Obviously don't know that UK mobile providers put a data cap on - in Megabytes Per Month.
You can have all the speed in the world, but it's useless if you can go over your limit (especially if you go to another European country) in a matter of seconds.
"Why" should we invest in a technology that we don't know "how" to put to use?
And, believe me, it's us that are investing in it. My mobile service provider keeps telling me about 4G. Says it's wonderful. Say's I'm ready to go. Except I don't have a 4G handset and have no intention of really getting one. Because it costs a lot more and does nothing that mine doesn't already do, just slightly faster (in theory). Coverage isn't there. Cost is too much (still measured in fucking megabytes). No real advantage over 3G at the moment.
So my question is not "how" at all - I can name a million ways we *could* use 5G. Like I could name a million ways we *could* use 4G. Or 3G. Or EDGE, GPRS or any number of other technologies before it. Fact is, we still don't really do them.
The problem is not "how". My question is "why". Why would I touch something that's likely to be commercially exploited to the hilt to my disadvantage and which I, honestly, hardly ever use?
Sure it's cool to check GMail on the go. I've RDP'd in and fixed servers from a smartphone. It's useful. But it's not a killer application of the technology because I've been able to do that (maybe not quite so fast) since the GPRS days.
And yes, you "can" video-stream etc. now Fact is, it all costs money and not everyone will pay you to watch Gravity in 4K on their 2" mobile screen (especially not if they're already paying £40 a month for 4G, and you want more for 5G to recoup your investment costs).
Why deploy a technology "just because" it's supposed-progress? Isn't that what left us with all kinds of dead-end hardware and initiatives / technologies that never really took off (3DTV)? Why not use what we've got and get the most out of even 3G as it stands (because, ultimately, we certainly don't do that in the UK)?
Let's use what we have to its limits, and be clever, and get better value out of those BILLIONS of pounds worth of 3G/4G licenses before we start jumping on the 5G bandwagon "just because". Hell, I'd infinitely rather have 3G everywhere at the max capable speed (which is surprisingly high!) than even a single base station with 5G.
And if consumption expands to fill capacity, the opposite is true - we will squeeze every byte we can out of technologies if they are the upper limit.
As someone with a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science, I can tell you that if your CS degree is applied-maths, then you really should find another course.
Pretty much, when I was at uni, the CS guys couldn't do the maths side of the courses and the maths guys couldn't do the CS side of the courses. There's an overlap of, at most, a few "theoretical" courses (so much closer to pure math, to be honest) - graph theory, coding theory, logic, etc.
But ultimately, they are separate for a reason. Otherwise, CS would just be another area of mathematics rather than a subject in its own right.
That said, education is a lovely thing to have, but if you want recognised education, it kinda stops at your second degree. Past that, you wouldn't need to prove yourself career-wise in the vast majority of jobs. And, in fact, a masters or a PhD speaks volumes more than any amount of undergraduate degrees.
If you're doing it for yourself, do it for yourself (and good on you!). If you're doing it for career "brownie points", then do the job, or higher education, instead.
Everyone is an "expert" on Data Protection, etc. laws until they are the ones who will go down if they get it wrong. Suddenly, all those minor things that were "dictator"ish when they weren't legally responsible turn into their norm when they are.
I had to write a 38-page diatribe on why we don't get administrator access to teachers. It's actually illegal. You can argue all you like, but it's illegal. And the way data protection laws are worded in the UK, I can go down for failing to abide by it just the same as the company I'm representing.
Just the POTENTIAL for a person to use access that I've granted even TEMPORARILY (even if they don't ever use that access) which could IN THEORY allow them to access personal data we've collected is a breach of data protection law. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of fines with established case law for just that.
Hell, even failing to encrypt a laptop which you can't prove DIDN'T hold personal data (but might conceivably have done, e.g. a staff laptop), could result in the same. And there is case law for schools, hospitals, etc. being fined for doing JUST THAT.
It's all fun and games until you're the one who has to sign off on it, and put their career on the line. That's when you realise that, actually, it's not that important for these things to happen.
Couple with child-protection laws, basic employment protection (i.e. doing your damn job, even if it's not explicit in law), etc. and it becomes a whole different ball game.
But, do you know what? Even if you sign a piece of paper to say that you're taking utter responsibility away from me and taking all the burden on you - even THAT doesn't clear me of certain responsibilities under the law.
Consider it like speeding laws - don't break them, but campaign to have them changed. If it's really not that dangerous, other countries have no limits (e.g. Germany), etc. then you have more of a case of changing the law. But breaking even a 20mph imposed speed limit will still see points on your licence and fines for you until you do.
I work in schools. I work in UK schools. I work in IT in UK schools.
This is normal. Sorry, but there's nothing shocking here.
You join our domain, we get the right to push any and all security measures to your client that we deem necessary. If you don't want to allow it, don't join our domain (which also means we probably won't authorise you to use our Internet connection, etc.)
The domain will have a "Default Domain Policy" that almost certainly includes software you don't want (but we insist you have), settings you'd rather not have (but which we will enforce on you) and things like this - installation of a required domain certificate so we can check your not using OUR SCHOOL FILTER to do illegal / illicit things.
Chances are if you read your network acceptable usage policy, it states this. The alternative is you don't get network access. Because we are LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE for what is accessed through the network on our network, as well as the protection of our internal data and services.
Complain all you like. The alternative is that we block SSL site-wide. That means no Facebook at all, by the way. Or GMail. Or Hotmail. Or anything else that uses SSL by default.
We have a legal duty to monitor, record and analyse the logs of Internet traffic to ensure our child-protection policy (a legally-required policy) is followed. Additionally, it's OUR resource. If you want to use your own external 3G connection on your own time, argue for that. Chances are it will fail.
If you want to use the SCHOOL connection on SCHOOL time for NON-SCHOOL business, that's not going to happen. However if you want to use it for SCHOOL BUSINESS then you are required to allow us to apply our domain policy. If that, at any particular place, happens to include SSL certificates, monitoring software (potentially even INVISIBLE monitoring software like Securus, Ranger, etc.) then that's what you get.
Sorry, but as an IT Manager specialising in schools, and working in state, private and boarding schools from primary to further education, this is bog-standard and has happened for years. I believe even places like LGfL (a London-wide, government-backed school IT services supplier) do it.
There's a reason - we are required to protect our systems and protect ALL the children. That means everything gets summarised, logged and monitored. If we then need to dig into detailed logs, we can enable that option and do that too. Because - as in a previous school I worked for many years ago - we get things like members of staff browsing child pornography on school time. Yes, they are that stupid. And yes, they get caught. And, sorry, but our child-protection and data-protection policies take precedence over you going on your private Facebook after hours and we can't spend the time to distinguish hours, locations, staff-types, etc. for everyone.
If you don't like it, do not join your computer to a domain. If you are on the domain, it's literally our DOMAIN. Our rules. Clearly stated. That you would have agreed to.
Please, also don't act like your the first person ever that this has happened to. It's been standard practice for at least the last 15 years I've been working IT in schools in the UK.
I own a single physical Jive Bunny CD (or did, many years ago) that my parents bought for me with a stereo system (that got thrown away 10 years later and had never been used).
Aside from that, I have a handful of things people have given me or bought for me. That's it. The most music I ever deal with is in work, believe it or not (I work in schools, they sometimes play music in class / PE / assembly) and I'm shit-hot on my copyright licensing because my job depends on it (and it's not as single once performance is involved).
Oh, and I have a couple of free MP3's that I got from Amazon MP3. They were literally giving them away, that's how good they are.
I probably have more music that I've licensed myself for putting into games that I've made than I've ever had bought for me, though.
Sorry, but I don't do Powerpoint presentations. I work in IT. I have need to train people, to convey information, to do all kinds of things.
I've never used Powerpoint for any of that. I don't believe I've "missed out" one bit.
The problem with slideshows is exactly that - they are a slide show. Boring, slow, at the pace of the presenter, and - ultimately - containing so little actual information that you could write them out in five minutes. If you use them at all, use them as "headings" to your talk. And TALK. Don't just read the Powerpoint that you put on the screen. We can all see the fucking thing, we don't need you to narrate what you've written on the slide.
Every time someone tells me that I have to sit through a Powerpoint, I find a way out of it. Every time I see one of those "amazing presentations" by, say, Valve, or Intel, or whoever and it comes with a Powerpoint summary? No. In the bin. It should (and mostly does) lose all context outside of the talk you gave as it should be nothing more than headings. If you're Powerpoints are that fabulous then YOU don't need to be there, standing up and talking. You could have just given us the Powerpoint and left us to read it at our own pace.
The really, really, sad thing? Children are being brought up by Powerpoint nowadays. Schools see them as "lessons". Put up a powerpoint, zip through some pre-prepared slides , how cool am I! Everything from whole-school gatherings to individual tasks to the detentions schedule is displayed as a Powerpoint. And if that isn't bad enough, we have them on loop throughout schools and commercial premises.
A Powerpoint - or, to be more accurate - any piece of presentation software is something pretty to look at. That's it. The information contained within it invariably can be better put across to your audience in a thousand other ways.
Powerpoint is the warning sign of the management devil. Along with policies, mission statements, and all the other buzzwords.
Avoid like the plague. If you want to impart information talk. It doesn't even need to be a dialogue like these people suggest. But if your talk is contained in your presentation, then we don't need your talk. If it's not, then why are you showing it?
I have never bought a record, tape, CD, MP3 or anything else in my life.
Music is one of those things that just has no part in my life. I can appreciate it. I've been to concerts and ochestras. I quite enjoy it. But not enough to listen to it on loop 24 hours a day.
I spent many years spending hours travelling in the car with the radio on. It was for nothing else but to cure the "drone" of the car. I've not missed having it since I quit that job and don't travel far enough to even turn the radio on any more.
You know how the average person consider paintings? That's me with music. Yeah, I might have a few that I like, but I don't consume them all day long. I have enough to adorn my stereo to cover the occasional awkward silence and that's about it, and most of those someone has bought for me or I've been given for free.
I disable all music in games. It's the first thing I do before I even try the game - install, load up, turn off music. I just find it a distraction and don't get any value from it at all. (And yet, I have written games and put music into them because I understand some people like that).
If I do listen to anything, it's gentle, smooth music with predictable backings. Think "Sitting on the dock of the bay". I don't even have a single music file on my phone.
It's not something important to me, nor is it something I hate (there's a lot of music I hate, but it's not enough to be generalised hate of music). I can go to parties where music is playing and not go out of my mind, but my preference is no music.
Think of that next time you write a game and INSIST that the volume slider affects both sound effects and background music. You're just annoying me for no good reason.
Why don't you try to misunderstand the scientific definition of the word "theory" some more?
A theory is the most accepted, most rigorous, best description of facts that we have that fits in with all evidential proof. It is *proven*. Like "Pythagoras' theory" (which is what we call it, and has been proven beyond doubt countless millions of times).
What you're implying is that evolution is a "hypothesis". A hypothesis is, quite literally, our "best guess" at what the truth is. It's not proven.
If you were taught evolution was a theory, you were taught correctly. Maybe you should have a word with your English and science teachers, though, to establish which definition of "theory" was referred to in a science lesson.
We don't have "laws" by the way. It''s an old-fashioned way of saying theory (in the scientific sense), e.g. Newton's Third Law of Motion, or the Law of Conservation of Energy. Both of which, by the way, are proven theories (subject to the terms of Newtonian descriptions of motion which do not act on the quantum scale, but still - they are proven theories at the levels that they apply to).
And neither are "facts". Facts are indisputable items of information. They do not, in themselves, form an explanation. The explanation of the facts can be a hypothesis or theory, but a fact is just a datum.
Nobody gives a shit what you teach, so long as it's what is required by law. Unfortunately, the Department of Education take a dim view of failing to teach an area of the National Curriculum. If you don't want to teach it, don't run a school. Run a religious group. Or an after-school club. Or a church. Not a school.
State the law they are breaking by fulfilling their legal obligations to monitor the security and integrity of their OWN computer network.
There isn't one. It just depends on whether they access that data as a source of personal information or not, and then they are at best subject to the Data Protection legislation - which pretty much is fine so long as you inform people of what you're doing (which all these places will do, with an AUP for the network).
Don't do crap on company time that you think you have to hide from the company. And that counts what you do at lunchtime, as I bet they don't (and can't reasonably) make an distinction between those actually on a lunch break using the machines for personal purposes and those working through lunch using the machines for company purposes.
And your consent doesn't really matter. Your public publishing of information to a public network means that, as much as you might like, you can't really control what the end-user does with it. You could argue about it until the cows come home, but that's the fact of the matter - you can't really stop people doing this and - to you - it's impossible to tell the difference between a request from a proxy server doing this, a request from a proxy server not doing this, and a direct client connection.
And your disagreement with the methods used by people accessing your website really means nothing. If it did, adblockers, alternate browsers, mobile-data-compressors, etc. would be illegal.
They almost certainly got their employees to sign or otherwise agree to an IT policy that allows this.
How common? Very common. Anywhere that deploys a decent web filter, most likely. Schools, colleges, universities, I've seen this in an awful lot of them.
Commercial places do it too. There's no difference. And if you're on work time, using work resources, including paid-for work connections then - guess what - they have a responsibility to monitor what you're doing with it. If they don't it could lead to all sorts of problems with their ISP, for example - you can't just say "Sorry, didn't know our employees were hacking other networks... but you can't cut us off for that", it does not wash.
If you don't want your employer to find out what you're doing...
WHY NOT... you're on work time, on work computers, on work resources - what the hell are you doing that they shouldn't know about?
Outside of that, use a personal device. Personal devices banned? Tough. Go outside and use it out there.
Your employer owns your computer network. They employ a guy whose responsibility it is to secure it, protect it, and ensure they can follow up on any reports of malicious or illegal behaviour - everything from internal abuse of database privileges to sending their customer database to a rival, to someone accessing child porn or "hacking" a rival company.
That person will have told you what they are doing and why. You just might not have read it first.
Don't like it? Don't browse Facebook on company time.
It's like saying "God, when my friends come into the shop, the guy who owns the shop could listen to us and time how long we're talking". Same thing, different technology.
There is privacy. There is personal privacy. And then there is the expectation of an employer to provide you with free, untraceable facilities that you could misuse to slack off or cause them damage. One of these does not fit inside a corporate workspace. Guess which one.
If they were spying in the toilets, fair enough. If they were looking up your personal life from work, fair enough.
But they are monitoring what YOU are doing, in terms of non-work-related activities, while you're on work time and in work premises, on a work-provided resources.
And, no, unless it specifically says they won't listen at lunch time, you're still on work time. Because that network still needs protecting and auditing even at lunch time because you STILL have access to work data.
Don't like it, take your phone out with you for lunch and do your personal browsing there.
Because, like Hollywood, or any kind of photography, making things more realistic does not get you any more people going "wow".
We've reached a point now where we can make photorealistic scenes. The problem is that photorealistic scenes have to be of something fantastical for you to be able to see what's going on, what's an enemy and what's prop furniture. Like the old Holywood adage - it has to be light enough to see the dark by.
Otherwise you get complaints like those that surrounded Doom 3 upon its release.
As such, all the shadows in the world will not make people go "Wow" any more. And the trick of "this is your enemy approaching, look, you can see by his shadow" can only really be used once per game (if that, nowadays). So, as you say, they can have all this fancy technology and capabilities but how do you use them in what is basically a *game* without them being ignored for the most part while people are running from the enemy?
This is the problem that many old-school gamers moan about in terms of games nowadays. I have seen any number of games that are beautiful. But I don't play them. The ones I do, they can be beautiful or not - it barely matters.
And if you're going to get people who whine that their computer can't run the game because it's so slow because you're doing all this fancy stuff, then it's better to dial it down and make more of a game, than dial it up and have nobody play it.
Like Hollywood, photography, and lots of similar art-forms - there's only so much you can do and keep people interested. Notice that movies are full of lens-flare too (despite the fact that it could be avoided). Photographers and movie producer adjust the lighting by flooding the scene with artificial light and reflectors to make it look "more natural", and removing natural shadows. When was the last time you played a game that fell into "night" and yet went dark except for a realistic arrangement of external lights? Possibly Doom 3 that everyone whined about?
You can have things look realistic, or be functional inside an interactive environment. The middle ground is exceedingly hard to manage and co-ordinate to make a good game.
Being an electronics geek went out of fashion. Then, when the stores had died through over-commercialism, it came back (raspberry pi's etc.). But by then, the stores were filled with cheap consumer electronics, DJ equipment, airbeds and other junk.
It's hard to even find a decent soldering iron in any other shop at all nowadays, so of course people turn online.
Problem is, if it goes out of fashion again, the businesses will go down the drain again just the same. I understand it, but I can't say I'm happy to see it happen.
Please show me where I say that double-NAT adds any security whatsoever.
I'm proposing the idea that you don't even need to use DMZ and/or forwarding in order to send packets to a REAL router that can do the job better. Literally let a "proper" router have its "external" IP be picked up from the cheap-piece-of-crap "internal" DHCP range. Double-NAT, but means you have a secure internal network behind a real-router.
The fact that growing numbers of people ARE behind double-NAT (carrier NAT and then their router's NAT) tells you that you don't lose functionality and don't need to change settings on your router at all in order to "trial" a proper router.
I'm not seriously suggesting it as a complete alternative to a decent setup, but if you have things like the Virgin SuperHub (which can go flaky in modem mode with some firmware revisions), then you can still operate a real router to isolate your network without having to play with potentially router-killing options on your existing cheap router.
"The only way to avoid it's to avoid any router whose firmware's vulnerable."
Or, to never rely on a "router" that costs less than £100/$200 except as nothing more than a modem to your real setup.
I realise home guys can't necessarily set that up but, really, it's not the "only" way to avoid it. Just don't rely on some cheap piece of junk - that's designed so that Jim doesn't have to hear modem screeches - to get on the net and be your only barrier against it.
Haven't yet seen a router that doesn't have DMZ settings or that you couldn't "double-NAT" through it to make it work like a modem. It's the config that anyone with a brain uses, and with things like Virgin Media UK's Superhub and/or BT's hub, it's the only sensible way to do things (unless you WANT it to offer out your wireless to people who have paid BT money, or whatever).
It's not "the only way". And people on here should really have the knowledge to secure their networks that does not rely on some cheap piece of foreign junk where they spend longer designing the case to look snazzy in your living room than they did writing the firmware containing the firewall.
Despite the fact that I actually have a degree, I still call bullshit on you. Precisely one of my employers cared that I actually have a degree. The first one. Because otherwise they wondered what I'd been doing for three years without working while I was actually at university.
You don't "require" a college degree to do any of those things. Never have, never will.
Hell, the adverts *might* even say "required" instead of "desirable" but you still DO NOT NEED THEM. Rule #1 of job adverts: Apply anyway, show willing, you just might get the job. I don't think I've ever met all the criteria of any job that I've ever applied for and got. Nobody's ever really cared.
I work in IT for schools - state and private, primary and secondary. Most of the people I work with, most of the people doing my job in other places, most of the people I network with, most of the people I've worked for, DO NOT HAVE A RELEVANT DEGREE or mostly even any degree at all. And yet, in teaching you are REQUIRED to have a degree in my country (fair enough, given your job), however all the people around them - including HR themselves and most of the IT crowd and support staff and office staff - DO NOT have a degree in general.
The problem is that people still think that HR rules the roost when it comes to hiring, and they're wrong. The HR guy is less qualified than you are, most of the time. You can't tell them that, of course, but that's the truth. They write "degree required" because they just want someone good and not a wastrel like the last guy. Apply and see what happens. If they are genuinely stupid enough to deny you interview because of a lack of degree, you honestly DID NOT want to work there anyway (a self-fulfilling prophecy).
At one place I worked (a state school), I made an entire London Borough form a pay-scale just for me. It wasn't stupidly high. It wasn't above my boss. It just didn't exist and the Borough HR wanted to lump me into either being a) a teacher, b) a support assistant or c) senior management. They did not have a category for me, so the head of the school made them make one, so that I wasn't subject to term-time contracts, or paid SMT-layer wages. It took months, it took a lot of arguments, but it happened because HR does NOT run the show.
People want to fit you into nice little niches and HR are especially bad at this. It doesn't mean you have to accept that.
I call bullshit that anything but the highest tier of professions *requires* a degree. And then I would posit that for the majority of the career path for those professions you do NOT need a degree. And if you're that good, you'll be allowed to study for a degree alongside your normal career advancement anyway, if they recognise talent.
However, to claim that you "need" a degree to find work in general is ludicrous. If you don't have a degree and the job needs one, but you have 20 years experience of doing the job, of course you should apply anyway. Chances are they won't even ask you about your lack degree. Even the worst of HR. Because the day that HR alone determines who to invites to interview is the beginning of the end of the company they are in.
But if you have no experience, no degree and are applying to be chief aeronautical safety engineer, then - yeah - they're going to want to see a piece of paper at least.
Java programmers need to be able to program in Java. I've seen adverts in New Scientist for programmers who will work on high-end scientific simulations and they barely state a minimum degree, so for generic business processes? No. Not required. No matter what they say.
It's just not true that a degree will get you jobs. I know. I have one. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been asked about it, and only once have I ever been required to PROVE I have one. But 15 years of steady progression in my career from jobs that don't need a degree through to jobs that - actually - you probably think you should have a degree for overrides any bit of 15-y
The loft is a dry, dusty, windy place. Water does not get in. In fact, it's so dry that even in a thunderstorm you will cough from all the dust etc.
As such, mould, damp, mildew etc. aren't a problem in the loft (and, yes, we do have minor problems elsewhere in the house - like the porch - where condensation or water builds up. Not enough that you can see the water itself, but enough to promote some slow mould growth).
My house is a 1930's, double-brick walls all the way up, peaked timber roof (with plastic sheeting under tiles and definite air-gaps all the way around, i.e. you can poke your hand out of the loft into the open air).
It's just Scotland. Everything is permanently wet in Scotland. It's more the humidity than the actual rain as such. The rain rolls off the tiles here just the same. But my loft is horribly dusty and dry.
If you slag the USB / Ethernet buses simultaneously, things nowadays slow to a crawl. Why? Because if they don't make them slow to a crawl, you drop USB packets silently, which makes the driver stack crash.
The bug was reported within weeks of release by a guy doing lots of USB / SD / Ethernet work simultaneously and I'm linked into it. Still unresolved, but they tweaked the "firmware" (really software) of the RPi to lessen the impact by degrading some performance.
It's a timing issue on the shared bus that's part of the hardware design and can't be "resolved" without a redesign. They just worked around it so that the blindingly-obvious bug when it was first released isn't so prevalant, but there's a cost.
My pre-order RPi ended up in my loft for 6 months after I waited a year for them to fix it (and also - on the request of some of the RPi designers / distributors - I had sent off SD cards to some guy at Broadcom who worked on the RPI "in his spare time" who then later discovered that it was because of things like this that SD cards weren't reading, not that they were old / strange cards). It's a nice gadget, but it is basically a bodge-job and for my use was useless for over 18 months without sight of permanent resolution.
It's not difficult to port to Linux, it just takes time on old titles that were never designed with Linux in mind.
That said, my Steam account has 126 Linux games from 627 games total. That's not a bad ratio considering that I've never bought a Steam game just because it has a Linux version, and that in any non-Steam count, the ratio of Linux games I own would be much, much, much, much less.
I don't know about Mac - it seems hard to find out how many Mac games I would have on Steam if I was to load it up on there - but I imagine it's the same at best, and much less at worst.
You have to consider - there are still not huge AAA titles for Linux. Maybe Half-Life 3 will sort that out. But given that, having 20% of my library available on Linux, for free, is a pretty good achievement in - what - a year or so?
Despite being a Slackware fan, it has to be said the package dependency issues are ALWAYS going to plague Slackware. It just doesn't have automated dependency resolution compared to just about every other distro on the planet.
That's both a wonderful thing (compiling from source is much nicer and only uses the things it needs to rather than everything under the sun) and a nightmare (when you want to just install a closed-source Linux binary that integrates a lot of libraries for every possible gaming-related library under the sun in order to run "Big Picture" mode).
Basically, most of the security is incomplete or easily ignored / bypassed.
On a stock system, with EMET defaults enabled, there are certain critical things that aren't done (hooking an old API that marks memory as executable, etc.). Even if they could be done, the way I read through the paper suggests that there are SO MANY alternatives they could have used that it's going to be finger-in-the-dyke hole-blocking rather than a blanket fix.
A lot of the things they try to do (e.g. roll back to the caller of a function, disassemble the code and see if it came from a direct jump or a proper CALL, etc.) aren't done properly or are worthless (in this example, they just get the MS VC runtimes to do the call "properly" with data they control).
They seem to be able to run arbitrary code via their exploits and they don't pick out any one particular exploit. Most of their work is about punching holes AROUND EMET security, not crafting a one-off exploit, and pretty much they appear to succeed. Most of the things they use are merely small tweaks to existing XP exploits and things like that.
At many points they just say "Or you could do this in a million other ways". So it's not that they've found a one-off hole through these things that works 1/256th of the time by chance, they literally walk around all the checks and security by doing some quite simple things.
And, yes, they end up running calc.exe or whatever they want at the end of it, without EMET or any of the listed protections kicking up a fuss.
When I can buy a PC without Windows, without my supplier feeling pressured to include Windows on it, and the machine costs less...
Then I'll believe that Microsoft are allowing me to do what I want on my computer.
Also, you're a commercial entity. I have no reason to have to forgive you. If you supply a service that I'm not happy with, I have no reason to buy from you again. This is the difference between forgiveness, and actual redemption. I might forgive a mistake, but I don't trust you not to make it again until you proved you've changed your ways.
Judging by things like: I cannot buy a Linux PC. Despite Steambox. Despite Android. I just cannot buy a PC without your junk on it.
You're trying to subvert an open standard in my country with your OOXML crap - that we STILL know is just a crappy writing-down of your crappy binary format without any gestures whatsoever towards an actual, open format.
Samba still hasn't got up to the standard that you can trust it to do simple things, like take over from your Windows server - DESPITE the fact that you have been required by law to help open your formats, open your protocols and you claim to be "helping" them.
When I see a change of actions, I'll think about beginning to "forgive".
"Hey, I only murdered ONE market, a few decades ago, and tried to pretend I wasn't doing that... why won't you forgive me?"
Because, I have absolutely no need to. You're the ones that need to *earn* the forgiveness, not just expect it.
Sorry, but it's much more deep-rooted than being able to talk to someone in a foreign country.
If you don't get that, you probably don't have many bi-lingual friends and certainly haven't asked them about it.
Being bi-lingual allows you to find patterns, origins, etymologies and structures of words. It's not uncommon from being able to speak French and English to being able to understand Spanish, Italian and maybe a little Portuguese WITHOUT having to learn anything, just hearing a native speaker.
It's provides much greater command of grammar and language structure than is available in English alone.
I speak as someone who was forced to learn only "tourist" German in an English school, who now lives with an Italian fluent in English and has entire swathes of friends who speak foreign languages.
English is universally derided among them for being the easiest to learn. The grammar is pathetic. The rules are arbitrary but easily picked up. The words all comes from Latin or Greek or Germanic originally.
And being bi-lingual opens up the creative areas of the brain associated with language. While you're 3-7 years of age, your brain will accept another language with ease. It won't even hinder you learning other things as you learn it. And you'll be bi-lingual by the time you're an adult with no extraneous effort. However, if you don't get it into the language-processing areas of the brain by that age, you will GREATLY struggle to learn a language later.
And by learning a language, I mean being able to live normally in the country for a year without resorting to translation tools, not asking the way to the airport in a single, broken accent.
My girlfriend's command of multiple languages is impressive. And it comes about because she was taught English in school and it was SO MUCH easier a language to learn than her own. It's basically the baby-language of foreign languages.
It's not about tourism. It's not about being able to phone up a foreign company and sell to them. It's literally an expansion of your whole thought processes and language interpretation that allows you a much richer method of communication, no matter what the language.
And while you're a child, you'll just absorb it - like any child in a bi-lingual home. But when you grow up, you'll struggle and have to spend 10 years learning to get the grammar, accent, structure, phrasing and wording correct enough to blend in. And it will never be "natural". But, learning a foreign language in school, it can be "natural" to your thought processes.
They say you know when you've actually learned a language because you dream in it. That's how natural it becomes and you get the richness of expression available from all the languages you know.
It's not about whether you know Perl, or French. It's about being able to genericise concepts enough that even when speaking in several languages at once you get a deeper understanding of what the grammar means and how the structure should be to be common to all languages.
Someone who programs professionally in a range of programming languages will, generally speaking, be more fluent in any particular one. The same as someone who speaks more than one language being, generally speaking, more capable with their use of language overall.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously don't know that UK mobile providers put a data cap on - in Megabytes Per Month.
You can have all the speed in the world, but it's useless if you can go over your limit (especially if you go to another European country) in a matter of seconds.
"Why" should we invest in a technology that we don't know "how" to put to use?
And, believe me, it's us that are investing in it. My mobile service provider keeps telling me about 4G. Says it's wonderful. Say's I'm ready to go. Except I don't have a 4G handset and have no intention of really getting one. Because it costs a lot more and does nothing that mine doesn't already do, just slightly faster (in theory). Coverage isn't there. Cost is too much (still measured in fucking megabytes). No real advantage over 3G at the moment.
So my question is not "how" at all - I can name a million ways we *could* use 5G. Like I could name a million ways we *could* use 4G. Or 3G. Or EDGE, GPRS or any number of other technologies before it. Fact is, we still don't really do them.
The problem is not "how". My question is "why". Why would I touch something that's likely to be commercially exploited to the hilt to my disadvantage and which I, honestly, hardly ever use?
Sure it's cool to check GMail on the go. I've RDP'd in and fixed servers from a smartphone. It's useful. But it's not a killer application of the technology because I've been able to do that (maybe not quite so fast) since the GPRS days.
And yes, you "can" video-stream etc. now Fact is, it all costs money and not everyone will pay you to watch Gravity in 4K on their 2" mobile screen (especially not if they're already paying £40 a month for 4G, and you want more for 5G to recoup your investment costs).
Why deploy a technology "just because" it's supposed-progress? Isn't that what left us with all kinds of dead-end hardware and initiatives / technologies that never really took off (3DTV)? Why not use what we've got and get the most out of even 3G as it stands (because, ultimately, we certainly don't do that in the UK)?
Let's use what we have to its limits, and be clever, and get better value out of those BILLIONS of pounds worth of 3G/4G licenses before we start jumping on the 5G bandwagon "just because". Hell, I'd infinitely rather have 3G everywhere at the max capable speed (which is surprisingly high!) than even a single base station with 5G.
And if consumption expands to fill capacity, the opposite is true - we will squeeze every byte we can out of technologies if they are the upper limit.
As someone with a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science, I can tell you that if your CS degree is applied-maths, then you really should find another course.
Pretty much, when I was at uni, the CS guys couldn't do the maths side of the courses and the maths guys couldn't do the CS side of the courses. There's an overlap of, at most, a few "theoretical" courses (so much closer to pure math, to be honest) - graph theory, coding theory, logic, etc.
But ultimately, they are separate for a reason. Otherwise, CS would just be another area of mathematics rather than a subject in its own right.
That said, education is a lovely thing to have, but if you want recognised education, it kinda stops at your second degree. Past that, you wouldn't need to prove yourself career-wise in the vast majority of jobs. And, in fact, a masters or a PhD speaks volumes more than any amount of undergraduate degrees.
If you're doing it for yourself, do it for yourself (and good on you!). If you're doing it for career "brownie points", then do the job, or higher education, instead.
Amen.
+100 mod points.
Everyone is an "expert" on Data Protection, etc. laws until they are the ones who will go down if they get it wrong. Suddenly, all those minor things that were "dictator"ish when they weren't legally responsible turn into their norm when they are.
I had to write a 38-page diatribe on why we don't get administrator access to teachers. It's actually illegal. You can argue all you like, but it's illegal. And the way data protection laws are worded in the UK, I can go down for failing to abide by it just the same as the company I'm representing.
Just the POTENTIAL for a person to use access that I've granted even TEMPORARILY (even if they don't ever use that access) which could IN THEORY allow them to access personal data we've collected is a breach of data protection law. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of fines with established case law for just that.
Hell, even failing to encrypt a laptop which you can't prove DIDN'T hold personal data (but might conceivably have done, e.g. a staff laptop), could result in the same. And there is case law for schools, hospitals, etc. being fined for doing JUST THAT.
It's all fun and games until you're the one who has to sign off on it, and put their career on the line. That's when you realise that, actually, it's not that important for these things to happen.
Couple with child-protection laws, basic employment protection (i.e. doing your damn job, even if it's not explicit in law), etc. and it becomes a whole different ball game.
But, do you know what? Even if you sign a piece of paper to say that you're taking utter responsibility away from me and taking all the burden on you - even THAT doesn't clear me of certain responsibilities under the law.
Consider it like speeding laws - don't break them, but campaign to have them changed. If it's really not that dangerous, other countries have no limits (e.g. Germany), etc. then you have more of a case of changing the law. But breaking even a 20mph imposed speed limit will still see points on your licence and fines for you until you do.
I work in schools.
I work in UK schools.
I work in IT in UK schools.
This is normal. Sorry, but there's nothing shocking here.
You join our domain, we get the right to push any and all security measures to your client that we deem necessary. If you don't want to allow it, don't join our domain (which also means we probably won't authorise you to use our Internet connection, etc.)
The domain will have a "Default Domain Policy" that almost certainly includes software you don't want (but we insist you have), settings you'd rather not have (but which we will enforce on you) and things like this - installation of a required domain certificate so we can check your not using OUR SCHOOL FILTER to do illegal / illicit things.
Chances are if you read your network acceptable usage policy, it states this. The alternative is you don't get network access. Because we are LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE for what is accessed through the network on our network, as well as the protection of our internal data and services.
Complain all you like. The alternative is that we block SSL site-wide. That means no Facebook at all, by the way. Or GMail. Or Hotmail. Or anything else that uses SSL by default.
We have a legal duty to monitor, record and analyse the logs of Internet traffic to ensure our child-protection policy (a legally-required policy) is followed. Additionally, it's OUR resource. If you want to use your own external 3G connection on your own time, argue for that. Chances are it will fail.
If you want to use the SCHOOL connection on SCHOOL time for NON-SCHOOL business, that's not going to happen. However if you want to use it for SCHOOL BUSINESS then you are required to allow us to apply our domain policy. If that, at any particular place, happens to include SSL certificates, monitoring software (potentially even INVISIBLE monitoring software like Securus, Ranger, etc.) then that's what you get.
Sorry, but as an IT Manager specialising in schools, and working in state, private and boarding schools from primary to further education, this is bog-standard and has happened for years. I believe even places like LGfL (a London-wide, government-backed school IT services supplier) do it.
There's a reason - we are required to protect our systems and protect ALL the children. That means everything gets summarised, logged and monitored. If we then need to dig into detailed logs, we can enable that option and do that too. Because - as in a previous school I worked for many years ago - we get things like members of staff browsing child pornography on school time. Yes, they are that stupid. And yes, they get caught. And, sorry, but our child-protection and data-protection policies take precedence over you going on your private Facebook after hours and we can't spend the time to distinguish hours, locations, staff-types, etc. for everyone.
If you don't like it, do not join your computer to a domain. If you are on the domain, it's literally our DOMAIN. Our rules. Clearly stated. That you would have agreed to.
Please, also don't act like your the first person ever that this has happened to. It's been standard practice for at least the last 15 years I've been working IT in schools in the UK.
Go for it.
I own a single physical Jive Bunny CD (or did, many years ago) that my parents bought for me with a stereo system (that got thrown away 10 years later and had never been used).
Aside from that, I have a handful of things people have given me or bought for me. That's it. The most music I ever deal with is in work, believe it or not (I work in schools, they sometimes play music in class / PE / assembly) and I'm shit-hot on my copyright licensing because my job depends on it (and it's not as single once performance is involved).
Oh, and I have a couple of free MP3's that I got from Amazon MP3. They were literally giving them away, that's how good they are.
I probably have more music that I've licensed myself for putting into games that I've made than I've ever had bought for me, though.
Powerpoint is the last refuge of management.
Sorry, but I don't do Powerpoint presentations. I work in IT. I have need to train people, to convey information, to do all kinds of things.
I've never used Powerpoint for any of that. I don't believe I've "missed out" one bit.
The problem with slideshows is exactly that - they are a slide show. Boring, slow, at the pace of the presenter, and - ultimately - containing so little actual information that you could write them out in five minutes. If you use them at all, use them as "headings" to your talk. And TALK. Don't just read the Powerpoint that you put on the screen. We can all see the fucking thing, we don't need you to narrate what you've written on the slide.
Every time someone tells me that I have to sit through a Powerpoint, I find a way out of it. Every time I see one of those "amazing presentations" by, say, Valve, or Intel, or whoever and it comes with a Powerpoint summary? No. In the bin. It should (and mostly does) lose all context outside of the talk you gave as it should be nothing more than headings. If you're Powerpoints are that fabulous then YOU don't need to be there, standing up and talking. You could have just given us the Powerpoint and left us to read it at our own pace.
The really, really, sad thing? Children are being brought up by Powerpoint nowadays. Schools see them as "lessons". Put up a powerpoint, zip through some pre-prepared slides , how cool am I! Everything from whole-school gatherings to individual tasks to the detentions schedule is displayed as a Powerpoint. And if that isn't bad enough, we have them on loop throughout schools and commercial premises.
A Powerpoint - or, to be more accurate - any piece of presentation software is something pretty to look at. That's it. The information contained within it invariably can be better put across to your audience in a thousand other ways.
Powerpoint is the warning sign of the management devil. Along with policies, mission statements, and all the other buzzwords.
Avoid like the plague. If you want to impart information talk. It doesn't even need to be a dialogue like these people suggest. But if your talk is contained in your presentation, then we don't need your talk. If it's not, then why are you showing it?
I have never bought a record, tape, CD, MP3 or anything else in my life.
Music is one of those things that just has no part in my life. I can appreciate it. I've been to concerts and ochestras. I quite enjoy it. But not enough to listen to it on loop 24 hours a day.
I spent many years spending hours travelling in the car with the radio on. It was for nothing else but to cure the "drone" of the car. I've not missed having it since I quit that job and don't travel far enough to even turn the radio on any more.
You know how the average person consider paintings? That's me with music. Yeah, I might have a few that I like, but I don't consume them all day long. I have enough to adorn my stereo to cover the occasional awkward silence and that's about it, and most of those someone has bought for me or I've been given for free.
I disable all music in games. It's the first thing I do before I even try the game - install, load up, turn off music. I just find it a distraction and don't get any value from it at all. (And yet, I have written games and put music into them because I understand some people like that).
If I do listen to anything, it's gentle, smooth music with predictable backings. Think "Sitting on the dock of the bay". I don't even have a single music file on my phone.
It's not something important to me, nor is it something I hate (there's a lot of music I hate, but it's not enough to be generalised hate of music). I can go to parties where music is playing and not go out of my mind, but my preference is no music.
Think of that next time you write a game and INSIST that the volume slider affects both sound effects and background music. You're just annoying me for no good reason.
Why don't you try to misunderstand the scientific definition of the word "theory" some more?
A theory is the most accepted, most rigorous, best description of facts that we have that fits in with all evidential proof. It is *proven*. Like "Pythagoras' theory" (which is what we call it, and has been proven beyond doubt countless millions of times).
What you're implying is that evolution is a "hypothesis". A hypothesis is, quite literally, our "best guess" at what the truth is. It's not proven.
If you were taught evolution was a theory, you were taught correctly. Maybe you should have a word with your English and science teachers, though, to establish which definition of "theory" was referred to in a science lesson.
We don't have "laws" by the way. It''s an old-fashioned way of saying theory (in the scientific sense), e.g. Newton's Third Law of Motion, or the Law of Conservation of Energy. Both of which, by the way, are proven theories (subject to the terms of Newtonian descriptions of motion which do not act on the quantum scale, but still - they are proven theories at the levels that they apply to).
And neither are "facts". Facts are indisputable items of information. They do not, in themselves, form an explanation. The explanation of the facts can be a hypothesis or theory, but a fact is just a datum.
Nobody gives a shit what you teach, so long as it's what is required by law. Unfortunately, the Department of Education take a dim view of failing to teach an area of the National Curriculum. If you don't want to teach it, don't run a school. Run a religious group. Or an after-school club. Or a church. Not a school.
Not really.
State the law they are breaking by fulfilling their legal obligations to monitor the security and integrity of their OWN computer network.
There isn't one. It just depends on whether they access that data as a source of personal information or not, and then they are at best subject to the Data Protection legislation - which pretty much is fine so long as you inform people of what you're doing (which all these places will do, with an AUP for the network).
Don't do crap on company time that you think you have to hide from the company. And that counts what you do at lunchtime, as I bet they don't (and can't reasonably) make an distinction between those actually on a lunch break using the machines for personal purposes and those working through lunch using the machines for company purposes.
Nope.
And your consent doesn't really matter. Your public publishing of information to a public network means that, as much as you might like, you can't really control what the end-user does with it. You could argue about it until the cows come home, but that's the fact of the matter - you can't really stop people doing this and - to you - it's impossible to tell the difference between a request from a proxy server doing this, a request from a proxy server not doing this, and a direct client connection.
And your disagreement with the methods used by people accessing your website really means nothing. If it did, adblockers, alternate browsers, mobile-data-compressors, etc. would be illegal.
It's not an attack.
They almost certainly got their employees to sign or otherwise agree to an IT policy that allows this.
How common? Very common. Anywhere that deploys a decent web filter, most likely. Schools, colleges, universities, I've seen this in an awful lot of them.
Commercial places do it too. There's no difference. And if you're on work time, using work resources, including paid-for work connections then - guess what - they have a responsibility to monitor what you're doing with it. If they don't it could lead to all sorts of problems with their ISP, for example - you can't just say "Sorry, didn't know our employees were hacking other networks... but you can't cut us off for that", it does not wash.
If you don't want your employer to find out what you're doing...
WHY NOT... you're on work time, on work computers, on work resources - what the hell are you doing that they shouldn't know about?
Outside of that, use a personal device. Personal devices banned? Tough. Go outside and use it out there.
Your employer owns your computer network. They employ a guy whose responsibility it is to secure it, protect it, and ensure they can follow up on any reports of malicious or illegal behaviour - everything from internal abuse of database privileges to sending their customer database to a rival, to someone accessing child porn or "hacking" a rival company.
That person will have told you what they are doing and why. You just might not have read it first.
Don't like it? Don't browse Facebook on company time.
It's like saying "God, when my friends come into the shop, the guy who owns the shop could listen to us and time how long we're talking". Same thing, different technology.
There is privacy. There is personal privacy. And then there is the expectation of an employer to provide you with free, untraceable facilities that you could misuse to slack off or cause them damage. One of these does not fit inside a corporate workspace. Guess which one.
If they were spying in the toilets, fair enough.
If they were looking up your personal life from work, fair enough.
But they are monitoring what YOU are doing, in terms of non-work-related activities, while you're on work time and in work premises, on a work-provided resources.
And, no, unless it specifically says they won't listen at lunch time, you're still on work time. Because that network still needs protecting and auditing even at lunch time because you STILL have access to work data.
Don't like it, take your phone out with you for lunch and do your personal browsing there.
Because, like Hollywood, or any kind of photography, making things more realistic does not get you any more people going "wow".
We've reached a point now where we can make photorealistic scenes. The problem is that photorealistic scenes have to be of something fantastical for you to be able to see what's going on, what's an enemy and what's prop furniture. Like the old Holywood adage - it has to be light enough to see the dark by.
Otherwise you get complaints like those that surrounded Doom 3 upon its release.
As such, all the shadows in the world will not make people go "Wow" any more. And the trick of "this is your enemy approaching, look, you can see by his shadow" can only really be used once per game (if that, nowadays). So, as you say, they can have all this fancy technology and capabilities but how do you use them in what is basically a *game* without them being ignored for the most part while people are running from the enemy?
This is the problem that many old-school gamers moan about in terms of games nowadays. I have seen any number of games that are beautiful. But I don't play them. The ones I do, they can be beautiful or not - it barely matters.
And if you're going to get people who whine that their computer can't run the game because it's so slow because you're doing all this fancy stuff, then it's better to dial it down and make more of a game, than dial it up and have nobody play it.
Like Hollywood, photography, and lots of similar art-forms - there's only so much you can do and keep people interested. Notice that movies are full of lens-flare too (despite the fact that it could be avoided). Photographers and movie producer adjust the lighting by flooding the scene with artificial light and reflectors to make it look "more natural", and removing natural shadows. When was the last time you played a game that fell into "night" and yet went dark except for a realistic arrangement of external lights? Possibly Doom 3 that everyone whined about?
You can have things look realistic, or be functional inside an interactive environment. The middle ground is exceedingly hard to manage and co-ordinate to make a good game.
Maplin's in the UK.
The story's the same everywhere you go.
Being an electronics geek went out of fashion. Then, when the stores had died through over-commercialism, it came back (raspberry pi's etc.). But by then, the stores were filled with cheap consumer electronics, DJ equipment, airbeds and other junk.
It's hard to even find a decent soldering iron in any other shop at all nowadays, so of course people turn online.
Problem is, if it goes out of fashion again, the businesses will go down the drain again just the same. I understand it, but I can't say I'm happy to see it happen.
Please show me where I say that double-NAT adds any security whatsoever.
I'm proposing the idea that you don't even need to use DMZ and/or forwarding in order to send packets to a REAL router that can do the job better. Literally let a "proper" router have its "external" IP be picked up from the cheap-piece-of-crap "internal" DHCP range. Double-NAT, but means you have a secure internal network behind a real-router.
The fact that growing numbers of people ARE behind double-NAT (carrier NAT and then their router's NAT) tells you that you don't lose functionality and don't need to change settings on your router at all in order to "trial" a proper router.
I'm not seriously suggesting it as a complete alternative to a decent setup, but if you have things like the Virgin SuperHub (which can go flaky in modem mode with some firmware revisions), then you can still operate a real router to isolate your network without having to play with potentially router-killing options on your existing cheap router.
"The only way to avoid it's to avoid any router whose firmware's vulnerable."
Or, to never rely on a "router" that costs less than £100/$200 except as nothing more than a modem to your real setup.
I realise home guys can't necessarily set that up but, really, it's not the "only" way to avoid it. Just don't rely on some cheap piece of junk - that's designed so that Jim doesn't have to hear modem screeches - to get on the net and be your only barrier against it.
Haven't yet seen a router that doesn't have DMZ settings or that you couldn't "double-NAT" through it to make it work like a modem. It's the config that anyone with a brain uses, and with things like Virgin Media UK's Superhub and/or BT's hub, it's the only sensible way to do things (unless you WANT it to offer out your wireless to people who have paid BT money, or whatever).
It's not "the only way". And people on here should really have the knowledge to secure their networks that does not rely on some cheap piece of foreign junk where they spend longer designing the case to look snazzy in your living room than they did writing the firmware containing the firewall.
Despite the fact that I actually have a degree, I still call bullshit on you. Precisely one of my employers cared that I actually have a degree. The first one. Because otherwise they wondered what I'd been doing for three years without working while I was actually at university.
You don't "require" a college degree to do any of those things. Never have, never will.
Hell, the adverts *might* even say "required" instead of "desirable" but you still DO NOT NEED THEM. Rule #1 of job adverts: Apply anyway, show willing, you just might get the job. I don't think I've ever met all the criteria of any job that I've ever applied for and got. Nobody's ever really cared.
I work in IT for schools - state and private, primary and secondary. Most of the people I work with, most of the people doing my job in other places, most of the people I network with, most of the people I've worked for, DO NOT HAVE A RELEVANT DEGREE or mostly even any degree at all. And yet, in teaching you are REQUIRED to have a degree in my country (fair enough, given your job), however all the people around them - including HR themselves and most of the IT crowd and support staff and office staff - DO NOT have a degree in general.
The problem is that people still think that HR rules the roost when it comes to hiring, and they're wrong. The HR guy is less qualified than you are, most of the time. You can't tell them that, of course, but that's the truth. They write "degree required" because they just want someone good and not a wastrel like the last guy. Apply and see what happens. If they are genuinely stupid enough to deny you interview because of a lack of degree, you honestly DID NOT want to work there anyway (a self-fulfilling prophecy).
At one place I worked (a state school), I made an entire London Borough form a pay-scale just for me. It wasn't stupidly high. It wasn't above my boss. It just didn't exist and the Borough HR wanted to lump me into either being a) a teacher, b) a support assistant or c) senior management. They did not have a category for me, so the head of the school made them make one, so that I wasn't subject to term-time contracts, or paid SMT-layer wages. It took months, it took a lot of arguments, but it happened because HR does NOT run the show.
People want to fit you into nice little niches and HR are especially bad at this. It doesn't mean you have to accept that.
I call bullshit that anything but the highest tier of professions *requires* a degree. And then I would posit that for the majority of the career path for those professions you do NOT need a degree. And if you're that good, you'll be allowed to study for a degree alongside your normal career advancement anyway, if they recognise talent.
However, to claim that you "need" a degree to find work in general is ludicrous. If you don't have a degree and the job needs one, but you have 20 years experience of doing the job, of course you should apply anyway. Chances are they won't even ask you about your lack degree. Even the worst of HR. Because the day that HR alone determines who to invites to interview is the beginning of the end of the company they are in.
But if you have no experience, no degree and are applying to be chief aeronautical safety engineer, then - yeah - they're going to want to see a piece of paper at least.
Java programmers need to be able to program in Java. I've seen adverts in New Scientist for programmers who will work on high-end scientific simulations and they barely state a minimum degree, so for generic business processes? No. Not required. No matter what they say.
It's just not true that a degree will get you jobs. I know. I have one. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been asked about it, and only once have I ever been required to PROVE I have one. But 15 years of steady progression in my career from jobs that don't need a degree through to jobs that - actually - you probably think you should have a degree for overrides any bit of 15-y
I live in the UK, but not Scotland.
The loft is a dry, dusty, windy place. Water does not get in. In fact, it's so dry that even in a thunderstorm you will cough from all the dust etc.
As such, mould, damp, mildew etc. aren't a problem in the loft (and, yes, we do have minor problems elsewhere in the house - like the porch - where condensation or water builds up. Not enough that you can see the water itself, but enough to promote some slow mould growth).
My house is a 1930's, double-brick walls all the way up, peaked timber roof (with plastic sheeting under tiles and definite air-gaps all the way around, i.e. you can poke your hand out of the loft into the open air).
It's just Scotland. Everything is permanently wet in Scotland. It's more the humidity than the actual rain as such. The rain rolls off the tiles here just the same. But my loft is horribly dusty and dry.
I'm not the OP, but:
The one that still had a ticket open.
If you slag the USB / Ethernet buses simultaneously, things nowadays slow to a crawl. Why? Because if they don't make them slow to a crawl, you drop USB packets silently, which makes the driver stack crash.
The bug was reported within weeks of release by a guy doing lots of USB / SD / Ethernet work simultaneously and I'm linked into it. Still unresolved, but they tweaked the "firmware" (really software) of the RPi to lessen the impact by degrading some performance.
It's a timing issue on the shared bus that's part of the hardware design and can't be "resolved" without a redesign. They just worked around it so that the blindingly-obvious bug when it was first released isn't so prevalant, but there's a cost.
My pre-order RPi ended up in my loft for 6 months after I waited a year for them to fix it (and also - on the request of some of the RPi designers / distributors - I had sent off SD cards to some guy at Broadcom who worked on the RPI "in his spare time" who then later discovered that it was because of things like this that SD cards weren't reading, not that they were old / strange cards). It's a nice gadget, but it is basically a bodge-job and for my use was useless for over 18 months without sight of permanent resolution.
It's not difficult to port to Linux, it just takes time on old titles that were never designed with Linux in mind.
That said, my Steam account has 126 Linux games from 627 games total. That's not a bad ratio considering that I've never bought a Steam game just because it has a Linux version, and that in any non-Steam count, the ratio of Linux games I own would be much, much, much, much less.
I don't know about Mac - it seems hard to find out how many Mac games I would have on Steam if I was to load it up on there - but I imagine it's the same at best, and much less at worst.
You have to consider - there are still not huge AAA titles for Linux. Maybe Half-Life 3 will sort that out. But given that, having 20% of my library available on Linux, for free, is a pretty good achievement in - what - a year or so?
Despite being a Slackware fan, it has to be said the package dependency issues are ALWAYS going to plague Slackware. It just doesn't have automated dependency resolution compared to just about every other distro on the planet.
That's both a wonderful thing (compiling from source is much nicer and only uses the things it needs to rather than everything under the sun) and a nightmare (when you want to just install a closed-source Linux binary that integrates a lot of libraries for every possible gaming-related library under the sun in order to run "Big Picture" mode).
Maybe you should read the paper they link in.
Basically, most of the security is incomplete or easily ignored / bypassed.
On a stock system, with EMET defaults enabled, there are certain critical things that aren't done (hooking an old API that marks memory as executable, etc.). Even if they could be done, the way I read through the paper suggests that there are SO MANY alternatives they could have used that it's going to be finger-in-the-dyke hole-blocking rather than a blanket fix.
A lot of the things they try to do (e.g. roll back to the caller of a function, disassemble the code and see if it came from a direct jump or a proper CALL, etc.) aren't done properly or are worthless (in this example, they just get the MS VC runtimes to do the call "properly" with data they control).
They seem to be able to run arbitrary code via their exploits and they don't pick out any one particular exploit. Most of their work is about punching holes AROUND EMET security, not crafting a one-off exploit, and pretty much they appear to succeed. Most of the things they use are merely small tweaks to existing XP exploits and things like that.
At many points they just say "Or you could do this in a million other ways". So it's not that they've found a one-off hole through these things that works 1/256th of the time by chance, they literally walk around all the checks and security by doing some quite simple things.
And, yes, they end up running calc.exe or whatever they want at the end of it, without EMET or any of the listed protections kicking up a fuss.
Yep. Was hoping someone would bring this up.
Do they even have licensing to call it a Spectrum anything? I think Amstrad might well want to take issue with that.
When I can buy a PC without Windows, without my supplier feeling pressured to include Windows on it, and the machine costs less...
Then I'll believe that Microsoft are allowing me to do what I want on my computer.
Also, you're a commercial entity. I have no reason to have to forgive you. If you supply a service that I'm not happy with, I have no reason to buy from you again. This is the difference between forgiveness, and actual redemption. I might forgive a mistake, but I don't trust you not to make it again until you proved you've changed your ways.
Judging by things like: I cannot buy a Linux PC. Despite Steambox. Despite Android. I just cannot buy a PC without your junk on it.
You're trying to subvert an open standard in my country with your OOXML crap - that we STILL know is just a crappy writing-down of your crappy binary format without any gestures whatsoever towards an actual, open format.
Samba still hasn't got up to the standard that you can trust it to do simple things, like take over from your Windows server - DESPITE the fact that you have been required by law to help open your formats, open your protocols and you claim to be "helping" them.
When I see a change of actions, I'll think about beginning to "forgive".
"Hey, I only murdered ONE market, a few decades ago, and tried to pretend I wasn't doing that... why won't you forgive me?"
Because, I have absolutely no need to. You're the ones that need to *earn* the forgiveness, not just expect it.
Sorry, but it's much more deep-rooted than being able to talk to someone in a foreign country.
If you don't get that, you probably don't have many bi-lingual friends and certainly haven't asked them about it.
Being bi-lingual allows you to find patterns, origins, etymologies and structures of words. It's not uncommon from being able to speak French and English to being able to understand Spanish, Italian and maybe a little Portuguese WITHOUT having to learn anything, just hearing a native speaker.
It's provides much greater command of grammar and language structure than is available in English alone.
I speak as someone who was forced to learn only "tourist" German in an English school, who now lives with an Italian fluent in English and has entire swathes of friends who speak foreign languages.
English is universally derided among them for being the easiest to learn. The grammar is pathetic. The rules are arbitrary but easily picked up. The words all comes from Latin or Greek or Germanic originally.
And being bi-lingual opens up the creative areas of the brain associated with language. While you're 3-7 years of age, your brain will accept another language with ease. It won't even hinder you learning other things as you learn it. And you'll be bi-lingual by the time you're an adult with no extraneous effort. However, if you don't get it into the language-processing areas of the brain by that age, you will GREATLY struggle to learn a language later.
And by learning a language, I mean being able to live normally in the country for a year without resorting to translation tools, not asking the way to the airport in a single, broken accent.
My girlfriend's command of multiple languages is impressive. And it comes about because she was taught English in school and it was SO MUCH easier a language to learn than her own. It's basically the baby-language of foreign languages.
It's not about tourism.
It's not about being able to phone up a foreign company and sell to them.
It's literally an expansion of your whole thought processes and language interpretation that allows you a much richer method of communication, no matter what the language.
And while you're a child, you'll just absorb it - like any child in a bi-lingual home. But when you grow up, you'll struggle and have to spend 10 years learning to get the grammar, accent, structure, phrasing and wording correct enough to blend in. And it will never be "natural". But, learning a foreign language in school, it can be "natural" to your thought processes.
They say you know when you've actually learned a language because you dream in it. That's how natural it becomes and you get the richness of expression available from all the languages you know.
It's not about whether you know Perl, or French. It's about being able to genericise concepts enough that even when speaking in several languages at once you get a deeper understanding of what the grammar means and how the structure should be to be common to all languages.
Someone who programs professionally in a range of programming languages will, generally speaking, be more fluent in any particular one. The same as someone who speaks more than one language being, generally speaking, more capable with their use of language overall.