I did not intend to sound personally adversarial. As I said above, if the government gets burned 10 times with big software projects, government leaders must change the way they do things, or not do them.
This kind of thing can be explained, but not explained away.
I absolutely agree that is happening. However, if the leaders of government know they have been burned on the last 10 projects, they need to change the way things are done.
"What you've described is common to all power structures."
It's not what you are saying that carries the most information in that comment. It is what you are not saying, which seems to be: "Since I've seen a lot of examples of corruption, therefore it doesn't matter, and can safely be ignored."
'Failures are very common, and they've been common for a long time.'
They aren't really failures. They are deliberate government corruption. Anything that has been "common for a long time", with no effective corrective action, is deliberate.
The IT corruption is small compared to the military procurement corruption, where the dishonesty can be kept more secret. The U.S. government is the world leader in buying equipment to kill people and destroy their property. (The least socially skilled way of relating to other people is killing them.)
U.S. citizens, it's 7 PM. Do you know what your government is doing? Unfortunately, you don't.
I found your comment helpful. However, I read the Intuit announcement page, and, at a very minimum, Intuit has handled this situation very poorly.
The core problem, it seems to me, is that the online banking software is extremely primitive. For example, when I last tested it, there was no unique serial number available from the banks and credit card companies for every transaction. So, it was possible to import a transaction twice.
There should not have been a third party like Checkfree involved! Intuit has a long, long history of bad design decisions, it seems to me.
Slashdot personality: If you can possibly find something remotely wrong with something someone said, focus on that. Ignore the central meaning and how what was said could be correct.
What's 100 Billion one way or the other? The 450.586 Billion U.S. dollars listed there as the 2005 U.S. government money for war-making capability is enough to justify my argument.
If part of it doesn't go for spying on other countries, where does it go? The think they don't have to tell you, and if they did say something, they don't think they don't have to tell the truth.
At home you have far greater security that comes from the fact that no one cares what you are doing with your computer.
Remember the Vietnam war? The U.S. government killed more than 2,000,000 people, none of whom threatened the U.S. directly. Since then, the U.S. government has killed at least 1,000,000 more who did not threaten the U.S. directly. (Most people in the U.S. find these facts so painful that they refuse to learn about why they occurred.)
Don't think that a government that spends an almost endless amount of money on war-making capability suddenly becomes moral when considering invading the computers of foreign governments or companies.
A government that uses closed-source, proprietary software is not an independent government. A company that uses closed-source, proprietary software is not an independent company.
Yes, Microsoft is abusive, and will remain abusive until its abusive leaders are gone, but that is not the point. The point is that you should not pay someone to keep secrets from you.
I'm posting this from a mountain city in Brazil near Sao Paulo city. Twenty years ago, they grew fruit trees here that need to freeze once or twice in the winter to bear fruit in the summer. Now some of the trees are here, but there is no fruit.
Humans are slowly destroying the earth by having too many babies.
There is only one thing that will stop global warming. Show women that it is not advantageous to them to have so many babies.
Okay, I should have said "abusive ads presented in an abusive way", such as trying to get you to look at things that have nothing to do with what you are searching for.
As far as I can tell, A9 is asinine. Maybe that's what A9 stands for.
The web site is so heavily weighted toward pushing advertising that it is just disgusting.
It's amazing that other people cannot learn for Google's success.
Asinine Manager #1: Hey, why don't we imitate Google, and not abuse customers?
Asinine Manager #2: What! Customers like to be abused! Didn't you know that?
I put in an address in Portland, Oregon, and selected Within 1 Mile, and it changed the selection back to Within 5 Miles, and gave me a list of what looks like all the businesses in Portland.
Google Images finds images for people who are specifically looking for images. A9 directs people to images on other people's servers as part of their regular content.
When will we get some good managers of technical companies? Start with replacing Bill Gates, for example.
Or, run Belarc and get ALL your license keys in one handy HTML file, and a list of all the software on your system, and model numbers and serial numbers of some of your hardware, and...
For everything else there's Mastercard....?? No, Everest.
That is someone's personal scheme. It is not connected with Sourcforge, although there is a link to Sourceforge. It is not connected with UltraVNC, apparently.
In this scheme, you give away the password to your UltraVNC sessions, and send the password over the Internet. If you change your IP address, you must go back to that website and disclose again how you plan to connect.
I bought 5 copies of Radmin and used them for a while. However, I got nervous because Radmin would leave icons in the system tray when it was not supposed to be running.
Famatech is a Russian company, apparently. What would keep them from installing a back door? Granted, Russians haven't been killing Iraqis, but Russia is a relatively unlawful country.
A back door might be justified by management as a way of insuring that you are using legal copies. A back door might mean that Famatech had access to any password that you used while using Radmin. A back door might mean that a Famatech employee could withdraw funds from your customer's bank account using your customer's computer. I don't have those worries with an open source product like TightVNC.
Also, I found that, as with most companies, the Famatech technical support is poor. They will be glad to give you the easy answers. Ask them something requiring thinking, and they will finesse the question.
An advantage with Famatech is that the technical support is by Russians, and not in India.
Recently I called Famatech recently and got the message, "This service has been temporarily suspended." Two people at Famatech said the service had been restored, but I got the same message again, several times.
However, I found that Radmin did work. But so does the free TightVNC.
Radmin has encryption, TightVNC doesn't. However, that is not a problem if you are running TightVNC over a VPN, which is a very convenient way to do remote maintenance.
It's the old story. Commercial software companies want to limit their quality as a way of maximizing their profits. Open source software just keeps on truckin'.
MS Remote Desktop does not allow logging out?
on
Easy Remote Access?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Another point: I understand that Microsoft's Remote Desktop does not allow you to log in as another user. Logging out breaks the RD connection. So, you can't log in as administrator, but must ask someone at the remote computer to do that, meaning they must sit there in boredom while you work.
VNC does not have that limitation.
TightVNC 1.3dev6 development version works fine.
on
Easy Remote Access?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have no experience with any of the BSDs, but it seems to me that FreeBSD is the most popular with ISPs. That means that any programs you write will run on the web host computer. For example, Powweb. (I'm a customer, but have no other connection with them.)
Slashdot Mirror
I did not intend to sound personally adversarial. As I said above, if the government gets burned 10 times with big software projects, government leaders must change the way they do things, or not do them.
This kind of thing can be explained, but not explained away.
I absolutely agree that is happening. However, if the leaders of government know they have been burned on the last 10 projects, they need to change the way things are done.
If you find your government doing something stupid or corrupt, does Hanlon's Razor mean that you should ignore it?
If you find yourself doing something self-defeating, does Hanlon's Razor mean that you should take no action?
"What you've described is common to all power structures."
It's not what you are saying that carries the most information in that comment. It is what you are not saying, which seems to be: "Since I've seen a lot of examples of corruption, therefore it doesn't matter, and can safely be ignored."
'Failures are very common, and they've been common for a long time.'
They aren't really failures. They are deliberate government corruption. Anything that has been "common for a long time", with no effective corrective action, is deliberate.
The IT corruption is small compared to the military procurement corruption, where the dishonesty can be kept more secret. The U.S. government is the world leader in buying equipment to kill people and destroy their property. (The least socially skilled way of relating to other people is killing them.)
U.S. citizens, it's 7 PM. Do you know what your government is doing? Unfortunately, you don't.
Welcome to Microsoft Palavra! (TM)
I found your comment helpful. However, I read the Intuit announcement page, and, at a very minimum, Intuit has handled this situation very poorly.
The core problem, it seems to me, is that the online banking software is extremely primitive. For example, when I last tested it, there was no unique serial number available from the banks and credit card companies for every transaction. So, it was possible to import a transaction twice.
There should not have been a third party like Checkfree involved! Intuit has a long, long history of bad design decisions, it seems to me.
"I ended up buying quicken 2K4 for about $5-10 mail-order."
Yes, but do you want a company you don't trust to have control over your finances?
It's tax time. Intuit sells TurboTax. Do you want a company you don't trust to have complete control over your tax records?
"Microsoft Claims Linux Security a Myth"
That's similar to "Prostitutes claim virginity is a myth."
Slashdot personality: If you can possibly find something remotely wrong with something someone said, focus on that. Ignore the central meaning and how what was said could be correct.
If you want the same answer above from the U.S. government's Department of Defense, look at this PDF file, located on a U.S. military web site: National Defense Budget Estimates for the FY 2005 Budget.
What's 100 Billion one way or the other? The 450.586 Billion U.S. dollars listed there as the 2005 U.S. government money for war-making capability is enough to justify my argument.
If part of it doesn't go for spying on other countries, where does it go? The think they don't have to tell you, and if they did say something, they don't think they don't have to tell the truth.
At home you have far greater security that comes from the fact that no one cares what you are doing with your computer.
Remember the Vietnam war? The U.S. government killed more than 2,000,000 people, none of whom threatened the U.S. directly. Since then, the U.S. government has killed at least 1,000,000 more who did not threaten the U.S. directly. (Most people in the U.S. find these facts so painful that they refuse to learn about why they occurred.)
Don't think that a government that spends an almost endless amount of money on war-making capability suddenly becomes moral when considering invading the computers of foreign governments or companies.
A government that uses closed-source, proprietary software is not an independent government. A company that uses closed-source, proprietary software is not an independent company.
Yes, Microsoft is abusive, and will remain abusive until its abusive leaders are gone, but that is not the point. The point is that you should not pay someone to keep secrets from you.
I'm posting this from a mountain city in Brazil near Sao Paulo city. Twenty years ago, they grew fruit trees here that need to freeze once or twice in the winter to bear fruit in the summer. Now some of the trees are here, but there is no fruit.
Humans are slowly destroying the earth by having too many babies.
There is only one thing that will stop global warming. Show women that it is not advantageous to them to have so many babies.
Okay, I should have said "abusive ads presented in an abusive way", such as trying to get you to look at things that have nothing to do with what you are searching for.
As far as I can tell, A9 is asinine. Maybe that's what A9 stands for.
The web site is so heavily weighted toward pushing advertising that it is just disgusting.
It's amazing that other people cannot learn for Google's success.
Asinine Manager #1: Hey, why don't we imitate Google, and not abuse customers?
Asinine Manager #2: What! Customers like to be abused! Didn't you know that?
I put in an address in Portland, Oregon, and selected Within 1 Mile, and it changed the selection back to Within 5 Miles, and gave me a list of what looks like all the businesses in Portland.
Google Images finds images for people who are specifically looking for images. A9 directs people to images on other people's servers as part of their regular content.
When will we get some good managers of technical companies? Start with replacing Bill Gates, for example.
Interesting.
Or, run Belarc and get ALL your license keys in one handy HTML file, and a list of all the software on your system, and model numbers and serial numbers of some of your hardware, and...
For everything else there's Mastercard....?? No, Everest.
That is someone's personal scheme. It is not connected with Sourcforge, although there is a link to Sourceforge. It is not connected with UltraVNC, apparently.
In this scheme, you give away the password to your UltraVNC sessions, and send the password over the Internet. If you change your IP address, you must go back to that website and disclose again how you plan to connect.
Runas gets tiring when you have a lot of work to do.
I bought 5 copies of Radmin and used them for a while. However, I got nervous because Radmin would leave icons in the system tray when it was not supposed to be running.
Famatech is a Russian company, apparently. What would keep them from installing a back door? Granted, Russians haven't been killing Iraqis, but Russia is a relatively unlawful country.
A back door might be justified by management as a way of insuring that you are using legal copies. A back door might mean that Famatech had access to any password that you used while using Radmin. A back door might mean that a Famatech employee could withdraw funds from your customer's bank account using your customer's computer. I don't have those worries with an open source product like TightVNC.
Also, I found that, as with most companies, the Famatech technical support is poor. They will be glad to give you the easy answers. Ask them something requiring thinking, and they will finesse the question.
An advantage with Famatech is that the technical support is by Russians, and not in India.
Recently I called Famatech recently and got the message, "This service has been temporarily suspended." Two people at Famatech said the service had been restored, but I got the same message again, several times.
However, I found that Radmin did work. But so does the free TightVNC.
Radmin has encryption, TightVNC doesn't. However, that is not a problem if you are running TightVNC over a VPN, which is a very convenient way to do remote maintenance.
It's the old story. Commercial software companies want to limit their quality as a way of maximizing their profits. Open source software just keeps on truckin'.
Another point: I understand that Microsoft's Remote Desktop does not allow you to log in as another user. Logging out breaks the RD connection. So, you can't log in as administrator, but must ask someone at the remote computer to do that, meaning they must sit there in boredom while you work.
VNC does not have that limitation.
The article referenced by the Slashdot article, Reverse VNC connection, recommends TightVNC version 1.2.9. However, the TightVNC 1.3dev6 development version is a release candidate, and in my experience works fine.
Read the TightVNC Windows Documentation.
Set up a VPN, which you need anyway to automate the transfer of files and do automated registry maintenance on Windows computers.
Then run VNC, such as TightVNC or UltraVNC over the VPN. If the VPN is secure, and remote network is not suspect, then VNC over the VPN is secure.
Beware, however, of Netgear's VPN routers. In my experience they are quirky and the technical support is very, very poor.
I have questions myself. What is the best way to form a VPN? What is the best VNC?
I have no experience with any of the BSDs, but it seems to me that FreeBSD is the most popular with ISPs. That means that any programs you write will run on the web host computer. For example, Powweb. (I'm a customer, but have no other connection with them.)
If you love the U.S., you will educate yourself about what the U.S. government is doing:
Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government
History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories
New York Governor Pataki's statements are equivalent to a declaration of war.
U.S. Federal Deficit by Political Party