a battery in the phone, which means I can shrink the battery and make the phone lighter and smaller and (very importantly) cheaper. Phones that are lighter and smaller sell better, this means $$$ for anyone who can make it work.
And of course when the company makes $$$, that means big bonuses for all us working in the trenches, which gets back to the "big deal" part..
It would seem that the overregulation of hardware design eventually leads to its abandonment. DAT, DivX, prior casualties.. I wonder why the hardware companies don't lobby this stuff out of existance, after all they are the ones that foot the bill when it comes to R&D (it doesn't cost the RIAA/MPAA any money when nobody buys Sony DVD players because of the hardware restrictions).
I remember when the Rio first came out, MP3s were a radical new concept at that time. No real restrictions, they sold a lot of hardware. Now you have to double check all the fine print before you buy these things. Even software like WinXP has problems, and I'm certainly not going to shell out $300 to find out what I can't do with my computer now that I could do before...
I've published papers in both conferences and publications run by the IEEE. The entire system is virtually a pyramid scheme designed to funnel money to the IEEE. (I dropped my IEEE membership over a year ago in disgust at the way things are currently run.)
The authors get very little out of the deal when they submit papers. A short bio at the end of the paper is essentially all you get. Additionally the time between submission and print is insulting, typically over a year. One would think that such a long time would allow them to really scrutinize papers for quality. Think again, I've reviewed papers and typically it goes like this: receive email saying 'go to web and download paper', download and review, then return with comments within two weeks. My question is what happens during the other 50 weeks of the year? Of course, no matter how diligent one attempts to be at reviews, it only takes a matter of a few minutes flipping through recent journals to realize that the peer review system ultimately is a failure. Half the papers or more in the journals are rehashed works which were already published, or completely useless crap.
In turn the IEEE expects a constant stream of researchers to submit papers, experts to review papers, and of course the whole lot to submit dues for the priviledge of looking at the papers.
I'm glad to see the JMLR doing this. If anyone knows of any such attempts to bypass the IEEE, please post the info.
Since this is before the original trek, the obvious question is whether the buttons and knobs on the control panel will be even bigger than before. I would expect that the ship's clock will be an even bigger odometer too.
If you read Tom's article, you'll find that the problem is the speed at which it can happen. If your socket cracks and the heatsink falls off (say during a move), the CPU will power up and according to the article can spike to 300C within a second or so. The computer would never react fast enough to save the CPU, such things would have to be built into the hardware.
And once again, I've got to argue, what can you possibly have on a home network that needs to be encrypted?
Hmm, well now, letsee... that big 'ol database of credit card numbers I downloaded a week ago, that DeCSS source code, a bunch of PIN numbers for something or other, transcripts of all my conversations with the mob, some schematics for a nuclear defense system, my list of the top 10 items on the NSA's double-secret probation list... pretty much all the usual stuff people have on their computers
System administrators and computer users in general need to be more concerned with the costs of not applying security patches.
Perhaps the real issue is that system admins and computer users in general need to be more concerned with the costs of RUNNING IIS WEBSERVERS. One would think that Apache is just as susceptable to these problems as IIS, especially given that the source is readily available. But of course it doesn't seem to work out that way. The real issue is that MS doesn't take the time to properly make IIS secure in the first place (and given that its closed source, noone is going to help them do it). MS just doesn't seem to be learning from historical mistakes they make. Instead of really fixing things, they simply throw PR dollars at it in an attempt to minimize the blame. I imagine once these incidents are repeated enough smart admins will move to a different platform (and the non-smart admins will simply repeat these mistakes all over again...)
A more serious effort also has to be made to convince crackers that there will be serious penalties for releasing these viruses/trojans/worms.
This is not a practical solution, you can't prosecute what you can't find. And since Code Red has no identifiers to point to the source, odds are noone will ever get the blame for it.
I think the basic problem is one of scale. Imagine taking all of the phone books from the world and compressing them into one big phone book. There will be redundancies all over the place. One difference that you find in the phone books, which doesn't seem to appear in domain names, is that you are -allowed- to have redundancies. You can have a whole page of people named Smith or Jones, its just up to the caller to decide which one is the intended recipient (typically there is other info, such as address, to help you determine which one you want)
Perhaps a better system is to have a generic domain name resolve into say an intermediate web page which has a list of further links of all the redundancies with additional info, those then resolve into the final page. In a strange sense search engines sort of do this, but they are not tied so strongly into DNS...
This thing is an embarrassment to Microsoft's many and often articulate critics.
Well I suggest if you happen to have a list of articulate critics, you should rally them together and write up your own complaint. Frankly I'm glad this group of mostly non-profit organizations have taken the initiative to do this.
It implies that users get tricked into signing up for Passport. Is a Passport registration necessary for non-MS Internet sites? If not, then what is the big fuss? It suggests you sign up; you tell it no, and that is it. None of this tracking seems to be mandatory if one doesn't choose to use their second rate online sites.
Its the presentation thats important here. The argument is not that Passport registration is required, but that when establishing internet connectivity it is implied that it is required. This functions along the same lines that made IE the dominant browser over Netscape. You install W98 and IE is right there along with it. Now you install XP and Passport is right there along with it. And for those who love irony, consider this: MS will undoubtedly try to make the statement that XP and Passport are inseparable in much the same way W98 and IE were inseparable (and of course by amazing revelation it was discovered after the downfall of Netscape that they aren't inseparable).
Their online sites monitor user activity and sell that information for marketing purposes. What "free" online service doesn't? All of this stuff is in the various license click-throughs.
Sure plenty of sites monitor activity, but what they don't do is track individual users by name, address, SSN, etc... And how many license click-throughs have you read through in their entirety? I seem to recall an article a while back which detailed some of the finer print in an MSN click-thru license, which basically said something along the lines of once anything was transmitted through their email system they retained full rights to it, including ownership. That means business plans, patents, any code, pictures, personal email, everything was owned by them.
The bottom line is that click-thru licenses are completely unaccountable. They rely on the impatience of people to basically give them free reign to say whatever they want. They can modify them at any time without telling anyone, including anyone who's already agreed to an older version. When is the last time you saw a revision number on a click-thru license? Better question is when is the last time anyone spent enough time looking at such a thing to see if it even exists.
On a side note, who doesn't lie when portals ask for personal information? I tell one I am a hog farmer, the next that I am an exotic dancer, etc.
It depends, if your information is tied to your XP registration number, credit card numbers, or anything else that would require outside authentication you'll have a hard time giving it bogus info. Remember the whole concept of Passport is that you enter the info once, not at each individual site.
So why is MS evil here again? Oh, that's right, that whole evil incarnate thing.
Yeah right, as if MS is just a pillar of ethics in our society. Give me a break, MS can and will screw every person who is too clueless to know they alternatives out of every dollar that they can.
On that note, if security becomes a major problem at Hailstorm, it won't be the FTC that stops it. It will be the companies that pay for credit card fraud. We would get a ringside seat on VISA vs. Microsoft. I wonder who would win.
Oh please - "if it becomes a problem" - I think its a fairly safe bet that since MS has been working on IIS for years and they have yet to make it secure, that getting a brand new totally unproven system up and secure is pretty much not going to happen.
And who exactly is going to pay if someone steals your identity? You think VISA is going to pay? You think MS is going to pay? Think again, the only person on the losing side of that deal is the user.
Agreed. Personally I have no intention of upgrading to Windows XP now or ever. Actually when you consider it, what earth-shattering thing is XP going to provide that you can't get someplace else?
I mean get real,.Net is like a cyber-bomb being primed to explode. There is a definite disconnect between what people perceive as bad and what is really bad. Y2K was a perceived disaster, yet anyone with a clue knew it was bogus. Now we have MS positioning itself to manage all data that passes between a user and the rest of the internet, yet the only time people start to notice is when some reporter has his laptop latch up on an airplane. I don't trust MS to take care of small things (like debugging their own code), much less big things (like managing all personal data needed to constitute identity theft).
Its a given by now that MS and security are mutually exclusive terms. Anyone who voluntarily dumps every bit of their personal info onto an IIS server sitting in a basement in Redmond is asking for whatever they get... To top it all off MS will certainly find ways to charge you for such a privilage. I'll pass on that. Been running dual-boot for a long time, yet when the apps I run on W98 become obsolete (prob years off) I'll be back to single-boot, and it won't be Windows...
Actually IIRC, microwave ovens use this freq. because water absorbs the radiation. So logical question is, when it rains outside would it shut down the whole network? (my guess is probably so)...
and what the article forgot to mention was that in the machines third revision, they're going to add a couple more motors so it can spit tobacco and scratch itself... hey realism counts here!
Slashdot Mirror
Walkout but make sure you have the next job ready
I can second this. Myself and two coworkers recently (last Sept) left our old job for a new opportunity. We were all EE-majors doing IC design work at a major cell phone maker. It wasn't a bad job, but the dept was crippled by bad management. Projects that should have taken months took years instead, and even then a good bit of them were eventually cancelled. All the while the boneheads in the organization floated to the top and the whole mess degenerated into a political power grab for upper mgmt to feed their egos into thinking they were doing something important.
It might not sound untolerable, but trust me after you work on a project for a long time, spending uncountable hours of overtime on it, only to have some bonehead screw it up, you get seriously pissed off. So, after enduring this for a while, myself and a couple others (majority of the core people in our group) decided to look elsewhere. The choice of people was not accidental. The three of us were diverse enough in skills and experienced enough in past projects to function as a self contained design group.
Outside of work we negotiated with various people to move ourselves as a group to a new company. This is where industry contacts really pay off. This part took a long time (on the order of a year or more), and a couple of our opportunities collapsed before they ever got anywhere. But eventually we negotiated to all move to a new company and form a new design group. At that point we got offer letters extended to all of us, told our previous employer we were leaving, and a week later we were in new offices, with new cubes, etc.
Now in the short term it sucked as we all put in a lot of overtime in order to set a good impression on our new employers. They had a bunch of urgent projects for us to chew on, so they were eager to have us go. Everyone got ~30% pay increases to boot, so it all worked out. There is always the risk of unemployment in the near term, whereas in the old job one could assume some amount of job security (I personally think this is a bad assumtion), but I wouldn't change my decision either way.
The thing people should realize above all is that job security does NOT come from your job, it comes from your skills. If you have skills, you can get a job. Jobs come and go, but your skill set stays with you. The best thing you can do as far as job security is to learn as much as you can and augment your skills as much as you can.
I would recommend that if you know a group that is skilled and intends to leave a company, work on lining up a new job first. It may take time, but there are huge advantages in moving as a group. The new company should realize that in acquiring a group of people, they not only get new skilled people, but people that have proven that they -can-work-together-. This is a great benefit, especially if the group can work on its own. In addition, you end up knowing your coworkers, and what their skills are or are not. Pick good people, and move as a group, I would highly recommend it if you can do it.
Agreed. If we can spend billions on a retarded program to monitor our own citizens (Total Information Awareness), we can certainly spend what it takes to keep the space program alive.
Space exploration is an investment in the future of humanity, and its benefits are not only to extra-terrestrial activities. Many of the materials and products used today rely on things invented in the space program.
Mr Sarris said that the Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine, where Luke Skywalker first meets Han Solo and Chewbacca in Episode IV, will take a game character 55 minutes just to walk across, let alone fully explore.
Now thats a slow server...
I'll second this also. I haven't worked with macs, but I have some familiarity with the 3D packages for them. I've had C4D XL v7 for a while now (on PC). Note that it works across platforms (PC or Mac) which is an advantage. If your mac specific (or even if your not) you should check out:
www.postforum.com
A lot of mac people hang out on the C4D forum there.
I have had opportunity to work with a lot of the lower end programs also (because I was very cheap, until I got a decent job), and frankly I would stay away from all of them. Face it, it takes a -LONG- time to learn a 3D package, and if you pick the wrong one, it can be a huge waste of time. So as long as your serious, don't be cheap when it comes to this. Specifically I would stay away from anything that has a dubious future or upgrade path: EI, Strata - anything that is severely feature limited: Bryce - and anything that costs less than $500: Carrara, Hash (think of it this way, if you don't pay them, they don't pay their programmers, then exactly who is going to fix the bugs???)
Overall I've found C4D XL to be a well rounded program - excellent modeller, a good shader set (esp with SLA shaders), decent animation (if your into animation you probably want version 8). Also has the bodypaint program and dynamics plugin for additional $$$ (just like everyone else). I believe it has a demo, try it out if nothing else..
Why, exactly shouldn't brick and mortar retailers be forced to charge everyone shipping and handling costs just like online retailers?
The "REAL retailer" argument is stupid. "REAL" customers weigh costs of shipping versus the convenience of a local store. Both stores have costs that the other does not. Online retailers have to subsidize shipping and handling for return items. You think the mom and pop store two blocks down the street is going to pay for me to fedex a defective item back to them?
No inventory or rent to pay??? Where exactly do you think Amazon keeps their bazzilion books stored? Under some 12yr olds bed? Perhaps you think a 12yr old assembles all of Dell's computers also, or that they have no inventory or rent to pay either...
The hardware depicted in the photos, despite the disturbingly large quantity of it, is not necessarily from the US or Europe. It could be coming from more local sources - China, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc.. I wouldn't classify any of those countries as third world, a bulk of the high tech industry is centered there after all.
It rather looks like an exceedingly bad way of disposing of their own garbage...
Thats a ridiculous proposal. Why should I pay tax to a -company- !?!?!
Companies don't fund the schools that my kids will go to, or pave the roads that I drive on. In fact those companies don't provide any -public- services at all. You have to pay for their products and services.
If I start an entertainment company, does that mean I can suddenly start collecting taxes?? Imagine the possibilities for corruption of such a system. Suppose a company collects a tax based on how many artists they sign. You can bet every name in the RIAA register would be signing every no-name retard on the planet to increase their portion of the pie.
Sorry, but I'm not interested in maintaining the RIAAs bottom line. If they can't find a real way to make money in the digital age then they should get another job just like everyone else...
Agreed, not a straight answer in the whole thing. Obviously he has been talking to crappy AI bots for too long. I figured in three pages there might be something, but no ... what a waste ..
According to the link Howard Berman was bought by TV/Movies/Music industry for about $187k. For a multi-billion dollar industry that seems like a bargain. Mabye the EFF should start a "Buy a congressman" fund, instead of trying to drag things through court...
Actually this is quite fitting. MS put Netscape out of business by giving away a web browser for free, which worked directly against their main source of income. Now OpenOffice, by giving away an office suite for free, is going to hit MS right in one of their main sources of income. MS can't complain, after all they proved how well it works! Goes to show - what goes around, comes around...
IANAWE(I am not a wireless engineer), but I can't help but feeling that if we're to see the 'unlimited spectrum' as it's been mentioned before, then equipment manufacturers are going to have to do a hell of a lot better job of making wireless kit that minimizes signal bleed.
IAAWE, and you can't expect the equipment manufacturers to fix the problem, because as the specs are written all of the original equipment works perfectly. All of this equipment has to pass field tests before it can be manufactured and sold. The problem is that you get some clueless dork who either (A) doesn't know anything about wireless systems or (B) doesn't care, to plug in a amplifier and overdrive it into compression, at which point the signal bleeds into all the adjacent channels wiping out all the nearby networks (I can assure you a LOT of engineering work goes into controlling adjacent channel power, and it is VERY easy to destroy this by hooking up a crappy amplifier). End result, you end up with a powerful signal spanning the entire band (and for those who really don't care they plug it into an omnidirectional antenna to spread the joy...)
The root problem is that you have average people putting together an ad-hoc cellular network without any knowledge of how to do such a thing, and typically not working as a group either, but as individuals, with each individual wanting to have an optimum connection at the expense of the others. Now you could argue that equipment should be even lower-powered to avoid interference, but this only makes it more susceptible to real-world intereferers (the microwave ovens and rainstorms), and still doesn't solve the problem of the guy with the overpowered amp.
Unfortunately this problem will only follow into the 802.11a band, as it is irrelevant what particular frequency your using (again the root problem is network design). For now you just have to negotiate with your neighbors to get an optimal setup (assuming you can find them, simply explain that the connection will be better on both sides if your not stepping on each other).
As an aside, this has particular serious issues when you think about it in the context of UWB (ultra wideband) equipment .. can you imagine when UWB appears, how long will it be before someone tries to amplify that, and starts blasting ALL frequencies .. not pretty .. and I seriously doubt the FCC will be able to police it...
I design cellphone ICs for a living, so I can tell you that this could potentially be a "big deal". Reason is that high gain antennas mean you can either get longer range OR you can get the same range at a lower power.
If the PA (power amp) in the phone was connected to a high gain antenna, and did not have to put out as much power to reach the cell tower, that translates directly into a major power savings (the PA is one of the dominant power drains). Power savings means I don't need as big of a battery in the phone, which means I can shrink the battery and make the phone lighter and smaller and (very importantly) cheaper. Phones that are lighter and smaller sell better, this means $$$ for anyone who can make it work.
And of course when the company makes $$$, that means big bonuses for all us working in the trenches, which gets back to the "big deal" part..
It would seem that the overregulation of hardware design eventually leads to its abandonment. DAT, DivX, prior casualties.. I wonder why the hardware companies don't lobby this stuff out of existance, after all they are the ones that foot the bill when it comes to R&D (it doesn't cost the RIAA/MPAA any money when nobody buys Sony DVD players because of the hardware restrictions).
I remember when the Rio first came out, MP3s were a radical new concept at that time. No real restrictions, they sold a lot of hardware. Now you have to double check all the fine print before you buy these things. Even software like WinXP has problems, and I'm certainly not going to shell out $300 to find out what I can't do with my computer now that I could do before...
I've published papers in both conferences and publications run by the IEEE. The entire system is virtually a pyramid scheme designed to funnel money to the IEEE. (I dropped my IEEE membership over a year ago in disgust at the way things are currently run.)
The authors get very little out of the deal when they submit papers. A short bio at the end of the paper is essentially all you get. Additionally the time between submission and print is insulting, typically over a year. One would think that such a long time would allow them to really scrutinize papers for quality. Think again, I've reviewed papers and typically it goes like this: receive email saying 'go to web and download paper', download and review, then return with comments within two weeks. My question is what happens during the other 50 weeks of the year? Of course, no matter how diligent one attempts to be at reviews, it only takes a matter of a few minutes flipping through recent journals to realize that the peer review system ultimately is a failure. Half the papers or more in the journals are rehashed works which were already published, or completely useless crap.
In turn the IEEE expects a constant stream of researchers to submit papers, experts to review papers, and of course the whole lot to submit dues for the priviledge of looking at the papers.
I'm glad to see the JMLR doing this. If anyone knows of any such attempts to bypass the IEEE, please post the info.
Since this is before the original trek, the obvious question is whether the buttons and knobs on the control panel will be even bigger than before. I would expect that the ship's clock will be an even bigger odometer too.
one has to wonder where the funding comes from to provide for the bandwidth..
Irrelevant, the worm will use bandwidth whether its funded or not. At least with this you gain some degree of control.
If you read Tom's article, you'll find that the problem is the speed at which it can happen. If your socket cracks and the heatsink falls off (say during a move), the CPU will power up and according to the article can spike to 300C within a second or so. The computer would never react fast enough to save the CPU, such things would have to be built into the hardware.
And once again, I've got to argue, what can you possibly have on a home network that needs to be encrypted?
Hmm, well now, letsee ... that big 'ol database of credit card numbers I downloaded a week ago, that DeCSS source code, a bunch of PIN numbers for something or other, transcripts of all my conversations with the mob, some schematics for a nuclear defense system, my list of the top 10 items on the NSA's double-secret probation list ... pretty much all the usual stuff people have on their computers
System administrators and computer users in general need to be more concerned with the costs of not applying security patches.
Perhaps the real issue is that system admins and computer users in general need to be more concerned with the costs of RUNNING IIS WEBSERVERS. One would think that Apache is just as susceptable to these problems as IIS, especially given that the source is readily available. But of course it doesn't seem to work out that way. The real issue is that MS doesn't take the time to properly make IIS secure in the first place (and given that its closed source, noone is going to help them do it). MS just doesn't seem to be learning from historical mistakes they make. Instead of really fixing things, they simply throw PR dollars at it in an attempt to minimize the blame. I imagine once these incidents are repeated enough smart admins will move to a different platform (and the non-smart admins will simply repeat these mistakes all over again...)
A more serious effort also has to be made to convince crackers that there will be serious penalties for releasing these viruses/trojans/worms.
This is not a practical solution, you can't prosecute what you can't find. And since Code Red has no identifiers to point to the source, odds are noone will ever get the blame for it.
I think the basic problem is one of scale. Imagine taking all of the phone books from the world and compressing them into one big phone book. There will be redundancies all over the place. One difference that you find in the phone books, which doesn't seem to appear in domain names, is that you are -allowed- to have redundancies. You can have a whole page of people named Smith or Jones, its just up to the caller to decide which one is the intended recipient (typically there is other info, such as address, to help you determine which one you want)
Perhaps a better system is to have a generic domain name resolve into say an intermediate web page which has a list of further links of all the redundancies with additional info, those then resolve into the final page. In a strange sense search engines sort of do this, but they are not tied so strongly into DNS...
This thing is an embarrassment to Microsoft's many and often articulate critics.
Well I suggest if you happen to have a list of articulate critics, you should rally them together and write up your own complaint. Frankly I'm glad this group of mostly non-profit organizations have taken the initiative to do this.
It implies that users get tricked into signing up for Passport. Is a Passport registration necessary for non-MS Internet sites? If not, then what is the big fuss? It suggests you sign up; you tell it no, and that is it. None of this tracking seems to be mandatory if one doesn't choose to use their second rate online sites.
Its the presentation thats important here. The argument is not that Passport registration is required, but that when establishing internet connectivity it is implied that it is required. This functions along the same lines that made IE the dominant browser over Netscape. You install W98 and IE is right there along with it. Now you install XP and Passport is right there along with it. And for those who love irony, consider this: MS will undoubtedly try to make the statement that XP and Passport are inseparable in much the same way W98 and IE were inseparable (and of course by amazing revelation it was discovered after the downfall of Netscape that they aren't inseparable).
Their online sites monitor user activity and sell that information for marketing purposes. What "free" online service doesn't? All of this stuff is in the various license click-throughs.
Sure plenty of sites monitor activity, but what they don't do is track individual users by name, address, SSN, etc... And how many license click-throughs have you read through in their entirety? I seem to recall an article a while back which detailed some of the finer print in an MSN click-thru license, which basically said something along the lines of once anything was transmitted through their email system they retained full rights to it, including ownership. That means business plans, patents, any code, pictures, personal email, everything was owned by them.
The bottom line is that click-thru licenses are completely unaccountable. They rely on the impatience of people to basically give them free reign to say whatever they want. They can modify them at any time without telling anyone, including anyone who's already agreed to an older version. When is the last time you saw a revision number on a click-thru license? Better question is when is the last time anyone spent enough time looking at such a thing to see if it even exists.
On a side note, who doesn't lie when portals ask for personal information? I tell one I am a hog farmer, the next that I am an exotic dancer, etc.
It depends, if your information is tied to your XP registration number, credit card numbers, or anything else that would require outside authentication you'll have a hard time giving it bogus info. Remember the whole concept of Passport is that you enter the info once, not at each individual site.
So why is MS evil here again? Oh, that's right, that whole evil incarnate thing.
Yeah right, as if MS is just a pillar of ethics in our society. Give me a break, MS can and will screw every person who is too clueless to know they alternatives out of every dollar that they can.
On that note, if security becomes a major problem at Hailstorm, it won't be the FTC that stops it. It will be the companies that pay for credit card fraud. We would get a ringside seat on VISA vs. Microsoft. I wonder who would win.
Oh please - "if it becomes a problem" - I think its a fairly safe bet that since MS has been working on IIS for years and they have yet to make it secure, that getting a brand new totally unproven system up and secure is pretty much not going to happen.
And who exactly is going to pay if someone steals your identity? You think VISA is going to pay? You think MS is going to pay? Think again, the only person on the losing side of that deal is the user.
Agreed. Personally I have no intention of upgrading to Windows XP now or ever. Actually when you consider it, what earth-shattering thing is XP going to provide that you can't get someplace else?
I mean get real, .Net is like a cyber-bomb being primed to explode. There is a definite disconnect between what people perceive as bad and what is really bad. Y2K was a perceived disaster, yet anyone with a clue knew it was bogus. Now we have MS positioning itself to manage all data that passes between a user and the rest of the internet, yet the only time people start to notice is when some reporter has his laptop latch up on an airplane. I don't trust MS to take care of small things (like debugging their own code), much less big things (like managing all personal data needed to constitute identity theft).
Its a given by now that MS and security are mutually exclusive terms. Anyone who voluntarily dumps every bit of their personal info onto an IIS server sitting in a basement in Redmond is asking for whatever they get... To top it all off MS will certainly find ways to charge you for such a privilage. I'll pass on that. Been running dual-boot for a long time, yet when the apps I run on W98 become obsolete (prob years off) I'll be back to single-boot, and it won't be Windows...
Actually IIRC, microwave ovens use this freq. because water absorbs the radiation. So logical question is, when it rains outside would it shut down the whole network? (my guess is probably so)...
They could always try traveling to other dimensions looking for server software... err, wait, thats been done too...
and what the article forgot to mention was that in the machines third revision, they're going to add a couple more motors so it can spit tobacco and scratch itself... hey realism counts here!