Hoo boy, have I got a lot to say. But first, let me throw out a
disclaimer that I am an IT person in a hier-ed (college) institution
and not a trained educator, therefore my opinion doesn't mean squat
(some sarcasm, some truth). I'd like to throw out the following
observations, points, and opinions on this topic...
Teachers from all subjects are being expected to integrate
technology into their lesson plans. In many cases the students know
more about the tech than the instructors. The place I work provides
training opportunities for instructors, but many don't seek them out
or resist.
I find limited utility in using computers in teaching some
subjects such as English. For example, one shouldn't be teaching how
to use a word processor in an English class. It takes away from the
core reason for the class. I do realize that people need to type up
papers on computers, but that activity should be done in general labs
staffed with support people to help students who don't have these
skills. However, see below about stressed support staffing problems.
Grants are usually given for new equipment purchases, not
maintenance or infrastructure. In my employer's case, that has meant a
large new base of installed systems, which increases the need for tech
staff, but since there is no budget for that, tech support
suffers. Infrastructure such as networking and back-end servers
suffers. And most importantly, the issue of replacement cost is not
considered. For example, we currently have 2,000 computers. If you use
a 5-year replacement cycle, which I consider not enough, you're
looking at having to set aside around a half-million dollars a year to
replace equipment. Despite this, we continue to add new
labs. Eventually we'll have hallways full of computer ghettos... It's
hard to convince people that that fast p4 today will be a dog 5 years
from now (or two whenever longhorn or whatever comes out and basically
uses a back-end database running on each desktop to store data instead
of a file system... ooo, that'll kill a currently fast machine I'm
sure...)
I find teaching vendor-specific programs in a college unwise, for
example, programming in Visual Studio or network design using literal
examples for a Cisco environment. For example, I wonder about former
students who were taught dbase III when that was hot. If they were
taught the concepts and theory, they could then adapt, if they were
taught just dbase iii, they are now in need of retraining. But that's
just a personal opinion.
Many computer textbooks are horribly rigid and instructors are
unable to adapt in some cases. For example, stupid personalized menus
in Office apps. After getting way too many complaints like "The print
menu disappeared" and trying to tell people to hit the chevron, we hear that the book doesn't say to do that, so we turned off personalized menus in a GPO. Then some
instructors using a different book say "The book tells the student to go down to the chevron
at the bottom of the menu to expand it, but our system doesn't do
that. How can I teach when our system doesn't match the book?"
Another example, a textbook that tells students to do create files and
dirs on the C: drive, which we have locked down via ACLs. Some
instructors actually expect us to toss out desktop security so they
don't have to tell students to use Z: instead of where it says C: in
the textbook. And speaking of textbooks, a curse to all textbooks that
include a CD-ROM that requires software to be installed to use it.
Computers can be a big distraction in a classroom. For example, students IM'ing each other during a lecture. Some teachers are looking at IT for a solution, which I believe we should offer, but due to staffing shortages, right now everyone is putting out other fires...
A few years ago, there was a big push to wire every K12 school in the state to the Internet. I remember thinking "Ah, who is going to manage all of this stuff?" One school district in my area has *one* IT person who runs around to about 20 schools. Talk about a job from hell... The schools hardly ever see this IT person, so they often appoint the most computer-literal teacher to handle many of the issues, taking that person away from their main job of teaching.
One tech I really do like is a single desktop in a classroom with a "smart board", something that allows an instructor to not only manipulate the mouse by touching the board, but also to annotate what's displayed with markers and save the board notes and displays at will to pdf files for later review by students. No desktops at the desks to distract students, cheaper to spread tech to every classroom, and students can practice what they learn later in a lab exercise of some sorts. I have taught evening classes before and I can first-hand testify that a lesson plan that has students repeating what you do on their own desktops drags down the pace tremendously. There is always one or two that claim that their computer isn't doing what you demonstrate and you have to stop, go back to them, and help them catch up.
Well, for that purpose, being a "secured" disk is not much of a problem. But I see a far greater need (for me) for portable storage for cameras, movie cameras, off-site backups, etc... I sure don't want to shoot my own movies and only be allowed a one-generation copy, for example...
Amen. You have to wonder why these storage manufacturers are so willing to risk product failure and a hit to their own profits, to save some imaginary profit hit to some other industry and companies. What's in it for them? (discounting the fact that some of them own entertainment companies of course...)
One more hurdle to clear for iVDR in the use of consumer electronics is that of a copyright protection format. The consortium plans to approach the movie industry soon and hopes to complete the standardization of its copy protection code by March, next year, Hioki said.
I am not sure what I believe as to his guilt or innocence but it wasn't right he was held for years without a trial.
At least he wasn't busted under Bush's watch, else he would have been labeled an enemy combatent and been held indefinitely with no access to council let alone having charges bought or opportunity to fight them in a court of law.
... or it will enable the hired help to say "Screw it, he's dead" and change it from a rescue to a recovery!
I read some article a few years ago that the then-fairly-new portable cell phones were enabling yuppies to hike up big mountain's like the White Mountains, then get stuck or exhausted and call 911 for a sky lift down and what a pain they had become for park rangers.
Which reminds me, last October my friends and I hiked up Picacho Peak near Tucson. I'm 43, and while I walk a lot, the three mile hike (so far) was doing a number on my heart and fatigue so I stopped before hitting the top. I was not going to go beyond my limits. The others went on and yeah, I regret it now, but it gives me incentive to go back after I train some more, get some proper gear like gloves for the steel rope climbs and ropes to haul the 9 liters of water we took (which was all on *my* back and made balance going up rock faces very difficult). My mistake was that, since this was a state-park maintained trail, I figured it wouldn't be all that tough. As pics like in the link above show, there were a few almost vertical climbs up rock faces using steel ropes set away from the rock by about two-foot I hooks we had to go up. (I did make it up the biggest set at least!:)
But there was no way I was going to go beyond my limits and then call 9-1-1 like a typical out-of-shape computer geek who doesn't know his limits...
(But yeah, I am still getting teased for being a pussy. Male bonding rituals are the best!:)
If this is such a great idea, then why was it never implemented on Star Trek? How many times have you seen someome steal a crewmembers phaser and point it back at em?:-)
My normal rant re: ISOs and paying customers...
on
New Red Hat Beta
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· Score: 2
Ah, redhat, how about taking care of people who are paying you via the RHN and making the ISOs available through it? I just checked, not there. My company pays for an enterprise RHN license. It'd be nice if some of those couple grand a year we and others send your way could buy a nice fat pipe to download the latest ISO betas and get a jump on the paupers and cheapskates!:-)
Remember, it's a big deal to be the first on the net block to install the latest!
Everytime there is any story about RMS or FSF, it's just yet another long flame war.
I would bet that most people flaming against the GPL haven't written any software of substantial merit. If so, please list your projects and the license. Then I will take your opinion seriously.
Why do most people write free software? What is the incentive to them? Why do so many non-GNU packages out there use the GPL if it sucks so bad?
I would venture to guess that it would probably suck big time to pour your soul into some really neat software program that took you years to develop, to have some company come along, add a feature or two, close the source, sell it, and make millions, all the while you get squat, not even a credit mention.
To the guy who is upset that readline is GPL, hey, write your own version from scratch and release it under any license you want.
And for the record, I haven't released any public software of any kind, so yeah, my opinion on the GPL wars obviously doesn't me shit either.
Another claim in the 50s wrt power was nuclear power. The big slogan back then was "too cheap to meter." As in, it would make electricity so cheap that it'd not be cost effective to meter it, you'd just pay a flat rate for all you could use.
You may hate me, but at work I have a 2000FP *and* a 1900FP attached in a dual monitor config to a geforce4 ti4200.
I can tell you right now that the 1900FP is a far better LCD monitor. Only downside is 1280x1024 res. But contrast ratio is better, image looks better, and it doesn't have that huge case wrapped around the screen like the 2000FP. It's just sexier!
Then again, to be fair, the 2000FP does have s-video and composite inputs.
I guess that must include ICQ, which I don't ever has had a release go past "beta" stage.
Also, emacs, where the 0. just got dropped off the release number after a while, so 21.2 is really 0.21.2
Most effective online ads I've seen....
on
Next-Gen Pop-up Ads
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The most effective ads I've seen are the ones on Kuro5hin and -- cough -- mbe fark (although I'm not usually in the market for porn, a.b. groups satisfy me just fine.;).
A small text-only non-obtrusive add that -- most importantly -- links to a comment section where potential clients can comment on the advertiser and, glory be, some rep from that company is there to answer questions and address criticisms.
It also has the added benefit that the advertiser gets a real-life feel for how effective the ad is, and doesn't have to rely on some easily falsifiable clickthrough or impression report from the advertising company.
Now, if you're peddling shit, I'm sure this kind of instant-feedback type ad is not going to be your cup-of-tea. Another reason why I like these ads.
...or post it on slashdot. Someone already posted a link to espn.com that blows out an ad for Orbitz using this mouseover crap. I had to see it for myself. I fired up IE, went to espn, up popped the orbitz window, and it was BLANK.
All very good points. It also takes ages to fully load a 747-400 and then unload it (er, deplane) at the end of a journey.
I've had the displeasure of taking cheap charter flights when I was younger to Europe where the entire plane is basically lower class and there's only two ticket agents checking in 450 people. It's hell let me tell you. Never again...
City and county police are dealing with murders, meth lab explosions, armed robbery of businesses, and plenty of things that fall into a higher category of importance in their manuals than your house getting broken into.
... don't give me that, I don't buy it. I wish it were true but I don't see it. For example, I lived near a section 8 apartment complex I had to walk through to get to the grocery store and I'd regularly see the police running a speed trap on a 35 MPH road with no side streets and 12 foot road-grade shoulders, enriching their revenue while in this complex, people were dealing drugs out in the open, breaking into vehicles, etc, etc...
The speed limit on that road was set artificially low just so the local police could run speed traps.
Another time I got ticketed for running a stop sign. Thing is, I stopped alright but since I didn't put down my foot on my motorcycle, I got the ticket. Now if you're a biker, you know you can often come to a complete stop and remain upright for a second or two without putting your foot down. But I had to get a ticket so that officer could meet his (officially) fictional quota.
My opinion, their priorities are all screwed up... (i don't blame the officers, it's their superiors that make the policies and set the priorities)
My friend is a consultant. Bought three laptops on eBay. Sent a tad bit under $10K to an escrow service, never got the laptops, the money and escrow service disappeared.
He can't get anyone to care. Not eBay for sure. Not the police, not FBI. He found out the scammers were working out of Romania and contacted their police, and hasn't gotten too far either. The scammers made it appear they were located in Minnesota. In the meantime he sees more auctions that look similar and contacted them with his same ID and addy, and they sent him details for payment, etc. They didn't even remember it was the same guy they scammed a few weeks earlier. They continue to operate and nail people over and over... (and since it wasn't a Mac laptop, he doesn't have that fanatical base of users to get help him either!:)
Let me take this opportunity to rant about the inequities law enforcement in this (U.S.) country. These are huge losses for individuals and when combined represent large sums of money overall, but law enforcement doesn't care. But you have some theoretical theft of a $18 CD and then we must throw the weight of the FBI after the P2P'ers. If a guy robs a 7-eleven of $20, he must spend 20 years in jail, but if a white collar criminal bilks several million bucks from a company, he gets a mild slap on the wrist, if that... If my house gets broken into and I lose everything, now the police don't even want to bother coming out to "investigate" the crime. They take a report over the phone and send you a police report for insurance purposes, but heaven forbid you don't come to a full stop at a stop sign or creep over the speed limit, because they are out there in full force ready to nail you with tickets.
Another thing wrong about Home Depot is over saturation. In my area (northern Delaware) there are Home Depots everywhere, only 5 miles apart. The cost to build (or lease) those mega-stores must be huge, and they end up just sucking customers from each other. This ain't 7-Eleven. If I want to go to Home Depot, a 10-15 mile drive isn't going to stop me.
They obviously haven't learned the lesson of other great retailers of the past that over-saturized the market with stores, like W.T.Grant for example. Huh? Never heard of Grants? Exactly....
GPO has a lot of holes and ways to get around things. Many of the restrictions are only enforced in the windows explorer shell. As for restricting to a specific set of programs, all you need to do to get around that is rename the exe of the program you want to run to be the same as one of the permitted programs and away you go.
Maybe with Palladin and code signing and only allowing signed code to run, this will finally work! (*ducks*)
It's all getting better in each release of Windows, but there still is a long way to go. There are so many programs that are not Windows logo compliant and to get them to work you must do inane things like open up that program's program directory to change access or open up large sections of HKLM, all things that would prevent a program from getting the logo. But when you scream at vendors, their usual response is to just give people local admin rights or power user rights.
Some vendors are really bad. Adobe, for example, only has one program that is logo compliant according to their web site.
You try to tell an academic department that they can't install program x on lab machines and you don't get much sympathy. A call or two later and some administrator is saying how important this program is and the (academic) program needs it and this could affect accreditation, etc, etc... so just install it anyway.
An install is only as strong as its weakess link. NT first came out what, almost 10 years ago, and network servers with file ACLs were out long before that. Yet vendors still write their code thinking they have absolute full access to scribble data to anywhere on the file system.
At least in Unix, I've never seen a user app that won't run unless all users are given root access and or write access to/usr/bin,/etc, and other fun locations!
LOL. Yeah, similar thing happened to me in the 80s. I used to say "You can't get a virus by simply sticking a floppy into your computer and taking documents off of it. You actually need to run a program to get infected.
Then along came WDEF virus on Macs and of course later, Macro viruses in Office docs...
I also remember someone telling me that there were going to be 56K modems, which I said was impossible because that's too near the speed the telco sends your voice data at and since modem data goes through A-D then D-A at other end, the loss would eliminate that as being possible.
Then of course, 56K modems came out that worked because they eliminated the D-A step and once again I had egg on my face!
I don't see how zone alarm can stop spy packets that go through http via IE via a COM object call. Any little proggie can grab a page such as "http://spysite/stats?uid=xxxxxxx&cd=nnnnnnnnn&tra ck=n" and then discard the results. You'd never know about it and your zone alarm will not stop it unless you stop all traffic from IE and use a different browser. (probably not a bad idea...)
A com object call requires the target program (like IE) to be running and if it's not, will launch it. It's like a remote-control of the external app and hence I believe that app (IE in this case) would be the one grabbing the page and returning the results. It's not like a library call. The process should be identified as IE to zone alarm (and hence a good guy).
If I'm wrong, I'd love for someone who knows how COM works to tell me. But I'm betting I'm right...
To cut down the risk of sharing your connection out, you could always throw up a linux box using iptables and only allow web traffic, transparently forced through your own proxy.
A bear any of us would scream about if done to us, but then again, beggars can't be choosers.
It still doesn't address other issues, like someone posting bad remarks about a company on some group and that company forcing records from the ISP and coming after you and claiming you did it.
Then again, this policy is refreshing. To draw a conclusion that just because bad thing x came from ip y at time z and logs show ip y at time z belonged to your account, and hence YOU are automatically guilty is insane. It could be unauthorized access, it could be a visitor to your house doing it from your PC as you go out to pick up a 6-pack, etc... Just like a criminal call from your premisis could be someone out back or in the basement of your flats hooking a handset up to your telco box. The fact that somehow the owner of an IP is guilty of all crimes committed through that IP is nuts.
I noticed some dedicated co-lo services have same attitude/policy. If you resell access and one of your clients does a bad thing over your pipe, they treat it as if you did it and subject you to being cut off for actions of a client...
OK, I'm convinced. Sharing wi-fi is a bad idea, with high risks and little if no reward. Sigh...:-( At least it opens up possibility of sharing with a neighbor with access controls.
Read the alt.cellular.verizon newsgroup about the T720. A few people like it, but the majority who have bought it or who work in the retail stores think it's garbage. Apparently the system software is buggy as hell.
I don't know about you but I want a mobile phone to make calls. I don't need a phone that decides to crash and reboot in the middle of a call... I have enough headaches with PCs, I just want my phone to work. (ps, I have never tried one, just my observation from reading that newsgroup when I was trying to decide what phone to buy. Based on the rants, I got a v60i for the wife and hung onto my trusty 2 year old moto 7868W startac which has always worked like a champ)
Sounds like a good script for a horror movie. The bad guy is about to slash you up in bits, you reach for your fancy cell phone, and it blue screens while trying to call 9-1-1
Re:solution for one of the problems..
on
The New IT Crisis
·
· Score: 2
SMS is pretty damn pricey, isn't it? And those CALs add up. Plus, aren't you supposed to have an SQL CAL for each desktop as well? That hurts if your desktops don't need SQL CALs for other things.
Last I looked at it, and I admit it was a few years ago, I had a stroke when I tallied up all of the costs for it.
There's something else out called SUS which I guess I'll be looking at next. It only requires IIS to be installed.. (sigh... another thing to learn).
Most advertisement banners want the page they are displayed on to send an HTTP header that tells the browser not to cache the content so each page view generates a new ad banner (and hence more page impressions), and/or they have some javascript on the page to do the same thing.
A big discussion about this topic was hashed out forever in bugzilla, bug 112564, and eventually a compromise was reached where the back-button would not honor that directive on http sites but would honor it on https sites. This increased the perceived speed of mozilla-based browsers because on backing up through history, the pages would not have to be re-fetched. Earlier mozzes did re-fetch.
So, whether or not you get a new banner when you hit back is dependent on browser implementation, but the point is still valid. Ad banners are designed in such a way that they WANT you to see a different ad when you hit the page again, and in my opinion, that's stupid and ridiculous.
And I still think there should be an ad index on the site, because I may remember an ad and go back to that site days later looking for it. Consider that someone looking for your ad is probably an ideal prospect to buy something, and the idea of making it harder for someone like this to find it becomes even more ridiculous and counter-productive (to your marketing goals).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for that purpose, being a "secured" disk is not much of a problem. But I see a far greater need (for me) for portable storage for cameras, movie cameras, off-site backups, etc... I sure don't want to shoot my own movies and only be allowed a one-generation copy, for example...
Amen. You have to wonder why these storage manufacturers are so willing to risk product failure and a hit to their own profits, to save some imaginary profit hit to some other industry and companies. What's in it for them? (discounting the fact that some of them own entertainment companies of course...)
At least he wasn't busted under Bush's watch, else he would have been labeled an enemy combatent and been held indefinitely with no access to council let alone having charges bought or opportunity to fight them in a court of law.
I read some article a few years ago that the then-fairly-new portable cell phones were enabling yuppies to hike up big mountain's like the White Mountains, then get stuck or exhausted and call 911 for a sky lift down and what a pain they had become for park rangers.
Which reminds me, last October my friends and I hiked up Picacho Peak near Tucson. I'm 43, and while I walk a lot, the three mile hike (so far) was doing a number on my heart and fatigue so I stopped before hitting the top. I was not going to go beyond my limits. The others went on and yeah, I regret it now, but it gives me incentive to go back after I train some more, get some proper gear like gloves for the steel rope climbs and ropes to haul the 9 liters of water we took (which was all on *my* back and made balance going up rock faces very difficult). My mistake was that, since this was a state-park maintained trail, I figured it wouldn't be all that tough. As pics like in the link above show, there were a few almost vertical climbs up rock faces using steel ropes set away from the rock by about two-foot I hooks we had to go up. (I did make it up the biggest set at least! :)
But there was no way I was going to go beyond my limits and then call 9-1-1 like a typical out-of-shape computer geek who doesn't know his limits...
(But yeah, I am still getting teased for being a pussy. Male bonding rituals are the best! :)
If this is such a great idea, then why was it never implemented on Star Trek? How many times have you seen someome steal a crewmembers phaser and point it back at em? :-)
Remember, it's a big deal to be the first on the net block to install the latest!
I would bet that most people flaming against the GPL haven't written any software of substantial merit. If so, please list your projects and the license. Then I will take your opinion seriously.
Why do most people write free software? What is the incentive to them? Why do so many non-GNU packages out there use the GPL if it sucks so bad?
I would venture to guess that it would probably suck big time to pour your soul into some really neat software program that took you years to develop, to have some company come along, add a feature or two, close the source, sell it, and make millions, all the while you get squat, not even a credit mention.
To the guy who is upset that readline is GPL, hey, write your own version from scratch and release it under any license you want.
And for the record, I haven't released any public software of any kind, so yeah, my opinion on the GPL wars obviously doesn't me shit either.
Another claim in the 50s wrt power was nuclear power. The big slogan back then was "too cheap to meter." As in, it would make electricity so cheap that it'd not be cost effective to meter it, you'd just pay a flat rate for all you could use.
I can tell you right now that the 1900FP is a far better LCD monitor. Only downside is 1280x1024 res. But contrast ratio is better, image looks better, and it doesn't have that huge case wrapped around the screen like the 2000FP. It's just sexier!
Then again, to be fair, the 2000FP does have s-video and composite inputs.
I guess that must include ICQ, which I don't ever has had a release go past "beta" stage.
Also, emacs, where the 0. just got dropped off the release number after a while, so 21.2 is really 0.21.2
A small text-only non-obtrusive add that -- most importantly -- links to a comment section where potential clients can comment on the advertiser and, glory be, some rep from that company is there to answer questions and address criticisms.
For example, this ad and comment page for Johncompanies helped convince me to get a virtual dedicated host with them.
It also has the added benefit that the advertiser gets a real-life feel for how effective the ad is, and doesn't have to rely on some easily falsifiable clickthrough or impression report from the advertising company.
Now, if you're peddling shit, I'm sure this kind of instant-feedback type ad is not going to be your cup-of-tea. Another reason why I like these ads.
Sounds like they got slashdotted! :)
I've had the displeasure of taking cheap charter flights when I was younger to Europe where the entire plane is basically lower class and there's only two ticket agents checking in 450 people. It's hell let me tell you. Never again...
The speed limit on that road was set artificially low just so the local police could run speed traps.
Another time I got ticketed for running a stop sign. Thing is, I stopped alright but since I didn't put down my foot on my motorcycle, I got the ticket. Now if you're a biker, you know you can often come to a complete stop and remain upright for a second or two without putting your foot down. But I had to get a ticket so that officer could meet his (officially) fictional quota.
My opinion, their priorities are all screwed up... (i don't blame the officers, it's their superiors that make the policies and set the priorities)
He can't get anyone to care. Not eBay for sure. Not the police, not FBI. He found out the scammers were working out of Romania and contacted their police, and hasn't gotten too far either. The scammers made it appear they were located in Minnesota. In the meantime he sees more auctions that look similar and contacted them with his same ID and addy, and they sent him details for payment, etc. They didn't even remember it was the same guy they scammed a few weeks earlier. They continue to operate and nail people over and over... (and since it wasn't a Mac laptop, he doesn't have that fanatical base of users to get help him either! :)
Let me take this opportunity to rant about the inequities law enforcement in this (U.S.) country. These are huge losses for individuals and when combined represent large sums of money overall, but law enforcement doesn't care. But you have some theoretical theft of a $18 CD and then we must throw the weight of the FBI after the P2P'ers. If a guy robs a 7-eleven of $20, he must spend 20 years in jail, but if a white collar criminal bilks several million bucks from a company, he gets a mild slap on the wrist, if that... If my house gets broken into and I lose everything, now the police don't even want to bother coming out to "investigate" the crime. They take a report over the phone and send you a police report for insurance purposes, but heaven forbid you don't come to a full stop at a stop sign or creep over the speed limit, because they are out there in full force ready to nail you with tickets.
They obviously haven't learned the lesson of other great retailers of the past that over-saturized the market with stores, like W.T.Grant for example. Huh? Never heard of Grants? Exactly....
Maybe with Palladin and code signing and only allowing signed code to run, this will finally work! (*ducks*)
It's all getting better in each release of Windows, but there still is a long way to go. There are so many programs that are not Windows logo compliant and to get them to work you must do inane things like open up that program's program directory to change access or open up large sections of HKLM, all things that would prevent a program from getting the logo. But when you scream at vendors, their usual response is to just give people local admin rights or power user rights.
Some vendors are really bad. Adobe, for example, only has one program that is logo compliant according to their web site.
You try to tell an academic department that they can't install program x on lab machines and you don't get much sympathy. A call or two later and some administrator is saying how important this program is and the (academic) program needs it and this could affect accreditation, etc, etc... so just install it anyway.
An install is only as strong as its weakess link. NT first came out what, almost 10 years ago, and network servers with file ACLs were out long before that. Yet vendors still write their code thinking they have absolute full access to scribble data to anywhere on the file system.
At least in Unix, I've never seen a user app that won't run unless all users are given root access and or write access to /usr/bin, /etc, and other fun locations!
Then along came WDEF virus on Macs and of course later, Macro viruses in Office docs...
I also remember someone telling me that there were going to be 56K modems, which I said was impossible because that's too near the speed the telco sends your voice data at and since modem data goes through A-D then D-A at other end, the loss would eliminate that as being possible.
Then of course, 56K modems came out that worked because they eliminated the D-A step and once again I had egg on my face!
A com object call requires the target program (like IE) to be running and if it's not, will launch it. It's like a remote-control of the external app and hence I believe that app (IE in this case) would be the one grabbing the page and returning the results. It's not like a library call. The process should be identified as IE to zone alarm (and hence a good guy).
If I'm wrong, I'd love for someone who knows how COM works to tell me. But I'm betting I'm right...
A bear any of us would scream about if done to us, but then again, beggars can't be choosers.
It still doesn't address other issues, like someone posting bad remarks about a company on some group and that company forcing records from the ISP and coming after you and claiming you did it.
Then again, this policy is refreshing. To draw a conclusion that just because bad thing x came from ip y at time z and logs show ip y at time z belonged to your account, and hence YOU are automatically guilty is insane. It could be unauthorized access, it could be a visitor to your house doing it from your PC as you go out to pick up a 6-pack, etc... Just like a criminal call from your premisis could be someone out back or in the basement of your flats hooking a handset up to your telco box. The fact that somehow the owner of an IP is guilty of all crimes committed through that IP is nuts.
I noticed some dedicated co-lo services have same attitude/policy. If you resell access and one of your clients does a bad thing over your pipe, they treat it as if you did it and subject you to being cut off for actions of a client...
OK, I'm convinced. Sharing wi-fi is a bad idea, with high risks and little if no reward. Sigh... :-( At least it opens up possibility of sharing with a neighbor with access controls.
I don't know about you but I want a mobile phone to make calls. I don't need a phone that decides to crash and reboot in the middle of a call... I have enough headaches with PCs, I just want my phone to work. (ps, I have never tried one, just my observation from reading that newsgroup when I was trying to decide what phone to buy. Based on the rants, I got a v60i for the wife and hung onto my trusty 2 year old moto 7868W startac which has always worked like a champ)
Sounds like a good script for a horror movie. The bad guy is about to slash you up in bits, you reach for your fancy cell phone, and it blue screens while trying to call 9-1-1
Last I looked at it, and I admit it was a few years ago, I had a stroke when I tallied up all of the costs for it.
There's something else out called SUS which I guess I'll be looking at next. It only requires IIS to be installed.. (sigh... another thing to learn).
A big discussion about this topic was hashed out forever in bugzilla, bug 112564, and eventually a compromise was reached where the back-button would not honor that directive on http sites but would honor it on https sites. This increased the perceived speed of mozilla-based browsers because on backing up through history, the pages would not have to be re-fetched. Earlier mozzes did re-fetch.
So, whether or not you get a new banner when you hit back is dependent on browser implementation, but the point is still valid. Ad banners are designed in such a way that they WANT you to see a different ad when you hit the page again, and in my opinion, that's stupid and ridiculous.
And I still think there should be an ad index on the site, because I may remember an ad and go back to that site days later looking for it. Consider that someone looking for your ad is probably an ideal prospect to buy something, and the idea of making it harder for someone like this to find it becomes even more ridiculous and counter-productive (to your marketing goals).