Actually, I'm very politically active and know several congressmen on a first name basis. I spend many many hours volunteering for candidates I support. What sickens me is the little influence I have for all the work I do, since someone else will come in with a big checkbook and "influence" them in another direction.
So to respond to your silly comments, I am "part of the system" and I do see "how it really is" and that is what disgusts so much about it when a lobbyist claims otherwise and expects naive people to believe him.
"You don't walk in, hand over a check and change a vote. Doesn't happen."
<sarcasm>Yeah, there's no corruption in Washington. Politicians won't just do anything for "campaign contributions". They are the civil servants for their consitituents.</sarcasm>
If it's really so basic, as the reviewer says, and covers simple *nix topics, then what is the difference between this book and Unix for Dummies? I'm guessing the answer is nothing.
Look at the basic topics: File management; Making a decent password; Shells; Text editors; Using Writer and StarOffice; Internet, Web, and Mail access; and Essential system administration. Are any of these *really* solaris specific or different for any other *nix?
This thing is actually bad for the conscientious consumers. The author states in the article: "Of course the data produced by this approach is subjective and inaccurate at times". It's is subjective and inaccurate ALL the time. Informed consumers should know what not to buy and they should know WHY not to buy it. This "dumbing down" of informed consumption is not good for anyone for several reasons: 1. the data will be wrong. 2. the data will be hacked and good people will be blacklisted and bad people whitelisted. 3. lawsuits will occur.
This is not the first time DirectX has had security issues. Here's another issue from a year ago:
Overview:
Risk: High
Distribution: Low-Medium
Patch available from vendor: True
Systems Affected:
Systems having Microsoft DirectX Files Viewer xweb.ocx (2,0,16,15 and possibly older)
Impact:
A remote attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.
Description:
A buffer overflow exists in the "File" parameter of the Microsoft DirectX Files Viewer ActiveX control that may permit a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system with the privileges of the current user. This vulnerability affects users visited
ActiveX samples galery at activex.microsoft.com.
Since the control is signed by Microsoft, users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) who accept and install Microsoft-signed
ActiveX controls are also affected. This control was also available for direct download from the web, but can be uploaded on any
website.
The tag could be used to embed the ActiveX control in a web page. If an attacker can trick the user into visiting a
malicious site or the attacker sends the victim a web page as an HTML-formatted email message or newsgroup posting then this
vulnerability could be exploited. This acceptance and installation of the control can occur automatically within IE for users who
trust Microsoft-signed ActiveX controls. When the web page is rendered, either by opening the page or viewing the page through a
preview pane, the ActiveX control could be invoked. Likewise, if the ActiveX control is embedded in a Microsoft Office (Word, Excel,
etc.) document, it may be executed when the document is opened.
Vendor Information:
secure_at_microsoft.com was informed on 9.May.2002.
MSRC 1149cb ticket was opened and finaly resolved on 25.Jun.2002
Solution:
Apply a latest IE/OS patches available from Microsoft:
Setting kill bit expected to be included in latest IE Service pack.
Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP SP1 expected to solve this problem.
Links:
ActiveX control still available for retrieval from Global Internet "backup copy":
http://web.archive.org/web/20010410194632/http://a ctivex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/directx/xweb.htm
an article on "bundled" contributions
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 1
percent of donations over $750 is still hard money donations ($1000 limit per campaign - $2000 limit total (primary+general elections), btw this is now $2000 per campaign=$4000 total per person), not the soft money donations referring to by the afore-mentioned assertion. Those donations are now illegal, but were legal before. and it isn't rich people who are giving $1000, it's middle-class people, who are the bulk of the electorate. The rich people are dishing out $10's or $100's of thousands of dollars at a time to special issue committees, not following the limits for candidate donations (and not included in the reported numbers.)
Re:Dean for President
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 5, Informative
$220 million directly donated to presidential campaigns by individuals under the law (hard money, not soft money large donations from individuals)... $157 million to Republican candidates...... $63 million to Democratic candidates...... conclusion: your source is faulty.
Re:Dean for President
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
One thing you're neglecting is that President Bush's money also comes from a huge number of small donations. A lot of them are "bundled" into a lump sum by lobby groups and corporations, but they are comprised of individual donations. Republicans tend to have an advantage during most election cycles in terms of the sheer number of individual donors. The influence still lies with the groups, not the individuals. Does this equal democratization? Or does this equal a small number of groups forcing employees or members to pony up so as to not violate campaign finance laws? (and Democrat groups do the same thing, btw, especially unions. The most ironic thing about campaign finance reform being pushed by the Democrats is that they were hurt the most by it.)
what really needs to happen is to make spam an unprofitable business somehow...improving filters will just continue the battle between spammers and filter makers indefinitely...as long as they're making $$$ from the.00001% of people who actually click on the links and generate money, the battle will never end.
The colleges are only refusing to comply on technical grounds: "MIT and Boston College yesterday said that they support the rights of copyright holders and would comply with any subpoena that addressed their concerns about the proper notification of students and was filed ''properly'' in US District Court in Massachusetts, not in Washington D.C"
Who wants to bet that if the RIAA files in Mass, then the colleges will quickly bow to the pressure rather than facing any kind of actual court sanctioning? These colleges are being heroes to their students without it costing them anything. The minute it costs something, they'll pony up any student information to avoid paying fines.
CRTC directs incumbent telephone companies to offer high-speed
Internet services to competitors' residential telephone customers
OTTAWA-GATINEAU -- In a decision issued today, the Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) directs the incumbent
telephone companies to provide their retail high-speed Internet services to
residential customers of competitors upon request.
The incumbents--Bell Canada, Aliant Telecom, Sasktel and TELUS-- are to remove
the restriction in their rules that makes their high-speed Internet services
available only to their own residential customers.
Today's decision is about removing the obstacles to fair competition, said
Mr. Charles Dalfen, CRTC Chairman. Making the incumbents' high-speed Internet
services available to the competitors' subscribers will give customers more
choice when it comes to choosing local telephone service providers and should
enhance competition.
In this decision (Telecom Decision CRTC 2003-49,[]
Call-Net Enterprises Inc. - Request to lift restrictions on the provision of
digital subscriber line Internet services), the Commission has determined that by
refusing to provide retail high-speed Internet services to competitors'
customers, incumbent telephone companies are unjustly discriminating against
their competitors and giving themselves an undue preference. This practice
contravenes subsection 27(2) of the Telecommunications Act which prohibits
unjust discrimination and undue preference.
The decision requires the incumbent telephone companies to make their
high-speed Internet services, including Lite services, available to a
competitor's residential telephone customers, who are served by local loops
i.e. lines leased by the competitors from the incumbent telephone company.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is an
independent public authority that regulates and supervises broadcasting and
telecommunications in Canada.
From the review: "The really great thing about this PDA is the presence of both MC and CF card slots."
Considering how small my 8-in-1 reader is, I'm surprised they didn't just integrate in one of those and be able to read CompactFlash Type I (CF-I), CompactFlash Type II (CF-II), CompactFlash USB (CF-USB), CompactFlash Ultra (CF-Ultra), MultiMedia Card (MMC), Secure Digital Card (SD), Micro Drive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Switch, Magic Gate Memory Stick, and Magic Gate Memory Stick Duo memory cards.
Besides, this guy is easily impressed if all he cares about is being able to read data from a couple of different formats.
RIAA's Oppenheim: "How does this have anything to do with corporations? This has to do with artists and creators"
Yeah, Right... Last time I checked, the RIAA web site stated that it "is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry", not the artist community.
Today's keyboards aren't what they used to be, no sir! Back in my day, we had our BS technology; our keyboards had chassis's
which allowed 'em to be thrown off a 3-story building and still work - barely dented. Yes those were the days. Now we've
got these newfangled Wireless Ergonomic E-Mail button membrane
keyboards. To heck with them, I say!
This
article really entails two things: The history of the Universal
or QWERTY keyboard layout and a comparison between BS and
Membrane technology used today in keyboards, one of the most
used interfaces to the computer at present.
QWERTY
keyboards are known as Universal keyboards - they are the
standard by which keyboard manufacturers produce their keyboards
today. It was named this due to the q,w,e,r,t,y
pattern in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard. QWERTY
was originally designed by Christopher Sholes to slow typing
down.
Wait
a second why would we be using a keyboard layout made
to slow us down? Let's look back before keyboards - typewriting.
In 1868 Christopher Latham Sholes was awarded the operative
patent for the typewriter. After receiving this patent, Sholes
still had many 'bugs' to work out, and spent a good deal of
time with the machine, working out the kinks. One of the kinks
in the machine was key jamming, which was prone to happen
often and could hurt the machine. If a typist typed two letters
one after the other too quickly, the hammers would
hit each other; the typist then had to dislodge the hammers
and that could get a bit messy. So, Sholes came up with a
keyboard layout that would place letters which would be most
likely struck closely in succession on opposite sides of the
layout.
Eventually,
due to the ability to touch type with QWERTY efficiently [first
demonstrated when in a typing contest a QWERTY
typist managed to type quicker than someone on a stenograph-styled
machine] it became the standard.
In
1936, August Dvorak patented his Simplified Keyboard
- DSK. It was designed to balance the load of typing more
evenly - those letters, which would be stricken most, would
be under the strongest fingers. The credibility of the claims
that the Dvorak is faster is outside the scope of this article.
If one is truly interested, I recommend reading an informative
article at: http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html.
However I do believe that Dvorak perhaps is the better layout
- although due to my experience with QWERTY I still stick
with it. For those of you who think Dvorak is a legacy item
no longer used, you will all be pleased to know that all windows
versions greater than 3.11 are Dvorak compliant, and a simple
setting can change the layout setting.
On
to the Keyboards!
To
this day I still use the IBM Model M keyboard. This keyboard
was released with the original IBM PS/2 computer. It is known
for it's weight, feedback, and distinctive keystroke sound.
There are some Model M's which are branded by Lexmark on the
back - Lexmark bought the design from IBM in the late 1980s.
Model
M's are 101 key keyboards, and still comply with all ps/2
requirements [read on for Pentium 4 possible incompatibilities
and fixes.] What makes this keyboard so special?
The
first aspect that is most obvious upon actually typing is
the sound and feel of the keyboard. There is a noticeable
and quite prominent 'click' which is not as high pitched as
some Chiconey keyboards (which are quite nice too,) the sound
is not soft and mushy. The Model M's keys also
have a bit of resistance to them - not so that it's hard to
push them down, but just a tad bit more pressure is needed
to fully depress a key. Now, for those of you up late at night,
or up in the wee hours of the morning, perhaps this is a disadvantage
for you. Also, many people prefer not to hear the keystroke
- companies like Dell, IBM, and hundreds of others have manufactured
(or sub-contracted other companies) to make quiet keyboards.
Let's take a look at why these keyboards are quiet, and w
To avoid moronic passwords being captured over cleartext telnet or ftp sessions, I think telnet and ftp should be disabled across the world with very limited exceptions. All UNIX and Linux distros should have cleartext protocols disabled by default. Once one account is comprised, the rest of a system usually goes very easily. Regardless of adding Kerberos support in OpenSSH, any kind of ssh or sftp connection immediately improves the worldwide crackability situation. (and yes, I just made up the word crackability=ease of access for crackers)
...nuclear-powered space ships should have started launching 10 years ago. So, if Roddenberry's predications continue to be off by 10 years, we should have the eugenics wars soon.
Khan!!!!!!
Re:Or you can change it...
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 1
like I said: "you yourself don't start judging people based on age". Work within the system to get ahead, but don't reinforce negative behaviors by doing them yourself when you're in a position to do so.
Also, anti-discrimination laws do exist, but employers have a legitimate argument to say that more experienced people should be promoted/rewarded. Ideally, experience should be judged secondarily to skills, but in most companies, the opposite is true. More laws won't make any difference. We need a culture change across the corporate world and that's not likely to happen.
Most people get ahead through sticking around someplace for a long time. People who really want to advance stick around one place just long enough to get as far as they can through hard work and skills and then move on when they reach a ceiling when years of experience count more than they should.
consulting
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I've been in the consulting world since I was 22 (started working in IT when I turned 20). I'm now 27 and I find that age-ism is the worst form of discrimination, especially among consulting clients. Since I have a well-established beard, I usually pass for 35 and that seems to give my clients the impression that I'm better qualified than one of my peers, who is exactly at the same point in his career. All of my bosses during my consulting career have always told me never to tell my true age to the clients for fear of losing business. This is especially true since the dot-com bust when all of the "young dot-commers were shown to be the frauds they are." This deception sickens me, but I have truly seen a huge difference in terms of instant credibility and career progression when people think that I'm significantly older than I actually am. (I'm starting to get a few gray hairs, so most people now think I'm in my late 30's-early 40's. Also, I got married young and have 2 kids and this reinforces their beliefs.)
I guess the whole point of my commentary on my situation is that people do discriminate based on age and you can either play along and help yourself out (and sell out in the process) or show your true self to the detriment of your career (and possibly of your consulting company's, if you're in my shoes.) That may not be politically correct, but it's the way of the world. Also, I think that it's not as bad to play along with the game to your benefit, as long as you yourself don't start judging people based on age, picking up the habits of those around you.
The law has been on the books since 1996 and was supposed to take effect no later than 1999, but the FCC has deferred implementation repeatedly for years. However, the FCC has said repeatededly that they will not defer implementation again and I'm becoming more optimistic that number portability will actually become real in Nov. (Rather than renewing my contract with AT&T (for another free new phone) as I've done for 4 years just to keep the same number, I'm holding off till Nov or till I hear that the law is deferred again. If the FCC doesn't defer again, GOODBYE AT&T!!!!!)
Another important point is that the cell phone companies have been adding fees for a couple of years now with the excuse to the FCC being "upgrading their systems" to support portability. They can't have it both ways, asking us to pay fees to support portability and then not give us portability.
This article came out almost exactly a year ago and has an interesting quote regarding all the devices, including this one, that license MPEG4:
"The MPEG-4 compression has run into controversy regarding high licensing fees. So significant were the fees that Apple actually delayed the release of Quicktime 6 in protest. How this will all play out with users over time is not known yet, but unless this fee issue is addressed it may dampen adoption by users."
Also, the link above links to this article regarding the entire controversy. (It's kind of funny because the first article is dated before the second one, so obviously that article was modified to include the link after being first published without the date changing.)
I wonder if they've managed to knock down the price or if the license is a significant portion of the cost of the device?
Slashdot Mirror
Notice that the shape of the winning antenna is a pyramid? There are a lot of theories regarding electromagnetism and the pyramid shape, including a bunch on how the ancient egyptians figured out how to utilize these electromagnetic properties, which is (supposedly) why the pyramids were built that way.
If you want to get kooky, it can also point to the extra terrestrial origins of ancient egyptian civilization.
I love the name of the "Certified Public Accountant" who will judge the entried: Smakmyass
/. blurb.
People should have to dig for these easter eggs in the article instead of having them pointed out in the
Actually, I'm very politically active and know several congressmen on a first name basis. I spend many many hours volunteering for candidates I support. What sickens me is the little influence I have for all the work I do, since someone else will come in with a big checkbook and "influence" them in another direction.
So to respond to your silly comments, I am "part of the system" and I do see "how it really is" and that is what disgusts so much about it when a lobbyist claims otherwise and expects naive people to believe him.
"The whole point is that politics really isn't as corrupt as you think it is."
You're taking the word of a lobbyist, who is part of the system? Boy, I just don't know how to respond to this naivete...
"You don't walk in, hand over a check and change a vote. Doesn't happen."
<sarcasm>Yeah, there's no corruption in Washington. Politicians won't just do anything for "campaign contributions". They are the civil servants for their consitituents.</sarcasm>
If it's really so basic, as the reviewer says, and covers simple *nix topics, then what is the difference between this book and Unix for Dummies? I'm guessing the answer is nothing.
Look at the basic topics: File management; Making a decent password; Shells; Text editors; Using Writer and StarOffice; Internet, Web, and Mail access; and Essential system administration. Are any of these *really* solaris specific or different for any other *nix?
This thing is actually bad for the conscientious consumers. The author states in the article: "Of course the data produced by this approach is subjective and inaccurate at times". It's is subjective and inaccurate ALL the time. Informed consumers should know what not to buy and they should know WHY not to buy it. This "dumbing down" of informed consumption is not good for anyone for several reasons: 1. the data will be wrong. 2. the data will be hacked and good people will be blacklisted and bad people whitelisted. 3. lawsuits will occur.
just my $.02
This is not the first time DirectX has had security issues. Here's another issue from a year ago:
a ctivex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/directx/xweb .htm
Overview:
Risk: High
Distribution: Low-Medium
Patch available from vendor: True
Systems Affected:
Systems having Microsoft DirectX Files Viewer
xweb.ocx (2,0,16,15 and possibly older)
Impact:
A remote attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.
Description:
A buffer overflow exists in the "File" parameter of the Microsoft DirectX Files Viewer ActiveX control that may permit a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system with the privileges of the current user. This vulnerability affects users visited ActiveX samples galery at activex.microsoft.com. Since the control is signed by Microsoft, users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) who accept and install Microsoft-signed ActiveX controls are also affected. This control was also available for direct download from the web, but can be uploaded on any website.
The tag could be used to embed the ActiveX control in a web page. If an attacker can trick the user into visiting a malicious site or the attacker sends the victim a web page as an HTML-formatted email message or newsgroup posting then this vulnerability could be exploited. This acceptance and installation of the control can occur automatically within IE for users who trust Microsoft-signed ActiveX controls. When the web page is rendered, either by opening the page or viewing the page through a preview pane, the ActiveX control could be invoked. Likewise, if the ActiveX control is embedded in a Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.) document, it may be executed when the document is opened.
Vendor Information:
secure_at_microsoft.com was informed on
9.May.2002.
MSRC 1149cb ticket was opened and finaly resolved on 25.Jun.2002
Solution:
Apply a latest IE/OS patches available from Microsoft:
Setting kill bit expected to be included in latest IE Service pack.
Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP SP1 expected to solve this problem.
Links:
ActiveX control still available for retrieval from Global Internet "backup copy":
http://web.archive.org/web/20010410194632/http://
an article on "bundled" contributions
percent of donations over $750 is still hard money donations ($1000 limit per campaign - $2000 limit total (primary+general elections), btw this is now $2000 per campaign=$4000 total per person), not the soft money donations referring to by the afore-mentioned assertion. Those donations are now illegal, but were legal before. and it isn't rich people who are giving $1000, it's middle-class people, who are the bulk of the electorate. The rich people are dishing out $10's or $100's of thousands of dollars at a time to special issue committees, not following the limits for candidate donations (and not included in the reported numbers.)
from this site:
$220 million directly donated to presidential campaigns by individuals under the law (hard money, not soft money large donations from individuals)...
$157 million to Republican candidates......
$63 million to Democratic candidates......
conclusion: your source is faulty.
One thing you're neglecting is that President Bush's money also comes from a huge number of small donations. A lot of them are "bundled" into a lump sum by lobby groups and corporations, but they are comprised of individual donations. Republicans tend to have an advantage during most election cycles in terms of the sheer number of individual donors. The influence still lies with the groups, not the individuals. Does this equal democratization? Or does this equal a small number of groups forcing employees or members to pony up so as to not violate campaign finance laws? (and Democrat groups do the same thing, btw, especially unions. The most ironic thing about campaign finance reform being pushed by the Democrats is that they were hurt the most by it.)
what really needs to happen is to make spam an unprofitable business somehow...improving filters will just continue the battle between spammers and filter makers indefinitely...as long as they're making $$$ from the .00001% of people who actually click on the links and generate money, the battle will never end.
The colleges are only refusing to comply on technical grounds: "MIT and Boston College yesterday said that they support the rights of copyright holders and would comply with any subpoena that addressed their concerns about the proper notification of students and was filed ''properly'' in US District Court in Massachusetts, not in Washington D.C"
Who wants to bet that if the RIAA files in Mass, then the colleges will quickly bow to the pressure rather than facing any kind of actual court sanctioning? These colleges are being heroes to their students without it costing them anything. The minute it costs something, they'll pony up any student information to avoid paying fines.
OTTAWA-GATINEAU -- In a decision issued today, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) directs the incumbent telephone companies to provide their retail high-speed Internet services to residential customers of competitors upon request.
The incumbents--Bell Canada, Aliant Telecom, Sasktel and TELUS-- are to remove the restriction in their rules that makes their high-speed Internet services available only to their own residential customers.
Today's decision is about removing the obstacles to fair competition, said Mr. Charles Dalfen, CRTC Chairman. Making the incumbents' high-speed Internet services available to the competitors' subscribers will give customers more choice when it comes to choosing local telephone service providers and should enhance competition.
In this decision (Telecom Decision CRTC 2003-49,[] Call-Net Enterprises Inc. - Request to lift restrictions on the provision of digital subscriber line Internet services), the Commission has determined that by refusing to provide retail high-speed Internet services to competitors' customers, incumbent telephone companies are unjustly discriminating against their competitors and giving themselves an undue preference. This practice contravenes subsection 27(2) of the Telecommunications Act which prohibits unjust discrimination and undue preference.
The decision requires the incumbent telephone companies to make their high-speed Internet services, including Lite services, available to a competitor's residential telephone customers, who are served by local loops i.e. lines leased by the competitors from the incumbent telephone company.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is an independent public authority that regulates and supervises broadcasting and telecommunications in Canada.
Reference document: Telecom Decision CRTC 2003-49
From the review: "The really great thing about this PDA is the presence of both MC and CF card slots."
Considering how small my 8-in-1 reader is, I'm surprised they didn't just integrate in one of those and be able to read CompactFlash Type I (CF-I), CompactFlash Type II (CF-II), CompactFlash USB (CF-USB), CompactFlash Ultra (CF-Ultra), MultiMedia Card (MMC), Secure Digital Card (SD), Micro Drive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Switch, Magic Gate Memory Stick, and Magic Gate Memory Stick Duo memory cards.
Besides, this guy is easily impressed if all he cares about is being able to read data from a couple of different formats.
Funniest Quote:
RIAA's Oppenheim: "How does this have anything to do with corporations? This has to do with artists and creators"
Yeah, Right... Last time I checked, the RIAA web site stated that it "is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry", not the artist community.
Today's keyboards aren't what they used to be, no sir! Back in my day, we had our BS technology; our keyboards had chassis's which allowed 'em to be thrown off a 3-story building and still work - barely dented. Yes those were the days. Now we've got these newfangled Wireless Ergonomic E-Mail button membrane keyboards. To heck with them, I say!
This article really entails two things: The history of the Universal or QWERTY keyboard layout and a comparison between BS and Membrane technology used today in keyboards, one of the most used interfaces to the computer at present.
QWERTY keyboards are known as Universal keyboards - they are the standard by which keyboard manufacturers produce their keyboards today. It was named this due to the q,w,e,r,t,y pattern in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard. QWERTY was originally designed by Christopher Sholes to slow typing down.
Wait a second why would we be using a keyboard layout made to slow us down? Let's look back before keyboards - typewriting. In 1868 Christopher Latham Sholes was awarded the operative patent for the typewriter. After receiving this patent, Sholes still had many 'bugs' to work out, and spent a good deal of time with the machine, working out the kinks. One of the kinks in the machine was key jamming, which was prone to happen often and could hurt the machine. If a typist typed two letters one after the other too quickly, the hammers would hit each other; the typist then had to dislodge the hammers and that could get a bit messy. So, Sholes came up with a keyboard layout that would place letters which would be most likely struck closely in succession on opposite sides of the layout.
Eventually, due to the ability to touch type with QWERTY efficiently [first demonstrated when in a typing contest a QWERTY typist managed to type quicker than someone on a stenograph-styled machine] it became the standard.
In 1936, August Dvorak patented his Simplified Keyboard - DSK. It was designed to balance the load of typing more evenly - those letters, which would be stricken most, would be under the strongest fingers. The credibility of the claims that the Dvorak is faster is outside the scope of this article. If one is truly interested, I recommend reading an informative article at: http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html. However I do believe that Dvorak perhaps is the better layout - although due to my experience with QWERTY I still stick with it. For those of you who think Dvorak is a legacy item no longer used, you will all be pleased to know that all windows versions greater than 3.11 are Dvorak compliant, and a simple setting can change the layout setting.
On to the Keyboards!
To this day I still use the IBM Model M keyboard. This keyboard was released with the original IBM PS/2 computer. It is known for it's weight, feedback, and distinctive keystroke sound. There are some Model M's which are branded by Lexmark on the back - Lexmark bought the design from IBM in the late 1980s.
Model M's are 101 key keyboards, and still comply with all ps/2 requirements [read on for Pentium 4 possible incompatibilities and fixes.] What makes this keyboard so special?
The first aspect that is most obvious upon actually typing is the sound and feel of the keyboard. There is a noticeable and quite prominent 'click' which is not as high pitched as some Chiconey keyboards (which are quite nice too,) the sound is not soft and mushy. The Model M's keys also have a bit of resistance to them - not so that it's hard to push them down, but just a tad bit more pressure is needed to fully depress a key. Now, for those of you up late at night, or up in the wee hours of the morning, perhaps this is a disadvantage for you. Also, many people prefer not to hear the keystroke - companies like Dell, IBM, and hundreds of others have manufactured (or sub-contracted other companies) to make quiet keyboards. Let's take a look at why these keyboards are quiet, and w
To avoid moronic passwords being captured over cleartext telnet or ftp sessions, I think telnet and ftp should be disabled across the world with very limited exceptions. All UNIX and Linux distros should have cleartext protocols disabled by default. Once one account is comprised, the rest of a system usually goes very easily. Regardless of adding Kerberos support in OpenSSH, any kind of ssh or sftp connection immediately improves the worldwide crackability situation. (and yes, I just made up the word crackability=ease of access for crackers)
...nuclear-powered space ships should have started launching 10 years ago. So, if Roddenberry's predications continue to be off by 10 years, we should have the eugenics wars soon.
Khan!!!!!!
like I said: "you yourself don't start judging people based on age". Work within the system to get ahead, but don't reinforce negative behaviors by doing them yourself when you're in a position to do so.
Also, anti-discrimination laws do exist, but employers have a legitimate argument to say that more experienced people should be promoted/rewarded. Ideally, experience should be judged secondarily to skills, but in most companies, the opposite is true. More laws won't make any difference. We need a culture change across the corporate world and that's not likely to happen.
Most people get ahead through sticking around someplace for a long time. People who really want to advance stick around one place just long enough to get as far as they can through hard work and skills and then move on when they reach a ceiling when years of experience count more than they should.
I've been in the consulting world since I was 22 (started working in IT when I turned 20). I'm now 27 and I find that age-ism is the worst form of discrimination, especially among consulting clients. Since I have a well-established beard, I usually pass for 35 and that seems to give my clients the impression that I'm better qualified than one of my peers, who is exactly at the same point in his career. All of my bosses during my consulting career have always told me never to tell my true age to the clients for fear of losing business. This is especially true since the dot-com bust when all of the "young dot-commers were shown to be the frauds they are." This deception sickens me, but I have truly seen a huge difference in terms of instant credibility and career progression when people think that I'm significantly older than I actually am. (I'm starting to get a few gray hairs, so most people now think I'm in my late 30's-early 40's. Also, I got married young and have 2 kids and this reinforces their beliefs.)
I guess the whole point of my commentary on my situation is that people do discriminate based on age and you can either play along and help yourself out (and sell out in the process) or show your true self to the detriment of your career (and possibly of your consulting company's, if you're in my shoes.) That may not be politically correct, but it's the way of the world. Also, I think that it's not as bad to play along with the game to your benefit, as long as you yourself don't start judging people based on age, picking up the habits of those around you.
The law has been on the books since 1996 and was supposed to take effect no later than 1999, but the FCC has deferred implementation repeatedly for years. However, the FCC has said repeatededly that they will not defer implementation again and I'm becoming more optimistic that number portability will actually become real in Nov. (Rather than renewing my contract with AT&T (for another free new phone) as I've done for 4 years just to keep the same number, I'm holding off till Nov or till I hear that the law is deferred again. If the FCC doesn't defer again, GOODBYE AT&T!!!!!)
Another important point is that the cell phone companies have been adding fees for a couple of years now with the excuse to the FCC being "upgrading their systems" to support portability. They can't have it both ways, asking us to pay fees to support portability and then not give us portability.
you're probably right....my bad...
This article came out almost exactly a year ago and has an interesting quote regarding all the devices, including this one, that license MPEG4:
"The MPEG-4 compression has run into controversy regarding high licensing fees. So significant were the fees that Apple actually delayed the release of Quicktime 6 in protest. How this will all play out with users over time is not known yet, but unless this fee issue is addressed it may dampen adoption by users."
Also, the link above links to this article regarding the entire controversy. (It's kind of funny because the first article is dated before the second one, so obviously that article was modified to include the link after being first published without the date changing.)
I wonder if they've managed to knock down the price or if the license is a significant portion of the cost of the device?