The new company's offer included an adjusted sign-on bonus that paid for his previous "debt". It would be an ACTUAL debt. Nor a quote DEBT unquote, and the additional money would not end up in the employees pocket. Your point, however fuzzy, is?
Sorry... I could have been more clear on the second point.
The perception created by this policy was the attempt to create a financial incentive to stay with the company for a specific time in exchange for training. Something along the lines of "I'd leave... but then I would owe them X dollars and I can't afford that." In this case (and in many others I've heard of), it didn't work that way. The new company had made its offer and then increased its offer to cover the buy-off of the employee's training. The employee got everything they were origionally offered and the raiding company got a valued employee. It was no barrier to the employee leaving.
So to recap... with today's shortage of good technical personnel, such a policy does not stop an employee from leaving. Its also very likely that such a policy generates resentment and provides a reason for an employee to leave.
Granted, the employer gets to retain their training funds - but that doesn't take into account for the lost time to find a new (scarce) qualified replacement and train them. Is it really a benifit to anyone involved?
The contract is lengthy, but in essence, if we train you in a field or subject that would benefit us and the employee (making him/her more likely to seek employment elsewhere),the employee will repay the cost of training out of their last paycheck if they fail to remain with us for a year. This year timeframe is a rolling window based upon the last training received.
I've seen this done with a company a friend of mine was working for. He was a key engineer for their infrastructure - amoung the top most valuable technical staff. Any technical training (whether company mandated or self proposed) included an additional 6 mo - 1 yr commitment. Failing to complete this commitment required pay back of training expenses.
There are two things that came from this policy.
First, was resentment. Most workers there saw this as an attempt to endenture them. My friend avoided training whenever possible. And when another company came along with an offer he decided to take - the old company was unable to match it. And they tried - they made a very excellent counter offer. But in the end, he remembered what KIND of company he was working for and was more than happy to leave it behind.
So how did he ditch the required pay-back? The new company's offer included an adjusted sign-on bonus that paid for his previous "debt".
Too a good techie, training is a motivator. It is valuable to the employee, and can also improve the effectiveness of the company. Makeing it a tool to lock in employees only creates resentment. This makes your valued people easier for another company with deep pockets, and also starving for good people, to raid.
Thanks for the link! My skepticism has been mostly abated.
One thing that answers my first concern (the ability to make a screenshot) seems to be answered by the spammer's like of PC Anywhere. I thought of BO... but thought that installing the server would be unlikely at sudden notice. A misconfigured PC Anywhere session, though, would be usefull and fortunate for the attacker indeed!
I've searched Wired News' archive for "spam" and "spammer" and did not find any article referencing this site during 2000. I'd be interested in an article tittle or link.
The site looks interesting. But as the AC pointed out, the ability to get a screen capture via a sudden-notice attack on a Windows box (Win9x? WinNT?) seems very unlikely. There's reason to be skeptical.
but americans despise laws. laws are bad. laws may cost big business money.
Interesting perspective - something I'll have to ponder over a bit. But allow me to offer another.
Look at some of the US laws mentioned on Slashdot. These are not laws that interfere with big business' money - these are laws that enforce or add to corporate power. Citizens of the US are right to be wary of laws - beucracy and corporate influence on the politcal machine do not benefit freedom.
Case in point: the slides before the movie are all want ads for tech jobs for pre-IPO companies. Dozens of them. Everything revolves around it.
Indeed, "pre-IPO" is often splashed up there on those slides. But I've been noticing a lot more "local to your area - short commute" messages too. Either the stock market has taken its toll, or the traffic has.
"It's the model that's out there," said John Kane, head of a marketing task force for Afilias, which is seeking a.web suffix. "It's a public resource. You don't own a domain name. You own the right to use it."
Names have value - especially on the internet. You only have to look at the story of sex.com to see that. Registrars understand this. Heck, its their business.
So if the individual only buys the right to use a name - who owns the name? The public? Hardly. One doesn't pay the public trust for use of the name. One pays the registrar. When looking at some of the registrar contracts, one gets the distinct impression that registrars are claiming ownership of these "public resources".
The whois database used to be just a simple means of finding out who owned a website, getting their contact information, and then contacting them. Now-a-days, it's become a means of grabbing more email for spam, or for offers to buy the domain from them, or (in a worst case scenario) it helps people figure out who to sue.
This is the theme that I picked up on. WHOIS as a tool for network administrators to keep a shared network working? Sure - that's what it USED to be for:
The idea is to help users contact the name's owner for possible purchase, even though the databases originally helped computer administrators contact one another when networks go awry.
And what is one of the major registrars concerned with when considering WHOIS or a replacement? Chuck Gomes of VeriSign Global Registry Services states:
New tools, he said, could help meet the needs of law enforcement officials and trademark owners while protecting privacy for individuals in other circumstances.
Law enforcement and trademark protection. Administrative contact? What was that, again?
At times I wonder how a collective environment such as the interenet survives self-serving commercial interest.
I don't agree with a lot of swb's origional post... but I have to say, he's right here.
IE on the various commercial versions of Unix is horid. It does appear to be a marketing trick. When Microsoft pitches something that required IE, they sometimes run into companies who have a sizable Unix workstation base. To handle this inconvenience, they pitch IE on Unix. I've seen it done with the web version of Exchange / Outlook.
My experience with Netscape on Linux has been nothing short of a joke. It bombs and often kills my X session as well. I'd take IE on Win2k over Netscape on Linux any day.
I've never had Netscape actually crater XFree86. Hit enough java-embeded web pages, Netscape will crash and leave a runaway process. Its common enough that you can get a WindowMaker dock app that kills netscape sessions with a few mouse clicks.
Mozilla delivers the Linux user from this annoyance.
I think that this means the ground based, anti-aircraft installations (guns, missles, radar)
Robotic Wild Weasels! The origional Wild Weasel patch imortalizes the supposed reaction of the first EWO (Electronic Warfare Officer) to the mission. At the risk of murdering the quote:
"You want me to sit behind a stick jocky who thinks he's invincible, flying an aircraft to go after weapons designed to shoot down aircraft?! You gotta be shittin' me!"
The Wild Weasel mission has always been dangerous. Automating the role would keep a lot of pilots safe(r).
It would also have a strong psycological factor. Wild Weasels, once the role had been perfected, tend to supress enemy air defenses by their mere presence. Imagine being a AAA operator considering the threat of stealth automated threat radar hunters lurking out there. Especially after a few sites get hit by one.
Oddly enough, I believe the US already has a simular capability. The AGM-88 HARM (which I've mentioned elsewhere in this story). Give the HARM an increased fuel capacity and it can humm round the open skies for hours waiting for a threat radar to power up. Of course, the HARM is a one-shot deal.
Thanks! Great link. One thing to note is the nature of the HARM. It specifically seeks out RF from threat systems and attempts to eliminate this source via direct impact or shrapnel from a near-miss explosion. Later versions of the HARM also attempted to damage / kill nearby equipment and operators. A misfire is surely possible. However, I feel its safe to assume that RF activity is central to most of these cases (radar or not).
If you're interested in the Electronic Warfare systems involved during the Gulf War, this source is excellent.
After the "accidental" bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the opinion of many countries (most notably China, of course) was that Americans are so afraid of losing their own lives, that they are willing to be reckless with the lives of other people.
Sour grapes and propoganda. The US Military is amoung, if not THE, world's most powerfull forces. It has in its arsonal weapons systems that give it capabilities undreamed of by less well-funded armies. To those who oppose US interests, that has to be frightening. I'm not suprised this generates a bit of name-calling.
Some have gone so far as to link this behavior to the fact that we are willing to get involved where Europeans or Oil is at stake (not necessarily in that order of importance), even if mass slaughter is going on and human rights are being severely violated with impunity.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
The US is going to protect its interests. War for oil? Certainly. The Gulf War was about protecting allied, and thus US, interests. Liberating a small State overan by its aggresive neighbor? It makes good press.
That's not to say the US won't take action on a moral basis. We have the reach to be able to react to any event in the world. But these situations get considerably more complex and have to potential to change drastically from the inital intent. Somalia is a prime example (and has sparked frantic study in urban warfare by the US Army). But just because we can... does that mean we should?
The US military can't solve every problem in the world. We will fail if we try. With any luck, the US leadership will wisely choose those situations where US involvement can help.
But the more the US gets involved in world affairs, the more we'll be scorned by fearfull governments for interfering with other sovergn nations. How ironic that some of these same critics would complain that we don't involve ourselves with every world hotspot.
Of course, the fear of some of the greatest critics will be that the next "hot spot" will be their own backyard.
Or breeding new and interesting versions of Mad Cow Disease to spray into cattle feed. Or slipping discrete lead-lined packets out of Khazakstan. Or suicide bombing our ships. Or cutting back on oil production.
And thus, our critics will seek ways to level the playing field. They'll use our morality (wish to avoid civilian casualties) to gain the high ground - its part of what makes urban warfare so difficult. And they'll seek out cheap forms of "weapons of mass destruction" to include biological and chemical agents. Oddly enough, this kind of threat will only increase the likelyhood that the US will take active interest in these governments.
One of the many successful weapons systems used during the Gulf War was the AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile). The HARM basically goes after weapons systems such as Anti-Aircraft Artillary (AAA) or Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) by eliminating the radar component and effectively blinding the threat (if not completely destroying it). It was remarkably effective and played a large part in limiting the effectiveness of enemy air defenses.
The HARM can be used in different ways. You can fire it off a platform such as the F-4G Wild Weasel. In this case, the EWO (Electronics Warfare Officer) selects a threat, hands that threat to the HARM, and sends the HARM on its way.
But the HARM also carries its own threat table and can be sent after a target with little direction. In this case, a threat is identified in a general area and the HARM is fired. The HARM then looks for threats, identifies the highest priority threat according to its internal table, and then goes after that threat.
These kinds of abilities allow a HARM to be used with platforms not otherwise especially equiped for Wild Weasel missions. It also allows for more creative functions. A pilot can "pickle over the horizon" and send a HARM after a known target without coming in range themselves. And by extending a HARM's fuel capacity, it can "hunt" for an extended period of time awaiting threat radars to power up after hiding from the Wild Weasel aircraft.
Vicous stuff.
The sobering part comes from a few rare reports during the Gulf War. There were reports of "near misses" with HARM missles by friendly surface forces. The theory is that the HARMs mis-identified friendly radar or communications systems as a threat in its internal threat table.
The DirecPC system uses 56-bit encryption on the packets of data that are sent downstream from the satellite, according to Steven Salamoff, assistant vice president of the DirecPC business services division. Deciphering upstream packets would first require breaking the downstream encryption because of its random packet generation, Salamoff said.
Consumer awareness of home computer security is growing. And it looks like the DirecPC salesforce is chomping at the bit to try out their service's embeded buzzword: encryption. Yep. They're safer than that Cable and ADSL you hear about. Unlike those guys, satalite providers encrypt their data.
Sure, wireless brings forth a whole new series of security concerns. And that means encryption has its part. But it does nothing to address insecure hosts on persistant broadband connections.
What do you want to bet that the new satalite service providers will do the same as their xDSL and cable competitors and ignore this problem. But hey... they have encryption.
A 33% increase sounds fine for gov't workers, but I'm willing to bet it stops
at Civil Servants. In some environments (specifically NASA), a great bulk of
IT operations are contracted out. These contracts are awarded to the lowest
bidder. And contracts are also awarded bonuses for reduced spending which
provides incentive for contracts to cut corners wherever possible. Often the
corners cut involve pay and benefits for personnel.
You can bet this means your average IT contractor won't be seeing an increase
in pay. And in the end, this means those organizations who rely on contracted
IT won't be seeing an increase in quality IT workers.
If anything, those Government agencies will continue to loose their IT staff.
The company I went to has been raiding government organizations across the
board. We can provide benefits and training well beyond the budgets of most
Governmental agencies.
So in all... what does 33% do for the average US Gov't IT worker? If you're one
of the current dedicated workers, you might be lucky enough to get a raise. But
will it attract additional staff? I doubt it.
Let's remember what a cracker does this for: the thrill of the chase, the bragging rights to a successful crack, and (more maliciously) any rewards from the compromized site.
Not many crackers are going to waste their time scanning @Home subnets looking for Internet newbies that they can screw with. It isn't worth the time and the "kill value" is negligable. How fun is it to kill someone in Quake with a ping of 500+ who is stuck in a corner? The true glory comes from killing the best guy on the map. (Or, in Slashdot's case, from rooting a/. box and posting a story about it.)
Different people are motivated by different things. Sure, you're going to have attackers whose interests aren't met by @home customer targets. That doesn't hold for every attacker.
What's the value of an average user's Windows box?
Perhapse a script that runs through open shares looking for a default install of financial software and harvesting the user's data. Maybe the script harvests cookie.txt files and scans them for common online bank identifications. Imagine the wealth of information an identity theif could have waiting for them after a day or two running such scripts.
Maybe the data itself isn't interesting. Instead we have a host with a broadband 24/7 connection. Relatively insecure. Perfect DDoS server host.
Of course... that's assuming the value is something that normally makes sense. Its great that you mention Quake. Quake cheats are relatively rampant. Why bother playing if you're playing with an artificial advantage - and one that's been "done" before? Yet it happens all the time. In the same line, you have skript kiddies who see themselves as something special if they can poke around, and maybe even delete, some unsuspecting target's files. The fact that it may have been trivial to do so means nothing to them.
Also, let's assume 90+ percent of @Home users run Windows boxes--Win95 and Win98. Even without firewall software, Win32 is much less likely to be cracked than *nix boxes.
The article opens up with the example of an unknown individual posting messages on target machine's WINDOWS desktops. Apparently enough of a customer base was affected by this "attack" to warrent a FBI investigation.
It doesn't matter what OS you're using. It doesn't matter if your IP address is constantly moving. Connect a box up to a broadband, persistant connection and it is a target. Being unaware of this is the danger.
Abandoned by investors, they are reduced to begging for venture capital at the highway intersections of US 183, holding up heart-wrenching singns with slogans such as "WILL PORTAL FOR T1 FEED" and "HOMEPAGELESS, PLEASE GIVE, GOD BLESS".
On the plus side, if they manage to hold out long enough for micropayments to take off, they'll already be prepared to launch a new startup. iHomeless.com. It'll revolutionalize the entire "homeless" industry with ePanhandling.
If done correctly, the entire IPO might be tax deductable.
Rejected: the story about Artisan Entertainment creating a fake web site that claims mass murders are being committed in a public park in maryland, attempting to create massive public histeria.
The same kind thing was done with The Blair Witch Progect last year. And it was much more subtle. At the time, there was quite a number of people who thought the film was a documentary. To this day, you could probably still find people who STILL think it was.
Of course, the whole thing generated a marketing storm that shoked the existing industry and lit the box office on fire. Can't blame their marketing department for trying to resurect the idea. Even if its an old one.
Look at Apple - for years they flogged this whole Apple vs. MS thing, until they realized that it wasn't selling any more computers.
...
The linux community won't be able to see AOL, Symbian, Palm, or other worthy competitors coming if it mindlessly pursues this David vs. Goliath thing (that nearly killed Apple).
I agree with one point - there's more than Microsoft out there as Linux competition. Although that's more RedHat's problem than the Linux community. Still, blind advocacy is foolish.
Having said that... advocacy IS important. And it has helped Apple. How? Lets look at one case...
Johnson Space Center (NASA) underwent an attempt to standardize their environment. The IT Department suggested various cross-platform data formats. Their director ignored the suggestions and mandated Windows (Windows 95 at that).
JSC was already a very diverse environment with a strong Apple userbase. Those users were adament supporters of their chosen environment and faught the Windows push.
Jihad. It even ended up with a congressional investigation. Not because Apple cried fowl - but their users did. Advocacy at work.
The outcome today? For business automation (read: desktop apps such as email and word proc), JSC is a strong Windows shop. But its still a diverse environment - despite attempts to eradicate all non-Windows desktops. New Apple G4s are being rolled out in increased numbers within JSC. And its all due to advocacy.
Look at Apple - for years they flogged this whole Apple vs. MS thing, until they realized that it wasn't selling any more computers. Much of Apple's success of late is due to the fact that it no longer tries to go head to head with Microsoft, or define the Mac simply as "better than Windows".
Cringly recently pointed out that Apple is a boutique computer company. He likens this to other boutique companies such as Porche within the auto market. This is all to point out that investors shouldn't link Apple's fortunes to other industry leaders such as Dell.
Of course, despite Mr. Cringly's suggestion, this points out that Apple doesn't compete with just Microsoft. Apple is both a software and hardware company. It essentially competes with the entire Intel/PC industry for marketshare. That's pretty stiff competition.
If anything, THIS is why Apple shouldn't be so focused on Microsoft. And this is where Cringley is right - Apple is its own market. As he points out, you don't see Porche fret over Chevrolet.
I've seen two of these types of "printers" in use over the last few years at NASA. The engineers rave about the ability to develop models of whatever parts they're working on quickly and for far less cost than actually machining a part. Aparently, there's nothing quite like having a physical model to look at and put up against other parts you're working with.
One 3D printer was the polymer style. These produce some rather resiliant models but take considerably longer to produce. The group I supported used these models for parts they were expecting to travel to other centers with (presentations, comparisons, etc) or if they thought this was pretty close to "done". One of the coolest demos I saw using this was a ship in a bottle - the bottle being latticework so you could see the inside ship's details.
A later printer I helped set up for the group was basically a wax-jet printer. A table was moved about as a jet squirted shots of a plastic-like wax; slowly building a model. Gaps in the model were filled with very thin support columns which were easily cleaned away once the model was finnished. One engineer used this to generate molds for resin heart pump test parts. This enabled him to make small changes, generate a physical part quickly, and then test the performance of the part. He was thrilled.
Like others have pointed out, this technology has been around for awhile. But its still interesting.
A C compiler can be said to aid and abet copywrite violation, so can a XEROX machine. They've both got legitimate purposes.
Of course, XEROX doesn't advertise their newest product line as offering better piracy features.
I'm sure the DivX CODEC offers a lot to legitimate uses. Perhapse Ferverent's point is that DivX developers and their supporters should stress these bennifits rather than illegal use.
I can't find the argument that "therefore, copying your own CDs to your hard drive is illegal." Maybe they dropped that...
I noticed that myself. Awhile back the subject of the RIAA's view on fair use came up and I was going to use this particular tidbit as an example. But its gone now. The RIAA has aparently been revising its stance. Or at least how it presents it.
Slashdot Mirror
The perception created by this policy was the attempt to create a financial incentive to stay with the company for a specific time in exchange for training. Something along the lines of "I'd leave... but then I would owe them X dollars and I can't afford that." In this case (and in many others I've heard of), it didn't work that way. The new company had made its offer and then increased its offer to cover the buy-off of the employee's training. The employee got everything they were origionally offered and the raiding company got a valued employee. It was no barrier to the employee leaving.
So to recap... with today's shortage of good technical personnel, such a policy does not stop an employee from leaving. Its also very likely that such a policy generates resentment and provides a reason for an employee to leave.
Granted, the employer gets to retain their training funds - but that doesn't take into account for the lost time to find a new (scarce) qualified replacement and train them. Is it really a benifit to anyone involved?
There are two things that came from this policy.
First, was resentment. Most workers there saw this as an attempt to endenture them. My friend avoided training whenever possible. And when another company came along with an offer he decided to take - the old company was unable to match it. And they tried - they made a very excellent counter offer. But in the end, he remembered what KIND of company he was working for and was more than happy to leave it behind.
So how did he ditch the required pay-back? The new company's offer included an adjusted sign-on bonus that paid for his previous "debt".
Too a good techie, training is a motivator. It is valuable to the employee, and can also improve the effectiveness of the company. Makeing it a tool to lock in employees only creates resentment. This makes your valued people easier for another company with deep pockets, and also starving for good people, to raid.
One thing that answers my first concern (the ability to make a screenshot) seems to be answered by the spammer's like of PC Anywhere. I thought of BO... but thought that installing the server would be unlikely at sudden notice. A misconfigured PC Anywhere session, though, would be usefull and fortunate for the attacker indeed!
The site looks interesting. But as the AC pointed out, the ability to get a screen capture via a sudden-notice attack on a Windows box (Win9x? WinNT?) seems very unlikely. There's reason to be skeptical.
Look at some of the US laws mentioned on Slashdot. These are not laws that interfere with big business' money - these are laws that enforce or add to corporate power. Citizens of the US are right to be wary of laws - beucracy and corporate influence on the politcal machine do not benefit freedom.
So if the individual only buys the right to use a name - who owns the name? The public? Hardly. One doesn't pay the public trust for use of the name. One pays the registrar. When looking at some of the registrar contracts, one gets the distinct impression that registrars are claiming ownership of these "public resources".
At times I wonder how a collective environment such as the interenet survives self-serving commercial interest.
IE on the various commercial versions of Unix is horid. It does appear to be a marketing trick. When Microsoft pitches something that required IE, they sometimes run into companies who have a sizable Unix workstation base. To handle this inconvenience, they pitch IE on Unix. I've seen it done with the web version of Exchange / Outlook.
I've never had Netscape actually crater XFree86. Hit enough java-embeded web pages, Netscape will crash and leave a runaway process. Its common enough that you can get a WindowMaker dock app that kills netscape sessions with a few mouse clicks.Mozilla delivers the Linux user from this annoyance.
It would also have a strong psycological factor. Wild Weasels, once the role had been perfected, tend to supress enemy air defenses by their mere presence. Imagine being a AAA operator considering the threat of stealth automated threat radar hunters lurking out there. Especially after a few sites get hit by one.
Oddly enough, I believe the US already has a simular capability. The AGM-88 HARM (which I've mentioned elsewhere in this story). Give the HARM an increased fuel capacity and it can humm round the open skies for hours waiting for a threat radar to power up. Of course, the HARM is a one-shot deal.
If you're interested in the Electronic Warfare systems involved during the Gulf War, this source is excellent.
The US is going to protect its interests. War for oil? Certainly. The Gulf War was about protecting allied, and thus US, interests. Liberating a small State overan by its aggresive neighbor? It makes good press.
That's not to say the US won't take action on a moral basis. We have the reach to be able to react to any event in the world. But these situations get considerably more complex and have to potential to change drastically from the inital intent. Somalia is a prime example (and has sparked frantic study in urban warfare by the US Army). But just because we can... does that mean we should?
The US military can't solve every problem in the world. We will fail if we try. With any luck, the US leadership will wisely choose those situations where US involvement can help.
But the more the US gets involved in world affairs, the more we'll be scorned by fearfull governments for interfering with other sovergn nations. How ironic that some of these same critics would complain that we don't involve ourselves with every world hotspot.
Of course, the fear of some of the greatest critics will be that the next "hot spot" will be their own backyard.
And thus, our critics will seek ways to level the playing field. They'll use our morality (wish to avoid civilian casualties) to gain the high ground - its part of what makes urban warfare so difficult. And they'll seek out cheap forms of "weapons of mass destruction" to include biological and chemical agents. Oddly enough, this kind of threat will only increase the likelyhood that the US will take active interest in these governments.The HARM can be used in different ways. You can fire it off a platform such as the F-4G Wild Weasel. In this case, the EWO (Electronics Warfare Officer) selects a threat, hands that threat to the HARM, and sends the HARM on its way.
But the HARM also carries its own threat table and can be sent after a target with little direction. In this case, a threat is identified in a general area and the HARM is fired. The HARM then looks for threats, identifies the highest priority threat according to its internal table, and then goes after that threat.
These kinds of abilities allow a HARM to be used with platforms not otherwise especially equiped for Wild Weasel missions. It also allows for more creative functions. A pilot can "pickle over the horizon" and send a HARM after a known target without coming in range themselves. And by extending a HARM's fuel capacity, it can "hunt" for an extended period of time awaiting threat radars to power up after hiding from the Wild Weasel aircraft.
Vicous stuff.
The sobering part comes from a few rare reports during the Gulf War. There were reports of "near misses" with HARM missles by friendly surface forces. The theory is that the HARMs mis-identified friendly radar or communications systems as a threat in its internal threat table.
Sure, wireless brings forth a whole new series of security concerns. And that means encryption has its part. But it does nothing to address insecure hosts on persistant broadband connections.
What do you want to bet that the new satalite service providers will do the same as their xDSL and cable competitors and ignore this problem. But hey... they have encryption.
You can bet this means your average IT contractor won't be seeing an increase in pay. And in the end, this means those organizations who rely on contracted IT won't be seeing an increase in quality IT workers.
If anything, those Government agencies will continue to loose their IT staff. The company I went to has been raiding government organizations across the board. We can provide benefits and training well beyond the budgets of most Governmental agencies.
So in all... what does 33% do for the average US Gov't IT worker? If you're one of the current dedicated workers, you might be lucky enough to get a raise. But will it attract additional staff? I doubt it.
I was happy to see Storm which tasted like Sprite, but was caffinated. Then I notice they changed their label - no more zip. Darn.
What's the value of an average user's Windows box?
Perhapse a script that runs through open shares looking for a default install of financial software and harvesting the user's data. Maybe the script harvests cookie.txt files and scans them for common online bank identifications. Imagine the wealth of information an identity theif could have waiting for them after a day or two running such scripts.
Maybe the data itself isn't interesting. Instead we have a host with a broadband 24/7 connection. Relatively insecure. Perfect DDoS server host.
Of course... that's assuming the value is something that normally makes sense. Its great that you mention Quake. Quake cheats are relatively rampant. Why bother playing if you're playing with an artificial advantage - and one that's been "done" before? Yet it happens all the time. In the same line, you have skript kiddies who see themselves as something special if they can poke around, and maybe even delete, some unsuspecting target's files. The fact that it may have been trivial to do so means nothing to them.
The article opens up with the example of an unknown individual posting messages on target machine's WINDOWS desktops. Apparently enough of a customer base was affected by this "attack" to warrent a FBI investigation.It doesn't matter what OS you're using. It doesn't matter if your IP address is constantly moving. Connect a box up to a broadband, persistant connection and it is a target. Being unaware of this is the danger.
If done correctly, the entire IPO might be tax deductable.
Of course, the whole thing generated a marketing storm that shoked the existing industry and lit the box office on fire. Can't blame their marketing department for trying to resurect the idea. Even if its an old one.
Having said that... advocacy IS important. And it has helped Apple. How? Lets look at one case...
Johnson Space Center (NASA) underwent an attempt to standardize their environment. The IT Department suggested various cross-platform data formats. Their director ignored the suggestions and mandated Windows (Windows 95 at that).
JSC was already a very diverse environment with a strong Apple userbase. Those users were adament supporters of their chosen environment and faught the Windows push.
Jihad. It even ended up with a congressional investigation. Not because Apple cried fowl - but their users did. Advocacy at work.
The outcome today? For business automation (read: desktop apps such as email and word proc), JSC is a strong Windows shop. But its still a diverse environment - despite attempts to eradicate all non-Windows desktops. New Apple G4s are being rolled out in increased numbers within JSC. And its all due to advocacy.
Of course, despite Mr. Cringly's suggestion, this points out that Apple doesn't compete with just Microsoft. Apple is both a software and hardware company. It essentially competes with the entire Intel/PC industry for marketshare. That's pretty stiff competition.
If anything, THIS is why Apple shouldn't be so focused on Microsoft. And this is where Cringley is right - Apple is its own market. As he points out, you don't see Porche fret over Chevrolet.
One 3D printer was the polymer style. These produce some rather resiliant models but take considerably longer to produce. The group I supported used these models for parts they were expecting to travel to other centers with (presentations, comparisons, etc) or if they thought this was pretty close to "done". One of the coolest demos I saw using this was a ship in a bottle - the bottle being latticework so you could see the inside ship's details.
A later printer I helped set up for the group was basically a wax-jet printer. A table was moved about as a jet squirted shots of a plastic-like wax; slowly building a model. Gaps in the model were filled with very thin support columns which were easily cleaned away once the model was finnished. One engineer used this to generate molds for resin heart pump test parts. This enabled him to make small changes, generate a physical part quickly, and then test the performance of the part. He was thrilled.
Like others have pointed out, this technology has been around for awhile. But its still interesting.
This kinda thing has happened before. Just makes me shake my head.
I'm sure the DivX CODEC offers a lot to legitimate uses. Perhapse Ferverent's point is that DivX developers and their supporters should stress these bennifits rather than illegal use.