Doesn't confining a laptop to a classroom defeat the purpose of having a laptop?
I'm on the IT advisory board of the local college here, and the reason they're keen on laptops (with wifi) is all due to classroom resource usage - why lock a room down to a single purpose "computer room" wired up with workstations and monitors when you can just carry in a scutch of laptops and then let any teacher use that room for other purposes?
This isn't a perfect solution in that it doesn't factor in resources such as manuals, books, etc. which would also have to be carted between rooms, or dedicated hardware for that matter, so it doesn't obviate the need for networking/Cisco/hardware labs for instance, but overall laptops are an excellent solution in freeing up classrooms.
Yes, it's for 2000 but hey, most enterprises are still using that anyway, and pretty much all of it applies to XP too.
For admins: take a look under Group Policy "Computer Configuration - Securiy Settings - Local Policies - Security Options" for "Rename administrator account" and "Rename guest account".
There's a fairly nice big picture (as well as specs) in the PDF brochure.
Not a bad review, though at that price I think I'll stick with my Sony TR-55 speakers which are much more reasonably priced at $50USD, have a remarkably good sound for their size, and excellent battery life (upwards of 10 hours). Sure, they don't have the bells and whistles of these, but they're 100 bucks cheaper! You may also want to check out the TR-77 speakers if you want to spend a bit extra, think they're around $90USD.
Oh, seeing as I'm commenting on iPods, my fellow Europeans might be somewhat tempted to know that Apple Europe are now offering free iPod engraving, so you can't grumble that Apple keep doing these offers for the US only;)
It's basically a killer-app version of MP 6.4 with plug-in support to play realmedia (with subtitles!) and quicktime... It's awesome... check it out!
Thanks for that, will go take a look:)
Only one problem with CDex: it doesn't do AAC encoding very well, requiring external encoders, and they're not that good apparently - the PsyTel one is the better of the two but not as good as the encoder that comes with Nero (which is by the guy that coded PsyTel), or the Quicktime/iTunes one (according to the posts of read over at HydrogenAudio anyway). But other than that I agree, it does rock!
iTunes for windows has ALL the functionality that the Mac version has. It is not a crippled product.
Almost true, but it's got the exactly the same problems as Quicktime for Windows, mainly that it doesn't behave like a normal win32 app.
Firstly, it's got a shiny metal skinned interface which goes again the Windows interface guidelines. Pretty it may be, but it doesn't look like a normal app.
More importantly, click on the maximise button and it.... doesn't maximise. Double-click on the title bar and it... doesn't behave like the maximise/restore button as it should. Minimizing to a smaller player is nice, but why Apple had to go against the standard convention in such an odd way is beyond me.
Don't get me wrong, I like iTunes: it's pretty much equivalent to the "CDex and Foobar2000" combo but without the complexity or hassle (assuming that you're not in the US and therefore can't use the iTunes store). But to ignore the OS Interface Guidelines is just stupid, and more to the point confusing for users. Maybe I should send Apple my old copy of "The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design";)
P.S. Saying all of that, Windows Media Player 7/8/9 aren't exactly the shining pillars of interface conformance either (talk about waste of screen real-estate), which is one of the reasons I think they're all so bloody awful. Give me Media Player 6 anyday, at least you know where you stand with that one!:)
I hope you realise what a mess you're making of the audio by re-encoding it.
You're taking a compressed format (such as AAC) with approx. 10 to 1 size reduction (due, in simple terms, to psychoacoustic masking which strips as much data as possible out of the sound while keeping the sound characteristics that the encoder thinks you'll most notice), then burning it to an uncompressed format (44.1KHz 16bit PCM - a normal CD). Fair enough, you CD will have the same quality as the compressed format, which is an acceptable compromise.
BUT to then re-encode this into another approx. 10 to 1 compressed format will murder what's left of the audio: it'll screw up the carefully-saved sound characteristics from the first encoding process and try to use data that is no longer there due to the first encoding to do its own psychoacoustic masking. It really wouldn't surprise me if you got better results from recording a track from a standard FM radio station using a decent cassette tape.
This is why I still buy CDs, because I get:
A 16bit 44.1KHz uncompressed format which is about as good as my 20-20 ears can handle once it's gone through my stereo.
If I want to I can rip this via CDex or iTunes to an unprotected compressed format of MY choosing in under 5 minutes.
I get a fairly durable medium with nice artwork which is easy to archive and lasts well over ten years before degradation occurs (unlike CD-Rs, which can become unusable after a mere 2 years).
I can make an identical backup of it to CD-R in under 5 minutes, and us this one as my regular copy till it's scratched beyond use or I lose it.
Why the hell would I want to pay for 10 to 15 heavily compressed rights-restricted digital tracks when I can buy a BETTER UNPROTECTED PHYSICAL medium for practically the same money? Convenience? Really? If I like the few tracks of an artist that I hear then I WANT to buy their album, not just those two tracks. Are people honestly now so lazy and apathetic that they just want to buy the tracks that are force-fed to them via ClearChannel, the tied-up mainstream radio stations and MTV, so they can then listen to them over and over once they've been replaced by the next latest-and-greatest bland single? Fuck that!
Once again it seems as though customers are being screwed by record companies trying to "protect their artists" through digital rights management. And it looks like people aren't even noticing...
Go to MezzoBlue and participate in some discussion. The site owner, Dave Shea, just did the Mozilla website redesign (note the new Bugzilla logo he did - much better) - if you get on alright there you might be able to help out and get your designs some worldwide exposure:)
Probably more than three years R&D, considering NASA has developed tile-repair kits since the 80's (before the first shuttle launch even!), but never deployed them on the shuttles for unknown reasons.
Heartily agree with that comment. When I did my Music Technology A level I bought and read many music mags including Future Music (wasn't impressed), SoS, etc. Sound on Sound was without doubt the best of the bunch by a long way, and definitely helped me pass my exams:) Well, that and having a very cool and knowledgeable music teacher who was actually interested enough in sound engineering to go out of his way and get our school to host the Music Tech course in the first place!
Which reminds me, I keep meaning to go through my old stack of SoS issues and cannibalize the workshop articles, but I don't have to 'cause all the articles are online for free! Very cool indeed.
I'm not sure if this'll quite fit your needs, but, assuming you can edit the form templates in Vignette or whatever CMS you use, surely you could roll your own solution using the default features in Mozilla? See the Rich-Text Editing in Mozilla 1.3 over at DevEdge, and check out the working demo for a good example of what it's capable of and how easy it is to use (or Kevin Roth's sweet cross-browser version).
You'll need to add some additional code to allow for features such as search & replace, but all that'd take is a few lines of ECMAScript/javascript...
Greaaat. The official Steam website give you a huge two locations to download the client, and *both* require signing up to these 3rd party services before you can download the software.
How long is it going to be before Valve get it through their skulls that this pisses people off massively? Fine, you want my personal details before I download your client, and you want a serial of a Valve game I purchased. No problem. But I'll be f*cked if I have to sign up to a 3rd party content distro site just to be able to download a different content distro system!
Sort it out Valve. Either suck it up and provide the download directly from your site, or if you don't want the bandwidth bill then provide a torrent (which, while a content distro system in itself, requires no registration). Grrr!
I'll post it here, 'cause I've not got time to file a Bugzilla report yet (or check if there is one - I know, I know, shame on me!). I've just tested this in Thunderbird 0.2 Stable and the bug still exists.
(Note this applies to Win32) If you're importing from full Outlook (not Express) you MUST make it your DEFAULT MAILER first (as in, the default MAPI application). You can do this through Control Panel, Internet Options - Programs tab: make Outlook the default Mail app.
Now when you import addresses, mail, etc. from Outlook you'll no longer get the "no (address books or whatever) were found to import", yay!
Had me stumped for a good while did this one!!! I only figured it out by looking at the source and noticing the Outlook import routines all called MAPI. Anyway, hope that's of help to some people out there!
Oh, BTW don't be put off by the cover artwork of Building Accessible Websites, even though it does bear a remarkably similarity to a certain infamous Mr/Mrs Goatse.cx [no link for obvious reasons] picture!!
Write your pages using validating HTML or XHTML, and style the pages using CSS.
Validate your webpages using the W3C Validator and your CSS using the W3C CSS Validator. Use Watchfire's Bobby to validate your pages, and aim for AAA rating (also note that Bobby has some helpful hints when it does find errors).
Other excellent resources (in no particular order):
Ahh, on re-reading it seems I may have misunderstood? If so, my apologies.
I'm assuming you meant that there's no way to stop IE6 SP-1 from installing AutoUpdate services on your boxes? Dunno, you could well be right. You might be able to hack the IE6 MSI packages using ORCA, but it'd be tricky and may cause problems down the line. Not to mention that they're installed by default on XP and by the 2K service packs; just disable 'em if you don't use 'em:)
You can do this with any Win* box that's running IE6-SP1 (with the latest updates). This stuff is installed for you (and no, I haven't noticed an option to stop it from doing so - I'm the admin of a 75 or so MS Shop).
Seriously, you haven't? And you admin 75 boxes?
Take a look at the "Automatic Updates" and "Background Intelligent Transfer" services (use Group Policy on your server to disable them).
Or, perhaps a better option would be to set up your own Software Update Services server (SUS) and control the distribution of patches to your boxes, not to mention saving a ton of bandwidth by not letting each client hit Windows Update...
I picked up a TA-1 for under 200UKP (just add 2.5" lappy drive and PC133 stick), and it's very nice - Eden 800MHz, 2xUSB (if you're after hi-speed USB2.0 you'll want the TA-2), 1xNIC, audio, PCMCIA slot, CD drive, etc. It even comes with a really nice mini BTC keyboard and optical mouse. Oh, and it's quiet too, unlike those little "vacuum cleaner"-like Shuttle boxes! Absolutely perfect for a little Linux box:)
If a system has been compromised, then you can't afford not to take it down.
Errr... not immediately, no.
Say you've just discovered that a box is compromised (e.g. you noticed an internal box portscanning your local network), you'd immediately take it down?? The whole point of forensics is to gather as much evidence as possible from the compromised machine, and shutting the box down or disconnecting it from the network means losing vital information, so you better be sure you've got as much evidence as possible before powering off. While there is always a fine balance in deciding whether or not to switch off (e.g. do I leave this box up an extra few minutes while I gather more evidence, after having discovered that the box is running a ton of SQL queries against the DB server), it should be carefully considered rather than a knee-jerk "pull the plug" approach.
Besides, the original parent poster seemed to have missed the point that the forensic analysis shouldn't be done from the compromised box; run netcat or cryptcat (from read-only media such as a CD) on it and pipe the shell to the secure forensics box (running LASL 0.4a for instance), then gather your evidence here. Depending on the compromised OS you'll need a variety of binaries on the CD to put in the suspect box, for instance the excellent PS tools are a must for Windows auditing.
For those interested in forensics it might be worth reading a paper linked off the front of SecurityFocus at the moment:
Maintaining System Integrity During Forensics. While it's not really intended as an introduction it does cover the main points pretty well, so would be worth a read if you're curious.
B. "Software Updates" are free and the distribution mechanism is optional.
---Steps to PROFIT!---
1. Distribute a free "Software Update" that fixes precondition A, and make it available ONLY through the Update mechanism. Make sure this update turns the Software Update mechanism ON, for those wise (uh, I mean paranoid) enough to turn it off.
2. Advertise heavily, then distribute a few more updates that fix minor things.
3. Distribute a free "Software Update" that causes CRASHES on 10% of machines. Not 100% as this'll impact on sales - haha, but seriously, discuss acceptable percentage that we can get away with without losing control of the press, after all we managed to get 5% last time:)
4. Start charging for "Software Updates"
5a. Sell a "Software Update" that fixes 3., and watch all the new subscribers come flocking in!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm on the IT advisory board of the local college here, and the reason they're keen on laptops (with wifi) is all due to classroom resource usage - why lock a room down to a single purpose "computer room" wired up with workstations and monitors when you can just carry in a scutch of laptops and then let any teacher use that room for other purposes?
This isn't a perfect solution in that it doesn't factor in resources such as manuals, books, etc. which would also have to be carted between rooms, or dedicated hardware for that matter, so it doesn't obviate the need for networking/Cisco/hardware labs for instance, but overall laptops are an excellent solution in freeing up classrooms.
Ars Technica's Securing Windows 2000: First Steps....
Yes, it's for 2000 but hey, most enterprises are still using that anyway, and pretty much all of it applies to XP too.
For admins: take a look under Group Policy "Computer Configuration - Securiy Settings - Local Policies - Security Options" for "Rename administrator account" and "Rename guest account".
Agree with all that; I'd also add a Stowaway keyboard to make user input easier on those longer jobs. (Dabs sell 'em for around 70UKP.)
There's a fairly nice big picture (as well as specs) in the PDF brochure.
Not a bad review, though at that price I think I'll stick with my Sony TR-55 speakers which are much more reasonably priced at $50USD, have a remarkably good sound for their size, and excellent battery life (upwards of 10 hours). Sure, they don't have the bells and whistles of these, but they're 100 bucks cheaper! You may also want to check out the TR-77 speakers if you want to spend a bit extra, think they're around $90USD.
Oh, seeing as I'm commenting on iPods, my fellow Europeans might be somewhat tempted to know that Apple Europe are now offering free iPod engraving, so you can't grumble that Apple keep doing these offers for the US only ;)
Only one problem with CDex: it doesn't do AAC encoding very well, requiring external encoders, and they're not that good apparently - the PsyTel one is the better of the two but not as good as the encoder that comes with Nero (which is by the guy that coded PsyTel), or the Quicktime/iTunes one (according to the posts of read over at HydrogenAudio anyway). But other than that I agree, it does rock!
Almost true, but it's got the exactly the same problems as Quicktime for Windows, mainly that it doesn't behave like a normal win32 app.
Firstly, it's got a shiny metal skinned interface which goes again the Windows interface guidelines. Pretty it may be, but it doesn't look like a normal app.
More importantly, click on the maximise button and it.... doesn't maximise. Double-click on the title bar and it ... doesn't behave like the maximise/restore button as it should. Minimizing to a smaller player is nice, but why Apple had to go against the standard convention in such an odd way is beyond me.
Don't get me wrong, I like iTunes: it's pretty much equivalent to the "CDex and Foobar2000" combo but without the complexity or hassle (assuming that you're not in the US and therefore can't use the iTunes store). But to ignore the OS Interface Guidelines is just stupid, and more to the point confusing for users. Maybe I should send Apple my old copy of "The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design" ;)
P.S. Saying all of that, Windows Media Player 7/8/9 aren't exactly the shining pillars of interface conformance either (talk about waste of screen real-estate), which is one of the reasons I think they're all so bloody awful. Give me Media Player 6 anyday, at least you know where you stand with that one! :)
I hope you realise what a mess you're making of the audio by re-encoding it.
You're taking a compressed format (such as AAC) with approx. 10 to 1 size reduction (due, in simple terms, to psychoacoustic masking which strips as much data as possible out of the sound while keeping the sound characteristics that the encoder thinks you'll most notice), then burning it to an uncompressed format (44.1KHz 16bit PCM - a normal CD). Fair enough, you CD will have the same quality as the compressed format, which is an acceptable compromise.
BUT to then re-encode this into another approx. 10 to 1 compressed format will murder what's left of the audio: it'll screw up the carefully-saved sound characteristics from the first encoding process and try to use data that is no longer there due to the first encoding to do its own psychoacoustic masking. It really wouldn't surprise me if you got better results from recording a track from a standard FM radio station using a decent cassette tape.
This is why I still buy CDs, because I get:
- A 16bit 44.1KHz uncompressed format which is about as good as my 20-20 ears can handle once it's gone through my stereo.
- If I want to I can rip this via CDex or iTunes to an unprotected compressed format of MY choosing in under 5 minutes.
- I get a fairly durable medium with nice artwork which is easy to archive and lasts well over ten years before degradation occurs (unlike CD-Rs, which can become unusable after a mere 2 years).
- I can make an identical backup of it to CD-R in under 5 minutes, and us this one as my regular copy till it's scratched beyond use or I lose it.
Why the hell would I want to pay for 10 to 15 heavily compressed rights-restricted digital tracks when I can buy a BETTER UNPROTECTED PHYSICAL medium for practically the same money? Convenience? Really? If I like the few tracks of an artist that I hear then I WANT to buy their album, not just those two tracks. Are people honestly now so lazy and apathetic that they just want to buy the tracks that are force-fed to them via ClearChannel, the tied-up mainstream radio stations and MTV, so they can then listen to them over and over once they've been replaced by the next latest-and-greatest bland single? Fuck that!Once again it seems as though customers are being screwed by record companies trying to "protect their artists" through digital rights management. And it looks like people aren't even noticing...
Go to MezzoBlue and participate in some discussion. The site owner, Dave Shea, just did the Mozilla website redesign (note the new Bugzilla logo he did - much better) - if you get on alright there you might be able to help out and get your designs some worldwide exposure :)
Oh, excellent comment BTWProbably more than three years R&D, considering NASA has developed tile-repair kits since the 80's (before the first shuttle launch even!), but never deployed them on the shuttles for unknown reasons.
Heartily agree with that comment. When I did my Music Technology A level I bought and read many music mags including Future Music (wasn't impressed), SoS, etc. Sound on Sound was without doubt the best of the bunch by a long way, and definitely helped me pass my exams :) Well, that and having a very cool and knowledgeable music teacher who was actually interested enough in sound engineering to go out of his way and get our school to host the Music Tech course in the first place!
Which reminds me, I keep meaning to go through my old stack of SoS issues and cannibalize the workshop articles, but I don't have to 'cause all the articles are online for free! Very cool indeed.
Cheers,
ManxStefinconceivable in the macroscopic world.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.You'll need to add some additional code to allow for features such as search & replace, but all that'd take is a few lines of ECMAScript/javascript...
Yeah, was just going to say - 1.63MB's worth of images, that's gonna sting :)
I feel a Ren and Stimpy moment coming on...
What rolls down stairs,
Alone or in pairs,
Rolls over your neighbor's dog?
What's great for a snack,
And fits on your back?
It's log, log, log!
It's lo-og, lo-og,
It's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's lo-og, lo-og,
It's better than bad, it's good.
Everyone wants a log,
Jooooooooyyyyy! (Sorry, but you said the magic word and I couldn't resist!)You're gonna love it, log
Come on and get your log,
Everyone needs a log...
Greaaat. The official Steam website give you a huge two locations to download the client, and *both* require signing up to these 3rd party services before you can download the software.
How long is it going to be before Valve get it through their skulls that this pisses people off massively? Fine, you want my personal details before I download your client, and you want a serial of a Valve game I purchased. No problem. But I'll be f*cked if I have to sign up to a 3rd party content distro site just to be able to download a different content distro system!
Sort it out Valve. Either suck it up and provide the download directly from your site, or if you don't want the bandwidth bill then provide a torrent (which, while a content distro system in itself, requires no registration). Grrr!
I'll post it here, 'cause I've not got time to file a Bugzilla report yet (or check if there is one - I know, I know, shame on me!). I've just tested this in Thunderbird 0.2 Stable and the bug still exists.
(Note this applies to Win32)
If you're importing from full Outlook (not Express) you MUST make it your DEFAULT MAILER first (as in, the default MAPI application). You can do this through Control Panel, Internet Options - Programs tab: make Outlook the default Mail app.
Now when you import addresses, mail, etc. from Outlook you'll no longer get the "no (address books or whatever) were found to import", yay!
Had me stumped for a good while did this one!!! I only figured it out by looking at the source and noticing the Outlook import routines all called MAPI. Anyway, hope that's of help to some people out there!
Oh, BTW don't be put off by the cover artwork of Building Accessible Websites, even though it does bear a remarkably similarity to a certain infamous Mr/Mrs Goatse.cx [no link for obvious reasons] picture!!
Hehe, Slashdot's not really a shining example of web accessibility, but it's a good place to ask for help none-the-less.
The first stops for help (as someone's no doubt pointed out already) should be:
Section 508
Mark Pilgrim's excellent "Dive Into Accessibility"
The W3C's web accessibility guide
The UK Disabled Rights Commission website, paying particular attention to the superb Interactive Demos (e.g. Inaccessible Website Demo).
Buy these books:
Constructing Accessible Websites
Building Accessible Websites
Oh, and a copy of Zeldman's Designing With Web Standards for good measure.
Write your pages using validating HTML or XHTML, and style the pages using CSS.
Validate your webpages using the W3C Validator and your CSS using the W3C CSS Validator. Use Watchfire's Bobby to validate your pages, and aim for AAA rating (also note that Bobby has some helpful hints when it does find errors).
Other excellent resources (in no particular order):
http://www.webstandards.org/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/QuickTips/
http://www.mezzoblue.com/
http://www.meyerweb.com/
http://www.simplebits.com/
http://www.whatdoiknow.org/
http://www.stopdesign.com/
Ahh, on re-reading it seems I may have misunderstood? If so, my apologies.
I'm assuming you meant that there's no way to stop IE6 SP-1 from installing AutoUpdate services on your boxes? Dunno, you could well be right. You might be able to hack the IE6 MSI packages using ORCA, but it'd be tricky and may cause problems down the line. Not to mention that they're installed by default on XP and by the 2K service packs; just disable 'em if you don't use 'em :)
Seriously, you haven't? And you admin 75 boxes?
Take a look at the "Automatic Updates" and "Background Intelligent Transfer" services (use Group Policy on your server to disable them).
Or, perhaps a better option would be to set up your own Software Update Services server (SUS) and control the distribution of patches to your boxes, not to mention saving a ton of bandwidth by not letting each client hit Windows Update...
How about the Gigabyte TA series?
I picked up a TA-1 for under 200UKP (just add 2.5" lappy drive and PC133 stick), and it's very nice - Eden 800MHz, 2xUSB (if you're after hi-speed USB2.0 you'll want the TA-2), 1xNIC, audio, PCMCIA slot, CD drive, etc. It even comes with a really nice mini BTC keyboard and optical mouse. Oh, and it's quiet too, unlike those little "vacuum cleaner"-like Shuttle boxes! Absolutely perfect for a little Linux box :)
Errr... not immediately, no.
Say you've just discovered that a box is compromised (e.g. you noticed an internal box portscanning your local network), you'd immediately take it down?? The whole point of forensics is to gather as much evidence as possible from the compromised machine, and shutting the box down or disconnecting it from the network means losing vital information, so you better be sure you've got as much evidence as possible before powering off. While there is always a fine balance in deciding whether or not to switch off (e.g. do I leave this box up an extra few minutes while I gather more evidence, after having discovered that the box is running a ton of SQL queries against the DB server), it should be carefully considered rather than a knee-jerk "pull the plug" approach.
Besides, the original parent poster seemed to have missed the point that the forensic analysis shouldn't be done from the compromised box; run netcat or cryptcat (from read-only media such as a CD) on it and pipe the shell to the secure forensics box (running LASL 0.4a for instance), then gather your evidence here. Depending on the compromised OS you'll need a variety of binaries on the CD to put in the suspect box, for instance the excellent PS tools are a must for Windows auditing.
For those interested in forensics it might be worth reading a paper linked off the front of SecurityFocus at the moment: Maintaining System Integrity During Forensics. While it's not really intended as an introduction it does cover the main points pretty well, so would be worth a read if you're curious.
Hopefully it's cause they recognise that some people don't want to have to buy VC++ to compile free software such as Mozilla on win32? :)
... on the Microsoft board meeting whiteboard:
--Preconditions--- A. 5% of machines crash at least twice a day
- B. "Software Updates" are free and the distribution mechanism is optional.
---Steps to PROFIT!---