Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?
Answer: because many of the manufacturers use cheap plastic or poor construction to keep the size down. I know my drive bends where the usb port meets the plastic case if I don't pull it straight out.
For some of us, a flash drive means data portability. I maintain a large network of computers, and having 4gb of storage in my right pocket when I'm on the move is incredibly handy. Smaller than a CD, holds more, and is writable in any machine. Perfect for machines that lack internet access and need updates or software installed. If it was bootable, it'd be perfect.
Some are just designed poorly. The first large flash drive I had was a JetFlash 512. It was 1/3" thick, a good 5" long, and about 1 1/2" wide. It was a cow. Would block any adjacent port beside or above/below it, and would not even FIT into some computers with recessed USB ports.
Now I have a 4gb SanDisk Cruzer Mini. 4gb, largest you can get, usb 2.0hs, huge activity light, and incredibly small profile. Won't block any adjacent ports. Everyone that uses a flash drive should have one of these. Only complaint I have is it lacks a write protect switch. OK one other complaint - being USB 2.0hs, it requires a powered hub, and that means no plugging it into a keyboard where it would be most handy. But that's forgivable.
That one ep where Max spends like 20 minutes navigating traps, huge vault doors, combination locks etc etc... then finally at the last one it won't let him in, so he walks 10 feet down the hall to another door and walks right in.
Secure apps are worthless without a secure OS to run them.
Article mentions the remarker is providing "software". This is very likely a patch to Windows to intercept the calls to the chip fetching its stats, and provide false information back to the caller. This means that windows, and most tools you run under windows, will report whatever the software wants you to hear. ("p4") Others here have kicked around ideas for other ways to verify what sort of a chip it is... try to execute instructions that are p4-only, etc. This is probably the only way to really verify it, besides benchmarking your machine and noticing the huge descrepency in average instruction speed.
So this is not something you'd miss if you were buying the board and chip stand-alone. But if you bought an assembed system, the person that did the assembly is probably full well aware it's a 1.7 and has pre-installed windows and that wonderful "patch" so it reports to you, the consumer, it's a P4. And that's almost certainly what they willl advertise it to you as. The average consumer might just think their machine isn't quite as fast as they had expected, would just blame windows or something else for the slowness, and would eat the $350 fraud without knowing it.
You'll notice they have a big white apple to work around. The critter they put on it has a curling tail that wraps nicely around the left side, balancing the image even with the apple where it is. The tiger would have to be placed on the right side probably, leading to a much less balanced appearance. (unless some embelishment was added to the left side dead space)
Though the Tiger would be much cooler if it were more practical.
I totally agree. There are two basic related disfunctions in society today. First are the people that are blaming the rest of the world for the results of their bad decisions. Second are the friends and relatives of the first group that got themselves killed as a result of their own poor decisions - they're blaming anyone that was even remotely connected to the deceased as somehow being responsible for their death. People need to take respsonsibility for their actions, and they need to accept that decisions made by others were their responsibility. The whole world is not made for your benefit and protection, and the whole world is not responsible when you screw up. Take ownership of your actions.
Considering how adware-infested the average window machine is nowadays, I think the users have gotten jaded to ads being tossed at them all day long, and the impact of ads presented by windows itself, if not just plain ironic, would not be nearly as effective as marketers might hope.
The trick of coloring something is to make it absorb some frequencies of light, and reflect the rest. You want it to absorb the colors you DON'T want to see, so that all that is reflected back is what you want to see. (if I'm thinking right on this, chlorophyl absorbs red light, not green - green is the light we see reflected off a leaf, minus the absorbed red light) The problem you run into with bubbles is that the dyes (things that selectively absorb colors) don't bond well to anything else in the bubble, which is actually in a liquid state, so the dyes fall to the bottom of the bubble due to gravity. The first trick was getting the dyes to 'stick' to the bubble instead of rolling off. Second challenge was making the color temporary.
I had a huge box full of legos when I was a kid. The 2x4 bricks and the 2x12/2x14 were by far the most useful. Did you know you can build a functional tumbler locked storage box that requires a lego key to open? (if you glued the blocks together, you wouldn't get in without either the key or a torch)
Years later I bought a set of knock-off blocks to play around with, and was sorely disappointed in the difference in quality. The bricks would sometimes stick, sometimes not, and sometimes you'd need two pair of pliers to separate them. Stacking bricks, the sides would be smooth and even from block to block with Legos; the knock-offs were jagged. Couldn't build a lock with them because the bricks would catch or jam on bricks next to them because of the crummy tolerances.
But despite all that, patents need to expire after the artist/creator has had an opportunity to recoup their investment of creativity. Lego has certainly gotten their nickel back and then some, time to open the market.
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Saying "we're due for one" makes you a nice sucker for Las Vegas. You are never "due" for a hit. You had the same odds last time as you do this time. If you roll two dice 200 times without getting snake eyes, you are not "due" for them. You still have the same 1 in 36 odds as you did last roll.
Some may look back and say "the odds of going THIS LONG without a hit are incredibly low" which is true, but you are factoring known events that have already happened into your odds, and that's just wrong. If it has already happened (or not happened) then the odds of that past outcome are 100% since we know what occurred. So those results don't have any effect on the odds of something happening tomorrow.
So we are no more "due" for a major outbreak this year than we were last year. OVERdue maybe, but not due.
"The website contains numerous untrue statements and defamatory statements about Activa," said the company's lawyer Greg Murdoch.
Truth will indeed be the determining factor. I haven't been to her website, but there is a fine line between statement of opinion and statement of fact, and that's a line she cannot cross when making undefensable statements. "I think they're crooks" and "They are crooks" have very different meaning in court.
"Untrue" is easier to prove or disprove than "defamatory". (tending to disgrace or lower public opinion of a person or to harm a person's reputation) There is nothing illegal in simply lowering public opinion of someone, but doing it with intent to harm them, rather than say, to whistleblow, is a no-no.
So the company's victory plan would be to either prove she made statements of fact that were not true, or that she exposed them to negative public opinion for the primary purpose of harming their business.
Also good to remember, whether she be a soccer mom or a million dollar corporation, the laws should apply equally. Somehow I don't think we'd be reading this if it was a legal battle between two corporations, even though there may be little or no difference in the cases.
The only way to look for this would be to unsolder the caps from the board. I don't think that would be a good idea. So far all the bad boards I've seen (maybe 25 of them?) have had at least four caps on the board all swollen up and easily spotted. Some had most or all of their caps swollen.
You can visually verify both issues very easily. Begin by setting the imac down on its face on a soft surface like a towel on a table, or a bed. With a philips screwdriver, back out the three philips screws that are on the underside of the display. They do not come out, just loosen them until they stop turning. Lift off the back and set it aside.
To check for bad caps, look at the capacitors on the board. They are round cylinders with silver tops, and have either an "X" or a "K" pattern stamped into the silver top. If they are K, there should be no problem. If they are "X", check all caps for the top to be anything but perfectly flat. If they're bulging up even 1/4mm, they are defective. In many cases a brown crusty residue will be seen at the center of the "X" where the cap has actually leaked. Those are definitely bad. All new logic boards include the new "K" style capacitors. The "X" or "K" is not specifically what's causing the problem, but all the "K" designed ones are within spec, whereas many of the "X" are not within their spec and are failing due to overvoltage. This causes problems turning on, digital video distortion, and random kernel panics.
To check the power supply, look at the top left of the power supply. Look on the metal grille and also on the logic board directly above it for a brown-yellow residue, like smoke residue. It may be subtle or small. Also use your sense of smell and see if you can detect a strong burnt smell coming from the upper left of the power supply. If you have this, and the mac is either not turning on at all or is shutting off abruptly within 2 minutes of powering on, then your power supply is defective. It may also have a small amount of white material falling out of the grill at that location.
Even though these are both power related problems, and a bad power supply could arguably aggrivate an under-spec capacitor problem, I have found no strong pattern of failure of both components in the same machines. It does happen, but is very uncommon.
Kinda disappointed in Apple here though - the iboook REP lasted for 3 years from date of purchase... this iMac REP only lasts 2 years from date of purchase. They're getting stingy. Although, a mac with either of these defects is likely to fail within the first few months of ownership, and the defect has been caught much earlier than on the ibooks, so Apple has likely ramped up production on the logic boards and power supplies, to cover the replacement need. Ibook logic boards are having to be repaired (instead of replaced with new) as they arrive, because they have been out of stock of new boards for some time now.
I don't think a "safer" cigarette is going to convince people not to mind others smoking in public places. Most people's immediate concern is the eye irritation and noxious odor of second hand smoke, not the long term effects. Safer isn't going to solve the problems people are first concerned with. Also, most "safer" cigarettes are safer because they have very agressive filters in them. That's something that the second hand smoke recipients cannot benefit from.
That, and put a smoker in a room with someone that has a "different annoying habit"... like projectile vomiting. See how long they continue to believe that everyone has the "right to be annoying to the public".
Traditional solar cells are made from hard, thin materials, and are fragile. They cannot be bent or flexed, and crack easily. Rain can damage solar cells. Most of those solar car competitions are run in the desert where (A) there's tons of sun and (B) it's not likely to rain.
There are newer materials such as flexible solar cells, but they are expensive by comparison, and are less efficient. Several posters are also saying that more efficient is better because it will lower the amount of cells required... this doesn't work because a cell that's 10% more efficeint can cost double what the less efficient cell does. You will always end up paying a premium for smallness with solar. Also, every implementation of solar-to-electic power that I've seen has a protective cover (plexi usually, though sometimes glass) over the panel to protect it. Plexi (or glass for that matter) would make a really poor outer material for your car, so that's out. Also considering the brittle nature of the high efficiency solar cells, they would not hold up well to years of being hard-mounted on a moving vehicle. You'd end up having to use the low efficiency, flexible, more durable panels. And getting a door ding could inflict you with quite a repair bill.
Last thing to consider. I don't know if the technology has changed recently, but last I looked, solar cells drop significantly in efficiency as they age. This too may preclude their being chosen for cars, and especially for buildings.
Bosses don't like those rear view mirrors. Neither do I. Got real tired of watching a certain coworker at last job alt-tab back to his work every time someone walked past the doorway, only to alt-tab right back to his web browsing as soon as the threat was identified as just another staff walking by. Some people have no shame. I'm sure 90% of them are used for "boss watching".
Most OS's have a screensaver feature that if you go afk for a user-defined time, the screensaver activates. It then can require you to type in your login password to unlock the screensaver. Only way around that is to reboot, which if you were logged into a network account, will just take you back to another login screen. Even if you're logged in locally, tampering would be obvious as you would no longer be logged in when you got back to your desk.
The "secure your computer" idea is obvious enough. There are other subtle problems though.
The "looking over your shoulder" problem is more difficult to deal with than you might think. More than once I've had issues with users stalking up behind me and reading my screen before I even knew they were there. (the really rude ones ask questions about what they've read) I could be doing any number of sensitive things - sending someone an email discussing the layoffs that are scheduled for next week, chatting with someone sending them their new account password, drafting a memo to someone outlining new security policy... posting the new router passwords on a secure filestore... any of these and more could be serious breaches of security and privacy if observed by the wrong people, and as another poster mentioned, could violate state or federal laws.
It's really a design problem to set up a cubicle where the user faces away from their door. For one, they can either look at their visitor OR their computer, but not both. I always prefer looking at my monitor, and then off to its side to see my guest. This also allows me to look up information for them without having to turn my back on them. Intelligent cubicle design has the desk on the left or right of the doorway, not opposite it. If your desk is opposite your cubicle doorway, tell your HR to get a clue. The best cubicle design is of course to have to walk around your desk and sit down, facing the doorway as well as your monitor, but I'll recognize that not every company has the space or the funds for such large cubicles.
As for physical security, that's another matter in itself. The best design is of course to have every computer imaged identically, with network login and home folder, and to allow no one to store their own information on the local hard drive. This seldom goes completely followed, and all sorts of things wind up on the local drives. Besides being a backup risk, anyone with physical access when you are away from your cubicle can rummage through your hard drive. Some I.T. are paranoid even of the nighttime janitors and clean the I.T. room themselves so they don't have to give out another key. But for that I'd say if you don't have janitorial staff you can trust at least that much, you need to find new janitors.
And of course if the fileserver is in your cubicle with you, that opens up a whole new can of worms. (and if not, why is your office away from the server room?) On that note I will say one thing I am against... leaving the server with an account logged in on it. I see that where I work sometimes, and it bothers me. I like that extra layer of security on top of physical security, and knowing someone with a key can play with the server is not my idea of a Good Thing(tm).
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Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?
Answer: because many of the manufacturers use cheap plastic or poor construction to keep the size down. I know my drive bends where the usb port meets the plastic case if I don't pull it straight out.
For some of us, a flash drive means data portability. I maintain a large network of computers, and having 4gb of storage in my right pocket when I'm on the move is incredibly handy. Smaller than a CD, holds more, and is writable in any machine. Perfect for machines that lack internet access and need updates or software installed. If it was bootable, it'd be perfect.
Some are just designed poorly. The first large flash drive I had was a JetFlash 512. It was 1/3" thick, a good 5" long, and about 1 1/2" wide. It was a cow. Would block any adjacent port beside or above/below it, and would not even FIT into some computers with recessed USB ports.
Now I have a 4gb SanDisk Cruzer Mini. 4gb, largest you can get, usb 2.0hs, huge activity light, and incredibly small profile. Won't block any adjacent ports. Everyone that uses a flash drive should have one of these. Only complaint I have is it lacks a write protect switch. OK one other complaint - being USB 2.0hs, it requires a powered hub, and that means no plugging it into a keyboard where it would be most handy. But that's forgivable.
I use lynx
that'd be everyone's best friend, Bill
That one ep where Max spends like 20 minutes navigating traps, huge vault doors, combination locks etc etc... then finally at the last one it won't let him in, so he walks 10 feet down the hall to another door and walks right in.
Secure apps are worthless without a secure OS to run them.
Article mentions the remarker is providing "software". This is very likely a patch to Windows to intercept the calls to the chip fetching its stats, and provide false information back to the caller. This means that windows, and most tools you run under windows, will report whatever the software wants you to hear. ("p4") Others here have kicked around ideas for other ways to verify what sort of a chip it is... try to execute instructions that are p4-only, etc. This is probably the only way to really verify it, besides benchmarking your machine and noticing the huge descrepency in average instruction speed.
So this is not something you'd miss if you were buying the board and chip stand-alone. But if you bought an assembed system, the person that did the assembly is probably full well aware it's a 1.7 and has pre-installed windows and that wonderful "patch" so it reports to you, the consumer, it's a P4. And that's almost certainly what they willl advertise it to you as. The average consumer might just think their machine isn't quite as fast as they had expected, would just blame windows or something else for the slowness, and would eat the $350 fraud without knowing it.
You'll notice they have a big white apple to work around. The critter they put on it has a curling tail that wraps nicely around the left side, balancing the image even with the apple where it is. The tiger would have to be placed on the right side probably, leading to a much less balanced appearance. (unless some embelishment was added to the left side dead space)
Though the Tiger would be much cooler if it were more practical.
I totally agree. There are two basic related disfunctions in society today. First are the people that are blaming the rest of the world for the results of their bad decisions. Second are the friends and relatives of the first group that got themselves killed as a result of their own poor decisions - they're blaming anyone that was even remotely connected to the deceased as somehow being responsible for their death. People need to take respsonsibility for their actions, and they need to accept that decisions made by others were their responsibility. The whole world is not made for your benefit and protection, and the whole world is not responsible when you screw up. Take ownership of your actions.
Considering how adware-infested the average window machine is nowadays, I think the users have gotten jaded to ads being tossed at them all day long, and the impact of ads presented by windows itself, if not just plain ironic, would not be nearly as effective as marketers might hope.
The trick of coloring something is to make it absorb some frequencies of light, and reflect the rest. You want it to absorb the colors you DON'T want to see, so that all that is reflected back is what you want to see. (if I'm thinking right on this, chlorophyl absorbs red light, not green - green is the light we see reflected off a leaf, minus the absorbed red light) The problem you run into with bubbles is that the dyes (things that selectively absorb colors) don't bond well to anything else in the bubble, which is actually in a liquid state, so the dyes fall to the bottom of the bubble due to gravity. The first trick was getting the dyes to 'stick' to the bubble instead of rolling off. Second challenge was making the color temporary.
I had a huge box full of legos when I was a kid. The 2x4 bricks and the 2x12/2x14 were by far the most useful. Did you know you can build a functional tumbler locked storage box that requires a lego key to open? (if you glued the blocks together, you wouldn't get in without either the key or a torch)
Years later I bought a set of knock-off blocks to play around with, and was sorely disappointed in the difference in quality. The bricks would sometimes stick, sometimes not, and sometimes you'd need two pair of pliers to separate them. Stacking bricks, the sides would be smooth and even from block to block with Legos; the knock-offs were jagged. Couldn't build a lock with them because the bricks would catch or jam on bricks next to them because of the crummy tolerances.
But despite all that, patents need to expire after the artist/creator has had an opportunity to recoup their investment of creativity. Lego has certainly gotten their nickel back and then some, time to open the market.
people tend to fear what they do not understand.
Saying "we're due for one" makes you a nice sucker for Las Vegas. You are never "due" for a hit. You had the same odds last time as you do this time. If you roll two dice 200 times without getting snake eyes, you are not "due" for them. You still have the same 1 in 36 odds as you did last roll.
Some may look back and say "the odds of going THIS LONG without a hit are incredibly low" which is true, but you are factoring known events that have already happened into your odds, and that's just wrong. If it has already happened (or not happened) then the odds of that past outcome are 100% since we know what occurred. So those results don't have any effect on the odds of something happening tomorrow.
So we are no more "due" for a major outbreak this year than we were last year. OVERdue maybe, but not due.
"The website contains numerous untrue statements and defamatory statements about Activa," said the company's lawyer Greg Murdoch.
Truth will indeed be the determining factor. I haven't been to her website, but there is a fine line between statement of opinion and statement of fact, and that's a line she cannot cross when making undefensable statements. "I think they're crooks" and "They are crooks" have very different meaning in court.
"Untrue" is easier to prove or disprove than "defamatory". (tending to disgrace or lower public opinion of a person or to harm a person's reputation) There is nothing illegal in simply lowering public opinion of someone, but doing it with intent to harm them, rather than say, to whistleblow, is a no-no.
So the company's victory plan would be to either prove she made statements of fact that were not true, or that she exposed them to negative public opinion for the primary purpose of harming their business.
Also good to remember, whether she be a soccer mom or a million dollar corporation, the laws should apply equally. Somehow I don't think we'd be reading this if it was a legal battle between two corporations, even though there may be little or no difference in the cases.
The only way to look for this would be to unsolder the caps from the board. I don't think that would be a good idea. So far all the bad boards I've seen (maybe 25 of them?) have had at least four caps on the board all swollen up and easily spotted. Some had most or all of their caps swollen.
You can visually verify both issues very easily. Begin by setting the imac down on its face on a soft surface like a towel on a table, or a bed. With a philips screwdriver, back out the three philips screws that are on the underside of the display. They do not come out, just loosen them until they stop turning. Lift off the back and set it aside.
To check for bad caps, look at the capacitors on the board. They are round cylinders with silver tops, and have either an "X" or a "K" pattern stamped into the silver top. If they are K, there should be no problem. If they are "X", check all caps for the top to be anything but perfectly flat. If they're bulging up even 1/4mm, they are defective. In many cases a brown crusty residue will be seen at the center of the "X" where the cap has actually leaked. Those are definitely bad. All new logic boards include the new "K" style capacitors. The "X" or "K" is not specifically what's causing the problem, but all the "K" designed ones are within spec, whereas many of the "X" are not within their spec and are failing due to overvoltage. This causes problems turning on, digital video distortion, and random kernel panics.
To check the power supply, look at the top left of the power supply. Look on the metal grille and also on the logic board directly above it for a brown-yellow residue, like smoke residue. It may be subtle or small. Also use your sense of smell and see if you can detect a strong burnt smell coming from the upper left of the power supply. If you have this, and the mac is either not turning on at all or is shutting off abruptly within 2 minutes of powering on, then your power supply is defective. It may also have a small amount of white material falling out of the grill at that location.
Even though these are both power related problems, and a bad power supply could arguably aggrivate an under-spec capacitor problem, I have found no strong pattern of failure of both components in the same machines. It does happen, but is very uncommon.
Kinda disappointed in Apple here though - the iboook REP lasted for 3 years from date of purchase... this iMac REP only lasts 2 years from date of purchase. They're getting stingy. Although, a mac with either of these defects is likely to fail within the first few months of ownership, and the defect has been caught much earlier than on the ibooks, so Apple has likely ramped up production on the logic boards and power supplies, to cover the replacement need. Ibook logic boards are having to be repaired (instead of replaced with new) as they arrive, because they have been out of stock of new boards for some time now.
which he says 'is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society.'
No, the worst thing that can happen to any society is to become "IP-based".
I don't think a "safer" cigarette is going to convince people not to mind others smoking in public places. Most people's immediate concern is the eye irritation and noxious odor of second hand smoke, not the long term effects. Safer isn't going to solve the problems people are first concerned with. Also, most "safer" cigarettes are safer because they have very agressive filters in them. That's something that the second hand smoke recipients cannot benefit from.
That, and put a smoker in a room with someone that has a "different annoying habit"... like projectile vomiting. See how long they continue to believe that everyone has the "right to be annoying to the public".
maxtor reliabiility seems to have gone up notably since they bought out quantum. all new maxtor drives are of the quantum fireball design.
/Volumes/source /Volumes/target
Two now I need to figure out a way to move W2K from a 120 to a 200 without buying Ghost.
Not sure if it'll work, but if you format the target drive, and boot say, OS X 10.4, you should be able to
sudo ditto -rsrc
I think that'll work on NTFS with 10.4
Traditional solar cells are made from hard, thin materials, and are fragile. They cannot be bent or flexed, and crack easily. Rain can damage solar cells. Most of those solar car competitions are run in the desert where (A) there's tons of sun and (B) it's not likely to rain.
There are newer materials such as flexible solar cells, but they are expensive by comparison, and are less efficient. Several posters are also saying that more efficient is better because it will lower the amount of cells required... this doesn't work because a cell that's 10% more efficeint can cost double what the less efficient cell does. You will always end up paying a premium for smallness with solar. Also, every implementation of solar-to-electic power that I've seen has a protective cover (plexi usually, though sometimes glass) over the panel to protect it. Plexi (or glass for that matter) would make a really poor outer material for your car, so that's out. Also considering the brittle nature of the high efficiency solar cells, they would not hold up well to years of being hard-mounted on a moving vehicle. You'd end up having to use the low efficiency, flexible, more durable panels. And getting a door ding could inflict you with quite a repair bill.
Last thing to consider. I don't know if the technology has changed recently, but last I looked, solar cells drop significantly in efficiency as they age. This too may preclude their being chosen for cars, and especially for buildings.
Bosses don't like those rear view mirrors. Neither do I. Got real tired of watching a certain coworker at last job alt-tab back to his work every time someone walked past the doorway, only to alt-tab right back to his web browsing as soon as the threat was identified as just another staff walking by. Some people have no shame. I'm sure 90% of them are used for "boss watching".
Most OS's have a screensaver feature that if you go afk for a user-defined time, the screensaver activates. It then can require you to type in your login password to unlock the screensaver. Only way around that is to reboot, which if you were logged into a network account, will just take you back to another login screen. Even if you're logged in locally, tampering would be obvious as you would no longer be logged in when you got back to your desk.
The "secure your computer" idea is obvious enough. There are other subtle problems though.
The "looking over your shoulder" problem is more difficult to deal with than you might think. More than once I've had issues with users stalking up behind me and reading my screen before I even knew they were there. (the really rude ones ask questions about what they've read) I could be doing any number of sensitive things - sending someone an email discussing the layoffs that are scheduled for next week, chatting with someone sending them their new account password, drafting a memo to someone outlining new security policy... posting the new router passwords on a secure filestore... any of these and more could be serious breaches of security and privacy if observed by the wrong people, and as another poster mentioned, could violate state or federal laws.
It's really a design problem to set up a cubicle where the user faces away from their door. For one, they can either look at their visitor OR their computer, but not both. I always prefer looking at my monitor, and then off to its side to see my guest. This also allows me to look up information for them without having to turn my back on them. Intelligent cubicle design has the desk on the left or right of the doorway, not opposite it. If your desk is opposite your cubicle doorway, tell your HR to get a clue. The best cubicle design is of course to have to walk around your desk and sit down, facing the doorway as well as your monitor, but I'll recognize that not every company has the space or the funds for such large cubicles.
As for physical security, that's another matter in itself. The best design is of course to have every computer imaged identically, with network login and home folder, and to allow no one to store their own information on the local hard drive. This seldom goes completely followed, and all sorts of things wind up on the local drives. Besides being a backup risk, anyone with physical access when you are away from your cubicle can rummage through your hard drive. Some I.T. are paranoid even of the nighttime janitors and clean the I.T. room themselves so they don't have to give out another key. But for that I'd say if you don't have janitorial staff you can trust at least that much, you need to find new janitors.
And of course if the fileserver is in your cubicle with you, that opens up a whole new can of worms. (and if not, why is your office away from the server room?) On that note I will say one thing I am against... leaving the server with an account logged in on it. I see that where I work sometimes, and it bothers me. I like that extra layer of security on top of physical security, and knowing someone with a key can play with the server is not my idea of a Good Thing(tm).
The way the trend is going, we will be legally required to encrypt our connections.
OK, then when the law hops in and screams bloddy murder because they can no longer tap into our traffic, THEN what do we do?
They're all idiots. It's just that simple.