Depends what two weeks of the year you are there. And what type of "farm" it is.
From what I've seen, even if you do 10,000 acres of grain (be it corn, wheat, beans, etc) there are DEFINITELY times of the year when you don't do nuthin.
Of Course, the planting season and the harvest season are pretty busy (24x7 if you can).
But, if all you do is grain, there are some times when the most difficult thing you do is going to your favorite breakfast joint to drink coffee and tell tall tales.
The hard kind of farming is when you deal with livestock. Those kinds of farms.... Yeah. It stinks. Literally and figuratively. Having livestock makes it hard to get away on vacation - ever, it's a dawn to dusk type of career. No, I'm not a farmer, but I live in farm country and I have a lot of friends who are farmers or grew up on farms. Most grain farmers have some sort of livestock though, from what I've seen. Until they want to slow down when they get old, then they sell off the livestock. Yes farming is hard, but it isn't torture, and it can be very profitable.
just shows how out of touch those whiny babies are. They are seriously out of their minds, especially since they haven't made an attempt to embrace new technologies. Reminds me of the SBA claiming billions and billions lost to piracy each year. It's a big assumption that all of those pirated copies would have resulted in an actual sale.
yeah, I wonder how long this "moxley" person has worked for comcast.
I've HAD comcast. I had it for about 2.5 years, but don't now (it's not here but it's all around, lurking, stalking, to the north, south east and west. Waiting, to pounce, and buy out mediacom cable who I have now.
I even dealt with them a number of times because I moved like 4 times in that 2.5 years and moved the service as well. When it worked I guess it was fine, and generally it actually did work. There were a few hassles with the moving instances, as you would imagine.
Who uses broadband speeds to their max? For any sustained amount of time? Someone who is downloading large files. That would be:
People downloading lots of ISO's of linux distros and such. (The mythical "I need torrentz for my linux habit, don't tread on my packets dood" kind of guy)
The limewire / bit torrent / movie and music and warez downloading fiend.
Someone who does massive amounts of VOD streaming
None of these will be doing this volunteer thing...
You're going to have people like Aunt May sign up who has a 10meg cable internet pipe who does weatherbug and gets emails with pics of little Johnny once a week. Right. This isn't going to work. Most people have fat pipes and don't use them. Then you have the download fiends who actually use their product and it overstress the grossly over-sold broadband network making the ISP's whine like little babies.
Do people actually get their advertised speeds? YES. Sometimes. Really? No, no they don't. Not all the time. There is no way, really. The cable ISP's get congested at the neighborhood levels. The DSL networks get congested at the home office or on their network bottlenecks. I know FIRST HAND of one DSL network putting a whole community through old obsolete and unavailable (!) ISDN equipment and it gets SLAMMED during peak hours.
An Explanation from Bad Robot?
So, this has been circulating the Interwebs since early yesterday evening, and a few people have sent it to me but I'm only getting around to reading it now. The person writing claims to work for Bad Robot and posted this on a Buffalo Bills forum, and it was reposted by DarkUFO. One resourceful Lost fan tracked the person's ID back to other postings on the forum, where apparently he's been referring to working for Bad Robot for a number of years, and people think it may be Greg Ernstrom, a production assistant on Cloverfield and Star Trek. So... it might be authentic. But all I can do is repost it here and you can decide. Some interesting stuff, that's for sure!!
UPDATE: I'm being told this is probably a fake, and Bad Robot is checking into it. I'll keep you posted.
Good stuff on here! I can finally throw in my two cents! I've had to bite my tongue for far too long. Also, hopefully I can answer some of John's questions about Dharma and the "pointless breadcrumbs" that really, weren't so pointless...
First...
The Island:
It was real. Everything that happened on the island that we saw throughout the 6 seasons was real. Forget the final image of the plane crash, it was put in purposely to f*&k with people's heads and show how far the show had come. They really crashed. They really survived. They really discovered Dharma and the Others. The Island keeps the balance of good and evil in the world. It always has and always will perform that role. And the Island will always need a "Protector". Jacob wasn't the first, Hurley won't be the last. However, Jacob had to deal with a malevolent force (MIB) that his mother, nor Hurley had to deal with. He created the devil and had to find a way to kill him -- even though the rules prevented him from actually doing so.
Thus began Jacob's plan to bring candidates to the Island to do the one thing he couldn't do. Kill the MIB. He had a huge list of candidates that spanned generations. Yet everytime he brought people there, the MIB corrupted them and caused them to kill one another. That was until Richard came along and helped Jacob understand that if he didn't take a more active role, then his plan would never work.
Enter Dharma -- which I'm not sure why John is having such a hard time grasping. Dharma, like the countless scores of people that were brought to the island before, were brought there by Jacob as part of his plan to kill the MIB. However, the MIB was aware of this plan and interferred by "corrupting" Ben. Making Ben believe he was doing the work of Jacob when in reality he was doing the work of the MIB. This carried over into all of Ben's "off-island" activities. He was the leader. He spoke for Jacob as far as they were concerned. So the "Others" killed Dharma and later were actively trying to kill Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and all the candidates because that's what the MIB wanted. And what he couldn't do for himself.
Dharma was originally brought in to be good. But was turned bad by MIB's corruption and eventually destroyed by his pawn Ben. Now, was Dharma only brought there to help Jack and the other Canditates on their overall quest to kill Smokey? Or did Jacob have another list of Canidates from the Dharma group that we were never aware of? That's a question that is purposley not answered because whatever answer the writers came up with would be worse than the one you come up with for yourself. Still... Dharma's purpose is not "pointless" or even vague. Hell, it's pretty blantent.
Still, despite his grand plan, Jacob wanted to give his "candidates" (our Lostaways) the one thing he, nor his brother, were ever afforded: free will. Hence him bringing a host of "candidates" through the decades and letting them "cho
mmmm..... nope. No. Just internet, with video on demand. Hulu. Netflix. All the other free-stream-online-until-they-get-shut-down sites.
It's the new normal. Broadcast is dead. It started dying with tivo and the dvr, and dropped dead and stinky with ubiquitous broadband and solid, simple and reliable VOD services.
I've had no landline phone since 2003 and I haven't watched broadcast TV for... at least a few years. Can't stand it. Even hulu is getting on my nerves with their increased commercials. I only know roughly when shows air because of when the latest ep gets added to the online services. VOD is to network tv like MP3 is to the RIAA and divx is to the MPAA.
Is hulu big enough yet to have original content? FOX NBC CBS and ABC will have to truly embrace the streaming stuff, and I think they have to a certain extent, so perhaps they won't go the way of the newspaper!
Re:Was Not Impressed at All
on
Lost Ends
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· Score: 1
I sorta think they made it so confusing, with no plan for the end, that they couldn't really resolve it. Sortof a "whoops- I don't know, screw it."
I keep going back to Babylon5. It had twists and turns and complexity but it ended up with total resolution. All the arcs landed and it made sense in a "wow" kind of way. Like, you watch the series finale and say "wow".
Conversely, Xfiles never made sense either, kept adding 2 questions for every 1 they answered. Even the stinkin movie didn't really resolve anything. Did the geeks give xfiles a pass because skulley was so hot?
Microsoft hasn't "innovated" since windows 95. They've simply "evolved" or "improved". Innovation was the radical change between windows 3.11 to windows 95. A person could, today, retire their 15 year old system with windows 95 on it, and having never used any other system in the meantime, sit down at a windows 7 machine and recognize the general idea (having looked past all the shiny eye candy).
That's not innovation, thats evolution. The start button is still there. The start menu is still there. The task bar is still there. The system tray is still there. The "my computer" is still there. The desktop is still there. Same idea, refined, polished, evolved. NOT INNOVATED.
Windows nt4.0 used the interface from 95 on top of nt3.x. Win2k was a user-friendlied nt4.0, and winxp was a sexed up win2k.
My guess is they are like porsche, having not redesigned (by much) the 911 since it first came out, even the boxter and the other still are obviously porsches. Why mess with perfection? Porsche admits it, but MS calls it innovation when it's not. Until they throw it all away and come up with something like minority report or iron man it's not innovation.
Shoot, they didn't even ditch ntfs like they were going to.
My grandpa (late 70's IIRC) passed out. Fell down. Had history of heart problems. Went to the doctor. Doctor said "blah blah blah" and then "take two aspirin and call me in the morning". Grandpa, feeling basically ok, did that.
Problem was, Grandpa was having a stroke. The bleeding kind, not the blockage kind. Aspirin is a blood thinner. You do the math.
So, he died, many months later, moaning and incoherent in a nursing home from brain damage caused by stroke.
my back felt perfectly normal within a couple of weeks, and we were done.
This is the key. Being DONE.
There are very professional looking and sounding chiro's out there who scare you into thinking you have some sort of horrible chronic life threatening time bomb in your spine that will leave you paralyzed or crippled unless you DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW and OH HOW FORTUNATE WE CAUGHT THIS JUST IN TIME and he signs you up for something like a three year long multi-time-per-week thousands of dollars regimen to totally rework your entire spine, and your family too. And the dog. Or you will ALL DIE A HORRIBLE DISFIGURING DEATH.
I worked with a guy that got roped into this, he and his son. I tried to convince him there was no way he had to do this, get a 2nd opinion, but he was convinced because he had x-rays and the Dr. pointed out the "problems."
But, hey, my wife has wrenched her back doing something dumb and she goes in and it's put right, a one shot deal. Chirpractors can help, and they can be quacks. The key is to get one thats just there to help and not one that's looking for his next three boat payments out of you, or one who is into all the crazy new age crap. I want to see joints and muscles on the wall, not crystals and scientology stuff. (I've done comp work for both kinds lol...)
Seems to me he's not a rocket scientist, just a script kiddie. He's not likely to really know how to monetize and leverage something like that. Perhaps he was nervous and wanted to get out, but was too greedy to just hit delete.
I've seen norton and mcafee break a computer's networking and radically slow down a powerful system just as much (and more-so) than the worst of the rogues and trojans. No doubt a grayhat (whitehat?) botnet would do some good. What frustrated computer tech hasn't wanted to put a benevolent botnet out there, to stave off the malevolent ones?
Email ain't "just like google" because Outlook is subject to an entire genre of bugs, viruses, and worms that Gmail has never had. Worse, Outlook has access to my internal system, which Google never has had, and never will have.
Flamebait??!?! **I'm** not the one saying linux is cobbled together and archaic, I'm saying what THE MAN will be saying via the propaganda machine when they actually DO this. Come on, you can surely see how something like this is a little more than just possible.
Linux IS NOT cobbled together and archaic. This is windows 12 timeframe, probably about 10-15 years from now assuming 2-3 years between releases. IF there is federally mandated OS usage and "botnet" participation they will do whatever kind of FUD or penalties are necessary to prevent people from running a *free* OS like linux.
Under conditions like that, FREE software will be even more vital.
I could foresee that happening on a national level some day.
When you get your computer with windows 12 on it you automatically are a part of the ISA Net. ISA Net is the Information Safety Administration Network, and it is a vast command and control network providing constant real-time analysis of your computer for security purposes. Constant registry and system file monitoring. Once a threat is found on one if the ISA Net computers the signature is instantly propagated throughout the network, instantly squashing any attempt at subterfuge.
Failure to "participate" in the ISA Net is an immediate red flag that you are a terrorist at worst, a non-patriot at best, and re-education will be mandated - at your own expense. Obviously, "non-compliant" operating systems like the archaic and cobbled together linux will be forbidden, as they are a threat to national security and are only used by "information terrorists".
My experience with Italians is very limited, but probably more extensive than many people.
I worked for a company that sold Italian equipment in the USA, so we talked with Italian people daily and traveled with them in the US, etc. We did business with them on a large scale. Solved problems with them, etc.
They (the people in this company) are honest and hard working people, not involved in organized crime. Very ethical and honorable.
That being said, one must admit that the Italian culture is different than the US culture, and will always be different, and that's the way they like it. A US company will have to get past the fact that Italy "closes" for August, and essentially "closes" in December, too. When they work, they work hard. But when they're not working, they don't. At all.
Not saying we didn't admire them and appreciate the differences, but it's just not the way things are done here in the US.
My former boss told a story about how a prominent political leader (I forget who) was speaking in Italy and was open and proud about how much he cheated in school. My boss was informed by the Italians he was with that the culture in Italy is pretty much geared that way - what can you get away with without getting caught, without getting in trouble, or without causing problems.
The existence of the mafia (and the general culture of doing everything and anything you can get away with) is just the way the Italians ARE.
The government only deals with the organized crime periodically, like when it's so bad it gets embarrassing.
A thirty something mob boss on facebook isn't all that surprising, something tells me it's not like the movies where all they do is sit around eating pasta and talking in cliche like "Paulie sleeps wit da fishes".
There's probably a mafia presence in the malware scene, anyway, as organized crime keeps up with the times.
I was using linux full time at work, but it started to get slightly messed up and was hurting productivity. I was too busy right then to take the time to fix it, which would have taken (me) a few hours. About that time win7 was JUST coming out so I put on a copy of win7 as I wanted to demo it. Took pretty much zero effort to put on, no drivers to find, no config. Works well. Low maintenance. Like it. Lots. I do miss linux and I will go back...
Side note - I "inherited" an ancient optiplex dell P4 POS, maybe 1.6 GHZ. It actually CAME with XP, so it isn't THAT old. Anyway. I took out the 2x 128 meg sticks and put in 4x 256 meg sticks and then installed windows 7. It's actually pretty smooth. lol!
The other day the sarcastic side of me was wishing I could send a thank-you card to russia and/or china and/or the koobface gang. The rogue security tools are great for business.
Then, perhaps a fruit basket to the Symantec gang for producing completely useless and overpriced crap software that overly trusting people rely on.
carry on!
No, really, I am all about helping people and fixing their computers as effectively and quickly as possible, but.... wow.... just wow.
Slashdot Mirror
"Prince was only hip with love stricken teenage girls and sexually confused young boys." Flamebait? Naw, try insightful. Or at least funny.
So, we've established that they really were spies? Anyone got a link? I might be a little behind the news cycle on that.
Depends what two weeks of the year you are there. And what type of "farm" it is.
From what I've seen, even if you do 10,000 acres of grain (be it corn, wheat, beans, etc) there are DEFINITELY times of the year when you don't do nuthin.
Of Course, the planting season and the harvest season are pretty busy (24x7 if you can).
But, if all you do is grain, there are some times when the most difficult thing you do is going to your favorite breakfast joint to drink coffee and tell tall tales.
The hard kind of farming is when you deal with livestock. Those kinds of farms.... Yeah. It stinks. Literally and figuratively. Having livestock makes it hard to get away on vacation - ever, it's a dawn to dusk type of career. No, I'm not a farmer, but I live in farm country and I have a lot of friends who are farmers or grew up on farms. Most grain farmers have some sort of livestock though, from what I've seen. Until they want to slow down when they get old, then they sell off the livestock. Yes farming is hard, but it isn't torture, and it can be very profitable.
just shows how out of touch those whiny babies are. They are seriously out of their minds, especially since they haven't made an attempt to embrace new technologies. Reminds me of the SBA claiming billions and billions lost to piracy each year. It's a big assumption that all of those pirated copies would have resulted in an actual sale.
yeah, I wonder how long this "moxley" person has worked for comcast.
I've HAD comcast. I had it for about 2.5 years, but don't now (it's not here but it's all around, lurking, stalking, to the north, south east and west. Waiting, to pounce, and buy out mediacom cable who I have now.
I even dealt with them a number of times because I moved like 4 times in that 2.5 years and moved the service as well. When it worked I guess it was fine, and generally it actually did work. There were a few hassles with the moving instances, as you would imagine.
Lets look at this logically.
Who uses broadband speeds to their max? For any sustained amount of time? Someone who is downloading large files. That would be:
People downloading lots of ISO's of linux distros and such. (The mythical "I need torrentz for my linux habit, don't tread on my packets dood" kind of guy)
The limewire / bit torrent / movie and music and warez downloading fiend.
Someone who does massive amounts of VOD streaming
None of these will be doing this volunteer thing...
You're going to have people like Aunt May sign up who has a 10meg cable internet pipe who does weatherbug and gets emails with pics of little Johnny once a week. Right. This isn't going to work. Most people have fat pipes and don't use them. Then you have the download fiends who actually use their product and it overstress the grossly over-sold broadband network making the ISP's whine like little babies.
Do people actually get their advertised speeds? YES. Sometimes. Really? No, no they don't. Not all the time. There is no way, really. The cable ISP's get congested at the neighborhood levels. The DSL networks get congested at the home office or on their network bottlenecks. I know FIRST HAND of one DSL network putting a whole community through old obsolete and unavailable (!) ISDN equipment and it gets SLAMMED during peak hours.
they are getting tougher, that's for sure. But there are still tricks to get rid of them. The problem is the friends they bring with....
I found this:
...
...
The Island:
... Dharma's purpose is not "pointless" or even vague. Hell, it's pretty blantent.
http://nikkistafford.blogspot.com/2010/05/explanation-from-bad-robot.html
An Explanation from Bad Robot? So, this has been circulating the Interwebs since early yesterday evening, and a few people have sent it to me but I'm only getting around to reading it now. The person writing claims to work for Bad Robot and posted this on a Buffalo Bills forum, and it was reposted by DarkUFO. One resourceful Lost fan tracked the person's ID back to other postings on the forum, where apparently he's been referring to working for Bad Robot for a number of years, and people think it may be Greg Ernstrom, a production assistant on Cloverfield and Star Trek. So... it might be authentic. But all I can do is repost it here and you can decide. Some interesting stuff, that's for sure!!
UPDATE: I'm being told this is probably a fake, and Bad Robot is checking into it. I'll keep you posted.
Good stuff on here! I can finally throw in my two cents! I've had to bite my tongue for far too long. Also, hopefully I can answer some of John's questions about Dharma and the "pointless breadcrumbs" that really, weren't so pointless
First
It was real. Everything that happened on the island that we saw throughout the 6 seasons was real. Forget the final image of the plane crash, it was put in purposely to f*&k with people's heads and show how far the show had come. They really crashed. They really survived. They really discovered Dharma and the Others. The Island keeps the balance of good and evil in the world. It always has and always will perform that role. And the Island will always need a "Protector". Jacob wasn't the first, Hurley won't be the last. However, Jacob had to deal with a malevolent force (MIB) that his mother, nor Hurley had to deal with. He created the devil and had to find a way to kill him -- even though the rules prevented him from actually doing so.
Thus began Jacob's plan to bring candidates to the Island to do the one thing he couldn't do. Kill the MIB. He had a huge list of candidates that spanned generations. Yet everytime he brought people there, the MIB corrupted them and caused them to kill one another. That was until Richard came along and helped Jacob understand that if he didn't take a more active role, then his plan would never work.
Enter Dharma -- which I'm not sure why John is having such a hard time grasping. Dharma, like the countless scores of people that were brought to the island before, were brought there by Jacob as part of his plan to kill the MIB. However, the MIB was aware of this plan and interferred by "corrupting" Ben. Making Ben believe he was doing the work of Jacob when in reality he was doing the work of the MIB. This carried over into all of Ben's "off-island" activities. He was the leader. He spoke for Jacob as far as they were concerned. So the "Others" killed Dharma and later were actively trying to kill Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and all the candidates because that's what the MIB wanted. And what he couldn't do for himself.
Dharma was originally brought in to be good. But was turned bad by MIB's corruption and eventually destroyed by his pawn Ben. Now, was Dharma only brought there to help Jack and the other Canditates on their overall quest to kill Smokey? Or did Jacob have another list of Canidates from the Dharma group that we were never aware of? That's a question that is purposley not answered because whatever answer the writers came up with would be worse than the one you come up with for yourself. Still
Still, despite his grand plan, Jacob wanted to give his "candidates" (our Lostaways) the one thing he, nor his brother, were ever afforded: free will. Hence him bringing a host of "candidates" through the decades and letting them "cho
"the truly wonderful show known as "real life""
... at least a few years. Can't stand it. Even hulu is getting on my nerves with their increased commercials. I only know roughly when shows air because of when the latest ep gets added to the online services. VOD is to network tv like MP3 is to the RIAA and divx is to the MPAA.
mmmm..... nope. No. Just internet, with video on demand. Hulu. Netflix. All the other free-stream-online-until-they-get-shut-down sites.
It's the new normal. Broadcast is dead. It started dying with tivo and the dvr, and dropped dead and stinky with ubiquitous broadband and solid, simple and reliable VOD services.
I've had no landline phone since 2003 and I haven't watched broadcast TV for
Is hulu big enough yet to have original content? FOX NBC CBS and ABC will have to truly embrace the streaming stuff, and I think they have to a certain extent, so perhaps they won't go the way of the newspaper!
I sorta think they made it so confusing, with no plan for the end, that they couldn't really resolve it. Sortof a "whoops- I don't know, screw it."
I keep going back to Babylon5. It had twists and turns and complexity but it ended up with total resolution. All the arcs landed and it made sense in a "wow" kind of way. Like, you watch the series finale and say "wow".
Conversely, Xfiles never made sense either, kept adding 2 questions for every 1 they answered. Even the stinkin movie didn't really resolve anything. Did the geeks give xfiles a pass because skulley was so hot?
Microsoft hasn't "innovated" since windows 95. They've simply "evolved" or "improved". Innovation was the radical change between windows 3.11 to windows 95. A person could, today, retire their 15 year old system with windows 95 on it, and having never used any other system in the meantime, sit down at a windows 7 machine and recognize the general idea (having looked past all the shiny eye candy).
That's not innovation, thats evolution. The start button is still there. The start menu is still there. The task bar is still there. The system tray is still there. The "my computer" is still there. The desktop is still there. Same idea, refined, polished, evolved. NOT INNOVATED.
Windows nt4.0 used the interface from 95 on top of nt3.x. Win2k was a user-friendlied nt4.0, and winxp was a sexed up win2k.
My guess is they are like porsche, having not redesigned (by much) the 911 since it first came out, even the boxter and the other still are obviously porsches. Why mess with perfection? Porsche admits it, but MS calls it innovation when it's not. Until they throw it all away and come up with something like minority report or iron man it's not innovation.
Shoot, they didn't even ditch ntfs like they were going to.
My grandpa (late 70's IIRC) passed out. Fell down. Had history of heart problems. Went to the doctor. Doctor said "blah blah blah" and then "take two aspirin and call me in the morning". Grandpa, feeling basically ok, did that.
Problem was, Grandpa was having a stroke. The bleeding kind, not the blockage kind. Aspirin is a blood thinner. You do the math.
So, he died, many months later, moaning and incoherent in a nursing home from brain damage caused by stroke.
I do miss my grandpa...
my back felt perfectly normal within a couple of weeks, and we were done.
This is the key. Being DONE.
There are very professional looking and sounding chiro's out there who scare you into thinking you have some sort of horrible chronic life threatening time bomb in your spine that will leave you paralyzed or crippled unless you DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW and OH HOW FORTUNATE WE CAUGHT THIS JUST IN TIME and he signs you up for something like a three year long multi-time-per-week thousands of dollars regimen to totally rework your entire spine, and your family too. And the dog. Or you will ALL DIE A HORRIBLE DISFIGURING DEATH.
I worked with a guy that got roped into this, he and his son. I tried to convince him there was no way he had to do this, get a 2nd opinion, but he was convinced because he had x-rays and the Dr. pointed out the "problems."
But, hey, my wife has wrenched her back doing something dumb and she goes in and it's put right, a one shot deal. Chirpractors can help, and they can be quacks. The key is to get one thats just there to help and not one that's looking for his next three boat payments out of you, or one who is into all the crazy new age crap. I want to see joints and muscles on the wall, not crystals and scientology stuff. (I've done comp work for both kinds lol...)
You're missing the point - don't put that crap on there in the first place then you can't get mad if they reveal it w/o your permission.
Seems to me he's not a rocket scientist, just a script kiddie. He's not likely to really know how to monetize and leverage something like that. Perhaps he was nervous and wanted to get out, but was too greedy to just hit delete.
I've seen norton and mcafee break a computer's networking and radically slow down a powerful system just as much (and more-so) than the worst of the rogues and trojans. No doubt a grayhat (whitehat?) botnet would do some good. What frustrated computer tech hasn't wanted to put a benevolent botnet out there, to stave off the malevolent ones?
Email ain't "just like google" because Outlook is subject to an entire genre of bugs, viruses, and worms that Gmail has never had. Worse, Outlook has access to my internal system, which Google never has had, and never will have.
Don't forget about hotmail...
Flamebait??!?! **I'm** not the one saying linux is cobbled together and archaic, I'm saying what THE MAN will be saying via the propaganda machine when they actually DO this. Come on, you can surely see how something like this is a little more than just possible.
Linux IS NOT cobbled together and archaic. This is windows 12 timeframe, probably about 10-15 years from now assuming 2-3 years between releases. IF there is federally mandated OS usage and "botnet" participation they will do whatever kind of FUD or penalties are necessary to prevent people from running a *free* OS like linux.
Under conditions like that, FREE software will be even more vital.
I could foresee that happening on a national level some day.
When you get your computer with windows 12 on it you automatically are a part of the ISA Net. ISA Net is the Information Safety Administration Network, and it is a vast command and control network providing constant real-time analysis of your computer for security purposes. Constant registry and system file monitoring. Once a threat is found on one if the ISA Net computers the signature is instantly propagated throughout the network, instantly squashing any attempt at subterfuge.
Failure to "participate" in the ISA Net is an immediate red flag that you are a terrorist at worst, a non-patriot at best, and re-education will be mandated - at your own expense. Obviously, "non-compliant" operating systems like the archaic and cobbled together linux will be forbidden, as they are a threat to national security and are only used by "information terrorists".
My experience with Italians is very limited, but probably more extensive than many people.
I worked for a company that sold Italian equipment in the USA, so we talked with Italian people daily and traveled with them in the US, etc. We did business with them on a large scale. Solved problems with them, etc.
They (the people in this company) are honest and hard working people, not involved in organized crime. Very ethical and honorable.
That being said, one must admit that the Italian culture is different than the US culture, and will always be different, and that's the way they like it. A US company will have to get past the fact that Italy "closes" for August, and essentially "closes" in December, too. When they work, they work hard. But when they're not working, they don't. At all.
Not saying we didn't admire them and appreciate the differences, but it's just not the way things are done here in the US.
My former boss told a story about how a prominent political leader (I forget who) was speaking in Italy and was open and proud about how much he cheated in school. My boss was informed by the Italians he was with that the culture in Italy is pretty much geared that way - what can you get away with without getting caught, without getting in trouble, or without causing problems.
I was going to say stop using crap like anything from McAfee or Symantec....
But I've been on a bit of a rant lately in that regard.
What is your domain controller group policy looking like? What was the botnet? Just spam bots? Zeus? Was stuff rooted?
My point is, was there anything you COULD have done?
The existence of the mafia (and the general culture of doing everything and anything you can get away with) is just the way the Italians ARE.
The government only deals with the organized crime periodically, like when it's so bad it gets embarrassing.
A thirty something mob boss on facebook isn't all that surprising, something tells me it's not like the movies where all they do is sit around eating pasta and talking in cliche like "Paulie sleeps wit da fishes".
There's probably a mafia presence in the malware scene, anyway, as organized crime keeps up with the times.
lol yeah, I recently had a customer run into something like that too.
I was using linux full time at work, but it started to get slightly messed up and was hurting productivity. I was too busy right then to take the time to fix it, which would have taken (me) a few hours. About that time win7 was JUST coming out so I put on a copy of win7 as I wanted to demo it. Took pretty much zero effort to put on, no drivers to find, no config. Works well. Low maintenance. Like it. Lots. I do miss linux and I will go back...
Side note - I "inherited" an ancient optiplex dell P4 POS, maybe 1.6 GHZ. It actually CAME with XP, so it isn't THAT old. Anyway. I took out the 2x 128 meg sticks and put in 4x 256 meg sticks and then installed windows 7. It's actually pretty smooth. lol!
The other day the sarcastic side of me was wishing I could send a thank-you card to russia and/or china and/or the koobface gang. The rogue security tools are great for business.
Then, perhaps a fruit basket to the Symantec gang for producing completely useless and overpriced crap software that overly trusting people rely on.
carry on!
No, really, I am all about helping people and fixing their computers as effectively and quickly as possible, but.... wow.... just wow.