You didn't actually read my message, did you. I'm not disputing any of your points: I considered all of that when setting up my mail system but my own needs aren't that critical. What we are discussing in this thread is whether or not it's wise to leave one's personal communications permanently on a system such as GMail, where they would be subject to any security breaches or law-enforcement requests that come down the line. The intent of my system is to have my mail go from my own server directly to the receiving host. That's not always possible: it's why I fail back to the No-IP alternate-port service if the remote refuses the transmission... that doesn't happen very often, but it eliminates any concern about RBLs. However, in either case I bypass my ISP's server, so anyone poking around on that system will find nothing. I also found out that my ISPs mail service is unreliable, which was another good reason to go around it. In any event, I'm not concerned about someone sniffing packets, I just don't want a collection of my personal emails sitting on someone else's hard disk forever. I think that's a bad idea.
So what? How many CEOs figure they could just as easily step right in and teach the engineers how to get things done, and probably do it better, if they could just take the time from their ever so much more important duties? This even though they have no idea how a light bulb works?
There are thousands of CEOs who do don't do anything, or at least, don't do anything beneficial for the organizations they nominally lead. That's obvious enough to anyone, given the present state of corporate America. In fact, given how fundamentally self-serving and dishonest (not to mention incompetent) many of these individuals are, I suspect that a decent engineer could step in and take over, with perhaps a modicum of management training. That's not to say he'd do a good job, no sir... but he probably couldn't do much worse.
I don't know who you're talking to, but everyone I know that has recently purchased a new machine with Vista pre-installed has had issues. For example, one individual who just bought a new Dell laptop with Vista on it found that after the last round of updates Internet Explorer refuses to run. Period. And that's the least of the complaints I've heard.
But, regardless. This all comes down to people expecting Microsoft (of all companies) to get something right the first time around. Microsoft never has, and never will. It's expected that you have to wait until at least the first Service Pack (or whatever they're called now) before you buy into the latest greatest from Microsoft. Consequently, the big issue here is not that Vista has problems (of course it does) but that Microsoft tried to shove it down our throats by obsolescing Windows XP before Vista had become sufficiently mature to replace it.
I mean, when Windows XP was released yes, it had issues, but at least I could use my Windows 2000 hardware drivers with it, so I didn't need to buy new peripherals. I could use my existing computer system (actually, as I remember I did add some more RAM.)
I figure in about one to two years, Vista will be an operating system worth taking a look at, but I want Microsoft to work out the major bugs first, and I'll wait until the hardware companies update all their drivers. I'm not in a hurry.
This has little if anything to do with the RIAA: they're just a just the enforcement arm of the big studios, and they will do what they're told. The question is whether the studios will release their music in an unencumbered format: they might, if that involves getting a cut of hardware profits. Personally, I think that would be a bad precedent, since it would give them even more influence over hardware design and implementation (look how well that worked for Sony's product line.) This could be a ploy to do just that: get the hardware guys under their collective thumbs and the studios can get heavy-handed again. In any event, they are not to be trusted.
Maybe, but he's right about why crackers do what they do. Believe me, it's not because they need to use the software they crack, no sir. It's because they get considerable positive reinforcement out of the process of cracking a protection system. It is a true battle of wits.
Way way back in my Apple ][ days (1978-1981, thereabouts) I cracked a lot of stuff. There were a few standard protection schemes around... I automated the cracks for those. But the only programs that interested me were the ones that had tough DRM (although that term hadn't been invented yet.) Removing the protection was, in fact, the object of the game so far as I was concerned. I didn't distribute what I cracked (well, not very much) since I wasn't trying to make any kind of "statement" and had no desire to stick it to anyone. However, the truth is that the entertainment factor was in figuring out the obstacles some other programmer had placed before me. Winning meant that I could make an unprotected copy and play it, and there was an immense sense of satisfaction in achieving that. Matter of fact, when I successfully finished cracking a game, generally the game itself was nowhere as much fun. I learned a lot of assembler tricks in the process too. I did crack some early IBM PC software after I got into that environment, but at that point in my life I had better things to do with my time.
There was a well-known Apple users group at the time, the Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange. I never had much to do with them, but I also recall an early cracker group with a similar moniker. I had tears of laughter in my eyes the first time I booted up some game and the first screen said, "Cracked by Jay of A.P.P.L.E. (the Apple Pirated Program Library Exchange)".
Oh, I agree. Let's face it, the bulk of Internet users couldn't configure themselves out of the bathroom, and that's probably okay: most people will never have a privacy problem because their "confidential communications" are of no interest to anyone but themselves. Those of us that do wish to maintain our privacy should take the proper steps. It's all matter of what risks you're comfortable taking. I have a GMail account because it's an interesting application, but I don't use it for anything consequential.
More to the point, nothing is secure from government snooping if they're really out to get you... but that's no reason to make it easy for them. I mean, why help make your typical government fishing expedition fruitful? And let's not forget non-governmental privacy risks: just ask the good folks at Media Defender how they are feeling about GMail right about now.
Storing all your confidential materials on a remote server that is not physically under your control is just asking for trouble. It is a risk I choose not to take. Unfortunately, I think you're right: the perceived risk of commercial providers (which has absolutely nothing to do with the real risk, whatever that might be) isn't very high.
Check out No-IP anyway. Their services aren't free, but they're inexpensive, and in the past four or five years I've used them they've been rock-solid. They might have a solution to your incoming Port 25 problem.
Well, I do run my own server and there are many ways to get around a port 25 block. At the moment, I use No-IP's alternate-port mail service for SMTP. The server tries to send the message directly to the destination server if it can, but since many ISPs won't accept mail from a non-static IP, if that fails it falls back and sends the message out through No-IP's server on a different port. Works extremely well, and I haven't had an outgoing message go through my ISP's mail server in years.
For incoming mail, my domain hosting company points their MX records directly at my server, using a dynamic DNS lookup in case my IP address changes, so the sending host just sends the mail directly to my machine. Never passes through anyone else's mail system that way. No I'm not very trusting.
A distributed mail system would be very interesting, wouldn't it? I mean, given what's been shown to be possible with the Gnutella protocol and the distributed hash table techniques in modern Bit Torrent clients, a truly distributed email system could be very effective. More to the point, it would be very much in line with the way the IP network was supposed to be used, for reliable command and control. Anything centralized is a point of failure, from either the reliability or security perspectives.
Interestingly, if you look back at the predictions made over the past hundred years, in most cases they dramatically underestimate the pace of progress (that's what happens when you apply a linear projection to what has become an exponential process.) Last I heard, human knowledge is doubling (or was it quadrupling?) every eight years (and that was several years ago.) That being the case, projecting forward to any point on the curve of technological and scientific progress is a hopeless task.
AI is no exception, however as so many hyperbolic, downright bombastic claims were made at the inception of the field those still in it are having a hard time explaining their lack of results. Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? HAL (a true, self-aware artificial intelligence) was supposedly brought online in 1999 or thereabouts. Arthur C. Clarke was later asked about that and admitted that he was way off on his estimate. However, he pointed out that he based it upon the predictions of the leaders in the field at the time.
I'm sure they already have. Probably more than one.... the things aren't that hard to acquire if you have the money. Hell, Russia has no idea how many warheads and tactical devices it's "lost" since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, you don't need something as expensive and risky as an atomic weapon to cause mass devastation. There are plenty of ways to cause the United States irreparable harm, if they really wanted to do so. I'd say a better question would be "why did they stop with 9/11?"
The answer is, they probably haven't. It obviously isn't scruples holding them back: they've shown that murdering vast numnbers of infidels (and believers too, for that matter) is part and parcel of their worldview. I wouldn't bet my life on a nuke being too evil even for them. These guys are patient, so my guess is they're waiting for the military might of the United States to fade away of its own accord (helped along by China and everyone else who doesn't like us, of course) so that we won't be able to retaliate. They're not going to have to wait much longer, at the rate things are going. I just heard on the news that we're down to 1950's levels of manufacturing and production. If that's true, we're in deep trouble.
The other civilized nations should be making plans for defending themselves once the economic collapse of the United States is complete. Put it this way, the people of this planet haven't advanced anywhere near as much culturally as they have technologically (and at that, most of us are still living in comparative squalor.) There are still plenty of would-be dictators and totalitarian empire builders out there, most of whom have been held in check for fear of reprisal from the United States and its allies. And that threat was backed by the industrial engine of the United States. Well, we've turned off that engine and sold it for scrap.
How we're going to maintain anything resembling our current level of military strength while depending upon foreign imports to supply said military is beyond me.
I suspect that most of the Founders would be thoroughly disgusted by what we've done to ourselves. On the other hand, they knew this was coming: Jefferson himself pointed out that governments rarely improve with age.
No, what he's asking for is some accountability. Hell, maybe all this security theater is doing a great job keeping us safe... but the way the Feds are handling matters we'll never know. More to the point, if there were any notable successes (and I'm talking real terrorists, now) I would think they'd trot them out to help justify the billions they're spending and the civil liberties they're taking. But they're not, which indicates that a. they've accomplished nothing and wasted all that money or b. they just don't care what we think anymore, or c. all of the above.
I have a similar outlook, but I go for an even older product: Duke Nukem 3D, Atomic Edition. And Shadow Warrior. Jonof's Windows ports of those games are remarkable.
It's just a matter of what congressmen are willing to be vilified in the eyes of the public, in order to get it done.
The public will see a sound-bite on the five o'clock news, frown and say to themselves "those fuckers!", and forget all about it ten minutes later. In any event, it's more a matter of which Congressmen work out the best deal for substantial cash and political favors from the old-line telcos.
Those bastards don't want VoIP unless they're the ones providing it, and really not even then. Now, I have AT&T's CallVantage: it's really a nice service and so far works very well. But I have no illusions that this situation will last forever: at some point my ISP (which is not AT&T) will make damn sure that it doesn't work properly in order to "encourage" me to buy their own offering. Maybe they'll just tack an extra charge on my Internet bill for "unauthorized voice service" or some such. AT&T/SBC and all the rest of them will, of course, do exactly the same thing to their customers. As it happens, I don't want my ISP's VoIP serivce, it's significantly more expensive and comparatively drain-bamaged. For the time being we do have a choice, but it's plain for all to see that the corporate assholes running the show here in the United States would like nothing better than to take that away from us. Spare us all from the likes of Edward J. "Those are my pipes!" Whitacre. He and his kind are turning us into a third-world country at an accelerating pace. In today's world, a nation with third-rate communications will not be a superpower for long.
The Internet in this country is becoming incrementally more Balkanized with each passing year, and eventually we're going to find our "Internet" is nothing more than a bunch of Compuserve/AOL-style sandboxes circa 1983. Those sucked even then, and I sure don't want to go back to that.
As a result, all 151 WTO members are considering seeking compensation for the withdrawal equal to the size of the entire US land-based and online gaming market, estimated at nearly US$100 billion.
From the Bush Administration? Yeah. Good luck with that. Besides, I'm sure we can find better uses for the money.
The problem is the crisis mentality that's infected our corporate and governmental sectors. The network guys that do run a tight ship and don't have many problems have a hard time justifying a bigger budget because... they don't have many problems. Eventually, however, the network gets cracked, and now suddenly there's justification for more spending on security. Of course, by then it's way too late since the breach already occurred.
It's tough to make the bottom-dollar mentality spend money proactively. They just don't see a reason for it until after the disaster.
No, but only because doctors are an expensive item, not because we're so intrinsically civilized. Bureaucrats, on the other hand, for the most part are a dime a dozen. We can well spare a few.
But yeah, the punishment maybe shouldn't match the cost of the mistake... but it should fit the crime. Somehow a week's vacation doesn't seem like enough. The only way I can see it being reasonable is if he was in a situation where his bosses refused to allocate sufficient resources to get the job done. In that case, it's their heads that ought to be rolling and he's just being made the fall guy.
And you so absofuckinglutely missed the point it's almost hard to bother replying. You seem confused about the term "profit center" which has a very specific meaning in most businesses. I didn't say that advanced technology was useless or doesn't help industry: I've been an industrial software developer for damn near thirty of those years, so there's no reason to get testy. I suspect you're just being deliberately obtuse so's you can use the word "absofuckinglutely". Good for you. If you'd actually grasped what I was trying to say, you'd have understood that I was referring to the perspective of the suits running a company, not the utility of information technology in general.
Look, you run a company. How do you see the world? You see it in terms of money coming in... and money going out. Those guys on the production floor making product? Money coming in. That programmer cranking out code for the latest release of the company's premier software product? Money coming in. That's what the corporate executive sees as a "profit making center", and that's how I defined it.
Now, let's take a look at some other internal functions in any company:
Sales & Marketing? Not a profit center, but without it there'll be no profits, plus which suits understand those departments. They generally haven't a clue how design and production work.
Accounting? Not a profit center... but even a suit sees that as money well spent so he can see how much money he has accumulated. Besides, there are numerous laws which require compliance.
Customer support? Not a profit center. "Too bad our drain-bamaged customers can't handle all their own problems, we'd save a bundle. No, we're not going to upgrade the call center, matter of fact we're shipping it to India next month. Start training Habib here... he's replacing you."
Internal IT department? Not a profit center. "Too bad all those stupid people that work for us can't handle their own problems. We'd save a bundle. Also, you gotta watch those IT guys, always wanting to spend our money on the latest fancy computer toys."
So far as external threats are concerned... who cares? "What? You want me to authorize 250 grand for security upgrades to fend off potential threats? Forget it, I'd have to reduce our bonuses this year and that sure ain't gonna happen... here's fifty K and you're lucky to get that. Besides, I don't understand all this "black hat" "white hat" shit. What's a firewall, anyway? I think my car has one. My dog had worms once."
That's what I'm talking about. I'm sorry if you're an IT guy and took offense, but the facts are clear: IT and its very important offshoot, network security are simply not in the average PHBs top ten list of important areas to spend money. There are some corporations that get it, and make themselves into hard targets, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Part of the problem is that good security is more a matter of good people that it is good equipment.
Re:Technically right, but...
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Yes, but which one has the cooler graphics?
Re:I don't care how good it is
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I don't care... that's one of the funniest exchanges I've read in a while.
Security is a subset of IT, and IT as a whole is not a profit-center... it's an operating expense. Now, what is it that most execs try to do with operating expenses?
Slashdot Mirror
From the summary: taught kite fabric.
Must be some kind of memory fiber that returns to its original shape when the wind stops blowing.
You didn't actually read my message, did you. I'm not disputing any of your points: I considered all of that when setting up my mail system but my own needs aren't that critical. What we are discussing in this thread is whether or not it's wise to leave one's personal communications permanently on a system such as GMail, where they would be subject to any security breaches or law-enforcement requests that come down the line. The intent of my system is to have my mail go from my own server directly to the receiving host. That's not always possible: it's why I fail back to the No-IP alternate-port service if the remote refuses the transmission ... that doesn't happen very often, but it eliminates any concern about RBLs. However, in either case I bypass my ISP's server, so anyone poking around on that system will find nothing. I also found out that my ISPs mail service is unreliable, which was another good reason to go around it. In any event, I'm not concerned about someone sniffing packets, I just don't want a collection of my personal emails sitting on someone else's hard disk forever. I think that's a bad idea.
So what? How many CEOs figure they could just as easily step right in and teach the engineers how to get things done, and probably do it better, if they could just take the time from their ever so much more important duties? This even though they have no idea how a light bulb works?
... but he probably couldn't do much worse.
There are thousands of CEOs who do don't do anything, or at least, don't do anything beneficial for the organizations they nominally lead. That's obvious enough to anyone, given the present state of corporate America. In fact, given how fundamentally self-serving and dishonest (not to mention incompetent) many of these individuals are, I suspect that a decent engineer could step in and take over, with perhaps a modicum of management training. That's not to say he'd do a good job, no sir
I don't know who you're talking to, but everyone I know that has recently purchased a new machine with Vista pre-installed has had issues. For example, one individual who just bought a new Dell laptop with Vista on it found that after the last round of updates Internet Explorer refuses to run. Period. And that's the least of the complaints I've heard.
But, regardless. This all comes down to people expecting Microsoft (of all companies) to get something right the first time around. Microsoft never has, and never will. It's expected that you have to wait until at least the first Service Pack (or whatever they're called now) before you buy into the latest greatest from Microsoft. Consequently, the big issue here is not that Vista has problems (of course it does) but that Microsoft tried to shove it down our throats by obsolescing Windows XP before Vista had become sufficiently mature to replace it.
I mean, when Windows XP was released yes, it had issues, but at least I could use my Windows 2000 hardware drivers with it, so I didn't need to buy new peripherals. I could use my existing computer system (actually, as I remember I did add some more RAM.)
I figure in about one to two years, Vista will be an operating system worth taking a look at, but I want Microsoft to work out the major bugs first, and I'll wait until the hardware companies update all their drivers. I'm not in a hurry.
This has little if anything to do with the RIAA: they're just a just the enforcement arm of the big studios, and they will do what they're told. The question is whether the studios will release their music in an unencumbered format: they might, if that involves getting a cut of hardware profits. Personally, I think that would be a bad precedent, since it would give them even more influence over hardware design and implementation (look how well that worked for Sony's product line.) This could be a ploy to do just that: get the hardware guys under their collective thumbs and the studios can get heavy-handed again. In any event, they are not to be trusted.
Maybe, but he's right about why crackers do what they do. Believe me, it's not because they need to use the software they crack, no sir. It's because they get considerable positive reinforcement out of the process of cracking a protection system. It is a true battle of wits.
... I automated the cracks for those. But the only programs that interested me were the ones that had tough DRM (although that term hadn't been invented yet.) Removing the protection was, in fact, the object of the game so far as I was concerned. I didn't distribute what I cracked (well, not very much) since I wasn't trying to make any kind of "statement" and had no desire to stick it to anyone. However, the truth is that the entertainment factor was in figuring out the obstacles some other programmer had placed before me. Winning meant that I could make an unprotected copy and play it, and there was an immense sense of satisfaction in achieving that. Matter of fact, when I successfully finished cracking a game, generally the game itself was nowhere as much fun. I learned a lot of assembler tricks in the process too. I did crack some early IBM PC software after I got into that environment, but at that point in my life I had better things to do with my time.
Way way back in my Apple ][ days (1978-1981, thereabouts) I cracked a lot of stuff. There were a few standard protection schemes around
There was a well-known Apple users group at the time, the Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange. I never had much to do with them, but I also recall an early cracker group with a similar moniker. I had tears of laughter in my eyes the first time I booted up some game and the first screen said, "Cracked by Jay of A.P.P.L.E. (the Apple Pirated Program Library Exchange)".
I suppose you could use the systems for some non-critical voting purposes.
...
Sure, like your typical Homeowner's Association:
Item 1: Do you
A. think satellite dishes are inappropriate for our community
B. think satellite dishes are unacceptable in our community
They could sell tons of these used voting machines to associations, since it really doesn't matter which way you vote anyway.
Oh, I agree. Let's face it, the bulk of Internet users couldn't configure themselves out of the bathroom, and that's probably okay: most people will never have a privacy problem because their "confidential communications" are of no interest to anyone but themselves. Those of us that do wish to maintain our privacy should take the proper steps. It's all matter of what risks you're comfortable taking. I have a GMail account because it's an interesting application, but I don't use it for anything consequential.
... but that's no reason to make it easy for them. I mean, why help make your typical government fishing expedition fruitful? And let's not forget non-governmental privacy risks: just ask the good folks at Media Defender how they are feeling about GMail right about now.
More to the point, nothing is secure from government snooping if they're really out to get you
Storing all your confidential materials on a remote server that is not physically under your control is just asking for trouble. It is a risk I choose not to take. Unfortunately, I think you're right: the perceived risk of commercial providers (which has absolutely nothing to do with the real risk, whatever that might be) isn't very high.
Check out No-IP anyway. Their services aren't free, but they're inexpensive, and in the past four or five years I've used them they've been rock-solid. They might have a solution to your incoming Port 25 problem.
Well, I do run my own server and there are many ways to get around a port 25 block. At the moment, I use No-IP's alternate-port mail service for SMTP. The server tries to send the message directly to the destination server if it can, but since many ISPs won't accept mail from a non-static IP, if that fails it falls back and sends the message out through No-IP's server on a different port. Works extremely well, and I haven't had an outgoing message go through my ISP's mail server in years.
For incoming mail, my domain hosting company points their MX records directly at my server, using a dynamic DNS lookup in case my IP address changes, so the sending host just sends the mail directly to my machine. Never passes through anyone else's mail system that way. No I'm not very trusting.
A distributed mail system would be very interesting, wouldn't it? I mean, given what's been shown to be possible with the Gnutella protocol and the distributed hash table techniques in modern Bit Torrent clients, a truly distributed email system could be very effective. More to the point, it would be very much in line with the way the IP network was supposed to be used, for reliable command and control. Anything centralized is a point of failure, from either the reliability or security perspectives.
Interestingly, if you look back at the predictions made over the past hundred years, in most cases they dramatically underestimate the pace of progress (that's what happens when you apply a linear projection to what has become an exponential process.) Last I heard, human knowledge is doubling (or was it quadrupling?) every eight years (and that was several years ago.) That being the case, projecting forward to any point on the curve of technological and scientific progress is a hopeless task.
AI is no exception, however as so many hyperbolic, downright bombastic claims were made at the inception of the field those still in it are having a hard time explaining their lack of results. Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? HAL (a true, self-aware artificial intelligence) was supposedly brought online in 1999 or thereabouts. Arthur C. Clarke was later asked about that and admitted that he was way off on his estimate. However, he pointed out that he based it upon the predictions of the leaders in the field at the time.
However, once they acquire a nuclear device ...
... the things aren't that hard to acquire if you have the money. Hell, Russia has no idea how many warheads and tactical devices it's "lost" since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, you don't need something as expensive and risky as an atomic weapon to cause mass devastation. There are plenty of ways to cause the United States irreparable harm, if they really wanted to do so. I'd say a better question would be "why did they stop with 9/11?"
I'm sure they already have. Probably more than one.
The answer is, they probably haven't. It obviously isn't scruples holding them back: they've shown that murdering vast numnbers of infidels (and believers too, for that matter) is part and parcel of their worldview. I wouldn't bet my life on a nuke being too evil even for them. These guys are patient, so my guess is they're waiting for the military might of the United States to fade away of its own accord (helped along by China and everyone else who doesn't like us, of course) so that we won't be able to retaliate. They're not going to have to wait much longer, at the rate things are going. I just heard on the news that we're down to 1950's levels of manufacturing and production. If that's true, we're in deep trouble.
The other civilized nations should be making plans for defending themselves once the economic collapse of the United States is complete. Put it this way, the people of this planet haven't advanced anywhere near as much culturally as they have technologically (and at that, most of us are still living in comparative squalor.) There are still plenty of would-be dictators and totalitarian empire builders out there, most of whom have been held in check for fear of reprisal from the United States and its allies. And that threat was backed by the industrial engine of the United States. Well, we've turned off that engine and sold it for scrap.
How we're going to maintain anything resembling our current level of military strength while depending upon foreign imports to supply said military is beyond me.
I suspect that most of the Founders would be thoroughly disgusted by what we've done to ourselves. On the other hand, they knew this was coming: Jefferson himself pointed out that governments rarely improve with age.
No, what he's asking for is some accountability. Hell, maybe all this security theater is doing a great job keeping us safe ... but the way the Feds are handling matters we'll never know. More to the point, if there were any notable successes (and I'm talking real terrorists, now) I would think they'd trot them out to help justify the billions they're spending and the civil liberties they're taking. But they're not, which indicates that a. they've accomplished nothing and wasted all that money or b. they just don't care what we think anymore, or c. all of the above.
I have a similar outlook, but I go for an even older product: Duke Nukem 3D, Atomic Edition. And Shadow Warrior. Jonof's Windows ports of those games are remarkable.
Not that I didn't put in my time on Quake too.
Yes, and we get upset about it too. And it's not just cars, either.
It's just a matter of what congressmen are willing to be vilified in the eyes of the public, in order to get it done.
The public will see a sound-bite on the five o'clock news, frown and say to themselves "those fuckers!", and forget all about it ten minutes later. In any event, it's more a matter of which Congressmen work out the best deal for substantial cash and political favors from the old-line telcos.
Those bastards don't want VoIP unless they're the ones providing it, and really not even then. Now, I have AT&T's CallVantage: it's really a nice service and so far works very well. But I have no illusions that this situation will last forever: at some point my ISP (which is not AT&T) will make damn sure that it doesn't work properly in order to "encourage" me to buy their own offering. Maybe they'll just tack an extra charge on my Internet bill for "unauthorized voice service" or some such. AT&T/SBC and all the rest of them will, of course, do exactly the same thing to their customers. As it happens, I don't want my ISP's VoIP serivce, it's significantly more expensive and comparatively drain-bamaged. For the time being we do have a choice, but it's plain for all to see that the corporate assholes running the show here in the United States would like nothing better than to take that away from us. Spare us all from the likes of Edward J. "Those are my pipes!" Whitacre. He and his kind are turning us into a third-world country at an accelerating pace. In today's world, a nation with third-rate communications will not be a superpower for long.
The Internet in this country is becoming incrementally more Balkanized with each passing year, and eventually we're going to find our "Internet" is nothing more than a bunch of Compuserve/AOL-style sandboxes circa 1983. Those sucked even then, and I sure don't want to go back to that.
It's pathetic.
Probably "Kennedy" would be a good choice ... it was on the list once, but now we know for sure it's off.
As a result, all 151 WTO members are considering seeking compensation for the withdrawal equal to the size of the entire US land-based and online gaming market, estimated at nearly US$100 billion.
From the Bush Administration? Yeah. Good luck with that. Besides, I'm sure we can find better uses for the money.
i agree with the budget increase..
... they don't have many problems. Eventually, however, the network gets cracked, and now suddenly there's justification for more spending on security. Of course, by then it's way too late since the breach already occurred.
The problem is the crisis mentality that's infected our corporate and governmental sectors. The network guys that do run a tight ship and don't have many problems have a hard time justifying a bigger budget because
It's tough to make the bottom-dollar mentality spend money proactively. They just don't see a reason for it until after the disaster.
No, but only because doctors are an expensive item, not because we're so intrinsically civilized. Bureaucrats, on the other hand, for the most part are a dime a dozen. We can well spare a few.
... but it should fit the crime. Somehow a week's vacation doesn't seem like enough. The only way I can see it being reasonable is if he was in a situation where his bosses refused to allocate sufficient resources to get the job done. In that case, it's their heads that ought to be rolling and he's just being made the fall guy.
But yeah, the punishment maybe shouldn't match the cost of the mistake
And you so absofuckinglutely missed the point it's almost hard to bother replying. You seem confused about the term "profit center" which has a very specific meaning in most businesses. I didn't say that advanced technology was useless or doesn't help industry: I've been an industrial software developer for damn near thirty of those years, so there's no reason to get testy. I suspect you're just being deliberately obtuse so's you can use the word "absofuckinglutely". Good for you. If you'd actually grasped what I was trying to say, you'd have understood that I was referring to the perspective of the suits running a company, not the utility of information technology in general.
... and money going out. Those guys on the production floor making product? Money coming in. That programmer cranking out code for the latest release of the company's premier software product? Money coming in. That's what the corporate executive sees as a "profit making center", and that's how I defined it.
... but even a suit sees that as money well spent so he can see how much money he has accumulated. Besides, there are numerous laws which require compliance.
... he's replacing you."
... who cares? "What? You want me to authorize 250 grand for security upgrades to fend off potential threats? Forget it, I'd have to reduce our bonuses this year and that sure ain't gonna happen ... here's fifty K and you're lucky to get that. Besides, I don't understand all this "black hat" "white hat" shit. What's a firewall, anyway? I think my car has one. My dog had worms once."
Look, you run a company. How do you see the world? You see it in terms of money coming in
Now, let's take a look at some other internal functions in any company:
Sales & Marketing? Not a profit center, but without it there'll be no profits, plus which suits understand those departments. They generally haven't a clue how design and production work.
Accounting? Not a profit center
Customer support? Not a profit center. "Too bad our drain-bamaged customers can't handle all their own problems, we'd save a bundle. No, we're not going to upgrade the call center, matter of fact we're shipping it to India next month. Start training Habib here
Internal IT department? Not a profit center. "Too bad all those stupid people that work for us can't handle their own problems. We'd save a bundle. Also, you gotta watch those IT guys, always wanting to spend our money on the latest fancy computer toys."
So far as external threats are concerned
That's what I'm talking about. I'm sorry if you're an IT guy and took offense, but the facts are clear: IT and its very important offshoot, network security are simply not in the average PHBs top ten list of important areas to spend money. There are some corporations that get it, and make themselves into hard targets, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Part of the problem is that good security is more a matter of good people that it is good equipment.
Yes, but which one has the cooler graphics?
I don't care ... that's one of the funniest exchanges I've read in a while.
Security is a subset of IT, and IT as a whole is not a profit-center ... it's an operating expense. Now, what is it that most execs try to do with operating expenses?
It would be like funding an invasion of a country then paying for the reconstruction of all the shit you just blew up~
..."
You forgot the "oh wait