2.passwords should look like they were randomly generated (esp. no English words)
...
...there is no way I can memorize a 10+ randomly generated strings. Aren't security experts being a little hypercritical?
Use a phrase to generate a suitable password. Try and use a phrase that has something to do with the system. For example, a server at a company office. "This building has 8 floors and 3 elevators" could generate "tbh8fa3e". Not bad. We can improve it by adding caps and some substitution: "TBh8f&3e". Now we have a password with mixed case, alpha-numerics, and non-alpha-numeric characters with a random appearance. And it has meaning to the user in the form of a phrase that can be remembered and repeated to regerate the password.
United Virtualities may be doing some of the greatest work towards advancing public demand for open standards.
Sure, W3C creates the standards. The Web Standards Project evangalizes them. Mozilla provides a cross-platform alternative that follows them. But with their browser-morphing and overlaying ads, United Virtualities has created technologies that will drive users to Mozilla in droves if they show up in Netscape or Microsoft products. It'll probably increase demand for Junkbuster too.
Thanks to rabid marketdroids and United Virtualities. Who knew.
Question: How could Netscape use a tag and prevent IE from using it? Copyright? Or was it 'we don't need their stinkin features' macho influence?
Speaking historically (and from my own memory of the time)... neither Microsoft nor Netscape exactly prevented the other from implementing each other's proprietary tags. They basically developed them quietly and sprung them on the world with the next revision of their product. Since these were pretty basic extensions, it was fairly easy for the competitor to implement them in the next revision of their product if they wished. Which began a kind of double-leapfrog game of compatability. Some tags were adopted, some tags were ignored.
One interesting point (and something I hope someone who understood the issue a bit more than I did at the time would comment on)... is Netscape claimed the W3C was going too slow. Instead of waiting for the new official standard, they simply implemented functionality that was being discussed for the new standard. The question is, did this forced the W3C to speed up their publication of new standards?
Of course, HTML is a fairly forward technology. It wasn't that difficult to reverse engineer other's proprietary extensions and become compatible (and even then, large gaps in compatability were created). There are others that are not so easy. Kerberos is one example.
Microsoft began extending the standard using a small loophole in the spec. In theory, anybody else could implement a compatible Kerberos if they understood the proprietary portion that Microsoft grafted in to the system. Microsoft even publishes their changes. If you agree to their terms. Which, suprise, are very restricitive. An open standard becomes closed and proprietary ("embrace and extend").
Was MS supposed to wait for Netscape to do it? They have a business to maintain, and that includes maintaining their product lines. What were they supposed to do, do what the industry declares is a standard and then wait for new ones?
Actually, its funny that you mention Netscape. They were criticized for extending HTML with their own custom tags and implementations (if I remember right, implementing some things that had only been discussed for future standards). Microsoft even got a dig on them over the issue. Of course, Microsoft was doing the same thing.
The two browsers sometimes implemented each other's extensions. Many of those extensions remained the sole propriety of their respective browser. This left users and developers with a mishmash of incompatible features. And hardly a standard. Thankfully, the W3C finally pushed the standard forward, implementing many of the proposals that had spawned proprietary extensions.
I'm sorry, but that doesn't fly very high with me. I need better reasoning than that. It's the market that sets the standards, it's companies that present them. I know it's cool to hate Microsoft and all, but you can't blame them for people accepting standards.
There's a few odd things in play here. The first to consider is if there were no open standards, you would not have the Internet. You would be back to CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, Genie, etc. The whole idea of open standards is to allow proprietary systems to interoperate. You either folow them or not.
The popularity of the Internet has driven this point home. Or at least made it popular with those who otherwise wouldn't know better. Thus, there is marketing appeal to "following standards". Microsoft likes to play fast and loose with this. They may not like to follow the same standards as everyone else, but they like to sound as if they are.
Can you blame them for people accepting this? Yes. Customers are told they're buying in to systems that implement these standards (open standards in many cases). But at the very least, its often a white lie. And that assumes customers are actually buying in, not being forced. One of my clients is rather upset with the direction Microsoft is forcing his development team. He's buying in to Microsoft's new "standard", not because he's excited and willing to do it - but because Microsoft is giving him no choice. He adopts these standards, stays stagnent and waits for technology to pass him by, or he ditches all his previous devel work. Its a tough choice. One that he resents. So while he is moving along with Microsoft, he has been exceptionally open to moving his architecture and projects to open source where possible.
I have to admit my overall sarcasm towards government involvement. However, I would like to see competition. And since the government is involved in creating the existing monopoly, it seems only fitting they help break down those barriers.
Yea. We already gave it one shot. Covad, Northpoint, etc all jumped in the fray. And what do we have? Lawsuits over alleged abuses of a monopoly. Not quite the market we need.
Why do we need this competative market? Well, some theorize the Bells aren't really all that interested in DSL. If it weren't for the earlier flurry of competition, its likely nobody would have seen DSL rollouts at all. Now all we have left is a mess.
So if not the government, who else can possibly continue to place the pressure of competition on the Bells? Yep. Cable. And the Deathstar Corporation itself: AT&T.
When I moved to the Silicon Valley area, I was thrilled to have a choice of broadband service. I figured I would go with xDSL and select a nice third person provider. I put my order in. I even rescheduled when they failed to show. Three times. At that point, three months had passed filled with missed appointments, confusion, and even a DSL switch that sat there with a link light but no data for the last month. Then my wife saved our household with a call to AT&T cable. Three days later, packets were routing in and out of my apartment at a fair clip.
Was AT&T eager to rush data to my house and feed my broadband lust? Probably not. They sold me on a premium digital cable package. And soon began inquiring to our changing to their new digital phone service and long distance package (which was a part of the same digital cable network).
That's right. AT&T is gunning for PacBell's market. If we're lucky, they'll go after the other Bells too.
Wait. Did I just say 'lucky'? AT&T and cable companies. Versus the Bells. I'm not sure which to lable the pan and which to call 'fire'.
As slim a chance as it is... the only one consumers might have is in the hands of government.
I believe, silly me, that competing market and companies ultimately provide best for the consumers.
...
Flamebait?;)
OK. So you're rather good at crafting the obvious flamebait. Now go ahead and take a whack at the other side of the argument. How do you create a competative marketplace with a service that already exists as monopoly (partly because of the nature of the resources involved)?:P
Thats actually what I was aluding to. What makes it even more interesting is that a large portion of their aquisitions was funded with stock. Think about that for a sec. Leveraging insane breakneck speed with one's insanely climbing stock value.
And of course, by aquiring companies who had products already in line with current products, or existing strategy, Cisco was able to avoid the usual delays and costs of R&D projects.
Of course, there was (is?) a price to be paid for that growth. One of Cisco's new challenges is maintaining its culture even as an onslaught of new management (many unfamiliar to Cisco culture, which is rather foreign to many other business cultures) takes the reins. And of course, that growth was based on projected growth... which caused some rather uncomfortable problems when the economy skidded to a sudden halt.
In the interest of wrestling this back towards the origional topic... I am not aware of a single aquisition by Cisco with the intent to kill a technology.
What are they supposed to do? It's hard to innovate when a standard is set in stone.
Oddly enough, Cisco has become a pretty sizable business while their products manage to adhere to standards (I won't claim that they 'develop' them anymore - Cisco doesn't have an R&D budget).
That's an excellent question. How the law deals with estates and property might add yet more twists to this. Not only does it beg to ask how such laws handle service accounts, but it also touches on virtual property. While EverQuest strongly discourages the practice, other games such as UO actually have a very real market for online "property" (though not actively created, it is far from discouraged).
Part of the oddity of this story is the mother's quest for understanding. From the article:
She has a list of names her son scrawled while playing the game: "Phargun." "Occuler." "Cybernine." But Woolley is not sure if they are names of online friends, places he explored in the game or treasures his character may have captured in quests.
Even if she was able to find out what any of these names meant, I doubt it would really provide her with any insight. She was an outsider to this fantasy world and is likely to remain so even if provided with all that fantasy's details. That's assuming Sony would be able to provide her with much more than what is already jotted down on notes on her son's desk and/or computer.
In the end, it was simply a fantasy world. It may seem odd and mysterious to the outsider. But then, squaredancing seems pretty odd to me too. It doesn't mean there's any additional meaning to it.
The son may have preferred a fantasy world. But the cause of his death is rooted firmly in the mundane.
First is the usual "we can't understand the gamer" / "games kill" stance. This isn't anything new to the Slashdot crowd, I'm sure. Heck - I've been in the middle of a lot of these things through my entire life (D&D, Arcade games, FPS Shooters, MUDs, Paintball, etc). So yea. Shake your head at in awe. Collectively yawn. Nothing new here.
Where it becomes interesting is that this is NOT a kid. This was a 21-year old adult. Living on his own. He had been diagnosed with several conditions (eplileptic, depression, schizoid personality disorder) but it doesn't appear that he was a ward of his parents or anyone else. He was his own person. His own responsibility.
Sony is right in refusing to release information on his account. This information belonged to the player alone. Unless there is a legal reason to do otherwise (ie: police investigation with appropriate warrent), Sony would be breaching their customers privacy by releasing any details.
This is in response to the general state of paranoia that has ensued since 9/11, with 'cybersecurity' as a high priority.
While the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH of the article reads:
Long before September 11 and last year's virus-like attacks over the Internet, the United States government announced plans to train an elite corps of computer security experts to guard against cyberterrorism.
Ya know what? Other than putting some additional paranoia in the public (and management) mind, infosec has little to do with terrorism. Sure, the politicians like the run around screaming "digital pearl harbor". But the general state of most organizations' infosec stance has been in shambles well before 9/11. And those vulnerabilities mean that these organizations are much more likely to be attacked by a random attack-of-opportunity than a coordinated terrorist activity.
And that includes the US Government. It might go especially for the US Government where "security" is usually dealt with a Cold War mentality. One that has little to do with the current state of information security. Instead, government agencies tend to rely heavily on prosecution (which kicks in well after the damage has been done). Change to this mindset is hampered by limited budgets which make hiring experts (or retaining anyone with the appropriate skillset) difficult. A couple years ago, the FBI even complained to congress that they could not attract experts in the field due to their uncompetative pay.
So to wrap it all up. Government computer systems tend to make suprisingly easy targets. This program is part of the awakening and catch-up the government is undergoing on this issue. It has very little to do with terrorism and 9/11. And even the very article referred to states that.
IE was way more popular then Netscape way before this whole integration crap came about (NSCommunicator sucked anyway). Opera wasn't around to really compete, and Mozilla wasn't that active either.
According to my memory, you're placing things a bit late in the time line.
The "whole integration crap" happened with IE4.
Up to that point, Netscape still held the market pretty firmly. IE3 was the first decent browser to come from Microsoft. But Navigator still provided a very competant alternative. So it was no suprise Netscape was able to maintain a large (if slightly slipping) share.
Then came be big fanfare for IE4 (even to the point of trying to syphon off hype from the current favorite Hollywood blockbuster Independance Day (ID4)). IE4 was more than a browser. It was an integrated environment. It was a download for Win95. It was a part of Win98.
Netscape still had Navigator. But Navigator4 was a part of a new "suite" called Communicator. Yes. It was proof that something bad was happening at Netscape. They had stumbled.
What about Opera and Mozilla? Well. I'm not entirely sure... but I believe Opera showed up sometime after this. And Mozilla? Well - the writing was on the wall. Netscape did something amazing (and probably more than a little desperate). It went open source. And thus the Mozilla project was spawned. And after some time wrestling with Navigator5 code, they took another gutsy step and scrapped it all and started fresh.
While the users may think of buying a "Dell" or "Gateway", who do they bash when their machines become finicky? Why Microsoft of course. There's a single point of blame in the industry.
So a user is working on a report in Microsoft Word. They're running Word on Microsoft Windows. Their Dell-branded machine consists of hardware supported my Microsoft Certified drivers. The system crashes. They loose their work. And you're saying they should then blame Dell?
It has taken a long while. But users are very slowly realizing that it is not normal for computers to crash. No longer is the "computer" to blame... but those who sell the software for their computers. More and more often, that is Microsoft.
You might note the entire blurb was from Arminius - CmdrTaco didn't even add a pithy comment this time. As has been pointed out a number of times before... Slashdot editors obviously don't check all the URLs submitted.
I was disappointed in how StarOffice 6.0beta handled bullets when exported to MS Word format. And while I can appreciate that issue may not be trivial, still... the end result was unacceptable.
So I turned to Open Office 641c. And to my suprise, bullets exported in an acceptable format. Not perfect. I would still like to see improvement in that area. But its close enough for me to continue using OO rather happily.
Your point, that a company that sold mainstream Linux PCs would have a wide-open market to themselves, is absolutely valid. Why is there no such company? Because it's been tried and it doesn't work. There's no market for such a company. To assume that Dell and Gateway don't sell them because of pressure by Microsoft ignores a far more obvious answer.
To assume small hardware companies went out of business during a tough time for the entire industry because they sold Linux machines ignores a far more obvious answer.
Why would you assume that companies like Dell can be bullied out of the desktop PC market by MS but not the server and workstation markets?
You're jumping to the wrong conclusions. Obviously, if Dell can be bullied in the Desktop market, they can be bullied in the server market too. The point is that Microsoft allows a small server OEM market for Linux.
Back to the "meeting demand, but not creating demand" concept.
Linux has already gained ground in the server market. And any time Microsoft has anything near positive to say about Linux, it is in that context. Of course, there is a point where Linux is more of a threat to SCO and Sun than Microsoft for server market share. But that won't continue forever.
The desktop is new ground for Linux. A lot of work has been directed toward this target. And it may or may not be suitable for you (IMHO its suitable for power users and complete neophytes). But any support in this market by a OEM is doing nothing short of expanding Linux market share.
So how do we meet demand but not create it? Provide it as an option for servers if the customer walks up and requests/demands it. Otherwise, push Windows.
I think the important point is that VA was obviously losing money on their PC business. And remember, this is in spite of a large software cost advantage vis-a-vis most PC vendors.
IS there a large software cost advantage? Sure. If VA had to license Windows, there might have been a hefty investment. But unit-for-unit, one has to wonder exactly what Windows costs one of VA's much larger competitors... such as Compaq. Remember Windows Refund Day? OEMs began claiming the price per unit somewhere around $5 (though there was a lot of hemming and hawing on the point).
It's perfectly reasonable to assume that major PC vendors also legitimately see no market in Linux desktops.
Its possible. But VA's business (failure?) does not neccissarily prove the point. You could take VA Linux and claim it proves "the PC is dead."
Ultimately, VA was trying to grow quickly at a very tough time for the IT industry. And they were having to compete for what ammounted to hardware sales within that tight market. It seems that they were unable to do this. It is not clear that it had anything to do with the OS loaded on their machines.
Exactly, this dynamic works for Dell and Gateway and IBM too. Why should people buy Linux systems from them when they can home-grow systems?
Why should people buy Windows systems from Dell, Gateway, or IBM when they can home-grow systems?
So why did VA stop selling Linux systems? Alleged Microsoft pressure on mainstream vendors not to sell Linux should only have made things better for VA, assuming there really was a market for Linux desktops. But the fact is that there is no serious market for Linux desktops.
The hardware industry has been fighting for survival. Even the big names have been taking hits. Was VA Linux in a better situation?
VA Linux put out nice enough systems. But they were expensive. And you hardly had to buy VA Linux hardware to run Linux. One of the places I saw VA Linux boxes also included Sun and Compaq hardware. They ran Solaris, Windows, and Linux. And Linux was found on more than the VA machines.
Is there a market for Linux? Yes. But it is not a market one can corner. And offering Linux does not provide a shield against the tough times the industry in general has been facing.
From that time to the day of the incident, they found an independent programmer to create the scripts to do the mass spamming.
I stumbled on the C&S book at a Barnes and Noble years ago. Flipped through a few pages. Read their story about how they got started. And read their descriptions of the person they managed to find to create the tools needed for their deeds.
They were not kind. In fact, they were almost hostile in their description of the person (and seemed to note his guilt in performing his task). The final mention of the mystery coder is their apparent relief to have the code and be done with his presense. Some gratitude.
It seems these folks were hell-bent on clashing with the tech culture from the very beginning.
Another strike for incompetent admins, if they turn off support for the standard protocols and then bitch about not being able to use non-Outlook clients.
I agree with the jab at admins. But, of course, they don't wonder about not being able to use non-Outlook clients. They tend to wonder why you'd WANT to use a non-Outlook client (and then stare dumbly at mention of other-than-Windows or the vast anti-virus infrastructure they're having to maintain). Oops. I'm ranting.
OK. Sure. The Academy Awards may or may not be a crock. LoTR may or may not have deserved more (or even what it did get). There are certainly other films Hollywood ignored. These are all fun points to discuss if this is your kind of thing. But I don't really put much weight to them (of course - don't let me ruin it for everyone else).
I'm just pleased to see a major motion picture fantasy epic (if not THE fantasy epic) done with enough quality to get nominated for serveral categories. And, perhapse, even the fact that it WAS nominated at all. Awards are just a bonus for those who received them.
This post has me thinking a bit. At first, I'm all with it. Yea! Progress. Let's go.
In the case of yEnc, someone found a problem and (Freely, as in public domain even) offered a solution if people wish to adopt it. People are adopting it. Progress is happening.
And then I hit:
As an example, I post HTML to Usenet. Intentionally . And I will continue to do so. The green-screen luddites need to stop whining and upgrade their newsreaders. Yes, ASCII newsreaders can strip out (or render to some degree) the HTML. And no, I don't care about the extra bandwidth. There's a reason that newspapers and magazines use italics, boldface and bullet lists.
And I can't help but think "wow - what a jerk." Why? Not because I don't have newsreaders and email clients capable of handing HTML based messages. Not because I dislike HTML itself (open standard - yay). But because HTML seems to be completely unneccisary in these environments.
Now... sure. There are some forums that might bennifit from it. Times where typefaces and bulletlists, etc. really add value to information. Maybe even times where some forms of information NEED this technology or it becomes very difficult to portray. But I rarely see it.
Instead, HTML based messages in Email and Usenet tend to increase the overhead with no real added value to the content. In some cases, they are used to attempt various shennanigans such as web-bugs (not to mention worms, etc). Little wonder tech-heads dislike it.
Change must happen. But when you run around trying to force change for change's sake rather than to solve real problems, then you simply become a problem yourself.
Its nice to see a government body finaly get a general idea of reality. But this press release is littered with examples of continued ignorance. One specific nugget reminds me of my time working for NASA.
The Detective had no reason not to believe he was pursuing a hacker when he issued a search warrant.
...
...we have also sent a message to hackers that we will pursue online activity that we feel may be maliciously intended.
The various parts of the US Government tend to be oblivious to Information Security issues. But they do know prosecution. And that they persue with gusto.
We were constantly told that there was no budget to support infosec activity. But when the inevitable compromise was discovered, in came the big investigation. Infosec meetings included management's gleefull discussion of FBI involvement, followed by an FBI agent's discussion of "lessons learned" (rarely touching on real issues and always tech-light) and what equipment had been taken as evidence. Of course, the lab loosing the IT resource rarely had the budget to replace the missing hardware. Everyone paid.
Of course, a bit of money up front to secure the environment from the beginning would probably avoid the whole investigation and enable the lab to continue using its hard-faught-for resources.
Back to Battle Creek. Sudden revisions on updating their infrastructure. Lots of grave concern over people running around doing damage to them, indestinguishable from all those Evil hackers. And prosecution talk.
Looks like the City of Battle Creek will be paying the high cost of ignoring infosec too.
Slashdot Mirror
Use a phrase to generate a suitable password. Try and use a phrase that has something to do with the system. For example, a server at a company office. "This building has 8 floors and 3 elevators" could generate "tbh8fa3e". Not bad. We can improve it by adding caps and some substitution: "TBh8f&3e". Now we have a password with mixed case, alpha-numerics, and non-alpha-numeric characters with a random appearance. And it has meaning to the user in the form of a phrase that can be remembered and repeated to regerate the password.
Sure, W3C creates the standards. The Web Standards Project evangalizes them. Mozilla provides a cross-platform alternative that follows them. But with their browser-morphing and overlaying ads, United Virtualities has created technologies that will drive users to Mozilla in droves if they show up in Netscape or Microsoft products. It'll probably increase demand for Junkbuster too.
Thanks to rabid marketdroids and United Virtualities. Who knew.
Speaking historically (and from my own memory of the time)... neither Microsoft nor Netscape exactly prevented the other from implementing each other's proprietary tags. They basically developed them quietly and sprung them on the world with the next revision of their product. Since these were pretty basic extensions, it was fairly easy for the competitor to implement them in the next revision of their product if they wished. Which began a kind of double-leapfrog game of compatability. Some tags were adopted, some tags were ignored.
One interesting point (and something I hope someone who understood the issue a bit more than I did at the time would comment on)... is Netscape claimed the W3C was going too slow. Instead of waiting for the new official standard, they simply implemented functionality that was being discussed for the new standard. The question is, did this forced the W3C to speed up their publication of new standards?
Of course, HTML is a fairly forward technology. It wasn't that difficult to reverse engineer other's proprietary extensions and become compatible (and even then, large gaps in compatability were created). There are others that are not so easy. Kerberos is one example.
Microsoft began extending the standard using a small loophole in the spec. In theory, anybody else could implement a compatible Kerberos if they understood the proprietary portion that Microsoft grafted in to the system. Microsoft even publishes their changes. If you agree to their terms. Which, suprise, are very restricitive. An open standard becomes closed and proprietary ("embrace and extend").
Actually, its funny that you mention Netscape. They were criticized for extending HTML with their own custom tags and implementations (if I remember right, implementing some things that had only been discussed for future standards). Microsoft even got a dig on them over the issue. Of course, Microsoft was doing the same thing.
The two browsers sometimes implemented each other's extensions. Many of those extensions remained the sole propriety of their respective browser. This left users and developers with a mishmash of incompatible features. And hardly a standard. Thankfully, the W3C finally pushed the standard forward, implementing many of the proposals that had spawned proprietary extensions.
There's a few odd things in play here. The first to consider is if there were no open standards, you would not have the Internet. You would be back to CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, Genie, etc. The whole idea of open standards is to allow proprietary systems to interoperate. You either folow them or not.
The popularity of the Internet has driven this point home. Or at least made it popular with those who otherwise wouldn't know better. Thus, there is marketing appeal to "following standards". Microsoft likes to play fast and loose with this. They may not like to follow the same standards as everyone else, but they like to sound as if they are.
Can you blame them for people accepting this? Yes. Customers are told they're buying in to systems that implement these standards (open standards in many cases). But at the very least, its often a white lie. And that assumes customers are actually buying in, not being forced. One of my clients is rather upset with the direction Microsoft is forcing his development team. He's buying in to Microsoft's new "standard", not because he's excited and willing to do it - but because Microsoft is giving him no choice. He adopts these standards, stays stagnent and waits for technology to pass him by, or he ditches all his previous devel work. Its a tough choice. One that he resents. So while he is moving along with Microsoft, he has been exceptionally open to moving his architecture and projects to open source where possible.
Yea. We already gave it one shot. Covad, Northpoint, etc all jumped in the fray. And what do we have? Lawsuits over alleged abuses of a monopoly. Not quite the market we need.
Why do we need this competative market? Well, some theorize the Bells aren't really all that interested in DSL. If it weren't for the earlier flurry of competition, its likely nobody would have seen DSL rollouts at all. Now all we have left is a mess.
So if not the government, who else can possibly continue to place the pressure of competition on the Bells? Yep. Cable. And the Deathstar Corporation itself: AT&T.
When I moved to the Silicon Valley area, I was thrilled to have a choice of broadband service. I figured I would go with xDSL and select a nice third person provider. I put my order in. I even rescheduled when they failed to show. Three times. At that point, three months had passed filled with missed appointments, confusion, and even a DSL switch that sat there with a link light but no data for the last month. Then my wife saved our household with a call to AT&T cable. Three days later, packets were routing in and out of my apartment at a fair clip.
Was AT&T eager to rush data to my house and feed my broadband lust? Probably not. They sold me on a premium digital cable package. And soon began inquiring to our changing to their new digital phone service and long distance package (which was a part of the same digital cable network).
That's right. AT&T is gunning for PacBell's market. If we're lucky, they'll go after the other Bells too.
Wait. Did I just say 'lucky'? AT&T and cable companies. Versus the Bells. I'm not sure which to lable the pan and which to call 'fire'.
As slim a chance as it is... the only one consumers might have is in the hands of government.
OK. So you're rather good at crafting the obvious flamebait. Now go ahead and take a whack at the other side of the argument. How do you create a competative marketplace with a service that already exists as monopoly (partly because of the nature of the resources involved)?
Thats actually what I was aluding to. What makes it even more interesting is that a large portion of their aquisitions was funded with stock. Think about that for a sec. Leveraging insane breakneck speed with one's insanely climbing stock value.
And of course, by aquiring companies who had products already in line with current products, or existing strategy, Cisco was able to avoid the usual delays and costs of R&D projects.
Of course, there was (is?) a price to be paid for that growth. One of Cisco's new challenges is maintaining its culture even as an onslaught of new management (many unfamiliar to Cisco culture, which is rather foreign to many other business cultures) takes the reins. And of course, that growth was based on projected growth... which caused some rather uncomfortable problems when the economy skidded to a sudden halt.
In the interest of wrestling this back towards the origional topic... I am not aware of a single aquisition by Cisco with the intent to kill a technology.
Oddly enough, Cisco has become a pretty sizable business while their products manage to adhere to standards (I won't claim that they 'develop' them anymore - Cisco doesn't have an R&D budget).
That's an excellent question. How the law deals with estates and property might add yet more twists to this. Not only does it beg to ask how such laws handle service accounts, but it also touches on virtual property. While EverQuest strongly discourages the practice, other games such as UO actually have a very real market for online "property" (though not actively created, it is far from discouraged).
Even if she was able to find out what any of these names meant, I doubt it would really provide her with any insight. She was an outsider to this fantasy world and is likely to remain so even if provided with all that fantasy's details. That's assuming Sony would be able to provide her with much more than what is already jotted down on notes on her son's desk and/or computer.
In the end, it was simply a fantasy world. It may seem odd and mysterious to the outsider. But then, squaredancing seems pretty odd to me too. It doesn't mean there's any additional meaning to it.
The son may have preferred a fantasy world. But the cause of his death is rooted firmly in the mundane.
First is the usual "we can't understand the gamer" / "games kill" stance. This isn't anything new to the Slashdot crowd, I'm sure. Heck - I've been in the middle of a lot of these things through my entire life (D&D, Arcade games, FPS Shooters, MUDs, Paintball, etc). So yea. Shake your head at in awe. Collectively yawn. Nothing new here.
Where it becomes interesting is that this is NOT a kid. This was a 21-year old adult. Living on his own. He had been diagnosed with several conditions (eplileptic, depression, schizoid personality disorder) but it doesn't appear that he was a ward of his parents or anyone else. He was his own person. His own responsibility.
Sony is right in refusing to release information on his account. This information belonged to the player alone. Unless there is a legal reason to do otherwise (ie: police investigation with appropriate warrent), Sony would be breaching their customers privacy by releasing any details.
While the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH of the article reads:
Ya know what? Other than putting some additional paranoia in the public (and management) mind, infosec has little to do with terrorism. Sure, the politicians like the run around screaming "digital pearl harbor". But the general state of most organizations' infosec stance has been in shambles well before 9/11. And those vulnerabilities mean that these organizations are much more likely to be attacked by a random attack-of-opportunity than a coordinated terrorist activity.
And that includes the US Government. It might go especially for the US Government where "security" is usually dealt with a Cold War mentality. One that has little to do with the current state of information security. Instead, government agencies tend to rely heavily on prosecution (which kicks in well after the damage has been done). Change to this mindset is hampered by limited budgets which make hiring experts (or retaining anyone with the appropriate skillset) difficult. A couple years ago, the FBI even complained to congress that they could not attract experts in the field due to their uncompetative pay.
So to wrap it all up. Government computer systems tend to make suprisingly easy targets. This program is part of the awakening and catch-up the government is undergoing on this issue. It has very little to do with terrorism and 9/11. And even the very article referred to states that.
According to my memory, you're placing things a bit late in the time line.
The "whole integration crap" happened with IE4.
Up to that point, Netscape still held the market pretty firmly. IE3 was the first decent browser to come from Microsoft. But Navigator still provided a very competant alternative. So it was no suprise Netscape was able to maintain a large (if slightly slipping) share.
Then came be big fanfare for IE4 (even to the point of trying to syphon off hype from the current favorite Hollywood blockbuster Independance Day (ID4)). IE4 was more than a browser. It was an integrated environment. It was a download for Win95. It was a part of Win98.
Netscape still had Navigator. But Navigator4 was a part of a new "suite" called Communicator. Yes. It was proof that something bad was happening at Netscape. They had stumbled.
What about Opera and Mozilla? Well. I'm not entirely sure... but I believe Opera showed up sometime after this. And Mozilla? Well - the writing was on the wall. Netscape did something amazing (and probably more than a little desperate). It went open source. And thus the Mozilla project was spawned. And after some time wrestling with Navigator5 code, they took another gutsy step and scrapped it all and started fresh.
So a user is working on a report in Microsoft Word. They're running Word on Microsoft Windows. Their Dell-branded machine consists of hardware supported my Microsoft Certified drivers. The system crashes. They loose their work. And you're saying they should then blame Dell?
It has taken a long while. But users are very slowly realizing that it is not normal for computers to crash. No longer is the "computer" to blame... but those who sell the software for their computers. More and more often, that is Microsoft.
You might note the entire blurb was from Arminius - CmdrTaco didn't even add a pithy comment this time. As has been pointed out a number of times before... Slashdot editors obviously don't check all the URLs submitted.
So I turned to Open Office 641c. And to my suprise, bullets exported in an acceptable format. Not perfect. I would still like to see improvement in that area. But its close enough for me to continue using OO rather happily.
To assume small hardware companies went out of business during a tough time for the entire industry because they sold Linux machines ignores a far more obvious answer.
You're jumping to the wrong conclusions. Obviously, if Dell can be bullied in the Desktop market, they can be bullied in the server market too. The point is that Microsoft allows a small server OEM market for Linux.
Back to the "meeting demand, but not creating demand" concept.
Linux has already gained ground in the server market. And any time Microsoft has anything near positive to say about Linux, it is in that context. Of course, there is a point where Linux is more of a threat to SCO and Sun than Microsoft for server market share. But that won't continue forever.
The desktop is new ground for Linux. A lot of work has been directed toward this target. And it may or may not be suitable for you (IMHO its suitable for power users and complete neophytes). But any support in this market by a OEM is doing nothing short of expanding Linux market share.
So how do we meet demand but not create it? Provide it as an option for servers if the customer walks up and requests/demands it. Otherwise, push Windows.
IS there a large software cost advantage? Sure. If VA had to license Windows, there might have been a hefty investment. But unit-for-unit, one has to wonder exactly what Windows costs one of VA's much larger competitors... such as Compaq. Remember Windows Refund Day? OEMs began claiming the price per unit somewhere around $5 (though there was a lot of hemming and hawing on the point).
Its possible. But VA's business (failure?) does not neccissarily prove the point. You could take VA Linux and claim it proves "the PC is dead."
Ultimately, VA was trying to grow quickly at a very tough time for the IT industry. And they were having to compete for what ammounted to hardware sales within that tight market. It seems that they were unable to do this. It is not clear that it had anything to do with the OS loaded on their machines.
Why should people buy Windows systems from Dell, Gateway, or IBM when they can home-grow systems?
The hardware industry has been fighting for survival. Even the big names have been taking hits. Was VA Linux in a better situation?
VA Linux put out nice enough systems. But they were expensive. And you hardly had to buy VA Linux hardware to run Linux. One of the places I saw VA Linux boxes also included Sun and Compaq hardware. They ran Solaris, Windows, and Linux. And Linux was found on more than the VA machines.
Is there a market for Linux? Yes. But it is not a market one can corner. And offering Linux does not provide a shield against the tough times the industry in general has been facing.
I stumbled on the C&S book at a Barnes and Noble years ago. Flipped through a few pages. Read their story about how they got started. And read their descriptions of the person they managed to find to create the tools needed for their deeds.
They were not kind. In fact, they were almost hostile in their description of the person (and seemed to note his guilt in performing his task). The final mention of the mystery coder is their apparent relief to have the code and be done with his presense. Some gratitude.
It seems these folks were hell-bent on clashing with the tech culture from the very beginning.
I agree with the jab at admins. But, of course, they don't wonder about not being able to use non-Outlook clients. They tend to wonder why you'd WANT to use a non-Outlook client (and then stare dumbly at mention of other-than-Windows or the vast anti-virus infrastructure they're having to maintain). Oops. I'm ranting.
I'm just pleased to see a major motion picture fantasy epic (if not THE fantasy epic) done with enough quality to get nominated for serveral categories. And, perhapse, even the fact that it WAS nominated at all. Awards are just a bonus for those who received them.
In the case of yEnc, someone found a problem and (Freely, as in public domain even) offered a solution if people wish to adopt it. People are adopting it. Progress is happening.
And then I hit:
And I can't help but think "wow - what a jerk." Why? Not because I don't have newsreaders and email clients capable of handing HTML based messages. Not because I dislike HTML itself (open standard - yay). But because HTML seems to be completely unneccisary in these environments.
Now... sure. There are some forums that might bennifit from it. Times where typefaces and bulletlists, etc. really add value to information. Maybe even times where some forms of information NEED this technology or it becomes very difficult to portray. But I rarely see it.
Instead, HTML based messages in Email and Usenet tend to increase the overhead with no real added value to the content. In some cases, they are used to attempt various shennanigans such as web-bugs (not to mention worms, etc). Little wonder tech-heads dislike it.
Change must happen. But when you run around trying to force change for change's sake rather than to solve real problems, then you simply become a problem yourself.
The various parts of the US Government tend to be oblivious to Information Security issues. But they do know prosecution. And that they persue with gusto.
We were constantly told that there was no budget to support infosec activity. But when the inevitable compromise was discovered, in came the big investigation. Infosec meetings included management's gleefull discussion of FBI involvement, followed by an FBI agent's discussion of "lessons learned" (rarely touching on real issues and always tech-light) and what equipment had been taken as evidence. Of course, the lab loosing the IT resource rarely had the budget to replace the missing hardware. Everyone paid.
Of course, a bit of money up front to secure the environment from the beginning would probably avoid the whole investigation and enable the lab to continue using its hard-faught-for resources.
Back to Battle Creek. Sudden revisions on updating their infrastructure. Lots of grave concern over people running around doing damage to them, indestinguishable from all those Evil hackers. And prosecution talk.
Looks like the City of Battle Creek will be paying the high cost of ignoring infosec too.