Most of those issues are caused by one of two things: 1) Policies created by some moron who doesn't know anything about IT but read a white paper once so thinks they're God's Gift to compliance (my current employer blocks any website that uses a META Refesh because of some reason...security...compliance) or 2) IT staff with a God Complex. Neither are that hard to fix, but both seem endemic across the corporate and government world.
Smart IT departments deal with this with: "Show me that you need this program to do your job and that we don't already have something in place that does the same thing to the same standard" process along with a quick check to make sure the program is "legit". If it takes you more than a week to do (in most environments), you're doing it wrong.
Most of the places I've worked have suffered from at least one serious security hole that has gone unaddressed due to either lack of comprehension, lack of skill or lack of funding; be it as obvious as everyone running as root/local admin or more "policy based" problems such as applying crippling restrictions on web browsing but having ways around the filters for "important" people (read: management) that inevitably find their way into the hands of the rest of the staff so that you might as well just turn off the proxies.
I'm willing to bet that most of those 250 departments either aren't even aware that any of their machines are infected or have been prevented from fixing them by higher priority issues such as rolling out iPads to all the execs so they can show off the size of their penises in meetings.
In other news, the RIAA have lobbied to introduce new legislation today requiring that all cakes are sold with a second, identical cake to permit posession and consumption without additional cost to an already struggling entertainment industry.
I can blame them because they are sending phone numbers as HTTP headers to websites. I don't care if they're "selected, trusted 3rd-party sites" and that sending them to everyone was an accident, I want to know why they're using phone numbers *at all*. If you need to identify a customer to a 3rd party site for whatever reason then you use a unique identifier that isn't directly connected to that user and you certainly don't use their phone number.
It may have been an accident, but it was an accident that should never have been able to happen.
It's a stupid article because any government petition system will always get 4 types of submission on a regular basis:
Show us the aliens Legalize drugs Bring back the death penalty (where appropriate) Kick out all the foreigners
The problem with these types of submissions is that they're utterly unrealistic; anyone with half a brain (and probably even those submitting them) knows that no democratic government is going to do any of those things on the strength of a petition, irrespective of the level of support (for various reasons) and so they're a complete waste of time. The fact that this happens doesn't make the system any less useful, it just alters the SNR slightly.
Let's be honest, the entire American political system operates on a system of borderline bribery at all times, it's just that most people have the common decency to be subtle about it. Dodd has just come out and said "We've been paying you money for years to do what we want you to and now that for once you've decided that what the voters want might be more important (out of you own self-interest rather than actually caring, of course) don't expect us to keep paying you" and in doing so has made explicit what was previously implicit and made the system look exactly as corrupt as it is.
A campaign donation is "I support what you want to do"
Bribery is "I want you to support what I want to do"
Don't forget the response to the anti-SOPA petitions which, whilst not taking a strong pro or anti-SOPA position per se did nonetheless state the White House's opposition to several of the key provisions and was doubtless a factor in the decision to eventually withdraw SOPA and PIPA.
Think of the petition system a bit like the manager of a sports team being interviewed after losing a big game; it's very rare that they'll openly criticize the players because that would stir up unwanted animosity in the dressing room, but they can still make general statements that make it clear how disappointed they are with the performance.
Of course, it's equally possible that they could just ignore it
You only have to look at cable TV in the UK or the entire television setup in the US to see that the one thing you would definitely not get by defunding the BBC is a rise in quality.
A few weeks ago they aired an hour long show on a Sunday evening in which Prof Brian Cox gave a lecture on atomic structure, quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality to a bunch of celebrities. It was very edutaining, but can you imagine pitching that show to a commercial network?
The irony being that SOPA/PIPA *doesn't* protect content providers from piracy any more than the DMCA did, DRM does or any other failed attempts to legislate their way out of this mess have done.
Ultimately, there is no technical or legal measure that will prevent piracy. The *only* way you will stop piracy from being a problem is to make it a more attractive proposition to buy a legitimate copy than to download a pirated one which requires Speed (Don't make me wait 6 weeks after the DVD is released to download the movie), Flexibility (Give me the option of several formats and let me move between platforms, don't time limit it), Choice (Old stuff, obscure stuff - it barely costs anything extra to have it available as well as the brand new shiny things) & Sensible Pricing (*LESS* than the physical copy).
The real question is, how many sales does piracy cost you compared to how many sales it gains you by spreading awareness of your existence?
I'm sure you're smart enough not to make the "pirated copy = lost sale" mistake, so think about it in this context; I typically "pirate" two classes of books, those which I already own as a physical copy and those which aren't available officially as a digital copy & that I need in that format for them to be practical (typically reference books). In neither case are there any lost sales involved - I won't re-buy books I already own on principle and there's no point in buying reference books that are never going to be used because they're too bulky to carry around with me - so even if you were able to magically take down all the links to pirated copies of them, it still wouldn't result in any additional sales. The same argument can be made for people who pirate because they genuinely can't afford to buy and people who pirate because they download *everything* they can get their hands on and then never look at it.
Ultimately, the only group who are causing losses are those who pirate because they don't want to pay for something, which I have no doubt is a fair number, but even then, while this is obviously a huge problem for the people whose works are being pirated, it still doesn't impact the economy in the way that the MPAA/RIAA always claim because oddly enough, the money they're not spending on movies, games, books and music gets spent on other things instead.
So, from what I can see of your book, it's Unavilable on Amazon and only available as a DRM'd PDF from your website in terms of digital formats; I don't trust Paypal as far as I can throw them, which means I can't buy a copy direct from you, so even if I wanted to I couldn't buy your book in a way that's convenient to me. That's when people get frustrated and think "sod it, I'll just download the damn thing" (For the record, that's not what I'm going to do).
PC Game graphics have mostly plateaued *due* to the 360 and PS3; almost everything has to have a console version these days so there's little to no incentive to make the PC version look any better than the consoles can manage.
You only have to look at some of the PC games that *have* gone the extra mile (Witcher 2, Crysis 2 DX11, Deus Ex HR, etc) to see how much better gaming graphics can be when they're not limited by 7 year old console hardware.
Most competent Windows server admins don't need a GUI on the actual server anyway; between the RSAT (Remote Server Admin Tools) and Powershell, there's very little that you need to be "on the box" to do.
Most good Windows server admins can do almost everything via Powershell anyway - of course it would be much easier if Microsoft would write decent Powershell modules for DNS and DHCP so you didn't have to do everything via COM objects and dnscmd.
That's ~90% lack of caring rather than lack of ability; not that it's a good thing.
The people who "don't know" where Control Panel is, despite having been directed to it countless times in the past by support staff are the same people whose car tyres are flat, never top up the oil and don't bother to indicate because they "don't care how cars work, as long as they get me to where I want to go".
If people are going on a course to learn to code, you have to assume that they have at least some interest in doing so.
Registry "bloat" is a bit like encumberence in RPGs; there's very little difference between a new "clean" registry and one that's full of leftover crap from old apps and the like (as opposed to actual issues that may be present, but no automated system can reliably resolve those) right up you hit the limit and slow to a crawl. These days you'd have to be going some to reach that point, so it's just not worth the risk of knackering your system for some negligible performance gain.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of those issues are caused by one of two things: 1) Policies created by some moron who doesn't know anything about IT but read a white paper once so thinks they're God's Gift to compliance (my current employer blocks any website that uses a META Refesh because of some reason...security...compliance) or 2) IT staff with a God Complex. Neither are that hard to fix, but both seem endemic across the corporate and government world.
Smart IT departments deal with this with: "Show me that you need this program to do your job and that we don't already have something in place that does the same thing to the same standard" process along with a quick check to make sure the program is "legit". If it takes you more than a week to do (in most environments), you're doing it wrong.
Most of the places I've worked have suffered from at least one serious security hole that has gone unaddressed due to either lack of comprehension, lack of skill or lack of funding; be it as obvious as everyone running as root/local admin or more "policy based" problems such as applying crippling restrictions on web browsing but having ways around the filters for "important" people (read: management) that inevitably find their way into the hands of the rest of the staff so that you might as well just turn off the proxies.
I'm willing to bet that most of those 250 departments either aren't even aware that any of their machines are infected or have been prevented from fixing them by higher priority issues such as rolling out iPads to all the execs so they can show off the size of their penises in meetings.
Or, to look at it another way, sometimes even my enemy's interests align with my own.
In other news, the RIAA have lobbied to introduce new legislation today requiring that all cakes are sold with a second, identical cake to permit posession and consumption without additional cost to an already struggling entertainment industry.
Well it's the top story on the BBC News site's technology section and linked off their front page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16757142
Does that count?
I can blame them because they are sending phone numbers as HTTP headers to websites. I don't care if they're "selected, trusted 3rd-party sites" and that sending them to everyone was an accident, I want to know why they're using phone numbers *at all*. If you need to identify a customer to a 3rd party site for whatever reason then you use a unique identifier that isn't directly connected to that user and you certainly don't use their phone number.
It may have been an accident, but it was an accident that should never have been able to happen.
Yes, yes, we all hate America over here and it's all just a big conspiracy to steal money from your corporations because we're so jealous of them.
Note that it's 2% of turnover, not profit; a 10% fine would ruin a lot of businesses, which is not the intent of the law.
The existing data protection regulations apply to government agencies as much as anyone else and as far as I can tell, so would these new ones.
In fact, I'm pretty sure we just periodically offer random citizens to the US on the offchance that they want to extradite them for something.
From the "Good god, would it kill you to edit submissions for basic grammar" department.
According to Google over the top ads is not good for user experience and thus such websites might not get high ranking on Google web search
Is barely a coherent sentence.
They're probably all paedophiles too...and communists.
I think he wants someone to prod the industry with their foot to see if it's dead.
It's a stupid article because any government petition system will always get 4 types of submission on a regular basis:
Show us the aliens
Legalize drugs
Bring back the death penalty (where appropriate)
Kick out all the foreigners
The problem with these types of submissions is that they're utterly unrealistic; anyone with half a brain (and probably even those submitting them) knows that no democratic government is going to do any of those things on the strength of a petition, irrespective of the level of support (for various reasons) and so they're a complete waste of time. The fact that this happens doesn't make the system any less useful, it just alters the SNR slightly.
Let's be honest, the entire American political system operates on a system of borderline bribery at all times, it's just that most people have the common decency to be subtle about it. Dodd has just come out and said "We've been paying you money for years to do what we want you to and now that for once you've decided that what the voters want might be more important (out of you own self-interest rather than actually caring, of course) don't expect us to keep paying you" and in doing so has made explicit what was previously implicit and made the system look exactly as corrupt as it is.
A campaign donation is "I support what you want to do"
Bribery is "I want you to support what I want to do"
There is an important difference.
Don't forget the response to the anti-SOPA petitions which, whilst not taking a strong pro or anti-SOPA position per se did nonetheless state the White House's opposition to several of the key provisions and was doubtless a factor in the decision to eventually withdraw SOPA and PIPA.
Think of the petition system a bit like the manager of a sports team being interviewed after losing a big game; it's very rare that they'll openly criticize the players because that would stir up unwanted animosity in the dressing room, but they can still make general statements that make it clear how disappointed they are with the performance.
Of course, it's equally possible that they could just ignore it
You only have to look at cable TV in the UK or the entire television setup in the US to see that the one thing you would definitely not get by defunding the BBC is a rise in quality.
Unles everyone thinks so, it isn't worth it.
By that reasoning, nothing is ever worth it.
A few weeks ago they aired an hour long show on a Sunday evening in which Prof Brian Cox gave a lecture on atomic structure, quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality to a bunch of celebrities. It was very edutaining, but can you imagine pitching that show to a commercial network?
The irony being that SOPA/PIPA *doesn't* protect content providers from piracy any more than the DMCA did, DRM does or any other failed attempts to legislate their way out of this mess have done.
Ultimately, there is no technical or legal measure that will prevent piracy. The *only* way you will stop piracy from being a problem is to make it a more attractive proposition to buy a legitimate copy than to download a pirated one which requires Speed (Don't make me wait 6 weeks after the DVD is released to download the movie), Flexibility (Give me the option of several formats and let me move between platforms, don't time limit it), Choice (Old stuff, obscure stuff - it barely costs anything extra to have it available as well as the brand new shiny things) & Sensible Pricing (*LESS* than the physical copy).
The real question is, how many sales does piracy cost you compared to how many sales it gains you by spreading awareness of your existence?
I'm sure you're smart enough not to make the "pirated copy = lost sale" mistake, so think about it in this context; I typically "pirate" two classes of books, those which I already own as a physical copy and those which aren't available officially as a digital copy & that I need in that format for them to be practical (typically reference books). In neither case are there any lost sales involved - I won't re-buy books I already own on principle and there's no point in buying reference books that are never going to be used because they're too bulky to carry around with me - so even if you were able to magically take down all the links to pirated copies of them, it still wouldn't result in any additional sales. The same argument can be made for people who pirate because they genuinely can't afford to buy and people who pirate because they download *everything* they can get their hands on and then never look at it.
Ultimately, the only group who are causing losses are those who pirate because they don't want to pay for something, which I have no doubt is a fair number, but even then, while this is obviously a huge problem for the people whose works are being pirated, it still doesn't impact the economy in the way that the MPAA/RIAA always claim because oddly enough, the money they're not spending on movies, games, books and music gets spent on other things instead.
So, from what I can see of your book, it's Unavilable on Amazon and only available as a DRM'd PDF from your website in terms of digital formats; I don't trust Paypal as far as I can throw them, which means I can't buy a copy direct from you, so even if I wanted to I couldn't buy your book in a way that's convenient to me. That's when people get frustrated and think "sod it, I'll just download the damn thing" (For the record, that's not what I'm going to do).
PC Game graphics have mostly plateaued *due* to the 360 and PS3; almost everything has to have a console version these days so there's little to no incentive to make the PC version look any better than the consoles can manage.
You only have to look at some of the PC games that *have* gone the extra mile (Witcher 2, Crysis 2 DX11, Deus Ex HR, etc) to see how much better gaming graphics can be when they're not limited by 7 year old console hardware.
Most competent Windows server admins don't need a GUI on the actual server anyway; between the RSAT (Remote Server Admin Tools) and Powershell, there's very little that you need to be "on the box" to do.
Most good Windows server admins can do almost everything via Powershell anyway - of course it would be much easier if Microsoft would write decent Powershell modules for DNS and DHCP so you didn't have to do everything via COM objects and dnscmd.
That's ~90% lack of caring rather than lack of ability; not that it's a good thing.
The people who "don't know" where Control Panel is, despite having been directed to it countless times in the past by support staff are the same people whose car tyres are flat, never top up the oil and don't bother to indicate because they "don't care how cars work, as long as they get me to where I want to go".
If people are going on a course to learn to code, you have to assume that they have at least some interest in doing so.
Registry "bloat" is a bit like encumberence in RPGs; there's very little difference between a new "clean" registry and one that's full of leftover crap from old apps and the like (as opposed to actual issues that may be present, but no automated system can reliably resolve those) right up you hit the limit and slow to a crawl. These days you'd have to be going some to reach that point, so it's just not worth the risk of knackering your system for some negligible performance gain.