Someone can have "wired equivalent" access to your network from possibly miles away using a good antenna, so physical security is irrelevant.
This is something that doesn't seem to get a lot of attention. Even if you're using a rather low powered device, it is still fairly difficult to be sure of exactly where your signal is ending up or who is able to pick it up (which leads in to a discussion about directional antennas, I suppose).
Another point is that its very difficult to tell who is using a wireless network. With the conventional network it ultimately involves someone being reasonably obvious about having plugged a cable in to a drop. With wireless it could be the guy outside in the park with his laptop or a sniffer sitting in a car in the parkinglot. Or someone in an office building blocks away using the right kind of antenna (as pointed out previously). Sniffing / attacking a wireless network involves considerably less risk than a conventional wired network.
They will only follow if morons continue to buy their products. If you buy someone else's products, they lose money and stop doing it.
That makes some pretty heavy assumptions towards the consumer. Unfortunately, many consumers these days lack the education needed to make an informed purchase. This is especially true in technology markets where becoming informed can take considerable time - especially if you are new or lack the knack of understanding tech quickly.
I am finding these recent industry scam alert articles very usefull. I'm no longer in a position to keep tabs on this sector of the market. But I'll need to make a new printer purchase here soon - these articles have alerted me to a few issues I should keep in mind as well as recommendations for companies who have not followed these business practices. Secondly, I'm always pumped for information on consumer computer items from coworkers and friends. I'm glad to share what I know and willing to admit when I either don't know or my knowledge is probably dated (which is more often as of late). Once again, I now have additional information to pass on to those who would have been unaware otherwise.
All my hardware worked - granted, none of it was bleeding edge, but it worked. Same for any device I've had to plug into a USB port.
I use Win2K and Linux (mostly Debian) on a regular basis. Win2K tends to work with most hardware because most (not all) manufactorers support it. Linux tends to work with most of my hardware, but mainly because I tend to try and only buy hardware that has manufactor support (or successful development). I am now finding myself more often suprised when hardware DOESN'T work with Linux than when it does.
And yes, I want automagical update downloading. If I'm blindly installing the software to begin with, I don't mind blindly installing the updates to the software either.
That seems to be fairly commonplace these days. Debian has always had it. RedHat offers such a service. Such a service is a cornerstone of Lindows. Just to name a few.
XP does it all. End users don't care that it does some of it due to market dominence. They just want something that works.
If something that "just works" was so important, Apple would have had far more market share well before WinXP ever surfaced. Its an admirable goal and definately worth pursuing. But its not the be-all and end-all to increased acceptance of the platform.
In Windows, unless you explicitly tell it otherwise, all apps are installed in C:\Program Files, so when I'm looking for a program's folder I don't have to spend 5 minutes searching my hard drive for it like I often do in Linux.
There are ways to handle this. First, if you know the command, you can find out where its living with whereis (although there is more to the whereis command). Secondly, you should be able to get a comprehensive listing of what was installed for your application via your system's package manager. In my case, I use Debian so "dpkg --listfiles [package]" will provide that list (this ability is also available in Synaptic - a GUI frontend).
In my experience, most binaries go in to/usr/bin. Docs go in/usr/share/doc/[package name]. Etc. And/usr/local tends to be used for resources (backgrounds, themes / skins, icons, etc)I've downloaded from other sources or locally compiled apps. One advantage to/usr/local is that I can install the official package for an app as well as compile my own versions if I want to try out unstable versions not already pre-packaged (or with different compile options, etc).
However, recently the Bush Administration has stated that it is unacceptable if the Iraqi people attempt to build an Islamic government (like that in Iran). And, Rosen is "writing" Iraqi law?
You may be confusing the two issues here.
First, copyright law should be a product of the eventual Iraqi govvernment once it is in place. Having any US representative (much less Hilary Rosen herself) taking on that task is simply undermining the authority of that future government.
But the issue of the Fundamentalist Islamic government is different. Allowing Shiite religious leaders to seize control doesn't sound much different than a Sunni-dominated government under the Ba'ath party. And neither option seems much better than a Northern Iraq speratist government dominated by Kurdish leaders.
The trick to Iraq's new government is going to be keeping the country whole and allowing distinct cultures and peoples (with considerable historical baggage towards each other) to all have a say in that unified government. No small feat. And likely served best by a secular democracy.
The US is right to be guarded against those who see an oportunity to seize power rather than form a better government for the Iraqi people. But then, that should count the same for influence from fundamentalist neighbors as it does for Hilary Rosen.
All most people care about is whether it costrs them money. mp3 is free for most users so what benefit does this strange sounding opgg format give?
The average user doesn't understand the majority of technology they use. But that doesn't mean they won't follow a trend. And that trend is often set by those who either do understand the technology or understand the business around the technology in question.
Outside of obvious defects, usually highlighted by a lumbering mixture of competition and pundits, the average user will follow the market. Even if that market shift costs them. But when it doesn't cost anything, they'll shift without comment.
Its the old "how to boil a frog" routine.
Ogg vorbis is available either as a free plugin or as a default in most popular software music players. If content starts showing up in this format, the average user will go clicky-clicky on it and play it. They may even want to play it on their portable music system of choice - which means supporting the format directly or including conversion software.
But the real push will be early adopters, technophiles, and audiophiles. If the format fits these requirements and an early demand forms then the industry will likely meet that demand (especially if it doesn't cost them much to do so - back to the frog).
And that just makes it even easier for the adverage user to follow along.
You don't want to make a warranty claim and would rather resolve the problem yourself without involving the manufacturer.
It would depend on how AMD is going to resolve the warenty on the fan. Do they require shipping it back? How long does it take to replace the defunct unit? It may very well end up being quicker and cheaper to get a superior part on one's own.
Now - a replacement CPU. That's a far more expensive part. Price will likely outweight many people's time requirements.
To each their own. Me, I'm a little bit more worried about the here and now since that has a much more drastic affect on my career. Granted - I'm also concerned about the future. But I suspect Richie's target future is much more distant than mine.
Re:Add vpn to make it complete
on
Cisco's Wi-Fi Phone
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Oddly enough, this is covered in the article:
Cisco has big plans for this product line. Marthin De Beer, vice president and general manager of Cisco's IP Wireless business unit, says that down the road Cisco wants to build a virtual private networking capability into the handset so that the phone will work at public hotspots. Using a VPN lets you connect back to your corporate network over any Internet connection while encrypting the traffic to prevent eavesdroppers and network snoops from seeing your data. What it would allow in this case is the potential for the Wi-Fi network at an airport to become a connection for a Wi-Fi handset--again allowing you to make and receive calls as though you were at your desk.
The problem is that they were parodying American McGee by using a registered trademark. They clearly weren't parodying Strawberry Shortcake - if they were, it would be more clear cut.
The problem is the nature of what they were parodying. American McGee's work took what our popular culture largely considers a nice, safe, child's tale and painted it in rather dark, disturbing hues. The PA crew simply drew from a more recent collection of cultural safe-for-kids icons and produced a different version as if it too were given American McGee's same treatment. It is a parody of McGee's style and a particularly saccarine-sweet line of children's icons / toys that surfaced in the 80s.
Perhapse they should have picked some safer material. Perhapse something else done by Disney.
Which leads in to a lot of rather interesting points. First off, Disney is hardly "safe". But at the same time, a lot of Disney IP is actually their own treatment of cultural tales and public domain stories - mucking around in that territory is fairly safe as long as the images don't come too close to Disney's images.
Oddly enough, Disney was one of the first entities to really manage coopting American culture as owned IP of the Disney corporation (whether that was the origional idea of the Man and the Mouse). Its kind of interesting to see a younger generation referencing their own cultural memory and finding it wholly owned by a corporattion willing to aggressively defend their property. The PA folks don't even have the public domain versions of cultural icons to fall back on.
Finally, despite the memories based on Disney's work... Alice in Wonderland is actually fairly twisted even without McGee's treatment.
Windows doesn't crash anymore. Perhaps if you were to install one of the newer Windows OS's such as XP, you would know this.
Windows has gotten better. Pretty darned good, in fact. But my personal experience suggests that claiming even the newer offerings don't crash is still a stretch - albeit less of one these days.
To be fair - I've crashed XWindows environments before. And on a rare occasion, my old Voodoo2/Glide combination will leave my old machine in an unusable state (I have to SSH from another machine on the network to try to recover it or, ultimately, reboot).
Neither Linux or Windows is bulletproof. But Windows is certainly catching up. About time.
The Linux community laughed at Windows for the past five years. In that time, it went from a joke to a serious contender.
Oddly enough, Microsoft has maintained that Windows has been a serious contender since WinNT was first released. Furthermore, they have been scoffing at Linux for the past 5 years as it has been gaining more and more attention - now often presented by industry press as a contender for anything from proprietary Unix to Windows (and even the occasional niche OS offering).
I certainly wouldn't paint Windows as the underdog here. But it is nice to see them react to competition.
Probably not - the "common wisdom" is that Linux can do whatever Windows does and better, yet Ritchie uses it. Surely he could figure out how to make Linux do all these things you mention he needs Windows for.
So what was Richie's reasons for using WinNT? From the article:
Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9. For stuff like getting Excel and Word things, plus much WWW browsing, I revert to NT.
We're back to the same old arguments. Linux (and often other Unix/varients) handle the basic tasks fine - word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and remote access (even Terminal Services). But the Devil's in the details, of course. The more complex a Word or Excel document, the less likely it can be handled. The more a web site relies on Internet Explorer, the less it will work with other browsers.
How one interprets this depends on the individual. Some may say this is proof that Linux/Unix can't do it all. Others may point out that 1) it is simply a combination of vendor lock-in and ignorance of those who continue to support it and 2) amazing that Linux/Unix can handle any aspect of these lock-in technologies.
I suspect Richie is simply being pragmatic about the situation - using whatever tools he has to. After all, his interest isn't in the current IT landscape. His interest is in the future. And for him, that is Plan 9.
It's just too bad I already paid for the game once. $80 for a $40 game? ... Ditto with Kohan, the Sims, Neverwinter Nights, etc... I'm all for the parallel development though - go UT2003!
My understanding is that one can use the Windows-only copy of NWN and simply download the Linux client (albeit still beta).
I suppose its a kind of lagging parallel development.;)
I know that Linux and GNU software carries some terms of their own, and I can't imagine any Open Source developer that would be that thrilled if Microsoft pulled a quid-pro-pro and copied our stuff into their stuff.
You'd be shocked to find out Microsoft does indeed sell products that include applications licensed under the GPL.
I know this wont be a popular viewpoint here on slashdot, but perhaps we shouldn't reward people who break laws [by hacking] by giving them a job?
If you (or your workplace) has a technically competent IT department, there is a good chance you already have hired hackers. If you also have a technically competent Infosec department, there's an even better chance. The only difference we're now hashing out is whether you wish to limit yourself to those who were either smart enough, or lucky enough, to never have gotten caught.
The important issue is not a criminal "hacker" record, but rather the abilities of the individual in question. If they are able to bring a particular skill-set to the table and perform to expectations, then they make a good employee.
The recent demonizing of "hackers" seems to have little to do with ability or morality. Such laws and legal actions seem to have more to do with publicity. A lawmaker or prosecuting attorney's career should have little to do with your hiring process.
There are exceptions. If the individual in question committed embezzlement, then they have demonstrated a willingness to victimize their employer (to say the least). Such an individual would be a risk - but then, that has little to do with a "hacking" conviction.
The other extreme is seeking to hire those with criminal convictions. This is perhaps a better example of "reward[ing] people who break laws." A computer crime conviction does little to prove one's skill-set. Again - it proves one was either stupid or unlucky. Or upset the wrong people. It doesn't prove that one would be able to deliver as a consultant or IT team member.
One final note - the old days of hacking seem to be passing. Hacking, no matter your definition, has always been about learning a system. Back in the old days, the only way one could gain more time/access to a system was to learn how to manipulate the system and provide it oneself. Without permission, if need be.
These days, one can create a functionally similar environment to most of what one would find in corporate and Government network at home using cheap, old hardware and free software. The need... and the excuse... to attack remote systems to gain the access needed to learn is fast fading. Of course, that doesn't take in to account proprietary hardware and software. But then it becomes a question of the risk being caught versus the lure of such systems. But then - if you learn enough and build a career, you'll get access to those systems legally.
With the internet, many of the ads are through 3rd party companies like doubleclick, etc. and is up to them to generate "data" for their clients regarding some kind of measured "effectiveness" of said ads, and will try those nasty tricks that we have all come to love like popups/unders, flash ads, obnoxious animated ads, etc.
Doubleclick poisoned the Internet advertising well.
The advertising industry has always been a bit of a black art. There is the action - an advertising campaign. Then there's the reaction - increased sales. And then there's a lot of theory how the two are associated.
This is where the "black art" comes in to play - advertising is not an exact science. There are campaigns that fail. There are campaigns that are remarkably successful - even becoming cultural icons. There are campaigns that become cultural icons but ultimately don't lead to increased sales... and thus are ironic failures. There is no guarantee any advertising agency or department can recreate any of these failures or successes at any given time.
Doubleclick promised a Holy Grail in advertising - quantifiable success. Internet advertising would be different. A Doubleclick ad could be immediately tracked. No more publishing a phone number and waiting for the phone calls over the next month. No tracking sales from distributers and guessing which advertising campaign was responsible for any increase in sales (assuming it was actually one of the current campaigns). You could tell an advertisement worked because it got clicks. And thus you could justify your budget spent on advertising with Doubleclick.
Everyone bought in to the idea. Money flowed. That is... until the click-throughs failed to live up to the expectations of the industry.
The problem is that advertising does not change with the medium used. One does not immediately rush to a phone to call 1-800-ABC-CARS when that hot, new flashy car shows up on TV. It doesn't matter how sparkling the soda looks, we don't run down to the vending machine or out to the store the second we see its image advertised. Nor do we immediately interrupt our busy day to browse a new business product even if we may be in the market for what it promises to offer. Conventional advertising knows this and a large part of its theory, and its black art, is based on strategies based on a more long-term behavior.
Internet advertising should have followed the same concepts and sold itself as part of an emerging, widely-accessed media. Not the deliverer of a Holy Grail.
If you visit a website such as slashdot.org, they cannot possibly know what you are interested in in order to target their ads (they try to guess, e.g. make it tech-oriented on slashdot)
Wow. You mean advertisers are having to fall back on the OLD way of doing business? Amazing.
If you're selling something of general interest (and have the budget) - say a SUV, then maybe a large advertising campaign on CNN / cnn.com makes sense. But when you're selling to a niche market you seek out that maket. Underwater basket weaving suppliers would be better served advertising in UBW World Magazine or aquabasket.com than TIME.
I was thinking about IBM's defective hard drives and laptop batteries.
Good point. Though this doesn't surface as often as more positive noise from IBM.
Now... TurboTax. I was thinking of an outdated list - TurboTax doesn't fit in the old days of Big Blue. But coming back to current events, sure. TurboTax gets right up there.
Ummm. You might want to check the date on that list. IBM are "good guys" now. I know. Its wierd. I consider it proof of a Universe with perverse humor - and even business is not sacred.
Of course - I'm not sure where your list came from. When IBM was 'evil', Microsoft were up-and-coming, scrappy underdogs (kind of good-guy in contrast, I suppose). And Amazon was a geography reference. TurboTax doesn't seem like it should even show up anywhere. But the MPAA was still evil and realing from 'rape' that VCRs would visit on their industry. RIAA was still evil too, I'm sure.
You are free to choose whatever software you want. You then give up certain features or interoperability abilities but that is something you factor in. Same goes with price, sometimes you really do get what you pay for.
Indeed. And sometimes you GAIN interoperability and features. Sometimes price is rather arbitrarily set according to "what the market will bare" rather than a barometer of quality. It pays to be an informed consumer and do one's own research rather than relying on someone's sales force. Welcome to the free market.
Please take the politics and personal agendas out of everything you do, especially software. Many are tired of seeing everything laced with your crap.
This is not reasonable. Everyone has and agenda. Any time more than one person is involved with something, politics come in to play.
The Open Source and Free Software movements have very obvious (although slightly differing) agendas and politics. I suspect that this is the focus of the above comment. However, let us not forget that commercial software vendors also have their own agendas and politics - ultimately, selling their product. Sometimes this goal is realized by offering a better product. Sometimes the goal is realized by limiting users with various "lock-in" tactics.
A smart consumer (be it private, business, or government) will be aware of these issues and use them as a guideline to match their own agendas and politics.
So you're going to create a database telling people exactly what software government agencies use and give them the code. Does anyone else see this as a security risk?
Sure - there is a potential for additional risk with such a listing. However, there is not as much risk as it may initially appear to present.
First off - the list may not be accurate. Software solutions and version numbers change - often faster than these kinds of lists update. An attacker will have to assume the list offers merely a starting point and will have to verify the information on their own.
On that point - an attacker will be able to profile the environment with or without the list. Even an attacker who wishes to avoid too much attention could easily scan a potential target and still blend in to the the background noise Government agencies deal with their public-facing networks daily.
Of course, that assumes the attacker is even going to bother profiling the target. The vast majority of attacks against Government and Corporate resources seem to be crimes of convenience, as it were. The target is attacked merely because it is there and vulnerable. There is no actual interest in the target itself (beyond perhaps the available resources or address space). These attacks quickly follow wide-spread scans. Attackers may even simply run exploits blindly against systems and dispense entirely with any form of intelligence gathering.
And so there you are. The current environment involves blind attacks, random attackers, and the occasional intelligent attacker who will go to their own measures to profile your environment. One should already take measures to protect one's environment against this sort of daily exposure.
Publishing basic software packages being used in an attempt to leverage knowledge and experience from the community and other organizations does little to expand this exposure. And it may very well present a much higher benefit than what little additional attention it attracts.
I think that credit would go to IBM, with their mainframe OSes, dont you think? IBM was selling many of those machines much before M$ came into the picture.
So are you disagreeing with the parent post's claims? First paragraph reads:
Back in the 70's, IBM came out with their VM meta-OS. Its origins were in academia, not in IBM's shops, and in all the installations that I saw, it always came with full source. They actively encouraged customers to submit not just bug reports, but fixes, which were then sent out to other customers.
Or do I misunderstand the reference to a "mainframe OS"?
Slashdot Mirror
This is something that doesn't seem to get a lot of attention. Even if you're using a rather low powered device, it is still fairly difficult to be sure of exactly where your signal is ending up or who is able to pick it up (which leads in to a discussion about directional antennas, I suppose).
Another point is that its very difficult to tell who is using a wireless network. With the conventional network it ultimately involves someone being reasonably obvious about having plugged a cable in to a drop. With wireless it could be the guy outside in the park with his laptop or a sniffer sitting in a car in the parkinglot. Or someone in an office building blocks away using the right kind of antenna (as pointed out previously). Sniffing / attacking a wireless network involves considerably less risk than a conventional wired network.
That makes some pretty heavy assumptions towards the consumer. Unfortunately, many consumers these days lack the education needed to make an informed purchase. This is especially true in technology markets where becoming informed can take considerable time - especially if you are new or lack the knack of understanding tech quickly.
I am finding these recent industry scam alert articles very usefull. I'm no longer in a position to keep tabs on this sector of the market. But I'll need to make a new printer purchase here soon - these articles have alerted me to a few issues I should keep in mind as well as recommendations for companies who have not followed these business practices. Secondly, I'm always pumped for information on consumer computer items from coworkers and friends. I'm glad to share what I know and willing to admit when I either don't know or my knowledge is probably dated (which is more often as of late). Once again, I now have additional information to pass on to those who would have been unaware otherwise.
I use Win2K and Linux (mostly Debian) on a regular basis. Win2K tends to work with most hardware because most (not all) manufactorers support it. Linux tends to work with most of my hardware, but mainly because I tend to try and only buy hardware that has manufactor support (or successful development). I am now finding myself more often suprised when hardware DOESN'T work with Linux than when it does.
That seems to be fairly commonplace these days. Debian has always had it. RedHat offers such a service. Such a service is a cornerstone of Lindows. Just to name a few.
If something that "just works" was so important, Apple would have had far more market share well before WinXP ever surfaced. Its an admirable goal and definately worth pursuing. But its not the be-all and end-all to increased acceptance of the platform.
There are ways to handle this. First, if you know the command, you can find out where its living with whereis (although there is more to the whereis command). Secondly, you should be able to get a comprehensive listing of what was installed for your application via your system's package manager. In my case, I use Debian so "dpkg --listfiles [package]" will provide that list (this ability is also available in Synaptic - a GUI frontend).
In my experience, most binaries go in to
You may be confusing the two issues here.
First, copyright law should be a product of the eventual Iraqi govvernment once it is in place. Having any US representative (much less Hilary Rosen herself) taking on that task is simply undermining the authority of that future government.
But the issue of the Fundamentalist Islamic government is different. Allowing Shiite religious leaders to seize control doesn't sound much different than a Sunni-dominated government under the Ba'ath party. And neither option seems much better than a Northern Iraq speratist government dominated by Kurdish leaders.
The trick to Iraq's new government is going to be keeping the country whole and allowing distinct cultures and peoples (with considerable historical baggage towards each other) to all have a say in that unified government. No small feat. And likely served best by a secular democracy.
The US is right to be guarded against those who see an oportunity to seize power rather than form a better government for the Iraqi people. But then, that should count the same for influence from fundamentalist neighbors as it does for Hilary Rosen.
The average user doesn't understand the majority of technology they use. But that doesn't mean they won't follow a trend. And that trend is often set by those who either do understand the technology or understand the business around the technology in question.
Outside of obvious defects, usually highlighted by a lumbering mixture of competition and pundits, the average user will follow the market. Even if that market shift costs them. But when it doesn't cost anything, they'll shift without comment.
Its the old "how to boil a frog" routine.
Ogg vorbis is available either as a free plugin or as a default in most popular software music players. If content starts showing up in this format, the average user will go clicky-clicky on it and play it. They may even want to play it on their portable music system of choice - which means supporting the format directly or including conversion software.
But the real push will be early adopters, technophiles, and audiophiles. If the format fits these requirements and an early demand forms then the industry will likely meet that demand (especially if it doesn't cost them much to do so - back to the frog).
And that just makes it even easier for the adverage user to follow along.
It would depend on how AMD is going to resolve the warenty on the fan. Do they require shipping it back? How long does it take to replace the defunct unit? It may very well end up being quicker and cheaper to get a superior part on one's own.
Now - a replacement CPU. That's a far more expensive part. Price will likely outweight many people's time requirements.
To each their own. Me, I'm a little bit more worried about the here and now since that has a much more drastic affect on my career. Granted - I'm also concerned about the future. But I suspect Richie's target future is much more distant than mine.
The problem is the nature of what they were parodying. American McGee's work took what our popular culture largely considers a nice, safe, child's tale and painted it in rather dark, disturbing hues. The PA crew simply drew from a more recent collection of cultural safe-for-kids icons and produced a different version as if it too were given American McGee's same treatment. It is a parody of McGee's style and a particularly saccarine-sweet line of children's icons / toys that surfaced in the 80s.
Perhapse they should have picked some safer material. Perhapse something else done by Disney.
Which leads in to a lot of rather interesting points. First off, Disney is hardly "safe". But at the same time, a lot of Disney IP is actually their own treatment of cultural tales and public domain stories - mucking around in that territory is fairly safe as long as the images don't come too close to Disney's images.
Oddly enough, Disney was one of the first entities to really manage coopting American culture as owned IP of the Disney corporation (whether that was the origional idea of the Man and the Mouse). Its kind of interesting to see a younger generation referencing their own cultural memory and finding it wholly owned by a corporattion willing to aggressively defend their property. The PA folks don't even have the public domain versions of cultural icons to fall back on.
Finally, despite the memories based on Disney's work... Alice in Wonderland is actually fairly twisted even without McGee's treatment.
Fertile soil for parody, indeed.
Windows has gotten better. Pretty darned good, in fact. But my personal experience suggests that claiming even the newer offerings don't crash is still a stretch - albeit less of one these days.
To be fair - I've crashed XWindows environments before. And on a rare occasion, my old Voodoo2/Glide combination will leave my old machine in an unusable state (I have to SSH from another machine on the network to try to recover it or, ultimately, reboot).
Neither Linux or Windows is bulletproof. But Windows is certainly catching up. About time.
Oddly enough, Microsoft has maintained that Windows has been a serious contender since WinNT was first released. Furthermore, they have been scoffing at Linux for the past 5 years as it has been gaining more and more attention - now often presented by industry press as a contender for anything from proprietary Unix to Windows (and even the occasional niche OS offering).
I certainly wouldn't paint Windows as the underdog here. But it is nice to see them react to competition.
So what was Richie's reasons for using WinNT? From the article:
We're back to the same old arguments. Linux (and often other Unix/varients) handle the basic tasks fine - word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and remote access (even Terminal Services). But the Devil's in the details, of course. The more complex a Word or Excel document, the less likely it can be handled. The more a web site relies on Internet Explorer, the less it will work with other browsers.
How one interprets this depends on the individual. Some may say this is proof that Linux/Unix can't do it all. Others may point out that 1) it is simply a combination of vendor lock-in and ignorance of those who continue to support it and 2) amazing that Linux/Unix can handle any aspect of these lock-in technologies.
I suspect Richie is simply being pragmatic about the situation - using whatever tools he has to. After all, his interest isn't in the current IT landscape. His interest is in the future. And for him, that is Plan 9.
My understanding is that one can use the Windows-only copy of NWN and simply download the Linux client (albeit still beta).
I suppose its a kind of lagging parallel development.
You'd be shocked to find out Microsoft does indeed sell products that include applications licensed under the GPL.
"Shawkinaw" - I think they're a small North American Indian tribe.
If you (or your workplace) has a technically competent IT department, there is a good chance you already have hired hackers. If you also have a technically competent Infosec department, there's an even better chance. The only difference we're now hashing out is whether you wish to limit yourself to those who were either smart enough, or lucky enough, to never have gotten caught.
The important issue is not a criminal "hacker" record, but rather the abilities of the individual in question. If they are able to bring a particular skill-set to the table and perform to expectations, then they make a good employee.
The recent demonizing of "hackers" seems to have little to do with ability or morality. Such laws and legal actions seem to have more to do with publicity. A lawmaker or prosecuting attorney's career should have little to do with your hiring process.
There are exceptions. If the individual in question committed embezzlement, then they have demonstrated a willingness to victimize their employer (to say the least). Such an individual would be a risk - but then, that has little to do with a "hacking" conviction.
The other extreme is seeking to hire those with criminal convictions. This is perhaps a better example of "reward[ing] people who break laws." A computer crime conviction does little to prove one's skill-set. Again - it proves one was either stupid or unlucky. Or upset the wrong people. It doesn't prove that one would be able to deliver as a consultant or IT team member.
One final note - the old days of hacking seem to be passing. Hacking, no matter your definition, has always been about learning a system. Back in the old days, the only way one could gain more time/access to a system was to learn how to manipulate the system and provide it oneself. Without permission, if need be.
These days, one can create a functionally similar environment to most of what one would find in corporate and Government network at home using cheap, old hardware and free software. The need... and the excuse... to attack remote systems to gain the access needed to learn is fast fading. Of course, that doesn't take in to account proprietary hardware and software. But then it becomes a question of the risk being caught versus the lure of such systems. But then - if you learn enough and build a career, you'll get access to those systems legally.
Doubleclick poisoned the Internet advertising well.
The advertising industry has always been a bit of a black art. There is the action - an advertising campaign. Then there's the reaction - increased sales. And then there's a lot of theory how the two are associated.
This is where the "black art" comes in to play - advertising is not an exact science. There are campaigns that fail. There are campaigns that are remarkably successful - even becoming cultural icons. There are campaigns that become cultural icons but ultimately don't lead to increased sales... and thus are ironic failures. There is no guarantee any advertising agency or department can recreate any of these failures or successes at any given time.
Doubleclick promised a Holy Grail in advertising - quantifiable success. Internet advertising would be different. A Doubleclick ad could be immediately tracked. No more publishing a phone number and waiting for the phone calls over the next month. No tracking sales from distributers and guessing which advertising campaign was responsible for any increase in sales (assuming it was actually one of the current campaigns). You could tell an advertisement worked because it got clicks. And thus you could justify your budget spent on advertising with Doubleclick.
Everyone bought in to the idea. Money flowed. That is... until the click-throughs failed to live up to the expectations of the industry.
The problem is that advertising does not change with the medium used. One does not immediately rush to a phone to call 1-800-ABC-CARS when that hot, new flashy car shows up on TV. It doesn't matter how sparkling the soda looks, we don't run down to the vending machine or out to the store the second we see its image advertised. Nor do we immediately interrupt our busy day to browse a new business product even if we may be in the market for what it promises to offer. Conventional advertising knows this and a large part of its theory, and its black art, is based on strategies based on a more long-term behavior.
Internet advertising should have followed the same concepts and sold itself as part of an emerging, widely-accessed media. Not the deliverer of a Holy Grail.
Wow. You mean advertisers are having to fall back on the OLD way of doing business? Amazing.
If you're selling something of general interest (and have the budget) - say a SUV, then maybe a large advertising campaign on CNN / cnn.com makes sense. But when you're selling to a niche market you seek out that maket. Underwater basket weaving suppliers would be better served advertising in UBW World Magazine or aquabasket.com than TIME.
Good point. Though this doesn't surface as often as more positive noise from IBM.
Now... TurboTax. I was thinking of an outdated list - TurboTax doesn't fit in the old days of Big Blue. But coming back to current events, sure. TurboTax gets right up there.
Ummm. You might want to check the date on that list. IBM are "good guys" now. I know. Its wierd. I consider it proof of a Universe with perverse humor - and even business is not sacred.
Of course - I'm not sure where your list came from. When IBM was 'evil', Microsoft were up-and-coming, scrappy underdogs (kind of good-guy in contrast, I suppose). And Amazon was a geography reference. TurboTax doesn't seem like it should even show up anywhere. But the MPAA was still evil and realing from 'rape' that VCRs would visit on their industry. RIAA was still evil too, I'm sure.
Indeed. And sometimes you GAIN interoperability and features. Sometimes price is rather arbitrarily set according to "what the market will bare" rather than a barometer of quality. It pays to be an informed consumer and do one's own research rather than relying on someone's sales force. Welcome to the free market.
This is not reasonable. Everyone has and agenda. Any time more than one person is involved with something, politics come in to play.
The Open Source and Free Software movements have very obvious (although slightly differing) agendas and politics. I suspect that this is the focus of the above comment. However, let us not forget that commercial software vendors also have their own agendas and politics - ultimately, selling their product. Sometimes this goal is realized by offering a better product. Sometimes the goal is realized by limiting users with various "lock-in" tactics.
A smart consumer (be it private, business, or government) will be aware of these issues and use them as a guideline to match their own agendas and politics.
Sure - there is a potential for additional risk with such a listing. However, there is not as much risk as it may initially appear to present.
First off - the list may not be accurate. Software solutions and version numbers change - often faster than these kinds of lists update. An attacker will have to assume the list offers merely a starting point and will have to verify the information on their own.
On that point - an attacker will be able to profile the environment with or without the list. Even an attacker who wishes to avoid too much attention could easily scan a potential target and still blend in to the the background noise Government agencies deal with their public-facing networks daily.
Of course, that assumes the attacker is even going to bother profiling the target. The vast majority of attacks against Government and Corporate resources seem to be crimes of convenience, as it were. The target is attacked merely because it is there and vulnerable. There is no actual interest in the target itself (beyond perhaps the available resources or address space). These attacks quickly follow wide-spread scans. Attackers may even simply run exploits blindly against systems and dispense entirely with any form of intelligence gathering.
And so there you are. The current environment involves blind attacks, random attackers, and the occasional intelligent attacker who will go to their own measures to profile your environment. One should already take measures to protect one's environment against this sort of daily exposure.
Publishing basic software packages being used in an attempt to leverage knowledge and experience from the community and other organizations does little to expand this exposure. And it may very well present a much higher benefit than what little additional attention it attracts.
So are you disagreeing with the parent post's claims? First paragraph reads:
Or do I misunderstand the reference to a "mainframe OS"?
Maybe you can vote him for Prom King.