I've been on both sides of the pond. In some cases your SysAdmin is also the network guy, DBA, Network Security, and sometimes even a bit of a dev all in one role. In others all of the above and more can be separated.
[using the masculine for convenience's sake, but I have worked with some notable female sysadmins]
First point: Like most employee's, a SysAdmin's loyalty should not be to you, but to the company. A lot of people don't get that, and see IT as a roadblock, especially when it comes to security stuff. No, often he's not trying to be a dick by preventing you from doing connecting to your home VPN or setting up a wifi hotspot for your tablet - even if it would make your life a lot easier - he's trying to prevent a security issue.
Second point: Don't get mad at the IT guy for enforcing policy. For example, one person mentioned being tied to a particular vendor for hardware. That policy was likely set by somebody else, but there are reasons. There may be RFP issues for hardware, accounting issues, or they may have just had the common problem with dozens of departments going wild-west with hardware purchases ending up with a lot of incompatible crap.
Third point: Don't be a jerk with the above. If the problem is a policy, work on getting the policy changed, not circumventing it or venting at the IT guy enforcing it.
Last one: Don't burn out the nice guys. It's a tendency in any department to find the nice guy (most helpful, fastest service, whatever) and then bombard him with requests because he's mostly likely to grant them in a timely manner. That increases his stress, which may result in him not being a nice guy for very long.
First hint: This one is for the SysAdmins. Also don't be a jerk. The worse answer you can give is "No" with no qualifier. There are cases where that may be valid (where there's a perfectly well-known policy or somebody is making the same mistake for the 10th time), but a lot of the issues with SysAdmins don't come down to what they're doing, but how they're doing it. Be polite. Be patient. "Unplug your laptop right now!" is a not nearly so constructive as "we don't allow personal machines on our network/domain because of the risk of infection on our more-vulnerable internal network as we can't verify your antivirus or the integrity of your machine." Try suggesting alternatives "If you need to take work home, did you know that you can request a company laptop that's preconfigured with VPN access and proper security software?" (and try to get them a machine that works).
Second hint: Try and let somebody else be a hard-ass when it's their job to be so. I've got a generally good repore with my co-workers. I have had to deal with people doing dumb things such as sharing passwords for high-level accounts, attempting to install non-vetting software, etc. If somebody didn't listen to the reasons against doing so ("remember when Bob installed that software that infected the entire shared network drive with a trojan and screwed up everyone's work"), then rather than being vindictive and a jerk, I passed it up the chain to somebody whose job was to deal with such things, usually a manager. Managers are actually pretty good when it comes to dealing with people who are jeopardizing the company (unless they're the ones doing so).
Third hint: Don't be seen taking personal liberties. Yeah, you're the IT guy, you know your shit. You (hopefully) know how to secure your wifi access point and your computer. It doesn't mean you should be doing all the stuff that you tell other people not to do. More especially, you shouldn't be *seen* doing stuff that you tell other people not to do. Sometimes the biggest security risk is the guy arrogant guy with the keys to the castle and a superiority complex.
Last one: For Sysadmins and non-sysadmins. Show appreciation. If a Sysadmin is helpful, let him know you appreciate it. If a client/user is pleasant to deal with, you should let it be known every so often. A little sincere appreciation goes a long way.
Is there any network connection between the two boxes you use? If so, have you considered trying RDP (mstsc, etc) from one to the other? Add a second monitor to the good machine if that help. It's what I do to run dual OS's without having to use multiple keyboards/mice, and you can't really even tell that my second monitor is actually running stuff on another machine.
Whoever it is that makes those awful "Black Friday in April", "May Black Friday" etc etc ads. I don't mind being notified about stuff on sale, but there is only one Black Friday, it's a specific event, and all the other idiotic ads just insult the intelligence of anyone who receives the emails (that, and the sales tend to suck).
One question I've always had (which may be answerable as there seem a number of TG/TS persons on slashdot) is, how does one form relationships after changing gender? I could definitely see some perils to announcing one's status while looking (attracting those ranging from creepy to curious) but I'd imagine that meeting somebody and not revealing it until later would not go over well in many situations either. Dating as a straight born-male is hard enough, and from discussions with friends it's harder in many ways to meet people if you're not straight. How does one find a relationship if you've changed visual gender (especially in smaller cities)?
I guess I just assumed that nobody would be stupid enough to leave a browser in that state. But then again one would also hope that nobody would be twisted enough to look at that material in the first place...
I don't disagree in that Comcast benefits more, just that there's no benefit.
Your personal benefit may vary greatly depending on - for example - how good of a cellular data plan you have. If it allows you to move to mostly wifi instead of cellular data, that might actually work out well. The big issue I see with that is that security would probably require you authenticate to individual AP's, where's convenience would have them appear as one and invite potential spoofing.
From a customer standpoint, the best way would be to make it opt-in for those that want to use the mesh network. If you don't run an AP, you don't get free mesh access.
I suppose what you *do* get is unlimited use of other people's wifi.
In some ways it's like companies that supply patches via torrent, etc. Yes, you use up your own bandwidth to supply others', but you also get better/faster service.
5 GHz is not a panacea; it's astonishingly poor at penetrating walls
That's not always a bad thing. Maybe your 5Ghz AP isn't very good through a bunch of walls in your house, but in theory it also means that your house is less likely to be swamped with your neighbours' wifi signals. You may get less signal from your own hardware, but still have the bonus of not competing with other people's hardware.
That said, I haven't had any major penetration issues with 5Ghz in my place. I do have an AP on either side of the house (one upstairs one downstairs) but even with a single it was fine for internet browsing, or at least until my wife swamps the connection with streaming etc:-)
Physically yes, emotionally less so. Part of the big issue with Superman is that - while he's physically near perfect - this means he won't fit in with normal society. As you said, the conflict is a moral one, which could be pulled off fairly well.
He's too strong for the government to trust, and even in some ways too strong for himself. The early part of the movie actually outlined that pretty well. Imagine having to suffer being bullied because fighting back would likely mean killing somebody. Imagine having to hide who you were because people would be afraid of you. It's not that you're too weak, it's that your strength is perceived as weakness because you always have to hold it back. It holds much in common with other Super-hero groups (say X-men, who are feared by non-mutants for what they *could* do), but is even more-so.
That's also what makes the latter part of the movie so lacking. It's all physical conflict. Yes, it's with somebody who is about on-par with Superman, but that just meant a lot of punching and crashing through CG buildings. It's boring. A better conclusion would be if some of the moral and intellectual lessons learned in youth had helped Clark come out ahead.
Well, it used to be that when you bought a console VS gaming PC, you didn't have to worry about some things like compatability issues, drivers, viruses/spyware, etc.
Now we've got console games that essentially need 0-day patches to fix poorly-tested games, need to download software updates for licensing (playing BD discs, etc), need software updates to stay online and play with friends, need an internet connection just to play single player, and come with the spyware BUILT IN.
Congratulations vendors, you've taken away anything that make it worth having a console.
I doubt that any sane person would have their browser start up with such things (even it they were into it). With that in mind, I would wonder how that happened.
Either a virus/hijack or something as simple as some site changing the start page would be my guess, but would be scary as heck for a normal person. I could see some sick-minded people jacking other people's PC for lulz with such stuff, or just to taint the pool a bit. At the various least it warrants DBAN and a full reinstall, but in many cases it might be safest just to scrap the drive.
At least it was visible. Worse would be if they were using hidden iframes or something like that to cause cache-tainting...
Thankfully I've not run into anything like that on a personal machine. I did once work on a win2k box where an idiot contractor preferred to turn on anon FTP rather than creating himself an account, and left it on over the weekend. I never looked at the actual content stored on the box, but the filenames were repulsive enough that it got new drives and the old ones got the drill.
I've heard: Aboriginal First Nation Native Indian etc
It seems like a bit of a mess, actually, since various laws seem to use difference names depending on the era in which they were created (e.g. the "Indian Act"), and people from different generations tend to be stuck on a given word. When I was young it was "Native," but First Nations appears to be the currently correct term.
A lot of small crime often leads to big crime. Get a warrant to search the grounds of somebody who's stolen an iPhone... and often find a bunch of other stolen stuff, or drugs, or whatever.
Some of the comments do actually provoke thought though: Why did he go to China?"
Because that is about the only country the Yanks fear and therefore wouldn't dare to tread on with drone strikes, SEALs infiltration teams, CIA assassins, etc.
This is actually an interesting thought. Where *would* you go if you had plans that would piss off one of the most far-reaching governments in the world? The Assange case has shown that it may be very hard to fine a "democratic" country that wouldn't be willing to ship your ass back to the USA.
The big problem with this is: reproduction. If people essentially don't have to work, but can still enjoy most of the fruits of life, then you're likely going to have a lot of people somewhere on the totem pole making babies. Even if robots can do the work, there's still a limit in resources (including food), etc, so you end up with situations where: a) Resources become too expensive for the middle/lower castes, who may not even be able to work to pay for them b) Resources become scarse for everyone. Tied with (b) this would lead to riots, etc c) Likely from (b)... war
We're far from parity of output, input, and ecology. Too many people and we get more pollution + less food.
The only real way to expand a "robots do the work" society would be to get off the rock we're currently living on. In that event, you're going to end up with a new (well, new again) class of workers: colonists.
Not at the college level, but I've heard from similar things at the High School level where they're expected to work for experience rather than pay.
IIRC, the local ski-hill often utilized unpaid high-school students in the capacity, but at least they often get free lift passes out of it. Other businesses offered little to nothing. It may be different now, but back in the day you were expected to be unpaid.
I should bomb something...and it's off the cuff remarks like that that are the reason I don't log chats
Just in case the FBI ever needs anything on me
I'm sure they can just get it from someone who DOES log chats. *** FBI has joined #gamecubecafe
We saw it anyway. *** FBI has quit IRC (Quit: )
Marked as funny, but actually no, it doesn't really.
I've dealt with co-workers who had hygiene issues. It wasn't a matter of deodorant, it was a matter of taking a freaking shower. Deodorant means that stinky co-worker comes to the office and then fills the area with the smell of BO and musky/minty/etc deodorant. Either the deodorant has to be so strong it overpowers the BO, making it an irritation in its own right, or it'll just mingle.
The solution was for said co-worker to either shower in the morning before work, or at least at night before bed after working in the shop and/or yard (and in the case of at least one, I know this wasn't happening).
If my wallet is stolen, I lose under a hundred bucks, and some plastic which I'll have to re-order. I'll also have to go through some annoyance in getting my driver's license re-issued (I think about $15) and various health/rewards cards, so let's say maybe a few hundred bucks of hassle. The thief may get a few twenties in cash, and if he's lucky get away with using the stolen plastic before it's cancelled without getting caught.
Your average current-gen smartphone runs around $550-750+
Not only does it cost you more, but the incentive to steal it for easy money is greater.
Compromises that exploit particular broken implementations of a cryptosystem are by far the most common kind of vulnerability
If you're talking about cryptographic vulnerabilities, sure. It could also be a physical issue common to those types of vehicles. Perhaps those vehicles have a poorly-shielded long-running cable that's easy to either induce noise and trigger the door opener, or produces noise and is easy to sniff data out of.
Also, consider things like smaller form factor cases, or even laptops. In many cases where space in a concern, a decent mobile APU is better than a CPU+GPU.
In other situations, well, good enough is good enough. I'm building a small luggable (basically suitcase-PC) for LAN parties, to replace a shuttle which I previously used to drag around. Some people show up with *huge* Antec cases and dual CPU,capable of playing [latest shooter] resolution at >1080P at superhigh detail, and then we end up playing Starcraft 2, DOTA, and Left 4 Dead 2, possible BF3... which worked just as well on an older dual/quad-core AMD with a cheap GPU. An upgrade to a APU would be more than enough for most of our needs.
Ditto. I have some old drives around that likely have various encrypted items. I'm not even keeping them for the data. Sometimes if I build a system that needs a lower-capacity drive they could be reformatted, and if not that then at least they've got some useful magnets in them that I can take out.
Yeah, I ran into this myself. It's one of the main reasons I'm still sticking with FOSS kits such as Ogre3d etc. Actually Ogre does pretty good graphics-wise, but lacks internals for things like advanced collision detection, precise ray-casting, physics etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been on both sides of the pond. In some cases your SysAdmin is also the network guy, DBA, Network Security, and sometimes even a bit of a dev all in one role. In others all of the above and more can be separated.
[using the masculine for convenience's sake, but I have worked with some notable female sysadmins]
First point: Like most employee's, a SysAdmin's loyalty should not be to you, but to the company. A lot of people don't get that, and see IT as a roadblock, especially when it comes to security stuff. No, often he's not trying to be a dick by preventing you from doing connecting to your home VPN or setting up a wifi hotspot for your tablet - even if it would make your life a lot easier - he's trying to prevent a security issue.
Second point: Don't get mad at the IT guy for enforcing policy. For example, one person mentioned being tied to a particular vendor for hardware. That policy was likely set by somebody else, but there are reasons. There may be RFP issues for hardware, accounting issues, or they may have just had the common problem with dozens of departments going wild-west with hardware purchases ending up with a lot of incompatible crap.
Third point: Don't be a jerk with the above. If the problem is a policy, work on getting the policy changed, not circumventing it or venting at the IT guy enforcing it.
Last one: Don't burn out the nice guys. It's a tendency in any department to find the nice guy (most helpful, fastest service, whatever) and then bombard him with requests because he's mostly likely to grant them in a timely manner. That increases his stress, which may result in him not being a nice guy for very long.
First hint: This one is for the SysAdmins. Also don't be a jerk. The worse answer you can give is "No" with no qualifier. There are cases where that may be valid (where there's a perfectly well-known policy or somebody is making the same mistake for the 10th time), but a lot of the issues with SysAdmins don't come down to what they're doing, but how they're doing it. Be polite. Be patient.
"Unplug your laptop right now!" is a not nearly so constructive as "we don't allow personal machines on our network/domain because of the risk of infection on our more-vulnerable internal network as we can't verify your antivirus or the integrity of your machine."
Try suggesting alternatives "If you need to take work home, did you know that you can request a company laptop that's preconfigured with VPN access and proper security software?" (and try to get them a machine that works).
Second hint: Try and let somebody else be a hard-ass when it's their job to be so. I've got a generally good repore with my co-workers. I have had to deal with people doing dumb things such as sharing passwords for high-level accounts, attempting to install non-vetting software, etc. If somebody didn't listen to the reasons against doing so ("remember when Bob installed that software that infected the entire shared network drive with a trojan and screwed up everyone's work"), then rather than being vindictive and a jerk, I passed it up the chain to somebody whose job was to deal with such things, usually a manager. Managers are actually pretty good when it comes to dealing with people who are jeopardizing the company (unless they're the ones doing so).
Third hint: Don't be seen taking personal liberties. Yeah, you're the IT guy, you know your shit. You (hopefully) know how to secure your wifi access point and your computer. It doesn't mean you should be doing all the stuff that you tell other people not to do. More especially, you shouldn't be *seen* doing stuff that you tell other people not to do. Sometimes the biggest security risk is the guy arrogant guy with the keys to the castle and a superiority complex.
Last one: For Sysadmins and non-sysadmins. Show appreciation. If a Sysadmin is helpful, let him know you appreciate it. If a client/user is pleasant to deal with, you should let it be known every so often. A little sincere appreciation goes a long way.
Is there any network connection between the two boxes you use?
If so, have you considered trying RDP (mstsc, etc) from one to the other? Add a second monitor to the good machine if that help. It's what I do to run dual OS's without having to use multiple keyboards/mice, and you can't really even tell that my second monitor is actually running stuff on another machine.
Whoever it is that makes those awful "Black Friday in April", "May Black Friday" etc etc ads.
I don't mind being notified about stuff on sale, but there is only one Black Friday, it's a specific event, and all the other idiotic ads just insult the intelligence of anyone who receives the emails (that, and the sales tend to suck).
One question I've always had (which may be answerable as there seem a number of TG/TS persons on slashdot) is, how does one form relationships after changing gender? I could definitely see some perils to announcing one's status while looking (attracting those ranging from creepy to curious) but I'd imagine that meeting somebody and not revealing it until later would not go over well in many situations either.
Dating as a straight born-male is hard enough, and from discussions with friends it's harder in many ways to meet people if you're not straight. How does one find a relationship if you've changed visual gender (especially in smaller cities)?
I guess I just assumed that nobody would be stupid enough to leave a browser in that state.
But then again one would also hope that nobody would be twisted enough to look at that material in the first place...
I don't disagree in that Comcast benefits more, just that there's no benefit.
Your personal benefit may vary greatly depending on - for example - how good of a cellular data plan you have. If it allows you to move to mostly wifi instead of cellular data, that might actually work out well. The big issue I see with that is that security would probably require you authenticate to individual AP's, where's convenience would have them appear as one and invite potential spoofing.
From a customer standpoint, the best way would be to make it opt-in for those that want to use the mesh network. If you don't run an AP, you don't get free mesh access.
I suppose what you *do* get is unlimited use of other people's wifi.
In some ways it's like companies that supply patches via torrent, etc. Yes, you use up your own bandwidth to supply others', but you also get better/faster service.
5 GHz is not a panacea; it's astonishingly poor at penetrating walls
That's not always a bad thing. Maybe your 5Ghz AP isn't very good through a bunch of walls in your house, but in theory it also means that your house is less likely to be swamped with your neighbours' wifi signals. You may get less signal from your own hardware, but still have the bonus of not competing with other people's hardware.
That said, I haven't had any major penetration issues with 5Ghz in my place. I do have an AP on either side of the house (one upstairs one downstairs) but even with a single it was fine for internet browsing, or at least until my wife swamps the connection with streaming etc :-)
I mean seriously, he's supposed to be perfect
Physically yes, emotionally less so. Part of the big issue with Superman is that - while he's physically near perfect - this means he won't fit in with normal society. As you said, the conflict is a moral one, which could be pulled off fairly well.
He's too strong for the government to trust, and even in some ways too strong for himself.
The early part of the movie actually outlined that pretty well. Imagine having to suffer being bullied because fighting back would likely mean killing somebody. Imagine having to hide who you were because people would be afraid of you.
It's not that you're too weak, it's that your strength is perceived as weakness because you always have to hold it back. It holds much in common with other Super-hero groups (say X-men, who are feared by non-mutants for what they *could* do), but is even more-so.
That's also what makes the latter part of the movie so lacking. It's all physical conflict. Yes, it's with somebody who is about on-par with Superman, but that just meant a lot of punching and crashing through CG buildings. It's boring. A better conclusion would be if some of the moral and intellectual lessons learned in youth had helped Clark come out ahead.
Well, it used to be that when you bought a console VS gaming PC, you didn't have to worry about some things like compatability issues, drivers, viruses/spyware, etc.
Now we've got console games that essentially need 0-day patches to fix poorly-tested games, need to download software updates for licensing (playing BD discs, etc), need software updates to stay online and play with friends, need an internet connection just to play single player, and come with the spyware BUILT IN.
Congratulations vendors, you've taken away anything that make it worth having a console.
Indeed. I assumed that Google already filtered such things to some extent, but mostly that they weren't blatantly out there in the open.
I've seen some pretty twisted/weird stuff come up when Safe-Search was off, but thankfully not CP.
I doubt that any sane person would have their browser start up with such things (even it they were into it). With that in mind, I would wonder how that happened.
Either a virus/hijack or something as simple as some site changing the start page would be my guess, but would be scary as heck for a normal person. I could see some sick-minded people jacking other people's PC for lulz with such stuff, or just to taint the pool a bit. At the various least it warrants DBAN and a full reinstall, but in many cases it might be safest just to scrap the drive.
At least it was visible. Worse would be if they were using hidden iframes or something like that to cause cache-tainting...
Thankfully I've not run into anything like that on a personal machine. I did once work on a win2k box where an idiot contractor preferred to turn on anon FTP rather than creating himself an account, and left it on over the weekend. I never looked at the actual content stored on the box, but the filenames were repulsive enough that it got new drives and the old ones got the drill.
I've heard:
Aboriginal
First Nation
Native
Indian
etc
It seems like a bit of a mess, actually, since various laws seem to use difference names depending on the era in which they were created (e.g. the "Indian Act"), and people from different generations tend to be stuck on a given word. When I was young it was "Native," but First Nations appears to be the currently correct term.
A lot of small crime often leads to big crime.
Get a warrant to search the grounds of somebody who's stolen an iPhone... and often find a bunch of other stolen stuff, or drugs, or whatever.
Some of the comments do actually provoke thought though:
Why did he go to China?"
Because that is about the only country the Yanks fear and therefore wouldn't dare to tread on with drone strikes, SEALs infiltration teams, CIA assassins, etc.
This is actually an interesting thought. Where *would* you go if you had plans that would piss off one of the most far-reaching governments in the world? The Assange case has shown that it may be very hard to fine a "democratic" country that wouldn't be willing to ship your ass back to the USA.
The big problem with this is: reproduction.
If people essentially don't have to work, but can still enjoy most of the fruits of life, then you're likely going to have a lot of people somewhere on the totem pole making babies. Even if robots can do the work, there's still a limit in resources (including food), etc, so you end up with situations where:
a) Resources become too expensive for the middle/lower castes, who may not even be able to work to pay for them
b) Resources become scarse for everyone. Tied with (b) this would lead to riots, etc
c) Likely from (b)... war
We're far from parity of output, input, and ecology. Too many people and we get more pollution + less food.
The only real way to expand a "robots do the work" society would be to get off the rock we're currently living on. In that event, you're going to end up with a new (well, new again) class of workers: colonists.
What was so bad about Salvation?
The whole discussion with skynet via glassy viewscreen was a bit lame, but most of the movie was decent.
Not at the college level, but I've heard from similar things at the High School level where they're expected to work for experience rather than pay.
IIRC, the local ski-hill often utilized unpaid high-school students in the capacity, but at least they often get free lift passes out of it. Other businesses offered little to nothing. It may be different now, but back in the day you were expected to be unpaid.
I think this is currently a similar program.
Also see here
It reminds me of this post from bash.org
I should bomb something ...and it's off the cuff remarks like that that are the reason I don't log chats
Just in case the FBI ever needs anything on me
I'm sure they can just get it from someone who DOES log chats.
*** FBI has joined #gamecubecafe
We saw it anyway.
*** FBI has quit IRC (Quit: )
Marked as funny, but actually no, it doesn't really.
I've dealt with co-workers who had hygiene issues. It wasn't a matter of deodorant, it was a matter of taking a freaking shower. Deodorant means that stinky co-worker comes to the office and then fills the area with the smell of BO and musky/minty/etc deodorant. Either the deodorant has to be so strong it overpowers the BO, making it an irritation in its own right, or it'll just mingle.
The solution was for said co-worker to either shower in the morning before work, or at least at night before bed after working in the shop and/or yard (and in the case of at least one, I know this wasn't happening).
If my wallet is stolen, I lose under a hundred bucks, and some plastic which I'll have to re-order.
I'll also have to go through some annoyance in getting my driver's license re-issued (I think about $15) and various health/rewards cards, so let's say maybe a few hundred bucks of hassle. The thief may get a few twenties in cash, and if he's lucky get away with using the stolen plastic before it's cancelled without getting caught.
Your average current-gen smartphone runs around $550-750+
Not only does it cost you more, but the incentive to steal it for easy money is greater.
Compromises that exploit particular broken implementations of a cryptosystem are by far the most common kind of vulnerability
If you're talking about cryptographic vulnerabilities, sure. It could also be a physical issue common to those types of vehicles. Perhaps those vehicles have a poorly-shielded long-running cable that's easy to either induce noise and trigger the door opener, or produces noise and is easy to sniff data out of.
Also, consider things like smaller form factor cases, or even laptops. In many cases where space in a concern, a decent mobile APU is better than a CPU+GPU.
In other situations, well, good enough is good enough. I'm building a small luggable (basically suitcase-PC) for LAN parties, to replace a shuttle which I previously used to drag around.
Some people show up with *huge* Antec cases and dual CPU,capable of playing [latest shooter] resolution at >1080P at superhigh detail, and then we end up playing Starcraft 2, DOTA, and Left 4 Dead 2, possible BF3... which worked just as well on an older dual/quad-core AMD with a cheap GPU.
An upgrade to a APU would be more than enough for most of our needs.
Ditto. I have some old drives around that likely have various encrypted items. I'm not even keeping them for the data. Sometimes if I build a system that needs a lower-capacity drive they could be reformatted, and if not that then at least they've got some useful magnets in them that I can take out.
Yeah, I ran into this myself. It's one of the main reasons I'm still sticking with FOSS kits such as Ogre3d etc. Actually Ogre does pretty good graphics-wise, but lacks internals for things like advanced collision detection, precise ray-casting, physics etc.