I know what you mean about searching MSDN. I usually use Google with "site:msdn.microsoft.com". This generally directs me straight to where I want to go.
I don't know if SCO's money is running out. They lost $1.6 million in a quarter. But didn't they get a $50 million investment not too long ago? At this rate they can go another 31 quarters just on that investment... (all of this assumes that the $1.6 million was their total loss for the quarter, after all expenses)
Here's a question I always wish I could ask managers, whenever the topic of 'outsourcing' comes up: if dealing with programmers overseas is more appealing to the bottom line, why not let your programmers work from home for 50-80% of their current in-office pay?
Based on the description of the problem this doesn't seem to have anything to do with oversea's labour. It's just that he was replaced by an outsourcing company (in his own country).
About the reduction in pay comment, if you were sent home with a 50% pay cut would you be happy about it? Or would you be hitting monster.com on your 'extended' lunch breaks. I don't think it's really practical to half-way lay-off people, because the employees won't be at all loyal after that.
So, what you're saying is that uploading is legal, but downloading isn't. Funny, here in Canada they just ruled that downloading is legal and uploading is illegal.
So why don't you we Canadians make a trade with the Dutch: you let us leech MP3's (which would be totally legit given the laws in our countries) and we'll send you maple syrup, all the beavers you can handle, hockey players and Celine Dion.
Or, better yet, start putting these things in convenience stores. Johnny six pack can come in and make all the CDs he wants for free, and then he might just buy some fritos and a big gulp while he's at it. Just put one of these things anywhere you want to attract customers and make money from them buying other things.
JDE is just Gnome with Star office and Java branded wallpaper. So it is opensource (at least most of it) and written in C. So I guess it's good:)
Re:You don't need a conspiracy theory
on
Stealth Inflation
·
· Score: 1
I tend to agree with you, but you say:
So, over time, there will be an inflation in the greyness of transactions, ironically quite the reverse of what you'd expect from a more and more automated system.
If the errors are random, wouldn't you expect there to be errors in the customer's favour, as well as in the merchant's. And if the customers fight the overcharges more than the merchants correct the undercharges (it's easier to get a refund from a merchant than for a merchant to ask for more later) there will actually be slight deflation?
Sun is playing catch-up with Microsoft. Microsoft has a two year head start slapping the same brand on everything it sells (.NET) so no one know WTF the brand actually means.
I think the strategy is to keep everyone so confused about the name they won't notice the products all do the exact same things this old one did, and just as badly.
You have to be able to boot from the CD though. Personally, I disable this by default to save ~1 sec at boot time, but I'm assuming that most library admins will have done this, or will shortly after the first person boots from a live CD (or else, why not just pop in a Win2K CD and do a fresh install of windows on that machine while your at it?)
I agree with this, but I think we have to look elsewhere to find the 'sickness'. The really issue that has to be solved, at least for most businesses, is that breeches in security cost money. But security itself costs money, so you end up with a big risk analysis problem: is it cheaper to use easy to use software (windows, outlook, etc) to increase productivity, but risk security breeches, or use more secure, harder to use systems that will slow workers down?
The answer to this varies from business to business, but I guess my point is the holy grail of the security world is easy to use security mechanisms. I think that there have been some wins in this area already. SSL comes to mind. It's quite secure and quite transparent, people just have to know to look for the 'lock' in the corner of their browser and that gives some assurance they're 'safe'. Also, encryption using outlook is quite painless (although certificate management is a pain).
What's my point? I guess we have to stop thinking about what the most secure solution is and why aren't these dumb users using it, and start thinking creatively about how we can slip secure solutions in where they won't impact people, and they won't work around them.
Many words, like "hacker", have more than one meaning
Kind of off topic, but I always liked the word cleave. Its two meanings are antonyms (or close to it). Basically cleave means to seperate, or join together.
I'm not at all a bibical scholar, but I think I know this. Ancient Chistians used to write Jesus Christ as Chi Rho (they used the greek alphabet). Chi Rho looks kind of like XP (insert windows joke here). Anyway, I think this got abreviated to chi, so there you go, Jesus = X.
In catacombs under Rome you can see 'X' carved into the walls, which was done by Christians who were persacuted by the Romans.
This reminds me of a trick a father of a friend of mine used to pull: he'd go to the airport bookstore (on the outside of the metal detectors) and slip an aluminum foil cut-out shaped like a gun into some magazines.
who really is wasting their time: the kids who did the experiment in an afternoon, or the/.'ers who check this website every 15 minutes, every day, for the rest of their lives
That's harsh man. You don't have to tell it like it is.
I have a question about this: if you are going to circumvent the DRM any way, why not just use Kazaa or whatever and get the song for free?
I think iTunes is attractive because it's legit, but is there another reason you'd use it to get your 'illegal' music (using the term illegal loosely to indicate violating the terms of the Apple license)? Quality? Convenience? Just like giving Apple money?
I can't vouch for the veracity of this, but someone told me that initially porn was the driving force behind DVDs. The feature to view a single scene from multiple angles made for some interesting possibilities.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I don't see this as a security enhancement. The dialog informing the user that a plug-in is loading only says "Press OK to continue loading content on this page", with no cancel button. So unless the user kills their browser the plug-in still gets loaded.
And really, the true security threat is when the person initially installs the plug-in, but this only addresses running the plug-in, not the installation.
So unless I'm missing something, I don't see this as a security improvement...
Slashdot Mirror
I know what you mean about searching MSDN. I usually use Google with "site:msdn.microsoft.com". This generally directs me straight to where I want to go.
Maybe Longhorn's final name will be: "I can't believe it's not an operating system" :)
I don't know if SCO's money is running out. They lost $1.6 million in a quarter. But didn't they get a $50 million investment not too long ago? At this rate they can go another 31 quarters just on that investment... (all of this assumes that the $1.6 million was their total loss for the quarter, after all expenses)
Based on the description of the problem this doesn't seem to have anything to do with oversea's labour. It's just that he was replaced by an outsourcing company (in his own country).
About the reduction in pay comment, if you were sent home with a 50% pay cut would you be happy about it? Or would you be hitting monster.com on your 'extended' lunch breaks. I don't think it's really practical to half-way lay-off people, because the employees won't be at all loyal after that.
So, what you're saying is that uploading is legal, but downloading isn't. Funny, here in Canada they just ruled that downloading is legal and uploading is illegal.
So why don't you we Canadians make a trade with the Dutch: you let us leech MP3's (which would be totally legit given the laws in our countries) and we'll send you maple syrup, all the beavers you can handle, hockey players and Celine Dion.
Think about it.
Try this, reviewed here.
Or, better yet, start putting these things in convenience stores. Johnny six pack can come in and make all the CDs he wants for free, and then he might just buy some fritos and a big gulp while he's at it. Just put one of these things anywhere you want to attract customers and make money from them buying other things.
Ready.gov has plenty of other good advice on other topics too. Check it out.
JDE is just Gnome with Star office and Java branded wallpaper. So it is opensource (at least most of it) and written in C. So I guess it's good :)
I tend to agree with you, but you say:
So, over time, there will be an inflation in the greyness of transactions, ironically quite the reverse of what you'd expect from a more and more automated system.
If the errors are random, wouldn't you expect there to be errors in the customer's favour, as well as in the merchant's. And if the customers fight the overcharges more than the merchants correct the undercharges (it's easier to get a refund from a merchant than for a merchant to ask for more later) there will actually be slight deflation?
Just a thought.
The problem with the link seems to be that they put an extra quote in the href tag, like:
<A HREF=""http://itmanagaerworld..."> ... </a>
Apparently <A HREF=""> just points the link to the page it's on. I didn't know that until just now.
I think the strategy is to keep everyone so confused about the name they won't notice the products all do the exact same things this old one did, and just as badly.
You have to be able to boot from the CD though. Personally, I disable this by default to save ~1 sec at boot time, but I'm assuming that most library admins will have done this, or will shortly after the first person boots from a live CD (or else, why not just pop in a Win2K CD and do a fresh install of windows on that machine while your at it?)
Cure the sickness; don't treat the symptoms.
I agree with this, but I think we have to look elsewhere to find the 'sickness'. The really issue that has to be solved, at least for most businesses, is that breeches in security cost money. But security itself costs money, so you end up with a big risk analysis problem: is it cheaper to use easy to use software (windows, outlook, etc) to increase productivity, but risk security breeches, or use more secure, harder to use systems that will slow workers down?
The answer to this varies from business to business, but I guess my point is the holy grail of the security world is easy to use security mechanisms. I think that there have been some wins in this area already. SSL comes to mind. It's quite secure and quite transparent, people just have to know to look for the 'lock' in the corner of their browser and that gives some assurance they're 'safe'. Also, encryption using outlook is quite painless (although certificate management is a pain).
What's my point? I guess we have to stop thinking about what the most secure solution is and why aren't these dumb users using it, and start thinking creatively about how we can slip secure solutions in where they won't impact people, and they won't work around them.
Of course, this is easier said than done.
Kind of off topic, but I always liked the word cleave. Its two meanings are antonyms (or close to it). Basically cleave means to seperate, or join together.
In catacombs under Rome you can see 'X' carved into the walls, which was done by Christians who were persacuted by the Romans.
"So disappointing they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion."
Made me laugh.
This reminds me of a trick a father of a friend of mine used to pull: he'd go to the airport bookstore (on the outside of the metal detectors) and slip an aluminum foil cut-out shaped like a gun into some magazines.
That's harsh man. You don't have to tell it like it is.
I have a question about this: if you are going to circumvent the DRM any way, why not just use Kazaa or whatever and get the song for free?
I think iTunes is attractive because it's legit, but is there another reason you'd use it to get your 'illegal' music (using the term illegal loosely to indicate violating the terms of the Apple license)? Quality? Convenience? Just like giving Apple money?
I can't vouch for the veracity of this, but someone told me that initially porn was the driving force behind DVDs. The feature to view a single scene from multiple angles made for some interesting possibilities.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I don't see this as a security enhancement. The dialog informing the user that a plug-in is loading only says "Press OK to continue loading content on this page", with no cancel button. So unless the user kills their browser the plug-in still gets loaded.
And really, the true security threat is when the person initially installs the plug-in, but this only addresses running the plug-in, not the installation.
So unless I'm missing something, I don't see this as a security improvement...
Now, all that's needed is a hotkey to eject the CD and kill the machine in case Someone approaches...
How about a 'boss key' that brings up a screen print of window with a word doc open, and kills the sound?
let's stop with the juvenille, knee-jerk reactions
You must be new here.
All jokes aside, there have been several books written without the letter E:
Gadsby, A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E", Wetzel Publishing Co., Inc. 1939.
La Disparition, George Perec, 1969.
And I think there was another on published recently by a Canadian author, but I can't find a reference to it.