The point is that you only need a very few people in a few locations to install fear. Shit, with the Anthrax stuff in the US, all "they" needed to do was keep sending out envelopes with nothing more then flour in them. Once it was widely publisized that some was found somewhere, it's enought to scare the shit out of everyone everywhere.
Think about this: If in 2 seperate locations in the US, a single guy walked into a mall with 2-3 gernades and rolled them into the food court. Would you go into a mall anywhere in the US anytime soon? Hell, it could be the same guy (though that'd limit the amount of fear caused if that could be proven).
* A cheap plastic pen modified to carry poison delivered thru it's modified (or replaced) ball point. Even if it only made people sick, the "terror" would be well recognized.
* A cheap plastic pen carrying a more sophisticated poison (probably traceable after the fact), where skin contact is all that is required to kill (then you'd just need to draw on people). As above, even if it only made people sick, the "terror" would be well recognized.
* As another poster noted, a pair of hands capable of breaking some else's neck/gouging out eyes/mameing in any number of ways.
* Infect some poor bastard outside of the "secured zone" with a virulent pathogen, then send 'em on in (again, probably traceable after the fact).
* Anthrax (again, tracable-ish).
* Spiking food/drinks sold within the venue with who knows what.
* Or how about attacking people outside of the secured zone!? It'd still be the Olympics after all.
Thank god the terrorists are relativity stupid. If they really wanted to install fear in the US after 9/11 all they would need is a couple bastards with grenades and a near by mall. Let's just hope they don't read/. =)
The one requirement I had for our wedding photographer was that we would end up with the original HiRes images once everything was done. This was my first question, and anyone who refused we walked out on then and there ("No? Well then I guess you can't help us, sorry.").
Like other posters have said, retaining the copyright is not as high of an issue. We ended up using one of the images on our thank you cards! Ballsy? Yes. Stupid? Probably, but all we got were ooh's and ahh's (maybe the CaD letter is in the mail;).
Just think of what the photographer is trying to do... he/she just wants to make sure that they're going to make more then their attendance fee. Printing off the occasional photo 20 years from now isn't going to chap their hide (or, at least it shouldn't). My advise - be open with them, say you're concerned that they'll be long gone X years from now and you will still want to have access (but make it clear that their reassurances are not good enough, that you want the HiRes images no matter what or you'll go else where).
On a side note... the suggestion of a News photographer is sweet! We were 110% happy with our wedding photographer, but I would have liked that idea originally as an option!
What I would appreciate as a customer...
on
eFax Hell?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
...is to have a formal apology letter PERSONALLY signed by your CEO along with a CASE of paper (to make up for the waisted paper from the 300 page fax, and for the toner for that matter). It might cost you a bit, but I think it would go a long way to mend a few fences, so to speak.
Excellent instrumental tracks that you've probably heard before (as this album was originally released as a promo to media to use as background music). Of course, this suggestion is comming from a hard core Beastie Boy fan;)
Here here! But the new Beastie Boys CD has the bullshit (well, maybe a different kind of copy protection, but there non-the-less).
The only people who get stopped by this shitty "copy protection" is Joe Sixpack. Then after yelling expletives for a few minutes, Joe downloads 5 MP3s off Kazza (1 of which isn't from an RIAA narq) and bam, he's good to go. Who wins here? Sure, the coke snorting record execs THINK things will be better with "copy protection", and the people who make the "copy protection" are of course making a mint. So again, who looses?
The artists I guess, as ironic as that is! "If we put copy protection on your next disk, no one will be able to make MP3s of the tracks and you'll make more money! Course the copy protection costs you 5c per disk, but it'll more then pay for itself. Trust me!"
I've just downgraded to 0.8 cause after installing my fav extensions/themes, all I get in 0.9 is something to the effect of:
"Please wait while Firefox finishes installing the extensions, this may take a minute."
A minute, 25 minutes, hour and a half, all the same thing! So I tried killing the directory and starting from scratch, but I'm still getting the same dialog (which is weird)... Stupid Orbit Gray Theme, it's poison I's tell's ya!
Just call me a jackass... the first 3 times I read that, I saw "attractive", not "active". Durr... Excuse me whilst I make a quick trip to the coffee pot to get an eye opener.
"Moo, Moo. Moo Moo Moo Moo" (Translation: "Sorry, my bad.")
So what of us hideous, nerd-like beings? It's not a terrible thing simply because some pretty people ain't so pretty no mo. Common./ editors, was that statement really so necessary?
Wouldn't it have been better for MySQL to lend the development work used to create this GUI to expand the capabilities of phpMyAdmin? Now granted, phpMyAdmin requires PHP (and by proxy a web server, as well as a web browser come to think of it) to run, but it runs on any platform that supports PHP. Seems to me that this is the best approach for Db admin (well, for my server at least).
Or am I missing the point? Is there any reason to have a thin/thick client over a web client?
PS - I'm downloading the alpha so I can give it a try, so maybe I'll get it;)
There seems to be 2 kinds of net cafe's OS wise - fully open and locked down to the point of uselessness. As a traveller, I have a USB thumb drive with my documents on it. Sometimes you need to install its drivers and it's VERY annoying when you can't.
But that's not to say that I approve of the wide open systems either... If I can install whatever the hell I want, so can anyone else (think keyloggers, etc).
What I have often thought is if I ran one of these places, I'd give each user a removable hard disk to slide into their rented system. Once they were done, they'd return the hard disk and I'd re-image it at the front desk. That way you're guaranteed that everyone can do whatever the hell they want/need to on your systems but only while they are there.
Of course you'd have the extra expense of having a few more hard disks then systems, a system up front to re-image disks, the removable trays themselves, the additional time for the users to startup and shutdown every time, lost/damaged/dropped/stolen hard disks... Needless to say there would be a few issues to work out, but all in all I think an approach like this would be the best for all parties involved (assuming you overcome the issues listed above of course =).
Internet Cafe's are relativity popular in Australia, least in dense backpacker-esque areas (Sydney, Gold Coast, Whitsunday's, etc). I've only used Internet Cafe's in these locations because I was unable to connect with my laptop. So I guess what I'm saying is unless you expect to get allot of foot traffic from travellers, I haven't seen a market for them (again, least in Australia though I'd believe the same would go for the US).
Where the hell is the "-1 Asshole" moderation when you need it? This is a fairly interesting question (as replacing the foam around old speakers is nothing I've ever thought of as an option). If you don't like "Ask Slashdot", don't be a dick... turn it off in your preferences.
As was mentioned a week-ish ago, Disney has closed it's 2D animation studio(s), and now without Pixar as their partner, is Disney out of the animation game? Or does Disney they have their own in-house CGI studio? And if they do, why did they need Pixar in the first place?
...but considering SCO's only product is media spin, some high profile/intelligent people need to counter the bullshit they are pumping out. Else no matter how unintelligent the argument, it will eventually be seen as the truth.
If I were going to make a patch such as this in the manor in which they did (that is, they patched a Microsoft program when they themselves are not Microsoft), I'd write an ActiveX browser plug-in that simply scrubbed the URL before it was processed by the browser!? I've not looked at the source code for it, but is this what they've done?
And no matter how they did it, how freaking embarrassing is this for Microsoft? "Our software is so flawed that unauthorized third parties can fix it faster then we can." Oh thank god NORAD is using that shit!
Besides a fairly decent backup schedule (in this case, even once a month would just about suffice), I've got the original email, so two copies + the backup location(s). Plus... any problems that arise with the billing SHOULD be rectified before you get the next statement anyway, so the "hard copies" are really for historical purposes only. All billing issues are fixed within a week of getting the PDF. Plus, no need to keep track of the dead-tree version.
Paperless != No Statement
on
Paperless Billing?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I get a PDF statement emailed to me from my Aussi telephone company and save $5/month to boot. Best of all, just have to file the PDF into a network folder and I've got a "hard copy" to refer to.
Very cool stuff! This is a very cool way to define the layout of a form, it boils it down very effectively (IMHO). Depending on it's implementation, it could allow for cross platform development (assuming that the target platform had a compatible compiler, of course)... But then again it is Microsoft, to them "cross platform" means Win9x, Win 2k and WinXP (see.NET). This will probably step into the same sort of role that VB (has) filled for so many years - quick and dirty applications development. Course that doesn't mean the concept is shit. This seems to be a very cool (and relativity open) means of defining UI layouts, and all the compiler would need is an XML parser!
If Microsoft was only a technology company and could leave that whole messy marketing evilness out of it. Microsoft has come up with (or outright "borrowed") some very cool RAD technologies over the years. But god help us if they try to integrate any more then the UI elements into this "programming language" (I was once forced to use an ad-hoc XML-based programming language... it sounded ok until you tried to program in it, implementing logic was weird), but for the UI, wow.
Re:password quandry
on
Real Security?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
No shit! At some places I've worked, passwords are required to contain X capital letters, Y numbers, and changed once a month. So what ends up happening? After forgetting the damned thing two or three times, most users (including myself, bad form I know but hey) come up with a pattern to their passwords. So, something like this begins to appear:
Pa55J4n
Pa55F3b
Pa55M4r
Pa55Apr
Sure, now you have 'secure passwords', but once someone recognizes the patter... This, IMHO is counter productive security wise. Have the ultra secure passwords, but don't make you're users change them too often or this shit begins to appear.
Backup just a little bit... the guy is trying to something on the cheap while also trying doing it right! There's nothing wrong with that! *IF* his shit goes to plan, then he may do kits, but until then it's not a business.
Your last bit of advice is the best... If you're not going to sell kits, you don't need your own Vendor ID. Just use nulls for everything, or make one up for your own lab purposes.... As long as this'll work for testing purposes, this should do him just fine.
On another note, I agree with $1500 being inexpensive for a block, I thought it was a typo at first as for a business, that's less then a drop in the bucket! I agree with everything you said, just watch admonishing a guy who's doing the right thing, is all =)
Why not employ a system such as... "what item is in the picture below?" and have randomized pictures of cars, boats, irons, etc, etc. I suppose there could be some androgyny about it (typing "car" or "automobile" or "sedan" or "Toyota"), but this sort of system would cater to the visually impaired leagues better then the morphed words!?
This could consist of "Prior Art", where by invalidating anyone who could try to (file a bullshit software) patent this idea (plus the tongue-in-cheek attitude the comment was made in).
Second, it's a COMPUTER voting system, it's connected, besides... a voter-defined email address (which could default to a 3rd party organization if the voter has no email)
As for SPAM, valid potential problem, that's in intrinsic problem with email. As for email is not a reliable medium, and you'd get corrupted votes that way, it's a good thing businesses don't rely on email, ope wait...
As for email induced corruption, it may happen a few times per major vote (ok, lets be generous and say 1/100,000 emails? That's have been about 40 bad emails in the Cali election), each user that generates an error should start an investigation, etc, etc.
As for exposing the Db to the web... Diebold has already done that on an open FTP, so anything would be an improvement. And all you need to check is the hash, not the votes, per say.
There are issues, sure... but it does provide a means of checking the vote was tallied. Voted for pot? Scared of the man? Send the email to the default email (to CNN, NBC, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
Washington Post Version
According to Bush
Or... the Google Search
Think about this: If in 2 seperate locations in the US, a single guy walked into a mall with 2-3 gernades and rolled them into the food court. Would you go into a mall anywhere in the US anytime soon? Hell, it could be the same guy (though that'd limit the amount of fear caused if that could be proven).
* A cheap plastic pen carrying a more sophisticated poison (probably traceable after the fact), where skin contact is all that is required to kill (then you'd just need to draw on people). As above, even if it only made people sick, the "terror" would be well recognized.
* As another poster noted, a pair of hands capable of breaking some else's neck/gouging out eyes/mameing in any number of ways.
* Infect some poor bastard outside of the "secured zone" with a virulent pathogen, then send 'em on in (again, probably traceable after the fact).
* Anthrax (again, tracable-ish).
* Spiking food/drinks sold within the venue with who knows what.
* Or how about attacking people outside of the secured zone!? It'd still be the Olympics after all.
Thank god the terrorists are relativity stupid. If they really wanted to install fear in the US after 9/11 all they would need is a couple bastards with grenades and a near by mall. Let's just hope they don't read /. =)
Like other posters have said, retaining the copyright is not as high of an issue. We ended up using one of the images on our thank you cards! Ballsy? Yes. Stupid? Probably, but all we got were ooh's and ahh's (maybe the CaD letter is in the mail ;).
Just think of what the photographer is trying to do... he/she just wants to make sure that they're going to make more then their attendance fee. Printing off the occasional photo 20 years from now isn't going to chap their hide (or, at least it shouldn't). My advise - be open with them, say you're concerned that they'll be long gone X years from now and you will still want to have access (but make it clear that their reassurances are not good enough, that you want the HiRes images no matter what or you'll go else where).
On a side note... the suggestion of a News photographer is sweet! We were 110% happy with our wedding photographer, but I would have liked that idea originally as an option!
...is to have a formal apology letter PERSONALLY signed by your CEO along with a CASE of paper (to make up for the waisted paper from the 300 page fax, and for the toner for that matter). It might cost you a bit, but I think it would go a long way to mend a few fences, so to speak.
Amazon
The only people who get stopped by this shitty "copy protection" is Joe Sixpack. Then after yelling expletives for a few minutes, Joe downloads 5 MP3s off Kazza (1 of which isn't from an RIAA narq) and bam, he's good to go. Who wins here? Sure, the coke snorting record execs THINK things will be better with "copy protection", and the people who make the "copy protection" are of course making a mint. So again, who looses?
The artists I guess, as ironic as that is! "If we put copy protection on your next disk, no one will be able to make MP3s of the tracks and you'll make more money! Course the copy protection costs you 5c per disk, but it'll more then pay for itself. Trust me!"
"Please wait while Firefox finishes installing the extensions, this may take a minute."
A minute, 25 minutes, hour and a half, all the same thing! So I tried killing the directory and starting from scratch, but I'm still getting the same dialog (which is weird)... Stupid Orbit Gray Theme, it's poison I's tell's ya!
0.9.1 here we come!
"Moo, Moo. Moo Moo Moo Moo" (Translation: "Sorry, my bad.")
So what of us hideous, nerd-like beings? It's not a terrible thing simply because some pretty people ain't so pretty no mo. Common ./ editors, was that statement really so necessary?
As long as it's in an eBay style (On X Date/Time, the user added this =), I'd get behind this idea! It'd sure help me change cheep -> cheap, et'la...
Or am I missing the point? Is there any reason to have a thin/thick client over a web client?
PS - I'm downloading the alpha so I can give it a try, so maybe I'll get it ;)
There seems to be 2 kinds of net cafe's OS wise - fully open and locked down to the point of uselessness. As a traveller, I have a USB thumb drive with my documents on it. Sometimes you need to install its drivers and it's VERY annoying when you can't.
But that's not to say that I approve of the wide open systems either... If I can install whatever the hell I want, so can anyone else (think keyloggers, etc).
What I have often thought is if I ran one of these places, I'd give each user a removable hard disk to slide into their rented system. Once they were done, they'd return the hard disk and I'd re-image it at the front desk. That way you're guaranteed that everyone can do whatever the hell they want/need to on your systems but only while they are there.
Of course you'd have the extra expense of having a few more hard disks then systems, a system up front to re-image disks, the removable trays themselves, the additional time for the users to startup and shutdown every time, lost/damaged/dropped/stolen hard disks... Needless to say there would be a few issues to work out, but all in all I think an approach like this would be the best for all parties involved (assuming you overcome the issues listed above of course =).
Anywhoo... just my rambling ideas!
Internet Cafe's are relativity popular in Australia, least in dense backpacker-esque areas (Sydney, Gold Coast, Whitsunday's, etc). I've only used Internet Cafe's in these locations because I was unable to connect with my laptop. So I guess what I'm saying is unless you expect to get allot of foot traffic from travellers, I haven't seen a market for them (again, least in Australia though I'd believe the same would go for the US).
Just my 2c.
Either way, go Pixar!
...but considering SCO's only product is media spin, some high profile/intelligent people need to counter the bullshit they are pumping out. Else no matter how unintelligent the argument, it will eventually be seen as the truth.
And no matter how they did it, how freaking embarrassing is this for Microsoft? "Our software is so flawed that unauthorized third parties can fix it faster then we can." Oh thank god NORAD is using that shit!
Besides a fairly decent backup schedule (in this case, even once a month would just about suffice), I've got the original email, so two copies + the backup location(s). Plus... any problems that arise with the billing SHOULD be rectified before you get the next statement anyway, so the "hard copies" are really for historical purposes only. All billing issues are fixed within a week of getting the PDF. Plus, no need to keep track of the dead-tree version.
I get a PDF statement emailed to me from my Aussi telephone company and save $5/month to boot. Best of all, just have to file the PDF into a network folder and I've got a "hard copy" to refer to.
If Microsoft was only a technology company and could leave that whole messy marketing evilness out of it. Microsoft has come up with (or outright "borrowed") some very cool RAD technologies over the years. But god help us if they try to integrate any more then the UI elements into this "programming language" (I was once forced to use an ad-hoc XML-based programming language... it sounded ok until you tried to program in it, implementing logic was weird), but for the UI, wow.
Pa55J4n
Pa55F3b
Pa55M4r
Pa55Apr
Sure, now you have 'secure passwords', but once someone recognizes the patter... This, IMHO is counter productive security wise. Have the ultra secure passwords, but don't make you're users change them too often or this shit begins to appear.
Your last bit of advice is the best... If you're not going to sell kits, you don't need your own Vendor ID. Just use nulls for everything, or make one up for your own lab purposes.... As long as this'll work for testing purposes, this should do him just fine.
On another note, I agree with $1500 being inexpensive for a block, I thought it was a typo at first as for a business, that's less then a drop in the bucket! I agree with everything you said, just watch admonishing a guy who's doing the right thing, is all =)
Why not employ a system such as... "what item is in the picture below?" and have randomized pictures of cars, boats, irons, etc, etc. I suppose there could be some androgyny about it (typing "car" or "automobile" or "sedan" or "Toyota"), but this sort of system would cater to the visually impaired leagues better then the morphed words!?
Second, it's a COMPUTER voting system, it's connected, besides... a voter-defined email address (which could default to a 3rd party organization if the voter has no email)
As for SPAM, valid potential problem, that's in intrinsic problem with email. As for email is not a reliable medium, and you'd get corrupted votes that way, it's a good thing businesses don't rely on email, ope wait...
As for email induced corruption, it may happen a few times per major vote (ok, lets be generous and say 1/100,000 emails? That's have been about 40 bad emails in the Cali election), each user that generates an error should start an investigation, etc, etc.
As for exposing the Db to the web... Diebold has already done that on an open FTP, so anything would be an improvement. And all you need to check is the hash, not the votes, per say.
There are issues, sure... but it does provide a means of checking the vote was tallied. Voted for pot? Scared of the man? Send the email to the default email (to CNN, NBC, etc).