But with DSL and cable modems going down to $40/mo, can you offer co-location with 1Mb/s for that little?
Well, if you're wanting to ensure uptime and connectivity, you definitely won't want to use broadband. They're absolutely great for personal use, but in the event of an outage, they're relatively low-priority (behind leased lines like T-1's, etc.), so a co-lo service would not be a bad idea, assuming they're multi-homed, etc.
I'm not sure that 'editorial control' applies in this case. Obviously, IANALBALFA (I am not a lawyer but a lowly firewall administrator), but generally I thought that applied to content providers versus carriers. In this case, the company has a responsibility to take reasonable efforts to maintain a tolerant work environment. Requiring 100% accuracy would be unreasonable. OTOH, if nothing is done, even at a policy or managerial level, then the company is certainly open to all sorts of nasty litigation.
This access is ostensibly not for personal use (yeah, right, and nobody makes personal calls from their work phone, either), so the company isn't required to allow ANYTHING that's not business-related.
From the article, referring to an internal IBM report on Linux:
To combat Sun and Microsoft, the report recommended, IBM should retool all its server operating systems, from the mainframe OS/390 to AIX, IBM's version of Unix, to run Linux smoothly.
What's this about running Linux on AIX? Make sense to anybody else?
Please note: the below is an explanation, not a defense. I didn't make this decision; it happened before I came to this company.
I work for a very large company that uses CyberNOT, which (as I learned in this discussion) is the name of the list for CyberPatrol. But it's important to realize that my company uses this, not for censorship, but for protection against sexual harassment lawsuits. The suits who made the decision are well aware that this product (like every other product in this category) doesn't block everything. But by using it, the organization is showing 'due diligence' in an effort to maintain a harassment-free workplace. (God, I sound like one of THEM now!) So if anyone were to ever sue, stating that the corporation tolerated porn-surfing at the workplace, we can point and say, "See! We tried!"
Personally, I think a better way to handle it is to let managers manage, and have draconian punishments for individuals who violate the policy. It is true that in a work environment, such surfing has no place. This is not a library with constitutionally protected free speech, nor is it imposed on employees' personal web surfing at home. If you wanna look at playboy.com, go right ahead. But it doesn't belong on your desk, not necessarily for religious reasons, but because that can in fact create one of those "hostile work environments".
Finally, a censorship issue that I can have an effect on (however small...)
I work for a large corporation that does use content blocking. This is mostly to prevent later claims of institutional sexual harassment. (No flames, please -- it's been made quite clear within the organization that I, personally, am opposed to this, for a number of reasons, only some of which are related to censorship/freedom of speech issues.) In the future, if/when we decide to revisit the content blocking service provider (I believe we currently use CyberNOT), at least egregious handling like this will help me keep CyberPatrol from being used. I'm not a fan of CyberNOT, either, but the contract's been signed, so I'm stuck for a while.
Mattel is really shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. This is at the level of UCITA. As much as corporations demand performance benchmarks, does this company really believe that such benchmarks of their "performance" (ie how effective their blocking really is) won't be desired? Get with it, folks...
I think there's a large contingent of potential players who wouldn't necessarily want to be Jedi. (I would... Obi-Wan was my boyhood hero).
It will be interesting to see how they balance it. The SW RPG (old-school) worked OK because they didn't have to balance thousands of players. Here, it will be a little different. But there's enough going on in places like Corellia and Tatooine that getting mixed up in even local rebellions (or really being on the fringe of the galaxy, where the Empire/Republic, depending on the chosen era) will be easy and fun.
Disclaimer: Yes, I could pass "just the Networking Essentials" portion of thest test.
Your error is in assuming that/.ers have no other experience with MCSE's or other certifications. I know a lot of MCSE's, and I would definitely say that the vast majority of them lack a lot of knowledge. ("Looks like you need to reinstall Windows." Way to ascertain the root cause, dude!) I worked for an MCSE once, and it quickly became apparent that she know virtually nothing about TCP/IP. Considering that she was the Manager of Internet Operations at an ISP, that was a severe handicap. And there are countless more examples. I would say that easily 80% of the MCSE's I've run into know crap, not even including the jokers who are studying for it now.
OK, there's nothing saying that an MCSE is automatically a fan of Microsoft. And I don't think anyone is saying that it's pointless to know Microsoft products.
The point remains that there are too many MCSE's out there who know next to nothing for the rest of us to be able to put any credibility into that certification. Other certifications may not necessarily work you harder, but my experience has generally been that admins certified on, say, Solaris, typically know more and are more competent, even if the test isn't massively harder.
There's already something similar (though not exactly what you're proposing). Security audits doing just this are often performed by 'tiger teams', whether by internal employees or external auditors hired for that purpose.
I work in network security for a large corporation, and the problem with the view that "hackers only point out weaknesses in your network, so you should thank them" is that they're exactly the people we need to keep out. This business of non-malicious vs malicious is not the point. Was the person authorized? No? Then it was wrong. Yes, I personally am glad they may not have had intent to do something further, since that means that there's less work to be done. But the fact that someone went somewhere they're not supposed to go is not excused by the fact that our security had a chink in it.
All that aside, authorized audits are a good thing. This way, you guarantee that they're not malicious (assuming you trust the auditors;> ), and still find holes.
Here's the thing: most of those successes you list (I'm not familiar with JServ, since I don't work with Java at all) aren't Linux-specific. The most outstanding example in your list is Apache, which was succeeding quite well before Linux. Our favorite OS may have contributed to Apache's continued success (and much of the interest in GNOME/KDE/Enlightenment/a thousand other packages), but Linux itself did not innovate those things.
And there are other ways to account for Linux' success other than innovation. Linux has given a relatively powerful and stable environment to the low end user, and despite what the FSF may say, many users are more attracted to the "free beer" than the "free speech". In my case, I think that the "free speech" is cool and brings a lot to the table, but I originally became a Linux user because I could get it for free without violating any license agreements or IP laws.
One could make the case that open source development is innovative, but let's be very honest. OS did a lot before Linus came up with this project. And someday, there will be a new darling of the open source world.
Lots of things succeed without being innovative. In fact, many times, you don't want to be on the "bleeding edge", but able to take advantage of new developments when they do in fact pan out. Doing something well is often better than doing it first.
Actually, if you read the entire/. comment, that was mentioned. How is it misleading to state exactly what the story is about?
As you might expect, the coursework is (an interdisciplinary approach to) designing and coding games, not playing them.
Doesn't sound misleading to me... I thought it was a pretty funny headline.
Re:Reversing cause and effect
on
LonelyNet
·
· Score: 2
I don't know about "Lonely people become Internet users", but I certainly agree with your basic point. I'm not sure that the Internet causes people to avoid human interaction, but I would say it's possible that people who want to avoid human interaction use the Net more. Further, there's something I don't believe was covered by this study. I don't want to avoid human interaction; I want to avoid unnecessary human interaction. That is, I want more time to spend with my wife, with my family, with the people important to me. My bank teller and the clerk at the local Fry's Electronics are not important to me, so interaction with them can be minimized and I don't care. So instead of spending two hours looking for the exact book I want, I can head over to Fatbrain, order it, then spend time with the people I care about. That's not detrimental to human interaction; it's a positive move.
Hmm... I smell a potential conspiracy. I'm not accusing anybody of anything, but what if someone caused all this in the hopes of raising more consulting business (a less-paranoid version of the theory that the NSA is behind all this...)
---------- They contend that DeCSS is necessary to achieve interoperability between computers running on the Linux system and DVDs and that this exception therefore is satisfied.
This contention fails for three reasons.
First, defendants have offered no evidence to support this assertion.
Second, even assuming that DeCSS runs under Linux, it concededly runs under Windows---a far more widely used operating system---as well. It therefore cannot reasonably be said that DeCSS was developed "for the sole purpose'' of achieving interoperability between Linux and DVDs.
Finally, and most important, the legislative history makes it abundantly clear that Section 1201(f) permits reverse engineering of copyrighted computer programs only and does not authorize circumvention of technological systems that control access to other copyrighted works, such as movies. In consequence, the reverse engineering exception does not apply. ----------------
This is really strange.
* No one offered any evidence that DeCSS is required to run under Linux? That should be taken care of, and *fast*. * This was for technical reasons, and can quickly be taken care of. Fine, concede on the Windows software (sort of -- the source will not be hard to port no matter what). This still doesn't take care of the Linux versions of the software. * I can't speak to the third contention.
I'd like to see more RPG's (none of this Nethack crap:) as well, especially non-fantasy based one. Wizards and all are cool, but gimme a good cyberpunk or even Bond-style RPG anytime.
That's been there for a lot of weeks, ever since they updated their web page...
Re:Dated, but in a good way.
on
Childhood's End
·
· Score: 2
When you try to take this book out of the fifties, it quickly ceases to make as much sense. The book was designed to shock people in a time of prosperity and mild close-mindedness into thinking a bit more about their predjudices and beliefs.
Sounds a bit like today, doesn't it? Granted, it may not be that communism is the "great enemy" now, but one could definitely say that this still fits our society, more so than ever in the last 30 years or so. And I'd venture to say that a number of those issues are still hot-button issues for a lot of people today.
Nope, no one is required to carry it. Freedom of speech doesn't supercede (sp?) my freedom to hear. If I choose not to re-print or listen to someone's words, unless I have a contractual obligation to them, they have no recourse against me. @Home would be laughed out of court.
Actually, @Home owns the *entire* 24 network. I'm an @Home user (for the moment, I'm in the middle of switching to DSL) and I usually block all traffic from hosts on that network (except from my DNS servers) to my home network.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you're wanting to ensure uptime and connectivity, you definitely won't want to use broadband. They're absolutely great for personal use, but in the event of an outage, they're relatively low-priority (behind leased lines like T-1's, etc.), so a co-lo service would not be a bad idea, assuming they're multi-homed, etc.
Other than Wired itself, of course, /. is ahead of just about EVERYBODY. CNN, AP, Reuters, no one has it yet. Hee hee, power to the nerds!
Well, I'm not sure about the programmer in Europe, but a lawsuit was filed in Canadian court against the Canadian programmer.
This access is ostensibly not for personal use (yeah, right, and nobody makes personal calls from their work phone, either), so the company isn't required to allow ANYTHING that's not business-related.
From the article, referring to an internal IBM report on Linux:
To combat Sun and Microsoft, the report recommended, IBM should retool all its server operating systems, from the mainframe OS/390 to AIX, IBM's version of Unix, to run Linux smoothly.
What's this about running Linux on AIX? Make sense to anybody else?
I work for a very large company that uses CyberNOT, which (as I learned in this discussion) is the name of the list for CyberPatrol. But it's important to realize that my company uses this, not for censorship, but for protection against sexual harassment lawsuits. The suits who made the decision are well aware that this product (like every other product in this category) doesn't block everything. But by using it, the organization is showing 'due diligence' in an effort to maintain a harassment-free workplace. (God, I sound like one of THEM now!) So if anyone were to ever sue, stating that the corporation tolerated porn-surfing at the workplace, we can point and say, "See! We tried!"
Personally, I think a better way to handle it is to let managers manage, and have draconian punishments for individuals who violate the policy. It is true that in a work environment, such surfing has no place. This is not a library with constitutionally protected free speech, nor is it imposed on employees' personal web surfing at home. If you wanna look at playboy.com, go right ahead. But it doesn't belong on your desk, not necessarily for religious reasons, but because that can in fact create one of those "hostile work environments".
So you see: Reading /. can be work-related! :)
Thanks for the info. This explains why I've been having trouble gathering info on it.
I work for a large corporation that does use content blocking. This is mostly to prevent later claims of institutional sexual harassment. (No flames, please -- it's been made quite clear within the organization that I, personally, am opposed to this, for a number of reasons, only some of which are related to censorship/freedom of speech issues.) In the future, if/when we decide to revisit the content blocking service provider (I believe we currently use CyberNOT), at least egregious handling like this will help me keep CyberPatrol from being used. I'm not a fan of CyberNOT, either, but the contract's been signed, so I'm stuck for a while.
Mattel is really shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. This is at the level of UCITA. As much as corporations demand performance benchmarks, does this company really believe that such benchmarks of their "performance" (ie how effective their blocking really is) won't be desired? Get with it, folks...
It will be interesting to see how they balance it. The SW RPG (old-school) worked OK because they didn't have to balance thousands of players. Here, it will be a little different. But there's enough going on in places like Corellia and Tatooine that getting mixed up in even local rebellions (or really being on the fringe of the galaxy, where the Empire/Republic, depending on the chosen era) will be easy and fun.
Your error is in assuming that /.ers have no other experience with MCSE's or other certifications. I know a lot of MCSE's, and I would definitely say that the vast majority of them lack a lot of knowledge. ("Looks like you need to reinstall Windows." Way to ascertain the root cause, dude!) I worked for an MCSE once, and it quickly became apparent that she know virtually nothing about TCP/IP. Considering that she was the Manager of Internet Operations at an ISP, that was a severe handicap. And there are countless more examples. I would say that easily 80% of the MCSE's I've run into know crap, not even including the jokers who are studying for it now.
OK, there's nothing saying that an MCSE is automatically a fan of Microsoft. And I don't think anyone is saying that it's pointless to know Microsoft products.
The point remains that there are too many MCSE's out there who know next to nothing for the rest of us to be able to put any credibility into that certification. Other certifications may not necessarily work you harder, but my experience has generally been that admins certified on, say, Solaris, typically know more and are more competent, even if the test isn't massively harder.
I believe that Ghostscript also reads PDF files, though I wouldn't swear to it, since I've never tried it myself.
I work in network security for a large corporation, and the problem with the view that "hackers only point out weaknesses in your network, so you should thank them" is that they're exactly the people we need to keep out. This business of non-malicious vs malicious is not the point. Was the person authorized? No? Then it was wrong. Yes, I personally am glad they may not have had intent to do something further, since that means that there's less work to be done. But the fact that someone went somewhere they're not supposed to go is not excused by the fact that our security had a chink in it.
All that aside, authorized audits are a good thing. This way, you guarantee that they're not malicious (assuming you trust the auditors ;> ), and still find holes.
And there are other ways to account for Linux' success other than innovation. Linux has given a relatively powerful and stable environment to the low end user, and despite what the FSF may say, many users are more attracted to the "free beer" than the "free speech". In my case, I think that the "free speech" is cool and brings a lot to the table, but I originally became a Linux user because I could get it for free without violating any license agreements or IP laws.
One could make the case that open source development is innovative, but let's be very honest. OS did a lot before Linus came up with this project. And someday, there will be a new darling of the open source world.
Lots of things succeed without being innovative. In fact, many times, you don't want to be on the "bleeding edge", but able to take advantage of new developments when they do in fact pan out. Doing something well is often better than doing it first.
As you might expect, the coursework is (an interdisciplinary approach to) designing and coding games, not playing them.
Doesn't sound misleading to me... I thought it was a pretty funny headline.
I don't know about "Lonely people become Internet users", but I certainly agree with your basic point. I'm not sure that the Internet causes people to avoid human interaction, but I would say it's possible that people who want to avoid human interaction use the Net more. Further, there's something I don't believe was covered by this study. I don't want to avoid human interaction; I want to avoid unnecessary human interaction. That is, I want more time to spend with my wife, with my family, with the people important to me. My bank teller and the clerk at the local Fry's Electronics are not important to me, so interaction with them can be minimized and I don't care. So instead of spending two hours looking for the exact book I want, I can head over to Fatbrain, order it, then spend time with the people I care about. That's not detrimental to human interaction; it's a positive move.
Hmm... I smell a potential conspiracy. I'm not accusing anybody of anything, but what if someone caused all this in the hopes of raising more consulting business (a less-paranoid version of the theory that the NSA is behind all this...)
Hmm, being as both /. and themes.org are now part of VA Linux per the Andover buy-out, methinks you have answered your own question.
"Why do we care?"
"Because that's where we are."
From the ruling:
----------
They contend that DeCSS is necessary to achieve interoperability between computers running on the Linux system and DVDs and that this
exception therefore is satisfied.
This contention fails for three reasons.
First, defendants have offered no evidence to support this assertion.
Second, even assuming that DeCSS runs under Linux, it concededly runs under Windows---a far more widely used operating
system---as well. It therefore cannot reasonably be said that DeCSS was developed "for the sole purpose'' of achieving interoperability
between Linux and DVDs.
Finally, and most important, the legislative history makes it abundantly clear that Section 1201(f) permits reverse engineering of
copyrighted computer programs only and does not authorize circumvention of technological systems that control access to other
copyrighted works, such as movies.
In consequence, the reverse engineering exception does not apply.
----------------
This is really strange.
* No one offered any evidence that DeCSS is required to run under Linux? That should be taken care of, and *fast*.
* This was for technical reasons, and can quickly be taken care of. Fine, concede on the Windows software (sort of -- the source will not be hard to port no matter what). This still doesn't take care of the Linux versions of the software.
* I can't speak to the third contention.
Standard IANAL disclaimer applies.
I'd like to see more RPG's (none of this Nethack crap :) as well, especially non-fantasy based one. Wizards and all are cool, but gimme a good cyberpunk or even Bond-style RPG anytime.
That's been there for a lot of weeks, ever since they updated their web page...
When you try to take this book out of the fifties, it quickly ceases to make as much sense. The book was designed to shock people in a time of prosperity and mild close-mindedness into thinking a bit more about their predjudices and beliefs.
Sounds a bit like today, doesn't it? Granted, it may not be that communism is the "great enemy" now, but one could definitely say that this still fits our society, more so than ever in the last 30 years or so. And I'd venture to say that a number of those issues are still hot-button issues for a lot of people today.
Thanks for the correction...
Nope, no one is required to carry it. Freedom of speech doesn't supercede (sp?) my freedom to hear. If I choose not to re-print or listen to someone's words, unless I have a contractual obligation to them, they have no recourse against me. @Home would be laughed out of court.
Actually, @Home owns the *entire* 24 network. I'm an @Home user (for the moment, I'm in the middle of switching to DSL) and I usually block all traffic from hosts on that network (except from my DNS servers) to my home network.
I can find no mention of this press release on their website (one would think it would show up there pretty quickly...)
Can anyone give us anything that will allow us to confirm this?