Here's what worked for me. I used to play Everquest a lot. One day I checked the amount of time I had spent playing. (These games usually have a command to do that.) I mentally converted the output in hours to days... then into weeks. That was a real eye-popper, and seeing that number is what directly led me to quit the game and get on with my life.
But if he doesn't want to see that number or think about it, then... he's probably stuck.
I've had Stanza (another ebook reader) installed on my iPhone for months. And just last week on a whim I wondered if I could download the Kama Sutra from Gutenberg with it, so I tried. Sure enough, it worked fine.*
So I dunno what the point of this rejection is, since I can already do with my (locked, unbroken, completely unhacked) iPhone the very thing they are trying now to prevent.
Ah, but that's the beauty of it! They're going to pay really close attention to the security of the crippling mechanism because there's money to be made directly from enabling the crippled features. So as a side effect of making sure the user can't get a feature without paying, the security of the whole shebang will get improved attention!
I think I may need to go take a shower now, I feel dirty.
"Sounds like the mechanism by which Microsoft sells one version of Vista to all users, and lets users upgrade to higher-tier flavors of the OS after cash changes hands"
Yes please!
Okay, look, I'm not really interested in encouraging people to use MS Windows. But in those situations where I am forced to support it, having the ability to enable additional features on an as-needed basis would be vastly superior to having to license and install a whole different "edition" of the whole freakin' OS to get the same feature set. (You bought a new touchscreen monitor and you want to add tablet support to XP? Great, that'll be forty bucks, ten minutes, and we're all done. As opposed to now, when it officially requires an OS reinstall.)
Plus, having the ability to monetize services individually will - Lord forgive me for seeing a bright side here - will encourage Microsoft to ship with a minimal default install, which one would hope would lead to improved overall security.*
The patent is pretty laughable, though. It strikes me as a tad obvious.
[*: Yeah, okay, maybe that's a bit of a stretch. But hey, it could happen!]
In addition to whatever else you are doing, seriously consider using virtualization to de-couple the information systems that actually Get Stuff Done for him from the underlying hardware. That way, when migration time comes around again, you can just slide the VM from one hypervisor+hardware platform to another. His systems turn into hermit crabs, changing hard shells at need without any painful and dangerous molting.
"Software resellers are moving headlong to Free Software? What is their business model supposed to be?"
In the case of the Navision software TFA discusses, the obvious business model would be to create a viable OpenOffice.org-based interface to replace the MSOffice-based interface , then sell that integration product or service globally. Of course, there's the minor detail of technical feasibility to overcome, but a) if it works it's golden, and b) what better things do bankrupt developers have to do with their time?
While the iPhone uses Apple's own dock connector, that connector is only one jump away from USB for both charge and data, plus it includes extra features. (Audio and TV out.) The iPhone package ships with a USB-to-dock cable, and (in the US) a 110VAC-to-USB adapter. They've also kept the dock connector pretty stable, with the only major change being the switch from Firewire to USB - and many devices along the way could use either version.
I'd of course be delighted if everyone would standardize on one power+data connector for phones, but until that day comes I think Apple has no reason to be ashamed of what they've got now.
"The article mentions that they happen to frequent the same sea lanes, but even still that seems a tad improbable."
If there are areas of the ocean which are better for hiding than others, the probability of two missile boats both choosing the same area in which to hide would be higher. It's still pretty unlikely that two would bump, but it may not be not quite so unlikely as it first would appear.
I think the comic is applicable for the very reasons you state. That is, no one's going to bother brute-forcing the encryption when they have access to the user; given a sufficiently motivated attacker, brute force would simply be applied to the user instead of to the hardware. The point isn't that your users need to be taught to keep their passwords confidential under torture, but simply that beyond a certain level better encryption is moot.
"My institution has thousands of computers, and is looking at starting an IT policy to encrypt everything, all hard drives, including desktops, laptops, external hard drives, USB flash drives, etc"
It may be too late for this, but... why? What problems is the policy intended to solve? Is there a less-intrusive way to accomplish the same goals? (For instance, centralizing data stores onto servers and making computing devices effectively thin clients.) Do the key-[loss|management|distribution|revocation] issues result in a better security model than you currently have? Is the threat of technical failure leading to denial of service a problem?
(For your org, these issues have presumably already been addressed. But others here considering something similar should be sure to ask those questions.)
I find I can silence my phone very effectively by putting my thumb over the speaker ports. The phone may be mandated to drive its speakers to produce a click, but that does mean it'll be audible.
Yeah, I remember very clearly when I first saw the "magic yellow line" some years ago. I watched for a couple minutes before I realized what the line meant. I turned to my friend and asked "You know what that yellow line means?"
He said "Yeah, that's where they have to go for a first down."
I said, "That too. But what the line really means is that you can't believe live video any more."
Arab opposition was of course known to the Zionists. Ben-Gurion said in 1918: "We as a nation want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs". Resistance was to be expected. Jabotinsky said in 1921: "I don't know of a single example in history where a country was colonised with the courteous consent of the population."
Trying to point your finger at one part of this incredibly long and tragic timeline of conflict and calling it the "start" is an exercise in futility. There's plenty of blame to go around.
It might be as simple as an acetylene generator and optimized burners, where the transported "fuel" is actually calcium carbide and the cooker would mix it with local water to generate the actual cooking gas. I imagine it would be very difficult to make that work in practice, but some similar clever chemistry could allow an apparently benign (and unblockaded) material to be used for fuel.
A 40-day supply does sound like a bit much, though.
Slashdot Mirror
System Administrators get no respect at least 364 days a year.
With which to annoy friends, parents, and younger siblings.
For sure. That is brilliant.
True.
Here's what worked for me. I used to play Everquest a lot. One day I checked the amount of time I had spent playing. (These games usually have a command to do that.) I mentally converted the output in hours to days... then into weeks. That was a real eye-popper, and seeing that number is what directly led me to quit the game and get on with my life.
But if he doesn't want to see that number or think about it, then... he's probably stuck.
I've had Stanza (another ebook reader) installed on my iPhone for months. And just last week on a whim I wondered if I could download the Kama Sutra from Gutenberg with it, so I tried. Sure enough, it worked fine.*
So I dunno what the point of this rejection is, since I can already do with my (locked, unbroken, completely unhacked) iPhone the very thing they are trying now to prevent.
[*: Didn't learn anything new, though. :-) ]
Ah, but that's the beauty of it! They're going to pay really close attention to the security of the crippling mechanism because there's money to be made directly from enabling the crippled features. So as a side effect of making sure the user can't get a feature without paying, the security of the whole shebang will get improved attention!
I think I may need to go take a shower now, I feel dirty.
"Sounds like the mechanism by which Microsoft sells one version of Vista to all users, and lets users upgrade to higher-tier flavors of the OS after cash changes hands"
Yes please!
Okay, look, I'm not really interested in encouraging people to use MS Windows. But in those situations where I am forced to support it, having the ability to enable additional features on an as-needed basis would be vastly superior to having to license and install a whole different "edition" of the whole freakin' OS to get the same feature set. (You bought a new touchscreen monitor and you want to add tablet support to XP? Great, that'll be forty bucks, ten minutes, and we're all done. As opposed to now, when it officially requires an OS reinstall.)
Plus, having the ability to monetize services individually will - Lord forgive me for seeing a bright side here - will encourage Microsoft to ship with a minimal default install, which one would hope would lead to improved overall security.*
The patent is pretty laughable, though. It strikes me as a tad obvious.
[*: Yeah, okay, maybe that's a bit of a stretch. But hey, it could happen!]
Scan the lawyers and shred the originals. You'll be very popular.
In addition to whatever else you are doing, seriously consider using virtualization to de-couple the information systems that actually Get Stuff Done for him from the underlying hardware. That way, when migration time comes around again, you can just slide the VM from one hypervisor+hardware platform to another. His systems turn into hermit crabs, changing hard shells at need without any painful and dangerous molting.
They probably found another copy of GURPS Cyberpunk.
"Software resellers are moving headlong to Free Software? What is their business model supposed to be?"
In the case of the Navision software TFA discusses, the obvious business model would be to create a viable OpenOffice.org-based interface to replace the MSOffice-based interface , then sell that integration product or service globally. Of course, there's the minor detail of technical feasibility to overcome, but a) if it works it's golden, and b) what better things do bankrupt developers have to do with their time?
Most amusing how the Sun declined to show the scale of the map. For comparison, here's another city at the same scale.
The similarity is not uncanny. :-)
While the iPhone uses Apple's own dock connector, that connector is only one jump away from USB for both charge and data, plus it includes extra features. (Audio and TV out.) The iPhone package ships with a USB-to-dock cable, and (in the US) a 110VAC-to-USB adapter. They've also kept the dock connector pretty stable, with the only major change being the switch from Firewire to USB - and many devices along the way could use either version.
I'd of course be delighted if everyone would standardize on one power+data connector for phones, but until that day comes I think Apple has no reason to be ashamed of what they've got now.
"The article mentions that they happen to frequent the same sea lanes, but even still that seems a tad improbable."
If there are areas of the ocean which are better for hiding than others, the probability of two missile boats both choosing the same area in which to hide would be higher. It's still pretty unlikely that two would bump, but it may not be not quite so unlikely as it first would appear.
I think the comic is applicable for the very reasons you state. That is, no one's going to bother brute-forcing the encryption when they have access to the user; given a sufficiently motivated attacker, brute force would simply be applied to the user instead of to the hardware. The point isn't that your users need to be taught to keep their passwords confidential under torture, but simply that beyond a certain level better encryption is moot.
LOL. Awesome. I wonder if that will end up as +5 insightful or +5 funny?
"My institution has thousands of computers, and is looking at starting an IT policy to encrypt everything, all hard drives, including desktops, laptops, external hard drives, USB flash drives, etc"
It may be too late for this, but... why? What problems is the policy intended to solve? Is there a less-intrusive way to accomplish the same goals? (For instance, centralizing data stores onto servers and making computing devices effectively thin clients.) Do the key-[loss|management|distribution|revocation] issues result in a better security model than you currently have? Is the threat of technical failure leading to denial of service a problem?
(For your org, these issues have presumably already been addressed. But others here considering something similar should be sure to ask those questions.)
For years after playing Doom a lot* the sound of a chainsaw starting up would make me flinch a little.
[*: Too much, apparently.]
I find I can silence my phone very effectively by putting my thumb over the speaker ports. The phone may be mandated to drive its speakers to produce a click, but that does mean it'll be audible.
Yeah, I remember very clearly when I first saw the "magic yellow line" some years ago. I watched for a couple minutes before I realized what the line meant. I turned to my friend and asked "You know what that yellow line means?"
He said "Yeah, that's where they have to go for a first down."
I said, "That too. But what the line really means is that you can't believe live video any more."
Ouch.
And the winners get all expenses incurred DMCA prosecutions!
From wikipedia:
Trying to point your finger at one part of this incredibly long and tragic timeline of conflict and calling it the "start" is an exercise in futility. There's plenty of blame to go around.
It might be as simple as an acetylene generator and optimized burners, where the transported "fuel" is actually calcium carbide and the cooker would mix it with local water to generate the actual cooking gas. I imagine it would be very difficult to make that work in practice, but some similar clever chemistry could allow an apparently benign (and unblockaded) material to be used for fuel.
A 40-day supply does sound like a bit much, though.
And in case anyone's wondering, I'm going for +5 Flamebait there. :-)