MagSafe does not seem all that innovative to me, small kitchen appliances have had this for a couple years now (it is called a SureRelease power cord, Google it).
Apple thinks they can patent this but someone probably beat them to it.
Parents? These are people applying to a graduate program with an average student age of 28. I don't think mommy and daddy are looking over their shoulder and know their application password.
The instructions were basically to login to the system and then change the URL in a couple places to get it to cough up a screen they were not supposed to have access to. Not something they could do by accident. Not anonymous. No way to look at data for anyone else but themselves. Not exactly hacking but really stupid!
Jobs said that the new iMac comes with the same optical mouse they already ship (but that and the USB keyboard on the stage appeared to be clear and white and not black).
I think that mouse is fine and comparable in quality to the Logitech optical USB mice that HP has been shipping with Vectra series desktops except for the second button of course (since I prefer a trackball I picked up an optical Microsoft Trackball Explorer for my G4 desktop).
I don't think the Columbia example is very good. Graduate schools within a university or affiliated with a college often have a specific name that is used to advertise the school so while www.law.columbia.edu might be fine for the Columbia Law School another school like the Wharton School of Business at UPenn might want something like www.wharton.edu to work also. The graduate school I work at registered a separate.edu domain for this reason and even though we do not advertise it we see lots and lots of hits on our web server at that address so people are obviously typing it into a browser rather than the college's domain name.
But I see little point in schools trying to register.com,.org etc. without a reason for it (many alumni associations will register schoolname.org or schoolname.net which seems sensible).
URLScan can certainly mess up a server if it is just turned on without any thought but it isn't that hard to configure... I'd have to say that if someone can't understand the readme file and edit the ini file they need to seriously ask themselves if they should be using IIS.
One pleasant surprise was that the ini file came with everything blocked and you had to enable things you wanted to work. The usual MO for Microsoft is to have it all open and then just offer you the option to disable something.
Be careful how much you rely on hfnetchk. It only verifies that a patch is installed but doesn't actually tell you if it is valid. If you are using NT there isn't an easy way to know the patches are valid (there is a utility out for Windows2000 that will check this).
We had an NT 4 IIS server that hfnetchk gave a clean bill of health and it was actually vulnerable to Nimda because one of the older unicode patches was somehow undone and no longer working.
Microsoft also released the URLScan utility that filters incoming requests for unicode, dots in the path, backslahes, etc. and blocks them before IIS can be affected.
This is much more pro-active since it might actually have a chance of blocking a future exploit simply because the requested URL is unusual and triggers the filters. It also can protect a server from some common attacks even if IIS is not fully patched.
Many people in academia are making their bones with big technology projects at the moment. A lot of them are nothing more than a press release, vaporware, and a ton of expensive hardware that ends up collecting dust on a shelf un-used because no one wanted to invest real money in hiring the staff to actually implement the project for real.
I get really suspicious when I read about how the major hardware vendor is donanting one unit for every unit purchased or something like that... usually the hardware is last year's model and instead of putting it in a landfill the vendor is taking a tax deduction for donating it and pocketing the cash for the units sold. Great way to clear up a bunch of old inventory and get a press release that makes you out to be a model corporate citizen.
This all depends on the program. I think that a school has to really have technology well integrated into the curriculum to justify the additional expense of a required laptop. If they don't do that then an ownership requirement with a choice of desktops and laptops is more appropriate.
But the requirement is key, as someone else pointed out this makes the purchase qualify for financial aid and that opens the doors for a lot of students who would be technology 'have-nots' otherwise.
I think mandatory purchasing programs are justified for schools that provide a lot of technical support. Standardization and pre-configuiration of the computers means they can spend time solving real problems and not waste hours trying to get a six year old Dell that wasn't designed to use an EtherNet card onto a campus network.
The graduate school I work at has a simple approach: buy one from us or buy an identical one and pay for the software template... if you don't we won't provide tech support and you're on your own. Students have to decide if they can be self-supporting or if they prefer to let us worry about fixing the computer for them.
A lot of incoming students don't like this but the reality is that we get them a heck of a deal for the computer by buying in bulk at an academic discount, we provide excellent tech support since we built the software template, and if it needs to be fixed we can hand them an identical computer as a loaner so they have zero downtime.
And the support techs get more work done in less time so we need fewer people, costs are lower, and tuition doesn't need to go up. I think that benefits students also.
-G
Wake Forest University
on
Dorm Storm?
·
· Score: 1
Wake Forest has an interesting program that applies to all programs, undergrads and graduate schools, and hands a laptop to every student. If a student is in a four year program they get a new laptop after the second year.
After graduation students get to keep the machine.
I think students pay a technology fee every term that funds it.
I would expect that MS is overjoyed that 10.1 has an SMB client... this pulls more Mac friendly sites into using NT/2000 servers, cuts down a major customer complaint about Mac and NT interoperability and also means that fewer people will use the truly lousy Services for Macintosh -- that probably means a lot of tech support calls will go away or become Apple's problem instead.
I am very jealous of the T20/T21/T22 laptops my co-workers have and my older 600e is finally due for replacement. But I am watching for a T23 with built-in wireless at a good price point.
We use Orinoco cards in the 600e models now and it would be great to not have that sticking out of the case and also have a better antenna arrangement.
We tested an iSeries ThinkPad with the built-in wireless and the reception was excellent even in poorly covered areas of our network and outdoors so I'm optimistic about the new T Series models with the same feature.
I carry two laptops... a ThinkPad 600e which is a reference machine for software testing (and is due to be replaced with a T22 or T23 model soon, yay) and a PowerBook G3 500 FireWire.
Right now I would not trade the PowerBook G3 for a G4 for three reasons:
Proportions -- yes, the G4 is thiner and lighter but it is wider and doesn't fit well in most carry cases -- this is a nitpick
AirPort reception -- I use my G3 on a wireless network 99% if the time and the reception is far superior because of the placement of the antenna and the plastic vs. Titanium case
Batteries -- I trade weight for battery life and carry two batteries in the G3 for maximum battery life while roaming around the network at work
If I had to replace the G3 today it would be a tough choice. The iBook would be a drop in performance but lighter. The G4 would be a great performer but has some annoying flaws.
The iBook also has a better 'touch' than the G4 I think... it fells better in your hands and the keyboard seems more natural to use... but that is based on brief periods of use.
I have seen a few attempts late in the day (not that they will get into a WebSTAR server, ha ha)... but some of our servers haven't seen any attempts yet.
It will be more interesting to see what comes in overnight. If the chart on incidents.org is accurate then I think there will be a lot of failed attempts in the log tomorrow morning.
No joke... the money that they want to spend on a missle shield would be better spent on space exploration and a defence against a 'planet killer' meteor. How dumb are we going to look if we build a system to defend ourselves from our own technology and then get wiped out by a big rock?
First a Peabody Award and now two Emmy nominations... Jon Stewart and co. will have to stop claiming all those fake "World's Best Golfer" awards and start listing the real ones.
I'm glad to see one nomination is for the writing... the writers on The Daily Show show deserve special recognition.
Slashdot Mirror
MagSafe does not seem all that innovative to me, small kitchen appliances have had this for a couple years now (it is called a SureRelease power cord, Google it).
Apple thinks they can patent this but someone probably beat them to it.
People talk louder on cell phones because, unlike most landlines, they cannot hear an echo of their own voice in the receiver.
Dartmouth is replacing an exisiting Cisco Aironet 802.11b network with a new 802.11a/b/g system designed by Aruba Networks.
Parents? These are people applying to a graduate program with an average student age of 28. I don't think mommy and daddy are looking over their shoulder and know their application password.
The instructions were basically to login to the system and then change the URL in a couple places to get it to cough up a screen they were not supposed to have access to. Not something they could do by accident. Not anonymous. No way to look at data for anyone else but themselves. Not exactly hacking but really stupid!
Jobs said that the new iMac comes with the same optical mouse they already ship (but that and the USB keyboard on the stage appeared to be clear and white and not black).
I think that mouse is fine and comparable in quality to the Logitech optical USB mice that HP has been shipping with Vectra series desktops except for the second button of course (since I prefer a trackball I picked up an optical Microsoft Trackball Explorer for my G4 desktop).
-G
No, but then I remember all the hype about Ginger, and we all know how earth-shattering that was.
Anyone want to take odds on Steve Jobs arriving on stage riding a Segway?
-G
I don't think the Columbia example is very good. Graduate schools within a university or affiliated with a college often have a specific name that is used to advertise the school so while www.law.columbia.edu might be fine for the Columbia Law School another school like the Wharton School of Business at UPenn might want something like www.wharton.edu to work also. The graduate school I work at registered a separate .edu domain for this reason and even though we do not advertise it we see lots and lots of hits on our web server at that address so people are obviously typing it into a browser rather than the college's domain name.
.com, .org etc. without a reason for it (many alumni associations will register schoolname.org or schoolname.net which seems sensible).
But I see little point in schools trying to register
-G
URLScan can certainly mess up a server if it is just turned on without any thought but it isn't that hard to configure... I'd have to say that if someone can't understand the readme file and edit the ini file they need to seriously ask themselves if they should be using IIS.
One pleasant surprise was that the ini file came with everything blocked and you had to enable things you wanted to work. The usual MO for Microsoft is to have it all open and then just offer you the option to disable something.
-G
Be careful how much you rely on hfnetchk. It only verifies that a patch is installed but doesn't actually tell you if it is valid. If you are using NT there isn't an easy way to know the patches are valid (there is a utility out for Windows2000 that will check this).
We had an NT 4 IIS server that hfnetchk gave a clean bill of health and it was actually vulnerable to Nimda because one of the older unicode patches was somehow undone and no longer working.
Microsoft also released the URLScan utility that filters incoming requests for unicode, dots in the path, backslahes, etc. and blocks them before IIS can be affected.
This is much more pro-active since it might actually have a chance of blocking a future exploit simply because the requested URL is unusual and triggers the filters. It also can protect a server from some common attacks even if IIS is not fully patched.
-G
Many people in academia are making their bones with big technology projects at the moment. A lot of them are nothing more than a press release, vaporware, and a ton of expensive hardware that ends up collecting dust on a shelf un-used because no one wanted to invest real money in hiring the staff to actually implement the project for real.
I get really suspicious when I read about how the major hardware vendor is donanting one unit for every unit purchased or something like that... usually the hardware is last year's model and instead of putting it in a landfill the vendor is taking a tax deduction for donating it and pocketing the cash for the units sold. Great way to clear up a bunch of old inventory and get a press release that makes you out to be a model corporate citizen.
-G
Well if you want to talk about liberal arts schools start with Dartmouth... they were networking student dorm rooms circa 1985.
-G
This all depends on the program. I think that a school has to really have technology well integrated into the curriculum to justify the additional expense of a required laptop. If they don't do that then an ownership requirement with a choice of desktops and laptops is more appropriate.
But the requirement is key, as someone else pointed out this makes the purchase qualify for financial aid and that opens the doors for a lot of students who would be technology 'have-nots' otherwise.
I think mandatory purchasing programs are justified for schools that provide a lot of technical support. Standardization and pre-configuiration of the computers means they can spend time solving real problems and not waste hours trying to get a six year old Dell that wasn't designed to use an EtherNet card onto a campus network.
The graduate school I work at has a simple approach: buy one from us or buy an identical one and pay for the software template... if you don't we won't provide tech support and you're on your own. Students have to decide if they can be self-supporting or if they prefer to let us worry about fixing the computer for them.
A lot of incoming students don't like this but the reality is that we get them a heck of a deal for the computer by buying in bulk at an academic discount, we provide excellent tech support since we built the software template, and if it needs to be fixed we can hand them an identical computer as a loaner so they have zero downtime.
And the support techs get more work done in less time so we need fewer people, costs are lower, and tuition doesn't need to go up. I think that benefits students also.
-G
Wake Forest has an interesting program that applies to all programs, undergrads and graduate schools, and hands a laptop to every student. If a student is in a four year program they get a new laptop after the second year.
After graduation students get to keep the machine.
I think students pay a technology fee every term that funds it.
-G
I would expect that MS is overjoyed that 10.1 has an SMB client... this pulls more Mac friendly sites into using NT/2000 servers, cuts down a major customer complaint about Mac and NT interoperability and also means that fewer people will use the truly lousy Services for Macintosh -- that probably means a lot of tech support calls will go away or become Apple's problem instead.
Seems like a win for Redmond all around.
-G
I am very jealous of the T20/T21/T22 laptops my co-workers have and my older 600e is finally due for replacement. But I am watching for a T23 with built-in wireless at a good price point.
We use Orinoco cards in the 600e models now and it would be great to not have that sticking out of the case and also have a better antenna arrangement.
We tested an iSeries ThinkPad with the built-in wireless and the reception was excellent even in poorly covered areas of our network and outdoors so I'm optimistic about the new T Series models with the same feature.
-G
Right now I would not trade the PowerBook G3 for a G4 for three reasons:
- Proportions -- yes, the G4 is thiner and lighter but it is wider and doesn't fit well in most carry cases -- this is a nitpick
- AirPort reception -- I use my G3 on a wireless network 99% if the time and the reception is far superior because of the placement of the antenna and the plastic vs. Titanium case
- Batteries -- I trade weight for battery life and carry two batteries in the G3 for maximum battery life while roaming around the network at work
If I had to replace the G3 today it would be a tough choice. The iBook would be a drop in performance but lighter. The G4 would be a great performer but has some annoying flaws.The iBook also has a better 'touch' than the G4 I think... it fells better in your hands and the keyboard seems more natural to use... but that is based on brief periods of use.
-G
I have seen a few attempts late in the day (not that they will get into a WebSTAR server, ha ha)... but some of our servers haven't seen any attempts yet.
It will be more interesting to see what comes in overnight. If the chart on incidents.org is accurate then I think there will be a lot of failed attempts in the log tomorrow morning.
-G
No joke... the money that they want to spend on a missle shield would be better spent on space exploration and a defence against a 'planet killer' meteor. How dumb are we going to look if we build a system to defend ourselves from our own technology and then get wiped out by a big rock?
-G
First a Peabody Award and now two Emmy nominations... Jon Stewart and co. will have to stop claiming all those fake "World's Best Golfer" awards and start listing the real ones.
I'm glad to see one nomination is for the writing... the writers on The Daily Show show deserve special recognition.
-Geoff