Here's a totally different solution: go with something like RSA's SecureID. This eliminates the need for users to change passwords, since the password rotates every second. And the server software runs on various platforms (*nix, windows, Novell). And you have better security since user passwords rotate every minute or so. We use it at work and it's great.
My suggestion: keep it; don't sell it or give it away. THis is of course, assuming, you had an ok/good relationship with your grandfather. THis is something that will always remind you of him. Something that he passed along to you, probably knowing full well how much it meant to you. Don't sell it or give it away, or you'll end up regretting it in the long run. Even if you have to leave it on the closet floor or in a cardboard box somewhere.
What I do suggest, however, is to get it appraised. Make sure it is indeed a meteorite. If it's worth a significant sum; get it insured. At 100$/gram as suggested by other Slashdot readers, it might be worth to keep in some type of bank vault storage. You could then use it for things like collateral on buying a house, etc....
So don't do anything rash, don't think of just the short term.
OK, I got hit with this virus on one of my winblows machines. Wanna know how I got it? SURFING A FRIGGIN WEBSITE. I did not open any attachements (nor do I use outlook/express for my mail... good ol' Eudora for me on Winblows). I hadn't patched IE in a few months. Even with semi-anal security options selected in IE, it still hit me.
Snake oil? I don't think so. 2-3 years ago I would have agreed with you. I've been downloading stuff since 1980. Up until 2-3 years ago I never used an AV. I never got a virus. I too used common sense. Then one day.... boom. I got hit. I installed an AV program and haven't looked back since.
Both Sympatico and Rogers, the 2 biggest ISPs in Canada (DSL and cable respectively) also advertise the fact in their commercials "download music and movies".
If let's say I won something like 20$ million at the lottery.
I'd quit my current job (I don't hate it, in fact I love my job. But I'd still quit).
After getting a house built as I want it, furnished, get a finincial advisor and invest (aka the usual)
I'd then travel the world for 6-12 months, going to every place I've ever wanted to go.
I'd probably go back to school and get study something related to my next point.
I'd start my own bar. This was a dream of mine when I was in my teenage years. Totally unrelated to the tech industry I work in. Plus, you can hire people to do the day to day management. So if you take off for a 2-4 week trip somewhere, you're not totally foobared (I know a few trustworthy ppl already that I would hire). And owning a bar would fit my lifestyle. Stay up late and wake up late.
and of course, give money to charities and such and volunteer some of my time with local children (IE: sports coach, etc..)
Automatic updates are not good in a live server environment. Many shops run software that are only certified for certain versions. Automatically updating any part of the OS or underlying packages like JDK could break the software. Doesn't sound like alot of thought was put into this.
Paying per show or per channel won't work, as told by some people here. Why? Because some people still get their TV signals the old fashion way: thru antenna. There's even some regions where cable is still not available (very small towns, cottage country, etc...). As long as the big networks (ABC, NBC, ABC, FOX, CBC, CTV, Global, etc...) transmit their signal thru the air, paying per show/per channel won't be viable. I have digital cable. I pay for extra channels like Discovery and TLC. I don't pay for NBC/CBS/etc... And if they wanted to charge for those, I'd just set up an antenna to watch those channels. I'm sure many other folks would too.
In Canada, taxes are based on your place of residence, and not your place of work. So if you live in Ontario and live in Quebec, you pay Ontario taxes. But special arrangements need to be made with the employer so that Ontario taxes are taken off your pay instead of Quebec taxes.
What they do is not really take off Quebec taxes, but adjust your tax rate so it about equals the Ontario tax. The province of Quebec then takes care of giving the province of Ontario the money you paid in taxes.
First, let me state that I run both Linux and Windows machines at home, each has it's use. So no flaming:P
This review is pure BS IMO. The reviewer installed an OEM version of Win2K using recovery disks. In my experience, installing from recovery disks take alot longer than installing from an original Windows CD. Even if you have to download specific drivers for a laptop, it's still faster than using an OEM recovery disk.
The pop-up advertisements are obviously part of the OEM recovery disk. They are not part of a standard Windows installation. So his complaining on that issue is moot.
Thirdly, he's comparing the newest RedHat version to a 3 yr old version of Windows. For a more fair review, he should have installed either WindowsXP and RedHat 7.3, or Windows2K and a 3 yr old version of Redhat (which is what, RH 6.1?).
Why not compare installing Solaris9 and Windows 3.1 and DOS? It was be just as fair as this piece of rubbish. If you're going to do a fair review, then do it right. Don't do it when it's so slanted it's not even funny.
It's hard to take this article seriously when it attempts to spread false information.
Neff, for instance, predicted Apple, which uses chips from Motorola and IBM that currently top out at 1GHz, will switch to Intel, whose chips run at 2.5GHz, to get a performance boost and gain more customers. There's a better than 80 percent chance Apple will make the jump in two to four years, he said.
Everyone knows you can't compare speeds of Intel and Motorolla chips, as they do not equate to the same thing. I lost all respect and believability for the article after reading that piece of rubbish.
Being a patent officer obviously requires knowledge in various areas. Is the patent office devided into various sections (mechanical, computers, agricultural, etc...)?
And what about enhancing your knowledge? How do you tackle new technologies that are coming out. What tools are given to you in order for you to do your job? (training, seminars, courses, books, etc...)
There's a very good reason why not just buy a new printer each time.
With cheap printers ( 200$), the cartridges are only 1/3 to 1/2 full. So you'd end up paying 40$ for a half full or one third full cartridge. That's not saving yourself some money.
At my place of employment we use Remedy. It has everything you're looking for; windows client, *nix client and web interface. It can be fairly stable. The server portion runs on solaris (probably other *nixes as well, but never tried it). You can do asset tracking, order tracking, change management, etc... It's also fully customisable.
One recomendation: Stay away from ANYTHING that's Java based. Those have long loading times, are prone to crashing, are slow to use and are generally just a pain in the @ss. I've used some Java applications that choke a 1.4 processor with 512 megs of RAM.
Corel did just this a few years ago. While still in school, I purchased Corel's Wordperfect Suite for 15$ and Corel Draw 7 for 20$. These were Student Edition versions. They were not restricted in any way. The only thing you didn't get with them were the manuals.
I don't know if Corel is still keeping up this practice, but it's/was damn smart of them.
As I stated, this normally doesn't happen under XP (i'm running it on a system at home, one at work, and i've installed it on multiple other PCs (everything from the beta version, home edition and pro edition). This behaviour never happened on the 20 or so machnes I've used that has various flavours of XP installed on them.
As I stated in my previous comment, this was most probably caused by other software that was installed on the system (whether from MS or a 3rd party). So to blame this on XP is in fact, wrong.
I also never that XP was a bad OS. It's definately strides better than any other of the previous Windows version. There are still a few problems with it that IMO MS should have solved a long time ago, but for a Windows product, it is pretty stable for what I use it for (I use my home XP machine mostly for gaming and 3d graphics).
Not being able to get to Google while using XP/IE is pure BS. I've been running XP on one of my machines since beta. When I want to look up something quick on the net I fire off Google. I've never had the system crash, lockup or BSoD while going to www.google.com in IE.
There's plenty of faults with Microsoft and XP, so there's no need to invent non-existing ones. The problem could have arisen from installing any number of other software.
There's a multitude of problems that will arise if this is allowed to pass.
If copyright holders are allowed to DoS, does this mean that if an ISP's user is flooded, and this flood affacts the capacity of the ISP to serve it's users/customers, will they have legal recourse to sue the copyright holder for loss of business? BR>
I'm also curious to know if the copyright holders will also be given the ok to DoS/attack servers that are not within the US judicial borders. What happens if the server is in Canada? Canada has laws against DoS attacks. Will this mean that a Canadian citizen who is attacked will have the right to sue the copyright holder, since they used US Laws to commit a what is considered a criminal offence in another country?
What about local disk cache? It has been upheld in the court of law that original works that appear on the Net are automatically granted copyright to the creator of the work (whether it be art, a BLOG, a webpage, etc...). Does this mean that if you visit my website, and your browser caches the information to disk, that I am allowed to DoS you? Your system will have a local saved copy of my copyrighted works. This is a huuuuuuuuuuge loophole.
[Rant] I wouldn't be surprised if this bill is passed. The US and other world governments have shown time and time again that they will give preference to big corporations and not it's citizens, even if it means big business can walk all over its consumers.
What kind of monitoring? If I were his neighbours I would *not* be comfortable with a neighbour monitoring my Internet traffic, other than of course the amount of data I transfer.
That's not the kind of monitoring I was talking about. Not a packet sniffer type of monitoring. More like a PPPOE authentication type of monitoring (or LDAP, or whatever).
Something that would allow him to keep track of the users accessing the system. You could sorta do it by assigning static IP addresses, but anyone with half a brain and is a little computer litterate could go and change their IP to the one that their neighbour uses.
I used to work for a backbone company, and I have never seen a contract for commercial connections that do not allow you to resell the bandwidth, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Just keep in mind that if one of your 'users' does something like send out spam or does illegal activites, you may be held responsible since it's your/company name on the contract with the ISP (hence get contracts drawn up for your users who will connect, in which case you'll need to do some type of monitoring in case the cops show up investigating a possible crime).
Damn, somebody beat me to boasting about the e-smith:)
A friend of mine works for Mitel (who bought out e-smith a while back), and develops blades for the e-smith. I've had a chance to test it and it's pretty much what you're looking for.
Basically the e-smith gives you the power of linux (can't remember what distrib they use) without needing much knowledge about it. It's basically controlled using a web-browser. Installing blades (packages) and upgrades is done via the web. You never go in thru CLI. It's basically for small businesses who don't have a sysadmin. It's pretty impressive.
Cisco has a great IOS feature called CAR that can do exactly what you're asking for at the router level. You can rate-limit specific physical ports on the router (even using a schedule such as from 8am to 8pm, allow anything, from 8pm to 8am throttle to xxx kbytes/second).
This is assuming that you're not running virtual hosting (multiple domains sharing one IP address), in which case all customers on that IP/physical port would be affected by the CAR limitations you would impose.
It is possible with the amount of traffic you're talking about. Just make sure that the puppy has a good processor and plenty of RAM.
We've had to run a number of pieces on unsavory renewal practices among the various registrars competing for your name-claiming business, but domain name scamming is sadly not confined to the U.S
This isn't just happening in the US or the UK. I received what looked like a bill from the Domain Registry Institute of Canada for one of my domains (which incidentally is a.org domain and not.ca). I couldn't believe I would receive such a thing after the big Verisign hoopla. I wrote them back stating that they had just ensured that I will never use their services for any of my domains (5 in all, all.org,.com or.net).
What I found even more ironic is that the particular domain in question isn't due for another year and some months! What are these people thinking?
Happened to me a few months ago.
on
Painless Chairs?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Bad backs are a combination of the chair, position of keyboard/monitor and taking breaks. I had a similar problem a few months back. It got so bad that I was flat out on my back for a couple of days. Went to a chiropractor and got some help and some good advice.
Get a chair with a high back that also has lumbar support and adjustable arm rests. Make sure the middle of your monitor is directly at eye level. When you type, rest your arms on the arm rests. Get something to prop up your feet about 2 inches.
And very importantly, never stay sitting down for longer than an hour if you can help it. But just don't get up. Stretch when you get up.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a totally different solution: go with something like RSA's SecureID. This eliminates the need for users to change passwords, since the password rotates every second. And the server software runs on various platforms (*nix, windows, Novell). And you have better security since user passwords rotate every minute or so. We use it at work and it's great.
My suggestion: keep it; don't sell it or give it away. THis is of course, assuming, you had an ok/good relationship with your grandfather. THis is something that will always remind you of him. Something that he passed along to you, probably knowing full well how much it meant to you. Don't sell it or give it away, or you'll end up regretting it in the long run. Even if you have to leave it on the closet floor or in a cardboard box somewhere.
What I do suggest, however, is to get it appraised. Make sure it is indeed a meteorite. If it's worth a significant sum; get it insured. At 100$/gram as suggested by other Slashdot readers, it might be worth to keep in some type of bank vault storage. You could then use it for things like collateral on buying a house, etc....
So don't do anything rash, don't think of just the short term.
OK, I got hit with this virus on one of my winblows machines. Wanna know how I got it? SURFING A FRIGGIN WEBSITE. I did not open any attachements (nor do I use outlook/express for my mail... good ol' Eudora for me on Winblows). I hadn't patched IE in a few months. Even with semi-anal security options selected in IE, it still hit me. Snake oil? I don't think so. 2-3 years ago I would have agreed with you. I've been downloading stuff since 1980. Up until 2-3 years ago I never used an AV. I never got a virus. I too used common sense. Then one day.... boom. I got hit. I installed an AV program and haven't looked back since.
Both Sympatico and Rogers, the 2 biggest ISPs in Canada (DSL and cable respectively) also advertise the fact in their commercials "download music and movies".
Sounds pretty much like what the Bill Gates type character wanted to do in AntiTrust... and look how that turned out ;)
I'd quit my current job (I don't hate it, in fact I love my job. But I'd still quit).
After getting a house built as I want it, furnished, get a finincial advisor and invest (aka the usual)
I'd then travel the world for 6-12 months, going to every place I've ever wanted to go.
I'd probably go back to school and get study something related to my next point.
I'd start my own bar. This was a dream of mine when I was in my teenage years. Totally unrelated to the tech industry I work in. Plus, you can hire people to do the day to day management. So if you take off for a 2-4 week trip somewhere, you're not totally foobared (I know a few trustworthy ppl already that I would hire). And owning a bar would fit my lifestyle. Stay up late and wake up late.
and of course, give money to charities and such and volunteer some of my time with local children (IE: sports coach, etc..)
Automatic updates are not good in a live server environment. Many shops run software that are only certified for certain versions. Automatically updating any part of the OS or underlying packages like JDK could break the software. Doesn't sound like alot of thought was put into this.
Paying per show or per channel won't work, as told by some people here. Why? Because some people still get their TV signals the old fashion way: thru antenna. There's even some regions where cable is still not available (very small towns, cottage country, etc...). As long as the big networks (ABC, NBC, ABC, FOX, CBC, CTV, Global, etc...) transmit their signal thru the air, paying per show/per channel won't be viable. I have digital cable. I pay for extra channels like Discovery and TLC. I don't pay for NBC/CBS/etc... And if they wanted to charge for those, I'd just set up an antenna to watch those channels. I'm sure many other folks would too.
In Canada, taxes are based on your place of residence, and not your place of work. So if you live in Ontario and live in Quebec, you pay Ontario taxes. But special arrangements need to be made with the employer so that Ontario taxes are taken off your pay instead of Quebec taxes.
What they do is not really take off Quebec taxes, but adjust your tax rate so it about equals the Ontario tax. The province of Quebec then takes care of giving the province of Ontario the money you paid in taxes.
First, let me state that I run both Linux and Windows machines at home, each has it's use. So no flaming :P
This review is pure BS IMO. The reviewer installed an OEM version of Win2K using recovery disks. In my experience, installing from recovery disks take alot longer than installing from an original Windows CD. Even if you have to download specific drivers for a laptop, it's still faster than using an OEM recovery disk.
The pop-up advertisements are obviously part of the OEM recovery disk. They are not part of a standard Windows installation. So his complaining on that issue is moot.
Thirdly, he's comparing the newest RedHat version to a 3 yr old version of Windows. For a more fair review, he should have installed either WindowsXP and RedHat 7.3, or Windows2K and a 3 yr old version of Redhat (which is what, RH 6.1?).
Why not compare installing Solaris9 and Windows 3.1 and DOS? It was be just as fair as this piece of rubbish. If you're going to do a fair review, then do it right. Don't do it when it's so slanted it's not even funny.
It's hard to take this article seriously when it attempts to spread false information.
Neff, for instance, predicted Apple, which uses chips from Motorola and IBM that currently top out at 1GHz, will switch to Intel, whose chips run at 2.5GHz, to get a performance boost and gain more customers. There's a better than 80 percent chance Apple will make the jump in two to four years, he said.
Everyone knows you can't compare speeds of Intel and Motorolla chips, as they do not equate to the same thing. I lost all respect and believability for the article after reading that piece of rubbish.
Being a patent officer obviously requires knowledge in various areas. Is the patent office devided into various sections (mechanical, computers, agricultural, etc...)?
And what about enhancing your knowledge? How do you tackle new technologies that are coming out. What tools are given to you in order for you to do your job? (training, seminars, courses, books, etc...)
Anything by Micheal Slade. His/Their books always have a twist at the end which is at the same time surprising and depressing.
There's a very good reason why not just buy a new printer each time.
With cheap printers ( 200$), the cartridges are only 1/3 to 1/2 full. So you'd end up paying 40$ for a half full or one third full cartridge. That's not saving yourself some money.
At my place of employment we use Remedy. It has everything you're looking for; windows client, *nix client and web interface. It can be fairly stable. The server portion runs on solaris (probably other *nixes as well, but never tried it). You can do asset tracking, order tracking, change management, etc... It's also fully customisable.
One recomendation: Stay away from ANYTHING that's Java based. Those have long loading times, are prone to crashing, are slow to use and are generally just a pain in the @ss. I've used some Java applications that choke a 1.4 processor with 512 megs of RAM.
Corel did just this a few years ago. While still in school, I purchased Corel's Wordperfect Suite for 15$ and Corel Draw 7 for 20$. These were Student Edition versions. They were not restricted in any way. The only thing you didn't get with them were the manuals.
I don't know if Corel is still keeping up this practice, but it's/was damn smart of them.
You missed my point entirely.
As I stated, this normally doesn't happen under XP (i'm running it on a system at home, one at work, and i've installed it on multiple other PCs (everything from the beta version, home edition and pro edition). This behaviour never happened on the 20 or so machnes I've used that has various flavours of XP installed on them.
As I stated in my previous comment, this was most probably caused by other software that was installed on the system (whether from MS or a 3rd party). So to blame this on XP is in fact, wrong. I also never that XP was a bad OS. It's definately strides better than any other of the previous Windows version. There are still a few problems with it that IMO MS should have solved a long time ago, but for a Windows product, it is pretty stable for what I use it for (I use my home XP machine mostly for gaming and 3d graphics).
Not being able to get to Google while using XP/IE is pure BS. I've been running XP on one of my machines since beta. When I want to look up something quick on the net I fire off Google. I've never had the system crash, lockup or BSoD while going to www.google.com in IE.
There's plenty of faults with Microsoft and XP, so there's no need to invent non-existing ones. The problem could have arisen from installing any number of other software.
There's a multitude of problems that will arise if this is allowed to pass.
If copyright holders are allowed to DoS, does this mean that if an ISP's user is flooded, and this flood affacts the capacity of the ISP to serve it's users/customers, will they have legal recourse to sue the copyright holder for loss of business?
BR> I'm also curious to know if the copyright holders will also be given the ok to DoS/attack servers that are not within the US judicial borders. What happens if the server is in Canada? Canada has laws against DoS attacks. Will this mean that a Canadian citizen who is attacked will have the right to sue the copyright holder, since they used US Laws to commit a what is considered a criminal offence in another country?
What about local disk cache? It has been upheld in the court of law that original works that appear on the Net are automatically granted copyright to the creator of the work (whether it be art, a BLOG, a webpage, etc...). Does this mean that if you visit my website, and your browser caches the information to disk, that I am allowed to DoS you? Your system will have a local saved copy of my copyrighted works. This is a huuuuuuuuuuge loophole.
[Rant] I wouldn't be surprised if this bill is passed. The US and other world governments have shown time and time again that they will give preference to big corporations and not it's citizens, even if it means big business can walk all over its consumers.
What kind of monitoring? If I were his neighbours I would *not* be comfortable with a neighbour monitoring my Internet traffic, other than of course the amount of data I transfer. That's not the kind of monitoring I was talking about. Not a packet sniffer type of monitoring. More like a PPPOE authentication type of monitoring (or LDAP, or whatever).
Something that would allow him to keep track of the users accessing the system. You could sorta do it by assigning static IP addresses, but anyone with half a brain and is a little computer litterate could go and change their IP to the one that their neighbour uses.
I used to work for a backbone company, and I have never seen a contract for commercial connections that do not allow you to resell the bandwidth, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Just keep in mind that if one of your 'users' does something like send out spam or does illegal activites, you may be held responsible since it's your/company name on the contract with the ISP (hence get contracts drawn up for your users who will connect, in which case you'll need to do some type of monitoring in case the cops show up investigating a possible crime).
In other words, cover your ass.
Damn, somebody beat me to boasting about the e-smith :)
A friend of mine works for Mitel (who bought out e-smith a while back), and develops blades for the e-smith. I've had a chance to test it and it's pretty much what you're looking for.
Basically the e-smith gives you the power of linux (can't remember what distrib they use) without needing much knowledge about it. It's basically controlled using a web-browser. Installing blades (packages) and upgrades is done via the web. You never go in thru CLI. It's basically for small businesses who don't have a sysadmin. It's pretty impressive.
Cisco has a great IOS feature called CAR that can do exactly what you're asking for at the router level. You can rate-limit specific physical ports on the router (even using a schedule such as from 8am to 8pm, allow anything, from 8pm to 8am throttle to xxx kbytes/second).
This is assuming that you're not running virtual hosting (multiple domains sharing one IP address), in which case all customers on that IP/physical port would be affected by the CAR limitations you would impose. It is possible with the amount of traffic you're talking about. Just make sure that the puppy has a good processor and plenty of RAM.
We've had to run a number of pieces on unsavory renewal practices among the various registrars competing for your name-claiming business, but domain name scamming is sadly not confined to the U.S
.org domain and not .ca). I couldn't believe I would receive such a thing after the big Verisign hoopla. I wrote them back stating that they had just ensured that I will never use their services for any of my domains (5 in all, all .org, .com or .net).
What I found even more ironic is that the particular domain in question isn't due for another year and some months! What are these people thinking?
This isn't just happening in the US or the UK. I received what looked like a bill from the Domain Registry Institute of Canada for one of my domains (which incidentally is a
Bad backs are a combination of the chair, position of keyboard/monitor and taking breaks. I had a similar problem a few months back. It got so bad that I was flat out on my back for a couple of days. Went to a chiropractor and got some help and some good advice.
Get a chair with a high back that also has lumbar support and adjustable arm rests. Make sure the middle of your monitor is directly at eye level. When you type, rest your arms on the arm rests. Get something to prop up your feet about 2 inches.
And very importantly, never stay sitting down for longer than an hour if you can help it. But just don't get up. Stretch when you get up.