Oh, great, you want to go after all the people who "let" their computers get infested. No problem getting that law passed!
Indeed, but actually this might not be such a bad idea.
If people were forced to acknowledge some degree of responsibility, to the same degree as people are forced to accept that it is stupid/inconsiderate/illegal to drive a car while drunk (to use an obligatory/. car analogy), our lives would probably be a bit easier. Of course, that would entail some level of quality control on the part of operating systems designers, but that wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing either.
Given that consumers often pay more for their anti-virus software than they (appear to) do for their OS, it might be easier to get such a draconian law passed than one might suppose.
In any case, I find that figure of 1.2M a bit doubtful. Given how easy it is for the average Winbloze user to get sucked into a botnet, I would have put the figure a lot higher.
Just two days ago, I had the unfortunate task of trying to disinfect my boss's wife's computer. I discovered that it was involved in no less than three botnets, as well as being riddled with more viruses than a ten-dollar tart. Needless to say, her AVG was out of date. It ended up being easier to wipe everything and start from scratch.
How are you all measuring the boot-up time? Are we including the POST time, which can be very long, depending on hardware. My POST takes 20 seconds.
But my Slackware desktop is ready to use in 72 seconds from loading the kernel (on a now ageing 1.6GHz P4, with 2 graphics cards, 2 soundcards, a TV card and 2 disk drives with 7 partitions), so I'm curious as to what Ubuntu does to get the time down (if that is really the case).
In any case, "better off" can mean all sorts of things, depending on just how bad the situations are. However, lots of people don't have the luxury of a job they are happy with.
Generally speaking, though, you are much more likely to score a new job if you're already in one. If you're unemployed, you go to the back of the queue, since people think you're probably desperate. Maybe try talking to a recruiting agency.
If it is not work related then you shouldn't be sending or receiving it while at work.
If you insist on adopting this kind of totalitarian approach, don't be surprised if your employees screw you. As I said elsewhere, trust has to work both ways.
2. By an acceptable use policy stating the equipment is for work only and any deviance could lead to dismissal.
If an employee can be dismissed for using a corporate phone or computer to ask his wife to pick up the kids, the company shouldn't be too surprised if he takes any opportunity to shaft them.
He should be asking himself, "Why do the people who work here feel they need to use the non-corporate system for business work?" br...and probably 9 times out of 10, the honest answer will be that it's a matter of trust. Many (most?) employees feel they need some level of insulation from corporate intrusion into their private lives. Whether or not webmail actually gives them that is another matter, but it doesn't change the perception.
Just icq, msn, gtalk and skype are enough to know that there can be too much connectivity.
Indeed. Which is why I am not one of those campaigning for video connectivity for the Linux Skype client. The last thing I need is to provide a view of myself and my study at any time of day or night. Some things are just better left to the imagination.
Actually, I got tired of ICQ within a couple of weeks of it coming out. Every time I needed to get anything done, I would be interrupted by that infernal "Uh Oh!". Eventually decided email was as connected as I needed to be.
Sure, I like VOIP, but I'm just using that as a cheaper version of Alexander Graham Bell's invention.
In any case, the redirection might not save any money, depending on the way your phone billing system works.
My wife and I both have mobile phones on the same account. We often call each other when one is overseas. The cost of the outgoing side of the call can be very cheap with any given VOIP solution, but the mobile phone that is away from home (Australia in my case) gets slugged with a massive charge from Vodafone to receive the call.
Why are you doing that? There are much cheaper ways to call mobiles.
Because:
(1) I am in Australia, my wife is currently in the UK (2) I spend days at a time away from home myself (3) I have an absolute requirement that the application I use to call from has to be cross-platform (4) Sometimes it is just not worth the trouble of shopping around SIP providers just to save what amounts to a few cents.
I could probably go on at considerable length. Yes, I know Skype is far from perfect, and no, I'm not enthused about the proprietary nature of the client. But nevertheless, the concept is good, and the roaming contacts list is very useful.
Umm, no. Skypeout calls to mobile phones are far from free. Cheaper
than your wireless carrier, but definitely not free.
(This from someone who is making a lot of Skypeout calls to mobile phones at the moment.)
Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements.
on
Gnome 2.18 Released
·
· Score: 1
Last I checked (a year ago) gnome still didn't have basics like reliable CD burning.
That was indeed the case for a long time.
CD burning is good now, though (and has been, I think, for quite a lot more than a year). Simple interface, reliable, probably similar enough to the way you might expect it to work on That Other Operating System.
Every time I tried KDE I could not use it for more than a day.
You've done better than I. The most I've managed is 3 hours before KDE makes me twitchy and irritable.
Trouble is, I'm not even really able to say why. Everything more or less works, often better than Gnome. It even compiles cleanly - and anybody who has ever tried compiling Gnome by themselves will know what I'm talking about.
But much has been made of KDE's configurability. It all rings a bit hollow, though. Gnome is configurable to pretty much exactly the same extent, and the means to do so should be no challenge for the average Slashdotter. I guess KDE is just too garish and cluttered for my taste.
Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements.
on
Gnome 2.18 Released
·
· Score: 1
I had some similar problems with duplication with the upgrade from 1.x to 2.0. Not on my phone, though. This was on the desktop machine. What really killed Evolution for me, though, was that since I was still running a machine with only 256MB of RAM, I had a choice between running Evolution and having a generally useful system. It was fine up to the last 1.x version, then everything just ground to a standstill.
At that point, I threw it away and started using Thunderbird.
It's fine that you're fine with making pretty major decisions like switching banks based on quite inconsequential matters such as browser compatibility
Hmmm. I would be pretty pissed off if I had to dump Linux and use Windows to do my banking, especially since I am always nervous about carrying out any sort of financial transaction on an OS known to have more ho^W^W^W be totally insecure.
Maybe you are wealthy enough to consider such a matter "inconsequential", but I'm not.
FWIW, though, most banks here (Australia) are now browser-agnostic. I haven't heard of one that insists on IE for something like 5 years now.
Indeed. Adblock is actually the only extension I use, and I consider it essential.
Apart from that, my preference is to keep Firefox as simple as possible. Maybe I'm just getting old (OK, I am), but I find too many bells and whistles just get in the way. I just want to see the content, without having to right-click on anything to diddle with it.
Indeed. When "Something Must Be Done", what that usually means is that "Someone Else" has to take responsibility for something that, 9 times out of 10, is not really anybody's fault.
The net result is a society that is so busy apportioning blame, it becomes incapacitated. Which is why we see so many frivolous lawsuits (in courts arbitrated at our expense), resulting from people's simple aversion to taking responsibility for their own actions.
...and it certainly sounds like the policy of the governing party here in Australia. Of course, the so-called "Liberal" party has wanted to resurrect the White Australia Policy for years now, so it didn't take much encouragement from the little twerp in the White House to set it back on course.
In any case, the hosts file thingy is only useful if you happen to know every hostname Microsoft has assigned to that purpose, since wildcards won't work. Does anyone have a comprehensive list of them?
Not that I personally need to worry, but others may be interested...
Slashdot Mirror
Are there any actual statistics for how many of these detected bots are running on Windows?
You could probably start by working backwards and making a few assumptions.
How many Linux-based botnets do you know of? If there are any at all, I really want to know.
How many OS X-based botnets do you know of? Again, if there are any at all, I really want to know.
Oh, you were saying? OK, maybe there are a few botnets running on IBM or Cray mainframes, but it takes a lot of them to make up 1.2 million.
Oh, great, you want to go after all the people who "let" their computers get infested. No problem getting that law passed!
/. car analogy), our lives would probably be a bit easier. Of course, that would entail some level of quality control on the part of operating systems designers, but that wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing either.
Indeed, but actually this might not be such a bad idea.
If people were forced to acknowledge some degree of responsibility, to the same degree as people are forced to accept that it is stupid/inconsiderate/illegal to drive a car while drunk (to use an obligatory
Given that consumers often pay more for their anti-virus software than they (appear to) do for their OS, it might be easier to get such a draconian law passed than one might suppose.
In any case, I find that figure of 1.2M a bit doubtful. Given how easy it is for the average Winbloze user to get sucked into a botnet, I would have put the figure a lot higher.
Just two days ago, I had the unfortunate task of trying to disinfect my boss's wife's computer. I discovered that it was involved in no less than three botnets, as well as being riddled with more viruses than a ten-dollar tart. Needless to say, her AVG was out of date. It ended up being easier to wipe everything and start from scratch.
*waits for the 'haha' tag to get applied*
[+] mafiaa, haha (tagging beta)
You didn't have to wait long. Am I the only one who finds these damn tags redundant and asinine?
Let me be the one to start a beowulf cluster of them:
[+] haha, fud, defectivebydesign, mafiaaaa, microsoftsucks, itsatrap...
Hmmm, better stop there, otherwise that lameness filter might start earning its keep for once.
If morality is a product of evolution, doesn't that mean most of our crop of politicians are throwbacks?
Something to restore our faith in the order of things... (sigh)
How are you all measuring the boot-up time? Are we including the POST time, which can be very long, depending on hardware. My POST takes 20 seconds.
But my Slackware desktop is ready to use in 72 seconds from loading the kernel (on a now ageing 1.6GHz P4, with 2 graphics cards, 2 soundcards, a TV card and 2 disk drives with 7 partitions), so I'm curious as to what Ubuntu does to get the time down (if that is really the case).
In any case, "better off" can mean all sorts of things, depending on just how bad the situations are. However, lots of people don't have the luxury of a job they are happy with.
Generally speaking, though, you are much more likely to score a new job if you're already in one. If you're unemployed, you go to the back of the queue, since people think you're probably desperate. Maybe try talking to a recruiting agency.
If it is not work related then you shouldn't be sending or receiving it while at work.
If you insist on adopting this kind of totalitarian approach, don't be surprised if your employees screw you. As I said elsewhere, trust has to work both ways.
2. By an acceptable use policy stating the equipment is for work only and any deviance could lead to dismissal.
If an employee can be dismissed for using a corporate phone or computer to ask his wife to pick up the kids, the company shouldn't be too surprised if he takes any opportunity to shaft them.
Trust has to work both ways.
He should be asking himself, "Why do the people who work here feel they need to use the non-corporate system for business work?"
br...and probably 9 times out of 10, the honest answer will be that it's a matter of trust. Many (most?) employees feel they need some level of insulation from corporate intrusion into their private lives. Whether or not webmail actually gives them that is another matter, but it doesn't change the perception.
Just icq, msn, gtalk and skype are enough to know that there can be too much connectivity.
Indeed. Which is why I am not one of those campaigning for video connectivity for the Linux Skype client. The last thing I need is to provide a view of myself and my study at any time of day or night. Some things are just better left to the imagination.
Actually, I got tired of ICQ within a couple of weeks of it coming out. Every time I needed to get anything done, I would be interrupted by that infernal "Uh Oh!". Eventually decided email was as connected as I needed to be.
Sure, I like VOIP, but I'm just using that as a cheaper version of Alexander Graham Bell's invention.
In any case, the redirection might not save any money, depending on the way your phone billing system works.
My wife and I both have mobile phones on the same account. We often call each other when one is overseas. The cost of the outgoing side of the call can be very cheap with any given VOIP solution, but the mobile phone that is away from home (Australia in my case) gets slugged with a massive charge from Vodafone to receive the call.
Why are you doing that? There are much cheaper ways to call mobiles.
Because:
(1) I am in Australia, my wife is currently in the UK
(2) I spend days at a time away from home myself
(3) I have an absolute requirement that the application I use to call from has to be cross-platform
(4) Sometimes it is just not worth the trouble of shopping around SIP providers just to save what amounts to a few cents.
I could probably go on at considerable length. Yes, I know Skype is far from perfect, and no, I'm not enthused about the proprietary nature of the client. But nevertheless, the concept is good, and the roaming contacts list is very useful.
meh, for a free international cell phone call?
Umm, no. Skypeout calls to mobile phones are far from free. Cheaper than your wireless carrier, but definitely not free.
(This from someone who is making a lot of Skypeout calls to mobile phones at the moment.)
Last I checked (a year ago) gnome still didn't have basics like reliable CD burning.
That was indeed the case for a long time.
CD burning is good now, though (and has been, I think, for quite a lot more than a year). Simple interface, reliable, probably similar enough to the way you might expect it to work on That Other Operating System.
Every time I tried KDE I could not use it for more than a day.
You've done better than I. The most I've managed is 3 hours before KDE makes me twitchy and irritable.
Trouble is, I'm not even really able to say why. Everything more or less works, often better than Gnome. It even compiles cleanly - and anybody who has ever tried compiling Gnome by themselves will know what I'm talking about.
But much has been made of KDE's configurability. It all rings a bit hollow, though. Gnome is configurable to pretty much exactly the same extent, and the means to do so should be no challenge for the average Slashdotter. I guess KDE is just too garish and cluttered for my taste.
I had some similar problems with duplication with the upgrade from 1.x to 2.0. Not on my phone, though. This was on the desktop machine. What really killed Evolution for me, though, was that since I was still running a machine with only 256MB of RAM, I had a choice between running Evolution and having a generally useful system. It was fine up to the last 1.x version, then everything just ground to a standstill.
At that point, I threw it away and started using Thunderbird.
It's fine that you're fine with making pretty major decisions like switching banks based on quite inconsequential matters such as browser compatibility
Hmmm. I would be pretty pissed off if I had to dump Linux and use Windows to do my banking, especially since I am always nervous about carrying out any sort of financial transaction on an OS known to have more ho^W^W^W be totally insecure.
Maybe you are wealthy enough to consider such a matter "inconsequential", but I'm not.
FWIW, though, most banks here (Australia) are now browser-agnostic. I haven't heard of one that insists on IE for something like 5 years now.
Indeed. Adblock is actually the only extension I use, and I consider it essential.
Apart from that, my preference is to keep Firefox as simple as possible. Maybe I'm just getting old (OK, I am), but I find too many bells and whistles just get in the way. I just want to see the content, without having to right-click on anything to diddle with it.
Indeed. When "Something Must Be Done", what that usually means is that "Someone Else" has to take responsibility for something that, 9 times out of 10, is not really anybody's fault.
The net result is a society that is so busy apportioning blame, it becomes incapacitated. Which is why we see so many frivolous lawsuits (in courts arbitrated at our expense), resulting from people's simple aversion to taking responsibility for their own actions.
Sounds pretty much like current Republican policy
...and it certainly sounds like the policy of the governing party here in Australia. Of course, the so-called "Liberal" party has wanted to resurrect the White Australia Policy for years now, so it didn't take much encouragement from the little twerp in the White House to set it back on course.
it's owned by Rupert Murdoch, and he makes sure his publications are pro-Labour.
Really? May I have some of what you're smoking?
I apologize for not making the facetiousness of my original post more apparent.
;-)
Don't. It's not your fault Slashdot readers are all illiter8 ba5tards.
Calling faith stupid doesn't make it true.
If you read my post again, you might notice I didn't.
In any case, the hosts file thingy is only useful if you happen to know every hostname Microsoft has assigned to that purpose, since wildcards won't work. Does anyone have a comprehensive list of them?
Not that I personally need to worry, but others may be interested...