There's that sticky bit called guilt, that for me personally comes from taking something from another individual that I can see, hear, possibly smell.
Yeah Yeah Yeah, copyright infringement steals money from the shop owners and distributors and RIAA and the starving artist. Right. So the cassette I purchase 3 times(1 broken, 1 loaned, 1 lost), admittedly only once for full retail and the rest used, I should feel guilty for downloading? The albums I have on vinyl, but haven't unpacked my record player in 4 years since moving? Guilty? The mix tapes that friends made with partials of albums mixed with partials of other albums?
I've bought some music off of the iTunes store. There are albums that if they would put them up(Half Japanese - The Band That Would Be King), I would buy them in a second. If albums were $5 and iTunes had nearly everything, I would likely stop pirating. As far as I'm concerned most of the crap that the music industry, and it IS an industry, churns out isn't even worth $5.
This may very well be due to a bug in McAfee VirusScan 8.0i, assuming that is what you are running. There was a bug fixed by Patch 6, I think. Patches are cumulative, so you can just apply Patch 11 and the problem should be fixed.
Patches are not available from the public download location. You may need to have a support contract to get them.
If I had to guess, I would say that the names are mangled to make the iPod more efficient and thus make the battery last longer. Minimizing the length of file names(song names) should minimize the size of the directory database, which I would think would also maximize read/query times for the directory. Normally this is not possible, but since iTunes is the only sanctioned interface for putting music on the iPod, there would be no need to use human readable filenames. The iPod designers could look at what is most efficient from a directory access point of view.
An elaborate system of reservoirs, valves, pressure sensors and delivery ducts to evenly mist your popcorn with warm yellow liquid . . . salt included.
Re: 40 mothers agree: Cleaning Windows is a PITA
on
Internet Security Warnings
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I fully agree. My home network is made up of 3 OS X machines and one windows box for when necessary. With OS X, I could actually agree that the best fix for a compromised machine(were it to happen) would be a reinstall, since there's nothing user specific in the System directory anyway.
Re: 40 mothers agree: Cleaning Windows is a PITA
on
Internet Security Warnings
·
· Score: 5, Informative
More often than not these days, the real tough buggers have randomly generated process names. Here's how I clean a machine:
Have all of this on a USB drive or CD. Will probably fit on a 64mb drive, unless your virus package is bulky.
Boot to safe mode
Start Task Manager or Proc Explorer and kill anything that doesn't look good, or everything that you know isn't part of windows. You could go to Control Panels:Admin Tools:Services and stop all services first, this will narrow the field.
Run Stinger, just let it scan memory and running apps. Don't wait for it to do a full system scan.
Run Ad-Aware, do the same. Just trying to ditch bad things that are actually running.
If you've gotten this far in 15 minutes, the machine probably isn't in too bad of shape. Dump all temp files, c:\temp, c:\winnt(windows)\temp, c:\documents and settings\username\local settings\temp, c:\documents and settings\username\local settings\temporary internet items
Update virus definitions and do a full scan. Latest SuperDAT from McAfee or Definitions from Symantec or whoever you use, should also be put on the USB drive or CD.
So, virus scan didn't deal with it, or couldn't stop/remove it? This is where it gets tricky and completely manual. This is the point where most people give up, since you really need to know what should be where in Win2k/XP/2k3. I'm really not thinking of 95/98/Me, if those are hosed just wipe it clean and move to XP home for $99-199
Run HiJackthis and look for gremlins. This tool really requires an eye for what is supposed to be there, but pay special attention to startup objects and BHOs(Browser Helper Objects aka evil Internet Explorer plugins)
Add/Remove programs. Go through it with the client. Anything they don't recognize, or know they don't need, ditch. This can be risky, since people forget, but compared to a reinstall . ..
Now for the real manual part . ..
Run lspfix and check for foreign entries. There are normally 2-4 LSP's present. I usually only do this if there are persistent network failures.
Check Hosts file at c:\winnt(windows)\system32\drivers\etc\hosts There really should only be one entry in here, for 127.0.0.1 localhost. You may have already checked this with hijackthis
Browse to c:\winnt(windows). Sort by date. On a default install, the file modify dates are going to be a long time ago. If you see anything from within the last few months, get suspicious. Ignore log/text files, but don't ignore those without an extension. Do the same for c:\winnt(windows)\system32 This can be a bit trickier, there are way more files in system32 than winnt(windows), but the same rule generally applies. Anything from the last 3-6 months is suspicious.
Do the same for c:\program files Delete any empty folders that your previous uninstall didn't remove. You should have an idea what is supposed to be here, after doing Add/Remove programs, so hack and slash the folders that you don't think belong.
In one of these deleting sprees you are sure to find something bad that won't let itself be deleted, usually a.dll that is registered and can't be removed. Never fear! Write down the.d
This is not an old exploit. It's quite fresh . . .
August 9th Release, which is 4 days ago. Exploits were reported in the wild on Friday, 3 days after the release. There's also a remote exploit in the Spooler service, which is of course enabled by default on all Win2k/XP/2k3 machines. I approved this patch on Friday, hopefully Monday won't bring scores of hosed machines.
Working with(sort of) a school district, I have to disagree here. They buy Optiplexes, which are the better machines, and the turnover is quite low. They actually manage to support some 6000 client workstations in 20 or more locations with approximately 8 support staff. Turnover is low, and they've streamlined software support with imaging. One of the things Dell does that Apple never would(ex-Apple school) is ship an entire school's worth of hardware, all EXACTLY the same. Down to mother board revisions, all exactly the same, which means they only need to support a handful of images.
In my own shop we also buy Optiplexes. In 3 years with about 300 desktops, I've yet to have a DOA, fewer than 2 new machines fail critically within warranty. Most of the machines hang around until they get auctioned off. We auctioned many pallettes of GXMT166-200 machines that still worked fine, just slow(Pentium166-200)
HP, Compaq, Dell all have 2 tiers of desktop machines. Business class and home class. HP Vectra, Compaq Deskpro, Dell Optiplex. Far better designs/quality than HP pavilion, Compaq Presario, Dell Dimension
I love Macs, use them at home, but refuse to falsely justify them to businesses. The management tools have room to grow, and I'm sure they will.
bash ported, good to know. I'd used it with cygwin but it felt bulky to use that way. As noted in another post, I use quickedit mode, just that ctrl-c/ctrl-v is such an automatic thing, it happens before I think to right click to paste, resulting in ^V backspace backspace right-click.
I shorten common commands whenever possible:
si = srvinfo \\%1 sid = srvinfo -ns \\%1 user = net user %1/Domain ts = mstsc/v:%1 ls = cygwin
put the bat files in home directory on network share, they're everywhere. There's also quite a few gnu ports of common tools at http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
Before OS X, I had given up on using Macs for anything other than creative work. WinNT, Win2k had the structure, and some stability(when done right and not changed), and I always felt that when a problem occurred at least you can usually deduce exactly what it was. Troubleshooting OS 9 is in some ways very similiar to Win9x, disable everything and bring things back til it dies again. With OS X Apple is moving forward at breakneck speed, which is why people look at dashboard and say "Why?" Because they are looking for new usage paradigms AND refining the existing uses.
When MS decides to shift paradigms, they make the start menu two columns and huge, change keyboard shorcuts for a few things, change names of a few more, gloss it, and call it 5.1 for another $300. Yes I'm exaggerating, that's what bickering is all about.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that there exist no Windows add-ons, there are thousands. I was just suggesting that most all of them suck.
cmd.exe - I realize you wouldn't want to override the behaviour of ctrl-c. For one, it would be nice if at least ctrl-v worked as expected, I don't know how many times I've seen ^V, as muscle memory kicks in before I think to right-click(paste). Or why not dynamically map ctrl-c based on current shell activity. The only time you need ctrl-c to copy is at an idle blinking prompt. And what are the different keys to copy paste, I've only known right-click to copy and paste?
Does you're bash shell run without cygwin? Does your bash shell natively assign / to c:\ or to c:\cygwininstallpoint? I guess I see tcsh, zsh, ksh, bash, csh as all being native Unix CLI's. While I am glad to have cygwin, and all the tools I can run over it, I don't see it as a native integrated solution.
I'll have to try this Expose! hack, the last one I found was XP only. Let's see if I can hot corner to show desktop, grab something from there, hot corner to bring a folder back into view, then drop my selected file.
While I do mean to bash windows, I'm not doing it out of ignorance. I manage a 350 node network, all win2k/xp active directory integrated, and I'll be the first to tell you what a dream it is to manage, in many respects. It's also chock full of problems, and Microsoft doesn't seem to be making it much better in the last 5 years. And if we're discussing usability at the client end, there's not much to talk about.
And by the way, if you don't like safari, don't use it. In fact if you don't like it DELETE IT! It's just an app, like anything else. Yes the webkit framework will remain for any apps coded to it, but you don't need Safari. Camino and Firefox have always seemed relatively quick to me.
As for OS X being rigid, I think an OS should be fairly rigid, in the same way that the laws of physics are rigid. It's a constraint, but one that we all understand instinctively. And if you don't like it, there are plenty of extensions to it. Check out www.unsanity.com
Show me a WinXX hack as cool as QuickSilver. Hell, windows doesn't even have hot corners.
As for windows theming, most of it is crap. Nice for eyecandy for a while, but totally lacking in consistency.
Want to talk about rigidity? How about the fact that in Windows you only have one command line interpreter? And cmd.exe can't even copy/paste like a normal app.
The one thing that bugs me in OS X is the lack of a quick route to executing a shell command, a la Start:Run in windows, but QuickSilver pretty much fixes this.
I for one feel that going to the preferences and checking the "Enable Tabbed Browsing" box is just compensation to the hardworking developers who built tabbed browsing for Safari.
I'm pretty sure with CallManagerExpress, you can build out a 200 user system for much less than that.
Let's say you did the $250,000 route, with 10 x 3550XL(240 ports), 2 Call Manager servers, 1 big router, 200 phones, 1 Unity Server. You've not only got a hell of a phone system: Email integrated Voicemail, phones that can be moved at will without needing to re-punch wires or change configurations, ultra-flexibility, scalable to 2500+ users, but you also just built out a rock solid computer network.
That's the catch. VoIP is great if you are starting from scratch, and need a phone system and computer network. It's expensive, however, if you have to replace your existing network.
I see Cisco in the phone/network market as Apple is in the PC market. They have a reputation, and they've earned it. My biggest complaint is the same as with Apple, the high price point.
Actually, my biggest gripe is with Unity Voicemail pricing, it's absurdly high.
What type of call processing system were you running? Separate VLAN's for data and voice? I've rolled out Cisco phone systems in some pretty dodgy network scenarios, and voice quality has never really been an issue.
"I have this dsl thing? and one of my computers was infected with an, uh, trojan? Well my internet has always been real slow, and now they say I stole 3000 songs!"
Or the technical version(more believable if you're a network admin)
"You see, I have a system that I use for SSH access into my home. It is behind a Linksys router which uses NAT to provide multiple internal IP's for the one external that I have. Well apparently, I used a weak password for one of the accounts on the SSH box, as I recently discovered it had been hacked and was being used to share files! As soon as I was notified of the breach, I disconnected the system and did a complete security check up on it. So while technically, the IP address in question was assigned to my DSL box at the time of the offense, I was not controlling the PC which generated this traffic"
With the obvious onset of rapid global warming, it has been determined that we must evacuate the planet. A suitable alternate planet has been located, and the first transport ship has already been prepared! As Project Managers play such an important role in keeping things running smoothly and efficiently, you have been selected to go on the first ship!
While everyone is balking at this analogy, it might have some merit. I remember reading an article about the inate human ability to calculate trajectories, which is why you can throw a ball and hit something(Oh wait, this is Slashdot)
But really, when you throw a ball and miss, you don't conciously calculate the distance then determine, based on the current gravitational pull and atmospheric conditions, how many newtons of force to exert and at what vector to exert them. You just throw and miss, though you may come close. All of this is math that is done visually/instinctively.
So maybe those operators are intrinsic to parts of your brain, namely those that calculate trajectories. And maybe for those with these special abilities, other parts of the brain have been linked to this calculation center. Maybe I'm making useless speculations in a field in which I have no knowledge. Again, this IS Slashdot. To make yet another computer analogy, it's like the methods associated to the trajectory class have been rewritten to apply to all classes.
They did that with the Sasser(LSASS) patch, and it was a nightmare. They rolled a bunch of non-critical patches in with one or two critical ones. Some sites really can't rollout 6 meg patches to hundreds or thousands of machines, when the actual patch for LSASS probably would have been a few hundred kilobytes. We badgered MS to try and get an isolated LSASS fix, they never conceded but did say they would never release another bundle like it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm playing poker tomorrow night, you should come. Odds are you'll do very well!
There's that sticky bit called guilt, that for me personally comes from taking something from another individual that I can see, hear, possibly smell.
Yeah Yeah Yeah, copyright infringement steals money from the shop owners and distributors and RIAA and the starving artist. Right. So the cassette I purchase 3 times(1 broken, 1 loaned, 1 lost), admittedly only once for full retail and the rest used, I should feel guilty for downloading? The albums I have on vinyl, but haven't unpacked my record player in 4 years since moving? Guilty? The mix tapes that friends made with partials of albums mixed with partials of other albums?
I've bought some music off of the iTunes store. There are albums that if they would put them up(Half Japanese - The Band That Would Be King), I would buy them in a second. If albums were $5 and iTunes had nearly everything, I would likely stop pirating. As far as I'm concerned most of the crap that the music industry, and it IS an industry, churns out isn't even worth $5.
This may very well be due to a bug in McAfee VirusScan 8.0i, assuming that is what you are running. There was a bug fixed by Patch 6, I think. Patches are cumulative, so you can just apply Patch 11 and the problem should be fixed.
Patches are not available from the public download location. You may need to have a support contract to get them.
If I had to guess, I would say that the names are mangled to make the iPod more efficient and thus make the battery last longer. Minimizing the length of file names(song names) should minimize the size of the directory database, which I would think would also maximize read/query times for the directory. Normally this is not possible, but since iTunes is the only sanctioned interface for putting music on the iPod, there would be no need to use human readable filenames. The iPod designers could look at what is most efficient from a directory access point of view.
I guess Glenn Danzig was a moron after all
Popcorn
Irrigation
Spray
System
An elaborate system of reservoirs, valves, pressure sensors and delivery ducts to evenly mist your popcorn with warm yellow liquid . . . salt included.
I fully agree. My home network is made up of 3 OS X machines and one windows box for when necessary. With OS X, I could actually agree that the best fix for a compromised machine(were it to happen) would be a reinstall, since there's nothing user specific in the System directory anyway.
More often than not these days, the real tough buggers have randomly generated process names. Here's how I clean a machine:
.
.
.dll that is registered and can't be removed. Never fear! Write down the .d
Tools required:
Process Explorer(procexp) from http://www.sysinternals.com/
autoruns.exe from the same, or hijackthis.exe from http://www.merijn.org/
Any good virus scanner(McAfee's Enterprise scanner is decent. Use a simple scanner if possible, not a scanner/firewall/spam filter/personal servant. It will be generally be faster and simpler.
Ad-Aware from http://www.lavasoft.de/
LSPFix from http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm/
Updated Stinger from McAfee http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
Experience enough to know valid windows processes and files.
Have all of this on a USB drive or CD. Will probably fit on a 64mb drive, unless your virus package is bulky.
Boot to safe mode
Start Task Manager or Proc Explorer and kill anything that doesn't look good, or everything that you know isn't part of windows. You could go to Control Panels:Admin Tools:Services and stop all services first, this will narrow the field.
Run Stinger, just let it scan memory and running apps. Don't wait for it to do a full system scan.
Run Ad-Aware, do the same. Just trying to ditch bad things that are actually running.
If you've gotten this far in 15 minutes, the machine probably isn't in too bad of shape. Dump all temp files, c:\temp, c:\winnt(windows)\temp, c:\documents and settings\username\local settings\temp, c:\documents and settings\username\local settings\temporary internet items
Update virus definitions and do a full scan. Latest SuperDAT from McAfee or Definitions from Symantec or whoever you use, should also be put on the USB drive or CD.
So, virus scan didn't deal with it, or couldn't stop/remove it? This is where it gets tricky and completely manual. This is the point where most people give up, since you really need to know what should be where in Win2k/XP/2k3. I'm really not thinking of 95/98/Me, if those are hosed just wipe it clean and move to XP home for $99-199
Run HiJackthis and look for gremlins. This tool really requires an eye for what is supposed to be there, but pay special attention to startup objects and BHOs(Browser Helper Objects aka evil Internet Explorer plugins)
Add/Remove programs. Go through it with the client. Anything they don't recognize, or know they don't need, ditch. This can be risky, since people forget, but compared to a reinstall . .
Now for the real manual part . .
Run lspfix and check for foreign entries. There are normally 2-4 LSP's present. I usually only do this if there are persistent network failures.
Check Hosts file at c:\winnt(windows)\system32\drivers\etc\hosts There really should only be one entry in here, for 127.0.0.1 localhost. You may have already checked this with hijackthis
Browse to c:\winnt(windows). Sort by date. On a default install, the file modify dates are going to be a long time ago. If you see anything from within the last few months, get suspicious. Ignore log/text files, but don't ignore those without an extension. Do the same for c:\winnt(windows)\system32 This can be a bit trickier, there are way more files in system32 than winnt(windows), but the same rule generally applies. Anything from the last 3-6 months is suspicious.
Do the same for c:\program files Delete any empty folders that your previous uninstall didn't remove. You should have an idea what is supposed to be here, after doing Add/Remove programs, so hack and slash the folders that you don't think belong.
In one of these deleting sprees you are sure to find something bad that won't let itself be deleted, usually a
This is not an old exploit. It's quite fresh . . .
August 9th Release, which is 4 days ago. Exploits were reported in the wild on Friday, 3 days after the release. There's also a remote exploit in the Spooler service, which is of course enabled by default on all Win2k/XP/2k3 machines. I approved this patch on Friday, hopefully Monday won't bring scores of hosed machines.
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-039 (899588)
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48900/
Working with(sort of) a school district, I have to disagree here. They buy Optiplexes, which are the better machines, and the turnover is quite low. They actually manage to support some 6000 client workstations in 20 or more locations with approximately 8 support staff. Turnover is low, and they've streamlined software support with imaging. One of the things Dell does that Apple never would(ex-Apple school) is ship an entire school's worth of hardware, all EXACTLY the same. Down to mother board revisions, all exactly the same, which means they only need to support a handful of images.
In my own shop we also buy Optiplexes. In 3 years with about 300 desktops, I've yet to have a DOA, fewer than 2 new machines fail critically within warranty. Most of the machines hang around until they get auctioned off. We auctioned many pallettes of GXMT166-200 machines that still worked fine, just slow(Pentium166-200)
HP, Compaq, Dell all have 2 tiers of desktop machines. Business class and home class. HP Vectra, Compaq Deskpro, Dell Optiplex. Far better designs/quality than HP pavilion, Compaq Presario, Dell Dimension
I love Macs, use them at home, but refuse to falsely justify them to businesses. The management tools have room to grow, and I'm sure they will.
bash ported, good to know. I'd used it with cygwin but it felt bulky to use that way. As noted in another post, I use quickedit mode, just that ctrl-c/ctrl-v is such an automatic thing, it happens before I think to right click to paste, resulting in ^V backspace backspace right-click.
/Domain /v:%1
I shorten common commands whenever possible:
si = srvinfo \\%1
sid = srvinfo -ns \\%1
user = net user %1
ts = mstsc
ls = cygwin
put the bat files in home directory on network share, they're everywhere. There's also quite a few gnu ports of common tools at http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
Before OS X, I had given up on using Macs for anything other than creative work. WinNT, Win2k had the structure, and some stability(when done right and not changed), and I always felt that when a problem occurred at least you can usually deduce exactly what it was. Troubleshooting OS 9 is in some ways very similiar to Win9x, disable everything and bring things back til it dies again. With OS X Apple is moving forward at breakneck speed, which is why people look at dashboard and say "Why?" Because they are looking for new usage paradigms AND refining the existing uses.
When MS decides to shift paradigms, they make the start menu two columns and huge, change keyboard shorcuts for a few things, change names of a few more, gloss it, and call it 5.1 for another $300. Yes I'm exaggerating, that's what bickering is all about.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that there exist no Windows add-ons, there are thousands. I was just suggesting that most all of them suck.
cmd.exe - I realize you wouldn't want to override the behaviour of ctrl-c. For one, it would be nice if at least ctrl-v worked as expected, I don't know how many times I've seen ^V, as muscle memory kicks in before I think to right-click(paste). Or why not dynamically map ctrl-c based on current shell activity. The only time you need ctrl-c to copy is at an idle blinking prompt. And what are the different keys to copy paste, I've only known right-click to copy and paste?
Does you're bash shell run without cygwin? Does your bash shell natively assign / to c:\ or to c:\cygwininstallpoint? I guess I see tcsh, zsh, ksh, bash, csh as all being native Unix CLI's. While I am glad to have cygwin, and all the tools I can run over it, I don't see it as a native integrated solution.
I'll have to try this Expose! hack, the last one I found was XP only. Let's see if I can hot corner to show desktop, grab something from there, hot corner to bring a folder back into view, then drop my selected file.
While I do mean to bash windows, I'm not doing it out of ignorance. I manage a 350 node network, all win2k/xp active directory integrated, and I'll be the first to tell you what a dream it is to manage, in many respects. It's also chock full of problems, and Microsoft doesn't seem to be making it much better in the last 5 years. And if we're discussing usability at the client end, there's not much to talk about.
And by the way, if you don't like safari, don't use it. In fact if you don't like it DELETE IT! It's just an app, like anything else. Yes the webkit framework will remain for any apps coded to it, but you don't need Safari. Camino and Firefox have always seemed relatively quick to me.
As for OS X being rigid, I think an OS should be fairly rigid, in the same way that the laws of physics are rigid. It's a constraint, but one that we all understand instinctively. And if you don't like it, there are plenty of extensions to it. Check out www.unsanity.com
Show me a WinXX hack as cool as QuickSilver. Hell, windows doesn't even have hot corners.
As for windows theming, most of it is crap. Nice for eyecandy for a while, but totally lacking in consistency.
Want to talk about rigidity? How about the fact that in Windows you only have one command line interpreter? And cmd.exe can't even copy/paste like a normal app.
The one thing that bugs me in OS X is the lack of a quick route to executing a shell command, a la Start:Run in windows, but QuickSilver pretty much fixes this.
I for one feel that going to the preferences and checking the "Enable Tabbed Browsing" box is just compensation to the hardworking developers who built tabbed browsing for Safari.
I'm pretty sure with CallManagerExpress, you can build out a 200 user system for much less than that.
Let's say you did the $250,000 route, with 10 x 3550XL(240 ports), 2 Call Manager servers, 1 big router, 200 phones, 1 Unity Server. You've not only got a hell of a phone system: Email integrated Voicemail, phones that can be moved at will without needing to re-punch wires or change configurations, ultra-flexibility, scalable to 2500+ users, but you also just built out a rock solid computer network.
That's the catch. VoIP is great if you are starting from scratch, and need a phone system and computer network. It's expensive, however, if you have to replace your existing network.
I see Cisco in the phone/network market as Apple is in the PC market. They have a reputation, and they've earned it. My biggest complaint is the same as with Apple, the high price point.
Actually, my biggest gripe is with Unity Voicemail pricing, it's absurdly high.
What type of call processing system were you running? Separate VLAN's for data and voice? I've rolled out Cisco phone systems in some pretty dodgy network scenarios, and voice quality has never really been an issue.
African snails will just be used for local subnet traffic.
"I have this dsl thing? and one of my computers was infected with an, uh, trojan? Well my internet has always been real slow, and now they say I stole 3000 songs!"
Or the technical version(more believable if you're a network admin)
"You see, I have a system that I use for SSH access into my home. It is behind a Linksys router which uses NAT to provide multiple internal IP's for the one external that I have. Well apparently, I used a weak password for one of the accounts on the SSH box, as I recently discovered it had been hacked and was being used to share files! As soon as I was notified of the breach, I disconnected the system and did a complete security check up on it. So while technically, the IP address in question was assigned to my DSL box at the time of the offense, I was not controlling the PC which generated this traffic"
With the obvious onset of rapid global warming, it has been determined that we must evacuate the planet. A suitable alternate planet has been located, and the first transport ship has already been prepared! As Project Managers play such an important role in keeping things running smoothly and efficiently, you have been selected to go on the first ship!
While everyone is balking at this analogy, it might have some merit. I remember reading an article about the inate human ability to calculate trajectories, which is why you can throw a ball and hit something(Oh wait, this is Slashdot)
But really, when you throw a ball and miss, you don't conciously calculate the distance then determine, based on the current gravitational pull and atmospheric conditions, how many newtons of force to exert and at what vector to exert them. You just throw and miss, though you may come close. All of this is math that is done visually/instinctively.
So maybe those operators are intrinsic to parts of your brain, namely those that calculate trajectories. And maybe for those with these special abilities, other parts of the brain have been linked to this calculation center. Maybe I'm making useless speculations in a field in which I have no knowledge. Again, this IS Slashdot. To make yet another computer analogy, it's like the methods associated to the trajectory class have been rewritten to apply to all classes.
Go ahead, shoot me.
If you can pick and choose your customers, it can make life much easier. I've been doing work for doctors because
a. I don't feel bad charging them $60/hr, which I feel bad charging home users but I think is actually a very fair price for a business.
b. I can convince them to spend the money to set up their computing infrastructure well, which makes it less frustrating to maintain.
So avoid just avoid cheap customers, unless you're good at repeatedly gouging people for their own stupidity.
They did that with the Sasser(LSASS) patch, and it was a nightmare. They rolled a bunch of non-critical patches in with one or two critical ones. Some sites really can't rollout 6 meg patches to hundreds or thousands of machines, when the actual patch for LSASS probably would have been a few hundred kilobytes. We badgered MS to try and get an isolated LSASS fix, they never conceded but did say they would never release another bundle like it.
I'll bet the MADD ladies will never fight for 3rd offence cell phone driving to be a felony.
There's another little app called BrowserTunes which allows you to control iTunes via web browser.
e s/ index.htm
http://homepage.mac.com/markburgess3/browserTun
"Just re-rate them and boom . . ."
Hi, Steve, nice to know you read Slashdot also . . . boom