As others pointed out, you are free to work for this jerkwad if you enjoy having these kinds of policies in place. But if you did, you sure as hell wouldn't be posting to/. during working hours, or you'd be out on your ass come 8:00 Christmas eve. Enjoy the unemployment queue.
There is a benefit to having clear, concise computer, telephone and security policies in place, but there are diplomatic ways to phrase such policies in an employee manual, not by way of a blunt (if not outright rude) email from a boss who sounds like Josef Stalin. If the boss addresses his clients/customers the same way he communicates with his employees, he won't be in business for very long.
"Clueless people" are the only ones who would open a file attachment in an email message from someone they don't know with the subject line consisting only of "Hi." Such folks are 99.9% likely to be using Windows and probably don't even know what Linux is, so I doubt they will have the capacity to associate the virus with the Open Source community.
Interesting that the virus is set to launch the DDoS on Feb. 1 and end it on Feb. 12. I don't know any details about the court schedule, but it sounds like it is timed to synchronize with their next hearings.
Doesn't surprise me a bit. Just about every law ever written includes an exemption for politicians, police officers or the author of the law (or any other ass-kisser they choose to include). Note that employees of the Social Security Administration are the only citizens in this country (except U.S. Senators and members of congress) who are exempt from paying social security taxes.
Uh, go read the Mirra.com website. This is a tiny little privately held company in Mt. View, founded by a guy who's been laid off from both 3DO and WebTV and apparently used to work at Microsoft. They're private, not public, so they don't sell stock.
Or you could even read the Mirra.com website. This device doesn't run Linux, nor do they support Linux or Macintosh (though they may explore this support option in the future if the market for these platforms grows). The founder of Mirra is a former Microsoftie and the client software only runs on Windows XP or 2000 machines.
California does not have a good track record for keeping private data private. See this link from the Sacramento Bee to read about how the state's 250,000 civil servants had their personnel records stolen in 2002 by hackers who have never been caught. And the sysadmins of the compromised database servers didn't even notify them for three months (because they were busy "investigating" the security breach).
This doesn't give me much confidence in the ability of government bureaucrats to maintain the security and integrity of a highly valuable database. You've seen how well they handle your tax dollars; just wait until they have control of your DNA records!
Sorry, but it's not fine with me. And the word is spelled "felon" not "FELLON."
California's Department of Health Services already collects DNA specimens from every child born in the state (under its Genetic Disease Screening Program) and has been doing so for more than 15 years. The potential is there to create a DNA database of every native born California resident and Attorney General Bill Lockyer has already proposed doing so with the GDB program. What started out as something good "for the children" is now being proposed as something "good for law enforcement." This proposed law is only the first step toward that ultimate goal.
To paraphrase a famous quote, "At first, they came for the felons, but since I wasn't a felon, I didn't speak up. Then they came for people aquitted of felony charges, but since I wasn't charged with a felony, I didn't speak up. Then they came for people with outstanding parking tickets..." etc. etc.
Thanks goodness I was born in Texas, but my children could be in that proposed database, and that concerns me plenty.
This is unfortunately true. I bought my first laptop in September, and I sometimes actually do keep it on my lap while working in areas where I don't have a desk. It does indeed get a bit warm on my thighs, so I don't keep it there for more than 20 minutes at a time. I also keep in mind the story posted last year on/. about the British researcher who burned his balls by keeping a hot laptop running during a trans-Atlantic flight.
Of course he votes! This is why our own government runs a ponzi scheme called Social Security and another one called MediCare. Both of these programs are mathematical incongruities that were created to swindle elderly people into voting for the proponents (chiefly Democrats, but now Republicans have jumped on the bandwagon as well). They are promised financial "security" in their retirement years, paid for by the labor of their children, and low-cost "health care" insurance, also paid by their children and grandchildren.
Anyone who runs the numbers knows that this structure will collapse on itself when the number of retirees and their financial entitlements grows to the point where it exceeds the number of workers paying into the system.
As a poll worker for the past seven years, I've noted that the most reliable voters are the elderly, who are happy to vote for any politician who promises them more money or benefits, or any bond issue that will be paid for by future generations. They won't have to deal with the consequences, and they know it.
I've used every release of Red Hat from 7.2 through 9 and then installed Mandrake 9 earlier this year. I have to confess that the Mandrake installation was the smoothest and easiest ever, and the rest of the family prefers Mandrake over RH. I haven't tried Fedora. The only "major" difference I noted between RH and Mandrake is that my scrolling mouse does not work in Mandrake, but does work on RedHat. Odd bug there, and probably my own fault.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, though, I installed SuSE 9, and that was a real treat. Almost as easy to install as Mandrake and everything appears to work fine, except for the HotSync package with my Handspring Visor. Of course, the PDA connection hasn't worked on any version of Linux I've tried so far.
I can only see Mandrake improving as their financial condition brightens, and with RedHat exiting the desktop market, things only look better for Gael and his team.
I'm surprised Diebold chose to use the embedded XP system in their ATMs instead of the far more widely used (and certainly more secure) OS/2. I understand from IBM sources that while OS/2 on the desktop never really took off that well (even though it was the first OS I installed on my first home-built PC back in, oh gee, 1994), it really does hold the lion's share of the ATM market. Makes me even more suspicious of the Diebold AccuTouch voting machines now. What happens if someone unleashes a similar worm around November 1, 2004 that spreads like wildfire in every precinct just before the General Election?
I agree with you that Mandrake is a much easier distro to install than RedHat, SuSE or Turbo (the only other ones I've played around with). Normal Windows users also seem to find it easy to adapt to the Mandrake environment. I need to spend some time playing around with LindowsOS to do a real comparison, though.
Well, you don't really have to pay Red Hat for the software. Anyone can download and install it for free. What you are paying for is support. This is important in a large corporate environment, but not so much for the casual home computer hobbyist. That's why I was somewhat surprised to see him say that the shrinkwrapped retail copies of RHL were profitable, because I don't know anyone who has bought Red Hat through that channel.
Dig up some history and you'll find out that the Pledge of Alliegance was written by the Christian Socialist Edward Bellamy (author of "Looking Backward) near the turn of the century, and intended as a sales pitch to sell flags to schools by way of his magazine "Youth's Companion" (the predecessor of the Weekly Reader). The original version included phrases even more socialistic than what we have now, but was edited after socialists got a bad rep after the Bolshevik revolution.
It was never even an official document until the American Legion lobbied congress to pass the "under God" amended language in the 1950s.
And contrary to popular belief, it was never mandatory for schoolchildren to recite until a number of states passed ordinances making it so in the 1960s to try to indoctrinate the children of America against the rebellious hippies who were undermining traditional values in that decade by encouraging young people to think for themselves and question authority.
I believe this all refers to MS03-039, released on 9/10/2003. If you've updated your system since last Wednesday, you're protected and the patch won't show up as a Critical Update, because you've been scanned and MS has determined that you're already patched.
Of course, if you're using Linux and you go to the Windows Update site, you won't find any critical updates for your system there either.
While this theme is rather old-hat in science fiction, with stories built around this prediction dating back to the 1930s, I just last night saw a wonderful variation on the idea in Metropolis, Rintaro's 2001 anime epic. While the story involves several other primary threads, one of the subplots involves the resentment human society holds toward the robots who have taken away so many of their jobs. Since a lot of the robots are doing the menial grunt jobs that most people wouldn't want to do (garbage collection, street sweeping, dishwashing) or hazardous jobs that humans really aren't equipped to perform efficiently (firefighting, dangerous police work, for example), this resentment is a bit difficult to swallow, but we see the same sentiment expressed here in the U.S. toward illegal immigrants.
Odd to see a world where robots do so many regular jobs, but Ken Ichi's uncle still gets served by a human bartender in Zone 1. Bartending is one of the skills that robots are now doing regularly, if I remember a/. article from a few months back about a Japanese water hole.
I don't think it matters what your job involves, staying in good physical shape takes effort and work. While I climb up and down stairs frequently in my position as a sysadmin, my family joined a health club last January, as one of the only New Years Resolutions we've managed to keep. Both my father and my brother had heart attacks last year (treated with triple bypass surgery), so I know I've got a predisposition for the same thing. I decided I shouldn't take any chances, and needed to get into shape. I go to the gym about three times a week now, and our personal trainer (the owner of the health club) has each one of us on a different exercise routine, customized to our ages and abilities. It only takes about 45 minutes each visit (and only costs us $75 a month for all four memberships). I feel great after every workout and have noticed many differences in my health after only 7 months of regular exercise. I haven't lost much weight, but I've turned fat into muscle; I don't tire as easily as I used to; my periodic back pain is now history, and I generally feel much better than I did last year. YMMV, but I've been very pleased with the outcome, and would highly recommend joining a gym.
Another problem is the "felony" provision of this bill. IANAL, but as I recall, the difference between a "felony" and a "misdemeanor" is fifty bucks. If you are caught stealing something that is worth less than $50, you are charged with a misdemeanor (e.g. shoplifting a candy bar). If you are caught stealing something worth more than $50, you are charged with a felony (stealing a 45" big screen TV or something similar). Since Apple is now selling individual songs on its iTunes site for $0.99, this bill would make copying any one of those songs to a filesharing network a felony, changing the retail cost of a single tune from $0.99 to $50+. And the RIAA wants to fine such filesharers something like $15,000 per song! Talk about runaway inflation...
This alone should be enough to kill this stupid bill before it ever gets out of committee, but if the RIAA and Hollywood put enough money into lobbying for it, this thing could sail right through to a vote the same way the DMCA did several years ago.
While you are correct that Afghanistan was never officially one of the Soviet Socialist Republics, it did suffer under Soviet domination for a time, until the Mujahideen rebels defeated the USSR forces.
One of my IT consulting clients is a small businessman from Afghanistan who fled the country with his family shortly after the Soviets invaded. He says Afghanistan in the 1970s was just as developed as neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan. Kabul in those days was as modern a city as Tehran or Karachi. He earned his degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kabul and now owns a thriving business selling and supporting Savin/Ricoh multifunction office technology. While he still hopes to return to his home someday, he says he's pretty pleased with life here in the States and this is now where he calls home.
Calling "your" president an asshole is now considered a capital offense? What paragraph of the USA PATRIOT Act included that provision?
I'm afraid my life may be in danger now. Given the choice of siding with a numbnutz redneck like you or the Dixie Chicks, I'll take those babes any old day. Go ahead and shoot me, Hinckley.
That very incident was the reason this new law was introduced. It took the State three months or more before notifying the employees that their personnel files had been hacked.
They won't be able to do that anymore, and claim they needed the time to investigate the incident.
The ACLU just picks its battles differently. With the NRA around to safeguard the 2nd Amendment, the ACLU figures that's one they don't need to bother with (so they avoid opposing any legislation that attempts to curtail it, assuming that the NRA will fight that battle for them). And, of course, they don't want to alienate their left-leaning core constituency which consists of quite a few gun-grabbers who would happily disarm the rest of the population). The NRA has also proven somewhat impotent in opposing most gun control legislation anyway. Witness all the gun laws that are already on the books in the U.S. today, so I suspect you are exaggerating the extent of their political power.
Wouldn't it be nice if the ACLU defended all provisions of the Bill of Rights equally, rather than selectively? I guess that's why we have the Libertarian Party in the U.S. Doesn't Canada have an ideologically similar Libertarian Party?
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For a significant number of English majors, I'm sure Project Gutenberg has made many trips to the campus bookstore unnecessary.
As others pointed out, you are free to work for this jerkwad if you enjoy having these kinds of policies in place. But if you did, you sure as hell wouldn't be posting to /. during working hours, or you'd be out on your ass come 8:00 Christmas eve. Enjoy the unemployment queue.
There is a benefit to having clear, concise computer, telephone and security policies in place, but there are diplomatic ways to phrase such policies in an employee manual, not by way of a blunt (if not outright rude) email from a boss who sounds like Josef Stalin. If the boss addresses his clients/customers the same way he communicates with his employees, he won't be in business for very long.
"Clueless people" are the only ones who would open a file attachment in an email message from someone they don't know with the subject line consisting only of "Hi." Such folks are 99.9% likely to be using Windows and probably don't even know what Linux is, so I doubt they will have the capacity to associate the virus with the Open Source community.
Interesting that the virus is set to launch the DDoS on Feb. 1 and end it on Feb. 12. I don't know any details about the court schedule, but it sounds like it is timed to synchronize with their next hearings.
Doesn't surprise me a bit. Just about every law ever written includes an exemption for politicians, police officers or the author of the law (or any other ass-kisser they choose to include). Note that employees of the Social Security Administration are the only citizens in this country (except U.S. Senators and members of congress) who are exempt from paying social security taxes.
Uh, go read the Mirra.com website. This is a tiny little privately held company in Mt. View, founded by a guy who's been laid off from both 3DO and WebTV and apparently used to work at Microsoft. They're private, not public, so they don't sell stock.
Or you could even read the Mirra.com website. This device doesn't run Linux, nor do they support Linux or Macintosh (though they may explore this support option in the future if the market for these platforms grows). The founder of Mirra is a former Microsoftie and the client software only runs on Windows XP or 2000 machines.
California does not have a good track record for keeping private data private. See this link from the Sacramento Bee to read about how the state's 250,000 civil servants had their personnel records stolen in 2002 by hackers who have never been caught. And the sysadmins of the compromised database servers didn't even notify them for three months (because they were busy "investigating" the security breach).
This doesn't give me much confidence in the ability of government bureaucrats to maintain the security and integrity of a highly valuable database. You've seen how well they handle your tax dollars; just wait until they have control of your DNA records!
Sorry, but it's not fine with me. And the word is spelled "felon" not "FELLON."
California's Department of Health Services already collects DNA specimens from every child born in the state (under its Genetic Disease Screening Program) and has been doing so for more than 15 years. The potential is there to create a DNA database of every native born California resident and Attorney General Bill Lockyer has already proposed doing so with the GDB program. What started out as something good "for the children" is now being proposed as something "good for law enforcement." This proposed law is only the first step toward that ultimate goal.
To paraphrase a famous quote, "At first, they came for the felons, but since I wasn't a felon, I didn't speak up. Then they came for people aquitted of felony charges, but since I wasn't charged with a felony, I didn't speak up. Then they came for people with outstanding parking tickets..." etc. etc.
Thanks goodness I was born in Texas, but my children could be in that proposed database, and that concerns me plenty.
This is unfortunately true. I bought my first laptop in September, and I sometimes actually do keep it on my lap while working in areas where I don't have a desk. It does indeed get a bit warm on my thighs, so I don't keep it there for more than 20 minutes at a time. I also keep in mind the story posted last year on /. about the British researcher who burned his balls by keeping a hot laptop running during a trans-Atlantic flight.
Of course he votes! This is why our own government runs a ponzi scheme called Social Security and another one called MediCare. Both of these programs are mathematical incongruities that were created to swindle elderly people into voting for the proponents (chiefly Democrats, but now Republicans have jumped on the bandwagon as well). They are promised financial "security" in their retirement years, paid for by the labor of their children, and low-cost "health care" insurance, also paid by their children and grandchildren.
Anyone who runs the numbers knows that this structure will collapse on itself when the number of retirees and their financial entitlements grows to the point where it exceeds the number of workers paying into the system.
As a poll worker for the past seven years, I've noted that the most reliable voters are the elderly, who are happy to vote for any politician who promises them more money or benefits, or any bond issue that will be paid for by future generations. They won't have to deal with the consequences, and they know it.
I've used every release of Red Hat from 7.2 through 9 and then installed Mandrake 9 earlier this year. I have to confess that the Mandrake installation was the smoothest and easiest ever, and the rest of the family prefers Mandrake over RH. I haven't tried Fedora. The only "major" difference I noted between RH and Mandrake is that my scrolling mouse does not work in Mandrake, but does work on RedHat. Odd bug there, and probably my own fault.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, though, I installed SuSE 9, and that was a real treat. Almost as easy to install as Mandrake and everything appears to work fine, except for the HotSync package with my Handspring Visor. Of course, the PDA connection hasn't worked on any version of Linux I've tried so far.
I can only see Mandrake improving as their financial condition brightens, and with RedHat exiting the desktop market, things only look better for Gael and his team.
I'm surprised Diebold chose to use the embedded XP system in their ATMs instead of the far more widely used (and certainly more secure) OS/2. I understand from IBM sources that while OS/2 on the desktop never really took off that well (even though it was the first OS I installed on my first home-built PC back in, oh gee, 1994), it really does hold the lion's share of the ATM market. Makes me even more suspicious of the Diebold AccuTouch voting machines now. What happens if someone unleashes a similar worm around November 1, 2004 that spreads like wildfire in every precinct just before the General Election?
I agree with you that Mandrake is a much easier distro to install than RedHat, SuSE or Turbo (the only other ones I've played around with). Normal Windows users also seem to find it easy to adapt to the Mandrake environment. I need to spend some time playing around with LindowsOS to do a real comparison, though.
Well, you don't really have to pay Red Hat for the software. Anyone can download and install it for free. What you are paying for is support. This is important in a large corporate environment, but not so much for the casual home computer hobbyist. That's why I was somewhat surprised to see him say that the shrinkwrapped retail copies of RHL were profitable, because I don't know anyone who has bought Red Hat through that channel.
Dig up some history and you'll find out that the Pledge of Alliegance was written by the Christian Socialist Edward Bellamy (author of "Looking Backward) near the turn of the century, and intended as a sales pitch to sell flags to schools by way of his magazine "Youth's Companion" (the predecessor of the Weekly Reader). The original version included phrases even more socialistic than what we have now, but was edited after socialists got a bad rep after the Bolshevik revolution.
It was never even an official document until the American Legion lobbied congress to pass the "under God" amended language in the 1950s.
And contrary to popular belief, it was never mandatory for schoolchildren to recite until a number of states passed ordinances making it so in the 1960s to try to indoctrinate the children of America against the rebellious hippies who were undermining traditional values in that decade by encouraging young people to think for themselves and question authority.
Yes, that was the day it was released. If you updated on 9/10/03, you're safe until the next exploit is discovered.
I believe this all refers to MS03-039, released on 9/10/2003. If you've updated your system since last Wednesday, you're protected and the patch won't show up as a Critical Update, because you've been scanned and MS has determined that you're already patched.
Of course, if you're using Linux and you go to the Windows Update site, you won't find any critical updates for your system there either.
While this theme is rather old-hat in science fiction, with stories built around this prediction dating back to the 1930s, I just last night saw a wonderful variation on the idea in Metropolis, Rintaro's 2001 anime epic. While the story involves several other primary threads, one of the subplots involves the resentment human society holds toward the robots who have taken away so many of their jobs. Since a lot of the robots are doing the menial grunt jobs that most people wouldn't want to do (garbage collection, street sweeping, dishwashing) or hazardous jobs that humans really aren't equipped to perform efficiently (firefighting, dangerous police work, for example), this resentment is a bit difficult to swallow, but we see the same sentiment expressed here in the U.S. toward illegal immigrants.
/. article from a few months back about a Japanese water hole.
Odd to see a world where robots do so many regular jobs, but Ken Ichi's uncle still gets served by a human bartender in Zone 1. Bartending is one of the skills that robots are now doing regularly, if I remember a
I don't think it matters what your job involves, staying in good physical shape takes effort and work. While I climb up and down stairs frequently in my position as a sysadmin, my family joined a health club last January, as one of the only New Years Resolutions we've managed to keep. Both my father and my brother had heart attacks last year (treated with triple bypass surgery), so I know I've got a predisposition for the same thing. I decided I shouldn't take any chances, and needed to get into shape. I go to the gym about three times a week now, and our personal trainer (the owner of the health club) has each one of us on a different exercise routine, customized to our ages and abilities. It only takes about 45 minutes each visit (and only costs us $75 a month for all four memberships). I feel great after every workout and have noticed many differences in my health after only 7 months of regular exercise. I haven't lost much weight, but I've turned fat into muscle; I don't tire as easily as I used to; my periodic back pain is now history, and I generally feel much better than I did last year. YMMV, but I've been very pleased with the outcome, and would highly recommend joining a gym.
Another problem is the "felony" provision of this bill. IANAL, but as I recall, the difference between a "felony" and a "misdemeanor" is fifty bucks. If you are caught stealing something that is worth less than $50, you are charged with a misdemeanor (e.g. shoplifting a candy bar). If you are caught stealing something worth more than $50, you are charged with a felony (stealing a 45" big screen TV or something similar). Since Apple is now selling individual songs on its iTunes site for $0.99, this bill would make copying any one of those songs to a filesharing network a felony, changing the retail cost of a single tune from $0.99 to $50+. And the RIAA wants to fine such filesharers something like $15,000 per song! Talk about runaway inflation...
This alone should be enough to kill this stupid bill before it ever gets out of committee, but if the RIAA and Hollywood put enough money into lobbying for it, this thing could sail right through to a vote the same way the DMCA did several years ago.
While you are correct that Afghanistan was never officially one of the Soviet Socialist Republics, it did suffer under Soviet domination for a time, until the Mujahideen rebels defeated the USSR forces.
One of my IT consulting clients is a small businessman from Afghanistan who fled the country with his family shortly after the Soviets invaded. He says Afghanistan in the 1970s was just as developed as neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan. Kabul in those days was as modern a city as Tehran or Karachi. He earned his degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kabul and now owns a thriving business selling and supporting Savin/Ricoh multifunction office technology. While he still hopes to return to his home someday, he says he's pretty pleased with life here in the States and this is now where he calls home.
Calling "your" president an asshole is now considered a capital offense? What paragraph of the USA PATRIOT Act included that provision?
I'm afraid my life may be in danger now. Given the choice of siding with a numbnutz redneck like you or the Dixie Chicks, I'll take those babes any old day. Go ahead and shoot me, Hinckley.
That very incident was the reason this new law was introduced. It took the State three months or more before notifying the employees that their personnel files had been hacked.
They won't be able to do that anymore, and claim they needed the time to investigate the incident.
The ACLU just picks its battles differently. With the NRA around to safeguard the 2nd Amendment, the ACLU figures that's one they don't need to bother with (so they avoid opposing any legislation that attempts to curtail it, assuming that the NRA will fight that battle for them). And, of course, they don't want to alienate their left-leaning core constituency which consists of quite a few gun-grabbers who would happily disarm the rest of the population). The NRA has also proven somewhat impotent in opposing most gun control legislation anyway. Witness all the gun laws that are already on the books in the U.S. today, so I suspect you are exaggerating the extent of their political power.
Wouldn't it be nice if the ACLU defended all provisions of the Bill of Rights equally, rather than selectively? I guess that's why we have the Libertarian Party in the U.S. Doesn't Canada have an ideologically similar Libertarian Party?