"My operating costs have gone up 1,000 percent this year, just so I can figure out how to get around all these filters," said Balan, a former truck driver and pinball machine mechanic.
He should be spending his valuable time repairing pinball machines, it's karmically more better.
Speaking of ANY commodity: There will only be two or three REALLY popular entrants, the rest will be left to muck about with single digit usage.
Without belaboring GPL v. Microsoft v. Oracle, I'd recommend you look at the Cola Wars: Coke has the margin (60%+), Followed by Pepsi (30% ish) and _everybody else_ scrounges around for the ramaining 10%.
If you're looking at using a laptop INSIDE the boat (out of the weather, mist, etc.) Then I wouldn't bother spending the additional money on the 'marine grade' systems. They're much more bulky, and quite a bit more expensive.
Here's a little thought experiment: Buy a laptop for $1200-1400 with a combo DVD/cdrw drive, make data backups to CD, store CD's in water tight container.
In two+ years when it starts to act flakey (corroding battery contacts) buy ANOTHER laptop for $1200 to $1400, rinse repeat.
It'll take a long time to add up to the $5000-ish you'll pay for your first marine grade laptop.
I noticed on my ATTBi bill that cablemodem rental had dropped to $2.95 a month. I wonder if that's because I've been a customer for awhile, or if they lowered the price across the board to discourage people from buying thier own.
It occurrs to me that a ThinkNIC would be an equally good platform for this.
It's cheap, departmental grey, looks like a piece of network componentry, uses GPL'd software (easy to change for your evil ways), and boots from a CD.
While attending a security session put on by the SANS institute, they had a REALLY cool solution for protecting machine to machine communication in an 'unsafe' network environment.
They used a feature of IPSEC that didn't encrypt the packets, but CRC'd them anyway. Then they configured the machines that were supposed to listen to the outside world (Business logic servers/ database servers) to punt all packets that didn't have an IPSEC crc on 'em.
The system does the decoding at IIRC the 2nd or 3rd layer, using some very efficient code Microsoft got from Cisco. The teacher reported pounding on a laptop on a 100mbit segment with 6 orther attacking computers and the laptop registered about 12% utilization whil punting illegal packets.
I've got some users that could really USE true border to border access (petroleum tank inspectors) but since live access= digital cellphone coverage, there's a BUNCH of the state that's unreachable via cellphone.
Meaning we've got to add a LOT of logic to the custom apps to handle dead zones.
Now, if coverage were limited to cities with more than 60 people (and could be, at $100 per basestation) that'd be a Very Good Thing.
Problem was, it wouldn't work more than 30 seconds with my 1 Ghz athlon...see, when you flipped the case closed, the processor was in a nice little nook in front of the Power Supply and behind the CDRW and DVD drives. It made for a nice little heatmaker.
So I overcompensated, got a huge tower box and never had a problem --past getting a floppy ribbon cable long enough.
Does it look like a Mac's case? Well from sitting at my computer, it might as well. It's behind the desk, hidden in the corner. I don't look at it much.
I maintain several sites that do lots of nice things using CSS and HTML...they work on and have been tested with multiple versions of Netscape, IE, and Opera (at the very least). As a Government entity, we've also got to consider ADA accessiblity and have accounted for that.
Making a site so that it works on only one browser demonstrates a lack of talent.
Our shop is about 30% into our Active Directory Migration, Windows 2000 server based with XP clients logging in. (Say what you will, XP's security isn't AS BIG a deal if you've got a properly designed -- and segmented -- network)
Migrating off Windows 2000 workstation should be something you're already doing - not keeping a proactive upgrade policy is just ASKING for trouble. (How is this any different from cycling your hardware out every three years for desktops and every two years for laptops? That's been a standard business practice for a very long time.)
In any event, the forced continual upgrade path for Microsoft products and OS's keeps me employed and keeps me learning new stuff. It also makes those residual Windows 9x boxes in our department look even more prime for replacement. Management has dictated that those machines stay in place for political reasons...Our being able to say 'look, _Microsoft_ hasn't supported 9X for X years' helps us move those boxes forward.
Does anybody think this is just a reglossing of the personalization stuff in Passport that didn't fly?
They made a big deal of grabbing and getting control over your personal information and when that went over like a fart in Church they backpedaled and thought:
"Well, will they accept it if we word it _this_ way?"
There are three types of person: a) us Geeks which upgrade at the drop of a hat (A GREEN LED instead of a RED one? Ooo, where's my Visa) b)The folks that buy the multi Ghz serverclass workstation to play solitaire and reproduce the words 'You've got mail!'..and typically buy one computer per decade, b) and my Mom...who's been living happily on my handmedowns for years. While I'm running a Ghz Athlon with GeForce graphics, she was happy with the PII 300 and the P1 120 before it.
At least from an end user (I'm ignoring business pc's for the moment) only 'a' above drives upgrade cycles.
Be honest, how many IT folk have you encountered whos primary computer is, like, five years old? The number is disturbingly high.
While I was looking through the ATTbi policies on verboten stuff, apparenly web servers _aren't_ expressly forbidden. As if they expect a LOT of things will work on port 80 and short of stateful inspection, they're not going to be able to enforce it...
Naturally, I can't find it now because i'm looking for it, but I discovered it while reporting script kiddie attacks to my home webserver.
Plastic (at least most plastics) do not biodegrade. There are exceptions to this, such as plastics made from corn/soy/(and if many people would pull thier heads out of their collective arses)hemp which can biodegrade.
That's not entirely true. Plastics that were thought to out live us by several lifetimes have turned out to be rather fragile. Bakelite and the plastic they made Barbie dolls out of leap immediately to mind.
See googlechached article here (no comments on the slimy PVC residue that's leaching out, only that what we thought would last forever DOES decay)
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of ANY commodity:
There will only be two or three REALLY popular entrants, the rest will be left to muck about with single digit usage.
Without belaboring GPL v. Microsoft v. Oracle, I'd recommend you look at the Cola Wars: Coke has the margin (60%+), Followed by Pepsi (30% ish) and _everybody else_ scrounges around for the ramaining 10%.
And if not, WHY not?
how would this be any different than cities/counties/whatever annexing land like they do now?
Borders change all the time - maybe not usually in a state border situation - but certainly often at lower government levels.
How about Outlook XP and M$'s Remote Desktop Client?
Then I could secretly run Licoris at the office an nobody'd would be the wiser!
(aaand it would keep everybody from mucking around with my workstation.)
If you're looking at using a laptop INSIDE the boat (out of the weather, mist, etc.) Then I wouldn't bother spending the additional money on the 'marine grade' systems. They're much more bulky, and quite a bit more expensive.
Here's a little thought experiment:
Buy a laptop for $1200-1400 with a combo DVD/cdrw drive, make data backups to CD, store CD's in water tight container.
In two+ years when it starts to act flakey (corroding battery contacts) buy ANOTHER laptop for $1200 to $1400, rinse repeat.
It'll take a long time to add up to the $5000-ish you'll pay for your first marine grade laptop.
It just means there will be more and more features the buying public won't use.
The wife's got the same uber cool J2ME LG flipphone I've got, with the web browsing and the funky ringtones.
Short of changing the ringtone to Monty Python, she barely knows (or cares) how to more than answer and call-out.
I noticed on my ATTBi bill that cablemodem rental had dropped to $2.95 a month. I wonder if that's because I've been a customer for awhile, or if they lowered the price across the board to discourage people from buying thier own.
It occurrs to me that a ThinkNIC would be an equally good platform for this.
It's cheap, departmental grey, looks like a piece of network componentry, uses GPL'd software (easy to change for your evil ways), and boots from a CD.
AC in and ethernet out...
You haven't been aground long have you?
Moeller's been talking about flying cars for, what, FORTY years now.
And other than a few tethered flights hasn't gotten very far.
It's a ZDnet site...'or else they'd need a windup chager for their webserver!
While attending a security session put on by the SANS institute, they had a REALLY cool solution for protecting machine to machine communication in an 'unsafe' network environment.
They used a feature of IPSEC that didn't encrypt the packets, but CRC'd them anyway. Then they configured the machines that were supposed to listen to the outside world (Business logic servers/ database servers) to punt all packets that didn't have an IPSEC crc on 'em.
The system does the decoding at IIRC the 2nd or 3rd layer, using some very efficient code Microsoft got from Cisco. The teacher reported pounding on a laptop on a 100mbit segment with 6 orther attacking computers and the laptop registered about 12% utilization whil punting illegal packets.
Start | Run | Cmd
:(
c:\basic
'basic' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
c:\gwbasic
'gwbasic' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
c:\qbasic
'qbasic' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
I'll be damned. Now I'm sad.
Across the WHOLE US? Or across major metro areas?
I've got some users that could really USE true border to border access (petroleum tank inspectors) but since live access= digital cellphone coverage, there's a BUNCH of the state that's unreachable via cellphone.
Meaning we've got to add a LOT of logic to the custom apps to handle dead zones.
Now, if coverage were limited to cities with more than 60 people (and could be, at $100 per basestation) that'd be a Very Good Thing.
I got a case that would do just exactly that.
Problem was, it wouldn't work more than 30 seconds with my 1 Ghz athlon...see, when you flipped the case closed, the processor was in a nice little nook in front of the Power Supply and behind the CDRW and DVD drives. It made for a nice little heatmaker.
So I overcompensated, got a huge tower box and never had a problem --past getting a floppy ribbon cable long enough.
Does it look like a Mac's case? Well from sitting at my computer, it might as well. It's behind the desk, hidden in the corner. I don't look at it much.
1. set up mail filter to punt any attachments to .jpg, .gif, .txt, .zip
2. There is no step two.
I maintain several sites that do lots of nice things using CSS and HTML...they work on and have been tested with multiple versions of Netscape, IE, and Opera (at the very least). As a Government entity, we've also got to consider ADA accessiblity and have accounted for that.
Making a site so that it works on only one browser demonstrates a lack of talent.
Really.
Our shop is about 30% into our Active Directory Migration, Windows 2000 server based with XP clients logging in. (Say what you will, XP's security isn't AS BIG a deal if you've got a properly designed -- and segmented -- network)
Migrating off Windows 2000 workstation should be something you're already doing - not keeping a proactive upgrade policy is just ASKING for trouble. (How is this any different from cycling your hardware out every three years for desktops and every two years for laptops? That's been a standard business practice for a very long time.)
In any event, the forced continual upgrade path for Microsoft products and OS's keeps me employed and keeps me learning new stuff. It also makes those residual Windows 9x boxes in our department look even more prime for replacement. Management has dictated that those machines stay in place for political reasons...Our being able to say 'look, _Microsoft_ hasn't supported 9X for X years' helps us move those boxes forward.
Does anybody think this is just a reglossing of the personalization stuff in Passport that didn't fly?
They made a big deal of grabbing and getting control over your personal information and when that went over like a fart in Church they backpedaled and thought:
"Well, will they accept it if we word it _this_ way?"
There are three types of person:
a) us Geeks which upgrade at the drop of a hat (A GREEN LED instead of a RED one? Ooo, where's my Visa)
b)The folks that buy the multi Ghz serverclass workstation to play solitaire and reproduce the words 'You've got mail!'..and typically buy one computer per decade,
b) and my Mom...who's been living happily on my handmedowns for years. While I'm running a Ghz Athlon with GeForce graphics, she was happy with the PII 300 and the P1 120 before it.
At least from an end user (I'm ignoring business pc's for the moment) only 'a' above drives upgrade cycles.
Be honest, how many IT folk have you encountered whos primary computer is, like, five years old? The number is disturbingly high.
While I was looking through the ATTbi policies on verboten stuff, apparenly web servers _aren't_ expressly forbidden. As if they expect a LOT of things will work on port 80 and short of stateful inspection, they're not going to be able to enforce it...
Naturally, I can't find it now because i'm looking for it, but I discovered it while reporting script kiddie attacks to my home webserver.
Okay, all you 1337 G33ks running over to Dell to see what that rig costs, cut it out! I can't configure mine! :P